Curious Posts at Hirhurim
Last week, Gil Student highlighted a paragraph by R’ Hershel Schachter as criticizing Talmud criticism, but I don’t get why that’s what Schachter’s doing. Schachter’s paragraph says “There are individuals who consider themselves Orthodox who believe that at one time the Jewish people did have a Divine Torah, but the amoraim misunderstood the tannaim, the rishonim misunderstood the Talmud, and the achronim misunderstood the rishonim,” but that’s not really what Talmud Criticism is about; Talmud Criticism wonders whether at each stage of scholarship, they were all working off of the same text. It doesn’t seem correct to me that Student should characterize Schachter’s critique in this way.
Another post has a new explanation from the Orthodox Union about why they allow dairy English muffins, despite a rabbinical prohibition on dairy bread. The new answer is that the quantity of dairy in the product is actually insufficient to render it dairy. That’s interesting to me, because in conversations with various supervisors over the years, I’d always been told the reason was that English muffins wouldn’t normally be confused for regular bread. Along these lines, I notice that Pepperidge Farm’s Cinnamon Swirl Bread — a presumably dairy product — has no certification, even though I’m really very sure it used to, and it’s the OU that certifies a lot of the rest of the company’s products.
BTW: For those looking for bonus info on Schachter & talmud criticism, first check out this comment on Hirhurim, which states:
The controversy in YU was about the articles in Bet Yithak some years ago by 1) Eli Stern and Meir Katz; and 2) Barry Wimpheimer which used critical methods on sugyot in Bava Kamma. RHS was reported to be very disturbed by the articles. Why doesn’t he write a critique of one of them?
In reality, the report, which I’m having trouble loading at the Commentator archives, contained fabricated quotes from Schachter, who wasn’t interviewed for the story.
June 12th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
To my knowledge the pepridge farm bread you speak of was never kosher.
June 12th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Barry Wimpfheimer recently completed his doctoral dissertation “Legal narratives in the Babylonian Talmud” at Columbia University (2005). He does not mention his previous Beit Yitzchak article; nor does he discuss any sugyot in Bava Kamma as he discusses twelve other sugyot in various appendices. Which Beit Yitzchak was it? Black cover?
June 16th, 2006 at 10:06 am
Hi Menachem: It was the issue in memory of Rabbi Murray Penkower. I believe it had a dark cover. If you would have checked the post you would have seen that I posted it and you could have asked me directly at he recent modern Orthodoxy conference in Scranton!