This wonderful tribute to Moshe Greenberg, who died yesterday, on Shabbat, is well worth reading as we contemplate some of the amazing accomplishments and insights of this master of the Hebrew Bible, surely one of the greatest in our generation…

Thanks to Jeffrey Tigay who wrote it some time ago but it captures the spirit of this great scholar’s work…

www.sas.upenn.edu/~jtigay/MGbio.doc

MOSHE GREENBERG

Moshe Greenberg was born in Philadelphia on July 10, 1928.  Raised in a Hebrew-speaking, Zionist home, he studied Bible and Hebrew literature from his youth. At the University of Pennsylva nia, where he received his Ph.D. in 1954, he studied Bible and Assyriology with E.A. Speiser; simultaneously, he studied post biblical Judaica at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Strongly influenced by the comparative Biblical-Assyriological approach of Speiser and by the studies of the Israeli scholar Yehezkel Kaufmann in Biblical thought and religion, Greenberg’s scholarship is characterized by the critical integration of ancient Near Eastern and Jewish materials in his explication of the Bible.

Greenberg taught Bible and Judaica at the University of Pennsylvania from 1964-1970 and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1970-1996. The first Jewish Biblical scholar appointed to a position in a secular university after World War II, Greenberg has had an important influence on the development of Biblical scholarship, particularly, but not limited to, Jewish Biblical scholarship. He has devoted most of his attention to the phenomenology of biblical religion and  law, the theory and practice of interpreting biblical texts, and the role of  the Bible in Jewish thought.

In the area of prayer, Greenberg traced the development of Biblical petition  and  praise away from their roots in the conception that the deity  literally needs to be informed of the worshiper’s plight and  propitiated by flattery, into “a vehicle of humility, an expression of  un-selfsufficiency, which in biblical thought, is the proper stance  of  humans before God” (Studies, 75-108). In Biblical Prose Prayer he showed that the prose prayers embedded in Biblical narratives reflect the piety of commoners. He reasoned that the frequency of spontaneous prayer must have sustained  a constant sense of God’s presence and strengthened the egalitarian tendency of Israelite religion which led to the establishment  of  the  synagogue. The fact that prayer was  conceived  as  analogous to  a social transaction  between  persons fostered an emphasis  on sincerity, and may lie at the root of the classical-prophetic view of  worship as a  gesture  whose acceptance depends  on   adherence to the values of God. In  his  “Reflections on Job’s Theology” (Studies, 327-333) Greenberg observes  that Job’s experience of God’s inex plicable enmity  could  not  wipe  out his knowledge of God’s benignity gained  from  his earlier  experience,  and  hence he became  confused  instead of simply  rejecting God. Accordingly, the fact that the  Bible  retains Job as well as the Torah, Prophets, and Proverbs reflects the capacity of the  religious sensibility to affirm both experiences: “No single key unlocks the mystery of  destiny.”

In the  area  of biblical law, Greenberg argued that “the law [is] the expression of underlying postulates or  values of culture” and that differences  between  Biblical and ancient Near Eastern laws  were not reflections  of  different stages of social  development  but  of different underlying legal and religious principles (Studies, 25-41). Analyzing economic, social,  political,  and religious laws in the Torah, he showed that their thrust was to disperse authority and prestige through out society and prevent the monopolization of prestige and  power by narrow elite groups (Studies, 51-61).

In his commentaries on Exodus (1969) and Ezekiel  (1983, 1997), Greenberg developed  his “holistic”  method  of  exegesis. While  building on the  source-critical  achievements  of  earli er  scholarship, the holistic method redirects attention from the text’s  “hypothetically  reconstructed  elements”  to the  bibli cal  books  as integral  wholes,  as  the products of  thoughtful  and  artistic design  conveying  messages  of  their  own. This approach recalls scholarly  attention to  the “received text [which] is the only historically  attested datum;  it  alone has had demonstrable effects; it alone  is  the undoubted  product of Israelite creativity.” In this connection argues that since  midrashic and later pre-critical Jewish exegesis  operated on the assumption of unitary authorship, they have many  insights to offer the holistic commentator.

Greenberg’s studies of Jewish thought include important studies of the  intellectual  achievements  of  medieval  Jewish   exegesis (1988 lecture, forthcoming), investigations  of Rabbinic  reflections on defying illegal orders (Studies, 395-403), and  attitudes toward members of other  religions  (Studies, 369-393; “A Problematic Heritage”).  In the latter he argues that a  Scripture-based  religion can and must avoid fundamentalism by being selective and critical in its reliance on tradition and by re-prioritizing values. In “Jewish Conceptions of the Human Factor  in Biblical Prophecy” (Studies, 405-419), Greenberg shows that from the Talmud  to the Renaissance, classical Jewish exe getes and thinkers who never doubted  the divine inspiration and authorship of the Torah and other  prophetic writings neverthe less acknowledged the  literary evidence of human shaping of the text.

WORKS

The Hab/piru. New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1955

The Religion of Israel, abridged English translation of vols. 1-7 Yehezkel Kaufmann’s Toldot

ha’Emuna ha-Yisre’lit. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960

Introduction to Hebrew. Englewood, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1965

Understanding Exodus New York: Behrman House, 1969

Ezekiel 1-20 and Ezekiel 21-37 (Anchor Bible. Garden City: Doubleday, 1983, 1997)

Biblical Prose Prayer.  University of California, 1983

Studies in the Bible and Jewish Thought (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1995) includes

many of Greenberg’s essays. Most notable are the following:

·      “Three Conceptions of the Torah in Hebrew Scriptures.”

·      “Some Postulates of Biblical Criminal Law.”

·      “Biblical Attitudes toward Power: Ideal and Reality in Law  and Prophets”

·      “On the Refinement of the Conception of Prayer in Hebrew Scriptures.”

·      Religion: Stability and Ferment.”

·      “The Stabilization of the Text of the Hebrew Bible: Reviewed in the Light of the Biblical Materials from the Judean Desert.”

·      “The Use of the Ancient Versions for Interpreting the Hebrew Text.”

·      “Reflections on Interpretation.”

·      “To Whom and For What Should a Bible Commentator Be Respon sible.”

·      “Another Look at Rachel’s Theft of the Teraphim.”

·      “The Decalogue Tradition Critically Examined.”

·      “Reflections on Job’s Theology.”

·      “Rabbinic Reflections on Defying Illegal Orders: Amasa, Abner, and Joab.”

·      “Jewish Conceptions of the Human Factor in Biblical Prophe cy.”

·      “Bible Interpretation as Exhibited in the First Book of Maimonides’ Code.”

·      See also:

·      “Prophecy in Hebrew Scripture.” Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973).  3:657-664.

·      “Biblical Judaism (20th-4th centuries BCE).” Encyclopaedia Bri tannica: Macropaedia. 15th ed. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1974. 10: 303-310.

·      “A Problematic Heritage: The Attitude Toward the gentile in the Jewish Tradition — An Israel Perspective,” Conservative Judaism 48/2 (Winter, 1996):23-35.

·      Articles in Encyclopaedia Judaica  (Jerusalem:  Keter, and New York: Macmillan), 1972:  “Decalogue” (5:1435-1446), “Herem” (8:345-350), “Sabbath” (14:557-562).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Moshe Greenberg: An Appreciation,” and “Bibliography of the Writings of Moshe Greenberg,” pp.

ix-xxxviii in M. Cogan, B.L. Eichler, and J.H. Tigay, eds., Tehilla le-Moshe. Biblical and Judaic

Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbraun’s, 1997

S.D. Sperling, ed., Students of the Covenant: A History of Jewish Biblical Scholarship in North

America (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), index s.v. “Greenberg, Moshe.”

Peras Yisra’el 5754 (Israel Prizes, 1994). Israel: Ministry of Science and Arts; Ministry of

Education, Culture, and Sports, 1994), pp. 5-7 (in Hebrew)

By Jeffrey H. Tigay

University of Pennsylvania

There was a fascinating interview with the esteemed Prof. Jacob Neusner in the Jerusalem Post last week. Neusner is known first and foremost for the ways in which he has brought a systematic critical historical study of the classic Rabbinic sources to the forefront of the academy, and for that matter, to the world. His provocative work, A Rabbi Talks with Jesus which came to the attention of Pope Benedict the XVI and has resulted in two meetings between Prof. Neusner and the Pope in which they have shared substantive exchanges. This interview takes a different direction. It touches on many important issues relevant to Neusner’s life-long academic work, but particularly his insights on Judaism itself in our time both in the Diaspora and in Israel. I produce it here in full, the link is: http://www.jpost.com/Home/Article.aspx?id=111090

A Utopian Document, a Utopian Law
March 4, 2010
Jacob Neusner talks of his five-decade love affair with the ancient rabbis, on the future of Jewish life. Questions posed by the interviewer are in italics:

In the world of Jewish studies, Prof. Jacob Neusner needs no introduction. The 75-year-old scholar of Talmud and rabbinic literature has written, edited or translated more than 900 books (though he doesn’t want you to read them all), making him among the most active and prolific authors alive. “But I have a limited repertoire,” he says with a smile, an expertise which extends across a millennium and through dozens of difficult, tightly-written works that are the record of the rabbinic love affair with the Torah. For Neusner, the study of rabbinic literature has been a kind of love affair in itself, and as with all true loves, he remembers clearly when it began. He sat down to study his first passage of Talmud just after Succot in October of 1954, at the age of 22. It was the eighth chapter of Baba Kama, “Hahovel,” he recalls almost 54 years later. “I was an American history major,” and had always been a bit bored with the subject. “When I started studying Talmud, I finally came across something endlessly interesting. I had never met anything so challenging. It was like mathematics, only 1,000 times more complex. I was never bored again.” Now, struggling through the latest work, Sifrei Zuta Bamidbar, “a very strange text,” he is a happy man. “Every line is a challenge, the challenge of reconstructing the thought processes of the rabbis.” Educated at Harvard, Oxford and Columbia, with rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary, Neusner’s stature has made him a focal point of interfaith dialogue, such as a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded conference on tolerance among the world’s religions and a much-publicized theological exchange with the pope.

On a recent lecture visit to Israel, The Jerusalem Post sat down with the energetic professor, since 1994 at Bard College about two hours’ drive north of New York City, for a discussion on issues closer to home. Who were the rabbinic Sages? What can we know about their world? What can they tell us about Jewish life today?

Rabbinic writings are often in difficult, coded language, usually focused on legal argumentation. They don’t seem to reveal much about themselves personally, socially? We don’t have the basis for a biography on sound critical historical lines for any rabbi. The cultural patterns that shaped biographical writing didn’t exist. The rabbinic accounts of individuals are subordinated to systemic purposes they’re trying to serve. If you have a model of an individual rabbi, you have an expression of detail within a larger theory of the social order. We have in Halacha a design for a social order. It lays out rules of constitution, institutions and patterns of life of the ideal Israelite society. It’s a utopian document, a utopian law. Meanwhile, the aggada [rabbinic homilies] provides a system for a worldview which accommodates new knowledge and unexpected situations. The Sages show what it means to have a rational social order in which things fit together.

A rational social order-as opposed to our modern societies? Correct. The poetry of the 20th century discusses the collapse of the established order, the notion that the social order has disintegrated. The Sages dealt with a collapsing social order as well, represented in the destruction [of the Second Temple] in 70 [CE]. In the Mishna, 130 years later, we have a plan for reconstructing Israelite society that served us for 2,000 years.

How relevant is this plan for today? Can it help us construct a rational order out of the chaos of modernity? The question the Sages answered no longer imposes itself on the life of the community. The question was: “How does Israel exist as distinct from anything else?” The question of modern times is: “How does Israel exist together with everything else?” Here, Reform Judaism and modern Orthodox Judaism ask the same basic question about how to be both a citizen and a Jew. The Sages wanted to know how to be a Jew only, emphasizing the uniqueness of Israel.

This difference begs the question: Does the new question of modernity require a new Talmud, so to speak? Does the Jewish world need a new social order? For Jews in the Diaspora, the question of “Jewish and something else” is urgent. There are only two types of people who say you can’t be two things at once-those who believe in assimilation, a belief that is not institutionalized but is broadly held, and the self-segregating haredim.

What does the Talmud offer for integrated, modern Jews? There are two roles for the Talmud. First, it’s a model of how people can think, a demonstration of the value of rigorous, critical thought producing systematic results-that is to say Halacha. Second, it contains situation-specific lessons that can be generalized.

Does Halacha have a role in modern society, not just as an exercise in logic, but in terms of observance? As I grow older I return to my Reform roots from childhood. I find observance a matter of personal thinking. After Oxford, I was advised I’d get a better rabbinical education at [the Conservative] JTS than [the Reform] Hebrew Union College. At the time it had a superior faculty. So I ended up spending many years as an observant Conservative Jew.

If observance is personal, do you see the boundaries of Judaism as ideological or intellectual rather than halachic? The gap between self-segregating Orthodoxy and Reform Judaism is unbridgeable. They represent two very different notions of what it is to be an Israelite. But the boundary has to be both. People won’t be robots. They have to find rationale in what they do. That’s the strength of Reform Judaism, which is the strongest Judaism in the Diaspora.

There may be more Reform-registered Jews in the Diaspora, but they are personally less observant and intellectually uncommitted to Halacha. What do you make of the criticism that this makes for a weaker Judaism, not a stronger one? If people want to stop being Jewish, they don’t have to be Reform. Reform Judaism is a positive option. The Orthodox make up 10 percent of American Jewry, even if there is diversity there. Reform Jews are 50%.

Even so, are Reform congregants, the “Jews in the pews,” making deep choices in belonging to that movement? It’s easy to mistake people on the bus who are trying to reach a destination and people on the same bus going from nowhere to nowhere.

The Orthodox, it is often said, are growing faster than the other movements. The haredi [community] seems to be growing, but that doesn’t take into account the rate of attrition, the number of young people leaving that community.

What about patrilineal descent-the American Reform movement’s acceptance of Jewish identification through the father, and not just the mother as Jewish law and tradition have held? Doesn’t this create two Jewish peoples? There are more than just two Jewish peoples. In Israel, there is a whole variety. The split between haredi and the rest of Orthodoxy is as dramatic as the Orthodox-secular divide. In America you have a large population completely unaffected by synagogue life. Patrilineal descent is not as great a point of differentiation as Orthodoxy to everyone else.

What do you think the Sages would make of today’s Jewish world? That’s a good question. I don’t know. It’s hard not to project one’s own positions onto them, especially since rabbinic literature contains so many positions-kol davar vehipucho [everything and its opposite]. The classical position of the Sages is that you become an Israelite through Torah, through accepting its discipline. It would seem that Orthodoxy carries this forward. But the Sages expressed a liberal spirit in accepting people coming in, and this social policy would also have to be carried forward. Recognition of converts is a case in point. Ruth Raba contains the message that conversion is undertaken by the convert and the Jewish response is a welcoming one. Orthodoxy in Israel is the opposite of this.

The Orthodox position in Israel differs from that of the Talmud? It’s hard to know criteria by which the Sages would reject a convert. I can’t think of a single passage demanding [halachic observance].

This newspaper has commented on the seemingly growing cultural gap between American Jews and Israeli Jews, how little they seem to understand about each other despite their constant communication. Do you share that observation? I don’t know how I would measure [the cultural gap]. You have two different civil religions. It’s very difficult to teach these to each other. Civil religion requires a previous experience that is concretized and that can’t be taught. Young Americans don’t have the [Israeli] experience.

Is this the reason the liberal Jewish movements are not having as much traction in Israeli society as they have in America? I don’t know the Israeli situation well enough to comment on it. It would seem that Reform and Conservative are answering questions people aren’t asking. Israelis don’t regard Judaism as an ongoing adventure that responds to new questions with authentic classical answers. The strength of Reform Judaism is that it responded to masses of Jews who wanted to be different than their parents. Even in America, Israelis form a community unto themselves, building their identity on the Hebrew language and Israeli customs.

Are you a pessimist, then, on the future of Israel-Diaspora relations? The experience of visiting Israel has a good impact. But if success is measured in aliya, this hasn’t been successful. [American Jews] are Americans. America is not an exporter of immigrants. We’re the only Western society not losing population. On the other hand, I’m not a great witness to the wisdom of an intellectual on issues of Jewish public life. When Birthright announced it was going to spend millions bringing young Jews to Israel, I thought this amounted to an evasion from day school education. But I was impressed when I saw my students coming back.

How do you see the cottage industry of conferences and committees looking into strategies for the future of the Jewish people? The most important thing happening this week or any week in the Jewish world is what’s taking place in the classrooms of the universities. The future of the Jewish people is in the hands of Jewish intellectuals. Politicians and public intellectuals nourish themselves from scholars who are not at those meetings and have no interest in them. It’s hard to engage too seriously in social science as a medium of cultural mediation. They’re measuring the present and not facing the future. For example, when I started my career there was no such thing as Jewish studies in universities, just a few professors of the Hebrew language. Now there’s a Jewish studies professor in every university in the US and Canada, and that cultural resource is beginning to hit the Jewish community. Young people are coming with an intellectual background that’s the result of my generation’s commitment to an ambience of Jewish learning. It didn’t come because people held conferences and passed resolutions. It came about because universities decided to turn to culture.

You are an outspoken critic of the study of rabbinic literature in Israeli academia. What, in summary, is your criticism? The stress is on problems of philology instead of problems of culture. But philology is of interest only to specialists, while the Sages represent a resource of thought and expression that provides a model of the social order and how society can deal with conflict and instability. In American academia, the Sages are treated as accessible models for shaping everyday life. We study the classics of any civilization to find viable examples of what we can be ourselves, of our own potential. The age that confronted the Holocaust should understand the Sages’ discussion of the destruction of the Temple, of rebuilding a social order.