Nationalism, War and Jewish Education by David Aberbach

Author:David Aberbach [Aberbach, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Jewish, Religion, Judaism, Social Science, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9780429779930
Google: hVtxDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-10-04T05:07:22+00:00

Notes

1E.g. Gittin 55b-56a, Yoma 9b. On responses to catastrophe in Hebrew literature from ancient to modern times, see Mintz (1984). Much modern Hebrew literature (e.g. Gordon, Mendele, Berdichevsky, Bialik, Brenner) echoes the prophets and rabbis who ‘tell Israel his sins’ with the aim of moral improvement but, at times, in a language bordering on self-hate.

2On education in the love of Israel in the general context of the creation of a viable school system in the talmudic era, see Aberbach (1982: 277–300). Christian anti-Semitism often involved citation from the many biblical passages critical of the children of Israel as fixed and unchanging for all time. The rabbis responded with wariness toward the Bible, evidently contributing to its relegation to a secondary importance, far below the intensive give and take of talmudic debate. This skewed intellectual hierarchy lasted to modern times (see p. 125–6 later) and continues in many yeshivot today. I have sometimes suspected that the manner in which the haftara is traditionally read in diaspora synagogues – by an elderly, decrepit gentleman, his voice barely audible above the buzz of conversation and, judging by his frequent errors, ignorant of the sense of the text – is the rabbinic punishment of the prophets for their diatribes against Israel.

3Song of Songs Rabba 1, 6, 1.

4E.g. Micah 3: 8; Isaiah 58: 1; and Ezekiel ch. 16. There was a rabbinic view that the Israelites, if not for their sinfulness which required prophetic reproof, would have been given only the Five Books of Moses and the book of Joshua at Sinai (Nedarim 22b).

5Song of Songs Rabba 1, 6, 1; Jerusalem Talmud, Ta’anit 3, 4, 66c; Berakhot 31b; Mekhilta, Exodus 12: 1; Pesachim 66b, 87a, 87b; Sanhedrin 92b, 107b; Yevamot 49b; Pesikta de-Rab Kahana, Buber edn., 112a, 115; Megillah 25b.

6Deuteronomy Rabba 9, 6.

7Hullin 91b.

8Hullin 89a, 91b.

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