Sin-A-Gogue

by David Bashevkin

  Such assessment should not happen, writes Rabbi Hutner, during times of self-doubt and insecurity. Just as Jewish law prohibits judgment during the nighttime, our self-assessment should not occur during times of personal darkness.392 Failure, when properly assessed and integrated, can be a fertile ground for personal and spiritual development.

  Rabbi Hutner’s consoling approach to sin and failure is likely the most enduring perspective contained in the collection of his letters. Yeshiva and seminary students who may have never heard of Rabbi Hutner or seriously studied his writings have likely been shown or read portions of his 128th letter—his fundamental treatise on sin and failure. The letter, which begins by lamenting the hagiographic nature of rabbinic biographies, reminds a student that greatness does not emerge from the serenity of our good inclinations but from our struggles with our baser tendencies. The verse in Proverbs (24:16), “The righteous fall seven times and stand up,” has been perennially misunderstood. It is not despite the fall that the righteous stand up—it is because of the fall that the righteous are able to stand confidently. Greatness does not emerge despite failure; it is a product of failure.

  If the medium is in fact the message, the message of these missives is the integration of theological profundities in the clothes of personal correspondence: the personal and subjective are seamlessly woven together with the eternal and enduring. Throughout the collection of Rabbi Hutner’s letters, none of the recipients’ names are listed. Listing the intended destinations of these letters would certainly have increased their historical value, but their absence likely increases the feeling of contemporary relevance they convey. The names are missing because the modern reader is intended to be their enduring addressee.

  The Consolation of Correspondence

  Rabbinic correspondence on sin and failure emphasizes that all of history is marked with struggles and failure. Matt Potter, a contemporary author like Shaun Usher, collects fascinating correspondences. He, however, collects a very specific kind of correspondence: resignation letters. In his book The Last Goodbye: A History of the World in Resignation Letters, Potter explains why he anthologized this form of history:

  History is written by the winners. It’s the survivors—the faithful servant, the insiders, the ones who stick around, who can adapt to almost any condition—who get to write the official histories …. The quitter’s tale offers a far more compelling, and often a more honest take.393

  Like the quitter’s tale, the sinner’s tale has also been neglected. Rabbinic correspondence, however, gives a rare lens into this rich history. Each generation and each individual’s struggles are unique, but the history of sin and failure as documented in rabbinic correspondence can help reorient the way we look at ours. The prolific author and psychologist Irvin Yalom writes, “Even though you’re alone in your boat, it’s always comforting to see the lights of the other boats bobbing nearby.”394 Centuries of rabbinic correspondence on sin and failure provide such a glimpse and, hopefully, such solace.

  ENDNOTES

  1. For a full account of the banning, read the author’s subsequent Anatomy of a Ban (Jerusalem: Private Printing Publishers, 2003). See also Yoel Finkelman, Strictly Kosher Reading (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2011), 106–107n36 as well as Immanuel Etkes, “Al Itzuv Demutam shel ha-‘Gdoilim’ bi-Safrut shel ha-Shevahim ha-Haredit-Litait,” in The Gdoilim, ed. Benjamin Brown and Nissim Leon (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2017), 58–66.

  2. Rabbi Shimon Schwab, “Jewish History,” in Selected Writings (Lakewood: C.I.S. Publishers, 1988), 232–235.

  3. See Robyn Fivush, Jennifer G. Bohanek, and Marshall Duke. “The Intergenerational Self: Subjective Perspective and Family History,” in Self Continuity: Individual and Collective Perspectives, ed. Fabio Sani (New York: Psychology Press, 2008), 131–143.

  4. Bruce Feiler, “The Stories that Bind Us,” New York Times, March 15, 2013.

  5. See Gen. 5:1. For a moving presentation of this analogy, see Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, A Letter in the Scroll (New York: Free Press, 2004), 39–41.

  6. See Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner’s Pahad Yitzhak: Igrot U-Ketavim (New York: Gur Aryeh, 1987), Letter 128.

  7. Much of the following is adapted from my article in First Things, “Life is Full of Failure. Bio Blurbs Should be Too,” May 14, 2014, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/05/life-is-full-of-failure-bio-blurbs-should-be-too.

  8. See Joseph Epstein, “The Art of Biography,” The Wall Street Journal, January 1, 2016. For more on the virtues and pitfalls of incorporating failure into storytelling, see Giles Harvey, “Cry Me a River: The Rise of the Failure Memoir,” New Yorker, March 25, 2013.

  9. A few years after this article was originally written, Johannes Haushofer, a professor at Princeton, received national attention for a similar idea. On his academic page he published a CV consisting exclusively of his failures—all of the programs, fellowships, and awards he did not receive over the course of his career. See “CV of Failures: Princeton Professor Publishes Resume of His Career Lows,” The Guardian, April 29, 2016. The actual CV of failures can be found at https://www.princeton.edu/~joha/Johannes_Haushofer_CV_of_Failures.pdf. Professor Haushofer credits an earlier article by Melanie Stefan entitled “A CV of Failures,” published in Nature 468 (November 2010).

  10. On the attribution of this saying see William Safire, “Let a Simile Be Your Umbrella,” New York Times, February 11, 1996.

  11. Gary A. Anderson, Sin: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 6.

  12. Joseph Lam, Patterns of Sin in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 3.

  13. Lam, Patterns of Sin, 4.

  14. Anderson, Sin: A History, 105.

  15. Anderson, Sin: A History, 110.

  16. Hayyei Moharan II 11:4, as cited in Arthur Green, Tormented Master: The Life and Spiritual Quest of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, Third Printing (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2004), 47.

  17. Green, Tormented Master, 47.

  18. For more biblical scholarship on het as missing the mark, see Lam, Patterns of Sin, 221n12.

  19. Lam, Patterns of Sin, 6.

  20. Cited by Lam, Patterns of Sin, 156.

  21. See Yoma 35b and 36b.

  22. See also Malbim’s comment to Ex. 34:7.

  23. Some later commentaries question the rationale of Rabbi Meir. See the comments of Gevurot Ari, Maharsha, and Sefat Emet on Yoma 36b and Malbim’s comment on Lev. 16:21.

  24. Karl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? (New York: Hawthorne Books, 1973), 50.

  25. For a more comprehensive overview on early rabbinic attitudes towards sin, see A. Büchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement in the Rabbinic Literature of the First Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1928). For more on the relationship between sin and punishment in rabbinic thought, see the comprehensive Hebrew work by Aharon Shemesh entitled Punishments and Sins: From Scripture to the Rabbis (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2003).

  26. See Meir Zvi Grossman, “Le-Mashmuatam shel ha-Bituyim ‘aveirah’ ve-‘dvar aveirah’ bi-Leshon Hakhamim,” Sinai 100, no.1 (1987): 260–272, which notes that the phrase aveirah does not appear in biblical literature. Grossman provides a comprehensive presentation of its evolving usage in rabbinic literature, specifically focusing on the sexual connotations of the word.

  27. Avot 2:2.

  28. Steven D. Fraade, “The Innovation of Nominalized Verbs in Mishnaic Hebrew as Marking an Innovation of Concept,” in Studies in Mishnaic Hebrew and Related Fields, eds. Elitzur A. Bar-Asher Siegal and Aaron J. Koller (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2017), 129–148.

  29. Grossman, “Le-Mashmuatam,” 260–272.

  30. See Grossman, ibid.

  31. On canonization as a concept in the development of Jewish law see Moshe Halbertal, People of the Book (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).

  32. See Sacha Stern, Time and Process in Ancient Judaism (Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007) for an introduction to the rabbinic
view of time. For more on the development of the words for time in rabbinic literature, see Jeffrey Woolf, “Time Awareness as a Source for Spirituality in the Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” Modern Judaism 32, no. 1 (February 2012).

  33. This phrase features prominently in the works of Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner. For more on this phrase, in particular in the thought of Rabbi Hutner, see Shmuel Vigoda’s “‘Be-Hevlei Ha-Zman’ Ha-Adam ve-Hazman be-Haguto shel ha-Rav Yitzhak Hutner” in Be-Darkhe Shalom, ed. Binyamin Ish Shalom (Jerusalem: Beit Morashah, 2007).

  34. For a historical consideration of the Jewish community’s lapse of donning tefillin in the Medieval period, see Ephraim Kanarfogel, “Not Just Another Contemporary Jewish Problem: A Historical Discussion of Phylacteries,” Gesher 5 (1976): 106–121.

  35. Sefer ha-Hinukh 421.

  36. Ibid.

  37. See Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshuvah, 2:2.

  38. Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams (New York: Pantheon Book, 1993), 69.

  39. Ibid., 68.

  40. Franz Boas, Introduction [To Handbook of American Indian Languages] (Washington DC: Government Print Office, 1911), 26.

  41. See Gen. 2:25–3:24.

  42. For differing approaches on the dating of Adam’s sin see F.R. Tennant’s The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1903), 151n6. It should be noted that Tennant was hostile to rabbinic thought, but his volume remains one of the most comprehensive works on original sin. In addition to the sources cited above, see also the Book of Jubilees 3:17 which explicitly states that Adam was in Eden for seven years before sinning.

  43. See Alan Jacobs, Original Sin: A Cultural History (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), 43. Jacobs also notes the depiction in C.S. Lewis’s Perlandra of the temptation going on “day after agonizing day.” Ibid.

  44. Sanhedrin 38b. For alternate versions of the events on that day, see Vayikra Rabbah, beginning of Parshah 29 (on Emor), and Avot De-Rebi Natan 1:8. For an explanation see Maharal’s Tiferet Yisrael ch. 16. See however, Perushei Rav Saadiah Gaon la-Bereishit (New York: Beit ha-Midrash la-Rabbanim ba-America, 1984), 296-301, who seems to present an alternative timeline to the account in Sanhedrin. See, in particular, at footnote 505 therein. I am indebted to Rabbi Abraham Lieberman for pointing this out to me.

  45. John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 104.

  46. Nahmanides commentary to Gen. 2:9. Translation from Oded Yisraeli, “Adam’s Sin: Its Meaning and Essence,” in Temple Portals: Studies in Aggadah and Midrash in the Zohar, trans. Liat Keren (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2016), 56. For a more robust presentation of the approach of Nahmanides to the sin of Adam, particularly the connection between his sin and the subsequent punishment of death, see Moshe Halbertal’s “Mavet, Het, Hok, ve-Geulah be-Mishnat ha-Ramban,” Tarbiz 71, no. 1-2 (2002): 133–162. For a more general discussion of Nahmanides approach to biblical exegesis see Elliot R. Wolfson, “By Way of Truth: Aspects of Nahmanides’ Kabbalistic Hermeneutic,” AJS Review 14, no. 2 (Autumn 1989): 103–178.

  47. William Safire, The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 232.

  48. Ora Wiskind-Elper, Wisdom of the Heart: The Teachings of Rabbi Ya’akov of Izbica-Radzyn (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2010), 185.

  49. Ibid., 181–182. Note that my translation is different, particularly my translation of the term bushah/ as shame, rather than Wiskind-Elper’s translation of the term as humility.

  50. Shaul Magid, From Metaphysics to Midrash: Myth, History, and the Interpretation of Scripture in Lurianic Kabbala (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008), 71.

  51. For more on the emotion of shame and its role in kabbalistic literature, see Jonathan Garb’s “Shame as an Existential Emotion in Modern Kabbalah,” Jewish Social Studies, 21, no. 1 (Fall 2015): 89–122. See also, Jonathan K. Crane, “Shameful Ambivalences: Dimensions of Rabbinic Shame,” AJS Review, 35, no. 1 (April 2011): 61–84.

  52. For a more comprehensive consideration of Cohen’s approach to sin see Michael Zank’s The Idea of Atonement in the Philosophy of Hermann Cohen (Providence, RI: Scholars Press, 2000). See also Annika Thiem’s “Specters of Sin and Salvation: Hermann Cohen, Original Sin, and Rethinking the Critique of Religion,” Idealistic Studies 40, no. 1/2 (2010): 117–138.

  53. Scott Edgar, “Hermann Cohen”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, last revised September 17, 2015, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/cohen/.

  54. Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Simon Kaplan (New York: Frederick Unger, 1972), 22.

  55. Ibid., 20.

  56. Alan Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Mind 59:236 (October 1950): 433–460.

  57. Brian Christian, The Most Human Human (New York: Doubleday, 2011), 11.

  58. Eric Chinski, “Brian Christian on ‘The Most Human Human,’” The Paris Review, March 14, 2011, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/03/14/brian-christian-on-the-most-human-human/.

  59. Wiskind-Elper, Wisdom of the Heart, 181.

  60. See N.P. Williams, The Ideas of the Fall and of Original Sin: A Historical and Critical Study (London: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1927), and F.R. Tennant, The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1903). For a more popular presentation of the doctrine with more contemporary context see Alan Jacobs, Original Sin: A Cultural History (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), as well as Paula Fredriksen, Sin: The Early History of an Idea (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).

  61. Alan Jacobs, Original Sin, 48–54.

  62. Joel E. Rembaum, “Medieval Jewish Criticism of the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin,” AJS Review 7/8 (1982-83): 353–382. This citation appears on page 377. For more on medieval polemics see also Hyam Maccoby, Judaism on Trial (Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1993). For more on the rabbinic conceptualization of sin, in particular the concepts of good and evil inclinations, see Steven T. Katz, “Man, Sin, and Redemption in Rabbinic Judaism,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume IV The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, ed. Steven T. Katz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). More on the evolution of the rabbinic conception of the evil inclination can be found in Ishay Rozen-Zvi’s Demonic Desires: Yetzer Hara and the Problem of Evil (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). For an interesting contrast on the development of the concept of original sin in Christian and rabbinic thought, see Jeremy Cohen, “Original Sin as the Evil Inclination: A Polemicist’s Appreciation of Human Nature,” Harvard Theological Review 73 (1980): 495-520. See also Stanley E. Porter’s “The Pauline Concept of Original Sin, In Light of Rabbinic Background,” Tyndale Bulletin 41, no. 1 (1990): 3–30.

  63. See Daniel J. Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007), xx.

  64. Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics, 107.

  65. See Responsa Raavad 11. See also Louis Jacobs’s Theology in the Responsa (Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2005), 49–50. For a more extensive analysis of the approach of the Raavad in regards to original sin, see Byron L. Sherwin’s Studies in Jewish Theology: Reflections in the Mirror of Tradition (Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007), 240–248.

  66. For more, see Alan Cooper, “A Medieval Jewish Version of Original Sin: Ephraim Luntschitz on Lev. 12,” Harvard Theological Review 97, no. 4 (October 2004): 445–59.

  67. For a broader and more extensive discussion of the story of Adam’s sin within Lurianic Kabbalah, see Shaul Magid, “From Theosophy to Midrash: Lurianic Exegesis and the Garden of Eden,” AJS Review 22/1 (1997): 37–75.

  68. Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics, 226n19.

  69. Allison P. Coud
ert, The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and Thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (Leiden: Brill, 1999).

  70. See Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1974), 416. For more on the Christian kabbalah movement, see Scholem, 196.

  71. For more on Leibniz and Kabbalah, see Allison Coudert, “Leibniz and the Kabbalah,” in The Impact of the Kabbalah, 308–329.

  72. For a more detailed discussion on the effect of Lurianic mysticism on the divide between original sin in Jewish and Christian thought, see Shaul Magid’s From Metaphysics to Midrash, 36–37. He summarizes his thesis as follows, “It is my contention that Lurianic exegesis actually brings Judaism and Christianity closer together, perhaps because his mystical fraternity flourished at a time when New Christians were returning to Judaism, thinning the opacity between these two competing religions.”

  73. Coudert, The Impact of the Kabbalah, 347.

  74. Rabbi Dr. Simcha Willig, email message to the author, August 18, 2010. For a moving dialogue that encapsulates this theme, see Saki Santorelli, Heal Thy Self: Lessons on Mindfulness in Medicine (New York: Random House, 1999), 29. There, he responds to someone who desired to “get back to being who I used to be.” For more on resilience see Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (London: Vermilion, 2016). See also Ben Sherwood’s The Survivor’s Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009).

  75. United States of America v. Gilberto Valle, 807 F.3d 508, 511 (2nd Cir. 2015). I am grateful to Ms. Debbie Stone for first introducing me to the details of this case. This case was later featured in Russ Mayberry, dir., Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop, aired April 24, 2015, HBO.