[Avodah] R Tzadok-TSBP

[Michael Makovi]

Regarding post-modernism, as exemplified in Shapiro, Wyschogrod, etc.
my mind is still not entirely made up. The objective historical
approach naturally appeals to my sensibilities, but somehow, the
post-modernist approach is so absurd-sounding, that I feel I must
believe it. (No one would say something so counter-intuitive unless it
was true! I never understood this aphorism until now.)

First, I'd note that the historical approach, in a peculiar way,
actually assumes a bit of post-modernism. If one assumes that
historical circumstances beyond the author's control influenced his
view, and if one assumes that the author himself is not totally aware
of these historical factors, then the upshot is that the author
himself is not totally aware of all the influences on his writing.
Professor Shapiro notes that this is the issue which separates
traditional halakhists from historians, and that this distinction is
what lies between Frankel and Rabbi Hirsch, and also between the
Hildesheimer yeshiva and Rabbi Hirsch. Professor Shapiro discusses
this - albeit without any mention of post-modernism - in a review
essay of his, “The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern
Era, Jack Wertheimer, ed. (Jewish Theological Seminary of America,
1992) 510 pp. Ha/acha in Straits: Obstacles to Orthodoxy at its
Inception by Jacob Katz, Hebrew (Magnes Press, 1992) 287 pp.",
Tradition 28:2 (1994), the very same issue, in fact, containing
Wyschogrod's review of Fox. Regarding the traditional and historical
views, Professor Shapiro there writes:
(Quote begins) "This basic difference in outlook can be seen again and
again when comparing the approaches of the halakhic historian with
that of the pasek and can be illustrated most vividly by looking at
Haym Soloveitchik's description of the Tosafist atttude towards
martyrdom. According to Soloveitchik, professor at Yeshiva
University's Bernard Revel Graduate School, there were occasions when
contemporary circumstances led the Tosafists to create a new legal
standard and in so doing were responsible for a radical new
development in halakha. Soloveitchik's method of describing halakhic
development is shared by such leading scholars as Katz, Ephraim
Urbach, and Yitzhak Gilat, all of whom identify with Orthodoxy, and it
is this method which is rejected as factually incorrect, and even
heretical, by those who do not recognize any real history or sociology
of halakha. The dispute is, of course, not new and was one of the
basic points of disagreement between R. Samson Raphael Hirsch and R.
Zechariah Frankel, and to a lesser extent Hirsch and R. David
Hoffmann." (End quote)

But I'm still not convinced of this post-modernist approach; it still
leaves a foreign taste in my mouth. My general approach seems to be
something like what Rabbi Bar Hayim says: perush (Rav Kook's term in
the hakdamah to Ein Ayah for peshat analysis of the author's intent)
and biur (expository drash) are both legitimate, but one must admit
which is which. Similarly, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, as quoted by
Shapiro, who said that Brisker analysis is legitimate as one realizes
one cannot put Rambam's name behind the final view.

So what I seem to do in practice is to utilize whatever historical
knowledge I have to determine what Rambam or someone himself actually
meant, and then I'll also add, alongside that, whatever I personally
think, or whatever I'll personally do with what Rambam said, or what I
personally think of when I think of Rambam's view, etc.

For example, regarding the clarifications Rambam himself gave
regarding his own halakhot, I'd probably note that Rambam himself
explained like that, and then I'd add that perhaps the halakhah can
also be explained in another way, in a way that I personally prefer.

Similarly, when I learned Shemonah Perakim, I found myself noting the
Aristotelian sources of Rambam, and then I'd tweak Rambam's view to be
less Aristotelian and more German Neo-Orthodox. I'd try to draw a
distinction between Rambam himself meant, and the way that I was
personally utilizing Rambam for my own purposes.

In this way, one can be both historically accurate and still render
the work a living breathing one with edifying benefit; the conflict
between these two goals is discussed by Kreisel on the Kuzari, op.
cit. Kreisel says that in the quest to achieve the perfect historical
reading, one not only loses the living edifying meaning, but also, he
says, it isn't possible to achieve anything more than a range of
historically *possible* readings, none of which can be proven as the
definitively correct one. He seeks a compromise, a philosophic
post-modernist reading which nevertheless is restricted by what the
historical view considers legitimate.

Michael Makovi