Posted on Mar 31, 2013 in Marc B. Shapiro

Date: 11/11/2003 8:02:00 AM
Subject: Clarification

Message: I have noticed that many people don’t understand the basic shitah of this website. With your permission, let me clarify something.
Rav Henkin, who together with R. Moshe Feinstein was the leading halakhic authority in the U.S. in the 1950′s and 1960′s, is quoted as saying that the entire basis for the existence of the kashrut organizations is the view of the rashba. What did he mean by this?
There is a machloket rishonim and the rashba holds that if a non-Jew, in the normal process of making a food product, adds some non-kosher element, even a very small percentage, then it is not batel. Bittul only works when it falls in by accident. This view is known by those who study Yoreh Deah since it is quoted in the Beit Yosef.
If you look at any of the standard Yoreh Deah books you will find, however, that the halakhah is not in accordance with this rashba. Rather, any time the goy puts a small amount of treif into the food it is batel, even if it is intentional on his part. There is a famous Noda Biyehudah that discusses this at length. See Mahadura Tinyana, Yoreh Deah no. 56 where he permits a drink that was produced using treif meat in the production but the amount of meat was very small and could not be tasted. He states that it is permissible. There is a Rama who has a teshuvah and states similarly. (I am sure if you describe the Noda Biyehudah’s case to people, even learned ones, and say that there is a contemporary rabbi who permits this, they will mockingly refer to him as a Conservative or Reform rabbi since in their mind no “real” rabbi who knows halakhah could ever permit something that has non-kosher meat in it!)

So now we can understand R. Henkin’s comment. If you go to the kashrut organizations’ websites and speak to them they will tell you that you need the hashgachah because sometimes the runs are not properly cleaned between kosher and non-kosher or milk and meat and some slight amounts of the objectionable ingredient might remain (yet here even rashba will agree that it’s not a problem!), or they tell you about release agents or that small amounts of ingredients are not listed on the label, etc. etc. The rashba indeed holds that these last cases are problematic, but the halakhah is not in accordance with the rashba. The hashgachot have raised the bar and are now operating at a chumra level here as well as in other areas. But the average person has no idea about any of this and has never even heard about the concept of bittul. Even if you explain the concept of bittul to him, his response will be: “OK maybe this is the strict halakhah, but I’m not starving so why should I eat something that we had to rely on bittul for. A person who cares about kashrut won’t eat something that has even the smallest amount of treif.” Since people haven’t been educated about the halakhot, they assume that bittul is a kula to be used in emergency situations, and it is not their fault that they believe this, since this is the view that the kashrut organization hold and publicize.
There is a good article waiting to be written about how in the last thirty years we went from halakhah to chumra when it comes to food issues.

Posted on Dec 25, 2012 in Marc B. Shapiro

In his third lecture on Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, history professor Marc B. Shapiro says:

I expected Obama to win. I did not vote for him.

Rav Zevin wrote Ha’moadim Be’halachah – halachic studies of the Jewish festivals. When this book appeared in 1944, it was completely new. It has many imitators. It was the first halachic work that has footnotes. It’s written in an academic style. This is now standard. Some works have one line of text and the rest if all footnotes. That’s not a traditional Jewish way of writing. That’s another example of how the Torah world has been influenced by the academic approach.

It’s the greatest work in modern times dealing with the festivals.

I use the Steinsaltz gemara (Talmud).

The worst thing Artscroll has ever done and it has never been rectified [it changed the words of Rav Zeverin in praise of the modern state of Israel].

R. writes: “Artscroll – they have an achrayus towards the tens of thousands of Jews who take what they say about Judaism at face value. By distorting is, they trivialise Judaism. One such example is where thye lied about R. Zevin’s position about Medinat Yisrael – they took out the words ‘ashreinu shezachinu lec’kach’ from their translation of Moadim Behalacha, and claimed that he had expressed his regret at writing this in his later years. When his relatives were asked if this was the case, they denied it vehemently. If you can’t do a job honestly, don’t do it at all. And fear of terrorists is no excuse. Their epsoused disregard for the hard work of academics is also inexcusable.”

Other than Satmar, the typical Haredi is happy that Israel rules Israel. They may not be Zionist but do they wish there was never a modern state of Israel? No.

Going back to the 1980s, Tradition was the only Orthodox journal.

The most interesting of all the Orthodox journals today is produced by a bunch of amateurs in Flatbush — Hakira. It’s not afraid to take risks. It’s iconoclastic. It knows how to keep things interesting. Tradition became boring. Tradition censored me. Thank God we now have blogs and all sorts of other things. I said I won’t ever write for them again.

Rabbi Shalom Carmy, the editor, has made Tradition a little more interesting. Under R. Emmanuel Feldman, it really collapsed and you could fall asleep reading those issues.

The great Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, history professor Marc B. Shapiro says:

Rav Zevin wrote Ha’moadim Be’halachah – halachic studies of the Jewish festivals. When this book appeared in 1944, it was completely new. It has many imitators. It was the first halachic work that has footnotes. It’s written in an academic style. This is now standard. Some works have one line of text and the rest if all footnotes. That’s not a traditional Jewish way of writing. That’s another example of how the Torah world has been influenced by the academic approach.

It’s the greatest work in modern times dealing with the festivals.

I use the Steinsaltz gemara (Talmud).

The worst thing Artscroll has ever done and it has never been rectified [it changed the words of Rav Zeverin in praise of the modern state of Israel].

R. writes: “Artscroll – they have an achrayus towards the tens of thousands of Jews who take what they say about Judaism at face value. By distorting is, they trivialise Judaism. One such example is where thye lied about R. Zevin’s position about Medinat Yisrael – they took out the words ‘ashreinu shezachinu lec’kach’ from their translation of Moadim Behalacha, and claimed that he had expressed his regret at writing this in his later years. When his relatives were asked if this was the case, they denied it vehemently. If you can’t do a job honestly, don’t do it at all. And fear of terrorists is no excuse. Their epsoused disregard for the hard work of academics is also inexcusable.”

Other than Satmar, the typical Haredi is happy that Israel rules Israel. They may not be Zionist but do they wish there was never a modern state of Israel? No.

Going back to the 1980s, Tradition was the only Orthodox journal.

The most interesting of all the Orthodox journals today is produced by a bunch of amateurs in Flatbush — Hakira. It’s not afraid to take risks. It’s iconoclastic. It knows how to keep things interesting. Tradition became boring. Tradition censored me. Thank God we now have blogs and all sorts of other things. I said I won’t ever write for them again.

Shalom Carny, the editor, has made Tradition a little more interesting. Under R. Emmanuel Feldman, it really collapsed and you could fall asleep reading those issues.

The great Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, history professor Marc B. Shapiro says:

Rav Zevin wrote Ha’moadim Be’halachah – halachic studies of the Jewish festivals. When this book appeared in 1944, it was completely new. It has many imitators. It was the first halachic work that has footnotes. It’s written in an academic style. This is now standard. Some works have one line of text and the rest if all footnotes. That’s not a traditional Jewish way of writing. That’s another example of how the Torah world has been influenced by the academic approach.

It’s the greatest work in modern times dealing with the festivals.

I use the Steinsaltz gemara (Talmud).

The worst thing Artscroll has ever done and it has never been rectified [it changed the words of Rav Zeverin in praise of the modern state of Israel].

R. writes: “Artscroll – they have an achrayus towards the tens of thousands of Jews who take what they say about Judaism at face value. By distorting is, they trivialise Judaism. One such example is where thye lied about R. Zevin’s position about Medinat Yisrael – they took out the words ‘ashreinu shezachinu lec’kach’ from their translation of Moadim Behalacha, and claimed that he had expressed his regret at writing this in his later years. When his relatives were asked if this was the case, they denied it vehemently. If you can’t do a job honestly, don’t do it at all. And fear of terrorists is no excuse. Their epsoused disregard for the hard work of academics is also inexcusable.”

Other than Satmar, the typical Haredi is happy that Israel rules Israel. They may not be Zionist but do they wish there was never a modern state of Israel? No.

Going back to the 1980s, Tradition [published by the RCA, the Modern Orthodox rabbi's group) was the only Orthodox journal.

The most interesting of all the Orthodox journals today is produced by a bunch of amateurs in Flatbush -- Hakira. It's not afraid to take risks. It's iconoclastic. It knows how to keep things interesting. Tradition became boring. Tradition censored me. Thank God we now have blogs and all sorts of other things. I said I won't ever write for them again.

Shalom Carny, the editor, has made Tradition a little more interesting. Under R. Emmanuel Feldman, it really collapsed and you could fall asleep reading those issues.

Rabbi Yaakov Elman wrote in to the second issue of Hakira a little contemptuously, what are you doing? Then he published an essay in it. He realized that if you want to write for the Orthodox world, you write for Hakira.

Rav Zevin refers to [the great JTA Talmudist] Shaul Lieberman as “Rav Shaul Lieberman” [a sign of respect]. When it was translated into English by Artscroll, the references were changed to “S. Lieberman.” Lieberman was one of Rav Zevin’s closest friends.

Show me an Agudah gadol who was not happy with the state’s founding (except for maybe Rav Aharon Kotler).

My book on censorship is done. I have to read over each chapter one more time. I have all the pictures. It then goes to the editor. Then it’s published.

Remember that the Seforim (books) blog for a year was the Tradition Seforim blog. The RCA wanted to censor my posts. Dan Rabinowitz wouldn’t let them. The RCA agreed before they took over that they would have no input in content and they wanted to bring people to their website. Thousands of people read Seforim. But they didn’t like my posts. They thought it wasn’t fitting for the RCA. They wanted a censor for Shapiro’s posts and they wanted to censor the comments.

I can’t say many people go to the Tradition website.

I’m not a member of the RCA nor any rabbinic body.

The Seforim blog has been quoted in numerous academic articles. Blogs now are an essential part of scholarship.

I think it shows why Tradition is not Hakira. What did I write so crazy that they did censor? I published what they wanted to censor in the Edah journal and the world didn’t collapse.

Posted on Dec 11, 2012 in Marc B. Shapiro

Historian Marc B. Shapiro writes:

Although in the U.S. the Telz yeshiva adopted a very anti-secular studies perspective, this was not the case in Europe. R. Joseph Leib Bloch was very involved with the Yavneh day school system in Lithuania, which incorporated secular studies (and also Tanakh), and in the context of Eastern Europe can be regarded as a form of Modern Orthodox education. It is also significant that in Yavneh schools Hebrew was the language of instruction for all subjects. The preparatory school (mekhinah) of the Telz yeshiva also contained secular studies (which the government insisted on if students wanted to be exempted from the draft).

The graduates of Yavneh attended universities, in particular the University of Kovno, and they had an Orthodox student group named Moriah. By the 1930s, Lithuania had begun to produce an academically trained Orthodox population. Had the Holocaust not intervened, much of Lithuanian Orthodoxy would have come to resemble German Orthodoxy. This is important to realize since people often assume that Bnei Brak and Lakewood are the only authentic continuation of Lithuania, when nothing could be further from the truth. What R. Ruderman attempted to establish in Baltimore was, speaking historically, the true successor of the pre-War Lithuanian Orthodox society’s dominant ethos. (I am speaking of Orthodox society as a whole, not the very small yeshiva population.)

Posted on Dec 11, 2012 in Marc B. Shapiro

Historian Marc B. Shapiro writes: In a 1931 letter to R. Kook, Iggerot la-Re’iyah, no. 273, the Kovno Rav asks R. Kook if he agrees with him that a world congress of rabbis should be convened – אספת רבנים עולמית . I mention this only because in later years it became almost an article of faith in the haredi world that such rabbinic gatherings were absolutely forbidden. The fear was that the gatherings would make decisions at odds with the haredi Daas Torah. The only way to make sure that their followers would not attend these gatherings, where they might actually hear different viewpoints, was for the haredi leaders to ban these gatherings.[7] This is as good an example of any of how the haredi leadership uses its rabbinic “muscle” for political goals. If someone were to ask on what basis can one state that it is forbidden for rabbis with different viewpoints to gather to discuss issues, the answer is obviously not going to be that the Talmud or Shulhan Arukh says it is forbidden. It is forbidden because the gedolim say it is forbidden, i.e., Daas Torah.