Category Archives: Judaica

The following post contains my notes on Jacob Neusner’s Epilogue (called Chapter 15, Before and After) to his book The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999). The former installments are: Introduction and Chapter 1, Chapters 2 and 3, Chapters 4 and 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, and Chapter 14.

He begins the epilogue with:

The theology of the Oral Torah in its union with the Written Torah, on the one side, and with the liturgy of synagogue and home life, on the other, defines Judaism’s world view, the details in context of its way of life, its explanation of what, and who, is Israel. In their distinctive language and idiom, which in no way copied the language and reproduced the modes of discourse of Scripture, the sages of the Oral Torah retold the story of the Written Torah. The liturgy of the synagogue and home, for its part, would rework modes of thought characteristic of the sages of the Oral Torah and re-frame clusters of categories that sages had formed to make their statement. That is why anyone who wishes to describe the principal characteristics of the religious world view of that Judaism, in proportion and balance, will find the prescription here (p. 641).

As proclaimed by the sages, the Oral Torah is the complement to the Written Torah, the two together providing the whole teaching of Moses. This situaties Oral Torah in the center of the continuum running from Written Tora to Judaism’s prayer life in synagogue and home. This is not solely a chronological but also a theological continuum. The Written Torah preceded the writing of the documents of the Oral Torah, which was later succeeded by the finalization of the liturgy for synagogue and home. Such is the history of the documents. But Oral Torah is also theologically central, occupying the position of mediation between Written Torah and liturgy. The Oral Torah is central, providing the interpretation of the Written Torah and the foundation of Jewish prayer life. Does the Oral Torah accurately represent the Written Torah? Does the Oral Torah really represent the foundation of liturgy and prayer in Judaism? It’s known that early Christian writers disagreed with the sages’ interpretation of Scripture during the centuries that the documents of the Oral Torah were being produced. Also, there is little of the eventually established synagogue liturgy and prayer documented in the Oral Torah (pp 642-643).

Continue reading “Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, Epilogue”

The following post contains my notes on Jacob Neusner’s The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), Part IV, Restoring World Order, Chapter 14, Restoring the Public Order: The World to Come. The former installments are: Introduction and Chapter 1, Chapters 2 and 3, Chapters 4 and 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, and Chapter 13. This Chapter 14, on the World to Come, is the last chapter proper in Neusner’s book. There follows an Epilogue, on which I will also prepare notes. I will also be posting some reflections on the book as a whole, showing its value as an introduction to the thought of the sages as found in the Oral Torah.

Neusner begins (p. 599):

For us it is not easy to imagine a thought-world in which patterns, rather than sequences of events treated as cause and effect, are asked to organize experience. Yet the theology of the Oral Torah sets forth a thought world in which what is at stake are not beginnings and endings in an ordinal or (other) temporal sense. At issue, rather, are balances and proportions, the match of this to that, start to finish, Eden and world to come. True, that mode of thought is not commonplace outside the rule-seeking sciences of nature and society. These worlds of intellect do not tell the teleologically framed story of a molecule or the history of a law of economics but seek to formulate in abstract terms the concrete facts of molecules and enduring rules of economics that describe secular facts whatever the temporal context. But, I think it is now clear, that is precisely how the sages think, which is to say, in the manner of the natural philosophers of antiquity in general, as I pointed out in chapter 1. And they have in mind, as I said, paradigms of relationship.

This philosophy and worldview of the sages can also be taken to explain precisely why we find relatively little narrative in the documents of the Oral Torah, and no large scale histories (whether primary or secondary) of the sort produced by their contemporaries in Christian circles. God’s justice in the world is expressed in balance, as we have learned, and as the primary goal of the Oral Torah itself is the expression of and effecting of God’s justice in the world in Israel, and not focusing on the imbalances abounding in history, the theoretically rigorous systematization of themes coheres and we are presented not with an outline of history, from Eden to the world to come, bu the demonstration of their philosophy of God’s justice. The temporal aspect is secondary. As the world to come is a nececcary component of God’s justice, it is discussed, not because of an apocalyptic interest in eschatology, or a tidying-up of history. For the sages, history itself is irrelevant in the Oral Torah—there is only justice.

Continue reading “Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, Chapter 14”

Please forgive my tardiness in posting this installment of my notes on Jacob Neusner’s The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999). Over the past two weeks, various distractions made it difficult for me to find the time and effect the concentration necessary to continue properly, but continue we now do, with, Part IV, Restoring World Order, Chapter 13, Restoring Private Lives: Resurrection. The former installments are: Introduction and Chapter 1, Chapters 2 and 3, Chapters 4 and 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, and Chapter 12. After this installment, there are still two chapters left.

Neusner begins:

Throughout the Oral Torah the main point of the theological eschatology–the theory of last things–registers both negatively and affirmatively. Death does not mark the end of the individual human life, nor exile the last stop in the journey of holy Israel. Israelites will live in the age or the world to come, all Israel in the Land of Israel; and Israel will comprehend all who know the one true God. The restoration of world order that completes the demonstration of God’s justice encompasses both private life and the domain of all Israel. For both, restorationist theology provides eternal life; to be Israel means to live. So far as the individual is concerned, beyond the grave, at a determinate moment, man rises from the grave in resurrection, is judged, and enjoys the world to come. For the entirety of Israel, congruently: all Israel participates in the resurrection, which takes place in the Land of Israel, and enters the world to come. (p. 554)

When Neusner says “the main point . . . registers both negatively and affirmatively,” he describes the eschatology of the Oral Torah as found in the complexity of the documents themselves, which describe both a temporary and disordered present world (“…negatively…”) and an eternal, changeless, ordered world to come (“…affirmatively…”). Like the commandments themselves, negative and positive, which together describe a way of life for Israel, so the congerie of negative and affirmative expositions of the Oral Torah’s theological eschatology presents a coherent whole.

With Neusner’s writing, “…to be Israel means to live…,” we are reminded of the Two Ways, the way of life and the way of death (Deuteronomy 30.15,19; Jeremiah 21.8; Didache 1.1). The difference between the two is as stark as can be. A life lived full of live-giving acts in God’s mercy leads only to eternal life. A life of idolatry, the rejection of God and His life-giving ways and His mercy, leads only to eternal death. Israel lives because God has given Israel the secret to life: Torah.

Continue reading “Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, Chapter 13”

At long last (forgive my recent distractions), the following are my notes on Jacob Neusner’s The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), Part IV, Restoring World Order, Chapter 12, Repentance. The former installments, by chapter, are: Introduction and Chapter 1, Chapters 2 and 3, Chapters 4 and 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, and Chapter 11. After this installment, there are three chapters left.

Neusner begins this chapter (p. 511):

The logic of repentance is simple and familiar. It is a logic that appeals to the balance and proportion of all things. If sin is what introduces rebellion and change, and the will of man is what constitutes the variable in disrupting creation, then the theology of the Oral Torah makes provision for restoration through the free exercise of man’s will. That requires an attitude of remorse, a resolve not to repeat the act of rebellion, and a good-faith effort at reparation, in all, transformation from rebellion against to obedience to God’s will. So with repentance we come once more to an exact application of the principle of measure for measure, here, will for will, each comparable to, corresponding with, the other. World order, disrupted by an act of will, regains perfection through an act of will that complements and corresponds to the initial, rebellious one. That is realized in an act of wilful repentance (Hebrew: teshubah).

Notice here something that has been occurring consistently throughout Neusner’s book: each chapter requires the previous chapters, and builds upon them. Neusner’s experience in working with the systematized documents of the Oral Torah finds expression in this exceedingly skillful organization of his presentation.

Repentance is not just apology, but also an act of intention, involving a change in one’s will, a determination to make a return (teshubah) from disobedience to obedience, from arrogance to humility. This, in conjunction with atonement, brings about reconciliation with God. In this changed attitude, repentance is then expressed by not repeating a sin when again confronted by the opportunity (pp 511-512).

As seen earlier, God’s mercy vastly outweighs His justice. A sin is punished measure for measure, but repentance is rewarded out of all proportion. Partly, this is because the act of will involved in repentance affects an unlimited number of sins that will no longer be committed; while each sin is a single act of rebellion, repenting of so much potential rebellion is rewarded. But it is God’s mercy that rewards the humble out of all proportion even in regards to that. As Neusner says, “[R]epentance makes sense, in its remarkable power, only in the context of God’s mercy” (p. 514). Man’s will is to be shaped by God’s own attitude of mercy, having benefitted from it. It is when we show mercy toward one another that God shows mercy toward us (pp 514-515).

Continue reading “Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapter 12”

Following are my notes for Chapter 11, Sin, of Part III, Sources of World Disorder, of Jacob Neusner’s The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999). The former installments, by chapter, are: Introduction and Chapter 1, Chapters 2 and 3, Chapters 4 and 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, and Chapter 10.

I’ll begin with Neusner’s own words:

That the theology of the Oral Torah spins out a simple but encompassing logic makes the character of its treatment of sin entirely predictable. First, the system must account for imperfection in the world order of justice; sin supplies the reason. Second, it must explain how God remains omnipotent even in the face of imperfection. The cause of sin, man’s free will corresponding to God’s, tells why. Third, it must allow for systemic remission. Sin is so defined as to accomodate the possibility of regeneration and restoration. And, finally, sin must be so presented as to fit into the story of the creation of the perfect world. It is.

Defined in the model of the first sin, the one committed by man in Eden, sin is an act of rebellion against God. Rebellion takes two forms. As a gesture of omission, sin embodies the failure to carry out one’s obligation to God set forth in the Torah. As one of commission, it constitutes an act of defiance. In both cases sin comes about by reason of man’s intentionality to reject the will of God, set forth in the Torah. However accomplished, whether through omission or commission, an act becomes sinful because of the attitude that accompanies it. That is why man is responsible for sin, answerable to God in particular, who may be said to take the matter personally, just as it is meant. The consequence of sin is death for the individual, exile and estrangement for holy Israel, and disruption for the world. That is why sin accounts for much of the flaw of creation. (pp 457-458)

With sin being an act of rebellion against God, a public sin is seen as blaspheming God’s name (Bavli Qiddushin 1:10 I.10/40a). In sin, God and man meet, and the order of the world is affected. Through sin, man’s will upsets God’s plan for creation. This imperfection, itself a result of sin through man’s expression of his free will, which latter is part of the image of God in man, is thus an expression of God’s justice. That is, the presence of free will itself expresses, even in wrong choices and their results, the love and justice of the Creator who endowed man with that image of Himself. And, like the use of free will resulting in the earlier-described zekhut, free will can also choose repentance, and thereby benefit from God’s mercy. (pp 458-459).

Continue reading “Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapter 11”

Here are links to previous installments in my series of notes on Jacob Neusner’s The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999):
Introduction and Chapter 1, Chapters 2 and 3, Chapters 4 and 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, and Chapter 9.

This entry covers Chapter 10, Intentionality, of Part III, Sources of World Disorder, beginning with a quote to set the tone of the chapter, looking both backward and forward, to previous chapters and those yet to come:

The theology of the Oral Torah now realizes in its fullness the theological anthropology set forth in the relationships of complementarity and correspondence. Here that theology explains who is man. Complementary with God in some ways, corresponding in others, man bears a single trait that most accords with the likeness of God: it is his possession of free will and the power of the free exercise thereof. In his act of will God makes just rules, and in his, man wilfully breaks them. (p. 411)

The same freedom of will that allows God to choose to create and advocate for, through Torah, a perfect world, is the same agent of man’s creation of an imperfect world. The intent of God is overthrown by man’s choices. The perfect world of God’s justice as created, the embodiment of love in every respect, requires that man possess a free will. God’s commandments offer to man the way to maintain and thus harvest the fruits of that perfect world, but man may also disobey, and has, suffering the entirely just consequences.

Continue reading “Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapter 10”

These are the previous installments in this series of notes on Jacob Neusner’s The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999):
Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah (introduction and chapter 1)
Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapters 2 and 3
Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapters 4 and 5
Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapter 6
Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapter 7
Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapter 8

We proceed to chapter 9, Correspondence, beginning with a transitional paragraph from the last chapter, on Complementarity:

Complementarity shades over into correspondence. For, in stressing the complementarity of God and man, we ought not to miss their correspondence at the deepest levels of sentiment and emotion and attitude. The one completes the other through common acts of humility, forebearance, accomodation, a spirit of conciliation. In the first lace, Scripture itself is explicit that God shares and responds to the attitudes and intentionality of human beings. God cares what humanity feels–wanting love, for example–and so the conception that actions that express right attitudes of humility will evoke in Heaven a desired response will not have struck as novel the authors of the Pentateuch or the various prophetic writings, for example. The Written Torah’s record of God’s feelings and God’s will concerning the feelings of humanity leaves no room for doubt. (pp 362-363)

As the last chapter on complementarity covered the principle of often quite disparate pairs completing one another, particularly God and man, in this chapter the focus is on the similar (and to a lesser degree, dissimilar) characteristics of those same two parties–how are God and man alike and not alike? The principle of complementarity discussed in the last chapter already bears the seeds in it of this discussion on correspondence through the very equability of the pairs. That is, they are sufficiently similar in a number of points to be equable, yet it is precisely in their differences that they complement one another (and also counter one another). Successful complementarity is thus precisely sourced in correspondence.

Continue reading “Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapter 9”

We continue now with my reading notes on Chapter 8, Complementarity, of Jacob Neusner’s The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999).

These are the previous installments of my notes:
Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah (introduction and chapter 1)
Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapters 2 and 3
Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapters 4 and 5
Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapter 6
Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapter 7

We’ll begin with Neusner’s description of the topic of this chapter:

Complementarity characterizes the way in which God and man relate, correspondence [which is the subject of Chapter 9], the way in which God and man reach ultimate definition. Here we reach the heart of world order: what is man, who is God, and how and why they need each other. Let me explain, accounting also for the position just here, just now of these two modes of relationship, complementarity, then correspondence, in my exposition of the theology of the Oral Torah. In this chapter and the next, the account of world order is complete, except for the story of chaos and the restoration of order, told in parts 3 and 4. (p. 321)

There are four characteristics of perfection in God’s plan as described in the theology of the Oral Torah, two negative and two positive:
The two negative characteristics:
1.) “God’s plan for a just and perfect order involves a timeless world of lasting, rational traits of social organization, called here ‘paradigms.'” (p. 322) — the subject of chapter 6.
2.) “God’s plan further is realized in a world of stasis, in which scarce resources of a worldly order, such as real estate, continue in enduring patterns, governing the holdings of households, for all time. At the same time, the sages made provision for an increase in wealth of a supernatural order, in which everyone participated in the benefits.” (p. 322) — the subject of chapter 7.
The two positive characteristics (pp. 322-323):
3.) Complementarity: the relationship between God and man — the subject of chapter 8.
4.) Correspondence: the dynamics of similarity and difference between God and man — the subject of chapter 9.

Continue reading “Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapter 8”

I continue with my notes on Jacob Neusner’s The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), coming now to chapter 7, World Without Change.

Here are the previous installments of my review/notes:
Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah (introduction and chapter 1)
Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapters 2 and 3
Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapters 4 and 5
Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapter 6

This is a very interesting chapter, particularly in light of the current troubled financial world. Interestingly, an article in Time magazine highlights the perspectives of two different rabbis on the financial crisis who posit that had the traditions in Scripture and Oral Torah been followed, such a crisis would never have occurred. There is also mention of what sounds like a very interesting book, a collection of articles entitled Judaism and Economics, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. It should prove more enlightening than the article. Yet, as we shall see below, there would need to be a number of changes or provisos to much of the Oral Torah’s economic program in order to apply it worldwide. But, as a broad sentiment, it is certainly the case that even an application of the strictly moral aggadot with an economic theme would have prevented the ongoing financial mess. Greed is, as we all well know, a sin for all, and any way to triumph over it is to be welcomed.

Continue reading “Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapter 7”

I proceed here with my reading notes on Jacob Neusner’s The Theology of the Oral Torah: Revealing the Justice of God (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999). We enter a new section of the book here, Part II: Perfecting World Order, with Chapter Six, World Beyond Time.

This is an intense chapter, its argument convoluted and somewhat difficult, at first, to grasp. It is necessary to keep in mind the nature of the literature in question, the Oral Torah, and to pay special attention to the examples cited in this this chapter (some of which are explicitly probative of Neusner’s point), as well as to Neusner’s unpacking of them in his commentary and discussion. The reason? This chapter deals with the sages’ perception and presentation of time, which is a perception and presentation vastly different than our own shared modern perception and presentation of time. This difference permits the sages to commit acts of what one might otherwise consider brazen, willful, and wanton anachronism, mixing present, past, and future; such a judgment would, however, be incorrect. This perception of time, paradigmatic time as opposed to historical time, is foundational to the sages’ work. Time is transformed from a series of events into a systematization of patterns of eternal validity, for they are Torah, the eternally valid revelation of the eternal God, and thus not historically conditioned or determined. Scripture, despite ist internal subjective narrative linearity, has become a treasure chest from which the sages extract and line up its jewels like so many pearls on a string. Some stones are recut and remounted and given wholly new settings along with stones of the sages’ own cunning manufacture. But in both Scripture (wider Written Torah) and the sages’ work (Oral Torah), the eternal value of God’s revelation trumps time itself. So the sages perceived Scripture and their work. As the past flows into the present, so the present flows into the past, all one moment in the light of the eternal Torah. The abstraction of patterns found in the Mishnah becomes the paradigm for all the systematization to follow in the Oral Torah, and it is entirely synchronic, and not at all diachronic. The time of Torah is now–a now spread over all the ages, an objective, eternal now replacing all our other little nows. Events thus conform to Torah’s paradigms, not to cause-and-effect in historical time. Again, as we have seen in earlier chapters, Israel, possessing the Torah, is the pole around which all is laid out, at the center of the paradigmatic universe of Oral Torah–events and entities being subsumed in the patterns only insofar as they come into contact with Israel. All else is irrelevant. Over all of it, the grand scheme of the sages’ systematization is in place like a great tent, its shelter creating an eternal, changeless world of perfect order and perfect rest, a Sabbath, in contrast to the busy, changing, anomalous world of linear historical time. This seems a good beginning.

Continue reading “Neusner’s Theology of the Oral Torah, chapter 6”