R' Baruch Ber

Found this today:

I am embarrassed to admit that I found the following, not through word of mouth, but on Wikipedia:

A witty anecdote serves to illustrate how the three of them differed in their approaches and relation to their teacher: it is said that had Reb Chaim [Soloveitchok] said, "This table is a cow," Rabbi Yitzchak Zev Soloveitchik would say that the table had the same Talmudic laws as a cow, Rabbi Shimon Shkop would say the molecules in a table could be rearranged into a cow, but Rabbi Boruch Ber Leibowitz would attempt to milk the table.

Everything sounds better in Yiddish

The other line we heard from our friend over Shavuos was this:

Someone commented to Rav Baruch Ber, "Torah is oxygen!"
"No," said Rav Baruch Ber, "Torah is lebn alein!"

('Torah is life itself')

Novhardok, Keep Portland Weird!, and Not Caring About Public Opinion

I'm going to go off on a tangent and tell you another Novhardok story, one that is common knowledge in these parts, just because this is basic Jewish history that everyone should know I love Novhardok.

If you're doing the right thing, it doesn't matter what other people think of you - but how do you practice not caring about public opinion?
The students of the Novhardok yeshiva used to practice by going into a store and asking for a product not sold there - e.g., they would enter a pharmacy, and ask to buy a hammer.

As the joke goes, if you try this in America, the pharmacist will ask you, "What size?" but in the specialized shops of pre-war Europe (Rav Elya Pruzhiner's family shop, for example, sold only yeast and salt) it was a truly ludicrous request.


How can this story be true? I asked one day, a few years after I heard it. Isn't it problematic to give the clerk the impression that Torah students are crazy?

"It is true," answered the rav at whom I threw the question. "I knew the daughter of an old Novhardoker, and she said that when her father came to America, he would try to pay for his groceries with Monopoly money. And when the clerk would say, 'Sir, you cannot pay with this,' he would assume a confused air, and ask, 'Why not?'"


...

I do not own this image

I was enthusiastically describing the unusual individualism of P-town's alternative culture (Keep Portland Weird!) to an elderly rebbetzin of Jerusalem, and she exclaimed, "That's not good! There's no normal to keep people on their toes."
Which is the flip side of not caring about public opinion.

Dostoevsky said, 'Where there is no God, everything is permitted', but where there is no objective definition of Good and also no normal, what, save fear of the government, is to prevent the selfish from committing any crime they want?
Keep Portland Weird and Idealistic!

Evidently you have to care even in a Torah society: the Netziv once chided his nephew for not caring whether the post office staff would laugh at him for including extra information in an address, saying that a person immune to public opinion has lost a useful motivation to behave properly (and to tell the truth, and so is disqualified from testifying in court).


You have to not care about public opinion... but you also have to care. It's probably one of those things that should be swung either way and eventually allowed to settle somewhere in the middle.

Anyway, wouldn't you just love to gather up all the self-conscious teenagers of the world, hand them a wad of Monopoly money, and send them shopping? Such a powerful lesson.

Double Book Review: women and Torah study, women and Jewish law

I recently re-read two books once lent to me in high school, on the subjects of Jewish women's Torah education, and Jewish women's role in general.
Those interested in such matters should know about these two books' existence.

The first is And All Your Children Shall Be Learned: Women and the Study of Torah in Jewish Law and History, by Shoshana Pantel Zolty, a Torah-observant academic from Toronto.
It is not light reading -- more like a Ph.D thesis.
The first half is a survey of halachic sources on teaching women Torah, or their learning on their own. If there is only one line of thought to follow in this section, I couldn't find it: as the author writes, her purpose is only to gather the relevant references, not to string them together to emerge with a legal decision. Interesting reading; not particularly helpful if you want to know what the halacha is.
The second half is a survey - which seemed to me comprehensive - of Jewish women's education through history.
This is not the book you curl up with to help you space out; it is not even a collection of anecdotes: it is an academic work, and the author tries to stay out of it - mostly. It is a good reference to have on hand if you need to look up who-was-it-that-said or where-did-she-live-again.

The other book, which treats a broader topic, is Jewish Woman in Jewish Law, by Rav Moshe Meiselman (shlit"a), a talmid chacham (Torah sage) of Jerusalem.
This one is a book you can curl up with - it is felicitously written, easy to follow (even when he is detailing the American laws of inheritance), and enlightening.
The first half treats women's role in Judaism generally (including women and Torah study); the second thoroughly addresses specific issues which were controversial when the book was printed (1978) and which in some circles are just as controversial today.
As the author writes in the introduction, the book is not apologetic; it starts by explaining the Torah value system, and treats its subject accordingly -- but the outcome is eminently satisfying even to one who cannot grasp that value system.
I wish more people knew of this book's existence, and would read it.
Excerpts here: http://books.google.co.il/books?id=t3zQAoncEnwC&printsec=frontcover&hl=iw&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false