[Avodah] one way to spend Tisha B'Av

[Toby Katz]

Although you are not supposed to learn Torah on Tisha B'Av, I took the
liberty of studying (rather than just reciting) several of the Kinos this
year, comparing the translations and commentaries of the ArtScroll Kinos,
R' Abraham Rosenfeld, and Rav Soloveitchik in the Koren edition. I did
not find any one of these to be superior to the others; rather, each
one was better in some places and worse in others.

Looking at the Kinah which is numbered 37 in A/S and in the Koren (number 39 in Rosenfeld) I found some interesting comments. This is the Kinah that begins with the words, <<Tzion kechi kol tzari Gilad letzirayiach.>> (<<Zion, take all the balm of Gilead for your wounds...>>)

About a third of the way down there is a passage that reads, <<Bach sod hateudah vesod chachmos/ uva'u venei Kedem vechachmei Sheva lichtov sefarayich.>>

Here are three translations, copied exactly. Words that appear in parentheses were in parentheses in the original, where parenthetical words and phrases are in effect a form of commentary. You will see, for example, that A/S considers the word <<hateudah>> to be a reference to the Torah.

ArtScroll: You are the repository of the secrets of (Torah) tradition and the secrets of wisdom, so the (wise) men of the Orient and the scholars of Sheba came to transcribe your books.

Rosenfeld: Secret testimonies and hidden wisdom were (kept) within you, and the sons of the East, and the wise men of Sheba, came to write down your (doctrines in) books.

Koren: You have the secret of good counsel and the secret of wisdom so that people from the Orient and the wise of Sheba come to copy your books.

I can tell you that every line of every Kinah has been translated three different ways! The Italian saying "Traduttore traditore" comes to mind. If you know Hebrew, you see that no translation quite captures the meaning, the sound, the poetry, the emotion, the layers, the flow, the heart of the original Hebrew. Luckily I don't know Hebrew all that well, or I would probably be heart-broken.

Anyway, I really want to tell you what Rav Soloveitchik writes about
these lines.

    <<So that people from the Orient and the wise of Sheba come to copy
    your books.>> This phrase is reminiscent of the statement of Rabbi
    Yehuda HaLevi (Kuzari 1:63; 11:66) that the Greeks, Babylonians
    and Assyrians copied Jewish books of wisdom, and that all Greek
    science, astronomy, mathematics and philosophy was copied from Jewish
    sources. It is interesting that there is a source for the statement
    by Plato (see Clement of Alexandria, /Stromata/ Book 1, chapter 1)
    that he met Hebrew scholars and learned from them as much as he
    could, although there are those who question the veracity of this
    source. Along similar lines, Maimonides refers to the descendants of
    the Tribe of Issachar having written many books on astronomy which
    are no longer extant (/Mishneh Torah/ Hil. Kiddush HaHodesh 17:24).

This is interesting in view of the many discussions here and everywhere
about whether we have to believe every statement of Chazal regarding
natural phenomena, and whether Chazal took wisdom from the Greeks or the
Greeks learned wisdom from them, and also whether or not R' Soloveitchik
was a straight right-wing charedi, the way he is portrayed by his nephew,
R' Moshe Meiselman, in his famous book <<Contra Slifkin>> oops I meant
<<Torah, Chazal and Science>>

We find in this short passage a fine example of both R' Soloveitchik's
legendary erudition as well as his equally legendary finesse at eluding
easy capture. Does he agree with Yehuda HaLevi or does he merely find the
kinah <<reminiscent>> of HaLevi without indicating agreement? Hard to pin
down, so his students and followers can see what they want to see. For the
record, I don't believe he fit neatly in either the MO nor the RW camp.

--Toby Katz
t613k at aol.com