Communities
Aug. 15th, 2010 05:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livI really ought to write up this summer's Jewish learning stuff before it all falls out of my mind. I started on doing another blog-style version, but the program I was using crashed repeatedly and reverted to a two-hour old save, and on reflection I think that doing it as a blog conversation wouldn't actually clarify all that much. I mentioned before that there was an emerging theme of community and its boundaries, which is really pertinent and worth talking about. Obviously you're free to skip over this if you find intricate Jewish discussions uninteresting!
When I booked, the organizers sent me a questionnaire to assess my level of Talmud knowledge; based on my time at Yeshiva last year, I said I was probably on the borderline between Intermediate and Advanced, and I was rather pleased to be placed in the Advanced class. There were a few in the class who are way ahead of me, having spent a year or more in yeshiva rather than just a month, but most were at about my level, and I could keep up though it sometimes required really stretching my brain, so I think this was the right decision. Anyway, the Advanced class was taught by R Weiner, who is a really fantastic scholar and teacher.
He decided to teach on the topic of minyan, or quorum of ten needed for certain important aspects of liturgy. This is a fairly controversial issue in some parts of the Jewish world at the moment, mainly because of the question of whether ten means ten men or ten people. R Weiner referred to this controversy but didn't really dwell on it; instead, he taught Talmud the really traditional way, along with some rabbinic sources showing how these principles played out in Jewish history.
There's pretty much only one Mishnaic source for the idea of a group of ten being special, namely Megillah Ch 4 Mishnah 3, which says:
So, first the Gemara asks (Megillah 23B) where does this number ten come from? R Yochanan cites the Biblical verse:
OK, that's typical twisted Talmudic logic, right? The thing that's surprising about it is that both the examples given to justify needing a quorum of ten for important religious ceremonies are of wicked people! If you read the continuation of the verses, not directly cited in Talmud but the audience would have been expected to be familiar with the Bible, you find that the first congregation were to be destroyed as punishment for their rebellion, and the second congregation is a
Now R Weiner jumped to another part of Talmud, namely the Mishnah from Berachot Ch7. Mishnah 1 talks about a bunch of stuff, but importantly defines the concept of "invitation to say grace after meals", stating:
Now here's a great chance for the Gemara (Berachot 47B - 48A) to discuss what exactly the boundary is between person and not-person. This is relevant to the earlier topic, note, because a minyan requires ten people, so we need to know exactly what the definition of person is. And also because, well, the list of things that you need ten people for includes "inviting eachother to make grace after meals using God's name". So understanding the edge cases about whether we have two people or three will help to understand the edge cases for whether we have nine people or ten. And indeed the Gemara proceeds to discuss these two questions more or less indiscriminately, without making it extremely clear which of the situations it's talking about, leading to much confusion for later scholars.
Let me try to clarify the edge cases, because they don't seem very intuitive to a modern person. First of all, a slave. A slave is by definition not a Jew, because the Bible forbids enslaving Jews (sort of, it's a little more complicated than that). However, a slave automatically acquires Jewish status when freed. So, a slave can readily cross the boundary between non-Jew and Jew, in other words the boundary between not counting and counting. A child is only partially a person, but given time will turn into a full person. Thus much of the discussion is taken up with deciding exactly when that transition takes place, what is the borderline between "child" and "adult". A woman is sort of partially a person; in some circumstances she is definitely a full person, and in other circumstances not quite, but her status doesn't (in most normal circumstances) change. So in women's case, the discussion turns on exactly how far women do or don't count as people. This part of the discussion mostly shows up in later commentaries, because for the Talmud, women are the easy case, as there is no possibility of status change.
R Yossi says: even a child still in the cradle can be included in the invitation. This is really surprising, given that it seems to explicitly contradict the Mishnah which firmly states minors are not included! R Yossi was following the opinion of R Yehoshua b Levi, who ruled that a child still in the cradle was not exactly included in the invitation, but could be counted as a branch of the ten. Later commentators generally interpret this to mean that an infant can be the tenth needed for a minyan if you have nine full adults.
R Yehoshua b Levi also ruled that nine full people plus a slave is sufficient. This seems to contradict a story of the Mishnaic authority R Eliezer who once went into a synagogue and did not find ten people. So he freed his slave to make the count up to ten. Surely the fact that he needed to free the slave means that nine full Jews plus one slave wasn't enough to make a minyan! However R Yehoshua b Levi interpreted the story to mean that the group was missing two (ie there were seven people present, plus R Eliezer himself, plus two slaves). So R Eliezer, in this version of the story, freed one of the slaves and retained the other, leaving a total of nine full Jews plus one slave, and this was enough for the minyan. [Here I skip some discussion of the laws pertaining to freeing slaves.] R Yehoshua b Levi said that people should always show up to synagogue early, so that they get the merit of counting in the minyan; indeed, even if a hundred latecomers show up, the person who arrived on time gets the merit of all of them. [Skip discussion of whether he meant this literally or hyperbolically.]
Rav Huna declared: nine people plus the Ark (where the Torah scrolls are stored) is sufficient. Rav Nachman protested: are you calling the Ark a person?! In fact Rav Huna was really saying that nine people are sufficient if they look somewhat like ten. Some people say this refers to the case where the nine people are spread out, and some the case where the nine people are bunched together.
Similarly Rav Ami declared: two people plus Shabbat is sufficient. Rav Nachman protested again: are you calling Shabbat a person?! In fact Rav Ami was really talking about two learned scholars having an intense debate about halacha being sufficient. Rav Chisda and Rav Sheshet said that they made enough noise for three people when they learned together!
Rabbi Yochanan ruled that you can include a physically mature minor in the invitation. He cites a midrashic text:
Anyway, says the Gemara, the halacha doesn't follow any of these opinions. Instead, we follow the view of Rav Nachman, who rules: if a minor understands to whom we address the blessing, we include him in the invitation. Here's a story about that sign of intellectual maturity: Abbaye and Rava were sitting before Rabba. Rabba asked them: to whom do we address blessings? They answered: to the All-Merciful. Rabba asked them, and where does the All-Merciful sit? Rava pointed upwards, while Abbaye went outside and pointed to the sky. Rabba declared that both boys would be sages one day, quoting the proverb
Now we have a big mess, really, because apart from anything else, it's totally non-transparent what the Gemara means by "any of these opinions"! The later commentators had a lot of head-breaking arguments about which opinions exactly were rejected – the whole discussion, or just R Yochanan's view, or a subset of the opinions discussed in this bit of Gemara, or what? It's also a problem, as I mentioned, to decide what inferences the Gemara wants you to make between a group of three needed for the invitation for grace, and a group of ten needed for especially holy ceremonies. I think I'll stop here, though, cos this post is already long and complicated enough, and I should probably get some food before I start delving into Tosafot.
I just wanted to note down R Weiner's central lesson, which is that this Talmudic discussion indicates a clash between two traditions: the Palestinian tradition which says that the idea of a quorum is about holiness, and the Babylonian tradition which says that the idea of a quorum is about having a community, ie having the right number of people. The later editors tried to make the two conflicting views consistent, and left us with a slightly confusing argument, because the underlying assumptions don't really match. So, R Yochanan, based in Yavneh in Palestine after the destruction of the Temple, says that it's all about matters to do with holiness. The people who tried to count the Ark or Shabbat thought that you could make up for a slight deficiency in numbers by adding more holiness. The Babylonian school, whose views eventually became authoritative for post-Talmudic Judaism, tried to reconcile these opinions with their idea about numbers of people by explaining this as a group that looks bigger than it is. That is, if there's a slight deficiency in numbers, you can make it up by making a lot of noise, or by spreading out so that the room looks more crowded. This is why the Babylonian Talmud gives proof texts about the worst groups of ten people they could think of; it doesn't matter how holy or otherwise the people are, as long as the numbers are right!
Now, the Palestinian customs tended to persist in Northern Europe, the demographic that eventually became the Ashkenazim, because this region was mostly populated by the spread of the Roman empire. So rabbinic leaders would follow the Babylonian view, as the Babylonian Talmud because the ultimate authority. However, they were always having to criticize their ignorant communities for continuing to follow Palestinian customs like including holy books in their quorum, which looks like superstition if you don't know about the Palestinian based understanding of what a minyan is.
When I booked, the organizers sent me a questionnaire to assess my level of Talmud knowledge; based on my time at Yeshiva last year, I said I was probably on the borderline between Intermediate and Advanced, and I was rather pleased to be placed in the Advanced class. There were a few in the class who are way ahead of me, having spent a year or more in yeshiva rather than just a month, but most were at about my level, and I could keep up though it sometimes required really stretching my brain, so I think this was the right decision. Anyway, the Advanced class was taught by R Weiner, who is a really fantastic scholar and teacher.
He decided to teach on the topic of minyan, or quorum of ten needed for certain important aspects of liturgy. This is a fairly controversial issue in some parts of the Jewish world at the moment, mainly because of the question of whether ten means ten men or ten people. R Weiner referred to this controversy but didn't really dwell on it; instead, he taught Talmud the really traditional way, along with some rabbinic sources showing how these principles played out in Jewish history.
There's pretty much only one Mishnaic source for the idea of a group of ten being special, namely Megillah Ch 4 Mishnah 3, which says:
One may not:There's also a version of this in the Tosefta, a collection of Mishnaic-era material which didn't make it into the final edition of the Mishnah:with fewer than ten. For [the ceremony of remitting to the Temple the value of dedicated] real estate, there must be nine plus the priest, and likewise for the value of a person.
- Recite the Shema with public responses
- Pass before the Ark [to recite the public repetition of the Amidah prayer]
- Perform the ceremony where [the Cohanim] lift their hands
- Perform a public Torah reading
- Perform a public reading of the Haftarah from the Prophets
- [Perform the mourning custom of] rising and sitting
- Recite the blessing of the mourners or the formal consolations of the mourners
- Recite the blessing of the groom
- Invite eachother [to make grace after meals] using God's name
One may not perform [the mourning custom of] rising and sitting with fewer than ten, and one may not rise and site fewer than seven times. One may not recite the blessing of the mourners with fewer than ten, and the mourners themselves don't count in the minyan. One may not recite the grooms' blessing with fewer than ten, and the grooms themselves do count in the minyan. One recites the grooms' blessing both at a feast celebrating a betrothal, and at a feast celebrating the completion of the marriage, both on weekdays and on Shabbat. R Yehudah says that if new faces arrive, one recites the grooms' blessing, and if not, one does not recite the grooms' blessing
So, first the Gemara asks (Megillah 23B) where does this number ten come from? R Yochanan cites the Biblical verse:
And I shall be sanctified amongst the children of Israel(Leviticus 22:32) and concludes that:
All matters to do with holiness must not take place with fewer than ten. His pupil, R Hiyya, clarifies that he was using a technique where you compare two verses that use the same word to derive the meaning of the word. The word amongst appears in the context of Numbers 16:21:
Separate yourselves from amongst this congregation...This means that amongst refers to a congregation. And there's another verse that uses the term congregation, namely Numbers 14:27:
How long shall this congregation.... The congregation in the second case was ten people, namely the ten spies who brought back a bad report of the Promised Land to Moses and the children of Israel, so the congregation in the first case (the followers of the rebel Korach whom God destroyed) must have been ten people. So when God is sanctified amongst the children of Israel, this means that God is only sanctified when a congregation, namely ten people, is present.
OK, that's typical twisted Talmudic logic, right? The thing that's surprising about it is that both the examples given to justify needing a quorum of ten for important religious ceremonies are of wicked people! If you read the continuation of the verses, not directly cited in Talmud but the audience would have been expected to be familiar with the Bible, you find that the first congregation were to be destroyed as punishment for their rebellion, and the second congregation is a
congregation of evilwhich complains about God and Moses.
Now R Weiner jumped to another part of Talmud, namely the Mishnah from Berachot Ch7. Mishnah 1 talks about a bunch of stuff, but importantly defines the concept of "invitation to say grace after meals", stating:
If three dine together as a single group, they are obliged to invite eachother.It describes what kind of food constitutes a meal, and notes that for the three needed for an invitation you can count a Samaritan (whose Jewish status is doubtful because Samaritans performed conversions in a way that wasn't acceptable to the mainstream), but not a definite non-Jew. Mishnah 2 then says definitively:
Women, slaves and minors: one does not include them in the invitation.This is a little surprising because earlier, Ch 3 mishnah 3, the Mishnah states that:
Women, slaves and minors are exempt from the recitation of the Shema and from laying Tefillin. They are obligated in prayer and in Mezuzah and in grace after meals.You might have thought that if these not-quite-people are obligated to make grace after meals, you'd include them in the invitation to do so, but apparently not.
Now here's a great chance for the Gemara (Berachot 47B - 48A) to discuss what exactly the boundary is between person and not-person. This is relevant to the earlier topic, note, because a minyan requires ten people, so we need to know exactly what the definition of person is. And also because, well, the list of things that you need ten people for includes "inviting eachother to make grace after meals using God's name". So understanding the edge cases about whether we have two people or three will help to understand the edge cases for whether we have nine people or ten. And indeed the Gemara proceeds to discuss these two questions more or less indiscriminately, without making it extremely clear which of the situations it's talking about, leading to much confusion for later scholars.
Let me try to clarify the edge cases, because they don't seem very intuitive to a modern person. First of all, a slave. A slave is by definition not a Jew, because the Bible forbids enslaving Jews (sort of, it's a little more complicated than that). However, a slave automatically acquires Jewish status when freed. So, a slave can readily cross the boundary between non-Jew and Jew, in other words the boundary between not counting and counting. A child is only partially a person, but given time will turn into a full person. Thus much of the discussion is taken up with deciding exactly when that transition takes place, what is the borderline between "child" and "adult". A woman is sort of partially a person; in some circumstances she is definitely a full person, and in other circumstances not quite, but her status doesn't (in most normal circumstances) change. So in women's case, the discussion turns on exactly how far women do or don't count as people. This part of the discussion mostly shows up in later commentaries, because for the Talmud, women are the easy case, as there is no possibility of status change.
R Yossi says: even a child still in the cradle can be included in the invitation. This is really surprising, given that it seems to explicitly contradict the Mishnah which firmly states minors are not included! R Yossi was following the opinion of R Yehoshua b Levi, who ruled that a child still in the cradle was not exactly included in the invitation, but could be counted as a branch of the ten. Later commentators generally interpret this to mean that an infant can be the tenth needed for a minyan if you have nine full adults.
R Yehoshua b Levi also ruled that nine full people plus a slave is sufficient. This seems to contradict a story of the Mishnaic authority R Eliezer who once went into a synagogue and did not find ten people. So he freed his slave to make the count up to ten. Surely the fact that he needed to free the slave means that nine full Jews plus one slave wasn't enough to make a minyan! However R Yehoshua b Levi interpreted the story to mean that the group was missing two (ie there were seven people present, plus R Eliezer himself, plus two slaves). So R Eliezer, in this version of the story, freed one of the slaves and retained the other, leaving a total of nine full Jews plus one slave, and this was enough for the minyan. [Here I skip some discussion of the laws pertaining to freeing slaves.] R Yehoshua b Levi said that people should always show up to synagogue early, so that they get the merit of counting in the minyan; indeed, even if a hundred latecomers show up, the person who arrived on time gets the merit of all of them. [Skip discussion of whether he meant this literally or hyperbolically.]
Rav Huna declared: nine people plus the Ark (where the Torah scrolls are stored) is sufficient. Rav Nachman protested: are you calling the Ark a person?! In fact Rav Huna was really saying that nine people are sufficient if they look somewhat like ten. Some people say this refers to the case where the nine people are spread out, and some the case where the nine people are bunched together.
Similarly Rav Ami declared: two people plus Shabbat is sufficient. Rav Nachman protested again: are you calling Shabbat a person?! In fact Rav Ami was really talking about two learned scholars having an intense debate about halacha being sufficient. Rav Chisda and Rav Sheshet said that they made enough noise for three people when they learned together!
Rabbi Yochanan ruled that you can include a physically mature minor in the invitation. He cites a midrashic text:
A minor who has grown two pubic hairs can be included in the invitation, and one who has not grown two pubic hairs can not be included in the invitation, but we do not enquire too closely about a minor.This seems to be a bit of a problem; if the difference in status depends on how many pubic hairs the kid has, how can you know that if you're not supposed to enquire too closely? No, the point is that if the kid is physically mature, you don't enquire too closely when his actual birthday is.
Anyway, says the Gemara, the halacha doesn't follow any of these opinions. Instead, we follow the view of Rav Nachman, who rules: if a minor understands to whom we address the blessing, we include him in the invitation. Here's a story about that sign of intellectual maturity: Abbaye and Rava were sitting before Rabba. Rabba asked them: to whom do we address blessings? They answered: to the All-Merciful. Rabba asked them, and where does the All-Merciful sit? Rava pointed upwards, while Abbaye went outside and pointed to the sky. Rabba declared that both boys would be sages one day, quoting the proverb
You can recognize a pumpkin from its stalk.
Now we have a big mess, really, because apart from anything else, it's totally non-transparent what the Gemara means by "any of these opinions"! The later commentators had a lot of head-breaking arguments about which opinions exactly were rejected – the whole discussion, or just R Yochanan's view, or a subset of the opinions discussed in this bit of Gemara, or what? It's also a problem, as I mentioned, to decide what inferences the Gemara wants you to make between a group of three needed for the invitation for grace, and a group of ten needed for especially holy ceremonies. I think I'll stop here, though, cos this post is already long and complicated enough, and I should probably get some food before I start delving into Tosafot.
I just wanted to note down R Weiner's central lesson, which is that this Talmudic discussion indicates a clash between two traditions: the Palestinian tradition which says that the idea of a quorum is about holiness, and the Babylonian tradition which says that the idea of a quorum is about having a community, ie having the right number of people. The later editors tried to make the two conflicting views consistent, and left us with a slightly confusing argument, because the underlying assumptions don't really match. So, R Yochanan, based in Yavneh in Palestine after the destruction of the Temple, says that it's all about matters to do with holiness. The people who tried to count the Ark or Shabbat thought that you could make up for a slight deficiency in numbers by adding more holiness. The Babylonian school, whose views eventually became authoritative for post-Talmudic Judaism, tried to reconcile these opinions with their idea about numbers of people by explaining this as a group that looks bigger than it is. That is, if there's a slight deficiency in numbers, you can make it up by making a lot of noise, or by spreading out so that the room looks more crowded. This is why the Babylonian Talmud gives proof texts about the worst groups of ten people they could think of; it doesn't matter how holy or otherwise the people are, as long as the numbers are right!
Now, the Palestinian customs tended to persist in Northern Europe, the demographic that eventually became the Ashkenazim, because this region was mostly populated by the spread of the Roman empire. So rabbinic leaders would follow the Babylonian view, as the Babylonian Talmud because the ultimate authority. However, they were always having to criticize their ignorant communities for continuing to follow Palestinian customs like including holy books in their quorum, which looks like superstition if you don't know about the Palestinian based understanding of what a minyan is.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-15 11:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-17 12:39 am (UTC)