Thread by @yitzlandes

THREAD

Some thoughts and observations on the recent Brody (RB)-Soloveitchik (HS) forum. I’m not gonna get into everything, as a lot of this is not so pleasant. So just some meta-commentary:
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1) This is an argument between two male, Ashkenazi, experts in rabbinic literature. This is important, as their argument is about male, Ashkenazi, medieval, experts in rabbinic literature.
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At times they acknowledge this is all about elites—but at some point rabbinic elites gels into “Judaism.”
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2) Some background: in the 2nd vol. of his Collected Essays, Soloveitchik put forth a theory that a number of odd aspects of early Ashkenazi rabbinic culture can (=should) be explained by saying that these rabbis were biological descendants of immigrants from Babylonia who
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studied in an otherwise unattested yeshiva, what he calls “the Third Yeshiva,” that functioned alongside Sura and Pumbedita (and supposedly alongside the actual 3rd yeshiva, that of the Exilarch).
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This is in contrast to regnant scholarly views, which partially attributed this to the NON-Babylonian, likely Palestinian, origin of some of these Ashkenazic oddities. This results in a fantastically romantic view of elite Ashkenazic scholarly culture:
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Not only are they biological descendants of immigrants from Babylonia who studied in an otherwise unknown yeshiva, but this yeshiva, for HS, *was actually more authentically Jewish than the two yeshivas that we do know of*.
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Adherents of the 3rd Yeshiva were untainted by Greco-Arabic—as subsumed into Judeo-Arabic—culture, and instead they were heirs to the talmudic “Judeo-Iranian” culture.
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As such they are *even bigger experts in Talmud than the Babylonian Geonim that we know of* (and needless to say, for HS this is the highest praise possible). Their disdain for Judeo-Arabic culture, for its acceptance of alien wisdom, is supposedly why they left for Ashkenaz.
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3) HS creates a theory that cannot really be disproven, but he repeatedly admits that he is not a scholar of Geonica and thus calls many times for such scholars to assess his claims. Brody answers the call as the foremost Geonica scholar of our time.
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Also, RB elsewhere explained that, as a former mathematician, he sees his role in the field as one who tries to “set the bar high…for proofs of any claim”:
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4) RB spends much of his time in the weeds, arguing with HS’ specific readings and such, and less on the general enormous historic claim that HS is trying to build on what is simply not that much evidence. This makes it much easier for HS to fight back his criticism.
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5) In the end this largely becomes an argument about the central themes of much disagreement amongst Jewish scholars of rabbinics: the manner in which Jewish culture was—and thus, *should* be—transmitted. HS writes:
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“Coeval” is an interesting word choice. HS used the word earlier in his response, but the most telling intertext is its appearance in a very similar context in HS’ famous 1994 article “Rupture and Reconstruction.”
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HS’ “Rupture and Reconstruction” is an odd piece, or even, phenomenon. HS isn’t an ethnographer, but in this article—published in Tradition, a “journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought,” a year after his father’s death—he tackles a sociological question:
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HS is lamenting something here—the diminished role of “mimesis” in the transmission of Jewish culture. And by the end of the article, he is lamenting the very absence of God in the lives of contemporary Orthodox Jews:
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In a footnote, HS notes that his father, “the Rav,” as he is affectionately referred to by Modern-Orthodox Jews, agreed with this assessment:
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This is actually a trope in Soloveitchikian writing—note his father’s discussions of Yom Kippur sunsets in Halakhic Man, including this anecdote about sharing one such sunset with his father Rav Moshe, the “Halakhic Man” par excellence:
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There’s a lot to say about the reception of HS’ Rupture and Reconstruction w/i the Modern-Orthodox Jewish world and Jewish Studies scholarship, but that’s not really what I’m interested in here.
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What's important rn is that HS is pining for a culture that, while emphasizing textual acumen, is primarily transmitted via “mimesis” (to be sure, text/mimesis is a problematic dichotomy, will leave that for another time...).
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And, it is noticeable that HS’ nostalgia in "Rupture and Reconstruction" maps on quite well to the move he makes in the 3rd Yeshiva argument:
a. Contemporary Judaism has lost a mimetic tradition and has instead become overly reliant on text;
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b. Medieval Ashkenazi elite rabbinic culture had its own, authentic, hidden tradition, and did NOT just receive the THE text—the Bavli—belatedly. And this Ashkenazi hermetic and mimetic tradition actually enables *greater* textual acumen.
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7) HS’ argument is reminiscent of a rather old rabbinic polemic. Already in the 9th century, Pirqoi ben Baboi famously criticized Palestinian Judaism for lacking such a mimetic/oral tradition and for overly relying on written text:
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8) I’m partial to one of the options raised by RB: that much of Babylonian rabbinic culture reached Ashkenaz/Europe via Palestine. As an extension of that, I think that the old model of a stark divide between Palestine and Babylonia needs to change.
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I tried in my own book to show how the philology of Jewish liturgy mitigates against the old scholarly model; and Simcha Emanuel’s new book will surely help us further nuance the model of stark Palestinian/Babylonian divide.
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And I also think that Italy had a larger role than HS allows for; e.g., someone like Hushiel, at the turn of the millennium, could move from Italy to Qairouan and be made head of the yeshiva, w/o ever interacting with Hai.
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