{"id":42782,"date":"2012-03-29T11:22:15","date_gmt":"2012-03-29T19:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=42782"},"modified":"2012-03-29T11:40:23","modified_gmt":"2012-03-29T19:40:23","slug":"how-to-write-histories-of-great-rabbinic-sages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=42782","title":{"rendered":"How To Write Histories Of Great Rabbinic Sages"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a lecture on rabbinic biographies for Torah in Motion<\/a>, history professor Marc B. Shapiro<\/a> says: It was two of my publications that brought this issue front and center in the Orthodox world… I wrote a doctorate on Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg<\/a> (1884-1966). I was in Isadore Twersky<\/a>‘s department. No one had ever written a biography about a figure who’d lived so recently…<\/p>\n

Torah study at its highest is conducted in the haredi world. Every time I publish on the Sephorim blog, I get more emails from people in places in the haredi world like Bnai Brak…<\/p>\n

Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg<\/a> was friendly with Samuel Atlas<\/a>, a Slobodka bochur (yeshiva student) who becomes a Torah sage and then left Orthodoxy and went to teach at Hebrew Union College<\/a>. He was one of these lost souls. He didn’t know where to make his place. He was Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg<\/a>‘s alter ego.<\/p>\n

I wanted to see the letters. I called up Samuel Atlas’s widow. She was about 93 in about 1989. She told me that all the letters Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg<\/a> sent her husband were kept in a closed section of the Jewish Theological Seminary<\/a> (JTS) and no one is allowed to see them until after her passing.<\/p>\n

I knew this material was going to be groundbreaking. We don’t have any other case in history where we have private correspondence in detail of a gadol Yisrael writing someone no longer in the rabbinic world. Perhaps the closest thing is Rabbi Yaakov Emden<\/a>‘s memoir.<\/p>\n

I go to JTS and go upstairs and I ask for the collection and he calls Professor Yaakov Shmeltzer (sp?) who tells him where it is. They bring it out to me. A thick manila folder. I sit down. I open it up. There’s a letter saying this is a gift from Mrs Atlas and is not to be seen without her permission. Was I to close it up and give it back? I read through them and was blown away.<\/p>\n

The first thing I did when I left the library was to call Mrs Atlas. She gave me permission to use them. I have exclusive rights to use them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a lecture on rabbinic biographies for Torah in Motion, history professor Marc B. Shapiro says: It was two of my publications that brought this issue front and center in the Orthodox world… I wrote a doctorate on Rabbi Yechiel … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,29243,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marc-b-shapiro","category-r-yechiel-yaakov-weinberg","category-rabbis"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42805,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42782\/revisions\/42805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}