Latest / The Podcast of Jewish Ideas / 89. The Rashbam | Dr. Martin Lockshin

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89. The Rashbam | Dr. Martin Lockshin · The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

0:20
Speaker 1: Greetings, friends, and welcome to the podcast of Jewish Ideas,
0:23
Speaker 1: a Torah in motion production.
0:24
Speaker 2: I'm jj kimbre.
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Speaker 1: On today's episode, we will turn to one of the
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Speaker 1: most original and often underappreciated biblical commentator of the Middle Ages,
0:32
Speaker 1: namely Rabbi Schmuel ben Meyer, often known as the Rashbam,
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Speaker 1: a leading figure in twelfth century Northern France and a
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Speaker 1: grandson of Rashi. Rashbam developed a radically contextual approach to
0:41
Speaker 1: Biblical interpretation, insisting on shat or plain sense of scripture,
0:46
Speaker 1: even when it cut against previous or established rabbinical readings.
0:50
Speaker 1: We will be exploring the methods of the rash brahm,
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Speaker 1: is understanding of the relationship between Pshat and Dhrush, and
0:55
Speaker 1: various other aspects of his work, and what they reveal about.
0:59
Speaker 2: The evolution of biblical commentary in the medieval period.
1:01
Speaker 1: Johnny us today to discuss the rush Bam is a
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Speaker 1: foremost authority on the subject. Doctor Martin Luchin, who is
1:06
Speaker 1: Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at York University. Professor Luction
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Speaker 1: has written extensively on the Rushbam, and his works included
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Speaker 1: a four volume translation of Rashbam's commentary on the Torah,
1:15
Speaker 1: as well as a Hebrew addition, both accompanied by extensive footnotes.
1:19
Speaker 1: It is a pleasure to welcome into the podcast of
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Speaker 1: Jewish Ideas Today, Professor E.
1:22
Speaker 2: Luction. Thank you for joining us.
1:24
Speaker 3: Wonderful to be here, like everything that Toron Motion does,
1:28
Speaker 3: and I'm happy to be part of this podcast series.
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Speaker 2: Fabulous, fabulous.
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Speaker 1: So let's begin at the beginning, as it were, tell
1:37
Speaker 1: us a little bit about this man, Rushmolov and Mayer sketch,
1:40
Speaker 1: if you please, what we know about his life, his
1:43
Speaker 1: circumstances from the sources, When and where and how did
1:46
Speaker 1: he live.
1:47
Speaker 3: We actually do not know a lot of details about
1:50
Speaker 3: Rushbam's life. We do know that he was Rushi's oldest grandson.
1:54
Speaker 3: He was the oldest son of Rash's oldest daughter, and
2:00
Speaker 3: she only had daughters, did not have did not have sons.
2:03
Speaker 3: And we know that he studied with his grandfather enough
2:10
Speaker 3: that he was able to pass on a lot of
2:13
Speaker 3: teachings that he received from his father. This is important
2:17
Speaker 3: for trying to figure out when he was born, because
2:19
Speaker 3: we know that Rashi died in eleven o five, and
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Speaker 3: so the best guest that people have is from the
2:27
Speaker 3: amount of time that Rashbam studied with his father, it
2:34
Speaker 3: seems likely that he was born, let's say around ten eighty,
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Speaker 3: so that he managed to be with his grandfather a
2:41
Speaker 3: student of his grandfather until age twenty five. This would
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Speaker 3: mean if Rashbam was born in ten eighty, this would
2:49
Speaker 3: mean that Rashi became a grandfather at age forty, because
2:52
Speaker 3: Rashi was born in ten forty. But it's not so
2:57
Speaker 3: unthinkable that somebody would become a grandfather. We don't know
3:02
Speaker 3: how old Rashi was when he married, and we don't
3:06
Speaker 3: know how old his daughter was when she married, so
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Speaker 3: there's a reasonable guess that he was born around around
3:15
Speaker 3: ten eighty. We know that he lived for a long time.
3:17
Speaker 3: He's referred to as being elderly, and so the best
3:21
Speaker 3: guess is that he died around eleven sixty. Professor Afreim
3:24
Speaker 3: Mooreba has written, and I think it's pretty convincing that
3:30
Speaker 3: after Rashi died, rush Bamb became the Roshieshiva of the
3:34
Speaker 3: Yeshiva there in tro and after a while, Rushbamb seems
3:40
Speaker 3: to have become overshadowed by his younger brother Rabenu Tom
3:46
Speaker 3: Rabeno Yakov Tom was nine or ten years probably younger
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Speaker 3: than Rushbam. And there's a great scholar of Rabenu Tom
3:56
Speaker 3: who's been writing prolifically about Rabeno Tom here in Jerusalem,
4:01
Speaker 3: UH Professor Rami Reiner and UH Professor Reiner's theory is
4:07
Speaker 3: that in the beginning Rabino Tom looked as his older brother,
4:13
Speaker 3: as his rebbie, as his teacher, and then he started
4:17
Speaker 3: looking at him as his colleague, and then he started
4:20
Speaker 3: looking at him as being, you know, not in the
4:24
Speaker 3: same high level that I am at. Both of them
4:28
Speaker 3: were very active in the tosspot enterprise, and that's probably
4:34
Speaker 3: I always tell my students that I figure that Rashbam
4:37
Speaker 3: wrote his his commentaries on the Bible as a kind
4:40
Speaker 3: of hobby and that and that his major gold in life,
4:44
Speaker 3: like most rabbis in Ashkenas uh in Franco, Germany in
4:53
Speaker 3: the Middle Ages, was it was to be an expert
4:56
Speaker 3: in the talmwood. And he probably spent most of his
4:58
Speaker 3: time on tambolical literature and wrote the wrote his Bible
5:03
Speaker 3: commentaries on the side. What else do we know about
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Speaker 3: his life? It seems almost certain that he spent some
5:14
Speaker 3: time talking with Christian scholars of the Bible in northern France.
5:19
Speaker 3: First of all, he mentions conversations that he had with
5:24
Speaker 3: Christians about the Bible, and he doesn't mention them with
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Speaker 3: any ranker or with any belittling of the Christians. He
5:33
Speaker 3: just says, you know, I pointed this out to them,
5:35
Speaker 3: and they said, that's fine. And a scholar recently, a
5:43
Speaker 3: Catholic scholar named Monsei Lera, came here to Jerusalem and
5:50
Speaker 3: studied Hebrew and Biblical commentaries for a dozen years in
5:56
Speaker 3: order to be able to figure out who various scholars
6:02
Speaker 3: who lived at the same time in France. There were
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Speaker 3: two great French scholars of the Bible who were slightly
6:10
Speaker 3: younger than Russbaum, Hugh of Saint Victor and Andrew of
6:15
Speaker 3: Saint Victor. And they're constantly quoting the Jews. And she
6:19
Speaker 3: came to the conclusion that their Hebrew was not good
6:23
Speaker 3: enough that they would have been able to read medieval
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Speaker 3: Jewish medieval Hebrew, and so they couldn't They couldn't have
6:31
Speaker 3: read these commentaries that must have talked with Jews about them.
6:35
Speaker 3: And she counted up the dozens of times that they
6:39
Speaker 3: quote the Jews, and she found that the interpretations that
6:45
Speaker 3: they quote in the name of the Jews again with
6:48
Speaker 3: they quote without rank or and without belittling. They just say,
6:51
Speaker 3: here's what the Jews say about this, about this passage,
6:55
Speaker 3: that the plurality of the explanations that they cited in
7:01
Speaker 3: the name of the Jews are explanations that come from
7:04
Speaker 3: rush Bomb. And she concluded in her book on the
7:07
Speaker 3: subject that either they talked to rush Bomb, or at
7:11
Speaker 3: a minimum, they must have talked to a student of
7:14
Speaker 3: rush Bomb, so he was interested in the Bible enough
7:19
Speaker 3: to talk about it with non Jews. There's an assumption
7:24
Speaker 3: that a lot of modern Jews have that if Jews
7:26
Speaker 3: and Christians were talking about the Bible, it's because they
7:29
Speaker 3: were in forced disputations, or that they were that the
7:35
Speaker 3: Jews were forced into these discussions, and I'm totally unconvinced
7:41
Speaker 3: by that.
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Speaker 4: I think that there.
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Speaker 3: Were friendly discussions of people who are interested in the Bible.
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Speaker 3: The Bible is the Bible for the Jews, and it's
7:50
Speaker 3: part of the Bible for the Christians too, And in
7:52
Speaker 3: the same way that you and I can talk to
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Speaker 3: a Christian today about the Bible without enmity, I think
7:59
Speaker 3: it was possible in the twelfth century also fascinating.
8:03
Speaker 1: That is actually a very interesting indeed, which leads me
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Speaker 1: a little bit into my next, let's say, contextual question
8:08
Speaker 1: before we dive into the commentary itself, which is surrounding
8:11
Speaker 1: just some of the characteristics of his place and time,
8:15
Speaker 1: because of course, round about the same centuries that Russian
8:18
Speaker 1: Rushbam and others were producing a total commentaries in what
8:21
Speaker 1: can be called a French school or a Nashar school
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Speaker 1: of devil commentary those of course the Spanish school, though
8:26
Speaker 1: you know Rambane, but Ezra various others in that school,
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Speaker 1: And so you know, I wanted to ask what were
8:32
Speaker 1: the sort of general characteristics of the culture of the
8:35
Speaker 1: intellectual ambiance in which Rushbam and his grandfather Russian will
8:39
Speaker 1: get to that moment in which they lived, which are
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Speaker 1: relevant or salient for understanding his his pirush and just
8:47
Speaker 1: his mode of thought I was going on at that
8:49
Speaker 1: time and place in which he lived.
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Speaker 2: That can shed light on this.
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Speaker 3: So it's clear that study of the Tuml was extremely
8:56
Speaker 3: central to rush Bamb's judaism, to his uh to his
9:00
Speaker 3: intellectual life, but that doesn't show up in his Torah commentary.
9:05
Speaker 3: Very often that shows up in other in other works
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Speaker 3: of his the centrality of this and that and that's
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Speaker 3: what that was the central Jewish intellectual activity in Franco Germany,
9:17
Speaker 3: as opposed to in this period of time in uh
9:20
Speaker 3: in Muslim Spain, the tom Wood was not as central
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Speaker 3: to Jewish to Jewish understanding. I once asked professor Professor
9:30
Speaker 3: Oriel Simone, who's a neighbor of mine here in Jerusalem
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Speaker 3: and is possibly the world expert on Abraham Eben Ezra,
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Speaker 3: I once asked them, how much Tomwood do you think
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Speaker 3: that uh Ibn Ezra knew? And he said, I think
9:45
Speaker 3: that even Ezra had the education of a well educated
9:50
Speaker 3: jew from from Muslim Spain, which probably consisted of studying
9:57
Speaker 3: the ref the Rabeno Jitsak Alfassi's kind of condensation of
10:05
Speaker 3: the Talmud. And he said that in those circles in
10:09
Speaker 3: Muslim Spain there wasn't that emphasis on the Talmud that
10:13
Speaker 3: you found in Franco Germany. So that that's part of
10:16
Speaker 3: the intellectual world in which Rushbam is living. But also
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Speaker 3: some of the teachings of Muslim Spain are reaching France
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Speaker 3: in the days of rush bomb and I think one
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Speaker 3: of the differences. One of the many differences between Rashi's
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Speaker 3: Torah Commentary and Rushbam's The Torah Commentary is that rush
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Speaker 3: Bamb had read the best available books of Hebrew grammar,
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Speaker 3: the ones written by Yehuda Hayuj and Bayona Idan Janach
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Speaker 3: that had actually been written in Judaeo Arabic. They had
10:52
Speaker 3: been written before Rashi was formed. But Rashi didn't read
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Speaker 3: Judeo Arabic, and he did Rushibam. Rusham didn't read Judeo Arabic,
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Speaker 3: but those books had been translated into Hebrew by the
11:02
Speaker 3: time rush Bomb came along. They weren't translated in time
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Speaker 3: for Rashi to make use of them, and so rush
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Speaker 3: Bomb had a I would say, a better grounding in
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Speaker 3: grammar than Rashi did, because the great works of Hebrew
11:22
Speaker 3: grammar that came up with the discovery in quotation marks
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Speaker 3: that we all. One of the first things that any
11:31
Speaker 3: of us learned when we learned Hebrew is that every route,
11:36
Speaker 3: pretty well every root in the Hebrew language has three letters.
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Speaker 3: That wasn't something that Rashi was taught. It's not to
11:43
Speaker 3: be blamed for not knowing this, but this theory was developed.
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Speaker 3: It's not a fact when you look at the word
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Speaker 3: va yate above you and tet and they tell I
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Speaker 3: remember when my third grade teacher told me that the
11:57
Speaker 3: root of vayet is nun tet hey. I looked at
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Speaker 3: the teacher, what are you talking about. There's no nun here,
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Speaker 3: There's no hey here. But that became the that became
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Speaker 3: the dominant theory of Hebrew grammar. There's that has been
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Speaker 3: taught since the days of Yona Binjana until until today.
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Speaker 3: And Rashi didn't know that theory of Hebrew grammar. And
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Speaker 3: so rush Bamb is part of the milieu of the
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Speaker 3: Tomwood centered Jews of Franco Germany, but he has been
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Speaker 3: exposed to some of the teachings or many of the
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Speaker 3: teachings of the Jews of Muslim Spain.
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Speaker 1: Interesting, that is a very interesting difference between the two,
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Speaker 1: of course, which is, you know, one it seems to
12:45
Speaker 1: conflate Russian and Rushbat. You know, obviously grandfather and grandson
12:48
Speaker 1: sort of similar time periods. That what you're saying is
12:50
Speaker 1: that in those in that generational difference actually a very
12:53
Speaker 1: important difference of the information that was flowing in from
12:58
Speaker 1: from outside, including these advances as a Hebrew grammar and understanding.
13:02
Speaker 1: That's that's very interesting.
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Speaker 2: Okay, fine, fair enough. So let's let's dive into a
13:06
Speaker 2: little bit the.
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Speaker 1: That that particular relationship, right, but one of the most
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Speaker 1: famous relationships, intellectual relationships, familiar relationships in the history of
13:15
Speaker 1: Jewish I thought, which is of course Jan Rushi and
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Speaker 1: his grandson Rashbam. And so let me ask you, I mean,
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Speaker 1: what do we know of that relationship? Firstly, on both
13:23
Speaker 1: on a personal level, Let's say, what we know of
13:25
Speaker 1: their interactions? Did they learn together? Were they to what
13:28
Speaker 1: extent we know about that? And secondly, I suppose tracing
13:32
Speaker 1: influence a little bit. I mean, obviously Rushuram sees himself
13:35
Speaker 1: at some sort of continuation of Rashi perhaps or some
13:37
Speaker 1: sort of an heir to his title, but also doing
13:41
Speaker 1: something quite different. I mean, how do we how do
13:44
Speaker 1: we throw the two of them into dialogue with each
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Speaker 1: other and what do we see as their relationship?
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Speaker 3: For sure, Rushbam I was a tolmidbothake, a dedicated a
13:55
Speaker 3: student of his of his grandfather, Rafshi, and he often
14:01
Speaker 3: quotes things in the name of Rashi, and he often
14:04
Speaker 3: speaks with great respect about Rashi. His his approach to
14:10
Speaker 3: the to the interpretation of Talmudic texts is very similar
14:15
Speaker 3: to Rashi. I have some things to say if you're
14:18
Speaker 3: interested about about the differences. And we have some of
14:23
Speaker 3: Rashbaum's commentaries on the Tomlud, and I think that he
14:28
Speaker 3: tried to go in a little bit of a different
14:30
Speaker 3: direction from Rashi, but he's definitely following in Rashi's footsteps.
14:35
Speaker 3: Rush Bomb reports to us in his commentary on the
14:38
Speaker 3: Torado that he used to discuss shot with his with
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Speaker 3: his grandfather, and he says nakiv I would argue with
14:49
Speaker 3: him to his face. And Rashi admitted to me that
14:54
Speaker 3: if he had time, he would change. He would write
14:58
Speaker 3: new commentaries based on Rushbamb, says hashadrachimbhol Yom, the newly
15:07
Speaker 3: thought of shot interpretations of the Bible that you come
15:11
Speaker 3: up with day by day. And there is some evidence
15:15
Speaker 3: that Rashi, towards the end of his life was being
15:20
Speaker 3: influenced by some of the approaches to the Bible of Rushbamb.
15:26
Speaker 3: Certainly Rushbam was influenced by Rashi, but there is evidence
15:33
Speaker 3: there another great rabbi who is younger than Rushbam named
15:38
Speaker 3: rabittak Or Zarua reports that there were various verses that
15:43
Speaker 3: Rashi used to call suke di Shmuel, the verses of Schmuel,
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Speaker 3: the verses that my grandson came up with an explanation
15:51
Speaker 3: of these verses, and that was very proud of the
15:54
Speaker 3: fact that he was learning something about the Bible from
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Speaker 3: his from his grandson. So it was an interesting relationship
16:03
Speaker 3: with a lot of books that were written in the
16:05
Speaker 3: Middle Ages got lost. A lot of books that were
16:08
Speaker 3: written by rush Bumb got lost. The Torah Commentary written
16:13
Speaker 3: by rush Bamb almost got lost, and we can get
16:16
Speaker 3: back to that in a second. But towards the end
16:19
Speaker 3: of Rashi's life, we know that there was a work
16:23
Speaker 3: that he wrote. He was too weak to write it himself.
16:28
Speaker 3: And there's a work that's called hell Haught yay Nesse
16:33
Speaker 3: that Rashi dictated to rush bomb and we don't have
16:38
Speaker 3: that work, but quotations from it appear in other reshow
16:43
Speaker 3: names and other rabbis from this period, So you know
16:46
Speaker 3: he was He was close enough to his grandfather that
16:49
Speaker 3: at the end of his grandfather's life was he was
16:52
Speaker 3: like his amanuensis. He was helping him write the things
16:55
Speaker 3: that that Rashi wasn't able to write. Himself anything.
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Speaker 1: Of course, there is this famous line of that. Russibamb
17:05
Speaker 1: reports Rashi saying that, you know, Russi would have gone
17:09
Speaker 1: over and recomposed some of his tory piroshin in light
17:13
Speaker 1: of things he learned, in light of the new shut him,
17:16
Speaker 1: the new explanations that arise every day.
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Speaker 3: You know, As a grandfather myself, I often wonder because
17:24
Speaker 3: occasionally a grandchild of mine says something, and I say, oh,
17:28
Speaker 3: that is brilliant, and sometimes it was brilliant, and sometimes
17:33
Speaker 3: I'm just being a good grandfather. And so you know,
17:37
Speaker 3: you never to know for sure when Rushbam says that
17:44
Speaker 3: Rashi said, oh, you've taught me important new things, whether Rashi,
17:53
Speaker 3: I'd like to think that Rashi really meant it, and
17:55
Speaker 3: that he wasn't just encouraging his young his young grandchild.
18:00
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, it's very interesting what you say just now,
18:03
Speaker 1: that in your mind the influence wasn't only in one direction.
18:07
Speaker 1: In other words, that one could perhaps correct the sun
18:10
Speaker 1: elements of Russi's writings, the Russi's way of thinking that
18:14
Speaker 1: had been shaped by interactions with his own, presumably precocious grandson.
18:19
Speaker 3: Yes, I really think that that that is the case.
18:23
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that Rashi, you know, totally revolutionized his approach,
18:30
Speaker 3: totally changed his approach. But you can find and things
18:33
Speaker 3: that he's writing, presumably towards the end of his life,
18:38
Speaker 3: some influence of Russi bomb. And we also know that
18:42
Speaker 3: Rashi was constantly revising his own works, including his tra commentary.
18:48
Speaker 3: And there are places where, like in the verse from shiratayam,
18:55
Speaker 3: you mean hajasm and aribako you mean hahashm tirat. Oh, yeah,
19:00
Speaker 3: when there are two references to God's right arm there.
19:03
Speaker 3: First of all, Rashi begins by explaining why there would
19:08
Speaker 3: be two references to God's right arm, and then he says,
19:15
Speaker 3: but the shot is and then he says something very
19:18
Speaker 3: similar to what Rushbam says. And the plastibility that he
19:23
Speaker 3: was talking about this verse with his grandson and that
19:26
Speaker 3: he revised his commentary to that verse in order to
19:30
Speaker 3: explain it the way his grandson explained it. I think
19:35
Speaker 3: that's a real possibility.
19:37
Speaker 2: Okay, fine, fair enough.
19:38
Speaker 1: And having danced around the edges of Rushbam's commentary, now
19:43
Speaker 1: for a little bit, let's dive into it itself.
19:46
Speaker 2: One of the most salient aspects of Rushbam's commentary.
19:50
Speaker 1: Elatura is is its dedication to what is generally called shot,
19:55
Speaker 1: and and you know, and then rush Bamb is usually
19:57
Speaker 1: tagged as you know he is the grandfather of Mikra.
20:02
Speaker 1: And so I want to ask you because this is
20:03
Speaker 1: actually not such a simple thing to describe exactly. People
20:07
Speaker 1: think it's generally translated to the plain or ordinary meaning
20:10
Speaker 1: of the words. But let me ask you, I mean,
20:13
Speaker 1: what did Rushbamb think shat was? What did he think
20:16
Speaker 1: he was doing in his methodology? And then let me
20:20
Speaker 1: ask I mean, as sort of a follow up, was
20:22
Speaker 1: the shot of Rushbamb the way he thought was what
20:26
Speaker 1: he thought he was doing the same as what others
20:28
Speaker 1: were I don't know Rashibanezra and Bane the others in
20:31
Speaker 1: his generation.
20:32
Speaker 2: Was his pursuit of shot.
20:34
Speaker 1: The same as what others thought they were doing when
20:36
Speaker 1: they said they were doing the same thing.
20:37
Speaker 3: Okay, great question. There isn't a simple definition of shot
20:43
Speaker 3: that everyone would would agree to. I remember, you know,
20:47
Speaker 3: I had the great privilege many years ago of studying
20:50
Speaker 3: with Nahamad Labovich, and she once said, there's a choke
20:54
Speaker 3: that the only difference between shot, and Rash is that
20:57
Speaker 3: shot is what I say in Drash is what everybody
21:00
Speaker 3: else says. Yes, and for a lot of people that
21:05
Speaker 3: that's the way it is. There's there's a book written
21:07
Speaker 3: by David by Salivni called Shot in Russia. He argues
21:11
Speaker 3: in this book that really the word shot, as the
21:15
Speaker 3: years went on, started to mean my explanation that I
21:19
Speaker 3: think is true without any real real definition. And Yeshiba
21:24
Speaker 3: boys know that, you know, the y boy will often
21:27
Speaker 3: say this is the shots in the commar. It doesn't.
21:31
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean anything other than the true interpretation. But
21:35
Speaker 3: I think that there are some characteristics of shot the
21:39
Speaker 3: way Russibumb understood Shot, in the way most Medievals understood Shot,
21:43
Speaker 3: that that we can define define. One of them is
21:47
Speaker 3: conforming to the rules of grammar. One of them is
21:53
Speaker 3: conforming to the context, looking to interpret the text in
21:58
Speaker 3: its context. One of them is being freed from seeing
22:07
Speaker 3: previous methods of interpretation as being binding. So Rashi himself
22:13
Speaker 3: said Anilo Badi el Albshutosh Mikra. But anybody who reads
22:18
Speaker 3: Rashi knows that Rashi is I don't know, maybe around
22:22
Speaker 3: ninety percent of the time or even more than that,
22:25
Speaker 3: he's offering things that he found in meat rush Rabba
22:28
Speaker 3: and taught Kumar and various various meat rashim he has
22:33
Speaker 3: not freed himself from. And he's probably proud of the
22:36
Speaker 3: fact that he hasn't freed himself from the traditions of
22:41
Speaker 3: Jewish interpretation. He's using those traditions of interpretation in his commentary,
22:48
Speaker 3: and he's probably using some kind of criteria for deciding
22:53
Speaker 3: which meat rashim he will use and which meat rashim
22:58
Speaker 3: he won't use. But rush Bumb hardly provides a meat
23:03
Speaker 3: rush eff in his commentary. It so there's there's the
23:07
Speaker 3: experience of me looking at the text using the the
23:13
Speaker 3: rules of grammar and syntax and reading the text in
23:19
Speaker 3: its context. And what makes rush Bumb so interesting and
23:26
Speaker 3: also so challenging is that he seems to also say,
23:31
Speaker 3: let the chips fall as they may. Now, I'm just
23:34
Speaker 3: going to give this interpretation. And if you tell me
23:38
Speaker 3: that the interpretation that I gave here goes against what
23:41
Speaker 3: it says in the talm Wood, then I'll say to you, Okay,
23:44
Speaker 3: I know that, but it's the shot. Does that mean
23:48
Speaker 3: that he was rebelling against the Talmud God forbid. Now,
23:52
Speaker 3: Rushbamb believed in a text that has more than one
23:57
Speaker 3: meaning to it, and he thinks that the text should
24:01
Speaker 3: be read using the mid rashik method, and he thinks
24:07
Speaker 3: that it should also be read using the shot method.
24:11
Speaker 3: And he didn't have any trouble with the suggestion that
24:15
Speaker 3: maybe they arrived at different conclusions one from the other,
24:19
Speaker 3: not just maybe often they did. And sometimes he'll write,
24:22
Speaker 3: here's what the shot is, but the rabbi said the following,
24:27
Speaker 3: and he could live with that. He could live with
24:29
Speaker 3: that tension. You asked, you know, is he's so different
24:33
Speaker 3: from Rashi. Yes, he's very different from Russia, because Rashi
24:36
Speaker 3: doesn't do that. Rashi is still very wedded to the
24:38
Speaker 3: midrash Is he so different from Ivanzra? It's not all
24:43
Speaker 3: that different from Ivanzra, except that even Ezra is not
24:47
Speaker 3: eager to live with that tension between the midrashik reading
24:51
Speaker 3: and the and the shot. There are places where Rashi
24:55
Speaker 3: where Rashbam says, give you an example, the rules of
25:00
Speaker 3: the evity breed the Jewish Slave. That says that a
25:04
Speaker 3: Jewish slave can be a slave only for six years
25:07
Speaker 3: and then and then he goes free. Unless he wants
25:10
Speaker 3: to stay. There's a ceremony that he can go through,
25:15
Speaker 3: and then he stays a slave. And then it says
25:18
Speaker 3: if he goes through this ceremony, the text the Taurus
25:22
Speaker 3: says Olam, he will worship, not worship, he will work
25:29
Speaker 3: for his uh for his master Olam. And the hawaha
25:36
Speaker 3: is that that the slave goes free at the jovela
25:41
Speaker 3: the jubilee year. But Rushbam says, no, that's you know
25:45
Speaker 3: that the shots of the passages that he remains a
25:51
Speaker 3: slave all of his life. And he knows very well
25:54
Speaker 3: that that's not what the halaka is. But he's interested
25:58
Speaker 3: in explaining the shot, even if the shot does not
26:02
Speaker 3: come to the same conclusion as as the halaha. Even
26:05
Speaker 3: Eesra couldn't live with that. Even Ezra writes in the
26:09
Speaker 3: introduction to his commentary that when when he finds a
26:14
Speaker 3: conflict between the traditional way of reading the text and
26:19
Speaker 3: the shot way of reading with the text, he'll see
26:23
Speaker 3: if he can make a kind of compromise between them,
26:27
Speaker 3: and if not, you have to choose. You can't have
26:29
Speaker 3: them both. And even Eesra had at one point in
26:34
Speaker 3: his uh in his Obra writes that any author Hajamia
26:42
Speaker 3: oh Navi, whether it's a sage or a prophet, Tom
26:48
Speaker 3: e Radlied Barrow, there's one interpretation of what of what
26:54
Speaker 3: he says, there's one correct interpretation. Rushbam didn't feel that way.
26:58
Speaker 3: Rushbaum felt that a text had many levels of meaning,
27:02
Speaker 3: or at least two levels of meaning, the meaning that
27:06
Speaker 3: has arrived at using the methodology of meat Rush and
27:10
Speaker 3: the meaning that has arrived at by using the methodology
27:14
Speaker 3: of Shot.
27:15
Speaker 5: And this is I think one of the reasons why
27:21
Speaker 5: Rushbamb's commentary for most of Jewish history was not particularly popular.
27:28
Speaker 3: Because a lot of Jews had trouble relating to the
27:33
Speaker 3: idea of an interpretation. A lot of religious Jews had
27:37
Speaker 3: trouble relating to an interpretation that wasn't worried about what
27:41
Speaker 3: the Halaja said the interpretation of the text was. Rushboton
27:48
Speaker 3: was a very pious Talmudist. He wasn't trying to organize
27:52
Speaker 3: any rebellion against the against Talmudic law. But as I said, before,
27:57
Speaker 3: this commentary almost got lost. There were we have dozens,
28:02
Speaker 3: if not hundreds, of manuscripts of Rashi's commentary on the
28:06
Speaker 3: Torah that were produced before print that came along in
28:10
Speaker 3: the fifteenth century, and perhaps the first and not the
28:15
Speaker 3: first that it was. The second Jewish book ever printed
28:19
Speaker 3: was Rashi's Commentary on the Torah in the fourteen seventies,
28:23
Speaker 3: already Incannabula, a book published already in the fifteenth century.
28:31
Speaker 3: Rushbump's Commentary on the Torah wasn't published until the eighteenth century.
28:36
Speaker 3: And the only reason it was published in the eighteenth
28:38
Speaker 3: century is because at the very end of the seventeenth century,
28:42
Speaker 3: from the Jewish book collector, a rabbi found one manuscript
28:48
Speaker 3: of rush Bumb's commentary on the Torah, and all of
28:54
Speaker 3: our versions of rush Bum's Commentary on the Torah are
28:58
Speaker 3: based on one count them, one manuscript which got lost
29:04
Speaker 3: during the show. Up For many years, I was hoping
29:07
Speaker 3: that the manuscript was plundered by somebody and that it
29:11
Speaker 3: would be put up for sale. But now that it's
29:14
Speaker 3: so many years after the after the show, it seems
29:19
Speaker 3: it seems that the manuscript was was destroyed. And so
29:24
Speaker 3: why were there not so many, uh, not so many
29:28
Speaker 3: manuscripts of rush Bomb's commentary on the Torah Because people
29:33
Speaker 3: weren't all that interested in learning it. Because religious Jews
29:38
Speaker 3: who were studying the Torah, wanted to have an explanation
29:43
Speaker 3: of the Torah that conformed to the tom Wooduk understanding
29:47
Speaker 3: of it. And I think Rashi had had the genius
29:51
Speaker 3: to realize this. While he professed an interest in Shot,
29:56
Speaker 3: as I said before, the majority of what he did
29:59
Speaker 3: was wasn't shot. And it's in the last couple of
30:03
Speaker 3: centuries that people have started to, you know, because modern
30:09
Speaker 3: people are different than medieval people and uh and many
30:16
Speaker 3: modern Jews, including many observant modern Jews. I'm an observant
30:21
Speaker 3: modern Jew, and I find a lot of interest in
30:25
Speaker 3: rush Bumb's understanding of the of the Bible.
30:28
Speaker 1: And I am okay, there's a lot that I want
30:32
Speaker 1: to address, and one of them is the very interesting,
30:35
Speaker 1: let's say, ramifications of rush BAM's ideas regarding Latin Rush because,
30:40
Speaker 1: as you said, he has this interesting relationship with mid
30:43
Speaker 1: Haan Hazal's readings, including the i Godic readings and those
30:46
Speaker 1: readings of the narratives in the in the Tanak, but
30:48
Speaker 1: also the halachic readings that Rabbi's legal midrash on on
30:53
Speaker 1: the text. And as you say, rush Bamb doesn't reject
30:58
Speaker 1: these as authoritative He doesn't say, you know, therefore we
31:01
Speaker 1: don't have to you know, we're not bound by these,
31:03
Speaker 1: but he does insist there's not the shot, there's not
31:06
Speaker 1: actually the reading, or I don't know the correct reading,
31:10
Speaker 1: there's not the genuinely how would you say what rush
31:13
Speaker 1: Brahm's attitude is to mid Russia, because at the end
31:17
Speaker 1: of the day, he is in a way, I don't know,
31:20
Speaker 1: demoting them or or like categorizing them as one particular
31:23
Speaker 1: thing while insisting that the plain text reading says something else.
31:28
Speaker 2: And I'm cold you sort of make make sense.
31:32
Speaker 3: Of all this, m Well, I think that that the
31:36
Speaker 3: key to this is that rush bamb believed that there
31:39
Speaker 3: could be two ways of interpreting the same text and
31:42
Speaker 3: they could both be valid. And you know, if you're
31:47
Speaker 3: studying poetry, uh, you you discover things like this. You know,
31:55
Speaker 3: there isn't just one correct interpretation of a poem. And
32:00
Speaker 3: Refam understands that there's a tool kit that the Midrash
32:05
Speaker 3: uses for interpreting a text, and it involves things like Kalbajomer,
32:12
Speaker 3: the thirteen medats that are used by Rabil. He writes this,
32:18
Speaker 3: he said, this is the halachically binding way of reading
32:24
Speaker 3: the Torah. But there's another way of reading the Torah,
32:28
Speaker 3: and that's the contextual way of reading the Torah. And uh,
32:34
Speaker 3: maybe I'll just give one more example. Rasfan made many
32:39
Speaker 3: people angry when he wrote in uh in his commentary
32:45
Speaker 3: on the first chapter of the Torah, that by he era,
32:49
Speaker 3: by he bolk here does not mean that that the
32:55
Speaker 3: Jewish day begins at night and continues. It goes from
32:59
Speaker 3: sunset the sunset. What it means is that God created
33:03
Speaker 3: on the first day and then, like the rest of us, wahabdil,
33:09
Speaker 3: just like the rest of us, when he finished working,
33:11
Speaker 3: there was evening and that was morning, and that was
33:14
Speaker 3: the end of the first day. When morning and that's
33:19
Speaker 3: we're talking today on a Sunday where I'm living here
33:23
Speaker 3: in Israel. Right now, the sun has already set and
33:27
Speaker 3: alofialy it's Monday, but everybody thinks of it as being Sunday.
33:31
Speaker 3: It's being Sunday still, And when will people think that
33:35
Speaker 3: Monday really begins. They'll think that it may that it
33:39
Speaker 3: begins when the sun comes up tomorrow morning. That'll be
33:42
Speaker 3: the beginning of the new day. And that's what rush
33:44
Speaker 3: Bomb says. That's what's going on in Genesis chapter one.
33:48
Speaker 3: Even Astra got apoplectic about this interpretation and said that
33:53
Speaker 3: he thought that maybe a commentary that that wrote something
33:57
Speaker 3: like this deserved to be burnt or at least to
34:01
Speaker 3: be torn to pieces, because because it seemed to undermine
34:06
Speaker 3: the tradition. And Russibamb managed to live with this, with
34:10
Speaker 3: this tension between what the text says on the shot
34:15
Speaker 3: level and what it is that we as religious Jews
34:18
Speaker 3: are required to do.
34:20
Speaker 2: Right, you mentioned that very interesting.
34:22
Speaker 1: I don't know what controversies the right word, but the
34:26
Speaker 1: sorry the Rushbaum's opinion that indeed the Jewish day begins
34:30
Speaker 1: the vayer very voca means that the Jewish day really
34:34
Speaker 1: begins in the morning, as we sort of instinctively understand
34:37
Speaker 1: it and wake up in the morning and believe it
34:39
Speaker 1: to be the case. And that that vaya very very
34:42
Speaker 1: voca as it is invoked in Genesis chapter one, just
34:45
Speaker 1: means that the day passed and the thing that was
34:47
Speaker 1: crazy on that day happened like it was sort of
34:49
Speaker 1: you know, it was the day ended. Or firstly, before
34:53
Speaker 1: we get onto to the other thing, this occasions quite
34:56
Speaker 1: a response from Ibn Ezra if I'm understaken that he
34:59
Speaker 1: had to defend his position. And can you briefly enlighten
35:05
Speaker 1: us as to that particular very interesting episode in in
35:08
Speaker 1: in the life of these two men.
35:10
Speaker 3: Yes, so, so Ibanezra wrote a whole book to try
35:14
Speaker 3: to disprove this uh the theory. And again because Ibanezra
35:21
Speaker 3: has this feeling that a text has one interpretation to
35:27
Speaker 3: it and that has to be the correct interpretation. Rashban
35:32
Speaker 3: was not suggesting that the Halahi definition of a day
35:36
Speaker 3: should change. In fact, there are other passages where Rushban
35:39
Speaker 3: makes it very clear that he thinks that the halahik
35:43
Speaker 3: definition of a day is from from the time that
35:49
Speaker 3: the stars come out today until the stars come out tomorrow.
35:54
Speaker 3: That's a Hallafi day. But he just argues that the
35:58
Speaker 3: correct reading of the first chapter of Gray Sheet is
36:03
Speaker 3: that during those first six days of creation, those days
36:08
Speaker 3: of creation finished in the morning. And eban Ezra says,
36:13
Speaker 3: what kind of weird thing would that be for the
36:15
Speaker 3: Torah to begin? If the Torah it's interested in us
36:19
Speaker 3: keeping days that begin in the evening and in the evening,
36:24
Speaker 3: why would it say something say something like that. It
36:27
Speaker 3: seems to be undermining the whole system. And so iban
36:31
Speaker 3: Azra wrote this old pamphlet. Some people call it a book,
36:35
Speaker 3: but it's really just a pamphlet called the Garrett Ashabad,
36:38
Speaker 3: which he wrote when he was towards the end of
36:41
Speaker 3: his life, when he was living in England, was to
36:44
Speaker 3: try to disprove this, this approach, and that there's a
36:50
Speaker 3: certain there's a certain irony about this because as I
36:54
Speaker 3: said before, Rashbaumb was the accomplished Talmudist and Ebn Ezra's
37:00
Speaker 3: not of Talmudist. That was not his thing. He did
37:04
Speaker 3: not write works of halacha, and Rushibamb did write works
37:09
Speaker 3: of halaka. Rush Bamb and his Tomlind commentaries gives us
37:14
Speaker 3: halachak summaries of the Talmudic text very often. He's very
37:21
Speaker 3: interested in people knowing what's the halaja is much more
37:25
Speaker 3: than Rashi and Rashi's Talmwud commentaries. Rush Bamb is much
37:28
Speaker 3: more interested in presenting the Talmudic text to students in
37:32
Speaker 3: such a way that they will know what the halaja is,
37:36
Speaker 3: and so that really matters to him. And yet another
37:40
Speaker 3: irony in the Torah Commentary written by Moses Mendelssohn at
37:45
Speaker 3: the end of the eighteenth century, in the introduction to
37:52
Speaker 3: Medilson wrote an introduction to Parashashpatim to the laws that
37:57
Speaker 3: appear in chapter twelve, twenty one, twenty two, and twenty
38:01
Speaker 3: three of Exodus of Schmaltz. And he says, there, you know,
38:08
Speaker 3: and of course paraphrasing you, but he says, you know,
38:13
Speaker 3: I try to follow Rushbamb all the time, but I
38:20
Speaker 3: can't follow Rushbamb on Parshakh Mishpatim because rush Bamb often
38:26
Speaker 3: interprets laws here in Parshakh Mishpatim in a way that
38:30
Speaker 3: doesn't conform with the halaka. And how can you do
38:35
Speaker 3: something like this? So the great father of the Jewish
38:39
Speaker 3: Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, Moses Mendelssohn, feels as if
38:44
Speaker 3: Rushbamb is not feel a pardon that is not from enough.
38:48
Speaker 3: He's you know, it's not from enough for me, for Mendelssohn.
38:54
Speaker 3: And the irony of this, of course, is that Rushbam's
38:58
Speaker 3: life was the tom in his life was the Halaja,
39:03
Speaker 3: and was not trying to change anything. But Meddelsohn just
39:08
Speaker 3: thought that this was that the rush Bomb had gone
39:11
Speaker 3: too far in his commitment towards chat And it's possible
39:17
Speaker 3: that that's why there weren't so many manuscripts of Rushbaumb's commentary,
39:21
Speaker 3: because other Jews over the years felt that he had
39:26
Speaker 3: gone gone too far. Before the twentieth century, there was
39:32
Speaker 3: just one super commentary written on rush Bamb's commentary, and
39:38
Speaker 3: the author of this super commentary writes in his introduction,
39:41
Speaker 3: I've heard people saying, what do I need this commentary for?
39:45
Speaker 3: What good does this commentary do for us? And I
39:49
Speaker 3: think that was what a lot of traditional Jews felt
39:52
Speaker 3: over the ages. But then again, there were people who
39:58
Speaker 3: followed in his in his footsteps. If you look at
40:02
Speaker 3: someone like schmil W Luzzato in Italy in the nineteenth century.
40:08
Speaker 3: Shadal Luzzatto was writing just after Rushbaum's commentary was published
40:16
Speaker 3: for the for the first time, and he was he
40:21
Speaker 3: was very taken by it, and he's quoting it all
40:23
Speaker 3: the time, and he liked that approach. And Shadala was
40:27
Speaker 3: a religious Jude, teaching all of his life in the
40:32
Speaker 3: seminary in Padua, felt that he had teaching Tanach there,
40:37
Speaker 3: felt that he had this kind of role model of
40:41
Speaker 3: somebody who could stay loyal to the tradition but was
40:46
Speaker 3: not willing to compromise his logical analysis of the text,
40:53
Speaker 3: and that's what Shadal. That's what Shadal does in his commentary.
41:00
Speaker 3: In many modern commentaries follow in Rushbam's footsteps. Just to
41:11
Speaker 3: give one example, Rushbam reads the story of Jacob and
41:16
Speaker 3: Esau very differently from the way that Rashi and the
41:21
Speaker 3: Jewish tradition at general reads the story of Jacob and Isa.
41:25
Speaker 3: Rushbam says that when Jacob was coming back from Haran
41:31
Speaker 3: to Erasistrael, he was afraid of his brother Esa for
41:35
Speaker 3: no reason. And God had promised him that everything would
41:40
Speaker 3: be fine when he came back, and he didn't believe
41:46
Speaker 3: what God said to him, and in fact, he was
41:50
Speaker 3: trying to run away. At the last moment, after he
41:55
Speaker 3: brought his family across the river, he decided to run
41:59
Speaker 3: away and run in the opposite direction. And that's when
42:02
Speaker 3: God sent that man Angel to wrestle with him so
42:06
Speaker 3: that he wouldn't be able to run away. And then
42:09
Speaker 3: when he meets Esau and Isa runs to him and
42:11
Speaker 3: kisses him and hugs him. That's because that's what I
42:13
Speaker 3: saw was planning on doing all along. One of the
42:17
Speaker 3: great Bible scholars who writes these days Professor Yonatan Grossmann
42:23
Speaker 3: of Barilan University wrote a book called Yakhov recently, and
42:28
Speaker 3: I went to the book launch of that book, and
42:31
Speaker 3: in the book launch he talked about the story of
42:35
Speaker 3: Yakov Aesov and he explained all the reasons why Rushbam's
42:41
Speaker 3: reading of the story of Yakov Vnesov was the correct
42:46
Speaker 3: reading of the text, a number of arguments beyond the
42:49
Speaker 3: ones that Rushbamb made. Professor Grossman was convinced that it
42:54
Speaker 3: was the was the correct reading.
42:56
Speaker 1: So which is which is introjected extraordinarily subversive reading? And
43:03
Speaker 1: again I sort of because of course, the whole weight
43:07
Speaker 1: of Abinning tradition to mean Russian, you know, the gamar
43:11
Speaker 1: that all assumed that Asaf was irredeemably wicked, that Yakov
43:15
Speaker 1: was always heroic, and that the kiss was either a
43:19
Speaker 1: very suspect kiss or wasn't a kiss at all, and
43:21
Speaker 1: that uh, you know, and right here comes Rushbam, just
43:24
Speaker 1: with the reading of the plain text, entirely subverts and
43:28
Speaker 1: so that was the basis of my initial question. On
43:31
Speaker 1: the one hand, he is loyal to rabbinic practice, and
43:35
Speaker 1: and the way, you know, I suppose the conclusions of
43:37
Speaker 1: the Brining tradition. But in terms of reading the verses,
43:39
Speaker 1: the way he does it and the conclusions he reaches,
43:42
Speaker 1: he's he's a real outlier.
43:43
Speaker 2: He's completely rather subversive.
43:46
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, that's an attraction to me and to many
43:50
Speaker 3: people who are attracted to this commentary that it's you know,
43:55
Speaker 3: I think to myself, just how creative this person was.
43:59
Speaker 3: You know, he have learned from the time that he
44:01
Speaker 3: was in kindergarten or whatever the equivalent of kindergarten was
44:05
Speaker 3: in order to France, and at the end of the
44:11
Speaker 3: eleventh century, he must have been taught that bay he
44:14
Speaker 3: Era Vahi Bocher teaches us that the Jewish day begins
44:18
Speaker 3: at night. And then he just decided he's going to
44:21
Speaker 3: look at the text independently, independently of all the things
44:25
Speaker 3: that he had been that he had been taught, and
44:27
Speaker 3: that you know, it's a great mind of somebody who's
44:30
Speaker 3: able to do this. I would say that not every
44:34
Speaker 3: interpretation that Rushbumb wrote is totally convincing to me, but
44:41
Speaker 3: I think that he did a really good job of
44:45
Speaker 3: looking at the Bible through the lens of context, grammar, syntax,
44:52
Speaker 3: and what the text is saying, and not necessarily what
45:01
Speaker 3: thea is interesting?
45:03
Speaker 2: Interesting?
45:04
Speaker 1: Okay, there were several points in what you said that
45:08
Speaker 1: I want to approach, and one of them is there
45:09
Speaker 1: is an aspect, an aspect of the Rushbam's terror commentary
45:13
Speaker 1: which you have also noted, which is what one might
45:16
Speaker 1: call noticing the literary aspects, the literary points of the
45:22
Speaker 1: of the tourist narratives and laws, et cetera. And could
45:24
Speaker 1: you elaborate a little bit on that. This is actually
45:26
Speaker 1: something which, as you say, is important, especially because it
45:30
Speaker 1: foreshadows more modern readings of the Tanakh. And you know,
45:33
Speaker 1: there's something that contemporary scholars pay a great deal of
45:36
Speaker 1: attention to, and Rushbam seems to have been something of
45:38
Speaker 1: a trailblazer and this in noticing this, So could you
45:40
Speaker 1: elaborate what was within Rushbam's commentary that is different or
45:45
Speaker 1: is what does he notice, let's say, what does he
45:48
Speaker 1: place within his commentary is that others don't.
45:51
Speaker 3: So, first of all, the example that I gave before
45:55
Speaker 3: of what Brawshi called suke de schmoil noticing that there's
45:59
Speaker 3: a pattern modern scholars call this latter parallelism, where there
46:04
Speaker 3: is a you have a poetic line and in the
46:08
Speaker 3: beginning of the phrase. In the first half of the
46:12
Speaker 3: poetic line, a noun or a verb appears, and then
46:15
Speaker 3: it's repeated in the second half of the line, and
46:19
Speaker 3: there's an elaboration of it in the second half of
46:22
Speaker 3: the u the line. When you study about Biblical poetry
46:29
Speaker 3: these days in a university where they teach about these things,
46:33
Speaker 3: they'll tell you that's yes, that's what's going on in
46:36
Speaker 3: many lines of Biblical poetry. And and rashbamb writes about
46:41
Speaker 3: this at length. And to notice that when it is
46:47
Speaker 3: you mean ha hashem, if your right hand God is glorious,
46:53
Speaker 3: your right hand God will destroy the enemy. That there
46:56
Speaker 3: aren't two right hands that are being described here. It's
46:59
Speaker 3: just a stylistic way of writing writing a Hebrew poem.
47:05
Speaker 3: You know, that's an important tool for understanding what should
47:08
Speaker 3: be paid attention to and what what need not be
47:13
Speaker 3: paid attention to. Why is there a repetition because that
47:17
Speaker 3: is the style It goes back Rushwan mentioned the first
47:22
Speaker 3: person by any means to talk about, you know, common
47:26
Speaker 3: biblical style. You'll find tabletic disagreements where let's say, a
47:31
Speaker 3: verse says shamorish maroon, it says keep you shall keep
47:36
Speaker 3: it uses a verb twice, and one rabbi will say
47:41
Speaker 3: that's the doubling came to teach us thus and such,
47:45
Speaker 3: and then another rabbi will say that that's how you
47:49
Speaker 3: speak in Biblical Hebrew, and you don't need to make
47:52
Speaker 3: a big deal out of it. The Tumble does that
47:55
Speaker 3: in a number of places, and Restauran does that all
48:00
Speaker 3: so in more places. Noticing what constitutes standard biblical style.
48:07
Speaker 3: If anomalies are important for you, if unusual things in
48:11
Speaker 3: the text are important for you, then you have to
48:13
Speaker 3: know what is anomalists So what is an anomaloust? And
48:16
Speaker 3: if you it's important to see what the what the
48:21
Speaker 3: pattern is, what the literary pattern is that somebody is.
48:24
Speaker 1: Following interesting and and as you say, you know the
48:28
Speaker 1: rush bumbs as let's say, in the nineteen twentieth century
48:32
Speaker 1: such as Chada and others also picked up and ran
48:35
Speaker 1: with this and that there are that the Tanaka is
48:38
Speaker 1: written not just is also, among other things, a good
48:42
Speaker 1: books written with sudden techniques and certain styles. And that's yeah,
48:47
Speaker 1: I ask you, let me ask you. So the rush
48:50
Speaker 1: bomb is a very interesting commentary. He's also an odd
48:53
Speaker 1: commentator in that he sort of refuses to say and
48:59
Speaker 1: there In other words, you read Ramban Barbunell and others,
49:03
Speaker 1: and they sort of they make a point about the
49:04
Speaker 1: pust oken question, and they say and therefore and kind
49:07
Speaker 1: of build an edifice of ah of ideas, of the
49:12
Speaker 1: sort of philosophy of Judaism. And then they kind of
49:14
Speaker 1: use their commentary of the Toura as a platform for
49:17
Speaker 1: building a larger palace of ideas, whereas Rushbam seems very.
49:22
Speaker 2: Retisent to do that.
49:23
Speaker 1: In fact, it doesn't seem to be interested in doing
49:24
Speaker 1: that at all. And so I guess I have a
49:26
Speaker 1: double headed question, one of which is why does he
49:30
Speaker 1: seem disinclined to do that? And the second is despite this,
49:34
Speaker 1: are there elements of a worldview that one can discern
49:38
Speaker 1: from Rushbum's commentary on Alatora? Is there a russibamb philosophy
49:41
Speaker 1: of Judaism, let's say, which appears even vaguely, even a
49:45
Speaker 1: silhouette of a philosophy that comes from this perish or
49:49
Speaker 1: were talking about.
49:49
Speaker 2: No, this is just he's just explaining.
49:52
Speaker 3: The text great questions. First of all, I would say
49:57
Speaker 3: that that you're right, and I often said to my
50:01
Speaker 3: students that your shool asps you to speak at sudash
50:07
Speaker 3: luchet on schabat and you're looking for a dvar tora,
50:11
Speaker 3: don't look in Rushbomb. You are unlikely to find some
50:15
Speaker 3: you'll find some insight into the text. But if you
50:18
Speaker 3: want to say something in shool and have a conclusion
50:23
Speaker 3: and therefore we should be doing uh this or such,
50:26
Speaker 3: here here's something to h some value that we should
50:31
Speaker 3: be pursuing. You're better off using more meat Rashik commentators
50:36
Speaker 3: than this. Why does rushbamb avoid doing this for the
50:39
Speaker 3: most part. I don't think he avoids it one hundred percent,
50:42
Speaker 3: but he.
50:42
Speaker 4: Does avoid it for the for the most part because
50:46
Speaker 4: I think because he thinks that the mead Rashik method
50:49
Speaker 4: of reading the text, as I said before, and as
50:52
Speaker 4: he says very often, is a valid way of reading.
50:56
Speaker 3: The text, and that's the way of reading the text
50:59
Speaker 3: that comes up with the and therefore kind of understanding,
51:05
Speaker 3: and therefore we jew should be doing thus, thus and such. Nevertheless,
51:10
Speaker 3: there are a few places where he does he does
51:15
Speaker 3: teach I think it does try to teach moral moral lessons.
51:21
Speaker 3: One example that comes to mind is when he talks
51:25
Speaker 3: about uh talks about succot. So there is a question
51:33
Speaker 3: the number of medieval rabbis and modern rabbi stealth with off.
51:38
Speaker 3: If Succot commemorates the fact that when we left Egypt
51:44
Speaker 3: we dwelt in succot, then why are we celebrating succot
51:51
Speaker 3: in the fall because we didn't leave Egypt in the fall.
51:56
Speaker 3: We should we should have our sadr in a soca
52:00
Speaker 3: because that's when we left Egypt, so we should build
52:03
Speaker 3: a soka in the So there are all sorts of
52:05
Speaker 3: explanations in rush Bomb deals with this on the I think,
52:09
Speaker 3: on the shot level in a very in a very
52:12
Speaker 3: moving kind of manner. He says that the time of
52:17
Speaker 3: year when people are harvesting is the time of year
52:20
Speaker 3: that they are most likely to feel Kocho Yadia sali
52:25
Speaker 3: At a fail has a g isn't a great I've
52:29
Speaker 3: got all this stuff, I'm I've brought in the harvest
52:33
Speaker 3: now and I don't really I don't really need God
52:39
Speaker 3: God's help because that's a farmer. Uh is in the
52:45
Speaker 3: black in his in his books around squat time when
52:48
Speaker 3: he's gathered in all of the all of the fruit,
52:53
Speaker 3: and rush Bomb says this is a time of year
52:57
Speaker 3: where it's important to teach people humility and to remember
53:02
Speaker 3: the humble origins of the Jewish people, to remember that
53:09
Speaker 3: once upon a time we didn't own any land, and
53:13
Speaker 3: we were wandering in the desert.
53:15
Speaker 6: And that's why, that's why we go and move out
53:20
Speaker 6: of our houses and move into a suka at the
53:24
Speaker 6: time of year when we are doing the best financially,
53:28
Speaker 6: because we.
53:28
Speaker 3: Should remember the humble origins of our of our people.
53:33
Speaker 3: And this also helps explain an an anomaly in that text.
53:39
Speaker 3: The text about Sukhota says quoha is rahbi Israel. Yeso
53:45
Speaker 3: every ezra modern Hebrews citizen, but they the landed people.
53:50
Speaker 3: And this is the only time in the Bible that
53:54
Speaker 3: the word ezrach appears in a legal context and doesn't
53:58
Speaker 3: say ha is rach. Bagel doesn't say both the landed
54:03
Speaker 3: the people who are part of the landed gentry, and
54:07
Speaker 3: the strangers are the converts who have joined you here.
54:11
Speaker 3: It just says that the israk should move and rush
54:15
Speaker 3: Bump says, well, the ra is the one who really
54:18
Speaker 3: needs to move into a suka, because the Israh is
54:22
Speaker 3: the one who's likely to feel that on the top
54:25
Speaker 3: of the world now because he's he's brought in the
54:28
Speaker 3: harvest and he's doing doing great, and he's he's the
54:32
Speaker 3: one who.
54:32
Speaker 7: Really needs to move into a sukka every fall, So
54:38
Speaker 7: that you know, that's a moral lesson that he attaches
54:43
Speaker 7: to the text.
54:44
Speaker 3: So if they ever ask you to give it to
54:46
Speaker 3: our tora around some quot time and you're looking for one,
54:49
Speaker 3: you can you can quote that one from from rush Bomb,
54:53
Speaker 3: but they are few and far between. His attempts to
54:57
Speaker 3: to say, as you put it, and therefore or here's
55:01
Speaker 3: what we should be doing, and he doesn't see that
55:04
Speaker 3: as the purpose of his commentary.
55:06
Speaker 1: Would you say that that is a characteristic difference between
55:10
Speaker 1: the Spara and Ashkena's schools of a country or is
55:15
Speaker 1: that taking it too far? Is that sort of building
55:19
Speaker 1: a you know, making a mountain out of a molehill,
55:21
Speaker 1: as it were.
55:22
Speaker 3: No, I don't think that that's something that is specifically
55:30
Speaker 3: a sparad kind of thing. Certainly, Rashi is trying to
55:32
Speaker 3: do uh to do that in his commentary, and he's
55:35
Speaker 3: trying to leave you with with moral messages and the
55:40
Speaker 3: whole question of how to categorize Ramban. Ramban, of course,
55:45
Speaker 3: came from Spain and from that perspective is from Farrad,
55:50
Speaker 3: but he came from Christian Spain, and Christian Spain is
55:55
Speaker 3: is more part of the world of Rashi and Rasbaan
55:59
Speaker 3: that it is part of the world of Ibanezra and Rambam.
56:04
Speaker 1: Interesting, Okay, fine, fair enough, President monte Lock. We're coming
56:09
Speaker 1: towards the end sadly of our interview today. But I
56:12
Speaker 1: do want to ask one final question which I asked
56:14
Speaker 1: to many of my guests, which as well as which
56:16
Speaker 1: is that if you could sit down tonight to dinner
56:20
Speaker 1: with the subject of your of your studies with Rushbamb,
56:24
Speaker 1: what would you what would you be asking him if
56:26
Speaker 1: you had an opportunity to converse with him, What is
56:29
Speaker 1: it that you'd like to bring up with him? And yeah,
56:32
Speaker 1: you know, would you imagine he would say to your
56:34
Speaker 1: your question or your query?
56:40
Speaker 3: So the big question that I've been thinking of for
56:43
Speaker 3: forty or fifty years, whereas I've been studying and writing
56:46
Speaker 3: about Rush Farmbers, why did he write the commentary and
56:51
Speaker 3: the so far shelter of are in the bottom line analysis?
56:54
Speaker 3: What was the purpose of writing the commentary? And there
57:00
Speaker 3: are there are a number of possible answers that that
57:05
Speaker 3: that I could give to this, but I'd like to
57:07
Speaker 3: hear what his answer is why he was doing it.
57:11
Speaker 3: On a certain level, he's trying to show that he
57:15
Speaker 3: understands shot better than his grandfather understands shot. And you know, well,
57:20
Speaker 3: Rashi says Anivo Badielkra, rush Bamb says almost the same thing,
57:28
Speaker 3: and and Rushbam says, h you're interested in the mead rashim,
57:34
Speaker 3: you can find many of them in the works of
57:36
Speaker 3: my grandfather Rashi. So it could just be that he's
57:41
Speaker 3: trying to say, you're trying to do shot. Here's how
57:44
Speaker 3: you dupe shot. It's possible also that Rushbamb felt that
57:51
Speaker 3: if how shall I put it, if God chose not
57:56
Speaker 3: to write the Shokanaru and not to write the Talmud,
58:00
Speaker 3: but to write the Torah that has a shot meaning
58:05
Speaker 3: to it, that maybe God wanted us to be looking
58:10
Speaker 3: at the shot meaning. Also, even though we won't be
58:16
Speaker 3: conducting our lives since religious Jews on the basis of
58:19
Speaker 3: the shot meaning, maybe God wanted us to be doing this.
58:22
Speaker 3: So those are a couple of the possible reasons why
58:26
Speaker 3: rush Bamb could have written this commentary, and that would
58:29
Speaker 3: be the first question that I would ask him.
58:35
Speaker 1: Interesting, okay, fair enough, that is certainly worthy of consideration.
58:40
Speaker 1: Professor Martin Lucchan, thank you so very much for Jody
58:43
Speaker 1: yesterday on the podcast of Jewish Ideas. This has been
58:45
Speaker 1: a great pleasure and you've suddenly spurred us on too
58:49
Speaker 1: much for the thought on this topic.
58:51
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for your contributions and we hope
58:53
Speaker 2: to see you again.
58:54
Speaker 3: You very good. Thank you for inviting me.
58:58
Speaker 1: This has been the podcast of Doing Ideas by Tora
59:01
Speaker 1: in Motion, produced by Alisha Kellman and myself JJ Kimbri,
59:04
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