The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature (New Directions in Book History) 3030818187, 9783030818180

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NEW DIRECTIONS IN BOOK HISTORY

The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature Iris Parush

New Directions in Book History

Series Editors Shafquat Towheed, Faculty of Arts, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK Jonathan Rose, Department of History, Drew University, Madison, NJ, USA

As a vital field of scholarship, book history has now reached a stage of maturity where its early work can be reassessed and built upon. That is the goal of New Directions in Book History. This series will publish monographs in English that employ advanced methods and open up new frontiers in research, written by younger, mid-career, and senior scholars. Its scope is global, extending to the Western and non-Western worlds and to all historical periods from antiquity to the twenty-first century, including studies of script, print, and post-print cultures. New Directions in Book History, then, will be broadly inclusive but always in the vanguard. It will experiment with inventive methodologies, explore unexplored archives, debate overlooked issues, challenge prevailing theories, study neglected subjects, and demonstrate the relevance of book history to other academic fields. Every title in this series will address the evolution of the historiography of the book, and every one will point to new directions in book scholarship. New Directions in Book History will be published in three formats: single-author monographs; edited collections of essays in single or multiple volumes; and shorter works produced through Palgrave’s e-book (EPUB2) ‘Pivot’ stream. Book proposals should emphasize the innovative aspects of the work, and should be sent to either of the two series editors. Editorial Board Marcia Abreu, University of Campinas, Brazil Cynthia Brokaw, Brown University, USA Matt Cohen, University of Texas at Austin, USA Archie Dick, University of Pretoria, South Africa Martyn Lyons, University of New South Wales, Australia

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14749

Iris Parush

The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature

Iris Parush Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Beer-Sheva, Israel Translated by Jeffrey M. Green Jerusalem, Israel With Contrib. by Tamar Parush Kiryat Ono, Israel

ISSN 2634-6117 ISSN 2634-6125 (electronic) New Directions in Book History ISBN 978-3-030-81818-0 ISBN 978-3-030-81819-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81819-7 Translation from the Hebrew language edition: HaH . ot’im BiKhtiva by Iris Parush, © Carmel Publishing House 2017. Published by Carmel Publishing House. All Rights Reserved. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: The Picture Art Collection/Alamy Stock Photo: Maurycy Gottlieb, Torah Scribe (1876) This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

This book was published with the support of the Israel Science Foundation

To Adi, Ori and Tamar with love

Preface and Acknowledgments

This book owes its origins to questions that I encountered while writing Reading Women: The Benefit of Marginality (2001; see also Parush 2004a), which dealt with the history of reading in Eastern European Jewish society in the nineteenth century. While I was exploring the influence of literacy on communities of readers, questions arose in my mind regarding the status of writing. I was particularly puzzled by the fact that the traditional education system in Eastern European Jewish society did not teach writing to its pupils. My effort to understand this omission led me to the hypothesis that the literacy policy in the traditional Jewish education system was intended to control writers and the content of their writing no less, and perhaps even more, than to supervise readers and the content of their reading. What began as an incidental inquiry into the status of writing in the curriculum of the heder (traditional Jewish elementary school) developed into a weighty and complex study. The effort to confirm or refute my hypothesis regarding the supervision of writing led me to the intricacies of the question of literacy in Jewish society and ended in unexpected destinations. I found that the processes of enlightenment, modernization, and secularization in Jewish society were marked not by a revolution in reading, but rather by a revolutionary change in the attitude toward writing. The transformations in the status of writing in culture and daily life were deeper, more decisive, and more consequential than those that took place in the field of reading. As these

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conclusions became clear to me, I grew more confident that shifting the focus of research from reading to writing was a fertile and inevitable move. The basic preliminary assumptions underlying this study were presented at a conference in honor of the late Professor Menachem Brinker, which was held at Neve Shalom in 2005, and an expanded version of this presentation was included in the volume Literature and Life (HaSifrut VeHaH . ayim), which was published following the conference. The theoretical and empirical foundations for the present book were laid in 2005–2006, while I was in residence at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. In time, my exploration of the policies regarding literacy and writing in the Eastern European heder during the nineteenth century developed into a comprehensive research project on the attitude toward writing, in its broadest social and cultural sense, in Jewish society of the time, and on the implications of this attitude for the rise of modern Hebrew literature. Hence, this study delves into the teaching of writing—its methods, aims, students, and instructors—as well as into the practices of writing and the discourse on writing that took shape around them. It examines the social and ideological implications of this discourse, as well as the emotional and intellectual meanings of writing in the lives of individuals. It analyzes the notions of the book, the writer, and literary creativity in traditional Jewish society of the period, as well as the transformation of these notions with the advent of modernization, secularization, Enlightenment, and national revival. By nature, this research is interdisciplinary. It stands on the border between socio-cultural history and literary studies, and it applies a variety of theoretical approaches drawn from the areas of literacy, gender, anthropology, and the sociology of knowledge, language, and literature. Its interdisciplinary nature is also reflected in its methodology, as well as in its general structure and in the internal build of each chapter. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the many individuals and institutions who helped make this book possible. As noted, the foundations of this research were laid when I was a resident at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and participated in the Center’s seminar on The Jewish Book: Material Texts and Comparative Contexts (2005–2006). I am grateful to Professor David B. Ruderman, Director Emeritus of the Center, for giving me the opportunity to conduct research in these wonderful environs, and to enjoy the excellent library and the generous professional assistance of the Center’s

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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librarians and staff. I am also indebted to the participants of the seminar for the fruitful dialogue and the important feedback and insights. An early version of Chapter 7 of this book was published as an article in the journal Alpayim under the title “Mabat Ah.er Al H . ayei HaIvrit HaMeta” (“Another Look at ‘the Life of “Dead” Hebrew’”) (Parush 1996), and an English translation of the article, by Saadya Sternberg, was published in the journal Book History (Parush 2004b). I am grateful to these journals for permitting me to include a revised version of the article in this monograph, and to Saadya Sternberg for allowing me to re-use his excellent English translation of the article. The Hebrew edition of this book, HaH . ot’im BiKhtiva, was published in 2017 by Carmel Publishing House, and I thank the publisher for allowing the publication of the English edition. I am also deeply grateful to Dina Horowitz, who edited the Hebrew version with thoughtfulness and refinement, and to Amnon Sasson, who compiled its index. I would like to convey my gratitude to the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) for the generous grant it awarded me toward funding the translation of this monograph into English. Its support has been vital for making this project a reality. My sincerest thanks go to my friends and colleagues who read the entire manuscript or parts of it, challenged me with their comments, and enriched my work with references to sources and studies relevant to my interests. These include Luis Landa and Rotem Preger Wagner, who read the chapters of the Hebrew version of this book as they took shape and shared their valuable thoughts with me; Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos, Iris Agmon, and Amir Ben-Porat, who enlightened me with insights drawn from their own adjacent fields of research; and Edna Erde, who helped me to choose the painting for the cover of this book, Maurycy Gottlieb’s “Torah Scribe.” I am also grateful to Ido Shahar and Talia Shahar, who went through parts of the English version of the book, for their engaged reading and important suggestions for clarification. Special thanks are due to my colleague and friend Bracha Dalmatzky Fischler, for a continued dialogue on matters of language, literature, and society that has been a source of both knowledge and inspiration for me. I cannot say enough to express my thanks to my daughter, Tamar, for her work on editing and polishing the English version of this book. It is hard to exaggerate the analytical sharpness, critical observation, and subtle intelligence she brought to bear on this task. Without her, the English edition of this monograph would not have come to fruition.

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I also wish to extend my gratitude to Shafquat Towheed and Jonathan Rose, the editors of the series New Directions in Book History, for their interest in my work and for their kind support and assistance. At Palgrave Macmillan, Senior Editor Allie Troyanos and Assistant Editor Rachel Jacobe accompanied the publication process in the most professional and pleasant manner, for which I am very grateful. Thanks are also due to Jon Lloyd for his perceptive and diligent copyediting of the entire manuscript, and to Shukkanthy Siva and the production team. Finally, last but not least, I am deeply grateful to my husband Adi and children Tamar and Ori, to whom this book is dedicated; to my son-inlaw Ido, daughter-in-law Yael, and grandchildren Talia, Roee, Guy, and Michal; to my brother Shmulik and his partner Avirama; and to my late parents Greti and Victor Shem-Tov, who sadly did not live to see this book published. All of them, each in her or his own way, made it possible for me to sin by writing on “the sin of writing.” Beer-Sheva, Israel

Iris Parush

Note on Transliteration

The transliteration and spelling of terms, names of people, and names of places in this monograph present an enormous challenge, given that many different forms of transliteration and spelling are current in the relevant literature, and that many of the names and terms are pronounced differently in different languages (Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, etc.). We generally opt for the Hebrew pronunciation of names and not for the Yiddish or Anglicized pronunciation. We take the “simple” rules of transliteration from Hebrew to Latin letters issued in 2011 by the Academy of the Hebrew Language as our standard, but depart from them when necessary. For example, in all cases where there is a broadly accepted transliteration that departs from the above rules, we give it preference, especially in the case of proper names. In a similar vein, Hebrew and Yiddish words that have found their way to English dictionaries, such as heder, Halakhah, Haskalah, or tzaddik, are spelled in accordance with their common spelling in the English language and are not italicized. Their capitalization is also in accordance with the preference in the English dictionaries. We capitalize all the words related to the words Hasid, Mitnaged and Maskil. Finally, we usually italicize foreign words only in their first occurrence in each chapter.

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Contents

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Introduction Reading vs. Writing in the Study of Literacy and the Writing Revolution in Eastern European Jewish Society Literacy, Writing, and Belles Lettres in the Jewish Enlightenment The Primacy of Speech Over Writing as a Cultural Code in Eastern European Jewish Society The Structure of the Book and Its Main Arguments Literacy: Theory, Methodology, Ethnography Speech and Writing: From Plato to Derrida From the Autonomous Model to the Ideological Model New Literacy Studies and the Case of Jewish Society Autobiographies, Stories of Literacy Events, and an Ethnographic Perspective on the Meanings of Literacy Reading Without Writing and the Myth of Universal Literacy in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Jewish Society The Status of Writing, Its Uses, and Its Instruction The Study of Jewish Literacy and the Myth of Universal Literacy

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1 4 6 9 19 19 24 32

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CONTENTS

Reading vs. Writing in the Study of Jewish Literacy The Status of Writing and the Portraits of Its Teachers and Students In the Heder and Outside It: The Meanings of Writing and Its Images Gendered Images of Writing Research into Methods of Instruction in the Heder: Functionalism and Apologetics in the Study of Jewish Literacy 4

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The Primacy of Speech Over Writing in Hasidic Society An Ethnographic Perspective on Reading Without Writing in Hasidic Society Ignorance of Writing and Oral Charisma The Tzaddik and His Scribe: Oral Charisma and the Social Control of Knowledge Speech, Books, and the Sin of Writing Writing, Pride, and Gender The Rise of Print and Its Paradoxical Consequences Print and Haskalah The Primacy of Speech Over Writing in Mitnagdic Society The Mitnagdic Version of the Primacy of Speech: Knowledge, Memory, and Methods of Study Fighting the War of Torah: Dialogue, Dialectic, and Public Performance Vocal vs. Silent Reading: From Religious Literacy to the Reading of Modern Literature The Hierarchy of Suspicion and the Boundaries of Legitimacy: Practices of Writing Among Young Yeshiva Scholars “Things that Are Spoken—You Are not Allowed to Say in Writing”: Semi-Halakhic Aspects of Writing Inhibitions Speech and Writing in Traditional Jewish Society: Interim Summary

48 49 55 58

63 75 76 81 87 96 108 111 113 121 121 126 130

134 144 149

CONTENTS

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The Written Torah and the Oral Torah: Class, Gender, and the Cultural Images of the Corpora The Hierarchy of Corpora and Its Relation to Class and Gender Stratification The Bible and Aggadah: The Maternal Heritage “The Bible—My Mother, and My Father—The Talmud”: Gender Identity and the Desire for Myth The Cultural and Psychological Ambivalence of the Desire for the Maternal Heritage Intentional Ignorance of the Hebrew Language “This Is Grammar, and We Do Not Study Grammar” Intentional Ignorance The Exclusion of Grammar from the Curriculum The Status of the Bible in the Traditional Education System The Model Set by Rabbinic Language Explicit Justifications and Implicit Reasons for the Intentional Ignorance of Hebrew “And Keep Your Sons from Reason” Intentional Ignorance of Hebrew and the Status of Modern Hebrew Literature “Grammar Was the Bane of the Maskilim” Who Is Master of the Language? The Paradoxes of Biblical Purism From Mother Tongue to Father Tongue: The Study of Grammar, Reading, and Writing in Hebrew as a Male Maskilic Rite of Passage Rites of Passage and Their Maskilic Version Writing in Yiddish and the Feminization of Writing Knowledge and Eros: The Coming of Age Narrative “Stolen Water Is Sweet”: The Coming of Age Narrative as a Story of Reading The Hebrew Language and the Maskilic Male Conversion Rite Visiting the Mentor and the Stage of Separation “Between Two Worlds”: The Liminal Stage and the Divided Self

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157 157 160 166 171 181 184 189 191 193 195 197 204 211 214 219 221

225 226 230 233 241 243 245 251

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Writing in Hebrew: The Ticket of Entry into the Male Community of Maskilim The Role of Writing Practices in the Consolidation of Maskilic Communities Writing, Language, Gender, and Nationality 9

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“I Made Myself a Notebook of Blank Paper”: The Sins of Writing and the Constitution of the Subject The Sins of Acquiring Writing Genre Indeterminacy as a Challenge to the Distinction Between the Sacred and the Profane On the Borderline: Biblical Inlay ( Shibuts) and the Shift from Oral Dominance to the Privileging of Writing The Sins of Writing and the Divided Self The Sin of Pride and Confessional Writing The Sins of Youth: Between Hubris and Eros Writing as a Site of Conflict with the Father Writing and the Constitution of the Subject Conclusion: Writing as Transgression and the Writing Revolution in Eastern European Jewish Society Epilogue: Writing, Tradition, and Modernity in “Only for the Lord Alone” by S. Y. Agnon The Status of Writing in Agnon’s Work: Torn Between Tradition and Modernity

257 261 265 269 270 275 279 285 295 299 306 316 324 329 337

Glossary

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Bibliography

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Name Index

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Subject Index

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Reading vs. Writing in the Study of Literacy and the Writing Revolution in Eastern European Jewish Society In his lectures on the origins of Western literacy, Eric Havelock contended that the key to understanding literacy as a social phenomenon and to assessing the state of literacy in a given society is to be found not in the history of writing, as many scholars had assumed until then, but in the history of reading (Havelock 1976, 18–19, 83). This statement encapsulated two arguments that shattered two of the greatest myths that had dominated the study of literacy throughout much of the twentieth century. The first argument is that a culture that possesses writing is not necessarily a literate culture. The second is that the connection between reading and writing is not a necessary one: they are not two sides of the same coin, and they do not testify to one another’s existence or scope (see also Graff 1987a, 34). One of the empirical observations supporting these arguments is the prevalence of the phenomenon of “reading without writing,” that is, of mastering reading but not writing. This phenomenon recurred in many societies throughout history, including in the Western world, where the number of people who only knew how to read was often significantly larger than the number of those who could both read and write. In light of these solid empirical facts, Havelock’s argument © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. Parush, The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature, New Directions in Book History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81819-7_1

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for shifting the focus of literacy studies from the history of script and writing to the history of reading appeared almost self-evident. Research into the history of reading, which began to develop in the 1960s and 1970s, has accelerated significantly since then, and grew into a complex, promising, and challenging area,1 mainly because more is hidden in it than visible. While writing, by nature, documents its existence and makes itself known, reading is the hidden part of the iceberg of literacy. Like speech and the performing arts, reading, especially that of anonymous people, leaves no clear traces, and if there are such traces, they are few, indirect, and concealed in texts that were put in writing. The assumption that the study of reading presents a more accurate and more significant picture of the status of literacy in a given society than the study of writing seems, therefore, quite reasonable and convincing. Nevertheless, it is not necessarily valid. Without denying the prevalence of the phenomenon of reading without writing, without viewing reading as a passive or negligible act, and without underestimating the huge significance of the study of reading, I argue that since literacy should be studied in its historical context, there is no place for universal claims as to the relative importance of studying reading or writing. In some historical settings, the key to understanding the prevailing literacy culture lies with the study of reading, whereas in other settings it lies with the study of script and writing. Indeed, the latter is the case when we consider Jewish society in Eastern Europe during the nineteenth century.2 Despite the enormous shifts in reading patterns among both men and women during this period, the most dramatic change that took place in the modernizing Jewish society was not in the field of reading, but rather in the field of writing. More than a “reading revolution,” this was a “writing revolution.” The term “reading revolution” was coined by Rolf Engelsing (1974), who argued that during the eighteenth century, Western culture witnessed a profound transformation in the nature of reading. At the core of this transformation, he contended, was a transition from “intensive” to “extensive” reading, i.e., from the repeated reading of few books, the majority of which were religious and ethical works and the minority ballads, poems, and stories, to the reading of a relatively large number

1 For a selection of studies in this field, see Towheed et al. (2011). 2 In this monograph, the term “Eastern Europe” refers to the areas included in

nineteenth-century Poland, Russia, and Galicia.

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of secular works that were read only once or a limited number of times, most of them novels and periodicals (Engelsing 1974). Other scholars, notably Robert Darnton, disagreed with Engelsing’s use of the term “revolution.” They rejected his claims regarding the revolutionary character of the changes in reading practices on the eve of the eighteenth century and in its course, although they did not deny that this period saw far-reaching transformations in reading habits and in the profile of the reading public (Darnton 1985, 249–251; Darnton 1990, 154–190; Kloek 1999; Reinhard 1999). Indeed, this period was marked by a rise in the rates of literacy, in the variety of genres, in the number of books printed and read, and in the size of the reading publics, as well as changes in the readerships’ gender and class composition. Furthermore, large publics shifted from reading mainly for religious purposes to also reading for pleasure and learning, and from reading out loud and in company to silent and solitary reading.3 Somewhat later, in the nineteenth century, Eastern European Jewish society underwent similar changes. However, as this monograph seeks to show, the processes of modernization, enlightenment, and secularization in Jewish society were marked not by a reading revolution, but rather by a writing revolution. Among the conspicuous manifestations of this change were a rise in the rates of individuals who could write, an expansion of the legitimate uses of writing, and a corresponding growth in the variety of literary genres. The practice of writing no longer served a limited number of conventional functions in the area of religion, such as the writing of Torah scrolls, phylacteries, and mezuzot or the writing of homiletic literature, rabbinic responsa, and notes in the margins of canonical texts. Writing was also no longer intended solely for a defined and limited set of secular purposes, such as personal and business letters, contracts, and family chronicles. Rather, it now expanded to new uses and to new genres, such as the composition of philosophical essays, scientific studies, journalistic texts, and literary works. Yet over and above all these, perhaps the most significant part of the writing revolution in Eastern European Jewish society was the transition from a literacy culture that privileged speech to one that privileged writing. As will be shown in this monograph, 3 Jorge Luis Borges is of the opinion that the beginnings of silent reading can be observed as early as the end of the fourth century and that they were linked to perceptions of the book as a goal in itself (Borges 2001). On Augustine’s puzzlement at the phenomenon of silent reading, see Augustine, Confessions, VI, 3.

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contrary to accepted views on the state of literacy in nineteenth-century Jewish society and quite strikingly, this society retained an oral literacy culture that persisted well into the nineteenth century, even as writing and printing had swept Europe. It was only with the writing revolution that oral dominance and the privileging of speech receded. In the terms of Michel de Certeau (1984, 131–153), this was a pivotal structural change in the scriptural economy of Eastern European Jewish society, which involved mighty struggles not only over the acceptance of previously illegitimate genres, but also over the very significance and status of writing. Unlike the transformations in the field of reading in Eastern European Jewish society, where literate women played an important and sometimes leading role (Parush 2004a), the writing revolution was borne primarily on the shoulders of educated men who adhered to the Jewish Enlightenment Movement, the Haskalah. It was this male intellectual elite that led the transition from a religious literacy culture privileging speech to a secularizing literacy culture that cherishes and prioritizes writing.4

Literacy, Writing, and Belles Lettres in the Jewish Enlightenment The Jewish Enlightenment Movement was promulgated by a community of writers and thinkers who disseminated their ideas mainly by the written word. This community sought to expand its circles by establishing a new Jewish library and a new public of writers and readers for this library.5 This was by no means an easy task. The Maskilic library covered a wide array of genres and fields of knowledge that overstepped the bounds of legitimacy set by traditional Jewish society, and whose reading and writing required literacy skills entirely new and different from those provided by the traditional education system.

4 On the characteristics of religious literacy, see Clanchy (1979, 191–196), Furet and Ozouf (1977, 174–175, 308–309), Cressy (1980, 177–181), and Goody (1986, 1–44). On the oral transmission of written texts, see Goody (1987, 116–122) and Graff (1987a, 10–11). 5 On the library of the Jewish Enlightenment Movement, see Shavit (1996, 127–133), Feiner (2002, 65–74), Gries (2002, 117–160; see also Gries (2007), Werses (2001, 67– 114), Zalkin (2000, 229–291), and Parush (2004a, 97–132).

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The spread and institutionalization of new reading and writing practices with a modern bent was therefore far from being a self-evident or trivial process. It was a prolonged transformation that evolved to the displeasure of hegemonic actors in traditional society, and that required profound changes in the very idea and purpose of literacy.6 It took place in a storm-tossed arena, which was complex in almost every possible way. The ideological confrontations between the adherents of Haskalah (the Maskilim) and the traditional rabbinic leadership, and the struggles over the control of society and of its institutions, were evident in each and every arena related to literacy. The proponents of Haskalah sought not only to reform the traditional education system and its literacy policies, but also to dismantle the restrictions on the writing and reading of Maskilic literature. They had to struggle not only against social mechanisms of forced and external supervision on reading and writing, but also against semi-voluntary mechanisms such as rabbinic approbations, self-censorship of printing houses, and internalization of hegemonic norms and conceptions.7 All of these struggles made their mark on the emotional and intellectual journeys of individuals who were on their path to enlightenment (known as Mitmaskelim), on their attitudes toward reading and writing, on the role they attributed to these practices in their life stories, and on the literary works they produced. Close analysis of these processes shows that the changes in the practices, notions, and status of reading on the one hand, and of writing on the other were interdependent, and that it is impossible to grasp their full significance in isolation from one another. The new notions of writing contributed to the formation of new types of readers and reading, and the new conceptions of reading contributed to the emergence of new kinds of writers and writing. However, as noted above, the spearhead of this reciprocal process of structuration was writing, mainly of the kind that served to reveal the self, i.e., to establish the writer as a subject by the very act of writing. Although all the genres in the Maskilic library took part in promoting the writing revolution, this did not culminate in books about nature, history, 6 On the slow pace of similar changes in Europe, see Clanchy (1979, 5–7, 185–334), and Furet and Ozouf (1977, 302–331). On reading without writing in France, see Furet and Ozouf (1977, 166–191). 7 On the concept of hegemony in Gramsci’s (2007) thought and on its importance for the understanding of literacy, see Graff (1987a, 11–12, 264–265). For an example of voluntary supervision over elementary education, see Lifschitz (1920, 304).

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geography, and the like, but rather in the writing of belles lettres, and especially of autobiographical, introspective, confessional works.8 These were frequently rather daring, and not only by the standards of the period (Ginzburg 1967; Lilienblum 1970). Indeed, these works, too, had a conspicuously didactic purpose (Pelli 2007, 241–247, 266). Many of them contained passages that could have been taken straight out of the reference and scientific books that stood beside them on the shelves of the Maskilic library,9 and many of them sought to justify their existence by claiming to present to the reader an ideal model of the Jewish Maskil as an autonomous, enlightened individual. However, it is precisely against this background that belles lettres gained their status as a socially transformative literature, even if most of their readers were in no hurry to admit this (Parush 2004a, 120–132). The humanistic and aesthetic elements inherent to the work of art gave belles lettres a relative advantage over other genres of Maskilic writing,10 and despite cultural inhibitions with regard to aesthetic intentions,11 these elements offered space and especially legitimacy to the writer’s expressions of individuality. It was with the opening of this space for the proclamation of individuality, and with the constitution of the individual writer as a Jewish, male, Maskilic, modern subject, that the writing revolution reached its peak, and it was with this development that the cultural principle of the primacy of speech truly receded.

The Primacy of Speech Over Writing as a Cultural Code in Eastern European Jewish Society The principle of the primacy of speech over writing was one of the deep cultural principles that shaped the customs, values, and beliefs of traditional Jewish society in Eastern Europe. This principle placed the Oral

8 On the characteristics and contents of the modern Hebrew autobiography, see Moseley (2006). 9 For one example among many, see Ginzburg (1864, 80–81). 10 Kovner argued that “Love stories (romances), history books, and books about nature

and its laws raised Haskalah up to its heights” (Kovner 1947, 207–208). 11 On obstacles on the path of Hebrew literature toward Europeanization, anthropocentrism, and realism, see Halkin (1984, 228–232). On reservations regarding the aesthetic, see Bar-El (1995a, 103).

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Torah, i.e., the Oral Law,12 above the Written Torah in many crucial respects, and accorded more prestige to those who studied it.13 In fact, this principle’s influence was far broader than appears at first glance. It imbued a variety of writing and reading practices with hidden cultural meanings; it influenced the cultural status of corpora and of bodies of knowledge; and it affected the status of the social groups that mastered the different corpora. Moreover, the tense relationship between speech and writing and the privileging of speech over writing underpinned significant mechanisms of social control in traditional Jewish society. It is this principle that explains, so it seems, why the curriculum of the traditional Jewish education system in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe did not teach writing to its students, that is, did not instruct them in the technical skill of drawing the letters of the alphabet. Notably, and in a manner that has long perplexed scholars, this skill was not taught systematically in the heder and the yeshiva, but rather in informal and marginal educational settings. This situation persisted even after the campaign for mass literacy had begun in Europe, and even after it had become broadly accepted in Europe that literacy comprises both reading and writing (Clanchy 1979, 262–263; Furet and Ozouf 1977, 112; Graff 1987a, 260–372). As I will contend in the chapters below, this puzzling phenomenon did not result only from prolonged neglect, inert conservatism, poverty, or scarcity of resources. Rather, entrusting instruction in writing to informal educational frameworks reflected a threatened society’s suspicious attitude toward script, writers, and writing. It is against this background that the young yeshiva students who embarked on their way to Haskalah—some of whom would later become the great writers of modern Hebrew literature—began to “sin by writing.” And, indeed, the thesis presented in this book calls for a renewed consideration of the well-known Hebrew idiom “to sin by writing” (lah.to bikhtiva). In present-day usage, this idiom is usually employed by a

12 Throughout this monograph, “Oral Torah” and “Oral Law” are used interchange-

ably. 13 On the link between the prohibition on putting the Oral Torah into writing and the

refraining from teaching writing to boys in the third century AD, see Morris (1977, 162– 165). On the religious motivations for instituting a universal policy of teaching reading skills in seventeenth-century Sweden, and on the charged relationship between the spoken and the written word in early modern Europe, see, for example Graff (1987a, 10–14, 308–310) and Cressy (1980, 178–179).

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speaker to refer to his or her14 own writing in a depreciative and apologetic manner, as if it were a mere side-engagement, a pastime, or a transitory youthful exuberance. And yet, as we shall see below, the reference to writing as a sin may reflect much more than a dismissive attitude toward callow writing, or a person’s effort to underscore the psychological and other inhibitions that stand in the way of his or her writing. This idiom acquires a different meaning when it is examined in the context of cultural understandings of writing and apprehensions with regard to it. This particular “sin” is context-dependent and colored by the specific hues of the speaker’s society with its values, desires, fears, inhibitions, and prohibitions. In the case of traditional Jewish society in nineteenthcentury Eastern Europe, the preference for speech over writing and the fear of unsupervised writing imbued the sin of writing with particularly charged meanings. Discussion of the sin of writing in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society is important not only because it clarifies how Jewish authors of the time viewed the writing of essays and of belles lettres, but also because it sheds new light on the processes of enlightenment, secularization, and modernization in Eastern European Jewish society. Examining the literary harvest of nineteenth-century Jewish culture from this perspective reveals that, in their act of writing, Maskilic writers overturned the traditional hierarchy between speech and writing, thus effecting far-reaching changes in the uses and functions of writing in their society. This breaking of ranks, inextricably connected with a new conception of reading, undermined the foundations of traditional Jewish society. It was one of the main engines of secularization and modernization in this society, and there was hardly any area that it left unchanged: it altered notions of language, text, and textual interpretation; it changed the definitions of knowledge, its structuring, and its dissemination; it transformed notions of critical thinking and methods of proof and instruction; it altered the status of authority sources and canonical texts; it introduced new concepts of originality and innovation; and, no less important, it played a critical role in the constitution of the Maskilic individual as an enlightened subject, whose writing is central to the formation of his selfhood and identity. 14 Since this book deals primarily with men and with exclusively male spheres of activity, I usually use male pronouns. When women, too, are referred to, I use female pronouns as well.

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The Structure of the Book and Its Main Arguments Several main arguments run through the chapters of this monograph. The first argument is that the literacy culture in traditional Jewish society in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe was a culture of oral literacy. This society approached writing with immense caution and treated writers with suspicion and reservation, if not worse. The second argument is that traditional society’s qualms with regard to writing reflected a deep cultural principle that gave primacy to speech over writing and that found expression, first and foremost, in the treatment of the Oral Torah, i.e., the Jewish Oral Law, as superior in many crucial ways to the Written Torah, i.e., the Pentateuch. This monograph explores the effects of the primacy of speech over writing, as a deep cultural code, on this society’s attitude toward writing in the broad sense of the term: writing as a technical skill, as a means of accomplishing a variety of practical and religious goals, and as an art of language and style. It should be noted at the outset, however, that the monograph does not deal with all the forms, uses, and manifestations of writing in this society: it does not deal with writing practices whose legitimacy was self-evident, such as the writing of letters and documents for secular everyday business, nor does it deal with the copying of sacred ritual texts, which was the province of religious scribes. Rather, it focuses on texts whose writing demanded special justification and on those whose writing was considered entirely illegitimate in traditional society. In other words, this study draws attention primarily to the areas where substantial normative restrictions on writing prevailed, such as the committing to paper of Halakhic debates and homilies that were delivered orally, which was subject to considerable restrictions. The third argument put forward in this monograph is that the principle of the primacy of speech over writing also played a major, yet reverse, role in shaping the attitude toward writing in the Jewish Enlightenment, the Haskalah. A new, subversive approach to writing, to writers, and to the book became one of the cornerstones of the Haskalah. “Sinning by writing” became an important step on the route to Haskalah, and the young yeshiva students who were undergoing enlightenment (the Mitmaskelim) had to struggle with profound feelings of sinfulness and guilt due to their engagement in writing. New practices of writing emerged, as did new genres of writing. Highlighting the principle of the primacy of speech over writing in Eastern European Jewish society therefore unveils the dramatic

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nature of the writing revolution in this society. It reveals the substantial role that this revolution played in the secularization and modernization of Jewish society, as well as in the emergence and formation of modern Hebrew literature. The next chapter of the book, Chapter 2, discusses the theoretical background of this study and its methodological tools. It begins with a brief review of the philosophical discussions of speech and writing in Plato and Derrida, and continues with an outline of new trends in the study of literacy. It presents the “ideological model” in literacy research, which is identified with New Literacy Studies and which serves as one of the theoretical foundations of this monograph. According to this model, literacy is an arena of social, cultural, political, and other power struggles, which segregate, exclude, oppress, and control, no less than they advance and promote social progress. These fundamental assumptions, which also guide the choice of research methods in this study, treat literacy as a context-dependent social phenomenon and reveal the blind spots in existing scholarship on the history of literacy in Jewish society. The remainder of the chapter takes a closer look at the study’s research methods. It places the study within a tradition of ethnographically oriented research, which observes events of reading and writing and analyzes them in their immediate social and cultural context. To achieve this goal, the study draws on a close reading of a large corpus of stories of writing and of reading collected from autobiographies, memoirs, ethnographic texts, and literary works of the period. These testimonies, and external sources that confirm them, combine to show that literacy is not of a piece. In Jewish society, as in any other society, various kinds of literacy existed side by side, expressed in the lives of individuals, society, and culture. Chapter 3 explores the different kinds of literacy that were current in Eastern European Jewish society in the nineteenth century and shatters the myth that this society was characterized by universal male literacy. It discusses the abstention from teaching writing in the traditional Jewish education system, its causes and its consequences, and explores the teaching of writing in informal educational settings, as well as the genderial and social composition of the pupil population in those settings. Along the way, it directs attention to the inferior status of those who taught and learned writing and to the gender stereotypes that disparaged writing, namely, the identification of speech with masculine spirit and authority and the identification of the written word with the female

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sphere. Based on a close reading of selected testimonies and accounts of reading and writing episodes, the chapter examines some of the consequences of the literacy policy practiced in traditional society. It provides evidence for the many instances of mechanical knowledge of reading, without actual comprehension, and for the prevalent phenomenon of writing and signing “by passing the pen” to a scribe or to another person skilled in writing, due to limited mastery of this skill. Another significant source in this chapter is statistical studies, which also show that among those who were regarded literate in this society, there was a considerable group of men who could read only mechanically and who could not apply their reading skills to texts that were not Biblical or liturgical. All this challenges the myth of universal male literacy in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society or, at the very least, testifies to the fluid nature of the definition of literacy in this society. The next two chapters take a closer look into traditional Jewish society’s approach to writing. Chapter 4 examines the status of writing in the Hasidic, mystically oriented sector of Jewish society, and Chapter 5 examines its status among the Hasidim’s fierce opponents, the rabbinic, legally oriented Mitnagdim. Despite the many differences between the cultures of the two groups, these chapters show that both of them maintained an oral literacy culture. Each group preferred speech to writing for its own reasons, but both drew inspiration from the privileging of the study of the Oral Torah over that of the Written Torah and from the separation between the two, in the spirit of the Talmudic saying “Things that are written, you are not allowed to say by heart, and things that are spoken—you are not allowed to say in writing” (Bavli, Gittin 60b). In Hasidic society, writing was treated with reservation because it threatened to detract from the oral charisma of the tzaddik (lit. righteous man, Hasidic rabbi and spiritual leader). Furthermore, it aroused worries that esoteric knowledge might come into the possession of unworthy people, as well as fears of the sin of pride, which was believed to be inherent in writing that is not solely for the sake of Heaven. These attitudes were expressed in practices, in sayings, and in many Hasidic tales. In Mitnagdic society, by contrast, writing was treated suspiciously primarily because it was thought to weaken memory, to diminish knowledge, and to disseminate erroneous interpretations of oral teachings. The preference for speech over writing found expression in well-established practices and institutions, such as learning by means of dialogue, public confrontation, repetition out loud, and memorization. These practices and views were

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not abandoned even when the struggle against modernization, secularization, and the Haskalah movement had forced both of these groups to loosen the reins on the writing and publication of books. The chapters show that both the adherence to the principle of the primacy of speech and the partial withdrawal from it were supported by Halakhic and semiHalakhic considerations, some of which were intended to deter writers by placing obstacles in their path, while others were intended to justify writing and printing for the purpose of spreading the Torah, in keeping with the paradoxical verse, “time to act for the Lord, they violated Your Torah” (Psalms 119:126). Chapters 6 and 7 each highlight an additional aspect of the restrictions on writing in traditional Jewish society, and then proceed to examine how these restrictions affected those who began to “sin by writing,” namely, the young Mitmaskelim who gradually revolutionized the status of writing in Jewish society. Chapter 6 explores the gender and class images of the various written and oral corpora in traditional Jewish society, and then discusses the effects of the gendering of the corpra on Maskilic writing. It shows how formative early childhood experiences stamped a label of gender inferiority on writers and on writing in nineteenthcentury Jewish society. Men’s autobiographical accounts of the sweet hours they had spent sitting in their mothers’ or grandmothers’ laps, listening to them reading Bible stories in Yiddish, the so-called mame lushn (mother tongue), demonstrate that even in early childhood, the message was conveyed that the Written Torah, the Biblical legends, imagination, and myth were the province of women or of “men who were like women,” whereas the prestigious and respected Oral Law, i.e., the Oral Torah, was the exclusive province of men. The feminine image that clung to Bible stories also clung to those who developed a passion for the mother’s sphere of legend and imagination, and who tried their hand at writing stories and legends. These writing ambitions, which often accompanied the hitmaskelut process (the process of becoming an enlightened person, a Maskil), posed a threat to the Maskilic writers’ masculine identity. There is no wonder, therefore, that they took measures to eliminate the feminine image of writing and to give it the status of a prestigious masculine pursuit. The choice of Hebrew, the father tongue, rather than Yiddish, the mother tongue, as the language of writing served, among other things, to sever the writing of belles lettres from the female sphere and to endow it with the desired male gender prestige.

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Chapter 7 shows, however, that the choice of Hebrew as the language of writing was not without its own difficulties, contradictions, and predicaments. The first part of the chapter explores the treatment of the Hebrew language in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society and contends that the traditional education system cultivated intentional ignorance of the Hebrew language among large parts of the population. The chapter investigates the surprising dearth of systematic teaching of Hebrew and its grammar in the traditional Jewish education system, as well as the hostile attitude toward those who did study Hebrew grammar and who used this knowledge for studying the Bible—a hostility that went as far as suspecting these individuals of heresy. This literacy policy is attributed, among other things, to the threat that unmediated access to the literal meanings of the Bible posed to rabbinic authority. The last parts of the chapter examine the implications of the intentional ignorance of Hebrew for the Maskilic writers who chose Hebrew as their language of writing. They show that the widespread ignorance of Hebrew and the ambivalent attitude toward it exerted a far-reaching influence on Haskalah writers, on their readerships, and on the emerging modern Hebrew literature. Chapter 8 shows that against this background of intentional ignorance of Hebrew in traditional society, the study of Hebrew and its grammar became a central component of the process of hitmaskelut, i.e., the process of becoming a Maskil. Because those who chose to study the Bible and Hebrew grammar were often suspected of heresy and were frequently forced to study alone and in secret, the study of Hebrew—and even more so the writing and publication in this language—turned into the ticket of entry to the adult male Maskilic community. Borrowing the notion of “rite of passage” from anthropology, the chapter analyzes the hitmaskelut process as an informal rite of conversion and initiation into the Maskilic community. It shows that literacy events of various kinds played a major role in all the stages of this rite of passage, from the stage of separation from traditional society and its values, through the liminal stage of “betwixt and between,” and ending with the final stage of incorporation into the male Maskilic community and the assuming of a full male Maskilic identity. A central argument in this chapter is that the Maskilic rite of passage served to constitute not only the young “initiates’” Maskilic identity, but also their male gender identity. The study of Hebrew grammar, which was one of the central trials in this rite of passage and which involved many hardships, was not only an initiation into the

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world of Haskalah but also a shift from the mother tongue (Yiddish) to the father tongue (Hebrew) and from the feminine sphere to the masculine one. The writing and publication of a Hebrew text, often composed in pure Biblical Hebrew, symbolized mastery of the “masculine” Hebrew language as well as entry into the circles of the Maskilim. The Maskilic rite of passage therefore filled the ranks of a new Maskilic generation, which would struggle not only to establish a new Jewish identity and masculinity, but also to obtain control over language and to stimulate a general transformation in the consciousness, ethics, and aesthetics of Jewish society. In this process, the transition from an oral literacy culture to a literacy culture that nurtures and cherishes writing, the writer, and the book played a major role. Chapter 9 continues to examine the world of the young yeshiva students undergoing enlightenment by delving into their first experiences of writing as recounted in their autobiographies and by analyzing the role of personal, confessional writing in their constitution as autonomous, male, Jewish, Maskilic subjects. The chapter lays out the full range of sins that were experienced as “sins of writing,” exposing the various transgressions that were entailed by writing, many of which challenged the clear boundaries between the sacred and the profane. The chapter demonstrates that many of the autobiographical stories of the first experiences of writing reflect feelings of sin and guilt due to the very act of learning how to write. Other accounts attribute the sinfulness of writing to the inevitable mixture of sacred and profane that it required in terms of language, genre, and the subjects of writing. Yet others describe the sins of attraction to the aesthetic for its own sake, of the urge to write in order to give pleasure and to take pleasure in the story, and of the wish to display talent that would win the readers’ hearts. However, the most painful and subversive of the sins of writing, those that frequently led to a break with the writer’s father, had to do with the pride and the eros that were bound up, often inextricably, with confessional and introspective writing—with taking pleasure in it and with enjoying its display and its glory. The revolutionary and subversive aspect of confessional writing found symbolic expression in the transition from writing in the margins of a sanctified canonical text to the writing, out of an explicit choice, on a blank sheet of paper. Writing on a blank page opened up a space that allowed the writer to construct his identity from the very beginning and to divorce himself from the superiority of speech by giving priority to

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writing. And yet this chapter also exposes the deeply ambivalent nature of the experience of writing for the young Mitmaskelim: they perceived writing as a quintessential site of power and liberty, but also as a site of painful tribulations; their acts of writing were buffeted between the desire to write and writing’s anxieties, between moments of spiritual exaltation and decline into the torments of sin, and between tradition and modernity. These predicaments run through their autobiographic stories of writing—stories of the growth and maturation of writers who invested all their strength in the renewal of the Hebrew language, literature, and culture. Through these stories, we can observe the central role that writing played both in the journey of the individual writer, who established himself as an enlightened modern Jewish subject, and in the modernization and secularization of society at large. The monograph’s Epilogue examines the reflection of some of the processes outlined above in a literary work written by one of the greatest authors of modern Hebrew literature, S. Y. Agnon (Buchach, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1888–1970). The chapter presents a reading of Agnon’s short story “Bilti LeHaShem Levado” (“Only for the Lord Alone”) (1962a), which is an adaptation of a Hasidic tale and which forms part of his collection of stories about the Ba’al Shem Tov (also known by the acronym BeSHT, usually considered the founder of Hasidism). Writing and its sinfulness are major themes in this story, and it throws light both on traditional Jewish society’s attitude toward writing and on Agnon’s own attitude toward it, as a writer torn between a sense of duty for the lost traditional world and his vocation as a modern artist. By tracing Agnon’s fingerprints on the Hasidic story, we discover the double bind facing the modern Jewish writer-artist when he turns his gaze backward, to the traditional world. The explicit moral of the Hasidic tale is that the story, every story, must be told solely for the sake of Heaven, and that the very act of putting a story into writing casts doubt on the purity of its author’s intentions. Furthermore, not only do the preachers whose words are committed to paper sin by preaching “not only for the sake of Heaven,” but so too do their addressees, for the latter extract from the beauty of the stories and the homilies pleasure for its own sake. Hence Agnon, who commits the Hasidic tale to paper in an unmistakably artistic fashion, is found subverting the overt message of the tale, and sinning by doing so. To conclude this Introduction, it is important to re-emphasize the scope and boundaries of this study. The monograph does not aspire

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to examine the literacy cultures of specific Eastern European Jewish communities in the nineteenth century, nor does it seek to highlight the differences between center and periphery in this society or between the literacies prevailing in different social circles and classes. Rather, its aim is to reveal the general principles that shaped the culture of literacy of Eastern European Jewry of that period, as well as to highlight the codes that endowed this culture with meaning. Without ignoring the differences between Jewish communities in Eastern Europe and without denying the existence of exceptions to the rule, the intention here is to describe, analyze, and interpret deep structures that shaped long-term processes in Eastern European Jewish society of the time. Despite its heterogeneity, this society displayed common social and cultural features, and hence the exceptions to the rule, in this instance, only prove the rule. The transition of Eastern European Jewish society from an oral literacy culture to one centered on writing was not sudden or marked by sharp changes. Threads of continuity and change were interwoven throughout this process, and the substantial questions that it raises have to do not with the exact times of is commencement or completion, but rather with its sources, manifestations, and consequences. The second half of the nineteenth century was chosen as the focus of this study because it was during this period that the transition from a culture of literacy marked by oral dominance to one in which writing is cherished and cultivated became visible, conscious, and explicit. It was during this period that the writing revolution gained momentum, and came to play an important role both as an outcome of the secularization and modernization processes in Jewish society and as one of the drivers of these processes. Much of the evidence that reveals the magnitude of this social transformation, and that may help explain it, is dispersed in autobiographies, memoirs, and the literature of the time. It is hidden in unwitting descriptions of everyday trifles, seemingly banal practices of daily life, and a variety of semi-ethnographic accounts, referring in one way or another to literacy, writing, and books. The study of these sources illuminates the discourse on writing as a locus of social and ideological power struggles, and traces the connections between this discourse and the codes that underlie it. As noted, the primacy of speech over writing was the underlying principle behind these codes. In the course of history, this principle received various emphases and interpretations in the spirit of the time, and these, in turn, determined the purpose, status, and legitimacy of the accepted practices of writing, the role of the writer and of

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the book, and their place in society. Not infrequently, the denunciation of one kind of writing, such as committing parts of the Oral Torah to paper, became detached in the course of time from its original context and occasioned reservations with regard to other kinds of writing. In light of all this, it should be clear by now that this monograph does not advance an ahistorical, sweeping argument, according to which Jewish society throughout the ages, with all its tribes and Diasporas, condemned every kind of writing wholesale. In different contexts and periods, Jewish society granted legitimacy to different kinds of writing, both sacred and secular. However, there can be no doubt that the complex attitude toward writing in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society was rooted in a well-established tradition of apprehension with regard to this practice. This apprehension played an important role not only in traditional society, but also in the Haskalah movement and in the work of the Maskilim, who sought to transform this society.

CHAPTER 2

Literacy: Theory, Methodology, Ethnography

We must distinguish the liberating potential of popular literacy from its more mundane reality […] Literacy unlocked a variety of doors, but it did not necessarily secure admission. David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order 1

Speech and Writing: From Plato to Derrida The relationship between speech and writing and the superiority of one over the other have been a recurrent theme throughout the history of Western thought, from the renowned Socratic-Platonic consideration of this issue to the works of twentieth-century scholars, writers, and thinkers (e.g., Barthes 1967, 1975, 1985, 2007; Borges 2001; de Certeau 1984). In Jewish culture, too, debates on this matter have held a distinguished place, and the tendency to privilege speech over writing, which was evident throughout much of Jewish history, was often supported by arguments similar to those raised in Western culture, and not only there (Messick 1993). The primacy of speech over writing in nineteenthcentury Eastern European Jewish society should therefore be viewed in

1 Cressy (1980, 189).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. Parush, The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature, New Directions in Book History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81819-7_2

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light of the prolonged discussion of speech and writing in Western tradition and in comparison to it. This chapter provides a glimpse into this discussion by presenting two views expressed at its two chronological extremes: Plato’s view on the one hand and Jacques Derrida’s on the other hand. In his “Plato’s Pharmacy” (1981), Derrida discusses the issue of speech and writing by examining Plato’s position on this matter and by considering the view that Plato believed speech to be clearly superior to writing. The starting point of Derrida’s essay is a short episode from the Phaedrus, in which Socrates and Phaedrus converse about the distinction between good and bad writing. The episode begins with Socrates relating a myth to clarify his position (Phaedrus 274c–e). In the myth, the god Theuth, the inventor of writing, offers his invention as a gift to the Egyptian King Thamus and his subjects, while praising its merits. In response, Thamus rejects both the gift and the words of praise. Whereas Theuth contends that writing assists memory, deepens knowledge, and imparts wisdom on those who possess it, Thamus proclaims that the opposite is the case. He refuses to be impressed by Theuth’s enthusiastic claims, and presents not only great skepticism but also a series of critical arguments: “[writing] will implant forgetfulness in their souls: they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves […] And it is not true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance” (275a).2 Socrates not only confirms Thamus’s arguments but also goes further, listing additional disadvantages of script and writing: That’s the strange thing about writing, [… the written words] seem to talk to you as though they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling you the same thing forever. And once a thing is put in writing, the composition […] drifts all over the place, getting into the hands not only of those who understand it, […] it doesn’t know how to address the right people, and not how to address the wrong. And when it is ill-treated and unfairly abused it always needs its parent to come to its help, being unable to defend itself. (275d–e)

2 All translations from the Phaedrus are by R. Hackforth (Plato 1952).

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As these arguments demonstrate, Socrates’s approach stems from his perception of speech as the living and breathing conversation of the knowledgeable person (276a), in contrast to writing, which he views as a frozen and dead substitute for living conversation. In his view, true knowledge is one that is received directly from the source of authority, i.e., the god, the king, the father, or the religious teacher, and that is thus impressed upon the knower’s soul. Closeness to the teacher, so that one hears the teaching directly from him, is the primary guarantee for stable meaning and for true knowledge. Unlike the written transmission of knowledge, oral transmission makes it possible to obtain an accurate elucidation of the transmitted knowledge from its authoritative source, and therefore it is less vulnerable to false interpretations and misunderstandings. Socrates’s opposition to writing is therefore closely related to his views regarding the control over knowledge and its dissemination, as well as to his views on questions of pedagogy. He praises speech as an embodiment of knowledge that is able to defend itself and to address only those worthy of it, while remaining silent before those who are not worthy (275d–e). His arguments imply that the danger posed by the written text lies with its being severed from its author and out of his control. Thus, the written text is liable to fall victim to erroneous interpretation and malicious distortion. Trustworthy knowledge is passed on through an unbroken human chain of reliable reporters, who convey their teachings to chosen students in a prolonged, living, and direct dialogue, for “The dialectician selects a soul of the right type, and in it he plants and sows his words founded in knowledge, words which can defend both themselves and him who planted them” (276e). Despite the various arguments against writing presented here, Socrates does not preach for an ideal world without writing. However, he undoubtedly calls for restricting the use of writing and for taking a cautious and critical approach toward it. He admits that writing is sometimes necessary as an aid to memory, for example when one takes short notes to document one’s thoughts for oneself or for people who may find interest in them in the future, but he nevertheless shows deep mistrust toward written texts of all kinds, especially literary texts (277a–278b). This is not the place to elaborate on the complex Socratic-Platonic view of literature and poetry. For our purposes, suffice it to say that despite its opposition to writing, the Phaedrus does propose a distinction between legitimate types of writing and ones that are illegitimate or inferior and

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that dishonor their writers. The reference to inferior genres shows that, contrary to what might be inferred from the myth of Theuth, the discussion of speech and writing in the Phaedrus is not an anachronistic relic of an ancient debate, a remnant from an oral society responding to the invention of writing. Rather, it is an ongoing polemic that does not cease to concern thinkers even in fully literate societies. Indeed, even a brief glance at the thought and work of contemporary writers suffices to show that the question of the relationship between speech and writing has not lost its relevance.3 The seminal works of leading scholars in the area of literacy, including those written in the last four decades, rely upon the distinction between speech and writing both to perfect theoretical models of literacy and to analyze the literacy cultures of particular societies. Hence, Derrida’s reading of the Phaedrus is part of an ongoing debate, and he contributes to it not only by elucidating the thought of his predecessors but also by adding new insights of his own. In “Plato’s Pharmacy,” Derrida shows that one way of reading the Platonic dialogue would be to superimpose the relationship between speech and writing on a series of hierarchical binary oppositions in Western thought. According to this reading, the relationship between speech and writing is the same as the relationship between good and evil, life and death, soul and body, truth and falsehood, original and copy, natural and artificial, serious and playful, memory and forgetfulness. It is also the same as the relationship between logos, dialectic, law, and truth on the one hand, and myth, imagination, and fiction on the other hand.4 However, after presenting this interpretation, Derrida proposes reading Plato differently.5 In a typical interpretative move, he seeks to deconstruct these binary oppositions and undermine the logocentrism reflected in them. To do so, he points to the contradictory meanings of the word pharmakon (Greek for both poison and remedy), to which Plato compares writing, and concludes, among

3 For example, see Havelock (1986, 16, 36, 50). 4 The pair “man-woman” should be added to this list. It is not mentioned explicitly

in the Phaedrus, and Derrida notes that the mother, unlike the father and the son, is passed over in silence in the dialogue. And yet he also writes that if one looks carefully, perhaps one could see the mother’s elusive figure reversed, as in a visual riddle, among the leaves in the Garden of Adonis (Derrida 1981, 143). For a feminist discussion of Derrida’s position on this matter, see Clarke (2000, 61–70). 5 On Derrida’s shifting between three different readings of Plato, see Brogan (1989, 7–8).

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other things, that writing is not only inferior, contemptible, and indecent, but also subversive, violent, and dangerous. However, our main interest is neither Derrida’s general position nor the details of his interpretation of Plato. For the purposes of the present discussion of the status of writing, several of Derrida’s key concepts are important, as well as a series of insights, some of which are not necessarily of major importance to him. Particularly illuminating in our context are the ideological, social, and psychological implications of Derrida’s analysis, as well as his insights into the ambivalent nature of writing and the deep motivations for viewing it as inferior to speech. Derrida’s view of writing helps us see the distinctly ideological and political nature of this practice, of the uses it serves, and of the forces that shape it.6 In an intricate line of reasoning, Derrida shows that writing, like the pharmakon, is both an elixir of life and a deadly poison. As a “supplement” of living speech, that is, as a duplicate or a reflection of it, it appears to be merely an aid to speech or a redundancy, and yet it has a cunning and threatening quality to it; it disguises itself as the supportive and innocent servant of speech, but in fact it acts to make speech itself redundant and to replace it. This analysis, which emphasizes the tension between the script and writing on the one hand, and the sources of authority and knowledge on the other hand, inevitably alludes to the social and political aspects of writing. It sheds light on the close connection between a society’s literacy policy and its social order, and it shows that the struggle for control over literacy is a struggle for hegemony, which is waged with tools permeated by symbolic violence. Reading “Plato’s Pharmacy” from this sociological perspective shows that, in the course of discussing writing as a “supplement,” Derrida highlights many of the features of charismatic religious authority, and shows why such authority has an interest in privileging speech over writing. Thus, for example, in describing the part played by the aura of orality in establishing the authority of the religious teacher, Derrida repeatedly brings out the role of writing in challenging this authority. The superiority of speech is attributed to its originality and uniqueness, unlike writing that can be duplicated, and to the fact that the speaker, i.e., the source of authority and knowledge, is always present and cannot be copied, reconstructed, or falsified. This explains why proponents of speech tend

6 This approach is consistent with the argument advanced by Street (1999, 101).

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to glorify its virtues with images of warmth, flexibility, and vitality, and why they present it as the embodiment of pure truth. The living presence of the speaker, the knowing teacher, is a guarantee of truth, since truth emerges from his mouth and is directly engraved upon the disciple’s soul or the tablet of his heart. This is not true of writing, which replaces the original oral system of signs with a secondary system replete with ambiguity, evasiveness, and cunningness. The grave danger inherent in writing is not, therefore, only in vitiating memory and constricting knowledge, but also in allowing unsupervised interpretations, in severing the genealogical conveyance of tradition, and in undermining the student’s willingness to obey authority. It would be no exaggeration to say that these social and political facets of writing are also reflected in Derrida’s daring and dramatic images and in his use of the father-son metaphor to describe writing as a violent act of patricide. The Father, says Derrida, is always suspicious of writing and supervises it, because writing is associated with the absence of the father, and because in the very act of putting speech into writing the son removes the yoke of the god-king-father and expresses an attraction to orphandom or a desire to murder the father (Derrida 1981, 77). Therefore, not surprisingly, putting the words of authority into writing is taken as a subversive act, bursting with hubris, in which the son dispossesses his father, makes him superfluous, and takes his place. Evidently, both Plato’s and Derrida’s discussions originated in unmistakably literate societies, and could only have been held in such societies. Unlike in Socrates’s myth, what is at issue here is not a contention between speech and writing at the moment of transition from an oral society to a literate one, or an effort to “salvage” the remnants of an oral society in an established literate one. What is at issue is the privileging of speech, and the confrontation between speech and writing, in societies in which writing already has a strong hold. These discussions force one to conclude that writing, which is presented as an inferior, contemptible, and reprehensible tool, is in fact a hugely threatening and powerful force, and what appears to be contempt for it is actually profound fear of it.

From the Autonomous Model to the Ideological Model Almost all current research into literacy and the history of writing relates in one way or another to the prolonged philosophical discussion of these

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questions, from Plato to Derrida (Havelock 1986, 16, 36, 50; Messick 1993, 25; Street 1999, 101). The relevance of this discussion for understanding the history of literacy up to the present day is particularly conspicuous given the critique leveled in recent decades against the classical approach to the study of literacy, whose prominent representatives have been Jack Goody (1968, 1986, 1987), Goody and Watt (1963) and Walter Ong (1982). According to Ong and Goody’s approach, which Street calls the “autonomous model,” literacy is a well-defined technical skill, independent of the context and circumstances in which it is acquired. It represents the polar opposite of orality, and by its nature it fuels an evolutionary process directed toward progress, freedom, and well-being. There is hardly any achievement of human society or of the individual that is not seen as requiring literacy, and hardly any component of progress that is not regarded as a product of it, without any connection to variables of gender, class, ethnicity, ideology, politics, and the like. However, as noted above, in the last third of the twentieth century, these views, which were termed by Harvey Graff “the myth of literacy,” were sharply criticized. Graff challenged the validity of theories of literacy based solely on narratives of progress and enlightenment, and emphasized the varied character of literacy, its non-linear dynamics, and the complex and polysemous nature of its ramifications (Graff 1979, 1987a, 382–386; Kaestle 1985, 11–53). Street, James Collins, and their colleagues in the circle of New Literacy Studies developed an even more radical relativism than that of Graff and propounded the “ideological model” as an alternative to the autonomous model, which they had rejected (Street 1993, 1–21). New Literacy Studies developed in the second half of the twentieth century as part of a trend that encompassed a broad variety of disciplines, and was sometimes dubbed the “social turn” (Gee 2000). In the specific context of literacy studies, this turn was expressed in the development of a more sociological understanding of literacy and in the replacement of the monolithic and linear autonomous model by a culturally dependent, relativistic and non-linear one. According to this new “ideological model,” literacy is much more than a mere technical skill, and the sharp dichotomy between orality and literacy, which is one of the cornerstones of the classical approach, is false (Street 1995, 153–159, 1999, 1–65, 95–125). It is argued that there is no polar opposition between the two, and that one cannot speak of a single literacy, self-contained and uniform, but rather of a variety of literacies, which must be studied within

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their social contexts and in terms of the power structures and ideologies that surround them.7 Furthermore, just as literacy does not have a uniform, unchanging, universal essence, it is not necessarily the harbinger of enlightenment, equality, and liberty. According to the basic assumptions of New Literacy Studies, literacy is a social situation that bears many meanings. Reading and writing as social practices are always embedded within a context, that is, within concrete situations, a given social structure, and existing discourses, which endow those skills with their meanings and significance. Different educational institutions provide reading and writing skills of different kinds using different pedagogical methods, depending on the purposes of the literacy taught in them. Thus, for example, in traditional Jewish society, the literacy skills taught in the heder (the Jewish elementary school) were different from those taught to Talmud scholars in the yeshiva, just as the skills taught in these institutions were different from those taught in the schools and universities of the surrounding society. Moreover, the adaptation of different literacy skills to different target populations refined and reinforced mechanisms of control over knowledge, and contributed to the preservation and reproduction of the social order.8 The role played by literacy in identity construction and socialization defines it as a locus of confrontation between centers of power and authority and centers of social resistance. In this confrontation, literacy constitutes a means for obtaining social control and securing hegemony. Moreover, because of the sophisticated use of various kinds of literacy both for social advancement and for segregation, it is impossible to evaluate its nature and results in universal terms, and certainly not in terms of progress. Literacy can be an instrument of critical thinking and mobility, just as it can be an instrument of conservatism. Discrimination among populations based on ethnicity, class, or gender does not necessarily entail total deprivation of basic literacy skills. Usually, even societies that provide basic reading ability to most of their members maintain discrimination among them by means of differences in the contents of study, in its

7 For a critical discussion of the autonomous model, see Street (1999, 1–65). 8 Kaestle (1976, 177–191) argued that at the beginning of the industrial age in

England, reading was taught without writing because elites feared the uncontrolled spread of writing skills. On control of literacy as a means of securing the hegemony of social elites, see also Scribner (1988, 75–76).

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purposes, and in its designated uses (Kaestle 1985, 11–53). Thus, education systems that teach reading and writing to everyone frequently deprive certain populations of the literacy skills that would give them access to prestigious knowledge and to social positions of power. The key questions in the study of literacy are therefore how, when, where, why, to whom, and for what purpose literacy skills are provided, what type of literacy is provided to each of the learner populations, and who are those who are deprived of literacy (Graff 1987a, 4). Moreover, despite the potency of the control mechanisms based on the allocation or withholding of diverse literacy skills, these mechanisms do not necessarily create stable patterns or states of literacy. Quite often, the opposite is the case. States of literacy are constantly prone to pressure toward change, and at any given moment there is someone who manages them, someone who negotiates them, and someone who struggles against them and acts to change them. According to New Literacy Studies, the distribution and characteristics of literacies in a given society are both uneven and dynamic, and the factors determining them at any given moment—the actors, the actions, the discourses—reflect simultaneously the ongoing efforts of the hegemony to preserve the existing situation and the subversive acts of those who seek to change it. Accordingly, literacy as a subject of research is “always already”—it is always already replete with ideological struggles, and in many respects, its study is equivalent to the study of social change. The ideological model described here leads to a series of conclusions, both substantial and methodological. The first conclusion is that the best way to understand the complex phenomenon called “literacy” is as a heterogeneous system of social practices. Knowledge of reading and writing is not a single, stable, and well-defined phenomenon, but a complex set of skills or literacies, whose meanings become clear only when one examines them in their historical, social, cultural, economic, and political context. Therefore, much of the theoretical effort in New Literacy Studies has been directed at developing a better conceptualization of the relationship between reading and writing on the one hand, and social structure on the other hand. As part of this effort, scholars have proposed new methods and analytical tools for studying literacy as a social practice, and new fields of research, such as the ethnography of reading (Boyarin 1993) and the ethnography of writing (Danet 1998), have been

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developed.9 Two key concepts that have been coined in this context are of particular interest to us: “literacy events” and “literacy practices” (Barton and Hamilton 2000). Generally speaking, the term “literacy event” denotes an event in which there is a dialogue or a conversation around a written text (Heath 1982). Thus, yeshiva students studying a passage of the Talmud, university students analyzing a poem in a seminar, a mother reading to her children Biblical stories from the Tsena UR’ena (a Yiddish compendium of Pentateuch stories and commentaries addressed to and read by women)—all these are literacy events. Such events are shaped by a dynamic network of interactions among people, environments, technologies, actions, customs, words, and symbols. By observing them, the researcher can follow the process of producing meaning from a written text and analyze the socially and culturally dependent nature of this process. The study of literacy events focuses, therefore, both on the text under discussion and on the process whereby reading, writing and meaning are conditioned by their social context (Barton and Hamilton 2000, 9). However, highlighting the social aspects of literacy events does not imply that these events have no personal, private dimension. Many of them are performed in solitude and reflect the wishes, values, and needs of individuals. Moreover, most of the retrospective accounts of literacy events tend to present solitary reading and writing as highly significant experiences. The intimate reading and writing events of childhood are often described in hindsight as experiences that had constituted, reciprocally, both the reader as an individual who peers into his own soul and the reader’s social identity—be it religious, class, gender, ethnic, ideological, or other. Consequently, comprehensive analysis of solitary literacy events requires one to also examine their relationship with more public and dialogical literacy events, as well as the relationship of both kinds of events with broader social institutions (Maybin 2000, 198). Although the notion of literacy events has gained broad acceptance, it has been criticized for defining the subject of literacy research too narrowly. Consequently, some scholars have suggested expanding the object of observation from dialogical events around a written text to “literacy practices” (Street 1995, 2, 162–163). Unlike literacy events, not all literacy practices are observable behaviors, and understanding them 9 For a critical discussion of the early theoretical models of New Literacy Studies, see Street (2003, 77–91).

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often requires more abstract conceptualization of the uses of reading and writing and of the cultural meanings attributed to them. These uses and meanings point to the links between literacy practices and a variety of factors that are not observable, such as feelings and values, beliefs and opinions, ideologies and power structures (Barton and Hamilton 2000, 7–13). The feelings evoked by forbidden reading are not the same as those evoked by mandatory reading, reading in public is not the same as reading in secret, and pleasurable reading is not the same as reading in agony. For the very same reasons, dictating a letter is different from writing it by one’s own hand, copying a poem is unlike writing an original one, writing in the margins of a pre-given text is different from writing on a blank sheet of paper, and writing for study and teaching is different from writing for satisfying emotional or aesthetic-artistic needs. Of course, in these areas, too, there is a deep reciprocal relationship between the individual and society. The individual’s stance as a reader and writer always takes shape in relation to the discourses surrounding him or her—in opposition to these discourses or in agreement with them. Indeed, the meanings of literacy practices are closely related to the discourses used to discuss literacy, its purposes, and its uses. The study of literacy practices and the discourses surrounding them has produced quite a few insights, which shed light on complex processes in a variety of societies, including nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society. Thus, for example, it becomes clear that powerful social institutions such as schools, universities, yeshivas, or the learners’ communities created by religious sects all promote kinds of literacy that are compatible with elite interests and agendas, preferring them over other kinds of literacy. Since the institutional context of learning shapes the meanings learners attribute to literacy, the types of literacy inculcated in powerful institutions receive greater prestige, visibility, and influence than those taught in less powerful institutions. These types of literacy, known as “dominant literacies,” receive a privileged status in society, and are distinguished from peripheral and new literacy practices that are typically acquired in informal frameworks and in marginal spaces, free from supervision (Street 1995, 134–135, 1999, 97). Needless to say, a considerable part of these marginal literacy practices is subversive and paves the way for social change. Another interesting insight offered by the study of literacy practices concerns the links between types of literacy and technologies of writing and printing. The study of these links has revealed, among other things,

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that control over the materials of writing and printing frequently serves as a means of social domination and of supervision over writers. For example, the high price of parchment and quills in medieval England was a central factor in restricting writing, which was the province of the wealthy classes or of groups of monks who lived in monasteries and enjoyed the possibility of pooling resources (Street 1995, 134–135). The insights of New Literacy Studies have shattered some deeply rooted myths and beliefs in contemporary Western society regarding the literacy of other societies in other times. Three of these myths, and especially their shattering, are of special relevance for understanding the state of literacy in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society. One myth assumes that the spread of literacy necessarily leads to the termination of the dominance of orality; the second assumes that there is a necessary and self-evident connection between the ability to read and the ability to write; and the third identifies the inability to write with ignorance. Studies such as those of Clanchy (e.g., 1979, 1982), Graff (e.g., 1979, 1987a, b), and others have shown that literacy in Western societies was shaped by the norms and practices of the oral cultures that had preceded literacy. Thus, for example, in a study dealing with the introduction of literacy to England by the Normans and with the literacy practices in use there during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Clanchy (1979, 175, 202–221, 227) showed that orality and literacy were far from being clearcut and mutually exclusive opposites.10 Written texts continued to be read out loud even after the introduction of literacy, and the transition from oral culture to what Clanchy calls the “mentality of writing,” or “literate mentality,” was a long process of 200 years or more. Throughout those years, the legitimate uses of writing gradually expanded to new areas and contributed to the rise of a new social elite (Clanchy 1979, 185–196). A similar conclusion emerges from the work of Graff (1987a, 2–22), who argues that literacy should be understood in terms of continuity and gradual development, and not in terms of radical shifts and transformations. Like Clanchy, Graff shows that literacy, particularly the skill of writing, did not enjoy special prestige in Europe at the start, and was used 10 In France, too, the transition from oral to written culture took about 200 years (Furet and Ozouf 1977, 166–191). The prolongation of the process was largely due to the opposition to writing in various circles of traditional society (Furet and Ozouf 1977, 308–309). See also Street (1999, 95–125) and Graff (1987a, 5–10).

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only for limited and well-defined purposes. Most of the literate population in Europe could read but could not write,11 and this was not considered ignorance, nor should we necessarily regard it as such. Not without connection to this, the restricted use of literacy remained intact for several centuries, during which oral dominance persisted. Whether because only a minority knew how to read or for other reasons, reading was not a silent act performed in solitude, but a collective, oral activity performed with others. The circumstances that encouraged the emergence of silent reading, including the increasing use of writing and the invention of print, did not lead to the immediate withdrawal of oral practices, nor did they eliminate the preference for these practices in various settings (Clanchy 1979, 267–272). Indeed, literacy practices take place in a historical continuum: they belong to a cultural system that extends into the past and draws upon it no less than it is embedded in the present and looks toward the future. For this reason, one cannot understand the full cultural significance of literacy practices without examining their embeddedness in a given tradition of literacy, with a particular history of its own. At this point, however, it is important to re-emphasize that while literacy practices and literacy events are always socially and historically embedded, they are also rooted in the personal experiences of individuals and laden with emotions, meanings, and associations that are preserved in their memory. One way to bring out these aspects, which might be hidden from the anthropologist’s observing eye, is to elicit descriptions of literacy events and literacy practices from life stories and autobiographies, and to learn from them how the social institutions of literacy affect the personal lives and experiences of individuals. The life stories and autobiographies presented in the forthcoming chapters show that in the eyes of most of the writers of these works, literacy was a form of knowledge that bestowed power, mastery, and liberty on its possessor. Many writers report that writing induced deep transformations in their lives, and in

11 This was not only the case in Europe. As shown by anthropologist John Clammer (1976, 54, 65), the missionaries who operated in the Fiji Islands during the nineteenth century taught reading, but did not teach writing. Their purpose was to inculcate literacy that would be sufficient for reading the New Testament in the vernacular, but they refrained from providing knowledge of writing lest the people start writing texts of their own.

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quite a few instances, the very act of composing an autobiography was the culmination of this process.

New Literacy Studies and the Case of Jewish Society Several conclusions drawn from the ideological model of literacy have guided me in the following chapters. The first conclusion has to do with the rejection of the autonomous model’s assumption of a sharp, dichotomous distinction between oral and literate societies, and its replacement by a nuanced conception of the relations between speech and writing in literate societies. This move draws attention to situations in which the dominance of orality is maintained in decidedly literate societies. Such situations are typical of religious literacy and of societies that reserve literacy primarily for reciting and disseminating religious texts.12 In these societies, both writing for religious purposes and writing for secular purposes are usually performed by scribes or clerks, and are produced by means of copying or dictation, which are writing practices that retain a fundamentally oral character. It is in this light that we should examine Jewish society in nineteenthcentury Eastern Europe. The use of scribes and clerks was very common in this society and, relatedly, many of those who could read did not master writing. The copying of Torah scrolls, tefillin (phylacteries), and mezuzot (parchment scrolls with verses from Deuteronomy, which are fixed to doorposts) was the province of specially trained scribes, called sofrei STaM (an acronym for the Hebrew Sfarim, Tefillin, Mezuzot). In other contexts, scribes took dictation, and consequently something of the ambience of orality was often preserved in the written texts, many of which were meant from the start to be read out loud. More generally, writing—with or without a scribe—was subject to a variety of prohibitions and inhibitions. Responsa (SHUT , the acronym for She’elot UTshuvot, rabbis’ replies to questions related to Jewish law) were put into writing out of necessity, but in other areas of religious life, such as ethical literature, exegesis, and sermons (drashot ), the use of writing was restricted

12 On reading without writing as a type of literacy and on the oral transmission of written texts as a characteristic of religious literacy, see Goody (1986, 1–44, 1987, 116– 122).

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and speech was clearly preferred to it. The use of writing as an auxiliary to study was uncommon, except for the copying of books that were difficult to obtain or the scribbling of brief notes containing ideas for h.idushei Torah (novellae) and sermons in small notebooks dubbed megilot starim (secret scrolls), which were meant solely for personal use as aids to memory. Furthermore, the writing, collection and publication of rabbis’ teachings were often done by their disciples or sons, frequently posthumously, if they were done at all. Those rabbis who did choose to write by themselves, for fear of error or distortion or for any other reason, were singled out and received special mention (Breuer 2003, 242–266; Vigoda 2006, 50–51). At the ideational and ideological level, religious, ethical, pedagogical, pragmatic, and other considerations were mobilized to restrict writing and to present it as inferior to speech. Indeed, when writing and written texts were used in this society, they were often viewed as “supplements” in Derrida’s sense, that is, as faint reflections of the original spoken words, which cunningly disguise themselves as aids to speech and to true knowledge, but in fact threaten to undermine them and to make them redundant. All this shows that the existence of a large and admirable corpus of written religious and legal literature, which is the basic body of knowledge for generations of Torah scholars, does not testify to the absence or the collapse of oral dominance. To a large extent, the opposite is the case: although the Oral Torah, i.e., Oral Law, was put into writing, the dialogic method of studying it and its memorization by oral recitation helped in retaining both its oral character and its prestige throughout the generations. It appears that the literacy culture under focus sought to retain something of the spirit of the ancient rabbinic culture of the Mishnah and the Talmud eras as described by Yaakov Sussmann—a culture of outstanding literacy that continued to privilege orality for ideological reasons: The culture of H . azal [the Talmudic sages, acronym for Hebrew H . akhameinu Zikhronam LiVrakha, our sages of blessed memory] was unequivocally oral, creating literary works in various realms but refraining absolutely, consciously, and intentionally from placing its creations in writing […] Similar phenomena existed in other cultures […] but nevertheless I believe H . azal’s literature was unique […] This was a society […] that revered books and was well aware of the advantages of writing and of study from books as opposed to oral study—but nevertheless,

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it consciously preferred oral creation. For many generations this culture clearly and explicitly distinguished between its written literary tradition and its oral tradition, between the “Written Torah” and the “Oral Torah.” This was an educated society of scholars, […] and still, in the areas of its own religious creation, it preferred oral creation. The sages created and acted in a cultural environment replete with scribes, books, and libraries, and yet they themselves refrained from placing their works in writing for ideological reasons. (Sussman 2005, 351–353)13

The second conclusion drawn from the ideological model of literacy is that reading and writing skills are not two sides of the same coin: they do not combine into a single, autonomous literacy skill, they are not directed at a single objective, and in many contexts, they do not function similarly. Hence, the study of literacy deals with many context-dependent and ideologically laden skills, whose methods of acquisition, purposes, and usages are varied: religious literacy is different from scientific literacy, the literacy of reading without writing is different from the literacy of reading and writing together, and the acquisition of a new kind of literacy is bound up with extensive cognitive and linguistic changes (Collins 1995, 75–93). In nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society, reading was taught but writing was usually not, because the religious obligations incumbent upon men required knowledge of reading but not of writing. The type of literacy acquired in this society prepared students for studying Torah and reciting it by heart, but did not prepare them for reading a modern literary text. To grasp the magnitude of the mental effort required for shifting from the former type of reading to the latter, it is sufficient to read the descriptions of yeshiva students undergoing enlightenment (Mitmaskelim) sitting in the bosom of nature and reading the poems of Schiller in pairs, as if they were studying a page of Gemara in the yeshiva (Abramovich 1956, 15). The third conclusion is that literacy skills are not distributed equally within societies. Types of literacy vary in the degree of prestige accorded to them, with the most prestigious kinds of literacy granted to favored groups in terms of lineage, social class, gender, and the like. In traditional Jewish society, the dominant, important, and prestigious form of literacy was the one required for Torah study, and it was imparted to men alone. This type of literacy did not necessarily include knowledge 13 Throughout the book, all emphases are mine, unless otherwise indicated.

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of writing, but this did not diminish its prestige in the slightest. Moreover, as in other societies, the acquisition of novel kinds of literacy usually took place in marginal spaces and in informal settings, and was often subversive in character. As noted, the rise of new forms of literacy was accompanied by profound social, cultural, psychological, and linguistic transformations, and contributed to the transformation of the existing hierarchy of literacies (Graff 1987b, 75–93). The fourth conclusion is methodological: in order to understand the full social, cultural, and psychological significance of writing in a given society, we must adopt an ethnographic perspective that examines concrete literacy practices and literacy events in their actual context of occurrence (Szwed 1988; Street 1995, 51–55, 149–159; Boyarin 1993; Danet 1998). In historical research, where it is impossible to be a participant observer and to witness literacy events as they unfold, we are forced to learn about the uses, meanings, and outcomes of literacy practices by means of close reading of autobiographic narratives that record literacy events. Literary theory and its conceptual tools can be of particular help in this task.

Autobiographies, Stories of Literacy Events, and an Ethnographic Perspective on the Meanings of Literacy With respect to methodology, this study is inspired by the anthropological tradition of documenting activities related to reading and writing, and analyzing them using qualitative and interpretive methods. The study is based on a large corpus of descriptions of literacy events and literacy practices drawn from autobiographies, memoirs, ethnographic works, and literary works written by Jews who grew up in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century. It is important to emphasize that although this study’s usage of the terms “literacy events” and “literacy practices” is inspired by New Literacy Studies (Barton and Hamilton 2000; Boyarin 1993), it does not meet the strict definitions of these terms, nor does it assume a sharp distinction between them. The loose usage of the terms “literacy events” and “literacy practices” is required, among other things, by the historical nature of this study, which precludes the possibility of participant observations of literacy events as they happen. Unlike anthropological analyses based on participant observation, this study draws on a close reading of

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narratives recovered from written sources. In this framework, the term “literacy practices” will refer to the various uses of reading and writing, and the various meanings attributed to them, in the daily life of Jewish society, traditional or Maskilic, in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, as they are described in these sources. The term “literacy events” will denote particular events described in the study’s sources in which reading activities, writing activities, or both play a central role, and whose interpretation requires understanding of a variety of cultural codes, over and beyond the description’s explicit purposes. These decisions regarding methodology and terminology are based, as noted above, on the assumption that various literacy practices are different from one another in their objectives, in the skills they require, and in the social and cultural value ascribed to them. With respect to objectives, skills, and values, reading the Torah in the synagogue is different from its study in the yeshiva, and these two practices are different from reading a letter or a collection of poetry or a book of science in private. This is also true of various writing practices. There are great differences between writing for religious purposes and writing for secular purposes, just as there are significant differences between writing memoranda, records, notes, and “secret scrolls,” and writing a book of Torah commentaries. In a similar vein, the writing practice of a scribe, who copies a sacred text that lies before his eyes, is different from that of a clerk who writes a letter from dictation, and both are different from the practice of a writer who writes from his memory things he had heard earlier from a rabbi or a tzaddik. Needless to say, these writing practices differ from those used in practical life, such as keeping accounts, writing contracts, listing merchandise, writing family letters, or recording the dates of family events such as births and deaths on the blank page at the front or back of a prayer book. All of the literacy practices mentioned here, and others similar in character, were different from one another both in their ascribed value and in their degree of legitimacy in traditional Jewish society.14 The social and cultural value of some of them was high, that of others was low, and some were even regarded as forbidden. Among the latter was the writing of modern Hebrew belles lettres and poetry, which took on a subversive character and was the object of a fierce campaign of de-legitimization. 14 On the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate kinds of writing, based on genre and type of discourse, in a culture that prefers oral creation, see Sussman (2005, 217, 228, 289–291, 295).

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In a reading that strives to decipher a literacy event fully, one must take note of the place, the time, and the circumstances under which the event occurred, as well as of the social, personal, and psychological meanings that the narrator attributes to it. For example, one must clarify whether the event occurred in public, in private, or even in secret, what type of interaction evolved between those present, what were the event’s consequences, and the like. Furthermore, since the definition of a literacy event in this study is particularly broad, it also covers actions and events that are only indirectly related to reading or writing. Thus, the definition also applies to activities aimed at obtaining or producing equipment for writing, such as papers, rulers, pens, and ink; to events having to do with the circulation of manuscripts, their loss, and their finding; to quandaries with regard to the writing and publication of manuscripts; and to emotional responses such as urges to conceal or destroy manuscripts, a man’s shame in his unbridled attraction to “women’s literature,” the acceptance of blame and punishment for forbidden reading, and the joy of improvising a parody of a sacred text and sharing it with friends. These and similar events will be discussed as literacy events in every respect, which add up to a mosaic of trifles and scraps of reality—a collage of reading and writing experiences rich in meanings and interpretations. Both the accounts analyzed here and my analyses of them constitute “thick descriptions,” to use the term coined by anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973). To bring out the full significance of literacy events and of the meanings attached to them, I chose episodes and scenes that stand out in their dense descriptive and linguistic texture, and that allude in various ways to the deep cultural codes that imbue them with meaning. My strategy of reading these descriptions is inspired by literary criticism, by New Historicism, and by the so-called literary or linguistic turn in history and anthropology (Biernacki 1999; Bonnell and Hunt 1999, 1– 32; Gallaghar and Greenblatt 2000; Hunt 1989). As such, the analysis seeks to illuminate discourses and to identify the affinities between literacy events and their surrounding culture and society. Oftentimes, this requires reading the studied texts against the main or declared intention of their writers. Furthermore, it requires examining the narrative sequence and associative context of the texts no less than the concrete circumstances and extra-literary socio-cultural context of the episodes described in them. The narrative sequence in accounts of literacy events is viewed as vital for understanding the significance of these events, and consideration of such narrative features is applied to memoirs, autobiographies, ethnographic

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texts, and documentary works, as well as to fiction and fictional autobiographies.15 This strategy assumes that structuring a narrative texture and organizing it into a story are among the primary forms of human understanding. People give meaning to their experiences, interpret other people, and understand the world around them by constructing stories anchored in social and cultural environments and framed by cultural concepts, symbols, customs, institutions, rituals, and writings (Bruner 1986; Ricoeur 1984). In the case of memoirs and autobiographies, the narrative sequencing of life events assists the writer in understanding the forces that shaped her or his life, and literacy events included in such stories are no different from other biographical events. Hence, analyzing the place of a literacy event within a narrative structure is vital for understanding the meaning that the narrator ascribes to it in her or his life, whether or not it had actually happened. In this context, certain questions always arise: what is the truth value of stories based on memories? What factual validity may we attribute to them? To what extent can they serve as a basis for historical research? This is not the place to discuss these questions in detail. Certainly, there is always room for doubting the fidelity of autobiographical descriptions, whether due to the elusive nature of memory, to authors’ tendency to re-invent themselves or to create a persona for themselves according to a desired ideal, or to the inevitable ideological biases that shape the presentation of life stories. Drawing on memoirs for studying historical reality certainly requires special prudence in examining the sources, as well as their verification by comparing them to a variety of other documents, both literary and extra-literary. However, it should also be acknowledged that if we wish to understand the meaning and significance of a literacy event from the retrospective viewpoint of a person telling the story of his life, the event’s embedding within a reconstructed or imaginary context can teach us no less, and sometimes even more, than a bare factual description of what had happened. Literacy events that are apparently routine, ordinary, or coincidental may be placed in a literary context—for example, positioned within an imagined or partially imagined sequence of childhood memories—that reveals their hidden precipitates, deep significance, and non-trivial meanings. In this respect, despite differences among 15 On the distinctions between traditional and modern Jewish autobiography and between autobiography, memoir, ethnography, and the like, see Moseley (2006, 50–376). For further distinctions between types of autobiography, see Brinker (1990, 34–41).

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autobiographies in the degree of their intended documentary fidelity, they are not different, in principle, in the way they endow events, including literacy events, with meaning. Autobiographies written close to the time of the described events, those written many years later, and also fictional life stories, which draw only in part on the author’s actual biography, offer a reconstructed narrative that imbues the actions of individuals with personal, social, and cultural meanings. It is these meaningful actions, in turn, that establish cultural processes, systems of values, and social orders.

CHAPTER 3

Reading Without Writing and the Myth of Universal Literacy in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Jewish Society

I was foolish for trying to stop Dan when he began studying with Dovidl. I said to him, stop doing what your forbears never did. For the good money you waste on tuition every month I could buy you every day a cup of milk with licorice and a bun with sesame seeds, and you would eat and drink and put on some weight and start looking like somebody successful. Tell me what pleasure you get from scribbling on a piece of paper. Even if you learned how to write and became a scrivener like Dovidl himself, what honor would you bring to yourself? Would the parnasim let you wear a shtreimel on the Sabbath? Would the shamash give you a sit in the synagogue on the eastern wall? Would the gabbai call you up for maftir? Look at Dovidl. On the Sabbath he wears a spodik, just like all the other ignoramuses. In the synagogue he stands by the door with all the undesirables in town. And if once or twice a year he gets called up to the Torah, why do they call him? For the pittance he will pledge to contribute. Now I see how smart Dan was to go and learn how to write and not listen to his mother. His letters keep me alive. S. Y. Agnon, “HaNe’elam” (“Disappeared”)1

1 Agnon (2016, 393), translated by James S. Diamond with Jeffrey Saks.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. Parush, The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature, New Directions in Book History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81819-7_3

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The Status of Writing, Its Uses, and Its Instruction As noted in the previous chapter, the once-common assumption that literacy necessarily implies knowledge of both reading and writing has long been rejected. Due to the prevalence of the phenomenon of reading without writing, any study of literacy in a given society should distinguish between individuals who can only read and those who can both read and write. In a similar vein, the status and uses of reading in a given society should be distinguished from the status and uses of writing.2 Indeed, in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society, knowledge of reading without writing was widespread, and the avoidance of teaching writing in the heder was a common and not at all trivial phenomenon. We find that in the formal traditional education system there was no universal instruction in writing the Hebrew letters, whether for writing in Hebrew or for writing in Yiddish (which is written in Hebrew characters). Needless to say, this also held true for writing in foreign languages such as Russian, German, or Polish. If writing was taught in a heder, it was usually not by the traditional heder teacher called melamed, and if it was the melamed who taught writing—and indeed, in the last decades of the nineteenth century there were some melamdim who did this—it was viewed as a sign of particular openness and enlightenment, or alternatively as an expression of unrestrained modernization of the heder.3 Ah.ad Ha’Am (the pen name of Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, born in Skvyra/Skver, Kiev G., R.E., 1856–1927)4 writes that in the area where he grew up, Hasidim “of the simple kind, uncultivated Hasidim, […] found it good that their sons also learn in the heder how to write in the Russian language,” but he, the child of an “aristocratic” Hasidic family, was not even permitted “to look at the shape of the letters” (Ah.ad Ha’Am 1931, 3). By contrast, Yitsh.ak Nissenboim (Babruysk/Bobruisk, Minsk G., R.E., 1868–1942/1943) relates in his memoirs that in the Talmud

2 For criticism of statistical datasets that do not distinguish between individuals who can

only read and those who can both read and write, see Furet and Ozouf (1977, 168–176). 3 For literary depictions of this phenomenon, see Reshimot LeToldotai (Abramovich 1956, 1); H . at’ot Ne’urim (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 84–86); Al Nehar Kvar (Gordon 1960, 270–273). 4 In the personal details provided throughout the monograph, P. stands for Province, G. for Governorate, and R.E. for Russian Empire.

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Torah of the Hasidim in his city, there were no secular studies at all. In the Talmud Torah of the Mitnagdim the pupils were generally poor and they did study secular material, that is, “Russian, arithmetic, and writing in Yiddish” (Nissenboim 1929, 30–31). In Nissenboim’s class, secular studies were not obligatory, and he learned how to write in Yiddish on his own accord, without studying any other secular subjects (Nissenboim 1929, 18–19). Usually writing was taught in informal settings, by a father, a grandfather, a relative, or a private tutor (Abramovich 1956, 1; Berdichevsky 1984, 32, 42–43), and in the second half of the nineteenth century also by special teachers of writing who were called shraibers .5 The classes taught by shraibers commonly met in the evening, and they are often described as frameworks intended to give girls skills in writing correspondences and addresses or in filling out official forms. However, even when these frameworks were intended for boys, they were selective, and, as is typical of informal education that requires separate payment, they reflected and reinforced social stratification. Refraining from universal instruction of writing, in complete contrast with the universal instruction of reading to boys, prevented, or at least restricted, the creative utilization of literacy skills. The selective provision of writing skills limited access to the “means of production” of written texts, and created a writing elite of sorts, for whom the possibility of creative writing opened up, at least in theory. The choice to call those who knew how to write “an elite of sorts” is not coincidental. Among the Maskilim, the ability to write was indeed seen as an asset and people with fine handwriting were considered welleducated (Nissenboim 1929, 71), and yet in traditional society the writing skills of a clerk, unlike those of the religious scribe, were regarded as professional skills without special prestige. There were circles in that society where belonging to the elite did not require knowledge of writing, and some members of the elite found it difficult to write or were entirely unable to do so. The very emergence of the notion that knowledge of writing is a cultural asset, and not a mere technical skill or a trade like any other, indicated a change in the status of writing and signaled the rise of a new elite. Another reason for calling this “an elite of sorts” is that those who possessed writing skills did not constitute a homogeneous group. On the 5 On the institution of shraibers, see, for example, Scharfstein (1943, 123–125) and Shtern (1950, 42–43).

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one hand, there were Torah scholars, custodians of the spiritual treasures of traditional society, who made sure to teach writing to their children and grandchildren, as well as wealthy people who could afford private tutors to teach writing to their sons and daughters; on the other hand, there were poor Talmud Torah pupils, who could learn how to write precisely because their education was uncared for and unregulated (Nissenboim 1929, 18–19; Ah.ad Ha’Am 1931, 3–4). In any case, the informal frameworks that taught writing reflected and created a particular pattern of social stratification, and the refrainment from teaching writing to everyone denied many people access to the means of producing written texts. However, to propose a proper description of the status of writing, its uses, and its purposes in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society, another distinction must be drawn, namely, the distinction between writing as a technical skill and writing as an art of expression, language, and style. Since writing in both senses was not taught to men in the traditional education system, men who did not learn writing as a technique also did not learn it as an art of style and expression. Moreover, even those who acquired some writing skills did not receive systematic linguistic and stylistic instruction for writing a Hebrew text. They learned how to draw the letters, but did not learn language and grammar, and did not practice the use of rhetorical and other devices for perfecting their style. Except for a few isolated cases (Katz 1963, 22), even those who did learn how to write were not trained in writing compositions, and in traditional society, not only were they not expected to treat classical texts, mainly the Bible, as linguistic and stylistic models, but they were also explicitly called upon not to do so (Kolp 1901, 72–73). Individuals who mastered writing and sought to find a personal, literary outlet for themselves could not but imitate the linguistic models that stood before their eyes, and were guided by their own choice of models. At the same time, despite the substantial differences between the two kinds of writing, the technical and pragmatic and the expressive and artistic, one may discern an implicit common denominator between the two: both types of writing embodied aesthetic values and both were evaluated in accordance with them. Both the technical perfection of penmanship (the ornaments, embellishment, and precision characterizing calligraphy) and the perfection of language and style (the purity, grammaticality, polished rhetoric, and figurativeness of language) testify to the prominence of aesthetic values and to the pursuing of beauty for its

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own sake (Scharfstein 1943, 115–117). Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that a reserved attitude toward the aesthetic and the enjoyments it offers contributed to the problematic status not only of artistic writing but also of writing in general in the studied society. However, this does not cover the entire story of writing in this society, or even its main point. The aims and methods of teaching writing, the spaces and times allotted to it, the teachers who engaged in it—all these testify to profound inhibitions with regard to writing, which restricted its use and marked the boundaries of its legitimacy.

The Study of Jewish Literacy and the Myth of Universal Literacy Most scholars of traditional Jewish society in Eastern Europe have seen no need to ask why writing had not been taught to boys in the traditional education system and, in any event, they have not tried to examine the consequences of this fact. The prevalent view among Eastern European Jews in the nineteenth century, and consequently among most of their researchers, was that, insofar as men were concerned, theirs was a society characterized by universal literacy and that with isolated exceptions, everyone could read and write Hebrew letters. Disagreement with this view found expression only indirectly, either in sporadic and coincidental presentation of information contradicting it, or in passing comments made in discussions of other topics. To the best of my knowledge, the question of literacy in this society first became the focus of systematic investigation in studies that examined the data of a census conducted in the Russian Empire in 1897. In this census, which surveyed literacy in Russian and in other languages throughout the empire, literacy was defined only as the ability to read, and not as the ability to both read and write. Nevertheless, the data refuted the claim of universal literacy in Jewish society (Stampfer 1987a, 466–467; Perlmann 1996, 17, 22). The census, which was held when most adult Jews were the product of the traditional education system, indicated that only 38.9 percent of the Jewish population (both men and women) could read, and only 49.4 percent of the men could do so. Three contemporaneous statisticians who studied Jewish society, Boris Dov Brutskus, Arthur Ruppin, and Ya’akov Leshchinsky, rejected these findings categorically. They claimed that with respect to Jewish literacy, the Russian census had been inaccurate and its conclusions unfounded.

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To support their view, they argued that the ability to read Yiddish among Jewish men was almost universal, but the Russian surveyors had not examined literacy in that language properly. For example, Brutskus contended that all those who attended the heder—that is, all men—were able to read Hebrew, and as a matter of course applied that ability to reading Yiddish (which, as noted above, is written with Hebrew letters). He explained the distortions in the findings by asserting that the surveyors had lacked the appropriate tools for collecting data on reading in Yiddish, and consequently considered many Yiddish readers to be “ignorant,” meaning people who have no literacy skills at all.6 A degree of skepticism regarding the claim of universal literacy and first doubts about its validity were presented by Shaul Stampfer (1987a, 459– 483), but an explicit challenge to the thesis appeared for the first time in the work of Joel Perlmann (1996). Unlike the statisticians who preceded him, Perlmann re-examines both the truth of the thesis of universal male literacy and the reliability of the Russian census data of 1897 (Perlmann 1996, 1–24). To this end, he compares the results of the 1897 census with those of a census conducted in the USSR in 1926. Based on a sophisticated system of statistical considerations, he concludes that literacy among Russian Jews in 1890–1900 was not universal. The 1897 Russian census did not underestimate the number of literate Jewish men, nor did it underestimate the level of literacy among the entire Jewish population. According to Perlmann, the census defined Jews as people whose mother tongue was Yiddish, and showed reliably that a solid proportion of 20–30 percent of Jewish men could not read at all, in any language, according to any criterion, however forgiving and loose it might be. The evident conclusion is that Brutskus’s claim that almost all Jewish men had learned to read in the heder was unwarranted (Perlmann 1996, 2–4, 10, 12–16, 30). Perlmann does not deny that the surveys examining literacy in Jewish society suffered from biases of one kind or another, but he believes these 6 On the position of these statisticians, see Perlmann (1996, 2–4). Although Leshchinsky was among those who rejected the census’s findings, a preliminary study he conducted in a single shtetl in 1898 confirmed the picture that had emerged in the census. With regard to his findings, Leshchinsky commented ironically: “These numbers prove how truthful are the words of all those who shout that our people are quite developed, and the proof – all our boys read and write! […] These numbers would have been even more saddening had we conducted the study three or four years earlier” (Leshchinsky 1903–1904, 169–170).

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biases do not explain the considerable gap between the expectations of an almost universal level of literacy (by virtue of the heder) and the findings. His interpretation of the findings is that the gap stems from the different treatments of mechanical reading, with some viewing it as a special kind of basic literacy and others viewing it as total ignorance. In his view, the 1897 census shows that the Jewish population included important minority groups that belonged to a special category with regard to literacy: men who could recognize the Hebrew letters and follow them in the prayer book, but could not transfer that ability to reading any other text, not even in Yiddish. These groups of men emerged, he says, in the findings of two additional studies, which were published on the eve of World War I. The first was a study of literacy skills among Jewish tailors in four cities in Eastern Europe, showing that more than a quarter of them could only read the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and a considerable portion could only read the Hebrew letters in the prayer book and not in any other Hebrew or Yiddish text. From these findings, Perlmann concludes that in some areas of Eastern Europe, such as Vilna and Warsaw, the proportion of men belonging in that category was particularly small, between 1 and 6 percent, whereas in Busin and similar areas, almost half the men belonged to it. The second study, which examined Jewish immigrants at Ellis Island in the United States in 1913, showed that about 8.5 percent of the men could only read prayers. In this survey, these men were classified as illiterate, since the mechanical reading of prayers was not considered true reading ability (Perlmann 1996, 14–15). Since Perlmann’s data shatter an entrenched myth, a source of national cultural pride, it is no wonder that he asks his readers to distinguish between the proofs he adduces for the findings and the explanations he provides for those findings, asking them not to deny the validity of the findings only because they reject his explanations. In this spirit, drawing on Perlmann’s proofs without referring to his explanations, we may note that in the memoir literature of the period, quite a bit of testimony supports his findings. An example of such testimony is a childhood memoir by Reuven Brainin (Lyady/Liadi, Mogilev G., R.E., 1862–1940), according to which in the environment where he grew up, “the mailwoman had to read the letter to its recipient, since a lot of people did not know how to read a letter written in Yiddish” (Brainin 1965, 397–398).

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Reading vs. Writing in the Study of Jewish Literacy Perlmann’s research questions, his findings, and his conclusions deal explicitly only with the knowledge of reading. And yet despite the importance of this issue, it is of course partial and insufficient for understanding this chapter in the history of Jewish literacy. No less significant and interesting is the other side of the literacy coin, namely, the knowledge of writing. Two important questions arise in this context: first, what does the state of reading in this society teach us about the state of writing? And second, how did the state of both reading and writing affect the authors and the readers of modern Hebrew literature? There is no simple way to answer these questions, and any effort to extrapolate from reading to writing involves huge difficulties. Nevertheless, one cannot but wonder why the inferior status of writing in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society has not yet been studied comprehensively and systematically. It is hard to avoid the impression that this lacuna is intimately connected to the myths that concealed the riddles, mysteries, contradictions, strangeness, and deceptiveness of the attitude toward writing. Reviewing the discussion of writing in the historiography and research of the society under consideration, we find that the status of writing was obscured not only by the false myth of (almost) universal literacy, but also by an erroneous projection from modernity onto the past, according to which writing and reading are two sides of the same coin and one cannot exist without the other. When these two errors combine, the myth of universal literacy becomes even more consequential, as it encapsulates not only the assumption that all men in the studied society attended the heder, but also the assumption that everyone who attended the heder could read Hebrew and Yiddish, and therefore could also write in those languages. These assumptions worked together in building up the myth of universal writing, and they constantly emerge in the literature, quite often in close proximity to unwitting, incognizant descriptions of events and phenomena that refute them. Thus, for example, in his article “On the History of Education and Enlightenment of the Jews of Russia,” published in 1913, Alexander Ziskind Rabinovitz (known by the initials AZaR, Lyady/Liadi, Mogilev G., R.E., 1857–1945) reiterates the statement of the Russian official Uvarov that “all Jews know how to read

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and write” (Rabinovitz 1913, 102). However, later on, when he turns to examine various Jewish educational institutions, he notes that to teach the skill of writing, whether in Yiddish, Hebrew, or foreign languages, Jewish society had to rely on the important yet humble institution of the shraibers, without whom many young men and women would not have known how to write their address or sign a document (Rabinovitz 1913, 103–104). Rather than supporting Rabinovitz’s claim concerning universal literacy, the evidence he presents undermines this claim, and challenges the automatic association between knowledge of reading and knowledge of writing. Not all men who attended the heder knew how to read; not all men who knew how to read could read well and apply this skill elsewhere (for example, in order to read a text in Yiddish); and not all who could read well also mastered the skill of writing.7 The disjunction between reading and writing, its sources, meanings, and consequences touch upon the very heart of the present study, and we will deal with them extensively below. However, before taking them up, let us examine the traces of the inability to write in literary testimonies, mainly autobiographical accounts of literacy practices and events, which reflect, consciously or unconsciously, the way in which the connection between writing and reading was perceived in Jewish society of that time.

The Status of Writing and the Portraits of Its Teachers and Students A variety of literacy events described in autobiographies confirm the proposition that many members of nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society, including people who could read on various levels, did not know how to write. Zvi Hirsch HaLevi Kolp of the Lifschitz family, the author of a book rich in ethnographic detail who shows little sympathy for modernity, reports how uncommon the ability to write was in his society: “Most of the masses did not know how to write at all […] and only in one house out of ten or more were there writing instruments, and when, rarely, a neighbor would come to borrow […] some ink and a pen, he 7 Similar conclusions emerged in studies of literacy in other European societies. In nineteenth-century Sweden, for example, nearly 100 percent of the population knew how to read, but only 10 percent could write, and many of those who knew how to read did not understand what they were reading (Cressy 1980, 178–179).

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would be asked in trepidation: ‘Who is ill in your house?’ For what need do such people have for pen and ink if not for a doctor to write a prescription for a member of the household who has fallen ill?” (Kolp 1901, 38). Ben-Zion Katz (Daugai/Doig, Vilna G., R.E., 1875–1958) also states that heder pupils in small towns “mostly did not know […] even the slightest bit of Bible or how to write two or three of the first words of a Hebrew verse” (Katz 1896, 182). A large variety of testimonies about the heder confirm that teaching writing was not common in the heder, and indicate that this was true of writing in both senses, that is, both as a technical skill of drawing letters on a piece of paper with a quill, a dip pen or a pencil, and as a more abstract, mental and communicative act of expressing ideas and emotions in writing using proper, well-phrased language. The complexity of the matter of writing and the tangle of emotions it evoked among those who chose to adopt modern notions of education are clearly illustrated in the notes about the heder published by Eliezer Meir Lifschitz (Skole/Skola, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1879–1946): Grammar was not taught in the heder, but rather was left to the private diligence of adolescence […] Assigned reading of literature was not practiced, not even of religious books […] Of course, there was no attention to the acquisition of Hebrew style and to mastery of the language, since the language itself was not a subject of study at all […] The teaching of writing passed into the hands of special “scribes,” beyond the boundaries [of the heder], but nevertheless all the pupils knew how to write perfectly. (Lifschitz 1920, 321–322)

It is difficult to ignore Lifschitz’s apologetic stance. In his efforts to defend the heder and the social values that supported it, he restates the claim of universal literacy and posits that although boys did not learn how to write in the heder, many yeshiva students gained their knowledge “from the air” and eventually knew how to write in Hebrew, each according to his own needs (Lifschitz 1920, 321–322). Even when he reports that the melamed used to skip “the grammatical parts in Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitsh.aki),” he excuses him by explaining that “He didn’t understand them [the grammatical parts] […] But he should not be reproached, because the grammar in Rashi has only historical value.” At the same time, Lifschitz’s account clearly indicates two phenomena: first, that with respect to knowledge of the Hebrew language and of writing in

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it, the heder gave up “on lower-class people […] and agreed in advance that the poor would not know Hebrew” (Lifschitz 1920, 336, 346); and, second, that the melamdim in the heder failed to teach writing in both senses, as a technical skill and as a cognitive, linguistic, and stylistic capacity to express oneself in writing. In his efforts to defend the heder on this matter as well, Lifschitz adds that although the teaching of writing was rare in the heder, it was sometimes performed as “occasional study,” which began after the teaching of reading had ended and after quite a few pupils had dropped out of the heder.8 What Lifschitz describes as an unequal division of the knowledge of Hebrew, which was relegated, according to him, to scholars and scribes, emerges even more strongly when it comes to the unequal distribution of writing skills. Many writers state in their memoirs that, because writing was taught in informal settings, it was mainly the province of the children of learned or wealthy men, who could afford to hire a writing teacher. The class stratification reflected in this phenomenon was often criticized openly. Such criticism is expressed clearly in a review of the “Jewish and General Education” in Belz, which describes the almost complete neglect of writing in the heder as a “fault” of the system and laments the slim chances of poor children to acquire writing skills (Roter 1974a, 211; see also Korekh 1941, 48). In another context, the author reiterates that “many boys finished their studies in the heder without knowing how to read or write in ‘mame lushn’ [Yiddish: the mother tongue]” (Roter 1974b, 247). Indeed, a whole gallery of writers describe the various settings in which they acquired writing. Some learned from their fathers, brothers, or grandfathers (Agnon 1960a, 372), others learned from a shraiber, and yet others taught themselves despite opposition from their families (Bernfeld 1926, 162; Korekh 1941, 44–45). Peretz Smolenskin (Monastyrshchina, Mogilev G., R.E., 1842–1885), for example, learned writing from his brother when he was fourteen, despite evident indications of reluctance on his part. According to Smolenskin’s biography by Reuven Brainin,

8 On dropping out of the heder after learning how to read, see also Deinard (1920, 65),

Stampfer (1987a, 463), and Zaltzman (1944, 32, 36). In seventeenth-century England, too, the teaching of reading preceded the teaching of writing, and many pupils dropped out before learning to write. Spufford (1981, 127, 134, 149–150) points out that women—teachers or mothers—played an important role in teaching reading, and that many of the teachers who taught reading did not know how to write.

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“even as an adult his handwriting was like that of a boy who has just learned to form the letters with the writer’s pen” (Brainin 1896, 17). For Smolenskin as a young man, not knowing how to write was not something to be proud of, but it was also not particularly shameful (Brainin 1901, 11). Brainin’s account of Smolenskin’s acquisition of writing testifies not only to a good deal of indifference toward the inability to write, but also to the difficulty of learning this skill at the age of adolescence and in informal frameworks. Although Smolenskin might have suffered from motoric or other limitations that made writing difficult for him, it is also possible that learning to write at a relatively old age affected his handwriting, which, according to Brainin, was childish and undeveloped. Mordechai Aharon Ginzburg (Salantai/Salant, Kovno G., R.E., 1795– 1846) also writes about the difficulty of acquiring writing at the age of eleven, which had a lasting effect on his handwriting: “my soul lacks the skill to train my fingers in guiding the writer’s pen and forming beautiful letters,” he writes, “so that I will lack this perfection forever” (Ginzburg 1967, 18). Only at the age of thirteen did Ginzburg decide to devote more effort to the study of writing, “so that until that time, both in writing and in language I was like an untrained heifer” (Ginzburg 1967, 54–55). Ben-Zion Katz was fortunate enough to be born into a family of scholars. His grandfather was the head of a yeshiva in Vilna, and he was the one who taught him “how to write Hebrew” (Katz 1963, 22). By contrast, Mordechai Ze’ev Braude (Brest/Brisk, Grodno G., R.E., 1870– 1908) had wandered quite a bit from heder to heder and from melamed to melamed until he managed to acquire the skill of writing from a shraiber (Braude 1960, 32). Moshe Leib Lilienblum (Keidany/Keidan, Kovno G., R.E., 1843–1910) learned to write at the age of thirteen from a special teacher of “fine writing” whom his father had hired for him, and it was in the teacher’s house that he first saw Haskalah literature: Shirei Sfat Kodesh (Poems in the Holy Language) (1861) by ADaM HaCohen and Sefer Et-Sofer HaShalem (The Complete Writer’s Pen Book) (1833) by Tzemah. Segal Landa, which was a guide for writing correspondences that was used also as an aid for writing in high Biblical style, and which served the teacher himself (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 85–86). Most teachers of writing were Maskilim or half-Maskilim, and they are described as enlightened and exceptional, even when their knowledge was limited. Avraham Shlomo Melamed (Kherson/Cherson, Kherson G., R.E., 1862–1951), for example, describes his childhood in a rural settlement in the district

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of Yekatrinoslav, where a semi-Maskilic ritual slaughterer-teacher arrived and taught grammar, arithmetic, and writing, although he himself was not particularly learned (Melamed 1922, 31). In contrast, Ben-Zion Dinur (Khorol/Choral, Poltava G., R.E., 1884–1973) learned writing from his untypical melamed, and the story of his studies testifies to his father’s enlightenment (Dinur 1958, 23). Among the few who learned writing skills from melamdim was also Eliyahu Ze’ev HaLevi Levin-Epstein (Vawkavysk/Volkavisk, Grodno G., R.E., 1864–1932). In his memoir, Levin-Epstein recounts that the melamed who taught him Gemara used “to make a living in all sorts of other businesses,” including “matchmaking and the writing of letters and addresses.” As “writership” was also one of his declared professions, he taught his pupils “how to write correspondences,” usually letters to parents and family. Nevertheless, Levin-Epstein sees himself as a person who had learned “to write Yiddish properly” by himself, and not from a teacher (Levin-Epstein 1932, 21, 26). In a similar spirit, Miriam Sperber (Kherson/Cherson, Kherson G., R.E., 1900–1992) writes of her father that “he even learned to read and write Yiddish by himself” (Sperber 1981, 27), and Baruch Schwartz (Balta/Balte, Podolia G., R.E., 1860– 1933) writes that: “Unknown to my parents and rabbi, I learned the craft of writing Hebrew. True, that art cost me a great deal in tears and beatings, but in the end I triumphed […] and I used to write in the heder, and nobody knew about it. My rabbi would occasionally scold me for wasting my time in ivelet [folly] and go on his way, and I would return to doing my thing: copying from the Taitsh [Hebrew-Yiddish version of the Pentateuch]” (Schwartz 1930, 60). The marginal and rejected status of writing in the traditional education system in Eastern Europe during the early modern period and the nineteenth century is also confirmed by the collection Sources for the History of Jewish Education (1948–1954/2001), edited by Simh.a Assaf. A review of the documents dealing with Jewish education in Eastern Europe reveals that references to the issue of writing are scarce compared to their relative abundance in the documents of Sephardi, Italian, Dutch, and German Jewry. The sources on the history of Jewish education in Italy, for example, show that instruction and practice in writing were an integral part of the heder curriculum, and that the employment contracts of the melamdim repeatedly and explicitly required that they teach writing in

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Hebrew and Italian.9 This is very different from the picture that emerges from the sources on the history of the heders in Poland and Lithuania. Those sources do not mention writing as part of the curriculum, they contain no discussion of the methods used for teaching it and, needless to say, they do not indicate that writing was required of the melamdim as a teaching subject (Turniansky 2010, 22–23; see also Tohar 2017). The few sources that do mention the subject of writing have two purposes: one is to condemn the study of writing in foreign languages and warn of the dangers inherent in it; and the other is to describe exceptional cases, in which instruction in the writing of Hebrew or of a foreign language was carried out with insistence on appropriate boundaries and necessary caution (Assaf 2001, vol. 1, 587, 617–618, 723). The substantial differences between the traditional education system in Eastern Europe and those of Sephardi, Italian, Dutch, and German Jews with regard to the teaching of writing are beyond the scope of this monograph. However, it is clear that these differences were related to different attitudes toward the teaching of the Bible, of the Hebrew language, of Hebrew grammar and rhetoric, and even of Biblical versification, that is, melitsa (Assaf 1948–1954, vol. 1, 23–40; Rozanis 2002, 348–410). The relationship between the teaching of writing and the teaching of these other subjects will concern us at length below. For the moment, it is important to note that when the issue of teaching writing does arise, it is not discussed as a trivial or self-evident issue, and those who advocate the teaching of writing feel obliged to emphasize and justify their opinion. A comment made by Rabbi Elyakim, son of Rabbi Ya’akov of Komorna, Poland, is a case in point. In his Melamed Siah. (Teacher of Discourse) (1710), he recommends teaching pupils the craft of writing at a young age, noting that “the children of the poor, whose parents cannot afford the salary of a good tutor for them, […] even when they grow up […] they will never be able to speak or write the Holy Tongue even a little 9 For example, see the letter by Rabbi David Provintsalo from 1564 (Assaf 2001, vol. 2, 265). For sources on the regulation of the conduct of melamdim, see at 301– 303, 310; for sources on the Sephardi community of Verona (1757), see at 282, 288, 298–299, and also n. 512; for sources on the community of Modena, see at 319, 325; on the community of Padua, see at 338; on the community of Venice (1714), see at 249, 347; on practicing writing “between the times,” that is, during vacation time, in seventeenth-century Germany, see Assaf (2001, vol. 1, 132). On the teaching of writing in the Netherlands during the holiday period known as bein hazmanim (lit. between the times), see Assaf (2001, vol. 1, 399).

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bit, and not to say a lot” (quoted in Assaf 1948–1954, vol. 1, 493–494; Lifschitz 1920, 329, 331). This statement confirms that, due to the separation between instruction in reading and instruction in writing, and because it was customary to teach writing in informal settings, writing skills were a kind of luxury for the privileged. However, Rabbi Elyakim’s criticism of this situation is no less important. In his view, people who do not acquire writing skills at a young age will never acquire them, and therefore the poor will never be able to rid themselves of errors in reciting the prayers, and perhaps also, as a consequence, of erroneous thinking. As we shall see below, Rabbi Elyakim’s view that reading and writing should be taught together was uncommon in his day.

In the Heder and Outside It: The Meanings of Writing and Its Images Keeping writing outside the bounds of the heder and entrusting it to shraibers was therefore not without social, cultural, and ideological meanings. Many of the sources that describe the heder and the institution of shraibers betray, for the most part unwittingly, the complexity and intricacy of these meanings, and the polysemous nature of the images that surrounded writing. Along with the class implications of placing the instruction of writing in the hands of shraibers, which were expressed in the view that writing is the province of wealthy elites or of Maskilim (Zaltzman 1944, 82), the institution of the shraibers bore with it a cluster of contradictory images, which generally detracted from the prestige of writing, at least according to the criteria of traditional society. Stories of writing and accounts of literacy events depicting shraibers show that in the eyes of their young pupils and in the minds of the adult Maskilim these pupils grew up to be, both the shraibers and the writing skills they taught were associated with a series of controversial topics in the modernizing Jewish society of the time. The study of writing was associated with secular education, the materialistic and pragmatic world of commerce and business, physical and social mobility, modern means of communication, new pedagogical methods and conceptions, the inferior sphere of girls and women, secularization, the language and culture of the surrounding non-Jewish society, and the prospect of attending the state’s high schools and higher education institutions.

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On the face of it, the shraibers’ methods of instruction reflected the declared purposes of teaching writing in their classes. The contents of the texts used for practicing writing appear to convey the message that writing is a secular, practical skill, and thus to demarcate the legitimate uses of writing in pupils’ minds without defying the values of the traditional education system . For example, Avraham Y. Brawer (Stryi, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1880–1975) describes copying letters in penmanship lessons with a shraiber: “The studies began with writing the alphabet forward and backward […] Then came the copying of salutations in a single line […] then short letters […] The primary purpose of the teaching was good handwriting, ‘calligraphy’, and beautiful flourishes in Hebrew and German writing” (Brawer and Brawer 1966, 233). The very same method is described by Yeh.iel Shtern (Tyszowce/Tishevitz, Lublin P., Poland, 1903–1981) in his Heider Un Beis Midresh. Like Brawer, Shtern emphasizes the importance accorded to calligraphy, and presents the writing of family and business correspondences as the declared objective of teaching writing. He notes that dozens of boys practiced writing Hebrew sentences that ornamented the beginning of their letters, such as “To my dear father, learned in Torah and extremely saintly” or “To my honored, precious mother, well-known for her modesty,” and dozens of girls copied similar letters, but began and ended them in Yiddish (Shtern 1950, 42; see also HaLevi Zvik 1990). This was also the case with the copying of sentences related in one way or another to commercial professions and business. Shtern also states that, in addition to the above, the teachers used to drill the pupils in copying verses from the Bible, sayings of the Sages, and proverbs in Hebrew and Yiddish. The custom of copying proverbs and sayings underscores the folksy purpose of teaching writing, as a means of preaching morality and providing guidance in life. After the copying of opening and closing salutations came the stage of dictation, in which the shraiber would dictate opening and closing lines, and the pupils were required to write them without any mistakes (Shtern 1950, 42–44). Only afterward were the pupils expected to write salutations of their own, and those who were studying in heder Gemara (a classroom where Talmud was taught) phrased them in Biblical verses and rhetorical figures. Finally, after learning how to write various kinds of correspondences using the Hebrew alphabet, the pupils were instructed

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in writing Russian and Polish. At this stage, the pupils were assisted by their older friends in reading and writing in these languages.10 The implicit messages conveyed by the custom of teaching writing outside the physical and symbolic space of the heder, as well as by the methods of instruction and the texts used for it, left a lasting impression on the pupils and played a formative role in their conception of writing— of its meaning, value, purposes, and uses. Writing in a Hebrew cursive script was bound up in their minds not only with the needs of family or business correspondence in Yiddish, but also with writing foreign alphabets, and even with the learning of foreign languages. In other words, writing Hebrew letters in cursive script was identified with a pedagogical, linguistic, and cultural sphere devoid of sanctity. In this manner, sanctity was also removed from the backbone of the Hebrew language—its grammar—which was studied, if and when it was studied, outside the heder, in informal frameworks and during free hours. The tendency to view the study of Hebrew cursive script as a secular subject need not be surprising, but nor is it self-evident. Writing in Hebrew could potentially include the use of “Assyrian script,” or “STaM script,” which served for writing Torah scrolls, tefillin and mezuzot, and which was considered sacred (Vingarten 2005).11 However, everything that was left outside the confines of the heder and placed in the hands of the shraibers was regarded and experienced as secular. As noted by Brawer: “In the heder we had only religious studies: Torah, Nevi’im and Ktuvim [Torah, Prophets and Writings] (a little) and Talmud. In secular studies we were instructed by the scribe, der shraiber, whose house we visited at noon” (Brawer and Brawer 1966, 235). Indeed, many memoirs suggest that writing Hebrew was regarded as a secular subject and identified intuitively with the study of foreign languages. This is clearly reflected in the memoirs of Ze’ev Gluskin (Slutsk, Minsk G., R.E., 1859–1949), who includes in his secular studies, along with Hebrew, Russian, and German penmanship, also the study of the Hebrew language and its grammar (Gluskin 1946, 26). For Levin-Epstein (1932, 26–27),

10 Some people preferred a gentile teacher to a Jew moving toward Haskalah. On the study of writing in the non-Jewish vernacular from gentile teachers, see, for example, Korekh (1941, 44). 11 On the sanctity of the Assyrian script (ktav Ashuri), see also BaYamim HaHem by Mendele (Abramovich 1956, 260) and H . at’ot Ne’urim (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 122).

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by contrast, it is the writing of the Jewish language—namely, Yiddish— that is considered secular, and the shraiber who taught it also taught boys and girls German and Russian. Although the uses of writing in business indicated its utility, the short time devoted to it in the pupils’ schedule reflects the tendency to depreciate it. The pupils who studied with the shraiber usually went to him in the evening or during the noon break, so as not to neglect the Torah, and this clearly conveyed its marginal status (Shtern 1950, 47). The popular view that the study of writing could, and perhaps should, be put off until an older age is well described by Asher Korekh (Galiniani, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1879–1951). He recounts how his father rejected his request to study writing, arguing that it would be better to postpone it for a few years (Korekh 1941, 26). The custom of learning the craft of writing during the noon break or during the twilight hours, so as not to violate the Biblical commandment “thou shalt meditate it day and night” (Joshua 1:8), also indicates its marginality. And yet, an even more substantial factor contributing to the devaluation of writing was the practice of teaching girls how to write in settings that made it possible, in one way or another, for boys and girls to meet in a single institution.

Gendered Images of Writing The confrontation between traditional society’s disdain for writing— which was related, among other things, to its teaching to girls—and the high value attributed to it by enlightenment and modernity, finds clear expression in the autobiography Main leben by Mordechai Spektor (Uman, Kiev G., R.E., 1858–1925). The story begins with Spektor’s envy of a boy in his village, who came to the Sabbath prayers dressed in the uniform of a high school student, with shiny brass buttons, and everyone listened with wonder to his learned talk about “how the earth upon which we live revolves.” Spektor is also envious of his sister, who received what was denied of him—instruction in writing from a shraiber: I myself, at the age of ten or eleven, still did not know how to write in any language, not even in Yiddish. In our home, they thought it unnecessary for a boy to learn how to write. They sent my sister to Avraham Noteh the shraiber, but not me. I was supposed to learn only Gemara with the melamed and not to mix myself up with nonsense like writing.

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But ever since I had seen the boy with the brass buttons, I was seized with a great desire to go to Avraham Noteh the shraiber, where they learned to write Yiddish and Russian, and I asked my mother to let me go there. “It’s unnecessary,” mother said, “still too early. You better learn with the melamed.” And uncle Moshe made a complete mockery of the study of writing. “Things like this,” he said, “one learns on his own, between the afternoon and the evening prayers, when one grows up and needs writing for business.” He claimed, for example, that many gvirim [rich men] in our town had never learned to write, and this had not hindered them from becoming wealthy and running large businesses. May it be so for all the people of Israel. [… Still] I kept asking my mother to go to Avraham Noteh, but each time I would ask and insist, she would push me away shouting at me to leave her alone […] she wasn’t going to let me “succumb to apostasy.” (Spektor 1929, 158–167; see also Stampfer 1992, 65)

Similar gender implications can also be found in the autobiography of Yeh.ezkel Kotik (Kamyenyets/Kamenitz Litebsk, Grodno G., R.E., 1847– 1921). Here, too, access to writing was easier for girls than for boys, and here, too, this testifies to the inferior status of writing as an activity that is devoid of power, glory, or prestige. Kotik recounts that he needed to write a letter of thanks in Hebrew to his future father-in-law, although he knew Hebrew “exactly as well as [he knew] Turkish.” He therefore had to ask his uncle for help. With much humor, he describes how difficult it was for him to copy the letter his uncle wrote for him and how, while he was copying it again and again, a teacher came to the shtetl, who taught the children how to write in Yiddish and Russian. Every day, he reports, “the teacher would come to grandfather’s house to teach writing to his daughters. My father didn’t want to entrust me to the teacher, but I would go by myself, while he was teaching my father’s sisters, and I would study without his knowledge” (Kotik 1998, 305).12 Thus, Kotik took his first steps in the study of writing in the company of girls, who studied with permission while he did so in secret. And, indeed, many sources indicate that traditional society did not impose restrictions on writing studies for girls, and, moreover, that the shraiber’s class was often perceived and presented as intended mainly for girls. 12 For additional examples, see Rakovsky (1952, 14), Weiss (1931, 69), and Zaltzman (1949, 51–52).

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Mordechai Spektor (1929, 163) writes that the girls’ desk in the shraiber’s room was larger than the boys’ desk, and Brainin (1965, 401–402, 404) writes incidentally, as though it were a well-known fact, that most of the pupils of the “beggarly” shraiber “dressed in tatters,” the one who studied in “shkoles” and who had arrived one day to teach Russian in the town, were girls. Ben-Zion Dinur (1958, 85) writes that as a yeshiva student, he lived in the house of a “teacher of writing,” who used to spend all day long “imparting the skill of reading” and “the craft of writing” to young girls.13 Greenbaum (1999, 297–298) writes that although girls’ education was neglected, they were the ones who were taught reading and writing in Yiddish, and he adds: “I must emphasize ‘writing,’ because in the girls’ heder and its substitutes they studied writing […] whereas in the boys’ heder they usually didn’t study writing.” In traditional Jewish society, truly important areas of knowledge were marked, among other things, by the exclusion of women. The study of Torah, as the most important field of knowledge, was reserved for men, and for them alone. Given these circumstances, it is easy to see how writing, as an area of knowledge whose gates were open to women, was not and could not be regarded as empowering or prestigious. This added another dimension to the perception and image of writing. Not only was writing in Yiddish identified with writing in other languages, but there was also an implicit, complex identification of the craft of writing with women’s work.14 Just as writing in Russian and other languages was considered a technical skill with little prestige or utility, so, too, writing in Yiddish was perceived as a somewhat inferior skill that one need not go into much trouble to acquire. At the same time, stories like Spektor’s and Kotik’s demonstrate that teaching writing to boys at a young age was often seen as potentially damaging, dangerous, and even leading to apostasy. It seems, therefore, that what appears to be depreciation reflects, in fact, great apprehension. Brainin’s memoirs support this argument, for they suggest that what was generously permitted to girls was regarded as undesirable and dangerous for boys. The girls in Brainin’s environment acquired the skill of writing in foreign languages without qualms, 13 See also Deinard (1920, vol. 1, 162) and Zaltzman (1944, 32, 61, 82–83). 14 An interesting legend worth mentioning in this context is that Rashi Script (ktav

Rashi), i.e., the semi-cursive Sephardi script, was invented by Rashi’s daughters. It is claimed that Rashi’s daughters were learned, and when he became feeble, one of them would write down his responsa (answers to Halakhic questions) for him.

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whereas Brainin was “deathly afraid of the Russian language” because he believed his melamed’s statement that “a Jew who stands in the company of someone who knows how to write an address in Russian, has no part in the world to come” (Brainin 1965, 400). Girls’ easy access to the study of writing is a good example of women’s “benefit of marginality.”15 Precisely because their intellectual abilities were underestimated, and because they were destined for practical life and not for spirituality and religious study, they enjoyed greater degrees of freedom in the marginal spaces allotted to them, and were even permitted, without any struggle on their part, to acquire literacy skills of the highest order by the standards of modern society.16 Shai Ish Hurwitz (Gomel/Homl, Mogilev G., R.E., 1861–1922) expresses this explicitly in an amusing account, which is not bereft of contempt for the shraiber and his girl pupils. “When the time had come for Yeh.iel the bathhouse-attendant to ‘reveal himself,’”17 he writes ironically, he looked for a livelihood that would provide for him, and “he went and became a teacher of girls, ‘to teach the daughters of Judea the inkwell’” (Ish Hurwitz 1923, 58). Teaching writing to these girls, whose “ambition to learn grew stronger every day,” included not only the study of penmanship but also the study of basic Russian grammar and spelling, which were practiced every day by means of dictations.18

15 On the relative advantage of women in acquiring writing skills, see Parush (2008b). The attitude of nineteenth-century Jewish society in Eastern Europe toward teaching writing to women was different from that of Western societies of the time. In colonial North America, for example, women were taught to read, sometimes to a high level of sophistication, without being taught to write. The study of writing among women who desired it required personal effort and tiring practice, whether the skill was self-taught or acquired with a teacher, father, or brother. See Hobbs (1995, 5) and also Furet and Ozouf (1977, 178–179). 16 On women’s “benefit of marginality” in the area of reading in the society under focus, see Parush (2004a). On the limits of this advantage in the area of writing, see Parush (2008b). 17 The expression “the time has come for him to reveal himself” was used to describe the revelation of the Besht, the founder of Hasidism, to his disciples, and here it refers parodically to “the new Hasidism” that rose around the shraiber. The connotation to the verse “to teach the use of the bow to the sons of Judah” (2 Samuel 1:18) substitutes the phallic bow (keshet ) with the female vessel—the inkwell (keset ). 18 On girls’ desire to learn and on girls fleeing from their homes in order to study, see Ish Hurwitz (1923, 59), Manekin (2020), and Parush (2004a).

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These practices, which reflected the gendered character of the study of writing, laid the foundation for the image of writing and for its elusive status. The more one delves into the details of these memoirs, the more one comprehends the complexity of the attitude toward writing in this society. It becomes clear that traditional society trapped writing in a tangle of contradictory connotations, in which, just as in Plato’s Phaedrus, that which is undesirable, dangerous, and threatening is seen and presented as inferior, marginal, and trivial. At the same time, we find that these contradictions shaped the experience of writing for many aspirants to Haskalah, who internalized them and were enmeshed in them. This explains the pendulum swing between exalting and slighting images of writing in the fragments of life that writers of memoirs present to us unwittingly, often viewing them as trivial and minor matters. Mordechai Ze’ev Braude, for example, writes in passing that he did not take the trouble to write properly because he had “learned from experience that those who were most outstanding in writing were actually the most thickheaded” (Braude 1960, 32). AZaR’s (Alexander Ziskind Rabinovitz) description of the institution of shraibers also exemplifies the importance of the information conveyed by the unwitting writer. According to him, and according to other testimony, the shraibers were regarded by their contemporaries not only as teachers of writing but also as people who spread Haskalah in remote shtetls. However, whereas AZaR describes the institution of shraibers as a “new institution,” different from the “traditional” ones, the shraibers themselves are described as hybrid figures, occupying the space in-between tradition and modernity: “simple men,” but “possessing knowledge”; “Maskilim,” but “behaving like the fully God-fearing”; regarded with contempt, but providing a necessary service; miserable and indigent, but “the first to bring Haskalah to the people” (Rabinovitz 1903, 103–104). Along the way, the hybrid nature of the shraibers was a metonymy for the problematic status of writing in the midst of the processes of modernization. Indeed, like the pharmakon, writing vacillated in this society between its contradictory images: an oldnew craft, traditional and marginal in its appearance, but its uses rubbing up against modernity, with its opportunities and threats. Given that the designation of writing instruction to shraibers is relatively salient in the autobiographies and given the heretical image of these marginal people, who bore popular Haskalah to the villages like traveling salesmen, it is difficult not to wonder why so little research has dealt with the institution of shraibers and its influence on the status of writing in

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the society under focus, on the state of literacy in this society, and on broader socio-cultural processes within it. Indeed, one may argue that it is only natural for research dealing with the heder curriculum to pay little attention to a subject that was hardly studied there. However, it is also possible that this research lacuna, and the limited curiosity with regard to the marginal status of writing in the heder, stem from uncritical acceptance of the explanations that the studied society itself gave for its customs, orders, and preferences.

Research into Methods of Instruction in the Heder: Functionalism and Apologetics in the Study of Jewish Literacy Scholars of Jewish education have not ignored the fact that the melamdim in the heder avoided the teaching of writing, but most of them have paid little attention to this avoidance and have focused on the methods used for teaching reading. In retrospect, this lack of attention appears symptomatic. It indicates that most scholars have adopted the autonomous, neutral model of literacy, and, under its aegis, have dispensed themselves from interrogating the reasons and meanings of the limited teaching of writing in the formal traditional education system. In the spirit of the optimistic universalism of the autonomous model, the scholars have tended to assume that writing is merely a technical skill that does not depend on the context and circumstances in which it is acquired. Moreover, there has been a tendency to view Eastern European Jewish society as highly literate, based on the assumption that a substantial rate of men who were able to read, even if many of them could not comprehend what they read and could not write, and a far smaller group of men who mastered both reading and writing, are enough to justify viewing the entire society as literate, and therefore as cultivated and advanced. Yet whatever the reasons for the limited scholarly attention paid to writing, for our purposes, suffice it to say that most scholars have not been puzzled by this society’s attitude toward writing and have paid merely limited attention to this matter in their scholarship. Furthermore, only a few have paid heed to the fact that even in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the campaign for mass literacy had been launched in Europe and

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Russia,19 the traditional Jewish education system clung to its old patterns and continued to refrain from teaching writing to its students. The studies of three prominent researchers of education in the heder, Zvi Scharfstein (1943), Diane Roskies (1978), and Shaul Stampfer (1987a, 1988), all tend to present the avoidance of teaching writing as a deviation from the glorious tradition of universal (indeed, only male) literacy that characterized European Jewish society in the Middle Ages, and was preserved primarily in Sephardi and Italian communities. Even when these scholars state explicitly that writing was not taught in the East European heder, they tend to dismiss the phenomenon with a few sentences, without questioning the accepted image of Jewish society as one where literacy rates among men were close to a hundred percent. Thus, for example, in his HaH . eder BeH . ayei Amenu (The Heder in the Life of Our People), Scharfstein devotes approximately two pages to the subject of writing and includes it in a series of subjects that were neglected in the heder or not studied there at all. He begins with critique of “the custom not to teach Bible at all, or not to teach it to a sufficient extent.” He then mentions Hebrew grammar and the geography of the Land of Israel, “which were not studied at all,” and only then does he provide a brief discussion of writing, stating that “the study of writing was not customary in most heders […] and a special kind of scribes, ‘shraibers’ in Yiddish, […] would go from house to house and teach girls how to write in Yiddish and Russian, and, incidentally, they would also teach the boys” (Sharfstein 1943, 111–116). While Scharfstein criticizes traditional society for not teaching the Bible, Hebrew grammar, and geography, he is not at all harsh when it comes to the lack of instruction in writing, and 19 For a general review of research into literacy in Western Europe in the nineteenth century, see Graff (1987a, 260–372). Sweden, which, in the seventeenth century, stood out in terms of mass literacy of reading without writing, was in the nineteenth century still among the countries with the highest levels of literacy in the West, despite a slight decline in literacy rates. From the mid-nineteenth century, the number of Swedes who could write rose steadily, and around 1900 near-equality was reached between those who could only read and those who could both read and write (Graff 1987a, 308–309). For general statistics on mass literacy in Europe in the nineteenth century, see Vincent (2000, 1–62). According to Vincent, in the last third of the nineteenth century, the provision of mass literacy came to be seen as a national mission in European countries. From 1860 onward, a drastic change in the attitude toward literacy took place in Russia as well (Vincent 2000, 11). On the campaign for spreading mass literacy in Russia, and on the teaching of reading and writing (in that order) in Russian primary schools from the second half of the nineteenth century, see also Brooks (1985, 35–58).

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merely points out this fact. Needless to say, he does not seek to explain the phenomenon or to discuss its consequences. Roskies’s (1978) study, which deals with the heder in nineteenthcentury Eastern Europe, focuses on the methods of teaching the alphabet and reading. It strives for broad cultural understanding of the methods of study in the heder, and makes important claims regarding the conceptions of study and of knowledge that underpin these methods. Although Roskies does not deal directly with the subject of writing, her analysis has some implications with regard to the avoidance of teaching writing. Thus, for example, when she discusses the printed tables of the alphabet, which were often used as auxiliaries in teaching writing, she refers briefly to the subject of writing and notes that in the entire Jewish memoir literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there is not a single description of a heder that mentions the act of writing or describes exercise in writing by drawing the alphabet on a form with printed instructions. She concludes that the teaching of writing before the teaching of reading or concomitant with it was not customary in the heder (Roskies 1978, 35). Roskies implicitly provides two explanations for the refraining from teaching writing. The first attributes this phenomenon to pedagogical considerations deriving from the traditional conceptions of study and of knowledge, which focused on oral praxis, on dialogue between student and teacher, and on oral repetition of the material, out loud and to a melody. The second explanation has to do with the invention of printing and the increased availability of printed alphabet charts. In Roskies’s opinion, the printed charts made it unnecessary to draw the letters on the melamed’s board or on the pupils’ individual “small boards” used for practicing reading. Thus, they freed oral instruction from dependence on writing and reduced the use of writing (Roskies 1978, 38–39). To support her arguments regarding the oral nature of study and knowledge in the heder, Roskies analyzes the allegorical-symbolic meanings of the rituals of entry into the heder, emphasizing the acts of swallowing candies in the shape of letters and licking honey that was spread on the alphabet chart. She contends that the considerable significance given in these rituals to metaphors and practices related to food reflects traditional conceptions of knowledge and learning, according to which acquiring knowledge is based on learning by heart, on “eating,”

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“drinking,” “swallowing,” “digesting,” and absorbing the studied material.20 Taken together, Roskies’s two explanations present a broad cultural statement regarding the influence of the invention of print on the state of literacy in Jewish society.21 Unlike the general European society, where, according to scholars, the invention of print increased the use of writing,22 in Jewish society it had the opposite effect. Contrary to the prevalent assumption, the modernization of Jewish society did not bring with it a rise in the rates and quality of literacy, but rather a decrease in the prevalence of writing skills (Roskies 1978, 27–28). 20 See also Bilu (2000, 16–46). 21 The wide-ranging influences of the invention of printing on early modern Euro-

pean Jewry fall outside the scope of this monograph, as does Jewish literacy during the early modern era more broadly. However, this topic has attracted growing and notable scholarly attention in recent years. See especially Ruderman’s (2010, 2014) research on the impact of the printing of books in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino on early modern Jewry. According to Ruderman, printing has contributed to the emergence of a transregional Jewish culture in Europe, connecting geographically distant communities, fusing Sephardi and Ashkenazic traditions, and threatening to undermine the authority of the local rabbinic elites. 22 Among the factors responsible for the increased use of writing in European society as a result of the invention of printing, scholars list the use of printing for bureaucratic purposes, business, and disseminating information, that is, the printing of documents, forms, and guidebooks in various fields. In this context, scholars attribute special significance to the printing of almanacs, calendars containing professional information in fields such as agriculture, medicine, and astrology, and tables of data, predictions of high and low tides, the times of sunrise, the dates of fairs, and the like. Almanacs included blank pages intended for writing personal and business records, and it is argued that these pages encouraged the learning of writing and increased its use, along with writing for keeping accounts, preserving records, documentation, letters, and the like. On the increased recognition of the necessity of writing, and on the importance of the use of almanacs, see, for example, Cressy (1980, 10–15); on the writing of life stories in almanacs, see Smith (2008, 200–244). The influence of printing on science, secularization, and the bureaucratization of government is a matter of controversy. According to Clanchy, printing did not appear ex nihilo. It was preceded by processes of secularization and by processes related to the expansion of writing and literacy for secular purposes. These developments commenced in the twelfth century, concomitant with the gradual division of writing and literacy into four types: sacred, scholarly, bureaucratic, and vernacular. These types of literacy and writing preceded the invention of printing and laid the groundwork for it (Clanchy 1982, 169– 183). Unlike Clanchy, Elizabeth Eisenstein does not deal with the contribution of the invention of printing to the spread of literacy, but rather with its revolutionary influence on the modes of thought of a literate population. For a brief summary of the dispute and a review of the scholarship on literacy between 1600 and 1850, see Kaestle (1985, 20–26); for Eisenstein’s position, see Eisenstein (1979, 1983); for her response to her critics, see Eisenstein (2002, 106–125).

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The work of Shaul Stampfer takes a somewhat different approach. In his article “Literacy among East European Jewry in the Modern Period: Context, Background and Implications” (1987a), he, like his predecessors, states that “in the heder, pupils did not learn to write, only to read” and that, contrary to expectations, “in the past centuries the level of writing ability was lower than in the Middle Ages” (Stampfer 1987a, 480). He attributes the decline in the level and type of literacy compared with the Middle Ages, and perhaps also with the early modern period, to the modernization of Jewish society (see also Turniansky 2010, 22–23). In his view, the severing of reading from writing in the heder and the teaching of reading without writing were among the far-reaching consequences of the invention of print, and did not stem from traditional society’s values or from the methods of instruction they entailed. He contends that contrary to the usual dating, which attributes the beginning of the modern period in Eastern European Jewry to the nineteenth century, if one regards rapid demographic growth and increased isolationism as marking the shift to modernity, it appears that this society had made the shift much earlier. Changes in literacy patterns in this society, he writes, are consistent with this periodization. While the teaching of reading without writing in the heder is often perceived as an old practice and an epitome of traditionalism, it is in fact a new practice that emerged in response to the invention of print (Stampfer 1987a, 460–461, 480, 483). Stampfer therefore views the new methods of study in the heder as a protective mechanism based on self-isolation, a defensive response of a traditional society to the invention of print. And yet, the absence of writing instruction in the heder is also discussed in other places in his studies, and in each of these the phenomenon is given further explanations, some related to the purposes of study, some to the social structure of Eastern European Jewish society, and some to economic conditions and historical transformations (Stampfer 1988, 1992). It is important to note that when Stampfer writes about Jewish literacy in the broadest and most basic sense, he challenges one of the most deeply rooted beliefs with regard to universal male literacy among the Jews of Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century (Stampfer 1988, 460–461). In his view, the religious purpose of reading instruction, which operated over the generations to expand literacy among Jewish men, ceased to do so with modernization and began to work against the expansion of literacy.

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Precisely because knowledge of reading was intended to serve only religious purposes and men could fulfill their religious obligations by reciting from memory, an especially limited level of reading proficiency was sufficient for them. Moreover, he contends that in the nineteenth century, many, and perhaps most, Jews did not have to master reading in order to satisfy their business, financial, or social needs (Stampfer 1988, 462–463). As for writing, since religious duty did not require it, only practical utility could have justified its teaching, and, with respect to men, there was no such justification. As the economic plight of the Jews of Eastern Europe had exacerbated and as many of them had become craftsmen, they did not require writing for their work and were satisfied with a heder that taught reading without writing. Thus, a unique situation emerged, in which printing contributed to a decline in knowledge of writing, at least with respect to men (Stampfer 1988, 481). However, unlike men’s education, women’s education was practical. They were not required to study Torah, and for them writing had demonstrable use. Thus it happened that “countless Jewish girls began their studies with copying the deathless words ‘I went to Odessa to purchase merchandise’” (Stampfer 1992, 65).23 In addition to the foregoing explanations for the limited teaching of writing and for its relegation to informal education, Stampfer offers prosaic explanations connected to the conditions of life in Eastern Europe during the period under discussion. Since the mail did not work well, since hardly any letters were written, and since the writing of legal and business documents was done by professional clerks, men did not need to write and there was no justification for spending precious time on acquiring this skill, thus reducing the time devoted to the study of the Torah (Stampfer 1988; see also Kolp 1901, 37). Perhaps these reasons for not teaching writing indeed figured among the considerations of the rabbinic authorities, but they do not offer a full or satisfactory sociological explanation. And, indeed, Stampfer follows Pierre Bourdieu (Stampfer 1988, 287) and argues that the heder and the

23 For a concise and enlightening discussion of the ethnographic, psychological, and

pedagogical meanings of teaching writing to girls by constant repetition of this sentence, see Shargorodska (1926, 69–70). Stampfer points out that learned women called rebetsin used to visit people’s homes and teach girls to read the prayer book and Tsena UR’ena (a Yiddish compendium of rabbinic commentaries on the Pentateuch primarily addressed to women), as well as to write letters in Yiddish (Stampfer 1992, 64–65).

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teaching methods practiced in it operated as mechanisms of social supervision and control, and were in fact successful in fulfilling their function of preserving the existing social order (Stampfer 1988, 273). However, it appears that Stampfer does not fully embrace Bourdieu’s perspective, and does not employ concepts related to conflict and power such as symbolic power, cultural capital, symbolic violence, and resistance. Rather, he chooses to describe the heder and its purposes in functionalist terms that connote equilibrium, stability, and harmony, such as “stabilizing communal life,” “means of guaranteeing status security,” “stabilizing the possession of authority,” or “supporting the stability of the community” (Stampfer 1988, 273–276). In fact, Stampfer argues that the heder performed a difficult, though not impossible task: creating the appearance of universal literacy and equal distribution of knowledge, while at the same time placing important knowledge in the hands of a small elite and ensuring that it would remain in its sole possession. The heder, according to this view, was supposed to accomplish a double task: selecting, sorting out, and ranking on the one hand, and dissipating frustrations on the other. Furthermore, this view assumes that those responsible for the organization and operation of the heder resorted to this policy with the “benefit of society” and its “stability” on their minds (Stampfer 1988, 271–277, 287–289). As noted, this discussion of literacy contributed, in a way, to undermining the myth of universal literacy that was promulgated by Jewish society and by most of its researchers (Perlmann 1996, 7, 23 n. 6). Stampfer does not ignore the neglect of instruction in writing, nor does he deny that it is puzzling. Nevertheless, he does not provide sufficient answers to the questions raised by a critical approach such as that of Bourdieu. Rather than searching for underlying struggles and conflicts of interest that may explain the literacy practices in the society under consideration, he tends to resort to surface-level functionalist explanations that present these practices as necessitated by technical considerations and constraints. Thus, for example, he explains the practice of teaching reading in the Hebrew language, which was not understood by most of the learners, and not in Yiddish, which they did master, by arguing that Yiddish did not possess a sufficient corpus of written literature, and therefore there was no reason to invest effort in teaching it (Stampfer 1988, 277–278). Likewise, he explains the priority given to teaching reading over teaching writing by pointing out, as noted above, that for the fulfillment of religious duties, reading alone was sufficient (Stampfer 1988,

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277–279). He further explains that “writing […] was a useful skill, to be sure, but not a necessary one” (Stampfer 1988, 278). When he does refer to interests, they are those of society at large. In his view, the heder did not seek to give all its pupils an equally high level of education and, were it possible to establish an education system that would offer better achievements, it would have endangered the very foundations of society. Quite explicitly, Stampfer states that providing a high level of literacy to everyone, if only for religious purposes, “would have possibly led to the collapse of the whole social order of Eastern European Jewry” (Stampfer 1988, 284–288). These explanations of the neglect of instruction in writing leave us with problems typical of functionalist explanations. Such explanations view society as a system or organism whose different parts work together to ensure its functioning and survival. Each constituent element of society is therefore explained by reference to the function that it serves in the social system, that is, by reference to its contribution to the stability and endurance of society as a whole. Social norms, traditions, and institutions are thought to serve some function and to contribute, in one way or another, to the coordinated and sustainable operation of society. In a similar vein, it is assumed that norms, traditions, and institutions aim at creating an equilibrium in the relationship between individual and society. Since society depends on the coordinated and harmonious operation of its members, it must ensure that individuals are reconciled with their social roles, and fulfill them willingly and without a sense of injustice. Functionalist approaches therefore tend to identify the good of the individual with that of society, and are likely to view the efforts of social authorities’ to train individuals to identify with their roles as expressions of deep concern both for the welfare of the individual and for that of society. Several critiques have been leveled at functionalist approaches, which are valid in the case under focus as well. First, there is no reason to assume that society, with all its strata, maintains a spirit of consensus and shared values, which is revealed in the functional unity of its customs and institutions. There are grounds for arguing that society is better conceptualized as an assemblage of groups and individuals with competing interests, values, and goals, and such conceptualization is also better equipped for explaining social change. Second and related, functionalist explanations have been criticized for underemphasizing power relations and power struggles, and for being inattentive to the fact that quite frequently, social

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customs act for the benefit of one group at the expense of the vital interests of other groups. Finally, functionalist arguments have been criticized for their circularity: they assume in advance that if a social institution exists, there must be a need for it and it must serve a particular function, and hence they deduce the need from the institution and the institution from the need. In the case of literacy, the very existence of a literacy policy or practice is taken as evidence of the social need that this policy ostensibly fulfills. Such circularity often implies a conservative tendency, since it presents existing social institutions as necessary ones.24 This also means that functionalist approaches are particularly compatible with an apologetic stance, which seeks to defend the society under investigation, its dominant institutions, and its social order. As to the literacy policies and practices in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society, attempts to explain them by inferring from them, retrospectively, particular social needs and constraints that supposedly necessitate them appear unconvincing. Likewise, we should not take at face value the explanations and justifications that the actors themselves, and the dominant ideology in their society, provide for the avoidance of teaching writing. It does not seem reasonable that in the second half of the nineteenth century, when writing was becoming an important means of social mobility in Europe and its teaching had become an integral part of the curriculum, in Jewish society there was no need for this practice and therefore it was not inculcated into most of its men. Moreover, given that girls were often permitted to acquire writing skills and did so with relative ease, the argument that men were not taught to read because that would take too much of their time, and distract them from the study of Torah, also seems unsatisfactory. Furthermore, considering the demands of modern life, it is even harder to be persuaded by the argument that women needed writing for their daily life, while men did not. Hence, we are left with the question of how we are to explain the denial of writing skills precisely from the gender that was responsible for transmitting religion and its values to future generations. To understand why, unlike the provision of reading to men, the provision of writing to men was not universal, we must lay bare the deep structure of power relations underlying the avoidance of writing. We must consider the possibility that in coping with modernization, dominant 24 For criticism of the circularity of functionalist explanations of literacy, see Street (1995, 4–5).

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actors and forces in traditional Jewish society responded paradoxically: on the one hand, they recognized the importance of writing and printing books for disseminating traditional religious doctrines and for struggling against Haskalah; on the other hand, they clung to the primacy of speech over writing for reasons similar to those presented by Socrates in the Phaedrus. Adherence to the principle of the primacy of speech, which entailed, among other things, teaching reading without writing to most pupils, served as a mechanism of control over knowledge, preserved the status of religious authorities, and enabled these authorities to determine who would write and what would be written. Consequently, these control mechanisms were applied with particular vengeance to those who bore responsibility for preserving religious and spiritual values: the men. Modernization gave traditional authorities good reasons to be tempted by writing and to encourage it, just as it provided good reasons to be wary of it. The written word and printed books did become vital and effective instruments of struggle (Kurzweil 1969, 68–95), but at the same time the threat they posed also increased, which generated an ambivalent attitude toward printing as well.25 Under these circumstances, clinging to the dominance of orality preserved the status of religious leaders in various segments of traditional society. It gave them tools to control the contents of their teachings and to choose their addressees, it provided them with control over writers, and it maintained people’s dependence on their exegetical mediation. As to the addressees of the religious leadership, oral transmission of religious knowledge provided them with a sense of intimate closeness to the truth. Learning by heart, which was compared to “swallowing” the truth, assimilated it into the learner-listener’s self in a supposedly direct, unmediated manner. It is important to note, at this point, that this argument regarding the interests and the power mechanisms that sustained the principle of the primacy of speech in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society does not suggest, by any means, that there was any intentional, wellorchestrated decision, plan, or scheme of the rabbinic leaders to preserve this principle. In other words, this argument does not propose that a conspiracy of any kind was involved here. Rather, the preservation of oral dominance reflected the rabbinic leadership’s awareness of the dangers 25 Testimony on the necessity and danger of writing and publication can be found in the Introduction by Rabbi Nathan of Nemirov to the stories of Rabbi Nah.man of Bratslav. See Chapter 4 below.

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that writing and print posed to their authority and to their control over the religious beliefs of the Jewish public. And, indeed, oral dominance was manifested differently, served partially different purposes, and received different justifications in different Jewish groups. The next two chapters turn to exploring the primacy of speech over writing in the two major sectors of Eastern European Jewish society at the time: the Hasidim and the Mitnagdim.

CHAPTER 4

The Primacy of Speech Over Writing in Hasidic Society

God the king does not know how to write, but that ignorance or incapacity only testifies to his sovereign independence. He has no need to write. He speaks, he says, he dictates, and his word suffices. Jacques Derrida, “Plato’s Pharmacy”1 And one cannot describe or depict in writing or in speech the very holy fire of His words that come from His holy and awe-inspiring mouth in holiness and purity. Rabbi Nah.man of Bratslav, Sefer Sih.ot HaRaN (Book of Rabbi Nah.man’s Conversations )2 For there are some books now, and there will be some more books in the future, and the world needs all of them. Rabbi Nah.man of Bratslav, Sefer Likutei MoHaRaN (Collected Teachings of Rabbi Nah.man)3

1 Derrida (1981, 76), translated by Barbara Johnson. 2 Sternhartz (1979, 85, sign 124). 3 Nahman of Bratslav (1968a, vol. 2, 1821). .

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. Parush, The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature, New Directions in Book History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81819-7_4

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An Ethnographic Perspective on Reading Without Writing in Hasidic Society On the face of it, the claim that Hasidism is an oral culture requires no proof (Gries 1992, 18–37). However, when we examine the Hasidic attitude toward speech and writing more closely, we see that this issue is much more complicated than it appears at first glance. On the one hand, we find accounts of men who could read but could not write that present this phenomenon as common and almost normative, and stories of tzaddikim (Hasidic rabbis) who refrained from writing and were praised for it. On the other hand, we find an obsessive concern with the issue of writing, which indicates that the preservation of oral dominance was far from being a straightforward, unproblematic issue. Knowledge of reading without the ability to write was not unique to Hasidic society. Evidence of the existence of this sort of literacy is dispersed in the writings of authors from other sectors of Jewish society of the time, and its prevalence has been affirmed, as noted above, in research by Stampfer (1988), Perlmann (1996), and others.4 Although it was quite a common phenomenon, authors of memoirs and autobiographies did not treat it as completely natural or self-evident, and often paid considerable attention to it. This may indicate that these writers had already undergone some change of consciousness, which deemed the separation of reading from writing worthy of attention. Their treatment of the inability to write was probably influenced by the expansion of literacy among the wealthy members of the surrounding Christian society, as well as by the identification of writing skills with the Maskilic intelligentsia and with wealthy Jews, who were influenced by this intelligentsia in one way or another. This influence is evident in a variety of stories dealing with ignorance of writing, whether the person who is unable to write or has difficulties writing is a tzaddik and whether he is one of the proste yidn (Yiddish: simple Jews), many of whom could not write in any language. These literacy events are often described in retrospect by an ironic Maskilic narrator, contrasting the viewpoint of Haskalah with that of traditional society. As expected, the tone of these accounts expresses superiority over those ignorant of writing, in the spirit of the general critique leveled by Maskilim at what they perceived as Hasidic ignorance. Notably, most accounts of inability to write refer to the Hasidic milieu and probably 4 See Chapter 3 above.

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testify to the status of writing in that milieu. While Mitnagdic society also displayed a cautious and reserved approach to writing, this approach took on different shapes and received different justifications there. In any case, if we examine closely the details and framing of literacy stories originating in the Hasidic milieu, we find that they call for a sophisticated interpretation not only of Hasidic society’s attitude toward writing, but also, more generally, of the psychological and cultural implications of mastering reading without writing in times of modernization. Men who could read but could not write, and especially those of them who belonged to the religious and social elite, constitute the most important and interesting social category created by the literacy policy in traditional Jewish society. By analyzing literacy events related to these men, among whom the “literacy split” between reading and writing was most pronounced, we can gain insight into the complex status of writing in a society that was accustomed to teaching reading without writing. Furthermore, the inability to write went hand in hand with the existence of professional writers, scribes, and clerks, who provided writing services to the public. Examining the inability to write in this context can illuminate not only the social status of the writing professions and their relations with those who used their services, but also the hidden yet everpresent power relations between the one who dictates and the one who takes dictation. Such analysis, focusing on men who have well-developed reading skills, particularly in the religious sphere, but are nevertheless dependent on scribes, can help us identify areas of emotional, moral, and cultural unrest in the society under consideration. Finally, and no less important, focusing on men who could read but not write sheds light on the increasingly charged and paradoxical attitude toward writing as an important marker of the cultural shift effected by the Enlightenment and modernization. Exploring the place of writing in Hasidic society and culture therefore directs attention to a broad variety of questions, such as: what uses did the tzaddikim designate for writing? What was their personal attitude toward it, and what role models did they offer to their followers in this regard? What were the feelings of rank-and-file Hasidim with regard to writing? What were the explicit and implicit arguments for and against it? How did the uses of writing in the religious sphere differ from its uses in the quotidian sphere? What part did the scribes play in all of this? And what was the self-image of those who could read but were unable to write?

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An interesting description of a man who could read but could not write appears in the memoirs of Shmuel Abba Horodetsky (Malyn, Ukraine, 1871–1957), in which the vacillation between Haskalah and Hasidism is associated with the story of a melamed who was “half or a quarter Maskil.” In a chapter entitled “Between Two Worlds,” Horodetsky describes the melamed, who was supposed to train him to become a rabbi: For two straight hours he would lecture to me about the Talmud, and then he would leave me and sit in another room, and from time to time he would come to see whether I was reciting his lesson and learning by heart the laws of the Shulh.an Arukh [lit. The Set Table, the most authoritative Halakhic code] and H . oshen Mishpat [lit. The Breastplate of Judgment, Halakhic code focusing on monetary law] […] In-between lessons, he would sit in his other room and read Divrei Yemei Olam and Toldot H . akhmei Yisr’ael and other books by Schulman, but he forbade me to touch them. (Horodetsky 1957, 25–26)

And yet this melamed, who studied Talmud all day long and immersed himself in history books translated from German by the Maskil Kalman Schulman (Bykhaw/Bykhov, Belarus, 1819–1899), did not know how to write, and when he opened a fabric store in partnership with Horodetsky’s grandfather, he sought to make the boy responsible for the store’s bookkeeping and accounting (Horodetsky 1957, 26). Horodetsky was a descendant of a very noble Hasidic family: his grandfather was the grandson of Rabbi Aharon of Chernobyl on his mother’s side, and the great-grandson of Rabbi Nah.man of Bratslav, himself the great-grandson of the Ba’al Shem Tov, on his father’s side. In the Hasidic milieu where he grew up, there were evidently men who could not write, and, speaking of his great-great-grandfather, Rabbi Aharon of Chernobyl, he relates that a year before his death “he sent a ‘general letter’ not only to his disciples but also to ‘all the sons of Israel, wherever they are’ […] and apologized for being unable to sign his name on personal letters because of his old age and feeble body” (Horodetsky 1957, 11, 18). Most probably, that letter was written by a clerk or a scribe, and it is precisely because of this that the rabbi’s signature was so vital for authenticating the document.5 Indeed, it is not a coincidence that copies of

5 On the importance that was given to the fact that a text is written in the author’s own handwriting, on the author’s signature as a substitute for the use of his handwriting

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signatures of rabbis and tzaddikim ornament the books containing their writings, letters, and sayings.6 The fact that signing his name was so difficult for Rabbi Aharon that old age and weakness prevented him from doing so is meaningful, as is the fact that he felt obliged to apologize for not signing. There is also much interest in the associative chain that leads Horodetsky to retrieve this memory and process it, for the episode of the letter and the missing signature is included in a somewhat ironic description of Rabbi Aharon’s followers’ gullible faith in the amulets and spells he gave them, and of Rabbi Aharon’s firm belief in his own miraculous powers (Horodetsky 1957, 17–18). Strong preoccupation with the issue of writing in the context of ongoing modernization processes can also be found in a childhood memory included in the autobiography of H . ayyim Chemerinsky (Motal/Motele, Grodno G., R.E., 1862?–1917). Chemerinsky reports that his father, a pious follower of the tzaddik Rabbi Moshe of Kobryn, was “a fine mixture of a Hasid and a Maskil.” This mixture also affected his attitude toward writing, which was unconventional in his surroundings. The father, who is described as a learned man, believed that a fine handwriting is a measure of its owner’s cultivation and that a person who is unable to write is a total ignoramus. His special way of mocking or reprimanding his son was to liken him to a person who writes “by passing the pen, that is, am ha’arets [a simpleton, ignoramus]” (Chemerinsky 2002, 159). The story is recounted in passing in a chapter portraying the author’s father. Chemerinsky does not attribute to it a formative status, nor does he use it to explain the importance that writing was to have in his own life. However, both the language and the content of the story betray the changes wrought by the modernization of Hasidic society. As to the language, the father’s use of the expression “passing the pen” to denote ignorance, rather than the common expression “am ha’aret s,” for example, demonstrates the emergence of a discourse influenced by Maskilic values; as to the content, the term “passing the pen” sheds light on a literacy practice that testifies to the prevalence of ignorance of writing. As explained by the author: “When a communal document is written, such

throughout the document, and on dictation as a guarantee of faithfulness to the original, see Spiegel (2005, 24–42). 6 For photographs of such signatures, see Rabinowitz (1961, 183–184).

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as for the appointment of a rabbi or a slaughterer, or some ‘agreement’ or ‘oath,’ all the townspeople sign, first the ‘higher-ups’ and then the masses. He who does not know how to sign his name passes his pen, as it were, to someone else, and the latter signs in the name of the pen-passer: the word of Meir son of Yitsh.ak by passing of the pen” (Chemerinsky 2002, 159). This explanation also hints at a certain correspondence between mastery of writing and social class. And yet whether it was for ignorance of writing, for ignorance of Hebrew, or both, even some members of the wealthy families signed by passing the pen.7 Most of the authors of such anecdotes refrain from interpreting the writing practices and events described in them. The ethnographic data encapsulated in them is hidden between the lines and is revealed only if one reads the author’s story from its margins, regardless of his main intention. Thus, for example, an amusing anecdote that Asher Korekh (1941) includes in his autobiography reveals that the study of writing, in any language whatsoever, even Yiddish, is regarded as a skill that is liable to lead to treachery, if not to heresy and assimilation. Korekh, whose father was a Hasid of Rabbi Shalom of Belz (Korekh 1941, 13), recounts the case of a classmate “who did not even know how to write the Hebrew alphabet” because his father prevented it from him. When the father was asked why he refused to teach writing to his son, even in Yiddish, he answered: “I don’t want my son to write on the Sabbath, nor do I want him to write defamations turning in Jews to the government” (Korekh 1941, 47). Korekh explains the father’s answer with a story that circulated in the town: A story was told in our town about the son of a tailor who knew how to write in the languages of the gentiles, and was accepted to work as a clerk in the court, and there he wrote on the Sabbath in public! […] They went and told the Rebbe about it, and he said: “Er vet nisht pishen” (he won’t keep on writing). The word “pishen” means “writing” in Polish, and in Yiddish, pardon me, to make water […] And that young man fell ill with a urinary disease and died of it […] That was in the years 1878–1880, and they talked about it for many years among the pious. But progress continued moving forward, and even the ultra-orthodox, especially the rich ones, would teach writing to their children by private tutors. But most of 7 On correspondence in Hebrew between grooms and brides by passing the pen, see Levin (1961, 237); on writing Torah commentary by passing the pen, see Tchernowitz (1954, 142).

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the town’s people did not know how to write in any language. (Korekh 1941, 48)

The comic and folkloristic character of the story, hinted at by the comment that it was widely told, does not undermine its significance. On the contrary, precisely because the story appears apocryphal and there is reason to doubt its historical validity, it resonates with real anxieties and imbues the literacy policy that restricted writing with religious, cultural, and social meanings. This innocent story is shown to be not only a reflection of prevalent beliefs, but also a warning against the study of writing and a testimony to the internalization of fear of writing that is so great as to lead to voluntary ignorance.8 The tension between exaggerated attention to matters of writing and contempt for it, and the refraining from teaching writing based on an explicit or implicit social-religious norm, point to the pressing need of Hasidic society to cling to an oral literacy culture. Despite the arrogant and sardonic tone of most of the above descriptions of literacy events, these stories clearly reveal this society’s profound fear of the collapse of oral dominance. Moreover, as will become clear below, the attitude to writing displayed by quite a few tzaddikim reinforced the norms restricting its use and warning against it. The practice of writing by means of scribes among tzaddikim who did not want to write, did not know how to write, or found it difficult to write served as a model for their followers, whether or not this was intended.

Ignorance of Writing and Oral Charisma Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin (Pohrebyshche/Probishta, Kiev G., R.E., 1796– 1850) had difficulties writing and even signing his name. In his book about Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin and his place in Hasidism, David Assaf (1986) writes extensively about this matter and expresses amazement at the “rare and surprising phenomenon” of “a leader whose intelligence and sharpness of mind cannot be disputed, but nevertheless the rumor of his inability to write or read persists.” Further on, Assaf confirms the truth of this “rumor” and states that it is difficult to offer a satisfactory explanation for this fact. His main assumption is that Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin 8 On the concept of “voluntary ignorance,” see Funkenstein and Steinsaltz (1987, 81–82).

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suffered from some learning disability, apparently dyslexia or dysgraphia (Assaf 1986, 88–90). To this Assaf adds a series of other explanations, for example, that Rabbi Yisrael had never had formal education, that “the social climate surrounding the families of tzaddikim in the first half of the nineteenth century was different, and daily life did not necessarily require reading or writing,” and that Rabbi Yisrael had “scribes and assistants who wrote for him […] and [thus] his functioning as a leader was not impaired” (Assaf 1986, 90). Assaf concludes by discussing the role of the scribes or clerks working in the service of Rabbi Yisrael and in Hasidic courts more generally, and places the phenomenon of passing the pen to a professional scribe in a historical and cultural context that minimizes its importance. He points to the use of court clerks among the surrounding Polish nobility, and suggests that this weakens the Maskilic critique of tzaddikim for their ignorance of writing and for the poor personal example they provided to their followers. “Although it is clear that Rabbi Yisrael found it difficult to write,” he notes, “it must be emphasized that we can learn nothing from the claims of Gottlober and other Maskilim” (Assaf 1986, 87–88). In light of Assaf’s own assertion that “Rabbi Yisrael was not alone in his time,” we have no choice but to challenge this sweeping remark (Assaf 1986, 87–91, nn. 45–57). If we heed the “rumors” about ignorance of writing among other tzaddikim, as well as testimony about such ignorance among the popular classes of Hasidic society, we must conclude that both Maskilic accounts that are suspected of partiality and those that are not suspected point to cultural meanings that demand deciphering. The examples presented by Assaf, as well as other accounts that will be presented below, indicate that the issue of writing illiteracy was very disturbing to those who dealt with it. The range of explanations provided for such illiteracy, which extends from viewing it as an expression of rare leadership charisma to viewing it as ignorance par excellence, attests that all of these explanations together, and each of them alone, fail to explain this phenomenon, and underscores the complexity of the values and emotions evoked by the issue of writing. One example among many can be found in the remarks about Rabbi Yisrael’s writing skills attributed to Rabbi Yitsh.ak of Husiatyn: “The holy Rabbi of Ruzhin wrote very little. As customary, all his letters were written by his associates, and when occasionally he had to sign, he would sign his name with large letters. And

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he himself once said: when does a person learn to write? In his youth, and I have never been a young boy” (quoted in Assaf 1986, 88, n. 51).9 In this explanation, Rabbi Yitsh.ak of Husiatyn justifies Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin’s inability to write in two opposite ways, moving between the legendary and the prosaic, the fantastic and the realistic. On the one hand, this inability is presented as testimony to the wondrous charisma of a man who has never been a boy, and as such it is part of Rabbi Yisrael’s hagiography; on the other hand, it is presented as an outcome of the prosaic and by no means miraculous fact that people usually acquire writing skills when they are young, and those who do not acquire them in their youth are unlikely to master them later on. Avraham Baer Gottlober’s (Starokonstantinov, Volhynia G., R.E., 1811–1899) comments in his memoirs tend in the same direction: “When Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin […] succeeded to his brother’s chair he was very young, so that he did not even manage to learn the skill of writing in Yiddish as men do, and could hardly sign his and his father’s names, ‘Yisrael son of Shalom,’ and in his latter days he made a great stride in that skill and managed to sign, ‘Yisrael son of our Master Rabbi Shalom” (Gottlober 1976, 188). These remarks present Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin as a person who sacrificed his childhood for the sake of leadership, and thus associate his ignorance of writing with his charismatic leadership. The firsthand impressions of Bonaventura Mayer, who met Rabbi Yisrael, are similar in this regard: This rabbi, Yisrael, from the town of Ruzhin in Volhynia […] is a man without deep scientific learning, but with a keen natural intelligence […] He married at the age of fourteen and since then he has served as a Chief Rabbi […] Anyone feeling wronged by his fellow man comes to him with his complaint, and he passes judgment, not according to written law but according to his natural intelligence. As he adjudicates, so is the law. The ruling is put into writing by his scribe, and he himself signs it with great difficulty. His knowledge of writing is so meager that he is barely capable of signing his name. His verdict is holy, and everyone must obey it. Even Russian noblemen seek his advice, honor him, and love him […] His gaze has such magnetic power that even his enemy cannot resist it. (Quoted in Assaf 1986, 137)

9 The same explanation is attributed to Rabbi Shmuel Salant; see Agnon (1985, 187).

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Whether or not this was his intention, Bonaventura Mayer’s depiction of Rabbi Yisrael’s writing illiteracy places it in the context of his unusual intelligence and charismatic authority. A different insight into this issue emerges from the comments of the autograph collector Avraham Schwadron (Bieniow, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1878–1957), who writes about this phenomenon from a distance in time in one of the notes accompanying his autograph collection: [Rabbi Yisrael] wrote very little. We know only his signatures on letters written by others. When he once visited Tarnopol, [the Maskil] Yosef Perl exhibited Rabbi Yisrael’s handwriting in his school’s window, to show his limited ability. Mr. Lipa Schwager of Husiatyn-Tel Aviv told me that he himself had heard from the Rebbe Rabbi Mordechai Feibish, son of Rabbi Yisrael, that, in consultation with Rabbi Yisrael, his gabbai [beadle] learned how to copy his signature and would even sign in his name. (Quoted in Assaf 1986, 87, n. 45)

Especially interesting in Schwadron’s account is the juxtaposition of two opposing views: the traditional-Hasidic view and the modern-Maskilic one. The reference both to the story of Lipa Schwager and to that of Yosef Perl (Ternopil/Tarnopol, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1773–1839), who publicly displayed Rabbi Yisrael’s deficient handwriting, demonstrates the difference between the Hasidic attitude to writing and that of Maskilim, making the issue of writing a cultural and ideological bone of contention between the two camps. Furthermore, it appears that the preoccupation with this issue is itself an outcome of the Maskilic campaign for the provision of both reading and writing literacy to all. Schwadron’s mention of Perl’s demonstrative act may have been written under the influence of the striking difference between Rabbi Yisrael’s signature in his own handwriting and the accomplished handwriting of his personal scribe. A document showing the two side by side, included in Schwadron’s collection,10 provides a graphic illustration of the magnitude of the barrier presented by the limited ability to write.11 Among the members of the Hasidic elite who were unable to write and who apparently did not value that ability very highly, was Rabbi Moshe 10 For a photograph of the document, see Assaf (1986, 89). 11 For a similar example, see the signature of Rabbi Simha Bunim of Peshisha next to . .

the neat handwriting of the scribe who wrote a letter for him (Rabinowitz 1944, 9).

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of Kobryn (Kobryn, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1783–1858). His grandson, Yehuda Leib Levin (YehaLeL, Minsk, R.E., 1844–1925), tackles the issue of writing in his memoirs after recounting how he was caught red-handed visiting the house of the town’s apikores (heretic): My father did not argue with me, rather […] he raised darkened eyes upon me, full of despair and great distress. My mother repeatedly reproached me that a person need not be able to write (I had told her that all my efforts were so that I could write), and the proof—that the Rebbe, her father, my saintly grandfather, could not write either. And what could I say to that? (Levin 1968, 46)

Although Levin’s words lack critical pathos, his position on the question of writing is decidedly Maskilic. He juxtaposes his grandfather’s oral tradition with his own Maskilic thirst for the written word and for the act of writing itself (Levin 1968, 36–53). This is another indication that the ignorance of writing, or at least refraining from writing on the part of tzaddikim, made its mark on the Hasidic approach to writing in general and to Maskilic writing in particular. Given this situation, it is no wonder that Maskilim frequently viewed the Hasidic attitude toward writing as ignorance par excellence and used it as an easy target for the arrows of their satire. The figure of the tzaddik in the anti-Hasidic satire “Emek Refa’im” (“Vale of Ghosts”) (1879) by Rabbi Yitsh.ak Dov Baer Levinsohn (RiBaL, Kremenets/Kremenitz, Volhynia G., R.E., 1788–1860) appears to be modeled, as surmised by David Assaf (1986), on the figure of Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin: this fictional tzaddik does not know how to write, blesses God every morning for making sure “that I cannot write or sign my name properly,” and orders a woman who comes to ask for a cure for her sick son to swear to ascertain that the son does not learn “punctuation and all the more so grammar, and does not learn to write even in Yiddish, just to sign a little bit like me and my treasured sons” (Levinsohn 1879, 135–136). Ironically, it is precisely these satirical exaggerations that provided further justification to the Hasidic fear of writing. Several Haskalah authors composed polished parodic imitations of Hasidic writing, language, and style, so much so that it was claimed that even Hasidim themselves could not distinguish the original from the imitation (Perl 1819, 21b, n. ii; Werses 1971, 26–28). It is not surprising, therefore, that Hasidim were wary of their writings

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falling into the hands of “outsiders” and “evil spirits,” and presented this as a danger facing writers and sometimes also as an indelible sin. Some scholars believe that the writing difficulties among the Hasidic elite were manifested not only in limited mastery of the required graphic skills, but also in deficient skills of expressing ideas in writing and poor command of written language and style. In Yosef Weiss’s (1975) opinion, for example, difficulties of this kind are evident in the works that Rabbi Nah.man of Bratslav (Medzhybizh/Mezhibozh, Podolia G., R.E., 1772– 1810) chose to put in writing by himself, and not through his scribe, Rabbi Nathan Sternhartz of Nemyrov (Nemyriv/Nemyrov, Podolia G., R.E., 1780–1844). According to Weiss: The opinion that Rabbi Nah.man himself did not put his teachings in writing, and that everything was written by Rabbi Nathan, is exaggerated […] There definitely were manuscripts of his teachings marked by the note “The words of our master,” but these were few. Without doubt, Rabbi Nah.man was not gifted with brilliant and fluent writing, and the few teachings “in the handwriting of our master” and several letters he wrote attest to his heavy style. (Weiss 1975, 223)12

These difficulties were most likely connected in various ways to tzaddikim’s habit of availing themselves of the services of scribes who placed their teachings in writing.13 This practice created a certain dependence on the skillfulness and linguistic and literary abilities of the scribes,14 especially because, for reasons that will be discussed below, teachings that the tzaddik delivered in Yiddish would usually be translated and written down in Hebrew. In any event, even if it was not difficulties in writing that gave rise to the habit of resorting to scribes, their extensive use did not contribute to the sharpening of tzaddikim’s writing skills, and might well have blunted them. 12 Unlike Weiss, Piekarz (1972, 64–65, n. 29, 81) emphasizes Rabbi Nahman’s “artistic . impulse”; Zvi Mark (2014, 32–37) holds a similar opinion. 13 There were, of course, tzaddikim who took pleasure in writing, and they are usually presented as the exception that proves the rule. Such joy in writing is attributed to Rabbi Levi Yitsh.ak of Berdichev (Berdychiv/Berdichev, Kiev G., R.E., 1740–1809), whose book Sefer Kdushat Levi was written by his own hand, “unlike most of the Hasidic books, which were not written by the hand of their authors” (Agnon 2000, 444). 14 On the tzaddik’s wish to have by his side a scribe with literary talent and on the pains of writing, see for example Weiss (1975, 79–83).

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One frequently has the impression, though it is difficult to prove, that this society perceived the relationship between speech and writing as a trade-off, with the reinforcement of one coming at the expense of the other: writing talent undermines oral charisma and consumes it, and speaking talent degenerates writing talent and represses it. Whether or not these matters were seen in that way, the use of scribes contributed to the belief in the charismatic power of the tzaddik’s speech and to the placing of the tzaddik as close as possible to God, who created the world by speech. According to this conception of the tzaddik, the utmost importance of oral charisma justifies the forgoing of writing. Moreover, the tzaddikim regarded the content of a story and the very act of telling it as a way of serving God, as the Ba’al Shem Tov’s grandson, Moshe Efrayim of Sudilkov (Medzhybizh/Mezhibozh, Podolia G., R.E., 1748– 1800), says of his grandfather: “I heard and saw […] that he would tell stories and extrinsic things, […] by which he would serve the Lord with the clear and pure wisdom that he had.”15 Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin is also said to have told “simple things” to his Hasidim, that is, stories and tales, and to view the telling of stories as “the proper and wise way to serve the Lord” (Assaf 1986, 145–150). By means of narration, in the two senses of the word—as a story and as an act of telling—the tzaddikim addressed God and people, and the Hasidim, who heard and saw the tzaddik narrating, absorbed his story as a total experience that became inscribed on the tablet of their heart.

The Tzaddik and His Scribe: Oral Charisma and the Social Control of Knowledge According to Derrida’s interpretation of Plato’s Phaedrus, speech is indeed perceived in the dialogue as coming at the expense of writing, and vice versa. The authoritative god, the king, commands, creates, and gives birth by means of speech, whereas the god of writing is an inferior, secondary figure, a technocrat with no authority (Derrida 1981, 86). The inability to write does not detract from the god-king’s authority, 15 See Moshe Hayim Efrayim of Sudilkov (1884, 18b–19a). On the place of the story in . Hasidism and in Bratslav Hasidism more specifically, see Piekarz (1972, 83–130). Piekarz notes that according to tradition, Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin is considered “an extreme example of placing the story and everyday conversation at the center of the tzaddik’s leadership” (Piekarz 1972, 102–104).

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but rather confirms it and enhances it. Precisely because of his greatness, he does not need to engage in writing, and yet he is the one who gives writing its significance. “Writing will have no value,” writes Derrida, “unless and to the extent that god-the-king approves of it” (1981, 76). Hence: He speaks, he says, he dictates, and his word suffices. Whether a scribe from his secretarial staff then adds the supplement of a transcription or not, that consignment is always in essence secondary. From this position, without rejecting the homage [i.e., the gift of writing], the god-king will depreciate it, pointing out not only its uselessness but its menace and its mischief […] The father is always suspicious and watchful toward writing. (Derrida 1981, 76)

Despite the unchallenged authority of the god-king-father, the relations between him and his scribe, no matter how marginal the latter’s status may be, are complex both at the inter-personal level and at the social and cultural level. Even if we do not accept Derrida’s family metaphor in all its implications, and even if we tone down considerably the interpretation of writing as a desire for patricide and orphanhood, we must concede that the relations between the tzaddik and his scribe were necessarily marked by a peculiar balance of power between a holy man with oral charisma and a craftsman with writing talents, who is a “master of language” and who bears substantial responsibility for the eventual form of his master’s disseminated teachings. Despite the complete subordination of the scribe to the tzaddik, and although the tzaddik often examined the texts produced by the scribe (Piekarz 1972, 64), the two found themselves bound to one another in a relation of dependence and control, suspicion and trust, which created a delicate and hidden mechanism of mutual supervision. This is how Weiss (1975), for example, interprets the manifestations of such complexity in the relationship between Rabbi Nah.man and his scribe, Rabbi Nathan: [Rabbi Nah.man] did not fully trust the enthusiastic young man, who had recently joined him and took upon himself wholeheartedly the yoke of writing and phrasing his “revealed” teachings. He harbored […] considerable reasons against his disciple’s writing. [… However] Rabbi Nah.man did not dare test the strength of Rabbi Nathan’s submission, and [consequently] we must admit that there are secrets in these writings that had

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best be concealed from all disciples, even the most devoted. (Weiss 1975, 224; see also Piekarz 1972, 63–65)

If one accepts that the ideal way of communicating religious knowledge, both esoteric and prosaic, is oral, the functional division between the speaker and the writer appears to be both a solution and an undeniable necessity. When the circumstances necessitate putting the teacher’s words into writing, the danger of losing control over the text, its meanings, and its audiences becomes palpable. One way of handling this threat is to construe writing as a simple craft and entrust it to skillful “writing technicians.” This construal, which is prevalent in traditional societies, helps separate the source of authority and truth from the clerk, and makes it possible to retain the oral charisma of the speaker and the magical spell of his speech. However, at the same time, this separation expands the role of the scribe, who in fact performs not only the technical role of a registrar but also the role of a witness or notary, who confirms the truth of the text and the identity of the speaker by testimony and by the act of writing. Thus, the separation of powers between the speaker and the scribe who puts his words into writing creates yet another system of control over knowledge and its conveyance, a system in which both the speaker and the scribe testify to one another and supervise one another. The separation between the speaker, as the source of authority and truth, and the scribe or clerk therefore had consequences for the practice of writing and for the kinds of texts that this practice made possible. It reduced the space for spontaneous, intimate, authentic, first-person writing both on the part of the scribe and on the part of the speaker.16 Furthermore, it underscored the essential differences between various kinds of writing, such as the writing of a text of one’s own, the setting down of a dictated text during the event of dictation, and the transcribing from memory, or “dictating to oneself,” of a text one heard from someone else in the past. Weiss (1975, 223) believes it is the latter distinction that was referred to by Rabbi Nathan, Rabbi Nah.man’s scribe, when he differentiated between “writing the teaching of his rabbi” and “writing a teaching in front of his rabbi.” The first phrase, according to Weiss, refers to writing the rabbi’s teaching from memory, and the second

16 On writing in a particular kind of first person as an important marker distinguishing modern autobiographical writing from pre-modern one, see Moseley (2006, 181).

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to writing it during the act of dictation.17 In this context, it should be noted that the scribe’s usual writing practice was that of writing from memory. Because writing was prohibited on the Sabbath, homilies and stories delivered by the tzaddik on Friday night were usually put into writing only on Saturday night, and their memorization for the purpose of restoring them later on was often performed by “repeaters,” (h.ozrim) who were nominated for this task (Zilberbush 1936, 110–111). These semi-oral writing practices made their mark on the poetics of Hasidic stories. They are apparent in the characteristics and reliability of these stories’ narrators, in the methods of citing other voices, in the colloquial style, and in the expressions of amazement and exaggeration.18 The narrator is usually a witness narrator, who claims to have taken part in the events he is recounting, and who praises the tzaddik for the marvelous things he had seen him do and say. At other times the narrator is a hearing witness, who heard the story from other witnesses who had seen the event with their own eyes or heard about it with their own ears. Hasidic stories of both kinds build their credibility by overemphasizing the importance of oral testimony and by presenting an unbroken chain of oral reports ending in the current narration. Hence, ironically, the very devices that are meant to establish the narrator’s status as a reliable reporter end up undermining his reliability. The very characteristics 17 In an article entitled “Shifting Ideologies of Orality and Literacy in Their Historical Context: Rebbe Nah.man of Bratslav’s Embrace of the Book as a Means for Redemption,” Siff (2010) discusses further aspects of this distinction. Clanchy (1979, 219) argues that dictation was the usual method of writing literary works in medieval England. Ong (1982, 95–96) describes the writing of Thomas Aquinas as that of “a man who dictates to himself,” that is, who imagines himself speaking the words he is about to write down. He distinguishes between this situation and that of a person who puts his ideas on paper directly, without such a mental representation of oral expression, which he defines as “high literacy.” Messick (1993, 28) points out that in Muslim literacy culture as manifested in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Yemen, the phenomenon of the writer who “dictates to himself” was preserved in defined areas of religious and legal texts, in which the presence of the authority was embedded in the text by means of markers of oral speech. In other fields of knowledge such as history, philosophy, and medicine, “high literacy” was apparent. 18 On the epic situation in stories of this kind, see Yassif (1994, 406–407). The unique-

ness of the epic situation in Hasidic stories, and of the resulting features in terms of language, style, and construction of the narrator’s authority, is particularly apparent when the oral rhetoric of the Hasidic narrative is compared with the various types of “speech” that the Russian formalists identified in the folk stories they call “skaz”; see Eikhenbaum (1978, 233–236) and Titunik (1977, 276–301).

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of narrating based on witnessing or on dictation—such as the narrator’s dependence on memory, his emotional involvement in what is described, the inclusion of his voice alongside the voices of other witnesses, and his suspected subordination to religious, ideological, and personal interests— all ultimately lead to the undermining of his reliability and to the forming of his image as an unreliable narrator. And yet, what appears to be a simple and innocent feature of the poetics of the Hasidic story can also be viewed as a reflection of the complex power relations between the speaker and the scribe, power relations that in turn shed light on the ambivalent attitude toward writing. Central to these power relations is the fact that it is not only the scribe who is subject to control and supervision; the speaker, too, is restricted by this relationship. From the speaker’s point of view, the existence of a scribe who records his words, whether while he is speaking or afterward, exposes him to the examining eye of the other and unintentionally turns the writer into a restraining authority of sorts. Unlike a person who sits alone and puts his ideas, beliefs, emotions, fantasies, and experiences into writing, the speaker who dictates to a scribe is never alone; he is always embroiled in an oral situation and always shares his thoughts and feelings with someone else. The situation of dictation is inherently restraining, and in this sense it also protects the speaker from himself—from forgetting himself, from temporary loss of control, from excessive self-exposure, from crossing boundaries, and from revealing secrets. All these are especially significant in the case of religious leadership that seeks to prevent unsupervised circulation of secret teachings, mystical visions, and the like. Fascinating insight into this implicit control system is provided by the story of the destruction of HaSefer HaNisraf (The Burnt Book) by Rabbi Nah.man of Bratslav, of whom it is said that he used to burn the teachings he had written in his own handwriting, without the aid of a scribe: Once people came to him. And he took a piece of paper in his hand. And on it was writing in his holy handwriting. And they held his hand. And he answered and said, so many teachings on this piece of paper. And he said there are many different worlds that are nurtured and enlivened from the

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smoke of his Torah. And he took the paper and burned it with the candle. (Sternhartz 1974, 135–136, sign 205)19

The duality implied by Rabbi Nah.man’s words emphasizes the power radiating from the teachings written in the tzaddik’s own handwriting. On the one hand, he burns his manuscript so that its smoke can nourish several upper worlds. On the other hand, he burns them so that they do not fall into the hands of random people. This interpretation is consistent with Weiss’s explanation regarding the connection between Rabbi Nah.man’s habit of burning teachings that he put to paper by himself and his notion of esoteric knowledge. According to Weiss, Rabbi Nah.man believed that esoteric teachings are divided into several levels: those that are not told at all; those that are told but not written; and those that are written and then burnt (Weiss 1975, 244–245).20 Indeed, Rabbi Nah.man implies that in the act of writing by oneself, secrets are exposed that would better not come into the world, and there is no alternative but to burn them: There are hidden tzaddikim, and they know aspects of the Torah, but they must conceal their Torah, as they tell in the story about the Ba’al Shem Tov and the preacher. And with him, too, sometimes he knows a Torah […] that is, an aspect of the Torah, and he must conceal it, and he does not say it and sometimes he does not write it at all, and sometimes he writes it and afterward burns it. (Nah.man of Bratslav 1968b, 185, n. 32)

Hence, we may say that in contrast to writing by the tzaddik himself, which is liable to reveal teachings that are highly esoteric, the practice of writing by means of a scribe or a clerk, even if he is a trusted associate, contains an inbuilt braking mechanism. This is because by its very nature, it makes the other present and sets boundaries that are dangerous to transgress. Interestingly, in Hasidic society and culture, the restraining role of the scribe does not derive only from the act of transcribing the oral preaching of the tzaddik. An important component of the scribe’s role in restricting 19 On Rabbi Nahman’s ecstatic state while writing his teachings in his own handwriting, . and on his belief that the death of his infant was related to the copying of HaSefer HaNisraf , see Weiss (1969, 279–287). 20 For more on the affair of the Burnt Book, its writing, copying, and burning, see Piekarz (1972, 62–66), Mark (2012, 301–305).

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and controlling knowledge stems from his responsibility for translating the tzaddik’s stories and homilies from the spoken language, Yiddish, to the holy written language, Hebrew. Indeed, this is how Rabbi Nathan describes the task of both writing and translating Rabbi Nah.man’s words on those occasions when he wrote “in front of his rabbi”: This was the manner of my writing in front of him, that the teaching he gave at that time, for example on the Sabbath of Hanukkah, he would repeat later at the time of writing, and he would tell it to me paragraph by paragraph, and he would tell me some things in the language of Ashkenaz [Yiddish], and I would sit before him and write those things in the Holy Tongue, until I would finish writing the whole teaching, and I would usually return and read it to him after I had finished writing it. (Sternhartz 1955, 72)

Scholars of Hasidic literature have provided several explanations for the custom of translating the Hasidic homilies and stories from Yiddish into Hebrew while placing them in writing. Chava Turniansky (1996, 186) attributes the translation into Hebrew before publication to “the preeminence, permanence, honor, and sanctity” of the Hebrew language. In her view, “the primary status [of Hebrew] as the language of writing, of texts, and of scripture” provided the texts written in it with prestige and canonical status. Ze’ev Gries also states that “the Hasidic homily written in Hebrew originates in an oral sermon given in Yiddish,” and notes the differences between the original and its written version.21 Gries explains the conversion of Yiddish into Hebrew by the desire to sanctify and perpetuate the texts, for fear that they would not be preserved in the oral tradition. He also refers to the flawed Hebrew and sloppy character of these translations, and attributes it to the decidedly oral nature of Hasidic culture (Gries 1992, 65; see also Siff 2010, 239–242). According to him, the book had no particular importance in Hasidic life, and primary importance was accorded to oral tradition. This also accounts, in his opinion, 21 In this context, Gries notes two phenomena. One is that stories that were told in Yiddish but transcribed in Hebrew excluded almost all the women and most of the men from the reading audience. The second is that despite the flourishing of printing and publication, primacy was still accorded to speech (Gries 1992, 35–40, 51–57). Since translation into Hebrew played a central role in protecting oral culture, it is hard to exaggerate the importance of the publication of the Yiddish translations of Shivh.ei HaBesht and Sefer Sipurei Ma’asiot in 1815–1816, as these were the first Hasidic books in that language (Gries 1992, 27).

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for some writers’ apologies for their ineloquent style and their difficulty in making their Hebrew writing closer to the Yiddish original (Gries 1992, 50–56). One may ask, however, how the faulty style and ungrammatical Hebrew squares with the desire to endow the written text with an exalted status by virtue of the sanctity or beauty of the Hebrew language. This apparent contradiction suggests that the careless style might well be intended, among other things, to cleanse the writing of an aesthetic aim for its own sake, of beauty, of perfection, or of pleasure, which were liable to compete with the oral charm of the live expression, to damage it, and to threaten it.22 Turniansky (1996, 186–187) suggests yet another explanation for the translation to Hebrew. It was intended, she proposes, to change the composition of the text’s audience, and replace the folksy, Yiddishspeaking audience of the oral sermons with a learned audience well versed in the Holy Tongue. In the spirit of this explanation, we must probe the deep motivations for replacing the addressees exactly when speech is converted into writing, for it is hard to avoid noticing that the translation from Yiddish into Hebrew was a project of exclusion by means of language. Due to the translation into Hebrew, the written teachings and stories were severed from the vast majority of their original addressees, who heard and understood them in their spoken version, and were directed at a smaller, relatively select Hebrew readership that could both read and understand them. Hence, as far as the broad public of the Hasidic community was concerned, the translation into Hebrew removed one of the great threats inherent in the act of transcription. In the socio-linguistic environment of the period, the Hebrew text allowed almost only ritual reading, and thus could not threaten the oral charisma of the tzaddikim, make their authority redundant, or take their place.23 In this way, in his role as translator, the scribe-clerk erected a defensive wall around the tzaddik, denying broad segments of the population easy and adequate access to the texts he dictated. Most likely, quite a few Hasidim could read the translated Hebrew texts ritually, but more often than not, they could not

22 See also Agnon’s story “Bilti LeHaShem Levado” (“Only for the Lord Alone”) (Agnon 1962a, 113–114), and the discussion of this story in Chapter 10 below. 23 On Rabbi Nahman’s opinion regarding the importance and power of ritual reading, . even without understanding, see Siff (2010, 248).

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understand them.24 At the same time, however, this control mechanism exposed the translated texts to a paradoxical and sometimes threatening relationship with Maskilic literature, its authors, and its readers. On the one hand, since they were written in Hebrew that was considered nonstandard and ungrammatical, they were easy prey for the Maskilim, who wrote venomous anti-Hasidic parodies on them; on the other hand, for these very reasons, they opened fertile channels of influence to Haskalah authors, providing many of them with an abundant source of inspiration. It is no accident that some scholars regard Rabbi Nah.man as a precursor of modern Jewish literature and emphasize the links between Hasidism and its literature and modern Hebrew literature (Schwartz 1982). In summary, the functional division of literacy practice in Hasidic society between an authoritative, creative, and learned man who dictates the text and a scribe or clerk who writes it was not an innocent or insignificant division of labor. In a similar vein, the gradual disappearance of the practice of dictation did not result only from a rise in the rate of people who could both read and write, as opposed to those who could only read. These processes reflected deep transformations in the uses of writing, in the conceptions of knowledge and its grounding, and in the methods of transmitting and controlling knowledge. It is no coincidence that in his first outburst of critical writing, as expressed in Tsror Mikhtavim Me’et Bar-Bei-Rav (A Bundle of Letters from a Beginner), the Mitmaskel yeshiva student Micha Yosef Berdichevsky (Medzhybizh/Mezhibozh, Podolia G., R.E., 1865–1921) vociferously and provocatively proclaimed the unification of the two functions, speech and writing, under one authority—his own authority: Bar-Bei-Rav is a self-contained living being, he does not need spells or magic amulets because his power is in his mouth and his force is in his pen; and when necessary he will defend himself, and every tongue that rises against him he will condemn. (Berdichevsky 1984, 76–77)25 24 This situation began to change with the publication of Shivhei HaBesht (1814– . 1815) and of Rabbi Nah.man’s Sipurei Ma’asiot (1816) in Yiddish. This trend accelerated with the appearance of Hasidic hagiographic literature in Yiddish in the second half of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, even in the 1860s, when the pressure to publish books intensified, leading to a large outburst of composition and publication of Hasidic literature (Gries 1992, 36), many in the Hasidic public could not read and understand Hebrew texts. 25 The letters were published in the Maskilic periodical HaMelits (1888).

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Berdichevsky’s declaration implies explicit rejection of the magic spells (speech) and amulets (writing) of Hasidic culture. He presents the qualities of his writing, free of dependence on authority, as a substitute for dependence on the magical charisma of one personality or another. Against the background of Berdichevsky’s declaration, the inner logic behind the preservation of the oral dominance in Hasidic society becomes increasingly clear. Indeed, Hasidism’s defensive and reserved attitude toward writing persisted not only during the first half of the nineteenth century, when it seemed as though uncontrolled writing could be prevented, but also after the field of ideological struggle had changed, and the writing and publication of books became unavoidable and widespread in Hasidic society as well.

Speech, Books, and the Sin of Writing Hasidic literature includes a substantial body of texts dealing with hidden, vanished, lost, burnt, or otherwise destroyed books and manuscripts,26 as well as texts about tzaddikim who refrained from writing partly or completely.27 It appears that the growing interest in issues of writing, printing, and publication in various segments of Jewish society, as well as the mysterious and emotionally intense phenomenon of the repression of writing and destruction of writings among tzaddikim, explain why many of these texts have found their way into modern anthologies of Hasidic stories and sayings (Buber 1946; Shvili 2015; Steinman 1957, 1969). By and large, these texts betray fierce resistance to writing, a strong drive to self-censorship, and great suspicion of books and their authors. Indeed, among the Hasidic sayings, there are some that encourage the writing of h.idushei Torah (novellae, innovative interpretations of written or Oral Torah), lest they be forgotten or removed from the world of the faithful.

26 For example, see the story of the burial of the writings of Rabbi Adam Ba’al Shem and their presentation to the Besht in Shivh.ei HaBesht (2005, 59). A selection of Hasidic stories in the genre of buried, burnt, lost, and missing books is included in Agnon’s Sefer, Sofer VeSipur (2000): “Rabbi Adam Ba’al Shem” (429); “HaSefer HaMezuyaf” (“The Feigned Book”) (433); “Sefer HaNisraf” (“The Burnt Book”), “Sefer HaGanuz” (“The Secreted Book”), “HaSefer HaNisraf VeHaSefer HaGanuz” (“The Burnt Book and the Secreted Book”) (452–454); “Sfarim Nisrafim” (“Burnt Books”) (461). 27 Sometimes the avoidance of writing among the Hasidim is explained as a result of lack of learning for its own sake. See Rabinovitz (1961, 150).

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This is the spirit of Rabbi Nah.man’s saying in Sefer HaMidot, “Whoever has the ability to compose a book and does not do so, it is as if he is bereaved of children,”28 which alludes to the common view that a person’s books are like his children, and permission to write is given to the childless. However, even this saying seems to reflect an effort to convince those who fiercely oppose writing and publication to mitigate their objection.29 Alongside sayings like that of Rabbi Nah.man, there are quite a few stories that read like calls to restrain the desire to write and rein it in. Among these stories we find, for example, one attributed to the author of H . idushei HaRIM (Novellae of the RIM ), Rabbi Yitsh.ak Meir Alter of Gur (HaRIM, Magnuszew, Radom G., Poland/R.E., 1799–1866): The RIM used to burn his manuscripts and was very strict with his disciples, who used to write down his words without his knowledge. When he was asked the reason for this, he said: The main point of studying is to give contentment to the Blessed Lord. One has to be very cautious with h.idushim. Some h.idushim, at the time of their writing they give one contentment, and [yet] they are not good. Afterward, even if their writer realizes his error […] he can no longer admit to the truth. A h.idush that has some slant and improper intention requires burning. (Steinman 1957, 141; see also Agnon 2000, 413)

This story and others like it, each in its own way, point out the dangers inherent in writing, most of which are related in one way or another to the sin of pride. A particular kind of story praises tzaddikim who refrained from writing altogether and left no written texts behind them, not even those written by disciples or clerks. Other stories advocate not only refraining from writing books, but also deterring others from doing so. Stories indicating the preference for speech over writing are attributed to many tzaddikim, expressing disregard for writing, great caution with regard to it, or real aversion to it, going so far as absolutely rejecting it. The arguments against writing in these stories are varied. Some of them appear to follow in the footsteps of Socrates in the Phaedrus, while others 28 Presented alongside similar stories and sayings in Agnon (2000, 143). 29 Vacillation between praise for tzaddikim who refrained from writing and praise for

those who authored many books recurs throughout the hagiographic literature on tzaddikim, although praise for a tzaddik who wrote abundantly is often accompanied by an apologetic remark. See, for example, Ortner (1972, 358–361).

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bear the social and cultural marks of their time and place, reflecting the tensions and controversies among Hasidim, Mitnagdim, and Maskilim. However, the multiplicity and variety of these arguments arouse suspicion and offer grounds for assuming that all of them together, and each of them separately, reveal less than they conceal. On the one hand, they display the range of prohibitions and inhibitions that imbued the act of writing with a sense of sin; on the other hand, they conceal the deep motivations for preferring speech to writing. Rabbi Moshe of Kobryn (Kobryn, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1784–1858), for example, explains his opposition to writing with two considerations: a didactic one and a religious one. He himself had never written a book in his lifetime, and when he was asked why, he used to answer: “I wrote my books on the tablets of the hearts of the Jews” (Meirson 1951, 221; Agnon 2000, 462). To this didactic reason, which is reminiscent of Socrates’s argument in the Phaedrus, there was added in the case of Rabbi Moshe of Kobryn a fear of wisdom that undermines action, as evident in another saying attributed to him: “If it were up to me, I would secrete all tzaddikim’s books. For due to knowing a lot of Hasidism, one’s wisdom exceeds one’s actions” (Buber 1946, vol. 2, 449). However, Rabbi Naftali Zvi, the Rebbe of Skvyra (1812?–1885), warned against books for an almost opposite reason. Unlike Rabbi Moshe of Kobryn, who believed that books led to excessive learning at the expense of deeds, the Rebbe of Skvyra feared that reading erroneous books would lead to neglect of learning the Torah: There were some great ones who were very great, and nevertheless in certain details they strayed from the path of truth, and therefore anyone who wishes to study books like these, should study only the books written by the Besht’s disciples and by the disciples of his disciples, for they did not stray even by a single point from the line of truth.” And the Rebbe concluded: “When you hear how I praise the books by the Besht’s disciples, do not think of dealing with them all day long. This is not right, only the main thing is to learn Shas UPoskim [Talmud and Halakhic decisions], and you should only peruse and study these books for about an hour. (Tzikernik 1984, 37)

A different perspective on the primacy of speech over writing can be found in a story about Rabbi Ya’akov Yosef of Ostrava (known as Yevi, PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, 1738–1791) that is attributed to his son, Rabbi Getsel. The story begins with the hasty journey of the father and his

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son to visit Rabbi Ya’akov Yosef of Polonne (1710–1784), the author of Toldot Ya’akov Yosef , who was lying on his deathbed, to learn the meaning of an obscure saying that the dying rabbi had heard from his teacher, the Besht. It ends with a description of the ecstatic and marvelous spiritual elevation experienced by the rabbi and his visitors while he confided the interpretation to them: I heard from a certain man, who had heard from Rabbi Getseli, the son of the holy Rabbi Yevi ZTL [may the memory of the righteous be a blessing], that when the author of Toldot Ya’akov Yosef printed that book, the holy Rabbi Yevi purchased it, and when he encountered a place [in the book] where it said, I heard from my master, its [the saying’s] interpretation eluded him, so he ordered to harness the horses and traveled to the holy rabbi, the author of Toldot, to clarify the meaning of the words for him, and because he was then in old age, he took his young son [Getseli] with him. And when he came he found the Toldot weak before his death, and he was lying on his deathbed, and the Toldot gave him his holy hand and asked him, what was the purpose of his visit? He answered that the meaning of a certain I heard from my master in his book was difficult for him. Then the author of Toldot of blessed memory ordered to bring the book to him, and that rabbi [Yevi] opened the book and showed the Toldot the obscure saying, and when the author of the Toldot began to explain the meaning to him, he became like a torch of fire, and his face burned with a flame of spiritual beings, and his bed rose and ascended a little above the floor until he had finished his explanation. (Sefer Siftei Kodesh n.d., 88)30

From young Getseli’s point of view, the emotional climax of the story lies with his very presence at the tzaddik’s bedside when he underwent his spiritual experience, and with the miracle that took place right before his eyes, when the tzaddik’s bed levitated until he finished speaking. However, for our purposes, the moral of the story is that words written in a book can never take the place of living speech and intimate closeness to the source of truth.31 The story literally demonstrates Socrates’s argument that a written text can never answer questions and needs the protection of its progenitor. The Rabbi’s holding of the visitor’s hand,

30 For other variants of this narrative kernel, see Buber (1946, vol. 1, 171), under the title “HaSefer” (“The Book”), and Agnon (2000, 435–436), under the title “Kokhvei Shamayim” (“Stars in the Sky”). 31 Admiel Kosman (2002) reads this story with different emphasis.

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his emotional turmoil, his burning face, and his being on the verge of death further emphasize the abyss between the warmth and vitality of the master’s words, and the frozen stasis of his written and printed book. Subtly, and with arguments more clearly reflecting their time and place, a story attributed to Rabbi Yeh.ezkel Shraga Halberstam of Shinawa (Tarnogrod, Poland, 1815–1898) points to the dangers of writing: My father ZTL told me that his rabbi, Rabbi Yeh.ezkel of Shinawa ZTL, was once near the city of Krenitz, and the Hasidim came to him and asked him to teach them Torah. The tzaddik told them that once a young man was captured by evil spirits, may that not happen to us, and his friends very much wanted to rescue him from them. His friends went to a tzaddik and asked him for help in saving their comrade, who was once a Torah scholar fearing Heaven and devout in his study. The tzaddik made magic spells and penances to communicate with the evil spirits’ world and leader. Their leader answered the tzaddik: […] We possess a list of all those who pray and study Torah but not for the sake of Heaven […] and so, if we find something from your teachings and prayers recorded on our list, we will not pay any heed at all to your effort to work against us in order to remove from our possession some soul that has fallen into our hands. But if your name is not on our list, that is, if nothing of your teachings and prayers is recorded with us, then you can defeat us, and you can save the aforementioned young man from our hands. They began to search in all their lists, and they found nothing from the tzaddik’s teachings and his prayers, and thereby he succeeded in rescuing that young man from their domain. Indeed, the tzaddik Rabbi Yeh.ezkel of Shinawa concluded, you should yourselves ask whether a man like me is permitted to teach Torah. We must pray and ask for mercy with threefold tears every day, so as not to fall, Heaven forbid, into the trap of the sitra ah.ra [the other side, the opposite of holiness] and Samael, God protect us, for they are the evil spirits that lurk for our souls and our Torah and our prayers, including even those who present themselves as righteous and refined Jews (sheine yidn). (Brinner 1989, 107; see also Buber 1946, vol. 1, 496)

This story, which begins as the story of a young man who had once been a Torah scholar and fell into the captivity of evil spirits, recounts his miraculous rescue by the merit of the tzaddik. The vague nature of the young man’s sin, the elusive link between his sin and his punishment, the nature of the evil spirits and their pursuits, the underlying logic of the bargaining between the tzaddik and the evil spirits’ leader, the strange connection

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between all these and the capturers’ conditions for releasing the prisoner, Rabbi Yeh.ezkel’s fear of falling into the evil spirits’ hands—all this acquires meaning if we assume that the evil spirits in the story collect Torah teachings that were delivered orally and placed in writing, which implies, by the very nature of this act, that they were not given for the sake of Heaven. They then keep these records as incriminating evidence against those who authored them. Only tzaddikim whose teachings were not put in writing are safe from the grip of the evil spirits and entitled to redeem their disciples from captivity. This interpretation is supported by other versions of this story, such as the one presented by Agnon (1962a), which will be discussed in Chapter 10 below. The story therefore relates, implicitly, how writing might lead to the passage of oral teachings into the hands of evil spirits, and adds another particularly sinister facet to the dangers of writing. Perhaps the best-known and most important story warning of the dangers of writing is told by Rabbi Gedalia of Linitz (Pollone, ?–1804) in the book Shivh.ei HaBesht [In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov] (1814–1815). It recounts what happened one day when the Besht saw a demon walking around, holding a book: I heard this from the rabbi of our community. Once a certain man wrote down a teaching of the Besht, which he had heard from him. Once the Besht saw that a demon was walking and holding a book in his hand. He said to him, what is that book that you are carrying in your hand. He answered him, this is the book that you composed. Then the Besht understood that someone had been writing down his teaching. He gathered all his people and asked them, which of you is writing my teaching? The man confessed to him. He brought his writings, and the Besht perused them, and said, there is not even a single word here that I said. (Sefer Shivh.ei HaBesht 1969, 123)32

This story has a different and earlier version attributed to Rabbi Pinh.as of Koritz (Shklow, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1726–1791), in which the supernatural presence of the demon is missing: It is told of the Besht of blessed memory, that someone was writing down what he had heard from his holy mouth. And when the Besht found out

32 The punctuation is based on Sefer Shivhei HaBesht (1947, 144). .

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about it, he commanded the reprover to examine the writings, and he saw that there was not a single thing written there from the words of the Besht of blessed memory, because that man had not been listening for the sake of Heaven, and therefore a klipah [shell of impurity] enveloped him, and he heard other things. (Guttman 1953, 11, sign 22)

Gershom Scholem believed that these two narratives contain the grain of a real event. In his article “The Historical Figure of Rabbi Yisra’el Ba’al Shem Tov,” he compares the two stories and argues that Rabbi Gedalia of Linitz, who told the legendary, supernatural story, and Rabbi Pinh.as of Koritz, who told the “sober and perhaps authentic [story] of an event that had happened,” were of the same generation, and the difference between the narratives they spun around the event stemmed from their different personal reactions to it: “The klipah in the witty saying in Rabbi Pinh.as’s version, which, if it is not a borrowed image, refers to the inner reality of a disciple who is unworthy of his master, turns in the mythopoeic imagination of the Rabbi of Linitz into an external reality of a demon walking about in the house” (Shalom 1975, 307–308). One may doubt whether these stories constitute reliable sources testifying to an actual episode in the life of the Besht and teaching about historical reality (Rosman 1996, 187–205). However, in the context of our discussion, neither historical reality nor the historical figure of the Besht is at issue, but rather the conversion of religious, cultural, and social attitudes into specific narratives, which reflect their narrators’ views and interpretations of the position held by their teacher and leader. Viewed from this perspective, the two stories describe a literacy event that involves the placing into writing of a teaching told by the Besht. Both narrators interpret this act of writing as a sin, both attribute to the Besht objection to the transcription of his teachings, both doubt the existence of a reliable, accurate way of representing in writing things that were delivered by speech, both suggest that whoever dares to try and do so risks his soul, and both instruct their disciples in this spirit. Nevertheless, one narrator, Rabbi Gedalia of Linitz, resorts to a far-reaching realization of the mystical powers of abomination, presents them as an actual demon, and casts the shadow of demonic forces upon the man who placed the Besht’s teachings in writing; and the other narrator, Rabbi Pinh.as of Koritz, uses metaphorical language in describing the writer as enveloped in a klipah (shell of impurity or evil spirit) and presents his seizure by the powers of abomination as a psychological event or an impaired mental

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state. And yet it appears that paradoxically, the story of Gedalia of Linitz, which indulges in mythical exaggeration, depicts the sin of writing as a single, clear, and quite realistic sin—that of distorting the tzaddik’s words while writing them, of which the tzaddik says: “there is not even a single word here that I said.” By contrast, in the story of Rabbi Pinh.as of Koritz, who refrains from mythical exaggeration and uses restrained metaphorical language, the writer’s sin is a vague sin with several components, presented in the form of “sin begets sin”: the writer “had not been listening for the sake of Heaven, and therefore a klipah enveloped him, and he had heard other things.” Indeed, the comparison between the two stories indicates that the deeper and more complex message concerning the sin of writing is encapsulated in the more prosaic, “sober,” and “authentic” story. In Rabbi Pinh.as of Koritz’s version, the portrayal of the sin is marked by gaps and ellipses; the sin is composed of several transgressions, whose inter-relationship is not stated explicitly. And indeed, this absent-present link is nothing but the act of writing itself and the resultant written record. The written text is what reifies the sin and makes it present. It is what shows that the writer “had heard other things” and it is what testifies, whether by its content or by its very existence, that the writer “had not been listening for the sake of Heaven,” since the cultural conception is that the writing of books, and especially writing for publication, is susceptible to the sin of pride, and only a few can avoid stumbling due to it. This interpretation of the story, which is consistent with the spirit of a variety of other Hasidic stories condemning writing, hints that whoever writes down things that were delivered orally is necessarily caught in a trap and is liable to sin, for if he hears his master’s teachings for the sake of Heaven, he will not be tempted to place them in writing, and if he does place them in writing, he evidently did not hear them for the sake of Heaven. Therefore, “a klipah envelope[s] him” and he is found to have distorted his master’s teaching. Another illustration of the entrapping and paralyzing nature of writing in this cultural setting can be found in a saying attributed to Rabbi Pinh.as of Koritz: [Rabbi Pinh.as] said, if I were able to write everything I say, I could give life to very many souls. (Pinh.as of Koritz 1954, 17, sign 91)

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This saying, which is formulated as a counterfactual conditional, implies the desire to place everything that is said in writing, and yet this desire is counterpoised by logical reasoning, which instructs one not to try to do so. On the one hand, the narrator concedes that perfect writing, one which conveys what has been said completely and in its totality, could “give life to very many souls,” but on the other hand, he doubts his own ability, and perhaps the ability of anyone at all, to produce such a text. In any event, in the cultural climate within which these ideas were expressed, writing down things that were conveyed orally was considered essentially flawed and was associated with hubris, such as the hubris of claiming “to give life to very many souls” by means of writing. The feelings of sin and betrayal due to the inability to put spoken words into writing accurately, and the recognition of the essential impossibility of doing so, may apply to writers in general, but are especially pronounced when it comes to disciples writing down the teachings of their masters. And yet in the case of Hasidic society, the inhibitions with regard to writing were manifested not only among the disciples of tzaddikim but also, and perhaps most meaningfully, among tzaddikim themselves, who were often reluctant with regard to the writing and publication of their own doctrines. Some of the justifications provided for this seem prosaic and facetious, while others are dramatic and dark; some appear to be dismissive, and others are full of fear and trembling. Despite the differences among them, a hidden cord binds them together tightly. The prosaic aspect of these explanations appears in a story attributed to Rabbi Menah.em Mendel of Kotsk (Goraj/Gorai, Lublin P., Poland, 1787–1859): The Hasidim asked the Rebbe of Kotsk why he has not composed a book. He was silent for a moment, and then he answered: Let’s assume that I have already written a book—who would buy it? Our fellow believers would buy it. And when would our fellow believers have time to read the book? […] On the Sabbath Day they would find time to read it. But first one must go to the mikveh [ritual bath]. Then one must study and pray, and then comes the Sabbath meal. And only after the meal one makes time to read the book. So now a man lies down on the bunk and takes the book in his hand and opens it. And because he is full, sleep would certainly seize him and the book will fall onto the ground. And now, pray tell me, why should I write a book? (Buber 1946, vol. 1, 566)

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A similar story is attributed to Rabbi Simh.a Bunim of Peshish.a (Wodzislaw, Poland, 1767–1827), but his explanations are far from prosaic: I wanted to compose a book the size of a quarter folio and call it “Man” [“Adam” in Hebrew] and all of man would be in it. But I resolved not to write it. (Berger 1910, 26, sign 63)

Unlike the book that Rabbi Menah.em Mendel of Kotsk did not write, the book that Rabbi Simh.a Bunim of Peshish.a refrained from writing appears to have been an ambitious project involving a good bit of hubris, for he speaks of “a quarter folio” that would contain “all of man.” The abundance of mystical, allegorical, and other interpretations of the word “Adam” (man) and of the verse in Genesis, “this is the book of the lineage of Adam,” in the light of what follows, namely, “on the day that God created Adam, in the image of God He made him” (Genesis 5:1), does not decrease the pretentiousness in the slightest.33 But no less pretentious and daring is the possibility that Rabbi Simh.a Bunim of Peshish.a believes he himself is “all of man,” in the spirit of ideas attributed to him elsewhere regarding his own leadership and regarding humanity in general. On his beliefs with regard to his leadership, it was said: Oh, this is the book of the lineage of Adam. I heard in the name of the holy rabbi Rabbi Simh.a Bunim of Peshish.a ZTL, who probed, why did the Holy One show the generation to first man before [showing him] its leader? And he said that if the Holy Name had shown the leader to the first man at the beginning, the first man would have said: What? Can Simh.a Bunim also be a leader!! Therefore the Holy Name showed him the generation first, and in such a generation I, too, am capable of being a leader. (Simh.a Bunim of Peshish.a 1991, 219–220)

While from Simh.a Bunim himself we learn about man, “all of man”:

33 The interpretations proposed for the verse “this is the book of the lineage of Adam [man]” are numerous. For our purposes, suffice it to say that according to Rabbi Moshe Efrayim, the Besht’s grandson, the numerological value of the word sefer (book) is the same as that of shem (name), and the name is the soul. Hence, “the book of the lineage of Adam” is the record of the deeds of a man who studies Torah for its own sake. Rabbi Moshe Efrayim also says that the verse refers to the list of those born to Adam and alludes to the entire Torah. See Moshe H . ayim Efrayim of Sudilkov (1884, 7–8, 4b).

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Every man for himself is a book: … And each one of you should tell himself to himself. That is, every person should make a book of himself, as one goes. As it says, the Torah and Israel are one and the same. And as it says, write them on the tablet of your heart. (Simh.a Bunim of Peshish.a 1991, 219–220)

The idea that Rabbi Simh.a Bunim may be talking here about writing some kind of autobiography, even if one motivated by mystical intentions,34 is both paradoxical and exciting. It is paradoxical because Rabbi Simh.a’s statements can be interpreted metaphorically, as meaning that the very life of a person who observes the Torah, or the very life of a tzaddik as the human embodiment of everything written in the Torah, is the same as writing “the book of the lineage of Adam,” and hence the task of literally writing the book is superfluous. It is exciting because Rabbi Simh.a’s statements can be understood, at least in part, literally, so that phrases such as “each one of you should tell himself to himself” or “every person should make a book of himself” can be interpreted as reflecting at one and the same time a desire for self-expression by means of narrative and writing, and an urge to restrain this desire, and all this on the very verge of the dramatic emergence of the genre of autobiography in modern Hebrew literature. These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive. Given the cultural conception of the tzaddik as an exemplary human being living according to the Torah, he can indeed regard himself as someone who, in his way of living, embodies the Torah, and he can indeed put his life, his thoughts, and his stories in writing and publish them in a book, so as to present an example for his disciples and believers. Nevertheless, the prevailing cultural codes regarding writing and publication generated a strong tension between the image of the tzaddik as exemplary in his humility, shunning of fame, and devoted to God, and the act of presenting oneself as a model person by choosing to write and publish about one’s life, thoughts, and deeds.35

34 On a collection of writings of a magical nature entitled This is the Book of the Lineage of Adam, which was published before the publishing of Shivh.ei HaBesht, and on its affinity to the theme of secreted writings, see Shmeruk (1981, 135–136). 35 Stories like “Kokhvei Shamayim,” “Ekev Hokhma Anava,” and “Sfarim Nisrafim” . (Agnon 2000, 432, 457–459, 461) demonstrate this well.

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With a clear tendency toward the pole of humility, Rabbi Pinh.as of Koritz bemoans the predicament and sinfulness of a man who sings his own praises in public and puts them in writing: There is yet another trouble (you should know of), that is, to tell one’s own praises to the people, and he [Rabbi Pinh.as of Koritz] emphasized it very much and said it is a great thorn of pain […] First thing, out of the virtue of modesty, one must not put into writing, and certainly not speak out loud, only the slightest of the slightest. (Pinh.as of Koritz 1974, section 6, signs 123–124)

The sin of pride is taken in Hasidism to be idolatry, delaying the arrival of the messiah, and it is associated with anger, melancholy, and unjustified hatred, as evident in the words of Rabbi Pinh.as himself: “When there will be no pride among the Jews, the messiah will come swiftly” (Pinh.as of Koritz 1974, section 6, signs 123–124). Elsewhere Rabbi Pinh.as describes the sin of pride as well as the sinner’s punishment, and in an amalgam of Hebrew and Yiddish words, he associates this sin with writing, singing, and erudition: Rabbi Pinh.as says: “What is it about books, that due to the sin of pride one reincarnates as a bee. The reason is that a prideful person says to himself: I am a writer, I am a singer, I am a learned man, and so forth. And evildoers, even at the entrance to Gehenna do not repent. Therefore even after death, the punishment is to be reincarnated as a bee, an inferior, noisy, shouting creature, who says: I am [ikh bin]. Because in the German language a bee is called biene.” (Pinh.as of Koritz 1954, 62, sign 35)

In this quotation from Rabbi Pinh.as, pride is presented as a sin to which three types of people are susceptible: the writer, the cantor, and the Torah scholar. Two out of the three engage in occupations that are related to art, and all three are liable to use their talents other than for the sake of Heaven. The storyteller is liable to boast his ability to charm people with his tales, the cantor is liable to warble to impress his listeners, and the scholar is liable to demonstrate his erudition and flaunt his sharpness of mind. Given these prevalent values and beliefs in Hasidic society, there is no wonder that the fear of committing the sin of pride deterred people from writing privately, and even more so from bringing writings to press. Casting the heavy shadow of the sin of pride on the acts of writing

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and publishing was a particularly effective mechanism for suppressing the desire to write and to publish. At the same time, publication by means of professional agents of writing and circulation, such as the clerk, the editor, and the printer, the printing of stories in many versions while blurring the identifying features of the original, or the printing of a man’s writings after his death by his sons and disciples—all these greatly moderated the fear of sinning by pride.36 Consequently, many tzaddikim left manuscripts to be published posthumously, and many of the stories on the deeds and teachings of tzaddikim were written by their scribes and disciples.

Writing, Pride, and Gender Due to the cultural significance of stories describing lost and withheld manuscripts, their narrative structures were also applied in the reconstruction of autobiographical and biographical events whose historical grounding is clearer to us. A fascinating example of this is offered by the story of the writings of the third Rebbe of Belz Hasidim, Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach (Belz, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1851–1926), the son of Rabbi Yehoshua Rokeach (1823–1894). This story also sheds light on some interesting genderial aspects of the theme of writing and its association with the sin of pride in Hasidic society. Rabbi Yissachar Dov’s h.idushei Torah (abbreviated h.idushim, novellae) were put into writing by one of his Hasidim, but according to the testimony of Miriam Eliash (1974, 374), whose father, Rabbi Ben-Zion Verubel, was chosen to be the tzaddik’s scribe, the “court” had no intention of publishing them. The story of Rabbi Yissachar Dov’s refraining from publishing his writings is told by Yosef Rubin (1974) differently, and with an added layer of meaning. Rubin begins the story by noting that Rabbi Yissachar Dov was childless. He frequently visited his father’s house in Belz, and used to bring with him his h.idushim as transcribed by one of his disciples. When he decided to publish his h.idushim in a book, he went to ask for his father’s blessing, but when he arrived in Belz, he discovered, to his astonishment, that his bag was empty and his writings had disappeared. When his father saw his sorrow, he hastened to console 36 For example, it is told of the hidden tzaddik Rabbi Yitshak Isaac that he withheld . his writings, and only when he was on his deathbed did he ask for people to come with paper and ink and copy them, so that they could be published after his death (Agnon 2000, 449–450).

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him, saying: “Please do not be sorry that you have lost your writings. For we have a tradition from my father […] who would interpret the verse, ‘This is the book of the lineage of Adam,’ as meaning: ‘A person’s best book is his progeny, that is, his children.’ Henceforth, my son, I promise you that in place of your writings that have been lost, you will have proper sons.” When Rabbi Yissachar Dov returned to Chernobyl, he found that his writings were not lost. The yeshiva students played a trick on him, took them from his bag and demanded a ransom for them. But Yissachar Dov lost interest in them and gave up the idea of publishing them. From that moment onward, the yeshiva students were respectful of him, and after ten years of marriage, he was granted a son (Rubin 1974, 67–76). The reservation with regard to writing, and even more so with regard to printing and publication, is quite evident in the explicit messages of the story. However, the story’s implicit messages are even more illuminating. It begins with recounting that Rabbi Yissachar Dov was childless, and ends with the fulfillment of his father’s prophetic blessing: in place of his lost books, Rabbi Yissachar received a son, Aharon, who would later become a prominent rabbi, and thus the matter of the writings came to its conclusion. One way to understand the deep meaning of this narrative is to unearth the underlying system of gendered images it builds on. As shown by Susan Stanford Friedman (1989), literary discourse in Western culture tended to perceive spiritual creation and physical procreation as two mutually exclusive forms of creativity. While men do not give birth to children and their books are their spiritual children, women, who give birth to children, do not create or are unable to create spiritual works (Friedman 1989, 73, 84–94). Drawing on these binary concepts, whose traces are quite evident in the story under discussion, Rabbi Yehoshua Rokeach applies to his son the principle that the two kinds of creativity— writing books and giving birth to children—come at the expense of one another. Moreover, his words also betray the assumption that the relationship between writing and giving birth is not only that of opposition and mutual exclusion, but also that of sin and punishment: writing constitutes a sin, whose punishment is barrenness, and the reward for refraining from writing is birth and continuity. In Friedman’s (1989) terms, Rabbi Yehoshua places his son at the “female” pole of giving birth to actual children. His words of consolation to his son also reflect an effort to make writing unattractive to him by stating its price, and an appeal to him to forgo the publication of his writings and perhaps even cease writing altogether. This

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interpretation suggests that the story presents Hasidic society with an ideal of a “feminine man,” a man who prefers procreation to spiritual creation.37 However, a more precise interpretation would be that in Hasidic society, masculinity is marked differently, that is, writing is not a sign of masculinity and the pen should not be taken as a symbol of male potency.38 As shown in some of the examples above, the hindrances and inhibitions surrounding writing in Hasidic society were not limited to the act of writing itself, and printing and publication presented their own set of barriers.39 While it was considered acceptable and even respectable to scrabble h.idushei Torah on scraps of paper so that they did not slip from memory, or to write them in encrypted codes in little notebooks dubbed “secret scrolls” (megilot starim) that were not meant for publication, the attitude toward printing and publishing was far less forgiving. And yet with time, the pressure to spread the word of Hasidism by means of print and publication increased, until eventually it came to be perceived as a necessity. This, in turn, led to unbridled activity, and many hands began stirring the pot of printing, which gradually acquired the character of a frenzy. Nevertheless, none of this undermined the broad consensus that writing, especially the writing of esoteric teachings, is no simple matter, and that not anyone who wishes to write can take up pen and ink and do so.

37 Such interpretation tends to accept Western bourgeois norms, according to which a man who dwells in the tent of Torah and avoids worldly and commercial dealings is a “feminine” man. See Boyarin (1997, 81–126). 38 Friedman (1989, 73) contends that the association between the pen and the paintbrush and the phallus, and between all three and artistic creation, delineated writing as an exclusively male arena. Consequently, women artists developed “anxiety of authorship” and experienced the wielding of the pen as a battle against their own body. However, in the case of Hasidic society, the binary opposition divides masculinity itself: the man’s use of the pen—the metaphorical phallus—destroys his physical potency, whereas refraining from wielding the pen sustains it. This state of affairs also finds expression in the view that authoring books is a compensation for being childless, and in the tendency to legitimize childless authors who set their hand to writing; see, for example, Agnon (2000, 457). 39 One of the norms hindering publication was that a son should refrain from publishing his writings until those of his father are published. See, for example, Agnon (1973, 647–648).

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The Rise of Print and Its Paradoxical Consequences The issue of printing in Hasidic culture has perplexed many scholars. According to Joseph Dan, “Between 1780 and 1815, that is, between the beginnings of Hasidic literature and the beginnings of Hasidic stories’ publication […] the Hasidim published dozens of books, […] all of which were very conservative, […] apparently not intended to herald anything new but rather to reveal the meaning encapsulated in the ancient texts” (Dan 1975, 35). It was only around 1815, thirty-five years after the Besht’s death and five years after the death of Rabbi Nah.man of Bratslav, that Shivh.ei HaBesht and the stories of Rabbi Nah.man were brought to press (Dan 1975, 34–35). Nevertheless, Dan continues, although in the following decades the stream of oral Hasidic stories did not dwindle, until 1864—that is to say, for the next fifty years—silence reigned with regard to the publication of Hasidic stories. One of the indications that there were forces pushing against the publication of Hasidic stories, according to Dan, is the unpublished book Megilat Starim (Secret Scroll ) by Rabbi Yitsh.ak Safrin of Komarno (Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1806–1874), in which stories that Rabbi Yitsh.ak heard orally and placed in writing were added to a collection of his intimate thoughts that were not intended for publication. This book, which was only published in 1944, was circulated in manuscripts among the initiates and was regarded as unique. Dan lists a number of possible reasons for the refrainment from publishing Hasidic stories, including the normative authority of the book Shivh.ei HaBesht and the fear of overshadowing it, the pressures of governmental censorship, which Hasidim were not eager to resist, and fear of anti-Hasidic satire like the works of Yosef Perl (Dan 1975, 190–195). However, another reason, which is implicit in Dan’s explanations and is more important for our purposes, is that Hasidim refrained from printing their stories because these stories were not only a new phenomenon, but also a revolutionary one, in the sense that they threatened to undermine the status of homilies, commentaries, and other traditional genres, and perhaps even replace them (Dan 1975, 35–36). From Rabbi Yitsh.ak of Komarno’s decision to include in his unpublished book Megilat Starim a selection of Hasidic stories that had been passed on orally, Dan concludes that the Hasidic story was taken to be an intimate, personal expression, and, as such, it was not supposed to be printed and circulated widely (Dan 1975, 189–195).

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Ze’ev Gries also expresses surprise that after the publication of Shivh.ei HaBesht, the flow of Hasidic stories was stemmed, bursting out “miraculously” only from the 1860s onward. Gries attributes this “silence of print” mainly to factors internal to the Hasidic community, such as the importance of oral culture for maintaining Hasidic unity (Gries 1992, 36). He then ascribes the renewal of printing to an external change whose importance cannot be overestimated: the emergence of the Maskilic Hebrew book.40 In his opinion, the change in the publication policies in Hasidic society and the bringing of Hasidic stories to print was a response to “a new fashion” brought on the wings of the Haskalah literature, although Hasidism did not cease to be an oral culture (Gries 1992, 36–40, 64–65). Even after the great burst of printing that commenced in the 1860s, Hasidim did not attribute as much importance to their literature as its contemporary researchers do. They were late to print their literature and did not seek to increase its impact, and, furthermore, they were not particularly careful to present stories in the name of their authors, either in the handwritten manuscripts or in the printed versions (Gries 1992, 8–19). Given Gries’s argument for the centrality of orality in Hasidic culture, the flurry of printing in the 1860s raises as many, and perhaps even more, questions as the fifty years of silence that preceded it. Furthermore, in light of his description of this wave of publication as a response to the Haskalah literature, we should modify somewhat his depiction of this phenomenon as “miraculous” or as the manifestation of a “new fashion.” The status of the printed text was central to the ideological struggles within the Jewish society of the time and was far from being a matter of mere fashion. As to the sloppiness in identifying the original sources of the stories, this can be interpreted as an unwitting defense mechanism against the threat posed by the published texts, seeking to defend the oral charisma of their originators. By obscuring the identity of the story’s author and severing the link between the written text and its oral delivery, the power of the written text as a “supplement” (in Derrida’s terms), that is, as a cunning duplicate of the original that threatens to replace it,

40 For a chronological table presenting the parallels between the development of Hasidism and its literature and the development of Haskalah and its literature, see Dan (1975, 36–40). Mark (2014, 19–21) also identifies the dialectical affinities between Hasidic literature and Haskalah literature, but gives primacy to the influence of Rabbi Nah.man’s stories.

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was reduced. Now that the written text escaped from the control of its author, the obscuring of its genealogy helped minimize, at least slightly, the possibility of treating it as a reliable substitute for intimate contact with the tzaddik and with the sole, single truth. Therefore, it may well be that the negligence in attributing texts to their true sources as well as the claim that all attributions should be treated with suspicion (Piekarz 1972, 128–131) were intended, even if unwittingly, to defend the aura of the tzaddik’s oral charisma.

Print and Haskalah The momentum gained by the Haskalah movement in Eastern Europe from the 1860s onward brought with it a new conception of literacy, and led to the printing of an increasing number of books and periodicals. This helped Maskilim to shape the arena of struggle against traditional society according to their own needs, and to wage this battle with instruments that suited both their ideological and practical outlook. The written word and the ideal of open knowledge were in the eye of the storm, and presented traditional society, both Hasidic and Mitnagdic, with the necessity of disseminating its teachings by means of the printed book, that is, with the need to fight Haskalah with its own weapons. And indeed, Hasidic society responded to these challenges by repeatedly examining its attitudes toward writing. Hence, along with expressions of reservation with regard to writing, there are quite a few stories and sayings in its favor. Close examination of these materials reveals considerable ambivalence and a tense relationship between the principled stance, which recognizes the dangers of writing or dismisses its importance, and the pragmatic considerations requiring its deployment. At times, submission to “the order of the day” by engagement in writing is presented as an almost heroic act of self-sacrifice on the part of tzaddikim and Hasidim, who are willing to risk their souls in order to fulfill the duty incumbent upon them, and occasionally this is also accompanied by expressions of guilt and apology. An early and prominent example of this can be found in Rabbi Nah.man of Bratslav’s position, stated in the Preface to Likutei Tfilot (Collected Prayers ), the first part of which was printed in Bratslav in 1822. What begins with a claim that “there is no prohibition against composing prayers […] for it [the Torah] is not in Heaven” and that the composition of prayers “does not involve fear of danger as in other books people write” develops into an apologetic essay

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of sorts, calling for writing and publication despite the dangers inherent in them: In the books of commentators […] there is danger that commentaries and explanations might not aim for the truth, but nevertheless it is the duty of every Torah teacher to compose books as much as he is capable, […] and to spread our fountains outward, […] for the Holy One does not bear resentment against His creatures, and the Torah was not given to the attending angels. (Sternhartz 1989, vol. 1, 8–9)

Rabbi Nah.man calls for suppressing the fear of writing books and even presents their publication as a duty, at least with regard to disseminating the fountains of Hasidism outward, to hasten the arrival of the messiah (Siff 2010). In his view, the written word is one of the principal means of opening routes to the hearts of those who had not yet joined the Hasidic movement, and in order for this mission to be accomplished, a special prayer must be composed for it: And we will have the merit of seeing many holy books written, […] they all will be very important and precious in our eyes […] both those that have already been written, and those that are yet to be written. For they are all necessary for the world, and we need them all, for they are our life and the length of our days. (Sternhartz 1989, vol. 1, 138)

Rabbi Nah.man’s position in favor of writing and publication also derives from a sense of palpable danger that “the Torah will be forgotten by the people of Israel” (Sternhartz 1979, sign 18).41 His response to historical transformations and his harsh vision of the future leads him to the conclusion that something must be done to stop this process, and yet even under these conditions of unimpeachable necessity, his arguments in favor of printing books are not without doubtful and apologetic undertones. It is evident that according to his principled view, encouraging the printing of books requires overcoming reservations and inhibitions, as expressed in the following quotation:

41 According to Siff (2010, 247), Rabbi Nahman’s acknowledgment of the inevitability . of writing required a profound change in the ontological status of script, and the written word of the tzaddik came to be seen as equal to his spoken word, confirming his continued presence in the written text.

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Our rabbi of blessed memory said that our Sages of blessed memory had said, “The Torah will be forgotten by the people of Israel.” Therefore, many books are printed and everyone buys books so that everyone will have a book, so that the Torah will not be forgotten […] And books are found today even in the hands of tailors and the like […] But this they do not know, that if one does not study the Torah, books are of no use whatsoever. (Sternhartz 1979, sign 18)

At the beginning of this passage, support for printing sounds clear and confident, for, by virtue of printed books, the Torah will not be forgotten. And yet the concluding statement sounds reserved and restrained, almost to the point of contradicting the initial propositions. Rabbi Nah.man does not regard the printing of books as a complete or perfect solution. He finds it necessary to emphasize that the owning of books and even reading them cannot be a substitute for Torah study, and without Torah study, what good are books? Put differently, Rabbi Nah.man senses the danger that the printed books will become “supplements” in Derrida’s sense, seeking to replace and undermine their original purpose of advancing Torah, and warns against this possibility. In a similar vein, neither Rabbi Nah.man’s appeal to his scribe, Rabbi Nathan, asking him to put his teachings into writing, nor Rabbi Nathan’s response to this request is free from cautious awareness of the threats inherent in the writing and printing of these texts. Paradoxically, traces of this caution are evident even in the fits of writing that seized Rabbi Nathan, as described by his disciple and assistant, Rabbi Nah.man of Tulchyn: For with regard to every single speech that [Rabbi Nathan] wished to write down, so that it would be revealed to the world, there were many impediments, […] and this is why he was very hasty in his writing […] because he always used to say to us that if he were not quick […] to break the impediments to writing right away, he does not know whether he would write anymore. (Sefer Sipurei Ma’asiot, quoted in Piekarz 1972, 17)

It appears that Rabbi Nathan’s hunger for writing, too, was nourished by contradictory urges of enthusiasm and reluctance. In Rabbi Nathan’s defense of the printing of Sefer Shivh.ei HaBesht one can hear an echo of this ambivalence, in the form of apprehensions regarding the uncontrolled printing of unauthorized manuscripts alongside a call to overcome these apprehensions:

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Many heretics mock Shivh.ei HaBa’al Shem Tov may the memory of the righteous be a blessing, […] so that several worthy and righteous men have been caught in their net […] and some say that the miracles were true, but it was not right to print them […] for the main fear of the worthy ones who say they should not have been printed is due to the mockery of the deniers and the opposers [Mitnagdim], but this is no reason to prevent the truth from him who desires the truth. (Sternhartz n.d., Hilkhot Pesah., Halakhah 7)

The defensive tone of Rabbi Nathan’s words implies, first of all, that the printing of the Besht’s oral teachings did not pass by without reservations. The satirical use made of them by the adversaries of Hasidism was just one of these reservations. Along with it, there was fear of undermining the public’s belief in the truth of the printed matter, whether due to the multiple versions and the many “queries and confusions” or due to the distance between the printed text and the source. For a person who sees and hears “the awe-inspiring miracles of the Ba’al Shem Tov” with his own eyes and ears is not the same as a person who reads what was written about them and printed in a book. Rabbi Nathan’s comments testify both to the inhibitions that hindered printing and to the circumstances that made it unavoidable. One can definitely say, following Mendel Piekarz (1972), that Rabbi Nathan was gifted with “a sharp historical sense,” to the extent of viewing printing as a religious duty, and that he sought “to implement his master’s testament […] by preparing the writings, printing them, and circulating them.” He viewed “the wisdom of printing” as “the grace of Providence,” and “the printing of holy books is the nearing of the messiah.” As noted, in the background of all this lay fear of the spread of Haskalah books (Piekarz 1972, 16–19). Ultimately, Shivh.ei HaBesht, as well as the stories and parables of Rabbi Nah.man, were put into writing and published, and likewise a broad range of Hasidic literature was printed and widely circulated.42 The dam that had blocked writing and publication had burst, and Hasidim acknowledged the critical role played by printing in the dissemination of their

42 As mentioned above, the vast majority of homilies, exegesis, and Halakhic teachings were delivered in Yiddish and written down in Hebrew. The decisive change in this field took place when Shivh.ei HaBesht and Rabbi Nah.man’s Sipurei Ma’asiot were translated back to their original language, Yiddish.

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creed.43 According to some scholars, the extensive circulation of Hasidic books was among the causes that drove Yosef Perl, a pioneering and leading Haskalah author, to compose his seminal anti-Hasidic Hebrew satire, Megale Tmirin (Revealer of Secrets, 1819) and to translate it into Yiddish (Shmeruk and Werses 1969, 66–67; Meir 2013, 219–221). Indeed, the writing, printing, and circulation of Hasidic literature demonstrate that Hasidim were bowing to necessity and acquiescing to the altered rules of the game. At the same time, the responses to Hasidic literature show that Hasidic apprehensions regarding writing and publication were not groundless. Further evidence of this is found in the contents of Megale Tmirin, as well as in the many hypotheses and falsehoods connected to its reception. The complex plot of this epistolary novel is woven around the quest for an anti-Hasidic book (bukh in Yiddish, a secular book), out of fear that it might fall into the hands of the authorities and give Hasidism a bad name. This plot was in fact inspired by the fate of an anti-Hasidic manuscript that had been written in German by Perl himself some years earlier (1814–1816), which was met with fierce opposition on the part of the Hasidic community and was eventually banned from publication by the authorities. Hence, Megale Tmirin is a parody that deals with the reception of parodies, and as its plot develops, the reader begins to suspect that Megale Tmirin itself may be the bukh that is searched for.44 Perl applies impressive camouflage techniques to give Megale Tmirin the style and appearance of a Hasidic text, so that it reads like an authentic story told by a disillusioned Hasid who abandoned the vain beliefs of his sect (Meir 2004, 11–28, 41–46; Werses 1971, 9–45). According to some scholars, this brilliantly crafted parody indeed succeeded in deceiving its Hasidic readers, who initially believed in its authenticity and debated whether its author was a Hasid or a Maskil.45 Yosef Klausner, for example,

43 On Hasidic printers’ attitude toward print and printing, see Liberman (1980, 1–15, 52–59, 87–91). 44 For more on this issue, see Shmeruk (1999, 145–146). Baruch Kurzweil (1970, 68–95) accords far-reaching significance to the quest for the bukh in Megale Tmirin. 45 According to Gedalyah Nig’al, “the danger that ordinary readers might not distinguish between the Hasidic stories of tzaddikim and those of Haskalah literature exacerbated as the publication of the latter increased,” and some people regarded Hasidic stories as a dam against the penetration of Haskalah literature among the Jews (Nig’al 2002, 24–26).

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writes that “at first the Hasidim did not realize that it [Megale Tmirin] was a satire aimed against them, and read the book with pleasure; but it was not long before they understood that it was contemptuous of them, and started burning the book and persecuting anyone who read it” (Klausner 1937, 300). Such doubts with regard to the identity of the author and, by implication, with regard to the meaning of the literary work itself are typical of parodic texts, which often tend to convey double meaning and leave room for false interpretations. However, Meir (2013, 207–237) shows that Klausner’s account regarding the reception of Megale Tmirin is wrong and that Hasidim did not mistake this work to be an authentic Hasidic work. In any case, Yosef Perl’s hopes that his satire would bring about change in the Hasidic society were frustrated. The reception of Megale Tmirin sheds ironic light not only on the Hasidic public but also on the high hopes of Perl himself. And yet despite the seeming “failures” in the reception of Megale Tmirin in Hasidic society, this episode suggests that with the increase in the power of the written word, the book became a necessary means of disseminating new ideas, and the primacy of speech over writing began to crack. Furthermore, it became clear that writing and the book exposed sacred and less sacred Hasidic texts to the parodic, disguised, cunning, and often cruel treatment of Maskilim. As with most, if not all, systems of control over knowledge, the Hasidic system was a porous one, but examination of its gaps and breaches shows that they were, to a large extent, the paradoxical product of the control mechanisms themselves (Parush 2004a, 57–70). The very mechanisms that operated to supervise knowledge and its dissemination—namely, the opposition to writing and printing and the custom of writing and printing homilies, stories, and sayings in the Holy Tongue—generated, in a dialectical fashion, unanticipated interactions, mutual reinforcement, and mutual fertilization between Hasidic literature and modern Hebrew literature.46 The struggle with the Haskalah forced Hasidim to write and to publish, thereby saving considerable parts of their spiritual assets from oblivion, and Hasidic stories written in Hebrew, which found their way to Maskilic readers, were an important source of inspiration for leading Haskalah writers, including both fierce opponents of Hasidism and writers

46 This picture is consistent with the dialectical model in the study of modern Hebrew literature, set forth by Dov Sadan (1950).

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whose attitude toward it was romantic or ambivalent. This point is exemplified by Ah.ad Ha’Am, who writes in his essay “Th.iyat HaRuah.” (“The Spiritual Revival”): With shame we must admit that if we wish to find some trace of original Hebrew literature in this period, we must turn to Hasidic literature, which, with all its vanity, has deep ideas as well, on which the seal of Hebrew originality is imprinted far more than we can find in Haskalah literature. (Ah.ad Ha’Am 1930, 129)

Whether it took the form of harsh criticism of Hasidism, as in the case of Perl, or of an intimate, deep, and complex attitude toward it, as in the case of Ah.ad Ha’Am, Berdichevsky, Peretz, Brenner, Agnon, and others,47 the influence of Hasidic literature on Haskalah authors was substantial, and owed much precisely to the control mechanisms that characterized Hasidic society. However, as we shall see below, these channels of mutual influence did not blur the difference between the two groups in terms of their approaches to writing and its uses. Rather, they emphasized it, highlighting the role of writing in secularization and modernization processes. Despite the burst of publication of Hasidic literature in the second half of the nineteenth century, Hasidism’s basic attitude toward writing did not change, and the shift in the publication practices, though large and decisive, was more tactical than substantial. The primacy of speech over writing in Hasidic society persisted, and there is evidence that it has remained dominant in Hasidic circles to this very day.

47 For Berdichevsky’s opinion on Hasidism, see his Sefer Hasidim (Berdichevsky 1900c); . see also Werses (1971, 104–118). On Peretz’s attitude toward Hasidism, see Ross (2009, 301–336). On Brenner’s attitude toward Hasidism in light of his Misaviv LaNekuda, see Bakon (1975, vol. 2, 387–413). On Agnon’s attitude toward Hasidism and Kabbalah, see Shilo (2011, 18–19).

CHAPTER 5

The Primacy of Speech Over Writing in Mitnagdic Society

The faculty of speech is to transmit the idea of the speaker into the soul of the hearer. Such intention, however, can only be carried out to perfection by means of oral communication. This is better than writing. The proverb is: “From the mouths of scholars, but not from the mouth of books.” Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi, The Kuzari 1 And when people’s hearts diminished, books multiplied, and anyone who could use his fingers was writing h.idushim [novellae] and having them printed. S. Y. Agnon, “Shnei Talmidei H . akhamim SheHayu Be’Irenu” (“Two Torah Scholars Who Were in Our Town”)2

The Mitnagdic Version of the Primacy of Speech: Knowledge, Memory, and Methods of Study The spread of Hasidism provoked fierce rabbinic opposition among groups who came to be known collectively as Mitnagdim (opponents). The Mitnagdic counter-movement, which was dominated by Lithuanian Jews, rejected Hasidism’s popularized mysticism and its doctrine of Divine 1 HaLevi (1964, 126), translated by Hartwig Hirschfeld. 2 Agnon (1960c, 32).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. Parush, The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature, New Directions in Book History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81819-7_5

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immanence in the material world, accused Hasidim of disregard for Torah study and Torah scholars, and endorsed diligent study of the sacred texts and severe, cerebral learnedness. Compared with Hasidic society, Mitnagdic society was less concerned with the problematics of speech and writing. It did not deal obsessively with stories of hidden, burnt, erased, or lost manuscripts, nor did it vacillate between refraining from writing and frenzies of publication. Nevertheless, in this society, too, speech was preferred over writing, and in this society, too, this preference served as an instrument of hegemony and control. The primacy of speech over writing in Mitnagdic society took on a far less emotional and dramatic shape. For the most part, it was embedded in institutionalized customs and literacy practices, which were generally taken to be self-evident. And yet close examination of these practices reveals that Mitnagdic culture, with all its scholars, learners, and books, was essentially an oral culture, that is, a culture based on the spoken transmission of knowledge and on the memorization of written texts. The rabbi, who would “say” (magid) his lesson to his students, was required to demonstrate a degree of oral charisma, and the students studied by recitation, bodily movement, and chant.3 Both while studying with a partner and while studying alone, the students used to repeat out loud the text they were studying. Furthermore, study usually proceeded in a dialectical fashion, with dialogical shakla vetaria (an Aramaic term for give and take) that was conducted orally. Study with a partner was clearly preferred to study alone, and the most gifted students of the yeshiva, the iluyim (prodigies), demonstrated their mastery primarily by proving erudition and quoting whole pages of the Gemara from memory.4 Although the experience of studying from the homilies of a tzaddik was different from that of studying from a rabbi in a Lithuanian yeshiva, and although the religious revelations gained by meeting the tzaddik were different from those garnered from a lesson with the head of a yeshiva, intimate closeness to the authoritative rabbi had considerable significance

3 For a description of yeshiva students who seek physical closeness to the rabbi during his lesson, see Linovitz (1936, 76–77). On captivation by the rabbi’s charisma, see Breuer (2003, 351–352). 4 It appears that studies of the methods of teaching and learning in the yeshivas never fail to mention the oral character of these methods. See Breuer (2003, 242–266), Etkes and Tikochinski (2004). For an ethnographic description of oral conversation about a written text in a yeshiva at the end of the twentieth century, see Boyarin (1993, 212–236).

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in the Mitnagdic culture as well, and in this culture, too, rabbis were expected to amaze their students with their eloquence, interpretations, and innovative insights, presented in well-crafted talks. Memoirs written by students of Lithuanian yeshivas often present the best lessons as events that are outstanding not only in terms of their contents, but also in terms of their performance. Quite frequently, the rhetoric used to describe the delivery of the lesson recalls the rhetoric that Hasidic stories apply to describe the inspiring and persuasive speech of the tzaddik. For example, Simh.a Assaf (Lyuban, Minsk G., R.E., 1889–1953) describes a lesson given by the head of the Telz Yeshiva, Rabbi Eliezer Gordon (Chernian, Vilna G., R.E., 1841–1910), in almost ecstatic terms: He who never saw Rabbi Eliezer while he was saying [magid] his lesson to the students, never witnessed the joy of Torah in his life. He was then truly an example of “all my bones will say” [Psalms 35:10], and the Divine Presence [Shekinah] dwelled upon him. In that moment he was full of gaiety and life like the youngest of the students. (Assaf 2004, 243)

With the same degree of enthusiasm and with metaphors of war, Efrayim Reuven Moshvitsky5 describes the lessons given by Rabbi H . ayim Soloveitchik (Valozhyn/Volozhin, Vilna G., R.E., 1853–1918): Rabbi H . ayim’s lesson was a delight to the students’ souls. He went through the daily page of Gemara with a single breath to its end, […] and with his wonderful explanations he would clarify, straighten out, fight with the force of his mighty intelligence against those who disagreed with Maimonides, and, like a conquering hero returning from the battlefield, he would leave his lessons, full of joy and pleasure due to his victory over Maimonides’s criticizers. (Moshvitsky 2004, 124)

Nevertheless, it was not the need to preserve the oral charisma of the rabbi that underlay the preference for speech over writing in Mitnagdic society. Whereas in Hasidic society this preference was justified by the need to protect hidden knowledge available to a select few, and the tzaddik’s gestures, voice, and mystical aura were viewed as things that no scribe could ever place in writing, in Mitnagdic society the primacy of speech was related to well-established conceptions of knowledge, study,

5 Year and place of birth unknown.

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and religious practice, which were part of individual and collective identity, and were considered vital for the continued existence of the Jewish people. Like in Hasidic culture, the preference for speech in Mitnagdic culture was grounded both in general principles and ideas and in rationales that bore clear marks of their time and place. The general principles were related to study, memory, and knowledge, as embodied in a long and established pedagogical tradition, much like the rationales presented in the Phaedrus, whereas the more context-dependent rationalizations reflected the Mitnagdic confrontations with Hasidism, Haskalah, and the challenges of modernization. Interestingly, while some of the Socratic arguments in favor of speech were particularly prominent in Hasidic culture, others stood out in Mitnagdic culture. Thus, for example, similar to the Socratic view of knowledge, Mitnagdic scholarly culture conceived true knowledge as one that is inscribed in the student’s soul or on the tablet of his heart, and is manifested in his ability to draw it from within himself, without the assistance of any external sources. Needless to say, to draw knowledge from within, the student must learn by heart, which in turn is identified with swallowing, absorbing, and incorporating the truth, as it were, until it becomes an integral part one’s self and soul. Hence, we find numerous images of eating and drinking used to describe the act of study, as well as knowledge itself. In Mitnagdic discourse, students always “drink the rabbi’s words thirstily” or “swallow his words,” “like an early fruit before summer.” The taste of Torah teachings in their mouth is always “like sweet honey,” and a Torah scholar worthy of his name is one who “has filled his belly with Torah and Talmud” and “his Torah is in his inwards ” (Roskies 1978, 27–28). Hence, excellent memory, knowledge by heart, and outstanding erudition were a basic precondition and an important standard for demonstrating both knowledge and excellence in studies in Lithuanian yeshivas. Even when creativity and sharpness of mind had an advantage over proficiency, and even though the purpose of study was, ultimately, to train the student to study the Gemara independently and deeply, memory was still a primary tool for evaluating scholarship and breadth of knowledge (Eisenstadt 2004, 110). It would go far beyond the scope of this book to list the countless autobiographical anecdotes in which scholars’ talents are measured by their capacious memory. As testified by Rabbi Meir Berlin (Bar-Ilan) (Valozhyn/Volozhin, Vilna G., R.E., 1880–1949), the son of Rabbi

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Naftali Zvi Berlin (known as the NaTSiV, Mir, Minsk G., R.E., 1816– 1893): “We believed that a great man was, of course, someone who knows the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, Sifrei, Safra, Tosefta [collections of Halakhic Midrash], and the like, and knows all of this by heart” (Berlin 1939, vol. 1, 72). Not coincidentally, Moshe Elazar Eisenstadt, a student of the NaTSiV, praises him with those very words: “It will not be an exaggeration to say that he knew by heart the entire Babylonian Talmud and Jerusalem Talmud, the Tosafot, the Mekhilta, the Sifrei and the Safra” (Eisenstadt 2004, 116). Students used to learn by heart not only written texts, but also the lessons taught by the rabbi. Taking notes during the lesson was not customary, and the student with the best memory was asked to be a h.ozer (repeater), whose role was to repeat the lesson for his comrades (Lissitzky 1949, 23–24).6 Oral repetition was considered of utmost importance. “The method of the diligent scholar,” wrote Yehuda Leib Don-Yih.ia (Derechin/Dreitsen, Grodno G., R.E., 1869–1941), is “to go over each tractate forty times” (Don-Yih.ia 2004, 157). To learn by heart, students made use of mnemonics and other techniques facilitating memorization, such as reciting texts aloud and chanting texts with rhythmical movements. Naturally, oral dominance also found expression in frequent oral examinations. It is very rare to find an autobiography without a description of an examination in which the boy or young man is called upon to prove his mettle, whether to his teacher or rabbi, to his father or grandfather, or to his intended parents-in-law. Shlomo Zaltzman (Grodno G., R.E., 1872–1945) writes about the weekly examinations by the rabbi: “The day of judgment for us was Thursday, for then we were required to repeat before the rabbi all the Torah we had learned from him during the week, and woe to he who forgot his Talmud or did not remember the Rabbi’s lesson” (Zaltzman 1944, 31). Ben-Zion Dinur (Khorol, Poltava G., R.E., 1884–1973) recounts how he was called upon to prove his knowledge “on the page and also with the pin,” and the head of the yeshiva “placed his finger on folio 11a of Tractate Shabbat, where it says, ‘Fasting is as potent against a dream as fire against beaten flax fiber,’ and asked me, ‘what is written in the equivalent place on folio 21a?’” (Dinur 1958, 47).

6 The role of the “repeater” was also important in Hasidic culture. See Nissenboim (1929, 121) and Chapter 4 above.

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Accounts of literacy events such as these demonstrate the centrality of oral methods of study in the Lithuanian yeshivas and their role in shaping students’ conceptions of knowledge. It is no wonder that when a rabbi used notes to deliver his lesson, he was seen as failing the most basic test of the scholar and lacking the talents required of a prodigy. A fascinating example of this is the criticism that the students of the Volozhin Yeshiva leveled against the NaTSiV’s son, Rabbi H . ayim Berlin (Valozhyn/Volozhin, Vilna G., R.E., 1832–1912), when they fought against his appointment as head of the yeshiva. They circulated an anonymous poem suggesting that the rabbi needed written notes to deliver his lesson, and a man whose memory fails him is unworthy of holding such a high position.7

Fighting the War of Torah: Dialogue, Dialectic, and Public Performance The proficiency examinations conducted at various stations in the students’ lives—from those given by the melamed (teacher) in the heder, through those given to young men by prospective fathers-in-law, to examinations for rabbinic ordination—were all oral. The ritual and performative dimension of these examinations betrays further layers of meaning in the preference for speech over writing. Some of these are expressed in Shlomo Zaltzman’s description of the rabbinic ordination examinations at the Mir Yeshiva: These examinations were held in a fine ceremony. On a high and elevated seat in the yeshiva building sat the head of the yeshiva, and before him, in a semi-circle […] sat the great iluyim [prodigies]—the glory of the yeshiva—and in the closed area between the rabbi and them entered the candidate for ordination. […] When the rabbi finished his questions, the candidate was usually placed in the hands of the best students, champions of the Talmud and its commentaries. […] These young men did their job without mercy. […] Each of the young examiners would vie with the candidate on a different tractate, prepared to exploit even the slightest of errors to fail him; and we, the little ones, who did not know anything

7 See Stampfer (2005, 195). The norm of delivering divrei Torah (sermons) from memory in social gatherings was particularly strong, to the extent of denouncing any assistance from a written text, even an outline. See Tchernowitz (1954, 121).

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about foot-ball competitions even in our dreams, found in this spiritual struggle the psychological tension that high school students find on the sports field, and, with dropped jaws and intense attention, we would stand outside the circle and listen to the course of the tempestuous war of Torah inside. (Zaltzman 1944, 113)

This is not the place to go into the socio-cultural meanings of the interesting comparison between watching a battle of erudition between Torah scholars and viewing a soccer game or a wrestling match. For our purpose, it is important to emphasize that the three central components of the event described—competition, battle, and public performance—are all products of the principle of the primacy of speech over writing. The manner of sitting in a semi-circle around the main arena of action is reminiscent of a play presented to spectators, and underscores the most conspicuous feature of the described event: its publicness. Accounts of the methods of teaching in yeshivas show that publicness played an important part not only at the ritual examinations but also in the routines of study and instruction. It is not a coincidence that the principles that guided the architects of the new building of the Volozhin Yeshiva (built in 1886) stated that a large, single joint space at the center of the building represents the essence of the yeshiva and of the study in it: “The entire yeshiva is a single whole, without individual rooms, […] all the hundreds of yeshiva students studied together in one large and splendid hall” (Berlin 1939, vol. 1, 26). Indeed, as is clearly evident from the teachings of the NaTSiV, who headed the Volozhin Yeshiva in the second half of the nineteenth century, the act of studying together with many others was regarded as a value in itself and was linked in various ways to elements that are usually an integral part of oral study: dialogue, dialectic, and dispute. As reported by the NaTSiV’s son, Rabbi Meir BarIlan, the NaTSiV’s interpretation of the verse, “And furthermore, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is weariness of the flesh” (Ecclesiastes 12:12), emphasized the supreme importance not only of “studying Torah in public,” but also of studying by means of speaking out loud, dialogue, and debate between the rabbi and his students: the rabbi “presents his heart’s thoughts to comrades and students,” and, while surrounded by his students, he “delves into instruction and extracts new Halakhah,” and “with their help he issues laws.” This manner of instruction has two advantages: first, “if he [the rabbi] has a biased opinion and errs about something, the students […]

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show him the truth,” and, second, “when the student sometimes begins to evoke a foundation of the Halakhah and is unable to complete, […] he begins to light the way before his teacher” (Berlin 1939, vol. 1, 26). Willingness to encourage the students to question their rabbi and challenge him is thus also described as a defense mechanism against error and as a source of inspiration for new insights into the Torah. However, as we have seen, the students sometimes experienced this interaction as a form of competition or battle, in which they are meant to contest their rabbi, and he is supposed to fight back, to repel, and to win (Etkes and Tikochinski 2004, 75–76). For example, Simh.a Assaf describes a lesson by Rabbi Eliezer Gordon as a war with many fronts, in which the sharpwitted erudite rabbi replies to the questions raised by the most advanced students in front of his spectators’ eyes: Now he enters the yeshiva building, ascends to the low platform that was installed for that purpose shortly before, and the students surround him and prick up their ears to hear his new interpretations. […] He begins, apparently at ease, offers the words of the Gemara […] and raises a kushia [question, problem]. Five minutes have not gone by—and the atmosphere is electric, and a conversation, or rather a duel, starts between him and the best students. Fireworks shoot out of his mouth to theirs. He raises a problem—and they try to solve his problem […] and to refute his supposition, or they raise a problem and he solves it. He grasps the words of the questioners and explainers with marvelous speed, in the blink of an eye. […] And sometimes the war surrounds him from the front and from behind, and he overcomes in the war of Torah and leaves as a victor. (Assaf 2004, 243)

The use of war imagery to describe the confrontational method of study was not intended simply as an illustration, nor was it a poetical elevation for its own sake. What appears to be a metaphor that has become routinized is in fact a culturally laden depiction, which serves to emphasize the importance and uniqueness of the Oral Torah and of the dialogical way in which it is studied. This depiction is inspired by the idea that the Oral Torah, i.e., the Oral Law, is what makes the Jewish people unique among the nations, and that in studying it, the nation preserves its soul

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and defends itself against internal and external enemies.8 According to the NaTSiV, the Oral Torah is like a sword: in times of peace and tranquility, the sword is sheathed, that is, enclosed in the splendid case of the Written Torah, but in times of war it is drawn from its sheath, and in the very act of studying Torah, “the nation sharpens its sword” and prepares itself to wage war against its enemies (Berlin 1943, 36–44). The war imagery works here on two different but complementary levels: an abstract allegorical level, where Torah study symbolizes a nation fighting for its life and waging the war of Torah against its enemies; and the practical, concrete level, where the metaphor of war is embodied in the method of study, namely, in the dialogical practice and in dialectical confrontation and dispute. The oral method of studying written texts is therefore rationalized in Mitnagdic society by a rich variety of explanations, which emphasize, each in its own way, the primacy of speech over writing. These explanations maintain closeness to principled arguments for dialogical instruction such as those presented in the Phaedrus, but they should also be examined in their historical context, against the background of the bidirectional struggle against both Hasidism and the Haskalah.9 Indeed, one cannot avoid the impression that one of the important functions of the oral-dialogical method of study was related to its public character, which enabled considerable levels of control and supervision. Studying by speaking out loud before everyone’s eyes, in a single hall with dozens or hundreds of students, externalized the act of learning and hardly left the students time or space free from the supervision of the surrounding society.10

8 On the extension of the term “Oral Torah” to denote not only the authorized interpretations of the Written Torah, but also the entire spiritual and cultural world of Judaism that is not explicitly spelled out in the Bible, see Vigoda (2006, 49). 9 On the influence of the confrontation with Maskilim on the use of these control mechanisms, see Ketz (1990). 10 Dinur describes the distress of being under constant surveillance as the “‘awe’ of flesh and blood, when you are subject to his eyes and supervision day and night” (Dinur 1958, 69); and H . ayim Tchernowitz (Sebesh/Sebezh, Vitebsk G., R.E., 1870–1949) writes: “For there was dread of one another” (Tchernowitz 1954, 129).

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Vocal vs. Silent Reading: From Religious Literacy to the Reading of Modern Literature The link between dialogue and public performance, and the particular significance of the combination between the two, are evident in the fact that boys were introduced to the dialogical method of study as early as their first encounter with the Pentateuch in the heder, which began with study of Leviticus. This encounter took place publicly, in the form of a ritualistic and symbolic conversation: A banquet was held, and the boy would give a sermon, actually a conversation with another boy. […] The two children would stand on a large table, the boy being honored wearing new clothes, [… and] his friend calls to him: – – – – – – – – – – – – –

[…] What are you studying? The Pentateuch, at a propitious hour! What does “Pentateuch” mean? Five. Five what? Five cookies for a penny? No, five books of the Holy Torah. And what book are you studying now? Leviticus [VaYikra in Hebrew, the first word of Leviticus, lit. “and he called”]. What does VaYikra mean? He called. Who called? Did Israel the beadle call us to go to the synagogue? No! The Holy One called to Moses from Mount Sinai to tell him the laws of sacrifices, and, just as the sacrifice is pure, so, too, I am pure. I am a pure Jewish boy, I will come and study about the pure sacrifices. (Blond 1974, 182)

Naturally, conveying knowledge by means of such dialogue led to the internalization of this method of study and its incorporation in the students’ habits. However, although the habit was already acquired and formed in the heder, the first encounter with the commotion of the yeshiva was something of a surprise. Yitsh.ak Nissenboim (Babruysk/Bobruisk, Minsk G., R.E., 1868–1942/1943) responded to this encounter with wonder and even panic. This is how he recalls the first time he entered the Volozhin Yeshiva: “When I entered, my ears were

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deafened by a huge commotion, the sound of three hundred young men studying in loud voices and different tunes, and I stood there in panic” (Nissenboim 1929, 42). Shlomo Zaltzman, recounting his first encounter with the Mir Yeshiva, describes the din of the yeshiva as a constant roar that prevailed in the entire town: Studies in the yeshiva continued without pause. A few of the diligent ones would continue studying all night. The students’ voices were heard in all the streets, each lad with his voice, each student with his chants, and every stranger coming to the city would be amazed by “the boisterous sound of the nation” [Exodus 32:17] until he got used to the din […] and I, too, gradually became used to it […] until in the end I, too, was one of the noisemakers. (Zaltzman 1944, 112)

With astonishment, Menah.em Mendel Zlotkin (Rostov, R.E., 1875– 1965) describes the enthusiastic body movements and the multitude of tunes of the hundreds of students in the Volozhin Yeshiva, comparing their voices to the sound of a waterfall, which gets louder and louder as one approaches it (Zlotkin 2004, 188). In a similar fashion, BenZion Dinur describes the huge impression that the noise made on him, until he joined the students of the Telz Yeshiva and his voice rose with them in a mighty chorus (Dinur 1958, 67–68). The historian Simon Dubnov (Mstsislaw/Mestislaw, Mogilev G., R.E., 1860–1941) interprets the learners’ chorus of voices as an expression of personal yearnings that amass into a welter of melodies: It was a complete concert or rather a “potpourri” made up of melodies, with which various speakers would intone their homilies: one chose the melody of the Magid of Kelme, and the other repeated the melody of the last of the wandering preachers who visited the town. (Dubnov 1936, 56)

The accounts of the huge impression that oral and vocal study made on yeshiva students show that it aroused strong feelings of empowerment, enthusiasm, and elevation. And yet even more conspicuous is the part played by this way of study in creating a sense of belonging and collective identity among the young men (Etkes and Tikochinski 2004, 17–19). Indeed, in the NaTSiV’s view, joint study in a huge din was intended, among other things, to evoke in the students the memory of Mount Sinai, that is, to establish a collective identity and to impress the soul (Berlin 2003, 97).

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However, it was only in retrospect that yeshiva students who later became Maskilim grasped the full significance of a method of study based on reading written texts out loud. Particularly interesting insights into this practice can be found in the writings of Shlomo Zaltzman (Mir) quoted above, as well as in the memoirs of Ben-Zion Dinur (Telz) and Moshe Elazar Eisenstadt (Volozhin) (Nyasvizh/Nesvizh, Minsk G., R.E., 1869– 1943). In an associative narrative, the three (each in his own way) contrast reading out loud with movement and melody in the noisy space of the yeshiva with the silent reading of books in a library hall. In so doing, they open a window to the cognitive, emotional, and religious meanings that the culture of oral study had for them. At the same time, their accounts shed light on the difficulties of converting the skills of religious literacy into those of reading modern secular literature, and the challenges of the transition from reading for the purpose of Torah study and religious duty to reading for general edification and pleasure. Dinur’s (1958) experiences with this kind of literacy combine insult and perplexity, on the one hand, with a moment of revelation, on the other hand. He recounts that in his youth, he used to study in the beit midrash (house of study) and his regular seat was next to that of Rabbi Ya’akov Shapira, who would later become the head of the Volozhin Yeshiva. Once, when he was studying out loud, Rabbi Shapira reproached him, saying that his tune indicates he does not comprehend the Gemara, and adding: “If you read in the wrong tune, why study out loud?” In a desperate effort to please the rabbi, Dinur went over from studying out loud to silent reading, only to receive another reprimand from the rabbi: “There is no studying in murmuring and whispers,” he told him, and Torah study that cannot be heard is not worthy of being called “study” (Dinur 1958, 51–52). This bewildering experience opened Dinur’s eyes to the difference between vocal and silent reading, and to the need to choose among them. Dinur’s vacillation between sound and silence in the context of Gemara studies was that of a young man entirely immersed in the world of the beit midrash, who finds it difficult to decide between two possible ways of studying. A very different experience is described by Eisenstadt, as he recalls the din of the yeshiva from the distance of time and presents it as the absolute opposite of two literacy events from a later period in his life: Imagine […] some 300–350 young man swaying and moving back and forth, immersed in study of the Talmud, chanting. […] At first, I was

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completely stunned. […] I felt alone […] and enveloped in mysterious dread, and I was ready to flee for my life. However, time did its work, and soon my voice was absorbed in the general din of the yeshiva. Inadvertently I recall two events from a later period in my life: here I am, sitting bent over a book in the great reading hall of the Royal Library in Berlin. At long rows of desks are sitting men, women, all of them immersed in reading the books open before them. The silence of death prevails in the reading hall. Because of my old habit of studying everything with a chant, I suddenly start mumbling softly, but my chanting caused me much unpleasantness. My neighbors at the desk complained to the librarian. He scolded me, though politely and quietly, but rather drily. He hinted to me explicitly that the library was a place of reading, and not of singing. The second event […] took place outside the walls of the library. One fine day my landlady addresses me in total astonishment, and tells me that her neighbor […] had expressed suspicions regarding my sanity. With her own eyes she had seen how I, as I sat with an open book, chanted and swayed back and forth. Play of that kind seemed strange to the German woman—if not worse. (Eisenstadt 2004, 107–108)

The comparison between of the tumult of the yeshiva and the silence of the Royal Library of Berlin is meant not only to describe the culture shock that struck Eisenstadt upon entering one of the bastions of European Enlightenment. His account of the librarian’s reprimand due to his “old habit of studying everything with a chant,” as well as of the German neighbor’s doubt regarding his sanity, betrays a feeling of inferiority or at least cultural insecurity, which in turn leads him to recognize the essential difference between reading out loud and reading silently. By comparing the din of the yeshiva and the silence of the library, Eisenstadt realizes that these are two different types of literacy, and that his journey to the Royal Library in Berlin is also a journey of departure from oral culture and its replacement by a different kind of literacy. Ben-Zion Dinur’s (1958) first encounter with the silence of the Strashun Library in Vilna provides similarly fascinating insights (see also Katz 1963, 47).11 Dinur recounts how at first, he tried to divide his time between study in the beit midrash and reading in the “house of books.” However, after a while he could not resist the temptation, and decided to devote all his time to the “house of books.” He describes the experience of reading in the new setting as follows: 11 On the Strashun Library, see Cohen (2013) and Shor (2012).

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For the first time in my life, I would have the joy of sitting at a desk, with quiet and silence all around. To read the books I wanted to read, to peruse everything I wished to peruse, to think for myself and to write for myself — without owing explanations to anyone, without being “examined,” without displaying “progress.” Simply: to read and study, to read and learn. (Dinur 1958, 112–113)

Although the Strashun Library was fundamentally a Torah library, the portrayal of the silence that prevailed in it as liberating silence exemplifies, by comparison, the burden of supervision entailed by the public nature of the oral method of study in the yeshiva. It appears as if the silence itself offered Dinur what he desired for: the ability to read whatever he liked. And yet no less liberating was the hesitant appearance of the desire to write, and the discovery of the connection between writing and expressing one’s self. The transition from noise to silence, which symbolized separation from oral culture, opened up a new area of possibility for Dinur “to peruse everything I wished to peruse, to think for myself and to write for myself —without owing explanations to anyone.” It was this silent space that paved the way to a new kind of reading and writing.

The Hierarchy of Suspicion and the Boundaries of Legitimacy: Practices of Writing Among Young Yeshiva Scholars Given the analysis thus far, there is no doubt that didactic considerations played a major role in preserving the primacy of speech in Mitnagdic culture. The utmost importance of memory in defining the concept of knowledge and the vital role of speech in transmitting knowledge were both expressed in practices of repetition, whereas organized use of writing for the purpose of learning was uncommon in yeshivas throughout the generations, and certainly not as a routine (Breuer 2003, 257–266; Spiegel 2005, 39–42). The explicit justification of this state of affairs was often that writing weakens memory and breaks the chain of transmission (shalshelet hamesira). However, just as one cannot attribute the choice of oral methods of study to one single factor, one cannot explain the attitude toward writing solely by reference to didactic considerations. This justification camouflaged other apprehensions with regard to writing, and the deeper one delves into this topic, the more one realizes the complexity of the attitude toward writing among Mitnagdic scholars as well, and the

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substantial role that the preservation of hegemony and the control over knowledge played in the insistence on cautious, controlled, and restrained use of writing. The regulated and restrained approach to writing was expressed in a series of explicit or implicit norms regarding the legitimate uses of writing in the yeshiva. These norms determined where, when, and for what purpose it was possible or proper to engage in writing in the yeshiva, and where, when, and for what purpose it was improper or even forbidden to do so. To get a better idea of the legitimate uses of writing in Mitnagdic scholarly culture, we must trace the types and purposes of the various writing practices in this culture. We must distinguish not only between mastery of the technical skill of writing and the ability to express oneself in writing, but also between writing by one’s own hands and writing by means of a scribe, secretary, or student; between writing in the margins of the pages of a canonical text and writing a new, original text from beginning to end; between the writing of an outline, mnemonical notes, and short Torah commentaries (h.idushei Torah) and the writing of a systematic, extensive treatise; between copying a work or book for independent study and writing an original work for one’s pleasure; and between all of the above and the writing of a book with the intention of publishing it. These types of writing differed in their degree of legitimacy and were thus organized hierarchically, and, accordingly, their prevalence varied too. Selected portrayals of literacy events among young yeshiva scholars that involve writing will substantiate the above statements. The proportion of men who knew how to write among the Torah scholars was apparently quite high, and almost all of them acquired this ability in informal frameworks. Among the Mitnagdic elite, the case of Rabbi Shmuel Salant (Valkininkai/Olkenik, Vilna G., R.E., 1816–1909), “who was not skilled in writing [and] had barely trained his hand to sign his name” (Sokolov 1889, 183), seems rare and even surprising. This, at least, is what emerges from the words of Agnon, who quotes H . ayim Yehoshua Kosovsky as saying that Rabbi Salant, who was the Rabbi of Jerusalem, used to tell his startled students: “Don’t be surprised, my sons. When does a person learn the skill of writing? When he is a child, and I have never been a child in my life” (Agnon 1985, 187). This explanation of the inability to write was also attributed, as noted in Chapter 4 above, to the tzaddik Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin. However, Agnon adds detail to it, and his version suggests that not only is there no contradiction between greatness in Torah and ignorance of writing, but in certain cases, this

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ignorance even contributes to the greatness and intensifies it: “When the other children were busy with childish things, he studied Torah, until he gained renown as one of the great scholars” (Agnon 1985, 187). Nah.um Sokolov (1889, 183) also points out that Rabbi Salant could not write, but in his account, this fact is meant to explain Rabbi Salant’s habit of conveying his teachings orally and his refraining from publishing books. To overcome his writing inability, Rabbi Salant used the aid of a scribe and was very meticulous in examining the texts that he dictated. Moreover, Sokolov states that Rabbi Salant’s habits were not at all exceptional. The custom of dictating letters, responsa, and h.idushei Torah to a secretary, scribe, or student was common in Mitnagdic society, and it was practiced even by rabbis who did know how to write and who wrote by themselves when they wanted to (Assaf 2004, 241). The choice to use the services of a scribe, whether out of habit, a wish to save the trouble of writing, or reservations about writing, violated the privacy of the author, and as in Hasidic society, it acted as a restraint. In any event, in the culture of Mitnagdic scholars, too, dictation to a scribe or to a student was a routine matter, and rabbis who chose to write by themselves were usually singled out and praised. This is perhaps why the NaTSiV’s son emphasized that his father used to write many of his letters with his own hand (Berlin 1943, 98–99), although in the photocopies of the NaTSiV’s epistles, it is evident that at least in some of them, his signature is added to a text written in a different handwriting.12 As noted, the task of writing was frequently entrusted to yeshiva students, and those who had fine handwriting gained wide reputation. Aside from writing founded on oral situations, such as taking dictation or writing a summary of a lesson from memory, students also wrote for other purposes, including copying entire texts, compiling texts or parts of texts from diverse sources, writing notes and commentaries, and sometimes even writing original compositions of their own. These uses of writing can be analyzed in terms of the medieval distinction between four types of writers and writing in theological contexts (Minnis 2012; see also Barthes 2007, 38–39): the scriptor, who copies a text without adding anything to it; the compilator, who compiles different texts together but does not add to them a text of his own; the commentator, who adds his interpretations to the text, but only to make it more intelligible; and the auctor, 12 See, for example, letters nos. 37, 59, 65, 69, 116, 118 by the NaTSiV and his signatures attached to them (Berlin 2003).

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who composes a text presenting his own ideas, though always drawing on other authorities. Yeshiva students engaged in these four kinds of writing, and although they were not distinguished or identified by name, each type of writing was treated differently and each was met with a different degree of suspicion. The suspicion toward the text, or conversely its legitimacy, depended on the depth of the writer’s involvement in the text and on the degree of risk this involvement entailed. An insightful depiction of writing practices of the first two kinds, that of the scriptor and that of the compilator, appears in Ben-Zion Dinur’s autobiography in the chapter devoted to his studies in the Telz Yeshiva. The two writing events of interest to us are presented in the context of a seemingly ingenuous story about Dinur’s acceptance in the yeshiva and about his brother, who was rejected from it. The first event concerns the copying of the book Ktsot HaH . oshen (Ends of the Breastplate, by Rabbi Aryeh Leib Heller, a commentary on part of the Shulh.an Arukh) by Dinur’s brother, who was forced to study by himself at home due to his rejection, and the book was too expensive for him to purchase (Dinur 1958, 67–68). The second event concerns the transition from copying to compilation, when the brother’s engagement in copying the book for self-study soon developed into the copying of selected passages chosen and complied by the two brothers: After prolonged arguments with me, my brother agreed that first we would study [Ktsot HaH . oshen], and after every section and topic, we would decide what was worth copying. […] And my brother would copy. And thus we composed a kind of “compiled system” of h.idushim in the “Telz manner,” which gained fame among our comrades. I remember the passage that we included from the book H . evel Ya’akov by Rabbi Abba Ya’akov HaCohen Borokhov […] This was an exploration and discussion of the human “self” in connection with the problem of ownership; the author proves the existence of the “self ” based on the use of expressions such as “my hand, my foot, my soul,” which testify that the “self ” expressing the selfhood of a person is something unique. (Dinur 1958, 67–68)

The unwitting story framing these writing events helps us decode their full cultural meaning, although it was not told for the purpose of conveying this meaning. The fact that the described writing activity was performed outside the walls of the yeshiva, by a young man who had been rejected by it, places this activity within its social and cultural context and shows that both psychologically and intellectually, it was a substitute for studying with a teacher, and in a certain sense even made the teacher superfluous.

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Had Dinur’s brother not been rejected by the yeshiva, he probably would not have set his hand to writing in that manner, although the copying of books or passages from books and their assemblage for the purpose of independent study was a legitimate and acceptable use of writing. Furthermore, Dinur’s account confirms an important insight into the creative and critical nature of compilation that was offered by Roland Barthes: “[C]ritical vision begins with the compilator himself: it is not necessary to add something of oneself to a text in order to ‘distort’ it: it suffices to quote it, that is to say, to break it up: a new intelligibility is born immediately” (Barthes 2007, 39). Indeed, as Barthes suggests, the apparently simple act of choosing, combining, and copying gave the two brothers a new and important tool for expressing themselves. Furthermore, Dinur’s comments are also interesting because out of all the choices that the two brothers made in constructing their compilation, the one that was engraved in his memory and that he emphasizes even at a distance of years is a passage about laws of property that proves the existence of the self and its individuality. It appears that at this point, Dinur implies, although probably unwittingly, that under the auspices of choice, combination, and copying, he experienced the first signs of a desire to write, with its yearnings and longings. As we shall see below, the constitution or discovery of the “self” and its positioning at the center were the glowing core of writing for those who “sinned by writing.” The compilator, like the copyist, adds nothing to the text, not even a single word of his own. Therefore, despite the subversive potential of compilation, it is usually not considered particularly threatening. The status of the commentator is, of course, different. His involvement in the written text is far greater, and with it the risk of error and the degree of suspicion against him. Nevertheless, at least ostensibly, the commentator’s writing does not revolve around itself, but rather around a canonical text. In this respect, it can be described as “writing in the margins,” referring both to the physical margins of the pages of a canonical text and to its symbolic margins. In the case of yeshiva scholars, this category included short comments and emendations in the actual margins of books, as well as memos scribbled in notebooks and “megilot starim” (“secret scrolls”), containing h.idushei Torah recorded for the writer’s personal use, for fear of forgetting (Breuer 2003, 258–259; Spiegel 2005, 52–68). Micha Yosef Berdichevsky describes this kind of writing in his “Olam HaAtsilut” [“The World of Emanation”], which is dedicated to the Volozhin Yeshiva, in

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a dismissive tone, with open criticism of the yeshiva’s attitude toward writing: While these young men [who are becoming Maskilim] are sitting and engaging in Enlightenment [Haskalah] and sciences, most of the yeshiva students are sitting and writing “leshitatot ” [lit. “according to the approach of”]; each one constructing for himself, reasoning questioning and analyzing, and in all of them there is not a single logical principle or substantial learning. And who is to blame for this? … I remember that when I was in the yeshiva, many Maskilic Torah students arose to found a Torah periodical, in which there would be new readings based on the spirit of reason, principles that are found in the Talmud, articles about Jewish thought and its literature; and when they went to the NaTSiV to ask him to intervene with the authorities to obtain a license for this, he scolded them and warned them of doing this, lest … Do you readers know what that “lest” is? Not something that would destroy the foundations of the yeshiva, Heaven forbid, but “lest” some yeshiva students might be idle from corporeal study due to engagement in writing. (Berdichevsky 2004, 150; see also Holtzman 2011, 60–61)

This passage encapsulates two important distinctions related to the approach to writing in the Volozhin Yeshiva, and in the scholarly Mitnagdic culture more broadly. One of these focuses on the presence of the writer in the text, and distinguishes between a commentator and an author who composes an original, coherent book from beginning to end; the other focuses on the text’s purpose, and distinguishes between writing intended for personal use and writing intended for publication. Pretension to the status of author and desire to publish a book marked a boundary whose crossing demanded particular caution. Fear of unsupervised crossing of this boundary guided the policy of writing practiced in yeshivas and explains the NaTSiV’s anger at the students who asked for his help in publishing a selection of their writings. And, indeed, memoirs, autobiographies, and literary works depicting yeshiva life show quite clearly that the attitude toward writing, and especially the writing of books in private, was suspicious, to say the least, and that the yeshiva’s policy was intended to restrict and suppress it. This issue was discussed openly in the Volozhin Yeshiva, and many of the yeshiva students mention it in their memoirs. Baruch HaLevi Epstein (Pinsk, 1860–1942), for example, relates that the NaTSiV encouraged the students in Volozhin to study in pairs, “and even though he did not force

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us […] to study two by two […] everyone knew that he tended toward this in heart and soul” (Epstein 1928, 1772). Moreover, for reasons similar to those that led him to prefer study in pairs, the NaTSiV used to warn against writing compositions and books in private: Quite frequently, […] he would say that in his opinion, […] whoever writes books by himself , without dibuk h.averim [lit. closeness to friends], would almost certainly fall […] into much more error than the amount permissible to a person […] since if he errs, there is no one to arouse him about it; […] and it is not so with he who studies […] or writes a book in a band, in closeness to comrades and students, [...] where one teaches the other, and the things emerge […] clear, refined, and reliable. (Epstein 1928, 1772)

This paraphrase from the NaTSiV introduces yet another distinction that was critical in defining the legitimate uses of writing in the yeshiva. In this case, the distinction does not refer to the author’s presence in the text or to the text’s purposes, but rather to its mode of production. The NaTSiV strongly opposed writing alone and in private, and, indeed, his insistence made strong impression on his students. Menah.em Mendel Zlotkin perceived the NaTSiV’s position not as a recommendation, but as a prohibition: To increase the students’ isolation [from external disturbances] and to distance them from anything that might interfere with study of the Talmud, […] it was forbidden to the yeshiva students […] to occupy themselves with the publication of any newspaper, […] not even one including solely h.idushei Torah. And everything the yeshiva students did along these lines was only done in secret. (Zlotkin 2004, 187)13

Nah.um Meir Shaikewitz (SHoMeR, Nyasvizh/Nesvizh, Minsk G., R.E., 1849–1905) also refers to these matters, and it appears that from his viewpoint, the phrase “not even one including solely h.idushei Torah” in the above quotation should be substituted with “and certainly not one including h.idushei Torah”: Among the things that were considered sins and crimes by the heads of the yeshiva and by the supervisors were (1) if some students gathered together 13 Torah periodicals by yeshiva students began to appear at the turn of the century (Breuer 2003, 428–429).

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in a room and talked […] about things related to the practical world, (2) if a student wrote words of pilpul [sophisticated argumentation] or homilies, (3) if a student read external books, which are known as Haskalah books. (Shaikewitz 1952, 60)

Those who described that attitude toward writing in the Volozhin Yeshiva, and they were not few in number, felt, as noted, that engagement in writing, and especially writing in private, was regarded as undesirable. However, their explanations for this stance varied: Zlotkin and Berdichevsky believed that the restriction was meant to prevent bitul Torah (i.e., neglect of the Torah); Shaikewitz believed that the sin of writing homilies and complex argumentation was similar to that of reading Haskalah literature, and equally grave; and Epstein explained that the restriction of writing was due to fear that erroneous Halakhic interpretations be put on paper. The problem with Zlotkin’s and Berdichevsky’s supposition is that the restriction was also applied to writing related to the interpretation and study of the Torah, that is, to writing that does not involve neglect of the Torah. Shaikewitz’s explanation is interesting, since it hints that the resistance to writing may have been related to the role played by writing in the Haskalah movement, namely, to fear of the critical spirit nourished by Maskilic writing. And, indeed, the dangers posed by Maskilic writings were palpable, as is clearly illustrated by Maskilic texts that were based primarily on quotations, imitations, or parodies of canonic religious texts and of the methods of studying them. Maskilic parodies of Talmudic discourse and reasoning were a conspicuous genre of Haskalah literature. Hebrew writing at that time could not avoid relying on quotations from the canonical religious texts or imitating their style, and in many autobiographical texts the authors describe their writing as primarily parodic.14 Furthermore, parodies of canonical texts were an important means of expression, entertainment, and release in the leisure-time gatherings of yeshiva students, and not only on Purim.15 An example of the Janus-face of parodic practice and of its cunning and threatening ambivalence appears in the memoirs of Avraham

14 Occasionally, such writing presented parodic imitations of Maskilic poems, stories, articles, and feuilletons. See Brenner (1960, 22). 15 On the ritual of choosing a Purim rabbi, see Shaikewitz (1952, 64–65) and Moshvitsky (2004, 130). This custom ceased over time, and according to Pinh.as Turberg (2004, 197), “Certainly there were reasons for this.”

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Ya’akov Paperna (Kapyl/Kapoli, Minsk G., R.E., 1840–1919). Paperna recounts, in a jocular tone, a social gathering at which Zvi Herman Shapira (Erzvilkas/Erzvilik, Kovno G., R.E., 1840–1898) read to his yeshiva comrades a witty, sophisticated homily that he had written, and then followed it with a spontaneous parody of Talmudic reasoning. Only when Shapira clarified that the spontaneous sermon he had given, astonishing his listeners with his sharpness of mind, was intended to be satirical and critical—“just smoke and mirrors […] fireworks of the Talmudic mind”—did the listeners recognize his parodic intentions. Shapira himself did not realize, says Paperna, that the commentaries he had read as a genuine sermon were no less of a satire than his humorous improvisation. “[Shapira] forgot, while he was reading,” Paperna writes, “that he had not been reading the Talmud and its commentaries, but an angry, dreadful critique of them, or, rather, a caricature” (Paperna 1952, 182–184). This concluding remark by Paperna points to important insights that can be gleaned from his account. One insight is that the difficulty in identifying the intention of the author of the parodic text does not necessarily derive from the shortcomings of the receiver; the second is that this difficulty may be encountered not only by the addressees: the author, too, can err in estimating the parodic effect of his writing, and therefore fail and mislead his audience.16 There is reason to assume, however, that the potential for error in the reception of parody is far smaller when the parodic text is read out loud in front of an audience than when it is delivered as a written manuscript. A well-written parody is based on a disguise that can easily be misleading, and in the absence of a presenter who betrays its intentions with his intonation, facial expressions, and body language, it does not always convey proper signals as to its subversive intent. Moreover, compared with the performance of a parody before a live audience, which is an ephemeral situation that cannot be repeated, copied, and widely circulated, a written and printed parody lives its own life independent of its creator, and therein lies its danger. For that reason, even if improvised parodies, taken as mere pranks, contained subversive energy, a well-written parody was regarded as more effective, and the fear of it was greater than the fear of parodical sermons given informally. It is no coincidence, for example, that the campaign waged by the students of the Volozhin Yeshiva against the appointment of Rabbi H . ayim Berlin

16 For more on failures in the reception of parody, see Morson (1989, 72–74).

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as head of the yeshiva circulated “parodies of liturgical poems, penitential prayers, dirges, and the like, with which they laughed at his expense, mocked, and reviled” (Zlotkin 2004, 191).17 H . ayyim Nah.man Bialik (Radivka/Radi, Volhynia G., R.E., 1873– 1934), the great pioneer of modern Hebrew poetry, also began to display his literary talents with parodies that captivated his comrades in the yeshiva and contained the seeds of a subversive position. In the view of Abba Balosher (Svir, Vilna G., R.E., 1873–1944), a direct line of development leads from these delightful parodies to Bialik’s later literary work, and here, too, we find expression of the threatening potential of the act of writing: In the yeshiva he was not numbered among the veteran scholars, but among the Maskilim there. He already had a reputation of a master of the Bible and a master of language, someone who could write occasional poems when called upon. At meetings, he was almost always the first speaker. […] He was the foremost, and none was second to him in the yeshiva, in telling Hasidic stories, and he would imitate the sermons of the “h.ozrim” [repeaters] with talent. […] He used to pepper the sermons with misquoted verses, with Midrashim that didn’t exist, or, if they did exist, he would twist them out of shape. […] When the Zhitomirite [Bialik was raised in Zhitomir] entered a room alone, not at the time of a gathering, they would immediately feel his presence in the neighboring rooms. […] After a short while […] he would take a little notebook out of his pocket, with pieces of paper bound in it, written on both sides of the page, with his poems, and give it to the eldest in the group. […] It could be that Volozhin had no part in Bialik’s poetry about nature and about the beauties of Japhet [i.e., Hellenistic culture], but it is clear and certain that it made an impression on his poetry about the Tent of Shem [i.e., Jewish culture]. (Balosher 2004, 166–167, 178–179)

Therefore, there are grounds for assuming that in scholarly Mitnagdic culture, just as in Hasidic culture, fear of the parodizing of sanctified texts was one of the reasons for the reserved attitude toward writing, even

17 On the use of written materials as part of the campaign against the appointment of Rabbi Berlin, see also Stampfer (2005, 151–153).

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if it was not the main one.18 However, it appears that in the case of the Volozhin Yeshiva, this policy of writing should be attributed first and foremost to the NaTSiV’s principled position regarding the writing of books and writing as a solitary pursuit (Epstein 1928, 1772–1774). Thus, we find that in this and other contexts, the apprehensions about writing were a combination of several factors of varying importance: fear that writing would degenerate memory and study, fear of the unsupervised nature of solitary writing, fear of parodic and potentially subversive writing, fear of disseminating erroneous interpretations, fear of breaking the chain of transmission, and fear of the danger inherent in the very placing of a matter of Halakhah in writing. Crossing the line between writing for personal use and writing for publication was particularly significant in this society: whereas the attitude toward writing for personal use was relatively tolerant, the caution required in printing and publication was far greater, especially when it came to Halakhic matters that “might not be well explained.” Mitnagdic scholarly society therefore shared the Socratic assumption that autonomous books, removed from any context, supervision, or control, are liable by their very nature to err and to lead to error. This society, too, believed that unlike face-to-face dialogical debates and studying in public, the writing and reading of books might lead to loss of control over knowledge and to the undermining of readers’ willingness to obey authority. However, beyond these Socratic-like assumptions, this society, probably more than any other sector of Jewish society of the time, bore the deep religious-cultural stamp of the distinction between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, which was, is, and will remain a foundational distinction in Jewish culture.

“Things that Are Spoken---You Are not Allowed to Say in Writing”: Semi-Halakhic Aspects of Writing Inhibitions The apprehensions regarding the writing and publication of new and potentially erroneous Halakhic interpretations reverberate the old saying of the Talmudic Sages, H . azal (an acronym for the Hebrew “our Sages 18 On cultures that defend their sacred texts by forbidding quoting and exact copying from them, and on the reasons for applying these prohibitions, see Morson (1989, 66–67).

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of blessed memory”): “Things that are written, you are not allowed to say by heart, and things that are spoken—you are not allowed to say in writing” (Bavli, Gittin 60b). This saying is akin to even stronger phrases, such as the one attributed to Rabbi Yoh.anan: “Those who write down Halakhot are like those who burn the Torah, and he who studies from them receives no reward” (Bavli, Temura 14b). The questions related to the origins of this prohibition, its interpretations, and its scope of application, like those related to the meanings and applications of its rescinding, are complex, and a large number of explanations have been suggested to tackle them (Vigoda 2006, 51–52, 58–63). In his discussion of these matters, Michael Vigoda presents the ideational background that gave rise to this prohibition and lists four categories of considerations that may explain it: Oral Law [i.e., Oral Torah] is […] a sign of the covenant between the Jews and their father in heaven. It is not written, so that the gentiles cannot translate it as they translated the Written Torah, and thus Christians will not be able to claim that they are the true Israel. According to this explanation, putting the Oral Law in writing was forbidden in order to protect the Jewish people. However, according to a different approach, which appears to be the majority view, putting the Oral Law in writing was forbidden to protect the Torah. Those who held this view offered many different explanations, but it seems that these can be classified into four kinds of considerations: some pointed out the inherent difficulty in interpreting any written text—the exegetical consideration; others highlighted the pedagogical danger of placing the oral tradition in a book—the educational consideration; others explained that, since the Torah is the word of the infinite God, it is impossible to imprison it in a finite text—the theological consideration; and, finally, some argued that the Torah’s ability to respond to changing reality is due to the fact that Halakhah is not mummified in a sacred text, but rather is conveyed orally, so that its interpretation and application are open for the dynamic decisions of the Sages of every generation—the consideration of the vitality of Halakhah. (Vigoda 2006, 52, emphases in original)

Detailed discussion of the arguments raised here is beyond the scope of this book. As far as we are concerned, suffice it to say that, despite differences of opinion regarding the normative validity and range of application of the prohibition against transcribing the Oral Torah, the heavy shadow cast by this prohibition was not removed in later generations. At

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the historical moment under consideration, even those who believed that writing was the need of the hour felt obliged to deal with the echoes of this prohibition and to examine the legitimacy of each kind of writing time and again, in light of the purpose and content of any given kind of text. Ironically, semi-Halakhic issues related to the restriction of writing in its different forms continued to challenge also those of the yeshiva iluyim who became leading writers of the Haskalah and acted to make Hebrew a language of modern writing. However, this time the arena of struggle was also that of language. The dilemmas facing Maskilic writers stemmed not only from the heavy shadow cast by the prohibition against writing the Oral Torah, but also from the rabbinic demand to avoid merging Biblical language with the language of H . azal, expressed in sayings such as “the language of the Torah for itself and the language of the Sages for itself” (Bavli, Avoda Zarah 58b) and “the language of the Torah is separate, and the language of the Sages is separate.”19 The need to prevent the blurring of the boundary between the Bible and the Oral Torah, and to avoid infringing upon the predominance of the latter, was expressed, among other things, in the demand to separate the languages of the two corpora. This separation was also meant to prevent deviation from Halakhot decreed by the Sages, either by changing the denotation of Halakhic terms or by interpreting the Bible without the mediation of rabbinic exegesis. The restrictions against mixing the different strata of the Hebrew language directly affected the trap into which Maskilic Hebrew writing fell. Furthermore, these restrictions highlighted the subversive nature of Maskilim’s linguistic choices—both the choice of pure Biblical Hebrew as the initial model for Haskalah literature, and the alternative choice of multi-layered Hebrew, whose exemplary model is attributed to the nosah. (formula) created by Mendele Mokher Sfarim (Mendele the Book Peddler), the pen name of Shalom Ya’akov Abramovich (Kapyl/Kapoli, Minsk G., R.E., 1836–1917).20 Just as the remnants of the prohibitions against transcribing spoken language inhibited those who sought 19 This version of the saying appears in various manuscripts, and the interpretations given to it are many and diverse. On two of these interpretations that are of relevance to our subject, see Parush and Fischler (1995, 109–110). 20 Abramovich (Mendele), too, was aware of the danger inherent in challenging the terms of the Sages. In his Sefer Toldot HaTeva he refrains from borrowing the names of animals from rabbinic literature, and justifies this choice with the wish to avoid getting involved in Halakhic issues, for fear of calling a kosher fowl impure and an impure fowl kosher (Abramovich 1867a, vi).

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to engage in writing, so, too, the demand to separate linguistic strata inhibited both the devotees of pure, Biblical Hebrew and the advocates of expanded Hebrew that includes post-Biblical language. The purists knew that in giving preference to Biblical Hebrew, they were laying the foundations for unmediated reading of the Bible, with all its inherent threats (Dalmatzky-Fischler and Parush 2011). The supporters of expanded Hebrew understood that turning Hebrew into a language of modern writing required mobilization and fusing of all its resources, as they evolved throughout the ages. Since this fusion contradicted the Sages’ demand for separation, the discussion of the renewed Hebrew language touched upon Halakhic issues and interpretations, similar to the discussion on placing oral language in writing.21 For various reasons, the Maskilim did not consider themselves exempt from dealing with these issues. Among other things, the discussion of Halakhic prohibitions helped them gain legitimacy among rabbis and among their comrades in the yeshivas and batei midrash. It also helped them to free themselves of their inner inhibitions and to clarify the differences in outlook that emerged among themselves.22 The effects of these inhibitions on the discourse, language, and writing practices of yeshiva students who tried their hand at writing are exemplified in the unfinished poem “Elh.anan” (Levin 1879–1880) by Yehuda Leib Levin (YehaLeL, Minsk, R.E., 1844–1925). This long poem tells the story of Elh.anan, a yeshiva prodigy who is accused of heresy due to deeds and thoughts that are both related to writing. Elh.anan, whom everyone considers an iluy, is gripped by obsessive thoughts of shock and wonder regarding the question of the relationship between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, and regarding the High Priest Yoh.anan (164– 104 BC), who rejected the Oral Torah and became a Sadducee toward the end of his life. He writes down these thoughts, which are phrased

21 On the explanations given to these rabbinic sayings by advocates of the expanded language, and on the considerations that guided their dilemmas and decisions, see Parush and Fischler (1995). 22 For extensive discussion of the influence of Halakhic inhibitions on Haskalah writers and their work, see Friedlander (2004, esp. 11–14).

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in Halakhic terms,23 in a “secret scroll,” and it soon turns out that this act of writing is in fact the tragic flaw, the hamartia, that drives the plot and determines Elh.anan’s fate. Zalman the overseer finds the secret scroll between the pages of Elh.anan’s Gemara and shows it to the rabbi, who declares that Elh.anan is a heretic who denies the Talmud and has no part in the world to come. After he is found out, Elh.anan seeks help from the rabbi, hoping that he will remove the doubts that oppress his heart, but the rabbi does not respond. Despairing of guidance, understanding, or forgiveness, Elh.anan addresses the community and says: I confess my sins, that at night/ I sneaked in and hid till almost dawn/ In Hebrew and foreign tongues I pondered, I wrote. (Levin 1879–1880, 616)

In his writings and thoughts, Elh.anan struggles to understand the meaning of the prohibition against writing down the Oral Torah. Plagued with doubt and penetrated with religious urgency to understand the relationship between the Oral Torah and the Written Torah, he is exposed to information about the historical development of the Oral Torah, and this new information opens his eyes; only then does he experience redemptive enlightenment and realize that only historicization of the Talmud does it justice and presents it without flaws. In their wisdom, the Sages understood that with the passage of time, flexibility was needed, and the laws of the Torah had to be adjusted to the spirit of the age: For they removed, added, changed, adjusted. […] Therefore every Sage in his city and generation, / Placed the spirit of his flock before his eyes. […] Therefore his Torah was conveyed orally,/ (And was written only for the sake of memory.)/ And why orally, why did they forbid writing? / Because “Those who write down Halakhot are like those who burn the Torah.” (Levin 1879–1880, 617–618)

After the effort to decipher and resolve the issue of the prohibition against transcribing the Oral Torah, Elh.anan enters into a long and detailed discussion of the permission to write, and there, too, he offers a historical explanation: 23 The very fact that Elhanan’s thoughts on the subject of writing are placed in the . context of Halakhic discussions of the transcription of Oral Torah reflects the Maskilic spirit at the time.

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For those who wrote down the Talmud, as our eyes see/ were not sparing of parchment and ink/ Like a heap of grain, they gathered every opinion/ All the Sages’ methods, all disagreement among them/ […] For they did not compile a book of eternal laws,/ But a record of every saying of the Sages. (Levin 1879–1880, 619–620)

The description of this chapter of Elh.anan’s spiritual life ends with severe criticism of the rabbis of his generation, who exchanged the tolerance of the Talmud’s compilers for fanaticism that did not do it justice: “If only the Sages of the Talmud could arise from oblivion,” he says, “they would cry out against the Jews and their rabbis,” who “feed the living generation with carrion!” (Levin 1879–1880, 619). At this point, Elh.anan once again seeks the rabbi for consultation, but this time, too, the rabbi rejects his pleas. Then, despondently, Elh.anan speaks again, decrying and condemning the obtuseness that led to his expelling from the yeshiva and abandonment by his parents. As noted, both the events around which Levin chose to weave the plot of his poem and the thoughts that vex the protagonist are connected in one way or another to the subject of writing. Issues of poetics that are developed in an illuminating fashion in the final sections of the poem will concern us in Chapter 9 below.24 In the present context, what is of interest is the Halakhic tenor of Elh.anan’s reflections on writing, as expressed in the “secret scroll” that he writes and in the ensuing drama around it. Levin’s way of presenting the dilemma of writing and the arguments he chose to place in his protagonist’s mouth once again confirm that challenging the boundary between the Oral and the Written Torah was seen as a dangerous threat to the authority of Halakhah. Hence, the deep motivations for preferring speech over writing were related to the preservation of rabbinic authority and hegemony, and as such they were also of concern to Haskalah writers, as challengers of this authority.

Speech and Writing in Traditional Jewish Society: Interim Summary The Halakhic consideration played an important role in the clinging of Eastern European Jewish society in the nineteenth century to a culture of oral literacy. However, despite its decisive contribution, it was not 24 On the poetics of “Elhanan,” see Bar-El (1995a, 102–103). .

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the only factor that led to the continued preference for orality in this society. Rather, a variety of other factors pushed in this direction and a variety of other justifications were provided for this preference: ideological, ethical, pedagogical, and pragmatic. While these justifications were not equally prominent, and the pedagogical and ethical ones were given more emphasis, the multitude of explanations for the primacy of speech is in itself somewhat suspicious: the excess of reasons appears to be a symptom of their weakness, as if each of them by itself is too weak to do its work; or, alternatively, the excess of explanations may indicate that under these particular historical circumstances, maintaining the primacy of speech and restricting writing was such a difficult task that a heavy battery of justifications was needed to support it. Moreover, the multitude of explanations given for refraining from writing suggest that while many of these justifications present the primacy of speech as motivated by innocent piety, they may conceal deeper reasons and motivations having more to do with power, hegemony, and the preservation of social order. Hence, the important task before us is not so much to delve into the Halakhic rationalizations of the prohibition on writing, but rather to examine how the hegemonic norms that supported this prohibition and promoted the preference for speech filtered into various sectors of Jewish society and were absorbed, internalized, and reinforced. No less important, we should explore how the circumstances encouraged certain groups and people to violate these norms. To better understand the social dynamic that evolved around the issue of writing, we must distinguish between explicit Halakhic prohibitions rooted in deep religious and cultural codes, and vaguer restrictions, which lack the severity of a prohibition, but draw meaning and inspiration from these codes even long after their Halakhic authority had faded (Vigoda 2006, 59–63). Rather than focusing on the validity, scope, and persistence of Halakhic prohibitions on transcribing Halakhot or legends,25 we must ask why, under particular historical circumstances, the question of the relationship between the Written and the Oral Torah re-surfaced and memories of these prohibitions re-emerged. We must examine how these

25 Moshe David Her notes that: “At the end of the Second Temple period and during Mishnaic and Talmudic times, it was forbidden to write legends in a book and to recite legends from writing. […] It appears that this prohibition emanated primarily from fear of cutting off the vitality of public sermons” (Herr 1985, 172–174; see also Beit-Arie 1967–1968, 413).

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ancient inhibitions once again became an active cultural code through the mediation of simple, accessible popular explanations, and what Maskilim’s reading and writing stories can teach us about these mediation mechanisms and their influence. From memoirs and autobiographies we learn that the primacy of speech over writing was usually expressed not in strict and explicit prohibitions against writing, but rather in consistent normative signals conveying disregard toward writing, and especially toward writing for publication. Autobiographical accounts of literacy events confirm that the restrictions imposed on reading Haskalah literature were far more stringent than those imposed on writing, which were manifested primarily in general suspicion toward this activity. Nevertheless, there is considerable evidence that constant exposure to devaluation of writing and to reservations about it exerted substantial influence. The multiple instances of voluntary refraining from writing, or deliberate concealing of written works out of a wish to avoid their publication, show that the repeated condemnation of those who write and publish abundantly had its effect and influenced young people who sought to engage in writing. An example of this kind of indirect normative messages can be found in a text written by Shlomo Mandelkern (Mlynov/Mlyniv, Volhynia G., R.E., 1846–1902) on the centenary of the death of the Gaon Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna (1720–1797). In conspicuous admiration, Mandelkern describes the Gaon as a great rabbi who wrote very little, “and not only did he not publish a single book in his lifetime, he also did not reveal his opinions and reasoning in the form of letters, epistles, or responsa to the great rabbis of the generation. Everything he wrote was only for himself, in the style of short comments on the margins of books that he perused. […] After he passed the age of forty, he wrote even his short comments by [dictating them to] students” (Mandelkern 1899, 2–3). In two autobiographical episodes, H Tchernowitz . ayim (Sebesh/Sebezh, Vitebsk G., R.E., 1870–1949) describes how ideas and values like those implicit in Mandelkern’s remarks were communicated to the public. In one episode he relates how, during his visit to the Gaon of Rogachov (Rogachov/Rahachow, Volhynia G., R.E., 1858–1936), the Gaon criticized Rabbi Yitsh.ak Elh.anan, the head of the yeshiva where Tchernowitz studied, claiming that “he writes and publishes and writes and publishes endlessly!” and that “all the rabbis who write books cannot tell their right hand from their left” (Tchernowitz 1954, 162–164). Elsewhere he tells how, fifty years later, when he

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set out to draw a portrait of the much-admired Rabbi Yitsh.ak Elh.anan, he repeated the Rogachover’s blunt remarks against writing almost word for word, expressing amazement at the Gaon’s fantastic memory (Tchernowitz 1954, 146). In this narrative move, Tchernowitz makes the connection between the Gaon’s outstanding memory and his open contempt for writing, and thereby reveals basic cultural assumptions that he shares with the Gaon, such as the assumption that writing comes at the expense of memory and indicates weakness of memory. This stance echoes the verse from Ecclesiastes (12:12), “my son, be admonished, of making many books there is no end,” as well as a saying frequently cited in this context: “From the mouths of scholars and not from the mouth of books.”26 And yet despite his admiration for the Gaon’s memory, Tchernowitz does not conceal his criticism of him. He portrays his eccentric figure in a manner verging on the grotesque, objecting not only his perplexing logical arguments but also his categorical opposition to writing (Tchernowitz 1954, 162–164). In a similar vein, Tchernowitz tends to reject the opinions of his grandfather, whose attitude toward writing and publication was similar to that of the Gaon. Of his grandfather, he writes: “He also wrote emendations on the Vilna Gaon, all on the [margins of the] pages of the book […] because he used to say that authors write what is already known to everyone, and what is not yet known, they, too, do not know” (Tchernowitz 1954, 99). It is doubtful whether, as he was writing this, Tchernowitz was aware that this clarification, which draws a boundary between the writing of original ideas and the writing of emendations and commentaries, holds the key to understanding his grandfather’s view of writing. Clearly, the grandfather did not put on paper ideas or thoughts of his own, but rather restricted himself to writing emendations and comments in the narrow physical and symbolic space left in the margins of the canonical text. This view of writing is consistent with the explicit and implicit justifications that the grandfather provides for refraining from writing: overtly, he argues that there is no reason to write if one does not innovate, and since most authors do not innovate, they have no need to write; implicitly, his explanations betray deep doubts regarding the very possibility of innovation, and an equally deep fear of innovation. His arguments point to 26 On the history of this saying, see Ya’akobi (2000, 245–254). On its influence on modern thinkers, especially Moses Mendelssohn, and its relation to the belief in the primacy of speech over writing, see Jospe (1989, 127–156).

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the affinity between the complex attitude toward writing and the ambivalent attitude toward innovation. Furthermore, the fear of innovation goes hand in hand with fear of the sin of pride, for the pretension to innovate is suspected of contemptible condescension toward generations of great sages and Torah scholars, and he who dares to publish might fall into boasting and into erudition not for the sake of Heaven. Thus, two men whom Tchernowitz and his surroundings regarded as authoritative, the Gaon of Rogachov and Tchernowitz’s grandfather, condemned the writing and publication of books, and both based their position on popular considerations that ranged from didactic to religious and ethical. Nevertheless, unlike the Gaon of Rogachov, at the end of his life Tchernowitz’s grandfather changed his mind. Shortly before his death, he ordered his grandson “to write,” telling him that he regretted not having written (Tchernowitz 1954, 99). Tchernowitz presents his grandfather’s change of heart as part of a personal process of spiritual reckoning, but this individual transformation was probably not unrelated to the general trend in the second half of the nineteenth century toward approval of writing for publication, as a need of the hour and a blameless necessity. In this context, a letter by the NaTSiV opening the book VeNigash HaCohen (And the Priest Approached) (1882) by Rabbi Hillel Trivash includes an explicit and rather typical statement: “Since yeshivas and Torah scholars are becoming fewer, the Holy One desired, for the sake of His righteousness, to increase Torah among the Jews in this manner, that the great rabbis of the generation should write and circulate their new insights in responsa and the like” (Berlin 2003, 89, 252). The increasing legitimacy accorded to the writing and circulation of books authored by prominent rabbis reflected acknowledgment of the decline in the power of the oral transmission of ideas and knowledge. Under these changing circumstances, there was no choice but to acquiesce to the role of books in the war of opinions and to deploy them as tools in this war, that is, as instruments for spreading the Torah and glorifying it. Comparison of Hasidic and Mitnagdic attitudes toward writing, books, and publication shows that, despite the differences between them, they have many points in common. Both Hasidic and Mitnagdic societies were literate societies that nevertheless maintained an oral dominance, both enveloped writing and publication in negative images and warned of the dangers inherent in them, and both became reconciled to the necessity of writing, printing, and publication, but without ridding themselves of the remnants of reluctance toward writing and without forgoing the rhetoric

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that acted to restrict it. Furthermore, beyond all the differences, both cultures built their views of writing on the basis of a shared religious ideology, which saw the Oral Torah as distinguishing the Jewish people from all other nations, and accordingly considered speech as superior to writing. As we have seen, in the NaTSiV’s Mitnagdic version, this view was anchored primarily in the cerebral aspect of Halakhic rules and in the utmost importance attributed to the study of the Oral Law in waging the war of Torah. In the Hasidic version of Tzadok HaCohen of Lublin (Kreuzberg/Krustpils, Latvia, R.E., 1823–1900), by contrast, this view was connected to emotion, to the esoteric, and to “the revelation of the wisdom of the heart,” which cannot be revealed in writing: This is why the Oral Torah was given, in expectation that the nations of the world might say, “we are Israel, etc.,” meaning that the difference between writing and speech is that writing is merely the revelation of the wisdom of the brain and of thought, but speech is the revelation of the wisdom of the heart […] Wanting to say that things that are revealed in speech cannot be revealed in writing, […] and in any event, the Torah was written with clarity in seventy languages so that the wisdom in its writing be shown to all people of the world, […] and the Holy One did not dwell in their hearts at all, only in the hearts of the Children of Israel, to whom the Oral Torah was conveyed, meaning the revelation of the wisdom of the heart by speech, and therefore things that are spoken you are not allowed to say in writing (Gittin 60b). (Tzadok HaCohen of Lublin, Sefer Likutei Amarim, part 7)

The tension between the traditional loyalty to the principle of the primacy of speech over writing, on the one hand, and the pressing demands of the hour in times of modernization, on the other hand, trapped both Hasidim and Mitnagdim in a tangle of paradoxes. History offers quite a few examples of the abandonment of oral dominance, and, at least potentially, the rise of writing and publication under the pressures of modernization could have taken the shape of a straightforward, logical, and even liberating transition. And yet, as we have seen, this is not what happened in Eastern European Jewish society. Much evidence shows that the primacy of speech remained an active cultural code in this society, which underpinned a variety of restrictions imposed on writing, as well as the evaluation, ranking, and legitimacy of different literary genres and kinds of writing. These restrictions had far-reaching social, ideological, intellectual, and emotional implications, and those who were exposed to

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them were bound to internalize them and to develop inhibitions in their path to writing. As we shall see below, both these inhibitions and the efforts to overcome them were central to the writing experiences of those of the students of the traditional education system who embarked on the journey to enlightenment.

CHAPTER 6

The Written Torah and the Oral Torah: Class, Gender, and the Cultural Images of the Corpora

With my own ears I heard the prodigies of the yeshiva, those who think that the whole world was created only for them, saying: “If only we were printers, then we would skip over the legends, and we would not print them at all, for what benefit do they bring? Legends were only made for the simple ba’alei batim [householders] […] but not for us. Micha Yosef Berdichevsky, “Olam Ha’Atsilut” (“The World of Emanation”)1

The Hierarchy of Corpora and Its Relation to Class and Gender Stratification The principle of the primacy of speech over writing operated as a deep cultural code, which both reflected and determined the relative superiority of the Oral Torah (i.e., the Oral Law) over the Written Torah in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society. And yet this principle influenced not only the hierarchy of corpora in this society, but also a variety of other social and cultural hierarchies that were related to these corpora. It shaped not only the relationship between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, but also the relative status of central cultural spheres, 1 Berdichevsky (1984, 13).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. Parush, The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature, New Directions in Book History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81819-7_6

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of the educational institutions and practices typical of these spheres, and of the social groups that populated them. In other words, the preference for speech and for the Oral Torah also lay behind the unequal distribution of cultural capital among social classes and genders in traditional Jewish society, and thus supported the reproduction of social stratification in this society. One of the sites where the hierarchy of corpora and social stratification mutually reflected one another was the “learners’ societies,” which were voluntary study groups of men who met regularly and learned together in the beit midrash (house of study). The hierarchical structuring of both corpora and social groups is clearly visible in the descriptions of learners’ societies in the memoirs of the time, such as that of H . ayim Tchernowitz (Sebesh/Sebezh, Vitebsk district, R.E., 1870–1949): The houses of prayer of the Mitnagdim were called “batei midrash” […] where men would study all day long, and also at night. Each one of the householders belonged to a particular society of learners. There were a Talmud society, a Mishnah society, an Ein Ya’akov [a compendium of legends excerpted from the Talmud] society, a Bible society, a Psalm society. […] The Mishnah society was a level below the Talmud society. Knowledge of “a chapter of Mishnayot” served as the touchstone for the level of a medium householder, whether he understood the content of the matter or not. […] Beneath the Mishnah society stood the Ein Ya’akov society, and below it was the Bible society, or the “verse” society, where they would read the Pentateuch with Rashi and a “verse” from the Prophets. Once when I was still a boy it happened that their rabbi got sick and the members of the society invited me to teach them the Prophets and Writings with the commentary of the MaLBYM [Meir Leibush ben Yeh.iel Michel Wisser] […] until word got to my grandfather and he prevented me from doing this, due to “bitul Torah” [neglect of the Torah]. […] The membership in the aforementioned study groups measured the prestige of the householders. […] The wealthy men and the heads of the community belonged to the Talmud society. […] The members of the Psalms society […] were from among the masses and the ignorant, who could not understand the meaning of the words and recited Psalms with gusto. All of these were the customs of the Mitnagdim […]. Among the Hasidim there was a different standard, […] piety, devotion, and close connection with the rebbe, and study of collected teachings and tales of tzaddikim. Some of the Hasidim were total ignoramuses, but nevertheless they studied Likutei Torah [by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi] without understanding a word. (Tchernowitz 1954, 6–7)

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Four matters in this account deserve special attention: first, the place of the Talmud, i.e., the Oral Torah, at the top of the hierarchy of corpora, and the place of the Bible, i.e., the Written Torah, at its bottom; second, the view that study of the Bible and its commentators is equal to “neglect of the Torah”; third, the attribution of religious significance to ritual reading and to the recitation of the studied text even when the readers do not understand a word of what is read; and, fourth, the correlation between a person’s social status and that of the text he is studying. On the face of it, Tchernowitz describes how the unequal distribution of knowledge served as a mechanism that produced and maintained class stratification. Wealthy men who could afford a good education obtained literacy skills that provided them access to the most prestigious knowledge, that of the Talmud, whereas the poor were trained only to read Psalms, without comprehending what they were reading. And yet in fact, Tchernowitz describes this system as a system in decline. According to his portrayal, membership in a learners’ society was a mark of social class that lacked solid connection with true study, knowledge, or literacy skills. Indeed, with respect to the distribution of cultural capital within the male society, the correlation between the hierarchy of texts and the hierarchy of social classes preserved its symbolic meaning, although it had long since lost its actual content. However, as far as the allocation of cultural capital between the genders was concerned, both aspects of the hierarchy, the symbolic and the actual, were meticulously maintained. The prestigious corpus—that of the Oral Torah, the Logos, and the Law— was an exclusively male corpus. Engagement with it was called “study,” and women were strictly denied access to it. In contrast, the Written Torah was identified with imagination and myth, engagement with it was called “reading,” and perusal of the Bible was not completely denied to women. This approach to women’s reading is also reflected in the interpretation that Maimonides and his followers offered to Rabbi Eliezer Ben Hurcanus’s saying, “whoever teaches Torah to his daughter, it is as if he were teaching her tiflut [vain things]” (Sotah 21b), according to which “these words refer to the Oral Torah, but he should not teach her the Written Torah from the outset, and if she did learn [the Written Torah], it is not as if he were teaching her tiflut.”2 Indeed, women’s exposure to the Written Torah was also subject to rather severe restrictions, and 2 Maimonides, Mishne Torah, Sefer HaMada, Hilkhot Talmud Torah, Ch. 1, Hal. 13. Rabbi Asher Ben Ya’akov held an opposite opinion (see Tur Yore De’a, sign 346), but

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their access to the narrative parts of the Bible was limited to their Yiddish translations, i.e., the Taitsh H . umash, and to the legends and Midrashim (interpretations of the Bible) in Tsena UR’ena (a Yiddish compendium of rabbinic commentaries on the Pentateuch, primarily addressed to women). Hence, the indirect, mediated version of the Written Torah, which was conveyed from mother to child, bore the stamp of double inferiority: that of imagination and myth and that of Yiddish—the language of women, of the kitchen, and of the market.

The Bible and Aggadah: The Maternal Heritage The memoir literature of the period is replete with testimonies on the limited teaching of the Bible and on what appears to be a lack of respect for it in the traditional educational system. These testimonies, most of which are Maskilic and highly critical, are interesting not only because they shed light on the neglected status of the Biblical text, a matter that is not in dispute, but also, and perhaps mainly, because they present the female sphere as a place where this lack is redressed. Along with descriptions of the deficient teaching the Bible in the heder, which we shall discuss shortly, we usually find emotional recounts of the first encounter with the Bible as a tempestuous discovery that took place by virtue of women, through their mediation, and under their aegis. Thus, for example, in the autobiography of David Yeshayahu Zilberbush (Zalishchyky/Zolishtchik, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1854–1936), a rather characteristic account is given of the way in which the Bible was taught in the Hasidic environment where he grew up. According to this account, teaching of the Bible was characterized by skips and by scant attention to the comprehension of the text, and was relegated to the twilight hours on Thursday afternoon: The Galician melamdim [heder teachers] would acquit themselves of the duty to teach Bible by devoting to it a few hours on Thursday afternoon, […] and even then they would translate the weekly Torah portion cursorily, translating the verses as they came. (Zilberbush 1936, 12) None of Galician melamdim would teach their pupils “verse,” that is, the books of Prophets and Writings. […] Teaching NaKH [Prophets and

even according to Rabbi H . ayim Yosef David Azulai (H . YDA) in his Yosef Omets (1961), the expression “teaches tiflut” refers to the Oral Law and not to the Written Torah.

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Writings] was a matter for those with stupid brains, but not for sharp lads who were going to be learned in the Torah. And if that was the case in the heder, in the Hasidic kloiz [Yiddish, house of study] it was all the more so. (Zilberbush 1936, 14)

Similar and equally characteristic is the testimony of Zvi Kasdai (Dubova/Dubovo, Kiev G., R.E., 1865–1937), who describes the method of teaching the Bible as one that led to ignorance of scripture even among the scholarly: According to the “method” of study that prevailed in our quarters at that time, […] [the boy] was prevented from studying “higayon” [lit. reason], that is, from knowledge of Biblical verse as it is written. And I remember: one scholar […] encountered a verse in a Talmudic discussion, […] and did not know how to read these strange words, which are not punctuated in the Gemara, and of course he did not know their meaning, and was afraid to look in the Bible, worrying that people would gossip about him that he is plunging himself into Biblical matters. (Kasdai 1926, 219)

When Shalom Ya’akov Abramovich (Mendele Mokher Sfarim, Kapyl/Kapoli, Minsk G., R.E., 1836–1917) describes the attitude toward the Bible and its instruction in the scholarly Mitnagdic society where he grew up, he does not hesitate to use strong language and declare that fathers prevented their sons from reading the Bible “for fear of heresy” (Abramovich 1956, 267). In his autobiographical novel BaYamim HaHem (In Those Days ) he writes about yeshiva students: Not a single one of them knows the Bible, not only the Bible in general, but even the Five Books of Moses none of them reads. […] If there is no Written Bible, the lower story, the Oral Torah, the upper story, where does it come from? And several bad things result from this—forced explanations, senseless reasoning, hasty and confused misinterpretations, which ultimately lead to deviation from the words of the Torah. (Abramovich 1956, 303)

Buki Ben Yogli (the pen name of Yehuda Leib Katzenelson, Chernihiv/Chernigov, R.E., 1846–1917) also writes in his autobiography that “in the past, the rabbis who sustained the Torah did not even know how to translate a single verse properly” (Buki Ben Yogli 1947, 57). In these and similar accounts of the teaching methods and curriculum in

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the heder, Abramovich, Zilberbush, Kasdai, and many others protested against the insult to the Bible and tried to redeem its honor, demonstrating its low status in the canon and its relegation to the margins of the religious-cultural sphere of their day. They pointed out the superficiality of its teaching and the limited comprehension of its language. These accounts, which presented the views of traditional society through the prism of the critical Maskilic worldview, reveal the tension between two aspects of the attitude toward the Bible that are apparently contradictory: on the one hand, the Bible was presented as a holy, obscure, and difficult Hebrew text, whose teachers and students found hard to study and understand; and on the other hand, its study was perceived as neglect of the Torah and as “a matter for those with stupid brains” (Zilberbush 1936, 14). This double-faced attitude toward the Bible and its complex implications will concern us at length below; in the present context, it is important to note that despite the differences between the Hasidic and the Mitnagdic attitudes toward the Bible, most of the autobiographers report similar treatment of it among the two groups, and all of them, at least in their childhood, tended to accept the values of the system in which they were educated. The impression emerging from the memoirs and autobiographies is that Zilberbush was far from representing only himself when he concluded his remarks on the subject with a confession: “to tell the truth, I myself, at that time, did not regard the Bible as study” (Zilberbush 1936, 14). We should not be surprised that the students in the traditional educational system internalized the normative message that relegated the Bible to the bottom of the curriculum. However, it is interesting, and even surprising, that their notions of the Bible were shaped not only by this internalized message, but also by the messages and images that crystallized around the experience of reading the Bible in the domestic sphere. Many accounts of literacy events related to reading the Bible describe the first encounter with it as an event that took place at home, usually on the Sabbath. Childhood experiences of reading Tsena UR’ena and Taitsh H . umash in the warm lap of the grandmother or mother are presented as a pleasurable compensation for the deprivation caused by the heder. Frequently, these descriptions are accompanied by criticism of the heder, which prevented the pupils from studying the Pentateuch properly. As expressed by Buki Ben Yogli in his memoirs:

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Sabbath days were days of festivity and pleasure for me. After the midday meal my grandmother would put her spectacles on her nose, and would read out lout, with a special chant, the Tsena UR’ena, and I would sit at her feet and listen with infinite joy to every syllable that sprang from her mouth […] Tsena UR’ena truly opened my eyes. […] In the heder I only learned fragmented passages of the Pentateuch, without any attention to the connection between them. From Tsena UR’ena a full and fine picture was revealed to me of the life of our ancient forefathers, a picture spiced with beautiful, marvelous legends, which captivated my heart. (Buki Ben Yogli 1947, 16–17)

Buki Ben Yogli attributes to his grandmother not only the moments of childish enchantment with the world of myth and imagination, but also the revelation of the stories of the Pentateuch in their elaborate entirety. Unlike the fragmented and frustrating study in the heder, the reading of the Pentateuch through the medium of women’s books, i.e., Tsena UR’ena and Taitsh H . umash, presented the Bible stories in accessible language and in the right order, from beginning to end. These literacy events in the company of women created a strong association, bordering on fusion, between the stories of the Pentateuch and the physical and symbolic space of women. Similar experiences of reading the Pentateuch are described in Miriam Sperber’s (Kherson/Cherson, Kherson G., R.E., 1900–1992) account, which highlights the pleasure of reading whole stories in sequence and the feeling of intimate closeness to her mother: We learned the stories of the Pentateuch from our mother of blessed memory. Every Sabbath, after the meal, we would go to mother, who was resting in her bed, and she would read to us the weekly Torah portion with Midrashim from the Taitsh H . umash. Everything came alive in my mother’s reading. The stories of the Patriarchs, the selling of Yosef and his rise to greatness, the enslavement in Egypt, the wandering in the desert. All week long we would wait for the next Sabbath and the stories were preserved in our memories. (Sperber 1981, 52)

In his memoirs, Eliezer Eliyahu Friedman (Kelme/Kelmy, Kovno G., R.E., 1857–1936) describes very similar reading events, but his interpretation of them invites a particularly rich and sophisticated socio-cultural reading. Unlike Sperber, Friedman describes his grandmother’s cultural milieu as an outgrowth of the gender hierarchy in Jewish society, and it

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is in the light of this hierarchy that he interprets the cultural meaning of his reading experiences in her company: My grandmother, this childlike woman, also engaged in Torah. Indeed, she did not study from the original source, the Hebrew language was not taught then to boys, let alone to girls. But she perused all the books of Aggadot [legends] and Midrashim that were translated into spoken Yiddish, and the young woman was outstanding in her great knowledge of the legends of our Sages, which she recited readily, and could compete with great rabbis in her proficiency, for the latter did not pay attention to the legendary part of the Talmud, as was customary. (Friedman 1926, 25)

Quite explicitly, Friedman states here that the gender hierarchy shaped his grandmother’s cultural world and determined its boundaries. Both her reading language, Yiddish, and the corpus she read, i.e., the Bible, legends, and Midrashim, derived from her place as a woman in a patriarchal society and reflected the unequal distribution of cultural capital between men and women. Like most Jewish women, the grandmother was excluded from the language of the canonical texts and was only exposed to their “inferior” parts, which were presented in the women’s mame lushn (lit. mother tongue), Yiddish. For that very reason, she focused on reading legends and Midrashim, which were considered unsuitable for study by men of status. It is this correspondence between the low prestige of the language and the corpus, on the one hand, and the low social status of women, on the other hand, that gave the experience of reading with the grandmother, as described by Friedman, its full significance as a formative and multi-faceted experience. Paradoxically, the marginal space of women opened a window not only onto the world of Talmudic legends, but also onto a distant, sublime world of poetry, beauty, and longing: After the afternoon nap, when my grandfather would go to the beit midrash, my grandmother would read Tsena UR’ena and Menorat HaMa’or [Candlestick of Light, a fourteenth-century collection of legends and moral teachings] with a beautiful melody that attracted the heart. I would sit at her knees, look at her beautiful eyes and absorb into my tender soul the poetry of legends and the nobility of spirit that wafts from these books and stories… When the pleasant Sabbath day would fade away, half-darkness would wrap the room, and my grandmother would take me in her arms, hug me

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to her heart, and softly, very softly, sing a sad song full of longing for an exalted and distant world. […] That melody affected me very powerfully in my early childhood and made a huge impression on me. (Friedman 1926, 35–36)

Friedman, who belonged to a generation that began to recognize the formative influence of early childhood experiences, describes reading with his grandmother as an intimate ceremony that took place every Sabbath and left an indelible mark on him. The small details of this ceremony, its timing and circumstances, carry a rich load of gendered meanings, since while the grandson was held in his grandmother’s arms and taken to her world of stories and legends, which was full of emotion, the grandfather had usually left for the beit midrash, a quintessential male sphere (see also Tchernowitz 1954, 98). In this confrontation between the women’s sphere and the men’s sphere, the narrator’s entry into his grandmother’s poetical world seems like a subversive reversal of the ceremony that was held upon a boy’s first entry to the heder, in which the boy was separated from his mother and carried in his father’s arms directly into the men’s world of Torah and study.3 Similar, and no less charged with emotion, is the first childhood memory of Ah.ad Ha’Am (the pen name of Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, Skvyra/Skver, Kiev G., R.E., 1856–1927), who juxtaposes the experience of going to the heder for the first time and that of reading the Pentateuch with his mother. At the request of H . ayyim Nah.man Bialik (Radivka/Radi, Volhynia G., R.E., 1873–1934) and Yehoshua H . ana Ravnitzky (Odessa, R.E., 1859–1944), Ah.ad Ha’Am tried to reconstruct “the beginning of the awakening of [his] consciousness” and “the scraps of memories from that time,” and wrote: “From that time I only remember when I first went to the heder, […] and I also remember this: my mother would read the portion of the week from the Taitsh H . umash and other ethical works in jargon [Yiddish]. I used to love sitting at her side, and she would read out loud, so that I could hear too” (Ah.ad Ha’Am 1931, 76). This account, which contrasts unwittingly two formative literacy experiences,

3 This is how Shmaryahu Levin (Svislac/Svislevitsh, Grodno G., R.E., 1867–1935) experienced this ceremony: “My father […] wrapped me in a prayer shawl […] and carried me in his arms from our house to the teacher’s house. My mother did not accompany us, since Torah study was given to men alone” (Levin 1961, 53–54). See also HaCohen (1923, 58).

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accords the experience taking place in the female sphere equal value to that occurring in the male literacy sphere.

“The Bible---My Mother, and My Father---The Talmud”: Gender Identity and the Desire for Myth These accounts of enchantment by the legends of the Pentateuch, and the profound impact of this enchantment, confirm the view implied by Rashi’s interpretation of Rabbi Eliezer Ben Hurcanus’s saying “and keep your sons from higayon [lit. reason]” (Bavli, Berakhot 28b). According to this interpretation, the meaning of the saying is “do not give them excessive training in the Bible, as it is seductive,” that is, since it is liable to be read in a childish fashion and understood literally. Indeed, boys’ entry into the realm of the Pentateuch, legends, and Midrashim during their early childhood was experienced as an entry into a world that is wondrous and alluring, and at the same time also inferior and dangerous. The normative superiority of the Oral Torah over the Written Torah, combined with a day-to-day reality in which the influential encounter with the Written Torah took place through the mediation and language of women, colored the sacred corpora with the hues of a gendered hierarchy. As noted, the prestigious corpus of the Oral Torah was taken to be the exclusive province of the father and of men in general, whereas the Written Torah, in the form of Yiddish translations of the narrative parts of the Pentateuch, legends, and Midrashim, was considered the inferior province of the mother. A striking formulation of this worldview is offered by Shmaryahu Levin (Svislac/Svislevitsh, Grodno G., R.E., 1867–1935), who phrases his attitude toward the corpora in unmistakably gendered terms: From my tenth to my fourteenth year, the Talmud, to which I devoted five hours a day, constituted the bulk of my studies. With time the power of the Bible over me gradually decreased, and the Talmud alone influenced my spiritual life. Consequently, my childhood experiences recurred, but in a more mature form. Just as my mother grasped my heart and my father captivated my intellect, the Bible took my heart and my emotions and the Talmud took my brain and intellect. The Bible—my mother, and my father—the Talmud. (Levin 1961, 283)

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Similar ideas are implicit in an insightful passage by Avraham Liessin (Minsk, R.E., 1872–1938), which describes the experience of reading in his mother’s company: At that time […] I was also listening to songs in the mother-tongue [Yiddish]. […] Songs in the Yiddish language were similar to reading the Taitsh H . umash. I yearned to hear my mother chanting the portion of the week from the Taitsh H . umash with ceremony and devotion, as she moved her lovely and delicate fingers across the lines. While this was happening, my father came and found me, as I, a boy studying the Gemara, was standing and listening to the wondrous tales of the women’s book with a glowing face. He made fun of me, and I, with my face red from end to end, slipped away and fled. But soon afterward I sneaked in and clung to the Taitsh H . umash, drinking in the portion thirstily. And this happened regularly, until once my mother was surprised to discover that I knew her Taitsh H . umash page by page. (Liessin 1943, 71–72)

Of special interest in Liessin’s story is the father’s mockery and the son’s shame at having disappointed him. It appears that in the view of both father and son, separation from the mother’s legends was a precondition and a sign of successful completion of the maturation process, whereas the attraction to the mother’s books indicated failure to mature. The identification of the Pentateuch with the female sphere was so powerful that attraction to its stories was experienced as shameful and as a palpable threat to male identity. Indeed, a close reading of Liessin’s text offers the reader fascinating insights into the normative messages implicit in this and similar literacy events, which associate the engagement with different corpora with the construction of gender identity and with appropriate feminine or masculine behavior. Liessin’s father’s mocking look is enough for him to understand that in his father’s eyes and in the eyes of society, to be a man meant to replace the Written Torah with the Oral Torah, the Bible with the Gemara, and legends with Halakhah. This minuscule literacy event encapsulates an entire cultural binary structure, which places masculinity at the pole of reason, logos, and the law, and femininity at the pole of Biblical legends and Midrashim, imagination, myth, emotion, beauty, and poetry.4

4 It should be noted that not every conception of the Written Torah as poetry necessarily implies that it belongs to the female sphere. The NaTSiV, for example, took the

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The cluster of meanings surrounding the feminine pole is the focus of two consecutive chapters in Buki Ben Yogli’s autobiography, Ma SheRa’u Einai VeSham’u Oznai (What My Eyes Saw and My Ears Heard) (1947). These two chapters, entitled “Laughter and Imagination” and “Melitsa [Biblical Verse] and Poetry,” deal with the author’s early experiences of reading women’s books and with his first efforts at writing, and they both point to a clear connection between his attraction to women’s books and language, i.e., Yiddish, and the arousal of his desire to write poetry. In the passage below, Buki Ben Yogli links his first steps in writing poetry with his endorsement of his grandmother’s Tsena UR’ena as a model: At first the language of Tsena UR’ena seemed somewhat strange and wondrous to me: living people would not speak like this. […] And then I gradually got used to that swirling style, […] and later when I started to write poems in the Jewish language [Yiddish], I wrote them in the style of Tsena UR’ena . (Buki Ben Yogli 1947, 17)

The subversive and ironic tone of this account is subtle, but one cannot fail to notice it. The stories of the Pentateuch, which were not studied systematically in the heder, were identified by the child as the exclusive realm of women, and it was this marginal realm of stories, legends, and Midrashim written in the women’s language, i.e., Yiddish, that served as a source of inspiration for him in writing poetry. From the retrospective viewpoint of the adult narrator, who evaluates the impact of his childhood experiences from the height of his age, the Biblical-maternal source of inspiration is without doubt an asset, and yet it still bears the mark of inferiority that clung to poetry and to the act of writing poetry in the mind of the young boy. Not only is his desire for women’s books and for their language perceived as a feminine gesture, it is also grasped, to a degree, as a threat to his masculine identity, as expressed in the reproach he heard from his uncle: “it is improper for a man to read a book in the Jewish language, which is meant for women alone” (Buki ben Yogli 1947, 18). Years later, he comments on this remark: Truth to be told, I must confess that despite my desire to be a man among men, I was unable to completely eschew the women’s language. When I found

Written Torah as poetry, but believed that deciphering its language entailed dangers and required special skills (Berlin 1943, 56–57).

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among my grandmother’s penitential prayers two books with legendary tales in Yiddish, Tsentura Ventura and Bobe Mayse, the evil impulse for fiction was kindled in me, I could not control myself and I swallowed them […] like first fruit before summer. (Buki Ben Yogli 1947, 18)5

In a humorous tone, Buki Ben Yogli thus describes the desire for women’s books as an irrepressible urge that threatens to undermine his masculine identity, and his first efforts to compose poetry are described similarly. Although the vast majority of women did not write poetry, Yiddish poetry was identified with them and with their world,6 and the message the boy received from his social milieu was that writing poetry in Yiddish was a matter for women, not for men: At that period, the desire to wield the writer’s pen also awakened within me for the first time. To this day, I cannot understand how and from where the idea occurred to me to write a poem about the kidnaped [the cantonists, Jewish boys captured and forced into the Tsar’s army] and their horrible tribulations. That poem, my firstborn and the inception of my prowess, was written in the spoken language and in rhymes and was as long as the Jews’ exile. While I was writing it, I cried bitter tears, but when I read it to my aunt, she could not contain her laughter. […] Do you want to be a badh.an [wedding jester], teaching your tongue to speak in rhymes? Or maybe you want to sing songs like the girls do? Phooey, this sort of thing isn’t fitting for boys. (Buki Ben Yogly 1947, 22)7

From Buki Ben Yogli’s anecdotes we learn that the cultural space that saw his initiation as a reader of fiction, an author, and a poet was a space identified with women. The initiation itself was performed and mediated,

5 Tsentura Ventura is a Yiddish translation of some of the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor, and Bovo Buch or Bobe Mayse is a book of medieval tales of the English knight Sir Bevis of Southampton translated into Yiddish. 6 A portrayal of a woman who “pressed her treasures in her heart” and held back “her urge for poetry” appears in Kofman’s (1955, 456) autobiography. 7 Buki Ben Yogli’s conversations with his grandmother, which he describes at length, were a source of inspiration for his poem on the kidnapped (Buki Ben Yogly 1947, 12– 16). Avraham Liessin recounts that his grandmother, mother, and sister exposed him to the poetry of the famous jester-poet Elyakum Zunser and to the works of the playwright Avraham Goldfaden (Liessin 1943, 71). On the social and cultural links between women, jesters, and poetry in Eastern European Jewish society of the nineteenth century, see Parush (2008a).

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for the most part unintentionally, by women, and the engagement in reading and writing Yiddish fiction and poetry bore the stamp of gender inferiority. This was one of the reasons why for the Maskilim, reading and writing were entangled in a bundle of mixed emotions. Unlike the literacy events experienced in the male religious sphere of the heder, the feelings of joy and pleasure arising from reading in the mother’s or grandmother’s company, as well as the satisfaction gained from first efforts at writing literature and poetry, were not free from discomfort and guilt. Indeed, quite a few authors who recount their early childhood experiences report absorbing similar messages and images from their environment. They describe the Pentateuch, the Written Torah, not only as the foundation of their literary-artistic creativity, but also as a women’s sphere that is an object of yearning and desire—a horn of plenty and a source of pleasure that is nevertheless accompanied by shame and, not infrequently, feelings of sin. In his memoirs, Nah.um Meir Shaikewitz (known as SHoMeR, Nyasvizh/Nesvizh, Minsk G., R.E., 1849–1905), who wrote hundreds of Yiddish novels intended for women,8 relates that the year when he did not have a melamed was more productive than any other time in his childhood, for it was then that he learned from his mother that “the Bible contains very beautiful stories,” and it was then that he started “reading the Bible translated into the language of the people” (Shaikewitz 1952, 33). He recounts that his mother was an avid reader and that the books on her shelf, especially Bobe Mayse and Arabian Nights in Yiddish, were a source of inspiration for him and taught him how to tell stories. He describes the moment when he discovered his ability to make up stories as a moment of elation and pride, which was shared by his mother. But immediately afterward, he adds, the pride became a reprimand. His mother recovered her wits and restored proper order by declaring that he should recite the melamed’s teachings and become a great Torah scholar rather than teach his tongue to tell stories. In retrospect, Shaikewitz believes his conservative parents did him wrong when they tried to thwart his destiny: “Had my parents been enlightened and

8 The artistic value of SHoMeR’s works is in dispute, but there is no doubt about his substantial influence. This is demonstrated by the campaign waged against him by critics and writers following the lead of Shalom Aleikhem, who published an essay in which SHoMeR’s literature was put on trial (Shalom Aleikhem 1996).

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wise people,” he comments bitterly, “they would have treated me differently” (Shaikewitz 1952, 20–22). And yet even as he speaks of reading in Yiddish as a formative experience without which he would not have become a writer, he continues to present the reading of women’s books and the writing of stories as acts that are unsuitable for men.9 The drawing of poetical vitality from sources that are low in cultural prestige or that suffer from gender or class stigmatization is not limited to the margins of the literary field or to the authors of “women’s romances.” According to Dov Sadan, this was also the case with the Yiddish poet Itzik Manger (Chernivtsi/Tschernovitz, Bukovina, Austrian Empire, 1901– 1969), for example. Sadan shows that Manger’s works H . umash Lider and Megila Lider draw their themes and materials not directly from the Bible, but rather from the Taitsh H . umash, “so that we can see how the Pentateuch and the Book of Esther looked through the lens of the mother, whose entire knowledge was acquired from Tsena UR’ena, or through that of the layman, whose knowledge was acquired similarly” (Sadan 1968, 11).

The Cultural and Psychological Ambivalence of the Desire for the Maternal Heritage Berdichevsky’s story “SheBiKhtav VeSheBe’Al-Pe” (“The Written and the Oral”) (1900a) offers a literary portrayal of the vital inspiration drawn 10 from the Taitsh H . umash and from the female sphere that surrounded it. The story consists of two rather different parts. The first part, written in the first person, recounts the painful and ironic childhood experiences of a young boy who accompanies his sick mother in the final days of her life, and is drawn to her Bible stories as if under a spell.11 The second part, in which the retrospective viewpoint of the narrator is combined with that 9 On the injury that writing in Yiddish to female audiences could cause to authors’ masculine identity, see also Parush (2004a, 142–152). 10 The story first appeared in Zikhronot, under the pseudonym Yosi Ze’ira (Berdichevsky 1892, 552–556) and was later included in a collection of Berdichevsky’s stories entitled Me’Iri HaKtana (Berdichevsky 1900b, 85–88). Yet other versions were published in 1965 and 1991 (Berdichevsky 1965, 3–4, iii–iv; 1991, 84–88). The discussion below is based on the 1900 version. On Berdichevsky’s collected stories published in 1900, see Holtzman (1991). 11 Shmuel Werses contends that Berdichevsky’s early stories should not be regarded as “a straightforward autobiography,” but, nevertheless, he believes that the early loss of

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of the observant child, is a fanciful satire about a sect of Hasidim who, due to their envy of a rival sect, decide to bring the Slavita edition of the Talmud into the synagogue on Simh.at Torah instead of a new Torah scroll, which they cannot afford. Common to both parts of the story is the challenge to the distinction and hierarchy between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. However, whereas the child’s questioning of the distinction is treated sympathetically and described as an expression of innocence that encapsulates deep insight, the actions of the Hasidic sect are mocked as pathetic. Reading each part of the story in light of the other advances the understanding of both and intensifies their ironic dimensions. And yet for our purposes, the interest in the story lies primarily with the memories of the child charmed by the legends told by his mother. Between a father “as yielding as a slender stalk” and a strict and stiff mother, the narrator chooses closeness to his mother because of her stories (Berdichevsky 1900a, 84–85). When he is five and his mother falls ill, “and her stories [become] fewer and fewer,” the two switch roles, and the boy begins to read Bible stories to his mother. And the more his mother drifts away from him, the more her books take over his life: I found a broad meadow in the story collections for the women of Israel [and] I would pore over them day and night. And when my mother scolded me for spoiling my eyes with reading, I would sneak into the kitchen and read in the corner, because in those books was all my spirit’s life—I was given over to that desire head over heels. (Berdichevsky 1900a, 84–85)

The description of the experience of reading in the mother’s sphere is based on the dichotomy between study and reading, between the heder as a male public space intended for study, and the “cooking room” as an intimate female space, where it is possible to read in hiding. The child narrator derives true pleasure from reading in that space, where he is not observing the commandment “thou shalt meditate therein day and night” (Joshua 1:8), but rather pores “day and night” over “collections of stories for the women of Israel” written in Yiddish. When he reaches the age of seven and the gates of the Talmud are opened before him, his father asks

the mother and the portrayal of the relationship with her are probably autobiographical (Werses 1995, 113–123).

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his teacher “to teach him strictly” and distract him from the “tales” that cause him to neglect his studies, but in vain: Since I loved the stories, my teacher could not rid me of them, and from the entire lesson that he taught me, […] only the Mishnah, that is, the tale of the events, remained in my heart. […] “Two men are riding on a donkey”—isn’t that a marvelous story? The Mishnah captivated my heart, and from the first minutes my brain absorbed it, but when I descended into the sea of Talmud, I became too weary to understand, and I got confused, and so I turned to my teacher and asked: “Rabbi! Don’t we know the story of the event as it happened from the Mishnah already? So why do we need the Gemara? And even more, […] the Mishnah recounts that two men are riding on a donkey, so why is it silent and does not tell us who the riders are? Reuven and Shimon or Menashe and Efrayim? (Berdichevsky 1900a, 85)

The attraction to the mother’s stories, the interest in the people whose story is told, and the preference for tales over Halakhic discussion make the boy the laughing stock of his teacher, and he shames him in public: – Stupid! I know that you only like tales! I know! – […] – Stupid! You think that everything is like the H . umash [Pentateuch], but the H umash is a thing for itself and the Gemara is a thing for . itself. – Isn’t the Gemara Torah? – Stupid! It is also Torah, it too was given to Moses at Sinai, but the H . umash is Written Torah and the Gemara—Oral Torah. – And why did the Holy One divide them instead of giving them both at once? This question, which I asked innocently, infuriated my teacher, who […] did not understand the nature of these questions. He scolded me: “Stop asking! […] You’re still a boy, and when you get older you’ll know and understand everything, but now direct your eyes to the Gemara.” (Berdichevsky 1900a, 84–86)

The narrator concludes: “With these words my teacher rejected me, but that question pecked at my heart for many days” (Berdichevsky 1900a, 80). With childish innocence, combining seeming ignorance with subversive insight, the protagonist of the story challenges the dichotomy between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, and seeks to dismantle it,

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or alternatively to turn its hierarchy upside down. Inspired by his mother’s stories, he gives priority to the “tale of events,” hinting that it is from this kernel that the mature artist, who wrote this story, evolved. Like the memoirs of Buki Ben Yogli, Liessin, and others, Berdichevsky’s story presents the childish identification of the Written Torah with the mother’s books and their world of imagination as the foundation for the emergence of the writer-to-be, and, like them, it shows that this identification was laden with psychological and cultural ambivalences. In the first part of the story, it appears that the narrator treats the mother’s marginal sphere with respect and highlights its advantages. He mocks those who disregarded this sphere, and refuses to accept the hierarchical dichotomy between the Oral Torah and the Written Torah. The child protagonist is humiliated, but the sympathy of the narrator who would later become a writer is given to him and to his desires. In the second part of the story, by contrast, the erasure of the distinction between the corpora, too, proves to be ridiculous. In fact, the narrator once again confirms the distinction between the corpora, the feelings of guilt that accompanied the prioritization of writing, and the incessant need to compensate for literary writing by acts of repentance. Indeed, the first, formative encounter of many boys with poetical literary expression took place in the female sphere and aroused mixed feelings. On the one hand, this encounter was an intense and highly significant experience that was often described as the seedbed for the growth of the artist-writer; on the other hand, it placed the act of artistic writing in threatening proximity to a seemingly inferior “female” source. As noted, the marginal “female” domains where the desire to write emerged charged writing with feelings of sin, guilt, and shame. However, these feelings stemmed not only from the psychological impression of gender confusion, but also from the blunt break with well-established conventions in traditional society, which worked to restrict the legitimate uses of writing. The marginal “female” domains gave rise to an urge to break through the boundaries of the accepted uses of writing, and to legitimize and even prioritize a new kind of writing: writing that does not hesitate to place the writer’s “self” at the center and to give it emotional and intellectual expression; writing that declares its adherence to aesthetic values; writing that soars into the realm of imagination to give pleasure to its readers. In these respects and others, which will be discussed below, the aegis of women gave impetus to revolutionary and subversive uses of

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writing, uses that the creators of modern Hebrew literature upheld while also being tormented by their “sinfulness.” Another example of the profound significance of these processes can be found in the writings of the influential author and critic David Frishman (Zgierz, Lodz, Poland/R.E., 1859–1922), and especially in the role he ascribed to childhood experiences and to women’s traditions in his views of Judaism, of national revival, and of the Jewish literature of his time. Frishman cast doubt on the very possibility of a Jewish art worthy of its name, and seized upon the influence of “the mother’s song” as a source of hope and sometimes as the sole guarantee for the emergence of Jewish art of any value. In light of the once-famous slogan that he coined, “work of art—the revival of the nation,” it may be said that Frishman regarded the mother’s song as an important and perhaps even necessary condition for the creation of Jewish art, including modern Jewish literature, and consequently for the success of Jewish national revival (Frishman 1914, vol. 11, 70–75, 80; Parush 1992, 33–34, 108–110). Frishman’s position was based on a long series of assumptions, beliefs, and opinions about nationality, the essence of Judaism, and the nature of the Hebrew language. With regard to our present concerns, however, suffice it to say that Frishman believed that the Jewish nation was sick. In his view, the long tradition of Talmudic scholarship had distorted its soul, “its emotions were killed and terminated, and its heart’s feelings for anything delicate and soft were stifled and put to death” (Frishman 1914, vol. 4, 50). The hyper-rational method of study and the logic-chopping of Talmudic discourse had left the Jew like “a mummified body […] who would hear songs and not comprehend, would see anything beautiful and not notice” (Frishman 1914, vol. 4, 51). As a result, Jewish society had lost the ability to produce great writers and masterpieces. Frishman was not the only one who believed the Jewish people to be sick, just as he was not the only one who believed that the national revival movement must cure this illness. But, unlike many of the poets of his time, he rejected Zionism and did not believe that possession of a piece of land in Erets Yisra’el (the land of Israel) could cure the nation (Parush 1992, 22–25). Rather, he believed national revival would be a result of the revival of feeling, imagination, and the desire for beauty, and that only art and literature could bring the Jewish spiritual prowess back to life (Parush 1992, 33–36, 108, 138, 144). Hence, the revival of the nation should begin with a literary renaissance (Frishman 1914, vol. 4, 111–112). Without emotional renewal followed by an outburst of creativity, not only is there

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no hope for the survival of the Jewish people, but there is also no point in their continued existence. “If we are late now,” he wrote, “there will never be any hope” (quoted in Parush 1992, 34–43). Fear that Jewish emotional disability would prove to be an irreparable flaw spurred Frishman to search the reservoir of the nation’s ancient culture for traces of feelings, good taste, and creative impulse that could facilitate the revival of the emotions that had perished. Frishman found signs of such emotions in the Jewish Aggadah literature, namely, the rabbinic legends that complemented the Halakhah and in some ways contrasted with it, which he viewed as the source and foundation for the renewed national creativity. This literature recovered his faith in the existence of remnants of emotion in the Jewish soul, and fortified his belief that Jews could once again become “a feeling nation” (Parush 1992, 107– 108). It is hard to exaggerate the importance that Frishman attributed to the chain of transmission that preserved the spirit of Jewish Aggadah literature and passed it on from generation to generation. Furthermore, his opinions become all the more interesting if we consider that this chain of transmission was in fact made up of women. Old grandmothers who sat with their grandchildren at the stove and young mothers who leaned over their babies’ cradles were the ones who nourished the imagination and emotional life of their children, and who cured their souls with stories and songs: “In the soft hearts of the sons only the merciful hands of women offered inspiration. On the soft sheets of the cradle lies the child and his ear hears pleasant singing, whose divine voices he will never forget, and these pleasant voices are engraved upon his heart forever” (Frishman 1914, vol. 1, 10).12 Frishman believed that these powerful childhood experiences, in which mothers introduced their sons into the realms of poetry and imagination through their singing and storytelling in Yiddish, were the emotional source from which the renewed Hebrew literature could draw its vitality. Frishman’s views regarding the crippled “Jewish soul” and the nature of the Jewish national revival might seem puzzling, both due to the portrayal of Jews as lacking emotion and due to the exaggerated emphasis

12 See also the first part of Frishman’s poem “Aggadot” (Frishman 1914, vol. 5, 101– 107); and Parush (1992, 109–110).

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on the role of aesthetic taste in the Jewish national renaissance.13 Yet even if his views are unconvincing, even if they stem from a sense of inferiority in relation to European culture, and even if they diverge considerably from other trends in the Jewish national movement of that time, both Zionist and non-Zionist, they are not devoid of important cultural insights: first, from an ideational perspective, there is much interest in illuminating the place of the aesthetic as a category in both Maskilic and nationalist Jewish thought; and, second, from a social and historical perspective, there is much value in Frishman’s unusual observations regarding the day-to-day practices that contributed, despite their marginality, to the creation and transmission of Jewish culture. His interpretation of these practices highlights their meanings in terms of gender and cultural values, and suggests, provocatively, that it was this secondary, “female” part of traditional culture that became a major and legitimate source of inspiration for the renewed Hebrew culture. In this respect, Frishman’s view is grounded in a historical reality that is well-documented in the memoirs and autobiographies of the period. As we have seen, quite a few childhood memoirs indicate that boys’ first encounters with literature and poetry in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society took place under the aegis of women and in their language, i.e., Yiddish. These unwitting descriptions of half-forgotten childhood experiences show that the women’s stories enchanted the boys and that spending time with them was a formative experience: mothers and grandmothers who read legends in the company of their children and grandchildren opened a window for them onto worlds of imagination and formed them as readers and writers of literature.14 At a psychological level, however, the attitude toward these experiences was ultimately ambivalent, as the women’s sphere projected its inferiority on the reading and writing of fiction. On the ideological-cultural level, too, Frishman’s insights hint at the paradoxical, multifarious meanings of the shift from prioritizing the Oral 13 In this context, there is interest in Frishman’s ignoring of the Hasidic story and of the significance of emotional expression in the world of Hasidism. On Frishman’s criticism of the Hasidic stories of Y. L. Peretz, see Parush (1992, 167–169). 14 For example, Agnon writes in an autobiographical work: “When Hemdat was a baby . lying in the cradle, she [his mother] would sweeten his sleep with songs and legends, and when he grew up, he took from what his mother sang to him and told him and made poems, like the tale of a woman magician who would milk the moon’s milk and nurse her orphaned grandchildren on it” (Agnon 1976, 12).

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Torah to prioritizing the Written Torah, which characterized the renewed Jewish culture. On the one hand, this culture accorded an honorable place to women’s cultural sphere: it turned this less prestigious part of traditional culture into the cornerstone of modern Hebrew literature, which was to be built on the foundations of the Bible and of the Aggadah. On the other hand, both the Maskilic and the national projects were generally thought of as exclusively male projects, despite their debt to the “maternal heritage.” Furthermore, the limiting of women to the Yiddish translations of the Written Torah, excluding them from the men’s Holy Tongue, namely Hebrew, was preserved in the Enlightenment and National Revival projects, reproducing the inferiority of women. This double inferiority—of women and of Yiddish as their language— did not go unnoticed by Frishman, and it, too, found intensified expression in his views. Despite the huge psychological significance he attributed to the mother’s song in her language, he denied the ability of women to use the Hebrew language for artistic creation of any value, and for various reasons—including, most likely, fear of damage to the masculine image of the new Hebrew literature and its authors—he even considered their exclusion from the linguistic and literary arena as a condition for the literary and national revival. Notwithstanding his universalistic views and his anti-Zionist position, he maintained that only the Hebrew language was suitable for great Jewish artistic creation. Since he regarded Hebrew as a man’s language, which women were incapable of using creatively, he concluded that to increase the chances of revival, Jewish society should maintain the diglossic situation, guard the Hebrew language and its literature zealously, and in certain cases also exclude women from their territory (Parush 2004a, 227–240). The inferior status that the Yiddish language and the maternal heritage conferred upon the activities of writing and reading poetry and fiction was not easily erased. Liberation from this inferior image was made possible primarily by the transition to the Hebrew language, which was, as noted above, an exclusively male language. This exalted language confirmed the masculinity of those who wrote in it and determined the gender identity of its readers. A fascinating example of this phenomenon is offered by Avraham Liessin (1943), who wrote his memoirs in Yiddish, while describing his early experience of reading Hebrew poetry. Liessin recounts that his enthusiasm for the Hebrew poetry of ADaM HaCohen and his son MiCHaL overshadowed his unmediated attraction to the Yiddish songs sung by his grandmother, his mother, and his sister, and even to

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the Yiddish songs of the wedding jester, the famous poet Elyakum Zunser (Liessin 1943, 71). The readers and writers of Hebrew literature in the nineteenth century—nearly all of them men—made their mark on this literature and molded its masculine, highbrow, and serious image. Nevertheless, this literature rested on a foundation of early childhood experiences that were identified, in line with prevailing gender stereotypes, with women’s emotion and imagination. In the years to come, this “maternal heritage” would continue to inject subversive energy and to nourish both those who “sinned by writing” and their reading audiences.

CHAPTER 7

Intentional Ignorance of the Hebrew Language

The study of language had always stood at the forefront of every Jewish movement of revitalization and cultural renewal. It served as bridesmaid as each new spiritual period began, accompanying it along up to its full ascendancy. Reuven Fahn, Kitvei Reuven Fahn (Collected Writings of Reuven Fahn)1 Grammar is the direct path to heresy. Avraham S. Melamed, H . ayim Kmo SheHem (Life as It Is )2

This chapter was published as an article in the journal Alpayim under the title “Mabat Ah.er Al H . ayei HaIvrit HaMeta” (“Another Look at ‘the Life of “Dead” Hebrew’”) (1996), and its English translation, by Saadya Sternberg, was published in the journal Book History (Parush 2004b). It has been revised for inclusion in this monograph. 1 Fahn (1937, 31). 2 Melamed (1922, 59).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. Parush, The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature, New Directions in Book History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81819-7_7

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In fact, there is a profanation of language in this grammar! Shmaryahu Levin, Yalduti (My Childhood)3

Writing and reading in Hebrew, whether for the purpose of eliminating the gender inferiority attached to some of the corpora or for the purpose of rehabilitating the prestige of writing and reading, was no trivial matter. Indeed, Hebrew had a male image, yet not only women were excluded from it but so too were the majority of men, and knowledge of Hebrew among the men was far from self-evident. The methods of instruction that contributed to the preservation of Hebrew over the generations also turned it into a half-dead language, which was the preserve of only a small elite. To understand the psychological, social, and ideological difficulties standing in the way of those who turned to Hebrew writing, and to appreciate the revolutionary implications of this choice, we must closely examine the attitude of the traditional education system to the teaching of Hebrew and its grammar. Such an examination of the literacy policy in this system reveals quite a few similarities between its treatment of writing and its treatment of the Hebrew language. Just as the study of writing was considered a secular engagement and therefore inappropriate for the heder, so, too, the study of the Hebrew language and its grammar was seen as secular and therefore beyond the purview of the heder. Furthermore, just as writing was considered a simple technical skill of limited importance, which is not worthy of consuming the precious time intended for studying Torah, so, too, the Hebrew language and its grammar were presented as unnecessary bodies of knowledge that are not vital for a full Jewish religious life. In both instances, there was a huge gap between the prevalent dismissal of these skills and bodies of knowledge as unimportant, and the considerable apprehension with regard to them. Similarly, there was a gap between the explicit explanations for not teaching these skills and bodies of knowledge and the deep reasons for this avoidance, which were quite different. As I will argue in the following pages, in both 3 Levin (1961, 224).

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cases this avoidance served as a mechanism that worked to maintain the authority of the rabbinic leadership and to preserve the traditional social order and its values. This chapter seeks to clarify the literacy policy that guided the traditional education system in its attitude toward Hebrew, and to examine the meanings and consequences of this policy. I show that traditional Jewish society in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe intentionally avoided systematic teaching of Hebrew and its grammar, and that this neglect was not coincidental, nor was it a symptom of a degenerating education system.4 In many respects, the opposite was the case. The literacy policy practiced in the traditional education system reflected the utmost importance that the rabbinic leadership attributed to control over language and knowledge as a means of regulating the beliefs, opinions, and customs of the public. In fact, the type of literacy provided by the traditional education system was meant to create intentional ignorance (Funkenstein and Steinsaltz 1987) of the Hebrew language, with the aim of controlling knowledge and determining, among other things, who would write and read and what they would write and read. In this manner, the rabbinic leadership sought to prevent the spread of undesirable ideas in Jewish society, to maintain its own authority, and to secure the reproduction of the existing social order.5 To support this argument, I will highlight the connections between the treatment of Hebrew in traditional Jewish society and the status and authority of the rabbinic leadership, which regarded itself as responsible for the preservation of the Halakhah. Since knowledge of Hebrew, which was not a spoken language, was completely dependent upon systematic learning of grammar and of the Bible, the analysis will pay particular attention to the status of Hebrew grammar and

4 As noted above, by applying this policy, traditional Jewish society in Eastern Europe continued a longstanding educational practice that first developed in the communities of France and Germany, and that was substantially different from the educational practice that developed in Spain and Italy (Assaf 1948–1954, vol. 1, 246; see Chapter 3). 5 The theoretical grounding of this thesis is provided by the work of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and especially by Bourdieu’s claims regarding the “symbolic violence” that social elites exert by means of the education system, which serves their interests by reproducing the social order (Bourdieu and Passeron 1997, 3–31). One of the forms of this symbolic violence is the unequal distribution of linguistic assets among social classes, which excludes entire populations from the circle of readers and writers (Bourdieu 1991, 43–116, 137– 170).

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Bible studies in the heder.6 For reasons that are explained below, traditional Jewish society in Eastern Europe approached the study of grammar and of the Bible with reservation and even hostility. This attitude had major implications, in turn, for the emergent modern Hebrew literature. Among other things, it affected the size and the character of this literature’s reservoirs of writers and readers, and it shaped the social and cultural meanings of writing Hebrew literature and reading it.

“This Is Grammar, and We Do Not Study Grammar”7 The opening chapter of Zikhronot MiYmei Ne’urai (Memories of My Youth), an autobiography by Avraham Baer Gottlober (Starokonstantinov, Volhynia G., R.E., 1811–1899), has three parts8 : the first presents a portrait of his father; the second, in the style of the Haskalah autobiography, deals with the education of the author; and the third describes his induction into married life. Thus, this first chapter is highly compressed, emphasizing the author’s key childhood experiences up to his adulthood and marriage. Given this compression, the episode of the author’s introduction to grammar is described in surprising detail, dominating the account of his education. Gottlober portrays his studies in the heder as a short and traumatic experience, which ended when, after vigorous beatings from the belfer (assistant teacher in the heder), he fell sick, and his alarmed father hired a private tutor to instruct him at home. The tutor, says Gottlober, taught him in his own way, “and his way was all dark and devious, for he knew not even the grammar of the letters and the vowels and other punctuation

6 In response to a question addressed to him, Rabbi Ya’akov Emden argued that since Hebrew is not a spoken language, its grammar cannot be studied without relying on verses from the Bible as examples and without reciting such verses (Emden 2004, vol. 1, sign 10). Joseph Klausner also stated, in his writings on the phenomenon of ignorance of Hebrew among the Hebrew authors of his day, that “our language is not spoken, and we acquire full knowledge of it from study of the Bible” (Klausner 1896, 89b). 7 Deinard (1920, vol. 1, 33). 8 The chapter was first published as a serial in the journal HaBoker Or, which Gottlober

edited (Gottlober 1880).

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marks” (Gottlober 1976, vol. 1, 69). These deficiencies were compensated for by Gottlober’s much-admired father, who would study with his son every night. Of all his hours in the company of his father, Gottlober selects one episode for special mention: In those days I was studying [Talmud] Tractate Ketubot with my father of blessed memory, and upon reaching the end of Chapter Six (folio 69b) my father skipped over the commentary of Rashi and sought to conceal it from me. And when I inquired what fault was to be found with these words of Rashi, why he would not read them aloud as was his manner, my father responded by saying: Know, son, that we have no share and portion in these words of Rashi, and it will be futile to seek to understand them, for these statements concern grammar, which is not for us to know. (Gottlober 1976, vol. 1, 73–74)9

The father’s desire to skip the Rashi commentary and conceal it from his son is experienced by Gottlober almost as though he is being steered away from a taboo subject. There is no wonder, therefore, that he grows increasingly drawn to a taste of the forbidden fruit: This occasion was the first time I had heard the word grammar. And I was dumbfounded at what my ears heard, not knowing the meaning of the word, and the impression arose within me, that surely this single word embraces a vast and wide-reaching subject, of which my soul longed to know, and hastily I asked my father and beseeched him to explain the meaning of this word and its significance. Yet in vain, my father could not explain it. He replied: “I know not son!” and his face grew pale. And upon seeing how frightened I was from his manner of response, he said in apology: Know, son, that the wisdom of grammar is large and wide, and it is hard for a man to master it by himself from books without a guide, and moreover books of grammar are not to be found in all places as are books of the Talmud and the rabbinic verdicts and books of the devout, and in 9 In a footnote to this passage, which appears only in the first version of the chapter from 1880, Gottlober explains the relevant statements by Rashi with regard to grammar and concludes: “And this is the meaning of Rashi and the Tosafot in my opinion, as I came to understand them later, once I had studied the wisdom of grammar and recalled that this very passage in the Talmud and the commentary upon it by Rashi and Tosafot had been the original cause that aroused my heart to know our language thoroughly. That tiny cause has been the source of all my ways and all my life’s effort” (Gottlober 1880: 1111).

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the towns where I have dwelt in since my youth I was never able to find books of grammar, or perhaps they existed in some of these places yet I never inquired about them nor sought to obtain them, for a man cannot learn all the forms of wisdom, and it sufficed me to study the books which every man in Israel is obligated to learn, and I had not time enough to peer into books unessential for the worship of the Lord or for the perfection of my soul. (Gottlober 1976, vol. 1, 74)

When the father discerns his son’s passion to study grammar, he brings him a grammar book by Shlomo Zalman HaCohen Hanau (Hanau, Germany, 1687–1746), Tsohar HaTeiva. Gottlober describes his first encounter with grammar as a profound and moving experience: To whom shall I speak and recount my feelings of that moment, when I opened the book and began to read in it? Who may understand me? […] I will not be fathomed except by one who likewise dwelt in darkness as did I then, and suddenly beheld a great light. To whom may I speak and recount and be fathomed? I shall keep mute and leave it to a great soul, to a wise man who understands on his own, to him shall I describe my emotions upon first opening my eyes to read the book […] (Gottlober 1976, vol. 1, 75)

Gottlober lists and describes the texts he had read up to then, books which fired his imagination and encouraged his first and youthful efforts to write, after which he remarks: All these books were as naught and void compared with this Tsohar HaTeiva, which lit my eyes in the laws of the Lord and taught me discernment, for until then I could not read texts of the Bible correctly, and I did not even know the names of the vowel-marks, even the remainder of the pronunciation marks such as hard and soft stresses, explicit and implicit ‘o’ marks, cantillation signs, etc. […] which stole sleep from my eyes the first night, when my father brought me the book, which I did not set down until the lamp oil ran out and burnt away entirely, leaving me covered in darkness, and then I reclined another hour and two, yet sleep did not come to my eyes nor rest to my brow, as the new knowledge I had gained did not allow me to sleep, and when at last I had fallen into slumber I was surrounded by [diphthongs and sibilants and virgules] which rose in dance before me till dawn. (Gottlober 1976, vol. 1, 77)

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The difficulties of self-instruction in grammar using Tsohar HaTeiva cause Gottlober to turn again to his father for help. This time the father seeks the advice of a knowledgeable Maskil (adherent of the Jewish Enlightenment), and the latter recommends replacing Tsohar HaTeiva with Talmud Leshon Ivri by Yehudah Leib Ben-Ze’ev (Lviv/Lelow, Poland/Galicia, 1764–1811), which in his opinion is more systematic and more amenable to self-instruction.10 The book, says the Maskil friend of the father, “is to be found at so-and-so’s, and although its author was a man with whom the divine spirit does not lodge and is suspected of being an infidel and heretic, since the text deals only with the wisdom of grammar and not with any questions of faith there can be no harm in it.” The father decides to give the book to his son, yet at the same time, he warns him not to spend too much time on it and thus make a peripheral interest central. On reading this text, Gottlober is again overcome: As I opened the book Talmud Leshon Ivri, I seemed to be in a waking dream. Like first fruits before summer I drank in his words which were sweet as honey in my mouth, and I did not put it down until completing the entire first section. (Gottlober 1976, vol. 1, 78)

However, in Talmud Leshon Ivri, the grammatical terms are translated to German, a language Gottlober had not mastered, and the difficulties of self-instruction cause him once again to appeal to his father for assistance. The Hasidic father had refrained until then from forming contacts with Maskilim, yet seeing his son’s distress, he departs from that practice and asks for help from a Maskil named Wiezner. Amazed that this Hasid had come to him with such a strange request, Wiezner agrees to tutor Gottlober in his home, and Gottlober first learns about the laws of logic from him. As he writes: “his words arrived as balm to mine bones and lit my eyes and I became nearly another man. […] It seemed as if I had suddenly arrived in another land: for my eyes opened and I saw new sights” (Gottlober 1976, vol. 1, 80). Here a new chapter in Gottlober’s intellectual development begins. For the first time he tackles Maimonides’s Milot HaHigayon with Moses Mendelssohn’s commentary,

10 For a similar transition from self-instruction in grammar using Tsohar HaTeiva to the study of Ben-Ze’ev’s Talmud Leshon Ivri, see also Lilienblum (1970, 121), Nissenboim (1929, 49, 77), and Zuta (1934, 31–34).

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identifying logic not only with the principles of rational thinking but also with grammar, as exemplifying these principles. In recounting his personal experience, Gottlober also supplies a rich panoply of ethnographic details. He describes the heder and its melamdim (teachers), the “heretic” Maskil living on the fringes of the town, how rare grammar texts were, and the difficulties of an autodidact forced to use one text with a defective method and another where the terms are in German. Yet this description goes far beyond a single person’s account of his educational development on the road to enlightenment, as it portrays the attitude toward grammar as a central point of dispute between the Maskilim and traditional society. Despite the uniqueness of Gottlober’s individual story, its trajectory is by no means atypical. The educational process it describes is echoed in the autobiographies and memoirs of many Maskilim, which may even create the impression of a shared literary convention. Often the melamed is portrayed as an ignoramus in grammar and the Bible; the practice of skipping over the Rashi commentaries when they involve grammar appears countless times; and writers like Mordechai Aharon Ginzburg, Y. L. Gordon, Moshe Leib Lilienblum, Mendele Mokher Sfarim, and others, who were lucky enough to have instructors in grammar and the Bible, heap infinite praises on the open-minded father or the educated teacher, and wonder at the rare good fortune that was their lot.11 There is a certain Maskilic tendentiousness in these accounts, yet it is hard to doubt the core of truth they contain. Evidence of a different sort showing the inferior status of Hebrew grammar may be found in the responsa of Rabbi Ya’akov Ben-Zvi Emden (Altona, SchleswigHolstein, Denmark, 1697–1776), in which Emden deems it necessary to decide whether it is permissible “to study the verb cases and tenses in the bathroom” (Emden 2004, vol. 1, sign 10).12 In his responsum, Emden mentions the practice of allowing the external wisdoms (h.okhmot h.itsoniyot, i.e., bodies of knowledge other than the Torah, such as

11 See Abramovich (1956, 267–268), Ginzburg (1967, 17, 33, 66–67), Gordon (1960, 268–272), and Lilienblum (1970, vol. 1, 84–86). 12 This statement by Rabbi Emden attests to the inferior status attributed to grammar at his time, but it should be noted that Rabbi Emden himself dealt with grammar and encouraged its instruction. Rabbi Yitsh.ak Baer Levinsohn cites him, as well as the Gaon Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna (HaGRa, 1720–1797), to support his arguments in favor of grammar education (see Etkes 1977, 16, 21–23).

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grammar, logic, rhetoric, philosophy, and the like) to be perused in the bathroom, in order to remove any thought of the Torah in that place. The mere question whether one may behave likewise with books of Hebrew grammar reveals the problematic status of this field of knowledge in broad circles of Jewish society. Indeed, in nineteenth-century Jewish Eastern Europe, grammar instruction was not part of the curricula of the heder and the yeshiva,13 and the question to be addressed is therefore not whether grammar was omitted from the curriculum, but why that was so. As I show, the marginal status of grammar and Bible instruction was not the product of an accumulated neglect, but part of a broad policy of the traditional elite to create deliberate illiteracy in Hebrew grammar and the Bible, and hence also in the Hebrew language.14

Intentional Ignorance I am borrowing the concept “intentional ignorance” from The Sociology of Ignorance by Amos Funkenstein and Adin Steinsaltz (1987, 9–33). In their work, the term “ignorance” denotes lack of knowledge in certain fields, with reading and writing not necessarily implicated, although the ignorance in which they are interested is closely related to reading and writing illiteracy. Intentional ignorance is lack of knowledge deliberately created and maintained by particular social authorities. The knowledge in question is of social relevance, and while it may be presented as available to all, in practice it is withheld from most members of society. In other words, this kind of ignorance is not an accidental gap in some esoteric body of knowledge, but rather a consequential omission that is central to social and educational policies, and that has implications for society

13 Anyone examining the source materials for Simha Assaf’s history of Jewish education . (1948–1954, 2001), or the scholarship of Eliezer Meir Lifschitz (1920), Zvi Scharfstein (1943), Nathan Morris (1977), Emanuel Gamoran (1925), Shaul Stampfer (1988), and others, will find ample evidence to that effect. 14 Indeed, there were some well-known rabbis who did master Hebrew grammar,

such as the MaHaRaL of Prague (1520–1609), Rabbi Ya’akov Emden, and the Gaon Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna, whose grammar text, Eliyahu’s Grammar, was published posthumously (Assaf 1948–1954, vol. 1, 468). Yet as far as traditional education was concerned, the opponents of grammar had the upper hand, and the evidence suggests that their opposition increased as the Haskalah movement took root.

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at large. It is effectively maintained by various institutions and mechanisms, and may be openly acknowledged and justified or alternatively generated via vilification or neglect. The Sociology of Ignorance, as a field of study, exposes such concealed mechanisms and analyzes their causes and consequences. Central to this field is the distinction between societies that maintain an ideal of “closed knowledge” and others that seek an ideal of “open knowledge.” Whereas “closed knowledge” conceals its method of delivery and is itself opaque in its characteristics, logic, and critical standards, “open knowledge” is, at least in principle, accessible to all—it is transparent, its logic and critical standards are generally agreed upon, and it is open to criticism by anyone who shares in it. Funkenstein and Steinsaltz claim that ever since Rabban Gamliel of Yavne was impeached from the presidency of the Sanhedrin (around 100 AD), Jewish society has embraced the ideal of open knowledge with regard to religious law and Jewish philosophy, and that this ideal “has not been entirely rejected, except in recent generations—and then only with regard to esoteric doctrines” such as the Kabbalah (Funkenstein and Steinsaltz 1987, 33). Yet, as I will try to show, traditional Jewish society in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe treated grammar, the Bible, and therefore also the Hebrew language as bodies of knowledge reserved for the few. In so doing, it continued an educational policy first formulated in the Middle Ages in the communities of France and Germany (Hocherman 1982, 31). Nonetheless, this intentional ignorance was not the product of a decision made by some particular institution at some particular time, nor was it even the result of any explicit ideological opposition to grammar, the Bible, or Hebrew as such. Rather, the withholding of knowledge in these fields from the broad public and its preservation in the hands of a narrow elite derived from an urge, whether conscious or not, to protect certain beliefs, ideas, and social practices from threatening elements that were viewed as associated with these fields. Close examination shows that the state of widespread ignorance in grammar, the Bible, and Hebrew was maintained in several complementary ways: first, by excluding grammar from the curriculum; second, by limiting the time allocated to instruction of the Bible15 and by choosing methods of teaching that reduce the 15 The Mishnah, which according to Tractate Avot requires five years of instruction, was not taught in the heder as a distinct subject either (Hocherman 1982, 31). Where the Mishnah was taught, only a few select chapters were included (Assaf 1948–1954, vol. 1, xvii).

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effectiveness of its learning; and, third, by presenting rabbinic language as an ideal linguistic-stylistic model worthy of imitation.

The Exclusion of Grammar from the Curriculum The exclusion of subjects and bodies of knowledge from the curriculum, or their inclusion in it, often have far-reaching social and cultural significance, and changes in the curriculum are generally evidence of sociocultural transformation (Bouwsma 1973, 6–12). Thus, for instance, the term “humanism,” which denotes the cultural transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, arose from demands for changing the curriculum by strengthening the role of the “studia humanitatis,” which included fields such as grammar, rhetoric, poetry, and history, as a reaction and alternative to the scholastic curriculum, which emphasized logic and metaphysics. And, indeed, there are more than a few parallels between the struggle of Renaissance humanism against scholasticism and the transformations that the Haskalah movement sought to achieve in the traditional Jewish education system.16 We may be tempted to assume that the exclusion of grammar from the traditional curriculum stemmed not from ideological motives, but from difficulties involved in its instruction. Yet this explanation does not seem reasonable. Consistently in the educational system, from the lowest level in the heder to the higher yeshivot, the subjects considered important for study were in fact studied, without hesitation or reservation, regardless of the difficulties involved (Avital 1996, 51–70; Lifschitz 1920, 323). Alternatively, one may suppose that Hebrew grammar was excluded simply because it was considered unimportant. This, for example, is the opinion of Eliezer Meir Lifschitz (Skole/Skola, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1879– 1946), who describes the heder’s educational programs from a manifestly apologetic stance. He explains the neglect of grammar by claiming that knowledge of Hebrew was not necessary in the Diaspora, but at the same 16 For a comparison, see Renee Balibar’s article “National Language, Education, Literature” (1986). In this article, Balibar argues that the French education system undermined the goal officially declared in 1789 to form a language common to all citizens by creating differently ranked educational establishments, and eliminating instruction in Latin and its grammar from elementary schools. She maintains that proficiency in Latin gave students of secondary schools access to the nation’s literary and cultural assets, while the exclusion of Latin from elementary schools denied their students access to such assets (Balibar 1986, 135–136, 144).

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time he complains that even toward the end of the nineteenth century, after the establishment of revised heders, some two-thirds of the heder pupils graduated without knowing Hebrew and its grammar: In the old heder, Hebrew was not among the subjects taught, and the road to its attainment by means of the other studies was long and arduous […] The old heder was able to persist in this manner because it could depend on the fact that most of its students would remain in its framework until graduation, except for a very few: it gave up on the weakest ranks, accepting that the lower classes of the nation would not know Hebrew, which, in the Diaspora, only mattered to the book-learned. And there was no damage caused, as they were not taught another language either. (Lifschitz 1920, 345–346)

Yet this explanation, too, appears inadequate and contrived. In a society where Hebrew was not a spoken language and had to be acquired outside the framework of the formal education system, avoidance of systematic instruction in grammar functioned as a real barrier to acquiring proficiency in that language. The assumption that in these circumstances, knowing Hebrew was deemed insignificant requires us to believe that understanding the words of the prayer books and of the Bible was considered unnecessary. And while many contemporaries indeed believed that this viewpoint reflected the establishment position (Friedman 1926, 105; Weiss 1895, 61), their belief does not make this explanation any more plausible, given the central importance of the Bible in this society (Avital 1996, 48). It appears that particularly substantial justifications are needed to account for the reluctance of traditional Jewish society to teach the language of the Bible and for the efforts to diminish the importance of its comprehension. Had the literal understanding of the text not been perceived as problematic, and had the ability to comprehend the Bible been merely a neutral affair, it is doubtful whether the system would have acted consistently to limit the linguistic facilities required for such comprehension. It is more reasonable to suppose that while the traditional elite indeed presented the understanding of Hebrew by the broad public as unimportant, in fact it regarded it as undesirable and even dangerous (Ah.ad Ha’Am 1931, 1–2). This explanation becomes all the more plausible when we consider that the grammar barrier was not the only obstacle that the traditional education system placed on the road to proficiency in Hebrew. Two other

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obstacles were the relatively limited time allocated to Bible study and the nature of the methods that were used for its instruction.

The Status of the Bible in the Traditional Education System The status of Bible instruction in the traditional education system was, naturally enough, better than that of grammar. Unlike grammar, instruction in reading, mainly reading the Pentateuch, was part of the heder curriculum, although the time allocated to Bible study was short and the focus was primarily on the laws listed in the book of Leviticus, the first and the principal topic studied (Lifschitz 1920, 332; Scharfstein 1943, 100). Once the study of the Five Books of Moses was concluded, pupils went on to study the Talmud, and with that the period of formal Bible study typically came to an end. The encounter with the Biblical text, though brief, might have offered the students access to the linguistic model of Biblical Hebrew and its grammar. Yet the pedagogical methods used in the heder largely foreclosed this possibility. Torah instruction was carried out using a Yiddish translation, sometimes after the Biblical verse was read out in Hebrew and sometimes before. The translated words were taught to a singsong and learned by heart. Since the translation into Yiddish-Taitsh (ancient Yiddish, used in the translations of Torah books printed for popular use) became canonical, and since the Bible projected its sacredness onto the translation,17 any attempt to amend it or introduce innovations was considered heresy. Not only did the differing Yiddish dialects obscure the ancient Hebrew words—frequently rendering them incomprehensible—but the method of instruction created further difficulties of comprehension. Typically, the Hebrew words were translated one by one in their sequence of appearance in the Bible, without joining them together in a comprehensible syntactical order. Thus, both understanding

17 Rabbi Yehezkel Landa of Prague instructed that the Pentateuch be studied “only in . commentary in Yiddish as is printed in the volumes issued in Berlin, Vienna and Prague” (see Weiss 1895, 75). See also Scharfstein (1943, 104) and Shtern (1950, 37).

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of the scriptural text and the learning of Hebrew from the Bible were effectively limited (Hocherman 1982, 34; Stampfer 1988, 279).18 A further obstacle to unmediated access to the Biblical text and its language was the fragmentary way in which the Five Books of Moses were taught. Every week, usually only on Thursday evenings and Fridays, the first part of the weekly Torah portion was studied; in the subsequent week, study was resumed not where it had left off, but rather at the beginning of the next Torah portion, without completing the remainder left behind from the week before. This practice of skipping large sections created gaps in narrative continuity and made it difficult to understand the language by means of the narrative context of the Torah stories (Friedman 1926, 133; Gamoran 1925, 100; Kasdai 1926, 219). Finally, the Five Books were read in the heder accompanied by the commentary of Rashi, which presented students with the rabbinic methods of textual analysis and with the Midrashic worldview (Ah.ad Ha’Am 1931, 79; Stampfer 1988, 280). Yet in this framework, too, the widespread practice was to skip over those of Rashi’s commentaries that dealt with grammar, commentaries that many of the instructors could not understand themselves (Lifschitz 1920, 320–321, 336; Friedman 1921, 134; Scharfstein 1943, 114). This practice was extended into the higher yeshivot, as attested, for example, by Y. L. Gordon (Vilnius/Vilna, R.E., 1830–1892), who writes of his comrades at the yeshiva: These young men, in training since early infancy to be Leaders of Israel, did not understand Bible and could not read verses in the original. This was occasionally a source of embarrassment during their Talmud reading classes. Though the Talmudic stories were full of “Bible passages,” we used to skip past them in front of our rabbis or run through them in a single breath, yet when there was some tough unavoidable verse inside a legal passage it stuck like a bone in their windpipes. (Gordon 1960, 475)

Thus was laid yet a further obstacle on the long road to mastering the Biblical language and its grammar. Each method of Bible instruction taken by itself may perhaps seem innocent enough to reflect an accidental disorder, didactic inexperience,

18 It should be noted that when Biblical texts of particular importance were about to be studied, instruction began not with the translated text, but with a special tune for the legendary (Aggadic) materials called oyseredenish (Scharfstein 1943, 100–108).

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or conservatism that marks a rigid education system or one in decay (Avital 1996, 30; Scharfstein 1943, 189). Yet, taken together, they reveal a consistent tendency to conceal the language of the Bible and keep it from serving as a linguistic model. Since Hebrew was not a spoken tongue, but rather a “half-dead” language, concealment of this linguistic model blocked the road to its acquisition in practice. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of this blockage and the magnitude of the obstacle it placed in the path of those who wished to learn Hebrew grammar. Rabbi Emden perceived this point clearly when he prohibited the study of grammar in the toilet on the grounds that “there is no way to arrive at knowledge of the Holy Tongue except by using quoted Bible passages, which can serve to illustrate the grammatical rules. For knowledge of the ways of the Holy Tongue is not left in our hands except by their means. And thus, since one cannot peruse them without also murmuring Biblical phrases and verses, it is prohibited” (Emden 2004, vol. 1, sign 10). Hence, what appears at first glance to be a lack of order and system in the instruction of the Bible is revealed to be deliberate disorder. Therefore, it is no wonder that calls for reform in the methods of instruction in the heder, such as those made by the MaHaRaL of Prague (Yehuda Liva Ben Betsal’el, 1520?–1609) and some of his successors, did not lead to significant changes in these methods (Assaf 1948–1954, vol. 1, xviii–xxvi).

The Model Set by Rabbinic Language The rabbinic language also played a role in the creation of ignorance in Hebrew grammar. Buki Ben Yogli (Chernihiv/Chernigov, R.E., 1846– 1917) writes of this language, emphatically, that “[this Hebrew] was written in barbaric fashion, so that we cannot know nowadays what was referred to” (Buki Ben Yogli 1947, 57), and the scholar of Hebrew philology Boaz Shahevitch lists its characteristics as follows: A large part of its vocabulary derives from the Talmud and later sources, and intermixed in it is a large number of Aramaic idioms, words, concepts and sayings. It has few linguistic elements drawn from the Bible, especially in the quotations; its morphology is largely that of the Talmudic idiom, the syntax is chiefly Talmudic, and one finds numerous standard legal expressions from Hebrew and Aramaic: abbreviations, initials, and complex concepts.

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The impression it gives is that it is sloppy, almost promiscuous as to its grammar: it is anarchic in its use of Hebrew and Aramaic suffixes and in the conjugation of nouns, adjectives, and verbs, as well as in its use of gender, number, and the definite article […] Anyone assessing this language using literary measures […] finds it to be abbreviated to the point of extremity: heavily dependent on the reader’s deep knowledge of the Halakhic sources (to the point where anyone not familiar with them is likely not to be able to make sense of what is written). (Shahevitch 1967, 236)

Because of the grammatical carelessness of rabbinic language, even the most advanced scholars lacked a model of correct Hebrew language and tended to disregard the grammaticality of their utterances (Isserles [HaRaMa] 1954, 16, sign 7). These features of rabbinic language were not devoid of ideological implications, which were quite paradoxical. The abbreviations, the complexity of the Halakhic terms, the careless attitude toward grammatical rules, and the resultant obscurity all indicate that rabbinic language sought to sort its addressees carefully, targeting only a select and qualified group of recipients and warning off the common man from venturing into territory that was not his.19 The scholarly elite’s special language thus combined with the other measures to foster ignorance of Hebrew. Under these circumstances, the limited mastery of Hebrew among the pupils of the traditional education system, and even among more than a few genuine scholars, was a natural outcome. It must be stressed, however, that there were differences between Hasidim and Mitnagdim on this score. Among the Hasidim, grammatical ignorance was widespread, whereas among the Mitnagdim there were students, melamdim, and Rabbis who knew grammar.20 Yet this in no way reduces the extent of 19 Yehuda Leib Ben-Ze’ev (1789, i) refers to these matters in his preface to Emunot VeDe’ot (Beliefs and Opinions ) by Rabbi Sa’adya Gaon: “And such was the manner of the First Wise Ones […] they would abridge their expressions into compact statements. This for two reasons: for they valued knowledge and therefore prized concise adages; and furthermore, they sought not to lighten the task for the discerning by making matters plain meanwhile for the boorish masses, who without toil and lacking appreciation of quality would strip away its veil of splendor by gropings crude.” For more on this point, see Fischler and Parush (1995, 110, n. 14). 20 On this issue, see Fuenn (1881, 147), Haramati (1992, 230), Kasdai (1926, 223– 224), Levinsohn (1879, 23–24), Scharfstein (1943, 85, 115, 119), and Weiss (1895, 76–77).

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ignorance of Hebrew among the broad public, nor does it undermine the explanation being offered for this phenomenon here. Indeed, the existence of an elite that did maintain this knowledge, and that understood its significance and its potential threats, is itself evidence that there was a social and ideological purpose to keeping it hidden from the masses. Had there not been such an elite, Hebrew grammar would have been a sort of “nonexistent knowledge” and there would have been no social or other motive for keeping it hidden. Thus, Hebrew was indeed “half-dead,” not only because it did not develop through the generations as a living language, but also because of the meager numbers of people who had full mastery of it. The apparently high degree of literacy among Jewish males in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe was in most cases limited to an ability to read the Bible mechanically in order to fulfill religious obligations; it did not extend to substantial comprehension of the Bible or of modern Hebrew texts.21

Explicit Justifications and Implicit Reasons for the Intentional Ignorance of Hebrew The conclusion that all the factors listed above combined into a single effort to withhold knowledge of Hebrew is not self-evident. For the following may still be asked: since we are not dealing here with a policy that was the product of a single decision taken by a particular person or group at a specific time, in what sense were all these mechanisms part of a single drive on the part of the traditional leadership to restrict knowledge of Hebrew? To address this question, we should take a closer look into the justifications and explanations provided for the intentional ignorance. According to Funkenstein and Steinsaltz (1987), the prevention of knowledge with the aim of creating intentional ignorance is usually explained or excused by several kinds of arguments: (1) that the withheld body of knowledge is not relevant to the group or society under focus; 21 In 1886, in a conversation about the inferior status of Hebrew literature and the small size of its readership, Mordechai Ben-Ami tells Mendele Mokher Sfarim: “Try to estimate just how many Jews understand Hebrew well enough to comprehend this literature” (Ben-Ami 1933, 97). Lilienblum similarly writes in a correspondence with Y. L. Gordon: “Here Hebrew literature is dead. […] the masses won’t understand a thing in the Hebrew tongue, and the so-called intellectuals hate it, its books, and its authors with the purest loathing” (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 2, 17; see also Lilienblum 1968, 81, letter 5).

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(2) that this body of knowledge interferes with the ideas and beliefs of the group or society; (3) that this body of knowledge is unsuitable for an intellectual, cultivated person; (4) that this knowledge corrupts those who possess it; (5) that this knowledge, and the opinions and habits of mind that emanate from it, threaten to upset the public order and to undermine the status of established authorities (Funkenstein and Steinsaltz 1987, 86–93). Typically, the first four justifications are stated explicitly by the established authorities, and to the extent that they become accepted and hegemonic, they are also internalized and acted upon voluntarily by members of society. The last justification, by contrast, tends to be implicit and unacknowledged. If we re-examine the qualms that Gottlober’s father expressed with regard to grammar, and he was comparatively liberal, we can see that most of the justifications noted above were present in traditional Jewish society. Gottlober’s father claimed that grammar was “no use to a person like him, for whom the Torah is a trade” (Gottlober 1976, vol. 1, 77); that it is “unnecessary for the worship of the Lord and the perfection of the soul”; and that “valuable time should not be wasted on it.” Yet behind these reasons, we hear echoes of his first reaction to his son’s request: “We have no share and portion in these words of Rashi and it will be futile to seek to understand them, for these statements concern grammar, which is not for us to know” (Gottlober 1976, vol. 1, 74). Evidently, knowledge of grammar is reserved for a scholarly elite; it is not meant for simple Jews like himself and his son. Gottlober’s father’s approach to grammar thus combined two almost opposite beliefs: first, that knowledge of grammar is insignificant for attaining religious fulfillment, and might even come at the expense of such fulfillment by wasting precious time that should have been devoted to the Torah; and, second, that this knowledge is so significant as to be reserved for a privileged few. The dissonance between these beliefs suggests that the subject was far from being straightforward. The explicit, hegemonic arguments against studying grammar, which minimized its importance and which were internalized and reiterated by Gottlober’s father, clashed with a reality that the father also sensed, where this knowledge was the prestigious province of a privileged elite. Hence—and this was least acknowledged—widespread ignorance of this knowledge served the interest of this elite in maintaining its privilege. It is no coincidence that all these justifications addressed the study of grammar rather than that of the Bible. For the Bible was studied, if

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only slightly, and its image as a supposedly open body of knowledge was not substantially damaged. This is why the connection between the deliberate maintenance of grammatical ignorance and the negligent methods of Bible instruction, and their combining into a single effort, was not easy to discern. It appears that the broad public in traditional Jewish society did not find fault with the accepted methods of teaching the Bible, nor, indeed, did it believe that knowledge of the Bible among the masses was inadequate. While it is true that anyone who read the Bible (especially the Prophets) outside the framework of devotional obligations was suspected of apostasy, this suspiciousness was generally explained as a reaction against the way in which Maskilim were reading the Biblical texts, or as an effort to prevent yeshiva students from taking up with Maskilim.22 Modern researchers have regarded the “Bible problem” as perplexing, but have tended to treat it in isolation, obscuring its close connection with the “grammar problem.” Three primary explanations have been given for the marginal status of the Bible in traditional education. One account stresses the idea of neglect, even criminal neglect. Zvi Scharfstein states that “this practice, not to teach Bible at all or not sufficiently, was not only a national sin, but also an enormous educational defect,” yet he does not delve into the causes of this practice, which he attributes to “a widespread perspective” that “ruthlessly ruled over public opinion” and that he leaves unexplained (Scharfstein 1943, 112–113). He devotes a separate chapter of his study HaH . eder to Bible instruction, and follows this with another chapter entitled “Grammar and Geography of the Land of Israel—Which Were Not Studied” (Scharfstein 1943, 111–117). Thus, Scharfstein associates the neglect of grammar with the lack of education 22 On the view that those involved in Bible study are to be suspected of heresy, see Kasdai (1926, 221) and Buki Ben Yogli (1947, 56–57). For the view that opposition to engagement with the Bible was an over-reaction to the Haskalah, see Fuenn (1881, 143) and Lifschitz (1920, 321). Yet it must be noted that suspicions of heresy were raised mainly about those who were involved with grammar, as is illustrated by an amusing episode related by Eliyahu Friedman: “My grandfather prohibited us from studying Bible or the grammar of the Hebrew tongue. I recall one time after numerous entreaties my grandfather permitted me to study a ‘kosher’ grammar book: Tsohar HaTeiva. And it happened that as I began to peruse the book a piece of a cigarette rolled out and came into my hands. My grandfather saw this and said, sin follows sin in train, you take hold of a grammar book and already have a cigarette in hand! Thus ended my studies in grammar.” Friedman also relates in this connection: “My grandfather did not permit me to study Bible and grammar, and told me, ‘you will be a Rabbi of Israel, and a great rabbi has no need to know the Hebrew tongue’” (Friedman 1926, 50–51, 105).

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on the geography of the Holy Land, yet he downplays the tighter link between the abridged and defective modes of instruction in Bible and the withholding of instruction in grammar. The second explanation for the inferior status of the Bible in the traditional education system, and the more accepted one, has to do with “priorities.” In this account, the priority assigned to the Oral Torah is what pushed instruction in the Bible to the sidelines (Lifschitz 1920, 320). However, while this explanation may help us understand the preference given to the study of the Talmud and its commentators, it does not sufficiently account for the persistence of pedagogical methods that systematically blocked the way to substantial engagement even with the Pentateuch, and even with the Pentateuch stories that capture the imagination. Finally, a third, more sophisticated line of explanation emerges in the work of Shaul Stampfer, who contends that the traditional educational programs were calculated to preserve the stability of the social structure and to solidify the status of the elite. Since this was not an elite of income or aristocracy, but an elite of scholars, the education system had to safeguard the prestige and value of education. At the same time, since open access to knowledge was liable to diminish the prestige of learning, the system chose to create the appearance of equality (all men learned to read) while in practice distributing its knowledge resources unequally. In this way, the education system created a clear class division between “simple Jews” and Talmud scholars and rabbis. According to this explanation, the heder curriculum was designed to educate each person according to the social role he was destined to fill: it passed by the “simple Jews” and left only the refined Jews, those talented enough to become scholars. Scholars were trained for their main task—study of the Talmud—whereas “simple Jews” were equipped with enough reading skills in Hebrew to satisfy their religious obligations, but no more than that. Hence, the social “division of labor” in traditional Jewish society was maintained, and with it the stability of society at large (Stampfer 1988, 273–281).23

23 In this context, Stampfer attempts to justify the instructional methods in the heder as

well. For example, he explains the fragmented teaching of the Pentateuch by noting that a school need not be the only source of knowledge acquisition and that a child may, if he so desires, hear from his parents the stories in the Five Books in their entirety. In Stampfer’s opinion, criticism of the fragmented instruction points not to any real problem in the methods used in the heder, but rather exposes the ideological bias of its critics (1988,

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Although Stampfer correctly identifies the link between the curriculum and the methods of study in the heder on the one hand and issues of social order and stratification on the other hand, he does not go all the way in this direction. His explanations often drift toward the apologetic stance that implicitly seeks to defend traditional Jewish society and its institutions, and to find excuses for the apparent deficiencies of the heder curriculum. Thus, he tends to explain and excuse these deficiencies by presenting them as necessary for ensuring the integrity of traditional Jewish society and for saving it from collapse (Stampfer 1988, 284–288). As elaborated in Chapter 3, he also points to additional factors that supposedly necessitated the absence of certain skills from the curriculum. For example, he explains the scarce teaching of writing in the heder by arguing that writing was not needed by Jewish men of the time in the first place, either for their practical lives or for their religious duties. Hence, Stampfer’s account still does not provide us with a comprehensive and satisfactory explanation for various omissions from the heder curriculum, and for the limited instruction of Bible in particular. Moreover, all the explanations reviewed thus far fail to highlight the connection between the lack of instruction in grammar and the methods of teaching the Bible, and between both of these and the literacy policy concerning Hebrew. This obfuscation hides the deliberate nature of the propagation of ignorance and avoids dealing with its social and ideological causes. Indeed, the approach that the traditional education system took to Hebrew literacy was fundamentally instrumental, yet the interests served were not those of society as a whole, but those of the scholarly elite. The education system equipped different classes of people with different literacy skills, and while everyone was given some instruction in reading to create the appearance of equality, the system in fact maintained unequal levels of literacy. Yet the nature of this inequality can be recognized only if one notices that the lack of instruction in grammar kept the Biblical text hidden, that the methods of teaching the Bible concealed its grammar, and that the two in combination served to keep the Hebrew language obscure. Inquiry into the social and ideological causes behind the policy of intentional ignorance suggests that the rabbinic leadership sought to govern the beliefs and ways of life of the Jewish public by means of control 279). Yet, as I have shown above in discussing the methods used in Bible instruction, this response does not sufficiently address the fundamental questions such methods raise.

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over language and knowledge. Keeping the Biblical text inaccessible and maintaining grammatical ignorance were among the methods for ensuring that the Midrashic worldview would be accepted by all; they served to prevent anyone from reading the Bible unguided by the authorized rabbinic interpreters, for this might lead to questioning of the received interpretations. This stance is rather clearly expressed in the exegesis offered by Rabbi Zvi Elimelekh of Dinov (Jawornik/Yavornik, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1785–1841) for the dictum of the Sages, “UMin’u bneikhem min hahigayon” (“And keep your sons from reason”) (Bavli, Berakhot 28a): That is to say that as minors they must not study Bible in its literal form; without the homilies of the Sages in the Bible commentaries they will find it strange to overlay the rabbinic commentaries upon the texts, and they will easily be led (Heaven forbid) to apostasy. And I […] well-appreciated the practices of our ancestors in these lands, who directed that as soon as a child can recognize verses of the Five Books [of Moses] directly, he is begun with instruction in Talmud. […] So that the words of the Rabbis will be routine in the child’s mouth in the received form of Torah from Sinai in the version of the oral transmission, which preserves the soul of a man from all evil. (Zvi Elimelekh of Dinov 1877, 425–427)

At the root of the refusal to teach grammar and Hebrew, and of the prohibition against reading the Bible without intermediaries, were fears that access to the literal meaning of the Bible might undermine rabbinic and Halakhic authority.24 Rabbi Shaul Ben Zvi Hirsch Levin-Berlin (Glogow, Prussia, 1740–1795), who presented a defense of Divrei Shalom Ve’Emet (1782) by Naphtali Hertz Wessely (Hamburg, 1725–1805), paraphrases this position mockingly in his satirical work Ktav Yosher (1784): And the study of grammar is the first step on the road to apostasy, for this is the way of temptation, today it tells him study grammar, and once equipped with the wisdom of grammar it incites him to compose verse and poetry in a pure language, and once acquainted with the pure language, he will tolerate no commentary or homily on the Biblical text that distorts its literal meaning, and will resist and rifle through all the commentaries

24 See Funkenstein and Steinsaltz (1987, 53–54) and Mahler (1954, vol. 1, 30–80). For an account of the complexity involved in direct access to Biblical texts in the context of the Reformation, see Cameron (1991, 136–144).

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and innovations which the texts seem to require as substance, as well as the endless books composed about them; and as sin draws sin in its wake, he will afterward rebuff the prayers and the wonderful sacred liturgical poems and condemn their lack of grammatical composition. (Levin 1784, 7a)25

Yet the rabbinic fears of grammar and of literal reading of the Bible were not entirely without foundation, as attested, for example, by Moshe Leib Lilienblum, when he describes in his autobiography H . at’ot Ne’urim an argument he had with his uncle: He would say that all the interpretations that the exegetes give to all the Bibles, they all have a foundation in the text, and that the author of this interpreted verse had intended this very interpretation when he had written it—for there are seventy faces to the Torah […]. I who had acquired knowledge of grammar in the house of my rabbi, said, that most of the interpretations do not accord with the rules of grammar, and it is impossible that they may be true. (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 101)

Even Rabbi Yitsh.ak Baer Levinsohn (RYBaL; Krements/Kremenits, Volhynia, Poland/R.E., 1788–1860), one of the first of the Haskalah authors in Russia to propose sweeping reforms in the traditional education system (Etkes 1977, 6–9; 1993, 26–29), was cautious in handling this matter. The first question posed in the Introduction to his book Te’uda BeYisra’el (1824) is “whether it is necessary for a member of the Jewish faith to study the Holy Tongue according to grammar to attain perfection.” To this question, he answers decisively: “Knowledge of the Holy Tongue for every member of the Jewish faith is of the utmost necessity” (Levinsohn 1977, ii). He calls for changing the customary modes of study in the heder, highlights the need to inculcate grammar as well as the Bible in its entirety, and appeals to the “honorable of our nation” and its scholars to become familiar with the language “in its pure, perfected form” (Levinsohn 1977, 1–2, 9, 20–21). And yet in a response to an epistle brought before him, Levinsohn takes pains to note:

25 For a satirical account of the attitude toward the Bible, see Levin (1784, 4a). On Rabbi Shaul Levin-Berlin, who was the Senior Judge of the Religious Court in Frankfurt, and his satire Ktav Yosher, published posthumously, see Samet (1968, 429, 432) and Sandler (1984, 97).

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But there is no need for the entire nation from youngest to oldest to all be rabbis […] It suffices for a man of Israel of the masses to know the Bible with adequate commentary, with a smattering of grammar […] and knowledge enough to read in the books of morals and qualities in the Holy Tongue, also to write in the Holy Tongue somewhat. (Quoted in Nathanzohn 1877, 116)

“And Keep Your Sons from Reason” The Maskilic criticisms of the traditional education system reveal that they recognized not only the deeper reasons behind the inadequate Bible instruction, but also how this was related to the rejection of modern Hebrew poetry and fiction. In the critiques of traditional education woven into Mendele’s BaYamim HaHem, there are more than a few insightful remarks on this subject: And among the learned in those days were only included those who studied the subjects fit for a Jew. […] A person who had sated of bread and meat, that is, of Talmud and Poskim, and who had acquired for himself also some knowledge of the Bible and a bit of the rules of grammar as supplement to the body of the Torah—so much the better: he is a wise man, he is a scholar, he is perfected with all the virtues and all else is just the world’s vanity and unnecessary. Yet would anyone in those days teach his sons Bible beyond the first fragment of the weekly portion? The fathers withheld from their children not only reason, but also the Bible, and those who studied it were suspected of heresy. The matter is most perplexing, and of the hundred and fifty excuses given for it not a one justly resolves this issue in Israel’s favor. And while many will not believe this, yet thus it was in fact and thus—for our sins—it remains among many Jews even today. In the past the rabbis were not versed in the Bible and even today many rabbis do not understand the written Bible. And nevertheless one must not question them, God forbid, doubtless they have reasons which the simple soul cannot comprehend; and perhaps it is possible to be a certified expert in Torah and a teacher of teachers even without knowing a verse of the Holy Writings. […] And Rabbi H . ayim is the one who sought to change the coin minted by the Sages in education, and as an experiment to teach his sons the whole Bible, including also the [Aramaic] translations, from “In the beginning” up to “And he arose,” in proper sequence and as it appears. Rabbi H . ayim himself was a master of the Bible and a great poet in his day. Sweeter than honey were his Biblical verses, say those who knew him, who spoke of him as a master of language. (Abramovich 1957, 267)

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Mendele’s critical and ironic description of the traditional educational approach ties the question of the status of grammar and the Bible to the problems that modern Hebrew literature was facing in gaining acceptance. From Mendele’s statements, it is apparent that the traditional approach to grammar and the Bible was bound up with the de-legitimization of poetic expression, and that the attempt of the Maskilim to make poesy acceptable was viewed as a dangerous deviation from “the coin minted by the Sages in education.” Mendele even suggests that both the fear that Bible study might lead to heresy and the fear that engagement with grammar and poetry might lead this way have a single source: both are related to the interpretation (in his opinion mistaken) given to the above-mentioned saying of the Sages, “And keep your sons from reason” (“UMin’u bneikhem min hahigayon”) (Bavli, Berakhot 28a). This is not the place to review the evolution of the exegesis of this phrase, or even to weigh the ideological and pedagogical attitudes reflected in its various interpretations. A brief overview, however, should mention Rashi, who offers two lines of interpretation. First, he suggests that the dictum means “do not give them excessive training in the Bible, as it is seductive,” and, second, he interprets the dictum as referring to “children’s chatter.” Following Rashi’s lead, many other commentators pondered the meaning of this phrase. Some took it as a warning against an overly deep reading of the Bible; others took it as a caution against a literal reading of the Bible, which might lead to heresy; still others viewed it rather as an admonition against mechanical and superficial readings, such as those of the “whistlers and reciters.” There were also some who claimed that the phrase warns against the study of the laws of reason, that is, the discipline of logic, as well as other “external wisdoms.” Furthermore, some commentators contended that the admonishment against the study of reason was intended for youth alone—after all, it says “your sons”—and that the pursuit of wisdom was permissible for adults (Breuer 1978, 242–261; Rappel 1990, 36–46).26 The various interpretations depend on different understandings of the root letters He-Gimel-He and of the word higayon, which is often taken to denote reason, reasoning, logic, study, or speech. They often reflect the attitudes toward the study of grammar, Bible, Hebrew, and the external 26 Rappel’s book deals with the dispute in Jewish history over the status of the external wisdoms. It dwells principally on the efforts of those who took the word higayon as denoting logic.

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wisdoms at the commentator’s time and community. Mordechai Breuer (1978) reviews the exegetical history of this phrase from the twelfth century, and finds that the communities of Spain and Italy gave it what he calls a “mild” interpretation and tended to provide instruction in grammar, the Bible, and Hebrew, whereas the communities of France and Ashkenaz generally took a harsher line, and consequently the Bible was pushed to the sidelines and instruction in grammar was eliminated almost entirely (see also Assaf 1948–1954, vol. 1, xviii–xxvi). Jewish society in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe was thus carrying on an educational tradition of long standing, and it worked to maintain ignorance in those fields of knowledge that it considered to fall under the heading “reason.” In the writings of the Maskilim, too, this phrase recurs frequently in various polemical contexts. In order to achieve legitimacy by the standards of traditional society, the Maskilim stressed the milder interpretations of the dictum, and tried to prove that their preoccupation with external wisdoms, grammar, Bible, and Hebrew did not contradict the saying of the Sages or its interpretation by Rashi. Two examples will serve to illustrate this point: one from the Maskilim of Berlin, which deals with Hebrew, and the other from the Maskilim of Eastern Europe, whose subject is the external wisdoms. In the preface to Kohelet Musar (Preacher of Morals ), Part 2 (1755), which is attributed to Moses Mendelssohn and Tuvia Bock,27 the author(s) laments the abandonment of Hebrew and attributes it to an erroneous interpretation of the saying “And keep your sons from reason”: I did behold and see our brethren the children of Israel who have departed from our Holy Tongue: and verily ill it is to me, I know not how the evil came about. What purpose they saw and what came over them—to cast off the crowning glory and pride of their grandeur. For it is the fairest of tongues. (Mendelssohn and Bock 1755, Part 2, 2)

As noted, the author blames the mistaken interpretation of the dictum of the Sages:

27 On the uncertainty regarding the authorship of Kohelet Musar, which was published without indication of the authors, and on its attribution to Moses Mendelssohn and Tuvia Bock, see Gilon (1979, 92).

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And there are those of brazen temper who appeal to the Holy One of Israel he is Rabbi Shlomo [Rashi] in his commentary (Berakhot 28b) on the expression of the Sages “And keep your sons from reason,” which he says refers to the study of the Bible. Here they have erected a barrier of deceit and have hidden behind falsehood. Not only have they turned their eyes from the interpretation of Maimonides who explains that reason is the study of argumentation. But also Rashi’s words they have viewed mistakenly and falsely interpreted. The thrust of his idea is that we ought not spend all of our days in study of Bible and the tradition, in the manner of those who delight when they find some letter or punctuation mark which escaped the notice of the First Ones. For so He of Blessed Memory himself said, that excessive exercises in the Bible should be avoided. And better it is for us to study the Torah as transmitted to us via the Sages for this is our life and the length of our days. Yet to withhold oneself from the craft of language altogether? Heaven forbid, a righteous man should do such a thing. On the contrary, it is a religious commandment. (Quoted in Gilon 1979, 160–161)

Whereas Kohelet Musar appeals to the commentary on the Sages’ dictum to sanction the return to the Hebrew language, Mendele (Shalom Ya’akov Abramovich) appeals to the same source to legitimize belles letters. In his book Ein Mishpat (Eye of Justice) (1867), he assembles numerous proof texts to support his position and says: And the dictum “And keep your sons from reason” (Berakhot 28b), all the great commentators interpreted it, such as the author of the [Shulh.an] Arukh and Rashi and the author of Ein Ya’akov and their like, as meaning—to refrain from interpreting the text by its literal form, instead of by its intent. And what is meant by “reason” [higayon] is mere chatter, such as those of the reciters and the elaborators. Even the author of Menorat HaMa’or, who thought that the passage cited indeed refers to the wisdom of reason, even he says explicitly (Candle 4, rule 3, sec. b): “Where it is said, Keep your sons from reason, perhaps their intent was this: when they said your sons they mean when they are young, and that is why they did not say you yourselves, for our rabbis would never have prevented any man from studying all the forms of wisdom.” (Abramovich 1867, 64–65)

From the polemic of Kohelet Musar and Abramovich, it emerges that their opponents had extended the application of the Sages’ dictum and enlisted it to their varying goals—to denounce either the engagement with grammar, the Bible, and Hebrew, or the engagement with the external

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wisdoms. Rabbi Yeh.ezkel HaLevi Landa of Prague (Opatow/Apt, Poland, 1713–1793), who led, with his son-in-law Rabbi David Tevle of Lissa (Brody/Brod, Galicia, Poland/Austrian Empire, ?–1792), the campaign against Naphtali Hertz Wessely and Moses Mendelssohn,28 interprets “And keep your sons from reason” as referring to “any part of the wisdom of nations”: And it is said, Keep your sons from reason, and I have seen written in Ein Ya’akov that one must not interpret higayon as the wisdom of reason for it is indeed a great wisdom also to study the Torah. And I say, what does it matter that it [wisdom] also belongs to the study of Torah, as from the beginning it was established as referring to the external wisdoms, which one should avoid as it says “in emergencies for the Lord,” etc. […] The wisdom of reason brings in its train the study of philosophy, which continues with pressures inch by inch to displace the entire doctrine of the Torah, […] and so as to secure this distance from philosophy our rabbis issued the warning Keep your sons from reason. Yet also with regard to the Torah, their sons should be trained in genuine studies and not be led astray in the manner of the misguided who use the wisdom of reason, […] they must sit at the lap of wise scholars from whom they will hear the proper manner of Torah study and the straight and true explanations, and the teachers will instruct them in the true study, and thus in order to distance them from these philosophers it was said, Keep your sons from reason. (Landa 1832, 39b)

The position of Rabbi Yeh.ezkel Landa is very similar to that of H . atam Sofer (Frankfurt am Main, 1762–1839), who also interprets the term “higayon” as referring to the external wisdoms. However, the H . atam Sofer’s rejection of the external wisdoms is grounded in an ahistorical principle, according to which the Nation of Israel is unique among the 28 Rabbi Yehezkel HaLevi Landa issued an approval of Naphtali Herz Wessely’s book, . yet after Wessely published Divrei Shalom Ve’Emet, Landa retracted his approval, became its leading detractor, and claimed that Wessely “incited Israel to the study of natural and academic sciences.” This episode is described in detail in the biography Toldot Yeh.ezkel HaLevi Landa, published in 1972 in Me’a She’arim accompanied by great praises to the Rabbi’s honesty and a warning against reading Wessely’s book: “And we are to consider the holy qualities of our Rabbi who, though he himself had been among the supporters of this man’s books, nonetheless did not hesitate to recant and ban him and say that he is a heretic and unfit to serve as a witness. (And one must take care to avoid reading this man’s books and there are some who err in this as they do not know who he is and see in his book the approval of one of the Great Ones of Israel)” (Munk 1972, 13–16).

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peoples of the world and has its own proper sequence of studies which must be adhered to. In a commentary on the Torah portion “BeShalah.” written in 1811, the H . atam Sofer directly associates the study of external wisdoms with the study of the literal meaning of the Torah, and scathingly attacks the trend taking shape in his generation to give such studies primacy over the oral tradition: “Our son and our seed, should they study at the outset of their education the literal Bible and the external wisdoms which are external to the Torah, then even before they mature and arrive at the commentaries and the Oral Torah, which is the principal object, […] they will have already chosen apostasy and will renounce the Lord and his law just as our eyes have seen in this evil age.” If the boy interprets the Bible literally and if he begins his education by studying the external sciences, continues the H . atam Sofer, then eventually, “in his acts he will denounce his Father in Heaven and will not desire the Lord and his laws.” Accordingly, he concludes with the unequivocal verdict: “And from this the moral will be drawn that one must not heed the novices who have just arrived, to distance us from the Lord using the Torah of God and who seek to overturn the plate and teach us in the manner of reason to fail our sons, so that there shall remain neither name nor trace to the Talmud, God forbid” (H . atam Sofer 1960, 21a–b). Both the H . atam Sofer and Rabbi Landa were careful to avoid explicitly prohibiting the study of grammar (Mahler 1954, vol. 1, 223). Yet it is no coincidence that the warning against literal study of the Bible and the admonition against the external wisdoms, taken together, were understood to also prohibit engagement in grammar. Rabbi Shlomo Kluger (Komarow, Poland, 1786–1869), for example, prohibited the study of grammar by drawing explicitly on Rabbi Landa’s pronouncements. This was in response to a question addressed to him: [It was asked] from the leaders of one community, regarding several people who set up a study group to learn together the composition Talmud Leshon Ivri [Instruction in the Hebrew language, by Y. L. Ben-Ze’ev] and the compositions of R. Moshe Dessauer [Moses Mendelssohn], and tempers flared and they were excommunicated and the books were taken from them and burned, and I was appealed to so as to decide who was right in this matter. (Kluger 1910, sign 257, 46:a–b)

Rabbi Kluger divides his responsum into two parts. As to the burning of the books, he states that “there might be cause for culpability by law,

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but they [the burners] are not to be blamed for this […] and given that they were incited into this action and acted from passion, doubtless they did well.” Then he turns to the heart of the matter: he rejects the view expressed by the author of Ein Ya’akov, which Mendelssohn and Bock and Abramovich used to legitimize study of the external wisdoms, and prohibits the study of grammar, based on the rulings of Rabbi Landa cited above: For owing to the requirements of the age, it is proper to enact laws and to increase our distance from even the slightest sin […] and therefore certainly the study of grammar or reason as in the early days, when the philosophizers and atheists had not yet taken hold of these subjects, was a proper thing to study. But now that they have taken hold of them, one must keep as far from them as the arrow flies […] (And here I am told that the righteous Rabbi Hirsch Melekh also wrote in this vein), for we have seen with our own eyes that the study of grammar leads to exclusive involvement in the Bible, and the Bible leads to German translation, and the German translation leads to apostasy. And the author of Talmud Leshon Ivri I did know him in his youth […] and observed that he was a great sinner […] and we must uphold only the Six Books [of the Mishnah] and the Poskim, may the light that shines from them return us to the true course. (Kluger 1910, sign 257, 46:a–b)

Other testimonies also indicate that some communities viewed the prohibition against reason as also proscribing any involvement with grammar and Hebrew. Isaac H. Weiss (Velke Mezirici, Moravia, Austrian Empire, 1815–1905), for instance, attests that in Hungary, the land of the H . atam Sofer, it was considered that “the wisdoms were sinful and the rabbis also steered their pupils away from involvement in the external wisdoms […] and even the knowledge of the wisdom of the Holy Language and its grammar and literature was treated as an external wisdom” (Weiss 1895, 30).29 No less important than the rabbis’ interpretation of the dictum “And keep your sons from reason” was the broad public’s understanding of their position, and its actual implementation both within the traditional education system and outside it. As autobiographers and memoir writers 29 A similar conclusion—that the status of grammar was like that of the “external wisdoms”—follows from Rabbi Y. Emden’s discussion regarding grammar study in the bathroom (Emden 2004, vol.1, sign 10).

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repeatedly point out, the dictum was often quoted as a justification for attacks against voluntary reading of the Bible and against systematic instruction in Hebrew and its grammar.30 As we have seen, Mendelssohn and Bock and Abramovich attempted to resist such claims and put forward narrower interpretations of the phrase. The former contended that the dictum does not speak about the Bible or Hebrew, nor does it order that they be neglected; the latter sought to show that the dictum does not refer to the external wisdoms or prohibit their study. Yet both admitted that Rashi intended to forestall some of the dangers inherent in literal readings of the Bible and in the preference of the Bible over the Oral Torah, and both insisted that their own stance does not imply any doubts as to the validity of the Midrash or the authority of the Halakhah. It must be conceded, however, that this last claim involved no small measure of naivety or even pretense. Without inquiring here which of the Maskilim honestly believed that their preoccupations did not constitute a threat to Halakhic authority, it cannot be denied that they did in fact advocate literal readings of the Bible (Etkes 1993, 27–28; Shoh.at 1985, 362, 368).

Intentional Ignorance of Hebrew and the Status of Modern Hebrew Literature Needless to say, the intentional ignorance of Hebrew had far-reaching implications for the status of the nascent modern Hebrew literature and contributed significantly to the beleaguered status of this literature in the traditional community. To better understand traditional society’s attitude toward the pioneering attempts at creating a modern Hebrew literature, we should closely examine the affinity between the notion of “higayon” (reason) as interpreted above and the notion of “melitsa” (lit. Biblical verse, poetic phrase, rhetorical ornament, figure of speech), which was central to the poetics of the modern Hebrew literature. Indeed, the Maskilic melitsa was an emblem of the dangers that Hebrew language and grammar and unmediated reading of the Bible posed to traditional authorities.

30 See, for example, Buki Ben Yogli (1947, 56), Kasdai (1926, 219–222), and Weiss (1985, 61, 71).

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A brief glance at the connotations of the word “melitsa” as used by Maskilim reveals that before it acquired a derogatory sense as referring to pompous, empty phrases, which happened around the 1860s, it had referred to sublime poetic language based on pure Biblical and proper grammatical Hebrew. The melitsa was to be a poetic expression that is based both on a logical structure that allows for persuasive rational argumentation, and on rhetorical and figurative forms that evoke a pleasing aesthetic experience. An illustration of these two foundations of the melitsa can be found in the words of Shmaryahu Levin (Svislac/Svislevitsh, Grodno G., R.E., 1867–1935), who likens the “long lines of verb conjugations” to “lines of trees in a planted garden, [...] beautiful and orderly and well-maintained,” and identifies grammar with “pure logic” and with the beauty of the planted garden (Levin 1961, 224). Both in their definitions of the term “melitsa” and in the practical use they made of this kind of language, the Maskilim stressed the close connection between the melitsa and classical rhetoric, grammar, logic, and poetics31 relying, in one way or another, on the disciplinary divisions accepted in the Middle Ages or on the idea of studia humanitatis. Naphtali Hertz Wessely, who finds correspondences between the “roots of language,” i.e., grammar, and the “melitsic sentence,” also speaks of the “clarity of the Holy Tongue and its grammar, and the phrasing of its melitsa” (Wessely 1785, 5:b). Melitsa is often equated with clarity and purity, and the words tsah. (clear) and tsah.ut (clarity) in the Maskilic phraseology connote a high idiom or rhetoric. Some go further and associate rhetoric not only with grammar and logic but also with the “purity” of the Biblical melitsa. Thus, for example, Yitsh.ak Satanov (Sataniv/Satanov, Podolia G., R.E., 1732–1804) writes: Every adept scribe will do well to ornament his melitsa materially, preserving purity; that is to say, the words which are the material of the melitsa should be based on grammar according to the rules and there should not be linguistic hybrids. I have seen certain melitsot whose authors knew nothing of grammar. Moreover, their melitsot half-spoke the

31 On the association and the tension between the melitsa and the “external sciences,” see Pelli (1991, 31–37) and Rappel (1990, 12–45).

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Talmudic language; they do not speak the Jewish tongue. And a mixture of linguistic strata underwrites them. (Satanov 1775, 4:a)32

Hence, the melitsa derived its value not merely from its figurative character, but also from its logic, order, and freedom from grammatical error and foreign-language terms. These aspects of its aesthetic appear in the discussions of both writers and grammarians. The latter viewed the melitsa as an integral part of the grammar books, and devoted entire chapters of their works to the melitsa and to poetic composition. Thus, for example, the grammarian Y. L. Ben-Ze’ev notes in his Talmud Leshon Ivri that the melitsa must “speak metaphorically, imaginatively, and indirectly, and its ideas must be so exalted as to waken and exalt the spirit” (Ben-Ze’ev 1884, 342), and the grammarian S. Z. HaCohen Hanau writes in his Tsohar HaTeiva: The melitsa must be such that it conveys its message in an orderly form and with beauty of arrangement, so that it is able to introduce into the soul the depths of the speaker’s thoughts. And among the requirements of the high form of melitsa is contentment with neither superfluity nor deficiency; an awareness of the dangers of an obstructive expression that blocks the rhetorical flow; and an elimination of double meaning. (Hanau HaCohen 1819, section 1)

These and similar elaborations of the notion of melitsa in the Maskilic discourse indicate that its essential attributes are strong affinity to Biblical idiom and grammar on the one hand, and to the “external wisdoms” of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, on the other hand. There is no wonder that these attributes, which were expressed explicitly in Maskilic discourse, aroused the suspicion of the rabbinic leadership. They confirmed what the rabbis had already known about the dangers posed by modern Hebrew literature and clarified why transparent rhetoric, which eschews ambiguity, is a threat to be resisted. The associations identified here—between the melitsa as a key feature of Maskilic discourse, on the one hand, and the study of external wisdoms, of Hebrew grammar, and of the Bible in its unmediated, literal form, on

32 It should be noted that Satanov supported the expansion of Hebrew drawing upon rabbinic language as well, although he sought to maintain the supremacy of Biblical language. See Parush and Fischler (1995, 111–113).

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the other hand—call for a reassessment of the rabbinic leadership’s opposition to the Maskilic melitsa. We must re-examine the common argument that the rabbis rejected the use of melitsa because they wished to protect the sanctity of the language, and uncover the deep factors behind this prohibition and behind the persecution of poets, which was described succinctly by Y. L. Gordon in his poem “For Whom Do I Labor?” (1956, 27): My parents—adhering to their Lord and nation, Commerce, Commandments, their life’s occupation Reason revolts them, good taste never found “Deathly is poetry, and melitsa heathen! “To lodge near a poet is strictly forbidden!” Thus do they taunt us, viciously hound.33

“Grammar Was the Bane of the Maskilim” Conventional wisdom has it that the principal reason for the traditional community’s rejection of modern Hebrew literature was that it infringed upon the sanctity of the Hebrew language. According to this explanation, the traditional community viewed Hebrew as serving the uses of prayer and Torah study alone, whereas Maskilim also designated it for secular ends. In Immanuel Etkes’s concise formulation, the Maskilic attitude was characterized by: a romantic approach which elevated the Hebrew language as a precious residue of the glorious past, and therefore one worthy of conservation and care. Hence the considerable importance of treating the Hebrew language as a subject of research and investigation. Hence also the excitement and emotionality accompanying efforts to compose modern Hebrew poetry, and the high regard for Biblical poetry as a source of inspiration and an aesthetic model worthy of imitation. This new approach, which removes Hebrew from the exclusive realms of Torah study and worship of God, and which turns it into a research topic and a means of intrinsically valued poetic creation, is one of the clear expressions of the secularizing trend that marks the Haskalah. (Etkes 1993, 28)

33 Translated by Saadya Sternberg.

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On this account, the Maskilic secularization of Hebrew had to do with the functional shift that Maskilim applied to the language, and it was this shift that attracted the traditional community’s opprobrium. This language, intended for sacramental purposes alone, was being removed from the exclusive realm of religious devotion, treated as a subject worthy of study in itself, and prepared for use for secular purposes and for the creation of poetry. Yet the associations we have noted above between melitsa and grammar, the Bible, and the external wisdoms suggest that the claim regarding the Maskilic profanation of Hebrew may have been a smokescreen for undeclared, and sometimes even unconscious, motives. It appears that this claim scarcely reflects the profound reasons for the disparagement of the Maskilic melitsa and literature. Similarly, the contention that the shift Maskilim were seeking to effect through language was limited to the harnessing of the Holy Tongue for secular ends vastly underrates the scope of the revolution they were trying to bring about. The insistence on the sacredness and thus the impermissibility of the Hebrew language masked other goals and agendas unrevealed by these express justifications. The hostility toward poetry, literature, and the Maskilic melitsa, like the hostility toward the external wisdoms, Bible studies, and Hebrew, was bound up first and foremost with the problem of grammar. A striking insight into this effect is given by Buki Ben Yogli (Yehuda Leib Katzenelson) in an account that concludes his autobiography: Falsely did they accuse the first Maskilim of excessive preoccupation with the grammar of the Hebrew tongue. A great deed those men did at that time, something whose value was appreciated neither by Kovner nor by his opponents. Although it is possible that his opponents understood this, yet they held it back behind their tongues. And in truth, what was the threat from the Maskilim which so frightened the zealots of those days? Why did they set upon them in rage and in fury? Did [the Maskilim] not persevere in all the customs practiced by the nation? Was it because they wrote poetry? But since when was poetry prohibited from reaching the public? […] In the Middle Ages there were great Jewish poets, and no one attacked them. All the great Torah-learned rabbis wrote poetry, and no one attacked them. Grammar was the bane of the Maskilim, it was Grammar that undermined the foundations of the Oral Torah, according to the zealots: and in this they were very right, for indeed grammar weakened the authority of the Talmud over the people. Someone who has even a little knowledge of Talmud knows that the Oral Torah, as it says in the

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Talmud, “the Halakhah supplants the Bible.” The Sages of the Prushim [anti-literalists] of yore saw that already in their day it was no longer possible to live according to the laws of the Torah of Moses; so they rose and enacted various emendations […] The Sages of the Talmud who succeeded them, observing the contradiction between the two bodies of law and seeking to reconcile them, sought to move from the literal sense of the Bible and interpret it in such a way that it would not be opposed to the Halakhah. They would not worry if their commentaries always contradicted the grammatical rules. For in Talmudic times the language of the Bible had already ceased to be current, and Hebrew was differently viewed and had a different grammar; the ancient tongue was not understood by most of the nation, and therefore it was comparatively easy to give nonliteral commentaries. […] Those in power sensed the danger the Talmud faced from grammar and condemned all those engaging in it. Yet the questioner will still ask, weren’t there great Jewish grammarians in the Middle Ages, and how is it that grammar didn’t threaten the Talmud in any way then? Neither is that the full truth. Grammar posed a threat to the Talmud even then; then too the Karaites felt that the Halakhah was based on a false interpretation of Bible, and they were banished from the House of Israel. (Buki Ben Yogli 1947, 153–154)

Buki Ben Yogli points out that the belief that grammatical knowledge threatens Talmudic authority was current in the Middle Ages as well, and was not an innovation of the opponents of Haskalah. And, indeed, in prefaces to grammar books from the Middle Ages, just as in prefaces to the grammar texts of the Maskilim, one repeatedly finds the apologetic statement that mastery of the wisdom of grammar does not lead to apostasy, but, on the contrary, strengthens faith as it aids in comprehension of the Bible. In the author’s preface to Sefer HaRikma by Jonah Ibn Janah. (Cordoba, Spain, 990–1055), which deals with Biblical grammar, the author sets out to defend grammar from those who denigrate it and vilify its devotees. In his opinion, jealousy and zealotry is what motivated the persecution of students of grammar and the wisdoms (Ibn Janah. 1964, 14). He condemns the use of linguistic ignorance as a means of intimidating the masses and withholding knowledge from them: Many of those who are jealous of the wise men of our time, and in our country, their zealotry and boorishness cause them to assail [the wise ones]. How wonderfully do they innovate, and how charmingly do they interpret, except in matters relating to religious obligations, their words differing from what is said in the Midrash and Aggadah. [So that the zealous] say:

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“This differs from what our rabbis taught us,” and the accusation is fanned, and the person is singled out, and defects are sought in him, and he is held as an example to frighten off the common uneducated men, until they are prevented from seeing the truth of things, and they are incited to loathing, from their jealousy of the wise men and their ignorance of what our rabbis of blessed memory said: “A scriptural passage is not to be divorced from its literal meaning;” and further: “The literal meaning of the Bible is one thing, and the Halakhah is another.” (Ibn Janah. 1964, 15)

Ibn Janah. was perplexed by the attitude of his generation toward grammar, when “our rabbis of blessed memory knew it and insisted on it and took pains with it,” “and most perplexing of all is their dismissiveness of this wisdom and denigration of its adherents and their limited recognition that fulfillment of the religious obligations as they are written and their proper observance is impossible unless grammar is relied upon” (Ibn Janah. 1964, 8–19). Like Ibn Janah., Shlomo Zalman HaCohen Hanau was convinced that grammar is an aid to comprehension of the ancient commentaries on the Bible, and is “a great tool for analysis of the Oral Torah.” Statements to this effect are to be found in the preface to his Tsohar HaTeiva: And I did settle upon the wisdom of grammar because it is part and parcel of the Torah. After I did see that this wisdom has been cast into a corner, no suitor she has and no seeker, blessed be she and blessed her cause. It is she who delivers correct reading of our precious Torah. She directs a person to gain knowledge and gives the boor insight and clothes the youth in wisdom and virtue. It is she who clarifies all the verses of the Bible with its roots and its rules and its punctuation and cantillation marks. (Hanau HaCohen 1819, no page numbers)

Yet these assertions did not improve traditional society’s attitude toward grammar in particular and toward Hebrew more generally. In the preface to his Otsar HaShorashim (1862), Yehuda Leib Ben-Ze’ev avers that since the death of Mendelssohn, the status of grammar has worsened: Those who uphold the Torah and serve as our eyes, they have become its [grammar’s] persecutors. For an old plague has sprouted anew in the nation, the name of wisdom has become hateful to her sister religion, and the Talmudic rabbis will not allow the tent of wisdom to be pitched alongside the tent of Torah, although the First Ones made her handmaiden

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to the mistress, religion. And now even a cook or servant they will not let her be. Banished is this handmaiden and her son, knowledge of language; no dowry or inheritance will she find among all the Great Ones of Israel. And many there are whose tongues have moved to pour scorn and wrath upon the devotees of wisdom and the students of language. (Ben-Ze’ev 1862, no page numbers)34

In a still more forceful allegation, the poet ADaM HaCohen (Vilnius/Vilna, R.E., 1794?–1878) describes the attitude of the traditional community toward Hebrew as an enmity that led to a campaign to destroy it: [Hebrew] is now being exterminated […] She is abandoned alone and humiliated, both she and her suitors, but not at the hands of some other nation but by her own people […] for she has no greater enemy than these of her own people. (ADaM HaCohen 1844, 121)

And in his lament for Mordechai Aharon Ginzburg, he says: For behold all nations and observe all peoples: does any nation on earth so abhor its language? For so precious is their language in their eyes that they greatly revere its sages and admirers, whereas we, the nation of God, despise our native tongue and persecute its scholars with everlasting hatred. (ADaM HaCohen 1847, 42–43)

Buki Ben Yogli, cited extensively above, offers an explanation of what ADaM HaCohen presented as a campaign of annihilation against the Hebrew language and its literature. He begins by explicitly declaring that “grammar was the bane of the Maskilim,” and concludes by hinting at an analogy between the contemporary Maskilim and the Karaites of yore. In fact, Buki Ben Yogli hints that the danger entailed by the study of grammar was that of approaching the Karaite worldview. And, indeed, the intensive engagement of Maskilim such as Shlomo Levisohn (Mor, Hungary, 1789–1821), RaSHY Fuenn (Vilnius/Vilna, R.E., 1818– 1890), and A. B. Gottlober in research on the language and history of the Karaites, as well as the relationships that Maskilim such as Rabbi Nah.man 34 Fuenn (1881, 142–143) makes a similar claim. For the different justifications provided for the engagement in Torah scholarship among the learned elite of Ashkenazi Jewry from the sixteenth century onward, see Etkes (1993, 30–31).

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Krokhmal (Brody/Brod, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1785–1840), Y. B. Levinsohn, Y. L. Gordon, and Gottlober maintained with leading figures in the Karaite community, suggest that the possible analogy between the Haskalah and Karaism preoccupied, and perhaps also worried, the Maskilim themselves (Fahn 1929).35 In his explicit statements and veiled hints, Buki Ben Yogli uncovers the link between the threat posed to the rabbis by grammar and that posed to them by the writers of modern Hebrew literature. The melitsa was rejected first and foremost because it was founded on the model of grammatical and pure Biblical Hebrew. It was not the use of the Holy Language for secular functions that threatened rabbinic authority, but rather Biblical purism itself. Even if the revitalization and inculcation of Hebrew based on pure Biblical grammar would have been done for purely religious ends, it would still have threatened the hold of the Oral Torah in society and hence would have undermined the traditional rabbinic authority.

Who Is Master of the Language? The intentional cultivation of ignorance for the purpose of controlling language thus served traditional leadership as a powerful instrument for fortifying its religious authority and reproducing the existing social order. This ignorance successfully deprived broad circles of society from knowledge of grammar, the Bible, and Hebrew. It stifled critical reasoning and ensured that the traditional sources of authority would be obeyed.

35 In an extensive study of the relations between the Maskilim and the Karaites, Fahn (1929) argues that one of the reasons for the Maskilim’s fascination with Karaism was Karaites’ linguistic and scientific research into Hebrew grammar and the Bible. On the close relationships between Maskilim and Karaites, he writes: “Hebrew Authors and Maskilim in Russia, who are active in promoting the Haskalah among Jews of the land, are walking as intimate friends with the Karaite scholars, in close brotherly bonds” (Fahn 1929, 107). In his opinion, Rabbi S. Y. Fuenn “was enthralled by the idea of Haskalah and by the criticism of Jewish life and its transformation, and was somewhat attracted to Karaism.” Y. B. Levinsohn resented Fuen for this, and scourged him in his Nidah.ei Yisra’el (Fahn 1929, 108). Fahn also notes that: “Both sides were mistaken. The Maskilim thought to find among the Karaites their intellectual predecessors – people with several hundred years of experience in criticism of the teachings of Our Rabbis, seekers who would not have Mount Talmud weighing upon them and would thus be free in their reasoning and their thoughts; and the Karaites imagined that the reformers in Ashkenaz and the enlightened of Israel in other countries tended toward the Karaite religion” (Fahn 1929, 115).

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Arrayed across the battle lines were the Haskalah authors and literary critics, who vigorously assailed the dependency of Jewish culture on, in their words, these “avtoritets.” In the spirit of the Haskalah posture, and under the influence of the radical Russian critics, they demanded free critical thinking and strove for democratization of language and knowledge (Katzenelson 1954, 52–53). In his book Ein Mishpat (1867), Abramovich deals with this topic at length. He describes how the elite is preventing the masses from gaining access to knowledge by using esoteric language and declares that “since time immemorial this has been the way of the wise of all nations: to hide the wisdoms and science from the eyes of the people and to use hints and a special scholarly language, so as to have their speech understood by the erudite alone […] and not by the masses” (Abramovich 1867, 42). Yet Abramovich also observes that the age of restriction of knowledge to a scholarly elite has ended, and the time has come to follow the example of other nations and make knowledge and enlightenment open and available to all. In a similar vein, Avraham Ya’akov Paperna (Kapyl/Kapoli, Minsk G., R.E., 1840–1919) lambasted the rabbinic tendency to “write in such a way so as not to be understood,” demanding the democratization of language and writing (Paperna 1952, 49–51; see also Parush 1993, 216–222). The battle between the Maskilim and the rabbinic authorities over grammar was thus a battle for the control of language. It was meant to answer decisively who would be ba’al halashon, i.e., the “master/owner of the tongue,” and who would thus be able to shape the consciousness of society, its beliefs, and its ways of life. In order to wrest this mastery from the hands of the traditional leadership, the Maskilim set out, consciously or not, to put together a “counter-discourse,”36 a subversive language, which would undermine the authority of rabbinic language and offer an alternative that would shape anew the consciousness of those using it. In the particular historical circumstances under which the Maskilim operated, pure Biblical language was of clear subversive potential, because it brought to the fore the repressed, repudiated aspect of language— its grammar. Furthermore, Haskalah thinkers viewed Biblical language as a mimetic and transparent idiom oriented toward the “real world” and representing it faithfully, as opposed to the rabbinic language, which they viewed as oriented toward the language of canonized texts rather than 36 On the theoretical basis of the distinction between “dominant language” and “subversive language,” see Terdiman (1985, 25–81).

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toward reality itself (Fischler and Parush 1995; Sandler 1984, 81–85). Hence, the return to the Biblical idiom and its grammar and their inculcation to all were meant also to reorient language toward the world, and thus to transform not only the consciousness of language users but also their social and cultural reality.

The Paradoxes of Biblical Purism Given all the above, conventional wisdom concerning the retardant effect of the ideal of Biblical purism on the development of Hebrew and its literature must also be reassessed.37 The debate over purism accompanied Hebrew literature from its outset. In the second half of the nineteenth century, many authors and critics tended to regard the ideal of purism as one of the great barriers to the development of modern Hebrew and its literature (Halkin 1984, 100–102).38 The main points of the criticism of the purist ideal were articulated by Yisrael H . ayim Taviov (Druya/Droye, Vitebsk G., R.E., 1858–1920) in his essay “Our Fine Literature and its Future,” published in 1891. Taviov explains the return of the Berlin Maskilim to Biblical purism as a wish to ennoble the dead language by drawing on the glories of the Biblical idiom, but at the same time he is unsparing in his criticism of this style: The Melitsic style, based on verses from the Bible, which has prevailed in our literature to its detriment […] has removed authority from the author and turned him into the willing slave of Biblical verse—the style that yielded entire volumes of quotes of Biblical rhyme, this style has not allowed our literature to develop naturally, as it surrounded it with a Biblical wall. (Taviov 1891, 108)

Yosef Klausner was also highly critical of Biblical purism, but explained the Maskilic resort to it as a “living protest” against “the deeply corrupt state into which our language has fallen […] from the days of the Kalir up to the period of the Me’asfim [the first generation of Maskilim, named

37 For the debate on the effects of Biblical purism on modern Hebrew literature, see Halkin (1984, 100–101), Haramati (1992, 212–213), and Klausner (1896, 98 ff.). 38 On Talmudic idioms and phrases in the prose of Avraham Mapu (Vilijampole/Slabadke, Kovno G., R.E., 1808–1867), for example, see Dalmatzky-Fischler (1983, 278–284).

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after the journal HaMe’asef 1784–1797].” In his opinion, “Hebrew […] had become a sort of gypsy dialect […] and for their goal of counteracting […] this corrupted style, they [the Berlin Maskilim] found no better means than to adopt the Hebraic style, without noticing that this stifled our language at a time when it most needed to be simplified and expanded” (Klausner 1896, 26). Unlike Taviov, who stressed the goals toward which Biblical purism strove, Klausner dwells on what this choice attempted to overcome. Still he does not disagree that building a scripturally pure Hebrew as an alternative to rabbinic idiom and a platform for a modern language and literature was a project fraught with difficulties. For notwithstanding the image of Biblical idiom as a mimetic, transparent, world-oriented discourse, many Maskilim wrote in an exegetical style that stuck to the conventions of rabbinic discourse. They tended to cite verses, to use expressions centered on canonical texts, and to avoid describing concrete realities. This pseudo-rabbinic manner raised the ire of melitsa critics such as A. U. Kovner, A. Y. Paperna, and Mendele, who demanded a halt to phraseology and a realization of the mimetic potential of the Biblical idiom, with nouns and concepts referring to “the real world” (Parush 1993). Without denying the validity of such criticism, one must also keep in mind that the challenges that led the Maskilim to resort to Biblical purism were far greater than mere correction of “stylistic corruption.” From their perspective, the choice of Biblical purism was a necessary move, since only such a language could have shaken the traditional worldview and serve as a platform for a Maskilic alternative. Furthermore, despite its problems and limitations, Biblical purism was vital for the formation of a linguistic standard based on a solid grammatical foundation. Only with such a linguistic standard could the Hebrew language synthesize all its strata into one organic whole that was lucid, grammatical, and accessible to all, as well as fundamentally different from rabbinic language (Fischler and Parush 1997, 227–236; Dalmatzky-Fischler and Parush 2011, 122– 163). Nonetheless, the turn toward a pure Biblical language was rife with paradoxes. The hope of revitalizing the language conflicted with its restriction to the Biblical vocabulary, and the desire to develop a Hebrew literature on the model of European realism conflicted with the pathos and sublimity of the Biblical idiom. The preoccupation with grammar and philology, necessary though it was, invaded literary creation and damaged

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it (Werses 1990, 40–41), and the desire for linguistic democratization was contradicted by the almost esoteric nature of Biblical discourse, which was inaccessible to many. The constraints within which the Maskilim operated forced them to choose an elevated, elitist language as a means of establishing a popular and equitable language. This paradox was revealed in all its intensity in the Haskalah of Eastern Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century, for compared to the more aristocratic Berlin Maskilim (Mahler 1954, vol. 1, 80–81), many of the Eastern European Maskilim were particularly committed to the democratization of language and knowledge (Abramovich 1867, 42). This complex state of affairs was further complicated by the ongoing detachment of the modern Hebrew literature from its targeted readership. Distrust of the Bible and those dealing with it “stained” texts written in Biblical style, marking them as texts that were not to be read or printed. Paperna, for example, tells in his memoirs that: The Shapira printers […] never accepted for publication in their printing house in Salavita and Zhitomir any book written by one of the Maskilim, which is why the authors of Volhynia and Podolia, RYBaL, Lerner, Abramovich and the rest, had to publish their works in Vilna or abroad. As fervent Hasidim they detested grammar and eliminated the hard-consonant diacritic and left it only in the letters Bet, Kaf , Pey, and Tav. And they never bothered to proofread any text they set to type. (Paperna 1952, 314)

Still more serious was the fact that modern Hebrew literature could not find a broad audience fluent in the language, a consequence of the traditional elite’s successful control of linguistic knowledge. Thus, despite many efforts to expand its circle of readers, almost until the end of the nineteenth century Hebrew literature continued to develop as an elitist literature whose readership was not much larger than the handful of authors who composed it. Many explanations have been offered for the return of the Maskilim to the Biblical language and to the purist ideal it represented. It has been argued that the language of the Bible, as a national language, symbolized the unity of the nation scattered throughout the Diaspora; that Hebrew, perceived as a relic of a glorious past, was approached with a romanticizing attitude; that this choice reflected a preference for Biblical values over the supposedly diasporic values of the Talmud; that the quest for a pure language was a form of classicist aestheticism; and that this was

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a means of erasing the “shameful Yiddish jargon” and showing to the nations of the world the language of the ancient and sublime culture of the Jews (Tzamriyon 1988, 353–430). To all these accounts we must add yet another one. In the historical circumstances under which the Maskilim acted, the choice of pure Biblical language as a linguistic and literary ideal was in fact a choice of a subversive language.39 This step was an integral part of a momentous struggle over the mastery of language and knowledge in East European Jewish society, and through it over the consciousness of the Jewish people, their culture, and their ways of life. Yet although the choice of Biblical purism suited the revolutionary goals of the Maskilim in some respects, it also put them in a bind: the very same features that gave Biblical language its revolutionary force also created an ongoing rift between modern Hebrew literature and its potential readership, and hindered its development for years to come.

39 The promotion of Biblical purism as a linguistic and literary ideal was an attempt to reshape Hebrew as a unitary language and to impose it upon the emerging literature. Any follower of Bakhtin, who favors heteroglossia, must view such an attempt as reactionary and negative, as it narrows down the range of possible voices and restricts the expression of diverse worldviews. Yet in the particular historical situation under consideration, the path toward the democratization of language depended on just such a unification, For a critique of Bakhtin based upon Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony, which is in line with the views expressed here, see Crowley (1989, 83–89).

CHAPTER 8

From Mother Tongue to Father Tongue: The Study of Grammar, Reading, and Writing in Hebrew as a Male Maskilic Rite of Passage

I returned to the house of prayer of the Sadigura Hasidim like a wanderer in the world, who no longer knows whether this world is his or not. I no longer know my regular place, which was kept for me there, and my place no longer knows me either. For I am no longer what I was. That is, I’m not yet I am, I am yet I’m not. David Yeshayahu Zilberbush, MiPinkas Zikhronotai (From My Memoir Notebook)1

The turn of the Haskalah writers to the Bible—making Biblical purism a linguistic model and fusing the various strata of the Hebrew language on the foundation of Biblical grammar—served many ideological purposes. However, the ideological aspects discussed thus far, as important as they may be, still do not capture the full significance of this move. The inferior status of the corpora that offered inspiration to Maskilic writing, and their close association with Yiddish and its “women’s romances,” added further layers of meaning to the turn to the Hebrew language, and complicated the implications of this move for individual Maskilim 1 Zilberbush (1936, 55).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. Parush, The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature, New Directions in Book History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81819-7_8

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and for their consolidation as a community. Descriptions of literacy events related to writing and reading in Hebrew show that the study of Hebrew, grammar, and the Bible had far-reaching social and psychological repercussions, and played a significant role in the initiation of young people into the world of Haskalah. In this chapter, I will examine typical literacy events in the lives of yeshiva students who turned to Haskalah (known as Mitmaskelim, individuals undergoing enlightenment) and will show that, taken together, these literacy events amounted to a rite of passage that initiated the Mitmaskelim into Haskalah, and (re)constituted not only their new Maskilic identity but also their male gender identity.

Rites of Passage and Their Maskilic Version The term “rite of passage” was coined by anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep, who described the life of the individual in any human society as composed of a series of transitions from one status to another: from age to age, from occupation to occupation, from creed to creed, and so on (Van Gennep 1960). These transitions are typically difficult and dangerous, and their successful completion is not guaranteed in advance. Many of them are accomplished with the assistance and mediation of “rites of passage,” which may take the form of a single ceremony or a series of ceremonial events. The meanings and significance of these rites are determined by their cultural, social, and institutional context, and therefore they are different from one cultural setting to another. Nevertheless, Van Gennep contended that all rites of passage share a similar structure consisting of three stages: the stage of separation, in which the individual or group are symbolically detached from society and from their previous position within it; the stage of liminality (from the Latin word limen, i.e., threshold); and the stage of incorporation back into society under a new status and identity. Of these three stages, the one that most fascinated scholars has been the middle, liminal stage, when participants are “betwixt and between” (Turner 1969)—no longer in their previous status and not yet in their new one. This is presumably the most precarious stage, in which the participants are most vulnerable. In extreme cases, this stage may include violence, suffering, pain, and humiliation, which create the void and chaos from which the new identity is supposed to spring out.

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Van Gennep’s model of rites of passage was challenged and revised by British anthropologist Victor Turner (1969), who criticized its functionalist and conservative assumptions. Whereas according to Van Gennep, the function of rites of passage is to secure the smooth transition of the individual from one status to another so that the existing social order is eventually maintained, Turner argued that rites of passage may also, under certain circumstances, effect social change and transform the social order. In particular, the liminal stage of rites of passage carries with it a subversive potential, as the temporary departure from day-to-day social order may develop into a substantial challenge to it. In light of these arguments, scholarship on rites of passage has turned to find out how and under what circumstances such rites can indeed contribute to the transformation of society at large (Eisenstadt 1992). Scholars have also directed their attention to the symbolic and performative dimensions of rites of passage as expressive public events, and to their contribution to the formation of individual and collective identities (Abeliovich 2018; Grimes 2000; Handelman 1990). It is these latter, more dynamic and symbolic perspectives on rites of passage that I espouse in this chapter: I seek to illuminate the formation of the individual and collective identities of yeshiva students undergoing enlightenment, against the background of a profound social transformation in Eastern European Jewish society. Of particular interest in our context is the role played by linguistic ceremonies, such as linguistic testing, in some rites of passage. Ong, for example, described the study of Latin during the Renaissance as a “Renaissance puberty rite” (Ong 1959; see also Cullum 2003). Since in many societies the unequal distribution of literacy skills is a component of the gender hierarchy, the linguistic dimension of rites of passage may also be related to the construction of participants’ gender identity.2 Thus, for instance, in societies where the vernacular is associated with the female sphere, the construction of male identity may be accomplished through rites of passage that symbolically cut off their male participants from the women’s vernacular and initiate them into exclusively male, higher-prestige forms of language (Rubin 2004, 8).

2 On the study of grammar as a distinguishing feature of male literacy in medieval England, see Zieman (2003, 97–120). On the gender aspects of the humanistic education in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Grafton and Jardine (1986, 56–57).

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Based on these observations, this chapter borrows the idea of rites of passage from cultural anthropology to show that literacy events related to the Hebrew language—such as self-learning of Hebrew grammar, first efforts at writing melitsa in pure Biblical Hebrew, and forbidden reading of modern Hebrew literature—were stages in a Maskilic rite of passage that served to initiate the Mitmaskelim into the Maskilic community, as well as to reconstitute their male identity. Since the term “rite of passage” is applied here in a borrowed sense, its denotation is particularly broad. The literacy events described below may seem, at times, like pale reflections of the dramatic ritual acts in the tribal rites of passage studied by anthropologists. Furthermore, unlike typical rites of initiation into male identity, where the boy is separated from his mother and from femininity, the Maskilic initiation also involved a severing of the boy from his father. Whereas the normative rites of male initiation in Jewish society, such as circumcision, upsherin/h.alakah (a Jewish boy’s first haircut at the age of three), entry into the heder, and bar-mitzvah, are performed by the father or under his directive, the male Maskilic rite of initiation was more akin to anti-normative rites, such as those accompanying religious conversion or introduction into an esoteric, dissenting sect. The Maskilic rite of initiation was not intended to induce the successful integration of the youth into the normative society of adult Jewish men, but rather to foster his separation from the father’s authority and from the traditional value system represented by the father. It was therefore an unofficial, loosely structured, and voluntary ritual process, usually clandestine and performed individually by young men in the private sphere. Nevertheless, other people, such as older mentors, were often involved as well, and the final stage of the process—the publication of a Hebrew text—was a public event, in which the Mitmaskel was publicly exposed as a “convert” to Haskalah. Hence, this transition process involved not only an individual transformation, but also a collective effort to establish a community of Maskilim imbued with a sense of intellectual and social mission. Quite a few similarities can be found between the role played by the study of Hebrew in the Maskilic initiation rite and the role played by the study of Latin in training for priesthood, as well as in the initiation into Renaissance Humanism (Ong 1959; Cullum 2003). The literacy events recorded in memoirs and autobiographies of Mitmaskelim indicate that acquiring mastery of Biblical Hebrew and its grammar was meant to produce a new type of Jewish intellectual and a new type of Jewish male,

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in the spirit of the patriarchal model set by the European Enlightenment. The Maskilic process of conversion or transformation was founded on the acquisition of the sanctified “father tongue,” as Hebrew was traditionally considered a male territory, but this was done with the aim of uprooting the traditional conception of masculinity and replacing it with another. As we shall see below, it was traditional Jewish culture that supplied the language, tools, and symbols for the Maskilic subversion of it, leading to its substitution with a different system in a prolonged yet revolutionary process. Two key cultural codes in traditional Jewish society, which have been discussed in the previous chapters, explain why and how the Hebrew language became the primary locus of the male Maskilic rite of passage. The first code had to do with the gendered images of Hebrew and Yiddish, and the second with the distinction between the sacred and the profane and its paradoxical implications for the status of the Hebrew language. As to the first code, the Hebrew language, as the “father tongue” and the language of the Written Torah, was a quintessential marker of masculinity, whereas Yiddish, as the “mother tongue” and the language of everyday speech, signified the cultural sphere of women and of “men who are like women.”3 As to the second code, the status of Hebrew in traditional Jewish society of the time was highly paradoxical: on the one hand, it was sacred, prestigious, and admired; on the other hand, it was distant, inaccessible, and almost forbidden. For reasons elaborated in the previous chapters, its systematic study was often seen as heretical and therefore had to be done in secret. Taken together, these two cultural codes explain why the study of Hebrew and its grammar came to symbolize, at one and the same time, separation from the mother and the mother tongue, Yiddish, and separation from the father as a symbol of traditional Jewish authority and of traditional Jewish masculinity, which the Maskilim viewed as flawed and effeminate (Parush 2004a, 38–56).4 These codes also explain the instrumentality 3 This is how Moshe Ben Hanokh Altshuler (1546–1633) describes the addressees of . his ethical work Brantshpigl (Burning Mirror), written in Yiddish and first appearing in Krakow in 1596 (Weissler 1987). In his words: “[This] book was written in Yiddish for women and for men who are like women” (quoted in Weissler 1987, 9). For an extensive discussion of the gender aspects of the relationship between Hebrew and Yiddish, see Seidman (1997). 4 The separation from Yiddish was far less complete than the separation from the effeminate gender identity. On the Maskilic critique with regard to the reversal of gender

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of Hebrew in the stages of liminality and incorporation: the struggle to acquire Hebrew brought with it ample dangers and challenges, which served as key trials in the liminal stage, and the eventual “conquest” of Hebrew served as the basis for a new male Maskilic identity and community. In addition, by focusing on the Hebrew language and its grammar, the Maskilic initiation process operated to transform the cultural status of the reading and writing of belles lettres. If these activities had previously been associated with the female sphere and with women’s world of legend and imagination, the resort to Hebrew enabled the Maskilim to turn them into prestigious male endeavors, thus producing a new version of women’s exclusion (Parush 2004a, 227–240). To substantiate these arguments, the following section will examine the gendered images and erotic metaphors that reflected the feminization of Yiddish writers, as well as their methods of coping with their feminization. This will be followed by an outline of the typical narrative of the Maskilic initiation process, as presented in Maskilic autobiographies. The subsequent sections will provide a closer look at the exclusively male literacy events that made up the Maskilic initiation rite: the systematic self-study of Hebrew grammar, the study of the Bible, the forbidden reading of modern Hebrew literature, the early efforts at writing melitsa (that is, poetic literary texts in Biblical Hebrew), and, finally, the attempts at publishing an original manuscript in a Maskilic Hebrew periodical.5

Writing in Yiddish and the Feminization of Writing As noted in Chapter 6, the feeling of feminization associated with writing and reading in Yiddish was vividly described in the memoirs of Buki Ben Yogli (the pen name of Yehuda Leib Katzenelson, Chernihiv/Chernigov, R.E., 1846–1917), who tells of his first poem written in the Yiddish language of Tsena UR’ena, and of his aunt who ridiculed him for this poem, saying that composing poems in Yiddish was a girls’ custom unfit for boys (Buki Ben Yogli 1947, 22). After recounting this event, Buki Ben Yogli adds, with irony, that despite his earnest desire to be “a man among roles in traditional Jewish society, see, e.g., Bartal (1998, 137–225), Boyarin (1997, 4–5, 11–12, 82–86), and Parush (2004a, 42–56). See also Gluzman (2007, 100–102, 116–122, 259–262). 5 On the risk carried by this test, see Werses (2001, 96).

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men,” he could not foreswear the women’s language, and his passion for women’s books remained unwavering (Buki Ben Yogli 1947, 18). Buki Ben Yogli was not the only one who expressed such a sentiment. Ironic comments alluding to similar experiences can be found in the writings of several Yiddish writers whose works were perceived as a prolonged dialogue with a female readership. Writing Yiddish literature and identification with its female readers carried with them a danger to the author’s gender identity, as if by the very act of writing, the author had taken on a female identity. Nah.um Meir Shaikewitz (SHoMeR; Nyasvizh/Nesvizh, Minsk G., R.E., 1849–1905), for example, hints unwittingly at this genderial blurring in a distant childhood memory evoked in his autobiography. Although he presents this incident as an example of his childish ignorance, it can also be viewed as an early anticipation of the covenant he would later make with his female readers: Once a bride and groom passed under the window of our melamed’s heder on their way to the bridal canopy, with many in-laws straggling after them, and I said to my friends: if I grow up, I will refuse to be a groom, only a bride. All the boys filled their mouths with laughter, and explained to me it was impossible for a boy to be a bride. But I did not believe them, and declared that every boy was given the choice of being a groom or a bride. And every girl had the right to be a groom. (Shaikewitz 1952, 32)

It appears that a similar meaning is implied in the comments that Peretz Hirschbein (Mielnik, Grodno G., R.E., 1880–1948) attributes to Yehoshua Mezah. (Seduva/Shadeve, Kovno G., R.E., 1834–1917), who, like Shaikewitz, wrote hundreds of stories for women. In a humorous tone, Hirschbein recounts how he met Mezah. on the street in Vilna and asked him “Mr. Mezah., […] you’re the one who wrote down the prayers of Sarah Bat-Tovim; […] when did she live?”, to which Mezah. replied, “with a cynical smile and a mischievous wink, ‘I am Sarah Bat-Tovim’” (Hirschbein 1971, 17). Nevertheless, sometimes the use of gendered metaphors was intended not to describe feminization, but rather to resist it. In such cases, it was meant to attenuate the reservations regarding Yiddish and to restore the impaired masculinity of the men writing in this language. A conspicuous use of such a gendered idiom is found in satirical visual caricatures of the time. In a variety of caricatures drawn toward the end of the nineteenth century, Hebrew and Yiddish are depicted as female rivals: the woman

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representing Hebrew is an old, dignified matron, whereas the one representing Yiddish is a charming servant girl, young and pretty. Needless to say, the male writers in the caricatures—whether they are embracing both women or going off arm in arm with juicy Yiddish alone—are proudly displaying their rehabilitated male potency.6 A splendid literary version of such a solution appears in an autobiographical sketch by Abramovich (Mendele Mokher Sfarim; Kapyl/Kapoli, Minsk G., R.E., 1836–1917) titled Notes on My History, where he insinuates, with allusive and charged irony, that he regarded writing in Yiddish as a sexual sin of a man who devotes his potency to an inferior and disreputable woman: How great was my embarrassment when I recognized that if I erred with that alien woman, I would be disgracing my honor, and I also heard reproaches for my ignominy from my friends, “lovers of the Hebrew language,” for shaming my name and my honor among the Jews by devoting my strength to that foreign woman. (Abramovich 1956, iv)7

Nevertheless, Abramovich presents his choice to write in Yiddish as the beginning of a fertile and bountiful affair with it, which reaffirms his male potency: From that time onward Yiddish has been my heart’s desire and I have espoused it forever, and I have eagerly brought her cosmetics to her and the portions she deserves, and she has become a lovely, beautiful, noble lady and bore me many sons. (Abramovich 1956, v)

Not many Yiddish writers managed to rehabilitate their injured masculinity by wedding the language. A more typical way of coping with the blow to the author’s masculine identity was the symptomatic custom of placing at the head of Yiddish novels a Hebrew poem, which was often devoted to praises for the Hebrew language. This literary convention, which was intended to give Hebrew its due honor and to demonstrate the author’s skill as a Hebrew writer worthy of his name, distinguished the Yiddish authors from their female readership and from the “men who

6 On the gendered and sexual aspects of these caricatures, see Fishman (1993, 151– 166) and Seidman (1997, 32, 34). It should be noted that the gendered symbolism of these caricatures excluded women from writing. 7 See also Miron (1973, 14, 27 nn. 28–31).

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are like women” who were also among their readers, and thus served to symbolically restore their masculinity.8 As we can see, as long as engagement with rhyme, poetry and novels was marked by a stamp of femininity due to the heritage of Yiddish and the spirit of Tsena UR’ena, only writing in pure Biblical Hebrew could efface the “shame.”9 In other words, by turning to the exclusive language of men, the “father tongue” of Biblical Hebrew, the writers asserted their masculinity and achieved the sought-after transformation: they liberated the craft of composing literary works from its feminine image, imbued it with prestige, and established a Maskilic male identity distinct from that of the traditional Jewish man.10 The literacy events that made up the liminal stage of the Maskilic rite of passage—which centered, as mentioned above, on the study of Hebrew and on reading and writing in this language—should be viewed against this background.

Knowledge and Eros: The Coming of Age Narrative Because of the relatively young age of marriage in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society, the period of adolescence was comparatively short.11 In the memoirs and autobiographies of Maskilim, accounts of this period are usually dominated by literacy events and stories about reading. The opening chapter of Avraham Baer Gottlober’s (AbaG; Starokonstantinov, Volhynia G., R.E., 1811–1899) autobiography provides a good example. As elaborated in Chapter 7, this chapter consists of a detailed account of Gottlober’s efforts at mastering Hebrew 8 For other aspects of this literary convention, see Marmar (1952, 9–11). 9 Writing in Yiddish was problematic in other respects as well. Evidence of the resent-

ment it incurred can be found in an autobiographical note by the writer and journalist B. Ye’ushzohn (the pen name of Moshe Bunem Yustman; Warsaw, Poland, 1889–1942). According to him, in his Hasidic environment, the Yiddish writer-journalist was seen as “a strange and bizarre creature, as a provoker of the masses who drives them away [from religion]” (Yustman 1967). In any case, the socio-cultural meaning of writing belles lettres in Yiddish requires a separate discussion. For a comprehensive research on the transformation in the status of Yiddish and its readers between 1860 and 1914, see Cohen (2020). 10 This phenomenon may be related to the fact that the Hebrew autobiography preceded the Yiddish autobiography (Moseley 2006, 15). 11 The age of marriage was low, but gradually rose throughout the century (Stampfer 1987b, 65–77).

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grammar—an account that is crafted, quite strikingly, as a narrative of maturation into adulthood. Although this and similar accounts of maturation often allude, each in its own way, to experiences of sexual arousal and adolescent anxieties, perplexities, and desires, most of them channel this emotional and erotic energy into descriptions of stormy and transformative literacy events. The story typically begins with a candid declaration of ignorance of Hebrew and its grammar, and of inability to read or write in this language,12 and ends with successful completion of the process of enlightenment, as expressed in the publishing of a Hebrew text and in the writer’s turning into “another man.” An example of this type of narrative is the story of maturation told by Nah.um Meir Shaikewitz (SHoMeR), which starts with the statement: “I was a young man devoid of all wisdom and knowledge, and apart from the Talmud, in which I had immersed myself, I knew nothing. It was hard for me to write even a few words in the Hebrew language” (Shaikewitz 1952, 69).13 When “a treasure house of books,” that is, a library, was established in his little town, “containing all the books of melitsa [Maskilic Hebrew poetry], all the love stories and all the periodicals that were published at that time,” Shaikewitz was exposed to the Haskalah literature. However, as he admits, his command of Hebrew was insufficient for reading a Maskilic novel, and “many things were like a sealed book” for him (Shaikewitz 1952, 72). From here on in, he describes a series of literacy events—such as the study of Hebrew and the reading of Maskilic Hebrew poetry and romantic novels—set within a story that extends between two quintessential adolescent events: the unfulfilled love for Miss P. and the crowning of a “Purim Rabbi” at the Volozhin yeshiva (Shaikewitz 1952, 55–68). Needless to say, there is no apparent connection between these two events, but the associative chain that positions

12 For a typical example, see Zilberbush (1936, 1–13). 13 Like Shaikewitz and many others, Ben-Zion Katz states that although he had studied

several tractates of the Talmud, he could not understand “the melitsic language of Haskalah books” (Katz 1963, 20).

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them as a frame, encapsulating a series of literacy events, points to such a connection.14 The ritual coronation of a Purim Rabbi, which took place in the bathhouse with the yeshiva students as naked as the day they were born, is described by Shaikewitz as a parodic hybrid of a carnivalesque and a state of communitas, which is typical of the liminal stage of rites of passage (Bakhtin 1984, 114–129; Turner 1969, 94–113, 125–130). Examining this ritual in Bakhtinian terms suggests that the topsy-turvy atmosphere of Purim served, among other things, the needs of the adolescent yeshiva students, and provided them with an outlet for their repressed erotic energies: After the yeshiva students chose this student as their rabbi and teacher, they brought him to the bathhouse on the eve of Purim, all the students following him.15 And when they were as naked as the day they were born, one of them climbed on the platform of the bathhouse […] and read aloud to all those present the new rabbi’s letter of appointment. This letter contained jokes and teasing about the new rabbi, who was about to succeed the old rabbi (to my dismay […] I only remember the end of the speech: “of this our holy rabbi, the verse was written: instead of the cypress the thornbush will grow, and instead of the myrtle shall come up the brier”). All the students applauded loudly, crying out, “Long live our new rabbi!” (Shaikewitz 1952, 65)

The Purim carnival generated among the students a communitas-like state (Turner 1969), that is, a state of solidarity free from the differences, hierarchies, and norms governing everyday life. The phallic undertones implied by the parodic reversal of the verse from Isaiah (55:13), “instead of the thornbush the cypress will grow, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle”—the only sentence that Shaikewitz recalls from the mock

14 Preoccupation with women and with arranged marriages is a recurring theme in Shaikewitz’s account. He describes those of his friends who were Mitmaskelim (on the way to Haskalah) as pretending to be Torah scholars so as not to spoil their chances for a good match (Shaikewitz 1952, 73), and those of his friends who were married as busy evading their wives and their oppressive mothers-in-law (Shaikewitz 1952, 61–62). 15 On another kind of carnivalesque procession—the one that escorted the bride to the ritual bath—see Parush (2008a, 101–103).

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coronation speech—reveal some of the erotic tension imbued in the situation, and continue to reverberate throughout Shaikewitz’s account of the consolidation of his male and Maskilic identity. In the narrative sequence that Shaikewitz expounds unwittingly, the carnival-like coronation ceremony of the Purim rabbi and the erotic tension running through it are presented as the culmination of a process that had begun, as noted, with the writer’s first love. The story of his love for Miss P. is interwoven with accounts of his reading of Ahavat Tsiyon (Love of Zion) by Avraham Mapu (Vilijampole/Slabadke, Kovno G., R.E., 1808–1867), and his emotions merge into descriptions of his attraction to Biblical verse, love stories, and the study of Hebrew and its grammar. He attributes his urge to learn Hebrew to an almost erotic desire for reading novels, and juxtaposes memories of the pleasure he found in reading with a description of his preoccupation with his physical looks and with the contradiction between the Maskilic masculine ideal and the traditional Jewish one: I read both parts of Ayit Tsavu’a [Hypocrite Eagle, a Hebrew novel by Avraham Mapu published in 1858] passionately […] I found much pleasure in them, for the story captured my heart and soul […] In the character of the beautiful maiden Elisheva, the daughter of the wealthy Ovadia, I found the image of my beloved, P. the daughter of G. How my soul yearned to be like Na’aman, the precious youth who, with his handsome face, won the heart of Elisheva. However, I was not delusional to believe that I resembled Na’aman, for he was mighty as a cedar of Lebanon […] and he was also elegant with fine clothing tailored in the spirit of the Germans, and his lips spoke Russian and German. Whereas I was a poor, thin lad, my face was as white as a sheet, my eyes were buried in their sockets, instead of curls I had two sidelocks as long as two mouse tails. I was dressed like Yerah.miel the Pharisee, whom the author Mapu mocked and ridiculed in the eyes of his readers, and I had no knowledge of any other language besides that of the yeshiva […] A desire arose in my heart to remove my filthy garments and wear respectable clothing, to cut my long sidelocks, and to let my hair grow until I too had beautiful curls. I examined my appearance in the mirror (spiegel) for the first time, and I became aware that I was not contemptible-looking, and only my clothes and my sidelocks, and also my big hat, spoiled my appearance. […] These thoughts robed me of my peace, and I resolved to change my path in life. I returned Ayit Tsavu’a to Sapavski and borrowed another

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book from him. […] the books by Schulman, Shulamit [1855], Ariel [1856], and Har’el [1866]. These books aroused my love for melitsa, and I resolved to study the Hebrew language thoroughly so that I could understand all the fine expressions unknown to me. (Shaikewitz 1952, 74–75)

Shaikewitz’s story of reading is a story of simultaneous inner and outer transformation. After reading Mapu’s novels, Les mystères de Paris by Eugène Sue translated by Kalman Schulman, and other love stories, a dramatic change takes place both in his physical appearance and in his inner world. Like Gottlober before him and many others of his generation, he describes the transformation he underwent with clear reference to Elisha Ben Abuya, the heretic of the Mishnaic period also known as “other”: “In the course of a few months, I became another man. I cut off my long sidelocks and cleaned my clothes, I washed my face, and ideas that I had never imagined filled the chambers of my heart” (Shaikewitz 1952, 78). A similar idiom is used by Moshe Ze’ev Elishinsky when he informs a friend after a long separation: “You don’t know yet that a revolution has occurred within me, and that I have become someone else.” His friend replies in the same tone: “I, too, have tasted the fruit of Haskalah and have become another” (Elishinsky 1937, 26).16 A more subtle but no less compelling story is narrated by Shmaryahu Levin (Svislac/Svislevitsh, Grodno G., R.E., 1867–1935). Levin also associates the study of Bible, Hebrew, and grammar with experiences implying sexual maturation and initiation into the world of men, and then links both of these processes with his journey to Haskalah, described in a chapter entitled “My Entry into the New World” (1961, 232–246).17 As in most Maskilic autobiographies, here, too, the desire to learn grammar signifies the beginning of the journey toward maturation, as well as the beginning of the journey toward Haskalah. The events preceding these two processes clarify the critical role played by grammar both in the consolidation of an adult male identity and in the crystallization of a Maskilic identity.

16 See Dubnov (1936, 173, 175, 197, 216) and Gottlober (1976, vol. 1, 80–81). 17 In a similar associative stream, the description of the seductive dance of “red-haired

Esteril” is included in David Y. Zilberbush’s (Zalishchyky/Zolishtchik, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1854–1936) autobiographic narrative of his becoming a Maskil (Zilberbush 1936, 30–32).

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Levin’s chapter about his enlightenment process begins in the usual way, with an account of the difficulty of learning grammar and the hostility toward those who study it. He repeatedly mentions that students of grammar and the Bible were suspected of heresy, and although he had the rare privilege of studying grammar with his melamed,18 he remembers it as “a difficult field of study, which only few people knew at that time, and even today they are not many” (Levin 1961, 227).19 The recurrent emphasis on the difficulty of studying grammar and on its subversive character sheds light on the circumstances that made it one of the central trials in the male Maskilic rite of passage. Despite the challenges and danger in studying grammar (and perhaps because of them), it offered students considerable pleasure. In an account somewhat reminiscent of Gottlober’s ecstatic depiction of his grammar studies (see Chapter 7), Levin describes the intellectual pleasure of discovering the magnificent new world of logic (higayon). The key metaphor of the garden, around which he constructs his story of maturation, adds a sensual and eventually erotic dimension to this experience: From the very first moment I entered into the garden of grammar, it appeared to me like the logic of language. A vague sensation began stirring in my heart, that language was not something random. […] The long lines of verb conjugations on my slate seemed to me like those lines of trees in a planted garden, and they are beautiful and orderly and well-maintained, and I am wandering among lovely rows of flowers: on this side, the flowers of the past, on the other side, the buds of the future, and in the middle, the bed of the present. And I myself—acting—an action that has taken the form of the body. (Levin 1961, 224)

The metaphor of strolling in a cultivated, splendid garden, that Levin employs to describe the study of grammar, recurs with variations in four successive episodes in his autobiography, and creates a fascinating association between grammar study, Bible study, and male maturation 18 Unlike in the traditional education system, in the heder where Levin studied, the curriculum included the Bible, grammar, and even writing (Levin 1961, 222–227). 19 Yehuda Leib Levin (YehaLeL; Minsk, R.E., 1844–1925) speaks similarly of ignorance of grammar and the Bible (Levin 1968, 41), as do Zilberbush (1936, 13–14) and others. Brainin writes of Yehuda Leib Gordon (YaLaG; Vilnius/Vilna, R.E., 1830–1892) that “when he grew up, he had studied Mapu in secret, and with great effort he had learned Hebrew, Russian, German, French, and Latin perfectly” (Brainin 1900, 29).

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(Levin 1961, 226–231). In mythic descriptions of closeness to nature and walking in an enchanted primordial garden, Levin recounts his discovery of grammar as the basis of all rational thinking, his discovery of the Biblical imagination as the source of infinite emotional vitality, and his encounter with his own body and sexuality. If in the first episode he likens the entry into the rational world of grammar to walking in an orderly, well-kept garden, in the second episode he likens the entry into the irrational kingdom of emotion to walking in a forest, listening to the song of the trees. In this episode, inspired by Perek Shira (Chapter of Poetry, an ancient Hebrew text in which God’s creatures sing his praises), Levin discloses his belief that every living being possesses a “private soul,” and his sense of a strong connection with nature, “full of vital forces”: “Often I used to walk alone in the forest, attending to the song of the trees described in Perek Shira. Of course, I did not expect the trees to open their mouths and sing verses from the Torah and Psalms in human language. For a special language was given to the trees, a language obscure to us” (Levin 1961, 229). His experience of revelation reaches its peak in the third episode, with the discovery of his body and masculinity. Inspired by a mythical story that his mother had once told him, and infusing the garden metaphor with blunt phallic symbolism, Levin describes an experience of sexual arousal that reached its climax and then concludes with a surprising insight, stating explicitly that desire was the true source of his emotional attitude toward his studies: My vitality and the joy of growing and flourishing were revealed also in this custom that I had with my body. I yearned to understand the secret of my own body’s growth. Every morning I would measure my height by means of a mark that I made on the door; this was my first act upon getting up in the morning. Once I heard my mother talking about cucumbers that grew in a single night. I used to sneak out of bed and steal out at night and lay myself down between the garden beds, gazing under the silent and pale light of the moon at the long, green cucumbers. I wished to see them at the moment of their growth, in the very striving of their creation, and every minute it seemed to me that here and now they are spreading and extending, here and now something is moving in them, boiling and bursting forth, boiling and sprouting, and a trembling joy spread through all my being. And my emotional attitude toward my studies came from that source. (Levin 1961, 229–230)

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Given the explicit association between erotic arousal and the passion for learning and knowledge, it may come as no surprise that Levin concludes the series of episodes with a touching description of feelings of sinfulness and guilt that strike him in the classroom of the melamed “Motya Kitniyot,” upon reading the story of Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden: I strolled with Adam and Eve through the Garden of Eden, as it spread heavenly perfumes, and in my heart I felt the decree of expulsion and its torments. […] The shame of the first man poured into all my limbs; at that time it seemed to me that it was I who had sinned, with no possible atonement, I who had eaten from the tree of knowledge, and I felt my body to see whether I was naked. (Levin 1961, 230)

Levin places the formative literacy events that he experienced in his youth within the framework of a binary opposition between intellect and emotion and between the rational and the irrational: “While in the study of grammar, it was logical thinking that most captivated my heart, in the study of the Bible—the psychological factor was critical” (Levin 1961, 228). However, upon examining the sequence of episodes, we find that the youth’s passion and intent gradually shift from grammar, intellect, and logic to myth, psychology, and the imagination, until in the final episode, in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the desire for knowledge and eros merge together, infused by a sense of unforgivable sin. Like Shaikewitz’s and Levin’s accounts of their journeys toward Haskalah, most if not all of the Maskilic autobiographies build their narratives of hitmaskelut (the process of becoming a Maskil, undergoing enlightenment) around similar themes: they open with a declaration of ignorance of grammar and the Bible, emphasizing the great difficulty of understanding Haskalah literature; they describe the study of grammar and the Bible as a subversive act that challenges the priorities and educational worldview of traditional society; they depict the channeling of the libidinous energy of the adolescent protagonist toward Maskilic literacy events of various kinds; and they present both the overt intellectual journey toward adulthood and Haskalah and the covert erotic journey as permeated by feelings of sin and guilt.

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“Stolen Water Is Sweet”: The Coming of Age Narrative as a Story of Reading According to the autobiographical accounts of the hitmaskelut process, the primary literacy activity into which adolescents channeled their erotic energy was reading. More often than not, the eroticism of their reading experience is conveyed indirectly by the choice of suggestive words, symbolization, or allusions to traditional canonical texts. Occasionally, however, it is expressed more explicitly, as in the case of the autobiography of Simon Dubnov (Mstsislaw/Mestislaw, Mogilev G., R.E., 1860–1941), where the story of his first encounter with a Maskilic book and the story of his brother’s marriage merge into a single narrative, presented in a chapter entitled “Haskalah Literature and the Youngster’s First Revolt,” under the heading “My Brother’s Marriage and My Engagement to the First Haskalah Book”: In the tenth year of my life, for the first time, a book of the new Haskalah Literature, that is, the forbidden Haskalah, came into my hands. […] This incident is associated in my memory with one of the family events. My older brother, Yitsh.ak, who used to read external books in secret, became a groom was required to move after the wedding […] to live in the house of his father-in-law, a fervent Hasid. […] Before moving to his new dwelling, he had resolved to purify himself of the sin of hiding foreign books, for in the Hasid’s house they were liable to cause him trouble. So before departing, he had given me as a gift one of those external books, Shulamit by the famous author Kalman Schulman [Bykhaw/Bykhov, Mogilev G., R.E., 1819–1899]. […] Because of that book I made a huge sacrifice: all the members of our family were preparing themselves for the trip […] to the wedding, which was going to last for seven days. Of course, I also wanted to go, but the adults started persuading me to stay at home, and as a reward my parents promised me a week of vacation from the heder, and my brother made me a gift of the aforementioned book. This compensation reconciled me to the idea that […] I would not celebrate on the seven days of the feast. However, I arranged for myself seven days of spiritual feasting: I became engaged to “Haskalah, Daughter of Heaven,” as they used to say then. […] With pleasure I read and reread the lyrical descriptions, written in the fine language of the Holy Scriptures. (Dubnov 1936, 44–45)

By merging the story of his first reading with that of his brother’s marriage, Dubnov creates an analogy between the two. Whether or not the events really happened as described, his way of processing and

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presenting the memory of his first encounter with a Haskalah book uncovers its significance for him. From this point of view, marriage and Haskalah are substitutes: to get married, the brother had abandoned his Haskalah books, while the young Dubnov channeled his desire toward books and betrothed “Haskalah, Daughter of Heaven.” Later on, he describes his physical excitement following the mere contact with books: “the very sight of a new book made me tremble” (Dubnov 1936, 56). Describing his response upon reading Mapu’s novel Love of Zion, he writes: “With enthusiasm I recited the poems of the shepherd Amnon, gripped by love […] and vague feelings of the ‘awakening of spring’ arose in the boy’s soul. […] Mapu was the ruler of my thoughts during those days” (Dubnov 1936, 46–48). As Dubnov’s story of his brother illustrates, reading modern Hebrew literature constituted a subversive act: it was regarded as blameworthy, it was done in secret, and its taste was the sweet taste of “stolen water.” As such, it is little wonder that in the minds of the Mitmaskelim, it was bound up with feelings of guilty pleasure. The satisfaction of intellectual curiosity in reading served, among other things, as a substitute for the satisfaction of the erotic desires and appetites of adolescent boys. Indeed, Yitsh.ak Nissenboim (Babruysk/Bobruisk, Minsk G., R.E., 1868– 1942/1943) describes reading books he had found in the house of his fiancée’s uncle, whom he used to visit in the evenings, in terms of desire and sin: On his bookshelf I found books by Mendelssohn, Krokhmal—the father and the son, SHYR, SHaDaL, Yitsh.ak Baer Levinsohn, Zweifel, Weiss, and others, as well as old periodocals such as Kerem H . emed, Bikurei Ha’Itim, Otsar Neh.mad, Kokhvei Yitsh.ak, Yeshurun, and many more. I was as pleased by these books as though I had found a great treasure, and started to read with intense desire. I confess my sins, for at that time I greatly neglected the study of the Torah. This literature illuminated my eyes on many-many subjects in Judaism. (Nissenboim 1929, 72)

An even more detailed and vivid account appears in the memoirs of Reuven Brainin (Lyady/Liadi, Mogilev G., R.E., 1862–1940), who was initiated into reading Haskalah literature by an older friend, who served as his mentor: He spoke slowly, and a sweet, secret smile played on his pale lips.

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He told me about Haskalah books, about Love of Zion by Mapu, about the books by Kalman Schulman, ADaM HaCohen, Mordechai Aharon Ginzburg, about Peretz Smolenskin’s [periodical] HaShah.ar, about HaTo’e BeDarkhei HaH . ayim [The Wanderer on the Paths of Life, autobiographical stories by Smolenskin], and everything he told me was new to my ears. […] Thirstily I swallowed every word that came from my older friend’s mouth. I asked him with curiosity: where is it possible to obtain these Haskalah books? He answered me with a whisper, that he possessed a whole crate of Haskalah literature (for the first time I heard the word “literature,” and in my ears it was like sublime, pleasurable music), and he lent me some of his books, but on condition that no one would know. The matter had to be kept in deep secret. […] Late at night, when everyone in the house had already been sleeping their slumber, I cautiously took out copies of HaShah.ar (which were safely stashed in a hiding place) and started to read them. I was terrified of every word, but I kept reading, as though drawn by magical cords. While reading HaShah.ar, I regarded myself as a culprit, as a person who had left the straight path. Nevertheless, I sat until dawn and read those booklets from start to finish, every word and letter. I did not understand everything correctly, for the “language of literature” and the exalted melitsot [Biblical rhetorical figures] were unfamiliar to me. But the words carried with them a powerful and secret charm. At dawn I went back to sleep, but I could not close my eyes. I was storm-tossed to the depths of my soul. (Brainin 1965, 396–397)20

The Hebrew Language and the Maskilic Male Conversion Rite It was not only reading that was central to the process of becoming a Maskil. At the heart of the process lay a series of literacy events, no less important and consequential, some of which were preconditions for the reading of Hebrew Maskilic texts: the study of Hebrew, grammar, and the Bible, and the comprehension and writing of melitsa in Biblical Hebrew. The primary locus of the Maskilic male conversion and initiation process was the Hebrew language—the ancient Hebrew and the renewed one, that of the Bible and that of modern Hebrew literature. As stated above, it 20 For more on the figure of the initiator/mentor who helps the youth through his conversion to Haskalah, see Brainin (1965, 399) and Ish Na’omi (Elimelekh Weksler Bezredka) (1925, 175–176). See also in the next section.

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was the socio-cultural context of traditional Jewish society that turned the Hebrew language into a site of transformation for the Mitaskelim. More specifically, the gendered character of the diglossic situation in traditional Jewish society turned language into an arena that was capable of establishing a clear distinction both between men and women, and between traditional Jewish men and enlightened Jewish men, i.e., Maskilim. It should be recalled that the level of literacy among women in Yiddish and foreign languages was rather high, but they did not have access to Hebrew. At the same time, most men did have some access to Hebrew and knew how to read it, but could not comprehend it, and definitely not perfectly. Under these circumstances, gaining knowledge of Hebrew could mark, at one and the same time, separation from the mother, from women, and from femininity, and separation from the father and from the figure of the traditional Jewish man, whom, as noted, many Maskilim viewed as effeminate. As the Haskalah movement spread throughout Eastern Europe, an increasing number of youths were exposed to it and embarked on the journey toward being a Maskil. This is how this process is described by Elishinsky in his autobiography MiBoker Ad Erev (From Morning to Evening ): In those days, the Haskalah began to penetrate the more remote towns and all the dark recesses. There was no town, not even the tiniest, where there weren’t at least two or three Maskilim, or as they were called then, “apikorsim” [heretics], who were joined, in secret during the wee hours, by young men whose souls thirsted for the teachings of the Haskalah. (Elishinsky 1937, 19)

Indeed, in many Maskilic autobiographies, the process of hitmaskelut begins with secret meetings with an apikores who becomes a mentor, and proceeds under his guidance to its completion. As noted above, the process bears the characteristics of a rite of passage, and resembles the conversion and initiation rites that accompany entry into religious communities such as cults, which often include the transmission of esoteric knowledge. In the first stage, that of separation and detachment, the “heretic” mentor chooses his protégé with care, approaches him out of a sense of mission and commitment, and cautiously exposes him to new and fascinating esoteric knowledge. The second, liminal stage takes place in the company of men in a remote, cut-off setting, where the initiate

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is called upon to undergo certain trials, which entail difficulty and risk. During this stage, the initiate begins to secretly learn a new language, to write in it, and to read the books that his mentor had given him. It is then that he discovers that the study of grammar demands considerable effort, and that reading Haskalah books comes at a heavy social and psychological cost. The doubts, hesitations, and torments that afflict him shake him to the core, and he finds it difficult to decide between the contradictory identities that vie within him. Only in the final stage, at the end of an exhausting and shattering psychological journey, does he consolidate his new identity as an enlightened man, as “another person.” Visiting the Mentor and the Stage of Separation The first stage therefore typically began at the initiative and under the inspiration of a mentor—occasionally more than a single one—who, in the course of time, became an intimate friend of the young Mitmaskel. Sometimes the mentor was an older brother, a brother-in-law, an uncle, or another family relative; sometimes he was a guest who frequented the house or a fellow yeshiva student; and sometimes he was an itinerant book peddler or teacher, who arrived in the village or town and found his way to the most brilliant and inquisitive of its young men. The complex, double-faced profile of these individuals is portrayed by Nathan M. Gelber (Lviv/Lemberg, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1891–1966) in his description of the Hasidic shtetl Kolomyia in Galicia: “Despite its image as a pious Hasidic community, […] there were hidden Maskilim in Kolomyia, Jews whose religious life was merely a pretense, but in their homes they secretly read secular books, and there was even a melamed, Yeh.ezkel-Yitsh.ak, who was dressed as a God-fearing Jew, but was in fact an apikores, truly a ‘walking encyclopedia,’ well-versed in philosophy, literature, and various sciences” (Gelber 1975, 41). Many of the mentors were “concealed Maskilim” of this kind, who acted outwardly as pious men in every respect. Others, however, were publicly known as apikorsim, and efforts were made to keep boys and young men from fraternizing with them.21 In

21 For selected examples, see Ahad Ha’Am (1931, 45, 86), Buki Ben Yogli (1947, . 70–71), Elishinsky (1937, 28), Friedman (1926, 52), Gottlober (1976, vol. 1, 80–83, 124–125, 226–227), Katz (1983, 15), Katzovich (1923, 124), Lilienblum (1970, vol. 1, 110–112), Shaikewitz (1952, 73), Tchernowitz (1954, 15–17, 78, 93, 95), and Zaltzman (1944, 113–114).

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many cases, these were liminal figures, attractive and threatening at one and the same time, who dwelled, both physically and symbolically, on the margins of the shtetl, that is, in the no man’s land between the familiar world of traditional Jewish society and the alien and forbidding world of heretics and gentiles. The liminal identity of the mentors, their Janus face, and their undefined social place enabled them to serve as models of a new Jewish male.22 Their familiarity with the discourse and culture of both worlds allowed them to speak directly to the yeshiva students in their own language, and gave them power, status, and authority in relation to them. One of the most interesting portraits of a mentor whose personality exhibits liminal characteristics appears in the autobiography of Mordechai Aharon Ginzburg (Salantai/Salant, Kovno G., R.E., 1795– 1846), Aviezer. Ginzburg’s mentor was a strange, mysterious, and impressive man—a physician, philosopher, scientist, mystic, and alchemist, possibly Sabbatean, possibly a crypto-Jew, and possibly a convert. It was this individual who escorted Ginzburg on his journey to Haskalah and who helped him out of his erotic distress and intellectual doubts: Despite all his acts of kindness among his brethren, he was […] considered dangerous in the eyes of all who were devoted to their faith. […] The elders who had known him said that he had been from the seed of the Jews, and had converted to Christianity after he had been excommunicated by the rabbis of his generation. And some said that he is a magus and a wizard, who sold his soul to the devil to get rich […] In truth, he was a philosopher and a man of great wisdom, and his wealth came from his knowledge of medicine […] and the tower that he built was an observatory […] yet he also inquired the mysteries of alchemy and the wisdom of what is beyond nature […] and being a master of the Holy Tongue, he also studied books of Kabbalah, […] and I may not be wrong to surmise that he was among the members of the sect of Shabtai Zvi who were forced to convert to Christianity—for he loved the Zohar [a major book of Jewish Mysticism] very much. […] I have spoken a great deal about this man, for his memory is very precious to me. Truth be told, I am not grateful to him for lightening my naturally heavy steps to hurry to the palace of women’s charms too early, but [I am grateful] for his conversations on wisdom and ethics […] And 22 See, for example, the figure of Yosef Wiezner in Gottlober (1976, vol. 1, 79).

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he encouraged me to abandon my interest in exalted matters […] and to study things that the mind can grasp. He was to me a mentor and a healer to my soul. (Ginzburg 1967, 124–125, 132–168)23

Less mysterious and far more conventional is the mentor sketched by H . ayim Tchernowitz (Sebesh/Sebezh, Vitebsk G., R.E., 1870–1949), although he, too, stood between two worlds: This Avraham Hirschl was a complete apikores and thought it a mitzvah [lit. God’s commandment] for him to lead astray a scholarly lad and remove him from the straight path. He would chase the best of the fellows in the beit midrash [House of Study] to teach them the “Torah of Epicureanism” as a mitzvah and with scholarly acuity. He caught me too in his net and brought me under the wings of his Epicureanism, and he enlightened my eyes with several Mishnayot [lit. sections from the Mishnah] in the theory of evolution. […] In practice, he was as observant and meticulous in the commandments as all the devout Jews; but in his opinions he was free […] My grandfather […] used to warn me to keep away from him, but he would pursue me […] and would meet with me in secret, so as to fulfil the saying, “stolen water is sweet,” until I would make my ear a funnel to catch every word of his. (Tchernowitz 1954, 16–17)

The extensive depictions of the encounter with the mentor in the autobiographies and literary works of the period testify to the prevalence of this phenomenon and to its significance in the life of the Mitmaskelim. For example, in the novel HaDat VeHaH . ayim (Religion and Life) (1877) by Reuven Asher Broides (Vilnius/Vilna, R.E., 1851–1902), whose protagonist, Shmuel, is modeled after Moshe Leib Lilienblum (Keidany/Keidan, Kovno G., R.E., 1843–1910),24 Shmuel meets his mentor, Shraga, at a critical juncture of his life, and Shraga becomes a kind of spiritual father for him. Their relationship begins when Shraga approaches Shmuel with premeditated caution, typical of a missionary or preacher of repentance. First he offers his Hebrew books to his protégé with no apparent strings attached: “If you wish, I will give you some of these books, and you can 23 Another interesting mentor figures in Zilberbush’s (1936, 16–27) detailed and insightful story of his initiation into Haskalah. 24 Lilienblum (1970, vol. 2, 176–178). On the reception of HaDat VeHaHayim as a . radical Maskilic novel, see Tchernowitz (1954, 80).

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read them when you find the time” (Broides 1974, 87). Only afterward does he give him carefully chosen books, with the aim of opening his eyes and captivating his heart without arousing opposition or resistance (Broides 1974, 8). In this novel, as in the vast majority of the autobiographies, it is the mentor who sets the ritual process of the Maskilic initiation in motion. It is he who imbues the ritual with meaning and content, and who urges his protégé to separate himself from traditional Jewish society, from the women’s language, and from the flawed traditional masculinity. The encounter with the mentor’s charismatic persona appears to be the crucial turning point that triggers the protagonist’s movement out of the spiritual and physical space of his old environment, and into the liminal space in-between the worlds. The Mitmaskel’s walk to the mentor’s distant house—often under the cover of darkness—signifies the start of a winding and painful journey that ends with the desertion of the father’s home (Berdichevsky 1984, 17–20). Yehuda Leib Levin (YehaLeL; Minsk, R.E., 1844–1925), for example, describes his first encounter with his mentor as follows: Walmann came to me and said that a wise man very much wanted me to visit him. […] When he told me it was David Luria, I flinched, because David Luria […] was known as the town’s apikores. […] He had established a school for Hebrew, […] He, who knew many foreign languages […] and who sat in his home bareheaded […] and a man like this was inviting me to come to him, me—a God-fearing, pious Hasid? And that night Walmann led me along the way and brought me to Luria’s house. […] And when I sat before him […] he ate without netilat yadayim [ritual hand washing] and without saying a blessing—my eyes darkened and my heart died within me. (Levin 1968, 43)

The encounter with the town’s apikores was unsettling enough, but even more alarming were the conversations between the visitors at his house, which revolved around issues such as critical approaches to the Talmud and the “odd homilies based on ignorance of the language of the Bible”: A tall man came in, […] Shaul Nah.man, who taught Gemara to the sons of the wealthy men. […] In his dress and customs he was orthodox like all the melamdim […] but with his poisonous tongue […] he spoke of the distortion of the Holy Scriptures and the odd homilies based on ignorance of the language of the Bible. I mocked all those words of his, since I knew

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that he was an apikores […] but upon returning home, it was Thursday night and I stayed awake, I took up the tractate I was studying, and I found that inadvertently I was tripping with almost every step. (Levin 1968, 44)

The challenge to the absolute authority of the Talmud, based on knowledge of Hebrew grammar, threw the young man’s soul into a state of turmoil: “I felt that the apikores’s words had taken root within me, […] and despite my oath not to return to Luria’s house […] I kept going and going” (Levin 1968, 44). Indeed, his return to Luria’s house marks the beginning of his separation from his parents, which is described as “cutting the connections with the old world,” and the increasing identification with the mentor and his values (Levin 1968, 45–53). The visits to the mentor’s house, and the soul-searching that accompanied them, constitute a recurrent, almost stereotypical, theme in the autobiographical accounts on the process of becoming a Maskil. There is hardly any Maskilic autobiography that does not include a description of such a scene as part of the psychological and physical journey “outward.” Brainin describes walking to the house of his Russian language teacher on a dark night, his heart trembling, but his legs carrying him forward, because “this was a fateful walk” (Brainin 1965, 405). In Dubnov’s version, the journey outward takes the form of a trip to the library of the “barley mill’s owner,” which is described as a “paradise of books” giving the young mitmaskel infinite pleasure. The miller, whom Dubnov dubs “the gatekeeper to the Garden of Eden,” is also a liminal, rejected figure. His brother had converted to Christianity and had become a monk, and he is described as “a man with an obscure and mysterious past, which distanced him from the Jewish community” (Dubnov 1936, 57–58). Like the figures of the mentors, the time and space of the forbidden literacy events were liminal in nature: late at night, early in the morning, or in the twilight hours, between day and night; at the mentor’s house on the town’s fringes—in his library or in a side room, out of sight; on the roof or in the cellar of the Mitmaskel’s own house, and very often in a garden, a field, or a forest.25 These times and places were chosen primarily because they were easy to conceal and free of supervision (Elishinsky 1937, 28–29), but their liminal character, betwixt and between, imbued the secret, repeated encounters they hosted with ritual atmosphere and 25 See, for example, Brainin (1965, 396–397, 406–408), Deinard (1920, vol. 1, 37), Elishinsky (1937, 35), and Weissberg (1896, 116).

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with cultural, emotional, and intellectual meanings. Particularly interesting are the meanings that the liminal spaces of the garden, the field, and the forest conferred on the acts of studying and reading within them. Shaikewitz, for example, is not satisfied with simply noting that he used to read in the gardens of the Radziwill fort to avoid the prying eyes of his parents. Rather, he chooses to dwell upon the scenery in the garden, which he describes as “Eden, the garden of God” (Ezekiel 28:13). As we have seen, the extensive use of garden, field, forest, and nature metaphors is common in the maturation discourse, which is also the discourse of reading and hitmaskelut, i.e., the process of undergoing enlightenment. Taking pleasure in the beauty of the landscape, which is not essential for describing a hiding place, imbues the reading of forbidden literature in the bosom of nature with a particularly rich array of meanings: My parents and also my grandmother scolded and tormented me very much. Once they had learned that, like one of the library boys, I had abandoned eternal life in the world to come and turned my eyes to the heresy of Haskalah, they set out together to take the vengeance of the God of Israel upon me. […] But I hardened my heart and did not cease perusing the books. […] And so that no one would stop me from reading, I would go to Prince Radziwill’s fort every day, there I would sit under one of the bushes and read whatever I wished to. […] This fort was surrounded by mountains. […] A small bridge led to the gate of the fort. The whole meadow around the fort looked like Eden, the Garden of God. Wherever one looks one sees flourishing trees planted in very splendid order, delightful roses raising their heads from the green grass. […] I chose myself a place near the fort to sit there for a few hours every day of the week and read books, being certain that no one would disturb me there from my work. (Shaikewitz 1952, 82–83)26

Shaikewitz traded eternal life in the world to come, reserved for Torah scholars, for a Garden of Eden of reading books in the bosom of nature. The sensual basking in the beauty of the garden acquires much of its meaning from the binary opposition between the world of nature and

26 See also Agnon (1976, 27).

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the world of the yeshiva, which is a recurring theme in Maskilic autobiographies of Lithuanian Yeshiva students. Staying outside and taking forbidden pleasure in the glory of nature is presented as the exact opposite of ascetic scholarship in the tent of the Torah. The same binary opposition appears also in Bialik’s long poem “HaMatmid” (“The Persistent Scholar”), where the yeshiva student resists the temptations of nature and pays no heed to the life that flows outside like “an inexhaustible stream of Eden” (Bialik 1939, 75–76).27 Under this cultural framing, reading in nature is the ultimate alternative to studying in the yeshiva. Not only does it make the act of reading subversive, it also gives it a new meaning, as an activity whose essence is harmonious merging with nature, due to the supposed closeness between literature and the ongoing flow of life, eros, beauty, and enjoyment. This view is expressed clearly by Elishinsky when he quotes his mentor’s comment in favor of reading in the forest: “For the trees of the forest are not like human beings. People seek […] to impose their folly and error on the heads of their brothers […] but the trees are not like this. […] For their nature is to give pleasure to those who take shelter in their shadow” (Elishinsky 1937, 33, 35). This comment, which negates the famous Biblical saying “for man is a tree of the field” (Deuteronomy 20:19), is not only a statement on the tranquility and shelter provided by the trees, but also an assertion of the importance of tolerance and liberty, without which study is not study and reading is not reading. “Between Two Worlds”: The Liminal Stage and the Divided Self As shown above, the journey to the mentor’s house and to the alien, isolated, liminal space outside symbolized both the separation of the young Mitmaskelim from the old world and the beginning of the liminal phase of their rite of passage. During this most vulnerable phase, the initiates underwent a profound and fateful process of identity conversion. They endured a series of experiences that shattered their prior identity and laid the foundations for their new one: they self-studied Hebrew, Hebrew grammar, and foreign languages; they started to study the Bible and to read the modern Hebrew literature; they made their first efforts at writing Hebrew poetry and melitsa; and they suffered acute distress,

27 See also Gordon (1960, 348).

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anxiety, and feelings of loss prior to the consolidation of their new identity (HaCohen 1923, 119–120; Katz 1963, 15). The various literacy events that made up the turbulent Maskilic rite of passage were usually experienced as challenging and occasionally also harsh and dangerous trials. In many cases they led to severe rifts—between sons and fathers, between yeshiva students and heads of yeshivas, and between the young men and the community around them. Often enough, things went so far as to result in loss of the supply of meals from community members, expulsion from the yeshiva, leaving the parents’ home, eviction from the house of the father-in-law, or parting from the wife and children.28 Indeed, the feelings of risk and danger that permeated the study of Hebrew and its grammar and the reading of Maskilic literature were quite real and warranted; these practices aroused suspicion of heresy and a great many young men paid a heavy price for them. However, these feelings were related not only to fears of the responses of others; there were also inner struggles, which emanated from a keen awareness that the study of grammar and the Bible and the reading of modern Hebrew literature necessarily involved blurring the boundaries between the sacred and the profane, between faith and heresy. These literacy practices were perceived and experienced by the Mitmaskelim as liminal in their own right, as implied laconically by Shmaryahu Levin in the following comment: “In fact, there is a profanation of language in this grammar!” (Levin 1961, 224, 290–291). Unlike Levin, who did not elaborate on this issue, Buki Ben Yogli wrote at length about the sense of danger that accompanied the study of grammar and the Bible, and tried to explain its causes: “Those who clung to the old ways felt the threat that grammar posed to the Talmud, and banned everyone who was involved with it” (1947, 153–154). As he says: Many contemporary readers will find it hard to believe that fifty years ago, reading the Holy Scriptures and mastery of the grammar of the Hebrew language were considered a very great sin. But I am not exaggerating. This was the opinion of those who clung to the old ways, who were not just the majority of the people then but almost the entire people, and from their point of view, they were right about this. Their heart predicted that reading the Holy Scriptures and mastery of the grammar of the Holy Tongue would

28 For one example among many, see Elishinsky (1937, 20).

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weaken the Talmud’s control over the people. And indeed, their prophecy was fulfilled. (Buki Ben Yogli 1947, 57)

In addition to facing suspicions of heresy and having to study in secret (Melamed 1922, 61, 78–79), the fledgling Mitmaskelim encountered many practical hurdles, such as the difficulty of obtaining grammar books and the arduous process of trying to understand them without the help of a teacher. The two principal books that the Mitmaskelim used for selfstudy were Tsohar HaTeiva by Shlomo Zalman HaCohen Hanau (Hanau, Germany, 1687–1746), which was first published in Berlin in 1733, and Talmud Leshon Ivri by Yehuda Leib Ben-Ze’ev (Lviv/Lemberg, Poland/Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1764–1811), which was first published in Breslau in 1796. Both were rare and difficult to obtain, and, moreover, the former was not clear and systematic enough, and the latter used German terminology.29 Hence, Abramovich described studying with Talmud Leshon Ivri as the study of one foreign language by means of another (Abramovich 1867b, 31, 33–35). In a similar vein, the poet Yehuda Leib Gordon relates in one of his letters how difficult it was for him to study Hebrew grammar all by himself: “I gathered my strength to study the grammar of the Hebrew language thoroughly. […] And I was all alone, with no one around me, no teacher and no director. […] Like a migratory bird I went from book to book, guided by chance alone” (quoted in Tzitron 1932, 9). As with all forbidden activities, even when the study of grammar and the Bible and the reading of Maskilic literature brought with them a sense of achievement and satisfaction, they also evoked dark feelings and required considerable courage and determination.30 On the one hand, they occasioned almost ecstatic experiences of revelation and illumination, and on the other hand, as Buki Ben Yogli admits, they aroused doubts and heretical thoughts, which in turn evoked dread, panic, and profound 29 Other less popular books included Maslul BeDikduk Leshon HaKodesh by Hayim . Ben Naftali Hertz Keslin (1749–1832), which was first published in Hamburg in 1788; Ma’arakhei Leshon Ever by Yehoshua Steinberg (1839–1908), first published in Vilna in 1881; and Sefer Moreh HaLashon by H . ayim Zvi Lerner (1815–1889), first published in Vilna in 1901. On the study of these books, see Buki Ben Yogli (1947, 164), HaCohen (1923, 120), Kovner (1947, 23–30), Melamed (1922, 59, 62), Nissenboim (1929, 77), and Weiss (1911, 130). 30 On the difficulty of learning grammar, even with the help of a teacher, see Gottlober (1970, vol. 1, 78) and Levin (1961, 223–228).

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anxiety. Shai Ish Hurwitz (Gomel/Homl, Mogilev G., R.E., 1861–1922) describes his psychological suffering due to these doubts, which eventually led to his break from his father’s world: My heart surely knew the bitterness of my soul. For the mosquito of doubt had already been puncturing my brain, […] and my childhood innocence with regard to the sanctity of the Talmud and its adulation was no longer with me. And also I felt that it was not my heart’s intention that stood behind my study of the Talmud, but rather a tired routine, because of my promise to my father. (Ish Hurwitz 1923–1925, 221)

In a typical way and with transparent Maskilic symbolism, Elishinsky, too, shares with his friend and mentor the ecstatic moments of enlightenment, and the abyss of dread and horror that opened up in their wake: A spiritual revolution took place within me, […] in addition to teaching me the Talmud, [my friend] taught me Hebrew and its grammar, and from time to time he would bring me a Haskalah book to read. […] At first I was fear-stricken by the bright light of the Haskalah, […] and I was like a prisoner […] who had not seen light for many years, and suddenly he was pulled out of his prison pit, and he saw the brilliance of the sun in all its might, and he shut his eyes so that he would not be stricken with blindness. […] My yearning for you, my friend, increased every time the dread of the Haskalah fell upon me, […] for if you would have been with me, you would surely have supported and strengthened me, for I myself did not know then what road to take or what I should do. (Elishinsky 1937, 26– 27)

An identity crisis and feelings of disorientation and loss are typical of the liminal stage of the rite of passage, and, as we can see, this was the case with the Maskilic rite of passage as well. The Mitmaskelim’s memories of this phase testify to existential boundary experiences, where emotional turmoil and contradictory desires melded into a deep crisis. This found expression in extreme vacillation between despair and exaltation, between panic and chaos due to the dismantling of the old identity and momentary clarity and assuredness in the new one, and between heretical thoughts of rebellion and bursts of pious religiosity. Lilienblum, for example, recounts that the more his doubts increased, the more he immersed himself in the “depths of Talmudic argumentation” and in the books of the most

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stringent teachers of Halakhah, in the hope of strengthening his faith: “I had already possessed Noda BiYhuda, Tshuvot R[abbi] A[kiva] Eiger, and parts of H . atam Sofer, the book of Amudei Or, and the like, in which I delved and probed to uproot the doubt from my heart, for it had been eating my flesh” (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 118–119). In his autobiography H . at’ot Ne’urim, he describes the torments he underwent during this long period, which he calls “the period of my transition-time” (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 112): By no means did I want to be an apikores, and whenever doubt arose in my heart about the truth of something mentioned in the Talmud, I would seek some authority among the great rabbis to rely upon; and when I could not find such an authority, I would force my mind to believe. […] The inquiries of Maimonides, the Bedersi [Yeda’aya Ben Avraham], Abarbanel, and so forth aroused an inner battle within me between faith in all that I had read and heard and the instruction of my clouded brain, which was growing clearer. […] After one question had been resolved, another arose. The war renewed its strength. And thus I had spent nine years, […] in anger, in inner sorrow, in boiling blood, and finally, from the period of my “days of heresy” onward, with coolness of mind and quiet. (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 114–115)

A sharp psychological insight into the turmoil of the liminal period is displayed by Shmaryahu Levin, who describes the guilt-ridden inner conflict that he experienced as a struggle between two parts of a split personality, twin brothers, or doubles: Thus from day to day I sank deeper into this double life—the real world of the reality of Svislevitsh, and the dream world that arose before me from the Bible stories. […] Two worlds took shape and intertwined in my heart, and I could no longer distinguish where one ended and the other began. Just one place in the Torah can describe that unusual situation that we had experienced during our years of transition, […] and that is the story about Rebecca and her two children who were inside her. “And God said to her: two nations are in your womb, and two people will be separated from your insides.” […] At that time the war waged in my heart was not the war between Jacob and Esau […] but the war between two Jacobs. One little Jacob was from the town of Svislevitch, a pupil in the heder, who was oppressed by the poverty and narrowness of life; the second little Jacob was descended from a mighty, tempestuous world. […] And on the threshold of the heder,

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of my melamed’s room, they both stood when entering and leaving, two Jacobs at war with one another. (Levin 1961, 234–235)

Levin’s struggle to establish his identity was not waged against another, but against himself or his double, as a war between two Jacobs. In this struggle, Levin found it difficult to distinguish between imagination and reality, myth and history, or emotion and intellect—in a manner typical of liminal situations. While Levin focuses on the individual, psychological aspect of the torments of the liminal period, H . ayim Tchernowitz turns his gaze to social practices and opens a window on less predictable areas. Just like Levin, he describes the first crisis, which he underwent soon after his bar-mitzvah, by stating: “I was not a single boy named H . ayim but two boys, each of whom was called H . ayim, and they were different from one another. One was good, and the other was bad” (Tchernowitz 1954, 54). Like Levin, he confesses with agonized words to the duality that lay within him: “Two opposite dispositions raced about within me, as if two souls dwelt in my body” (Tchernowitz 1954, 83). However, immediately afterward, in an off-handed way, he describes his friends’ custom of holding séances and calling up the dead. Thus, he provides, probably unwittingly, yet another perspective on the twisted paths that yeshiva students took to calm and control their fears and to expunge their sins: Sometimes we, the boys of the beit midrash, would engage at night in all sorts of magical experiments, such as placing our hands on a table and concentrating all our thoughts on the table until it started to move and almost dance, and also to answer our questions by knocking. Although we knew that this was forbidden by the law, for it was considered witchery, we still occupied ourselves with it, with strange excitement. (Tchernowitz 1954, 84)

Compared to Tchernowitz’s description, Zilberbush’s account of his identity crisis is touching in its simplicity: “The new books that I had tasted ever so slightly placed me in a blazing baking furnace. And I came out of it half-baked, with one part of me still alive, and the other part scorched” (Zilberbush 1936, 55). However, we find that Zilberbush tried to cope with the feelings of sin and loss in ways very similar to those of Tchernowitz and his friends. With metaphors of betrothal, divorce, and forbidden love, he describes how he had abandoned scholarship, which

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had been his betrothed from youth, and chose instead “one more beautiful than her—a concubine with charming dimples in her cheeks.” Then, in his distress, he turned to books of Kabbalah and of pious rabbis to “expel the Satan” that had possessed him. Maskilic writers’ accounts of the liminal period they had spent inbetween the worlds may seem simple and straightforward, but in fact they carry complex personal and social meanings. They present the inner conflict that had torn apart the souls of the young Mitmaskelim and hint at the various ways by which they sought to amend it. As to their religious-philosophical worldview, it appears that toward the end of the liminal stage, many of the novice Maskilim opted for a deist solution of one kind or another. For example, Elishinsky reports that he found solace when he had recognized that “the true Haskalah would not lead to heresy. On the contrary! […] For the first [Haskalah] would purify and cleanse the second [religious belief] from all impurity and muck, [all that is] insipid and parasitical, delusional and filthily vain” (Elishinsky 1937, 31). He thus embraced the view that “faith and Haskalah are not […] two opposite approaches to the same subject, but rather twin sisters” (Elishinsky 1937, 28). Similarly, but in a more learned and sophisticated phrasing, Dubnov describes his choice to adhere to the “doctrine of deism” (Dubnov 1936, 89, emphasis in original). Under the influence of the Encyclopedists, he chose to replace the “ordinary theism” he had subscribed to up until then with “a certain guise of deism: God is the source of the forces and laws that rule the world […]” (Dubnov 1936, 89–90).31 More than a few Mitmaskelim opted for this path, although many others continued to be torn by the dilemmas of faith and heresy. Writing in Hebrew: The Ticket of Entry into the Male Community of Maskilim The moments of illumination and consolation experienced by the young Mitmaskelim during their journey to Haskalah did not eradicate their feelings of sin and guilt, nor did they attenuate the difficulty, fear, suffering, and risk of the liminal period. Yet at the last stage of the rite of passage, that is, at the stage of incorporation, these young men finally joined the adult male Maskilic community. If studying Hebrew grammar and the 31 See also Brainin (1965, 408–409), Dubnov (1962–1963, 86–87), and Parush (2004a, 109–110).

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Bible and reading Haskalah literature were the preconditions for membership in this community, writing and publishing in Hebrew were regarded as the ticket of entry. Many of the Mitmaskelim invested great effort in preparing themselves for that moment. There are hardly any autobiographies or memoirs from the second half of the nineteenth century, whether by professional writers and intellectuals or not, which do not include some description of first efforts at writing, and in many of them, the young man’s ambition to see his writing in print is conspicuous.32 After they had studied Hebrew, grammar, and the Bible, and after they had read literature that served them as a model, the Mitmaskelim viewed the publication of a manuscript they had written, usually a letter to the editor or a report on the happenings in their shtetl, as the ultimate test confirming their membership in the Maskilic community.33 A full and rather detailed account of this sequence of events appears in Elishinsky’s memoirs: My uncle, Meir Moshe, my friend Shlomo, and I firmly believed that we had already ascended the ladder of Haskalah to the highest rung, for what were we supposed to do that we had not done yet? We had studied a lot, drilled a lot, and read a lot. Our views, so we believed, had already been clarified. […] Not a shadow of a doubt occurred to us […] and we considered ourselves, with absolute certainty, to be complete Maskilim. Therefore, it was incumbent upon us to show the people the path they should take. […] So we decided to test our strength in literature and to address the people in the newspapers day and night, to teach them wisdom and to enlighten them. (Elishinsky 1937, 39–40)

At this stage, when they believed themselves to be “complete Maskilim,” Elishinsky and his friends decided the time had come to identify themselves as Maskilim in public and to fulfill their mission: to write for publication. Their attitude toward writing indicates that they viewed it as a necessary and decisive entry test. They approached it with “excellent caution,” settled for writing “informative letters” about “the events in their surroundings,” and resolved “to write and rewrite” until they

32 For a typical description of a first publication, see Agnon (1976, 356–357). Agnon enjoyed his father’s support, and the publication of his poems marked his initiation and recognition as an artist. See also Sadan (1967, 125–128). 33 See Berdichevsky (1984, 42–43), HaCohen (1897, 23–25), Lilienblum (1970, vol. 1, 129), and Raboy (1992, 122–123).

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mastered “the secret of writing and the path leading directly to literature.” They sent their short letters to the Hebrew newspapers HaMagid, HaMelits, and HaTsfira, and waited with bated breath for the editors’ verdict. But of the three, only Elishinsky, who was privileged to see his letter published in the newspaper, regarded himself as one who would eventually ascend to the rank of an author (Elishinsky 1937, 40–42).34 The implicit assumption behind the ambition to write, publish, and attain the status of author was, as noted by Buki Ben Yogli, that “a Maskil was a prodigy who was capable of writing in the Holy Tongue with purity and beauty” (1947, 42), and that every Maskil worthy of the name must be an eloquent author and a “master of the language” (ba’al lashon). For many young men, the experience of writing in Hebrew was no less meaningful than the experience of reading Maskilic literature, and, to a significant extent, writing was the culmination of the process of becoming a Maskil. Sometimes one gets the impression that writing was also a central motivation for the study of the Bible, for its language provided the Maskilim with a linguistic standard and with a vocabulary of words, idioms, and grammatical patterns for the writing of melitsa in the original, positive meaning of this term.35 This less acknowledged motivation for studying the Bible is referred to, almost as a trivial matter, in the writings of Alexander Harkavy (Novogrudok, Minsk G., R.E., 1863– 1939), when he describes the desire to write that overtook him in his youth: “When I was still a lad, the desire arose in me to become a writer and an author; and I gained knowledge of the Bible and tried to imitate the writers in HaLevanon, HaMagid, and HaMelits —the periodicals I found in the house of Reb Gershon—and I wrote eloquent essays and also poems (though not for publication)” (Harkavi 1935, 13).36 Among those for whom writing was not a transitory episode, some began writing maskilic poetry and prose with a single daring leap, but many dedicated their first efforts to forms of writing that were more customary and legitimate in traditional Jewish society. Buki Ben Yogli, 34 For examples of the letters the three sent to various newspapers, see Elishinsky (1937,

40–42). 35 For a more elaborate discussion of the melitsa, see Chapter 7. 36 On the use of the inlay technique known as Shibuts (the introduction of fragments of

Biblical verses into a newly composed text word for word) as a method of compensating for ignorance of Hebrew and its grammar, see Elishinsky (1937, 19). For more on this, see also Chapter 9.

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for example, began his career as the apprentice of a sofer STaM (religious scribe); Ben-Zion Dinur and his brother began by copying texts for the purpose of study (Dinur 1958, 68); Dubnov served as a letter writer for his mother; Horodetsky worked as a clerk in his melamed’s business; and Zilberbush and Ben-Zion Katz began by writing h.idushei Torah (novellae) and other Halakhic discussions. Yet when these writers tell their stories in retrospect, reflecting on the significance of the most consequential literacy events in their lives, they view these first efforts at writing as their first step toward becoming Maskilim, and often also as the vital foundation for their later development as authors, historians, or scholars in other fields.37 The testimony of Ben-Zion Katz (Daugai/Doig, Vilna G., R.E., 1875–1958) is a case in point. He begins with the familiar declaration of ignorance of Hebrew and of an inability to write a Hebrew text of any kind. Then he relates that his first articles, those which were not accepted for publication, dealt with rabbinic literature, and that his writing in this area laid the foundations for his future writing as an historian (Katz 1963, 22). Usually, alongside types of writing that were considered legitimate in traditional society,38 and under the auspices of such types of writing, the young Mitmaskelim gradually began engaging in writing that bore a clear trademark of the Haskalah, such as letters to the editor, local chronicles, translations, historical and philological research, essays, fiction, and poetry. Avraham Shlomo Melamed (Kherson/Cherson, Kherson G., R.E., 1862–1951) recounts how he wrote poems in Hebrew and Aramaic, because his Hebrew was still clumsy and “the words of Onkelos [the Aramaic translation of the Pentateuch] were more familiar to me than the books of the Prophets.” However, he notes that at the same time, he also wrote “homilies on the weekly Torah portion,” in line with “the inclinations of the old generation and in the homiletic manner of that time” (Melamed 1922, 87). As mentioned in Chapter 6, Buki Ben Yogli began by writing a poem in Yiddish about Jewish boys kidnapped and forced to serve in the Russian army, inspired by the style of his grandmother’s Tsena UR’ena (1947, 22), while Moshe Leib Lilienblum, Yehuda Leib Gordon, Yehuda Leib Levin, and many others record their first efforts at writing melitsa drawing on the Biblical model and on the much-admired stylistic 37 For typical accounts, see Dinur (1958, 33) and Horodetsky (1957, 23–24). 38 Thus, for example, in a speech condemning poetry, Lilienblum’s rabbi declares: “The

entire usefulness of melitsa is for writing letters; who needs poems?” (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 144).

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and literary model offered by Avraham Mapu’s novel Love of Zion, with its Biblical language, its inlay technique, and its pastiche style, composed of quotations of Biblical verses.39

The Role of Writing Practices in the Consolidation of Maskilic Communities The writing of melitsa was a significant component of the Maskilic rite of initiation, and its role was distinct and no less important than that of reading Maskilic literature. This is because in their reading practices, but not in their writing practices, the young Mitmaskelim were able to preserve the old oral habits that they had acquired at the traditional education system. Frequently, for example, they chose to read Maskilic literature out loud and in the company of friends, and to work out difficulties together and resolve them.40 It appears that the internalization of the traditional reading and studying practices among these young men was so powerful that both their reading habits and the justifications they gave to them were borrowed from the oral culture of traditional Jewish society. Elishinsky, for example, justifies his choice to read Isaac Hirsch Weiss’s book Dor Dor VeDorshav (Each Generation and Its Commentators ) (1924) in the company of his friend with the very same argument that we heard from the head of the Volozhin Yeshiva in Chapter 5:41 “Reading alone is not like reading beh.avruta [with companions ]. In the former case, if the reader errs […] the error will remain with him, […] but in the latter […], if one makes an error, his comrade will reprove him” (Elishinsky 1937, 38). This was not the case with writing. Unlike reading, some of the new practices of writing demanded introspection and intimacy that could only

39 For example, see Liessin (1943, 47–55) and Tchernowitz (1954, 158). On Mapu’s use of the Biblical inlay technique (shibuts) and on its role as a model, see Miron (1979, 17–51). On Biblical purism in Mapu’s Love of Zion and on its influence on the writers of the national revival period, see Brainin (1900, 50, 52) and Steinman (1944, 20–21). 40 For example, Abramovich depicts a group of yeshiva students undergoing hitmaskelut as they sit in the bosom of nature and read Schiller out loud: “One of them reads from the book in a chant, points with his finger, and rocks his body as students of Gemara do, and his companions listen to his voice with bright faces” (Abramovich 1956, 15); see also Wengeroff (1919, 34). 41 For the NaTSiV’s arguments in favor of reading in companionship, see Chapter 5.

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be attained alone. Indeed, in many of the Maskilim’s accounts of their early efforts at writing, we find a rather daring drive to engage in personal confessions and in expressions of individuality. An interesting comment in this regard is offered by Ish Na’omi, who associates the practice of writing with the crisis of the divided self in the liminal stage of the journey toward Haskalah, and with the need to express his own personal distress: From the time I began to think thoughts, a very mighty conflict took place within me. Two impulses of my heart waged a fierce war, and I did not know which was the good impulse and which was the evil one. Sometimes my conscience instructed me to completely remove the veil of piety from my face […] And sometimes my conscience tormented me, saying: How can you throw your Torah, your delight, behind your back? […] And I had no companion with whom I could share my secret and who could support me with his advice. Therefore I poured my thoughts onto a sheet of paper in melitsa as a “reprimand of passion,” and I read my scroll each and every day to strengthen my spirit, so that my feet would not stumble. (Ish Na’omi 1925, 184)42

Surely, there were many young Maskilim who wrote melitsa solely for the purpose of practicing their writing and displaying it (“melitsa letif’eret hamelitsa”).43 However, this type of writing, too, was part of the general transition from a culture characterized by oral dominance to a culture that prioritizes the written text. In other words, both the writing of personal, confessional texts and the writing of melitsot for their own sake reflected the shift in the socio-cultural status of writing, a shift that manifested itself, among other things, in the growing prevalence of solitary writing. In any case, toward the end of the Maskilic initiation rite, most of the Mitmaskelim viewed their writing in pure, prestigious, ancient Hebrew as a personal achievement to be proud of, and were determined to take credit for it. Once the task of writing in private had been accomplished, the resultant manuscripts played a major role in the incorporation of the Mitmaskel into the Maskilic community. Just as they used to borrow and lend books and to read them together, the Mitmaskelim also used to gather in order

42 For another example, see Harkavi (1935, 12). 43 For harsh criticism of poets who write empty flowery melitsa, see Kovner (1947,

7–22).

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to read aloud and discuss their own works. These shared literacy events bounded the Mitmaskelim together, creating support groups of sorts that reinforced their collective identity and their sense of solidarity and joint mission. S. Y. Agnon (Buchach, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1888– 1970), for example, recounts how he read his poems and stories to an older mentor during a walk in the forest (Agnon 1976, 27), and Dinur mentions the friendship that he forged with a fellow yeshiva student through reading their writings to one another: “I had a friend in the yeshiva, a young lad, Moshe of Kobryn, […] apparently also from a wealthy family, who was a Zionist, a Maskil, and used to write poetry. Every month he would lend me a copy of HaShiloah., read his poems to me, and demand that I read my ‘creations’ to him too” (Dinur 1958, 88). With respect to the building of local Maskilic communities, there was no real difference between the joint reading of Maskilic literature and the joint reading of original manuscripts composed by the participants. Both activities served to create intimate social circles of Maskilim at the ground level, in which they could safely declare their identity and receive support and feedback.44 However, it was only through the publication of an original manuscript in Maskilic periodicals that a writer could break out of the local community and gain visibility beyond the provincial, familiar circles. By this act, the Mitmaskel identified himself as such in public and progressed toward being part of the Maskilic establishment, sometimes at the cost of ostracism.45 In organizational and institutional terms, printing spanned the boundaries of the town or village and created a network of Maskilim with a well-defined identity, a hierarchical structure, and a relatively broad geographic distribution. This is how this state of affairs is described by Shaikewitz, who presents the joint reading of manuscripts as one of the focal activities in the clandestine meetings of the Maskilic group he dubs “the library boys”: “In the beit midrash everyone brought the melitsot and poems they had written, and read them aloud to the knowledgeable, and also spoke and argued about Haskalah and about the news written in the periodicals” (Shaikewitz 1952, 73). Not without a 44 Despite their relative safety as solidary groups of Maskilim, these groups also made the Mitmaskelim vulnerable to surveillance, exposure, informing, and betrayal by their comrades. See Ben-Zion (1932, 8) and Ish Na’omi (1925, 185). 45 For example, Lilienblum was discharged from his work as a teacher because he had written for Hebrew periodicals (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 159).

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hint of irony, he adds that a published manuscript in a Maskilic periodical won its writer the status of an “author” and served as a criterion for determining the hierarchy in the community of Maskilim. Indeed, the head of the “library boys” was one, Mordechai Greenwald, whose articles were published in HaMelit s, “and all the people, when they saw his explicit name in black ink on white paper, believed him to be first and foremost among all the Maskilim in the land […] And they said, you be our leader” (Shaikewitz 1952, 73). Despite the ironic tone, this account offers important insights. Reading constituted and reinforced local Maskilic communities, whereas writing, and especially publication in Maskilic periodicals, made it possible to reach beyond the local community. Not only did it provide the writers with recognition and give them relatively broad visibility, but it also incorporated them into a hierarchical institutional network that extended over the entire territory of these periodicals’ circulation, that is, throughout Eastern Europe and beyond. Additional insight into the role played by writing in the completion of the Maskilic rite of passage can be found in Eliezer Raphael Malachi’s (Jerusalem, Palestine, 1895–1980) portrayal of Mordechai Ben Hillel HaCohen (Mogilev/Mohilev, R.E. 1856–1936). As part of his homage to HaCohen, Malachi describes the strong drive of the Mitmaskelim of his generation to write in many different genres and to gain the status of “writers.” In his opinion, HaCohen’s story shows “how our good fathers became Hebrew writers”: Like most of the Hebrew writers of his generation, Mordechai Ben Hillel HaCohen entered our literature through correspondence. […] That was a short letter from Mogilev, his hometown. […] Then he began to send letters, articles, and translations to Rodkinson’s HaKol and Slonimsky’s HaTsfira. The latter then appointed him as correspondent and agent of HaTsfira in his town. […] and the young author became known to young Maskilim. (Malachi 1925, 20)

HaCohen’s entry into the literary arena and the Maskilic network was no different from that of Elishinsky and his friends, and many others: they all submitted letters on the latest events in their little towns, they all saw their names in print, and the most talented of them managed to penetrate the inner circle of leading editors and writers. Hence, the writing of a letter, a chronicle, a translation, an essay, a feuilleton, a story, or a poem, and their

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publication in a Maskilic periodical served more than one function: aside from formulating the worldview of the developing Haskalah movement and aside from expressing the inner turmoil of the emerging Maskilic identity, the act of publication signified the writer’s willingness to identify as a Maskil in public and to contribute in practice to advancing the ideas of Haskalah.46 In this respect, it was the final chord of the long and painful Makilic initiation process, and an entry ticket into the growing network of the Maskilic establishment. It is noteworthy that the community of Maskilim was not an “imagined community” (Anderson 1991). Rather, it was a real, tightly-knit community, with a profound sense of common intellectual, social, cultural, and ethical mission. Its active members were generally familiar with one another, and each of them knew what the others were doing: they all read one another’s work, corresponded, debated, and were jointly assisted by the Maskilic institutional network that had emerged due to their actions.47 In this sense, the Haskalah project was a communal endeavor no less than it was an individual one.

Writing, Language, Gender, and Nationality The adult male Maskilic community sought to advance a new social order in Jewish society and to promote a new model of masculinity, which was inspired by the image of European bourgeois masculinity. The Hebrew language—which, as we have seen, served as the primary locus of the Maskilic rite of initiation—was supposed to play a crucial role in attaining both these goals. Both the Maskilic Enlightenment ideology and the Zionist national ideology viewed the Hebrew language as an important instrument for curing the alleged mental and ethical flaws of Jewish society, as well as for repairing the purportedly effeminate and “damaged” Jewish masculinity. A compelling example of this approach to the Hebrew language can be found in the work of David Frishman (Zgierz, Lodz, Poland/R.E., 1859–1922), who was one of the prominent writers and literary critics in the field of Hebrew literature at the turn of the twentieth century. His 46 For other motives for publication in Maskilic periodicals, see Harkavi (1935, 12–13), Katz (1963, 26–29), and Raboy (1992, 121–124). 47 On the social network of the Maskilim, see Zalkin (2000, 92–151). On the List of Addresses of the Maskilim in Galicia in the 1880s, see Brawer and Brawer (1966, 238).

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views demonstrate the broad range of meanings and expectations attached to the Hebrew language and to its literature during this period, as well as the many paradoxes and intricacies involved. In particular, his ideas about the relationship between language, literature, national revival, and gender bring to the surface the non-trivial links between writing in Hebrew and the Jewish Enlightenment, and between both of these and the adoption of a new, European model of masculinity. Through the prism of Frishman’s rather extreme and blatant views, it is easier to discern the place allocated to women and to their cultural sphere in the Jewish Enlightenment and national revival; to understand why the need arose to draw inspiration from women’s world, but at the same time to also exclude them from the Enlightenment and national projects; and to comprehend how the writing in Hebrew served the purpose of separation from the mother and from femininity and rehabilitation of the damaged Jewish masculinity. Frishman’s series of articles “Letters on Literature,” which are framed as a series of letters addressed to a fictional noble and well-educated woman, opens with a categorical assertion of the masculine nature of the Hebrew language: I will not deny, my lovely friend, that I have always opposed our sisters who study the Hebrew language, and I have never believed that a woman could ever learn that language innocently and wholeheartedly, and that the thoughts that would bring her to this study could ever be pure.

With explicit reference to the Biblical prohibition against women wearing men’s clothing (Deuteronomy 22:5), Frishman adds: The Hebrew language—as I have always said—is a male instrument, and male instruments should never be used by a woman, for once she takes up this instrument, it will no longer be an instrument, but rather it will become a woman’s gown. (Frishman 1914, vol. 1, 7–8; emphasis in original)

In this “letter,” written in St Petersburg in 1887, Frishman presents his view that women should be excluded from the Hebrew language because it is an essentially male language, and because men, who have preserved it throughout the generations as part of their religious duties, are its sole proprietors. He expresses his fear that if women would share this language with men, they would afflict it with their supposedly chaotic

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thinking, and thus they would undermine its masculinity as well as that of its masters (Parush 2004a, 227–240). Frishman’s other writings indicate that in his view, women’s entry into the realm of the Hebrew language would threaten not only the language itself and the masculinity of its masters, but also the very prospects of a Jewish national revival. These ideas entangle Frishman in a series of contradictions and paradoxes. On the one hand, his famous slogan, “work of art—the revival of the nation,” expresses his belief that the Jewish national revival depends entirely on the revival of the nation’s imagination and emotion, and on a new burst of Jewish creative forces, mainly in the fields of fiction and poetry.48 In this area, he argues in various places, the only internal sources of inspiration available to the creators of the renewed Jewish culture are those that have been preserved in the female cultural sphere, as a reservoir of songs and stories in Yiddish recorded in childhood memories. On the other hand, like other Maskilim, he does not regard Yiddish as a language in which first-rate literature could ever be written, certainly not literature that could bear the burden of national revival on its shoulders. Despite his anti-Zionist views, or perhaps because of them, he believes that great Jewish literature could only be written in Hebrew.49 Hence, in his opinion, only a language that women are incapable of using creatively allows for the emergence of a respectable national culture, which is also a precondition for the desired emancipation and incorporation into European culture. Frishman concludes, therefore, that the burden of national creation and revival is incumbent mainly upon men, and that in order to make certain the possibility of revival, Hebrew language and literature must be closely guarded. To this end, he contends, Jewish society must retain its diglossia: it must separate the language of writing, Hebrew, from the language of speech, Yiddish, thus securing the Jewish national revival while also distancing the renewed Jewish culture from women and their influence.50 Over the years, Frishman abandoned these flagrant views. In the “Sixth Letter on Literature,” which was written in 1895 and focused on the work 48 On the significance of the slogan “work of art—the revival of the nation” in David Frishman’s nationalist thought, see Parush (1992, 33–43). 49 On Frishman’s opposition to Zionism, see Parush (1992, 17–32); on his attitude toward the Hebrew language, see Parush (1992, 95–104). 50 On Frishman’s support for the preservation of Hebrew-Yiddish diglossia, see Parush (1992, 99).

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of Mendele Mokher Sfarim (Abramovich), he writes: “Childishness, it was only childishness that led me to believe that the spoken language was a non-language, that its literature was a non-literature, and that its writers were non-writers” (Frishman 1914, vol. 1, 70). A comprehensive discussion of the considerations that led Frishman to mitigate his criticism of Yiddish and his objection to women’s entry into the realm of the Hebrew language is beyond the scope of this book.51 However, one consideration worth mentioning was that women’s role in educating the young required that they be taught Hebrew, so that they could cultivate the next generations of Hebrew readers and writers. Nevertheless, even after moderating his views, Frishman continued to doubt the ability of women to create worthy works in the ancient Hebrew language. This arrogant, patriarchal position regarding women’s linguistic abilities sheds light on the Maskilic masculine ideal. Taking an authoritative, patronizing stance of moral and intellectual superiority, Frishman stresses his appreciation for women’s virtues in the areas of taste, imagination, and emotion, while also delimiting their legitimate field of action. In doing so, he draws the portrait of the enlightened Maskil—in his own image. In his framing, the mastery of classical, grammatical, pure Hebrew constitutes the Archimedean point that would enable the removal of all the linguistic, intellectual, and ethical blemishes of the traditional Jewish man, and the launching of a new creative and enlightened Jewish masculinity.

51 For more on the change in Frishman’s position on these matters, see Parush (2004a, 236–240).

CHAPTER 9

“I Made Myself a Notebook of Blank Paper”: The Sins of Writing and the Constitution of the Subject

He opens the cupboard, takes the writing implements, holds the pen and the ink in one hand and the notebook of poems in the other, and approaches the table on tiptoe: at this moment, he looks very much like a man walking on a tightrope in the air. Hirsch David Nomberg, “HaRav UVno” (“The Rabbi and His Son”)1

The formative writing experiences described in the autobiographies and memoirs of young Mitmaskelim (persons undergoing enlightenment) shed light on several essential aspects of the writing revolution. Reading between the lines of these accounts reveals the difficulties and the revolutionary spirit that accompanied the physical and symbolic transition from “writing in the margins” to writing on a blank sheet of paper. The key to understanding the social, cultural, and personal significance of these accounts usually lies in the minute details and everyday practicalities of the writing events described, and in this respect, they should be read as “ethnographies of writing” of sorts. Attention should be given not only to their major themes, but also to their seemingly trivial particulars; to the time, place, and purposes of the depicted writing events; 1 Nomberg (2011, 72).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. Parush, The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature, New Directions in Book History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81819-7_9

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to the ideas expressed with regard to the nature of writing and the poetics of the literary text; and to the tendency to draw on traditional genres as a source of legitimacy. As this chapter will show, these autobiographical narratives suggest that the Mitmaskelim experienced writing on a blank sheet of paper as a radical act, which reconstituted them as autonomous subjects well aware of the profound transformation that they are undergoing. This is why this act evoked feelings of both sinfulness and elation that reinforced one another; and this is why writing, and especially the writing of fiction and of autobiographical-confessional texts, became the site of a charged, painful conflict with the authoritative father, the imposing rabbi, or both. Furthermore, if we read these narratives as ethnographic accounts, focusing on their socio-cultural meanings, they provide an important prism through which to examine the dismantling of the dominance of orality in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society. Indeed, the Maskilic writing, from that of the greatest authors to that of the last of the anonymous Mitmaskelim, constituted both a documentation of the writing revolution in this society and a significant part of this revolution, setting in motion far-reaching transformations in the status of books and their writers, in the profiles of readerships, and in the very notions of knowledge and individuality.

The Sins of Acquiring Writing The process of learning how to write is depicted in Maskilic autobiographies in several contradictory ways, indicating the ambivalent status of writing in Eastern European Jewish society of that period. At one extreme, there are writers who skip over the matter of acquiring writing, giving the impression that this is a simple and negligible skill not worthy of attention. Alongside them, we find writers who regard the acquisition of writing as a noteworthy achievement, and emphasize their good fortune to have studied it with their father or grandfather, with an unusual melamed (teacher in the heder), or with a private tutor hired especially for this purpose. At the other extreme are those who describe the acquisition of writing as a most significant event, which was accompanied by strong yet mixed feelings—a sense of excitement, elation, and emancipation on the one hand, and a sense of transgression, sinfulness, and guilt on the other hand. Among the latter, many acquired their writing skills in secret, against the will of their parents and without their knowledge. In many cases this act was associated with an additional misdemeanor of one kind

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or another, which stained the engagement with writing and the yearning for it even further. The sense of culpability and pain that accompanied the study of writing is often conveyed in subtle and indirect ways. This is how Isaac Raboy (Zavalia, Podolia G., R.E., 1882–1944) describes what happened when the clerk at the town’s post office taught him how to write and showed him “a pen with a nib and an inkwell with ink” for the first time in his life: “I took up the pen in my hands,” he writes, “and examined the nib’s point, and it pricked my finger” (Raboy 1992, 15). It would have been unwarranted to interpret this simple pricking as a fateful, prophetic sign of future pain due to the sin of writing, were it not for a series of other similar stories by Raboy himself and by other Maskilim. Some of these stories are light in tone while others refer to painful childhood memories, yet most of them are rather explicit and detailed in elucidating the various transgressions entailed by the study of writing. Yeh.ezkel Kotik (Kamyenyets/Kamenitz Litebsk, Grodno G., R.E., 1847–1921), for example, recounts how he sneaked into the shraiber’s lessons against his father’s will; how his father gave him “two ringing slaps” when he saw the letter he had written to his fiancée; how he was scolded for becoming “Daitsh” (German, i.e., enlightened); and how the shraiber was driven out of the town (Kotik 1998, 305–306). Far less amusing are the stories of those whose study of writing involved true transgressions, confrontations with the rabbi or the father, and a humiliating punishment. This was the case for Baruch Schwartz (Balta/Balte, Podolia G., R.E., 1860– 1933), whose autobiography begins with his first exposure to writing in the heder: And this is how it happened. Pinh.as Angert […] could not keep step with his comrades […] in the Pentateuch. And the rabbi used to let him sit a lot at the other desk and recite the studies by himself. So as not to get bored […] he would also write the alphabet with a black pencil on a piece of white paper, folded like a notebook, over and over, drawing only those letters, and the rabbi would not rebuke him. I envied him and asked him to teach me this art. He agreed, on condition that I help him to memorize and recite the lesson. When I acquired the skill of writing, an important thought lit up in my mind: to purchase a pencil and a sheet of paper and to write down whatever my heart desires, so that I am not dependent on the opinions of other people. […] My rabbi would occasionally scold me for wasting my time in ivelet [folly] and go on his way, and I would return

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to doing my thing: copying from the Taitsh [Hebrew-Yiddish version of the Pentateuch]. (Schwartz 1930, 60)

Reading Schwartz’s personal account as an ethnographic document reveals important aspects of his society’s attitude toward the practice of writing. It is not a coincidence that he learned how to write the Hebrew letters from the weakest pupil in the heder, the one who found it difficult to keep pace with the other pupils and needed his friend’s help to memorize the lesson. It is also not a coincidence that the rabbi ignored the failing pupil’s occupation in writing, but scolded Schwartz for doing so. For the rabbi, writing was an inferior skill, appropriate for unknowledgeable boys, whereas the bright pupil, the one who could actually make creative use of it, was discouraged from using it. This approach reflected the hegemonic view, in which disregard for writing and fear of it intertwined. At the same time, the narrator’s attribution of his young self’s eagerness to write to his desire to say whatever he pleases, without depending “on the opinions of other people,” suggests that even as a child, he grasped writing as an instrument of liberation.2 Yet the story of Schwartz’s acquisition of writing does not end here. Its culmination comes later, after the boy steals two kopecks from his mother’s kitchen cupboard to buy writing materials: I rushed to buy myself […] secretly a pencil and two sheets of paper, and I also managed to buy a ruler somehow, and I would write in the heder and nobody knew about it. […] In the end I felt pangs of conscience: my heart struck me for taking the coin without my parents’ permission. […] A kind of tremor passed over my flesh. “The sinners in Zion are afraid” [Isaiah 33:14]. And indeed, my day came. One morning when my mother shook out […] my clothing, the pencil fell out of my trouser pocket, and the rustle of the paper crumpled in my bulging pocket also could be heard— and “my hidden things were sought out” [Obadiah 1:6]. (Schwartz 1930, 60–61)

All the boy’s efforts to deny the theft were in vain. With the active assistance of the grandfather, his father beat him vigorously, and the sense of

2 In a similar vein, when Lilienblum began to write, he yearned “to be free in my soul to write whatever came to my mind” (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 151–152). See also Dinur (1958, 113).

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achievement he had gained by learning how to write was diluted by feelings of sinfulness and guilt for the act of stealing. The narrator consoles himself by stating that his actions paved the way for his two younger brothers, and that with time, all three were lucky enough to learn the art of penmanship from their father (Schwartz 1930, 128). Nevertheless, the narrator’s tenor indicates that the taste of sin that clung to the act of writing due to the theft has never completely faded, and he sums up the moral of this episode with the words: “One cannot eat from the tree of knowledge, so it seems, without torments” (Schwartz 1930, 128). Even more charged is the story told by Avraham Shlomo Melamed (Kherson/Cherson, Kherson G., R.E., 1862–1951), who associates his first experience of writing with a failed and terrifying attempt to produce ink from galls: At that time a desire to write had begun to grow within me; but I could not obtain all the writing implements. Paper—I bought in the store, quills—I made from the wing feathers of a goose; but I could not find ink. So I bought oak galls, chopped them into little pieces, and soaked them in water. I also put some iron sulfide in this water; I corked the jar well and put it on the yahrtzeit [memorial] candle that was standing on a column in front of the Holy Ark, to boil the liquids. I was not familiar with the laws of fire and water, nor was I familiar with the laws of rest and motion […]; and when the water began to boil, the liquids pushed the stopper off the jar, and the ink exploded powerfully and shot up to the ceiling of the synagogue, on the Holy Ark, and on the eastern wall. I was terribly alarmed by that sight, and I was also afraid that the ba’alei batim [lit. householders, community leaders] would put me on trial for disrespecting the sanctuary. […] In the morning, when the people gathered in the synagogue to pray, they saw the stains on the walls and ceiling. And everyone realized that I was the culprit. A huge crowd surrounded me; and I, with tearful eyes, told them the truth. The people wanted to banish me entirely from the synagogue; but an old man, whose name was Reb Zanvil, got angry with them and scolded them, saying, “Why have you all ganged up on this boy? After all, he studies in the synagogue day and night, and this house—it is his house, and if he blackened the ceiling and the wall, we are capable of whitening them.” […] Then all of them left me in peace […]. [Afterward] I began to write poems, with the alphabet at the beginning of the rhymes, and my name and my family name signed at the end. (Melamed 1922, 86–87)

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In this autobiographical anecdote, the story of the arousal of the desire to write is transformed into a story of producing ink, and the detailed, symbolic description of this practice hints at the charged and threatening nature of writing. In the evening, in the dark and empty space of the synagogue, on the flame of a memorial candle, which is burning in front of the Holy Ark, the child who had not yet acquired “the laws of fire and water” tries to boil the gall solution in a stopped jar. Within minutes, a symbolic and almost catastrophic event takes places: the ink bursts out of the boiling stopped jar and spurts out powerfully, dirtying the ceiling of the synagogue, the eastern wall, and the Holy Ark. The quasiritual act of preparing ink, which paves Melamed’s way to the writing of poetry, is described as a grave sin—an act of sacrilege with sexual connotations—deserving a punishment from which he escapes by the skin of his teeth. Thus, Melamed places both events—the preparation of ink and the writing of poetry—in the twilight region that borders on sacrilege, and perhaps even crosses this border. The basic experience of many young men on their way to Haskalah was consistent with the interpretations given to Tractate Avot 5:6 in the Mishnah, which lists the things that God created in the twilight hours preceding the first Sabbath and includes among them the script (ktav), writing (mikhtav), the tablets, “and some say also the demons [mazikin].” According to some commentators, the liminal time during which these things were created indicates their miraculous nature, and at least in some of them day and night, the sacred and the profane, intermingle. These commentators suggest that writing, just like the liminal time of its creation, is an expression of the twilight in the human soul. And, indeed, the Mitmaskelim’s stories about their first efforts at writing clearly point to the liminal character of this practice, which placed many obstacles in the way of those who sought to engage in it. These obstacles included not only the difficulty of obtaining writing materials and of acquiring the technical skill of writing, which often led the young Mitmaskelim to transgression, but also the strain entailed by the very act of writing, by its language, subjects, and genres, which all challenged the boundaries between the licit and the illicit, between the holy and the profane. The liminality of writing is conspicuous in the words of Moshe Ze’ev Elishinsky, who recounts: “On my own, I acquired a decent knowledge of our language and its grammar, […] and at an hour that was neither day nor night I would write flowery phrases and poems, which are kept in my papers” (Elishinsky 1937, 26). Notably, the hours that are

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neither day nor night are also the ones when there can be no neglect of the Torah, for they are not included in the commandment “Thou shalt meditate on it day and night” (Joshua 1:8).3 In terms of its content, the Maskilic writing in Hebrew challenged the boundaries between the sacred and the profane in two primary ways: in the indeterminacy of its genres, which will be discussed next, and in its linguistic-stylistic character, as reflected in the inlay technique known as shibuts , to which we will turn afterward.

Genre Indeterminacy as a Challenge to the Distinction Between the Sacred and the Profane With respect to its genres, the writing of the Mitmaskelim at the start of their career, and often also throughout it, was characterized by constant to and fro between poetry and exegesis, between belles lettres and religious thought, and between fiction and h.idushei Torah (new interpretations of the Torah). This fusion of genres and crossing of their boundaries is evident not only in the custom of including in a single published volume poems and commentaries, polemics and correspondences, essays and homilies,4 but also in the tendency to deviate from genre conventions within a single work. Among the Haskalah writers there were some, such as Avraham Shlomo Melamed, who took inspiration from traditional Jewish genres, without regard to the Haskalah literature that preceded them (Melamed 1922, 87; see also Gottlober 1976, vol. 1, 126), and others, such as Moshe Leib Lilienblum (Keidany/Keidan, Kovno G., R.E., 1843–1910), who embraced the models set by their Maskilic predecessors. As we shall see below, the social and cultural circumstances of both categories of Haskalah writers forced them, whether they wished to or not, to challenge the boundaries that distinguished the sacred from the profane in the traditional Jewish society of their time.

3 On writing a poem in the twilight hours, see also Agnon (1976, 56). 4 Shmuel Leib Tzitron recounts that the first works by Reuven Asher Broides were

written “according to the taste and spirit of that time: a bit of homiletics, a bit of erudition, a bit of eloquence, and some seasoning of Torah and wisdom” (Tzitron 1932, vol. 2, 158). For an example of this mixture of genres, see Zweifel (1856), and for harsh criticism of this mixture in Zweifel, see Abramovich (1860, 46–9).

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A brief look at some examples of the fusion of genres in the autobiographical works of Mordechai Aharon Ginzburg (Salantai/Salant, Kovno G., R.E., 1795–1846) and Moshe Leib Lilienblum shows that generic and stylistic choices of an apparently poetic character were in fact a means of justifying the act of writing and of gaining legitimacy for new, threatening forms of writing. These choices served to expand the realm of legitimate writing by introducing new styles under the cloak of traditional genres, or by making literary use of legitimate practical genres such as epistles and correspondences. In Ginzburg’s autobiographical work Aviezer, the genre indeterminacy finds expression in the interweaving of essays, moral lessons, and parables, mainly animal fables,5 with the autobiographical narrative, even at the cost of breaking the chronological flow of the story, and even at the cost of blurring the boundaries between sacred and profane genres.6 In an address to the frustrated reader, “who might look ill upon the breaks in the continuity” of the life story, Ginzburg encourages his readers to skip the “commentaries” and the “opinions,” and to read, for their pleasure, only the story of the events in their proper chronological order (Ginzburg 1967, 4, 68). This disclosure testifies (so it seems) that Ginzburg was aware of the function, as well as of the price, of the blurring of the generic boundaries. The effect of this blurring on readers is demonstrated by the response of Lilienblum, whose writing was deeply influenced by Ginzburg. In his own autobiographical book, H . at’ot Ne’urim, Lilienblum relates that in his youth he used to skip the philosophical passages in Aviezer, not only because he was attracted to the story of the author’s life, but also because he was afraid of crossing the line between faith and heresy. As he writes: “In my great foolishness, I skipped the last chapters, which speak of philosophical matters, for fear that my heart might receive something improper and I would be corrupted” (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 112). Still, the recognition that most of his readers would be interested primarily in the life story, and that some might be reluctant to read philosophical passages, does not deter Ginzburg from challenging the 5 On the claim that this use of bird and animal fables is an imitation of German literature and culture, see Magid (1897, 11). 6 In this matter, Ginzburg is following in the footsteps of Shlomo (Salomon) Maimon (Sukoviburg, Poland/Lithuania, 1753–1800), whose autobiography was published in German in 1792. An abbreviated Hebrew version adapted by Y. H. Taviov was published in 1898.

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boundary between sacred and profane and from including alien genres in his autobiographical narrative.7 On the contrary, in the complex circumstances created by the ongoing transformation in the status of writing and in the profile of readers,8 this mixture served to legitimize autobiographical writing in two possibly contradictory ways: on the one hand, it was in line with the expectation that the personal life story should be accompanied by a moral lesson in the spirit of the traditional Jewish will9 ; on the other hand, it satisfied the need to record the narrator’s intellectual development in the spirit of the European Enlightenment’s bildungsroman.10 Ample insights and information relevant to our discussion can be found in Lilienblum’s account of his own first efforts at writing, which involved walking a thin line on the boundary between the sacred and the profane: One of my acquaintances, […] who had Haskalah books, […] subscribed to HaCarmel […] At that time, he and his fellows resolved to publish a weekly periodical, which would announce various news items […] They asked me, too, to join them with articles, that is, with poems, for a Hebrew periodical cannot be without poems […] And at the head of the first issue of this periodical, which was called A Word in Due Time [Davar Be’Ito], appeared a poem of mine in praise of our Holy Language, in which I urged “the sons of Zion” to come to the aid of our Holy Tongue. Of course, the poem had neither taste nor fragrance, just a bunch of phrases […] but poems like that cannot be published in every single issue. Therefore, the editors advised me to write a poem about the Torah portion of that Sabbath in every issue. […] I did what they had asked, and every week I gave them an ethical poem. […] In the first poem I preached against slander and about the punishment of Miriam the prophetess, who spoke ill about Moses, her brother, and thus I continued to preach until […] the publication of that periodical became known to the denizens of the beit 7 On the circumstances that led to the use of the Holy Tongue for the writing of “books where the sacred and the profane intermingle,” see Agnon (1976, 72–73). 8 On the changes in the profile of the readership during this period, and on the conventional strategies of addressing the readers and appealing to their mind and heart, see Fischler and Parush (1997, 237–262). 9 On Aviezer’s affinity to the confessional formula of the traditional Jewish will, and on its points of diversion from the conventions of this genre, see Werses (2009, 32–35). 10 On the link between skepticism and secularization and the emergence of the long autobiographical Hebrew poem, see Bar-El (1995a, 25). See also Moseley (2006, 453– 458).

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midrash, and we the writers, and even more so the editors, became their laughing stock, and our periodical had given up the ghost before I finished my poem about the portion of that week. […] [A poem about] that portion was not published in the periodical, therefore […] Nevertheless, I set my eyes on that portion, and sought to mark it with cantillation marks. I took up Tsohar HaTeiva and Talmud Leshon Ivri and studied the rules of the cantillation marks. I recited my studies with determination and succeeded in achieving my goal. Both my friends and I were more impressed by that portion after I had decorated it with the cantillation marks, and they agreed that I was a melits [a virtuoso in Hebrew writing], and so I was in my own eyes as well. (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 119–121)11

Like many of the Mitmaskelim toward the end of their initiation to Haskalah, Lilienblum, too, wanted to see his poem printed on the pages of a Hebrew periodical, so that he could be designated a “melits”; and in doing so, he, too, defied the boundaries between the genres and between the sanctified and the profane.12 His account demonstrates that the very publication of poems and the very publication of a Hebrew periodical were seen as improper acts, or at least as ridiculous, contemptible acts.13 Against this background, the tendency to mix genres, and to accord a Biblical-prophetic appearance to texts dealing with the portion of the week and with matters of ethics and current events, seems like a deliberate tactic aimed at minimizing the innovative elements in Maskilic Hebrew writing and at legitimizing them. Lilienblum’s decision to devote his debut poem to praise of “our Holy Tongue” was also an apologetic move, which aimed at excusing himself for writing poetry while also preventing potential adversaries from condemning this poetry. Thus, Lilienblum joined an apologetic tradition shared by many of the Hebrew writers of the period.14 However, this could not conceal the fact that 11 The emphasis is in the 1912 edition of Lilienblum’s collected writings (Lilienblum 1912, vol. 2, 230–231). This emphasis was omitted in the Mosad Bialik edition of 1970. 12 For another example, see Levin (1968, 40). 13 On the contempt for the young men who began to fill the periodicals with their

writings, see Lilienblum (1970, vol. 1, 213). 14 On Hebrew authors’ hesitation when asked about the reasons for their wielding of the author’s pen and about the advantage of writing in the Hebrew language, see Abramovich (1867b, 10). On the need to preserve the Hebrew language and save it from

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writing in Hebrew, even for the supposedly worthy goal of glorifying the language, was a transgressive act crossing the boundary between the sacred and the profane. It was precisely the texts written in pure Biblical Hebrew, using Biblical phrases and imitating “the style of the prophets,” and precisely the texts using Assyrian letters and cantillation marks and accents—which were added in accordance with despised grammar books such as Tsohar HaTeiva and Talmud Leshon Ivri—that stamped Maskilic writing with the seal of heresy, and that crowned the young Lilienblum with the titles of melits and Maskil. Maskilic writing therefore sought the shelter and protection of traditional genres as a means of gaining legitimacy and of introducing alien, suspicious genres into the literary field and the intellectual sphere. It harnessed the Biblical style, hymns, homilies, exegesis, and the like, along with legitimate practical frameworks and genres of writing such as letters and diaries, to pave the way for poetry, novels, and autobiographies.15 The blurring of genres, which was integral to this strategy, was therefore a thoroughly ambivalent practice: it made the Maskilic text, at one and the same time, more familiar and more alien, more legitimate and more sacrilegious, and it led, by its very nature, to the undermining of the all-important distinction between the sacred and the profane.

On the Borderline: Biblical Inlay (Shibuts) and the Shift From Oral Dominance to the Privileging of Writing Like the generic equivocality of Maskilic writing, its linguistic and stylistic ambiguities had cultural significance that extended far beyond the poetical realm. These ambiguities stemmed from the preservation, within the literature of the Haskalah, of reading and writing practices typical of oral literacy cultures. They reflected not only the standing of Haskalah writers on the borderline between a literacy culture privileging speech and one

oblivion as a justification for writing fiction and poetry in Hebrew, see ADaM HaCohen (1861, 9). For criticism of this apologetic tendency, see Kovner (1947, 151). 15 On the epistolary novel as a Maskilic genre, see Pelli (1999, 28–47). On the place of the epistolary novel in the development of modern autobiography, see Moseley (2006, 21–22, 343–344, 366–368, 416–418, 447). On the European epistolary novel and the role of the epistle in the plot of Yosef Perl’s Megale Tmirin, see Werses (1971, 18–22).

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privileging script and writing, but also their contribution to the shift from one to the other.16 A close look at the writing practices of the Mitmaskelim at the beginning of their way, and often not just at the beginning, reveals that even those considered innovators and “creators of language,” such as Ginzburg, Mapu, Y. L. Gordon, Frishman, or Mendele Mokher Sfarim (Abramovich), depended heavily on the use of fragments of verses from the Bible and from other traditional Jewish sources—an inlay technique known as shibuts (lit. embedding). Some of them produced texts that were an amalgam of linguistic elements borrowed from the Talmud, the prayer books (the mah.zor and the siddur), the haftarah (selections from the prophets read in the synagogue), hymns (piyutim), elegies (kinot ), penitential prayers (selih.ot ), introductions to Halakhic books (hakdamot ), and approbations to books (haskamot ).17 Others insisted on maintaining the purity of Biblical Hebrew, and their inlay and pseudo-inlay techniques drew on Biblical verses alone. In any case, the texts created by both camps were based, in large part, on the juxtaposition of ready-made verses and fragments of verses. This practice developed for a variety of reasons, including not only the fact that Hebrew had not been a spoken language at the writers’ time, and not only the wish to gain legitimacy and prestige by drawing on the traditional Jewish sources, but also insufficient knowledge of Hebrew and its grammar and lack of self-confidence in using it among some of the writers.18 Whatever the reason, one aspect of this stylistic choice, which is particularly relevant to our discussion, is that this form of writing was similar in some respects to the writing of a dictated text or a text learned by heart—the same practices that are typical, as noted in Chapter 4 above, of oral literacy cultures. In both cases, writing is not autonomous and spontaneous, or at least not completely so, and the writer copies a pre-given text or transcribes a text he had memorized earlier, “hearing” this text as an “inner voice” and “dictating” it to himself

16 On the oral character of Ginzburg’s rhetoric in Aviezer, see Werses (2009, 32–33). 17 Levin (YehaLeL), for example, writes that he composed his first poems “in the

language of the Talmud, the mah.zor [High Holidays prayer book], and the haftarah,” and that his father used to call his attention to expressions he had found in hakdamot, haskamot, kinot, and selih.ot (Levin 1968, 41). 18 It is no coincidence that the literary criticism of the period devoted considerable space and attention to linguistic corrections. See, for example, Frishman (1914, 104; 1923, 140).

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from memory (Messick 1993, 28). The oral origins of the shibuts inlay technique also found expression in the fact that the ready-made fragments of verses were taken primarily from texts that were studied or read out loud for religious purposes, and were known, in large part, by heart.19 The writing of the young Mitmaskelim was therefore hybrid in nature not only due to its tendency to mix the sacred and the profane, but also due to its intermingling of two cultures of literacy—one that prioritized speech and another that prioritized script and writing. Not all the Mitmaskelim were aware of the full social and cultural significance of their writing practices, or of the role played by the shift from oral to writing dominance in the processes of modernization and secularization. Many of them unwittingly expressed a supposedly natural fondness and predilection to oral practices, and did not attribute special significance to their oral customs, such as their habit of gathering together and reading their literary works to one another in the style of the joint study in the yeshiva and the beit midrash.20 However, many of the Mitmaskelim’s memoirs and autobiographies do hint at some awareness that their standing on the boundary between the holy and the profane also implied their standing on the verge of a new, revolutionary culture of literacy. This awareness was especially conspicuous in the Mitmaskelim’s critiques of the traditional education system, when they accused the melamdim and the rabbis of neglecting the teaching of the Hebrew language and its grammar and disregarding the inculcation of proper writing style. As part of these critiques, many of the writers also identified the connection between the widespread ignorance of Hebrew and its grammar and their own limitations as writers. Furthermore, they sometimes presented their lack of proficiency in Hebrew as one of the reasons for their turning to the technique of shibuts, and as an explanation for the use of ready-made phrases and linguistic formulae as the foundation for modern Hebrew writing. A. S. Melamed, for example, openly admits that he seized upon pre-existing verses and idioms wherever he could find them because of his slender vocabulary and limited mastery of grammar: “My Hebrew was clumsy, peppered with quotations from the Sages. […] I acquired only the style of the hymns, from which I drew words for my

19 See, for example, Levin (1961, 205–206). 20 For selected examples, see Berdichevsky (1984, 16), Fishco (1948, 28), Shaikewitz

(1952, 73). For a discussion of this phenomenon, see Sadan (1996, 46).

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craft. I wrote many poems in Aramaic, because the words of Onkelos [the Aramaic translation of the Pentateuch] were more familiar to me than the books of the prophets” (Melamed 1932, 87). Elishinsky, who had a melamed who presumably taught the writing of Biblical melitsa, states: “He did not teach me grammar, because he himself knew nothing about it. The melitsot were segments and fragments of verses, as well as entire verses” (1937, 17). Many similar testimonies indicate that both the melamedim and their pupils used the technique of inlay as a scaffolding, enabling them the very act of writing in Hebrew, and the writing of poetry in particular. Shmaryahu Levin (Svislac/Svislevitsh, Grodno G., R.E., 1867–1935), for example, relates that when the desire would arise in him to express his ideas in writing, he would look for a verse that suited his intentions: “When a verse from the Torah or the Prophets was in line with my ideas, I would copy it verbatim; when they [my ideas and the verse] did not suit one another, I would try to find bits and pieces of verses or single words, to combine them, and to compose them together into a new form and expression, which fitted my ideas” (Levin 1961, 254). As can be gleaned from the final part of Levin’s statement, only a short path led the Mitmaskelim from awareness of their inevitable dependence on the inlay technique to a sober evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of this technique. Many writers complained about the artificial and delimiting character of the shibuts style, and admitted that only a select few were skillful enough to use it creatively for expressing complex ideas.21 At the same time, many writers acknowledged the liminal and subversive character of the shibuts style in particular, and of the craft of the modern Hebrew poet-melits in general. A colorful and perceptive portrayal of the forced, restricted, and impersonal character of the shibuts inlay technique is provided by Ginzburg in his book Aviezer, where he presents an unusually detailed description of the practice of borrowing and inlaying verses, and of the inevitably failed outcomes of this practice: And what was the language of study in my eyes? A piece of writing composed of various verses, rhymes from hymns, dirges, and penitential

21 In his article “Shiratenu HaTse’ira” (“Our Young Poetry”), Bialik writes of Mendele, Frishman, and Peretz that “in their day, the reign of the melitsa receded, and the Biblical verse no longer strolled before them like a cane before a blind man, but rather ran and wagged its tail behind them” (Bialik 1939, 232).

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prayers, seasoned with Aramaic words from the Talmud that gave it a bad taste, complete with entire lines from Biblical books that had nothing to do with the purpose of the writing at hand, and all of this I cooked together into a single pulp, and it tasted like bone marrow to a person of my taste at the time. However, it was a precious vessel, a masterwork in my eyes, when my hand managed to do away with and destroy an entire verse by changing similar letters to make it express something different, [that is,] when I succeeded in pushing some idea into the strait of a whole verse. Even if the idea had lost its hands and its feet in that tight space, I did not feel sorry for it, as long as I could squeeze its head and body into it. One moment I would squeeze the idea into the verse, and the other moment I would squeeze the verse into the idea, and I marked and re-marked the verse to show the change and to highlight the single point that was sometimes added to the verse, and sometimes the two blemishes joined together in a single place, and the idea was truncated and the verse was crushed to such an extent that my writing was like a beit hah.ofshit [netherworld, lepers house]—(hospital)— where truncated ideas and crushed verses gather together with no soundness to them [cf. Isaiah 1:6]—lacking arms and with injured legs, they could not move from their place in the province of punctuation[.] And to these I called the pen of a rapid scribe [cf. Psalms 45:2], and the masses saw them and gave me a crown of praise[.] I took them to the one who truly understood, to my father, to hear his praise as well, I hoped for tehila [commendation] and I received tahala [condemnation] [cf. Job 4:18]. (Ginzburg 1967, 54–55)22

Ginzburg goes on to confront the flaws of his own broken writing at the start of his career—which was badly damaged by its dependence on the words of others—with the logical, clean, and precise writing of his father. But for our purposes, there is interest not only in Ginzburg’s view that his father’s mastery of Hebrew yielded a clear language and lucid ideas, but also in the fact that Ginzburg’s criterion for evaluating the beauty of a style was the ease of both grasping the text and learning it by heart: The Bible and the Holy Tongue in general, with its grammar and logic, were his [my father’s] treasure, and his letters were refined in the furnace of cleanliness and distilled in the clear brevity that was peculiar to him alone, […] And only he alone, in the breadth of his mind, knew how to compress an idea as broad as the sea into a column as short as a handbreadth, and 22 For further analysis of Ginzburg’s style, see Magid (1897).

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nevertheless the idea would not lose its content, not even as much as the tip of the letter Yod [kutso shel yod] […] and therefore his words were easy to learn by heart, like a great idea wrapped in a brief melitsa that the eye can grasp in a single moment, while the head keeps thinking about it for some time[.] This is the difference between him and me, for I create German [Ashkenazi] ideas and dress them in the pure Holy Tongue, whereas he gave birth to his ideas at the knees of that language itself. (Ginzburg 1967, 66)

In sum, the dependence on traditional sources and genres, and the difficulties of the transition from an oral literacy culture to one based on writing, had left their mark on the writing of the Mitmaskelim and on their complex, ambivalent attitude toward it.23 The gradual emancipation of Haskalah writing from the brace of the shibuts, which went hand in hand with Haskalah authors’ growing mastery of Hebrew and its grammar (Fischler and Parush 1977, 237–260), signified the decline of oral culture in Jewish society and contributed to this decline. For complex reasons that are beyond the scope of the present discussion, the shift from oral dominance to the dominance of script and writing was accompanied by purist tendencies and by efforts to crystalize a high, lucid, proper, and exemplary literary style.24 Whereas at the early stages of the revival of the Hebrew language as a modern written language, these tendencies were expressed in the adoption of a pure Biblical model, which was most pronounced in the writing of poetry, in later stages, with the expansion of the Hebrew language, they were expressed in efforts to unify the various strata of the language around a single set of grammatical rules, whatever the genre. This latter development was highly influenced by the work of Mendele Mokher Sfarim, who created what came to be known as the “nosah.” (lit. formula), a linguistic model that drew upon both Biblical and post-Biblical sources (Parush and Fischler 1995, 123–135;

23 On the efforts to uproot the melitsa due to its many faults, see Dolitzky (1883, i–vii). 24 In diglossic societies such as the Eastern European Jewish society of the studied period, and also in societies undergoing national and linguistic revival, literary language is typically subject to strong purist pressures (de Silva 1976, 94–106). Nevertheless, at the turn of the twentieth century, there were also calls in Jewish society for a more sparing use of Biblical allusions. Frishman went as far as to demand the removal of Biblical allusions from Hebrew altogether, and proselytized the use of Hebrew as a neutral “linguistic substance” (Parush 1992, 103–104).

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Dalmatzky-Fischler and Parush, 2011). Needless to say, both the new linguistic ideals proclaimed by the Maskilic writers and their dismantling of the principle of oral dominance entailed direct confrontation with the rabbinic authority, and there is no wonder that many of them experienced the act of writing as profoundly transgressive.

The Sins of Writing and the Divided Self The position of the Mitmaskelim in the twilight zone between the holy and the profane, and between oral and script-based literacy cultures, reinforced their sense that theirs was a hybrid identity. Their writings provide an impressive and touching portrayal of the agonies of this dual identity, with its wavering between the exhilaration of achievement and the dread and guilt of sin and transgression. For Shmaryahu Levin, the quandaries of the divided self centered on feeling guilty due to the study of grammar. Even before his bar-mitzvah, Levin had been captivated by modern Hebrew literature and had studied grammar to become an author (Levin 1961, 282–284). Nevertheless, when he met one of the prushim (lit. ascetics, men who left their wives and children behind and went to study Torah in another city) of his hometown, he was sucked into a whirlpool of guilt and regret: I used to read Peretz Smolenskin’s [periodical] HaShah.ar, where the Holy Tongue served to discuss mundane matters of this world. My parush insinuated quite clearly that this was sinful and transgressive. And he would appeal to me vehemently that I forget everything I had learned about grammar, for grammar is a tool in the hand of the evil impulse, it is Satan, the Angel of Death. And this is what he used to say: “Great is the power of the evil impulse, for it wraps itself in the prayer shawl of awe and piety and brings one to study grammar, as if it would serve only for studying Torah.” And grammar is what brings profanity into holiness. (Levin 1961, 290–291)25

The parush’s attempts to deter Levin from studying grammar relied, consciously or not, on the uncovering of the Maskilic strategy of generic and stylistic ambiguity discussed in the previous sections, that is, the 25 In a similar vein, the rabbi who reproved Lilienblum for writing his visionary essay “Masa Polin” accused him of mixing the sacred and the profane (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 145).

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strategy of introducing “profanity into holiness” under the guise of “a prayer shawl of awe and piety.” Under the parush’s influence, Levin recounts, “I withdrew from writing, and I distanced myself from the external books, the books of Haskalah” (Levin 1961, 291). Levin’s withdrawal from writing, his subsequent turning to mysticism, and his efforts to extricate himself from the “world of secrets and visions” are described as a fierce struggle within his divided soul: It appears to me that at that time, I was betwixt and between two worlds, and my soul was divided into two; one part was in a state of high fever and […] was dreaming wild dreams, and the other part pulled the first one with all its force, […] to free it of its bonds and to merge together fully, a complete unification. One part of me was immersed in a heavy fog, and at the edges of the fog there gathered […] imaginary visions […] arousing dread and horror, and the second part clung, with its final strength, to the last ray of reason, of rationality. (Levin 1961, 293)26

Levin uses the metaphor of illness, “a high fever,” to describe the torments of the divided self, and portrays his deep yearning, as a young boy, for a stable, continuous, rounded, and unified self. In the spirit of Maskilic ideals and in line with prevalent notions of the subject in the thought of the Enlightenment, Levin believes that clinging to reason has the power to mend the rifts of a torn soul, and, indeed, he continues to recount how his embracing of reason had cured him from his illness.27 As he reports: “I was then drawn to my pen once again, and once again I threw myself into the arms of the new Hebrew literature” (Levin 1961, 293). Different in their details yet similar in essence were the doubts and tribulations experienced by David Yeshayahu Zilberbush (Zalishchyky/Zolishtchik, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1854–1936) on his path to becoming a writer. Zilberbush, whose wife died shortly after their wedding, describes his return from the house of his father-in-law to his native town as the return of a man who no longer knows his place, nor does his place know him. “For I am no longer what I was,” he 26 Tchernowitz describes a similar experience: “[It was] as if two souls dwelled in my body—one mysterious and one rationalist, one pulling me here and the other pulling me there” (Tchernowitz 1954, 83–84). See also Lilienblum (1970, vol. 1, 114). 27 On the development of the notion of the unified subject in European thought, see Thiel (2011).

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reports on his feelings those days, and with an erotic metaphor hinting at transgression, he describes the transition from his first, scholarly writing to the writing of modern Hebrew literature as turning away from a legal wife in favor of a forbidden and desired concubine: “At the same time that I became a ‘widower’, I also became […] a ‘divorcee’; to my scholarship, my heart’s desire from youth, whom I had betrothed with great love and huge diligence, […] I gave a bill of divorce […] for I found another one whom I considered better looking—a concubine with dimples in her cheeks” (Zilberbush 1936, 55). He compares his departure from Torah scholarship to widowhood and divorce at one and the same time, and likens his turn to modern literature to a wanton desire for an illicit woman. Indeed, he depicts his efforts to repress his forbidden desire for writing as a struggle with the devil, who emerges from his lair and starts “to dance and frolic between the letters” in front of him (Zilberbush 1936, 56). Also telling are the hints at sinful acts that he weaves, in passing, into his description of the moment he shared his writing with his friend: This yeshiva student had already known […] that I myself had been trying my hand at becoming a Hebrew poet [melits]. And let no one think I am boasting in vain when I relate that when I brought him a “story of Zelishtska” that I had filled with hollow […] melitsot […], he was foolish enough, in his excessive love for any fine expression […] in our “one language, the sole vestige,” to kiss me on the forehead. And that kiss was from then on like the seal of our mutual friendship. (Zilbrerbush 1936, 59)

This passage, which concludes the episode of Zilberbush’s initiation into Haskalah, alludes, perhaps unwittingly, to essential aspects of the sin of writing. The apologetic need to justify the love of melitsa by the love of the Hebrew language; the urge to defend oneself from potential accusations of vain pride due to the writing of Hebrew; the friend’s kiss on the narrator’s forehead due to his presumed love for “our ‘one language, the sole vestige’”—all these betray clear apprehension of the sin of hubris, as well as a latent fear of an erotic sin lying on the doorstep of those who engage in writing. Thus, while they were standing on the boundary between two cultures of literacy and clinging on to both of them, many young Mitmaskelim gradually proceeded from hesitant writing to feverish writing, which was

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often experienced as a source of shame and of pride simultaneously.28 At each of these poles, multiple sins preyed upon the Maskilic writer: the sin of boasting one’s knowledge, talent, and originality; the sin of craving publicity and fame; the sin of desire for pleasure and for giving pleasure; the sin of narcissistic self-absorption; and more. Chief among these sins were hubris on the one hand and eros on the other. Fear of these two sins and their various permutations deterred some from writing, and tormented those who dared to sin in writing nevertheless. Echoing the Mitmaskelim’s vacillation between the contradictory urges aroused by writing—reluctance and desire, suffering and pleasure—the image they sought to attach to their writing also wavered between the holy and the profane, between continuity and revolution, and between conformism and subversion. Some of them tended to present the modern writer as the natural heir of the religious scribe (sofer STaM ) and to endow their own writing with the sanctity of that craft. Others, by contrast, distanced themselves from traditional forms of writing, and contributed to the demystification of the sofer STaM and his work. Buki Ben Yogli (Chernihiv/Chernigov, R.E., 1846–1917), who was an apprentice to a sofer STaM as a boy, relates how he escaped this man’s tyranny by threatening to reveal his shame publicly, after finding out that he had sinned and led others to sin by writing faulty scrolls for tefillin. Along the way, he reveals the banal, exhausting, and retrograde aspects of the sofer STaM’s work, and states that “the hard and tedious work of the scribe” did not allow a prodigy like himself “to study Gemara even on the Sabbath and on holidays” (Buki Ben Yogli 1947, 45–48). An opposite and more common position regarding religious scribes was taken by Reuven Brainin (Lyady/Liadi, Mogilev G., R.E., 1862– 1940). He writes that in his childhood, he witnessed how people would kiss books when opening and closing them, how they would wash their hands before touching them, how they would take worn-out books to the genizah (a storage place for worn-out sacred manuscripts usually located in the synagogue) or bury them in the cemetery, and how the sofer STaM would purify himself, full of awe, before sitting down to write. He adds that: “Authors were not known by their personal names but by the names of their books, […] like ‘the author of Metsudat David,’ and the like […] 28 Agnon’s speech upon receiving an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem testifies that he, too, experienced a similar bout of writing accompanied by feelings of sinfulness in his youth (Agnon 1976, 45).

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In this spiritual atmosphere, it was but natural that I felt (and I still do to this very day) great honor for books and for the printed word. I have seen in them something of life-after-death, of immortality” (Brainin 1965, 405–406). Like Brainin, many Maskilim regarded the sofer STaM, who immerses himself in the ritual bath before writing so as to write in sanctity and purity, as an ideal, exemplary model of the proper attitude toward the book and the printed word. At the same time, the figure of the sofer STaM often served in the emerging Hebrew literature as a symbol of the heavy price exacted by the sanctity of writing, of the danger inherent in the tension between writing and eros, and of the complex relationship of both continuity and change between the scribe and the author as a modern artist. This is the symbolic meaning of the figure of the sofer STaM in Agnon’s story “The Legend of the Scribe” (1919), for example, or in David Frishman’s “Lilith” (1919). And, indeed, some young Mitmaskelim experienced their first act of writing as a burst of desire and as a truly erotic sin. Such are the feelings described by Yehuda Leib Levin (YehaLeL) (Minsk, R.E., 1844–1925), for example, in his autobiographical notes: I showed the poems I had written to my friends, who read them eagerly, as the content of the poems was mainly amorous play, gutter language, teasing, and jokes. I do not know from where the spirit came upon me to write only about love and flirtation, although I had hardly ever seen a woman’s face, and I had never laid my eyes upon a maiden. Apparently, this was the working of the books I was reading, such as Ahavat Tsiyon [The Love of Zion] and Ayit Tsavu’a [Hypocrite Eagle] and the like. After writing those poems, and after my friends had read them, my heart struck me for I had used vulgar language, and I tore up the poems in fury. (Levin 1968, 41–42)29

Yet alongside such feelings of debasement, many Mitmaskelim sought to harness their writing in pursuit of the noble goal of effecting a radical change in the socio-cultural status of writing and in the status of the author, the book, reading, and readers. This change, which was at the heart of the “writing revolution,” is what Ah.ad Ha’Am (Skvyra/Skver, 29 Levin adds that the poem he wrote immediately afterward, “Wounds of Love,” was composed after he had seen a young nobleman wooing a beautiful servant woman (Levin 1968, 42).

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Kiev G., R.E., 1856–1927) hoped for when he called for the Jewish people to become the “literary people” (am sifruti) rather than the “people of the book” (am hasefer). In his opinion, literature should attend to the ongoing needs of independent, free, and critical readers: For it is our calamity that we are not the literary people, but rather the people of the book. The difference between the two is huge. Literature, like the nation, is a living force that assumes one form after another. A generation comes and a generation goes, and the nation lives in all of them; books come and books go, and literature lives in all of them. A “literary nation” is therefore only a nation whose life and the life of its literature, the generations and the books, develop together, literature according to the needs of the generation, and the generation according to the spirit of literature. For a literary nation, the vocation of literature is to sow new ideas and desires in the hearts and then to entrust the soft seed to the care of the heart, which would embrace it, nurture it, and make it grow with its own power and according to its needs, until it would become an organic part of the human soul, a living force in its own right, without any further relation to its literary source […] But the “people of the book” are the slaves of the book [emphasis in original], a nation whose soul has departed from its heart and has shifted in its entirety into the written texts. For it [for such a nation] the vocation of the book is not to enrich the heart with new strengths, but rather, on the contrary, to weaken it and humiliate it until it would not dare to act and to strive “by its own strength and according to its needs”; rather, everything is only by means of script. (Ah.ad Ha’Am 1921, 93–94)30

Given the inhibitions and mixed feelings aroused by writing, meeting the challenges set by Ah.ad Ha’Am was no simple matter, not even for the writers of the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. Shmuel Tchernowitz (Sebesh/Sebezh, Vitebsk G., R.E., 1879–1929) expresses this succinctly in his speech in honor of Mordechai Ben Hillel HaCohen (Mogilev, R.E., 1856–1936) on his fiftieth birthday,

30 Berdichevsky describes the transformation in the culture of reading and of the book from the point of view of a young reader who replaced reading based on the sanctification of the book with critical reading. In his eulogy for David Frishman, he recounts that after he had read Frishman’s book Tohu VaVohu (lit. void, Genesis 1:2), he ceased to regard every book as “an honorable thing, just because it was a book,” and his eyes opened to realize that “one should discuss the writer and author […] whether he is worthy” (Berdichevsky 1966, 207, emphasis in original).

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drawing the outlines of a collective biography of an entire generation of writers: Son of a poor family. Since his childhood studied in the “heder,” in the beit midrash, fought the battle of Haskalah, secretly studied Russian, passed through the “yeshiva,” began to try his hand at literature, etc.—this is, in short, the life story of most of the authors of R. Mordechai Ben Hillel’s generation. They entered literature, like they entered life, shyly, modestly, with uncertain steps, like strangers, until it became their home. (Tchernowitz 1925, 39)

As stated by Tchernowitz, for most of the Mitmaskelim, writing was far from a natural occupation. They began by writing in traditional genres, by copying books they could not afford to buy, by writing correspondences, or by scribbling h.idushei Torah as short notes on the margins of the Talmud and in “secret scrolls,” as described in Chapter 4 above.31 Usually this sort of writing was not seen as an integral part of the studies in the yeshiva and was not performed within its walls. Rather, writing was practiced at home and was frequently experienced as a liminal activity, not to say an illegitimate one.32 Such was Yeshayahu Zilberbush’s first experience in writing. He began by secretly writing h.idushei Torah, feeling that even this act of writing was in some way a “neglect of the Torah” (bitul Torah). In a regretful, penitential tone, “with hidden shame and visible sadness,” he tells his friend, who was also his mentor in Haskalah, about his first futile attempts at writing and their shameful failure (Zilberbush 1936, 21–22).33 Abramovich (Mendele Mokher Sfarim; Kapyl/Kapoli, Minsk G., R.E., 1836–1917) also reports that he experienced his early attraction to writing as a disturbing temptation of the evil impulse (yetser hara), and that his main concern was the danger of neglecting the Torah: I knew the Bible, but I had not yet tried to wield the author’s pen. And when the Lord’s spirit had begun to throb within me, I did not pour it as 31 On writing with extreme brevity for fear of neglecting the Torah, see, for example, Agnon’s “Mishum Bitul Torah” (1962d, 124–125). 32 See Buki Ben Yogli’s explanation to the head of his yeshiva that it was due to the weakness of his memory that he had put the rabbi’s h.idushei Torah on paper (1947, 61–62). 33 For another description of writing in secret, see Raboy (1992, 83).

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words of poetry and melitsa onto a book. […] The waves of my feelings roiled and rolled, and in secret my soul wept due to my heart’s disposition. For it is the devil’s doing, the evil impulse dwells within me and distracts me with bad thoughts from the study of the Torah, and I could find no other way to save myself but through prayers and pleas to the Lord of spirits. (Abramovich 1956, 2)34

Even Yehuda Leib Gordon (YaLaG; Vilnius/Vilna, R.E., 1830–1892), whose introduction to Haskalah was in a relatively favorable environment, used to write in secret and was ashamed of his writing: I still remember that once I felt a fierce desire in my heart to write some melitsa, which was like a fire shut up in my bones, and I looked for a secret place to put it on paper. I hid in the cellar, where empty barrels stood upside down, with their bottoms up, and there, on one of the barrels, I poured my discourse out on paper, and no one saw me. […] The harvest of my pen then, for my many sins, is no longer in my possession, but without doubt it would have brought laughter to anyone who would read it. (Gordon 1960, 348)

Like Gordon, many Mitmaskelim tried to hide their first efforts at writing and were ashamed of the awkwardness of the outcomes. However, in retrospect, they regarded it as the first step, unripe and hesitant, on their path toward writing artistic poetry and prose, essays, research, journalism, and more. Two autobiographical episodes recounted by Ben-Zion Dinur (Khorol/Choral, Poltava G., R.E., 1884–1973), which both occurred in the domestic sphere, are illuminating in this regard. The first episode hints at Dinur’s inception as a historian, while he was writing “the sequence of the generations from Adam to the present day,” inspired by the traditional Jewish historiographical literature that he found in his uncle’s bookcase: I bought a notebook, and on the first page, in print [dfus ] letters, I wrote: “MAN.” […] I used my uncle Kalman’s library, where, as I mentioned, […] there were many books of history, all organized according to the sequence of the generations of rabbi and disciple, rabbi and disciple. I decided that I would also espouse this sequence. […] To be certain that my “work” would not be disturbed, I would rise very early in the morning;

34 Agnon, too, describes the submission to the urge to write as an expression of inability to resist the evil impulse (Agnon 1976, 45).

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[…] One morning, after the “composition” had already been finished, my uncle suddenly entered the room and found me writing. […] He was breathing heavily, panting, and he is picking up the notebook, peeking into it bewildered, and taking it with him. Later he handed it to my uncle Reb Eliezer-Moshe. The latter summoned me and said: “Indeed, you sat night after night and proved one great thing! You proved that indeed we originate from Adam. Without you, would we not have known this? […] You should make a rule for yourself: if a person writes, he must prove something new, which has not yet been known. What you have written is vain words. […] These are useless things. Why waste your time?” (Dinur 1958, 31–33)35

The second episode refers to the time when Dinur first began to perceive himself as someone who “sins by writing”: I had a friend in the yeshiva […] who used to read his poems to me, and also used to demand that I read my “creations” to him, for I, too, had “begun to sin” by writing. […] I made myself a “memory book,” in which I would write various proverbs and wise sayings of writers, as well as “original” things of my own: “thoughts and ideas,” “poetry,” “drawings and stories,” and the like. (Dinur 1958, 88)

Especially interesting is the juxtaposition in this passage of a reading practice that is oral in nature, namely, the two friends’ habit of reading poems to one another, and a writing practice that is hybrid in character, namely, the copying and compilation of pre-given texts alongside the writing of new ones. The “memory book” that Dinur prepared, and the variety of genres that found their way into it, testify to the transformations in the purposes of writing and in the roles assigned to it. The memory book was a mixed bag, somewhere between a journal and an anthology, where copied texts and original passages played a personal, not to say intimate, role, documenting Dinur’s intellectual and emotional development. Like Dinur, Avraham Liessin (Minsk, R.E., 1872–1938) also kept a “red notebook,” where he recorded the tempestuous impressions of his childhood and where he wrote, “in the language of Luzzatto and Mapu, poems and 35 For similar descriptions, see Dubnov (1936, 27) and Katz (1963, 22). Agnon also recounts how he decided to write down the genealogy of authors from the time of the Patriarch Abraham onward (Agnon 1976, 349).

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rules for good behavior” (Liessin 1943, 47–55).36 Undoubtedly, such notebooks encompassed radically different forms of writing, which bore different cognitive and emotional meanings: juxtaposing words, expressions, and verses taken from canonical texts, which echo their original contexts, is not the same as putting one’s own words on paper. The difference between the two is profound, and this explains, perhaps, why Dinur began viewing himself as “sinning in writing” only after he had transitioned from writing practices that are typical of oral literacy cultures to writing practices that reflect the privileging of the written text. Yet all of Dinur’s first experiences with writing are colored by the contempt expressed by his uncle Eliezer-Moshe. This contempt, which, as we have seen, had deep cultural grounding, illustrates once again the double-bind into which traditional culture led writers: he who cannot innovate, should not write; and he who aspires to innovate, is inclined not only to err and to lead others into error, but also to commit the sin of pride. Whether explicitly or implicitly, this trap created a close connection between writing and pride, and, as is the way with hegemony, which imposes its views and values even without placing explicit prohibitions, it acquired normative validity and worked to prevent people from writing, and even more so from printing and publishing their works. One of the fascinating aspects of this phenomenon was the internalization of the hegemonic views restricting writing also among Maskilic writers and members of the Jewish intelligentsia. Quite often, inhibitions with regard to writing and publishing that characterized traditional Jewish society continued to grip also those who sought to rebel against them.37 The remarks of Shim’on Bernfeld (Ivano-Frankivsk/Stanislau, Galicia, Austrian Empire, 1860–1940) about his father, who had a conspicuous literary talent, testify to the continued presence of fears of the sin of pride in these circles: “In his view, there was no art more important than that of the writer. […] However, in line with his education, he was fearful of publishing under his own name. Later […] he published words of wisdom in HaMagid; but he firmly refused to publish his name with his writings”

36 On the writing and copying of thought-provoking and exciting texts in a notebook that also served as a reading diary, see Raboy (1992, 83). 37 Such inhibitions are evident in many of the stories in Agnon’s anthology Sefer Sofer VeSipur (2000).

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(Bernfeld 1926, 191).38 One might have expected that Bernfeld, who looked at his father with the eyes of the new generation, would act differently. But, in fact, he was not free of the inhibitions that blocked his father, and many of his stories and articles were published anonymously, or under the pen name “Pel’i” (lit. miraculous, the name of the angel in Judges 13:18 who announces the birth of Samson). Elazar Schulman (Kaunas/Kovne, Kovno G., R.E., 1837–1904) offers a compelling literary portrayal of this emotional stance toward writing in his story “Gavri’el the Maskil,” which concludes his book Zikhronot Ir Moladeti (Memories of My Native Town). The story tells the tale of an autodidact Maskil, “who was urged by many of his associates […] to publish his books, which he kept with him in manuscript. But he refused to do so—so great was the humility of his soul” (Schulman 1894, 72).

The Sin of Pride and Confessional Writing Close examination of the sin of pride, as it figures in the context of prohibitions against writing, reveals that this is quite a multi-faceted sin. It does not refer only to pride in knowledge, in exegetical virtuosity, in originality, and in innovativeness, nor is it restricted to pride in the creative imagination, in the mastery of language, and in the power to create worlds with one’s words. Rather, it is also, and perhaps primarily, the sin of pride implied by the narcissistic preoccupation with one’s “self” and by the exposure of this self to the public. The many shades of the sin of pride find clear expression in the autobiography of Levin (YehaLeL), which describes his vacillation between the requirement to erase the self and the need to engage in writing centered on the self. When his grandfather, Rabbi Moshe of Kobryn, examined the young Levin on 800 pages of Gemara that he had learned by heart, he asked the boy to explain the meaning of the Aramaic phrase “La titnei anava deikha ana” (Bavli, Sotah 42b), and as if to dampen the young scholar’s pride, he rushed to explain: “In a place where there is an ‘I,’ a person’s ego, there is no humility!” The grandfather’s words pierced the boy’s heart “like arrows”

38 Levin’s rabbi and teacher, too, encouraged young Levin to write and publish, while he himself “did not dare to dream” that his words “would see the light of day” (Levin 1961, 295–296).

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and filled him with shame (Levin 1968, 38).39 And, indeed, Levin opens his autobiography with reservations about autobiography as a genre, and with condemnation of the inevitable dearth of truth and sincerity in any writing that places the self at its center: Without enthusiasm I take up my pen to tell my story. In general, I do not like the autobiography, for it is usually not entirely true, […] since a person does not see his own faults. And since I do not like reading other people’s autobiographies, […] I am not enthusiastic about writing my own life story. […] It is only to satisfy the wish of the people […] who encouraged me to do so that I am laying out my story, but I cannot guarantee the sequencing, […] and I skip all the matters that are related to my own self and flesh, my family life, and so on, unless they are necessary for some general purpose. (Levin 1968, 36)

Unlike Levin, Lilielblum took a more balanced position on autobiographies and on the sins that prey upon those who try to write them. He does not express blanket disapproval of the genre, but rather strives to formulate a more responsible and precise definition of its purposes: A biography that presents to us the deeds of a private man, his acts and his vagaries, his inner opinion and outlook, his crises and the experience that he had gained through great and many torments; and that reveals all this to us in good order, each thing with its reason and with the mark it had left on the person’s soul—such a biography can occasionally be of use to some readers as a good novel. (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 94–95)

In Lilienblum’s view, a significant and useful autobiography expresses the individuality of the writer and gives meaning to his personal life by showing how it reflects events and actions of historical significance. Hence, the focus on the writer’s self and life story is not a goal in itself; rather, it is a means for recording “historical events […] whose publication is of some value,” either because it can enlighten the reader about the problems of the generation or because it can help him understand his 39 In this context, it should be noted that almost all pre-modern Jewish autobiographies were circulated in manuscript form and were copied by hand rather than printed (Moseley 2006, 80–81).

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own life (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 95). However, what Lilienblum sees as most urgent is the need to recognize the value of the common man’s life, and to provide legitimacy to his wish to write down the story of his life. In the introduction to his autobiographical writings, which is not devoid of an apologetic undertone, Lilienblum seeks to open up a space for writing about the “self” of the “common man,” who is not suitable to serve as the hero even of a Hebrew drama, but whose appreciation of himself requires that he should not let his tears and despair be in vain: I am a common man, nothing but a Hebrew writer, the author of various articles in periodicals and the author of some books. My own self [atsmuti] is of no significance, but my life story can teach some lesson of experience to the unknowledgeable […] My life offers a kind of Hebrew drama— behold, I will step up on the stage and will play it before the readers’ eyes, and they will laugh at me, nod their heads to me, and will be careful not to do as I did, and I will become their image of horror… I have said “a kind of Hebrew drama,” because there are no wondrous effects and extraordinary incidents in my life, but there are sorrows and torments buried in the chambers of my heart, and harsh and bitter pains that are hidden from all my friends, […] and since all my troubles have not come upon me due to passion and succumbing to the evil impulse, as in a French drama, but due to folly that has rusted, which is the foundation of the Hebrew drama; and as one Maskil author once wrote: “The life of the Hebrews begins in debauchery and folly and ends in grief and agony, it begins in comedy and ends in tragedy” […]. My life has been woven of large and small errors, my forefathers’ errors and my own, vain dreams that I dreamt about myself, that I dreamt about others, and that others dreamt about me; and they are what coiled around my neck and thwarted my strength… Today I am twenty-nine years and one month of age, and old age is already creeping up on me. I have already despaired of life, of life that has life in it; my eyes have run out of tears for no avail; and the source of my tears is already dry… but self-appreciation requires of me that I do not let my tears and despair be in vain; and if they have brought me no benefit, they can still be of value to others. This is why I am writing the story of my life. – And who are you? What is your name? the reader may ask me. – I am a living person; I am not Job, who has never existed, nor am I one of the dead that Ezekiel brought back to life, who are merely a parable, but I am one of the dead-of-the-world [Lamentations 3:6] of the Babylonian Talmud, whom Hebrew literature has revived—a literature that is itself dead, and its faint dew of resurrection cannot bring the dead back

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to life, only to blow a little spirit into him and then leave him fluttering between life and death all his days. I am a Talmud scholar who recited and interpreted, a pious believer who has come to deny every pleasant dream and every invigorating hope that my ancestors bequeathed to me; a goodfor-nothing, miserable man; poor and oppressed by torments, I despair of anything good… And my name—but why does my name matter to you? I have already said that the name is not the crux of the matter in such a biography, but rather the things that happened, and neither you, reader, nor I will benefit from you knowing my name. (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 95–96)40

While there is no doubt that by putting the story of his life in writing, Lilienblum sought solace from his personal distress,41 it is also clear that this act was intended to make a contribution to the revival of the “dead” Hebrew literature, out of willingness to pay the price that this project demanded of its proponents. In this respect, the very act of writing the story of his life and the very willingness to expose his failures, misery, and despair are presented as an almost altruistic sacrifice for the benefit of others. In this way, Lilienblum succeeds, at least ostensibly, in distancing himself from the lurking sin of pride, while still fulfilling his own unapologetic, humanistic call to place the common man at the center of writing. Yet, as convincing as Lilienblum’s justifications of writing may be, his attitude toward it, and especially toward personal writing, remains ambivalent and entangled. Paradoxically, in order to place his self at the center of his writing, he felt compelled to put forward an apologetic essay that belittles his image and to resort to a rhetoric of cruel and tormented humility.42

40 The emphases are in the 1912 edition (vol. 2, 214–215), but not in the 1970 edition. 41 See also Lilienblum (1970, vol. 2, 138) and Pelli (2002, 212). On shame and relief

in confessional writing, see Sadan (1996, 25–31, 38–41). 42 Lilienblum’s apologetic essay constitutes an early link in a chain of introductory chapters that draw on similar literary conventions. Both Abramovich, in the opening section of his novel BaYamim HaHem, and Brenner, in the opening of his novel BaH . oref , introduced their pseudo-autobiographic works with apologetic essays (Abramovich 1956, 253–260; Brenner 1960, vol. 1, 7). A similar function was served by introductions with titles such as “The Author’s Apology” or “The Editor’s Excuses,” which appeared both in actual and in fictional autobiographies (e.g., HaCohen 1923, 5–8). On Brenner’s clever use of literary devices such as these to undermine generic models, see Brinker (1990, 115–130). For a psychological explanation of this literary convention, see Sadan (1996, 42–47). In Halkin’s opinion, “the socio-cultural pressure on the Hebrew author” often

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The Sins of Youth: Between Hubris and Eros The title that Lilienblum gave to his autobiography, The Sins of Youth, or The Great Confession of One of the Hebrew Writers, Tslofh.ad Bar H . ushim the Perplexed (H . at’ot Ne’urim, o Vidui HaGadol Shel Ah.ad HaSofrim Ha’Ivrim, Tslofh.ad Bar H . ushim HaTohe), does not refer only to the religious, moral, and sexual sins to which he confesses. Without denying that this title alludes primarily to what Lilienblum presents explicitly as his conspicuous sins—seeking Haskalah on the one hand and “falling prey to love” on the other hand (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 2, 128)43 —I would like to argue that it also refers to the act of writing itself, and that it presents confessional writing as part and parcel of the sin. Let us examine both parts of the title: The Sins of Youth versus The Great Confession of One of the Hebrew Writers, Tslofh.ad Bar H . ushim the Perplexed. We find that each of them, in its own way, points to the connection between writing and sin, and that the relationship between them points to the inherent paradox that makes writing both the sin and the atonement for it. It should be noted that in the parlance of the period, the phrase “sins of youth,” like the phrase “to sin by writing,” was used, among other things, to designate the immature writing typical of adolescents. This is what Bialik refers to in his essay “The Old Mendele,” where he discusses Abramovich’s early work and notes that in his last years, “the old man set his heart upon correcting the ‘sins of his youth’” and “placed his hand on several of his early works” (Bialik 1939, 344). This is also the meaning that Yitsh.ak Leib Peretz (Zamosc/Zamashtch, Lublin G., R.E., 1852–1915), David Magid (Vilna, R.E., 1862–1942), and others attached to these and similar expressions.44 Against this background, it is clear that the title The Sins of Youth alludes not only to the contents of the autobiography but also to the very act of writing. This also applies to the subtitle, The Great Confession of One of the Hebrew Writers […]. While the subtitle can be read as a promise to present the led the author himself “to appear as an editor, publisher, or functionary” (Halkin 1958, 289–290). By contrast, Moseley holds that the apology has to do with the relationship between the publisher, the author, and the reader (Moseley 2006, 44–46). 43 Emphasis in the 1912 edition (vol. 2, 400). On these two sins, see also Braiman (1970, 28–39) and Pelli (2002, 225–226). 44 In his autobiography, Y. L. Peretz called his early works “maine hatos ne’urim” . (Peretz n.d., 65, 82). David Magid did the same when describing Ginzburg’s early writing as “the sins of the pen of M. A. Ginzburg, in his youth” (Magid 1897, 9).

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reader with a cruel and daring exposure of the author’s youthful sins, in the spirit of the confessional tradition in Western autobiographic literature,45 this is not the entire story. First, the subtitle does not refer simply to the confession of a “Hebrew man” or “a Jew,” but to the confession of “one of the Hebrew writers.” Thus, the subtitle underscores writing as a central component in the autobiography of a young Mitmaskel, who completed his initiation into Haskalah when he began to write and became a “writer.”46 Second, the subtitle alludes to the view that confession constitutes a Biblical commandment and that it is an integral part of the process of repentance. Hence, atonement for the sins of youth requires one to admit them and confess to them in front of God.47 Consequently, confessional writing blurs the boundaries between sin and repentance, between writing that focuses on the “self,” which is stained by the sin of pride, and writing that confesses to the sins of youth for the purpose of repentance and atonement, but finds itself reproducing these very sins and experiencing them anew.48 Taken together, the title and the subtitle place writing in a liminal and entrapping zone, due to the blurring of the boundary between confessional writing as a sin and confessional writing as an act of restitution. Underlying all this lie, of course, the charged connotations of the idiom h.at’ot ne’urim (sins of youth). In the Halakhah and in Kabbalistic mysticism, this idiom refers to pgam habrit, i.e., wasting seed due to masturbation, nocturnal emission, or coitus interruptus. If a man does not atone for these erotic sins, they will continue to haunt him for the rest

45 The claim that Rousseau’s Confessions was the formative model for the modern Maskilic Jewish autobiography is central to Moseley’s work, which discusses Rousseau and Ginzburg at length (Moseley 2006, 333–376 and also 5–17, 37, 46, 442). On Rousseau’s influence on Lilienblum’s H . at’ot Ne’urim, see Pelli (2007, 244–266). 46 On Lilienblum’s Hat’ot Ne’urim as the story of becoming a Maskil, an apikores, . and an author, see also Pelli (2007, 252–258). 47 On the practice of recording sins in a notebook as part of the process of confession and repentance, and on the connection between this form of writing and the Maskilic autobiography, see Ziv (2010, 33–58, esp. 33–35). 48 On the narcissistic pleasure of confessional writing, and on the representation of the inner conflict inherent in the very act of writing in the work of Brenner, see Sadan (1996, 46–47).

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of his life.49 This meaning plays a significant role in Lilienblum’s autobiography as well, and emerges in a touching confession on his desperate efforts to make reparation: Once at night, after I had recited the entire Great Confession, […] and fell into a pleasant sleep, I suddenly woke up—and my heart died within me! I understood that I had a nocturnal emission! That was like an arrow in my heart, because I had already learned from my uncle, that Lilith and her entire cult cruise through the world every night and make the sons of Avraham, Yitsh.ak, and Ya’akov fail; that this transgression causes many souls to go about naked and wander through the world until they come into the possession of h.itsonim [lit. exterior beings, i.e., evil spirits], may the Merciful One preserve us; […] I wept a great deal and fasted that day, perhaps the Lord would see my misery, would pardon my misdeed, and would not add to my anguish. To guard myself better, I changed the place where I lay, perhaps the female spirit would not find me and would leave me forever, but the Good Lord, who desires the repentance of the wicked, did not heed me and my fasting. (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 104–105)50

Yet the identification of the “sins of youth” with the sin of nocturnal ejaculation does not negate their association with other grievous transgressions, such as the sin of pride. This association is stated explicitly in Sefer HaMidot (The Book of Moral Qualities ) by Rabbi Nah.man of Bratslav, which reads: “Pride emerges when you have not made reparation for the sins of youth” (Nah.man of Bratslav 1955, 40, sign 34). Rabbi Tzadok HaCohen of Lublin also points to this link in his Sefer Takanat HaShavin (The Book of Penitents’ Rehabilitation), where he binds together the erotic-lustful aspect of youthful sins with the pride of eating from the tree of knowledge, as well as with the sins of pride committed by the generation of the deluge (HaCohen 1968, 197–198, sign 15, articles 43 and 45). Furthermore, in his Tsidkat HaTsadik (The Righteousness of the Righteous ), Tzadok HaCohen discusses these sins and their remedy at length, stating that “The root of all alien thoughts [which distract a person during prayer] is pride” and that “in the time of youth, the raging of desire increases, leading to many sins due to the evil impulse, may the Merciful One save us, and these are the sins of youth, and this is

49 See Sagiv (2011, 364–365). 50 See also Ish Hurwitz (1923–1925, 282); Ish Na’omi (1925, vol. 2, 177).

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what happened in the generation of the deluge, as it was said there [Gen 6:5] that the impulse of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (HaCohen 1968, 59–60, signs 95–97; 203–207, signs 245–246; 49, sign 95).51 According to these views, the sins of youth are related not only to eros but also to hubris. Moreover, these two sins, eros and hubris, appear to be two sides of the same coin, and, as such, their association with the sins of youth in the sense of writing is far stronger than might seem at first sight. We find that the sin of ejaculation, that is, of wasting seed, is related to the sin of writing not only metaphorically, due to the analogy between wasting seed and wasting words and due to the fact that both acts defy God as a creative force—one by spending the creative capacity bestowed by God in vain, and the other by aspiring to replace God in creating worlds; rather, there is also a literal, substantial link between these two sins, stemming from the relationship between committing the erotic sin and writing about it, between the suffering, guilt, and erotic pleasure evoked by the sins of youth, and the suffering and pleasure evoked by confessional writing about them. Indeed, this aspect of the entangled relationship between The Sins of Youth and The Great Confession of One of the Hebrew Writers is also evident in the narrative sequence of Lilienblum’s story, which juxtaposes the reckoning for his sins of youth and the reckoning for the writing of modern Hebrew literature. In a chapter entitled “The Last Sigh,” which concludes the second part of his book, Lilienblum attributes his sins to the sins that his father had committed against him. He presents his love, “without thought or consideration,” for a woman who was not his wife, as an inevitable consequence of the immature marriage that his father had imposed upon him. In a similar vein, he depicts the refuge that he found in the “empty chaos that our authors call ‘Haskalah’” as the rotten fruit of his father’s defective education. He views his immersion in writing as intimately connected to both of these faulty life choices: My father did not provide me with a decent education. The simplest and most material evil that he caused me thereby, is that this has led me to be a good-for-nothing man, whose life is hanging on by a thread every single day. […] If I would have acquired some special ability that is needed in the world of practice and of life […] I would not have been deterred so much by the fear for my needs, and the spirit of despair and melancholy would 51 See also HaCohen (1967, 91).

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not have oppressed me to a degree that has no limits, and moreover, the visions of my love (if I had any in this case) could have come to a better conclusion than now. […] My father did not give me education and my mind sought to occupy itself. When I was still a lad of thirteen, I tried to write poems and to copy a translation of the Song of Songs in broken Hebrew. Then I wrote a pamphlet in rhymes on the 613 commandments; I began to prepare an abbreviation of Yore De’a [a Halakhic treatise], I was busy with intricate logic and sharp commentary, until I was pressed into the empty chaos that our authors call “Haskalah.” […] Since my father gave me no education whatsoever […], I searched for nourishment for my brain on my own; since I was pressed into the empty chaos that our authors call “Haskalah” unintentionally […]; and since the people of my hometown, and especially those of the circle to which I belonged, were all dwelling in darkness that explodes the heart; since I did not have any gravitas based on knowledge of absolute facts, and the signs of inebriation were already visible in me even in my childhood— therefore there is no wonder that during the period of the boiling of my blood and the ardor of my emotions and imagination, and due to various poignant circumstances, I became a drunken writer of the very highest order. (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 2, 128–129)52

Lilienblum chooses to conclude this part of his daring project—that is, of his bold effort at committing to paper the tribulations of his life and of his path to becoming a Maskil—with a fierce condemnation of both Haskalah and writing. To this end, he does not shy away from using language that negates the value of his own writing, even though, paradoxically, it also reaffirms it. Building on a distinction that might seem odd between Haskalah and what he calls “the absolute sciences” (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 2, 129), he describes his addiction to writing literature and his submissiveness to the pull of Haskalah as a prolonged situation of blinding inebriation. Using expressions that are often reserved for describing the hot blood of young men who are liable to commit the sins of youth, he writes: Lads […] who have no gravitas, and whose brains are full of chaos, might fall into drunkenness if their imagination is fiery and their emotions boil, as is the nature of young people. This inebriation is not found only among the

52 Emphasis in the 1912 edition (vol. 2, 400–402).

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youth of Israel, but also among some European writers. They, these European writers, and all the comrades of Don Quixote, gave this inebriation a fine name: “holy fire,” and they cry it out in the wilderness and try with all their strength, sometimes self-sacrificingly, to plant their liberal ideas and fantasies in the brains of the madding masses, whose wildness stems from prior causes extending from generation to generation and cannot be remedied by literature alone, but rather by change in the causes themselves […] But for its part, the drunkenness is just as necessary as the wildness. […] Wherever you find war among various sects and religions, and sometimes also between political factions, there you will find drunkenness. […] If my father had not been full of drunkenness—he would not have educated me the way he did, and would not have married me to a woman in my childhood. Indeed, the curse of the prophet Jeremiah [13:13], which I have mentioned at the beginning of this book, has been fulfilled in us, and almost “all the inhabitants of this land are full of drunkenness!” (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 2, 130–131)53

Of course, this analysis does not exhaust Lilienblum’s complex attitude toward literature, which requires a discussion of its own.54 However, in the limited context of our present concerns, it is noteworthy that while Lilienblum does not deny the usefulness of literature for society completely, he is not sparing in his criticism of it, and especially of its writers. He perceives many authors—including himself—as immersed in a state of intoxication, and he views this intoxication, which writers share with other utopian reformers, as containing an element of curse, despite the good and worthy intentions that may motivate it. Literature, just like the spiritual forces that give rise to it, is irrational, tempestuous, and chaotic, and many of its writers are driven by irrepressible urges, produced by the same boiling blood and ardent imagination of eros and hubris, namely, the sins of youth. And as Lilienblum, “a drunken writer of the very highest order,” interprets the sins of his youth, these are irreparable sins that are committed out of necessity and not out of free will (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 2, 128). Indeed, it is possible to understand the expression “the sins of youth” literally, as indicating that the view of writing as hubris and as an erotic sin applies only to the immature writing of youth, and not to adult, mature 53 Emphasis in the 1912 edition (vol. 2, 402). 54 For a summary of Lilienblum’s position on literature and poetry, see Lilienblum

(1898, 19–25).

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writing. However, to justify such a narrow interpretation and to see it as the sole and exclusive one, we must ignore the values and conventions of traditional Jewish society, as well as the ethical, psychological, and social inhibitions with regard to writing that were inherited by some of the greatest authors of the Haskalah and the national revival periods. This heritage drove them to wrestle with the urge to engage in confessional writing—to feel ashamed for this writing, to apologize for it, or to engage in it while at the same time distancing themselves from it. The psychological and literary dimensions of this phenomenon, as they manifest in the work of Yosef H . ayim Brenner (Novi Mlyni, Chernigov G., R.E., 1881–1921), are analyzed in a series of articles by literary critic Dov Sadan (1996). Sadan examines the compulsion, relief, satisfaction, and narcissistic pleasure that the writer of public confessions derives from his writing, but also takes note of the feelings of sin, guilt, and shame that accompany such writing (Sadan 1996, 26–31). He explains the “shame— in writing and in the first stirrings of love” by the fact that these pursuits are “a reincarnation of a forbidden impulse that looms in the depths of the soul from infancy and its obscure experiences” (Sadan 1996, 26). In his view, the writer takes pleasure in writing because “his work prolongs his life even after its loss” and because the confession brings with it “the pleasure of satisfying—by fantasizing, by daydreaming—the impulses, which have not been openly fulfilled.” The resulting shame and remorse due to the act of writing then find expression “in the devaluation of this writing” in the author’s work (Sadan 1996, 46). In the conclusion of his reading of Brenner’s preface to MiKan UMiKan (From Here and There), Sadan writes: “In this Introduction we can see […] the battle within the author’s soul around the very act of writing, with writing perceived as a way of evincing the hidden, as a source of pleasure drawn from confession, and as a suitable way of confessing to that hidden thing in public” (Sadan 1996, 47). The poet and literary critic Simon Halkin (1984), by contrast, refrains from emphasizing strictly psychological explanations, and attributes the resistance to confessional writing to the social and cultural circumstances of the period. He views inhibitions with regard to writing as a conspicuous feature of the modernizing Hebrew literature and argues that due to these inhibitions, this literature was late to endorse the literary conventions of the contemporaneous European literature. “In my opinion,” he states, “three kinds of inhibitions were responsible for this situation. First: the commitment of Hebrew literary creation to the Jewish collective. Second: a kind of spiritual humility,

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almost self-flagellation with respect to personal and private life. Third: the inspiration that our modern literature draws from traditional literature, which is entirely normative. These are what I call the three inhibitions— inner inhibitions, inner psychological prohibitions—which are active in the psyche of the Hebrew writer when he writes a poem or a story” (Halkin 1984, 78). The idea that a writer only acquires the right to write if he stands on the synagogue platform and speaks on behalf of the congregation and to the congregation, or, in other words, if his work is committed to the public, stems, in Halkin’s opinion, from the feeling of “responsibility for the collective” that characterized traditional Jewish society. The writers of the Haskalah movement, too, regarded themselves as committed primarily to Jewish society and its reform, and this hindered the Europeanization of Hebrew literature and its progression toward realistic writing worthy of the name. Halkin illustrates the emotional restraint and thematic restriction that these writers imposed on themselves by following in the footsteps of Lilienblum (1898) and quoting Y. L. Gordon’s poem “You Are My Witnesses,” in which the poet praises himself for the absolute concealment of his personal life, as well as for dedicating his poetry to the Jewish collective (Gordon 1956, 32–33).

Writing as a Site of Conflict with the Father As noted, Lilienblum sees his resort to writing as a compulsion and a sin, and attributes it to the sins of his father against him. Though he does not describe writing as a reason for a rift with his father, he does not treat the absence of a confrontation on this matter as self-evident. He attributes his father’s indifference to his first efforts at writing to ignorance and inattention to the first signs of the rise of Haskalah (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 1, 86). Elsewhere in his memoirs, he writes that when he was thirteen, his father placed him in the hands of a penmanship teacher, and with that teacher’s guidance, he was exposed to the poetry of ADaM HaCohen and to Segal Landa’s grammar book Sefer Et Sofer HaShalem (The Complete Writer’s Pen Book) (1833). He says of these books: Had my father had the slightest inkling of the Hebrew writers’ Haskalah at that time, he would have striven with all his strength to advance my knowledge of the Hebrew language and my poetical talents; if in my hometown there had been Hebrew Maskilim—he would have protested, without

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doubt, lest I do what the apikorsim do; but my father, who knew nothing about the Haskalah of Hebrew writers or about their suspected heresy, paid no attention to my actions, and I continued on my way: I read books of legends and wrote hymns. (Lilienblum 1970, vol. 2, 86)

In Yehuda Leib Levin’s (YehaLeL’s) autobiographic narrative, the father takes a different position on writing. In his case and similar ones, the son has to face not only the fears of sin but also the moment when his writing hurts his father or leads to a break with him. Levin recounts how his father, who had initially encouraged him to write and supplied him with “any wonderful phrase” he had found in “Introductions, approbations, the holiday prayer book, laments, and penitential prayers,” later “regretted it and was sorry for it,” and even “accused himself of abetting” his son’s apostasy (Levin 1968, 41). In this context, Levin notes that at first he had intended to write “a book of h.idushim [novellae] and logical arguments on the Gemara,” but in the end, to his father’s disappointment, he used the notebook intended for this purpose for writing poetry. The book of h.idushim, he writes, “took up only half the notebook […], and after my ‘renunciation of faith,’ I tore up all the h.idushim, and on the blank paper that remained I wrote my poems. My father saw this and almost fainted, so grievous was his sorrow and distress” (Levin 1968, 39). Whereas in Levin’s autobiography, his writing of poetry causes sorrow and distress to his father, in his unfinished poem “Elh.anan,” the protagonist’s transition from writing in the margins of his Gemara to writing poetry on a blank sheet of paper occurs in the shadow of a complete break with the father. As noted in Chapter 5, in this long poem, which is based in part on Levin’s life story,55 writing is both a central theme and one of the drivers of the plot. The young yeshiva student Elh.anan, who occupies himself with writing notes in the spirit of Maskilic “Talmud criticism,” is discovered by the overseer of the yeshiva, and is accused in public of heretical and blasphemous writing (Levin 1879–1880, 567–568). At that juncture, he shares with the congregation and with the readers his thoughts about traditional society’s attitude toward the Oral Torah and the question of speech and writing (Levin 1879–1880, 618). Under the influence of opinions he had heard from his Maskil friend, he sums up his position by declaring that, in contrast to the rabbis of his generation, the 55 References to “Elhanan” in Levin’s autobiography show that the first chapters of this . work are biographical (Levin 1968, 44, 48, 69).

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editors of the Talmud did not refrain from writing (Levin 1879–1880, 619–620). As to the plot, the poem represents the life story of quite a few young men on the path to Haskalah. Like many of them, Elh.anan is suspected of harboring heretical thoughts, like them he is expelled from the yeshiva, and like them he is punished by cancellation of his betrothal. But by means of two illuminating narrative components, Levin reveals additional meanings in this life story. As the plot thickens, he weaves the fears and torments of the process of hitmaskelut (becoming a Maskil) around a dramatic confrontation caused by the protagonist’s sinning by writing, and in the course of the resolution and denouement of the plot, he shows that the act of writing, which revealed Elh.anan’s ostensibly heretical thoughts and led to the deep rift between him and his father, is also what ultimately offers a way out and a route toward repair and healing. In Elh.anan’s life, writing and reading play a therapeutic role. For example, directly after the first confrontation with his father, Elh.anan goes out to the field: “There is his cache of books, there he has a pen and a paper/ There he recited his lesson, there he wrote, there he contemplated/ And he was relieved and forgot any anger and worry” (Levin 1879–1880, 666).56 The therapeutic function of writing appears more emphatically when he learns that his engagement has been cancelled. “We cannot deny,” the narrator comments, that Elh.anan took the cancellation of his betrothal “as a gate of hope, as the sight of a rainbow in a cloud” (Levin 1879–1880, 667). He then adds, echoing Elh.anan’s voice as well, that the moment of liberation is also the right moment for writing. This is the time to open eyes “imprisoned in sleep,” to unblock “the conduits of ideas” previously plugged up, to set free “the remnants of imagination” that have persisted “like foam on water,” and to cry out: “Rise up, you writers, with your pens of many colors/ […] to fill with black ink the white of the paper./ My pen is awake—I will arouse it in the morning./ What we shall do, what we shall hear, only then will I be knowing ” (Levin 1879–1880, 667–668). For Elh.anan and for the narrator, who speaks for him, only writing, acquired at the cost of a painful and excruciating break with the father, makes it possible to see reality and act in it. Thus, it is not surprising that Elh.anan, who “set his thoughts free/ And this his sin, they 56 Mapu also used to write in the bosom of nature. According to Brainin, Mapu’s novel Ahavat Tsiyon (Love of Zion) (1870) was written for the most part outdoors, on the peak of the Aleksote Mountain in Kaunas (Kovna) (Brainin, 1900, 32–33).

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found written on a slate” (Levin 1879–1880, 314), wins the admiration of his friends in the Maskilic community. However, despite the utmost importance attributed to writing in the poem, the narrator’s and the protagonist’s attitude toward writing is not free from reservations and guilt, as well as from a feeling that writing might constitute a threat to masculinity. In the concluding chapter of the unfinished poem, Elh.anan and his comrade, Salmon, try to remove the labels of vanity and femininity that have clung to occupation with belles lettres. In a manner that is simultaneously bombastic, patronizing, and apologetic, they choose to preach their view of literature to Miriam, the “spoiled” daughter of a wealthy man, who looks upon them with admiration. In an unintentionally comic scene, they reproach her coarsely for “spoiling her soul” with “gratifying novels” and with “worthless fantasy, false vision, and vanity of spirit” (Levin 1879–1880, 571). By these statements, the two are trying to distinguish themselves from the works of novelists such as Alexandre Dumas, Eugène Sue, and the like, as well as from “the terrifying poems of Schiller” and from what they saw as a romantic, female book culture. It is not by this route, they declare, that “a man will learn and develop his spirit” (Levin 1879–1880, 570– 573).57 The alternative that Levin offers for the “romantic-female” novel is a manly valiant literature, in the spirit of his 1875 poem “The Helpless Fury”: “May my writing hand be an iron bar!/ A well-honed spear—my pen, and you inkwell—a sledgehammer!” (Levin 1911, 81). Given the didactic character of “Elh.anan,” one may argue that it cannot serve as a ground for far-reaching arguments regarding the status of writing and literature in the milieu it describes. Yet, in fact, the poem’s representation of the status of writing is far from unfounded, and, moreover, the picture it portrays is not limited to an early and transitory stage in the development of Haskalah literature. On the contrary, traces of the suspicious attitude toward writing, and especially of its perception as a cause of conflict with the father, are evident even in the works of later writers—those associated with the national revival period. If anything, the manifestations of this conflicted stance become increasingly complicated and increasingly varied. A story by Hirsch David Nomberg (Mszczonow/Amshinov, Warsaw G., R.E., 1876–1927), “The Rabbi and His Son,” which was published in Frishman’s periodical HaDor in 1901,

57 See Bar-El (1995a, 102–103).

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is a clear example of a dire conflict and a heart-rending reconciliation between a father and his son, who is caught violating the Sabbath by writing poems and carrying his poem notebook beyond the Sabbath boundary (teh.um Shabbat, a limited area within which a Jew is permitted to walk on foot on Sabbath) (Nomberg 2011, 69–78). A great deal of evidence is also to be found in Dov Sadan’s article “In the Shadow of the Father,” where he shows that in Brenner’s works BaH . oref (In the Winter) (1903) and Misaviv LaNekuda (Around the Point ) (1904), what we would call “literacy practices”—that is, writing and, to a lesser degree, reading—are both the cause and the main arena of confrontation between a son who writes and an authoritarian father (Sadan 1996, 80–99). The significance of this analysis for our purposes is reinforced by the fact that the issue of writing, in itself, is not of primary interest to Sadan and is not what motivates his investigation. Precisely because his focus is on father– son relationships in Brenner’s work, and to some extent also in Brenner’s life, the discovery of the centrality of writing in the conflict between father and son is of special significance. Indeed, although Sadan states that he is presenting the conflict with the father about reading merely “as an example,” and although the connection to the issue of writing is not emphasized, we soon realize that this is not a random example. Sadan’s reconstruction of the confrontation between the son and the authoritarian father shows that, to exemplify the father’s violent severity with his son, who is expected to live up to the father’s values (Sadan 1996, 83–84), and to discover the source of the feelings of sin, blame, and shame experienced by the son, who has absorbed his father’s prohibitions, one must examine how each one of them views reading and writing. Due to the subtlety of Sadan’s analysis and the compression of his writing, I can only present his essential points, which support my arguments. Regarding reading, Sadan argues that the father’s prohibition on the reading of sfarim h.itsoniyim (lit. external books; books dealing with non-Jewish bodies of knowledge, including belles lettres) turns into a kind of superego for the son. It becomes a source of shame, guilt, and suffering, on the one hand, but also an opportunity for rebellion and for pleasurable forbidden reading, on the other hand. Sadan contends that this mental disposition is evident both in Abramson, the protagonist of Brenner’s Misaviv LaNekuda, and in Yirmiyahu Fiermann, the protagonist of his novel BaH . oref . In both works, “the recurrence of the same situation and the same duality in the character’s soul […] is symptomatic for understanding his psyche,”

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in both works, the protagonist “could neither overcome nor accept the father’s prohibition,” and in both he “could not free himself from the feeling of sinfulness and from the fear of the punishing, beating father” (Sadan 1996, 83–86). Since accounts of conflicts with fathers due to forbidden reading are very prevalent in the autobiographic Hebrew literature of the second half of the nineteenth century, there appears to be nothing particularly insightful in these observations.58 However, Sadan examines this conflict from an uncommon angle. First, he views it as an expression of a childhood experience of Brenner that left him with a deep-seated “anxiety regarding authority,” which continued to cast its heavy shadow on him throughout his life. Second, and most important for us, he identifies an analogy between the prohibition on reading and the prohibition on writing, and argues that the conflict around these prohibitions played a decisive role in shaping Brenner’s ambivalent attitude toward writing. Third, although Sadan deals only with Brenner, his personality, and his works, he offers a unique, fascinating, and highly insightful account of the conflicted attitude toward writing of several generations of writers: We have seen that the father forbids the reading of external books, and the son cannot rid himself of the fear of violating this prohibition even when he reaches his twenties. A similar thing happens with writing, which the boy viewed as a refuge for himself. Whenever the boy would set out to write his private thoughts, whenever the urge to write would press him, the strict and rigid father would come and impose an explicit prohibition, accompanied by an act of subjection through violence: “and when I would sometimes claim vaguely that I had not been writing for others, the argument would end with a solid slap on the cheek.” Should we be surprised, therefore, to find in some of the prefaces to Brenner’s stories and novels a sort of continuation of that dispute, as the writer apologizes (“claims”) that his writing was not meant for others, and that [it is] the publisher [who] urged him to arrange his writings so that they are worthy of appearing in public (MiKan UMiKan, Shkhol VeKishalon [Breakdown and Bereavement ])? Is it not also that solid slap on the cheek that terrorizes the author so, when he is struggling so hard and weighing whether to make his confessions public, [until] eventually he publicizes them only after having cut them, whether more or less? (Sadan 1996, 86–87)

58 For one example among many, see Berdichevsky (1984, 20–23).

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Sadan’s interpretation shows that the apologetic rhetoric in some of Brenner’s stories, which is in fact not unique to him, is not merely a literary device, but rather an expression of a psychological urge to exonerate oneself from feelings of sin. Sadan goes on to demonstrate that despite the close connection between the prohibition against reading and that against writing, the transition from violating one prohibition to violating the other is no trivial matter.59 For those of the Mitmaskelim who were to become writers, and for those who experienced writing as a spiritual and ethical necessity and also found in it moments of joy and elation, the father’s proscription against writing was a considerable blow both to their self-esteem and to their mental well-being: “A feeling of joy filled his [Brenner’s] characters when they succeeded in writing, and with it came great relief, since in this manner they were able to bring their hidden and forbidden emotions to light, or, in the words of Yirmiyahu Fiermann: ‘I only write because one cannot avoid crying that old cry, because I will never cease crying that old agony … yes, never … until my last moment’” (Sadan 1996, 87). In light of these insights, Sadan points to the close connection between the urge to confess and the feelings of guilt, shame, and erotic pleasure in writing. Furthermore, he notes the links between the confession, the subversive nature of writing, and the rebellion against the father’s authority: We would be wrong were we to assume that Yirmiyahu’s father, who reproved his son with vehement words and solid blows for writing whatever his instinct told him, and who sought to drive him to writing only what he, the father, saw fit—left no mark on his son by doing so. Just as the father and the fear of him planted in the son an ambivalence toward the book, so, too, they planted ambivalence toward writing. Eliezer in Evening and Morning [Erev VaBoker] says: “To write? Perish the thought! ... I mean: to write something new, important—no, this will never be” […] and Abramson in Misaviv LaNekuda, when he speaks of his writing, shame covers his jaws: “His face was covered involuntarily with a light flush, the kind of redness that covers a young man’s face when he talks of his first love.” […] The desire that seeks happiness for itself and finds it by way of a written confession encounters the authority of criticism, whose origins are in the paternal authority. (Sadan 1996, 88) 59 A description of the tangle of conflicting emotions accompanying the shift from obsessive reading to autobiographical writing is presented in S. Ben-Zion’s story “Me’ever LaH . ayim” (“Beyond Life”) (Ben-Zion 1949, 53).

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Sadan’s interest in the representations of the father–son conflict in Brenner’s work stems primarily from his concern with the psychoanalytic analysis of Brenner’s personality. In many contexts he expresses his opinion that Brenner’s work is fundamentally autobiographical: “To show us that ultimately, the writer presents to us nothing but his own autobiography, especially its hidden aspect” (Sadan 1996, 25). In his view, “Brenner’s need to tell about himself, to strip himself naked, to confess publicly, was great and profound. It was not just a need, but a necessity” (Sadan 1996, 38). From Brenner’s preface to BaH . oref , he writes, we can glean that: “Between the author and his protagonist […] there is a kind of declaration of identity, […] and it is not difficult to hear a tone of apology for the very act of writing ” (Sadan 1996, 41). Given all this, it would not be too bold to argue, following Sadan, that the attitude of Brenner’s protagonists toward both their fathers and their writing, with its tangle of emotions, urges, thoughts, and tensions, was close and perhaps even identical to Brenner’s own attitude. At the same time, it is doubtful whether Sadan’s explanation gives proper space to the social, cultural, and religious aspects of the matter. Sadan does not treat the literacy events in Brenner’s work as “thick descriptions,” whose symbolic language demands deciphering in light of broad yet concrete social and cultural contexts, nor does he try to explain why the space where the open confrontation between the father and the son erupts is that of literacy. Sadan’s psychoanalytic interpretation of the conflict between Brenner and his father mainly examines patterns that are not unique to the Jewish society of the time, and obscures those that are peculiar to it, although it does not ignore them completely. In fact, Sadan’s interpretation focuses on the individual dimension on the one hand and on the universal on the other hand, but largely avoids the socio-cultural dimension of his topic. At the universal end, he presents Brenner’s relationship with his father—and, implicitly, with writing—as a manifestation of the general, all-human, ahistorical conflict between fathers and sons; at the individual end, he presents Brenner’s relationship with his father and his attitude toward writing as a singular case, which does not share culture-dependent elements with other authors of the modernizing Hebrew literature. Yet given the fact that Brenner was not the only author whose writing provoked rage, suspicion, or fear in his father, it is evident that the socio-cultural dimension is of particular significance. And, indeed, the first writing experience of H . ayim Hazaz (Sidorovichi, Kiev G., R.E., 1898–1973), for example, is also marked by

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the memory of a humiliating slap on the cheek that he received from his father: My father was a timber merchant. He was absent from the house all week, and only came home on the Sabbath. Once, when I was eleven or twelve, I took up my father’s Talmud […] I studied it, and like the scholars, I wrote my h.idushim in the margins of the book. Father came home for the Sabbath, and, as was his wont, he took up the Talmud on Saturday afternoon, and when he saw what I had done to his Talmud, he was shocked. Father called me, and, uncharacteristically, slapped me on my cheek. “First,” he said, “you violated the commandment of ‘bal tashh.it ’ [‘do not destroy/waste’] with my Talmud, and second, which is the main thing, pride has possessed you, and you aspired to innovate h.idushim on the Torah.” (Hazaz 1999, 36)

Aviva Hazaz, the author’s widow, who told this story at a ceremony commemorating the centenary of his birth, interprets it as a formative moment in which the traditional text summoned the writer, H . ayim Hazaz, to fulfill his destiny: And the boy was but a boy, and he wrote his h.idushim innocently, and the invitation to write came from the text itself. We have before us a page of the Talmud, ornamented with the words of commentators who interpreted it throughout the generations; each and every one of them illuminates it to the best of his understanding and according to his place in time, but never overshadows the text of the Talmud itself—which he comes to interpret. At that hour, when he took up his pen and added his h.idushim to those of his predecessors—at that hour he was anointed as a Hebrew writer. (Hazaz 1999, 36)

The harmonious interpretation of writing in the margins of the Talmud offered by Aviva Hazaz comes at the price of erasing the conflict with the father, or, at least, at the price of presenting it as a regrettable misunderstanding. This is what emerges from her apologetic tone—“And the boy was but a boy, and he wrote his h.idushim innocently”—as well as from her need to defend both father and son later on: “His father misjudged him. It was not pride emanating from childish mischief” (Hazaz 1999, 36). Yet a reading that takes into account the deep cultural codes underlying the story reveals that the confrontation between the father and the son is not

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only the very heart of Hazaz’s personal story of writing, but also a collective story of writing of a considerable group of writers. In this story, as Aviva Hazaz conveys it, Hazaz comments in passing that by writing in the margins, he was acting “like the scholars,” and there was nothing exceptional about it. Hence, the boy’s punishment was primarily because, in his father’s eyes, he committed the sin of pride. The boy believed he was worthy of being counted among the scholars, whereas his father denied it and treated him as a transgressor—having committed the very sin that traditional Jewish society used to deter people from writing and, even more so, from publication. Like Uncle Kalman, who caught Ben-Zion Dinur in flagrante while he had been writing,60 Hazaz’s father taught his son a lesson in the laws of innovative interpretation, and trapped him in the double-bind that traditional Jewish society prepared for writers and writing: if you have nothing new to say, you better not write, and if you dare think that you have something new to say, most likely you are sinning by pride, and you had better keep quiet. Aviva Hazaz was correct when she continued her interpretation by stating that “here [in the father–son episode] we witness a meeting on the borderline between the old and the new,” and that the young Hazaz’s writing in the margins of the Talmud was “the beginning of a recognition that things had to be said in his own unique, singular voice, whose likeness there has never been before and will never be again” (Hazaz 1999, 36). However, the father’s humiliating slap on his son’s cheek was not an invitation for him to join his voice in the chain of earlier commentators. On the contrary, it denied him the right to do so, and it demonstrated to him, without saying so explicitly, that if he wishes to make his unique voice heard, he has to abandon the physical and symbolic margins of the sacred text. It could be said that this exclusion from the margins of the page signified the departure from traditional writing, rather than the joining into it. This is because it left the young writer with no choice other than to exchange writing in the margins of a text authored by an imposing, exalted “Other” for writing on a blank sheet of paper. 60 Y. L. Gordon was also punished when he was found holding a long and narrow sheet of paper with short lines written on both its sides. Rabbi Yitsh.ak slapped his cheek “one and two and cried: ‘It is with poetry and melitsot that you are dealing!’” (Gordon 1960, 277). In the story “Me’ever LaH . ayim” by S. Ben-Zion, whose protagonist is writing an autobiography, the formative experience is the stinging slap on the cheek that the protagonist receives from his father in front of all the men present in the beit midrash (Ben-Zion 1949, 53).

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Writing and the Constitution of the Subject The practice of writing in the margins of a canonical text was very well-established in traditional Jewish society. Many of the Mitmaskelim’s accounts of their first efforts at writing show how self-evident this practice was for them, and how revolutionary was their turn to writing on a blank sheet of paper. Perhaps the most striking example of this is found in Gottlober’s autobiography, where, in two different accounts of his first efforts at writing, we are told that these efforts involved writing in the margins, as if the very idea of writing on a blank piece of paper had not occurred to him: When the desire to write, which was the first of my desires, arose in me, and when I was about seven years old it had already taken my heart and had tempted my heart to pick up a scribe’s inkwell, I took a large sheet of paper, […] and I drew a line on it and outlined with a pen of lead a sort of square box in the middle of the page, and I wrote down some verse there, […] and I built a wall around it to the right and to the left, also above and below, and I poured down on it masses of thin questions, […] and above them I cast my words to answer them. (Gottlober 1976, vol. 1, 76)

In the second account, Gottlober emphasizes the models that guided him in these first efforts: I recall, when I was a tender child, when I barely learned how to write, and the only book I knew was the Bible with Rashi’s commentary and Or HaH . ayim commentary […] except for the Gemara that I studied— and behold, here I am, doing the same as the author of Or HaH . ayim, and this is what I did: I took a large sheet of paper, and in my hand the drawing stick, and I prepared the paper so that I could write some verse in the middle in large Assyrian letters, […] and all around it I wrote […] questions […] and countless answers. […] I have no doubt that at that age I did not know how to write properly, for I had not learned grammar yet and my tongue stuttered, but the desire burned in me to write and compose. (Gottlober 1976, vol. 1, 126)

Gottlober’s stories of his first attempts at writing illustrate the depth of the internalization of writing in the margins among the students of the traditional education system. It does not even occur to the seven-year-old boy that it is possible not to write in the margins. Using a “drawing stick”

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or a “pen of lead,” he draws a square in the middle of the page to mark a space that is supposedly “off limits,” and thus re-creates, by his own hand, the restricted and marginal space that is available for his writing. The transition from writing in the margins to writing on a blank sheet of paper was therefore no trivial matter. Autobiographic depictions of this transition indicate that it was a charged move, which, like other aspects of writing examined thus far, carried with it a considerable sense of guilt. However, alongside the feelings of sinfulness and guilt, the Mitmaskelim clearly perceived this move as a liberating one. As we shall see below, they experienced writing on a blank sheet of paper as an opportunity for a fresh start—as an act of self-expression that is not dependent on other sources of authority and that constitutes the writer as an autonomous, critical, and singular subject. Whereas the tendency in most accounts of the first experiences of writing to elaborate on the methods of obtaining the paper, the notebook, the ink, and the like is intended to spice the story with realistic details, the dwelling on the preparations for writing on a clean, white sheet of paper charges the narrative with symbolic meanings. This symbolic weight is also suggested by the connotation to the notion of tabula rasa in Western thought, as well as to the equivalent notions of “blank slate” (luah. h.alak), “blank writing sheet” (neyar h.alak), “empty sheet” (aleh reik), or “new writing sheet” (neyar h.adash) in Jewish sources. One of the well-known occurrences of this notion is in Tractate Avot of the Mishnah, where Elisha Ben Abuya is quoted as saying: “He who learns when a child, what is he like? Like ink written on a new writing sheet. He who learns in his old age, what is he like? Like ink written on an erased writing sheet” (Pirkei Avot 4:20).61 The young learner is like new paper since the knowledge he receives from his teachers, evidently orally, is absorbed into his soul like ink on a paper that has never absorbed anything. The old man, by contrast, must erase earlier knowledge to make room for new knowledge. Ginzburg resorts to the notion of the “empty sheet” (aleh reik) to convey a different meaning, which testifies to his own conception of writing. In his autobiography Aviezer, the “empty sheet that is added

61 Bialik uses this image in a similar meaning in his article “Yotser HaNosah” to describe . the state of the Hebrew literary language before Mendele: “You see a rabble of words, and you do not know why this one and why here. These are all sorts of beggarly beings […] blind and mute flocks, […] as if everything here is written on an erased writing sheet” (Bialik 1939, 240).

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to the book at its beginning” is an “uncharted territory,” like early childhood at the start of life, and perhaps also like the emptiness waiting at its end (Ginzburg1967, 6–7). Because a person who recounts “the history of his soul […] must know his soul completely,” Ginzburg chooses to compare his early childhood to an “empty sheet,” where both the signifier (the page) and the signified (the early childhood) are empty. From this negative statement, one can glean a positive one: if early childhood is a blank sheet of paper, the mature person is a densely written book, and any writing worthy of the name, especially autobiographic writing, must draw upon this rich inner book at the same time that it writes it. It appears that for Ginzburg, writing is a process by which the writer encounters himself and comes to know his own world, and especially his own soul, which is writing itself on a blank sheet of paper (Ginzburg 1967, 1–2).62 Each of these images of the blank writing sheet—that of Elisha Ben Abuya in the Mishnah and that of Ginzburg in his autobiography— reflects the literacy culture of its period as well as the period’s notions of knowledge and of human life. Considered together, they suggest that the transition in Jewish society from an oral culture to a culture centered on writing was also a transition from a conception of the human being as a passive object, an empty page upon which knowledge is absorbed and recorded, to a conception of the human being as an autonomous, active subject, who writes on a blank sheet of paper the story of his life and the knowledge he has accumulated and processed by virtue of his sapience and wisdom. Writing on a blank sheet of paper, as opposed to writing in the margins of an already-written paper or on an erased paper, came to symbolize the creation of a defined space that is free of others’ voices and that allows for the subject’s own creative agency. As such, this act was a declaration of independence from accepted sources of authority, as well as a delineation and a conquest of a new space for original creation. In an essay examining the scriptural economy and the transition from oral dominance to that of writing in Western culture, Michel de Certeau argues that from the early modern period, Western society was gradually conquered by writing. Writing became a pronounced sign of enlightenment, progress, and modernity, and as such it repressed and silenced oral

62 For further discussion of the image of the “empty sheet” in Ginzburg’s Aviezer in the context of the emergence of the discourse of childhood in modern Hebrew literature, see Preger Wagner (2018, 62–189).

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culture (de Certeau 1984, 131–153). The ideology of the Enlightenment fostered the idea that writing and the book can transform society and advance it in every sphere of life, and hence gave it utmost importance, at the expense of other forms of literacy and other forms of life (de Certeau 1984, 166). Even if we accept only some of de Certeau’s arguments concerning the oppressive tyranny of writing, and even if we do not identify with the motivations and considerations underlying his sweeping critique of the Enlightenment, many of his ideas are relevant to the phenomena discussed here. Of particular relevance are his ideas concerning the notion of the “blank page” (de Certeau 1984, 134),63 which suggest important insights into the social, cultural, and ideological significance of writing on a “blank sheet of paper” in our context. According to de Certeau, the blank page is a necessary precondition for modern writing, since this writing requires first of all the existence of an empty space, which is distinct and detached from the traditional world, and free from the voices emanating from the sacred texts (de Certeau 1984, 137).64 The modern writer takes the blank page to be his own space, so that writing on it establishes a thoroughly new “world,” Hence, the turn to modern writing is a revolutionary act. From here on in, writing is seen as the absolute opposite of magic speech and superstition, and as such it serves as the entrance ticket to modern Western society. In de Certeau’s opinion, writing becomes the leading partner in the constitution of Western society as a “blank page,” upon which this society writes itself, by itself, from the start. Modern Western society, he contends, inscribes on the blank page its most fundamental and comprehensive utopia, within which writing itself operates as a mechanism intended to re-organize the field of knowledge, to transform the view of the world, to conquer the world, and to appropriate it (de Certeau 1984, 135–136). In certain respects, these features of modern writing also apply to the writing of the individual. The individual, too, needs the “blank page” as a free space that is subject, at least ostensibly, solely to his own control; he, too, writes “himself, for himself, about himself,” thus constituting himself 63 The Hebrew idiom “neyar halak” is equivalent to de Certeau’s “un espace propre,” . literally “a clean space,” and to the English “blank page” (de Certeau 1984). 64 In this formulation, de Certeau’s conception of writing on a clean sheet of paper is reminiscent of Berdichevsky’s statements (see below) regarding the need to silence the magical voices emanating from the sanctified texts of traditional society. However, unlike de Certeau, Berdichevsky cherishes and celebrates the power of writing.

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as a writing subject, while also re-organizing and re-interpreting the world around him. Yet de Certeau does not idealize modern writing; on the contrary, while he does not deny that writing is a source of power for many in modern society, he contends that the more the project of writing as a systemic mechanism is perfected, the more the subject is enslaved by it. Over time, the subject turns from the master of the mechanism of writing to its operator, and eventually the mechanism overcomes its operator and uses him for its own needs (de Certeau 1984, 135–136). De Certeau’s arguments and insights regarding writing, enlightenment, and modernity shed additional light on the significance of writing for nineteenth-century Hebrew writers. As sons of the Enlightenment, that is, the same ideology that de Certeau denounces as oppressive and exclusionary, these writers view the act of writing on a blank sheet of paper as profoundly liberating.65 Their autobiographic stories of writing show that for them, writing in general, and personal-confessional writing in particular, is a route out of oppression, although it often breeds shame, guilt, and suffering, and sometimes ends in ostracism. This stance is clearly evident in the portrayal of the turn to writing on a blank sheet of paper in Brenner’s autobiographic novel BaH . oref. Like many of the Mitmaskelim, Brenner’s protagonist, Yirmiya (or Yirmiyahu) Fiermann, commences his journey toward writing during the vacation time, by writing short comments on the Torah in the hope of composing an entire scholarly book one day: The desire to write developed in me in the early days of my youth. I have always “wielded the author’s pen” about everything around me, about all that happened in our house, in the heder, and in the kloiz—the three homes that I knew. I also liked to make a summary of my studies, “to place the thing in writing,” and to take pleasure in it on “my vacation days.” My mind was full of various fantasies on the great composition that I will write about the entire Talmud and the four sections of the Shulh.an Arukh—those great-great marble columns, whose tops touch the heart of the heavens. (Brenner 1960, 16)

65 Dubnov, for example, praises “the author of the genius book Shitat HaHigayon [The System of Logic],” which in his opinion could have been called The Wisdom of Writing, for in his view, the book addresses the problem of liberating the individual’s soul from the tyranny of public opinion—a problem that was close to his heart due to his own bitter experience (Dubnov 1936, 104).

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Concomitant with writing comments on the Torah in the physical and symbolic margins of the Talmud, Yirmiya derives great pleasure from writing about life in his close surroundings. For this sin, he receives a slap on the cheek from his father: first, because he wastes so much of his time on this superfluous writing; and, second, because he writes about himself and for himself: My father found this writing of mine worthy of being shown to the whole world, so that people would know that his Yirmiya was also a master of language. But nevertheless, he would prevent me from writing as much as I wanted. In his opinion, it was enough to write one substantial melitsa to show off, and nothing more. One should not spend a lot of time on it! And when I would sometimes argue vaguely that I had not been writing for others, the argument would end with a solid slap on the cheek. (Brenner 1960, 15–17)66

In this dispute, which erupts more than once, Yirmiya finds it difficult to cope with his father’s arguments, and defends himself “vaguely” by stating that his writing was not meant for others. The significance of his journey from this humiliating moment to the time when he embarks on writing his life story can be appreciated if we consider the opening and concluding notes of the apologetic introduction to BaH . oref : I made myself a notebook of blank paper, and I intend to write some notes and sketches about “my life”—“my life” in quotation marks, for I have no future or present; only the past remains. (Brenner 1960, 7)

And the concluding words of the short introduction are as follows: And nevertheless, although I am no hero, I wish to record this past of mine, the past of my non-heroism. The past of heroes is recorded for the world and arouses the frenzy of the world; my own past, the past of a non-hero, I am writing for myself and in secret. And even such an introduction will do. (Brenner 1960, 7)67

66 Yitzhak Bakon believes that the slap on the cheek was a real event that made an . indelible impression on Brenner, who keeps returning to it repeatedly in his works and letters (Bakon 1975, 15–19). 67 Of Mapu, it is also said that “he did not plan to be a Hebrew writer, and everything that he wrote—he wrote only for himself” (Brainin 1900, 36).

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Despite the apologetic and self-effacing tone of the introduction, and despite the fear of writing it reflects, it appears that the sentence “I made myself a notebook of blank paper, and I intend to write some notes and sketches about ‘my life’” is written with a sense of relief: the doubts and indecision are left behind, as the writer has finally mustered the strength to declare “and nevertheless”—“I am writing for myself,” and to create for himself the space that is necessary for writing. The transition from writing in the margins of a sacred and authoritative text to writing on a blank sheet of paper, and from writing an occasional melitsa to writing about oneself, one’s surroundings, one’s life, and one’s intimate experiences was therefore a radical one.68 As we shall see, even if the page the Mitmaskelim were writing on was not—and could never have been—entirely blank, and even if their language was always the language of others as well (Bakhtin 1981, 259–275)—the experience captured by these writers was a novel and unprecedented one. Many of these sentiments and insights, which are often hidden between the lines of the autobiographic and fictional stories of writing, are expressed explicitly in the “Bundle of Letters” about the Volozhin Yeshiva that the young Berdichevsky published under the pen name Bar-Bei-Rav. Unlike Brenner’s novel, Berdichevsky’s text is not a fictional confession, but rather a “correspondence” that was printed as a series in HaMelits, and was correctly described by his son Immanuel Bin-Gorion as a “double testimony: an authentic picture of the regime, the methods of study, and the types of students in one of the bastions of the rabbinate at that period; and a portrayal of the birth of a classic Hebrew writer” (Bin-Gorion 1984, 5). And, indeed, Berdichevsky says of himself that he is “as full of words as a pomegranate” and that he wishes “to pour out his soul” in front of his readers, and whenever he has a few pennies in his pocket, he rushes to obtain “the three things that make a writer happy: a good pen, black ink, and white paper” to write down his words (Berdichevsky 1984, 38– 39). As if to highlight the radical change entailed by his newly adopted conception of writing, he contrasts the custom of writing notes in the margins of the Gemara with his own subversive and critical writing on the blank page he had torn out of it: 68 Y. L. Levin (YehaLeL), for example, takes a blank sheet of paper to write a poem (Levin 1968, 39), and Shmaryahu Levin picks up a blank sheet of paper to write a novel (Levin 1961, 254–255). See also Dinur (1958, 88, 114), Katsover (1923, 255), Zilberbush (1936, 20).

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The words that my heart wishes to put before you have not yet run out, but the paper is already finished, and I have no more blank paper, for I tore even this one from the new Gemara that I took from the supervisor today—may God forgive me!—as I had no other paper. […] And anyway, in my humble opinion it is better for the paper to be used for something like this than to have casuistry and emendations scribbled on it, which are mostly like straw put in a dust heap. (Berdichevsky 1984, 61)

Parodying the convention of opening or ending books with an “author’s apology,” Berdichevsky concludes the Volozhin Letters with a pompous, arrogant, and belligerent apology, which celebrates his constitution as a writing subject who looks at reality with clear eyes and who criticizes it fearlessly and impartially: I also see no reason to justify myself to the readers for having this “bundle of letters” printed; for I know that whoever reads them with a clear and composed mind will appreciate me […] And let us wish that all the cleareyed pen-wielders will do the same […] so that things are clarified and explained, and nothing remains hidden from view. (Berdichevsky 1984, 76–77)

As we can see, Berdichevsky describes his decision to write and publish as an Archimedean point, and the blank sheet of paper as a site of liberty and strength. His open-eyed writing establishes him as an autonomous, critical, and creative subject, or, in his words, as “a self-sustaining living being.” As a writing subject, he does not need amulets and spells, and is not dependent on the magical powers of authorities of any kind. In this sense, Berdichevsky describes writing as the quintessential cultural resource of the Enlightenment and as the critical factor that vanquishes orality, magic, and superstition, even if it does not extinguish them completely. His ideas, his critique, his realistic depiction of the yeshiva life—all these testify to his status as a self-governing subject, while also constituting, at one and the same time, a new type of reader— an autonomous reader who is capable of assessing the writer’s critical statements “with a clear and composed mind.”

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Conclusion: Writing as Transgression and the Writing Revolution in Eastern European Jewish Society The Maskilic story of writing therefore has four key motifs: the multifaceted challenge to the boundaries between the sacred and the profane; the conflict with the father; the transition from writing in the margins to writing on a blank sheet of paper; and the constitution of the subject by means of writing. These motifs, which support and illuminate one another, join together to reconstruct the act of writing as an act of transgression. They present this act as the product of a conscious decision, both voluntary and inevitable, to cross boundaries and to violate rules in a liberating move that is nevertheless permeated by feelings of sinfulness and guilt.69 The orchestration of these themes points to a close connection between writing on a blank page and confessional-autobiographic writing focusing on the “self,” and sheds light on the sense of sin that accompanied both activities. The perception of writing as a form of transgression is also evident in the consistent apologetic tone with regard to the very act of writing, which marks not only the autobiographic texts of common people, who might fear that their life stories are too slender to warrant putting them in writing, but also the autobiographic works of the greatest Hebrew writers of the time. Both categories of writers tried to justify the crossing of the normative boundaries with various excuses, including the need to rescue of the Hebrew language from deterioration and oblivion, the need to educate the Jewish collective for the sake of improving its life, or the need to fulfill the social role of the “watchman unto the house of Israel” (Ezekiel 3:17), who is concerned with the survival, rectification, and revival of the nation. Nevertheless, the Maskilim’s effort to disguise the transgressive character of their writing does not detract from the radical nature of this transgression; rather, it highlights the writers’ pressing need to gain legitimacy among broad circles of the Jewish youth and public, in the hope of eventually assuming a hegemonic position in Jewish society. At least ostensibly, the transgression implied in the very act of writing was not among the boldest of possible transgressions. It did not entail 69 For an overview of the notion of transgression in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and literary criticism, and of its poetic and political aspects, see Jenks (2003) and Stallybrass and White (1986).

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crime, violence, or the violation of a sexual taboo, and its social and psychological motivations were different from those of these more salient forms of transgression. Nevertheless, its radicality and significance should not be underestimated. The violation of norms with regard to the purposes, forms, and contents of writing, and the crossing of longestablished boundaries in the fields of language and genre, were part of a fateful socio-cultural transformation that was greater than the sum of its parts, and that revolutionized not only the character and status of writing as a cultural system, but also Jewish culture and society at large. The transgressive writing of nineteenth-century Hebrew writers brought about a profound transformation in the literacy culture of Eastern European Jewry. It shifted the cultural center of gravity from speech to writing, placing the cultural capital and symbolic power in the hands of writers, and it transformed the status of the book, the role of the author, the profiles of the readers, and the relationship between writers and their readerships. Close examination of these changes would require a separate discussion, but in general, it can be stated, using Derrida’s terms, that the written text ceased to play the role of a “supplement,” that is, an inferior yet dangerous replica of a charismatic or scared authoritative speech. The written word was no longer restricted to a sealed corpus intended to be studied, memorized, and obeyed, nor was it limited to notes of commentary added in the margins of such canonical texts. Concomitantly, the writer ceased to be a craftsman (a religious scribe, a copyist, a clerk) or a trusted person skilled in writing and in taking dictation (a disciple, a student, a chronicler), who merely puts on paper the words of another. Moreover, henceforth the writer was also differentiated from the traditional author of Halakhic books, known in Hebrew as ba’al meh.aber (lit. owner-author of the book, a designation that identifies the author by his book and not by his name), whose appellation indeed indicates his ownership of the manuscript, but also his status as a compiler and a commentator on canonical texts. Unlike the compiler and the commentator, the new author writes “himself” on a blank sheet of paper, and his identity is not hidden behind the title of the book that he composed.70 As explicated by Ah.ad Ha’Am (Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg; Skvyra/Skver, Kiev G., R.E., 1856–1927) in his article “Torah of the 70 The prevalent traditional practice of referring to authors by the name of their books— HaH . afets H . ayim, HaH . atam Sofer, etc.—probably reflected the fears of sinning by pride and operated to reduce this danger.

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Heart,” the new writer substitutes writing that sanctifies “the book” as a sealed and sanctified corpus with “literary” writing, which is intimately connected with present life. As an autonomous subject—a “self-sustaining living being”—the author now grasps writing as the ability “to act and to be acted upon [impressed] ‘by his own power and according to his own needs,’” and he sees the book as an instrument for expressing his singular voice, thoughts, and emotions. By using this instrument, he seeks to disseminate his creations, knowledge, and opinions to autonomous and sovereign readers like himself (Ah.ad Ha’Am 1921, 93–94). Hence, the transformation in the status of the author and the book also involved a decline in the authoritative status of the writer as an instructor, and a reinforcement of the authority of the reader, who now learns “from the mouths of books and not from the mouth of scholars.”71 The profundity of this change in the notion and status of the book is conveyed succinctly by Zvi Hirsch HaLevi Kolp of the Lifschitz family, an adherent of the traditional worldview who sees the book as the degraded outcome of sudden and accelerated modernization. In his book MiDor LeDor (From Generation to Generation), he writes: “The Arabs called us the people of the book, but the true epithet appropriate to us is ‘the people of the Torah’” (Kolp 1901, 12). In other words, the Jewish people, according to Kolp, are distinguished not by the book in itself, but rather by the reading, studying, and obeying to a sealed canon of sanctified texts. This understanding of the phrase “the people of the book” is the complete opposite of the modern one, which reads the phrase as alluding to open knowledge, ideological pluralism, and the autonomy of the reader. Kolp attributes the dramatic departure from what he views as the true and appropriate relationship between the Jewish people and the written text to the damage wrought by “the power of literature, which has spread in the land to its detriment” (Kolp 1901, 6), and more broadly to the “rapid transition from the earlier period to the new one, which brought with it a profound and sudden change […] And this general and sudden change has seized the pillars that support the house of Israel and has shaken them” (Kolp 1901, 15).

71 For more on the decline in the authority of rabbinic leadership, see Kanarfogel (1991, 248). In his discussion of the saying “from the mouths of scholars, and not from the mouth of books” and of its opposite version, Yosef Ah.ituv (1995, 99–119, esp. 105– 111) argues that it is difficult to decide which is the more authoritative among the two, and that neither is to be regarded as more conservative than the other.

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Without doubt, the changes in the status of the book, the writer, and the reader, as well as in the relationships between the three, were deep and consequential. As to reading practices, the far-reaching transformations in the reading habits and the composition of readerships went hand in hand with a rise in the accessibility of various sources of knowledge to expanding sectors of the population. However, as we have seen, the changes in the field of reading, as important as they were, were less significant than the ones that occurred in the field of writing. Given the state of literacy in Jewish society, and since many of the men and a good number of the women knew how to read in at least one language, reading was not as restricted as writing and was less of an obstacle to change. By contrast, large sections of the population could not write, and many of those who could write found it very difficult to acquire, on their own, the necessary knowledge for making creative use of their writing skills. Moreover, whereas it is possible to read without command of the language being read, as demonstrated by the Jewish men who read the Bible and the prayers without comprehending the Hebrew language, original writing of any kind is impossible without mastering the language in which one writes. Consequently, in the historical circumstances of nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society, the rising numbers of individuals who could write, and the growing variety of the legitimate uses of writing, led to greater transformations in literacy, society, and culture than the concomitant changes in the patterns of reading. Furthermore, preparing the Hebrew language, in its vocabulary, style, and sophistication, to serve as the writing language of literary works, philosophical essays, journalism, and science was a bolder and more complex task than expanding the scope of the readership. Indeed, the great breakthrough took place with the establishment of a culture of literacy that entrusted cultural capital and symbolic power to writers. It was first and foremost the writing revolution that shook the foundations of Jewish society, and many of the changes in the reading patterns within this society were in fact secondary to this revolution.

CHAPTER 10

Epilogue: Writing, Tradition, and Modernity in “Only for the Lord Alone” by S. Y. Agnon

Since I have touched upon the topic of tales, I will say this about them. Whatever has an original, read the original and throw away the literary adaptation. And whatever does not have an original, if a poet made it, it should be treated like poetry, if a common author made it, turn your eyes away from it. S. Y. Agnon, “Me’Atsmi El Atsmi” (“From Myself to Myself”)1

S. Y. Agnon’s story “Only for the Lord Alone” (“Bilti LeHaShem Levado”) presents a daring confrontation with the dilemmas and predicaments of those who “sinned by writing” while standing on the border between tradition and modernity.2 It is woven around a narrative core borrowed from a Hasidic tale, which Buber (1946, vol. 2, 496) attributes to Rabbi Yeh.ezkel, the son of the Rabbi of Tsanz (Tarnogrod, Lublin G., R.E., 1815–1898). This is the story as it appears in Buber’s anthology Or HaGanuz: 1 Agnon (1976, 262). 2 Agnon’s story was first published on September 14, 1947 in Haaretz and was later

included in the collection “Sipurim Na’im Shel Rabbi Yisrael Ba’al Shem Tov” (“Graceful Stories of Rabbi Yisrael Ba’al Shem Tov”), in Ha’Esh VeHa’Etsim (The Fire and the Wood) (1962, 107–114). All references in this chapter are to the 1962 edition.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. Parush, The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature, New Directions in Book History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81819-7_10

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It is known that Rabbi Yeh.ezkel, son of the Rabbi of Tsanz, would not speak words of Torah at his table. And because the Hasidim always asked him about this, he told them once on a Sabbath meal the following story. “A young man was taken prisoner by harmful spirits [mazikim], and no way to rescue him from their grasp had been found, until a tzaddik was asked to help and he did what he did. Said the harmful spirits: ‘if we have in our possession words of Torah from your rabbi, we shall be indifferent to his [the rabbi’s] deeds; but if we do not possess words of Torah from your rabbi, we will acknowledge our defeat and set the young man free.’ They searched and searched in their notebooks and found nothing, and therefore they set the young man free.” “And now,” concluded the Rabbi, “say for yourselves, is a man permitted to speak words of Torah?” (Buber 1946, vol. 2, 496)3

In Agnon’s version, the tzaddik in the story is identified as the Magid of Zlotchov (Brody/Brod, Galicia, Poland/Austrian Empire, 1726–1786), who is known for not having left any writings behind him.4 This version makes writing one of its central themes, and presents a succinct and nuanced portrayal of the view that writing harbors a danger, of the resultant inhibitions in the way of those who sought to engage in writing, and of the transformation in the status of writing and writers brought about by modernization. The fantastic, nightmarish adventures of the story’s protagonist can be read as representing not only the position of the Magid of Zlotchov and of traditional Jewish society against writing, but also Agnon’s bitter and ironic confession, as a modern writer, on his engagement with the sins of writing. “Only for the Lord Alone” tells the story of a Hasid who is journeying light-heartedly to pass the High Holidays in the company of the Magid of Zlotchov, as he does every year. While on his way, in the midst of a heavy storm, the Hasid finds himself in a forest that he has never seen before. Looking for refuge, he enters a house that he spots in the forest, only to find himself captured by demonic creatures who hold quill pens in their hands and are engrossed in feverish writing of homilies:

3 Aliza Shenhar maintains that “the naïve Hasidic root from which Agnon’s pseudoHasidic story evolved” is to be found in Sefer Ohel Elimelekh, sign 123 (Shenhar 1986, 126–127). 4 The biographer of the Magid of Zlotchov emphasizes that he “did not write books, nor did his disciples record his teachings from his mouth” (Alfasi 2005, 218–219).

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He saw there some creatures in the form of people, whose ears were long and reached down below their feet, to the earth and underneath it, and each and every one of them held a clerk’s quill in his hand, and thick notebooks lay before him, and the pages of the notebooks were made of skins that no tanner’s hand had worked. And strange sounds croaked and rose from the earth, and came and sat at the top of every quill and shrieked from there, and the quills raced urgent and hassled over the notebooks and screeches emanated from them. […] One of the creatures extended his head from his notebook and waved his arms to and fro like a man drowning in deep water. And if what the Hasid observed was true, both of the hands of this one, as well as those of all his companions, were left hands, yet they were as swift as seventy-seven hands. (Agnon 1962a, 108–109)

Every single feature of the demonic creatures indicates that they are deeply entrenched in the world of impurity: their long ears “hear what is below the earth and are sealed […] from hearing words of truth” (Agnon 1962a, 109); the pages of their notebooks are made of untanned leather, and a stench emanates from them; strange noises rise from the earth and sit on top of their quills; screeches come out of their mouths; all their hands are left hands; and they are dubbed “h.itsonim” (lit. externals, alien beings, demons).5 Once the Hasid realizes all of this, he understands that “he has come to a place that is not good” (Agnon 1962a, 109) and tries to run off, but all the walls of the house are sealed and there is no escape. Only after he promises the h.itsonim that he would return to their house in thirty days does he manage to find the door and to flee from their grip. The Hasid arrives at the Magid’s court in time, but it is in the muchawaited refuge of the tzaddik that he suffers the gravest humiliation, no less painful than he had experienced in the hands of the h.itsonim: 5 The term hitsonim, which denotes demons and forces of impurity, also alludes to the . Maskilim. In Agnon’s Hakhnasat Kala (The Bridal Canopy), for example, the narrator tells of Reb Yudl, who went to the home of the Maskil Heshel and was “fearful that he might find himself in the company of the h.itsonim who are called fools, who cling to a person to trip him up with words of jesting” (Agnon 1960b, 64–65). As for writing with left hands, according to the Halakhot of writing Torah scrolls, tefillin, and mezuzot, one “must write them with his right hand, and if he writes them with his left hand they are invalid” (Gantzfried 1961, sign 7, fol. 5b). Indeed, under certain circumstances, writing with the left hand does not invalidate the written text (Gantzfried 1961, sign 7, fol. 6a), but the depiction of the h.itsonim as creatures with two left hands testifies to the impurity of their writing.

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After the morning prayers, the Hasid went to be greeted by his rabbi, and his rabbi did not greet him. The Hasid stood behind the Magid’s door. People went in and out, some of them ba’alei batim [householders] and some Hasidim, and some of them town folk. The Magid greeted all of them and spoke with them, and to him alone he did not give a greeting, nor did he look at him. (Agnon 1962a, 110)

The Magid’s treatment of the Hasid gradually acquires the shape of fullblown abuse: This is how it was that day, and on the morrow, and on the morrow after the morrow, and thus on the eve of Rosh Hashana, and thus on the first night of Rosh Hashana, when all are blessed by their rabbi, and thus on both days of Rosh Hashana. And even on the eve of Yom Kippur, when the Magid’s hand is extended to everyone—he did not return that Hasid’s greeting. (Agnon 1962a, 111)

The Hasid is anguished and tormented by the tzaddik’s rejection of him. The time of his return to the house of the h.itsonim is steadily approaching, and the only man who is capable of helping him “does not allow him to get near” (Agnon 1962a, 111). Desolate and dispirited, he wanders tearfully among the crowd of Hasidim, interpreting the rabbi’s estrangement as a punishment for a sin of which he is unaware. At the very last moment, on the day before the Hasid must return to the demons’ house, the Magid summons him and relates to him, with severe countenance, what his sin is and the reason for his punishment: Do you know what that house is? It is not a good house. It is the dwelling place of impurity, and the h.itsonim sit there and write down every single homily that the preachers preach to demonstrate their sharp wit and knowledge, to strut before the disciples and to exalt themselves among the people. Similarly, they write there the words of the preachers who castigate others and do not castigate themselves first. And what caused you to end up there? The sermons you are so eager about. And even on the first night of selih.ot [penitential prayers said before and on Yom Kippur], when a Jew must prepare his heart for repentance, you took pleasure in them. (Agnon 1962a, 111–112)

From this reproach, we can glean that the sin for which the Hasid was punished twice—first by being captured by the h.itsonim and second by being rejected by the Magid—is the sin of enjoying the tales and proverbs

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of the preachers, “for the enjoyment of something that is not entirely for the sake of Heaven deserves punishment” (Agnon 1962a, 114). This revelation, which opens the Hasid’s eyes, sheds new light on the beginning of the story. Now we discover that the light-hearted, elated, and harmonious description of the Hasid’s departure to his rabbi’s court is, in fact, an account of the protagonist’s fatal flaw, his hamartia, the shameful disposition for which he must be punished. We re-read: When he left his town, the sky was full of stars and the earth rejoiced, and he, too, was happy, like a Hasid going to greet his rabbi from whom he learned the Torah and fear of Heaven. And as he was walking, he quavered his voice with moral remonstrances he had heard during the month of Elul from the preachers and remonstrators and sermonizers. That Hasid is walking along and sweetening his way with a sad melody, like a preacher standing on the pulpit and addressing the congregation. Sometimes he is benevolent to the audience, calling them dear brothers, and sometimes he threatens them and calls them fools and simpletons. And he did not notice, that Hasid, that when he stretched out his right hand reproachfully, the sack with his prayer shawl and his tefillin that he had taken with him fell down. (Agnon 1962a, 108)

Not without a pinch of humor, the Hasid’s sin is attributed, among other things, to his pretension to be like one of the preachers. However, his innocent and laughable behavior proves to be disastrous: the enthusiastic waving of his arms, as if he were a preacher, is what causes his prayer shawl and tefillin to slip from his hands, and this symbolic loss leads to his losing his way, which in turn leads to his falling into the hands of the h.itsonim. For all these failings, the Magid reproves him with harsh words and without a hint of compassion, but as is the case with preachers, who sometimes show kindness to their audience, the Magid of Zlotchov, too, concludes with a note of consolation, showing the Hasid the way out of his entanglement: You promised those creatures that you would return to them […] and you are obliged to return to them as you told them. But be not afraid of them, rather tell them, I am among the people of the Magid of Zlotchov, and they will surely mock you and me, but do not heed their mockery but rather tell them: if you find a single dibur [utterance, speech, saying] that left the mouth of the Magid that was not for the sake of Heaven, you are

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free to do with me as you wish, but if not, leave me alone and I will go on my way. And the Rabbi of Zlotchov said, I trust in the grace of the Blessed One, that they will not find in their notebooks a single dibur of mine that left my mouth not for in the sake of Heaven, for every sermon that I give and every dibur that I utter is only for the Lord alone. Go forth in peace, and may the Lord help us to serve Him with a whole heart, without exterior motives [kavanot h.itsoniyot]. (Agnon 1962a, 112)

Of course, the Hasid obeys his rabbi’s command and thereby obtains his freedom. Upon arriving at the demons’ house, he proves to them that they have never heard the name of the Magid of Zlotchov, for his sermons have never been put into writing and there is no trace of them in the demons’ notebooks. And so the demons set the Hasid free: They [the h.itsonim] brought their notebooks and checked and did not find in them neither the name of the Magid of Zlotchov nor any dibur of his. They checked again and did not find neither his name nor any dibur of his, and needless to say, nor any homily of his. They were bewildered and perplexed, for even those whose deeds are all for the sake of Heaven, sometimes a dibur slips from their mouth that is not wholly for the sake of the Blessed One, that is to say, they pilfer a little bit of it for themselves. But we, Hasidim sons of Hasidim, […] we are not surprised that they did not find in those notebooks any dibur of the Magid of Zlotchov, for we know that every single dibur that had left his mouth was only for the Lord alone. He, of whom no record remained in those notebooks. The Hasid departed on his way, happy and glad-hearted. (Agnon 1962a, 114)

Upon reading this conclusion, it becomes clear that the moral of the story is to be found not only in its explicit messages. At the core of the story we find not only the overt condemnation of the preachers who “in their heart of hearts seek to exhibit their might in legends and fables” (Agnon 1962a, 114), and not only the prohibition on taking pleasure in the beauty of these fables (Shenhar 1986, 127–129, 133–135). No less significant is the role played by writing—as opposed to speaking—both in the Hasid’s sin and in his punishment. The Magid, whose “every single dibur […] was only for the Lord alone,” presents writing first and foremost as a touchstone for identifying speech (dibur) that is not for the sake of Heaven: the very act of putting speech in writing testifies that it

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is driven by “exterior motives,” and the written sermon, in itself, is an incriminating evidence against the boastful people who give sermons for their own sake. Writing, according to the Magid, preserves that which has no truth in it; it removes the sermon from the possession of the one who delivers it, and enables “external” forces to appropriate it and desecrate it. Consequently, writing proves to be part of the sin, and refraining from writing part of the rectification. In the end, the protagonist is redeemed by the impeccable figure of the Magid, none of whose sayings was put in writing and recorded in the h.itsonim’s notebooks. Had the Hasid not been liberated from the h.itsonim by virtue of his rabbi, he would have been imprisoned in their sealed house, would have learned their craft, and would have gradually assumed their demonic form; like them, he would have heard with his elongated ears sermons from the underworld, like them he would have written the sermons down in the putrid leather notebooks with two left hands, and, most likely, like them he would have cursed and reviled, saying “Blast those sermonizers. I have seen an end to every purpose, and there is no end to windy words [Job 16:3]” (Agnon 1962a, 109). In the view of the Magid and of the narrator, who seeks to glorify his image,6 the egocentric urge to tell a story for no higher purpose, and the deriving of aesthetic enjoyment from the beauty of the descriptions and the attractiveness of the plot, are sinful, and writing only exacerbates the dangers of this sin.7 This is because by writing, one risks falling prey to the h.itsonim, that is, one risks losing control of one’s stories—of their language, their contents, and their addressees. This is likely the reason for the confidence of the h.itsonim—among them, presumably, readers of external books (sfarim h.itsoniyim) and students of external wisdoms (h.okhmot h.itsoniyot)—that “anyone who enters their place never leaves them again” (Agnon 1962a, 113). The use that the h.itsonim make of 6 On hagiography in the context of the story in question, see Shenhar (1986, 117). On Jewish hagiographic literature in general and on the Hasidic hagiographic story, see, e.g., Dan (1975), Gries (2000, 85–94). 7 Rabbi Yitshak of Skvyra is quoted as commenting on the seductiveness of reading . stories that attract the heart and on the dangers inherent in them: “Whoever wishes to study such books, should only learn from the stories written by the disciples of the Besht, and by their disciples, for they did not stray even one single point from the line of truth […] When you hear how I praise the books of the disciples of the Besht, do not assume to deal with them all day long […] the main thing should be the study of the Talmud, and only for an hour or so study these stories” (Zikernik and Nig’al 1994, 37).

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writing—whether to parody tzaddikim or to take aesthetic pleasure— is desecrating and corrupting, and this is precisely the sin from which Agnon’s protagonist is saved, as he sets out “on his way, happy and gladhearted. Happy for being rid of the h.itsonim and glad-hearted for being blessed in adhering to a holy and pure rabbi, whose every single dibur is only for the Lord alone” (Agnon 1962a, 114). On the face of it, Agnon’s story appears to be faithful to the spirit and moral of the Hasidic tale. In several different ways, it warns and re-warns against the sins of satisfying one’s pride and deriving one’s pleasure by means of a story, and it demonstrates that those who succumb to these sins are liable to fall into the hands of evil powers. It is no wonder that the story has sometimes been interpreted as a critique of false and vain preachers, which lacks any hint of satire or anti-Hasidic pathos (Shenhar 1986, 128, 134–145). However, a closer look at the story reveals that in fact, and quite similarly to the h.itsonim, Agnon appropriates the Hasidic story for himself and, in an act of aesthetization, charges it with an ironic, subversive meaning.8 By putting the story in writing and by adapting it as an autonomous work of art, Agnon violates the commandments of the Hasidic tale and does precisely what it condemns and forbids. Whereas according to the Hasidic story, the aspiration to write is an expression of deplorable pride, and the touchstone of things that are said for the sake of Heaven is that they “refuse to be written,” Agnon sets out to put the story in writing and to force on it his own personality, language, style, and ironic outlook. Despite the double prohibition on deriving aesthetic pleasure from the story—both as a writer and as a reader—Agnon polishes the Hasidic story with an artist’s hand and addresses it to the modern reader, who will read it mainly, if not only, for the sake of intellectual and aesthetic pleasure. Hence, by the very act of rewriting the Hasidic tale, Agnon changes it from top to bottom. Contrary to his sources, which require one to eschew egocentric preoccupation with the “self,” Agnon focuses the heart of the story on his own writing, as a signifier of the transformation in the status of writing with the advent of modernity. Thereby

8 No less charged and subversive is Agnon’s treatment of the language of the Hasidic story, which he dubs “Talmud leshon Ivri” after the grammar book by this name authored by Ben-Ze’ev (Agnon 2000, 138–140). On Agnon’s emendations and their linguistic and ideological significance, see Dalmatzky-Fischler and Parush (2020, 299–333). For another example of Agnon’s subversive adaptation of Hasidic stories, see Mark (2009, 62–79).

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the story tacitly examines Agnon’s own place in the rich tradition of narrators and writers from whom he drew inspiration, and marks the distance between him and the preachers with their legends and fables, as well as between his writing as an artist-writer and the writing of the scribe, who commits the tzaddik’s dibur to paper.

The Status of Writing in Agnon’s Work: Torn Between Tradition and Modernity The double commitment to Jewish tradition on the one hand and to modern literary writing on the other hand, and the quandary of the writer who is torn between these two obligations, is evident throughout Agnon’s corpus. It finds clear expression in the composition and hierarchy of Agnon’s genre repertoire, and in his constant to and fro between different writing personas, along the continuum stretching between the writer as a scribe and the writer as a creator-artist. The ironic tension between these personas is expressed in the ways that Agnon chose to present his craft: from copying, correcting, and editing, through documenting and rewriting, and ending with artistic writing. Agnon’s division of his creative energies between anthologies and original literary works, and the incursion of one into the other, sometimes appear to reflect an almost desperate effort to alleviate feelings of guilt, or at least to give both personas their due. Traces of these efforts are conspicuous in the introductions to his anthologies and pseudo-documentary works, where an apologetic tone for the very act of writing is accompanied by attempts to justify this writing in the terms and values of traditional Jewish discourse.9 Thus, for example, the introduction to the anthology Atem Re’item (Present at Sinai) opens with the words: “Not with haughty eyes nor with a proud spirit did I approach the work of making a book about Mount Sinai and the giving of the Torah” (Agnon 2003, 19). Contradictory positions of humility and pride, which threaten to cancel one another out, characterize Agnon’s attitude toward the craft of writing, copying, and compiling the works of preceding generations. One cannot avoid discerning how the heavy responsibility placed on Agnon’s shoulders, as a writer who is destined, or perhaps doomed, to serve as a witness and to save from 9 Dan Laor views these apologies as evidence of Agnon’s dilemmas, considerations, and decisions with regard to the composition of the canonical body of his work (Laor 1995, 24–25).

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oblivion an entire historical, cultural, and literary tradition, is interwoven with a no less forceful sense of greatness and an urge to press his own personal mark on that entire tradition.10 This is not the place for an extensive discussion of Agnon’s handling of the tension between the restrictions imposed by the traditional view of writing and his own writing as a modern artist. Suffice it to say that Agnon often chooses to accentuate his personal marks on the texts he compiles, while at the same time illuminating the highly problematic aspects of his position as a compiler and editor. He uses the traditional discourse, with its code of oral dominance, as a medium for reflecting on the act of writing as an act that is far from self-evident. In a tone that is often apologetic, he seeks to justify and defend his writing, whether from possible criticism from the outside or from his own internal apprehensions due to the dangers of distorting the intention of the text, subverting Halakhic authority, writing not for the sake of Heaven, and, above all, committing the sin of pride. In his anthologies that assemble texts from traditional Jewish sources, as well as in literary works based on documentary or semi-documentary materials, Agnon presents his intervention in the texts written by others as inherently suspect of pride and as necessitating apology. It is no coincidence that the title “Apology” heads the brief conclusion at the end of the volume Ha’Esh VeHa’Etsim (The Fire and the Wood). In this apology, Agnon writes: “Here I will say something against myself. It is a difficult trial for a narrator who is capable of recounting what his eyes have seen to take on the task of telling tales and fables of Hasidim and the like. But I trust the few who will see the difference between my stories and those that any hand could write” (Agnon 1962b, 336).11 Writing is therefore shaped by two contradictory forces, that of humility and that of pride. In the Introduction to the anthology

10 Quite possibly, Agnon’s genre system responded to his ethical and psychological need to use writing for a variety of purposes, that is, to balance between the urge to write literary fiction and the commitment to writing for traditional purposes. Dov Sadan regarded this as a failed effort and wrote that “the poet, who has built such a wonderful mansion for us so that we can escape our embarrassment, has not managed to escape the embarrassment himself (ostensibly he has rescued himself from it completely in his anthologies, but in fact he has not rescued himself, but rather effaced himself, in the sense that he abandoned himself but preserved his Torah)” (Sadan 1967, 47). 11 See also Agnon (1976, 74–75). It is interesting to note the similarities and differences between Agnon’s apologies and the “Author’s Introduction and Apology” that Dov Sadan placed at the beginning of his autobiography, MiMeh.oz HaYaldut (Sadan 1938, 5–6).

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Yamim Nora’im (Days of Awe), humility receives special emphasis, when Agnon highlights his caution with regard to the inclusion of Halakhic materials in the book, and when he declares that in his editing work, he insisted on “excellent preservation” of the original intention of the texts. With a hint of feigned innocence, he notes that his correction of the language of the latter Sages (i.e., rabbinic Hebrew) is merely an aesthetic emendation meant to exalt their writing, as if a different choice of words or linguistic stratum does not entail a different intention: What was written in Aramaic I translated into Hebrew, and what was too long I shortened, bringing only what was necessary for our purposes. And to make this book clear and accessible to everyone, so that every reader could run swiftly through it, I sometimes saw fit to change the language of the latter Sages slightly, for these holy authors—because their generation was righteous and everyone would race to hear words of Torah—did not have time to beautify their language. And even though I did not preserve their language, I insisted on excellent preservation of their intention. And the Halakhot that I brought in my book, like those of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, are not intended to teach Halakhic practice, but rather to adorn the book with Halakhot. (Agnon 1998, 5)12

In the foreword to a new edition of Yamim Nora’im, Agnon evinces even more emphatic humility when he states: “and I added nothing of my own except as a craftsman to whom silk is given to make a garment, and he adds his own threads” (Agnon 1998, 8). However, this comment may be less ingenuous than it seems at first glance, and it calls for further interpretation. On the one hand, the intervention in the text is presented as a slight aesthetic correction—a mere addition of some threads to the silk cloth of the original text; on the other hand, the use of the new threads for sewing the garment can be interpreted as an act that marks 12 In a similar spirit, Agnon writes in the Introduction to the anthology Atem Re’item: “Things that were needed for the matter, I copied, those that were not, I omitted. Things that were said in Aramaic, I copied into the Holy Tongue, for most people do not know Aramaic. And just as I did with H . azal [the Sages of the Mishnah and Talmud eras], I did with our rabbis that followed them. However, as to our latter Sages, I pursued the matter and not the language” (Agnon 2003, 19). Agnon does not mention the possibility that the omission of ornamentation in the works of the latter Sages (i.e., in the rabbinic language) was ideological, and hence the “aesthetic” correction was ipso facto also a change of intention. On the ideological significance of the grammatical carelessness in the rabbinic language, see Chapter 7 above.

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the garment with the craftsman’s unique, personal stamp, thus turning Agnon’s work into “a new book full of the old, garnered from the Written and the Oral Torah” (Agnon 1998, 8).13 This latter interpretation is also suggested by the central metaphor in the Introduction to the collection of stories Korot Bateinu (The Beams of Our House). In this Introduction, Agnon likens his method of copying the works of his ancestors to the work of “a son who has inherited from his forefathers broken vessels, and he repairs them” (Agnon 1998, 24). Yet when Agnon sets out to tell of the h.idushim that the MaHaRSHA (Rabbi Shmuel Eliezer HaLevi Eidels; Kazimierz, Poland, 1555–1631) shared with his grandfather, Rabbi Shmuel, he hints at difficulties that he obfuscates elsewhere. On this occasion, he returns to the topic of the relationship between language and content, and takes note of the dangers of writing and of the inevitable distortion that is entailed by changing the wording and by placing spoken discourse in writing: “And many more wonderful and vast things the Gaon told his grandfather, but I do not remember the language, and because I do not remember the language I shall not present the matter, for every true h.idush [new insight] has to do with language, and if one changes the language, one changes the matter” (Agnon 1998, 42).14 The requirement implied by this statement is for complete fidelity to the language and wording of the speaker, at least when it comes to the writing of Halakhot and h.idushim that were delivered orally. Indeed, it is possible to read this statement as an ironic excuse for the decision to exclude the words of the MaHaRSHA from the story. Nevertheless, one cannot fail to notice the import attributed to the language that the writer uses as he commits spoken discourse to paper. The assertion that “every true h.idush has to do with language” necessarily assigns full responsibility for the written text to the writertranscriber. The pretention to present new insights, to create new worlds, and to place one’s “self” at the center is entirely the fault (or the merit) of the writer, his fault according to traditional values, and his merit according

13 This interpretation is also consistent with Agnon’s comment, quoted above, on his adaptation of the stories of the Besht: “I trust the few who will see the difference between my stories and those that any hand could write” (Agnon 1962b, 336). 14 It should be noted, in this context, that Rabbi Shmuel met the MaHarSHA when the latter had been making his way from Italy to Poland, possibly in search of a chest of hidden manuscripts by Rabbi Yosef, and possibly in order to establish a printing house there.

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to modern notions of the writer as an artist—hence Agnon’s apologies for amending the manuscripts of his forefathers and for bringing them to print. As he writes in the “Rosh Milin” (“Preface”) to Korot Bateinu: During all these years, the manuscripts have been kept with me as I had copied them, and it did not occur to me to publish them or even to show them. Now, after all that the enemies have done to us […] says I, I will pay homage to my ancestors with these writings that they wrote for themselves. […] And if one would say, this was done only to take pride, this pride is nothing but humiliation. Such forefathers had we, and what of us? What are we, and what are our lives? (Agnon 1962c, 24)

A brief review of the scholarship on Agnon’s writing is sufficient to glean that his struggle with the tension between tradition and modernity is broadly perceived as the central theme in his literary oeuvre, which runs throughout it and, in many respects, holds its different parts together. Some scholars examine the thematic manifestations of this struggle, while others focus on linguistic, structural, or poetic manifestations; yet with all proper caution, one may say that despite differences in approach, terminology, and ideology, the leading tendency is to attribute to Agnon not only an effort to integrate tradition with modernity, but also an exceptional and unique success in this effort.15 Nonetheless, when one reviews the tension between tradition and modernity in Agnon’s work from the

15 For selected examples of such assessments, see Arbel (2006), Hagbi (2007),

Hirschfeld (2011), Laor (1995), Miron (1995), Sadan (1950, 1967), G. Shaked (1973), M. Shaked (2000). By contrast, Baruch Kurzweil’s penetrating and paradoxical comments on Agnon testify to his doubts regarding Agnon’s success in uniting the poles, even partially and in a limited way. On the one hand, Kurzweil writes unequivocally: “It is impossible to interpret Agnon as a religious writer in the sense of any orthodoxy. Agnon is a secular writer, and his efforts in recent years to deny the artistic truth, which is immanent, are a matter for psychologists; they are irrelevant to literary research” (Kurzweil 1970, 380–381). On the other hand, he writes: “the return to the land of the fathers [the land of Israel] is also a late return, a tragic return. The incompatibility between the present and the past can be overcome by regression, which is in fact a paradoxical flight to the world of religious certainty of the forefathers. The return becomes a kind of faith within the absurd, despite acknowledgment of the incompatibility between the present and the past. This is the situation in most of Agnon’s stories. To the realization of this painful incompatibility […] Agnon responds with faith that in the future the incompatibility would be eliminated, and hence in any event, past, present, and future will be as one” (Kurzweil 1959, 144).

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perspective of writing—its cultural significance, status, and functions— one cannot but notice, behind the veils of irony, the rifts and the fissures that remain unmended. The deep cultural structure that helps us understand Agnon’s doubts about writing is also the key to deciphering the “sins of writing” committed by his predecessors, the writers of the Haskalah and the national revival. The inhibitions and restrictions laid in the path of writing, as well as the recurrent excuses and justifications for it, which persisted well into the twentieth century, were all part of the discourse of oral dominance. They were among the many manifestations of a deep cultural code in Jewish culture that distinguished between writing and speech, between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, and that privileged the latter over the former. While the manifestations, metamorphoses, and outcomes of this code were different from one epoch and diaspora to another, and while it sometimes lay dormant and ineffectual, its continued presence was paramount. In manifold ways and to various extents, it determined social and textual sources of authority, shaped religious, social, and cultural practices, including literacy practices, affected social institutions and hierarchies, and infused society with meanings, norms and values. At the same time, at the conclusion of this monograph, it is important to note, once again, that this book does not mean to propose a sweeping ahistorical or trans-historical thesis regarding the attitude toward speech versus writing in Jewish society throughout the generations and across geographic locations. It does not argue, by any means, for the existence of a principled, uniform, and unchanged attitude toward writing and literature in Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities during various periods and in different areas of Europe. On the contrary, this exploration has focused on a particular society in a particular historical context, with its peculiar social and cultural circumstances. In other words, the discussion has focused on the cultural principle of oral dominance in the special circumstances of Eastern European Jewish society in the second half of the nineteenth century, and has examined the attenuation of this principle with the gradual rise in the status of the written word. It has shown that this society reached the verge of the twentieth century as a society maintaining an oral literacy culture and privileging speech over writing. It has also shown that it was within, and against, this oral culture that the foundational corpus of modern Hebrew literature emerged and took shape. The rise of the Jewish Enlightenment and the consolidation of a modern

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body of literature—essays, research, and, most important, belles lettres— were marked by a revolutionary change in the significance, meanings, and uses of writing, a change that was far more dramatic than the transformations in the field of reading. Hence, it was a writing revolution, and not a reading revolution, that shook and transformed the literacy culture in nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish society and that gave rise to modern Hebrew literature.

Glossary

Aggadah (pl. Aggadot): Talmudic legends, homiletic expositions of the Bible, stories, parables, allegories, folklore, anecdotes, or maxims, the content of which is not considered legally binding. am ha’arets: Ignoramus. apikores (pl. apikorsim): Heretic. approbation: See haskama. Ashkenazi (pl. Ashkenazim): German or Western, Central, or Eastern European Jews; contrasted with Sephardim. avrekh: A married yeshiva student during the first years of his marriage. ba’alei batim (lit. householders): Community leaders, nouveau-riche, married members of the congregation who work for their living and are not yeshiva students. badh.an (pl. badh.anim): Jester and master of ceremonies, particularly at traditional Jewish weddings. bein hazmanim (lit. between the times): Vacation times in hadarim and yeshivas. beit midrash (lit. house of study): A hall for rabbinic learning often attached to or used as synagogue. belfer (Yiddish): Assistant teacher in the heder. bitul Torah: Neglect of the (study of the) Torah.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. Parush, The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature, New Directions in Book History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81819-7

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GLOSSARY

Bi’ur (lit. explanation): Moshe Mendelsshon’s (Dessau, 1729–1786) translation of the Pentateuch into German, in Hebrew letters and with Hebrew commentary. Cantonists: Jewish boys captured and pressed into the tsar’s army. Daitsh: German, enlightened. drash: Homiletic interpretation of the Bible. drasha (pl. drashot ): Sermon, exposition of a sacred text. Ein Ya’akov (lit. Fountain of Ya’akov): Popular compilation of Aggadic passages from the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, compiled by Ya’akov Ben H . aviv. gaon: Honorific title given to rabbis who have great knowledge of Torah. Gemara: Commentary on the Mishnah. The Mishnah and the Gemara make up the Talmud. The Mishnah is printed at the center of the page with the Gemara surrounding it. genizah: Storage place for worn-out sacred manuscripts usually located in the synagogue. hadran (pl. hadranim): Sermons given upon completing the study of a Talmudic tractate. haftarah (pl. haftarot): Passages from the prophets read in the synagogue on Sabbath after the reading from the Torah. Halakhah (pl. Halakhot): Traditional religious Jewish law. It is identified with the Oral Law, that is, with the Mishnah and the Talmud. HaMe’asef : Maskilic Hebrew periodical published alternately in Germany, 1784–1797. Hasid (pl. Hasidim): Adherent of the mystically-oriented Jewish religious sect of Hasidism. Hasidism (Hebrew H . asidut ): Mystically oriented religious movement founded by Rabbi Yisrael Ba’al Shem Tov in the mid-eighteenth century. Haskalah: Jewish Enlightenment; movement for spreading modern, secular, European culture among Jews, c. 1750–1880. haskama (pl. haskamot ): Rabbinic approbation prefixed to Hebrew books. hazan: Cantor who leads the congregation in the synagogue in prayer and song. heder (pl. hadarim, lit. room): Religious elementary school, generally for boys, often located in the teacher’s (i.e., the melamed’s) house. higayon: Reason, logic, coherence, rationality. hokhmah (pl. hokhmot): Wisdom, logos.

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h.at’ot ne’urim (lit. sins of youth): Forbidden thoughts and deeds of adolescents and youths, especially of a sexual character, such as wasting seed. H azal: Acronym for Hebrew “H . akhameinu Zikhronam Livrakha” (lit. . Our Sages of Blessed Memory), referring to all Jewish sages of the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Talmud eras. h.idushei Torah (pl. h.idushim): Novellae, innovative interpretations of Written or Oral Torah. h.itsoni (lit. external, foreign): Non-Jewish, applied to books, wisdoms and evil demonic spirits. h.okhmot h.itsoniyot (lit. external wisdoms): Bodies of knowledge other than the Torah, especially Greek wisdoms, such as grammar, rhetoric, logic, and philosophy. H . oshen Mishpat (lit. The Breastplate of Judgment ): The fourth part of Ya’akov Ben Asher’s Sefer Arba’a Turim (Book of Four Columns, c. ~ 1340), a collection of Halakhot (religious laws) based on the rabbinic literature that preceded it, dealing with tort and monetary law. h.ozer (pl. h.ozrim, lit. repeater): Yeshiva student with excellent memory who is asked to memorize the rabbi’s teaching for the purpose of repeating it in front of his comrades or of putting it into writing later on. H . umash: The Pentateuch; the five books of Moses. iluy (pl. iluyim): Genius, prodigy. Usually applied to outstanding young Talmudic scholars. jargon: Yiddish (a term sometimes used by detractors of the language). Kabbalah (lit. reception, tradition): A school of thought in Jewish mystical tradition. klipah (pl. klipot ): Kabbalistic term that denotes a shell of impurity or an evil spirit. kloiz (Yiddish): Small synagogue, house of study, frequently restricted to some occupational or social group. lamdan (pl. lamdanim, lit. scholarly, learned): Persistent learner of the Torah. leshon H . azal: Language of the Mishnaic Sages and their successors, as opposed to the language of the Bible. mame lushn (lit. mother tongue): Yiddish. Maskil (pl. Maskilim, lit. learned, enlightened): Adherent of the Jewish Enlightenment movement, the Haskalah; Jewish Enlightenment figure.

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Me’asfim: The generation of Maskilim named after the Hebrew journal HaMe’asef , published alternately in Germany, 1784–1797. megilat starim (pl. megilot starim, lit. secret scroll or scroll of secrets): 1. Torah scholars’ term for denoting a personal notebook for privately writing brief notes regarding h.idushei Torah and Halakhot, meant to serve solely as an aid for memory and strictly not for dissemination or publication. 2. Manuscripts dealing with mystical experiences and doctrines, intended to remain secret. melamed (pl. melamdim): Teacher in the heder, the traditional Jewish elementary school. melits: Poet, writer, orator, or master of the Holy Tongue. melitsa (pl. melitsot ): Biblical verse; poetry or prose written in pure Biblical Hebrew. In modern usage has pejorative connotations as overly florid style. Menorat HaMa’or (Hebrew, Candlestick of Light ): A fourteenthcentury collection of Aggadic, homiletic, and ethical teachings. mezuzah (pl. mezuzot): Parchment scroll with verses from Deuteronomy, which is fixed to the doorpost of every doorway in the house. midrash: An interpretation of the Bible, different from its literal meaning. Mishnah: Earliest codification of the Jewish Oral Law (i.e., the Oral Torah). Compiled by Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, written down, and canonized at the end of the second century. Mitmaskel (pl. Mitmaskelim): A person in the process of becoming a Maskil; a Jewish person undergoing enlightenment. Mitnaged (pl. Mitnagdim, lit. opponent): Orthodox rationalist, legally oriented opponents of Hasidism, mainly from Lithuania and White Russia. Ninth of Av: See Tish’ah Be’Av. Onkelos: Roman nobleman who converted to Judaism and, according to tradition, authored the translation of the Pentateuch into Aramaic. Oral Law (see also Mishnah and Talmud): According to tradition, the Oral Law, i.e., the Oral Torah, was given to Moses on Mount Sinai together with the Written Torah. It was studied orally in the academies and written down in the Mishnah (the second century) and recorded in the Talmud (the sixth century). Oral Torah: See Oral Law.

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parush (pl. prushim): A young man who leaves his wife and family behind and goes to study Torah in another city. paytan (pl. paytanim): A writer of liturgical poems. Perek Shira (Hebrew, Chapter of Songs ): A collection of scriptural verses in which the praise of God is uttered by different parts of creation. petih.ta: A literary form of an introductory sermon characteristic of Amoraic Midrash, which is delivered in the synagogue immediately before the weekly reading of the Torah. Pharisees (Hebrew, Prushim): One of the main sects of Judaism before the destruction of the first Temple (70 AD). The Pharisees adhered strictly to the Oral Law, i.e., the Oral Torah. They formed the basis of rabbinic Judaism, and their studying traditions were continued by Talmudic and later rabbis (see also Sadducees). phylacteries: See tefillin. piyut (pl. piyutim): Poem, specifically one added to a statutory prayer in the synagogue. proste yidn (Yiddish): Simple Jews; contrasts with sheine yidn, refined Jews. Purim: A holiday that commemorates the saving of the Persian Jews from death as recounted in the Book of Esther. Celebrated in permissive carnival atmosphere, with drinks, masks, and plays. Rashi: Shlomo Yitsh.aki (1040–1105); French rabbinic scholar. Wrote commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud. His Bible commentary served as the basis for later interpretations of Scripture, and his commentary on the Talmud defined terms and established the correct Talmudic text. reb (Yiddish): Hebrew honorific for a man. rebbe (Yiddish): Hasidic rabbi, teacher, and spiritual leader. responsa: Written replies given by rabbis to questions related to Jewish law. See also SHUT . Sadducees (Hebrew, Tsdokim): One of the main sects of Judaism before the destruction of the Second Temple (70 AD). Encouraging adherence to the Written Torah, the Sadducees dispensed with the oral hermeneutic tradition (see also Pharisees). Sanhedrin: An assembly of seventy-one scholars, who acted as a Supreme Court and legislature during the Second Temple period and until 425 AD. secret scroll: See megilat starim.

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Sephardi: Spanish Jew or descendent thereof (contrasts with Ashkenazi). sfarim h.itsoniyim: 1. Jewish Apocrypha, books that were not accepted as sacred manuscripts when the Bible was canonized. 2. Books dealing with non-Jewish bodies of knowledge, especially the Greek wisdoms, but also sciences and belles lettres. shakla vetaria (Aramaic, lit. give and take): An oral dialogic method of study based on questions and answers, proofs and refutations. shalshelet hakabbalah: Chain of Sages that received and transmitted the Oral Torah from generation to generation. SHaTS: Acronym of Hebrew shliah. tsibur, emissary, a cantor or prayerleader. sheine yidn (Yiddish): Refined Jews, wealthy community members of distinguished lineage; contrasts with proste yidn (Yiddish, simple Jews). Shekinah: Divine Presence. In Kabbalistic sources the tenth sphere, representing God’s feminine aspects. shibuts (lit. inlay): A literary style and a writing technique based on inlay of directly borrowed fragments of Biblical verses. Shivh.ei HaBesht (In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov, first printed 1814– 1815): Hagiography of Yisrael Ben Eliezer, the founder of Hasidism. shraiber (Yiddish): Tutor of penmanship. shtetl (Yiddish): Jewish small-town community in Eastern Europe. Shulh.an Arukh (lit., Set Table): Halakhic book compiled by Rabbi Yosef Caro (1488–1575); became the authoritative code for orthodox Jewry. SHUT : Acronym of Hebrew she’elot utshuvot (lit. questions and answers). See also responsa. Sifra: Collection of Halakhic Midrash to Leviticus. Sifrei: Collection of Halakhic Midrash to Numbers and Deuteronomy. sitra ah.ra (Aramaic, lit. other side): Kabbalistic term denoting the opposite of holiness. sofer STaM : Religious scribe, the writer of sfarim, tefillin, and mezuzot (acronym STaM). Taitsh: Old Yiddish. Taitsh h.umash: Hebrew-Yiddish, bilingual version of the Pentateuch. talmid h.akham (pl. talmidei h.akhamim): Knowledgeable Torah scholar; brilliant yeshiva student. Talmud: Compendium of discussions on the Mishnah by scholars and jurists in the Babylonian and Jerusalem academies over the course of several centuries; canonized in the early sixth century.

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Talmud Torah: Jewish religious public elementary school for boys, fostered by voluntary associations. tefillin: Two small leather boxes, each containing four passages from the Torah written on parchment. They are bound to the head and to the arm by leather straps, and worn to remind men to keep the law. teh.um Shabbat: Sabbath boundary, a limited area within which a Jew is permitted to walk on foot on Sabbath. tiflut: Vanity. Tish’ah Be’Av (lit., ninth of Av): Fast day commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples. Torah: 1. The Pentateuch, that is, the five books given to Moses in Mount Sinai along with the Written Torah. 2. The Oral Torah, and the entire body of the Jewish law and literature. Tosefta (lit. addition): Parallels and supplements to the Mishnah from around the second century. Tsena UR’ena: Yiddish compendium of rabbinic commentaries on the Pentateuch, the haftarot (see haftarah), and the five scrolls, primarily addressed to and read by women. Authored by Ya’akov Ben-Yitsh.ak Ashkenazi of Yanov (Lublin, Poland, 1550–1628). Tsentura Ventura: translation to Yiddish of some of the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor. tzaddik (lit., righteous man): Hasidic rabbi, spiritual leader, regarded by his disciples as an intermediary between God and man. Written Torah: 1. The Pentateuch, i.e., the five books of Moses. 2. The books included in the Bible, i.e., not only the Pentateuch but also Nevi’im (Prophets) and Ktuvim (Writings). yeshiva: School devoted to the study of the Talmud and rabbinic literature. Yiddish: Judeo-German. The historical language of Ashkenazi Jews. German-based vernacular fused with Hebrew and Aramaic elements as well as Slavic words. Yiddish-Taitsh: Ancient Yiddish, used in the translations of Torah books printed for popular use. Yom Kippur: Day of fast and atonement observed on 10 Tishri. Zohar (lit. radiance): Major book of Jewish mysticism.

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Name Index

A Abramovich, Shalom Ya’akov (Mendele Mokher Sfarim), 34, 42, 43, 57, 146, 161, 162, 188, 207, 210, 211, 220, 223, 232, 253, 261, 268, 278, 280, 291, 292, 298, 299 ADaM HaCohen (Lebensohn HaCohen, Avraham Dov Baer Michailishker), 52, 178, 218, 243, 279, 306 Agnon, Shmuel Yosef, 15, 41, 51, 83, 86, 94, 96–99, 101, 106, 108, 110, 119, 121, 135, 177, 250, 258, 263, 275, 277, 288, 289, 291–294, 329–342 Ah.ad Ha’Am (Ginsberg, Asher Zvi Hirsch), 42, 44, 119, 165, 192, 194, 245, 289, 290, 325, 326 Ah.ad HaKana’im. See Leshchinsky, Ya’akov Ah.ituv, Yosef, 326

Aleikhem, Shalom (Shalom Nah.umovitch Rabinovitch), 170 Altshuler, Moshe Ben H . anokh, 229 Anderson, Benedict, 265 Aquinas, Thomas, 90 Arbel, Michal, 341 Assaf, David, 81–85, 87 Assaf, Simh.a, 53–55, 123, 128, 136, 183, 189, 190, 195, 206 Augustine, 3 Avital, Moshe, 191, 192, 195 AZaR. See Rabinovitz, Alexander Ziskind (AZaR) Azulai, H . ayim Yosef David (H . YDA), 160 B Bakhtin, Mikhail, 224, 235, 322 Bakon, Yitzh.ak, 119, 321 Balibar, Renée, 191 Bar-El, Judith (Yehudith), 6, 149, 277, 309

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. Parush, The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature, New Directions in Book History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81819-7

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384

NAME INDEX

Bartal, Israel, 230 Barthes, Roland, 19, 136, 138 Barton, David, 28, 29, 35 Beit-Arie, Malachi, 150 Ben Yogli, Buki (Katzenelson, Yehuda Leib), 161–163, 168, 169, 174, 195, 199, 211, 215, 216, 218, 219, 230, 231, 245, 252, 253, 259, 260, 288, 291 Ben-Ze’ev, Yehuda Leib, 187, 196, 209, 213, 217, 218, 253, 336 Ben-Zion, S. (Simh.a), 263, 312, 315 Berdichevsky, Micha Yosef (Yosi Ze’ira), 43, 95, 96, 119, 138, 139, 141, 157, 171–174, 248, 258, 281, 290, 311, 319, 322, 323 Berger, Yisrael Ben Yitsh.ak, 105 Berlin (Bar-Ilan), Rabbi Meir, 124, 125, 127–129, 136, 168 Berlin, Rabbi H . ayim, 126, 142 Berlin, Rabbi Naftali Zvi (NaTSiV), 125, 131, 136, 153 Berlin, Rabbi Shaul. See Levin-Berlin, Shaul Ben Zvi Hirsch Bernfeld, Shim’on, 51, 294, 295 BeSHT. See Rabbi Yisrael Ba’al Shem Tov (Besht) Bialik, H . ayyim Nah.man, 143, 165, 251, 282, 299, 317 Biernacki, Richard, 37 Bilu, Yoram, 66 Bin-Gorion (Berdichevsky), Immanuel, 322 Bock, Tuvia, 206, 210, 211 Bonnell, Victoria, 37 Borges, Jorge Luis, 3, 19 Borochov Ya’akov HaCohen, 137 Bourdieu, Pierre, 68, 69, 183 Bouwsma, William J., 191 Boyarin, Daniel, 110, 230 Boyarin, Jonathan, 27, 35, 122

Braiman, Shlomo, 299 Brainin, Reuven, 47, 51, 52, 60, 61, 238, 242, 243, 249, 257, 261, 288, 289, 308, 321 Braude, Mordechai Ze’ev, 52, 62 Brawer, Avraham Ya’akov, 56, 57, 265 Brawer, Michael HaCohen, 56, 57, 265 Brenner, Yosef H . ayim, 141, 298, 305, 320, 321 Breuer, Mordechai, 33, 122, 134, 138, 140, 205, 206 Brinker, Menachem, 38, 298 Brogan, Walter, 22 Broides, Reuven Asher, 247, 248, 275 Brooks, Jeffrey, 64 Bruner, Jerome Seymour, 38 Brutskus Boris Dov, 45 Buber, Martin, 96, 98–100, 104, 329, 330 C Cameron, Euan, 202 Chemerinsky, Hayyim, 79, 80 Clammer, John, 31 Clanchy, Michael T., 4, 5, 7, 30, 31, 66, 90 Clarke, Jessica, 22 Cohen, Nathan, 133, 233 Collins, James, 25, 34 Cressy, Davis, 4, 7, 19, 49, 66 Crone, Rosalind, 2 Crowley, Tony, 224 Cullum, Patricia, 227, 228 D Dalmatzky-Fischler, Bracha, 147, 221, 222, 285, 336 Danet, Brenda, 27, 35 Dan, Joseph, 41, 111, 112, 335 Darnton, Robert, 3

NAME INDEX

de Certeau, Michel, 4, 19, 318–320 Deinard, Ephraim, 51, 60, 184, 249 Derrida, Jacques, 10, 20, 22–25, 33, 75, 87, 88, 112, 115, 325 De Silva, M.W.S., 284 Dinur, Ben-Zion, 53, 60, 125, 129, 131–134, 137, 138, 260, 263, 272, 292–294, 315, 322 Dolitzky, Menachem Mendel, 284 Dubnov, Simon, 131, 237, 241, 242, 249, 257, 260, 293, 320 Dumas, Alexandre, 309 E Eidels, Rabbi Shmuel Eliezer HaLevi (MaHaRSHA), 340 Eikhenbaum, Boris, 90 Eisenstadt, Moshe Elazar, 124, 125, 132, 133 Eisenstadt, Shmuel N., 227 Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., 66 Eliash, Miriam, 108 Elisha Ben Abuya, 237, 317, 318 Elishinsky, Moshe Ze’ev, 237, 244, 245, 249, 251, 252, 254, 257–259, 261, 264, 274, 282 Elyakim son of Rabbi Ya’akov of Komorna, 54 Emden, Rabbi Ya’akov Ben-Zvi (YaVeTZ), 184, 188, 189, 195 Engelsing, Rolf, 2, 3 Epstein, Baruch HaLevi, 139–141, 144 Etkes, Immanuel, 122, 128, 131, 188, 203, 211, 214, 218 F Fahn, Reuven, 181, 219 Feiner, Shmuel, 4 Fischler, Bracha. See Dalmatzky-Fischler, Bracha

385

Fishman, Joshua, 232 Friedlander, Yehuda, 147 Friedman, Eliezer Eliyahu, 110, 163–165, 192, 194, 199 Friedman, Susan S., 109, 199 Frishman, David, 175–178, 265–268, 280, 282, 284, 289, 290, 309 Fuenn, Shmuel Yosef (RaSHY Fuenn), 196, 199, 218, 219 Funkenstein, Amos, 81, 189, 190, 197, 198, 202 Furet, François, 4, 5, 7, 30, 42, 61

G Gallaghar, Catherine, 37 Gamoran, Emanuel, 189, 194 Gantzfried, Shlomo Ben Yosef, 331 The Gaon of Rogachov. See Rosin, Rabbi Yosef (The Gaon of Rogachov) The Gaon of Vilna. See Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna (HaGRa) Gee, James Paul, 25 Geertz, Clifford, 37 Gelber, Nathan Michael, 245 Gilon, Meir, 206, 207 Ginsberg, Asher Zvi Hirsch. See Ah.ad Ha’Am (Ginsberg, Asher Zvi Hirsch) Ginzburg, Mordechai Aharon, 6, 52, 188, 218, 243, 246, 247, 276, 280, 282–284, 299, 317, 318 Gluzman, Michael, 230 Goldfaden, Avraham, 169 Goody, Jack, 4, 25, 32 Gordon, Rabbi Eliezer, 123, 128 Gordon, Yehuda Leib (YaLaG), 42, 188, 194, 197, 214, 219, 238, 251, 253, 260, 280, 292, 306, 315

386

NAME INDEX

Gottlober, Avraham Baer, 82, 83, 184–188, 198, 218, 233, 237, 238, 245, 246, 253, 275, 316 Graff, Harvey J., 1, 4, 5, 7, 25, 27, 30, 35, 64 Grafton, Anthony, 227 Gramsci, Antonio, 224 Greenblatt, Stephen, 37 Gries, Zeev, 4, 76, 93, 95, 112, 335 Grimes, Ronald L., 227

H HaCohen, Mordechai Ben Hillel, 264, 290 Hagbi, Yaniv, 341 HaLevi, Judah, 121 HaLevi Zvik, Yehudit, 56 Halkin, Simon, 6, 221, 298, 299, 305, 306 Halsey, Katie, 2 Hamilton, Mary, 28, 29, 35 Hanau HaCohen, Shlomo Zalman, 213, 217 Handelman, Don, 227 HaRaMa. See Isserles, Moshe Ben Yisrael (HaRaMa) Haramati, Shlomo, 196, 221 HaRIM. See Rabbi Yitsh.ak Meir Alter of Gur (HaRIM) Harkavi, Alexander, 259, 262, 265 H . atam Sofer (Moshe Sofer), 208–210 Havelock, Eric A., 1, 22, 25 Hazaz, Aviva, 314, 315 Hazaz, H . ayim, 313 Heath, Shirle Brice, 28 Heller, Rabbi Aryeh Leib, 137 Herr, Moshe David, 150 Hirschbein, Peretz, 231 Hirschfeld, Ariel, 341 Hobbs, Catherine, 61 Holtzman, Avner, 139, 171

Horodetsky, Shmuel Abba, 78, 79, 260 Hunt, Lynn, 37 H . YDA. See Azulai, H . ayim Yosef David (H . YDA) I Ibn Janah., Jonah, 216, 217 Ish Hurwitz, Shai, 61, 254, 301 Ish Na’omi (Elimelekh Weksler Bezredka Rakryuzer), 243, 262, 263, 301 Isserles, Moshe Ben Yisrael (HaRaMa), 196

J Jardine, Lisa, 227 Jenks, Chris, 324 Jospe, Raphael, 152

K Kaestle, Carl F., 25–27, 66 Kasdai, Zvi, 161, 162, 194, 196, 199, 211 Katz, Ben-Zion (Lita’i), 44, 50, 52, 133, 234, 245, 252, 260, 265, 293 Katzenelson, Yehuda Leib. See Ben Yogli, Buki (Katzenelson, Yehuda Leib) Katzovich, Israel Isar, 245 Keslin, H . ayim Ben Naftali Hertz, 253 Ketz, Hana, 129 Klausner, Yosef, 117, 118, 184, 221, 222 Kloek, Joost, 3 Kluger, Rabbi Shlomo, 209, 210 Kofman, Shmuel, 169 Kolp, Zvi Hirsch Halevi, 44, 49, 50, 68, 326

NAME INDEX

Korekh, Asher, 51, 57, 58, 80, 81 Kosman, Admiel, 99 Kotik, Yeh.ezkel, 59, 60, 271 Kovner, Avraham, Uri, 6, 215, 222, 253, 262, 279 Krokhmal, Rabbi Nah.man (RaNaK), 219 Kurzweil, Baruch, 72, 117, 341 L Landa, Rabbi Yeh.ezkel HaLevi of Prague, 193, 208–210 Landa, Tzemah. Segal, 52, 306 Laor, Dan, 337, 341 Lerner, H . ayim Zvi, 223, 253 Leshchinsky, Ya’akov (Ah.ad HaKana’im), 45, 46 Levin-Berlin, Shaul Ben Zvi Hirsch, 202, 203 Levin-Epstein, Eliyahu Ze’ev HaLevi, 53, 57 Levin, Shmaryahu, 80, 165, 166, 182, 212, 237–240, 252, 253, 255, 256, 281, 282, 285, 286, 295, 322 Levinsohn, Yitsh.ak Dov Baer (RYBaL), 85, 196, 203 Levin, Yehudah Leib (YehaLeL), 85, 147–149, 238, 248, 249, 278, 280, 289, 295, 296, 307–309, 322 Levisohn, Shlomo, 218 Liessin, Avraham, 167, 169, 174, 178, 179, 261, 293 Lifschitz, Eliezer Meir, 5, 49–51, 55, 189, 191–194, 199, 200, 326 Lilienblum, Moshe Leib, 6, 42, 52, 57, 187, 188, 197, 203, 245, 247, 254, 255, 258, 260, 263, 272, 275, 276, 278, 279, 285, 286, 296–299, 301, 303, 304, 306, 307

387

Lissitzky, Ephraim, 125 Luzzatto, Shmuel David (ShaDaL), 293 M Magid, David, 276, 283, 299 (The) Magid of Zlotchov. See Rabbi Yeh.iel Mikhel (The Magid of Zlotchov) (The) MaHaRaL of Prague. See Rabbi Yehuda Liva Ben Betsal’el (MaHaRaL of Prague) (The) MaHaRSHA. See Eidels, Rabbi Shmuel Eliezer HaLevi (MaHaRSHA) Maimonides, 123, 159, 187, 207, 255 Maimon, Shlomo, 276 MaLBYM. See Wisser, Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yeh.iel Michel (MaLBYM) Mandelkern, Shlomo, 151 Manekin, Rachel, 61 Manger, Itzik, 171 Mapu, Avraham, 221, 236, 237, 242, 243, 261, 280, 293, 308 Mark, Zvi, 336 Marmar, Kalman, 233 Maybin, Janet, 28 Mayer, Bonaventura, 83, 84 Meir, Jonatan, 117, 118 Melamed, Avraham Shlomo, 52, 53, 253, 260, 273–275, 281, 282 Mendele Mokher Sfarim. See Abramovich, Shalom Ya’akov (Mendele Mokher Sfarim) Mendelssohn, Moses, 152, 187, 206, 208, 209, 211, 217, 242 Messick, Brinkley, 19, 25, 90, 281 Mezah., Yehoshua, 231 Minnis, Alastair, 136 Miron, Dan, 232, 261, 341 Morris, Nathan, 7, 189

388

NAME INDEX

Morson, Gary Saul, 142, 144 Moseley, Marcus, 6, 38, 89, 233, 277, 279, 296, 299, 300 Moshvitsky, Efrayim Reuven, 123, 141 Munk, Shmuel David, 208

N Nathanzohn, David Baer, 204 NaTSiV. See Berlin, Rabbi Naftali Zvi (NaTSiV) Nig’al, Gedalyah, 117, 335 Nissenboim, Yitsh.ak, 42–44, 125, 130, 131, 187, 242, 253 Nomberg, Hirsch David, 269, 309, 310

O Ong, Walter J., 25, 90, 227, 228 Ortner, Natan, 97 Ozouf, Jacques, 4, 5, 7, 30, 42, 61

P Paperna, Avraham Ya’akov, 142, 220, 222, 223 Parush, Iris, 4, 6, 61, 118, 146, 147, 169, 171, 175–178, 196, 213, 220–222, 229, 230, 235, 257, 267, 277, 284 Passeron, Jean-Claude, 183 Pelli, Moshe, 6, 212, 279, 298–300 Peretz, Yitsh.ak Leibush, 299 Perl, Joseph, 85 Perlmann, Joel, 45–48, 69, 76 Piekarz, Mendel, 86–89, 113, 115, 116 Plato, 10, 20, 22–25, 62, 87 Preger Wagner, Rotem, 318

R Rabban Gamliel of Yavne, 190 Rabbi Adam Ba’al Shem, 96 Rabbi Aharon of Chernobyl, 78 Rabbi David Tevle of Lissa, 208 Rabbi Eliezer Ben Hurcanus, 159, 166 Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna (the Gaon of Vilna, HaGRa), 151, 188, 189 Rabbi Gedalia of Linitz, 101, 102 Rabbi Levi Yitsh.ak of Berdichev, 86 Rabbi Menah.em Mendel of Kotsk, 104, 105 Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon. See Maimonides Rabbi Moshe H . ayim Efrayim of Sudilkov, 87, 105 Rabbi Moshe of Kobryn, 79, 85, 98, 295 Rabbi Naftali Zvi of Skvyra, 98 Rabbi Nah.man of Bratslav, 72, 75, 78, 86, 90, 91, 111, 113, 301 Rabbi Nah.man of Tulchyn, 115 Rabbi Nathan of Nemyrov. See Sternhartz, Rabbi Nathan of Nemyrov Rabbi Pinh.as of Koritz, 101–103, 107 Rabbi Sa’adiah Gaon, 196 Rabbi Shlomo Yitsh.aki (Rashi), 50, 60, 158, 166, 185, 188, 194, 198, 205–207, 211, 316 Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, 158 Rabbi Simh.a Bunim of Peshish.a, 84, 105, 106 Rabbi Tzadok HaCohen of Lublin, 301 Rabbi Ya’akov Yosef of Ostrava (Yevi), 98 Rabbi Ya’akov Yosef of Polonne, 99 Rabbi Yeh.ezkel Shraga Halberstam of Shinawa, 100

NAME INDEX

Rabbi Yeh.ezkel, son of the Rabbi of Tsanz, 329 Rabbi Yeh.iel Mikhel (The Magid of Zlotchov), 330, 333, 334 Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi, 121 Rabbi Yehuda Liva Ben Betsal’el (MaHaRaL of Prague), 189, 195 Rabbi Yisrael Ba’al Shem Tov (Besht), 15, 61, 96, 98, 99, 101, 102, 105, 111, 116, 329, 335, 340 Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin, 81–85, 87, 135 Rabbi Yitsh.ak Meir Alter of Gur (HaRIM), 97 Rabbi Yitsh.ak of Husiatyn, 82, 83 Rabbi Yitsh.ak of Skvyra, 335 Rabbi Yitsh.ak Safrin of Komarno, 111 Rabbi Yoh.anan (of the Amora’im), 145 Rabbi Zvi Elimelekh of Dinov, 202 Rabinovitz, Alexander Ziskind (AZaR), 48, 49, 62, 96 Raboy, Isaac, 258, 265, 271, 291, 294 Rakovsky, Puah, 59 RaNaK. See Krokhmal, Rabbi Nah.man Rappel, Dov, 205 RaSHI. See Rabbi Shlomo Yitsh.aki (Rashi) RaSHY Fuenn. See Fuenn, Shmuel Yosef (RaSHY Fuenn) Ravnitzky Yehoshu’a H . ana, 165 Reinhard, Wittmann, 3 Ricoeur, Paul, 38 Rokeach, Rabbi Yehoshua, 108 Rokeach, Rabbi Yissachar Dov, 108, 109 Rosin, Rabbi Yosef (The Gaon of Rogachov), 152–153 Roskies, Diane, 64–66, 124 Rosman, Moshe, 102 Ross, Nicham, 119 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 300

389

Rozanis, Avraham, 54 Rubin, Miri, 227 Ruderman, David B., 66 Ruppin, Arthur, 45 RYBaL. See Levinsohn, Yitsh.ak Dov Baer (RYBaL)

S Sadan (Shtok), Dov, 338 Sagiv, Gad, 301 Salant, Rabbi Shmuel, 52, 83, 135, 136, 246, 276 Sandler, Peretz, 203, 221 Satanov, Yitzhak, 212, 213 Scharfstein, Zvi, 43, 45, 64, 189, 193–196, 199 Schiller, Friedrich, 34, 261, 309 Scholem, Gershom. See Shalom, Gershom Schulman, Elazar, 295 Schulman, Kalman, 78, 241, 243 Schwadron Avraham, 84 Schwartz, Baruch, 53, 271–273 Schwartz, Howard, 95 Scribner, Sylvia, 26 Seidman, Naomi S., 229, 232 ShaDaL. See Luzzatto, Shmuel David (ShaDaL) Shahevitch, Boaz, 195, 196 Shaikewitz, Nah.um Meir (SHoMeR), 140, 141, 170, 171, 231, 234–237, 240, 245, 250, 263, 281 Shaked, Gershon, 341 Shaked, Malka, 341 Shalom, Gershom, 102 Shapira, Zvi Herman, 142 Shargorodska, P., 68 Shavit, Uzi, 4 Shenhar, Aliza, 330 Shilo, Elchanan, 119

390

NAME INDEX

Shmeruk, Chone, 106, 117 Shoh.at, Azriel, 211 SHoMeR. See Shaikewitz, Nah.um Meir (SHoMeR) Shor, Frida, 133 Shtern, Yeh.iel, 43, 56, 58, 193 Shvili, Binyamin, 96 Siff, David B., 90, 93, 94, 114 Smith, Adam, 66 Smolenskin, Peretz, 51, 52, 243, 285 Socrates, 20, 21, 24, 72, 97–99 Sofer, Moshe. See H . atam Sofer Sokolov, Nah.um, 135, 136 Soloveitchik, Rabbi H . ayim, 123 Spektor, Mordechai, 58–60 Sperber, Miriam, 53, 163 Spufford, Margaret, 51 Stallybrass, Peter, 324 Stampfer, Shaul, 45, 46, 51, 59, 64, 67–70, 76, 126, 143, 189, 194, 200, 201, 233 Steinman, Eliezer, 96, 97, 261 Steinsaltz, Adin, 81, 189, 190, 197, 198, 202 Sternhartz, Rabbi Nathan of Nemyrov, 86, 92, 93, 114–116 Street, Brian V., 23, 25, 26, 28–30, 35, 71 Sue, Eugène, 237, 309 Sussman, Yaakov, 33, 34 Szwed, John F., 35

T Taviov, Yisrael H . ayim, 221, 222, 276 Tchernowitz, H . ayim (Young Rabbi), 80, 126, 129, 151–153, 158, 159, 165, 245, 247, 256, 261, 286, 290 Tchernowitz, Shmuel, 291 Terdiman, Richard, 220 Thiel, Udo, 286

Titunik, Irwin, 90 Tohar, Vered, 54 Towheed, Shafquat, 2 Turner, Victor, 226, 227, 235 Turniansky, Chava, 54, 67, 93, 94 Tzamriyon, Tzemah., 224 Tzikernik, Yeshaya Wolf, 98 Tzitron, Shmuel Leib, 253, 275

V Van Gennep, Arnold, 226, 227 Vigoda, Michael, 33, 129, 145, 150 Vincent, David, 64

W Weissberg, Yitsh.ak Ya’akov, 249 Weiss, Isaac Hirsch, 192, 193, 196, 210, 211, 261 Weiss, Joseph, 86, 88, 89, 92 Weissler, Chava, 229 Weiss Y.S. (Yehoshem HaLivny), 59, 86 Weksler, Bezredka Rakryuzer Elimelekh. See Ish Na’omi (Elimelekh Weksler Bezredka Rakryuzer) Wengeroff, Pauline, 261 Werses, Shmuel, 4, 85, 117, 119, 171, 172, 223, 230, 277, 279 Wessely, Naphtali Hertz, 202, 208, 212 White, Allon, 324 Wisser, Rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yeh.iel Michel (MaLBYM), 158

Y YaLaG. See Gordon, Yehuda Leib (YaLaG) Yassif, Eli, 90

NAME INDEX

YehaLeL. See Levin, Yehudah Leib (YehaLeL) YaVeTZ. See Emden, Rabbi Ya’akov Ben-Zvi Yoh.anan, the High Priest, 147 Yustman, Moshe Bunim (B. Ye’ushzohn), 233 Z Zalkin, Mordechai, 4, 265 Zaltzman Shlomo, 51, 55, 59, 125–127, 131, 132, 245

391

Zieman, Katherine, 227 Zikernik, Isaiah Wolf, 335 Zilberbush, David Yeshayahu, 90, 160–162, 225, 234, 237, 238, 247, 256, 260, 286, 287, 291, 322 Ziv, Pinchas, 300 Zlotkin, Menachem Mendel, 131, 140, 141, 143 Zunser, Elyakum, 169, 179 Zuta, H . ayim Arie, 187 Zweifel, Eliezer Zvi, 242, 275

Subject Index

A Aesthetic and attitudes toward it in Haskalah and National Revival, 6, 14–15, 174–179, 212, 214, 223, 251, 265–268, 335–336, 339 in traditional society, 6, 6n11, 44–45, 94, 107–108, 335–336, 339 Aggadah and legends, 12, 157–158, 160, 162–174, 176, 178. See also Taitsh H . umash; Tsena UR’ena Apologetic stance on writing and printing, 8, 94, 97n29, 113–115, 278, 287, 305, 311–313, 324 author’s apology, 296–298, 298n42, 321–323, 337–342 Approbations (haskamot ), 5, 280, 307 Autobiography autobiographic fiction, 38–39, 313 autobiographic poem, 277n10, 307 and constitution of individuality, 296–298, 324

and dictation, 89n16 and genre ambiguity, 276–277 Jewish autobiography, 38n15, 300 and notion of human life as a book, 106, 318 as research source, 10, 16, 31, 35, 37–39, 80–81 its role in process of undergoing enlightenment, 5–6, 31–32, 270, 299–300 its role in writing revolution, 5–6, 270, 324–325

B Belles lettres feminization of, 12, 167–174, 230, 233, 309 as forbidden literature, 36, 205, 207, 310 and Jewish national revival, 175–179, 265–268 its role in writing revolution, 6, 343

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 I. Parush, The Sin of Writing and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature, New Directions in Book History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81819-7

393

394

SUBJECT INDEX

Benefit of marginality. See Gender: women’s “benefit of marginality” Bible Biblical stories as female sphere, 12, 159–168 and the dictum “And keep your sons from reason”, 166, 202, 204–211 ignorance of, 161, 194, 204 as linguistic model, 44, 195, 211–224, 279. See also Biblical purism; Melitsa; Shibuts its neglect in traditional education system, 13, 54, 64, 160–162, 163, 183–184, 189, 193–195, 198–204 its study as leading to heresy, 13, 161, 199, 199n, 202–205, 209, 238, 252–253 its study as part of male Maskilic rite of passage, 251–252, 257–260 its study as threat to Oral Torah, 158–159, 162, 202–205, 209–211, 213, 214–219, 248–249 See also Aggadah and legends; Oral Torah (Oral Law) and Written Torah; Taitsh H . umash; Tsena UR’ena Biblical purism, 14, 219, 221–224, 284. See also Melitsa; Shibuts Books and Manuscripts burnt, lost, hidden, secret, 91–92, 92n19, 96n26, 96–98, 106n34, 109, 117, 122, 151, 340n14 “external”, Maskilic, forbidden, 141, 209–210, 241, 247–250, 277, 286, 310–311, 335. See also “External” wisdoms genizah, 288 Jewish people as “people of the book”, 290, 325–326

life as a book, the book of life, 91–92, 103–107, 292–293, 318–319 notebooks, Maskilic, 143, 269, 293–294, 307, 310, 317, 321 published anonymously, 294–295 sanctification of, 288–289, 290n30 as their authors’ children, 97, 108–110 unpublished, 111–112, 151, 295 unwritten, 92, 103–107 and the writing revolution, 16–17, 269–270, 324–327 See also Library; Megilat starim (secret scroll); Printing and publication C Chain of transmission, 21, 90, 134, 144 female, 176 Class stratification, 7, 12, 15–16, 26, 34, 43, 51, 54–55, 68–73, 80, 157–159, 171, 192, 200–204. See also Elite; Hegemony Constitution of the subject, 6, 8, 316–324 and autobiography, 296–298, 324 and the divided self, 251–257, 285–288 and writing on blank sheet of paper, 14–15, 269–270, 307, 315, 316–323, 324–327 See also Rite of passage, Maskilic D Dictation, 32, 56, 61, 136, 151, 280, 325 “dictating to oneself”, 89–90, 280–281 “passing the pen”, 11, 79–80, 82

SUBJECT INDEX

and power relations, 75, 77, 87–96 See also Writers and scribes Diglossia, 178, 267, 284n24

E Education educational arguments against writing, 21, 33, 65–66, 124, 145, 150 informal educational settings, 7, 10, 29, 35, 43–44, 49, 50, 55–63, 135. See also Shraibers learners’ societies, 158–159 traditional education system, 7, 10, 13, 42–45, 50, 53–54, 60, 63–73, 160–162, 181–184, 189–211, 261, 316 See also Heder; Oral literacy: oral methods of study; Yeshiva Elite, 29–30, 34, 43, 68–73, 183n5 economic, 55, 76, 80, 158–159 Hasidic, 84, 86 Maskilic male, 4, 76 Mitnagdic, 135 rabbinic, 66n21, 13, 72–73, 158–159, 181–184, 196–204, 219–220, 223, 285 See also Class stratification; Hegemony Emotion, affect, 154, 186 association of emotionality with art, 175–179, 267 association of emotionality with femininity, 165, 166, 167, 175–179, 267 contempt for writing, 17, 24, 60, 81, 282, 294 emotional ambivalence regarding writing, 170, 174, 177, 270, 271, 272, 288, 311–313

395

emotional tumults of Maskilic rite of passage, 239–240, 253–257, 262, 285–288, 308 guilt, shame due to writing, 113, 170, 174, 273–275, 288, 291–292, 305–306, 308–312, 324, 337 Jewish people as emotionally handicapped, 175–176, 267 joy, pride, elation due to writing, 170, 270, 288, 312 and oral charisma, 99–100, 154 See also Eros; Sins of writing Enlightenment, Jewish (Haskalah) calls for democratization of language, 219–220, 223, 224n calls for reform in curriculum, 5, 191, 203, 281 critique of Hasidic ignorance, 76, 79, 82, 84–85, 95, 111, 172 critique of traditional society, 139, 141–143, 149, 160–162, 191, 195, 202–204 and Karaism, 218–219, 219n Maskilic communities, 4, 13–14, 261–265 Maskilic library, 4n5, 5–6, 52, 78, 234, 236–237, 241–243 Maskilic model of masculinity, 236–237, 244, 265–266, 268, 309 reading Maskilic literature, 78, 140–141, 209–210, 234, 236–237, 241–243, 247–250, 277, 286, 310–311, 335 and shift from oral to writing dominance, 3–6, 8, 9, 14, 17, 76–77, 177–179, 262, 269–270, 279–285, 289–290, 294, 318, 320–323, 324–327, 342–343 and shraibers, 62–63

396

SUBJECT INDEX

relaions with Hasidic society, 12, 76, 84–85, 95, 112–119 town’s apikores, 85, 188, 244–251, 307 and transition from mother tongue to father tongue, 12–14, 178–179, 229–230, 233 See also Modern Hebrew Literature; Modernization and secularization; Rite of passage, Maskilic Eros, 14, 233–243, 246, 251, 287–289, 299–306, 312. See also Emotion, affect; Rite of passage, Maskilic: channeling of adolescent erotic energies into literacy events; Sins of writing “External” wisdoms, 140–141, 188, 205–211, 212–215, 335. See also Books: “external”, Maskilic, forbidden F Foreign languages, their teaching and writing, 49, 54, 56–58, 59–60, 61, 64, 148, 192, 251 Functionalism, 68–73, 201, 227 G Gender, 4, 8n14, 26, 34, 72, 108–111 attraction to “women’s literature” as threat to masculinity, 12, 37, 167–171, 173, 178, 230–233, 309 Biblical stories, legends as female sphere, 12, 159–160, 162–179, 230–233 effeminate men, 12, 108–111, 229, 230–233, 244, 265–266 exclusion of women, 60, 164, 178–179, 230, 265–268, 309

feminization of belles lettres, 167–174, 178–179, 230–233, 309 feminization of writing, 10, 12, 60, 168–171, 174, 179, 230–233, 309 Hebrew as men’s language, father tongue, 12, 14, 229–230, 233 and the hierarchy of corpora, 12, 157–158, 159–160, 162, 166 Maskilic model of masculinity, 236–237, 244, 265–266, 268, 309 modern Hebrew literature as masculine pursuit, 12, 14, 178–179, 230, 233, 265–268, 309 Oral Torah as men’s province, 12, 159–160, 166, 171–174 its relationship with language and nationality, 175–179, 265–268 and shift from mother tongue to father tongue, 12–14, 178–179, 229–230, 233, 243–244, 265–268 teaching writing to girls and women, 10, 43, 56, 58–63, 64, 68, 71 traditional Jewish masculinity, 110, 229, 248, 265–266 women’s “benefit of marginality”, 43, 60–61, 72, 164, 174, 177, 179 Yiddish as women’s language, mother tongue, 12, 14, 162–172, 177–179, 229, 230–233, 267–268 Genres in Agnon’s oeuvre, 337, 338n10 genre ambiguity as legitimization strategy, 270, 275–279, 285–286

SUBJECT INDEX

genre diversity, 3, 264, 293 legitimacy of, 154 Maskilic, 5–6, 260, 264–265, 275–279 traditional Jewish, 111–112, 270, 275–279, 280, 285–286, 291, 307 See also Aggadah and legends; Autobiography; Belles lettres; Hagiography; Hasidic stories/tales; H . idushei Torah (novellae); Homily; Novel; Parody; Poetry; Responsa (SHUT); Satire Grammar. See Hebrew grammar, its study H Hagiography, 83, 95n24, 335n6 Hasidic society attitude toward printing and publication, 110–119 as oral literacy culture, 11, 76– 77, 96–99, 110–112, 122, 153–154 preoccupation with issue of writing, 76–77, 79, 81, 84, 122 and sin of pride, 97, 103, 106–110 struggle and interaction with Haskalah movement, 12, 76, 84–85, 95, 112–119 unauthorized writing of teachings, 97, 100–103, 329–337 writing illiteracy among tzaddikim, 81–87 writing illiteracy in, 76–87 writing prohibitions and oral charisma in, 87–110, 113 See also Hasidic stories/tales; Tzaddik Hasidic stories/tales, 11, 15, 87, 90, 93, 98–105, 111–112, 116–117,

397

117n45, 158, 329, 336. See also Hasidic society Haskalah. See Enlightenment, Jewish (Haskalah) Hebrew grammar, its study and the dictum “And keep your sons from reason”, 161, 205–211 grammar books, 186–187, 189, 199n, 209–210, 213, 216–217, 253, 278, 279, 306 in Hasidic vs. Mitnagdic society, 196–197 intentional ignorance of, refraining from teaching of, 13, 50, 54, 64, 85, 181–193, 195–224, 281–282 as “neglect of the Torah” leading to heresy, 13, 181, 198, 202, 205, 216, 229, 238, 252, 285 its role in male Maskilic rite of passage, 13–14, 234, 237, 238–240, 243–245, 251–252, 278–279 self-teaching of, 186–188, 253, 274, 278 See also Hebrew language; Melitsa Hebrew language democratization of, 220, 223 different strata of, 146–147, 213, 280, 284–285 as father tongue, masculine language, 12, 14, 178–179, 229, 233, 265–268 intentional ignorance of, refraining from teaching of, 13, 50, 54, 64, 85, 181–193, 195–224, 281–282, 234, 260 as means of exclusion, 94–95, 196–204, 220, 265–258 rabbinic language, 195–197, 220–221, 339

398

SUBJECT INDEX

its role in male Maskilic rite of passage, 13–14, 229–230, 233, 234, 237, 238–240, 243–245, 251–252, 278–279 secularization of, 214–215, 219, 285 and status of modern Hebrew literature, 13, 178–179, 197n, 211–224, 265–268 as weapon in struggle between Haskalah and rabbinic elite, 219–224, 277 See also Hebrew grammar, its study Heder in communities outside Eastern Europe, 53–54, 64, 190, 206, 342 progressive, 42, 52–53, 238n18 refraining from systematic teaching of Hebrew and its grammar, 64, 181–184, 188–193 refraining from teaching writing in, 7, 42–43, 45, 50–55, 60, 63–73 rites of initiation into, 65–66, 130, 165 status of the Bible and its instruction, 64, 160–162, 163, 172–173, 183–184, 190, 193–195, 198–204 See also Education Hegemony and intentional ignorance of Hebrew and its grammar, 13, 182–184, 191–193, 197–204 and intentional ignorance of writing, 7, 43, 68–73 and limited study of the Bible, 13, 182–184, 190, 193–195, 197–204 literacy norms and institutions as product of, 5n7, 23, 26–27,

29, 68–73, 182–184, 189–191, 197–204 and preservation of oral literacy culture, 5–7, 118–119, 122, 134–135, 149–150, 272, 294 struggle between Maskilim and rabbinic elite over, 5–7, 14, 35, 118–119, 149–150, 191, 219–220, 324 as taken for granted rather than single proclaimed policy decision, 62, 150–151, 190, 197–198, 209, 294 See also Class stratification; Elite; Ignorance: intentional H idushei Torah (novellae), 33, 97, . 108–110, 121, 135–136, 140, 260, 276, 291, 307–308, 314, 340. See also Megilat starim (secret scroll) Homilies, 32–33, 90, 93, 111–112, 126n, 141–143, 150n, 260, 330, 332 I Ignorance of the Bible, 161–162, 184, 190, 193–195, 197–224, 240, 248 explicit justifications and implicit reasons for, 63–73, 144–155, 197–224, 305–306, 311–315, 339 and fear of innovation, 152–153, 216–217, 294 of Hebrew and its grammar, 13, 181–189, 190–193, 195–224, 234, 240, 248, 259n36, 260, 281 intentional, 13, 181–184, 189–191, 197–198 of reading in Hebrew, 47 voluntary, 81

SUBJECT INDEX

of writing, 1–2, 5n6, 30–31, 32n, 42–43, 64n, 67, 75–88, 95–96, 135–136, 182, 189, 201, 220, 269–275 See also Class stratification; Hegemony

L Legends. See Aggadah and legends Library, 34, 132–134, 234, 249–250, 263, 292 Literacy different types and their evaluation, 10, 25–27, 34–35, 36 dominant, 29, 34 literacy events, 10, 13, 28, 35–37, 49, 55, 76–77, 102, 132–133, 137, 162, 167, 226, 263, 269, 313 literacy practices, 16, 28–29, 35–36, 49, 79, 81, 122, 310 myth of universal male literacy in Jewish society, 4, 10–11, 45–49, 64, 67, 69 its prevalence in Jewish society, 10–11, 45–47, 67–68, 244 religious, 4, 9, 32–34 See also Literacy studies; Oral literacy culture and the primacy of speech over writing Literacy studies, 1–4 the “autonomous model” of literacy, 24–25, 32, 63 ethnographic approach to, 10, 13, 16, 27–28, 35–39, 77–79, 80–81, 188, 269 and literary theory, 35, 37–39 New Literacy Studies, the “ideological model” of literacy, 10, 24–27, 32–35, 36

399

M Megilat starim (secret scroll/scroll of secrets), 33, 36, 110, 111–112, 138–139, 148, 291. See also H . idushei Torah (novellae) Melitsa, 168, 211–215, 219, 221–224, 230, 237, 243, 259, 261–262, 284. See also Biblical purism; Shibuts (inlay technique) Mitnagdic society memorization as touchstone of excellence, 122, 124–126, 134 oral charisma in, 122–124, 135–136, 151–152 as oral literacy culture, 11, 121–126, 129, 144–145, 149–155 oral methods of study, 123–134 refraining from writing and publication, 149–155 struggle with Hasidism, Haskalah, and modernization, 12, 124, 129 writing practices and restrictions in yeshivas, 134–144 See also Yeshiva Modern Hebrew literature, 297–298 and Biblical purism, 146–147, 211–224. See also Melitsa; Shibuts as inspired by female cultural sphere, 174–179, 265–268 and intentional ignorance of Hebrew, 13, 181–184, 197n, 204–205, 211–224 as masculine pursuit, 12–14, 178–179, 233, 243–244, 265–268, 309 and prohibition on merging Biblical language and language of the Sages, 146–147 its readership, 184, 197n, 223–224, 277n8

400

SUBJECT INDEX

its reading and writing as part of Maskilic rite of passage, 151, 228, 230, 242–243, 252, 286–287, 302, 342–343 and shift from mother tongue to father tongue, 12–14, 178–179, 229–230, 233, 243–244, 265–268 writing inhibitions among authors of Haskalah and national revival, 15, 175, 270, 288, 294–295, 302, 305–306, 309–315, 337–342 and the writing revolution, 7, 9–10, 174–175, 177–179, 230, 279–285, 298, 302, 305, 342–343 See also Enlightenment, Jewish (Haskalah); Modernization and secularization Modernization and secularization and change in status and uses of writing, 3, 8, 10, 12, 15–16, 42, 55–56, 62–63, 65–68, 71–73, 77, 79, 118, 124, 154–155, 281, 318–320, 326–327, 329–330, 336–337, 342–343 struggle against, 12, 71–73, 77, 79, 119, 124, 154–155, 326 See also Enlightenment, Jewish (Haskalah); Modern Hebrew literature N Novel, 3, 237, 279, 308, 309 autobiographic, 161 epistolary, 117, 279n15 Hebrew, 234, 236–237, 242, 247–248, 261, 298, 310–311, 320–322 Yiddish, 170, 225, 232–233

O Oral charisma, 23–24 in Hasidic society, 11, 81–96, 112–113 in Mitnagdic society, 122–126 Oral dominance. See Oral literacy culture and the primacy of speech over writing Oral literacy culture and the primacy of speech over writing as cultural code in traditional Jewish society, 6–8, 9, 16, 33–34, 63–73, 149–155, 157–159, 314, 342–343 in the culture of H . azal (Talmudic sages), 33–34 and dictation, 75, 87–96 and the dictum “From the mouths of scholars and not from the mouth of books”, 121, 152, 326 in Hasidic society, 11, 76–77, 96–99, 100–113, 122, 153–154 in Mitnagdic society, 11, 121–126, 129, 144–145, 149–155 and oral charisma, 11, 23–24, 81–96, 96–99, 122–123 oral methods of study. See also Heder; Yeshiva dialogue and public confrontation, 11–12, 21, 65, 122–123, 126–130 noise and hubbub in yeshiva, 130–134 oral examinations, 125, 126–127 recitation with chant and movement, 65, 122, 125, 131–134, 261n40 repeater (h.ozer), 90, 125, 143

SUBJECT INDEX

repetition aloud and memorization, 11, 32–34, 65, 72, 90, 122, 124–126, 134, 143, 159, 281, 283–284 study in pairs or groups, 3, 34, 122, 127–129, 140, 158, 209, 244–245, 261, 261n40, 262–263, 281 surveillance and control by means of, 129, 134, 144, 263n44 and poetics of Hasidic stories, 90–91, 112–113 and Shibuts (inlay technique), 279–281 “reading without writing”, 1–2, 30–31, 32n, 41–42, 63–73, 76–81, 95 and the verse “[…] of making many books there is no end […]”, 127, 152 See also Literacy; Oral Charisma; Oral Torah (Oral Law) and Written Torah; Writing, its social significance and consequences: writing revolution and its consequences Oral Torah (Oral Law) and Written Torah, 7n12, 33–34, 154, 161 challenging the boundaries, overturning the hierarchy between them, 149, 150, 171–174, 177–178, 209–211, 214–219, 248–249, 252, 307–309 and the dictum “The language of the Torah for itself and the language of the Sages for itself”, 146–149 and the dictum “[…] things that are spoken – you are not allowed to say in writing”, 11, 144–146, 154

401

and the dictum “Those who write down Halakhot are like those who burn the Torah […]”, 145–146, 148 hierarchy of corpora and class stratification, 7, 12, 157–159 hierarchy of corpora and gender, 7, 12, 166, 167, 159–179 prohibition on merging Biblical language and language of the Sages, 146–147 prohibition on putting Oral Torah in writing, 7n13, 9, 17, 144–149, 307–308 study of Written Torah as threat to Oral Torah, 202–204, 209, 211, 214–219, 248–249, 252–254 superiority of the Oral Torah, 6–7, 9, 11, 12, 128–129, 157–162, 166, 167, 171–174, 200, 342 See also Oral literacy culture and the primacy of speech over writing; Talmud

P Parody, 37, 85, 95, 117–118, 141–144, 235, 323, 335–336 Periodicals, 113, 139, 140n, 230, 234, 243, 259, 263–265, 277–278, 285, 297 Poetry, 34, 143, 147, 149, 176–179, 267, 306, 307–309, 310 denunciation of, 36, 168–171, 202–203, 204–205, 214, 215, 260n38, 278, 278n14, 307, 310, 315n feminization of, 164, 167–171, 176–179, 230, 232–234 and Shibuts (inlay technique), 282, 284

402

SUBJECT INDEX

its writing as part of Maskilic rite of passage, 251, 259, 260, 263, 273–274, 277–279, 289, 292–293, 303, 307, 310 See also Melitsa Primacy of speech over writing. See Oral literacy culture and the primacy of speech over writing Printing and publication and censorship, 5, 30, 111, 223 effects on oral literacy culture, 31, 65–68, 66n22, 72–73, 93n in Hasidic society, 99–100, 108–119, 153–154 of Maskilic texts, 223, 294–295 in Mitnagdic society, 144, 153–154 as part of male Maskilic rite of passage, 13–14, 230, 257–260, 263–265, 277–278 posthumous publication, 33, 108 printing houses, 5, 108, 117n43, 157, 223, 340n14 reluctance to print and publish manuscripts, 108–116, 136, 144, 151, 153, 294–295, 341 social consequences of, 31, 65–68, 66n21, 72–73, 263 technologies and instruments of, 29–30, 223 their effects on writing, 65–68 as weapon in struggle between Haskalah and rabbinic elite, 12, 72–73, 110–119, 153–154, 223 See also Books and manuscripts R Rabbinic leadership. See Elite: rabbinic elite Reading in the bosom of nature, 34, 249–251, 261n40, 308

with chant, 65, 122, 125, 131–134, 162–167 and eros, 236–237, 241, 251, 289 in literacy studies, 1–3 mechanical, without comprehension, 11, 47, 49n, 69, 94–95, 158–159, 160, 192–193, 197, 244, 327 out loud, 3, 11, 30–31, 32, 65, 122, 127, 129–134, 142, 165, 261, 262–263, 281 with mother and grandmother, 12, 28, 160, 162–167, 176–177 in pairs and groups, 3, 31, 34, 142, 209, 261, 261n40, 262–263, 281, 287, 289, 293 as part of male Maskilic rite of passage, 236–237, 241–243, 247–248, 249–253, 259, 261–265 in private, 3, 28 reading one’s works to others, 142, 262–263, 281, 287, 289, 293 reading revolution, 2–3 “reading without writing”. See under Oral literacy culture for religious purposes, 3, 34–35, 47, 70, 132, 281 in secret, 241, 243, 245, 249–251 silent, 3, 3n, 31, 130–134 transition from religious literacy to reading modern literature, 130–134 Responsa (SHUT ), 3, 32, 60n14, 136, 151, 153, 188, 195 Rite of passage, Maskilic, 13–14 channeling of adolescent erotic energies into literacy events, 234–237, 238–240 emotional tumults of Maskilic rite of passage, 239–240, 253–257, 262, 285–288, 308

SUBJECT INDEX

(stage of) liminality, 13, 226–227, 230, 233, 235, 244–245, 246, 248, 249–250, 251–257, 262, 274, 291 literacy events as part of, 226, 227–228, 234, 240 Maskilic coming of age narrative, 233–243 and Maskilic model of masculinity, 236–237, 244, 265–266, 268 mentors, 228, 242–243, 244–251, 254, 263, 291 publishing as part of, 13–14, 230, 257–260, 263–265, 277–278 reading as part of, 236–237, 241–243, 247–248, 249–253, 259, 261–265 stage of incorporation, 245, 257–265 (stage of) separation, 13, 226, 228, 229, 233, 244, 245, 248, 249, 251, 252, 254, 263, 266, 308 study of Bible as part of, 251–252, 257–260 study of Hebrew language and grammar as part of, 13–14, 234, 237, 238–240, 243–245, 251–252, 278–279 theoretical model and its application, 226–230 writing as part of, 12–15, 251–252, 257–265 See also Enlightenment, Jewish (Haskalah) S Satire, 85, 111, 117–118, 142, 172, 202–203, 231–232 Scribes. See Writers and scribes Script, 274 Assyrian (STaM ) script, 57, 279, 316

403

cursive script, 57 Rashi script, 60n14 See also Writing, its circumstances and technologies: penmanship Secret scroll. See Megilat starim Shibuts (inlay technique), 141, 259n36, 261, 279–285 as compensation for limited mastery of Hebrew, 259n36, 281–284 as liminal and subversive, 275, 282, 285 as preserving oral literacy practices, 279–281 as strategy for legitimization of Maskilic writing, 279–280 See also Biblical purism; Melitsa Shraibers , 3, 43, 43n, 49, 50–53, 55–63, 64, 80, 271. See also Education: informal educational settings Sins of writing, 7–8, 9, 12, 14–15, 109–110, 277–278 the Hebrew idiom “to sin by writing”, 7–8 and learning how to write, 59, 270–275 sin of challenging the boundaries between sacred and profane, 14, 274–289 sin of disseminating false interpretations of oral teachings/law, 11, 20–21, 23, 97–98, 101–103, 114, 140–141, 144, 338–341 sin of eros, 287–288, 289, 300–306, 312 sin of letting valued knowledge fall into the hands of unworthy people/evil spirits, 11, 20–21, 23, 85–86, 92, 100–103, 329–337

404

SUBJECT INDEX

sin of neglecting the Torah, 58, 68, 71, 140–141, 274–275, 291–292, 321 sin of pride, foregrounding of the self, 11, 14, 97, 103–104, 105–110, 153, 174, 287–288, 294, 295–298, 299–306, 314–315, 316–318, 321, 336–341 sin of taking and giving aesthetic pleasure, 14, 15, 94, 174–175, 288, 305–306, 312, 332–333, 335–336 sin of writing not only for the sake of Heaven, 11, 15, 100–103, 107–108, 153, 329–337, 338 and sins of youth, 299–306 See also Apologetic stance on writing and printing; Emotion, affect; Eros; Writing, perceptions of and attitudes toward; Writing, restrictions and inhibitions; Writing, its social significance and consequences Speech and writing. See Oral literacy culture

T Taitsh H . umash, 53, 160, 162–163, 165, 167, 171, 193, 272. See also Bible; Tsena UR’ena Talmud effects of its study on Jewish soul, 175, 197–198 gendering of its study, 164, 166–173 Maskilic parodies of Talmudic discourse, 141–144 its memorization, 122, 124–125 representing an oral literacy culture, 33–34

(semi-)Halakhic sources of writing inhibitions, 11–12, 17, 144–149, 150, 154 study of grammar and Bible as threat to, 202–204, 209, 211, 214–219, 248–249, 252–254 its teaching in traditional education system, 56, 57, 78, 124–125, 132, 139–140, 158–159, 161, 193–195, 200, 202, 204, 209 writing in the margins of, 291, 307, 314–315, 321 See also Oral Torah (Oral Law) and Written Torah Tsena UR’ena, 28, 68n, 160, 162– 164, 168, 171, 230, 233, 260. See also Taitsh H . umash Tzaddik destruction, secreting of books and manuscripts, 91–92, 92n19, 96–98, 106n34 limited writing skills, 77, 78–79, 81–87 opposition to and refraining from writing and printing, 76–87, 96–110, 113, 329–337 and oral charisma, 11, 83–96, 112 relationship with scribe, 77, 82–84, 86–96, 108 translation of oral teachings in Yiddish to written texts in Hebrew, 86, 92–95, 116n42, 118 See also Hagiography; Hasidic society

W Writers and scribes ba’al meh.aber (lit., owner of the book), 325, 288–289

SUBJECT INDEX

constitution of writer as modern creative artist, 15, 174, 264– 265, 289, 290n30, 316–323, 324–327, 329–330, 336–342 medieval typology of writers/writing, 136–138, 293, 325, 337–338 religious scribe (sofer STaM ), 9, 32, 43, 57, 260, 288–289, 325 scribes and clerks, 10, 32, 34, 36, 43, 53, 68, 77, 78, 80–96, 108, 136, 260, 325, 337 See also Dictation Writing, its circumstances and technologies on blank sheet of paper, 14–15, 29, 269–270, 307, 315, 316–323, 324–325 in the bosom of nature, 308 on front or back page of a prayer book, 36 in a group, 139–140 in the margins of sacred canonical text, 3, 14, 29, 135, 138, 151, 152, 269, 291, 307, 314–315, 316–323 from memory, “dictating to oneself”, 36, 89–90, 136, 280–281 “passing the pen”, 11, 79–80, 82 penmanship, 43–45, 52, 56, 57, 61, 79, 136, 273, 306 in private, 28, 140, 144, 261–262, 291–292, 308, 321 in secret, 140, 270, 272, 291, 292, 321 signatures, 49, 78–80, 81, 82, 83–85, 135, 136, 273 technologies and instruments of, 29–30, 37, 49–50, 61, 65, 271–274, 308–309, 316–317, 322

405

See also Dictation; Writers and scribes Writing, perceptions of and attitudes toward and aesthetic values, 6, 44–45, 94, 107–108, 174–179, 212, 214, 335–336, 339 and conceptions of knowledge, 11, 20–21, 23–24, 65–66, 72, 92, 95, 98–100, 113, 123–124, 128, 154, 270, 317–318 as “dangerous supplement”, 23–24, 33, 62, 72n, 87–96, 112–113, 114, 115, 137, 142–144, 215–219, 325 as demonic and liminal practice, 274, 291–292, 300, 329–337 feminization of writing, 10, 12, 60, 168–171, 174, 179, 230–233, 309 leading to degeneration of memory, 11, 20–21, 24, 124–126, 134, 144, 152 legitimate and illegitimate, 36, 56, 135–140, 144, 154, 174, 259–260, 276, 291 status and images of its pupils and teachers, 55–63 as transgression, leading to heresy, 14, 23–24, 36, 59, 60, 80, 87– 88, 103, 147–149, 270–275, 285, 306, 310, 324–327 writing and its study as “neglect of the Torah”, 58, 68, 71, 140–141, 274–275, 291–292, 321 See also Sins of writing; Writing, its social significance and consequences; Writing, restrictions and inhibitions Writing, restrictions and inhibitions

406

SUBJECT INDEX

anonymous and posthumous publication, obscuring of author’s identity, 33, 108, 112–113, 294–295. See also Writers and scribes: ba’al meh.aber condemnation of unauthorized writing of teachings, 97, 100–103, 329–337 destruction, secretion of books and manuscripts, 91–92, 92n19, 96–98, 106n34 explicit opposition to study of writing, 41, 53, 59, 80, 85, 270 explicit opposition to writing and publication, 81, 97–98, 104–105, 107, 139–144, 307, 309–315, 320–322 justifications and explanations for, 16–17, 21, 32–33, 36, 45, 63–73, 87, 96–108, 134–136, 139–146, 149–155, 305–306, 311–315 and prohibition on putting Oral Torah in writing, 7n13, 9, 17, 144–149, 150, 154, 307–308 in traditional education system, 7, 10, 42–43, 45, 50–55, 60, 63–73, 133–144 reluctance to print and publish manuscripts, 108–117, 136, 144, 151, 153, 294–295, 341 voluntary avoidance of writing and publication, 33–34, 81, 81n, 85, 92, 103–108, 111–112, 151–153, 295, 329–337 writing inhibitions among authors of Haskalah and National Revival, 15, 175, 270, 288, 294–295, 302, 305–306, 309–315, 337–342

See also Apologetic stance on writing and printing; Sins of writing; Talmud: (semi-)Halakhic sources of writing inhibitions Writing skills, their prevalence in Jewish society, 10–11, 42–55, 67–69. See also Ignorance: of writing; Literacy Writing, its social significance and consequences and constitution of the subject, 6, 14–15, 28, 138, 174, 269–270, 272–273, 295–306, 316–323, 324–327 and exclusion of social groups, 43, 178, 230, 265–268, 320 as instrument of liberation, 19, 134, 154, 271–272, 308, 312, 317–318, 320–323, 324–326 as instrument of oppression, 318–320 and mechanisms of social control, 5, 7, 21, 23, 26–27, 31n, 68–73, 87–96, 108, 112, 118–119, 144, 152–155, 319–320. See also Hegemony as part of male Maskilic rite of passage, 12–15, 251–252, 257–265 as site of conflict with father/parents, 24, 41, 59, 85, 270, 271–273, 306–315, 321–322 as weapon in struggle between Haskalah and traditional society, 12, 72–73, 110–119, 153–154, 223 writing revolution and its consequences, 2–4, 6, 8, 10, 14–15, 16, 30–32, 43, 95, 118–119, 153–155, 174–175, 262, 269–270, 279–285, 289–290,

SUBJECT INDEX

293–394, 318–323, 324–327, 342–343 See also Gender; Modernization and secularization Writing, its teaching and learning in heders outside Eastern Europe, 53–54, 64, 342 first experiences of writing, 168– 169, 258–260, 262, 277–278, 291–293, 306–309, 316–317 self-teaching of, 43, 51, 53, 59 its teaching to girls and women, 10, 43, 56, 58–63, 64, 68, 71 its teaching in informal educational settings, 7, 10, 43–44, 49, 50, 55–63, 135. See also Shraibers its teaching and use in traditional education system, 7, 10, 42–43, 45, 50–55, 60, 63–73, 133–144 See also Education; Heder; Ignorance: of writing; Yeshiva Writing, its uses and functions, 9, 30–31, 36, 135–140, 327 as aid to memory, 20–21, 22, 33, 110, 135, 138, 148, 291n32, 293 as auxiliary to study, 33, 134 confessional, 6, 14, 89, 89n, 174, 262, 270, 277n9, 295–306, 316–323, 324–327 for personal use vs. for dissemination, 138–140, 144. See also

407

Megilat starim; Printing and publication secular vs. religious, 3, 9, 17, 32, 36, 43, 55–58, 59, 66n22, 67–71, 182, 214–215, 219 See also Writing, its circumstances and technologies Y Yeshiva, 7, 122–144, 194, 234–236, 250–251, 322–323. See also Education; Oral literacy culture and the primacy of speech over writing: oral methods of study Yiddish as mother tongue, 12, 14, 160, 162–172, 177–179, 229, 230–233, 267–268 reading and writing in, 46–47, 51, 53, 56, 58, 59–60, 80, 85, 160, 162–170, 178, 224, 230–233, 267–268 translation from Hebrew to Yiddish, 116n42, 117, 160, 162–164. See also Taitsh H . umash; Tsena UR’ena translation from Yiddish to Hebrew, 86, 92–95, 116n42, 118, 193 See also Novel: Yiddish novel Z Zionism and Jewish national revival, 175–179, 263, 265–268, 290