Studying Nechama Leibowitz
The public and private life of one of
the greatest teachers of Bible in recent
times
is explored in a two-day learning program at the Drisha Institute for Jewish
Education in Manhattan
By
Judah S. Harris
If
you
weren’t
fortunate
enough
a
number
of
decades
ago
to
sit
at
the
“learning”
table
in
Nechama
Leibowitz’s
modest
Jerusalem
apartment
where,
over
many
years,
she
taught
her
regular
Torah
classes,
or
grab
yourself
a
place
in
one
of
the
outer
rows
where
students
yet
found
room
to
sit,
you
still
could
have
secured
a
comfortable
empty
chair
on
a
Wednesday
and
Thursday
late-December,
in
one of the larger classrooms on the fifth
floor of
Manhattan’s Drisha
Institute for
Jewish Education.
Nechama
Leibowitz: Her Life & Work, was the theme for this year’s Winter
Week
of
Learning at Drisha, a center for advanced Jewish Studies (but
all
levels
are welcome) which offers ample learning opportunities throughout the
year, but
attempts special programs during popular vacation seasons to bring
teachers and
students together in a common pursuit. December 23rd and 24th was
the
most
recent
“community
learning event,” as Drisha calls it, with
presentations by Nati Helfgot, Walter Hertzberg, Moshe
Sokolow,
and Chayuta Deutsch from Israel, who wrote one of the special
biographies of
Nechama Leibowitz that has been published in recent years.
The
seven different sessions during the two days focused on
both Nechama Leibowitz’s methodology
for
studying
the
written
text,
and
the
chapters,
not
of
the
book,
but
of
her
own
life,
the
intricacies
of
a
public
and
private
person.
She
taught
thousands
of
students
in
schools,
seminaries,
yeshivot, and two Israeli universities, and tens of thousands more through
her
widely
circulated
“gilyonot”
–
stenciled
pamphlets
of
teachings,
with
insights
and
questions
on
the
Parsha,
that
she
prepared
from
1942
to
1971,
and
which
she
distributed
broadly.
Even
after
her
health
dictated that she no longer
would
labor to produce new material, she continued to receive responses, and
offered,
for the mere price of postage, and presumably the rewards of extreme
satisfaction,
to reply, in her own handwriting, to the many who
corresponded with
her.
Photography and design by
Judah S. Harris
“Who
are
you?”
Nechama
would
occasionally
ask
the
sender
on
paper,
with
a
heightened
wonderment
at
times
as
to
the
basic
identity
of
her
correspondents.
They
were
religious
and
secular,
soldiers
and
shopkeepers,
scholars
and rabbis, and in one instance, as chronicled by Dr. Avigdor
Bonchek,
a clinical psychologist and student of Nechama Leibowitz, a waitress in
a
coffee house, a beit cafe. Nechama, noticing good progress in
this correspondent’s worksheets
over
the
months,
was
prodded
to
ask
personal
questions:
what
is
your
profession
and
how
much
time
do
you
spend
on
the
worksheets?
The
waitress answered Nechama that that she was spending
two nights
each week.
If
her students exhibited such a dedication to their
learning, for sure it was reflective of or inspired by the dedication
of their
teacher. For 50 years, Nechama received and marked papers each week,
and the
tally, which she kept track of at her husband’s suggestion, reached
40,000,
before the formal counting stopped. Her approach towards studying and
analyzing
the meforshim, the classical medieval commentators, became legendary,
inspired
more than one generation of educators, and all those striving to be
educated in
the words of the Biblical text, and molded the way Tanach was taught
and, for
sure in Israel, tested in formalized exams, such as the national
Bagrut.
Nechama
championed
active
learning,
encouraging
her
students
to
study
the
words
of
Tanach,
together
with
the
explanations
of
the
traditional
commentaries,
to
contrast
them,
and
to
formulate
their
own
understandings
as
to
the
motivations,
based on the text, that led a commentator in a certain
direction. In Nechama’s world, there existed right and wrong answers,
better
ones and less so, but all in her “classroom” were welcome to attempt,
and she
was fully encouraging of her students.
Yet
some teachers of Tanach, exemplary ones, have been
critical of Nechama’s approach, as well as the “exaggeration” of her
methodology
(by others) that developed and became entrenched in the Jewish Studies
world,
then dictating forcefully how Tanach would or would not be studied.
Rabbi
Nati
Helfgot,
in
his
late-morning
session
on
the
second
day
of
the
program,
offered
a
survey
of
these
voices
and
provided
a
“loving
critique”
of
elements
-
not
the
entirety
of
Shitat Nechama,
which
had,
as
one
example,
popularized
Rashi,
in
distinct
contrast
to
the
other
parshanim,
commentators.
“Nechama
loved
Rashi,”
said
Rabbi
Hefgot,
Director
of
the
Tanach and
Jewish
Thought
Departments
at
Yeshivat
Chovevei
Torah,
and
a
graduate
of
both
RIETS
and
Azrieli
Graduate
School
(Yeshiva
University).
“The
parshan
she
quotes
the
most
in her
gilyonot is Rashi.”
“What’s
bothering
Rashi?”
has
become
a
catch
phrase
in
the
tents
of
Jewish
learning,
and
even
when
not
verbalized
with
these
choice
words,
students
have
been
encouraged
to read the text almost solely through
the eyes
of this major exegete, or via the commentaries of a select few. They
have, her critics
feel, been denied direct access to the text.
“Students
get
bogged
down
in
Rashi
and
may
think
there’s
no
other
way
to
read
the
text
–
except
the
way
these
five
parshanim
read
it,”
says
Helfgot.
Nechama’s
method
was
to
teach understanding, “havana,” in
contrast to
accumulation of knowledge, “yeda.” Curriculums and exams in Israel
began to
reflect this approach and caused a real level of tension in Israeli
society,
says Helfgot. “Sixty percent of a test was on material never
learned.”
Nechama
felt
that
students
“don’t
remember
anything
anyway,”
and
that
understanding
the
happenings,
and
specific
facts
related
in
the
text
was
paramount. Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, an
Israeli educator and Rosh Yeshiva (he studied with Rabbi Zvi Yehuda
Kook), and
a paratrooper during the Six Day War, who has championed alternative
approaches
to Tanach study in Israel, is one of Nechama Leibowitz’s more
pronounced
critics. He counters that people know thousands of songs – they
“remember”
them. People do remember what they learn, but how they learn it can
make all
the difference.
It
was in the 70s and 80s that Bible educators such as
Bin-Nun started to ask more global or “big” questions that couldn’t be
contained in single pasukim, or groups of sentences in the text: Who
was King David?
What is happening in the perek? What is the overall motif or message of
this
entire book?
"Looking
at
'central
stories'
became
more
of
the
focus
for
many
writers
and
readers
of
Tanach,”
Helfgot
explains.
Bin-Nun
would
say
“Read
an
entire
perek,
learn
an
entire
story,
not
just pasukim.” But Nechama
was
against the “Ideas of Tanach” mentality. She had encountered seemingly
similar
things in Germany in her youth, where non-Jewish biblical scholarship
often
negated the authenticity of the Torah, at times heavily infused with
anti-Semitic beliefs, such as in the theses of Julius Wellhausen.
Another
strong
critique
by
the
proponents
of the new
methodologies for learning Tanach was that Nechama Leibowitz’s approach
ignores
the important disciplines of Archeology, Anthropology, History,
Geography - the
research in all these areas that could contribute to vital
understanding of
Tanach. “She was not interested,” says Helfgot, “to take a Tanach and
go on a
tour.”
Tanach
b’Yad, actually going out with text in hand,
to survey the Land of Israel, to encounter firsthand the actual places
mentioned in the pasukim, has enchanted many a student, no matter what
age.
Rabbi Helfgot recounts his first “Tanach tiyul” during his Gush
(Yeshivat Har
Etzion) years, to the top of Tel Azekah, a high place 12 miles
from the
Mediterranean Sea, overlooking the Elah Valley, the site where
David
battled and then killed the Philistine giant Goliath, who according to
some
calculations was nine feet tall (not as romantic and exciting an image
of a
giant as we might wish, but taller than anyone we’ll ever know). The
battle is
over, and this once strategic point now overlooks a valley of
agricultural
fields and vineyards, but for Nati Helfgot, here, he says, is where
“David and
Goliath came to life.”
"Who’s
going
to
be
interested
in
this
besides
archeologists?”
Nechama
would
ask.
“She
didn’t
care
about
the
Hittite
Laws,”
says
Helfgot,
but
contemporary
teachers
wanted
to
know
“what
were the customs of the
kings in the
times of Bnei Yisrael; the tools in use at the time; Derech Plishtim,” the shorter biblical route from Egypt
to Canaan,
but a more treacherous one through enemy territory. What did it look
like? What
was its path? “We have to understand the geography, realities of the
day,”
Helfgot says.
(A couple of weeks later, a Jewish
educator
who studied with
Nechama
Leibowitz at Beit Midrash L'Torah [BMT] in the 70s,
mentioned to me
that he took issue with this perception of her. He distinctly remembers
her
citing archeological findings in respect to Shmuel Aleph 13:21, where
the word
“Pim” appears in the text, in the context of the monetary cost for the
Israelites to have their agricultural tools sharpened by the
Philistines. The
text states that there were no smiths to be found in Israel, for fear
that “the
Hebrews will make swords or spears” [to use against the Philistines,
but
decorative metalwork may still have been allowed]. For the classical
commentators, the word Pim remained an unknown word, a hapax
legomenon,
and they attempted various interesting translations. Only when
archeological
digs in Israel in the early 1900s yielded stone weights with the word
Pim on
them, was the mystery solved, and the newly discovered measurement
revealed to
be exactly equal to 2/3 of a Shekel.)
Because
of
his
critique,
Rabbi
Helfgot
considers
himself
a
talmid
and not a chasid of Nechama Leibowitz. He reads to the class a
letter in
Hebrew that he received from her in 1988, where she criticizes his
attempts to
publish a journal of Tanach at Yeshiva University. Helfgot had extended
to his
teacher, a well-intentioned invitation to submit an essay to the
journal, but
Nechama explains that she has nothing of real importance relating to
textual
studies to contribute, and that she has little time.
Then
she
goes
on
to
the
“real”
reason.
Why
are
these
students
publishing
a
journal
on
Tanach
when
they
have
yet
to
read
some
of
the
seminal
“higher
level”
books
in
contemporary
parshanut, and she lists a
few of
those she holds in high regard. “Who from the students of your yeshiva
have
read even one line of these books?” she scolds, advising Helfgot to
turn
instead to the Tanach teachers at the institution, who are of the same
caliber
as the roshei yeshiva who teach Torah She-be'al Peh.
Helfgot wrote
back to
defend and clarify his and his peers’ studies of Tanach, even sharing a
copy of
an exam he had prepared for his own students, and Nechama responds
again. She
thanks him for his letter, suggests the exam might be too hard for the
students, and offers additional books on Tanach and teaching Tanach,
written in Hebrew,
that should be required reading for all educators, and that
even those teaching
in the Hebrew language have avoided or missed out on.
Nechama
Leibowitz held
the highest standards for the study of Tanach, but biblical criticism,
and the
notion of discordance within the Torah, she didn’t accept. “Ein stirot
ba’Torah, there are no contradictions in the Torah,” she would say.
Rabbi Mordechai Breuer,
one of the leading contemporary scholars of Tanach and the Masoretic
tradition,
who died in 2007, dialogued with her on the subject. They discussed the
contradictions between the first and second chapters of Bereishis
(Genesis), to
which Nechama answered with Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s analysis of the
Torah
presenting the first man in two portrayals, Adam I and Adam II. Yes, a
contradiction, she admitted.
In one of his books,
Rabbi Breuer sums up this exchange as emblematic of Nechama. “A typical
Nechama
response,” he writes. “Her fear (of God) preceded her wisdom.” All the
world
scholars could prove that there are contradictions in the Torah, and
she would
ignore, says Breuer, because in the end it could lead to kefirah,
denial of the
authenticity of the Torah. “If it came from the mouth of Rabbi
Soloveitchik,”
he continues, she’d accept, because “for sure,
his words won’t
encourage
heretical notions.” But for Breuer, Nechama had missed that Rabbi
Soloveitchik’s explication in this area had
in fact opened a “small
portal” for
examination of the entire text of the Torah, in a similar manner.
“Two very
stubborn
people,” comments Rabbi Helfgot on the exchange, as he begins a final
area of
critique of Nechama’s methodology. “She is extreme - Rashi was not
influenced
by personal experiences, beliefs…” Only the pure text, the language of
the text
guided his parshanut, she maintains in her published work, and his
bringing of
medrashim, she writes, is only when they answer a question, solve a
problem at
hand,
fill in a
missing piece. They are not brought as “drashot, moral
lessons”
or to give mussar.
But there are times,
Rabbi Helfgot says, that Rashi does in fact bring midrashim to educate,
not
just to “solve a problem” in the text. And there are places in Rashi,
where the
historical situation of the times is very much of concern, and where
Rashi, as
did other commentators, engages in polemics, selecting explanations to
counter
Christian theology.
(On right, Nechama
Leibowitz
speaks
at the 1983 award ceremony for the Bialik Prize, an important Israeli
award granted by the Tel Aviv municipality for significant
accomplishments in Hebrew literature, both fiction and Jewish thought.
Nechama was awarded the prize that year, and spoke on behalf of the
winners.)
In an
afternoon session,
same day, Chayuta Deutsch, author of Nechama: The Biography of
Nechama
Leibowitz (published in
Hebrew in
September 2008) hands out a photocopied page where Nechama examines one
of the
culminating episodes in the story of Joseph and his brothers. Judah, a
pivotal
character throughout the entire narrative, has “drawn near” to Joseph
to issue
a plea to the ruler to allow Benjamin, the very youngest, and in whose
sack the
missing goblet has been found, to return home to his father along with
the
other brothers. Judah offers himself instead, as a slave. Asking for
mercy, and
predicting their older father’s demise if Benjamin is not returned
safely,
Judah recounts the series of requests and indictments that Joseph
leveled
against them.
But the
Medrash
Tanchuma, which Nechama brings, portrays a much harsher exchange
between the
two men, as this partial excerpt illustrates:
“A false
judgment
against us,” declares Judah.
“There is no more false
a judgment, than the sale of your brother,” Joseph replies.
“The fire that burned
Shechem is rekindled in me, Judah declares.
“That is the fire (of
passion) of your daughter-in-law Tamar. I will douse it,” says Joseph.
“I will go out now and
color the marketplaces of Egypt in blood,” Judah threatens.
“You were dyers from an
earlier time, coloring the garment of your brother in blood, and saying
to your
father: He is torn to pieces,” Joseph retorts.
Chayuta Deutsch solicits
responses from the class, and a number of participants volunteer
possible
explanations for the medrash’s contrived dialogue. This writer suggests
that
Joseph’s words heard in the medrash are the “unsaid” comments of the
listener,
who in the actual biblical text is verbally silent during Judah’s plea,
but
speaking or responding nonetheless.
“Interesting,” she
acknowledges, with a tone indicating clearly that she’s not too
accepting of
that explanation. “Let’s see what Nechama says.”
We read together
Nechama’s answer to the medrash’s embellished transformation of a
thoroughly
moving speech, Judah’s monologue, into a harsh, combative, accusatory
dialogue
between the two brothers. The words attributed to Joseph - he could not
possibly have said them, especially since he has yet to reveal himself.
But who
then is this accuser that the Medrash presents? Nechama asks.
The sages, she answers,
wanted to reveal the inner conscience of Judah, the “voice of remorse
which
plagued him,” now that the brothers’ fate was totally in the hands of
this
Egyptian monarch. The more Judah objects to their treatment, she
writes, the
more he’s reminded of his own persecution of another, “the injustice he
inflicted on Joseph.”
“It’s the voice of
remorse and shame,” says Deutsch. “But why did Nechama bring this
medrash?”
She was drawn to the drama, but most
importantly, stresses Deutsch, Nechama wanted to connect the text to
real life. The essential peshat, primary explanation of the text must
be about the moral obligation that applies to the lives of each one of
us. “Her theme was to bring Torah to life,” says Deutsch. “She brings
Shuk HaCarmel (the large flavorful Tel Aviv market) to class.” She
wanted everyone "in the marketplace," the entire populace, as diverse
as it is, to read Tanach and to think about the psychology (in this
case, Judah’s relationship with his brother, his family), and the
questions that everyone confronts.
Admittedly, the Joseph story ranks high
amongst the most dramatic in the Torah, but Nechama found drama
throughout the scripture. “Nechama loved drama, understood what drama
is,” says Deutsch. “She had a good ear for the text and people.”
Her capacity with people is well noted,
and many former students told Deutsch, while she was researching for
her book, that Nechama had a good feeling for people and could sense if
something was the matter with someone. Literature, in all its forms,
Biblical or otherwise, evoked the human drama. Nechama Leibowitz taught
literature, she taught poetry, and she even “liked detective books,”
shares Deutsch.
An appreciation and
command of great literature was instilled in Nechama’s own home in the
early
years. Around the family table, her father would quote a sentence and
demand
the source. “How could you not know it is a Shakespeare miforash (an obvious reference),” he questioned?
But even with the
family’s penchant for knowledge and worldliness, they remained critical
of the
fact that Nechama, as a young woman, was also a “scholar” in Tanach.
The socio-religious outlook of
the time considered immersion in Torah study more appropriately the
domain of
men (even in later years during her career, the site of a woman
teaching Torah
was surprising, if not shocking to many who sat in on her lectures or
classes).
Nechama’s brother, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, also excelled, and became, in
Israel,
the more famous of the two - probably, Deutsch assumes, since he was
the more
outspoken, more provocative one, with philosophical and religious views
that
seemed radical coming from an Orthodox Jew.
Nechama Leibowitz was
two years younger than her brother. Both were born in Riga, Latvia
where the
family was then living. Nechama was born in 1905 and passed away in
1997 at the
age of 92, three years after her brother’s death. In her childhood she
attended
public school; the Jewish education was
taught at home.
(On left, Nechama's
passport photo)
In 1919, after World War
I, the family moved from Russia to Berlin, the German capital. This was
a prosperous time for Jews in Berlin, the start of the era of the
democratic Weimar
Republic, a time of Jewish Renaissance, a term introduced years
earlier,
at the
turn of the century, by Martin Buber to encourage a Jewish
cultural, as
opposed to solely political, revival.
Berlin
had
become
a
new
home
for
70,000
East European
Jews
(according
to
some
figures)
that
arrived
during
and
after
the
War,
and
soon
grew
as
a
center for
Hebrew culture (by 1930, it is
estimated
there were more than 103 Jewish periodicals being published in Germany
in both
German and Hebrew).
Nechama studied at the
University of Berlin from 1925-1930, and simultaneously continued her
Jewish
studies at Hochschule für die
Wissenschaft des Judentums,
the
Higher Institute for Jewish Studies, a liberal or non-denominational
institution. “Why did she
go?”
Deutsch
jokes,
but
with
a
serious
point
intended.
“Since
she
wasn’t
going
to
be
accepted
to
Beit
Medrash
L’Rabbanim
(the
Rabbinical
Seminary).”
In 1930, Nechama
completed her doctorate. Her thesis examined Yiddish translations
of
the
Hebrew
Bible "in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century, as
Exemplified by Translations of the Book of Psalms.” She married and moved to Israel. Her
brother stayed
in Berlin, and then finished his medical degree in Switzerland.
Nechama’s
marriage to
her uncle, Yedidya Lipman Leibowitz, who was 29 years her senior, caused not
only wonderment, but also
strife in her family (her parents were not at the chuppah). He was a
big man,
says Deutsch, and blind. Nechama took care of him, and some supposed
she
married him specifically to enable her, as a religious woman, to be
able to
properly care for him. But observers of Nechama Leibowitz point out
that indeed
it was for love. She felt he was the only one who could really
understand her.
Nechama
and her brother Yeshayahu
In 1936
Nechama traveled
to Strasbourg, where her family was living. She made peace with them,
and
escorted her family back to Israel, where they resided in her
neighborhood.
This was the only time in her life that she left Israel after having
made aliyah from Germany.
At one point during the
afternoon, Deutsch, who has studied with Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, references
Rabbi
Nati Helfgot’s lesson of the morning. She feels the need to further
explain to
the class the reason Nechama Leibowitz “couldn’t stand” the touring
with Tanach
phenomenon, an educational activity which would seem enticing to many
Jewish
Studies teachers, and which Nechama herself might have accepted as an
additional means to make “the text come to life.” She was convinced,
says
Deutsch, that this type of discovery activity could “disprove” the
veracity of
Tanach, when used by scholars with a non-traditionalist historical
agenda or
clearly anti-religious approach.
Rabbi David Silber, the Founder
and
Dean
of
Drisha,
who
has
been
sitting
in
one
of
the
back
rows
during
the
class
(the
back
partition
has
now
been
opened
up
to
join
the
classroom
with
the
larger
Beit Medrash), speaks up and offers to frame the difference
between
Nechama Leibowitz and the educators who subscribe to the new
methodologies for
teaching Tanach. During visits to Israel, he has met Rabbi Rabbi Yoel
Bin Nun,
sat next to him in shul. “Rabbi Yoel Bin Nun is about making it real,”
says
Rabbi Silber. “I have many issues with it (his Torah), but it’s about
constructing Torat Eretz Yisrael” - a term referring to
knowledge and
love of the Land, the integral nature of Eretz Yisrael within
Religious-Zionistic thought. “Nechama Leibowitz may have more of a
‘Galus
mentality,’” he surmises.
As
indicated by this special series of classes at Drisha;
the popular stories that her students will at times relate casually,
but
proudly, to their own students, congregants and friends (I have heard
many);
and the books and articles that have been published since her death,
there
remains a strong interest in understanding the motivations of Nechama
Lebowitz
- her world outlook, her philosophy as a pedagogue, and who she was as
a
private person.
Those
who
studied
with
Nechama
Leibowitz
in
her
time,
for
sure
caught
glimpses
of
her
personal
life,
if
not
more.
And
those
who
study
her
now,
are
invariably
often
seeking
an
understanding
of the woman as well
as the
teacher.
For
40 years of her life, Nechama Leibowitz was married, but
she had no children. Her housekeeper had to help her with food
preparation,
because Nechama simply didn’t know how to cook. The housekeeper told
Chayuta
Deutsch that she prepared all the food on the heating platter; Nechama
just had
to plug it in.
The
hundreds of pages in the biographies written about her,
based in part on hundreds of interviews and conversations with those
who knew
her, offer ample details - stories, recollections, and analysis - as
the
authors also ponder whether Nechama Lebowitz’s life as a woman and her
life as
a teacher only existed side by side, or did also they come together,
her
private life influencing her public life, the teachings she shared with
her
students?
Deutsch
addresses
this
question
directly,
during
the
last
class
of
the
day,
by
circulating
a
handout,
two-sided,
with
an
English
translation of the explanations by two biblical commentators, Ramban,
Rabbi
Moshe ben Nachman, and a later Spanish commentator, Rabbi
Isaac
Arama,
who lived in the 15th century, and authored Akedat
Yitzchak,
a collection of 105 philosophical sermons on the Pentateuch.
In
this 1953 lesson on the weekly Torah portion of Vayetze,
Nechama’s private life plays out on the page, as she presents the two
different
exegetical approaches by these commentators, which deal with the third
matriarch’s inability to conceive. The textual sentence is Rachel’s
saying to
her husband Jacob: “Give me children or else I will die” (Beraishis 30:1) Jacob responds with anger: “Am I in
the place
of God, who has withheld from you children?”
The
commentators each wonder why Jacob was angered. But
while Ramban focuses on Rachel’s request for Jacob to pray to God on
her
behalf, and the efficacy, or not, of that prayer, since she still
remains
childless, Rabbi Issac Arama chooses instead to stress the dual purpose
that
each woman has in life: being both an “Isha” and also a “Chava.” The
latter
name references being an “em kol chai, the mother of all living,” but
isha,
says Rabbi Arama, infers “taken from man” (some scholars question the
etymological connection between ish and isha), and that just as a man
can
advance in developing and bettering the world, so too the woman shares
this
mission. It is not dependent on having children. A woman “deprived” of
her
“secondary” purpose (in the Biblical text, the name Chava comes after
Isha)
“will be left with the ability to do evil or good, like the man who is
barren,”
writes Rabbi Arama - the good deeds of the righteous are their
children.
Jacob, with his harsher response, strongly reminds Rachel that she was
not
“dead” without children, Rabbi Arama concludes in his commentary. Their
joint
purpose in life remained very much alive.
She
sided with which parshan?” Deutsch asks the class,
prodding us to look again at the handout in front of us, and to choose
a
winner. “Ramban or Rabbi Isaac Arama?” Womanhood defined solely by
having
children, or by a dual-purpose?
Both,
answers
Deutsch.
“Publicly
she
kept
the
harmony
of
both
sides.”
The
dual-purpose
of
being
a
woman
-
and
if
one
purpose
is
biologically
unattainable,
the
other
remains
forever
present and
integral to
the success of mankind, Rabbi Arama’s approach. “But in private,”
continues
Deutsch, “she kept the sadness of not having kids,” the Ramban’s
approach.
Nechama wanted to have children, and Deutsch quotes her as saying, that
if she
did, “she wouldn’t have written one folio,” implying that the children
would have
been her preferred accomplishments.
Nechama
Leibowitz’s
children
are
her
thousands of students,
and at her burial on Har HaMenuchot in 1997, a nephew turned to the
gathered
audience and announced that anyone who felt a connection, should recite
the Kaddish
too.
In
an inscription in her books, she also refers to her
published works as her
children. Her writings survive her on multiple
continents, on tens of thousands of bookshelves, but initially Nechama
didn’t
want to publish any formal books. “Yidabru haTorot sheli,” she said.
Her Torah,
as she taught it, would speak loudly, be passed along, and need not be
confined
to printed volumes. She didn’t want to be considered only a scholar,
says
Deutsch. “She was a human being, a person.”
When
approached
to
publish
her
teachings,
she
initially
refused.
She
conveyed
to
the
Jewish
Agency,
which
had
requested
to
publish
her
works,
that
she
felt
that
would
mean
that
she
had to provide the
answers to the
questions she posed, and people should be thinking on their own. She
was also
afraid, says Deutsch, who conversed with Dr. Chaim Chamiel of the
Jewish
Agency’s Department of Torah
Education in
the Diaspora, that if there were books in print, people
might not
come to her to learn, a financial loss and serious compromise of the
personal
relationship between teacher and student. She finally did agree,
though, and
was happy with the results - and even with the answers now provided,
she
supplemented additional material for students to ponder. The first
books were published
in Hebrew, later translated into English, French, Spanish, and Dutch.
Though
Nechama
was
never
wanting
the
title
scholar
(her
tombstone
has
only
the
one
word,
“morah,
teacher”
as
a
description),
she
was
by
all
accounts,
respected
as
a scholar at the highest levels in the field
of
Jewish Studies, well versed in Torah she Baal Peh, a lecturer in Tel
Aviv and
Jerusalem - of “performer” status, says Deutsch - whose ever-popular
public
talks were
heralded with large signs and public announcements.
Nechama's
gravestone,
photographed by Yael
Unterman
The
curious wondered about her popularity, and some her gender. Yael
Unterman, in
her book Nehama Leibowitz: Teacher and Bible
Scholar,
published in 2009, tells the story of “a
distinguished looking Ultra-Orthodox man” who asked to sit in on her
class at
the Efrata College, a religious teacher training program
in
the
Baka
neighborhood
of
Jerusalem
(formerly
the
Mizrachi College for
Women). Nechama obliged and, as
Unterman writes,
after the class was over “he introduced himself as a student’s father.
He had
felt the need to substantiate with his own eyes that the teacher behind
his
daughter’s
impressive class notes and worksheets was a woman.”
Unterman relays
another anecdote, this time of a Modern Orthodox Yeshiva student, who
arrived
in Israel in 1972 as a newlywed, to learn at the Gruss Kollel of
Yeshiva
University, and was encouraged by his Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Dovid Miller
to study
with Nechama Leibowitz. He did not take the opportunity seriously. The
student
was Rabbi Hershel Billet, Rabbi of the Young Israel of Woodmere
in New York
(and a past President of the Rabbinical Council of America), who tells
Unterman
that his thinking was “I had already
spent five or six years in Rav Soloveitchik’s shiur – what could a
woman teach
me about Torah? So she wrote a few books, quotes a few commentators –
simplistic stuff!”
Rabbi
Billet
finally
phoned
her,
they
scheduled
for
a
Friday,
and
he
was
soon
surprised
at
just
how
much
he
could
yet
learn
from
this
woman.
“I walked up a couple
of
flights of stairs, knocked on the door, and a feisty lady opened it,
saying,
‘Come in, you’re two minutes late.’ Then she sat me down and gave me a
worksheet to fill out. I thought it would be piece of cake. The first
question
was a breeze, but the second wasn’t – it had an X, and the third had
two X’s,
and I couldn’t believe this was happening.”
He was humbled.
Nechama conveyed she was a “busy lady too,” but agreed to give him an
hour and
a half a week. Often Rabbi Billet’s wife would
join for the sessions,
which he
found eye opening, and broadening of his perspective.
Not only could
longtime students of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik
gain immensely from
shiurim with
Nechama, even the Rav’s son himself benefited, as
Chayuta
Deutsch tells
in her own story of Rabbi Dr. Haym
Soloveitchik,
who
studied
privately,
b’chavrusah,
with
Nechama
for
nine
months,
on
a
weekly
basis.
What
did
they
study?
Chumash
with
Rashi.
Of
course.
If
Nechama Leibowitz had serious hesitations, initially,
about formally publishing her work, was reluctant to contribute to
certain
Tanach journals (critical of what she perceived as “amateur” attempts,
but also
wondering what she might possibly have to add), and continuously
exemplified
modesty and simplicity in most aspects of her life, what would she say
about
these books now being published about her, about multi-day learning
programs
that are examining not just her methodology and “shitah,” but her
person, her
essence, her inner thoughts?
Yael
Unterman,
who
spent
10
years
researching
and
writing
her
607-page
biography
of
Nechama,
looks
back
and
feels
that
a
lot
yet
remains
elusive.
“I
think
the
question
of
how
exactly
she
came to be who she
was, what
influences shaped and formed her, and how she became this legend, was
not fully
covered by either myself or Chayuta, though we both made brave attempts
at it
from various angles. I also believe neither of us really got into who
she was
in her most private moments, though again, we make some suggestions.”
Unterman
is
grateful
that
the
publication
of
her
book,
together
with
other
recent
books,
including
a
number
of
collections
of
teachings,
has
led
to
a
renewed
interest
in
the
work
of one of the
greatest
contemporary teachers of Jewish Studies. Unterman measures the overall
impact
of this one woman who taught Torah, in the broadest possible terms, and
believes that the “Jewish intellectual discourse” can benefit
immensely by
looking to Nechama Leibowitz when discussing “Torah study, feminism,
pedagogy
and other major issues of concern.”
Those
who
research
and
write
about
Nechama
and
those
who
studied
with
her
personally,
offer
us
a
more
complete
appreciation
of
her
legacy.
Their
opinions
or
conclusions
may
differ
at
times,
both
in
style and
information conveyed, but with the help of these “commentators,” so to
speak, a
cohesive impression is formulated nonetheless, one that can be
transmitted
further to all those who choose to study Nechama Leibowitz.
All of Nechama
Leibowitz's Gilyonot are
now available on the internet at www.nechama.org.il and can be used to
study Torah, prepare a shiur, or talk about the
weekly parsha. Scans of the
original work sheets are also available, as well as short bios of the
commentators she includes in her lessons.
Photographs
reproduced with this
essay are courtesy of the family of Nechama Leibowitz, except the last
image (right above) which was taken by Rabbi David S. Levin. The
introductory
graphic of Tanach text with magnifier was designed and photographed by
Judah S.
Harris. Chayuta Deutsch's biography on Nechama Leibowitz can be
purchased from Yediot Books, www.ybook.co.il, and Yael
Unterman's, a finalist in the 2009 Jewish Book Awards, on Amazon or via
her website: www.yaelunterman.com
A program on Nechama Leibowitz was presented by Bernard Revel Graduate School of YU in October 2013. Audio of the scholarly lecture and a link to a short film interview that I directed about one of Nechama's earliest students, can be found here: www.yu.edu/revel/nehama-leibowitz-event