AJS 2009 Day 3

With the 2010 conference of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) having occurred this week, I realized I still hadn't posted my summaries of the third and last day of last year's AJS conference (I posted the first day and the second day much earlier). As much as I had wanted to go this year, making it the third straight AJS conference for me (and I could've stayed with my sister and her husband in Boston), we decided that I would stay here in California instead. Nota bene that this isn't exactly the best written, as it is primarily the notes I took whilst the sessions were in progress.

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For the third and last day of the conference, after arriving and some schmoozing, I first went to the session on "Orthodoxy Revisited". The first paper delivered was “Samson Raphael Hirsch: The Chimera of ‘Self-Explanatory’ Scripture” by Alan T. Levenson, although I showed up about a halfway through, so I didn't quite catch everything from it. Levenson said that Hirsch found Mendelssohn philosophically wanting.
Hirsch advocated reading the Bible in its original versus in a German (vernacular) language. When he was in Frankfort in 1860s and 1870s, worked on his translation. Differences in keri and ketiv, trop, and big and small letters. He resisted Christian readings throughout. It was unique – pronouncing universalism. It appears as culmination of the study of bible. Hirsch was not haredi – he stands within German tradition of elevating Torah study.
The second presenter was Martin I. Lockshin, who spoke on “Dueling Prayerbooks: ArtScroll, Koren, and Contemporary Orthodox Values”, which, he said, arose from a book review about the Koren siddur. The “Artscroll Takeover” took place 25 years ago and the best known product, published 1984 is their siddur. Many orthodox shuls have them, even MO, but notes are haredi. But now there is competition in the prayerbook market with the Koren-Sacks siddur. Professor Lockshin (who was one of three IRF members [that I counted] at the conference (him, Professor Don Seeman and me)) spoke on the differences between the Artscroll Siddur and the Koren-Sacks siddur, success of the Artscroll siddur, as well as the broader shift to the right, the resulting liberal shift and his conclusion on The Siddur Wars of 2009. In the q and a:
The translation wasn’t done solely to sanitize the language, but also in a fashion to effectuate strangification, that is, the language used is not the same usage we use in a daily fashion, so it was successful in what it was trying to do.
Artscroll came out at a time when Modern Orthodoxy was not lekhathilah, but as an outreach method for haredi Jewry; it was “nicely timed” as presenting haredi values to a modern audience.
The third paper(”A Woman on the Bima means an ignorant man”?) Jessica Rosenberg “’Blessed is he who says and does’: Jewish Law, Gender, and Communal Identity”
Turning to theoretical models outside of halakhah to give us a better understanding of response literature

Strangification
Successful in what it is doing
Not a sanctifying factor but differentiating discourse

How do they set their boundaries? How do they …agenda
Creating communal narrative versus community deciding
An ingroup attempting to redefine the nomos is seen as attempting to create a new one
Opened up attacks from both sources and goals – Shapiro
Undergird with own notions of halakhic legitimacy Jessica second half and conclusion. Jerome Chanes said – 2 Riskins: 1969 – courageousness – 2009 – conservative mostly off the deep end
Artscroll came out at a time not when MO was לכתחילה but as outreach method. It was “nicely timed” as presenting haredi values to a modern audience.

After speaking with some of the presenters and others following the first session, I then went to the second session, "Social Attitudes and Cultural Constructions in Biblical Israel", albeit missing the first half of Elaine Goodfriend’s “Another Look at Animals in the Hebrew Bible”.
Names of people with animal names; Animal life central to the concerns of Israel; Humans dependant upon animals
Dung for fuel; Food, leather, wool; Shared habitation.
The second paper delivered was “The Assembly of Yahweh’s People: Judahite Pilgrimage and Israelite Muster” by Stephen Russell. I don't have anything to note from that paper....
The third paper was given by Esther Fuchs on “Intermarriage in the Hebrew Bible: Gender, Exogamy, and Nation”.
Intermarriage is legally proscribed.
Performance of identity is gendered – endogamy is feminine, the body of the nation; exogamy = masculine
When there are foreign men and Israelite women, the men are violently dealt with, such as the King of Gerar and Avimelekh, so, too, with Shkhem. In Genesis 34, rape is racialized. Realizing the gravity of the sexual laws. The story pokes fun at Shkhemites for their sexual mores – to have sexual intercourse first and then to take her is not the proper way, that is the way of prostitutes. “Exogamy with an Israelite woman leads to mayhem and violence.” Proscription of exogamy w/ Shkhem may not just be sexual transgression, but also national. Domestic space versus foreign nation.
Book of Esther implies that only in national crisis is it permitted - no mention of legal, political, etc. stuff with her. Mordechai giving her over in keeping with.
Exogamy with erasure.
Israelite woman is neither inside or outsider ; she has potential to deconstruct rather than produce binary. Focusing on Israelite women’s endogamy and problematic of exogamy for them; men different.
The fourth paper, “Impurities and Gender in Ezra-Nehemiah”, was delivered by Elizabeth Goldstein.
Niddah as nation in Ezekiel and then now with Impact of foreign women. Collective impurity affects how we think of gender. Woman’s body as useful for reproducing, but when menstrual, not (expendable). There's always a link between niddah and gender. Moral impurity seen with having these foreign women. Collective nature of the impurity makes it important for us to consider.

Having had trouble parking at the nearby mall (presumably due to it being heavy shopping season as Xmas occurred during that week), I missed the first twenty minutes of Richard Hidary’s “Indeterminacy and Codification in the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds in Light of Roman and Sassanian Legal Cultures” during the third and last session of the day, Rabbinic Worldview.
One of the causes for the difference in deciding law between the two Talmuds seems to be the different cultural contexts. He also stated that another difference is that, in Babylonia, there was a greater geographical distance between the communities, which allowed for a greater amount of diversity, versus in Israel, where they were closer together.
Jonathan Crane then spoke on “Shameful Ambivalences: Legal and Ethical Dimensions of Rabbinic Shame (בושה)”
Shame simultaneously damns and redeems. Because of time, he only dealt with the ethical dimension. He focused on how shame is described my focusing on Maimonides and Levinas, not so much the rabbis, themselves. He said they tried to avoid shame, but they needed it, just the same.
Trying to avoid, while needing it

Then, the conference was over.

Interesting Speech: Wimpfheimer on Jury Duty & Shapiro's Article

I just came back from the gym, where I read Barry Wimpfheimer's Rabbi May I? Taking Responsibility for Psak in a Post-Feminist Age that he delivered on 11 February 2007 which was sent my way a few days ago. I wanted to quote a couple of interesting parts of that speech.
The first of which is part of how he starts out his address, speaking on being a juror. I found this interesting, as, although I've never served as a juror before, I did go down for jury duty, but had it postponed until July. So it will be interesting to consider what he wrote regarding jury duty (pp. 2-4):

The practice of American law often operates within what I would call a fallacy of law as truth. What I mean by this is that despite the fact that all the participants in a legal drama are fully aware of the fact that American law is a construct shaped by precedents over a long period of time and subject to the whims of multiple authors and interpreters, lawyers and judges pretend that there is a single entity called “the law.” It is almost as if this law is personified and has agency such that a lawyer can say that “the law” demands that you side with my client or a judge can write that “the law” wants to be fair to all ethnic groups. Even legal academics are not above this fallacy; certain types of scholars will write articles articulating a uniform philosophy of law on the basis of many disparate cases even in different areas of law and different jurisdictions. Sometimes, American legal practitioners are aware of the fallacy under which they operate but employ it because it is productive value and sometimes they are unaware of the fact that it is a fallacy at all.
As a juror in a courtroom, though, one cannot but be affected by the fallacy. Within the courtroom, the jury is socialized to believe that the trial is about the pursuit of a single true and correct ruling demanded by “the law.” Each lawyer turns to the jury and attempts to convince it that the law requires the jury to find for their client or for the state.
In other words, each side presents its case as if “the law” compels the jury unequivocally to find for it. The presence of the presiding judge further socializes the jury into this notion of a single legal truth by occasionally interrupting the proceedings to decide on minor bits of procedure—sustained or overruled.
Thus when it comes time for the jury to reach a verdict, it is possible as a juror to think that the process is like a test in school: there is a correct answer which they are expected to try to figure out. The jury deliberates on the opposing narratives of what “the law” demands before deciding which one is the single truth.
If we reflect on these issues further, though, we can realize that the very process of the trial is evidence that the fallacy of a single legal truth is a fallacy. If each side can frame its case through an interpretation of the law that finds unequivocally for its interests it should be clear to us that the notion of a single legal truth in American law is always just a productive heuristic device.
In fact, if the purpose of the trial would be to determine the correct answer, the American system should eliminate the jury completely. Since the judge is better schooled and usually smarter than the aggregate juror, we would be more likely to get the correct answer if the judge figured it out on her own. If we had a math competition and needed to get the correct answer, would we have the expert teach a novice and have him answer the question or would we have the expert answer the question herself?
What is the purpose of a jury? One purpose is to dissipate some of the power that had historically been located in a judge’s hands. Now if law was just a computation, it wouldn’t so much matter that the law was in one person’s hands; but since determining a legal ruling involves subjectively choosing from among multiple options, there is a significant degree of subjectivity involved in such an act and that subjectivity is dangerously empowering. So the American system relieves the judge of the power to rule and hands that power to a jury of one’s peers. In the course of doing that, the structure of judge and jury makes manifest the distinction between the legal fallacy of a single legal truth and the reality of a subjective determination of a verdict from among multiple options. In other words, while the jury may think that its purpose is to figure out the one true legal answer, the very structure of a jury system testifies to the fact that they have more than one possible choice. Moreover, because the jury system relieves the judge of this subjective choice it places responsibility for that choice squarely on the jurors. This means that whereas the judge through her rulings from the bench contributes to the fallacy of a single truth and to justice as an exercise in figuring out what “the law” requires, the jury symbolizes the fact that a verdict requires someone to take responsibility for multiple options within the law. The trial jury embodies the taking of responsibility for a legal choice.
A juror’s responsibility is no light matter. Jurors must weigh the evidence and bear in mind that a decision to convict could ruin a man or woman’s life, while a decision to acquit could have disastrous consequences for the community. It is sometimes easier for jurors to think of their role as determining “the law” as truth so that they do not have to feel the responsibility of their choice. But when you issue a mixed verdict that puts worldly realities at odds with legal truths, the burden of one’s responsibility is often too much to bear. My fellow jurors turned to the judge because they wanted him to reassure them with the voice of law as truth that they had done good, but also because they wanted to share or dump the responsibility for their choice back on the judge.

Another piece that was interesting, relates to the issue of women's aliyot and Rabbi Mendel Shapiro's piece thereon (pp. 14-15):

When Rabbi Mendel Shapiro wrote his original article on the topic, he wrote it along the lines of a contemporary American Law Review piece which only exacerbated his attempt to construct a single-truth argument permitting the practice. Along the way, Shapiro wanted to argue that every layer of Jewish law—rabbinic, medieval, modern—can provide support for the practice. In my opinion, though the piece is excellent, this type of argument opens itself up for critique—a critique that has recently emerged. Several articles have now come out in response to Shapiro and much of the critique has focused on a specific reading of a certain Rishon or Aharon. In my view, though, such attacks miss the point. Shapiro’s article provides a wide audience with access to the knowledge necessary to take responsibility for its practices. One need not satisfy every halakhic opinion; the existence of rabbinic texts justifying the practice allows a community to take responsibility for its own practices and follow that position. Because the counter-argument cannot eradicate all support for participatory minyanim, they do not pose a challenge to their continued implementation.

More Kevod Zibur Stuff

So, I see that there is a new article-response-rebuttal on the topic of aliyot for women by Rabbis Shlomo Riskin and Mendel Shapiro in the new Meorot issue, which I will hopefully read soon (I've already read my rebbe's article so far (upon which Menachem Mendel commented)). This, of course, only further serves to remind me that I haven't quite gotten around to posting about Rabbi Berman's presentation about this issue of aliyot for women (mentioned previously), which had been done after Rabbis Sperber and Riskin had spoken at that same shul. While I'm on the topic, I listened to an excellent audio shiur on this topic by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper that took place in June.
Also, speaking of which, there are a pair of shiurim worthy of a listen by Rabbi Klapper on the topic of kevod zibur: one from February and one from March. Oh, and I stumbled across an audio file (to which I have yet to listen, but hope to) of Rabbi Asher Lopatin speaking on "Beyond Tzibur and Kavod Hatzibur: A Synagogue Becomes Home" at JOFA's 6th International Conference.

Kol 'Ishah & Women's Krias haTorah

As one of the postings I had wanted to post in my hiatus from blogging, this was one I definitely wanted to do a couple of weeks ago and just didn't - it's the third in my series on women and krias haTorah.
In Rabbi Mendel Shapiro's "Qeri’at ha-Torah by Women: A Halakhic Analysis", he includes a section on kol 'ishah, running pp. 40-41 and pp. 41-43, nn. 228-230 (yes, one of the annoyances of the editing of the article to me was that footnotes to sections in the text were on one or two pages ahead). A big selection of that small section is the following (pp. 40-41):

The question of whether qeri’at ha-Torah by women in accordance with the prescribed musical notations (ta`amei ha-miqra) violates qol ishah has not, to my knowledge, been directly addressed by poseqim. There is, however, ample collateral evidence that normative halakhah does not prohibit the practice on this ground. First, as R. Ovadiah Yosef points out, the Talmud’s declaration that women may not read the Torah because of kevod ha-tsibbur (sic), and for no other reason, is strong evidence that the rabbis did not regard qol ishah as a relevant consideration.

The footnote at the end of this selection refers the reader to two selections from R' Yosef's Yehaveh Da'at, the latter of which is not particularly relevant to kol 'ishah. The first selection is a brief quote from the third section, the 51st chapter (I am trying to access Spertus right now to get the full text of the responsum, but I think Spertus' Bar Ilan feature is down for the time being):

...ומכל מקום, קשה לי מהגמרא "הכל עולים לקריאת התורה למנין שבעה אפילו אשה וקטן, אבל אמרו חכמים אשה לא תקרא בתורה מפני כבוד הצבור", הרי שלא חששו לאסור משום קול באשה ערוה, אף על פי שסתם קריאה בתורה עם טעמי המקרא. וצ"ע.

...And in any event, it is difficult for me from the Talmudic statement "Everybody ascends to the reading of the Torah for the counting of seven, even a woman or a minor, but [the] Sages said a woman should not read of the Torah on account of the congregation's honor" - behold, they were not concerned to forbid because of "a woman's voice is a nakedness", even though that a normal reading of the Torah is with cantillation. And [this matter] requires looking into.

(Yes, by the way, he wrote כבוד הצבור and not כבוד צבור.)
I must point out, however, that the reason that the Sages that were quoted in the beraisa (on Megillah 23a) did not mention the woman's voice issue is because it had not yet come about. The kevod zibbur issue was brought up by tannaim, the woman's voice issue came about at the beginning of the amoraic period, derived by Shmuel (Berakhos 24a (and also quoted by one of his students in Kiddushin 70a)) : "קול באשה ערוה, שנאמר 'כי קולך ערב ומראך נאוה'" ("A woman's voice is a nakedness, as it is said, 'because your voice is sweet and your appearance is pleasing.'")
However, it is possible that the stammaim could have inquired about this issue, but I'll leave that be for now (thus, it could be that even where a congregation waives their honor, there would still be an issue of women singing [publicly] - but I'm not going to get into that).

Head & Hair Covering For Women (Pt. 1)

Last month, R' Sedley (I only found out about his blog through a Google blogsearch on this topic) posted on the topic of head/hair covering for Jewish women, starting off with:

I have been asked by someone about the sources for women's hair covering. Why do they have to cover their hair? Who has to cover her hair? When does the hair need to be covered? How much? and Where does it say so in the Torah?

He then proceeds to not answer the questions.
In the Talmud, there are essentially just two [albeit separate] pericopes which discuss head and hair covering: one at Kesubos 7.6 (both Mishnah & the Tosefta) with the Talmudic commentary thereupon (in both Talmuds) and the other at Berakhos 24a (click here for these Talmudic sources).
Yesterday, I sat down with Rabbi Josh Yuter to read through some of the halakhic sources on head and hair covering for women, focusing on the Talmudic excerpts, though also reading briefly through the relevant passages on the topic in the Mishneh Torah and the Shulhan Arukh. As generally married Jewesses cover their heads/hair, it is pretty relevant for me, as I am getting married in four days to a young lady who has asked me about this particular topic.
While Josh emphasized the distinctness to me between these two pericopes which have been conflated in the halakhic literature (and I agree), I cannot entirely separate these two entirely in a descriptive fashion as they most certainly somehow be related. In other words, what it was that caused Rav Sheshes to read into the verse "your hair is like a flock of goats" (SoS 6.5 & 4.1) in order to make his hermeneutical read of "A woman's hair is a nakedness" (Berakhos 24a)? The book of Song of Songs is filled with a number of statements of the recognition of feminine beauty and yet only a few are selected to depict, in this section of Talmud, "nakednesses". I think there must have been something in the culture that not only was for a woman to contain her hair, but also a covering of it. Nevertheless, maintained Josh, was that, halakhically, these are separate discourses, which is certainly interesting.
Aside from the nakedness discussion is that of not covering it would be one of the things which goes against Jewish custom (one of four things [in the Mishhah] and one of five things [in the Tosefta]). In both Talmuds, the discussion takes on a spatial dimension as to where she must cover her head or not (and how). Thus, there is clearly a social (socio-religious(?)) element to a Jewish woman covering her hair (perhaps indicating that she is married(/taken))?

I see that JOFA has a listing of various articles and such on this topic and I hope to read through them in the future.