Mekor Barukh—My Memoirs

1

In general, the power of the influence exerted by the Master, R. Mendele, on my revered father over many years since his return from (studying with) him, was very great. [ . . . ]

The Master was very great and exceedingly distinguished in all areas of the Torah, and in virtually all Talmudic and halakhic matters, whether of a practical or an academic nature. [ . . . ]

And his knowledge was similarly great in branches of secular wisdom and the sciences, such as in astronomy, higher mathematics, and so forth. [ . . . ]

“Learn and pray!” he would say—and he would accord Torah study priority over prayer.

This formula bore fruit, for, truth to tell, there were to be found among the Hasidim of Habad (or, as they used to call them in Lithuania, Hasidim of Lubavitch) numerous great Torah scholars, and not merely among the rabbis and rebbes, but also among the ranks of laymen—merchants, middlemen, and such as were familiar with the ways of the world. [ . . . ]

At that time, the echo of the enlightenment [Haskalah] could already be heard in the camp of Israel, and its roots had begun to shoot forth as blossoms and to release sprouts in greater or in lesser measure, affecting every home and family in Israel; and slowly but surely it began to emerge with strength in many cities in general and the city of Vilna in particular. [ . . . ]

This Rebbe, Mendele, was well known as a determined campaigner against the enlightenment, with a mighty soul and vehement spirit. Later, the fortitude of his spirit was seen in his refusal to sign the document containing the proposals of the minister of education in regard to the expansion of enlightenment among the Jews, at the time when he was invited to the committee of rabbis that convened in the office of the minister of education in the year 5608 [1848] [ . . . ]

Thus, our ancestors, the inhabitants of Liteh, saw fit to forget “old scores” with the Hasidim [ . . . ] and to make peace with it, in order to perform the sacred task in unison, and fight this mandatory battle [against the enlightenment] together. [ . . . ]

2

One of the most visible aspects of the influence of the Master on my father was this: he discouraged him from accepting any novel idea in the religion and in the Talmud if that idea ran counter to that which had been accepted by the early interpreters and decisors, or even if it merely contradicted accepted tradition—and this was applicable even where this novel idea was very easy to accept, and also pleasing to the ear and in line with reason: “Because (these were the words of the Master) in general the introduction of innovations, of whatsoever kind they may be, reflects the lustful desire of the soul and the delight of the eye, and they have the slickness of speech wherewith to attract the heart and draw the soul toward them; and if not we ourselves and our children, then the later generations will be able to proceed further along the paths of these ‘innovations,’ slowly but surely, step by step, up to a point from which they will not wish, nor indeed will they even be able, to return. And therefore it is best to erect fences and boundaries in relation to them right from the outset . . . and an additional fence of steel, capable of withstanding every broad breach, and also every narrow crack that, in the future, has the potential to become wider and eventually to burst with peals of thunder and commotion, and bring about breaches and cause shattering in all aspects of the life of the spirit—up to a point where neither fortresses nor enclosures, nor mighty rocks nor fortified walls will be of any avail.”

[ . . . ] “And now”—the Master ended his words with the following admonition—“now it is up to you and to us to guard with the utmost care the laws of and fences around our Torah, the traditions of our faith, and the acceptance of our religion, so that no cracks and no plain fissures, which are liable to appear as a result of the existence of ‘innovations’ such as these, will occur within the edifice of Judaism.” [ . . . ]

3

Now I recollect that when I was in the royal city of Vienna some thirty years ago, and was there acquainted with the great rabbi, a venerable old man, Rabbi Zalman Spitzer, the rabbi of the ultra-Orthodox community there, who was one of the disciples, and from the family, of the most brilliant sage, the Hatam Sofer [ . . . ]

Rabbi Zalman Spitzer related that he was well acquainted with several of the great sages who were grieved about the matter, that on account of fear of “innovations,” which they sensed as being a type of infectious disease, they were unable, or did not wish, to introduce any new thing—even of the type that they would have desired to create because they found it to be in conformity with the truth of Torah—but were frightened to go ahead on account of the limited grasp of the masses of the people, who could not distinguish between one matter and another, and would think that since one innovatory matter was permitted, so was another; “and the strap would be untied” [i.e., every restriction would be removed]. [ . . . ]

And likewise there were great men, who, in their hearts, were inclined to permit the baking of matzot by machine (as I have mentioned above in connection with the book Divre ḥayim), because they considered that, with a machine, there is a greater degree of active care and a superior measure of protection against the fear of their becoming leaven than there is in the case of matzot baked manually by masses of men and women who are occupied with this task for many hours, by day and by night, and they are frequently so tired and exhausted, wearied and oppressed by their involvement with the enforced and haste-driven toil up to the point where, in the very course of their work, they were overtaken by drowsiness and light sleep, and they felt themselves diffused and dejected in body, in soul and in spirit, up to a point where they could keep control over their bodies only with difficulty, so as to prevent their tottering and falling, and their labor was carried out when they were half awake and half asleep; and all these factors would not be applicable and equally prevalent where matzot were manufactured by machine. [ . . . ]

Now in the year 5623 [1863], a certain dayan from Minsk, R. Israel Ozdaner, brought a machine of this kind to Jerusalem; and there were present there the giants of halakhah R. Meir Auerbach and R. Moses Leib of Kutna, and they made no protest on this score; and in the year 5625, the aforementioned dayan died, and the process of baking matzot by machine ceased until the year 5666, in which year they brought it to Jerusalem, and it was then that several rabbis bestirred themselves to prohibit it; but R. Samuel Salant stood by his permissive stance, and in the year 5668, as people were relying strongly upon his permission, he personally ate from the machine-baked matzot.

But, as against this, there was a band of rabbis prohibiting the practice. [ . . . ]

4

And who could properly evaluate and describe the thunder and the commotion and the rumbling sounds emitted by the shepherds of Israel, its rabbis, its sages, its financial providers, and its leaders in the previous generation, at the time when “the innovations” dared to break through the wall of our faith, albeit by means of a crack the size of a needle-point, or even though it were nothing more than partially to dislodge one of the customs of Israel and of the ancestral tradition? [ . . . ]

At the beginning of the final quarter of the last century [according to our system of counting, the year 5575 (1815)], after devastation and destruction had finally come upon the monstrous tyranny represented by the empire of Napoleon the First, and in that very manner in which he had initially caused countries to quake and agitated kingdoms, attacking peoples and weakening nations, he kindled a bitterly cold fire from numerous battles in various countries and regions, and stirred up sparks of strife among nations and kingdoms, and brought about much calamitous evil upon the entire world, and misfortune resulting in despair upon the whole of humanity;—

At that time the heavens, as it were, called for freedom, and the earth—for relief, and people began to long for a spirit of freedom in a mood of love and brotherhood; and they went about in the open places in a spirit of ease and tranquility. [ . . . ]

And the Jewish people too did not separate themselves in this regard from the international community, and likewise chimed in with the spirit of the new life, which was good and free; the bounty of the world was also given over into their hands, and, in common with all the rest of humanity, they knew how to utilize it for their happiness, and for the happiness of their rest and tranquility, the covenant of love and brotherhood, of life and of peace which the Almighty had decreed for the world!

And there was an additional consideration for the Jewish nation at that time and in that battle, for they were not satisfied with merely obtaining freedom insofar as the life of this world was concerned, but also dug deeper, to ascend the steps of the House of God and to find ease likewise [ . . . ] in regard to faith and tradition, in the precepts and the pathways of the Torah, and to fit the spirit of the religion into the ways of secular life; that is to say, freedom and liberty, freedom from the burdens of life and liberty from the Kingdom of Heaven!

And the first to feature in this crisis were the inhabitants of the city of Hamburg, in Germany; the first of their acts was that a small group of young men assembled together, [ . . . ] and now they believed they were perceiving a fresh world before them, “a world of license,” in which it was within the power of everyone to do whatever his heart desired and what was right in his sight; no one would disturb him, and no one would raise a protest against it!

And . . . they perceived a straight path in front of them. [ . . . ] to create a special House of Prayer for themselves, and they called it “The Holy Temple” and referred to themselves as “the Congregation of the Temple.”

They proceeded further with their work, which consisted in chopping and trimming, in altering and changing the prayer rituals, and deleting from them matters and themes that had been established by ancient tradition and were directed toward reestablishing the Jewish nation; and they prepared and established a new order of prayer, neither full nor overflowing in content but cut by half, a third, or a quarter of its standard length.

A further step forward taken by them was to explore ways of weakening our adherence to our mother-tongue, and they directed that the Order of Prayer compiled by them be translated into pure German, and they made it obligatory to pray from this liturgy and in its new language.

At the beginning of this “new creation,” virtually no one paid any attention to it, as they regarded it as an act of folly by young men of an unstable and unruly nature, who barely constituted even a worthy topic of conversation. People thought it best to leave it alone and it would dissolve of itself, melting continuously until such time as its roots and trunk would simply wither away, and that in the same sudden manner as it had appeared, it would vanish without a trace.

However, this calculation did not prove correct because all of a sudden, a savior was discovered for this group of men, a mighty redeemer, from the ranks of the rabbis themselves, who possessed a firm grasp of Talmud, was conversant with rabbinic literature, and acquainted with and well known to many of the great rabbis of that generation. This rabbi compiled a book containing everything he could find to shield and shelter this group, and to justify its actions; and in this work, he investigated and proved that, judging by the fundamentals of the religion, nothing perverse or sinful was to be found in these actions of theirs. On the contrary, such activities were, as a whole, in conformity with the spirit of the Torah and with the ways of the Talmud and the mode of life of the Jewish nation during those times when it was established upon its own land and had its kingdom [ . . . ] with each man enjoying life under his vine and under his fig tree! [ . . . ]

This was the rabbi in the city of Arad, in Hungary [today, Romanian Transylvania], Aharon Chorin. [ . . . ]

And it was then that the great sages of Israel and its shepherds were proved right—this was not a time to remain silent, and that if they were not now to make a stand to close up the breach before it burst in a mighty thunderstorm, and before the “innovations” sent their fall-out [lit., side-locks of hair] over the surface of the world, the survival of the faith would be endangered throughout the land. It was virtually certain that it would also spread, like an infectious disease, to other countries too; and then, slowly but surely, and step by step, broken fragments and breaches, both broad and deep, would increase in the wall of the faith, from one side and another, from the front and rear, until it would all burst open and explode, thus bringing about the ruin of Judaism as a whole.

[ . . . ] The quarrel spread with mighty force, and even reached the houses of officialdom in the country; everyone became involved in it—from officials and governors to deputies and ministers—right up to the very heads of government. The vast majority supported those who were endeavoring to fence in the breaches, and they resolved that “it is not religion that has to bow to the times, but the times that have to bow to religion, because times are transitory, whereas religion endures forever!” [ . . . ]

[Rabbi Epstein cites several instances where even the most stringent Orthodox decisors accepted innovations. They include: “in the year 5596 [1836] in the royal city of Vienna, when many young children died as a result of circumcision, and the doctors recognized that the cause of this was the practice of sucking out the blood of the circumcision with the circumciser’s mouth, since often the circumciser was not physically in perfect health and in that way the symptoms of this disease became attached to the blood of the tender baby who had undergone circumcision, and he was unable to tolerate it—and died. [ . . . ] At that time, the rabbi who was head of the bet din in Vienna, R. Eleazar Horowitz, a disciple of the yeshiva of Rabbi Moses Sofer in Pressburg, advised his teacher to permit the sucking out of the blood through a utensil which had been specially manufactured for this purpose; and the Master responded to him—and in the manner of a Talmudic genius, he proceeded to give a most satisfactory explanation of the reason for his permitting it—that apart from the mandatory obligation to save life, which would in itself have been a sufficient basis for granting permission, the very practice of sucking out the blood—as explained by our sages of blessed memory—was neither an obligatory matter nor a precept in its own right; that is to say, it did not constitute a part, or a detail, of the commandment to be circumcised. [ . . . ] Nowadays, the majority of circumcisers in the Western world employ a utensil for sucking out the blood, namely the mechanical device of a glass tube with a soft, spongy material inside to absorb the blood sucked out] [ . . . ]

5

[ . . . ] Furthermore, there were in the previous generation men of distinction who went further “in hatred of novelties,” even [ . . . ] in practical affairs and the ways of the world! And with every new invention that appeared in the world, they would explore and seek the origin of its existence [and find] “in reality, the basis of this or that ‘novelty’ was already in existence within the world, and now it is only a matter of the thing attaining perfection or being completely developed and emerging into reality” and therefore—they would assure us—and therefore, at the end of the day, there is no such thing as a novelty!

Thus [ . . . ] when the telegraph came into practical use [ . . . ] these people attempted to show that the fundamental principle underlying it had already been known in ancient times, and they demonstrated that it appeared in a certain work, entitled Ma’arekhet elohut [The Divine Order], by R. Peretz Ha-Kohen, one of the Tosafists, with the commentary known as Minhat Yehudah [The Offering of Judah] by R. Judah Hayyat, a Spanish sage, in the third century of the current millennium (printed in Ferrara in the year 5318 [1558])—where, in the chapter entitled “The Gate of the Divine Chariot,” while in the course of clarifying a certain obscure matter, the commentator writes as follows:

“The lower world has a force which it is capable of exerting upon the upper worlds, etc., and there is a strong allusion to this force within nature in the magnetic lodestone that attracts iron, for, when you hold it firmly and extract its dross, and then break it into two pieces, and you place one segment in one corner, and the other segment in another corner, even though they are a thousand miles distant from one another, and you place the iron close to one of these segments, you will find that corresponding to every movement made by that segment, the other one makes the same movement simultaneously.”

[ . . . ] Now it is well known that the entire concept and design of the telegraph is built upon the fundamental basis of the force of magnetism, and accordingly—so the “enemies of novelties” used to say—the basic principle of the telegraph was already known to the world, and it is simply that the idea has now come to full fruition—and it is nothing more than that. [ . . . ]

And when the invention of the telephone came out (in the year 5637: 1877), they discovered within it a most awesome thing . . . contained in the work Shevut Yaakov, where an enquiry was made in the month of Shevat 5482 [1722], in connection with speaking to another person at a distance on the Sabbath, in view of the prohibition of exceeding the Sabbath boundaries; and the author of the aforementioned work permitted this, and in the course of his discussion he writes as follows:

“And in particular, by means of instruments specially designed for the purpose, which can cause sound to be heard at a distance of many, many miles, a person is able to speak with his friend; and should such a thing be prohibited on the Sabbath? We have never heard anyone opening his mouth to cast the slightest doubt upon this!”

[ . . . ] Since these words were written roughly two hundred years have elapsed (and I am writing these words in the winter of the year 5683 [1923]), and he goes on to write that: “We have never heard anyone opening his mouth to cast any doubt upon the matter . . . is this not a plain and explicit allusion to the existence of “instruments for speaking at a distance” about three hundred years ago? Now this is truly a most amazing thing; and so far as I am aware, no reference to this matter occurs in any of the ancient works, nor have we ever heard, even by way of the faintest allusion, that in former generations, they made use of a type of “instrument for speaking at a distance”—how astonishing this matter then is!

[ . . . ] And there is similarly, in the case of our telephones, a factor militating against their use on the Sabbath, in that at the moment when one is preparing to speak, an electric current is released in the nozzle inside the receiver of the person being spoken to, and this comes under the category of the prohibition of creating a fire; however, there are many issues that one can raise concerning this point; and it would have been appropriate for the great halakhic authorities to clarify this matter. [ . . . ]

In our generation, many people have explored the question of whether it is permissible to use the telephone for legal matters, such as for bills of divorce—is it permitted for the husband who is divorcing his wife to request the dayanim, and the scribe, and the witnesses, by telephone, to write out and sign a bill of divorce for his wife? Likewise are the dayanim allowed to accept relevant testimony by way of telephone, and matters of a similar nature? They investigated, and found no halakhic impediment to this; and if the concern is that the parties do not see one another, surely, as a result of the telephone conversation, they can recognize the identity of the speaker by his voice; and it is an established Talmudic principle that “the perceptive sense created by the sound of the voice is valid” (Gittin 23a). [ . . . ]

There is, nonetheless, on the face of it, a factor militating in favor of a prohibition—for at the place where they receive the message by telegraphic means, they copy the fused letters and arrange them in proper order on a sheet in plain script, and they then deliver the sheet to the person to whom the message has been sent; and that being the case, there exists here the prohibition of instructing a non-Jew to perform work on the Sabbath.

[ . . . ] And in our generation and in our own days, the power concealed within the radio, which can transmit sound over several thousand miles, has been discovered, and a strong allusion to this is to be found in the Talmud, in tractate Yoma (21a), where the radio is reckoned as among those things the sound of which travels from one end of the world to the other—though Rashi ad loc. interprets this expression in another way. [ . . . ]

And at the time when it became customary (halfway through the last century, according to the secular system of counting) to hold contests in bodily wrestling with strength and might, and in alertness and speed in respect of hand and leg movements (which is called in the vernacular tongues athletics), and likewise in (the area) of swift racing on foot and on horseback (sport), and of attempting to toss a ball into the goal—there were some who demonstrated that this too is no novelty, and that it existed from ancient times, and they accounted for each of these activities as I shall detail here below:

1. Concerning Bodily Wrestling and Physical Combat

They pointed to the Midrash Rabbah on Genesis, Section 21 and Section 77: “This may be compared to two athletes (even the term itself refers to what it is nowadays) who were standing and wrestling in the presence of the king,” etc.; “And Abner said to Joab: ‘Let the young lads arise and disport themselves in combat in our presence!’ And twelve men of the tribe of Benjamin and belonging to Ish-bosheth, and twelve of the servants of David arose, and each man seized the head of his companion, and they fell down dead together” [II Samuel 2:14–16].

It is explained in the words of the ancient chronicles that the Romans constructed gymnasiums and stadiums for athletic wrestling in the city of Lod, and that the slaves wrestled with one another or with wild animals unto the point of death, for the delight of the spectators who derived pleasure from witnessing those who had been slain struggling convulsively in a state halfway between life and death, with rivers and streams of blood gushing forth before their eyes (it would have to be seen to be believed!); and likewise they erected training-houses in this city especially devoted to this purpose; and they did not prevent the trainees from having every manner of healthy nourishment entering their bodies, so as to prepare them for the slaughter (as [the work] “Erets Kedumim,” Part 2, informs us).

[ . . . ] However, according to what has been explained, one may state with virtual certainty that this is with reference to the residents of the city of Lod, who were regularly accustomed to be trained in wrestling and physical combat, and who would attempt to feed the trainees with the best and healthiest foodstuffs . . . and one of the good aspects of this was the feeding of them at a very early hour of the day, as this contributes toward the improvement of bodily health as does consumption of a piece of bread in the early morning;

[ . . . ] As to the reason why a type of entertainment as undisciplined as this—witnessing wrestling and physical combat to the death—was more prevalent in the city of Lod than in other cities, one has to say that it was because this city was generally laden with great wealth, and enjoyed a surfeit of sustenance and of good-quality and happy living, due to the fact that business boomed in it in extraordinarily large measure, since within it there were to be found all the conditions suitable for the development of commerce: the soil was fruitful and gold was extracted from its surrounding mountains. [ . . . ] Moreover, it constituted the center for unloading and loading of merchandise arriving from the distant lands of Asia and proceeding on to Europe; and in the Talmud too, its merchants are referred to by the distinguished epithet of “the merchants of Lod” (Bava Metzia 49b, in the Mishnah). As a result of the abundance of good things and of their merriness of heart, they did not refrain from treating themselves to all the delights life could offer, and, as is explained in the Talmudic Tractate “Shabbat” (119a), they were accustomed to use golden tables; and as a result of the abundance of the good life they enjoyed, they became stout-hearted and brazen of spirit to such a point where they could not control themselves from deriving entertainment out of seeing men wrestling with wild beasts to the death, and obtaining pleasure from witnessing them struggling convulsively in a state halfway between life and death, and sinking in rivers and streams of blood, as we have written above.

And a form of this wild entertainment is still in vogue in our own times in Spain; indeed it is well-known that its inhabitants are stout-hearted and of violent temperament, shedders of blood and tears, from times of old. [ . . . ]

Insofar as the enthusiasm for wrestling and physical combat is concerned [ . . . ] in recent generations, Jews play only a very small role in contests such as these and the like; and the reason for this is almost certainly that, quite apart from the fact that its fundamental basis—involving all its wrestling and violence—is not at all in accord with the spirit of the Jewish people, there is also the additional factor that the lengthy and bitter exile, and the harsh and bitter persecutions, and its enforced peregrinations, following closely one upon another, and the numerous and oppressive wanderings, and all the waves of its vicissitudes and the hardships, and the abundance of troubles and evils that have passed in anger over its head from the time it left its own land and inheritance, and went about from one nation to another and from kingdom to another without finding a resting-place for its feet or quietude for its soul. [ . . . ] All these have weakened its physical prowess and caused its strength to fail, and destroyed its might, and have also diminished its bodily development, by comparison to the nations around them who always dwelt on their own soil and rested in tranquility, for indeed “even birds living on their own territory are healthier and fatter than those who go into exile” (Tractate “Shabbat” 145b).

And therefore there are some who advocate and supervise schools of the kind where the matter of “bodily vigor” is treated as one of the parts of the curriculum, who take particular care over Jewish pupils that they should perform well in this sphere, and that they should renew their days through display of physical fortitude and strength as in former times, those days when the Jewish nation was dwelling and established upon its own land and had its own kingdom, in the days of its tranquility [each man dwelling] under his vine and under his fig tree.

And so far as can be determined, the theme of bodily vigor was generally regarded as a worthwhile and desirable pursuit for our people from ancient times, as it has the effect of energizing the flow of blood within the body and of keeping it flowing so that it does not congeal, and it also develops the limbs of the body, broadens the spirit, and effects the efficiency of life in general.

Accordingly, among the other requests and prayers for goodly aspects of life that the sages fixed for recitation prior to the Blessing for the Coming Month—we ask also for “a life of bodily vigor!” [ . . . ]