Abstract
This chapter brings into sharp focus the privileged status of action. After an exploration of two “moments” of language—speaking and writing—Wiener Dow connects these two stylizations of language to the Written Torah (The Hebrew Bible) and the Oral Torah (rabbinic literature). The rabbis, he argues, crafted a unified Torah that included both aspects of language, viewing the principal charge of Torah as allowing the eternal, commanding words of the Divine to achieve instantiation in the finite world. The infinite interpretive possibility of the words of Torah yields to an uncompromising insistence that their meaning be realized and expressed through discrete action. Halakha, so conceived, is a response to the Divine in deed. As such, it is interpersonal, creating a shared language of deed and establishing community.
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Notes
- 1.
See, for example, Yisrael Hopstein (The Maggid of Kozhnitz), Avodat Yisrael on Shulkhan Aruḥ, Oreḥ Ḥayim 433 3 [Hebrew ].
- 2.
Franz Rosenzweig, “The New Thinking,” in Franz Rosenzweig’s ‘The New Thinking’, ed. and trans. Alan Udoff and Barbara E. Galli (New York: Syracuse, 1999), 81–84. See also Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption, 295–296 and Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, 71–74.
- 3.
B.T. Sanhedrin 90b.
- 4.
See Hartman, A Living Covenant, pp. 6–8. See also Yeshayahu Leibowitz, “The Holiness of the Holy Scriptures,” in Leibowitz, Judaism, The Jewish People, and the State of Israel , 346–350 [Hebrew ]. For an English gloss on this, see “Ahistorical Thinkers in Judaism” in Leibowitz, Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, 96–105.
- 5.
“There is a very serious traditional orientation to the covenant that points in the direction opposite to the one that I am suggesting in this work. … This orientation claims that the closer one is to Sinai , the more truly one can understand the meaning of Torah and live authentically with God . The further one gets away from Sinai , the more one must be obedient and reverential to those earlier generations, who mediate in a more authentic way the living word of Torah. From this perspective, the present can find legitimacy only through the authentication of the past” (Hartman, A Living Covenant, 11). See also Hartman, The God Who Hates Lies, 15–16.
- 6.
Exodus 19–20, esp. 20:14.
- 7.
B.T. Kiddushin 39a.
- 8.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Funes, the Memorious,” in Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones, translated by Emecé Editores (New York: Grove Press, 1962).
- 9.
Hayyim Nachman Bialik, “Language Closing and Disclosing,” trans. Yael Lotan, in The Heart and the Fountain: An Anthology of Jewish Mystical Experiences, ed. Joseph Dan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 261.
- 10.
J.T. Berachot 1:2.
- 11.
“The school of Rabbi Yishmael taught … [j]ust as a hammer breaks a stone into several fragments, so too, each and every utterance that emerged from the mouth of the Blessed Holy One divided into seventy languages” (B.T. Shabbat 88b).
- 12.
Mishna Avot 5:22.
- 13.
“Ben Damah, son of Rabbi Yishmael’s sister, asked Rabbi Yishmael: ‘One such as I, who has studied all of the Torah, what is the law with regard to my studying Greek wisdom?’ Rabbi Yishmael recited this verse: ‘“This book of Torah shall not depart from your mouth; rather you shall contemplate it day and night” (Joshua 1:8). Go out and find a moment that is neither the day nor the night, and study in it Greek wisdom!’” (B.T. Menaḥot 99b).
- 14.
Mishna Avot 2:8.
- 15.
See Midrash Tehillim on Psalms 12:7. For a concise summary of how the 49 faces of Torah became 70, see Ḥananel Mack’s article “The Seventy Faces of the Torah: Tracing the Development of a Phrase” [Hebrew ], available at http://mikranet.cet.ac.il/pages/item.asp?item=18290
- 16.
See Mekhilta of Rabbi Yishmael, Parashat Beshalaḥ, Parasha 8; see also B.T. Shabbbat 88b on Jeremiah 23:29.
- 17.
“The point, however, is that the tradition surviving among the Sages [was] transmitted in the original way—by patient repetition, from master to disciple, from mouth to ear, and from ear to memory, without the intervention of a written text. This teaching is thoroughly oral; in the parlance of the Talmud and other early rabbinic writings, it is Oral Torah or, as I prefer to render it—Torah in the Mouth” Martin Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 5.
- 18.
Haninah Ben-Menahem, ‘Two Talmudic Understandings of the Dictum “Appoint for Yourself a Teacher”’, in Thinking Impossibilities: The Intellectual Legacy of Amos Funkenstein, ed. R.S. Westman and D. Biale, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 2008.
- 19.
I have spoken of “he” rather than “she” in this paragraph because I am describing the rabbis’ endeavor.
- 20.
B.T. Gittin 60b.
- 21.
See, for example, the rabbinic treatment of the Biblical verse, “You shall go according to the Torah that they will instruct you … veering neither right nor left” (Deuteronomy 17:11). Among others, see Rashi’s and Nachmanides’ commentaries on Deuteronomy 17:11; Song of Songs Rabba Parasha A; Sifre Devarim 154; and J.T. Horayot 1:1. See also the phrase “Yiftah in his generation is akin to Shmuel in his generation” (B.T. Rosh Hashanah 25b).
- 22.
Rosenzweig , Star of Redemption, 183–184.
- 23.
B.T. Temurah 14b.
- 24.
Mary Douglas , Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Ark, 1988).
- 25.
B.T. Shabbat 33b.
- 26.
For two of the better known instances (among many), see the story of Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai who withdraws into a cave with his son (B.T. Shabbat 33b), or the description of how Rabbi Akiva would engage in ecstatic prayer when alone (B.T. Brakhot 31a).
- 27.
B.T. Temura 14b. See also B.T. Gittin 60a.
- 28.
For further discussion of the nature of learning in the Beit Midrash, see Elie Holzer with Orit Kent, A Philosophy of Havruta: Understanding and Teaching the Art of Text Study in Pairs (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2013).
- 29.
B.T. Taanit 23b, Shabbat 33b.
- 30.
B.T. Brakhot 57b.
- 31.
“It is a tree of life to all who grasp it, and whoever holds on to it is happy; its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all it paths are peace” (Proverbs 3:17–18). This verse is integrated into the siddur at the time that the Torah scroll is returned to the ark.
- 32.
Rosenzweig , Star of Redemption, 132–133.
- 33.
Avot 3:9.
- 34.
Ben-Menahem , “Two Talmudic Understandings.”
- 35.
B.T. Brakhot 62a.
- 36.
Martin Buber, Israel and the World, (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997), 112. See also Ahad Ha-‘Am, “Priest and Prophet,” in Selected Essays of Ahad Ha-‘Am, trans. and ed. Leon Simon (New York: Atheneum, 1981).
- 37.
Yehuda Aryeh Leib Alter of Gur, Sefat Emet, Parashat Tzav, 1871 [Hebrew ].
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Wiener Dow, L. (2017). Saying, Writing, Doing. In: The Going. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68831-2_2
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