Text Criticism and the Yeshiva World

See here for a fascinating encounter between geniza research and the yeshiva world. As of this writing there were five response, which provide a snapshot of distrust of textual criticism.
We have:
(1) The assertion that leaders of the yeshiva world are the true masters of the text.
(2) Blanket dismissal
(3) A line that could be interpreted as approval or dismissal.
(4) Reference to the ever-present force of Artscroll
(5) A theological explanation of why text criticism is worthless.

For a touching encounter between yeshivaleit and academic scholars, see Barry Wimpfheimer, "The Shiva" in Paul Socken, Why Study Talmud in the Twenty-First Century?: The Relevance of the Ancient Jewish Text to Our World (2009).

Hopkins Postdoc

Call for Applications
Crane Family Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellowship in Jewish Studies
The Johns Hopkins University: 2010-2012
Application Deadline: April 12, 2010

The Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Program for Jewish Studies at the Johns
Hopkins University invites applications for the Charles Crane Family
Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellowship in Jewish Studies. Recipients of this
fellowship will receive a 2-year appointment with salary and benefits to
live in the Baltimore area and work on the Homewood (Arts & Sciences)
Campus of the Johns Hopkins University. Requirements for the fellowship
include teaching one undergraduate course per semester on a topic in
Jewish Studies, designed in consultation with the Jewish Studies
committee, as well as participation in ongoing Jewish Studies activities
such as lectures, colloquiums, and receptions...

New Look, Same Great Tool

Encylclopaedia Iranica has just posted this message:

IRANICA IS CHANGING
Dear Users,
During more than a decade of close partnership with Internet Server Connections, Inc., we have maintained a consistent look and feel while building up to the present corpus of entries.
But now Iranica is changing. The new URL accurately communicates our status as a not-for-profit organization. The new page style, with a more contemporary look, is easier to view. Navigation is smoother, and the search is enhanced. You will notice new functionality in the article pages, such as tagging.
The new URL will be posted here as soon as it becomes available this week.
By early next week, we expect to be forwarding your link requests to the new site.
As of April 1, only the new site will be available online.
We hope you will enjoy the updated Iranica, and we welcome your observations and comments.
Yours truly,
The Editors

Notes towards Srugim and Talmudic Culture

Instability

Despite the accolades that Srugim has received for achieving a kind of objective correlative that affords access to dati and hillon audiences, it simultaneously point to aspects of the dati/hiloni divide - especially in terms of perceptions of the Other. A number of episodes ago, Hodaya, the rabbi's daughter who left the fold and is now officially a "datlash," and finds herself in a relatively unfulfilled relationship with a fellow datlash. One depressing evening she heads out to a bar, alone, and phones her old boyfriend - the Hebrew U archeologist Avri who was the focus of a number of episodes last season. Avri was truly secular. Not a drop of datlash in him. The chemistry is still there, but Avri has found someone new. And as he repeats over and over again, his new girlfriend, unlike Hodaya, is stable. The scene sheds light on an interesting assumption. Pretty much all of the characters are, in their own way, unstable - especially in their obsessive and unending search for identity and the interplay between identity and religion. Hodaya is of course the perfect example. but the same could be said of the other characters, like Amir - the married man who is less happy with having to fake as an Ashkenazi, Roi with the questions of his sexual identity, etc. One episode poked fun of a hilonit trying to leave her cozy Tel Aviv world and "play" the complex experience of being religious - clearly a nod to the experience of Srugim's actors.

It is worth noting that Srugim assumes that there is an inherent instability in the religious experience- an idea that R. J. B. Soloveitchik famously celebrated in "footnote 4" of his Halakhic Man. From the staid mid-century confines of Orthodox America, R. Soloveitchik tried to demonstrate that being religious was no trip alongside the tranquil waters, but a tortuous, existential experience. At least in certain corners of the Modern Orthodox world, it seems this battle of perception was won.

Identity

Speaking of identity, the questions of datlashim and borders came up as well. Hodaya's new boyfriend has no problem whatsoever with ordering shrimp. He is not dati, so what difference does it make if he transgresses the rules of Shabbat or eats creepy crawly things. But Hodaya is uninterested in the treif. Indeed, Hodaya is interested only in pursuing a traditional existential quest. So when she gets a tattoo on her back after wandering the streets of Tel Aviv, her datlash boyfriend is less than happy. It's an interesting way to think of the halakhic categories of mumar lehahis and mumar leteavon. The datlash boyfriend is essentially portrayed as a "mumar leteyavon." He is in it for the non-kosher food and premarital sex, while identity seems less a part of it. On the other hand, identity is Hodaya's obsession, and in order to concretize her new identity as secular she inscribes it as a sign on her body. I don't necessarily want to characterize Hodaya as lehahis - except in the sense that what she's doing is "for real" and not a temporary phase, in the passion of the moment. As much as possible, she wants her new secularism etched on her body, and soul.

Trust and Believablity

Amir and Yefat have been having some marital problems. Not only in conceiving a child, but also in trust - from the banal to the serious. Amir crashes the car and tries not to tell Yefat, etc. etc. At the beginning of the episode entitled Shivah Neqiyim, the glasses waiting to be immersed in the mikveh are still on the kitchen counter - Amir simply has not gotten around to do it. And Yifat has been taking hormonal supplements to play with her cycle since she's been having fertility problems - a matter of some controversy in Israel over the last few years (Menahem Mendel posted about it a while back). At Hodaya's insistence, Yifat considers rethinking when to begin counting the "shivah neqiyim". This is rather interesting since she is married to a Sefardi, who begin counting from the fourth (and not fifth) day of the onset of the period. But Amir loses trust in Yifat. He asks a Rav how one can trust one's wife that she has immersed in the mikveh and receives a lesson about notions of believability in Jewish law (the idea that a person is believed regarding "forbidden things" is actually derived from the menstruant's believability). It doesn't work for Amir and, he does everything to avoid the mikveh night since according to his (mistaken) calculation, Yifat has immersed too early. The irony is profound. The glasses that Amir finally ends up immersing are partially broken, while his wife, who has immersed properly is broken as well. Judging by the facebook comments on Amir's profile, he is not exactly the most beloved character right now, to say the least.

Niddah
As for the Shivah Neqiyim themselves, it is interesting how Yifat, the woman, is less sure of the process of shivah nekiqiym than her husband, while at least according to the Bavli it was a female innovation.
In my dissertation I made a fairly radical claim that I have yet to receive a response to. I hope I will get some pushback when I publish it in article form. For further details, I would suggest looking there, but in short, I argue that by comparing the Bavli and the Yerushalmi we can see that the phrase "the daughters of Israel were stringent" is a Babylonian addition to a Palestinian kernel, which merely declares a woman a menstruant even upon seeing a small drop of blood. In tannaitic sources, shivah neqiyim need not refer to seven "clean" days without blood but a period of time that is divorced from relations. This is at least how it appears in Tannaitic Hebrew. R. Zera cited the tradition in the name of R. Huna, and it made it into Babylonia in slightly altered form. In Rava's circle it was not entirely clear what the decision was - a stringency of the women or one that was simply "folk" or rabbinic and connected to the tendency to blur the distinction between zavah and niddah - already apparent, in some respects in the Dead Sea Scrolls. There also was the factor of Zoroastrian practice which similarly preached a need to divide the period from purification and underwent a comparitive development. It is interesting how the sources are in fact much less clear regarding who was responsible for the innovation - pious women, rabbis, general "folk custom" etc. And the same dynamic can be found in the later history of hilkhot niddah which ossocilates between rabbinic concern, female stringencies occasionally looked down upon by the rabbis, "mikveh ladies" etc. As always, things are messier than they first appear. The texts testify to this - if you look closely enough.

New Book on Magic

Yuval Harrari just published a new book on Jewish Magic with Yad-Ben-Zvi. (Hat-tip: Menahem Mendel).

Workshop on Sasanian Jews and Christians

Next week, Geoffrey Herman hosts a workshop on Jews and Christians in the Sasanian Empire at Ruhr University, Bochum. Here's to hoping the proceedings will be published.
(Via H-Judaic)

New Journal for the Study of Judaism

The most recent Journal for the Study of Judaism has been published. Highlights include an article by Stuart Miller, " Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and other Identity Markers of "Complex Common Judaism" which was delivered at an AJS session last year devoted to notions of purity amongst "commoners." Susanne Plietzsch discusses two competing forms of religiosity - the regional and the individual, in Mekhilta in "Dass jede einzelne Sache, fur die Israel sein Leben gab, in seinen Handen Bestand haben sollte ": Individuelle und regional unabhangige Religiositat in der Mekhilta des Rabbi Jischmael".
An extremely useful Review of articles is required reading for scholars who want to be up to date on the literature. Unfortunately, Hebrew journals are not reviewed

Adventures in Comparative Talmudim

Just when I thought I had found an example (b. Berakhot 36a-b) of an amora (Rava) responding to a question of the Talmud's anonymous layer...

...אמ' רב יהודה אמ' רב צלף של ערלה בחוצה לארץ זורק את האביונות ואוכל את הקפריסין
למימרא מאי דאביונות פירא הוא וקפריס לאו פירא הוא ורמינהי...
רב דאמ' כר' עקיבא ...
ותיפוק לי דהוה ליה שומר לפרי ורחמנ' אמ' וערלתם ערלתו את פריו את הטפל לפריו
אמ' רבא היכא אמרי' דהוי שומר לפרי היכא דאיתיה בין בתלוש בין במחובר אבל האי במחובר איתיה ובתלוש ליתיה ...
אלא אמ' רבא היכא אמרי' דהוי שומר לפרי היכ' דאיתיה בשעת גמר פרי אבל היכא דליתי בשעת גמר פרי לא ...
אלא אמ' רבא היכא אמרי' להוי שומר לפרי היכא דכי שקלת ליה לשומר לקי פירא אבל היכא דכי שקלת ליה לשומר לא לקי פירא לא הוי שומר לפרי
הוה עובדא ושקלוה לנץ דרומנא ולקה רומנא ושקלוה לנץ דפרחא והוי()[א] בוטיתא

...I looked at a parallel Yerushalmi. There (p. Mas. 4:6; 51c) I learned the Bavli is probably working off of a Palestinian tradition that looked something like this:

שמואל אמר קפרס אסור משום קליפין ותני כן וערלתם ערלתו את פריו דבר שהוא עורל את פריו
רב מפקד לאילין דבי רב אתי רב הונא המנונא מפקד לחברייא תיוון מפקדין לנשיכון כד הינון כבשין הדא קפריתא דיהוון מרימין אילין ביטיתא

אמר רבי בא אסברי רבי זעירא כל הקליפין גדילות עם הפרי וזה פרי מלמעלן וקליפין מלמטן

Indeed.

Yerushalmi Online

MS Leiden is now online, though I wouldn't knock the Academy of Hebrew Languagetranscription, available in hard copy and online (paid subscription). (Hat-tip: Mississippi Fred).

The Cairo Geniza in Geneve

David Rosenthal's catalogue of the Geneva Geniza has just just been published. (Hat-tip: Daf Kesher).

בבוקר בצאת היין

When the Fat Lady Sings

For those of us outside Jerusalem, Sushan, and other cities with ancient walls, Purim "has been." Though not a drinker during the rest of the year, I do usually get thoroughly drunk in honor of the day - but try hard not to take it too far. My rule of thumb is not getting sick and being able to sweep up after the festivities. This year, the theme of the meal was Spain - Spanish food and Spanish philosphers and exegetes. Though Maimonides was well represented by my wife's costume (the "golden mean" - a term which I believe he never uses but a concept he subscribes to), the Rambam took a hit or two. One of our guests pointed out that he advocates giving to poor people on Purim because this enhances our own joy. This lead into the well worn Kotzker tale about shaking a poor person "like a lulav" and other drunken critique ensued. Perhaps the Shushan Purim family trip should be to Tiberias to ask Maimonides forgiveness.

This morning, as I woke myself up with black coffee, I received two electronic mishloah manot. Yaakov Elman found another fascinating Persian parallel to a well known Tosefta in Sanhedrin, and Galit Hasan-Rokem sent me an old review by Bernhard Heller (JQR 24, pp. 51-66) of Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews that discusses Ginzberg's use of the Persian material.