A Good Example of the Academic Style of Learning

In the past, we have had several posts about the academic/Modox approach to so-called “learning”. One of the most popular ones was my approval of female rabbis. Now, Natan Slifkin has a new post in which he discusses Rashi’s commentary. He writes regarding the difference between Rambam and Rashi that “Rambam is revered, Rashi is beloved.” I can’t necessarily argue with that, it sounds nice, maybe even has a ring of truth to it (yes, even he can say something correct sometimes!) But then he writes the following whopper:

We bond with Rashi more than we do with any other rabbinic figure. I think that this may be one of the reasons why many people are more comfortable rejecting Rambam’s views as being problematic than those of Rashi.

Rejecting Rambam’s views? Who rejects Rambam’s views?? Which views?? His halachos in the Mishna Torah? His 13 Principles of Faith? His opinion that God has no body? Maybe his stance against taking money for teaching Torah, or his non-belief in astrology? There are many things from both the Rambam and Rashi and everybody else we don’t pasken like, this is standard Torah discourse, and nobody calls it “being comfortable rejecting ___’s views”.

No, it’s very clear which “views” Natan refers to, and it is the complete kefira that academics like Menachem Kellner and Natan himself made up and attributed to the Rambam. To quote Mecharker’s amazing post:

And yes, this means that he thinks that there is no tzara’as for lashon hara, no punishment for sins through the death of one's children, no famine or plague for not keeping the parshos of arayos, and no destruction of the Beis Hamikdash due to idolatry and immorality. There is no Olam Haba and there is no Gehinom. No beseeching God. Asking Hashem for our needs is “manipulating spiritual entities” that enlightened Rationalists don’t believe in. The idea of a Relationship with Hashem is “fluffy spirituality”.

So yes, we reject this obvious kefira, but no, we are not “comfortable” rejecting the Rambam’s actual views. (EDIT BASED ON SOME COMMENTS - I concede that Kellner’s nonsense notwithstanding, there are still aspects of the Rambam’s hashkafa that are considered controversial to those who study such works as the Moreh. But as commenter Shaul Shapira points out, you can’t really compare Rambam and Rashi, Rambam wrote standalone works on hashkafa, Rashi was mostly just a commentator. Furthermore, these controversial aspects of the Rambam were considered controversial basically since the Rambam was published, it is not a matter of contemporary people simply feeling comfortable arguing with the Rambam.)

Natan writes further:

Now, of course, you might respond that there’s a much more basic reason why people are more likely to reject Rambam’s views than Rashi’s - because Rambam really did have some very controversial views, and Rashi didn’t!

But in fact, this isn’t exactly true. Rashi’s approach is very problematic from a certain perspective. It’s just that he became so popular that the opposition to his approach died out, and the controversial aspects of his approach have been “reinterpreted.”

This is the topic of and fascinating new book by Prof. Eric Lawee, Rashi's Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic (and you can read some parts of the book here). Lawee quotes rabbinic scholars from centuries ago who had profound objections to Rashi’s commentary on the Torah. The reason was that Rashi’s “pshat” included what the more rationalistically-inclined Torah scholars considered to be drash. In other words, rabbinic exegeses which Spanish rationalists viewed as metaphorical (or as simply incorrect) were presented by Rashi as being the straightforward explanation of Scripture and thus true in their literal sense.

What is this “problematic from a certain perspective” he is talking about? What is “problematic” about Rashi quoting Medrashim? That Medrashim are not pshat?¹ Are Medrashim themselves now “problematic” as well? To see what “profound objections” Natan probably means, let us turn to Eric Lawee’s paper, The Reception of Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah in Spain: The Case of Adam’s Mating with the Animals. This paper is 34 pages long, and in the style of “Torah” academics, most of it taken up by historical odds and ends that have very little relevance to the main thesis, which seems to be that Rashi’s commentary was somehow controversial or considered problematic at a certain point of time in Spain.

The primary support for that theory is Rashi’s commentary to Bereishis 2:23, where he brings the Gemara that Adam had relations with each animal until he found Chava. Who were the ones who saw this Rashi as problematic? The first people he cites are Christians who used this Medrash as a justification to burn the Talmud. Great job, Eric. That is definitely solid support. The only non-Christian he brings who finds fault with this Rashi is “an anonymous late medieval author of possibly eastern Mediterranean origin”. So far, so good. Finally, he cites many supercommentaries to Rashi who understand the Medrash non-literally, but find no fault in Rashi for bringing it, and are apparently even willing to interpret Rashi non-literally the same way they do the Medrash. This is his evidence that Rashi was viewed as “very problematic”? This is a whole lot of ado about nothing, puffs of smoke from the academic pipe.

But let’s say Eric was actually able to show that this particular Rashi was controversial at a particular time in Spain, or anywhere else. What would that prove? Absolutely nothing. There are thousands other statements of Rashi, the Ramban, the Rashba, the Baal HaMeor, Geonim, Amoraim, Tannaim, and every other Torah authority that many disagreed with quite vehemently. Welcome to the world of Torah, buddy. None of this remotely shows that these were considered “problematic” or controversial figures. Nobody was burning copies of Rashi because he quoted this Medrash (well, except for the Christians). This is a good example of how academics who are not grounded in the Bais Medrash speak like complete amei ha’aretz, make something out of nothing, a complete fantasy rooted in their collective daydreams.

Now let’s continue to the next part of Natan’s post:

This week’s Torah reading includes a fascinating example of this, which I discussed in detail in my book Sacred Monsters. It says that Og’s bed was nine cubits long, “in the cubits of a man.” Rambam interprets this to refer to standard cubits, and explaining that beds were about as third again as long as a person, describes Og as being around six cubits - nine feet - tall.

Rashi, on the other hand, says that the “cubits of a man” refers to the cubits of that man i.e. Og. He does this in order to reconcile the verse with the Aggada about Moshe being ten cubits tall, leaping ten cubits in the air, stretching out a ten-cubit spear, and striking Og in the ankle. Accordingly, Og’s ankle alone would have been thiry cubits off the ground. And so the verse about his bed being nine cubits must be talking about Og’s units of measurements - the distance from his own elbow to his fingertips. Og’s bed was nine of his own cubits long, but he was hundreds of regular cubits tall (though, as Ibn Ezra and Mizrachi point out, with disproportionately short arms).

It’s not in any way ridiculous for people in antiquity to have believed in Moshe being fifteen feet tall, and Og having been hundreds of feet tall. In fact, they had good reason to do so. There was actually apparent skeletal evidence for such giants (the true nature of which I discuss in my book.) Still, taking such Midrashim literally was absolutely not the approach of the rationalist Torah scholars. They regarded it as not only incorrect but also demeaning to Torah.

Presumably, what Natan means here is the Gemara in Brachos (54b) that Rashi brings in Parshas Chukas,

אבן שבקש עוג מלך הבשן לזרוק על ישראל, גמרא גמירי לה. אמר מחנה ישראל כמה הוי — תלתא פרסי, איזיל ואיעקר טורא בר תלתא פרסי ואישדי עלייהו, ואיקטלינהו. אזל עקר טורא בר תלתא פרסי ואייתי על רישיה, ואייתי קודשא בריך הוא עליה קמצי ונקבוה, ונחית בצואריה. הוה בעי למשלפה, משכי שיניה להאי גיסא ולהאי גיסא ולא מצי למשלפה. והיינו דכתיב: ״שני רשעים שברת״. וכדרבי שמעון בן לקיש. דאמר רבי שמעון בן לקיש: מאי דכתיב ״שני רשעים שברת״ — אל תקרי ״שברת״ אלא ״שרבבת״. משה כמה הוה — עשר אמות, שקיל נרגא בר עשר אמין, שוור עשר אמין, ומחייה בקרסוליה וקטליה. ואבן שישב עליה משה — דכתיב: ״וידי משה כבדים ויקחו אבן וישימו תחתיו וישב עליה״.

It is true that many authorities, such Rashba or Maharsha on the daf, and the Maharal in Gur Aryeh, incidentally, none of whom were die-hard rationalists, learn this allegorically (and by the way, the Rashba still takes Moshe being 15-feet tall literally). But neither do they give an indication that this is because they find it scientifically impossible for there to be hundred-foot tall giants. As Natan (correctly) points out, there would have been no reason for even rationalists at the time to have objected to this aspect of the Medrash. Rather, like the Aggados of Rabba bar Bar Chana, they find the entire Medrash to be bizarre according to the literal understanding, which points to a deeper meaning. And there is absolutely nothing in Rashi to indicate that he wouldn’t agree that there is a deeper meaning (the same way his commentaries understood with regard to Adam mating), but he simply wasn’t doing that in his Torah commentary.

In any case, unlike Natan’s delusions, Rashi wasn’t considered “very problematic” for bringing this Medrash, or for any other Medrash he brings. At most, some maintained that this is not the best approach to learning Chumash, and the focus should be on pshat. Natan’s assertion, like Eric’s, are complete pie-in-the-sky academic nonsense.

Finally, we have Natan donning his clairvoyant hat:

And I doubt that many people today, no matter what they profess to believe, actually really believe that Moshe was fifteen feet tall and Og was hundreds of feet tall.

Many people would find this offensive, but I just find it amusing. It’s funny because it’s so obvious why Natan thinks this way. He is a “rationalist” who (seems to be) kofer in most miracles in the Torah, such as Ma’aseh Bereishis, the Mabul, and even in the miraculous nature of the Makkos and Krias Yam Suf. He almost certainly doesn’t believe that the generations from Noach until Avraham lived extraordinarily long lives (I would be surprised if he believed Noach existed). So of course he can’t imagine anybody thinking Og, who was allegedly a remnant of this mythical fantasy time, was hundreds of feet tall. But for the rest of us who are Baruch Hashem not kofrim, we may have difficulty with this Aggada, we may find the Rashba easier to accept, but it is not something we have a problem with in principle.

With Hashem’s help, sometime in the near future, I will review another piece of academic nonsense from Natan entitled Was Rashi a Corporealist?

Stay tuned!

1. They most likely think that because Rashi says, ואני לא באתי אלא לפשוטו של מקרא, ולאגדה המישבת דברי המקרא דבר דבור על אופניו They think this means he equates Medrash with pshat. First of all, this shows they only read the first part of the sentence, not the second. Secondly, even if Rashi really does equate Medrash with pshat, it’s just a word game. Rashi knew there was a pshat besides for the Medrash, like he mentions in countless places. And the Rashbam quotes his grandfather as saying that he wanted to write another commentary with only pshat.