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Uncensored: Recovering Anti-Christian Animosity in Contemporary Rabbinic Literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 August 2021
Abstract
This article focuses on the recovery of censored Jewish texts in contemporary Orthodox rabbinic literature. I show that contemporary Orthodox scholars make use of critical methods which are close to those of the historical, philological, and biblical sciences, in order to reconstruct those portions of the Jewish tradition which were omitted or transformed in the early-modern period by Christian censorship or by Jews with an “eye” to the censor. As the censored texts were mostly omitted or changed because they were recognized as offensive to Christian sensitivities, their current recovery entails also a renewed discussion of Judaism’s attitude to Christianity. I argue that the “uncensoring” of Jewish traditions is closely connected with expressions of animosity towards Christianity. The combination of this animosity with the use of modern scientific methods brings the common cultural assumptions which relate resistance to inter-faith rapprochement with “traditionalism,” and a reactionary approach to modernism, into question.
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- © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Footnotes
*
I am grateful to Amit Gvaryahu, Omer Michaelis, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Assaf Tamari, and the anonymous readers of this article for their instructive comments. An earlier version of this study appeared in my book A Pottage of Lentils: Mutual Perceptions of Christians and Jews in the Age of Reconciliation (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2020) 228–39 (Hebrew).
References
1 In this article, “Orthodox literature” is not a synonym for a literature written by Orthodox people but stands for literature that is written within a certain religious tradition, within an “Orthodox” framework, and has religious purposes. This is a variation on Marc Shapiro’s distinction between “Orthodox history” and “Orthodox historians,” acknowledging that different Orthodox people can entertain different approaches to the past, more or less scientific, more or less dogmatic. See Marc Shapiro, Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2015) 1 n. 2.
2 On the sophisticated Orthodox resistance to Wissenschaft des Judentums in the 19th cent., see Israel Bartal, “True Knowledge and Wisdom: On Orthodox Historiography,” in Reshaping the Past: Jewish History and the Historians (ed. Jonathan Frankel; Studies in Contemporary Jewry 10; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) 178–92; on the resistance to the Haskalah and to science in general, see Shmuel Feiner, “ ‘To Eradicate Wisdom from the World’: The Jewish Enemies of the Enlightenment and the Origins of the Ultra-Orthodox,”Alpayim 26 (2004) 166–90 (Hebrew); on other critics of modern Jewish historiography, see David N. Myers, Resisting History: Historicism and Its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). Though the Orthodox resistance to modern historicism and to the academic study of Scriptures and rabbinic sources has been largely maintained in the ultra-Orthodox world to this day, recent developments in contemporary attitudes of Haredi society to academic Judaic studies are still under-studied. See Kimmy Caplan, “ḥeqer haḥeḇrah haḥaredit beyisra’el, me’afyenim, heśegim ve’etgarim,” in Israeli Haredim: Integration without Assimilation? (ed. Kimmy Caplan and Emmanuel Sivan; Ra’anana: Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and Hakibutz Hameuchad, 2003) 258–60 (Hebrew).
3 Approval for applying modern methods of biblical exegesis was first given by Pope Pius XII, in his 1943 encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu. See John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008) 84. See also Benedict T. Viviano, OP, “The Renewal of Biblical Studies in France 1934–1954 as an Element in Theological Ressourcement,” in Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology (ed. Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 305–17.
4 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Martin Buber on Christianity: A Dialogue between Israel and the Church (trans. Alexander Dru; London: Harvil Press, 1961) 21–22.
5 Examples for this Catholic trajectory are abundant. See, for instance, Jean Daniélou, Théologie du judéo-christianisme (Paris: Desclée, 1958), and Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (trans. Hubert Hoskins; London: Collins, 1979).
6 Bea summarizes his arguments in La Chiesa e il popolo ebraico (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1966).
7 Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, “Notes on the Correct Way to Present the Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church,” 24 June 1985, sec. 4, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/relations-jews-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_19820306_jews-judaism_en.html.
8 Ismar Schorsch, From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry 19; Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press; Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994) 158–76.
9 The first to make rabbinic, postbiblical Judaism into an object of science was Leopold Zunz, in his Etwas über die rabbinische Litteratur (1818).
10 On the method of Wissenschaft, see Rachel Livneh-Freudenthal, The Verein: Pioneers of the Science of Judaism in Germany (Jerusalem: Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem and Zalman Shazar Center, 2018) 325–33 (Hebrew).
11 This does not imply that the Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars did not conduct polemics with Christians; their entire project could be conceptualized as an attempt to present an alternative to the way Protestant scholars have perceived Jewish history and literature. Yet the aim of this polemic was to present to European culture a tolerable version of Judaism that would have a place within an enlightened Protestant milieu. For the polemical strategies of the Wissenschaft pioneers against their Protestant counterparts, see, for example, Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998); Alexandra Zirkle, “Heinrich Graetz and the Exegetical Contours of Modern Jewish History,” JQR 109 (2019) 360–83. On the Protestant theological foundations of Wissenschaft des Judentums, see Elizabeth Johnston, “Semitic Philology and the Wissenschaft des Judentums: Revisiting Leopold Zunz’s Etwas über die rabbinische Litteratur,” Philological Encounters 2 (2017) 296–320.
12 Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982) 77–103. Amos Funkenstein fundamentally disagrees with Yerushalmi’s “break” thesis. For him, there is much more continuity between the modern, secularized, and scientific Jewish perspective on history and the historical perspectives that characterized the Jewish tradition in premodern times; see Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 10–21. See also Myers, Resisting History, 1–12.
13 Baruch Kurzweil, bem’aḇaq ‘al ‘erḵey hayahadut (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1969) viii.
14 Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, The Censor, the Editor, and the Text: The Catholic Church and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon in the Sixteenth Century (trans. Jackie Feldman; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) 177.
15 Ibid., 180.
16 Ibid., 197.
17 Israel Yaakov Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (trans. Barbara Harshav and Jonathan Chipman; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006) 20–21.
18 Caplan, “ḥeqer haḥeḇrah haḥaredit,” 258.
19 Shapiro, Changing the Immutable, 7–26.
20 There is plenty of evidence for the dominance of this halakhic perception. See, for example, ‘Oḇadyah Yosef, [Responsa] yeḥaveh da‘at (Jerusalem: 1980) 4.45; yabia‘ ’omer (vol. 2 ; Jerusalem: Yeshivat Porat Yosef, 1955), yoreh de‘ah 11. Yosef did allow entrance to a mosque, since the Muslims are not considered to be idolaters. See yabia‘ ’omer (vol. 4; Jerusalem: Yeshivat Porat Yosef, 1959), yoreh de‘ah 15. See also Menashe Klein, [Responsa] mišneh halaḵot (Jerusalem: maḵon mišneh halaḵot gedolot, 2002) 16.6:86; Yehuda Herzl Henkin, [Responsa] bney banim (Jerusalem: ṣur-’ot, 1997) 3.35; Eliezer Waldenberg, [Responsa] ṣiṣ eli‘ezer, (Jerusalem: E. Waldenberg, 1998) 14.91; Moshe Feinstein, [Responsa] ’igrot mosheh (Bnei-Berak: yeshivat ’ohel yosef, 1980), yoreh de‘ah 3.129; ibid., 3.43. Some prominent examples are collected in Aviad HaCohen, “Modern Rabbinical Conceptions of Christians and Christianity: From Rabbi Kook to Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef,” Mahanaim: A Review for Jewish Thought and Culture 15 (2004) 89–124 (Hebrew), and in my book Pottage of Lentils, 208–20.
21 The most prominent example for this pro-dialogue group’s presence on the international stage is the recent declaration published by an international group of Orthodox rabbis through the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation (CJCUC), “To Do the Will of Our Father in Heaven: Toward a Partnership between Jews and Christians,” 3 December 2015, https://www.ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/documents-and-statements/jewish/orthodox-2015dec4. This declaration entertains a positive theological and halakhic evaluation of Christianity. There are, of course, other Orthodox initiatives for the promotion of Jewish-Christian relations, but most of these carefully avoid discussing the halakhic and theological status of Christians and confine themselves to diplomatic gestures and joint declarations on common values. See, e.g., the joint declaration by the Conference of European Rabbis, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the Rabbinical Council of America, “Between Jerusalem and Rome: Reflections on 50 Years of Nostra Aetate,” https://www. ccjr.us/images/From _Jerusalem_to_Rome.pdf. However, halakhic and theological literature that is meant for intracommunal readership usually reflects a more negative attitude.
22 Rashi’s commentary on Gen 33:4, paraphrasing Sifre to Num 9.
23 This is HaCohen’s approach in “Modern Rabbinical Conceptions.” See also Yosef Salmon, “Christians and Christianity in Halachic Literature from the End of the Eighteenth Century to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century,” Modern Judaism 33 (2013) 125–47. Salmon relates the hardening of halakhic attitudes toward Christianity to Orthodoxy’s firm antimodernism.
This question corresponds with the controversy on whether Jewish Orthodoxy is modern only in the sense that it is a reaction to the 18th- and 19th-cent. crises engendered by emancipation, enlightenment, and reform in traditional Jewish positions (the term “Orthodoxy” first appears in Jewish literature at the end of the 19th cent.), or if it is modern in its own right. For the classical view, see Yaakov Katz, “Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective,” Kivunim 33 (1987) 89–100 (Hebrew), and his Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages (New York: New York University Press, 1993). See also Moshe Samet, The New Is Prohibited by Torah: Chapters in the History of Orthodoxy (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2005) (Hebrew); Benjamin Brown, “Orthodox Judaism,” in The Blackwell Companion to Judaism (ed. Jacob Neusner and Alan J. Avery-Peck; Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2000) 311–33. For an alternative view, see David Sorozkin, Orthodoxy and the Regime of Modernity: The Production of Jewish Tradition in Europe in the New Era (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2012) 34–42 (Hebrew). For additional relevant discussions of the “modernity” of Orthodoxy and the need to challenge the classic sociological dichotomies between modernity (in which secularization is defined as a key element) and Orthodoxy (defined as a conservative reaction to modernity), see also Elyahu Stern, The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013); and Maoz Kahana, From the Noda Beyehuda to the Chatam Sofer: Halacha and Philosophy in View of the Challenges of the Times (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for the Study of the History of the Jewish People, 2015) (Hebrew).
24 Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961). See also idem, “The Vicissitude of Three Apologetic Passages,” Zion 23–24 (1958–59) 174–93 (Hebrew); and Louis Jacobs, “Attitudes toward Christianity in the Halakhah,” in Gevuroth Haromah (ed. Ze’ev W. Falk; Jerusalem: Mesharim, 1987) xvii–xxx.
25 Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Idolatry and the Laws of the Gentiles, 9:4; Commentary on the Mishnah, Avodah Zarah, 1:3.
26 The definition of Christians as believers of “association” (Šituf)—that is, a simultaneous belief in both God and another entity—was one of the most important halakhic justifications for conducting commercial relations with Christians during the Middle Ages. The sentence “Noachides are not warned against association” (’in bney Noaḥ muzharim ‘al haššituf) was first introduced into the halakhic discourse by the Tosafists, as part of the permission given to a Jew to receive a Christian’s oath in order to prevent monetary loss. The rabbis argued that since faith in “association” does not constitute a transgression of the Seven Noachide Laws for a Christian (and more specifically, it does not constitute idolatry), then a Jew does not violate the halakha by asking the Christian to swear on his faith. See Tosafot on Sanhedrin 63b; Bekhorot 2b; Rabbeinu Yeruḥam, sefer toledot ’adam veḥavah (Tel Aviv: Leon, 1959) 17:5.
Medieval halakhists limited the use of the “association” rule solely to the circumstance of the Christian’s oath, but in the modern age, the principle was broadened to additional interactions between Christians and Jews. Later on, the “association” rule was transformed from a series of specific halakhic solutions to specific problems into a fundamental claim about the Christian faith, according to which Christianity is legitimate for gentiles, even though for Jews—who are commanded to follow pure monotheism—it is considered idolatrous. This distinction was not accepted by all halakhists, but it did allow for a vast variety of interactions between Jews and Christians and provided a basis for religious tolerance. For a short summary of the development of the halakhic and theological category of “association,” see David Berger, The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008) 175–77.
27 On Menachem Meiri, see Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance, 114–28; Moshe Halbertal, Between Torah and Wisdom: Menachem ha-Meiri and the Maimonidean Halakhists in Provence (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2000), 80–108 (Hebrew); Jacobs, “Attitudes toward Christianity.”
28 For a famous example of such an opening statement, see Yeḥezqel Landau’s “apology” (hitnaṣlut), noda‘ beyhudah (Prague: 1776) 3 (Hebrew).
29 See, for example, Yosef, yabia‘ ’omer (vol. 2) yoreh de‘ah 11, 148–49; Eliezer Waldenberg, [Responsa] ṣiṣ eli‘ezer (vol. 13; Jerusalem: E. Waldenberg, 1978) ch. 12, 30 (Hebrew).
30 Yosef Pinḥasi, yefeh to’ar (Modi‘in ‘Ilit: Y. Pinḥasi, 2000) 22 (Hebrew).
31 The sections in which Maimonides declares Christianity to be idolatry were omitted from his writings by censors. Today, most editions of Maimonides’s writings have restored the suppressed texts.
32 Pinḥasi, yefeh to’ar, 27–28.
33 R’ Zvi Yehuda Kook criticized the popular commentary rambam la‘am: although it did include the uncensored passages about Christianity, the editor, in a footnote, expresses disagreement with Maimonides about the Sanhedrin having killed Jesus, to Kook’s displeasure. See Zvi Yehuda Kook, yahadut venaṣrut (Beit El: Sifriyat ḵava, 2000) 28–29 (Hebrew).
34 David Avitan, “be‘inyian ‘ezrah lenoṣrim beḇinyan haknesyiah šelahem,” ’or torah 357 (1996) 20 (Hebrew).
35 Moshe Sternbuch, tešuḇot vehanhagot (vol. 3; Jerusalem: 1996) yoreh de‘ah, 317.
36 Ibid., 183.
37 David ben Zvi Moshe Kahan, qontras ha‘aqov lemišor: letaqen ta‘uyot hadefus Šel haŠas hoṣa’at Vilna (New York: Rabbi Jacob Joseph School Press, 1982) 35.
38 R’ Pinḥas Zeviḥi wrote that Meiri may be relied on, as his writings lay secreted away for centuries and were untouched by censorship. See [Responsa] ‘ateret paz (Jerusalem: Tif’eret refa’el ve‘ateret śarah, 2000) 3.1, ḥošen mišpat, 12.
39 From an interview that I conducted with the Haredi-Zionist rabbi Dr. Eliyahu Zeini of the Technion and of Haifa’s ’or veyeŠu‘ah yeshiva. Zeini further elaborates on his attitude to Meiri in ḥesed le’umim ḥatat: ‘iyun hilḵati vehaguti besugyat qabalat ṣdaqah migoy uḇerur ‘emdato hameduyeqet šel rabbenu hameiri legabey noḵrim (Haifa: ’Or veyeshu‘ah, 2017).
40 For the argument that only rabbinic literature that originated in Muslim countries should be regarded as credible concerning Judaism’s position vis-à-vis Christianity, see Yaakov Yerucham Wreschner, seder ya‘aqoḇ ‘al maseḵet ‘aḇodah zarah ve‘inyaneiha (3rd ed., vol. 2; Jerusalem: Yaakov Yerucham Wreschner, 2009) 645. I will discuss the seder ya‘aqoḇ further later on in this article.
41 On historicist methodology, Wissenschaft des Judentums, and religious Zionism, see Shakhar Pelled, Shredded Identities (Haifa: Pardes, 2007) (Hebrew).
42 In fact, Posen had been preceded by Eliyahu Koren, founder of Koren Publishers Jerusalem, who was the State of Israel’s premier Tanaḵ (Bible) publisher. Thus, Koren wrote about his enterprise: “The Koren Tanak is the first Tanak to have been printed in which all of the work, from the design of the Hebrew letters to the finishing touches, was done by Jews and in Jerusalem. This Tanak’s publication … led then Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to declare … ‘Disgrace has been lifted from Israel.’ ” See Eliyahu Koren, hara‘ayon vehahagšamah hadpasat sefer hatanaḵ—hamahadurah hayehudit hariŠonah [The Idea and Its Realization: The Printing of the Bible—The First Jewish Edition] (Jerusalem: Koren, 2001) 9. Among the problems that Koren sought to address via the “Jewish” Bible was that of removing it from Christian hands, which had exercised hegemony in this sphere since the invention of printing. In addition to employing Jewish printers and proofreaders, Koren divided the text in accordance with the Hebrew parŠiyot, or Torah portions, as opposed to the Christian “chapters.” See Eliyahu Koren, “hatanaḵ behoṣa’at qoren yerushalaym,” in ki miṣion teṣe’ torah udeḇar hašem miyerušalayim: mah šerau’i lada‘at ‘al defuśey hatanaḵ [For out of Zion Shall the Law Go Forth, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem: What One Must Know about the Bible’s Printed Editions] (Jerusalem: Koren, 2002).
43 Eliezer Posen, introduction to ḥumaš kefi haḥaluqa ‘al-pi maśoret ḥazal (London: Feldheim, 1990) 1.
44 Eliezer Posen, introduction to ḥumaš kefi haḥaluqa ‘al-pi maśoret ḥazal (London: Posen, 2012) 3.
45 Ibid., 5–6.
46 Ibid., 9.
47 Ibid., 10.
48 Ibid., 14.
49 The first to undertake correction of the Talmud and restoration of its suppressed passages was Natan Neta Rabinovich, author of diqduqey sofrim. A prominent contemporary work in this sphere is Rabbi David Ben Zvi Moshe Kahan’s qontras ha‘aqov lemišor: letaqen ta‘uyot hadefus Šel haŠas hoṣa’at vilna (New York: Rabbi Jacob Joseph School Press, 1982).
50 The author refers to Jonathan ben David haCohen of Lunel, peruŠey rabbenu yehonatan melunel ‘al 21 maseḵtot hašas, bava qamma (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1969) ch. 4, mishnah 4, 102. Emphasis is mine.
51 The quote appears in R’ Baruch Fränkel-Te’omim, ‘ateret ḥaḵamim ḥošen mišpat 30 responsum 14 (New York: Israel Ze’ev, 1963).
52 See also the Haredi rabbi Shmuel Levinson’s remarks on the same talmudic passage in portal hadaf hayomi, where he reviews the passage’s censorship history and the stratagems employed by Torah scholars “in order to shut the mouths of the goyim,” as he put it; http://daf-yomi.com/ DYItemDetails.aspx?itemId=4009. Rabbi Levinson not only believes that Meiri wrote his commentary out of fear of censorship but also that “knowing the mind of his Jewish readers,” Meiri assumed they would grasp his real intentions.
53 In the face of inauthenticity allegations to which “tolerant” halakhic decisors are subjected, the few rabbis who support interfaith dialogue occasionally express opposing views. For example, in an interview I conducted with R’ David Rosen, the honorary advisor on interreligious affairs to the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, he speculated that, had Maimonides known Christians firsthand, he would not have regarded them as idolaters. R’ She’ar Yeshuv Cohen, who served as a representative of the bilateral commission of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the Vatican, conjectured that R’ Zvi Yehuda Kook spoke disparagingly of Christianity in order to defend his father against the defamations to which his positive attitude toward Jesus had exposed him—i.e., he ascribed it to “negative apologetics.”
54 Yaaqov Yerucham Wreschner, seder ya‘aqoḇ ‘al maseḵet ‘aḇodah zarah ve‘inyaneiha (2nd ed., vol. 1; Jerusalem: Yaakov Yerucham Wreschner, 1994) 8. Wreschner also raises the possibility that the tractate was originally called goyim [gentiles] and not ‘aḇodah zarah, though ultimately he rejects the idea.
55 Wreschner, seder ya‘aqoḇ ‘al maseḵet ‘aḇodah zarah ve‘inyaneiha (4th ed., vol. 1; Jerusalem: Yaakov Yerucham Wreschner, 2009) 11.
56 Ibid., 642.
57 See ibid., 636–39.
58 Mishnah Ta‘anit 4:1.
59 Wreschner, seder ya‘aqoḇ (3rd ed.; vol. 2) 639.
60 Yosef Menachem Zvi Halevi Manen, “Letter to the Editor,” in ṣefunot 10 (1990–1991) 125–26 (Hebrew).
61 Wreschner, seder ya‘aqoḇ (3rd ed., vol. 2) 637.
62 Wreschner follows in the footsteps of Rabbi Rafael Natan Neta Rabinovich, compiler of the diqduqey sofrim series, which compares different versions of rabbinic writings. He also quotes at length from diqduqey sofrim, referring to Rabbi Rabinovich’s study of the history of censorship. Wreschner seeks to fill the gaps in Rabbi Rabinovich’s reconstructive effort; see seder ya‘aqoḇ, (3rd ed., vol. 2) 639–43. In his historical overview, Wreschner proposes rules for determining a text’s degree of rabbinic authenticity in terms of the time and place where it was written. As I have noted above, a lengthy subsection is devoted to the argument that Meiri wrote what he did due to censorship concerns, and that his opinion must therefore not be relied on (ibid., 639–40). Wreschner stresses that Meiri lived after the burning of the Talmud (Paris, 1244) and wrote during a very difficult period in terms of Christian pressure at a location where such pressure was often brought to bear. Thus, Meiri’s statement about Christianity should be regarded not as a reflection of his real opinion, but as a concession to censorship.
63 Wreschner proposes distinguishing the historically reliable portions of toledot YeŠu according to their provenance. He claims that the Jewish version of the Jesus story is more reliable than the gentile versions because “he was of our people, we know the truth, and it is stated in the Gemarah that there was such a person, and that he practiced sorcery and mocked the words of the sages, and in the history of his life it is stated that he worked wonders, but through sorcery and not by the power of sanctity, and that he was of King David’s line”; ibid., 394. For a revealing overview of nittel naḵt customs, see Marc Shapiro, “Torah Study on Christmas Eve,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 8 (1999) 319–53. On the complex history of the toledot YeŠu, see “Toledot Yeshu” (“The Life Story of Jesus”) Revisited: A Princeton Conference (ed. Peter Schäfer, Michael Meerson, and Yaacov Deutsch; TSAJ 143; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011).
64 In contrast, Wreschner refers directly to the Qur’an on several occasions; see, for example, seder ya‘aqoḇ (3rd ed., vol. 2) 388.
65 Ibid., 478. Wreschner even added to the list a few terms that he felt were missing, such as kalonah (her disgrace)—kevodah (her dignity), and kenessiyah (church)—ṭum’ah (impurity), etc.
66 Ibid., 399; reference to Rabbi Chayim Vital, sefer haḥezyonot. The story echoes the talmudic statement that Jesus is condemned to be cast into boiling excrement in hell (Gittin 57a).
67 Ibid.; reference to me’ir ‘eyney israel (vol. 4) 378 (on the Chofets Chaim).
68 See ibid., 399–401, 407.
69 Ibid., 619: “ ‘and destroy their names’ is interpreted by Rashi as an injunction to ‘call them by derogatory names.’ ”
70 Wreschner aspires for the evaporation of Islam from Jerusalem as well, but this is based on a different theological attitude. His discussion of Islam is beyond the scope of this article.
71 Wreschner, seder ya‘aqoḇ (3rd ed., vol. 2) 619; reference to ’or haḥayim commentary on Deuteronomy.
72 Ibid., 642.
73 Wreschner, of course, considers Christianity to be idolatry; see ibid., 474.
74 Ibid., 643.
75 Ibid., 638.
76 Ibid., 634.
77 According to Wreschner, although it is no longer customary to print such apologetic statements, he chose to include one, because his book “specifically addresses matters of idolatry and censorship”— that is, it contains material of particular sensitivity; see ibid., 641.
78 Wreschner, seder ya‘aqoḇ ‘al maseḵet ‘aḇodah zarah ve‘inyaneiha (1st ed.; vol. 1; Jerusalem: Yaakov Yerucham Wreschner, 1988).
79 Wreschner, seder ya‘aqoḇ (3rd ed.; vol. 2) 638.
80 On the function of fundamentalist elites as the guardians of scriptural traditions against the penetration of modern currents, see Nurit Stadler, A Well-Worn Tallis For a New Ceremony: Trends in Israeli Haredi Culture (Jewish Identities in Post-Modern Society; Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2012) 21–22.
81 On the utilization of modern technologies within Haredi society without affirming modern ideologies, see Kimi Caplan, besod haśiaḥ haḥaredi (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2007) 52–58. Stadler, A Well-Worn Tallis, 125, describes the penetration of modern discourses on a deeper level into Haredi society (such as the therapeutic discourse). Yet for Stadler, too, such modern discourses are legitimized in order to bolster the ability of the Torah scholars to dedicate themselves to Torah study, which in itself still takes place in a “fundamentalist” way, i.e., a reactionary mode that co-opts modernity in order to counter modern critical and secular reasoning; ibid., 126–29.
82 Daniel Boyarin, Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2019) 131–32.