Maran

On Monday, I joined some 800,000 other people in the streets of Jerusalem to pay final respects to Rav Ovadia Yosef. Amazing to see such a crowd, drawing from all kinds of religious Jews, many in tears. Several times, I was literally carried by the mass of people. At one point, I lost my sandal, and could not stop -- let alone turn around -- for almost two blocks, at which point I waited for a lull in the flow and went to retrieve it. I think my favorite part was during one of these crushes when a man next to me, barely able to shift his arms, decides to pour a drink for his rabbi. Anyway, hard to think of anyone more worthy of such an outpouring. Born to in Iraq to a poor grocer, he parlayed a superlative memory, combined with creativity, flexibility, and vision, to become the most respected Sephardi posek (legal decisor) in centuries, and arguably the greatest living scholar of halakha in the world by the end of his life. Astonishingly, he accomplished this by sheer weight of genius despite openly resisting the prevailing zeitgeist of the hareidi world that greater stringency equals greater scholarship and holiness, and often contradicting the established authority of revered past poseks like the Ben Ish Chai. Baruch Dayan Emet (blessed is the true judge).

Much as I respect him, there is much that I am uncomfortable with as well. I do not speak of his controversial, sometimes inflammatory public statements; I don't understand them, but I trust the extensive record of compassion, broad-mindedness, and social responsibility in his legal rulings above sound bites that, however hard to see favorably, are generally taken out of context and easy to misinterpret, and as such I withhold judgment. Instead, I refer to his overall vision for Sephardi renewal. I will digress slightly before explaining.

I recently read Rabbi Dr Haym Soloveitchik's landmark essay, Rupture and Reconstruction, which induced me to consider yet another dialectic that traditional Judaism seeks to balance: mimetic tradition vs textual tradition. This particular tension is very difficult for me to grapple with, as a ba'al teshuva, because I have little access to mimetic tradition, and so must rely very heavily on text and theory. I do know that consideration of popular practice plays a large role in the Talmud and responsa literature. Perhaps greater familiarity will at least let me have a sense of what is ideal, even if I have trouble putting it into personal practice. This is one reason I am inclined to try to marry FFB (frum from birth), to at least have the possibility for a balanced fusion for my children. The question becomes all the more difficult because the balance has shifted in favor of text and theory in almost every sector of Orthodoxy. Almost certainly, we were too far to the other end of the spectrum before that shift; religious education was not very strong except for the elite and there was some degree of sclerosis, and many were driven from traditional practice by these weaknesses. However, it is hard to tell when we overcompensate, how to judge the proper balance. It seems to me that the best hope is a robust pluralism within Orthodoxy that can provide a living experiment, comparing different ways to combine these sources of traditional knowledge and practice. If, on the contrary, every community suddenly elevates textual authority to complete dominance over mimetic learning, traditions are lost, continuity is called into question, and the experiment loses its comparative power. Of course, there are the Conservative Jews, who swung in the other direction, and the Reform, who abandoned both, but neither provides much additional insight into the ideal.

Maran's overarching project through his life was very much a reconstruction of Sephardic Jewry according to this same pattern. True, he sought leniency in the texts rather than chumra after chumra (stringencies), but he emphatically places the Shulchan Aruch over local custom and received tradition in the name of unity and ideological purity. It is a truism that nothing can uproot the Sephardic traditionalism and inherited spirituality. If anything can, I think it might be this project, if his successors have half his brilliance and charisma.

Further reading, if you are interested:
Soloveitchik's essay (long): http://www.lookstein.org/links/orthodoxy.htm
A pair of fascinating articles on this trend in the Dati Leumi (national religious) world: http://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/datlash-hardal-according-to-rav-shagar/
http://tomerpersicoenglish.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/a-point-about-the-fundamental-difference-between-haredi-and-traditional-and-national-religious-judaism/

Life here is good. One week into the new zman, and classes are great. Gemara with Rabbi Hirschfeld, the rosh yeshiva I have praised here several times, is challenging and interesting, learning the laws of objects that are borrowed or entrusted to another's care. Two hours of daily ulpan provide exactly what was missing last zman. New halakha teacher continues the pattern (four now) that halakha rebbeim are among the most dynamic and gregarious people I've met. Looks like a D&D group may be forming tomorrow. I didn't realize that last Shabbat was an out Shabbat, so I ended up joining a couple of guys going to Karlin-Stolin to trawl for a meal. Within moments of entering, we were shepherded to a host, where we ate with about 30 other bochurim from various yeshivot. Very welcoming, the Karliners, but I don't think I could get used to screaming every prayer. Another exciting event: when in Meah Shearim to purchase my gemara for this zman, I happened to run into two friends from Rutgers, including one that I used to learn Daf Yomi with. They have been in Jerusalem the past year, learning, and just happened to be standing on a street corner as I was walking by. Shocking how often these small-world things happen in Jerusalem. One of the things I love about this place.

Shabbat Shalom l'culam!