Author: Natan Hason

Natan Hason

For many progressive Jews whose practice is in dialogue with the halakhic tradition, there has been a tension between the commitment to matrilineal descent and a desire to positively recognize the Jewishness of our patrilineal fellows. In this brief article, I will propose one possibility for the development of a halakhic path toward the recognition of the status of patrilineal Jews. My hope is that this will spark a dialogue among progressive posqim on the feasibility of this approach and, if it is unable to be the basis of a possible resolution, that it may inspire the search for other pathways toward what I believe to be full recognition of the dignity of a marginalized segment of our community.

Metahalakhic Framework

Within the Conservative movement and progressive denominations generally there has been a long-held commitment to a wider and more expansive halakhic conversation than a narrow review of technical legal sources. Coming from this place, I feel it is important to begin with sources that speak to the ethical values of our tradition. These should be an integral element in wider halakhic discourse, as well as in the particular case with which this article is concerned—recognizing patrilineal descent. Rabbi Seymour Siegel said the following in an address to the Rabbinical Assembly Convention in 1971, which speaks to the ethos of this paper:

It is possible to formulate the approach in terms of the relationship between the aggadah and the halakhah. If we loosely define the aggadah as the expression of the ethical and theological values of Judaism, and the halakhah as their embodiment, then our thesis is that the aggadah should control the halakhah—not vice versa…

For us, the aggadah is all important, for it is the expression of Jewish values and world-outlook. The halakhah is its embodiment. We do not intend, of course, to diminish the value of the halakhah in pressing this formulation. Indeed, it is our view that there is no better way to preserve the integrity and the authority of Jewish law than by revising it when it needs revision. Edmund Burke, perhaps the greatest of all conservative (politics, of course) thinkers, said: A state without the means of changing its laws is without the means of preserving its laws. Menachem Mendel of Kotzk put the idea in a striking saying: Do not make a pesel [an idol] of the asher tsivkha hashem elokekha [what God has commanded you].¹

Other articulations of this call to appreciate the legal implications and force of aggadah can be found in the writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel, Neil Gillman, Gordon Tucker, and others. It is within this approach that I offer these first three sources as a metahalakhic framing for this paper. They represent what I believe are the values in our tradition that should be embodied in our halakhic rulings regarding this issue.

The first is taken from the Tur, Orakh ḥayyim 199:1:

שמש שאכל כזית מזמנין עליו... תניא עם הארץ אין מזמנין עליו והאידנא אמר ר״י שמזמנין עם עם הארץ כדי שלא יהא כל אחד בונה במה לעצמו פי׳ אם היו פורשין מהם היו גם הם פורשין מן הציבור לגמרי וכ״כ ר״ח האידנא רגילין לזמן אפי׳ עם עם הארץ גמור:

One who eats a kezayit of food that would make one obligated to say grace after meals should make a zimmun… [the] Mishnah teaches that an ʿam haʾarets does not count towards a zimmun. Now Rabbi Yitzhak said that you do form a zimmun with an ʿam haʾarets in order that one will not build a division between himself and there will be a separation from them so that they will be separated completely from the community. Rabbeinu Hananel has written that we are now accustomed to making a zimmun even with a complete ʿam haʾarets.

Here, out of an interest in not losing these marginal members of the community, the Tur codifies the abrogation of a mishnaic instruction that one does not include an ʿam haʾarets in the counting of a zimmun. How many Jews of patrilineal descent have felt a division built between them and the rest of the community by their exclusion from participation in the ritual life of our community? How many, feeling the doors to the synagogue closed to them, have decided to walk away from our communities because of this? This concern for the potential loss of members of our community is taken seriously enough that it is considered justification for the overturning of a mishnaic teaching.

Secondly, we find the following anecdote in b. Kiddushin 70a:

וְכֹל הַפּוֹסֵל פָּסוּל וְאֵינוֹ מְדַבֵּר בִּשְׁבָחָא לְעוֹלָם וְאָמַר שְׁמוּאֵל בְּמוּמוֹ פּוֹסֵל

He further said: And anyone who disqualifies others by stating that their lineage is flawed, that is a sign that he himself is of flawed lineage. Another indication that one’s lineage is flawed is that he never speaks in praise of others. And Shmuel says: If one habitually claims that others are flawed, he disqualifies himself with his own flaw. The flaw he accuses them of having is in fact the one that he has.²

In this text we learn that we should avoid the impulse toward shutting others out based on questions of parentage and are exhorted against it with a middah keneged middah isolation of the one who does so. Our disposition in these matters should be toward searching out ways to include others rather than taking a defensive stance toward the status quo.

Lastly, in y. Yevamot 1:6:8 there is recorded the dispute between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai regarding issues of marriage that could lead to serious transgressions in the area of status and permitted relationships:

רִבִּי יוֹסֵי בֵּירִבִּי בּוּן אָמַר. רַב וּשְׁמוּאֵל. חַד אָמַר. אֵילּוּ וְאֵילּוּ כַּהֲלָכָה הָיוּ עוֹשִׂין. וְחַד אָמַר. אֵילּוּ כְהִילְכָתָן וְאֵילּוּ כְהִילְכָתָן. מַמְזֵרֻת בֵּינְתַיִים וְאַתְּ אָמַר הָכֵין. הַמָּקוֹם מְשַׁמֵּר וְלֹא אוּרָע מַעֲשֶׂה מֵעוֹלָם.

Rebbi Yose ben Rebbi Abun said, Rav and Samuel, one said both acted according to valid practice; the other said, each party followed its own practice. Bastardy is between them and you say so? The Omnipresent watched and no case ever happened.³

Rather than allow for a deep division within the community to take place, they responded with a deus ex machina solution. Given the mutually exclusive approaches to marriage practices between these two segments of the community, it is impossible to conclude that by marrying with each other no such violations of their own norms took place. Yet the response was to say that God made sure no such violations occurred. When backed into a corner, they gave up legal resolutions and held tightly to the value of Jewish unity.

The Evolution of the Matrilineal Principle

To dive further into the particular question being investigated in this article, we will begin with a brief overview of the matrilineal principle. Works like Rabbi Dr. Shaye Cohen’s “The Origins of the Matrilineal Principle in Rabbinic Law”⁴ and Rabbi Ethan Tucker’s series “Matrilineality and Patrilineality in Jewish Law and Community”⁵ have already clearly established the long historical process involved in the development of this halakhic approach. Readers interested in the details of this should read these works which give in-depth analysis of the relevant texts.

In summary, the first attestation of any kind of matrilineal principle in Jewish text is found in Tannaitic material. There is no clear reference to any matrilineal principle in either the Tanakh or the literature of the Second Temple period. On the contrary, as most readers are probably aware, there is instead a clear patrilineal principle. In the Tannaitic period we encounter opinions that accept the status of a child from a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father as Jewish. However, at this earliest stage, the Mishnah accords them the status of a mamzer, and it is only in the Amoraic period that this status is overturned. Tucker, in his overview of the complex status of Jews of matrilineal descent and of patrilineal descent, points out that even some eighteenth- and nineteenth-century rabbinic authorities ruled that Jews of matrilineal descent required conversion. It is clear from the evidence that the matrilineal principle as we practice it today has been more fluid, even within the past two centuries, than is often assumed in popular discussion of the topic.

This is not to claim that these later texts are less authoritative or that the principle of matrilineal descent does not carry weight by virtue of being a later innovation, but simply to recognize the breadth of historical change that has taken place regarding this principle. The matrilineal principle of today is not the same as what is found in earlier literature. It raises the question, “If it has not always been this way in the past, then perhaps it may not always be this way in the future?” When tackling halakhic questions such as this one, which are often perceived as being almost untouchable, it may be helpful to keep in mind Rabbi Yoseph Hayim’s description of the halakhic process, as summarized by Professor Zvi Zohar: “a rabbi who makes a halakhic decision is not bound by a majority of relevant precedents…if his own best understanding of the halakha leads him to formulate a decision completely without precedent, he may in good faith rule according to the halakhic truth as he sees it.”⁶

The Status of Quasi-Jewish Groups in Rabbinic Texts

Professor Christine Hayes makes the following argument about rabbinic constructions of identity:

Yet the rabbis resist simple dichotomies and locate many gentiles along a spectrum of proximity, as seen in rabbinic discussions of the righteous gentile, the venerator of heaven and the convert. Some others—non-rabbinic Jews of various types—are, by birth and culture, heirs to the text but have neglected, distorted, or abandoned it in some way.⁷

Identity creation and maintenance is a complex process; it is fluid and hardly a clear-cut matter. We can find the rabbis negotiating this “spectrum of proximity,” as Hayes refers to it, in their opinions on the status of the Samaritans and later regarding the Karaites. Both communities have a claim to an identity as Israelite/Jewish, and the rabbis accept that claim at various points and to varying degrees. Further, this recognition of Jewish status carries over into areas of ritual practice and is not simply a validation of genealogy. The Samaritans and Karaites are communities that have a principle of patrilineal descent for determining group identity.⁸ Recognizing and validating the status of Samaritans and Karaites implies acceptance of the validity of their practice of following the father’s line in determining status.

Lawrence Schiffman wrote an in-depth review of the early rabbinic literature regarding the status of Samaritans, and he concludes:

Up to a certain point the Samaritans were accepted as Jews. From that point on, the trend began to change, and this is reflected in both explicit statements and redactional tendencies which classify the Samaritans with non-Jews. This change of attitude can be traced even further, starting with the view of R. Judah the Prince that they are non-Jews, through the various negative statements of the Amoraim, and culminating in the ruling that the Samaritans are unquestionably considered as Gentiles.⁹

His review of the sources is compelling, and, while it may be that rabbinic tradition eventually develops in another direction, it is clear that, the Tannaim by and large accepted Samaritans as Jews.

There are a few sources from Tannaitic material that demonstrate this point. We find in m. Berakhot 7:1 that the tannaʾ kamaʾ states: שׁלשׁה שׁאכלו כאחד, חיבין לזמן… והכותי, מזמנין עליהם, “When three persons eat together they are obligated in zimmun… [if there are two] and a Samaritan, then they make a zimmun.” We also find the following disagreement in t. Terumot 4:13, והכותי כנכרי דברי ר׳ רשב״ג אומר כותי כישראל, “the Samaritan is like a non-Israelite. R′ Shimon ben Gamliel says, ‘A Samaritan is like an Israelite.’” Finally, Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel again takes the stance of upholding the status of Samaritans in t. Pesahim 2:2

מצה של כותים מותרת ואדם יוצא בה ידי חובתו בפסח ורבי אליעזר אוסר לפי שאין בקיאין בדקדוקי מצוה רשב״ג אומר כל מצוה שהחזיקו בה [כותים] הרבה מדקדקין בה יותר מישראל.

Samaritan matzah is permitted and the one who [eats it] has fulfilled his obligation on Passover. Rabbi Eliezer rules it forbidden since [the Samaritans] are not exact in the laws [of matzah]. Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel says, “any mitzvah which the Samaritans have taken on, they are more exacting in its observance than an Israelite.”

It is the case, as noted in the quote from Schiffman above, that the rabbis eventually pushed the Samaritans further out on that “spectrum of proximity,” culminating in their being treated as outsiders. Equally true is the reality that we have authoritative precedent within the halakhic tradition, represented in the sources above, for recognizing the status of groups practicing patrilineal descent.

The Karaite community has also had a history of acceptance, although contested, from rabbinic authorities down to the modern day. Documents from the Cairo Geniza testify to the practice of marriages between Karaites and rabbinic Jews, with marriage documents in some cases enshrining the Karaites’ right to practice their own customs. While controversial to some, this practice was accepted by many rabbinic authorities in Egypt.¹⁰ More recently than this medieval practice, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards accepted a teshuvah in 1984 affirming the status of Karaites as Jews.¹¹ In this teshuvah, Rabbi David H. Lincoln provides a brief review of some relevant responsa, which he points out are primarily concerned with the question of marriage between the two groups. He explains that the major concern in these responsa is safeq mamzerut. This is the fear that valid marriages may be taking place between Karaites but not valid divorce, leading to bastardy cases and therefore preventing the children of Karaite communities from marrying another Jew. The issue of marriage and potential mamzerut are not the primary issues for our question in this paper; rather, the crucial point is, as Lincoln says, “their ‘Jewish descent’ is not really in question (indeed, that is our problem).”¹² In other words, the foundational assumption of much of the halakhic literature surrounding Karaites is that they are, in fact, Jews. If this were not the case then there would be no concern of safeq mamzerut, the validity of their marriages, their ability to be valid witnesses, or other such issues.

The late chief Sephardic rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef also permitted marriages between Karaites and rabbinic Jews, therefore recognizing the Jewish status of the Karaite community. His response on this issue can be found in Yabiaʿ omer EH 8:12. There he relies primarily on the rulings of Rabbis David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (the Radbaz) and Yaakov de Castro, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who both held that it is permissible to intermarry with Karaites. In these sources the issue that is dealt with is safeq mamzerut, which, as already mentioned, is a relevant concern only in cases of marriage between Jews. The Radbaz makes this explicit in his writing on the issue of Karaites, intermarriage, and safeq mamzerut in Radbaz, Teshuvot 4:219, where he says: עוד יש טעם כללי לכלל הקראין שהרי ישראל הם, “Furthermore, there is a general argument concerning the Karaites as a whole, since they are Jews.”

As with the case of the Samaritans, we have halakhic precedent that acknowledges the validity of the Karaite claim to Jewish status. As this group holds to a standard of patrilineal descent, it is difficult to argue that these rulings have not already granted a recognition of the Jewishness of individuals whose proximity to this identity is through their father’s line. In our hands are sources both modern and ancient that provide at least the implicit recognition of this practice.

Conclusion

As progressive Jews we value a halakhic discourse that is not limited to legalistic sources. The metahalakhic framing offered above in sources that speak to our values of inclusion and unity, even in matters of lineage, should be considered in our discourse on par with teshuvot and legal codes. However, we do not need to rely on this metahalakhic argumentation alone. The sources reviewed in this article contain halakhic precedent—both classical rabbinic sources and modern responsa literature—for accepting the status of communities en masse that hold to a principle of patrilineal descent. From here it appears that the same may be offered to individual Jews of patrilineal descent, since functionally this has already been done in the recognition of Samaritan and Karaite claims to Jewishness. It is my hope that this article can play some role in deepening and widening the conversation around this sensitive and pressing issue.

Natan Hason is a graduate of the Pardes Educators Program and received his master’s degree in Jewish Education from Hebrew College. Since 2018 he has been a member of the Jewish Studies Department at Rochelle Zell Jewish High School.

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Daniel Z. Siegel

In a late seventeenth-century text, entitled Meiʾah berakhot (One Hundred Blessings), we read:

Blessing when Purchasing Slaves

When an Israelite purchases a slave, he must recite a blessing, saying: “Have mercy and remember, master of this slave, to rejoice in his deeds and to enslave him and his children after him” as it says, ‘You shall make them an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit as a possession in perpetuity, them shall you enslave’ (Leviticus 25:46). ‘Praised are You Who is good and does good’” (m. Berakhot 9:2).¹

The author, Rabbi Avuhav da Fonseca, was then serving as chief rabbi of the Sephardic community of Amsterdam, which included Jewish slaveholders (and traders), as did the Dutch colony, Recife, in which he previously served as rabbi of the Portuguese Jewish community.²

While, in light of present-day sensibilities, we might find it morally repugnant for one to acquire or own a slave, let alone recite such a blessing, from biblical times into the nineteenth century (and beyond) one can hear an echoing of the sentiment expressed by the second–third century Babylonian Amora, Samuel: “Whoever emancipates his non-Jewish slave transgresses a positive commandment” (b. Gittin 38a–38b).³ Indeed, the assertion Deo Vindice, “God Will Vindicate Us,” adopted as the motto of the seceding slaveholding Confederate States of America, points to this same biblical commandment referenced by Samuel and cited in Meiʾah Berakhot.

Beyond slavery, there remain today not a few biblical prescriptions/proscriptions and rabbinic sanctioning of the same whose viability and validity, although questioned on moral grounds, still meets with a response akin to that of Samuel or with the cry of Deo Vindice, voiced by those who would “uphold” the divine word against the “mistaken” moral onslaught of those who could only succeed in “dishonoring” it. For Hasidic Grand Rebbe Tsvi Elimelekh Spira of Dinov (1783–1841), whose reflections on the conflict of Jewish law and morality are the subject of this article, not only should we not cite the Torah as grounds for divine vindication in defending a law that would otherwise be deemed repugnant, but we should also not vindicate God in upholding this commandment, for that, in truth, would be a violation of the Divine will.

Tsvi Elimelekh, who lived in the period following the appearance of Meiʾah berakhot and shortly before the abolitionist movement came to the fore, is not alone within our Jewish tradition in arguing that divine law and morality must coincide. Challenging God for what might be deemed questionable, unjust, and/or destructive is not foreign to our biblical or rabbinic tradition. Well known are the words of the biblical Abraham when seeking to save Sodom from God’s (indiscriminate) destruction: “It would be a profanation (ḥallilah) for You; would the judge of all the earth not do justice”? (Genesis 18:25).⁴ When Moses saves the Israelite people from destruction by an angry God, following the golden calf incident, the rabbis have God Himself contrast the consequences from the generation of the flood, when no intercessor rose up to challenge Him:

The Holy One Blessed be He says: “When I win, I lose and when I lose, I win. I won at the generation of the flood, but I lost in destroying all those people. And so it was with the generation of the dispersion [of the races, in the tower of Babel] and the people of Sodom. But, at the [golden] calf, Moses prevailed over Me and I won” (Pesiqta Rabbati, pisqa 40).⁵

Prophets with “boundless audacity” such as Moses, our tradition tells us, exemplify true servants of God in being “His Majesty’s loyal opposition.”⁶

Within the Hasidic sphere in particular, confronting God was both laudatory and to be expected. The famous Berditcher Rebbe, Rav Levi Yitschak, is known as the “Defender of Israel” in that he is the “Prosecutor of God.” In “The Kaddish of Reb Levi Yitschak” or “A Din Toyre mit Gott,” this leader of his community rebukes God for the great, unjust suffering of his people.⁷ In our time, Elie Wiesel, of Hasidic lineage, explains that his play, Trial of God, set in the fictitious seventeenth-century Ukranian town of Shamgorad, found its inspiration in witnessing a court of three rabbis in Auschwitz placing God on trial and declaring Him guilty for allowing the massacre of His people.⁸

In being an upstander—in challenging rather than vindicating God—Rabbi Elimelekh is thus not exceptional. He may prove to be more distinctive in his creative interweaving of, on the one hand, the biblical and rabbinic portrayal of God as desiring or responding positively to the human challenge, as refracted through the biblical narrative, or aggadic portions of our tradition’s texts, and, on the other hand, the call for human beings to take up the cause, presented through prescriptive and exhortative statements found within our Torah and halakhah. It is to him that we will now turn.

We will explore Rabbi Elimelekh’s contention that, moved by our moral conscience and as prescribed by His law, we are required to call God to account and effect the necessary changes. The central passage we will consider is found within his commentary on the Bible entitled Agra dekallah. Noteworthy are the concluding remarks of his introduction to this volume, wherein he states that “these words of mine” are to be “safeguarded” by the “ḥaverim makshivim” for whom they are intended and are not for those seeking to “attack” God and “to render defective [lehatil mum], God forbid, the Holy Divine.”⁹ The ḥaverim maqshivim are those “companions attending (to your voice)”, appearing in Song of Songs, a biblical book that the rabbis presented as an allegory of Israel seeking God. For Elimelkeh, his teachings, in Agra dekallah, when properly understood and applied, will make for a union of God and His people rather than provide a cause to rupture the divine-human relationship.¹⁰

The textual teaching that will be our focus appears in Elimelekh’s commentary on the Torah portion Reʾeih, which begins with the words “Behold, I have set before you today a blessing and a curse—the blessing if you heed the commandments of the Lord your God, and the curse if you do not heed the commandments of the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 11:26–28). After subsequently noting that, upon entering the Land, Israel is to “utterly destroy all the places where the nations you are to dispossess served their gods… And you shall break down their altars…and you shall destroy their name out of that place” (Deuteronomy 12:2–3), the Bible warns: lo taʿasun kein lʾadonai elohekha, “You shall not do thus to the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 12:4).

This latter verse, based upon its context, is generally understood as part of the Deuteronomist’s call for centralization of the cult, as further evidenced in the verses that immediately follow it (Deuteronomy 12:5–6) and/or as warning against erasing God’s name or destroying (a stone of) the altar, in contrast with the actions prescribed in the verses preceding it. Our Hasidic rebbe, however, reads this negative commandment in a remarkably surprising way:

lo taʿasun kein… [The word] kein is to be explicated as meaning just (tsedeq) and right (nakhon, firmly established). For God, may He be praised, desires that the righteous (tsadiqim) annul His decree for that is His delight (shaʿashuaʿv) rather than that the righteous one (tsadiq) would say “certainly His laws, may He be praised, are just and how can I bring charges (meqatreig) against my Master.” He should not say thus (kein)! That is [the meaning of] lo taʿasun kein [lʾadonai elohekha], “Do not make just and right (kein) His laws [when they are not so]” (Elimelekh, Agra dekallah, 320b).¹¹

Applying his explication lo taʿasun kein directly to the words of the verse, we thus read: “Do not make just/right the Lord your God.” In an otherwise radical exegesis of this verse, Elimelekh replaces “the Lord your God” with “His laws” thus stopping short of (directly) impugning God. This would not escape his readers, who, on the basis of Elimelekh’s rendering of this verse, are told to challenge and “bring charges” against the “Master.” For purposes of presenting the whole of the verse in terms of his exegesis, we shall read it “Do not make just (the laws of) the Lord your God.”

Significantly, Elimelekh’s exegesis of kein—whereby one is not to be God’s “yes man” by finding just what is unjust—is based upon the biblical episode of the daughters of Zelophehad. Immediately before his above-cited exposition of this verse, he writes: “Lo taʿasun kein… kein as in the expression kein beinot Tselofḥad, meaning right and just [are the daughters of Zelophehad]” (Elimelekh, Agra dekallah, 320b). The daughters of Zelophehad are recorded as bringing the following grievance:

Then the daughters of Zelophehad drew near…and stood before Moses and before Eleazar the priest, and before the princes and the entire congregation at the entrance of the tent of meeting, saying: “Our father died in the wilderness, but he was not among the assembly, Korah’s assembly, that banded together against God…and he had no sons. Why should our father’s name be lessened among his family because he has no son? Give us a holding among our father’s brothers” (Numbers 27:1–4).

Not unexpectedly, as this was apparently their intent in presenting themselves before the tent of meeting, their claim as daughters to inherit as do the sons of other Israelite fathers is brought before God:

Moses then brought their cause before the Lord. And the Lord said to Moses: “Justly/Rightly (kein) do the daughters of Zelophehad speak. You shall assuredly give them a hereditary holding in the midst of their father’s brothers, and you shall transfer their father’s inheritance to them. And you shall speak to the Israelites, saying: ‘If a person dies and he had no son, then you shall transfer his inheritance to his daughter… And it shall be for the children of Israel a statute of judgment, as the Lord commanded Moses’” (Numbers 27:5–8).

In using the daughters of Zelophehad story in his explication of the verse lo taʿasun kein lʾadonai elohekha as “You shall not make just (the laws of) the Lord your God,” Elimelekh presents an interpenetration of divine commandment and biblical narrative. While the narrative of Zelophehad’s daughters serves as the instantiation and affirmation of “You shall not make just (the laws of) the Lord your God,” this commandment sanctions and requires actions like those of the daughters of Zelophehad. Moreover, we see the just claim of these women being championed and formalized into law, in their name, by God Himself. God presents the emerging narrative as making for a new “statute of judgment,” even as His response to the daughters of Zelophehad is in fulfillment of His law lo taʿasun kein, “Do not make just (that which is not just).” God is thus portrayed by Elimelekh as an examplar of employing the integrative engagement of nomos and narrative. The established nomos must not lie beyond the grasp of a questing narrative so that when infused with its living spirit it gives birth to a new law, which itself becomes generative of that spirit.

The daughters of Zelophehad, as Elimelekh hopes for the ḥaverim for whom he has written this book and who attend to the divine voice of Torah, were attuned to a voice of God that could not yet be heard within the prevailing community. Those whose moral sensibilities make for a deeper understanding of the divine moral conscience are God’s partners in bringing a new revelation and law into the divine community. In challenging as unjust God’s command, which was heretofore perceived and held as just by the community, and in being responsible agents in rectifying it, the daughters of Zelophehad are making the Lord their God just.

The rabbis present Zelophehad’s daughters as saying “human beings extend greater mercy to males than they do to females. But, He who spoke and the world (ʿolam) came into being is not so (kein). Rather, His mercy is upon both males and females.”¹² One can hear Elimelekh pointedly reading this midrash as God does not say kein to, or affirm as just and correct, those who, in limiting His mercy through law, do not truly express the divine moral conscience. Rather, yomar na yisraʾel, ki leʿolam ḥasdo (Psalm 118:2)—all “Israel,” in exercising His Law, “should say ‘His (the Creator’s) lovingkindness is everlasting and to all His world.’”

Speaking to an injustice still practiced today in the name of God’s Law, we might hope that, like that of the daughters of Zelophehad, the plight of the ʿagunah would evoke within us all Elimelekh’s divine command lo taʿasun kein.¹³ Cast in the words of a present day activist for the liberation of “enchained women,” even as it might have been expressed upon a protesting placard of a would-be abolitionist, this rebbe’s reading of this verse might be rendered “Do not give the nod to a narrow God.” Justly resolving the plight and compassionately responding to the protest of the ʿagunah through a remedying of the Law releases us and our God from the fetters of injustice.

As exemplified by Zelophehad’s daughters, disobedience is at times obedience, even as obedience is at times disobedience. Elimelekh asks us to see that the blessing is sometimes found in following the commandment not to follow the commandments. Present day research, as expressed here in the words of Pearl Oliner, the author of Saving the Forsaken, finds that “significantly higher percentages of bystanders, as compared with rescuers, cited obedience as a primary value.”¹⁴ In Elimelekh’s view, we are divinely challenged to have the courage of conscience to speak out for ourselves and others by rightly declaring His laws unjust.

How, though, can we be certain when disobedience in deeming His laws unjust constitutes obedience in fulfilling the commandment “Do not make just (the laws of) the Lord your God”? In opening his exegesis of the verse lo taʿasun kein, Elimelekh notes that, for some, Jewish living is “religious behaviorism” (ḥoq qavuʾa lahem). However, the wise individual (maskil) understands that

no single day is the same as another, [so that] at times, the self-same deed that constitutes a commandment one day is a transgression the next. And it is impossible to further explain the matter, for the wise one will discern on his own. And it was regarding this that our Torah warns us in saying “do not do kein to the Lord your God,” [kein] meaning [living always] “thus,” the same, never changing behavior (Elimelekh, Agra dekallah, 320b).

The slippery slope is always present, but one is a deviant in refusing to deviate. If wise, our behavior in observing the law will change when we correctly discern what is required. Although we might not always be correct, there is greater risk in not risking than in risking; that will result in an ossified religion, God and self. For Elimelekh, when righting our ever-evolving Torah, we are God’s active partners in further revealing and realizing the divine moral conscience.

Apposite to Elimelekh’s remark that the proscriptive and prescriptive may at times interchange is his second interpretation of lo taʿasun kein, which we will now consider. The rabbi of Dynov writes:

An allusion to another [meaning of] lo taʿasun kein [is provided] on the basis of what our rabbis, may their memory be for a blessing, said: “Greater is a transgression committed for God’s sake (lishmah), than a commandment performed not for His sake (shelo lishmah)”…as you know from the matter of Ya’el, the wife of Ḥever, the Kenite [whose adulterous action saved her people; see b. Nazir 32b and b. Horayot 10b, cf. Judges 7:17–22]. And this is what the Torah was indicating [by] lo [taʿasun kein], meaning that against which you are warned by lo (“no”), being the negative commandments, you shall make kein (“yes”) “for the sake of the Lord your God” (Elimelekh, Agra dekallah, 321a).

Thus, complementing his first reading of lo taʿasun kein lʾadonai elohekha as a negative commandment, “Do not make just (the laws of) the Lord your God,” Elimelekh here reads this verse as presenting a positive commandment, “Make the “no/lo” (negative commandment) into a “yes/kein” (prescribed action). In his first exposition of this verse, God’s “yes” becomes “no” when proscribing the prescribed, as we challenge rather than perform a morally reprehensible action. In this understanding of the verse, God’s “no” becomes “yes” when prescribing the proscribed, as we commit ourselves to the ethically laudable for the sake of God.

It is instructive that, in discussing those whose practice is fixed (ḥoq qavuʾa) and who are unable to discern that at times proscriptions are to become prescriptions (or the reverse), he later writes:

This is what is alluded to in the verse “And you shall not erect an [immutable] pillar/stone (matsevah) for yourself” (Deuteronomy 16:22). That is, [do not create] a condition (matsav) in which your service [of God] is constant without change (Elimelekh, Agra dekallah, 327a).¹⁵

In the verse immediately preceding lo taʿasun kein (Deuteronomy 12:4), the Bible, in referring to the idolatrous nations which Israel is to displace, says: “You shall break their pillars, or standing stones (matsevotam)” (Deuteronomy 12:3). When we are not discerning and, in our unchanging way, adhere to a proscription that is not for “God’s sake” (lishmah) rather than seeing it now as a prescription to be fulfilled for the sake of God, we are idolizing the Law rather than serving God.¹⁶

Elimelekh is reminding us that God, and hopefully our experience of God, is beyond the boundaries of Torah; He is, and hopefully we are, not limited to or by His Torah. This rebbe relates that God Himself, as we sometimes are expected to do, “violates” the Torah for His sake (lishmah). Thus, in explaining God’s appearance in Egypt (mitsrayim), the land of “defilement,” he writes:

“And I will pass (ʿavarti) through the land of mitsrayim on that night” (Exodus 12:12). God, may He be praised, Himself, in His own glory (beatsmo ubikhvodo), revealed Himself in mitsrayim?! Behold, the rabbis, may their memory be for a blessing, said: “Greater is a transgression committed for God’s sake.” The Creator, may His name be praised, Who “sanctified us through His commandments” (kideshanu bemitsvotav)—that is to say, His commandments for He Himself fulfills the same mitsvot [which he commands of us]—said: “And I will pass (ʿavarti) through the land of Mitsrayim.” He did not say “I will go down” or [use] any other term but “and I will pass (veʿavarti),” [meaning] a “transgression (ʿaveirah) committed for God’s sake (lishmah)” (Elimelekh, Agra dekallah, 186a).¹⁷

This midrash aggadah and the midrash halakhah—through which the commandment lo taʿasun kein is a divine prescription for a transgression committed for God’s sake (“You shall make the ‘no’, a transgression, a ‘yes’”)—are complementary and mutually affirming. Here, too, through an interplay of law and narrative (one speaking to our greatest national myth), Elimelekh provides us with a divine calling that should stir us to redress an injustice that some would continue to perpetuate in the name of God. Should we not feel summoned to ask, if God makes a “no” a “yes”, abrogating a proscription in performing it as a prescription, when He enters mitsrayim to liberate His people from the realm of impurity not of their own making, lest they themselves be counted as impure, should we not do likewise for the mamzer, who, being a product of an illicit union, is cast into a context of impurity through no desire or action on his part? Rather than recording who is or might be a mamzer in order to restrict his access into the Jewish community based on the verse “A mamzer shall not enter (lo yavo) the congregation of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 23:3), should we not make the “no” (lo) a “yes” (kein) and, committing a transgression for the sake of God rather than performing a precept that does not serve Him, bring the mamzer into our community as God brought the Israelites into His.¹⁸

God asserts, explain the rabbis, that a Jewish community and its legislators that use My law to oppress rather than comfort those in need are not serving Me:

“But I returned and observed all the oppressions that are done under the sun; and behold the tears of the oppressed, and they have no comforter; but from the hand of their oppressors comes power, but they have no comforter” (Ecclesiastes 4:1). Ḥanina the Tailor interpreted this verse: “All the oppressions” this refers [to what is being done] to the mamzerim (those illicitly conceived), “and behold the tears of the oppressed,” [for] their mothers transgressed, but it is these humiliated ones that are being marginalized. This one’s father had illicit sexual relations, but what did he (the child) do?! Why should it have consequence for him?! “They had no comforter” but “from the hand of the oppressor there comes power”—this refers to the Great Assembly of Israel which comes upon them with the power of the Torah and marginalizes them in the name of “No mamzer shall enter the community of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 23:3). But, [since] “they have no comforter,” the Holy One Blessed be He says: “It is upon Me to comfort them” (Leviticus Rabbah 32:8).¹⁹

The governing body uses My Law, complains God, to aggravate rather than ameliorate the plight of the mamzer. The midrash thereafter concludes that, in a future world (ʿatid lavoh), God will create an inclusiveness of all that the current world (ʿolam hazeh) is incapable of achieving. At the same time that God presents humans as making His law an obstacle in creating a truly divine community, one hears, as well, His persistent hope that it would not be so.²⁰

The rabbis, in bringing attention to the profound pain being experienced by the mamzer, yet presenting God as the only avenue of redress, might be commenting upon a community that—by sacralizing its “moral integrity” so that it is not violated by countenancing the “stain” of mamzerut upon its collective moral fabric, lest it be placed in the precarious position of incurring the wrath of a punitive God—may be blinding rather than binding itself to that God whose will it seeks to fulfill. Returning to the words “Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse—the blessing if you heed the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you this day, and the curse if you do not heed the commandments of the Lord your God but turn away from the path which I command you today to go after other gods” (Deuteronomy 11:26–28), we find the following teaching of Elimelekh:

And this is the meaning of “Behold, I set before you today a blessing.” I place before you and in your hands that which will arouse a blessing for Israel. And “a curse” you will actualize if you do not listen to the commandments of the Lord your God, only insofar as it is in the manner that I command you this day to do this transgression; that is a transgression (ʿaverah) committed for God’s sake (lishmah), for that is to be included among My commands. By that means (committing a transgression for God’s sake) you will actualize “going after other gods”—that is, you will actualize the curse upon other gods (Benei Yissakhar 82a).21

For Elimelekh, we are commanded to both heed and transgress God’s commands. Blessing and curse are presented together, but it is our discriminating response to God’s commands that determines which we bring upon ourselves and which upon the foreign gods. Contradicting the contextual meaning of the verse, this Hasidic rebbe reads not heeding God’s commandments and turning away from the path as that “which I (God) command you to do,” in the particular instances constituting transgressions for the sake of God. Thus, in heeding God’s command by not heeding “God’s” command, we destroy foreign gods who might otherwise blind us.

Indiscriminate adherence to a particular law may undermine the whole of the Law with which it is at variance, thus violating rather than valorizing God’s Torah. Indeed, for Elimelekh, moral sensibilities that issue from outside the Law and serve to contravene a law are sometimes most consonant with the Law in which it may find its greatest support. In his midrashic “misreading” of lo taʿasun kein as both a positive and negative commandment to do what is right and just, Elimelekh shows how stimulus for change can originate outside the Law and at the same time be sanctioned within the Law. This stimulus, in turn, finds its nurturing within the moral spirit of the Law, as reflected in many of its commandments, and serves to deepen and expand our understanding of the divine moral conscience, which it further concretizes in a renewed revelation of God’s Law.

Elimelekh is heir to a rabbinic tradition that reminds us that the Torah begins and ends with an act of lovingkindness on the part of God (b. Sotah 14a). For this Hasidic rabbi, we are enjoined to make the whole of the law an expression of God’s lovingkindness. While some rabbis in the time of Elimelekh and beyond argued—as did the second–third century Amora, Samuel—that slaves must not be released lest we violate God’s Law, others, looking to a Torah reflective of a caring and loving God, rendered this law inoperative.22

In our own time, in an address entitled “Being Frum and Being Good,” Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein writes regarding filicide and genocide when discussing God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son and the biblical commandment that we eradicate Amalek:

Wiping out Amalek…killing “from child to suckling babe”…I am not saying, God forbid, it is immoral in our case, where God has specifically commanded the destruction of Amalek…The same holds true of the Akeida…in the context of the divine command, surely it partakes of the goodness and morality of God… When there is a conflict between the tsav (Divine command) and the moral order, what do we do about it? For us, the answer is perhaps practically difficult, but surely it is conceptually clear and unequivocal… The message of the Akeida is clear: God’s command takes precedence in every respect, over our moral sensibility and our conscientious objections… As those who educate towards yirat shamayim (fear of heaven), we must communicate the message of the akeida boldly, loudly and clearly.²³

His contemporary, Rabbi Harold Schulweis, in his book, Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey, presents a contrasting perspective, one with which Elimelekh would appear to concur.

What does Judaism have to say to those who, on moral grounds, may challenge commander and commandment, rabbinic and scriptural narratives and laws? …Legislation and obedience are essential aspects of Judaism, but are controlled by a persistent moral conscience. The deep respect in Judaism for courage of conscience cultivates a sensibility significantly different from [that] of the religious believer who stands passive, acquiescent, and trembling before God and scripture… Contrary to those who split asunder the duty to obey and the duty to disobey, viewing them as contradictory, we Jews regard both duties as complementary.²⁴

When confronted with a Constitution that does not recognize the full humanity of black people or their right to freedom, some abolitionists rejected the former in their commitment to the latter. Elimelekh, reflective of the Jewish tradition, sees that fidelity to those marginalized by the Law requires us to rectify rather than forsake that Law.²⁵ We advance our shared humanity in more fully realizing a Torah of morality. It is through a “redemptive righting” of our Torah, as found in and promoted by the teachings of this Hasidic rebbe that we make for and are blessed by a renewed revelation of the divine moral conscience.

Rabbi Daniel Z. Siegel has served as Head of Jewish studies and Jewish Life programs in Australia, Canada and the United States. He is a lifelong educator, teacher and student of our Jewish textual tradition.

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Rachael Turkienicz

One of the most challenging instances in life is when we begin to move from sadness to despair. This transition often involves feelings of isolation and hopelessness. Once despair sets in, a person’s perspectives can narrow, and the ability to move beyond the despairing moment minimizes. The Torah narrative of Hagar’s exile into the wilderness with her son, Ishmael, portrays her journey toward despair, as well as her journey toward its resolution: hope. By carefully reading the verses that detail Hagar’s exile, consulting with parts of Psalms, rabbinic literature, and modern psychological approaches, a model for transitioning from despair to hope can be seen.

From Sadness to Despair

Unlike moments of sadness or grief, despair has a far more all-encompassing aspect to it. According to the American Psychological Association’s dictionary, despair is: “the emotion or feeling of hopelessness, that is, that things are profoundly wrong and will not change for the better. Despair is one of the most negative and destructive of human affects.” There is a narrative within Torah, the exile of Hagar and Ishmael (Genesis 21:14–21), that portrays the human journey from despair to healing.¹ The beginning of the text outlines the dilemma and the beginning stages of despair (Genesis 21:14–16):

וישכם אברהם בבקר ויקח לחם וחמת מים ויתן אל הגר שם על שכמה ואת הילד וישלחה ותלך ותתע במדבר באר שבע‏ ויכלו המים מן החמת ותשלך את הילד תחת אחד השיחם‎ ותלך ותשב לה מנגד הרחק כמטחוי קשת כי אמרה אל אראה במות הילד ותשב מנגד ותשא את קלה ותבך

And Abraham arose early in the morning, and he took bread and a goatskin of water, and he gave them to Hagar, placed it on her shoulder, with her son, and sent her. She went and erred in the wilderness of Beersheba. And the water in the goatskin ceased, and she sent the boy under one of the bushes. And she went and sat by herself opposite, at the distance of an arrow from a bow, because she said, “I must not see the death of the boy.” As she sat opposite, she raised her voice, and she wept.

The description of events, as well as the choice of images and words, paints the picture of someone who is beginning to despair. The Torah depicts increasing challenges, as well as a mindset of personal responsibility, both of which lead to the conclusion of personal failure. Repeated images, as well as words of battle and confrontation, are used to indicate the locked perspective of conflict that repeats in the worldview playing repeatedly in the mind.

Textual Images and Word Choices

On a careful reading of the Hagar narrative, we can see that the Torah presents key signs of a despairing person: an overwhelming load, feelings of being lost and rejected, a narrowing of perception, and an effort to position oneself in opposition to or in conflict with one’s surroundings. We see in Hagar a person who has descended to the lowest spiritual and psychological levels. If such a person is left alone, there is a strong possibility of extreme outcomes.

The Load is Overwhelming

Hagar has been exiled into the wilderness with her son, and with limited supplies. The order of phrases in Genesis 21:14 indicates that Abraham has placed two warm things on Hagar’s shoulders. The Hebrew word for “goatskin of water” contains the word “warm” in it (חמת מים), and her son, Ishmael, has the warmth of a living child. Hagar is now carrying the water they will need to survive, as well as the life for which she is responsible, on her shoulders. Both these responsibilities are emitting heat as she is cast into the desert, where heat is a primary threat. By playing with this image of warmth and wilderness, the Torah shows that the things normally viewed as reinforcing survival are now being viewed as growing threats.

Although it is Abraham who is exiling her, Hagar never blames him or expresses anger toward him. This may also be explained by the description of Abraham placing these things on her shoulders. Once placed, Hagar bears both the water of their future survival and the child she birthed from the waters of her womb on both her shoulders. This image also shows the shift from carrying Ishmael in her womb to now carrying Ishmael on her shoulders. While he was in her womb, Hagar could provide water for him constantly; now that he is on her shoulder, she cannot give him what he needs, and she now sees this as her failure, not Abraham’s.

Losing the Way

The Torah tells us that, before running out of water, Hagar lost her way in the desert. Hagar is an Egyptian woman and may have been able to return to Egypt had she not become disoriented in the desert. The problem she faces begins not with a lack of resources (water) but with a lack of direction or control. The water running out is now the last measure of loss in that Hagar, the mother, can no longer provide the waters of life for her son. Hagar’s entire focus is on her relationship with her son, which becomes apparent because the loss of water is equally a threat to her own life, but she does not see it.

Rejection

When Abraham rejects Hagar, the verb used is וישלחה, “and he sent her”; when Hagar leaves Ishmael under a bush, the verb used is ותשלך, “and she sent.” This is a strange verb choice for Hagar, as it literally means “to send,” but in her case she seems to be laying her child under the bush. The deliberate use of this verb, especially because it is a constrained use, hints at the place of rejection within despair. Abraham has rejected Hagar by sending her away. Hagar will subsequently reject all meaningful relationships in her life, mirroring the rejection that triggered her despair. A key component of despair is a sense of isolation and rejection, which leads to a narrowing of perspective and connections.²

A Narrowing of Perception

Once the water has stopped, Hagar places Ishmael “under one of the bushes” (Genesis 21:16). In other words, Hagar is sitting at an oasis that has living bushes, a clear sign of the presence of water. The solution to her dilemma is sitting all around her, but Hagar is unable to see it. Hagar’s perceptions have narrowed, such that she is able to process the crisis but cannot see the opportunities for resolution.

Words of Opposition and Conflict

Once Hagar has placed Ishmael under the bush, the Torah says that she sat at a distance from him (Genesis 21:16). The exact description is ותשב לה מנגד, which literally means “and she sat in opposition.” In fact, the phrase repeats later in the same verse, emphasizing that she has positioned herself in conflict with, or opposition to, the events. The language becomes stronger when the distance being described is כמטחוי קשת, “like the distance of an arrow from a bow.” The text has used the image of a weapon to describe the measure of Hagar’s distance. A bow and arrow would be used either to attack or to hunt. In either case, Hagar is feeling that she is being preyed upon, as if she has been targeted.

The Portrait of Despair

Abraham Maslow’s Pyramid (1943) represents a hierarchy of human needs beginning with a broad base structure of physiological needs. This base covers the essential needs of food, warmth, water, and rest. The pyramid builds upward through needs of safety, belongingness and love, esteem, and culminates with self-actualization. According to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, Hagar has been deprived of all stages listed on the hierarchy. The resulting psychology is one of despair, a struggle to survive.

There is a commonly accepted notion that a person needs to “hit rock bottom” before rebuilding. The idea is that, while sitting at the bottom, they would understand that there is only one direction of movement, and that is upward. However, there is a second option to someone in this position: rather than choosing to move upward, the person might choose to opt out entirely. It is important to recognize when the spiral has reached its lowest point, since connecting in that moment may make all the difference in which choice the person will make. Connecting means meeting the person where they are without offering platitudes of how things will get better.³

The Torah’s Response to Hagar

The Torah’s response to Hagar’s despair is related in the verses that immediately follow the incident (Genesis 21:17–19):

וישמע א–להים את קול הנער ויקרא מלאך א–להים אל הגר מן השמים ויאמר לה מה לך הגר אל תיראי כי שמע א–להים אל קול הנער באשר הוא שם: קומי שאי את הנער והחזיקי את ידך בו כי לגוי גדול אשימנו: ויפקח א–להים את עיניה ותרא באר מים ותלך ותמלא את החמת מים ותשק את הנער:

 And God heard the voice of the lad, and an angel of God called to Hagar from the sky and said to her: “What [is upon] you, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the lad from where he is. Rise up, carry the lad, and strengthen your hand with his, for I will place him as a great nation.” And God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water, and she went, filled the goatskin of water, and fed water to the lad.

As the narrative progresses, we are told that Ishmael has also been despairing and crying out: “And God heard the voice of the lad.” In fact, the angel tells Hagar: “God has heard the voice of the lad from where he is.” Although we are told of Hagar’s dilemma, we must not forget that Ishmael is doing worse and is at death’s door. The focus now shifts from Hagar as the victim to Hagar as the support person.

Moving toward Hope

The Torah now outlines the initial stages involved in approaching Hagar and changing her perspective. The first words spoken are words of inquiry: “What [is upon] you?” is an open-ended question of outreach that allows the person to describe what they are seeing and feeling—or, conversely, what they are not seeing or feeling.

The angel immediately proceeds to give instructions to Hagar and explain what she must do to save Ishmael. The instructions are simple and easy to follow: stand up, walk over to him, touch him, cradle him, hold his hand. Each step on its own is small but addresses parts of the isolation Hagar must overcome to help her son—to simply be present with him, no words exchanged except the offer of companionship, and to move from there to caring gestures such as touching hands, in order to strengthen each other with the power of presence and contact. Throughout it all, the angel does not tell Hagar to say anything, because sometimes words can themselves become the barriers.

Michelle Friedman, a psychiatrist who founded and directs the pastoral program at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, notes: “What clergy do wrong is leaning forward and talking too much. In their own anxiety, they are not believing in the power of pastoral listening and hospitality. People feel like they have to make it better, to fill the space with words. They really need to quiet down.”⁴ This subtle sentiment is also present in Jewish traditions of visiting mourners at a shiva house. It is the presence of the visitor that is comforting, not necessarily the words of comfort, which can sometimes sound like platitudes. The person visiting—or, in the Hagar text, the person supporting—initially takes the role of listener. At times, subtle and small physical gestures of contact breach the isolation far more effectively than words.

Although we hear that Hagar raised her voice to sob, we are told that God heard the voice of Ishmael. Genesis Rabbah 53,19 comments on this change of subject and connects it to the phrase “from where he is”: באשר הוא שם. בזכות עצמו. יפה תפילת החולה לעצמו יותר מכל, “‘From where he is.’ On his own merit. The prayer of the one who is ailing is preferred over all others.” Genesis Rabbah states that God hears Ishmael’s cries first because Ishmael is more desperate than Hagar in this moment. The midrash clearly states that a person must be strengthened to reach out on their own behalf. Empowerment can be found in self-advocacy, in finding one’s own voice.

This concept is reinforced in the Talmud, Bava Metziʾa 33a: אבדתו ואבדת אביו אבדתו קודמת אבדתו ואבדת רבו שלו קודם, “We learn (Mishnah), his own lost article and the lost article of his father, his own lost article takes precedence. And [as regards] the lost article of his rabbi, his own takes precedence.” The Talmud lists the comparisons between us and those people in our lives we have been commanded to respect and revere. Although one might assume that the commandment to respect a father or a rabbi would be prioritized first, it is self-care that gains importance when feeling disadvantaged.

The same midrash in Genesis Rabbah (53,19) also discusses the latitude of assessment in the moment of despair. It is not about what was or what will be; it is singularly about what is within this moment. Genesis Rabbah presents a discussion between God and the angels as God is preparing to save Ishmael:

אמרו לפניו רבון העולמים אדם שהוא עתיד להמית בניך מצמא, את מעלה לו באר? א׳׳ל עכשו מה הוא, צדיק או רשע? אמרו לו, צדיק. א׳׳ל איני דן את האדם אלא בשעתו.

They said before Him: “Master of Eternities, a person who is destined in the future to kill your children by thirst, You raise a well for him?” He said to them, “Right now, what is he, righteous or wicked?” They said to Him, “Righteous.” He said to them, “I do not judge a person except for in his [present] moment.”⁵

Genesis Rabbah has narrowed the context to be this moment of time, while ruling out a discussion of the future. To begin the support for someone who is despairing is to enter the current moment of despair with them, not to begin with predicting a future. Only once the support person is standing alongside them can the discussion entertain unknown futures.

When the angel says “For I will place him as a great nation” (Genesis 21:18), the angel is now introducing a future that looks quite different than either the present moment or even what logical hope might have predicted. The statement explores the aspect of creating the possibility of the unknown. It broadens the narrow perspective on the moment and invites the person to imagine what could be.

The Torah then states that God opens Hagar’s eyes so she can see the well of water. It does not say that God creates a well; rather, the well had been there all along, but Hagar’s despair made her blind to its existence. Once the angel opens the door of possibility in her mind, Hagar can entertain the opportunities that are around and see them as possibilities.

The final verse has Hagar refilling the water from the well, an endless source of water, and seeing herself again as the protective mother to her son. This image is solidified when the text says את הנער ותשק, which means “she fed him water,” but the verb also alludes to a kiss. She is now giving Ishmael water both from the well and from her lips—the physical and the emotional/spiritual are replenished.

While the Torah provides the basis for understanding this portrait of despair and hope, it is only the outline within which the remaining texts find their expressions.

The View from Within: Psalms Can Enter the Moment

Following the example of the Torah and the midrash, an important step in supporting someone is to enter the moment they are experiencing, rather than try and force them to enter yours. The book of Psalms is filled with texts that speak to the moment of sadness from within and allow the reader to unapologetically explore its realms. It is to enter the human heart and walk around.

The psalms that describe the despairing heart from the inside validate its pain. The psalmist does not retreat from the recognition that a person can legitimately feel abandoned, isolated, and betrayed. These verses can be used to sit together with a person and enter the heartache they feel. We see this, for example, in Psalm 22:

(ב) א–לי א–לי למה עזבתני רחוק מישועתי דברי שאגתי: (ג) א–להי אקרא יומם ולא תענה ולילה ולא דומיה לי: (ד) ואתה קדוש יושב תהלות ישראל:...(ח) כל ראי ילעגו לי יפטירו בשפה יניעו ראש:...(י) כי אתה גחי מבטן מבטיחי על שדי אמי: (יא) עליך השלכתי מרחם מבטן אמי א–לי אתה: (יב) אל תרחק ממני כי צרה קרובה כי אין עוזר:

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me, far from helping me when I roared my words? My God, I call to You all day and You do not answer, and at night, and You make no appearance to me. But You are the Holy One who sits on the praises of Israel… All those who see me will mock me, they will open with their lips and they will shake their head… Because You drew me from the womb, You gave me promise at my mother’s breast. I was cast upon You from the womb, from my mother’s womb You are my God. Do not make Yourself far from me, because crisis is close, and there is no one there to help me.

The psalm begins with the validation of feeling abandoned, alone, and betrayed. It incriminates God for remaining silent in the face of beseeching words. The verbs of the first four verses speak of a present and ongoing unanswered outreach. There is no reprieve, whether it is day or night. Sitting with no answer, the psalmist reminds God that God sits on Israel’s praises. The unspoken disconnect is the complete divine disengagement from the painful outreach of someone who belongs to those who praise.

The psalm continues to explore the details of the human rejection experienced by the writer. It is in their spoken words and in their body language; it is both overt and subtle, but it is present and unending. The verbs now change to future tense. It reflects the viewpoint of a person in despair who believes that what is currently happening will continue to happen endlessly, with no change or improvement. To this point, the words of the psalm, when shared with a person in pain, creates a point at which the support person can enter the pain through validation, with no comfort offered. Any words of comfort would be understood as undermining the reality of the experience in its personal and spiritual depth and trauma.

The psalmist then expresses the reality that life exists because God wills it, and the writer therefore has no choice but to feel bonded with God. God was present at birth and through infancy, as the writer was sheltered and nourished by his mother’s breast. The psalm explains that an acceptance of God occurred in those most gentle moments when the world was reduced to God and the mother, both anchoring the new life. The fact that no one else is mentioned in the poem excludes all those who mock and will continue to mock. They have never been part of the essential picture. They are insignificant.

The language of the psalm now switches to the imperative verb form. It does not beseech but demands—אל תרחק, “Do not make Yourself far!”—ultimately stating that God’s presence is the constant, and God must stand beside him.

Modern religious pastoral care teaches clergy to understand how and when to bring God into the discussion. Theresa Clement Tisdale, Carrie E. Doehring, and Veneta Lorraine-Poriere⁶ present a case study outlining the following steps for pastoral support and care:

The importance of listening to the theological language used by the person. Entering the moment of despair to stand with the person affected includes listening first to establish common theological language and perspective.

Once the language is established, the discussion can explore the theological structure within which the person views the crisis: one of sin; personal or societal; is there promise in redemption; does the person believe in personal salvation etc.

Throughout the conversations, it is important to note if the person has maintained or changed their understanding of God in their lives, and whether the crisis has affected this or triggered it.

By using the Psalm 22 excerpts or similar verses, the discussion around God and the person’s feelings of religious context can be explored and validated. It is important to allow the suffering person to articulate spiritual feelings, and this can be encouraged by asking questions such as: What were they and what are they now? When did the change occur? What would be the ideal picture? Where do they feel God’s absence?

The journey of the psalmist toward empowerment, self-advocacy, and direct theological dialogue now includes the perspectives presented within modern pastoral literature.

Words of Comfort Can Become Words of Pain

Even as a support person might intend to bring comfort and relief, it is often easy to fall back on long held cultural beliefs that may no longer hold true. “Misery loves company” can lead someone to offer examples of suffering, believing that this will soothe the sufferer. This strategy often backfires, as it may end up adding more pain or fear to the situation or rendering the uniqueness of their moment less important.

Chapter 14 of Avot deRabbi Natan describes a situation of crisis and the responses it received:

כשמת בנו של רבן יוחנן בן זכאי נכנסו תלמידיו לנחמו נכנס רבי אליעזר וישב לפניו ואמר ליה רבי רצונך אומר דבר אחד לפניך. אמר לו אמור. אמר לו אדם הראשון היה לו בן ומת וקבל עליו תנחומין, ומנין שקבל עליו תנחומין שנאמר וידע אדם עוד את אשתו (בראשית ד׳ כ׳ה) אף אתה קבל תנחומין. אמר לו לא די לי שאני מצטער בעצמי אלא הזכרת לי צערו של אדם הראשון. נכנס רבי יהושע ואמר לו רצונך אומר דבר לפניך. אמר לו אמור. אמר לו איוב היו לו בנים ובנות ומתו כולם ביום אחד וקבל עליהם תנחומין אף אתה קבל תנחומין. ומנין שקבל איוב תנחומין שנאמר ה׳ נתן וה׳ לקח יהי שם ה׳ מבורך (איוב א׳ כ׳א). אמר לו לא די לי שאני מצטער בעצמי אלא שהזכרת לי צערו של איוב. נכנס רבי יוסי וישב לפניו אמר לו רבי רצונך אומר דבר לפניך. אמר לו אמור. אמר לו אהרן היו לו שני בנים גדולים ומתו שניהם ביום אחד וקבל עליהם תנחומין שנאמר וידם אהרן (ויקרא י׳ ג׳) אין שתיקה אלא תנחומין ואף אתה קבל תנחומין. אמר לו לא די לי שאני מצטער בעצמי אלא שהזכרתני צערו של אהרן. נכנס רבי שמעון ואמר לו רבי רצונך אומר דבר לפניך. אמר לו אמור. אמר לו דוד המלך היה לו בן ומת וקבל תנחומין ואף אתה קבל תנחומין ומנין שקבל דוד תנחומין שנאמר וינחם דוד את בת שבע אשתו ויבא אליה וישכב עמה ותלד בן ויקרא את שמו שלמה (שמואל ב׳ י׳כ כ׳ד) אף אתה רבי קבל תחנומין. אמר לו לא די שאני מצטער בעצמי אלא שהזכרתני צערו של דוד המלך. נכנס רבי אלעזר בן עזריה...וישב לפניו ואמר לו אמשול לך משל למה הדבר דומה לאדם שהפקיד אצלו המלך פקדון. בכל יום ויום היה בוכה וצועק ואומר אוי לי אימתי אצא מן הפקדון הזה בשלום. אף אתה רבי היה לך בן קרא תורה מקרא נביאים וכתובים משנה הלכות ואגדות ונפטר מן העולם בלא חטא ויש לקבל עליך תנחומין כשהחזרת פקדונך שלם. אמר לו רבי יוחנן, אלעזר בני נחמתני כדרך שבני אדם מנחמין.

When Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai’s son died, his disciples came to comfort him. Rabbi Eliezer entered, sat before him, and said, “Master, by your will, may I say one thing to you?” He said to him, “Speak.” Rabbi Eliezer said, “Adam had a son who died, yet he accepted comfort over him. And from where do we learn that he accepted comfort? ‘And Adam knew his woman again’ (Genesis 4:25), now you too must accept comfort.” He said to him, “Is it not enough that I have my own sorrow, but now you remind me of the sorrow of the first human being?” Rabbi Joshua entered, and he said to him, “By your will, may I say one thing to you?,” and he said to him, “Speak.” He said to him, “Job had sons and daughters, and they all died on one day, and he accepted comfort over them. Now you must accept comfort. And from where do we know that Job accepted comfort? As is written, ‘God gave and God took, may the Name of God be blessed’ (Job 1:21–22).” He said to him, “Is it not enough that I have my own sorrow, but now you remind me of the sorrow of Job?” Rabbi Yosi entered and sat before him. He said to him, “My Master, by your will, may I say one thing to you?,” he said to him, “Speak.” He said to him, “Aaron had two grown sons, and the two of them died on the same day and Aaron accepted comfort, as is written ‘And Aaron was silent’ (Leviticus 10:3), there is no [other meaning] for silence other than comfort. Now you, too, must accept comfort.” He said to him, “It is not enough that I have my own sorrow, but now you remind me of the sorrow of Aaron?” Rabbi Shimon entered, and he said to him, “My master, by your will, may I say one thing to you?,” he said to him, “Speak.” He said to him, “King David had a son who died, and he accepted comfort. From where do we know that David accepted comfort? As is written, ‘And David comforted Batsheva, his wife, and he came to her and he lay with her, and she delivered a son, and he called his name Solomon’ (2 Samuel 12:24). Now you too must accept comfort.” He said to him, “It is not enough that I have my sorrow, but now you remind me of the sorrow of King David?” Rabbi Eleazar ben Azaria entered…and sat before him. He said to him, “I will draw an analogy for you. To what does this compare? To a man with whom the king entrusted something. Each and every day he would cry and shout ‘Woe to me, when will I be safely relieved of this trust?’ Even you, my master, You had a son who read Torah, he read Prophets and Scrolls, Mishnah, laws, and legends, and he is now departed from the world without sin. It is upon you to receive comfort that you returned your trust whole.” He said to him, “Rabbi Eleazar, my son, you have comforted me in the way that a human being should be comforted.”

The midrash presents Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai as an inconsolable parent in the face of losing his son. As each rabbi enters to offer comfort, they engage in what they think he would find most comforting: rabbinic discourse. Each of the examples offered is an example from text, and the emotional arguments they present are all accompanied with prooftexts. It is the day-to-day exchange in which they all engage; it is the discourse of their lives. They are seeking to offer comfort through the security of routine.

But ben Zakkai rejects each one, not on the basis of the argument, but on the basis of the lack of humanity within the argument. He points out to them that empathy would result in increased sorrow, not comfort. The suffering of others is not a textual exchange. It is a human moment that must be recognized in the uniqueness of each one. To consider that “misery loves company” is to argue that all suffering and misery is the same and can therefore be grouped together to form some kind of community in which comfort can be found. Ben Zakkai refutes each attempt by telling his interlocutor that they are adding to his pain.

When ben Azaria gives his analogy, he is speaking in human terms, with no texts and no prooftexts. He offers the story of the human condition and the ongoing responsibility of parenting. In his final words to ben Zakkai, ben Azaria offers him comfort in the idea that, throughout his son’s life, he met his parental responsibility of providing care, knowledge, depth of insight, and guidance for a life without sin. The loss is still there, but the self-blame and doubt has been comforted. Ben Zakkai addresses ben Azaria as “my son” and by doing so offers the response that ben Azaria spoke to him from within the relationship he shared with his lost son—ben Azaria had entered the realm of ben Zakkai’s pain and spoke to him from there. In the end, the comfort is accepted because it is “the way a human being should be comforted”—it entered the human moment and spoke from within.

Conclusion

The Torah brings a powerful portrait of despair, presenting the details and steps through which Hagar’s journey leads her there. Once despair sets in, Hagar can no longer see opportunities or hope; she feels hunted and lost and has given up. The nuances of the Torah text are reinforced through modern psychological lenses of depression and despair. Once the biblical narrative changes Hagar’s role from victim to support person, we become aware of the voice of the suffering child, Ishmael. Rabbinic literature enters the text in discussing the power of self-advocacy and the importance of finding your own voice.

The ability to enter the heart, into the reality of the despairing person, is accessible through the excerpts from Psalms. Once we have validated the suffering and all the emotions that accompany it, a candid exploration of God’s presence in life or perceived absence can be discussed. The perspectives of modern psychiatric and pastoral care providers include the questioning and discussion of God, as well as the changing spiritual relationships that are important in a life journey. The importance of listening rather than speaking is crucial to creating and maintaining a supporting connection.

Ultimately, rabbinic literature shows how words of comfort that are offered must recognize the uniqueness of each person and their experiences. A moment of despair breaks the mold of the mundane; mundane words will therefore only make it worse. It is the human bond, the recognition of the suffering in its uniqueness, that can begin a discussion that moves toward comfort and hope.

Hagar, in her despair, and an angel with but a few words open a deeper understanding in us all. In allowing these texts to connect with each other, each bringing a different crucial element to the human moment, the journey from despair to hope broadens. Through this model, the Torah and all supporting texts and examples brought here allow us to recognize when someone moves closer to despair, and how we might enter that moment with them to begin a journey toward hope.

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Daniel Stein

In his famous meditation on Jewish history, Zakhor, Yosef Haim Yerushalmi laments what he considers to be a lacuna of “historiography” in rabbinic literature. “Classical rabbinic literature,” he writes, “was never intended as historiography, even in the biblical, let alone the modern, sense, and it cannot be understood through canons of criticism appropriate to history alone.”¹ Yerushalmi follows Hannah Arendt in drawing a distinction between Jewish history and memory. History, he argues, is focused on constructing linear narratives with defined teleologies. Memory, on the other hand, is less concerned with chronology and is “by its nature, selective.”² Memory, Yerushalmi asserts, and not history was the sustaining force behind the Jewish people prior to the advent of modernity. Yerushalmi expresses anxiety that in the modern period the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction: while there is no shortage of historical writing, Judaism has failed to create a metahistorical narrative that functions as memory once did. This failure of synthesis, he asserts, pushes the community toward a crisis.³

What if, though, the rabbis of the Talmud had a different approach to history and historical memory—one that is perhaps obscured by its very synthesis? We might argue that asynchronous tales of rabbinic literature are models of what Walter Benjamin famously called “the tradition of the oppressed.”⁴ In reading such traditions, one of Benjamin’s translators, the philosopher Susan Buck-Morss has argued for privileging the fragmentary over the linear. “The detail that counts,” she writes, “is the one that arrests the reader because it does not fit that narrative.”⁵ Such fragments, she asserts, can function as the Paris arcades did for Benjamin, as “a passageway that pierces through the street facade of the present, providing an entry point into the past.”⁶ Perhaps we could be even bolder in contemplating the role of rabbinic literature in the Jewish tradition: Could it be the passageway from the past that provides an entry point into the present moment?

This approach to memory challenges the nostalgia typologies recently explored by literary theorist Svetlana Boym.⁷ Boym sees acts of memory as either restorative, embracing a dangerous desire to restore a simulacrum of a past that never was, or reflective, forever trapped in a narcissistic sense of loss. Indeed, recent interest in the fragmentary nature of rabbinic literature—a literature born out of the cataclysmic destruction of the Second Temple that Benay Lappe has called “The Crash”—may herald a contemporary renewal of the praxis of Jewish memory.⁸

In this essay, I will reread a famous tale from the Passover Haggadah, the account of the sages’ seder at Benei Braq, seeking to understand the implications of reading this tale as such an entry point into the past. I hope that reflecting on this famous rabbinic narrative evidences a different and less pathologized form of memory than those Boym contemplates. The rabbis knew of a kind of memory that engages neither in narcissistic melancholy nor in restorative fantasy. Instead, we witness a trend in rabbinic literature that seeks to memorialize the past in order to redeem the present. As we will discuss below, and following Benjamin’s understanding of melancholia, critical theorists Judith Butler and Enzo Traverso have named this kind of memory either “productive” or “fruitful” melancholia.”⁹

Toward the beginning of the Haggadah, we read:

A story is told of Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah, and Rabbi Akiva, who were reclining in B’nai B’rak, and were telling of the Exodus from Egypt all of that evening, until their students came and said to them: Our Rabbis, the time has arrived to recite the morning shema.¹⁰

This tale appears in the Haggadah as a response to the preceding passage: “All who expand on the telling of the Exodus from Egypt are considered praiseworthy.” In our story, we see many of the great sages of their generation doing exactly that—expanding on the story at such length and with such fervor that their students must interrupt their study for the only ritual obligation that could take precedence: the recitation of the morning prayers. The story of the sages is also linked to Eleazar ben Azaria’s legal statement, which immediately follows it, and which may be understood, at least in this context, as a continuation of the story itself. This is markedly different than the way the story of Eleazar ben Azaria appears in the Mishnah.¹¹ There, Eleazar ben Azaria is responding to the legal statement that the exodus be recalled in the evening. Here, the Haggadah presents the legal statement alongside the narrative material as a single literary unit, generating further interpretive implications.

The reception tradition around the Haggadah has long been fascinated with this gathering, which brings together many—but not all—of the greatest rabbinic sages of the first century at a time of great upheaval. Is there a deeper meaning to this grouping of sages? Can we say with precision when exactly they met? Why did they apparently travel from their homes to the town of Benei Braq? Did their gathering signify anything at all beyond what is stated explicitly in the text?

One of the most well-known answers to these questions is of recent origin. In Ḥagim umoʿadim (Holidays and Festivals, 1943), Yehuda Leib Maimon wonders why the sages’ students are absent from the seder and appear only at the very end of the meal. He offers this hypothesis:

I speculate, therefore…that this party, which gathered the sages of Israel from a variety of locations, had a double purpose: while its expressed goal was to engage with the memories of the past in the form of the Exodus from Egypt, the sages also hoped to discuss the issues of the day from their national-religious (datit-leumit) perspective. They were especially concerned with the rebellion against the Roman Empire, which had recently started to develop in secret among the Jews of Israel and which would culminate in the Bar Kokhba Revolt and the Hadrianic War.¹²

Maimon was an important Zionist religious and political leader. He was a founder of the Mizrahi movement, one of the most significant religious Zionist political organizations. He also founded Mosad haRav Kook, a religious research organization named after Israel’s first chief rabbi, and served as Israel’s first minister of religion. In Maimon’s reading of the gathering of sages at Benei Braq, we see clear reverberations of a Zionist mythology that emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. He introduces an element not found in the text—that the seder is no longer simply a religious gathering but a clandestine conclave planning revolt against Rome. Rabbi Akiva assumes a central role in this reading for his endorsement of Simon Bar Kokhba, the military leader whose doomed campaign against Rome marked the final chapter of Jewish life in Palestine and the true beginning of exile. This interpretive choice is reflective of broader trends; as Yael Zerubavel has observed, the Zionist movement rehabilitated the personage of Bar Kokhba, perhaps in countervalance to the rabbinic tradition:

The transformation of Bar Kokhba from a dubious leader of a failed revolt to a prominent heroic figure from Antiquity is an important feature of the Zionist reshaping of the past…. National pride was a central Zionism theme, and the revolt was important because it symbolized the ancient Hebrews’ proud and courageous stand…. The Zionist commemorative narrative thus shifts its focus from the outcome of the revolt to the act of rebelling.¹³

Maimon’s reading, then, may be a kind of historical artifact; it is revelatory in helping to understand the early Zionist worldview but does little to help us understand the literary context that generated the Haggadah. A more compelling interpretation can be found in the commentary of Maimon’s teacher, Yechiel Michael Epstein, widely known as the Arukh hashulkhan after his composition of the same name. In Epstein’s commentary on the Passover Haggadah, he observes:

We must look into this—for rabbi Eliezer lived in Lod, Rabbi Yehoshua lived in Peki’in, and Rabbi Akiva lived in B’nei B’rak. For what purpose did they gather at Rabbi Akiva’s home in B’nei B’rak?...It appears, in my humble opinion, that this story should be read in accordance with this account in the Talmud.¹⁴

Here, Epstein points the reader to this famous narrative in b. Makkot:

Once, Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Elezar ben Azariah, Rabbi Yehoshua, and Rabbi Akiva…were coming up to Jerusalem together, and just as they came to Mount Scopus, they saw a fox emerging from the Holy of Holies. They fell a-weeping and R. Akiba seemed merry. “Wherefore,” said they to him, “are you merry?” Said he: “Wherefore are you weeping?”Said they to him: “A place of which it was once said, ‘And the common man that draws nigh shall be put to death,’ is now become the haunt of foxes, and should we not weep?” Said he to them: “Therefore am I merry; for it is written, ‘And I will take to Me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest and Zechariah the Son of Jeberechiah’ [Isaiah 8:2].” “Now what connection has this Uriah the priest with Zechariah? Uriah lived during the times of the first Temple, while [the other,] Zechariah lived [and prophesied] during the second Temple; but Holy-Writ linked the [later] prophecy of Zechariah with the [earlier] prophecy of Uriah. In the [earlier] prophecy [in the days] of Uriah it is written, ‘Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field etc.’ [Micah 3:12]. In Zechariah it is written, ‘Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, There shall yet old men and old women sit in the broad places of Jerusalem’ [Zechariah 8:4].” “So long as Uriah’s prophecy had not had its fulfilment, I had misgivings lest Zechariah’s prophecy might not be fulfilled; now that Uriah’s prophecy has been fulfilled, it is quite certain that Zechariah’s prophecy also is to find its literal fulfilment.”Said they to him: “Akiba, you have comforted us! Akiba, you have comforted us!”¹⁵

Epstein, then, offers this gloss on the tale:

Therefore, I say that it was for this reason that the sages gathered at Rabbi Akiva’s home: he strengthened the hopes of the House of Israel immediately after the destruction of the temple. Therefore, they all came to the city and the house of Rabbi Akiva—except for Rabban Gamliel, who did not come because he was the Nasi.¹⁶

By setting the Haggadah’s seder within the larger narrative context of the Talmud, Epstein’s reading invites us to explore foundational questions. What was the relationship between these sages? Was there something significant about Rabbi Akiva’s personality that caused his colleagues to travel to his home instead of their own? And can we read anything at all into the absence of their colleague Rabban Gamliel—who is absent from Rabbi Akiva’s seder, but whose voice is essential to the Haggadah? Following Epstein, I would like to a suggest a reading that asks us to situate the story of the seder at Benei Braq alongside the Babylonian Talmud specifically and rabbinic literature more generally. I will also suggest a hermeneutic for understanding this rabbinic gathering and argue that, in recalling narratives of liberation, the rabbis may have been engaged in a task even more revolutionary than planning a revolt against their Hadrianic oppressors.

To understand the seder at Benei Braq, then, I suggest that we read the tale as part of a series of narratives that Daniel Boyarin has called “The Yavneh Cycle.” Boyarin argues that the Babylonian Talmud’s stories of the rabbinic academy at Yavneh are meant to be read collectively, and that Yavneh serves as an “icon of the Stammaitic yeshiva” of the fifth century.¹⁷ Following Boyarin, Moshe Simon-Shoshan has argued that Yavneh functioned as a “narrative world” for the redactors of the Talmud, who “established the norms on which the society of the beit midrash is founded and the ground rules by which rabbinic study, dispute, and decision-making are to be conducted.”¹⁸

The Talmud famously tells the tale of how the academy at Yavneh was founded. During the Roman siege of Jerusalem, Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua, the first two protagonists mentioned in our story, hid the great sage Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Zakkai in a coffin and smuggled him out of the city. The story goes to relate how, while leaving the city, the trio encountered the Roman emperor Vespasian, and the quick-witted rabbi Eliezer was able not only to sweet talk his way out of trouble, but also to extract additional promises from the emperor. He secured the protection of Yavneh and guaranteed the safety of Rabban Gamliel, a descendent of both King David and Hillel the Elder, who would serve as nasi, leader of the rabbinic court, after Rabbi Yoḥanan. ¹⁹

The other sages at our seder represent a younger, so-called second generation of sages. Rabbi Eleazar ben Azaria and Rabbi Akiva are the students in our story and are listed second to illustrate their subordinate position in the chain of transmission. Yet, according to the Talmud, three of the four sages mentioned do share at least one thing in common: they were participants in the controversy that led to the removal of Rabban Gamliel as nasi.

Several stories in the Talmud relate how Rabban Gamliel could be particularly cruel, especially to his contemporary, Rabbi Yehoshua. In one well-known incident, Rabban Gamliel disagrees on the calculation of Yom Kippur. Using his authority as the nasi, Rabban Gamliel orders Rabbi Yehoshua to appear before him with his staff and purse on the date Rabbi Yehoshua considered to be Yom Kippur. Rabbi Yehoshua is humiliated and distraught at having to violate the most sacred day of the year, as he understood it, to appease the nasi. It took the intervention of Rabbi Akiva to resolve the dispute, appease Rabbi Yehoshua, and honor Rabban Gamliel.

In another famous incident, Rabban Gamliel was deposed from leadership of the rabbinic academy. Here, again, in a dispute with Rabbi Yehoshua over whether the evening prayer was obligatory or optional, Rabban Gamliel humiliates his contemporary. He forces the aging Rabbi Yehoshua to stand for hours in the study hall and ultimately compels him to publicly recant his previous teaching. This shaming is more than his fellow can bear. The assembled sages—including Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabbi Eleazar ben Azaria—lock Rabban Gamliel out of the study house and appoint Rabbi Eleazar ben Azaria as nasi in his place.²⁰

Perhaps this rift explains Rabban Gamliel’s absence from at Benei Braq. While Rabbi Akiva again intercedes to restore harmony, suggesting a rotating leadership of the academy, the damage has been done. Rabban Gamliel’s absence from the seder suggests that he is unable or unwilling to celebrate Passover with the other sages. The association of the seder at Benei Braq and Rabban Gamliel’s deposition is suggested by the Haggadah itself. The text that immediately follows is a quote from the Mishnah that begins “Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah said, ‘Behold, I am like a man of seventy, and yet I did not know that the Exodus from Egypt was to be remembered in the evening.” The Talmud is captivated by the word “like.” It views it as superfluous and uses the irregular language as hook for another legend. I share the story below, in Emmanuel Levinas’s telling:

Rabban Gamliel, head of the rabbinic academy, was too strict a master. He was dismissed for that very excess of severity. A replacement is sought, and Eleazar ben Azaria is designated. He possesses wisdom, material independence and nobility—being descended from Esdras [Ezra] in the tenth generation; responsible for an exceedingly glorious spiritual heritage. Everything seems to portend an eminent role for him. But he is only eighteen years old—without one white hair. Can one teach without innovating? But can one innovate without reference to a tradition, without remaining the contemporary—real or apparent—of the discourse of the past? A miracle was needed! Eighteen rows of white hair appeared on Eleazar ben Azaria’s head—who, at the age of eighteen, henceforth looked seventy, in order that all innovation should derive from earlier forms.²¹

While at first glance, it may appear that Rabbi Eleazar ben Azaria’s statement—and therefore the legend of his overnight maturation—appears independent, disconnected from the story of the sages’ seder that precedes it in the Haggadah, the manuscript tradition suggests reading the two texts together. While the majority of Haggadot today follow the text of Rabbi Eleazar ben Azaria’s statement as preserved in the Babylonian Talmud, most extant geniza fragments of the Haggadah offer a reading with a critical addition, which is also preserved by Maimonides in his Haggadah text. They all add the word להם, “to them,” so that the line reads “Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah said to them, ‘Behold I am like a man of seventy…’” This addition demands that the reader understand this paragraph as continuation of the story that precedes it.

A second text also asks us to imagine the sages at Benei Braq as being in dialogue in some ways with the legal and political attitudes that led to the deposition of Rabban Gamliel. While Rabban Gamliel is absent from the seder in the Haggadah, the Tosefta shares a story of his own all-night seder:

A story is told of Rabban Gamliel and the Sages: Once they were reclining at the house of Boethus ben Zonim in Lydda and were occupied with the laws of Passover all evening until the early morning [kerot ha’gever]. They removed [the table] from before them, gathered themselves and went to the study hall.²²

While this narrative differs in several ways from the seder in the Haggadah, perhaps the most critical distinction is in the contents of the Passover service. At the seder in Benei Braq, the sages spend the evening telling the story of the exodus, while Rabban Gamliel and the unnamed sages with him spend the evening “engaged with the laws of Passover.” How are we to understand the difference in practice between these two groups?

Barry Wimpfheimer has argued for the importance of deconstructing the division between so-called halakhah (legal) and aggadah (narrative) in reading rabbinic literature. At a minimum, he maintains that narrative material should be read within a legal context and vice versa.²³ This methodology is useful here. Immediately prior to the story of the sages, the Haggadah enjoins the act of communal memory: “Even if we were all sages—even if we all knew the Torah, we would still be obligated to tell of the Exodus from Egypt. And all who expand in their telling of the story is deemed praiseworthy.” Rabban Gamliel’s seder, though, comes as an example of fidelity to a different legal tradition cited in the Tosefta: “One should not consume dessert, such as nuts, dates, or roasted grains, after the [eating] the Passover offering. A person is obligated to occupy themselves with the laws of Passover all evening, whether with his son, his students, or even with himself alone.”²⁴ We have, then, two traditions about what the content of the Passover seder should be, one that privileges the study of the law and one that centers the seder around the telling of a story. It is perhaps surprising that the Passover Haggadah ultimately embraced the second approach. If legal dispute is at the heart of the rabbinic tradition, why did the rabbis choose narrative and memory as the most appropriate modes of discourse for Passover?

S. Daniel Breslauer has argued that the two narratives reflect divergent ethical traditions within rabbinic literature. Rabban Gamliel’s seder “focuses on actions rather than on thought, on deed rather than on motivation.” The Seder at Benei Braq, conversely, is an example of Rabbi Akiva’s messianic optimism, even if it predates his revolutionary activities: “The purpose of telling stories is to motivate political action,” Breslauer argues. “Political action does not precede but depends upon theology. In such a case, theology can succeed even when the political action fails.” He understands the Haggadah’s call to remember the exodus as an example of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s “depth theology,” which he understands to mean “the sense of divine challenge and the desire of human beings to answer that challenge.”²⁵ Or, as Heschel writes, “[t]heology declares. Depth theology evokes…theology deals with permanent facts. Depth theology deals with moments.”²⁶

Similarly, Levinas asserts that the memory of a singular event—the exodus—becomes the very breath of Jewish existence. Reflecting on Eleazar ben Azaria’s enjoinment to recall the exodus in the evening that follows the seder in the Haggadah, he writes:

The going forth from Egypt—the Exodus—and the evocation of that exodus in which freedom was given to a people, the coming to the foot of Mount Sinai where that freedom culminated in Law, constituted a privileged past, the very form of the past, as it were. But by the same token it is a thought virtually obsessed by the theme of freeing slaves…. Here we have a dimension of the memorable and as it were the spirituality—or the respiration—of consciousness, which already, in its content of presence, is memory of affranchisement, and lived concretely as the soul of freedmen. The Jew is free qua affranchised: his memory is immediately compassion for all the enslaved or all the wretched of the earth, and a special flair for that wretchedness that the wretched themselves are prone to forget.²⁷

Perhaps, by including the seder at Benei Braq and excluding Rabban Gamliel’s seder at Lod, the editors of the Haggadah were simply preserving the tradition best known to them by its transmission in the Babylonian Talmud. It is plausible, though, that the text is also making a claim about the function of memory as a redemptive act.

In the rabbis’ telling, the two Passover meals come at a time of crisis for the Jewish community: the Jerusalem temple lays in ruins, and Jewish ritual practice must find a way to move forward. In recalling the specific laws of Passover as they would have been carried out in the temple, Rabban Gamliel is recalling a recent past to which he was a direct witness. A psychoanalytic reading might suggest that Rabban Gamliel is trapped in a pathologized melancholy; he longs to maintain and restore those customs and rituals that were central to his identity when the temple stood. This perhaps contributes to the lack of empathy he displays toward his contemporaries. In Rabban Gamliel’s world, there is no room for the kind of innovative teaching that Levinas sees manifest in Rabbi Eleazar ben Azaria. How can one innovate? “The footrest of our God is burnt in fire. Should we not weep!”

In the seder at Benei Braq, though, another mode of memory prevails. Where Rabban Gamliel weeps, Akiva laughs. These sages are no less traumatized—they are products of the same calamity as Rabban Gamliel. They deploy, though, a messianic vision of history that sees the world not through the lachrymose lens of recent destruction but with an eye—or, better, soul—toward past and future redemption. Telling the tale of redemption is an act of defiance against destruction. Seen this way, the purpose of historical narrative is not to create linear arcs, but to disrupt them.

Fruitful Melancholia and Jewish Memory

In Mourning Becomes the Law, philosopher Gillian Rose reflects on the perseverance of narrative in Jewish thought, even in the midst of catastrophic loss. She cites a famous Hasidic tale that she learned from Elie Wiesel:

When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov

Saw misfortune threatening the Jews

It was his custom

To go into a certain part of the forest to meditate.

There he would light a fire,

Say a special prayer,

And the miracle would be accomplished

And the misfortune averted.

Later when his disciple,

The celebrated Magid of Mezritch,

Has occasion, for the same reason,

To intercede with heaven,

He would go to the same place in the forest

And say: “Master of the Universe, listen!

I do not know how to light the fire,

But I am still able to say the prayer.”

And again the miracle would be accomplished.

Still later,

Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov,

In order to save his people once more,

Would go into the forest and say:

“I do not know how to light the fire,

I do not know the prayer,

But I know the place

And this must be sufficient.”

It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.

Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn

To overcome misfortune.

Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands,

He spoke to God: “I am unable to light the fire

And I do not know the prayer;

I cannot even find the place in the forest.

All I can do is to tell the story,

And this must be sufficient.”

And it was sufficient.²⁸

Rose comments:

The tale plus the comment which questions the continuing ability to tell the tale is the tale renewed by the questioning of its transmission in spite of the loss of its truth. Not to tell the tale of perhaps not being able to tell the tale would make the loss of the tale and the occurrence of the catastrophe absolute: it would fix the catastrophe as the meaning, or, rather, as the devastation, of meaning.²⁹

Rose would have perhaps been delighted to learn that the tale she cites here, one that she hopes “countless others” would also relate, has a rich history of its own—one that, ultimately, helps us finally understand Rabbi Akiva’s seder.

The letters between Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, both philosophers, bear witness to the growth of and ultimately the tragic demise of a friendship that developed during the most catastrophic moments in world history. Despite this—or perhaps because of it—they also display a consistent theme: the urgent desire the two men shared to write and hopefully publish books of lasting impact.³⁰ While Benjamin’s influence has ascended in recent years, he died tragically, before seeing his mature works through to fruition. Scholem, on the other hand, published arguably his most important book, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1946), just after the conclusion of World War II. It carries this dedication:

TO THE MEMORY OF

WALTER BENJAMIN

(1892–1940) The friend of a lifetime whose genius united the insight of the Metaphysician, the interpretative power of the Critic and the erudition of the Scholar.

DIED AT PORT BOU (SPAIN)

ON HIS WAY INTO FREEDOM³¹

In the afterward to the collection of lectures that formed Major Trends, Scholem concludes with the same Hasidic tale cited by Rose. It is, to my knowledge, the first time the story appears in English. Scholem, though, does not attribute the tale to Martin Buber’s famous collections of such tales. Instead, he notes that he heard the story from Shmuel Yosef Agnon, the Hebrew author who, in the 1920s, had served as a kind of spiritual mentor to Scholem and Benjamin in their early studies of Judaism in Berlin.³² This is how Scholem understood the story:

You can say if you will that this profound little anecdote symbolizes the decay of a great movement. You can also say that it reflects the transformation of all its values, a transformation so profound that in the end all that remained of the mystery was the tale. That is the position in which we find ourselves today, or in which Jewish mysticism finds itself. The story is not ended, it has not yet become history, and the secret life it holds can break out tomorrow in you or in me.³³

How are we to understand such an approach to memory?

Traverso has contemplated the fate of Marxism after the collapse of the Soviet Union and has suggested an approach to mourning that might also be applied to Rabbi Akiva: “This melancholia does not mean lamenting a lost utopia, but rather rethinking a revolutionary project in a nonrevolutionary age. This is a fruitful melancholia that, one could say with Judith Butler, implies the transformative effect of loss.”³⁴ Traverso also offers a moving example of this kind of “fruitful melancholia”:

One of the most significant examples of a fruitful work of mourning that, instead of paralyzing action, stimulates it in a self-reflexive and conscious way deals with the reactions of gay activists to the disruptive consequences of AIDS, a pandemic whose outbreak coincided with the fall of communism…. Rather than escaping melancholia, [activists] channeled it toward a fruitful work of reconstruction, creating medical centers, assuring psychological care, defending recently achieved rights, and rebuilding a network of associations. Act Up [The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power—an early HIV-AIDS advocacy group] was the product of a fruitful, political melancholia.³⁵

Rabbi Akiva’s approach to memory is similarly productive. As Rose notes, the act of telling stories is an act of resistance against catastrophe. For Rabbi Akiva and his fellows, telling the tale of redemption and plunging its interpretive depths while experiencing their own personal loss inspires them to work for a better future. Instead of striving to rebuild an irreplaceable past, their memories remind them of what was and allow them to envision the world as it might be. As Levinas asserts, the exodus is evidence that it is possible, against all odds, to move from suffering to freedom. In renewing this memory, then, Rabbi Akiva and his fellows were simultaneously bearing witness to a redeemed past and calling on each other to be agents in creating a holier future. It is in this way that Akiva brings comfort to his colleagues. And it is perhaps for this reason that new approaches to Jewish memory are ascendant today. We live in a turbulent time, when the impacts of catastrophes beyond name are regularly experienced by so many. While petty tyrants may call on their followers to seek refuge in imagined pasts that never were, Rabbi Akiva’s seder teaches us that embedded within crisis is the promise of redemption, if we only seek it out and heed its call to action. As Scholem writes, “The story is not ended, it has not yet become history, and the secret life it holds can break out tomorrow in you or in me.”

Rabbi Daniel Z. Stein is the spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Shalom in Walnut Creek, California and a doctoral student at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. He is the 2023–2024 Daniel Jeremy Silver Fellow at the Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies.

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Tamara Kohn 1

Introducción

La presencia de museos judíos en las ciudades más importantes del mundo y donde existen grandes (o pequeñas) comunidades judías, es un fenómeno que a muchos hoy nos puede parecer natural - ya sea un museo de arte judío, de la historia de la inmigración o uno dedicado a la historia del Holocausto. Sin embargo, no fue hasta comienzos del siglo XX que estos museos surgieron en Europa, ante la necesidad de los judíos de compartir con las sociedades que los rodeaban, la historia de su pueblo. Solamente medio siglo después, aparecen los primeros museos judíos en América Latina.

Para la tradición judía, la colección de objetos rituales era una tarea de la sinagoga y la accesibilidad a los mismos era limitada. Los objetos rituales eran generalmente vistos por la comunidad, solamente durante su uso en la sinagoga en las ocasiones para las que se habían creado. El punto de inflexión en la colección y exposición de este tipo de artefactos ocurre cuando la mayor parte de la judería de Europa Occidental y Europa Central logra finalmente la Emancipación legal en los diferentes estados europeos. Adquieren derechos civiles y no dependen de la comunidad para ser representados ante el Estado. Es decir, que esto sucede durante el proceso de su aculturación e integración a la sociedad moderna.

Una exhibición o un museo sirve como un espacio público de encuentro para gentiles y judíos de igual manera, saliendo del contexto litúrgico religioso, en el espíritu de la cultura y como apreciación hacia la cultura judía. La primera exposición de Arte judío en Europa fue realizada por Isaac Strauss (1806-1888), un judío francés de la corte de Napoleón III, que expuso 82 objetos rituales judíos en el Palacio Trocadero, siendo un pionero en la presentación pública de una colección privada de este tipo. A esta primera exposición en Francia le siguieron la Exposición Histórica Anglo-judía en el Albert Hall en Londres en 1887, la Exhibición de Arte Judío y Antigüedades en la Whitechapel Art Gallery en 1906, y otras tantas muestras que se van desarrollando en la Europa de Fin de siècle2.

Richard Cohen sostiene que más allá de las razones personales que podrían haber llevado a Strauss a montar esta colección, este evento ha demostrado ser un punto de referencia y un testimonio del desarrollo de la vida judía en Europa Occidental y Central, desde la Revolución Francesa.3 Por primera vez artefactos rituales judíos eran presentados como un fenómeno histórico y estético, más allá de su contexto de la práctica religiosa. Cohen afirma que, con esta exposición, un nuevo aspecto de la vida judía se ha objetivado.4

Sin embargo, las instituciones comunitarias judías estaban poco interesadas en la colección y la preservación de arte y artefactos judíos en los años previos a la Primera Guerra Mundial. La mayoría de los museos judíos de Europa se fundaron en el período de entreguerras, muchos fueron destruidos por el nazismo, y luego reaparecieron como continuación o nuevos museos, desde la inmediata posguerra en adelante.

Exposición e institucionalización del arte judío en América Latina

En nuestra región el proceso por el cual los objetos pasan de la esfera privada y comunitaria a la pública, es posterior a la Segunda Guerra Mundial y cuenta con el antecedente de la existencia de museos judíos en Europa, así como de espacios de exposición comunitarios.

Este trabajo propone la presentación de una cronología y categorización de los espacios de exposición y “museos judíos” en Latinoamérica, con el objetivo de visibilizar la multiplicidad de museos judíos con enfoques completamente diferentes, sobre la historia y la cultura judía en relación a su presencia en la región.

Cabe destacar que, a diferencia de Norteamérica y Europa, donde existen asociaciones que nuclean a los museos judíos (CAJM y AEJM), estas no existe en nuestra región, por lo que el relevamiento se hizo a partir de la información disponible y es una investigación que continúa desarrollándose día a día.5

Historia de los museos judíos en América Latina

A diferencia de lo que ocurre en Europa, el proceso de integración de los judíos a la sociedad general en la modernidad es diferente. No existe la salida de los guetos (en el sentido de los barrios judíos) sino que una inmigración masiva que ocurre hacia fines del siglo XIX y comienzo del XX y se completa con la llegada de refugiados y sobrevivientes del nazismo hacia mediados de siglo XX.

El primer museo judío del que se tiene registro es el Museo Maurycy Minkowski, conocido como museo del IWO (Instituto judío de investigación). Fue fundado en 1940 y es una excepción frente al resto de los museos relevados, ya que se crea durante el período de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Su patrimonio consiste en pinturas, esculturas, objetos de judaica y cotidianos, relacionados con la vida judía en Europa del Este y la cultura Idish en Argentina. Dentro de su colección se destacan las obras del pintor judío polaco Maurycy Minkowski y los objetos de judaica rescatados del Holocausto y enviados a la Argentina en la posguerra, por la JCR (Jewish Cultural Reconstruction). En 1945 el IWO mudó su sede a la AMIA, ocupando el tercer piso del edificio. Al momento del atentado, la colección fue dañada y parte de ella rescatada, pero no volvió a contar con un espacio propio de exposición, fuera de los salones del Archivo y Biblioteca de IWO, por lo que se encuentra actualmente cerrado. A pesar de ello, el museo Maurycy Minkowski continuó exponiendo en espacios externos, como es el caso de la muestra de Minkowski en el Museo Sivorí en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, que se llevó a cabo en 2012.

Es recién en los años 60 cuando se funda el primer Museo Judío, el Museo Judío de Buenos Aires, siguiendo el modelo europeo. Creado en 1967 por Salvador Kibrick, se encuentra en el edificio adyacente a la sinagoga de la Congregación Israelita Argentina (CIRA). Al mismo tiempo, en Montevideo se funda en 1960, el Museo de la Shoá Uruguay, el primero en toda Sudamérica. Y es recién hacia finales de la década de 1980 que aparecen los primeros museos de las colonias, dedicados a la inmigración judía.

Estos primeros museos van a sentar el antecedente para los tipos de museos judíos que van a surgir en la región a lo largo de las décadas. El primer modelo es el del Museo judío tradicional, adyacente a una sinagoga, centro de vida comunitaria. El segundo modelo es el del Museo del holocausto. Y el último el del museo de la inmigración. Podemos identificar un cuarto tipo de espacio de exposición en los salones de arte.

El modelo tradicional del museo adyacente a la sinagoga es el más popular en la región, y tal vez, en todo el mundo. Naturalmente, estos museos surgen como un espacio de preservar la memoria y la historia comunitaria que se puede adecuar a grandes urbes y pequeños pueblos, ya que la sinagoga funciona como marco institucional para la creación de los mismos. Esto permite, a lo largo de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, el continuo desarrollo y fundación de este tipo de museos, desde los ejemplos más tempranos como el de Buenos Aires, pero también con los casos más recientes como el Museo de los Judíos Alemanes, en Santiago de Chile (2022), el Museo Sefaradí de Tucumán, San Miguel de Tucumán (2022) y el Museo judío Virtual de Córdoba (2021). Si nos extendemos a otras áreas de la región, también aparecen casos similares en Panamá, Perú, Paraguay y Costa Rica.

Los museos de la inmigración judía, en el caso de Argentina, responden a una característica muy interesante, que es el hecho de que sean museos comunales, es decir, de carácter público. Dentro de esta categoría nos encontramos con dos subtipos de museos: los museos que cuentan la historia del pueblo donde se encuentran, incluyendo una sección sobre la historia judía con la agrupación de algunos objetos rituales judíos o museos completamente dedicados a ello, como lo son el Museo Rabino Aaron Goldman, ubicado en Moisesville, prov. de Santa Fe, y el Museo de las Colonias Judías del Centro de Entre Ríos. Para el primer subtipo nos encontramos con el caso del Museo de Carlos Casares, por ejemplo.6

En cuanto a la historia de la shoá, resulta esta temática más o menos relevante según la locación y el relato del museo. En el caso de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, existe un Museo del Holocausto creado con ese fin y una filial de La Casa de Anne Frank, en la misma ciudad, por lo que los museos judíos existentes en la ciudad se dedican a otros temas. Pero en el caso de Santiago de Chile, existe el Museo Judío de Chile, que se encuentra junto a una sinagoga y que abarca tanto el tema migratorio, como la historia y tradición judía, como la historia del Holocausto. Esa misma función cumple el Museo Judío del Paraguay “Dr. Walter Kochmann”, en Asunción y el Museo judío de Perú y Centro de Estudios del Holocausto, en Lima.

Un último espacio de exposición, consiste en salones y espacios de arte dedicados al arte en general, no necesariamente judío, pero promovidos por instituciones de la comunidad. Tal vez el caso más famoso sea el espacio de arte de la Sociedad Hebraica Argentina (SHA), que en la década de 1960 estaba absolutamente integrado a los circuitos de arte contemporáneo locales. Por ejemplo, en 1967 se llevó a cabo la muestra “Estructuras Primarias II” donde se expusieron obras de artistas contemporáneos argentinos, pioneros del minimalismo. Esta muestra histórica, formó parte del programa del circuito del Arte Avanzado organizado por el Instituto Torcuato Di Tella y fue en respuesta a la muestra “Primary Structures” expuesta en el Museo Judío de Nueva York el año anterior.7

Cabe destacar que la presencia de los tempranos ejemplos del Museo Minkowski y el espacio de arte de SHA en Buenos Aires, son una excepción al desarrollo de los museos judíos en el resto del mundo, donde generalmente surgen a partir del primer modelo mencionado.

En cuanto al enfoque y el contenido de los museos, a medida que pasa el tiempo se identifican dos tendencias: la especialización o la inclusión de los tres modelos en uno. Es decir, la creación de museos especializados en temas específicos, como la shoá o la inmigración, o la inclusión de tres secciones dentro de un mismo museo. Estas secciones suelen incluir la historia del pueblo judío previo a su llegada a América, por medio de los artefactos religiosos, un sector dedicado a la historia del holocausto, y por último una sección relacionada con la inmigración judía y su desarrollo en comunidades locales e integración a la sociedad general.

Conclusiones

Luego del relevamiento de datos sobre más de 30 museos judíos en América Latina podemos concluir que existe una cantidad significativa de museos dedicados a la historia del pueblo judío. A veces nos encontraremos con centros educativos destinados a la historia de la shoá que comparten el edificio con el museo de la historia judía y de la comunidad pero que funcionan como identidades separadas. En otros casos el foco estará en la historia de la inmigración, como símbolo del inicio de un nuevo capítulo en la historia del pueblo judío en el que se fusiona e integra a una sociedad Relevamiento de Museos Judíos y espacios de exposición en America Latina

donde son minoría. Luego de 1990 y en el siglo XXI los museos donde se expone la historia de la shoá tomaron especial protagonismo.

Todos tienen en común que miran hacia el pasado cumpliendo un rol de memoria, pero también hacia el futuro, al actualizarse y buscar atraer a las nuevas generaciones. En un mundo donde la discriminación y xenofobia no cesan, estas instituciones buscan narrar la historia de un pueblo que siendo minoría y víctima de persecuciones en el pasado, supo reconstruirse en diferentes momentos de su historia en las diferentes sociedades latinoamericanas a las que se integraron y formaron parte de ellas rápidamente. Al fin y al cabo, el guion curatorial de cada uno de estos museos busca conectar el pasado con el tiempo presente y su ubicación geográfica. Esto último adquiere principal importancia en un contexto en el que la virtualidad toma protagonismo.

Haga clic para abrir un gráfico de museos y espacios de exposición judíos en América Latina.

 

Tamara Kohn is a researcher, curator, and Jewish art lecturer at the Seminario Rabinico Latinoamericano Marshall T. Meyer. She graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and obtained an MA in Jewish Art and Visual Culture at JTS in 2011. She was part of the research and curation teams for the renewal of the permanent exhibition at the Jewish Museum of Buenos Aires (2012-2014) and the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires (2018-2020). Currently, she is writing her dissertation on the ritual art and material culture of Jewish refugees from Nazism in Argentina as objects of memory. She also coordinates the LAJM project (Latin American Jewish Museums), aimed at creating a regional association of Jewish museums and professionals in Jewish art.

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