Jewish Thought

This study explores an important Hasidic manuscript rediscovered among the papers of Abraham Joshua Heschel at Duke University. The text, first noted by Heschel in the 1950s, is a collection of sermons by the famed tzaddik Judah Aryeh Leib Alter of Ger (d. 1905). These homilies are significant because they were transcribed by one of his disciples, in many cases capturing them in the original Yiddish. Comparing this alternative witness to Alter's own Hebrew version (called Sefat emet), printed shortly after his death, reveals substantive differences in the sermons' development, structure, and themes. But the manuscript's importance extends beyond a critical new perspective on Alter's teachings. It offers a snapshot of the processes behind the formation of Hasidic books, and calls for scholars to consider the unavoidable divergences between Hebrew and Yiddish, between orality and textuality, and the transmission of ideas from a teacher to his disciples, vectors of change that inhabit all Hasidic literature.

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed an explosion of Christian interest in the meaning and workings of the natural world—a "discovery of nature" that profoundly reshaped the intellectual currents and spiritual contours of European society—yet to all appearances, the Jews of medieval northern Europe (Ashkenaz) were oblivious to the shifts reshaping their surrounding culture. Scholars have long assumed that rather than exploring or contemplating the natural world, the Jews of medieval Ashkenaz were preoccupied solely with the supernatural and otherworldly: magic and mysticism, demonology and divination, as well as the zombies, werewolves, dragons, flying camels, and other monstrous and wondrous creatures that destabilized any pretense of a consistent and encompassing natural order.

In _A Remembrance of His Wonders_, David I. Shyovitz disputes this long-standing and far-reaching consensus. Analyzing a wide array of neglected Ashkenazic writings on the natural world in general, and the human body in particular, Shyovitz shows how Jews in Ashkenaz integrated regnant scientific, magical, and mystical currents into a sophisticated exploration of the boundaries between nature and the supernatural. Ashkenazic beliefs and practices that have often been seen as signs of credulity and superstition in fact mirrored—and drew upon—contemporaneous Christian debates over the relationship between God and the natural world. In charting these parallels between Jewish and Christian thought, Shyovitz focuses especially upon the mediating role of polemical texts and encounters, which served as mechanisms for the transmission of religious doctrines, scientific facts, and cultural mores. Medieval Jews' preoccupation with the apparently "supernatural" reflected neither ignorance nor intellectual isolation, but rather a determined effort to understand nature's inner workings and outer limits, and to integrate and interrogate the theologies and ideologies of the broader European Christian society.

תקופת המלוכה והכהונה בארץ ישראל לעולם משמשת או נקודת שיא בתולדות העם היהודי ובמימוש הייעוד שלו או נקודת זינוק בדרך להשגתו מחדש. תקופה זו לא שינתה ממעמדה למרות השינויים התרבותיים העמוקים שעברו על ישראל לאורך שנות הגולה ולמרות השינויים ביחס לגולה. גם השינויים בעצם ההגדרה של הזהות היהודית, שינוי יעדיה והתמורות שחלו בנקודת המבט ההיסטוריוסופיה של המחשבה היהודית, גם אלו לא ערערו את מעמדה. אמנם השחג התכנים שיוחסו לעבד הארץ־ישדאלי בהתאם לנקודת ההשקפה, ברם צורת ההתייחסות העקרוני לא שונתה; כל בחינה מחודשת של הקיום הבראשיתי בארץ ישראל באה לשמש גיבוי ואסמכת
להגדרה חדשה של הזהות היהודית ולתפיסה היסטוריוסופיה חדשה. ׳לגיטימציה מהפכנית׳ היא אכן המטווה רבת־הרבדים ורבת־המשמעויות שברקע מיקוד הזיכרון היהודי בתקופות בית ראשון ובית שני עוצמתו של המיקוד ההיסטורי בארץ ישראל וההתמדה בו נעוצים בשני גורמים. הראשון נובע מהקיים והעומד, הוא הגרעין הבלתי משתנה של המהות היהודית, שההתייחסות ההיסטורית והתודעה ההיסטורית אימננטיות לה; והשני נובע הן מן המאפיינים של מהפכת התרבות שהתחוללה בציבוריות היהודית החל מראשית תקופת האמנציפציה בשלהי המאה השמונה־עשרה, והן מן הגורמים לה.

Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum was born in 1887 to his father Rabbi Hanania Yom-Tov Lipa Teitelbaum, chief rabbi of Sighet, the capital of Maramureş County, Hungary. The father was a Rebbe to his Hasidim, headed the local yeshiva, and was one of the top leaders of Hungarian Orthodoxy. During his childhood, Rabbi Yoel was known as a prodigy but was not destined to continue the family’s Hasidic or rabbinic dynasty, as this role was reserved for his older brother - Rabbi Haim Tzvi. At seventeen, soon after his father’s death and the ordination of his older brother as his successor, the newlywed Rabbi Yoel and his wife were forced to leave Sighet.

They settled in nearby Satmar (Satu Mare) where Rabbi Yoel began gathering a small group of disciples. Several years later he was elected as chief rabbi of the remote village Orshiva, but during World War I he returned to Satmar and established a small yeshiva, dividing his time between Satmar and Orshiva. In 1926 he was elected as chief rabbi of Kroly (Carei) in Transylvania, Romania and two years later he was elected chief rabbi of Satmar. This appointment faced substantial public opposition and it took Rabbi Yoel six years of fierce and scandalous struggle until he eventually took office in 1934. During that waiting period he also tried to run for a rabbinate office in other communities, including that of the Edah Haredit (the ultra-Orthodox community) of Jerusalem.

Rabbi Yoel was known to have a stubborn, controversial and argumentative personality. Wherever he wanted to serve, public debates arose and the newspapers accused him in using improper means during the election process. At the same time, he was also known as a religious zealot, and several extremist Orthodox groups acknowledged him as their spiritual leader. Following his ordination as chief rabbi of Satmar, Rabbi Yoel gained an important leadership role among the extreme-Orthodox, and became known for his unwavering opposition to modernity, Zionism and even to the ultra-Orthodox party Agudat Israel. In the late 1930s, after a long public campaign, he was elected to the leadership of the Central Bureau of the Orthodox Jewish communities of Transylvania. In that position he was able to influence the lives of over one hundred and fifty thousand religious Jews in that region.

In his personal life, Rabbi Yoel suffered a series of tragedies. After losing his father at an early age, he was expelled from his hometown, Sighet. He and his wife could not give birth to a son, and two of their three daughters died young and childless. His chronically ill wife died soon thereafter, as well as Rabbi Yoel’s mother and brother. He married again, but although his wife was young and healthy, she too did not bear him any children. Following this second marriage, Rabbi Yoel and his only daughter became estranged and they hardly spoke until she died, also at a young age. This surviving daughter was also barren meaning that Rabbi Yoel had no grandchildren to succeed him.

During World War II Rabbi Yoel was involved in various rescue operations for refugees who fled Poland. As danger grew, he sought to get a certificate that will allow him and his close family to immigrate to Palestine. Failing that, he abandoned his community and escaped along with a small group of friends from Satmar, but was caught and sent to the ghetto of Cluj. He was spared from being sent to Auschwitz as he was included in the small group saved by Zionist activist Israel Kasztner’s rescue train. He and the rest of the passengers were taken to Bergen-Belsen, where they were detained for a few months. Later the group was released to Switzerland where Rabbi Yoel stayed for a few months. He did not return to lead and to comfort the survivors that returned to Satmar after the Holocaust, nor did he join the relief operations conducted by other rabbis in the refugee camps in Germany.

After his stay in Switzerland, Rabbi Yoel decided to settle in Jerusalem. The leaders of the ultra-Orthodox community, who were aware of his aggressive and argumentative personality, shunned away from him. As a result, the institutions he established failed and he was on the verge of bankruptcy. His only hope to repay his tremendous debt was by raising funds in the United States. Humiliated and destitute Rabbi Yoel was forced to travel to the land he always considered the most hostile and spiritually dangerous environment for Orthodox Jews.

After arriving in the United States, it became clear to Rabbi Yoel that he will never be able to raise enough funds to save his institutions in Jerusalem. Having no place to return to, he decided to settle in New York. Oddly enough, it was in this notorious “New World” that Rabbi Yoel was able not only to establish his own congregation, but also to significantly expand and develop it. Within a few years he attracted a large circle of supporters and devotees and created a congregation which, he claimed, resembled that of an East-European “Shtetel.”

However, in order to succeed in his mission, Rabbi Yoel had to apply significant un-traditional innovations that were inconceivable in the East-European “Shtetel.” He established a Hasidic education system, including one for girls, which introduced secular teachings and summer camps. He also encouraged his followers to go to work or to establish their own small businesses. His delegates cooperated with government and municipal officials who helped the poor Hasidim to get public housing, professional training and social benefits. That innovative spirit was one of the main reasons his Hasidic court grew rapidly and prospered economically. Rabbi Yoel used funds gathered by his adherents to support the Eda Haredit in Jerusalem, and in 1952, just a few years after he was forced to leave Jerusalem, he returned triumphant to be declared president of the Edah Haredit.

One of the reasons for Rabbi Yoel’s unparalleled success, beyond his personal charisma and leadership qualities, was his anti-Zionist and Extreme Orthodox ideology. His views were published in two major books, Va-Yoel Moshe – published in the late 1950s, and Al Ha-Geula Ve-Al Ha-Temura – published after the Six Days War. These books were re-printed numerous times, and new editions are still being printed to this day. The radical ideas expressed in these books still affect and guide the Satmar Hasidic court and some of the other Hungarian courts, as well as some marginal groups of zealots, also known as Neturei Karta.

At the time of his death, in 1979 and still today, Rabbi Yoel was undoubtedly one of the most recognized and influential Jewish leaders in the post-Holocaust era. His community had tens of thousands of Hasidim and the education system he established was amongst the largest in the Jewish world outside Israel. Ideas expressed by Rabbi Yoel have influenced the rest of Orthodox society and thus the Jewish society in general. Today, about forty years after his death, the “Satmar” trademark is still strong and still synonymous with religious zealotry. The spiritual and practical foundations laid by Rabbi Yoel continue to fuel the ever-growing expansion of the Satmar Hasidic court that today has more than a hundred thousand followers worldwide.

ערב רב: פנים וחוץ בוויכוח הפרנקיסטי הוא ספר מרתק וחדשני החושף את סיפורה הייחודי של התנועה הפרנקיסטית, תנועה יהודית אפיקורסית שצמחה בפולין והתפשטה במרכז אירופה במחצית השנייה של המאה ה-18.

בעיני רוב היהודים פרנק היה 'משיח שקר' ידוע לשמצה. בעיני נוצרים נאורים ומיסיונרים מילנריסטים היה יהודי-נוצרי ואדם חופשי בדעותיו, שלו קשרים מסתוריים והוא משתמש במגיה ובמאגרי עושר סודיים. עבור מאמיניו היה למבשר שחרור מן המסגרות המקובלות המדכאות של מגדר, הלכה, מעמד, משטר ודת.

התנועה הפרנקיסטית עוררה הדים והיתה סלע מחלוקת גם בקרב גורמים דתיים ופוליטיים לא יהודיים: יוזף השני, קתרינה הגדולה, גתה, קזנובה ואחרים. תורותיו של יעקב פרנק, מנהיג התנועה, הציבו אתגר בפני היהדות הנורמטיבית, אך גם בפני האסלאם וזרמים בנצרות. הספר מברר מחלוקות פנימיות ביהדות המודרנית אך דן גם ביחסים בין יהודים לסביבתם במאות ה-18–ה-19.

ערב רב מבוסס על מקורות פנימיים שחיברו פרנק ומאמיניו, על מקורות יהודיים פולמוסיים אנטי פרנקיסטיים, ועל מקורות שכתבו גורמים לא יהודיים בני הזמן. דרכו המוקצנת של יעקב פרנק עוררה עניין רב בו ובתנועתו, ולקורא מוגש ניתוח מעמיק של פרשה היסטורית ייחודית זו.
המחבר, ד"ר פאבל מצ'ייקו מן האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים, חוקר את תולדות היהודים בפולין-ליטא בעת החדשה. נולד בוורשה וקיבל תואר דוקטור מאוניברסיטת אוקספורד. פרסומיו הרבים זיכו אותו בפרסים, במלגות ובמענקי מחקר רבים. שימש מרצה אורח באוניברסיטאות שונות, בארצות הברית, בצרפת, בגרמניה ובפולין.

ר' יואל טייטלבוים – הרבי מסאטמר – היה אחד הרבנים הידועים והמשפיעים ביותר בעולם היהודי, ואף מעבר לו, בתקופה שלאחר השואה. הוא הצליח להקים את אחת החצרות החסידיות הגדולות ביותר דווקא בארצות הברית, מדינה שבה המודרנה, החופש האישי והמתירנות המינית היוו את ההפך המוחלט של השמרנות החסידית המסורתית. אחת הסיבות להצלחתו המפתיעה הייתה כי בניגוד למרבית הרבנים בני דורו, אימץ ר' יואל השקפה אנטי-ציונית קיצונית שהאשימה בגלוי את הציונות באחריות לפרוץ השואה ולתוצאותיה החמורות. לדבריו, חטא הציונות, המהווה כפירה בבורא עולם, היה כה חמור, עד כי לאל לא נותרה כל ברירה מלבד להעניש את עמו בעונש החמור ביותר – השואה.
מאמר זה יבחן את ההשערה לפיה השקפותיו האנטי-ציוניות של ר' יואל, ובמיוחד אלו הנוגעות להאשמת הציונות באחריות לשואה, הושפעו מן הצעדים, ההחלטות והאירועים אותן עשה או חווה בתקופת מלחמת העולם השנייה ומן הצורך להסביר אותן לחסידיו. חלקו הראשון של המאמר ידון בחייו הפרטיים ובפעילותו הציבורית של ר' יואל בין השנים 1937—1945 כפי שבאו לידי ביטוי בביוגרפיות שנכתבו אודותיו, בעיתונות התקופה ובמסמכים ארכיוניים. החלק השני יסקור את הביקורת על התנהלותו המפוקפקת, הן ברמה האישית והן ברמה הציבורית, ובסופו תוצגנה הדרכים השונות בהן ניסו ר' יואל עצמו, ובעקבותיו גם כותבי תולדותיו, לטשטש, להצדיק ולתרץ בדיעבד את מעשיו השנויים במחלוקת בתקופה קשה זו.

Since from the late Middle Ages to the Emancipation, Eastern European Jewry was spiritually, physically and linguistically isolated from the Christian society, we are inclined to believe that it had always been so ever since Judaism and Christianity turned their backs on each other in late antiquity, especially because rabbinical literature mentions Christianity by name only sporadical-ly. According to the traditional narrative, also represented by Paul Johnson in his History of the Jews, the destruction of the Temple, the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt and the spread of Christianity caused Judaism to turn in on itself for hundreds of years and became oblivious of its richer past and untouched by the outside world, as if living in a hermetically sealed world. This paradigm has difficulties accommodating that four Midrashim (rabbinic exegeses) in a collection of Jewish homilies for Sabbath titled Pesiqta Rabbati, recorded in the seventh century but prob-ably composed earlier, features Ephraim son of Joseph, another Messiah apart from David’s son, whose description contains an amazingly large number of Christological features, which strikingly resemble the Gospels’ Passion account and the book of Revelation. The homilies also draw heavily from Psalm 22, understood by Christian tradition as describing Christ’s sufferings. Recent scholarly discourse defines the polemics in which Jews take over Christian cultural or religious ideas to build their own religious identity as “counterhistory” or “inward accultura-tion.” Its confrontational form denies the opponent’s identity by frontally attacking Christian religious symbols to deprive them of the sanctity attributed to them, such as the medieval Jewish Gospel parody titled Toledot Yeshu. The other strategy is internalization or “re-Judaization,” in which Jews appropriate and take control over Christian symbols as if saying: “what the Chris-tians talk about is really our Messiah because anything may they say, we are still the true Israel.” It reinstates into the Jewish tradition ideas that were inherent in pre- and para-Rabbinic Judaism but embraced by Christians, so deemed heresy by the rabbis, thus found only in traces in the Talmud. Concerning Jesus Christ, one of them is the binitarian theology of “two powers in heaven,” which elevates human figures to divine status such as in the Enoch/Metatron tradition, and the other one is the idea of “two messiahs” stemming from the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. The Midrashim of Pesiqta Rabbati revive this latter in a seemingly traditional manner, but in fact they go far beyond the limits of Rabbinic messianism without precedent, among others by merging the Messiahs son of David and son of Joseph into the figure of a preexistent Ephraim, who undertakes suffering for the sins of humans at the time of the creation, which is unknown outside the New Testament. By wandering into such dangerous theological waters, the Midra-shim support the new scholarly narrative that the rabbis knew the Christian discourse, the Chris-tian interpretation of the Old Testament, and the New Testament more profoundly and relied on them to develop Jewish religious identity to a greater extent than we formerly thought, and that the spiritual and ideological borderline between the two sisters, Ecclesia and Synagoga, was far from so rigid and impermeable as it seems for the first sight.

Monday 11 January 2021, 19:00 Israel Time

Sword and Buckler in Hebrew Letters: Traces of Early Illuminated German Fight Books in Jewish Manuscripts
Prof. Sara Offenberg
Department of the Arts, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Two manuscripts produced in early fourteenth-century German lands reflect similar iconography of fighting with Sword and Buckler (small round shield); one is the well-known fencing manual, Leeds, Royal Armouries, MS I. 33, produced ca. 1320, and the other is a Hebrew manuscript of the Bible, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France héb. 9, made in 1304, that will be the focus of this paper. I wish to demonstrate that the iconography of the masorah figurata was adapted from German Fechtbücher (fencing manuals), which are books of instructions, usually with illustrations, detailing the fencing arts. First, I relate to the realia of Jews bearing arms and Jewish fencing masters. Afterward I discuss the iconography of the fighting figures; subsequently, after examining the texts that make up the micrography, I reach a broader conclusion regarding the reason the patron commissioned this work and the meaning of the scene. This lecture intends to demonstrate how Hebrew illuminated manuscripts can shed more light on the study of fight books iconography.

טַעַם וָדַעַת: בין אדם לאדם, למקום ולזמן, נפתלי רוטנברג, ירושלים תשפ"ב, 2022.
Naftali Rothenberg
Reason and Opinion
Among Person to Person, God and Time
טַעַם וָדַעַת: בין אדם לאדם, למקום ולזמן, משתף את הקוראים בניסיונות חוזרים ונשנים למפגשים בין אדם לעצמו, לקרוב ולרחוק. במשך כשלושה עשורים בחן המחבר נושאים רבים העומדים במוקד הדיון הציבורי בתרבות היהודית, בחברה ובפוליטיקה הישראלית: נגישות לידע וסמכות הפרשנות; זמנים ומועדים של חיבור וריחוק; מקומות קדושים כזירת-קרב; דמוקרטיה ומדינת-הלאום; רוב ומיעוט; דת ומדינה; זרמים ויחסים בין קבוצות ועוד.  כמה מן הסוגיות הנדונות, נתונות מזה שנים רבות, במחלוקות קשות וסוערות. קובץ המאמרים בספר זה הוא הצעה לניסיון אחר להבעת דעה ולהשתתפות פעילה בדיון הציבורי, בלי לטשטש את ההבדלים והמחלוקות. עמדה ביקורתית ומחלוקת חריפה ועמוקה יכולה להישמע תוך הקשבה לדעות מנוגדות ולאמיתות של אחרים.
לרכישת עותק מודפס 60₪ כולל משלוח: נא לכתוב לחיה, במייל  [email protected]

Article published in Bamidbar 5.2 (2015), pp. 21-55.
http://www.bamidbar-journal.org/

I explain why W. Benjamin and G. Agamben think that late modernity, especially in the form of late capitalism, fails to neutralize the authority structures of religion and therefore calls for profanation of such structures rather than secularization. This leads me to consider how Frankist Jews profaned the structures of orthodox Judaism and Christianity in a manner that allows us to imagine forms of human existence that do not merely invert the authority structures of religion but alter them. I discuss four such structures: national, gender, territorial and economic. This view of Frankism as a liberating profanation gives it more systemic affinity to members of the Frankfurt School than is usually supposed. I discuss each of these profanations in relation to the thought of Ernst Bloch and contrast them with Scholem's views, which vacillate between secularization and inwardness. In this way I hope to establish a commonality of inspiration and a continuity of purpose between Frankists like Ariyeh von Honigsberg and Frankfurtists like Bloch and Benjamin. Such commonality and continuity legitimates our regard of such thinkers as profoundly faithful exponents of critical Jewish modernity.

תיקון שבתי צבי / יונתן מאיר. ההרצאה מבקשת להציג תמונה מורכבת ביחס לשבתי צבי, מכתיבתו הקבלית של נתן העזתי על המשיח הנפוּל, דרך ניסיונות תיקון נשמתו בידי הבעש"ט, ועד לשילובו בנרטיב הלאומי בידי זלמן שז"ר וחוקרים שבאו אחריו. יהא זה ניסיון למשוך קו במחשבה ובהיסטוריוגרפיה היהודית העומד מנגד לתפיסת הצרה בדבר "משיח שקר"

History in general and the study of religious fundamentalism in particular, as well as the ongoing conflicts between various Muslim groups in the Middle East, teach us not only the importance of religious identity but also about the lengths that those who seek to hold on to a specific identity are prepared to go. This article addresses one minor manifestation of this vast phenomenon.

From the mid-19th century onward, Hungarian Jews began to acquire a unique religious and social identity that set them apart from other European Jews. Its single most distinctive feature was the formal separation between Orthodox and Non-Orthodox Jews, almost as if they belonged to two different “Jewish churches.” For the first and only time in Jewish history, the Orthodox Jews were able to administer their own communities in accordance with halachic laws and were no longer forced to compromise with non-Orthodox Jews.

Following WWI, Transylvania, a former Hungarian district, was annexed to Romania. Consequently, its Jews were cut off from their Hungarian homeland, which had previously enabled them to establish their own Jewish identity. Reluctant to lose their distinct characteristics, they sought and received governmental permission to establish communities and institutions in accordance with their former lifestyle. This led to the establishment of a religiously and culturally autonomous enclave within which the Jews of Transylvania, many of whom were Orthodox, led their public life differently from all the other Romanian Jews.

This article focuses on the development of the separate Orthodox institutions and communities in Transylvania. It surveys the characteristics and inner conflicts of Transylvanian Orthodoxy. It then proceeds to demonstrate how the unique set of circumstances that evolved during the interwar period facilitated the strengthening of Orthodoxy’s radical wing, which I call Extreme Orthodoxy, which sought to establish itself as an enclave within an enclave.

This sector’s achievement, however, ended with catastrophic results. The uncompromising leaders of this ultra-conservative, anti-Zionist and separatist camp hampered the efforts of other Orthodox leaders to prepare for the impending Holocaust. This, consequently, led to the almost complete annihilation of North-Transylvanian Orthodox Jewry. Nevertheless, the radical ideas of Transylvania’s Extreme Orthodoxy endured, and after the Holocaust were disseminated throughout the Jewish world by the camp’s best known survivor and its prominent spokesman – Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe.

An updated version, with the addition of one paragraph. I also recommend that you read the Tree of Life (1st and 2nd Part), which is now also published here in Academia. This is a post on my blog, and also a supplement to my last book titled, The Torah of the Messiah.

Here is my blog: http://secretofbereshit.blogspot.com/

An antinomian doctrine is most often created in order to endorse a deviation from the law. But why should a thinker build such a doctrine if he immediately stipulates it with so many restrictions that it is rendered theoretical? This question is addressed through the thought of Rabbi Mordekhai Yosef Leiner of Izbica (c.1800-1854), a hasidic leader who sparked the enthusiasm of many modern scholars and spirituality-seekers for his alleged "boldness" and "antinomianism". The article suggests that his doctrines served religious functions similar to those that utopias often serve in politics and literature. Besides the revolutionary function of utopia, that is usually emphasized by scholars, the article points at other, often neglected function: the conservative one.

It is in this thesis we will explore the thought and religious phenomenology of the Hasidic master, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Ishbitz (RMY).
RMY maintains that God has cast a veil over human eyes which obscures the divine reality, while the humanly perceived reality is rendered a divinely orchestrated illusion.  The reality which is obscured and the illusion which emerges is not of the exterior world. The subject of the illusion is primarily the very self consciousness of human beings which experience themselves as autonomous agents independent from God and possessing free will. Thus it is the reality of consciousness which RMY understood to be multilayered; one layer in which there is no will other than God's will and another layer in which humans are conscious of themselves as autonomous, willing beings.  Both layers enjoy paradoxical reality since they are products of divine perspective and divinely orchestrated human perspective. None the less, the human perspective compared to the divine perspective can be considered an illusion, just as dream reality is an illusion when juxtaposed to waking reality.  To a degree, societal constructs (including the halakha) are also understood and experienced as a part of the illusory reality.

In June 2017 I taught sources from Rav Shagar z"l related to his novel concept of Teshuva (repentance). This was in the framework of a study day on the tenth anniversary of his death, sponsored by Yeshivat Siach Yitzchak and held in Jerusalem. The lecture was in English and included here are the sources that I taught in both Hebrew and English, as well as a link to the lecture on YouTube.

Yakov Leshchinsky’s 1928 essay, here translated from the Yiddish, provides the first cross-national analysis of the migration and class transformation of world Jewry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It draws on diverse and widely scattered official and historical sources in German, Polish, Russian, Yiddish and other languages. A careful, complex and empirically grounded work, it helped to boost Leschinsky’s scholarly reputation. Before long, its author was routinely referred to as “the father of Jewish demography” and “the dean of Jewish sociologists.”