Title: Pursuing Peshat
By: Rabbi Dr. Moshe Sokolow
Kodesh Press
Back in the early 1980’s, I was the third person in the car, as Rabbi Alvin Marcus, z”l, of West Orange, N.J., drove Rav Hershel Schachter back to Washington Heights from a shiur he had delivered. Such private moments, of course, are golden opportunities to ask questions of the rosh yeshiva, and Rabbi Marcus proceeded to do so, asking, “What is Rav Schachter’s view on teaching Gemara to girls?” Without missing a beat, Rav Schachter responded, “Sure! Ruin their education like you did for the boys.”
In his daily shiur at YU, Rav Schachter has mentioned that the Maharal of Prague criticized diverging from Yehuda ben Teima’s Mishnaic prescription of introducing Mikra at age 5, Mishna at age 10 and Talmud at 15 (Avot 5:21). In his recent volume, Rav Schachter on Pirkei Avos, Rav Schachter adds some elaboration.
I remember wishing for something more definitive on the topic. Why had the learned world veered away from the plain sense of the mishna? Was there more to be found on the subject than the view of Tosafot that Talmud Bavli was “balul” (formed of a mixture containing) Mikra, Mishna, and Talmud? Were there other luminaries through history who weighed in on the topic? To comprehensively tackle the question of the place that Gemara should occupy in the curriculum of a yeshiva requires knowledge of history, Tanach, pedagogy, philology, developmental psychology, and, of course, Torah. Where can one find someone who has such credentials?
Rabbi Dr. Moshe Sokolow is such a person, and his newest book, Pursuing Peshat, tackles the subject.
In the first of the book’s three sections, Rabbi Dr. Sokolow defines what the terms Mikra, Mishna, and Talmud meant in the Mishnaic period. He takes the reader on a dazzling historical tour of all those before and after Maharal who objected to the second class status of the study of Tanach and the monopoly that Gemara held over the hours of instruction. He analyzes the rationale for elevating Tanach, as well the objections to doing so. He is able to do all this and more because he is a student of multiple disciplines, rarely combined in one individual.
And that’s just one topic in Section 1, which is devoted to theoretical questions, such as the validity of interpreting scripture and balancing original intent and exegetical originality. Section 2 deals with the pedagogical: How to teach Tanach, how to distinguish between peshat and derash, how to resolve ambiguities. Here Sokolow draws on over 40 years of teaching Tanach (and teaching the teaching of Tanach) in settings from Lincoln Square Synagogue to Yeshiva University’s Azrieli Graduate School. Finally, Section 3 focuses on implementation. Each chapter is a case study in applying the principles developed in the first two sections. How do you reconcile different sources regarding the invasion of Sennacherib or different interpretations of the character of Nimrod? Was Rebecca really 3 years old when she married Isaac? And, in that fateful encounter between Samuel and Saul in I Sam. 15, who tore whose garment? How do you approach such questions, and how do you teach students to untangle them?
If those last questions sound as if they are straight from the notebook of Nechama Leibowitz, that’s because Sokolow studied under Nechama for several years. Unlike most of her students, who suffice with repeating her interpretations, Sokolow built on her methodology and the result was his “Studies in the Weekly Parasha Based on the Lessons of Nechama Leibowitz” (Urim, 2008). Whether his mentor was Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik or Rav Yoel Bin Nun, Prof. Sokolow is the student that not only relays the Torah of his teachers, but struggles to define its methodology and apply it further. Little wonder that his current volume received the imprimatur of Herzog College and the 929 Tanakh Project, as well as Kodesh Press.
At this point, you may be thinking that such a carefully organized work needs to be read in order. Indeed that would be one rewarding way of absorbing its contents, but it is not the only way. Another way is to simply view it as an omnibus, a treasury of essays written by an erudite author and engaging teacher over the course of a long and rich career. Indeed, this is one of several recent volumes with which the author is cementing his considerable legacy. Simply scanning the table of contents and choosing a topic that you’ve always wondered about is another pleasurable way of approaching the wealth of content.
One of the greatest delights we experience reading truly talented scholars is the shower of sparks that cascade in our own minds, supporting or challenging the points made by the author. I will take one brief gem of a chapter and try to illustrate how it had that effect on me. Part 3 contains a chapter that uses the leitwort or milah mancha literary technique (which involves repetition) to explain the numerous forms of the word panim in the Jacob-Ish-Esau narrative. Sokolow’s opening focus is on Gen. 32:21: “Ki amar achapera fanav ba-mincha ha-holechet lifanai, v’acharei chen er’eh fanav, ulai yisa fanai,” which contains four instances of the term. He presents five translations (channeling his inner Nechama, as she often compared translations), and points out that none are sensitive to the wordplay that is going on elsewhere in the story, citing five other instances, ranging from seeing Laban’s disenchantment with him to meeting and wrestling with the Ish, to dispatching the gift of animals to Esau and conversing with him. Each uses a form of panim.
Sokolow shows that panim can be literal – Jacob could see disaffection on Laban’s face (p’nei Lavan); and also figurative – Esau’s gift passed before Jacob, under his supervision: al panav. He then uses both senses in explaining the occurrences in 32:21: achapera fanav (figurative for seeking forgiveness) – I will cover his face, meaning that my gift will cover Esau’s face so that he doesn’t see my offense in taking the blessing and birthright. This interpretation is based on the k-p-r root elsewhere, meaning to cover, as in the pitch (kofer) that covered Noah’s ark, the kapporet that covered the Holy Ark, and even Yom Ha-Kippurim. (I wonder whether Sokolow would also connect it to the thousand pieces of silver that Avimelech gave Abraham for having abducted his wife Sarah, saying “Behold it is for you a covering of the eyes.”)
Ulai yisa fanai – perhaps he will lift my face (figurative for showing favor). This meaning is found in the Birkat Kohanim: Yisa Hashem panav elecha. Similarly, it says elsewhere “lo tissa panim ba-mishpat.” (Here Sokolow quotes as his prooftext Deut. 10:17, which actually reads “asher lo yisa fanim.” Perhaps he really meant Lev. 19:15 which reads “lo tissa f’nei dal.”)
Ba-minha ha-holekhet l’fanai – (literal) through the offering that goes before me.
V’aharei chen er’eh fanav – (literal) after which I will see on Esau’s face whether he truly forgives me (as I read the negative emotions on Laban’s face). Sokolow later connects this understanding to the translation of I have seen your face as one sees the face of an angel.
At the end of the chapter, Sokolow cites the translation of Everett Fox, who is the only translator to retain the term face in each of the references. Wow! That comparison of translations alone is worth the price of admission.
This is where every reviewer must find something to criticize about a book, or be accused of being merely a cheerleader. Well, OK. Here are two items, one a quibble and the other a wish. Sokolow writes like a professor. There is a good reason for that: He is a professor. Moreover, many of his chapters were originally published in publications for the cognoscenti. Nevertheless, some educated but non-expert readers could be put off by the constant classification and defining of categories with which experts would be much more at ease. He uses terms that require a dictionary to parse (e.g. gratuitous encomium).
Second, it’s interesting that Rav Yoel Bin Nun makes it into the bibliography and text, and Prof. Yoni Grossman is quoted in a footnote, but the rest of the current leading lights in Tanach, like Rav Yaakov Medan, Rav Amnon Bazak, Rav Menachem Leibtag, Rav Chaim Navon, and others don’t make the cut. Of course, this gap (shall I say lacuna?) can be attributed to the volume being comprised mainly of older essays and stressing the author’s unique contribution.
But that leads to my wish: There are few, if any, experts more qualified than Rabbi Dr. Moshe Sokolow to compare and contrast the approaches of the latest school of literary analytical exegetes (should I say interpreters?) of Tanach. For his next book, may it come soon, I’d like to register my personal request for such an analysis. Indeed, then my encomiums for the author will be anything but gratuitous.
