Why Now? Toward a Sociology of Knowledge Analysis of TheTorah.com

“Sociology of Knowledge,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Ed. David L. Sills (New York: Macmillan, 1968) Vol. 8, pp. 428-435.

Makor Rishon is an Israeli newspaper with an overt Israeli-nationlist bent.  It is not formally a Religious Zionist publication but the overwhelming majority of its staff and readership probably is.   Its expanded Friday edition contains a variety of magazines and supplements.  The literary supplement, “Shabbat,” includes, among others, essays, interviews and book reviews on Jewish philosophy, history, society, and  culture.

Chaim I. Waxman, Jewish Baby Boomers: A Communal Perspective (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), p. 28.

I thank Uzi Rebhun for this information.

Pew Research Center, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” Oct. 1, 2013, p. 43.

Rona Sheramy, personal communication, July 28, 2011.

Rona Sheramy, “From the Executive Director,” AJS Perspectives, Fall 2010,  p.4.

Robert Eisen, “Jewish Studies and the Academic Teaching of Religion,” Liberal Education87:4, Fall 2001, pp. 14-17.

Rona Sheramy, “From the Executive Director,” AJS Perspectives, Spring 2011, pp. 4, 56.

Steven M. Cohen and Judith Veinstein , “The 2008 Association for Jewish Studies Membership Survey,” April 27, 2008. http://www.ajsnet.org/survey.pdf,  p. 4.  I thank Pamela Nadell and Rona Sheramy for bringing this survey to my attention.

David Berger, Cultures in Collision and Conversation: Essays in the Intellectual History of the Jews (Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2011), p. 210.

I have discussed this in, among others, “If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem…: The Impact of Israel on American Orthodox Jewry,” in Chaim I. Waxman, ed., Religious Zionism Post Disengagement: Future Directions (Orthodox Forum Series), (New York and Jersey City, NJ: Yeshiva University Press and Ktav, 2008), pp. 415-432. 

Haym Soloveitchik, “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy,” Tradition 28:4, Fall 1994, pp. 64-130.

Joseph Berger, “Rabbis Who Were Sages, Not Saints,” New York Times, April 26, 2003.

Steven I. Weiss, “Orthodox Rabbis Launch Book Ban,” Forward, Feb. 4, 2005.

See among others, Shaul Magid, Hasidism on the Margin, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), p. 120. For a different interpretation, see Herzl Helfter, “‘In God’s Hands’: The Religious Phenomenology of R. Mordechai Yosef of Izbica,” Tradition46:1, Spring 2013, pp. 43-65.

Yehuda Gellman also points to the Hasidic penchant to remove the text from its historical context and apply it ahistorically.  As he puts it,

In the first Hasidic book ever published, R. Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye laid down a principle, attributed to Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov his teacher and founder of Hasidism, which was followed in the coming generations of Hasidism. The principle, let’s call it “The Principle of Universal Applicability,” states that the Torah is eternal, and thereforemust have application to every person in every age. The idea is not that people are to take the literal/historical content and see how that might be relevant to their lives. For R. Yakov Yosef this means that the linguistic meaning, the pshat, itself varies from one period of time to another. The eternity of the Torah involves the fact that the Torah can be read differently for every generation for all time to come. The Torah is eternally variable. While the Torah has text-immutability it has mutability of linguistic content.

Yehuda Jerome Gellman, This Was From God – A Contemporary Theology of Torah and History, forthcoming.

Yehudah Mirsky, Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 19.

Avinoam Rosenak, Rabbi A. I. Kook [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2006), pp. 52-53.

Tamar Ross, “RAI”H Kook vepost-modernism: Ha’erekh hahakarati shel ta’anot emet datiot,” Akdamot 10, p. 204. An earlier, English-language version of Ross’ article appeared as “The Cognitive Value of Religious Truth Statements: Rabbi A. I. Kook And Postmodernism,” Yaakov Elman and Jeffrey S. Gurock eds., Hazon Nahum: Studies in Jewish Law, Thought and History Presented to Dr. Norman Lamm on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday(New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1997),  pp. 479-529.

For a historical analysis see Marc Zvi Brettler and Edward Breuer, “Jewish Readings of the Bible,” in The New Cambridge History of the Bible: From 1750 to the Present, Vol. 4 (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).  A rare recent exception was Rabbi Yaacov Kamenetsky, the “protagonist” of the aforementioned banned work, Making of a Godol,who not only studied Tanakh but also wrote unique commentaries which are now being prepared for publication.

 עד היכן חייב אדם ללמד את בנו תורה? אמר רב יהודה אמר שמואל: כגון זבולון בן דן, שלימדו אבי אביו מקרא ומשנה ותלמוד, הלכות ואגדות.

Rabbi Yoel Sirkis, in his commentary of the Shulhan Arukh, claims that Rashi was actually the exception and that most maintained that the father’s obligation included the teach of Neviim and Ketuvim.

Rabbeinu Tam, one of the major Tosafists, went even further than his grandfather, Rashi, and was of the opinion that one can fulfill one’s obligation of learning Torah as well as Neviim and Ketuvim by learning Talmud, because they are all included there (Tractate Kidushin 30a).  Although his opinion was the exception, rather than the rule, it may have influenced the trend.  It may also be one of the reasons that, though men did not generally study Tanakh, women, who did not study Talmud, did study Tanakh and typically knew it better than men.

Rabbi Moshe Shternbuch, Teshuvot vehanhagot hashalem, Vol. 2 (Jerusalem: 5754), No. 457, p. 386.  Shaul Stampfer suggests that there are sound educational reasons for not teaching Tanakh in cheder, namely, “the realities of teaching children—especially children who do not understand Hebrew.  Even Hebrew-speaking adults today have great difficulty with books of the Bible such as Job and the prophetic books with their sweepings and brilliant rhetoric.” Shaul Stampfer, Families, Rabbis and Education: Traditional Jewish Society in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Europe (Oxford : Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), p. 155.  For an overview of the neglect of Tanakh study in yeshivot, see Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, “On the Study of Tanakh in Yeshivot” (Hebrew) in Rabbi Yehoshua Reis, ed., My Constant Delight: Contemporary Religious Zionist Perspectives on Tanakh Study(Jerusalem and Alon Shvut: Magid and Yeshivat Har Etzion/Herzog College, 5773/2013), pp. 157-180 (Hebrew).

Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 56a.

For an analysis of the Talmudic approach to David, see Rabbi Yaacov Medan, “Kol ha-omer David hata—eino ela to’eh,” in Reis, ed., My Constant Delight, pp. 83-96.

Sara Japhet, “Major Trends in the Study of Medieval Jewish Exegesis in Northern France,” Trumah 9, 2000, pp. 43-61. 

For somewhat different perspectives on the role of the Bible in secular Israeli society, see Uriel Simon, Seek Peace and Pursue It: Topical Issue in Light of the Bible/The Bible in Light of Topical Issues (Hebrew), Second, expanded edition, Tel Aviv: Yediot Ahronot/Sifrei Hemed, 2004, pp. 23-46; Yair Zakovitch, “Scripture and Israeli Secular Society,” in Benjamin D. Sommer, ed., Jewish Concepts of Scripture: A Comparative Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 2012), pp. 299-316; and Yael Zerubavel, “A Secular Return to the Bible? Reflections on Israeli Society, National Memory, and the Politics of the Past,” AJS Perspectives, Spring 2011, pp. 30-31.

Anita Shapira, “Ben-Gurion and the Bible: The Forging of an Historical Narrative?”Middle Eastern Studies 33: 4, October 1997, pp. 645-674

Sara Japhet, “Yisudo vereshit toldotav shel haHug leMikra,” in Hagit Lavski, ed., Toldot haUniversita haIvrit beYerushalayim: Hitbosesut utzemiha (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 5765), pp. 283-303.

See Sara Japhet, “Major Trends . . .” and Uriel Simon, “Seek Peace . . .” cited above.

There is some disagreement as to if, when, and why the decline.  In addition to the reasons cited  by Japhet and Simon, Anita Shapira argues that the decline was largely the result of  “appropriation of the Bible” by religious nationalism  (Anita Shapita, “The Bible and Israeli Idenity,” AJS Review 28:1, 2004, pp. 11-42; that article in Hebrew is the opening chapter in a book edited by Shapira, Hatanakh vehazehut haIsraelit [Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005]). Curiously, in her article on Ben Gurion and Tanakh, Shapira implies that the decline began before the Six-Day War and the religious-nationalist “appropriation of the Bible.” Izhak Laor, in a review of Shapira’s book, argues that the decline is connected to a linguistic matter, namely that the language of Tanakh is alien to modern non-religious Israelis and, thus, has little appeal (I. Laor, “Shimshon higer bishtei raglav haya,” Haaretz, Jan. 17, 2006).  Yair Zakovitch suggests a series of reasons for the change (I. Zakovitch, “Scripture and Israeli Secular Culture,” pp. 301-304). Somewhat curiously, Yairah Amit, in another review of Shapira’s volume, asserts that in fact there has been no decline in the status of Tanakh in Israeli society (Yairah Amit, “Ha-im yarda karno shel haTanakh?” Zemanim 95, Summer 2006, pp. 111-115.

Perhaps because he was a member, Yair Zakovitch is still somewhat optimistic that the circle can be revived and have impact (“Scripture and Israeli Secular Culture,” p. 314).

It was and is still named the Mahlaka leTanakh, whereas Hebrew Univesrity has its Hug leMikra.

Yael Unterman,  Nehama Leibowitz: Teacher and Bible Scholar (Jerusalem: Urim Publications, 2009); Hayuta Deutsch, Nehama: The Life of Nehama Leibowitz [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Miskal-Yediot Ahronoth, 2008).

Among many secularists who opposed Israel’s occupations of the territories, alienation from the Bible was exacerbated.

Haim Chertok, Stealing Home: Israel Bound and Rebound (New York: Fordham University Press, 1988), p. 137.

Yosef Ofer, ed. The “Aspects Theory” of Rav Mordechai Breuer: Articles and Responses(Alon Shvut: Tevunot, Sifriyat Hegyonot, 5765; Hebrew);Mordechai Breuer, “The Study of Bible and the Primacy of the Fear of Heaven: Compatibility or Contradiction?” in Shalom Carmy, ed., Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah: Contributions and Limitations,Orthodox Forum Series, (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996), pp. 159-180.

For many of those seriously interested in Bible study, this was probably a more appealing approach than that of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who declared,

I have never been seriously troubled by the problem of the Biblical doctrine of creation vis-a-vis the scientific story of evolution at both the cosmic and the organic levels, nor have I been perturbed by the confrontation of the mechanistic interpretation of the human mind with the Biblical spiritual concept of man. I have not been perplexed by the impossibility of fitting the mystery of revelation into the framework of historical empiricism. Moreover, I have not even been troubled by the theories of Biblical criticism which contradict the very foundations upon which the sanctity and integrity of the Scriptures rest. (Rabbi. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “The Lonely Man of Faith,” Tradition 7:2, Summer 1965, pp. 8-9).

He did not disclose why he was not troubled by those matters, especially those that he did not reject.  See Tamar Ross, “Orthodoxy and the Challenge of Biblical Criticism: Reflections on the Importance of Asking the Right Question,” http://thetorah.com/the-challenge-of-biblical-criticism/

A portrait of Bin-Nun which highlights the centrality of Tanakh in his life and  his approach to it is found in Yossi Klein Halevi, Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation (New York: HarperCollins, 2013); see esp. pp. 203-04.

Hayyim Angel, “Torat Hashem Temima: The Contributions of Rav Yoel Bin-Nun to Religious Tanakh Study,” Tradition 40:3, Fall 2007, pp. 5-18; http://jtec.macam.ac.il/portal/ArticlePage.aspx?id=1700

See, for example, the books by Amnon Bazak, I Samuel: A King in Israel and II Samuel: David the King [both in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Maggid, 2013), and his Until This Day: Fundamental Questions in Bible Teaching [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Miskal-Yediot Ahronoth and Sifrei Hemed, 2013).

See, for example, Binyamin Lau, Jeremiah [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Miskal-Yediot Ahronoth and Sifrei Hemed, 2010) and Esther: Reading the Megillah [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Miskal-Yediot Ahronoth and Sifrei Hemed, 2011); Yoel Bin-Nun and Binyamin Lau, Isaiah [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Miskal-Yediot Ahronoth and Sifrei Hemed, 2013). 

Zvi Israel Tau, Zadik be-emunato yihye: Al hagisha lelimud Tora (Jerusalem, 2002); Five videos of lectures by Rabbi Shlomo Aviner on Tanakh begova einayim.

Personal communication, June 2, 2014.

I would broadly suggest three distinct types of relationship with Tanakh in different Orthodox communities: 1. For Religious Zionists, Tanakh speaks directly to the reader and the reader interprets its words in ways that are contemporarily meaningful.  Tanakh is a living document with which one has dialogue, conversations.  2. For charedim, it is a sacred document — “set apart and forbidden,” to use Emile Durkheim’s phrase or, as “set apart,” as Rashi and numerous others translate it and “forbidden” in the sense that no new interpretations are permissible – “hadash assur min haTorah.”  In that context, communication is one way – it addresses the reader but there is no dialogue with it.  It is “set in stone,” i.e., it does not lend itself to individual interpretation.  3. Diaspora Jews are detached from it.  It is written in a foreign language and relates to places, events, and matters that are remote and in the past.

Chaim I. Waxman, “Needed – New Typologies: The Complexity of American Orthodoxy in the 21^st Century,” in Stuart Cohen and Bernard Susser, eds., Ambivalent Jew: Charles Liebman in Memoriam (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2007), pp. 135-153.

See, for example, Shalom Berger,“A Year of Study in an Israeli Yeshiva Program: Before and After,” Ph.D dissertation, Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration, Yeshiva University, 1997, pp. 17, 90.

Personal communication, June 2, 2014.  It should be noted, however, that the increase in the number of students wearing kippot does not necessarily indicate that more Orthodox students are studying Bible.  It may reflect the changes in the larger American culture on which Orthodox students at secular universities are now much more likely to wear kippot in public than they were 30-40 years ago.

Bernard Lazerwitz, , J. Alan Winter, Arnold Dashefsky, and Ephraim Tabory, Jewish Choices: American Jewish Denominationalism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), pp. 78-83; Chaim I Waxman, Jewish Baby Boomers: A Communal Perspective(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), pp. 77-78..

Bernard Lazerwitz, et. al., Jewish Choices, p. 40.

Pew Research Center, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” p. 10.

The decline of Conservative Judaism was foreseen by Charles Liebman as early as 1980.  See Charles S. Liebman, “The Future of Conservative Judaism in the United States,” Jerusalem Letter: Viewpoints #11: March 31, 1980/14 Nisan 5740.  Evidence from the 2013 Pew study demonstrates the decline.  Reasons for the decline, in addition to those suggested by Liebman, can be found in Daniel Gordis, “Conservative Judaism: A Requiem,” Jewish Review of Books, Winter 2014 and, from a personal perspective, Michah Gottlieb, “How Conservative Judaism Lost Me — The Reason I Drifted Away: I Wasn’t Wanted,”http://forward.com/articles/186693/how-conservative-judaism-lost-me/?.  The pattern is not unique to Conservative Judaism.  See, for example, Dean M. Kelley, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing (New York: Harper & Row, 1972); Donald E. Miller, “The Future of Liberal Christianity,” Christian Century, March 10, 1982, p. 266, available on line at 
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1289;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/opinion/sunday/douthat-can-liberal-christianity-be-saved.html?_r=0

Pp. 10, 49-50.

Jay P. Lefkowitz, “The Rise of Social Orthodoxy: A Personal Account,” Commentary, April 2014, pp. 37-42.

Chaim I. Waxman, America’s Jews in Transition (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1983), p. 52.

The term “Orthodoxy” derived from Christian theology and was first applied to traditionalists within Judaism in early 19^th century Germany as a pejorative by adherents of Reform. Subsequently traditionalist adopted the label as a badge of honor.  In the United States, the term emerged several decades later and, likewise, those who adopted it did so in opposition to Reform.  See Louis Jacobs, The Jewish Religion: A Companion (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 370; Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 86-87.

Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism, pp. 165-193.

I discuss this further in Chaim I. Waxman, “Defensive in the Center,” Conversations 20, (forthcoming) Autumn 2014.

Avraham Weiss, “Open Orthodoxy! A Modern Orthodox Rabbi’s Creed,” Judaism46:4,Fall 1997, pp. 409-421

If, in the early 1980s, Clifford Geertz could suggest that, “The hallmark of modern consciousness . . .  is its enormous multiplicity”; how more so is that true for the world after the internet. See Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 161.

I know of no studies of web connectivity among Orthodox Jews in the United States.  However, there are indications of high usage from studies internet connectivity and usage among both Religious Zionist youth and  haredim in Israel (see Yona Goodman, “Hano’ar haZioni-dat ba-internet: Zilum matzav vehitmodedut hinukhit,” Tzohar, No. 33 (Summer) 2008, pp. 85-94; Karine Barzilai-Nahon and Gad Barzilai, “Cultured Technology: The Internet and Religious Fundamentalism,” The Information Society 21: 1, January-March 2005, pp. 25–40).

The term was suggested to me by Menachem Friedman.

See for example, Menachem Kellner, Must a Jew Believe Anything?(London and Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1999); Marc B. Shapiro, The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles Reappraised (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004).

Rachel S. A. Pear, “’And It Was Good’?: American Modern Orthodox Engagement with Darwinism from 1925 to the Present (2012),” Ph.D dissertation, Bar-Ilan University, Science Technology and Society Program, 2012.

Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967.

Peter L. Berger, The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (Garden City, NY: Anchor Doubleday, 1979), p. 27.

Peter L. Berger, ed., The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center and Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 2.

Peter L. Berger, “Further Thoughts on Religion and Modernity,” Society, Vol. 49, No. 4 (July-August), 2012, p. 314.  This seems similar to an observation made decades earlier by Jacob Katz, namely, “Secularization has affected the role played by religion generally . . .  It did not, however, succeed in ousting religion nor in effacing the particular characteristics of the two religions [Judaism and Christianity=CIW] whose interrelation we have been considering.” See Jacob Katz, Emancipation and Assimilation: Studies in Modern Jewish History (Farnborough: Gregg International Publishers, 1972), p. 125.

Berger, “Further Thoughts on Religion and Modernity,” p. 316. 

Jacob Katz, “Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective,” in Peter Y. Medding, ed., The Challenge of Modernity and Jewish Orthodoxy  (Studies in Contemporary Jewry, Vol. 2; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986),  pp. 3-17; Michael K. Silber, “The Emergence of Ultra-Orthodoxy: The Invention of a Tradition,” in Jack Wertheimer, ed., The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era (New York and Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), pp. 23-84; Adam S. Ferziger, Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance, and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).

Gerald J. Blidstein, “Halakha and Democracy,” Tradition 32:1, Fall 1997, p. 29.

Tamar Ross, “The Feminist Contribution Halakhic Discourse: Kol Be-isha Erva as a Test Case,”  Emor1, 2010, pp.37-69; Amanda Borschel-Dan, “Orthodox, Separate — and Almost Equal, Times of Israel, http://www.timesofisrael.com/orthodox-separate-and-almost-equal/; Netael Bendel, “Harav Avi Gisser: ‘A’afsher lemishpaha lesbit lagu beOfra,’” http://m.kipa.co.il/now/56906.html, which is a report of talks by Rav Avi Gisser and Rabanit Esti Rosenberg at a panel sponsored by Bat Kol, a religious lesbian organization, at Hartman Institute, May 14, 2014 (motzaei Pesach Sheni).

Menachem Kellner, Must a Jew Believe Anything?, pp. 8-9.

Frank Newport, “More Than 9 in 10 Americans Continue to Believe in God,” June 3, 2011, http://www.gallup.com/poll/147887/Americans-Continue-Believe-God.aspx