The Analytic Movement: Hayyim Soloveitchik and his Circle by Norman Solomon

Posted on July 26, 2020 by Luke Ford

Marc B. Shapiro writes:

The history of Torah study is marked by various trends, such as Tosafistic analysis, the combination of philosophy and Talmud study, and pilpul. In this century, it is the “Brisker” method of Talmud study which stands out. The analytic approach developed by R. Hayyim Soloveitchik of Brisk (1853-1918) quickly conquered the yeshiva world and created a revolution in Talmud study. It is true that R. Hayyim did not create the Brisker method ex nihilo. Still, there is no doubt that this method reached its most polished state in R. Hayyim’s hands. He was the major force behind its development and his contribution was unique. Without exaggeration it is possible to say that R. Hayyim raised the quality of Talmud study to a level not seen since the days of the Tosafists. In hands the argumentation of the Talmud and rishonim assumed a “scientific” character, without parallel in previous generations. At the same time, he transformed the practical halakhic work par exellence—Maimonides’ Mishne Tor ah—into both the central feature of his theoretical analyses as well as the most profound commentary on the Talmud. By doing so, he became the first to reveal the profundity of the Mishne Torah in all of its grandeur. The centrality of Maimonides’ code in contemporary Talmudic shiurim is a direct result of R. Hayyim’s influence.1

As is to be expected with anything new, the approach of R. Hayyim met with opposition among many scholars. No doubt, there was a good deal of jealousy and small-mindedness in this opposition. It would not be surprising if there were those who, because of their inability to produce hiddushim of R. Hayyim’s quality, attempted to destroy his influence. Yet it is also true that a number of important gedolei Tisrael distanced themselves from R. Hayyim’s method of study. They did so not merely as a natural conservative response to the new method, but because they believed that R. Hayyim’s approach endangered the tradition of Talmud study.

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LAT: By easing its bar exam score, will California produce more Black and Latino lawyers?

Posted on July 26, 2020 by Luke Ford

The Los Angeles Times suggests that reducing standards will allow for more diversity.

Report:

For more than three decades, California has clung to one of the nation’s toughest testing standards for law school students hoping to practice law in the most populous state in the country.

But this month, the California Supreme Court, which oversees the state bar, agreed to lower the passing score for the exam, a victory for law school deans who have long hoped the change would raise the number of Black and Latino people practicing law…

“There is absolutely no evidence that shows having a higher score makes for better lawyers,” said UCLA School of Law Dean Jennifer L. Mnookin, a longtime supporter of lowering the passing score. “There is significant evidence that it reduces the diversity of the bar.”

Forty percent of California’s population is white, 60% are people of color. But 68% of California lawyers are white, and only 32% are people of color, according to a new report by the State Bar of California.

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Boy

Posted on July 26, 2020 by Luke Ford

Jack writes: The term persists in the name “busboy” which is still used. Because of child labor laws, menial jobs that were once done by children or young teens (e.g. bellboy, shoe shine boy) are now done by full grown adults but the “boy” description still sometimes attaches. In other cases (“ball boy”) the job is still done by children (though often nowadays by girls).

Naturally, being the lowest skilled, the grown men who replaced children in these menial jobs were often black but the job title was still “boy” – there was no racial angle. In the old days, IQ was sometimes express as mental age, so it’s not surprising that a job once done by a white 12 year old would become one that a black 16+ year old was capable of in the age of child labor laws.

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What Many Transgender Activists Don’t Want You to Know: and why you should know it anyway

Posted on July 26, 2020 by Luke Ford

J. Michael Bailey writes: Currently the predominant cultural understanding of male-to-female transsexualism is that all male-to-female (MtF) transsexuals are, essentially, women trapped in men’s bodies. This understanding has little scientific basis, however, and is inconsistent with clinical observations. Ray Blanchard has shown that there are two distinct subtypes of MtF transsexuals. Members of one subtype, homosexual transsexuals, are best understood as a type of homosexual male. The other subtype, autogynephilic transsexuals, are motivated by the erotic desire to become women. The persistence of the predominant cultural understanding, while explicable, is damaging to science and to many transsexuals.

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IS MODERN ORTHODOXY MOVING TOWARDS AN ACCEPTANCE OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM?

Posted on July 26, 2020 by Luke Ford

Marc Shapiro writes in 2019:

If you take Louis Jacobs at his word, then the eruption of the so-called ‘‘Jacobs Affair’’ in the early 1960s was a big surprise to him. Some might find this difficult to believe, since how could the English United Synagogue ever have allowed one of its rabbis to advocate higher biblical criticism? Yet in one of my conversations with Jacobs, he insisted that he meant what he said, and that he had no reason to assume that because of his views about the authorship of the Torah that he was in any way disqualified from serving as a rabbi in the United Synagogue. The proof of this, he noted, was that he published We Have Reason to Believe in 1957 and no one raised any objections to its content in the first few years after it appeared.1

When We Have Reason to Believe was published, Jacobs was teaching at Jews’ College. If he was acceptable to teach at Jews’ College, then it makes sense that he would have been surprised at the furor that broke out a few years after the appearance of the book. Furthermore, as he well knew and would himself later point out, men such as Joshua Abelson (1873–1940) and Herbert Loewe (1882– 1940) had been regarded as significant figures in traditional Judaism in England, with Abelson serving as minister of a few different Orthodox synagogues, yet they both held non-traditional views when it came to the authorship of the Torah.2

The Jacobs’ Affair became a huge theological controversy, the details of which most of the laity did not really grasp. In the end, Orthodoxy was victorious and Jacobs was prevented from becoming principal of Jews’ College. This victory was an affirmation of the doctrines of Torah min ha-Shamayim (Torah from Heaven) and complete Mosaic authorship, both of which are ‘‘codified’’ in Maimonides’ Eighth Principle of Faith. For centuries now, traditional Jewish thinkers have been unanimous in accepting these ideas. They have regarded as heresy any assertion that portions of the Torah were written at different times by different people.

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