כעומד לפני השכינה בשעת ער לערנט:
Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein on the Divide Between Traditional and Academic Jewish Studies
By Shaul Seidler-Feller
Shaul Seidler-Feller strives to be a posheter yid(link) and an oved Hashem (link); the rest is commentary. This is his third contribution to the Seforim blog; for his previous articles, see here (link) and here (link).
This post has been generously sponsored le-illui nishmat Sima Belah bat Aryeh Leib, z”l.
Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein enthusiasts might be surprised to learn that there was a time when the rosh yeshivah, zts”l, lectured publicly in Yiddish. I myself had no idea that this was the case until my dear friend, Reb Menachem Butler, who fulfills be-hiddurthe prophetic pronouncement asof asifem (Jer. 8:13) in its most positive sense, forwarded me a link (here) containing a snippet from a talk Rav Lichtenstein had given at the Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut-YIVOon May 12, 1968, as part of the Institute’s forty-second annual conference. Feeling a sense of responsibility to help bring Rav Lichtenstein’s insights to a broader audience, I quickly translated that brief excerpt into English, and, with the assistance of YIVO’s Academic Advisor and Exhibitions Curator Dr. Eddy Portnoy, my translation (here) was posted on the YIVO website in early December 2017. Realizing, however, that the original lecture had been much longer, Menachem and I made some inquiries to see if we could locate the rest of the recording, only to come up empty-handed.
As hashgahah would have it, on the Friday night following the publication of the translation, I was privileged to share a meal with another dear friend, Rabbi Noach Goldstein, whose great beki’utin Rav Lichtenstein’s (written and oral) oeuvre was already well-known to me. In the course of our conversation, Noach mentioned that there was another Yiddish-language shi‘urby Rav Lichtenstein available on the YUTorah website. I was stunned: could this be the missing part of the YIVO lecture? After Shabbat, I followed up with Noach, who duly sent me the relevant link (here) – and lo and behold, there was the (incomplete) first part of the speech Rav Lichtenstein had given at YIVO![1] I told myself at the time that I would translate this as well; unfortunately, though, work and other obligations prevented me from doing so…
But then, in another twist of fate, one of the orekhei/arkhei dayyanim(here)at The Lehrhaus(here, Rabbi (soon-to-be Dayyan Dr.) Shlomo Zuckier, reached out to me at the end of December in connection with a syllabus he was compiling for a class he is teaching this semester at the Isaac Breuer College of Yeshiva University on “The Thought of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein.” I mentioned to him at the time that Noach had recently referred me to the YUTorah recording and that I had hoped to translate it. With his encouragement, the permission of YUTorah (thank you, Rabbi Robert Shur!), and the magnanimous support of an anonymous sponsor (Menachem Butler functioning as shaddekhan), I present below a preliminary annotated English version of the lecture, whose relevance to the current(link)debate (link) about Rav Lichtenstein’s attitude toward academic Jewish studies should be clear. It is my hope to post my original Yiddish transcription (which awaits proper vocalization), as well as any refinements to the English, shortly after Pesah; please check back then for an update.
Note: As was the case with my translation of the shorter recording published previously, Romanization of Yiddish and loshn-koydesh(Hebrew/Aramaic) terms attempts to follow the standards adopted by YIVO,[2] and all bracketed (and footnoted) references were added by me. It should also be borne in mind that the material that follows was originally delivered as a lecture, and while the translation tries to preserve the oral flavor of the presentation, certain liberties have been taken with the elision of repetitions in order to allow the text to flow more smoothly.
[A Century of Traditional Jewish Higher Learning in America]
[Introduction]
I beg your pardon for the slight delay. It was not on my own account; rather, my wife is not able to attend, and I promised I would set up a recording for her. In truth, I must not only ask your indulgence; it could be that this behavior touches upon a halakhic issue as well. After all, the gemoresays that “we do not roll Torah scrolls in public in order not to impose upon the community” [see Yume70a with Rambam, Hilkhes tfile 12:23]. It is for that reason that we sometimes take out two or three Torah scrolls: so that those assembled need not wait as we roll from one section to another. The gemoredid not speak of tape recorders, but presumably the same principle obtains, and so I beg your pardon especially.
When they originally asked me to speak on the topic of “A Century of Traditional Higher Jewish Learning in America,” they presented it to me as a counterbalance, so to speak, to a second talk, which, as I understand it, had been assigned to Professor Rudavsky.[3] They told me that since we are now marking the centennial of the founding of Maimonides College, which, as Professor Rudavsky capably informed us, was the first institution of higher Jewish scholarship in America, perhaps it would be worthwhile to hear from an opposing view, so to speak, from the yeshiveworld, regarding another type, another model, of Jewish scholarship. This was certainly entirely proper on their part – and perhaps it was not only proper, but, in a certain sense, there was an element of khesedin their invitation to me to serve as such a counterbalance.
I wish to say at the outset that what I plan to present here is not meant to “play devil’s advocate,” contradicting what we heard earlier; rather, just the opposite, I hope, in a certain sense, to fill out the picture. However, as appropriate as the intention was, my assignment has presented me with something of a problem. Plainly put: my subject, as I understand it, does not exist. We simply do not have a hundred years of so-called “traditional higher Jewish learning in America” – at least, not in public. Privately, presumably there were “one from a town and two from a clan” [Jer. 3:14], a Torah scholar who sat and clenched the bench[4] here and there. But in public, in the form of institutions, yeshives, a hundred years have not yet passed, and for that centennial, I am afraid, we must wait another ten to twenty years. At that point – may we all, with God’s help, be strong and healthy – they will have to invite a professor as a counterbalance to the yeshiveworld.
The first yeshive, which was a predecessor, in a certain sense, to our yeshive, the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, a yeshiveknown as Yeshiva University, was the Etz Chaim Yeshiva, founded in 1886. As a result, I find myself facing something of a dilemma here, bound in – as they say in the non-Jewish world – a kind of Procrustean bed, that same bed familiar to everyone from the gemorein Sanhedrin. The gemoredescribes that when a guest arrived in Sodom, they had a one-size-fits-all bed, and it seems that in Sodom they were not particularly attentive to individual preferences. So they took each guest and measured him against the bed: if he turned out too short, they stationed one fellow at his head, another at his feet, and they stretched him in both directions until he covered the bed; if he turned out too tall, they would cut him down to size, sometimes at his feet, sometimes at his head, so that, in any event, he would fit [Sanhedrin109b].
Here I face the same problem, and I have one of two ways to extricate myself from my present impasse. On the one hand, I could, perhaps, make a bit of a stretch and broaden the definition of “traditional higher Jewish scholarship and learning,” so that my title, my subject, would be accurate and so that I might, after all, be able to identify a hundred years during which people sat and learned. But, on the other hand, perhaps I should rather stay close to the title, maintaining the pure, unadulterated conception of what constitutes “learning,” “Jewish learning,” “traditional learning,” even if doing so would come at the expense of thoroughly fulfilling the task assigned to me: to speak not about a brief span of years, but a full hundred. You yourselves understand very well that, given these two options, it is certainly better to choose the latter, perhaps abbreviating a bit chronologically, in order to grasp, at least partially, the inner nature of traditional learning as I understand it.
In taking up the work of presenting an approach to traditional Jewish learning here in America, I believe that, in truth, I have two tasks. The first is to define, to a certain degree, how I conceive of “traditional Jewish learning,” or, let us say, more or less, yeshivelearning – what constitutes the idea in its purest manifestation? – though I fear this might transport us to an epoch, a period, that does not accord with the title as it stands, in its literal form.
Second, having somewhat limited the definition, I wish to briefly introduce the principal players and give a brief report simply on the historical development of this form of study in the course of the last hundred, or, let us say, a bit less than a hundred, years.[5]
When we speak of “traditional higher Jewish learning,” we must analyze four different terms. And, in truth, one could – and, perhaps, should – give a lengthy accounting of each of the four. However, I mentioned earlier the concept of not imposing upon the community, so I will not dwell at all on the latter two. Rather, I will speak about the first two, “traditional” and “higher,”[6] and it will be self-understood that my words relate to “Jewish learning.” I especially wish to focus on the first term, “traditional.”
[Three Definitions of “Traditional”]
What does it mean? When we speak here of “traditional” learning – or when we speak in general about some occurrence or phenomenon and wish to describe it as “traditional” – I believe we could be referring to three different definitions:
First, learning can be “traditional” in the sense that it involves the study of traditional texts – khumeshor gemore– in the same way that one could say about a given prayer, ballad, or poem that it is “traditional,” and sometimes we speak of a custom or even a food as “traditional.” Here, the adjective refers, simply, to a text that goes back hundreds or thousands of years, that is rooted in the life of the nation, and that takes up residence there – at least, so to speak, in a word.
Second, we can speak of “traditional” learning and refer thereby to learning that operates, methodologically, using concepts, tools, and methods that are old. There were once yeshives… – but this issue does not concern yeshivesonly: whatever the discipline, the learning is “traditional” if one is using methods that are not new, that do not seek to reconceptualize or revolutionize the field, that have already been trod by many in the past, with which all are familiar, and that have been employed by a long “golden chain of generations.”
Third, though, and perhaps this is the main point, when we describe learning as “traditional,” we refer to a methodology that is not only old, but that is rooted in – and, to a certain extent, implants within the student – a particular relationship to the past, or to certain facets thereof; in other words, an approach to learning through which the student absorbs a certain attitude to the Jewish past.
Among these three points, the first – studying traditional texts – is the least important in establishing and defining what I mean, at least when I say that I will speak about “traditional” Jewish learning. At the end of the day, one can take a gemoreor a khumesh, study it in a way that is consistent with the spirit of the Jewish past, and thereby strengthen one’s commitment to Judaism; or, Heaven forbid, one can do the opposite, studying the same text in such a way that it undermines that commitment. Khazalsay of Torah learning itself that it can sometimes be a medicine and at other times, Heaven forbid, a poison [Shabes88b]. Of course, if one is not dealing with “traditional” texts, one cannot be involved in “traditional Jewish learning;” but this is nothing more than a prerequisite, so to speak, not a determining factor in establishing what constitutes “traditional Jewish learning.”
The second sense – in which one follows a path one knows others have trod in the past – is much more directly relevant. First of all, it gives a person a sense of continuity: that he is not the first, that he is not blazing a trail, that he is not entirely alone, and that before him came a long chain, generation after generation of Torah giants, or – excuse the comparison – in the case of another discipline, of professors, thinkers, or philosophers, who established a certain intellectual tradition to which he can feel a kind of connection. This feeling is obviously important not only in relation to an intellectual tradition; it is significant in general and is relevant to a person’s approach to social questions writ large – but perhaps especially to intellectual questions. Second, aside from not feeling isolated and alone, the benefit is straightforwardly intellectual: in general, when working in a traditional manner, a person has at his disposal certain tools that other specialists developed before him. He also has a common language with others who are studying, so that it is simply easier for him to express himself, understand what his fellow says, and communicate with others. For in the ability to communicate, of course, lies much strength.
However, I am especially interested in discussing and defining the third sense: a “traditional” methodology which is not only inherited from our forebears, a kind of memento from the house of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, but which seeks to implant within us, on the one hand, and is rooted in, on the other, a particular relationship to those great-grandfathers. And here I wish – and I hope you do not misunderstand me – especially to distinguish and define the wall – and it is a wall – separating what we conceive of as a yeshivestyle of learning and what is considered a more or less academic approach: that same Wissenschaft des Judentums which Professor Rudavsky mentioned earlier, which was identified with those pioneers of the previous century – [Leopold] Zunz, [Abraham] Geiger, a whole group – and which, of course, has many exponents to this very day.
[Two Differences Between Traditional and Academic Learning]
Where, then, is the point of distinction dividing a yeshiveapproach from a more academic one? I believe that there are two points in particular upon which it would be worthwhile to focus briefly.
[Historical vs. Analytical Orientations in Studying the Text]
First, the academic approach is more historically oriented. It is more interested in collecting facts from the past; taking a particular author or text – it makes no difference: it could be a popular painter or poet, rishoynim, Khazal, even the Bible itself – placing it within the context of a particular epoch; seeing to it to study, as much as possible, all the minutiae of that period; and thereby attaining an understanding of the nature, the essence, of the text, work, artist, or author. On the other hand, the yeshiveor “traditional” approach – “traditional” at least in yeshives, and not only in yeshivesbut in the study of halokhein general – is more analytically oriented. It does not seek to expand upon a particular work in order to construct an entire edifice, a whole framework of facts, that would help us understand the circumstances under which it was written, or what sort of intellectual or social currents acted upon a person and drove him to work, paint, or portray one way and not the other. Rather, it seeks more to explore and delve deeply into the work itself. Whatever was happening in the world outside the gemorehas a certain significance, but the main emphasis is not there. The main emphasis is instead on understanding what the gemoreitself says, what kind of ideas are expressed therein, what sort of concepts are defined therein, and what type of notions can be extracted therefrom. In other words, the focus is not so much on facts as it is on ideas; it is more of a philosophical than a historical approach; it is concerned more with the text than with the context.
And that which concerns this point – the difference between a yeshiveor traditional approach, on the one hand, and a more academically oriented one, on the other – is not limited to the walls of the besmedresh; it is not our concern alone. Those familiar with the various approaches to and methods of treating and critiquing literature in general know that the same argument rages there as well, though perhaps not in as sharp a way. For example, in 1950, during a session of the Modern Language Association conference, two of the most esteemed critics in the world of English literature spoke for a group dealing specifically with [John] Milton. One of them, A.S.P. [Arthur Sutherland Pigott] Woodhouse, then a professor at the University of Toronto and a man with a truly incisive approach to literature, gave a paper whose title – it was given in English – was “The Historical Criticism of Milton.”[7] From the other side, Cleanth Brooks, a professor at Yale and one of the renewers, so to speak – or perhaps not a renewer but, at the very least, one of the propagandists arguing on behalf of the so-called “New Criticism” – gave a different paper entitled “Milton and Critical Re-Estimates.”[8]
This is nothing more than a single example – they were specifically treating Milton in that case – of the aforementioned difference in approach. On the one hand, Woodhouse argued consistently that in order to understand Milton, one must delve deeply into the history of the seventeenth century and of its various intellectual currents – one of them was mentioned earlier by Professor Rudavsky: the great interest in Hebrew studies that exerted its influence upon him – and only once one has gathered such information and is able, as much as possible, to reconstitute the seventeenth century as it was, can one properly understand Paradise Lost or Samson Agonistes. And Brooks, who came from an entirely different school of thought – from I.A. [Ivor Armstrong] Richards’ school and others’ – claimed that certainly there is a degree of value to that as well, but the main thing, at the end of the day, is to understand the poem itself. To do so, one needs to address a different set of problems, problems of form, and to grasp not so much the relationship of Milton to, let us say, [Oliver] Cromwell, [Edmund] Spenser, or [John] Donne, but rather the relationship of the first book of Paradise Lost– or of Paradise Regained– to the second, and so on. And, of course, this difference in approach, in the goal one wishes to accomplish, manifests as well at the simple level of one’s work. According to one line of thinking, one must busy oneself with many small minutiae; according to the other, one can limit oneself and concentrate on the poem itself.
The same question can be asked in regard to learning and understanding Torah. And it is possible that this question presents itself more sharply with respect to Torah learning than with respect to other fields of study. In the editor’s introduction to Chaucer’s poetry, F.N. [Fred Norris] Robinson, one of the most prominent Chaucer scholars – forgive me, before I became a rosheshiveI studied English literature – mentions that a French professor of some sort had bemoaned the fact that we find ourselves now in, as he put it, l’âge des petits papiers,[9] in a period that busies itself with small scraps of paper. What he in fact meant was that the aforementioned broadening required by the historical approach – which was, of course, influenced by German Wissenschaft, especially in the last century – can sometimes simply overwhelm. To put it differently, they say about Hirsch Berliner that someone was once speaking with him about Jewish Wissenschaftand the like. Berliner said to him, “If you want to know what Rashi looked like, what clothing he wore, and so on, go consult Zunz.[10] But if you want to know who Rashi was, what he said, better to study with me.”[11]
And I wish to emphasize: when we speak here of a historical, academic methodology, we refer not only to research and investigation. Those who adopt such an approach certainly go much further, undertaking not only historical research but also historical criticism. In other words, after one has studied all the minutiae through various investigations, one can assess to what use they can be put and what light they can shine on some dark corner of Jewish history. However, this form of criticism, which is mainly rooted in a more historical approach, is different from the yeshiveapproach. The question turns mainly on what direction one is looking in: from outside in, so to speak, or vice versa. Does one stand with both feet in the gemore, or does one stand outside and look inward?
This question is particularly important in regard to learning Torah. For, at the end of the day, when we speak of “traditional learning,” “yeshivelearning,” we are dealing not only with an intellectual activity but a religious one as well. This means that learning is not only a scholarly occupation meant to inform a person of what once existed, what Khazalthought, what they transmitted to us, what the rishoynimheld, but is bound up in a personal encounter wherein the individual, the student, is wholly attached and connected to what he learns and feels that he is standing before the Divine Presence as he learns. If one takes to learning in this way, one’s entire approach of emphasizing that which is contained within the gemoreattains a special significance unto itself.
Lionel Trilling once wrote about [William] Wordsworth and Khazal.[12] There he mentions a bit about his youth – Trilling is, as you know, a Jew – going to synagogue with his father, perusing an English translation of Pirkey oves since he did not know Hebrew, and years later realizing that the relationship of Wordsworth to nature is the same as that of Khazalto the Holy Scriptures and that of the rishoynimto Khazal. What they found therein he expresses by quoting the last line of Wordsworth’s “Immortality Ode”: “Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”[13] Trilling recognized that for Khazalor the rishoynim, the Torah was not simply an intellectual exercise. Rather, it was something that penetrated into the depths of their souls. It is to attain that feeling that every yeshivestudent strives. Not all achieve it, but everyone does, and must, aspire to it.
This is one point distinguishing the method which emphasizes the text from that which focuses on what surrounds it.
[Respect vs. Reverence for the Text and the Jewish Past]
A second difference between the yeshiveand academic approaches is their respective attitudes to the text. I just mentioned this a moment ago: a benyeshiveapproaches a gemoreand other traditional works with a certain reverence, each time with a greater sense of “Remove your sandals from your feet” [Ex. 3:5], feeling that he is handling something holy, that he is standing before a great, profound, and sacred text. And this goes hand-in-hand with an approach not only to a specific text, but to the entire Jewish past, a past which a benyeshivenot only respects – after all, academics respect it as well – but toward which he demonstrates a certain measure of submissiveness and deference. He stands before it like a servant before his master [Shabes10a], like a student before his teacher.
If we seek a parallel to this point in the world at large, we should not look to modern literary criticism; I do not know whether such an approach exists among today’s literary disciplines. Rather, we should go back, perhaps, to the seventeenth century – Professor Rudavsky mentioned this as well – and the whole question, the great debate that raged within various circles in Europe, regarding what sort of approach one should take to the classical world: the so-called “battle of the books.” You know well that [Jonathan] Swift, the English author, once wrote a small work – more his best-known than his best – about a library whose various books suddenly began fighting with one another, this one saying, “I am better,” and the other saying, “I am better.” What was the whole argument about? The debate turned on the issue of which literature is to be more highly esteemed: the ancient, classical literature, or the new, modern literature?[14]
Once upon a time, people assumed this was just a parody, a type of jeu d’esprit, a joke – Swift was, after all, a satirical writer. However, almost fifty years ago, an American scholar, R.F. [Richard Foster] Jones, wrote a whole book about it, The Background of the Battle of the Books,[15] in which he demonstrated that this was not merely a parody in Swift’s time. Rather, he was treating an issue that actually stood for some at the height of importance: the so-called querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, “the battle of the Ancients and the Moderns,” which can be found in many, many literary works, especially in critical works of the seventeenth century. For example, in [John] Dryden’s essay Of Dramatick Poesie,[16] there is an entire dialogue between four different speakers, each of whom deals with the question: how should one relate to the classical world? And let us recall that during the Renaissance and Reformation, people related to the classical world differently than even a professor of classical literature does today. For example, [Desiderius] Erasmus, one of the greatest figures of the European Renaissance, made it a practice to pray, Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis, “Saint Socrates, pray for us.”[17] But today, even in the classical universities, I do not believe that they pray to Socrates in this way.
In the seventeenth century, the feeling that was, for Erasmus, so deep had not yet disappeared entirely, but, nevertheless, the question was looming. For an academic today, in his approach to traditional Jewish texts, the ancients, the classics, Khazal, rishoynim, are, in the words of the English poet Ben Johnson, “Guides, not Commanders.”[18] A bentoyre, by contrast, recognizes to a much sharper and greater degree the authority of Khazal, rishoynim, Torah, and halokhe. For him, texts are not only eminent or valuable but holy. And this is a basic difference in attitude which, perhaps, distinguishes the two approaches and leaves a chasm between them.
Edmund Wilson, writing once in The New Yorker magazine, mentioned – he is a non-Jew, but one who is greatly interested in the Land of Israel and Jewish matters – that he believes that a non-Jew cannot possibly grasp what an observant Jew feels when he holds a Torah scroll, and not only when he is holding one; how he thinks about khumesh, about Torah. To a certain extent, it is, perhaps, difficult to convey to a modern man who has no parallel in his own experience; perhaps it is complicated to describe how a bentoyreor benyeshive approaches a gemore. Of course, it is not the same way one approaches khumesh, for khumeshis, from a halakhic perspective, a kheftseof Torah. Of what does Torah consist? Text. However, the kheftse, the object, of the Oral Torah is not the text alone – which was itself, after all, originally transmitted orally – but the ideas contained therein and, to a certain extent, the human being, the mind, the soul that is suffused with those ideas by a great mentor. Nevertheless, it may be that the relationship of a benyeshiveto a gemoreis difficult to convey, but it is certainly, at the very least, sharply divergent from the approach of an academic.
And so, we have, for the time being, two points that distinguish the traditional form of learning, yeshivelearning, from a more academic approach. But these two points, it seems to me, are not entirely separate from one another; rather, just the opposite, one is bound up in the other. At the end of the day, why does a benyeshivedevote himself so fully specifically to text alone, to the arguments of Abbaye and Rava, and why is he not terribly interested in knowing Jewish history and the like? Firstly, because he believes that the text is so important; if one holds that a text is holy, one wishes to study it. Secondly, because he believes that the text is not only holy but deep – there is what to study there! It contains one level on top of a second level on top of a third. The more one delves into Torah, the more one bores into its insides, the more distinctly one feels the radiance and illumination that Khazalsay resides within the Torah [Eykhe rabe, psikhte2].
And in order to establish the various levels of interpretation and maintain that one can examine a particular nuance with great precision, one must actually believe that a text is both holy and important and that it stems from an awe-inspiring source. For example, in the Middle Ages, in the – excuse the comparison – Christian world, people were involved in all sorts of analysis, each person seeing from his own perspective…
Notes:
* I wish at the outset to express my appreciation to my dear friends, Rabbis Daniel Tabak and Shlomo Zuckier, for their editorial corrections and comments to earlier drafts of this piece which, taken together, improved it considerably.
[1] The date assigned to the shi‘uron the YUTorah website is erroneous; it should read: “May 12, 1968.”
Those who listen to the original audio will note that it begins to cut in and out at about 42:40, thus effectively eliminating the direct connection between the present recording and the one posted on YIVO’s website. However, it is clear from the short snatches of Rav Lichtenstein’s voice that have been preserved after 42:40 that the recordings do in fact belong to one and the same talk (and not two separate Yiddish lectures on the same topic).
Incidentally, if any of theSeforimblog’s readers knows where the intervening audio can be found, please contact the editors so that it, too, can be translated for the benefit of the public. For other Seforim blog studies related to Rav Lichtenstein, see Aviad Hacohen, “Rav Aharon Lichtenstein’s Minchat Aviv: A Review,” the Seforim blog(September 8, 2014), available here (link), and Elyakim Krumbein, “Kedushat Aviv: Rav Aharon Lichtenstein zt”l on the Sanctity of Time and Place,” trans. David Strauss, the Seforim blog (December 5, 2017), available here (link) (both accessed March 25, 2018).
[2] See the YIVO website (link(accessed March 25, 2018) for a guide to Yiddish Romanization, as well as Uriel Weinreich, Modern English-Yiddish, Yiddish-English Dictionary(New York: Schocken Books, 1977) for his transcriptions of terms deriving from the loshn-koydeshcomponent of Yiddish.
[3] David Rudavsky, research associate professor of education in New York University’s Department of Hebrew Culture and Education, presented before Rav Lichtenstein on “A Century of Jewish Higher Learning in America – on the Centenary of Maimonides College.” See the conference program in Yedies:News of the Yivo (link). See also David Rudavsky, Emancipation and Adjustment: Contemporary Jewish Religious Movements and Their History and Thought(New York: Diplomatic Press, 1967), 318-320, for a brief discussion of Maimonides College.
For a history of Maimonides College, founded in Philadelphia in 1867 by Isaac Leeser – not to be confused with the post-secondary school of the same name (link) located today in Hamilton, Ontario – see Bertram Wallace Korn, “The First American Jewish Theological Seminary: Maimonides College, 1867–1873,” in Eventful Years and Experiences: Studies in Nineteenth Century American Jewish History (Cincinnati: The American Jewish Archives, 1954), 151-213. The charter of Maimonides College was published in “A Hebrew College in the United States,” The Jewish Chronicle (9 August 1867): 7 (I thank Menachem Butler for this latter source). See also Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 80, 431.
[4] Yiddish kvetshn dos benkl is a particularly evocative way of referring to someone putting in long hours learning while sitting on a bench in a besmedresh.
[5] For this part of the lecture, see my aforementioned, previous translation published on the YIVO website.
[6] It appears that the section of the lecture relating to Rav Lichtenstein’s understanding of “higher” learning has not been preserved in either of the two parts of the recording available at present.
[7] See A.S.P. Woodhouse, “The Historical Criticism of Milton,” PMLA66:6 (December 1951): 1033-1044.
[8] See Cleanth Brooks, “Milton and Critical Re-Estimates,” PMLA66:6 (December 1951): 1045-1054.
[9] F.N. Robinson, ed., The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer(Boston; New York; Chicago: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1933), xv.
[10] Leopold Zunz, Toledot morenu ge’on uzzenu rabbenu shelomoh yitshaki zts”l ha-mekhunneh be-shem rashi, trans. Samson Bloch ha-Levi (Lemberg: Löbl Balaban, 1840), available here (link).
[11] For a survey and discussion of the various people to whom this critique of Wissenschaftis attributed, see Shimon Steinmetz, “What color was Rashi’s shirt? Who said it and why?” the On the Main Line blog (June 10, 2010), available here (link) (accessed March 25, 2018). For a recent biography of Zunz, see Ismar Schorsch, Leopold Zunz: Creativity in Adversity(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).
[12] Lionel Trilling, “Wordsworth and the Rabbis: The Affinity Between His ‘Nature’ and Their ‘Law,’” CommentaryMagazine20 (January 1955): 108-119, a revised version of his earlier “Wordsworth and the Iron Time,” The Kenyon Review 12:3 (Summer 1950): 477-497. The essay, or a version thereof, also appeared in a number of other forums.
[13] William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” Wikisource,l. 206, available here (link) (accessed March 25, 2018). (The poem was first published under the title “Ode” in Wordsworth’s Poems, in Two Volumes, vol. 2 [London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807], 147-158.) This line does not actually appear in the aforementioned Trilling article. The Ode itself was the subject of a different essay by Trilling published under the title “The Immortality Ode” in Trilling’s The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society(New York: The Viking Press, 1950), 129-159.
[14] See Jonathan Swift, An Account of a Battel between the Antient and Modern Books in St. James’s Library (London: John Nutt, 1704), available here (https://tinyurl.com/y9rjse4z).
[15] Jones’ monograph, The Background of the Battle of the Books (St. Louis: Washington University Press, 1920), was actually an offprint of an article by the same name that appeared in Washington University Studies: Humanistic Series7:2 (April 1920): 99-162, available here (link).
[16] John Dryden, Of Dramatick Poeſie, an Essay(London: Henry Herringman, 1668), available here (link).
[17] Desiderius Erasmus, The Colloquies of Erasmus, trans. N. Bailey, ed. E. Johnson, vol. 1 (London: Reeves & Turner, 1878), 186.
[18] Ben Iohnson, Timber: or, Discoveries...(London, 1641), 89.