Sefer Ha-Bloggadah: week 44

The beginning of the section on exile coincides with the beginning of the Three Weeks of mourning leading up to 9 Av.

• Monday - 3:2:92-109 (A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey)
• Tuesday - 3:2:110-126 (Jerusalem)
  
• Wednesday - 3:3:1-9 (The Sacred Tongue)
  
• Thursday - 3:3:10-23 (The Sacred Tongue and Other Languages; Exactness in the Use of Language)
• Friday - 3:4:1-14 (The Hardship of Exile and the Enslavement by Kingdoms)
• Saturday/Sunday - 3:4:15-24 (The Hardship of Exile and the Enslavement by Kingdoms)

3:2:49 Distorting the Law in Order to Save It?

This text says that, when Hanina the nephew of R' Yehoshua went to Babylonia (apparently after the crushing of the Bar Kochba rebellion), he made decisions regarding declaring Rosh Hodesh and intercalating the year, and that the authorities in the Land of Israel sent two scholars after him. They told Hanina, disingenuously, that they were coming to learn Torah from him. He then extolled them to the Jewish community in Babylonia, calling them great scholars. Then they began contradicting him -- he would declare an object impure and they would declare it pure; he would forbid an action and they would permit it. Frustrated, and embarrassed, he proclaimed that they were good-for-nothings, but they pointed out that he had already vouched for them and could not undo that. He then asked why they kept contradicting his rulings.

Their response is that it is because he had been making calendrical decisions outside the Land of Israel. This response is fascinating -- they do not indicate in any way that his decisions about ritual purity, or on prohibited actions, were wrong. They apparently set about systematically overruling all of his decisions on all sorts of halachic questions, even though, it seems, he was right in those decisions. Preserving the central authority to set the calendar was considered so important that it not only warranted sending two scholars on a trip to Babylonia, and not only warranted threatening Hanina and the entire Babylonian Jewish community with excommunication if they didn't fall in line. It also warranted actually making wrong legal decisions, telling people that they could use objects that were really impure, and telling people that they could perform actions that were really forbidden, just in order to undermine Hanina's authority.

3:2:24 Planting and the M'shiah

"Rabban Yohanan b. Zakai used to say, 'If there was a planting [seedling] in your hand and they told you, "Here's the M'shiah [Messiah]," plant the seedling and afterwards go and greet him.'" I recognized this famous saying, but then I did a double-take. This chapter is "The Land of Israel," and this section is "The Land and its Settlement." What is this saying doing here? I've always understood this statement as a caution about over-eagerness for the M'shiah, perhaps a warning to be suspicious of a purported but possibly-false M'shiah, and a prioritization of small accomplishments in this world over focusing on the next world. None of this has anything to do specifically with the Land of Israel.

My guess is that B&R understood "planting" in light of text 3:2:22, about planting being the first activity the people is to undertake upon entering the Land. But then Rabban Yohanan b. Zakai's statement means something a bit different from what I thought it meant: now it's a statement about how important it is to plant in the Land of Israel -- it's so important that one even delays greeting the M'shiah in order to finish planting. Instead of an attempt to hold in check possible over-enthusiasm for the M'shiah, the statement accepts that enthusiasm and elevates planting in (and, it follows, settlement in) the Land even higher.

I wondered whether commentators on the original text might have explained the text in ways that would support B&R's apparent reading or my reading. Unfortunately, B&R cite the statement only to Avot d'Rabbi Natan version B. Schechter's text does not have any explanatory comment on this statement, and the version that appears in a standard set of Talmud is version A. (Likewise, Goldin's book on Avot d'Rabbi Natan uses version A.)

Sefer Ha-Bloggadah: week 43

More on the land of Israel. Remember, while reading all the denigration of the Diaspora, that Sefer Ha-Aggadah was published in Odessa.

• Monday - 3:2:20-32 (The Land and Its Settlement)
• Tuesday - 3:2:33-46 (Love for the Land; The Holiness of the Land)
• Wednesday - 3:2:47-64 (Torah of the Land; The Dimensions of the Land)
• Thursday - 3:2:65-69 (A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey)
• Friday - 3:2:70-80 (A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey)
• Saturday/Sunday - 3:2:81-91 (A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey)

Sefer Ha-Bloggadah: week 42

How can the content of "Those Who Became Proselytes Because of Lions" possibly live up to the title? This week we look beyond the Jews to the other nations, and then start the section on the land of Israel.

• Monday - 3:1:143-149 (Those Who Became Proselytes Because of Lions)
• Tuesday - 3:1:150-162 (The Nations of the World)
• Wednesday - 3:1:163-173 (The Nations of the World)
• Thursday - 3:1:174-183 (The Nations of the World)
• Friday - 3:2:1-7 (The Land and Israel)
  
• Saturday/Sunday - 3:2:8-19 (The Land and Its Settlement)
  

Jewish Continuity

The material in "Israel Endure Forever" is a somewhat different take on Jewish Continuity. I think the Rabbis probably "knew" what actions were needed, keeping halachah and doing Jewish study. But they needed reassurance that if the Jewish people didn't meet those demands, Judaism would continue. They showed great imagination in finding Biblical sources of support for Jewish Continuity.

We, on the other hand, fight over what we should do and have much less faith that it will work.

Howard

Sefer Ha-Bloggadah: week 42

Born or made?

• Monday - 3:1:101-104 (Constellations Have No Power over Israel)
• Tuesday - 3:1:105-114 (Israel Endure Forever)
• Wednesday - 3:1:115-120 (The Purity of Families in Israel)
• Thursday - 3:1:121-126 (Proselytes in Israel)
• Friday - 3:1:127-137 (Proselytes in Israel)
• Saturday/Sunday - 3:1:138-142 (Proselytes in Israel)