Was Rashi a Corporealist?

Much worse than the usual academic am ha'aratzus you are used to

About 14 years ago, Natan published his sorry mess of an article, “Was Rashi a Corporealist?” in the Modox journal, Hakirah (I think you’re supposed to pronounce it like you’re a severe old lady with a bun teaching an ulpan class on a kibutz, right after singing Zum Gali Gali and dancing the Hora.) In truth, it was painful for me to read it. It has to be one of the worst things that he wrote (not that his writings are lacking for competition!) The article is just so unbelievably atrocious, and shows such gross ignorance and lack of perspective, that is it was actually physically difficult for me to begin writing this post. Attempting to rebut it would be like rebutting the Timecube guy. Difficult, unrewarding, and futile.

Thank God, I quickly discovered that somebody else, Rabbi Shaul Zucker, already wrote a rebuttal article in Hakirah shortly afterwards, completely and utterly demolishing Natan’s theory, showing that it has absolutely no substance. However, I feel he did a disservice by taking it too seriously (his last response paper was 36 pages!), and thereby giving the impression that there is an actual debate here, instead of a lunatic bringing all sorts of “evidence” that Trump won the 2020 election.

Everybody who doesn’t agree with me is biased, all frum people are biased

I am going to describe how I believe this non-issue should be approached, but first, I want to show you how shockingly intellectually dishonest Natan was about this. And I mean shockingly. This is, without a doubt, one of the worst examples of intellectual dishonesty you have ever seen.

You can look at the old Rationalist Judaism and observe the back-and-forth between Natan and Rabbi Zucker over several posts and hundreds of comments, to see what I mean. Every time Rabbi Zucker brings up a new point showing that Natan is incorrect, Natan weasels out of it with some ridiculous contorted excuse, never ever admitting that he could even be slightly wrong about any of it.

As the discussion proceeds, it does not go well for Natan.

It does not go well at all.

As is clear from the numerous comments, most observers were convinced by Rabbi Zucker’s arguments and found Natan’s “evidence” weak and shallow (as it was), even those who normally support him. But instead of admitting that there might be something wrong with his perspective, Natan started ranting and raving in numerous posts, and tens or hundreds of comments, both on his site and on other blogs, about how Rabbi Zucker is biased, and everybody who finds him convincing are biased, and ALL frum people are biased, and they are like moon landing deniers, but that since he became an academic, he is not biased, and that THIS is the primary issue, not the actual evidence from Rashi one way or the other. It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.

https://rationalistjudaism.blogspot.com/2009/07/was-rashi-corporealist.html

https://rationalistjudaism.blogspot.com/2009/07/hanging-corpses-and-decomposing-faces.html

https://rationalistjudaism.blogspot.com/2009/07/seeing-no-image.html

https://rationalistjudaism.blogspot.com/2009/07/corporealism-redux-part-i.html

https://rationalistjudaism.blogspot.com/2009/08/as-it-were-so-to-speak.html

https://rationalistjudaism.blogspot.com/2009/08/arguing-with-creationists-and-other.html

https://rationalistjudaism.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-latest-mistake.html

https://www.torahmusings.com/2011/02/deference/

The “argument”

In any case, despite how clownish Natan comes off in that debate, I said I would introduce a different perspective than Rabbi Zucker, so here it is.

The crux of Natan’s argument is as follows (and I am trying to make it sound as reasonable as possible, or as rationalists say, “steelmanning”):

1. We have testimony that there were some/many French rabbis close in time to the period when Rashi lived, who held corporealist views. Therefore, there is already a decent likelihood that he was one of them.

2. Rashi explains several Pesukim and Midrashim in ways that sound corporeal. Combined with #1, we have strong evidence that he was a corporealist.

3. Rashi never explicitly repudiates corporealism the way more philosophical authorities such as the Rambam do (although he implicitly repudiates it in many places, as Rabbi Zucker shows).

To somebody completely uninitiated in Torah study (the people who Natan calls “unbiased”), this may perhaps sound somewhat reasonable. But when one scratches the surface just a tiny bit, the whole “argument” falls apart like house of cards.

What exactly is this testimony that there were many French corporealist rabbis? Almost all of it is from people who condemned corporealism in very strong terms, and felt that it is deeply erroneous and is based on an extremely simplistic understanding of the Torah and Midrash (And of course, none of them name Rashi as a corporealist, and there is also testimony that Rashi was not a corporealist, something that Natan has to twist himself into pretzels to dismiss.) Meaning almost all the evidence we have for corporealism is from people who viewed it as a terrible mistake. So why in the world would we attribute this mistaken view to Rashi for no reason other than that other rabbis in his region made that error?

It’s like if I heard testimony that there is a pedophilia problem in frum society, so I claim that there is a good likelihood that the current Rosh Yeshiva of Tifrach is a pedophile.

Absurd.

And this takes us to the second part of the argument, that Rashi in many places explains pesukim and Midrashim in ways that sound corporeal.

This is just an abuse of sources and an insult to the reader’s intelligence. In all of these examples, the pesukim and Midrashim themselves sound corporeal. So the fact that Rashi in many places explains them simply, or brings the Midrash simply (in contrast to the “rationalist” commentators, typically), as is his style in literally hundreds of other places that have nothing to do with the corporealism of God, is evidence that he held that God is a giant person?! Seriously, what kind of perverted imagination does somebody need to come up with something like this? Does such a proposition deserve a 36-page refutation? Maybe from somebody with unlimited patience, but not me!

The last point, about how Rashi never explicitly repudiates corporealism, is a valid observation, but in no way demonstrates what Natan thinks it does, as I am about to explain.

He knows more about Rashi’s views than Rashi himself

Although he was pretty much the first person to discover this amazing revelation, Natan was quite modest about it.

The other thing you came up with is a stronger statement of Machzor Vitry against corporealism than the one that I had. I should share with you a comment on my article from a Rabbi Dr. with many decades of expertise in medieval Jewish theology. He said that I probably put more thought into Rashi's view of God than Rashi himself ever did. R. Simcha Vitry may not have been consciously disputing his rebbe's view - he may have never known what his rebbe's view was. While this issue is very important to us right now, it's only a tiny fragment of Rashi's commentary, and something that he may not have pursued at all from a philosophical. theological standpoint.

Wow, just amazing.

However, surprisingly, I agree with the statement to a tiny extent. Not the part about Natan knowing more about Rashi than Rashi himself or his students, but the idea that Rashi didn’t pursue the question of corporeality from a philosophical standpoint. Rashi was not a philosopher, and it is very possible that he simply didn’t delve into the issue much or at all.

But you have to seriously have some screws loose to make the leap from “not delving into it” to “he actually thinks Hashem has a gigantic ethereal body with an enormous nose”. Or as Shimshon says, “retarded”.

In other words, you don’t need to be a philosopher to understand that Hashem’s hand is not like our hand, or that Hashem’s face is not like our face, and that everything about Him is totally unlike us. This is the simple pshat of the Torah in countless places, and there is absolutely nothing about this non-philosophical understanding that implies Hashem is a giant ethereal body.

I will finish with the censored Rashi to Yeshaya 63:1: 

מי זה בא מאדום. נתנבא הנביא על שאמר הקב"ה שעתיד לעשות נקמה באדום והוא עצמו בכבודו יהרוג את שר שלהם תחלה, כענין שנאמר לעיל ל"ד כי רִוְתָה בשמים חרבי ואחר כך על אדום תרד ונכר בזעם פניו שהרגם הרג רב, והנביא מדבר בלשון מלחמות בני אדם לבושי בגדים, ובהרגם הרג הדם נתז על בגדיהם, כי כן דרך הכתובים מדברים בשכינה כדרך בני אדם לשבר את האזן מה שהיא יכולה לשמוע, וכן וקולו כקול מים רבים, דימה הנביא קול חזק שלו לקול מים רבים לשבר את האזן כדרך שאפשר לה לשמוע שאין להבין ולהאזין ברוח גבורות אלהינו להשמיעה כמות שהיא:

Who is this coming from Edom The prophet prophesies concerning what the Holy One, blessed be He, said that He is destined to wreak vengeance upon Edom, and He, personally, will slay their heavenly prince, like the matter that is said (supra 34:5), “For My sword has become sated in the heaven.” And afterward, (ibid.) “it shall descend upon Edom,” and it is recognizable by the wrath of His face that He has slain [them with] a great massacre, and the prophet is speaking in the expression of the wars of human beings, dressed in clothes, and when they slay a slaying, the blood spatters on their garments, for so is the custom of Scripture; it speaks of the Shechinah anthropomorphically, to convey to the ear what it can hear. Comp. (Ezek. 43:2) “His voice is like the voice of many waters.” The prophet compares His mighty voice to the voice of many waters to convey to the ear according to what it is possible to hear, for one cannot understand and hearken to the magnitude of the mighty of our God to let us hear it as it is.

Nobody seems to have brought this Rashi up in the debate 14 years ago, but I’m sure Natan could easily dismiss it as he does all the other sources, by maintaining that although Rashi thinks God has a body, he agrees that God doesn’t need clothes.

I think it is more likely that Natan doesn’t need clothes.

EDIT: Natan in the comments wanted me to link this https://hakirah.org/Vol%209%20Slifkin2.pdf

Although Rabbi Zucker already responded to it in his final response.