The Psalms Scroll of Qumran Cave 11

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Introduction to the Online Seminar

What is a Classic Jewish Text?

Planning and Implementing the AJC Classic Jewish Texts Seminar

Seminar Syllabus (Sample Readings)

The Dallas Classic Jewish Text seminar represents a liberal approach to the study of Jewish Texts through a return to active learning. Its format is both egalitarian and participatory. Historicism and the temptation to understand an author better than the author understood himself is relegated to the background.

Readers are expected to frame their insights directly from the texts without appeal to outside academic authority. It marks a process of reconnection to Jewish sources by a generation in exile from Jewish learning.

The seminar does not restrict itself to the Tanach (Hebrew Bible) or classical Rabbinic texts, it incorporates Jewish memoirs from every age as well as philosophy, polemics, and profound modern works of history and literature.

The seminars do not attempt to compete with the academic study of texts and do not minimize the importance of direct access to original languages for textual study.

The seminars do oppose the hegemony of academic and religious based approaches to Jewish texts and the exclusion of ordinary Jews from independent access to the literary sources of their people. Denigration of translation-based encounters with essential Jewish texts has led to the near-death of amateur Jewish studies at precisely the moment that virtually all Classical Jewish sources have become readily available.

We hope to communicate with readers worldwide and to gather and post on-line as many classical Jewish texts as possible.

Index

The term text can refer to any writing, sacred or banal, worthy of sustained attention. The text is typically part of a received tradition (scientific or religious), mediated by institutions and deemed significant by particular techniques of study and interpretation.

A classic text is a text that is a centerpiece of the traditions, institutions and techniques of study which transmit it.

The expression Classic Jewish Text is presently a question as much as a category. The great majority of the Jewish people prior to the 19th century had no need for that phrase. Jewish tradition, meaning the received Rabbinic learning, distinguished between texts and texts, a mere book (sefer) and a book (Sefer).

The Greek-speaking world bears evidence to this tendency 2200 years ago when the collection of Jewish texts, par excellence, was transmitted under the title Biblia ("Book"). Moreover, a Sefer characteristically ends with the Aramaic phrase: Hadran Alach, "we shall return to you." Hence, a classic text, by definition, is one worthy of perpetual study.

But what constitutes a Classic Jewish Text in our time? The key to discussing the question begins with the word Jewish. Between the 3rd century and the 19th century, most broad-based disputes concerning the definition of Judaism addressed the scope of the sacred scriptures and their interpretation, but no authorities publicly doubted the inherent divinity of Torah. Judaism was understood as a system of revealed truth and laws to be fulfilled in ritual and correct action.

But, for several reasons, the nineteenth century saw the end of most Jews' self-understanding based on a traditional foundation:

1. the stirrings of civil and economic emancipation under liberal regimes,
2. the mass exodus of Jews out of traditional communities,
3. the popularization of "enlightenment" philosophies;
4. the introduction of historical research as a central category of Jewish self-understanding and
5. the rise of racial, rather than religious, anti-Semitism.

These categories of modern Jewish experience have led inexorably to the disintegration of traditional Rabbinic authority and of the model Jewish man and woman defined by it.

Likewise, Mitzvah (commandment) has been gradually supplanted by vaguer standards such as Jewish identity and ethnic feeling. With the passing of the old order, Jewish nationalism and the great communal institutions for fund raising and defense have come to be the sole authentic arenas for expression of Jewish virtue. All that remains is Jewish ethnicity, now passing under the euphemism: identity.

With the decline of self-understanding rooted in obligation, predictably, the complex tapestry of Jewish learning has unraveled in our hands. An account of this unraveling is an essential constituent of the Classic Jewish Text in our time.

The loss of even rudimentary Jewish learning as a result of this process has imposed on us a profound experience of exile. The central texts chronicling our journey from creation down to the Babylonian and Roman conquests have been locked up in ghettos called universities, behind impregnable intellectual and emotional walls. Our texts no longer speak to us and we do not speak to them.

To free them, we must mount a re-evaluation of Jewish classics in terms of our own Judaism, retracing our steps from Sinai to Berlin, New York and Tel Aviv. By encountering together the most profound works of Jewish self-expression, both ancient and modern, we can also begin the larger task of restoring the shattered sphere of the Jewish spirit. And perhaps, in time, we shall again glimpse the ancient Jewish City of Man and God, among whose ruins we now walk.

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1. A Personal Word

When I began planning Dallas' first group in 1988-1989 (the AJC sponsored the second group in 1992), my main concern was to introduce Classic Jewish Literature to the widest possible audience. I recognized that any attempt to "dominate" or "teach" would dampen original thought and defeat our goal of creating an egalitarian learning experience.

Quiet enthusiasm and a personal affection for the material were the most important factors in drawing a committed group of about 8 or 10 people to begin the experiment. I welcomed all interested persons and did not try to select for any particular intellectual or religious style. Self-identified mystics and anti- intellectuals have essential contributions to make in our joint encounters with the Classic Jewish Texts.

Our first meetings convened in a basement at our local Jewish Community Center. We outgrew the basement in about 6 months and were relocated to the JCC library, where we meet today.

By way of contrast, the American Jewish Committee seminars meet in members' homes. Light refreshments are served after each two hour session .Sessions convene once each month. A third seminar has been developed for Temple Emanu-El in Dallas and meets in a Temple conference room.

2. The Basics of Starting-Up

• Discuss the program in your executive committee and confirm that it will complement your local chapter's programming.
• Identify the right person to coordinate the start-up. Typically, a communal affairs vice-president or committee member will take the lead.
  The practical requirements are as follows:
  1. publicizing the seminars to AJC membership and, perhaps, the general community. Remember, these seminars can be useful membership tools.
  2. arranging an appropriate meeting place. In determining whether to use some community facility for each meeting or members' homes, look to the style that your local members are most comfortable with. Our two Dallas groups use both approaches and are equally successful. Try to include as much information about location, meeting dates and times as possible in your initial syllabus. If scheduling and locations are not publicized months in advance, you may lose potential attendance.
  3. putting together a confirmed list of individuals who will attend the first meeting. Copying and forwarding the syllabus of the first 10 or 15 readings and distributing the first reading at least one month in advance. A proposed initial syllabus is attached.
  4. publicizing the rules of discussion for seminar participants (see section 3, below, in your initial syllabus.
  5. refusing to be discouraged by occasional dips in attendance. Persistence and consistency are the keys to "institutionalizing" the group. Once the seminars are seen as a staple of your community calendar, participants will come.

   

3. Conducting the Seminar

Choosing texts:

When the group is initiated, be sure that you are working from a syllabus that all participants have seen and agree to. Choosing the next reading only one session ahead opens the door to arbitrary selections and, ultimately, apathy. If a group is held together primarily by a strong personality, arbitrary selections of readings may improperly focus the group on that person's private literary interests. Ultimately, the group will devolve into a personal book review circle. Remember, a special relationship develops between those selecting the texts and the seminar participants. No work should be chosen that:

1. is too long (100 pages is generally the maximum);
2. has not been thoroughly read and digested by its proponent before it is selected;
3. is not genuinely rooted in classical Jewish thought, spirituality and/or experience (avoid anything "trendy");
4. is unduly pedantic or academic;
5. is based solely on secondary sources (scholarly accounts of classical texts), rather than original works themselves. Thus, certain examples of 19th and 20th century scholarship are admissible, but not works entirely derivative of an original scholar's work, such as historical novels or popular histories;
6. also, try to give weight and preference to Bible, Talmud and traditional liturgy, without unduly limiting the chronological scope of your readings.

Seminar Leaders:

Promote egalitarianism and commitment by rotating the responsibility for introducing and moderating the discussion. The leader's primary responsibility is to ask the initial question and to keep the discussion in line with the rules. Leaders should resist the temptation to espouse personal views or to dominate.

The Initial Question:

The Leader's most important contribution is to devise a question of sufficient subtlety and breadth to set the conversation in motion. Careful reading of the text and a bit of experience will help to sharpen this skill. Responses to the question should be supported by citations to the text. A good initial question will give birth to unlimited subsidiary questions and insights in the course of discussion.

Rules of Discussion:

The recommended rules have been designed to overcome a deep seated insecurity about our ability to read and understand pre-modern texts.

• Amateur and professional scholars will invariably participate in these groups but they must understand that their interpretations have no greater authority than any other participant's.
• Outside scholarship is inadmissible, unless its conclusions are easily demonstrable from the face of the text itself.
• Squabbles about translations should be avoided by choosing the best available translation and sticking to it.
• Likewise, arguments which suggest a text is inferior or naive in some essential respect due to its age are discouraged.
• The presumption is that classical texts are at least as sophisticated as works produced in our own time and that all of our objections have been anticipated by the work's author.
• Some historical context can be presented before each meeting by the seminar leader, but historicism and context-based arguments should be relegated to the background, rather than the foreground.

This is a kind of modern adaptation of the traditional Jewish method of reading texts and, hopefully, will enable us to give each of them a fair hearing. Related approaches have been advocated by Mortimer Adler's Great Books discussion groups and by the distinguished 20th century philosopher, Leo Strauss.

4. Support

Recommended texts as well as programming ideas will be available through the AJC's national office and Dallas office. Please keep in touch so that we know how your seminars are progressing.

Index

This program is intended to expose members to a wide range of Jewish texts addressing Jewish law, history and thought. Each participant is expected to read the text prior to the meeting. The discussions will begin with a short introduction and a series of questions prepared by the evening's moderator. Outside authorities are inadmissible. Each participant is expected to read and interpret the text for her/himself. We presume for purposes of discussion that we cannot understand a text better than its author and that our status as moderns does not bestow on us some unearned advantage or insight.

Through these ground rules, we insure that each text is given a fair and thorough hearing. Through study and discussion we hope to reawaken respect for Jewish culture and to restore a place for ourselves, as Jews, in an ancient community of learning while remaining true to our time and our place.

1. Towards a Renaissance of Jewish Learning and Upon Opening of the Judisches Lehrhaus by Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929).

   Rosenzweig was a German philosopher/theologian of the early 20th Century. He pioneered the return to classic Jewish texts among non- traditional Jews.

2. Bereshit a/k/a/ Genesis, Chapters: 1-4; 5:28-32; 6-9; 11:1-9, 31-32; 12-21; 22:1-19; 23.

   The text, as edited, will emphasize creation and the covenants with Noah and Abraham.

3. Shemot a/k/a Exodus, Chapters: 1-5; 6:1-13; 7-20; 24; 31-34.

   The text, as edited, chronicles the oppression of Israel in Egypt, the confrontations with Pharaoh, the theophany at Sinai, the golden calf and the second reception of the Divine Law.

4. Yeshayahu a/k/a Isaiah: selected chapters relating to the pre-exhilic and post-exhilic periods.

   The term exile refers to the forcible deposition of the Jewish King, Jehoiachin, in the year 598 BCE by the neo-Babylonian King Nubuchadnezzar, and the exile of the ruling classes eastward to Babylon. Jehoiachin's successor, Zedekiah, was killed by Nebuchadnezzar 11 years later (in 587 BCE) following the conquest of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple of Solomon.

5. The autobiography of Yoseph ben Mattityahu ha-Cohen a/k/a Flavius Josephus (38-100 A?CE), along with selections from the Jewish War.

   Josephus, a first century Jewish aristocrat and commander of the Galilean resistance during the revolution of 66 CE, was captured by the Emperor Vespasian. He followed the Roman army throughout its bloody campaign and chronicled the war which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 ACE.

6. Talmud, Mishna Brachot, Me'eymatay, pp. 5(a), 7(a) and (b).

   This Talmudic excerpt addresses human suffering and divine providence.

7. Kuzari by Yehudah Halevy (books 1 and 5).

   Halevy (1075-1141) was the foremost Hebrew poet of the Spanish "Golden Age". His philosophical work, the Kuzari, presents a fictional debate among a Muslim, and Aristotelian, a Christian and a Jew resulting in the conversion to Judaism of the Khazar King.

8. Mishna Torah, Laws of Repentance by Moshe Ben Maimon a/k/a Maimonides is to be read with the book of Jonah.
   
9. The Memoirs of Luis de Carvajal, El Mozao and J.H. Yerulshalmi's The Education of Morranos in the 17th Century.

   Carvajal (1566-1596) was the best known Crypto-Jewish martyr in the New World. He openly returned to Judaism, encouraging his family and friends to do likewise, and was burned at the stake in Mexico City in the most infamous auto-da-fe in North America.

10. Tractatus Theologico-Politicus by Benedictus Spinoza a/k/a Baruch Spinoza (Chapter 7 On the Interpretation of Scripture).

    Spinoza (1632-1677) was the descendant of Portuguese Crypto-Jews. He was the first modern philosopher of the secular state as well as the founder of modern biblical criticism. After his excommunication by the Amsterdam Jewish Community, he lived a secluded, scholarly life, though never converting to Christianity.

11. The Memoirs of Glukel of Hamelin (1646-1724).

    Glukel is a literary diarist of the first order and is the best preserved Jewish woman's voice of the 17th Century.

12. The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon (1753-1800).

    Maimon was a Polish, Talmudic genius who embraced philosophy in Berlin in the circle of Moses Mendelsohn. His autobiography is one of the great masterpieces of Jewish literature.

13. The Master of Prayer by R. Nachman of Bratslav, and an anonymous Kabbalistic memoir by a disciple of the 13th Century mystic, Abraham Abulafia.

    Nachman (1772-1811) was the greatest Chassidic spiritual figure of the late 18th Century. His stories anticipate modern literary tendencies while startling the reader and provoking deep spiritual reflection.

14. My Quarrel with Hersch Rasseyner by Chaim Grade.

    A philosophical/theological reflection on the Holocaust presented as a fictional dialogue.

15. To Mend the World by Emil Fachkenheim (Section 2, The Problematics of Contemporary Jewish Thought: from Spinoza to Rosenzweig).

    The most influential Jewish philosopher of our times examines the wrong "turns" in Jewish philosophy up to the 20th Century.

16. Achad Ha-am a/k/a Asher Ginsberg (1856-1927), Slavery in Freedom (1856-1927), Zionism and Jewish Culture (1902); and Reminiscences

    Achad Ha-am, descendant of a distinguished Ukrainian Chassidic family, began his career as a Talmudic genius (illuy). He was an early Zionist and one of the most influential Jewish thinkers of the past century. In a series of early essays he diagnosed the roots of decline in Jewish life and advocated a blend of spiritual and intellectual renewal, centered in Palestine, which came to be known as Cultural Zionism. His critique of the Diaspora and his insistence on Jewish learning as a key to Jewish renewal bear comparison and contrast with Franz Rosenzweig.

17. Moshe ben Nachman (1194-1270), ("Ramban"), Memoir of

    Disputation with Paulo Christiani; a Spanish Talmudist, philosopher and mystic from Gerona, was summoned by the Catalonian King in 1263 to debate a Jewish apostate in Barcelona. This is his account of the Jewish victory for which he was ultimately exiled.

18. Isaac Troki (1533-1594), Chizzuk Emunah (Faith Strengthened), Chapters 1,2,6,14,18,19,21,26,45,46,47 and 50.

    A Russian Karaite sage whose bold refutation of Christianity was widely circulated among Christian intellectuals in 18th century France. The Karaites were a 9th century Jewish sect distinguished by their rejection of Talmud and traditional Rabbinic authority.

19. Martin Buber (1878-1965), Open Letter to Gerhard Kittel

    Buber was the best known Jewish thinker and writer in Weimar, Germany. Kittel was a distinguished Bible scholar and Nazi. His father edited the standard scholarly edition of the Hebrew Bible. Buber's method of responding to Kittel's Jew hatred suggests enormous changes in Jewish status and self-understanding since the Renaissance.

20. Emanuel Menachem Ringelblum (1900-1944)

    His December 1942 Essay presented here concerns the organization and implementation of project Oneg Shabbat, a monumental collation of historical, sociological and anthropological materials relating to the Warsaw Ghetto from its inception in October 1941 until its destruction in June 1943. Ringelblum, a Polish-Jewish historian, organized the project while a Ghetto inmate. His obsession with historical detail in the midst of unparalleled tragedy invites consideration and contrast with his first century predecessor, Josephus.

21. Martin Buber (1878-1965), Between Man and Man [Section One: Description, Original Remembrance]

    Buber's poetic, very personal account of the origins of his Jewish humanism.

22. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Moses & Monetheism [Preface & Section II]

    Written in the last few years before his death, in both Austria and England, Freud uses psychoanalysis and ancient literature to attempt to penetrate the "mythical" surface of Jewish religion. Freud appears to champion a painful, rational stance toward one's history and people in opposition to Nazi self-deception and racial mythologizing.

23. Isaac Heinemann (1876-1957), The Purpose of Human Existence as Seen by Greek-Roman Antiquity and the Jewish Middle Ages.

    Heinemann was professor of Jewish theology at Jewish Theological Seminary in Breslau and, after 1939, at the Hebrew University at Jerusalem. In this essay he describes the naturalization of Greek philosophy into Jewish thought.

24. a) Salo Baron (1895-1991), European Jewry Before and After Hitler(including testimony given at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, April 24, 1961).

    Baron is arguably the greatest Jewish historian to emerge in the 20th century. He was a Galician-born Talmudic genius, appointed first professor of Jewish studies at Columbia University in 1927. His 18 volume Social and Religious History of the Jewish People is an encyclopedic reconstruction of Jewish history through the late 17th century. In this essay he brings to light the cultural devastation wrought by the Holocaust. It was written in preparation for his expert testimony at the Eichmann trial.

    b) Leon Poliakov (1910-_______), The Proceedings (of the Eichmann Trial).

    Professor Poliakov is a leading historian of anti-Semitism. He attended the Eichmann trial and, in this short paper, summarized the proceedings.

25. Anson Layter, Arguing With God.

    Selected excerpts from classical Jewish texts documenting confrontations between the human and the divine.

26. Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) with traditional commentary, one of the Five Megillot. It is traditionally attributed to King Solomon and is read on the intermediate Sabbath during the Sukkot holiday.
    
27. Kai-feng Inscriptions of 1489, 1512, 1663 and 1679

    Inscriptions of 1489, 1512, 1663 and 1679 relating to the Jewish Community of Kai-feng Fu (see "Chinese Jews" by William Charles White, Paragon Book Reprint, pages 42-50, 58-75, 88-93 an 97-103. The blending of Judaism and Confucianism evident here presents a fascinating study in Jewish adaptation.

28. Yoseph ben Matityahu haCohen a/k/a Flavius Josephus (38-100 CE), Against Apion

    Josephus, a first century Jewish aristocrat and commander of the Galilean resistance during the revolution of 66 C.E., was captured and befriended by the Emperor Vespasian. He followed the Roman army throughout its bloody campaign and chronicled the war which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. After the war, Josephus wrote a history of the Roman campaign, a monumental history of the Jews and an elaborate apologia or defense of Judaism against the anti-Semitic Alexandrian "philosopher", Apion. This is an important historical source for pre-Christian anti-Semitism and a classic of Jewish apologetics.

29. Moses Hess (1812-1857), Rome and Jerusalem

    Hess was a revolutionary agitator and sometimes ally of Karl Marx. His frustration with the direction of European socialism led him to return to Rabbinic thought and, in 1862, to lay the intellectual foundations for modern Zionism. The transforming power of Jewish tradition is evident throughout this seminal work.

30. Job. This Biblical masterpiece is the fountainhead for all discussion of suffering and providence in the Western world.
    
31. Moshe ben Maimon, Rambam (1135-1204),Guide of the Perplexed, [Vol. III, chs. 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24].

    Rambam is the most influential Jewish thinker and legal scholar of the post-Talmudic period. In the Guide he elaborates the rational foundations of Judaism, where possible, as well as the limits of reason when applied to revelation. In these sections, the Rambam attempts to set forth the Jewish understanding of Providence with particular attention to the Book of Job.

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