The Forbidden Relations and the Early Tannaim: No Subtitle

By John W. McGinley

Is there an idiosyncratically Jewish hermeneutic? Did such ever obtain in Jewish history? Is there an idiosyncratically Jewish theology? Did such ever obtain in Jewish history? Did the two ever obtain at once and together in Jewish history? The answer to all of these questions is: Yes.

Come and explore -- with an idiosyncratically odd interpreter of things Jewish -- a special brief moment in the history of Jewish letters. One is speaking of roughly 75 CE to roughly 95 CE. Come and explore what was birthed in that time period. Come and explore how what was birthed in that time period came to be rejected and suppressed on the day of the coiled snake. Come and explore how, miraculously, what was rejected and suppressed ended up being re-inscribed in the final redaction of the Bavli, rendering that written production as the quintessential expression of what is idiosyncratically Jewish.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 12, 2007
• ISBN: 9780595871810

John W. McGinley

John W. McGinley holds a PhD in Philosophy from Boston College and an MA in Jewish Studies from Gratz College; he resides in Farmingdale, NJ.

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Copyright © 2007 by John W. McGinley

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ISBN-13: 978-0-595-42843-4 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-87181-0 (ebook)

ISBN-10: 0-595-42843-6 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-87181-X (ebk)

Contents

1. (Introductory remarks)

2. (Rabbinic cognomens and cognate matters; excerptive materials)

3. (The azzan yadin backdrop)

4. (The yadin backdrop morphs into the mcginley enterprise)

5. (Who are the early tannaim?)

6. (A guide for the perplexed)

7. (Excerptive material from isbn: 0-595-40488-x)

8. (So where are we now?)

9. (The launching of rabbinic officialdom)

10. (Continuing on)

11. (The heart of the matter is a broken heart)

12. (Concerning on that very day; concerning on that day; concerning the other on that day)

13. (The other on that day first of all)

14. (On that very day inaugurated by mishna paragraph one of on that very day and the gemaric treatment thereof)

15. (Mishna paragraphs two through five of on that very day and the gemaric treatment thereof; taking aim at rabbi eliezer through the orchestrated public shaming of john tsakkai)

16. (The orchestrated public trashing and shaming of rabbi eliezer; the subtext concerning eliezer’s association with the jamesian minut)

18. (When and under what conditions learning/knowledge outside of scripture can be put into the service of standing into scripture; analysis of the conceptual antidote to gloom and apostasy when one has learned too much about god: the gift given to us by rabbi nachman of uman)

19. (Final excerptive material from ISBN: 0-59537978-8 and ISBN: 0-595-40488-X)

About the Author

in honor and in memory of

Ishmael ben Elisha and Eleazer ben Arakh

the greatest of the greats

I happily acknowledge my gratitude to and for Joseph John Cimakasky for his generous help in the preparation of this manuscript.

(the heart of the matter is a broken heart)

1

(Introductory remarks) 

there is a quiet genius in virtually all the documents produced by classical Rabbinism. This genius is exhibited in what is referred to as the halakhic midrashim; in the Mishna; in the two Talmuds. There is some falling away from this quiet genius in the midrashim rabbot.

This quiet genius makes the halakhah—and the determining of it thereof—the ambience, the medium-without-which, and very condition for the possibility of all their written productions (with, a falling off from this in the midrashim rabbot*). Halakhot come and halakhot go. Fidelity to the actual observance of halakhah waxes and wanes; waxes and wanes. But never (—not even in Scripture itself—) has Judaism produced any writings which rival this genius of classical Rabbinism: making the halakhah—and the determining of it thereof—the ambience, medium-without-which, and the very condition for the possibility of written productions. This quiet genius must be distinguished from two other kinds of Jewish writings which deal with halakhah.

*. [[And even here it appears that only Genesis Rabbah and Exodus Rabbah had been pretty much redacted into their final state during the time period of classical Rabbinism.

The midrashm rabbot do hearken back to the practice of the halakhic midrashim by making the books of the Chumash—rather than the Mishna—the point of departure for commentary. However the midrashim rabbot generally do not thematically orient their commentaries around the program of determining the halakhah. And, as well, the midrashim rabbot—with some notable exceptions to be discussed as this book unfolds—do not generally prooftext their contentions according to the norms established in the earliest strata of the halakhic midrashim attributed to Rabbi Ishmael. To be returned to.]]

a). Law codes. This is halakhah in the raw. Yes, there is some Scriptural window dressing and even some literary finessing in these compendia. In the case of the Mishneh Torah you will even find a high-brow Aristotelian-oriented excursus here and there interspersing the text. But still, the Mishneh Torah remains a raw ordering of the halakhah filtered through the lens of this Avicennian Aristotelian. It is an endeavor which obtains on a plane radically different from the works of classical Rabbinism wherein and whereby the halakhah—and the determining of it thereof—remains always the medium and condition for the written productions even as, at the same time, such curiously remains in some ways incidental to the written productions. Not so for law codes.

Are you going to cite, then, the Mishna as the fly in the ointment of my suggestion? If so, you are going to be partly right and mostly wrong.

In many ways the impetus for the Mishna is to produce a compendium of halakhah; a compendium which, by its very production, was to have established not only the validity of the so-called Oral Torah but the establishing of the ultimate normative-and-adjudicative function of this alleged Oral Torah. Nonetheless the production of the Mishna itself was unable to free itself from the initial undertaking of the Rabbinic Movement which is to be found in the earliest strata of the halakhic midrashim. This is part of the reason why the Mishna shares in this quiet genius of which I speak. There is a stirring in the Mishna—despite itself so to speak—which bespeaks itself of a raw need which desperately wants to be something different from what it is becoming. There is an ambience of repressed drama which animates the Mishna and which is not found in Law Codes.

The other reason is that the Mishna—for all practical purposes—ended up NOT becoming a compendium document which could stand by itself. It probably was intended as such, but it did not end up being such. Yes. Of course. You can read the Mishna by itself. There are numerous editions of Mishna Raw and numerous translations of Mishna Raw. And some probably wish that such were the whole story. But the intractable historical fact is that the Mishna ended up getting subsumed into two versions of a much larger production, the two Talmuds. Not only subsumed, but at least in the case of the Bavli, transformed into the handmaiden of something akin to what it [the Mishna] originally thought it was superseding: the earliest strata of the halakhic midrashim. For through the evolution of the Bavli Gemara culminating in the sixth century final editing of the Bavli Gemara, there occurred something like a reinscribing of the original animus of the halakhic midrashim as the final character of the Bavli itself. And I suggest that the greatest glory of the Mishna—albeit not what its producers had intended—is in this function of being the handmaiden to the Bavli Gemara.

b). The other halakhah-oriented endeavor in Jewish letters is the usage by Qabbalists of the individual actual halakhot themselves as grist for the mill of engaging in Qabbalistic pastimes. [[Would that Qabbalistic endeavors had only remained pastimes. Instead these pastimes are now taken so seriously in our time by some that they end up as a substitute for Scripture and the Bavli. And,—orders of magnitude more dangerous for the future of Judaism—these agendizing endeavors take on the role of importing this foreign material into Scripture and the Bavli which (—in direct proportion to which they are persuasive in these sometimes well-intentioned but, in any case, terribly destructive undertakings—) will lead to the fulfillment of the Biblical prophecy of Amos:

They shall run to and fro to seek the word of Hashem and shall not find it.

[8:12. It is not without interest that, with cross-referencing, the Rabbinic concerns in Pishka # 48 of Sifre Deuteronomy which elicit this prooftext can be related to a curious addendum to Pishka # 160 which stands by itself and ends with the following assertion. Emphases are mine:

—hence R. ELEAZER BEN ARAKH taught that in the future the Torah will be forgotten.

I have spoken of these passages elsewhere.]]]

This Qabbalistic usage of individual halakhot as grist for their Qabbalistic mill is not in principle different from the Qabbalistic appropriation of Scripture itself. This usage comes in from the outside and—rather crassly in the final analysis—appropriates the individual halakhot here and Scripture there as utilitarian/instrumental raw material for furthering the Qabbalistic agendum. The written productions of classical Rabbinism, in contrast, honor the halakhah and never sever themselves from the careful and steady commitment to the task of determining appropriately how observance of the halakhah is to be achieved. More than that, the written productions of classical Rabbinism doubly honor the halakhah by never venturing into any kind of mystical speculation except in the context of determining the halakhah. <<>> Such constitutes a quiet acknowledgement that Judaism falls or stands as a function of maintaining the principle of halakhic fidelity. Halakhot come and halakhot go. The degree of commitment to the principle of halakhic fidelity waxes and wanes; waxes and wanes. But if it disappears, Judaism disappears.

So let us not be distracted by Law Codes and Qabbalah [[even as I aver that Joseph Karo is one of the greatest of all Jews; anyway]] as we try to explore this quiet genius of classical Rabbinism.

2.

(Rabbinic cognomens and cognate matters; excerptive materials)  

2-a.

In the book, ’The Written’ as the Vocation of Conceiving Jewishly, [McGinley, 2006] there is an interesting, albeit controversial, hypothesis offered concerning the historical identity of Rabbi Ishmael. The suggestion offered there is that Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha is a Rabbinic cognomen for the famous and officially discredited tannaitic apostate, Elisha ben Abuyah. The contention is that through this ruse the Rabbis were able to give expression to the vast halakhic and hermeneutic rulings and achievements of the otherwise discredited Akher. The argument entails the reading of the famous aggadah [Bavli; Gittin 59b] by which Rabbi Joshua liberated the young Rabbi Ishmael from Roman imprisonment as a mashal used as a device through which a cover name for the discredited Akher could function as a means of referring to the vast body of teachings of this Elisha ben Abuyah while at the same time not directly honoring the discredited Akher.

The vignette has Rabbi Joshua asking the imprisoned young man the question of Isaiah 42:24 and receiving from the imprisoned Ishmael the repentant answer which constitutes the rest of that verse. Further, the dual character of the 42:24 text which Joshua is presented as choosing by which to test the bona fides of the imprisoned boy of this mashal is intriguing. The wrong of the one, here called Israel there called Jacob, cited by the prophet’s words ((the wrong ultimately implying infidelity to Hashem)) seems to point to the redactor’s implication that Joshua and Ishmael carry shared paradigmatic responsibility for the multi-faceted wrong, and its respective consequences, brought about on that day which so cruelly injured the Rabbinic Movement.

Rabbi Joshua had generated and formed an alliance with Rabbi Aqiba in bringing about a radical sea change in the Rabbinic Movement about a quarter of a century after the destruction of the Temple. It is quite possible that towards the end of his life (it being assumed here that Rabbi Joshua died about two years before the onset of the Bar Kochba Rebellion) Rabbi Joshua came to realize the severe character and intellectual shortcomings of the one whom he himself, Rabbi Joshua, had made so prominent back then in bringing about that sea change in the early Rabbinic Movement. The work of the figures which they had engineered out of positions of power—John Tsakkai, Rabbi Eliezer (rehabilitated only after he died), and, most importantly of all, Elisha ben Abuyah—was no longer represented in the Rabbinic endeavors after that day. This factor even added to the prominence, influence, and growing hegemony in decision-making for the Rabbinic Movement of this Rabbi Aqiba.

To be sure, even towards the end of his life Rabbi Joshua still favored the Oral Law orientation which had now become normative—by virtue of what the alliance headed by Joshua and Aqiba effected on that day—for the Rabbinic Movement. But the work and spirit of those three sages who had been displaced, Joshua now realized, needed to be part of the record. Further, it needed to be shown that indeed there was a time when, for some twenty years or more in the Rabbinic Movement post-destruction-of-the-Temple, Rabbi Aqiba had been embarrassingly ((embarrassingly because of his grandiosity which was not matched by his intellectual acuity)) and radically overshadowed by the displaced trio. Especially lacking in the record was the immense honor and esteem accorded to Elisha ben Abuyah in all areas of Rabbinic study and practice effectively dwarfing, back then, the meager achievements of Rabbi Aqiba. But because of Akher’s apostasy the record of those years prior to that day had no way of being recognized or made part of the record. It would be as though one were maintaining the documents of the American Revolution and the Constitutional Convention and had excised both the name and contributions of, say, Alexander Hamilton. Joshua came to understand that a good faith restoration and appreciation of the huge early influence of those displaced (and, in the case of Akher, erased from the record) prior to that day would have to become part of the Rabbinic record.

So we can imagine a quietly arranged meeting—through the encouraging mediation of Rabbi Meir—wherein the former foes took counsel with each other. Mutual recognition of blame. And in this manner, through the efforts and influence of Rabbi Joshua, the figure of Rabbi Ishmael (indeed, Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha) was born.

In the author’s other book of 2006 [pages 308-310] it is argued that the aggadah in the Babylonian Talmud [at 15b of the Gemara’s commentary on tractate Khaggigah] concerning Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi and an alleged appearance of Akher’s daughter before him asking for charity is likewise a mashal by which it is indicated that Rabbinic officialdom came—decades after the death of all the players involved—to finally endorse Rabbi Joshua’s suggestion concerning a cognomen for Akher and correlatively officialdom’s endorsement of allowing recognition of the enormous body of his teachings and rulings along with recognition of his unparalled influence. Listen:

Remember his Torah, but do not remember his deeds.

[Bavli Gemara to tractate Khaggigah at 15b]

This overall hypothesis about the true identity of Rabbi Ishmael brings with it a radically innovative approach for understanding the relationship between The School of Aqiba and The School of Ishmael in the earliest strata of the

Halakhic Midrashim produced in the decades immediately following upon the destruction of the Temple.

It is to be noted that this vignette from the Bavli Gemara in tractate Gittin is introduced by the well-known formulaic statement: Our Rabbis have taught. This formulaic statement usually refers to a final settled view representative of a ruling having the stamp of Rabbinic officialdom concerning a matter of halakhah which had been in dispute. The usage of this formulaic phrase as an introduction to a vignette would indicate that the vignette represents, indirectly, a ruling having the stamp of Rabbinic officialdom concerning a huge matter which had been in dispute: whether to represent the huge body of learning and rulings of the apostate at all, and, if so, how and in what manner. This cognomen ruse was the answer. It had the authority of Rabbi Joshua behind it, a figure held in high esteem by Rabbinic officialdom. Indeed, it was Joshua who himself had been largely responsible, on that day, for engineering the very emergence of a juridically sanctioned Rabbinic officialdom. This towards-the-end-of-life ransom engineered by Rabbi Joshua was not given the stamp of approval with finality until the time of Rabbi Judah. From the perspective of looking back on this development from the vantage point of about three and one half centuries—(i.e., the vantage point, approximately, of the final editors of the Bavli)—this interlude of approximately seventy years was not really a long time. Thus the vignette heads to a conclusion with these words:

—nor did many days pass before he became a teacher in Israel.

2-a-i.

The above vignette is immediately followed by a follow-up vignette concerning a son and a daughter of this Ishmael ben Elisha who was sold into slavery to two different masters who brought them together to be mated (unbeknownst to the two masters and to the son and daughter). Each of them bemoans the fate of being given over to a slave (the daughter) and to a bondwoman (the son) since each of them claims lineage from high priests. The story advertises its historical impossibility by having the daughter phrase her situation in terms totally unacceptable to Judaism ever since the purges during the reign of Josiah : I am a priestess, descended from high priests, and I shall be married to a slave? They ended up recognizing who they were through a night of tearful sorrow and mourning and are presented as dying before the incestuous conjugation would be consummated.

The strange vignette expands upon a set of virtually impossible—and mutually contradictory—stories concerning this Rabbi Ishmael and the alleged pedigree of this Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha. In other words, to accept the existence of this Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha as an historically real figure entails embracing a plethora of impossible and mutually contradictory stories about him or simply picking and choosing, more or less arbitrarily, on the veracity of these stories and the falsity of those stories. On the other hand this vignette (and others) indirectly remind the reader whose reading is equal to the subtlety of these stories that Elisha ben Abuyah and his aristocratic family did in fact have strong connections to priestly families.

2-b.

Idel, Scholem, Dan, and others have raised the natural question concerning the relationship between the chambers portion of the Heikhalot literature and the Bavli’s treatment of The Work of the Chariot in the presentation and analysis of such in the Gemara to tractate Khaggigah of the Mishna. This portion of the Babylonian Talmud, which includes the famous four entered pardes material, runs from 12b-iv (wherein the Gemara’s treatment of The Work of Creation flows into and becomes The Work of the Chariot) to and into 16a-i. [All references are to the Art Scroll pagination.]

By using the Rabbinically paradigmatic figures of Rabbi Aqiba and Rabbi Ishmael the Heikhalot literature, arguably, seems to be attempting to show some sort of connection to the Chariot/Throne study and practice of the Rabbinic Movement in the decades immediately following upon the destruction of the Temple. However, in both the Palestinian Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud the major players in this endeavor are, clearly, Rabbi Aqiba and Elisha ben Abuyah who is referred to as Akher. Neither Talmud presents Rabbi Ishmael as a player in Merkabah study and practice.

In the study on these matters contained in ’The Written’ as the Vocation of Conceiving Jewishly [McGinley, 2006] the hypothesis is offered that Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha (more often, simply Rabbi Ishmael) is in fact a cognomen for Elisha ben Abuyah who, as is well known, apostasized from the Rabbinic Movement. The argument is that through this indirection Rabbinic officialdom was able to integrate into the Gemaric give and take of argumentation and analysis the huge body of halakhic and hermeneutical teachings of the great Torah scholar without, however, directly honoring his equally significant apostasy. To be sure, in the accounting of his mystical study and practice, the pejorative (in context) Akher is used instead of Rabbi Ishmael. This is because Elisha ben Abuyah’s teachings under the heading of The Work of the Chariot were considered heretical in comparison to his halakhic and hermeneutical teachings which were generally admired—and whose weighty influence in any case could not be ignored. All of this indicates that the generators of the Heikhalot literature were indeed savvy in choosing Rabbi Aqiba and Rabbi Ishmael as paradigmatic in their writings as a means of relating their own endeavors with the study and practice of the tannaim in the early decades following upon the destruction of the Temple.

Both Aqiba and the Ishmaelic Akher traded upon the two-thrones/two-powers-in-Heaven motif in their respective Merkabah-oriented endeavors. Aqiba’s version is memorialized in the Bavli Gemara to tractate Khaggigah at 14a-ii wherein Aqiba puts forth the pairing of Hashem and David in a messianic version of this motif. Immediately after this Aqibian solution to the puzzle of throneS referred to in Song of Songs and the two thrones spoken of in Daniel, Chapter Seven, the text presents Aqiba as being pressured—and then acquiescing to—a domesticated version of this twoness theme of and within a single Jewish God acceptable to Rabbinic officialdom. The text offers Justice [din] and Charity [tsadaqqa] as the middot of God which are enthroned in Heaven. And stubborn Aqiba allows his silence to be interpreted as acquiescence to this domestication. In turn, Akher’s non-Messianic and Metatron-oriented version of this two-thrones/two-powers-in-Heaven motif is discussed at length in the entry Paradigmata in the above-mentioned study. [pages 432-434]

The generic point is that by the time of the final editing of the Mishna this whole motif (and Merkabah-oriented study and practice in general) came to be strongly discouraged by Rabbinic officialdom. Those who still pursued these kinds of things were marginalized by the Rabbinic Movement and over the next several centuries became a separate grouping responsible for the

Heikhalot literature.

*****

In the four-entered-pardes section of this portion of the Bavli Gemara on tractate Khaggigah, it is the figure of Aqiba who seems to be lionized. For of the four he was the only one who ascended and descended whole. This putative lionization occurs at 14b-vi—16a-i of our Gemara section. However, in the author’s other publication of 2006 [pages 366-369] something remarkable is revealed about the prooftexting offered in support of this putative lionization. A careful analysis of the prooftexting involved shows that the final redactors, through the curious prooftexting, are in fact satirizing the self-aggrandizing feature in Aqiba’s character make-up. We shall return to this below.

2-c.

In a lengthy study, ’The Written’ as the Vocation of Conceiving Jewishly, [2006] John W McGinley makes a case [[in the Paradigmata entry of that book on pages 432-434]] that Elisha’s epiphany in this passage from the Bavli’s Gemara on tractate Khaggigah is an allusion to a teaching from Merkabah mysticism. According to this account, contained in ISBN: 0-595-40488-X, Elisha’s dualism refers to a duality within a single Jewish God hearkening back to the face/kavod dynamic characteristic of Exodus, Chapter Thirty-Three. In that same entry an account is given concerning the significance of the name Metatron and how it relates to this feature of the Work of the Chariot.

2-d.

In the Gemara to tractate Erubin in the Babylonian Talmud there is an extended discussion of the real name of this Rabbi Meir. At 13b there is, without argumentation, a simple statement that this Rabbi Meir is Eleazer ben Arakh, one of the students of Rabbi Yochanan ben Tsakkai. This Eleazer ben Arakh is given tremendous encomia in Rabbi Nathan’s version of Avot. Indeed at 2-8 of Rabbi Nathan’s Avot this Eleazer ben Arakh is presented as being the greatest of the Sages inclusive thereof of Rabbi Eliezer ha Gadol. Further in the

Gemara to tractate Khaggigah in the Babylonian Talmud [14b] this same Eleazer ben Arakh is presented as a student of Rabbi Yochanan ben Tsakkai. This Eleazer ben Arakh, at an early age, had mastered the meaning of the mystical revelations which are associated with the Work of the Chariot.

All of this is rather curious, since aggadic material in Rabbi Nathan’s Avot and elsewhere indicates that after his studies Eleazer ben Arakh settled in Emmaus and virtually ended his participation in the Rabbinic Movement. A name without any record, so to speak. Also, Rabbi Meir is never listed as one of the students at the beit ha-midrash of Tsakkai at Yabneh.

In ’The Written’ as the Vocation of Conceiving Jewishly [McGinley, 2006; pages 408-409] this conundrum is addressed. The suggestion is put forth that the virtual disappearance of Eleazer ben Arakh off of the Rabbinic radar screen allowed for the usage of this name as a cognomen for Rabbi Meir, such being acceptable to Rabbinic officialdom who permitted this cover name to function in two ways: i). as a cover for the highest honor relative to ALL of the tannaim to be attributed to this great scholar but with sufficient indirectness so as to not also honor his checkered history with Rabbinic officialdom; and, ii). as a cover for his mystical study and practice in The Work of the Chariot since it would not be seemly for the great halakhist