Natan Slifkin's Blog, page 175

A Visit to Ein Gedi

Here is an email that I received from a rabbi in Jerusalem, with regard to my earlier post regarding the hyrax:

Just wanted you to know that we're rooting for you, or more accurately, for the Emes. It was disturbing to see that intelligent people today, and among them chashuv rabbanim, would entertain the possibility that the shafan is not the hyrax. It can only be clear proof that none of them have ever visited Ein Gedi in the early morning. Our family loves to get to Ein Gedi at opening time when the crowds haven't yet arrived, just to spend time sitting with the ibex and hyraxes (see attached photo), basking in the beauty of Hashem's world and saying the Pirkei Tehilim in which Dovid ha'Melech expressed that beauty. The hyrax is such an integral part of Eretz Yisrael (I've photographed them in the Negev and at Rosh Hanikra) that I wonder what Tanach calls the hyrax if it isn't the shafan.

And if the shafan is the rabbit, then what am I supposed to tell my children when we are hiking in the Negev and we see the ibex and the hyrax among the rocks and they spontaneously yell out, "Harim ha'gevohim la'yeelim, selaim machseh la'shfanim!" -- "Sorry, kids, you got it wrong. The shafan is a rabbit"? (N.S. - And at least his kids have heard of rabbits. What would the average Jew in Biblical Israel have thought?)

I also wonder if Isaac Betech also believes that the size of a k'Zayis is eight olives.

In relation to this, note that the Bronx Zoo displays ibex and hyrax in the same enclosure, to replicate how they are commonly found together in the wild.

On Eagle's Wings

One of the questions that I receive most often is about the description of eagles carrying their young on their wings, which is alluded to in this week's parashah and mentioned explicitly later in the Torah. Here's a post that I wrote a few years ago at www.zootorah.blogspot.com; check the original post for some interesting comments.

The most prominent bird in the Torah is the nesher, the king of birds. Although many assume that this is the eagle, and some of the commentaries have identified it as such, the evidence shows that it is more likely a vulture - specifically, the griffon vulture (see full essay here).

Curiously, the best-known Scriptural description of the nesher is also the most problematic to understand. It occurs in reference to God bringing the Jewish People out of Egypt:

"You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I carried you (va'esa eschem) on the wings of nesharim, and brought you to Myself." (Exodus 19:4)

The conventional translation of va'esa eschem is "I carried you." However, some translate it as "I elevated you." The explanation is that the nesher is the highest-flying bird, and God raised the Jewish People to spiritual heights above anything in the natural world with His miraculous redemption.[1] The highest flying birds are griffon vultures.

But many explain this verse instead to refer to God poetically carrying the Jewish People like a nesher carrying its young on its back. This relates to a description of the vulture later in the Torah:

"As a nesher stirs up its nest, flutters over its young, spreads out its wings, takes them, bears them on its pinions; So did God guide them, and there was no strange god with them." (Deuteronomy 32:11-12)

The description here is of the nesher carrying its young upon its wings while flying. Many have considered this verse to present us with a great difficulty and to require some kind of allegorical or poetic interpretation, since neither vultures or eagles are generally known to carry their young on their wings. Swans sometimes carry their young on their backs while swimming, and jacanas may sometimes carry their young between wing and body while walking. But according to most literature, the only bird of any sort that carries its young during flight is an obscure water bird from Central and Southern America called the sungrebe, which carries its twin young in pouches under both wings.

This remarkable phenomenon was first reported in 1833 by the German ornithologist M.A. Wied. Subsequent generations of ornithologists viewed this report with skepticism or ridicule. However in 1969 Mexican ornithologist Miguel Alvarez del Toro[2] confirmed that soon after hatching, the male sungrebe places each of the two chicks in pouches under his wings and departs. An article by B. Bertrand[3] explains: "M. Alvarez del Toro, who observed a nesting pair in Mexico, discovered that the male has a shallow pocket under each wing into which the two young can fit. The pocket is formed by a pleat of skin, and made more secure by the feathers on the side of the body just below. The heads of the chicks could be seen from below as the bird flew. Alvarez del Toro collected the bird in order to examine it and confirm the unlikely discovery. Subsequently, he found it confirmed also by a report published by Prince Maximilian of Wied 138 years earlier but apparently ignored, forgotten or not believed. This adaptation is unique among birds: in no other species is there any mechanism whereby altricial young can be transported...."

But eagles and vultures, despite being widely studied, are not generally described as displaying such behavior. However, unbeknownst to many, reports do indeed exist of eagles carrying their young on their backs. One ornithologist writes:

"Many ornithologists have thought that the Bible picture of an eagle carrying her young was merely figurative, but in recent years certain reliable observers have actually seen a parent bird let its young rest for a moment on the feathered back - especially when there was no other roosting place in sight. When an eagle nests on the ledge of a sheer-walled canyon, many feet above the earth, with no jutting tree or protruding rock to break the fall, the quick movement of a mother bird to offer her own back to a frightened fledgling may be the only way to let it live to try its wings again." (V.C. Holmgren, Bird Walk Through The Bible [New York: Dover Publications 1988] p. 98)

One report of this behavior is as follows:

"Our guide was one of the small company who have seen the golden eagle teaching the young to fly. He could support the belief that the parent birds, after urging and sometimes shoving the youngster into the air, will swoop underneath and rest the struggler for a moment on their wings and back. ... Our guide, when questioned, said that every phrase of the verse [Deut. xxxii, I I] (which was new to him) was accurate, save the first; he had seen it all except the stirring up of the nest." (W.B. Thomas, Yeoman's England [1934], pp. 135-6)

Another report concerning the golden eagle comes from Arthur Cleveland Bent, one of America's greatest ornithologists, on the authority of Dr. L. Miller:

"The mother started from the nest in the crags and, roughly hand-ling the youngster, she allowed him to drop, I should say, about ninety feet; then she would swoop down under him, wings spread, and he would alight on her back. She would soar to the top of the range with him and repeat the process. Once perhaps she waited fifteen minutes between flights. I should say the farthest she let him fall was a hundred and fifty feet. My father and I watched him, spellbound, for over an hour." (A. C. Bent, Bulletin of the Smithsonian Institution CLXVII [1937], 302) (Note to the reader: I would be indebted to anyone who can obtain a copy of this article for me, or who knows of any other reliable reports of such behavior.)

True, these reports concern eagles, whereas evidence shows the nesher to be the griffon vulture rather than the eagle. However, it is possible that such behavior likewise occurs with griffon vultures, or that nesher is a generic term encompassing both eagles and griffon vultures. Another solution to the entire question is to posit that "the Torah speaks in the language of men," which, according to one school of thought, means that it packages its messages within the scientific worldview of the generation that received the Torah. For more on this approach, which has been used by several recent and modern authorities to explain other phrases in the Torah that are scientifically inaccurate (such as references to the "firmament," to the hare bringing up its cud, and so on), see my essay "The Question of the Kidneys' Counsel."

If referring to a griffon vulture, these verses show that the vulture is regarded by the Torah very differently from the way that it is perceived in contemporary culture. While people today view the vulture in a negative light, the Torah presents it as an example of a loving and caring parent. This also relates to the vulture's entire parenting process. Female griffon vultures usually lay one egg, which both parents incubate for an unusually long period of around seven weeks until it hatches. The young are slow to develop and do not leave the nest until three or four months of age. The long devotion of the vulture to its young symbolizes God's deep dedication to the Jewish People.

Sources:
[1] See HaKesav VeHaKabbalah ad loc.
[2] Alvarez del Toro, M. (1971) "On the Biology of the American Finfoot in Southern Mexico," The Living Bird 10: 79-88.
[3] Bertrand, B. C. R. (1996) Family Heliornithidae (Finfoots) in del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., & Sargatal, J., eds. Handbook of the Birds of the World. Vol. 3. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.

Where are the Pandas, Penguins and Polar Bears of Psalms?

In “The Identity of the Shafan and Arnevet” (Dialogue 2012), physicians Isaac Betech and Obadia Maya attempt to argue that the shafan of Tenach is the rabbit and not the hyrax. Their article is lengthy, includes a copious number of footnotes, and the authors claim to have corresponded with “the greatest specialists in the relevant disciplines.” Yet they fail to even mention, let alone address, the reason why virtually every scholar of Biblical zoology in the last century has agreed that the shafan cannot be the rabbit.

You can download my full response in PDF version at this link. I already sent it to Dialogue , but given the make-up of their rabbinic board (Rabbi Miller, Rabbi Feldman and Rabbi Meiselman), it seems unlikely, to say the least, that they would be open to dialogue. I asked the editor to notify me if they would consider it for publication, but I did not receive a reply. So I am making it available here; if you know any readers of Dialogue, please pass it on to them.



Meanwhile, my article about Mishpacha's take on charedim and the army is in the Jerusalem Post. You can see it online at this link (slightly expanded from the version that I originally posted here). If you have comments on it, please post them to the previous post, not this one.

Mishpachah's Myopia, etc.

In this week's Mishpachah magazine, editor Rabbi Moshe Grylak writes about why charedim in Israel don't serve in the army (online here). I drew upon various blog posts that I have written and put together a response that you can download at this link. It's a PDF file, so you can print it out and share it on Shabbos with people who read Mishpachah.

If you're looking for a dvar Torah to share about Tu B'Shvat, I once wrote an essay that you can view at this link. It's based on various material that I heard from Rav Moshe Shapiro.

If you live in NY/NJ, I'd really appreciate it if you could spread the word about my program at the Turtle Back Zoo in West Orange next Sunday. You can download the flyer at this link.

Good Shabbos!

Manna and Maimonides

(A re-post from a few years back, which is appropriate for this week's parashah)

It is notoriously difficult to ascertain Rambam's view on the extent to which miracles are naturalistic phenomena. He makes comments about miracles in a number of different places, which seem to contradict each other:

A. Commentary to the Mishnah
Miracles are all preprogrammed into nature since creation

B. Guide to the Perplexed
1. Rambam professes his own view: Miracles are supernatural, and all are possible, as an essential parallel to creation
2. Praises sages’ view that miracles are built into nature
3. Extensively reinterprets many Biblical events so as to remove supernatural aspects

C. Treatise On Resurrection
1. Presents policy of only accepting supernatural as last resort
2. Categorizes some miracles as supernatural and others as natural

D. Epistle Against Galen
Explains supernatural miracles as being relatively minor modifications of nature

Many have tried to make sense out of all these statements, with differing results. See, for example, Joseph Heller, “Maimonides’ Theory of Miracles”; Hannah Kasher, “Biblical Miracles and the Universality of Natural Laws: Maimonides’ Three Methods of Harmonization”; Haim Kreisel, “Miracles in Medieval Jewish Philosophy”; Y. Tzvi Langermann, “Maimonides and Miracles: The Growth of a (Dis)Belief”; Alvin J. Reines, “Maimonides’ Concept of Miracles”; and Michael Tzvi Nahorai, “The Problem of Miracles for Maimonides.” I also have my own paper on it, which is still unpublished.

In this post, I merely wish to draw attention to Rambam's statements about manna. In the Epistle Against Galen, he describes one type of supernatural miracle as being the acquisition of new properties:

Something is innovated which is not in the nature of the present reality to come into existence, such as the entire innovation of the manna, which had the property of being hard and could be ground to make bread, but when the sun shone upon it, it became soft and melted.

The manna itself was not supernatural; what was supernatural was that it was a hard substance that turned into a liquid under sunlight. This is, to say the least, an unexpected aspect of the manna to highlight as being miraculous.

In the Guide (III:50), on the other hand, Maimonides describes the miracle of the manna as follows:

Now the greatest of the miracles described in the Law is the stay of the Israelites in the wilderness for forty years, with a supply of manna every day. This wilderness, as described in Scripture, consisted of places "wherein were fiery serpents and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water"; places very remote from cultivated land, and naturally not adapted for the habitation of man... But God knew that in future people might doubt the correctness of the account of these miracles, in the same manner as they doubt the accuracy of other narratives; they might think that the Israelites stayed in the wilderness in a place not far from inhabited land, where it was possible for man to live [in the ordinary way]; that it was like those deserts in which Arabs live at present; or that they dwelt in such places in which they could plow, sow, and reap, or live on some vegetable that was growing there; or that manna constantly comes down in those places as an ordinary natural product; or that there were wells of water in those places. In order to remove all these doubts and to firmly establish the accuracy of the account of these miracles, Scripture enumerates all the stations, so that coming generations may see them, and learn the greatness of the miracle which enabled human beings to live in those places forty years.

Here, Rambam does not say anything about the nature and formation of the manna per se being miraculous, but rather that the miracle was in its being present constantly over forty years. He certainly did not believe that this was a substance created ex nihilo, and apparently did not even believe that there was anything supernatural about its formation per se. Rambam seems to have shared the view found in certain Yemenite Midrashic texts (and see too Ibn Ezra to Shemos 16:13), that manna is essentially a naturally-occurring substance. It was miraculous in it occurring with unnatural properties (according to the Epistle Against Galen) and with constantly fortuitous timing (according to the Guide). (See the extract from Rabbi Nataniel ben Yeshayah, Nûr al-Zalâm, written in 1329, published in Y. Tzvi Langermann, Yemenite Midrash: Philosophical Commentaries on the Torah, pp. 216-217.)

The reason why I mention all this is that the New York Times just published a fascinating article about various foodstuffs thought to be the Biblical manna, which are making a comeback on modern restaurant menus (link, or you can read the reprint, with typically entertaining comments, at Vos Iz Neias). Food for thought!

The Sephardic Spring

In the 19th century, Ashkenazi and Sephardic versions of Judaism were very different. As I mentioned in my monograph "The Novelty of Orthodoxy," some historians attribute this to long-standing differences between the two, while others attribute it to the different environments. Ashkenazi Orthodoxy developed as a response to developments in Christian Europe, for better or for worse; Sephardic Jewry, which was not faced with such developments, did not change in that way.

But in the late twentieth century, when Ashkenazim and Sephardim came together in Israel, the differences began to fade away. Not in a good sense; there was and is still plenty of discrimination. But many Sephardim adopted the Ashkenazi Lithuanian Charedi approach to Judaism, in which things are extreme and reactionary, and young men are encouraged to learn in kollel rather than serve in the army and work to support their families.

Enter Rav Chaim Amsalem. He is an amazing Rav who is seeking to return the Sephardic world to its more moderate roots - you won't hear any screaming tirades from him about how his opponents are goyim! But his work is important for Ashkenazim too. He has launched the new political movement Am Shalem, which seeks to unify Israel around an equal, normal Jewish and Israeli way of life, involving serving in the IDF and enabling everyone to work for a living. It also seeks to rescue the rabbinate from the charedi takeover. You can learn more about Rav Amsalem and Am Shalem at its website, AmShalem.org.

The other day, I mentioned that I was nervous about voting for Am Shalem, because I was unsure if they would pass the voting threshold. However, the polls are unclear; it is certainly at least on the border, and some polls predict that they could gain as many as three seats. This may well be a historic opportunity for change. I will leave you with the following comment that someone wrote to my blog post, which provides much food for thought:

I have heard your argument from so many that Am Shalem makes the most sense and would be their first choice, but...... (mainly passing the minimum number of votes).
If one tenth of such people would vote Am Shalem he will get in. I will sacrifice my otherwise traditional Mafdal/Bayit Yehudi vote (of 30 years) and vote Am Shalem. The difference between 14 and 15 Bayit Yehudi seats is meaningless, but having Rav Amsalem in the Knesset is (maybe) priceless.

(See too this article in The Jerusalem Post)

Politically Maturing

When I moved to Israel twenty years ago, as an idealistic and wide-eyed charedi yeshivah bachur, I was amazed and horrified at religious Jews who did not vote for United Torah Judaism. After all, Torah is the ultimate guide to everything, right? And the Gedolim are the ultimate guide to the Torah, right? And the UTJ Knesset Members are the ultimate guide to the Gedolim, right? So how could a religious Jew not vote for UTJ?

Ah, the naivete of youth! Unfortunately, looking around at my neighborhood, it appears that a lot of adults suffer from the same naivete. Since many of them apparently read my blog, I thought that I would explain how I evolved.

My chain of logic expressed above came undone in reverse order. The first thing that I realized was that the Knesset Members are most certainly not some sort of perfect conduit to and from the Gedolim. They filter what information reaches the Gedolim, and they make plenty of decisions on their own. Some of them might be fine people; the late Avraham Ravitz comes to mind (and I received a lovely phone call from his wife recently, complimenting me on one of my Jerusalem Post articles). But I'm not particularly confident that others are not the askanim that we all know about, who simply manipulate the Gedolim. Look at how much power Leib Tropper was able to wield! An important Rav in the charedi world told me, a few years back, that this is how UTJ ended up supporting Sharon for the Gaza withdrawal - the Daas Torah that allegedly determines UTJ was simply manipulated by askanim.

The second thing that I realized was that the Gedolim themselves are not the ultimate guide to the Torah. They reflect one very particular and narrow approach to the Torah; that of 21st century charedi ultra-Orthodoxy. As I have explained in my monographs "The Novelty of Orthodoxy" and "The Making of Charedim," this is but one of many approaches to Torah that exist and have existed. Sadly, the charedi Gedolim are largely unaware of other approaches, or in denial of them. And the ultra-Orthodox approach is, in many ways, contrary to Chazal, mesorah and common sense. In particular, of course, the notion of the rest of the country funding mass open-ended kollel while Charedim do not give their children the education or desire to support their families - which is the primary issue for which UTJ exists - is most certainly contrary to Chazal, mesorah and common sense. (This was discussed in a previous post, Not For The Reason You Might Suspect, that was the third most read post on this blog of all time!)

The third thing that I realized is that it is far too simplistic to say that Torah is the ultimate guide for everything. As Ramban states in his commentary to Devarim 6:18, the Torah does not and could not spell out the proper course of action in all situations. Instead, it gives us the basic guidelines and values, and we have to work out the rest for ourselves. In complex situations such as political decisions and national security, there is very little explicit guidance from the Torah; such decisions are affected much more by the values of people. And the notion of "pure Torah values," I discovered, is a myth. Everyone is affected by their surrounding culture; either directly, or by responding to it, or indirectly via learning from rabbinic sources that were themselves influenced by their surrounding culture. The Vilna Gaon accused no less than Rambam of being deeply affected by Greek culture (in which the Gaon was, of course, correct); does anyone seriously think that Rambam had some personal weakness that led him to be influenced, while every other Torah scholar is immune?!

Thus, I realized that voting UTJ was based on a very naive view of Torah, Charedi Gedolim, and how Charedi rabbinic authority functions. They would simply sell out the Land of Israel, even supporting the Left and giving away land, in order to receive the money that they so desperately need because they cannot support themselves, and/or to avoid sharing the burden in being moser nefesh for the nation by serving the army. They've basically said as much recently.

So who should one vote for? Rav Chaim Amsallem and his Am Shalem party seem to have great values, but sadly, they don't seem to be going anywhere. Yesh Atid has some well-meaning people, but I don't trust Yair Lapid one bit, and they are clearly left-leaning. Tzipi Livni? Don't make me laugh. Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak? Don't make me cry.

Likud is a reasonable option, especially with the current makeup of candidates. (Also, I am related to Bibi Netanyahu, by marriage.) However, ultimately, there are grounds for concern that they would succumb to the same weakness to which Sharon succumbed - giving away irretrievable land for temporary international goodwill and useless promises of security. The problem is that, as we have seen, once land is given away, Israel can never defend itself from attacks that are launched from that territory, without being faced with international condemnation that it can't withstand.

So, it's Bayit Yehudi for me. Religious Jews who, unlike charedim, understand that working to support one's family is the normal, traditional and correct way to live. They won't sell out the land for money, and they realize that Israel is destined to "live alone among nations." Sure, the road ahead will be tough; there simply isn't any good solution to the conflict with the Palestinians. But we shall endure, as we always have.

Here Comes Lice Day!

Tomorrow is Lice Day!

Yes, that's right. Tomorrow, Daf Yomi reaches Shabbos 107b, the page of the Gemara which references lice spontaneously generating. As you may remember, my pointing out that this is an errant belief (albeit with no halachic ramifications) caused a spot of bother back in 2004/5. As far as most of the Charedi Gedolim were concerned, such a view was utter heresy (or at least forbidden to say). This was notwithstanding the fact that my statement was simply a repetition of an observation that had been made by many great Torah scholars (such as, specifically with regard to spontaneous generation, Rav Yitzchak Lampronti, Rav Hirsch, Rav Herzog, and Rav Dessler). Not to mention the fact that it was clearly true.

Meanwhile, there are always those who claim that the Gemara isn't actually saying that lice spontaneously generate. I remember Rabbi Moshe Meiselman literally (and I mean "literally" literally) screaming at me that on Yom Kippur, I will have to beg forgiveness for having accused Chazal of believing such a thing. When I pointed out that this is clearly how Rashi and other Rishonim interpret the Gemara, he responded that that was irrelevant. So here's an extract from the chapter on lice in my book Sacred Monsters , which you can buy directly from me online or at bookstores, which addresses this claim:

Some have attempted to defend the notion of the scientific infallibility of the Talmud, or at least the applicability of this ruling, by reinterpreting this statement about lice. A popular argument is that the Sages actually meant only that the eggs of lice are halachically insignificant due to their small size, not that they do not exist. Similarly, some claim that the life-force of a louse is not halachically classified as an animal life-force (just as a plant is alive and yet is not classified in a halachah as a living creature). An alternate claim that is advanced is that since the eggs or larvae require this particular environment in which to develop, it can be said that they are generated from there.

However, there are numerous problems with such explanations, notwithstanding their obvious appeal. First, there is no independent evidence for these explanations; they are presented simply on the grounds that there could not be a scientific error in the Talmud. Yet, as we discussed in the introduction to this work, most authorities understand that the Sages of the Talmud did make a scientific error in believing that the sun passes behind the sky at night. And since the Sages spoke of a mouse that grows from dirt, they clearly did believe in spontaneous generation. Thus there is no reason to accept that they could not have believed that lice generate this way, which was the common belief in their era.

Second, the words of the Talmud say nothing about the eggs being halachically insignificant, or about the life-force of lice not being like that of other animals. It simply states that they do not reproduce sexually. While it is not impossible that this could be a shorthand reference for something else, the burden of proof is certainly upon those who would make such a claim. Especially since, in Talmudic times, the entire world believed that lice spontaneously generate, it is highly unreasonable to state that when the Sages spoke of lice as not reproducing sexually, they intended a different meaning entirely.

Third, such explanations are inconsistent with the views of the traditional Talmudic commentators. Rambam, Rashba, Ran, Tosafos and others all state that lice spontaneously generate from sweat or dust. True, it is not impossible that they misunderstood the nature of the Talmud’s ruling—indeed, we posited similarly in the case of mermaids. Yet in the case of mermaids, there was compelling textual evidence that the Talmud was referring to dolphins instead; here, no such evidence exists. Furthermore, those who posit that the Talmudic statement about lice must be scientifically correct are usually the same people who are reluctant to posit that the traditional commentators all erred in their understanding of the Talmud.

The final objection to such reinterpretations of the Talmud’s statement is that there is a straightforward refutation from the continuation of the Talmud:

Abaye said: And do lice not reproduce? Surely it was said, “God sits and sustains from the horns of aurochsen to the eggs of lice” (which shows that lice come from eggs)? — That refers to a type [of organism] which is called eggs of lice (but not that lice actually hatch from these).

If the Sages were not denying the existence of lice eggs, why do they reject the simple meaning of the statement that speaks about God sustaining the eggs of lice, and resort to difficult explanations instead? Let them simply state that although lice do hatch from eggs, these are too small to be halachically significant! It therefore seems that they did not consider this possibility. (I am aware that some claim that the Talmud means that since the eggs are halachically insignificant, they cannot be the subject of the statement about lice eggs. However such a reading is highly contrived, lacks any evidence, and is certainly not how the Rishonim and Acharonim understood the Talmud.)

Eight years later, how do things look? Has the Daas Torah of the Charedi Gedolim triumphed? Or have people calmed down, and are matters back to the way they were before the controversial ban, when views such as those expressed in my book were tolerated? If you attend a Daf Yomi shiur, perhaps you could post a comment and let us know what was said. And I would also like to point out that I have a Hebrew translation of Sacred Monsters ready to be published, if someone would like to help sponsor it!

The Threat of Euclid

Here in Israel, United Torah Judaism is circulating the following campaign ad:


For those who can't make out the Hebrew words in the poster, the ad says "EUCLID - Not, it's not the name of a medicine. It's the Greek mathematics mathematician that (the Zionists want) your son to learn about instead of learning Mishnayos." It proceeds to detail how it is important for your children to learn good character, yiras Shamayim and Torah, rather than the foreign wisdom that the government wants them to study, etc.

Now, one question that immediately springs to mind is why Mishnayos and mathematics are presented as an either/or. Nobody is saying that charedim should not learn Mishnayos at all; rather, they are saying that charedim should learn mathematics as well as Mishnayos. Which many Orthodox Jews, in Israel and abroad, manage perfectly well. And they seem to do pretty well at achieving good character and yiras Shamayim, too.

But my colleague Leor Jacobi pointed out something else:



It's a Hebrew translation of Euclid, by Rav Baruch of Shklov. He was encouraged to publish it by his rebbe, the Vilna Gaon. He writes in the introduction that the Gra told him that “according to the measure of what a person lacks in general wisdom, he will lack a hundredfold when it comes to Torah wisdom, because the Torah and general wisdom are closely linked together.”

It looks like United Torah Judaism has set itself up against the Zionists and the Vilna Gaon. Strange, no?

Rivers And Other Rationalist Miscellenia

1. In the comments to the post "Sugar For Elephants," a reader drew my attention to another example of an early Acharon pointing to an inaccurate statement made by a Rishon due to his geographical location. Radvaz negates the view of R. Eliyahu Mizrahi (and effectively many others) who identified the "River of Egypt," stated to be the border of Eretz Yisrael, as the river Nile. He points out that they were unfamiliar with the geographical reality, due to their living in Europe:

שו"ת רדב"ז חלק ו סימן ב אלפים רו
הרב המזרחי חשב כי נחל מצרים הוא הנילוס כאשר צייר באותה פרשה ואין לתפוס עליו לפי שהוא ז"ל צייר מה שלא ראה
If anyone has more examples of this phenomenon, please send them in.

2. I am pleased to report that the "Rationalist Medical Halachist" is back in action! Check out his website at http://rationalistmedicalhalacha.blogspot.com.

3. Dr. Marc Shapiro has a typically fascinating post, primarily about metzitzah, at the Seforim Blog. Also, there's interesting tidbits about the charedi world at The Jewish Worker.

4. My safari to Africa is filling up, but there are still some places left. Learn more about this trip of a lifetime at http://www.torahinmotion.org/programs/live_program/5440

5. If you live in NY/NJ, I'd appreciate it if you could help spread the word about my program at the Turtle Back Zoo and my lectures in NY.