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RABBI DR. JOSHUA BERMAN & RABBI AARON CHAIM HALEVI ZIMMERMAN: A FAKE GENIUS, AND A STUDY IN CONTRAST

Updated: Aug 12, 2020

Some writers exude passion and vigor, others plod along, dragging the reader from one ponderous sentence to the next. Some writers inelegantly sling endless ad hominin’s at others, while simultaneously recoiling, wounded, at the slightest criticism directed towards them—others focus on the issues, allowing their arguments to undercut their opponents. The way a person comports themselves on the page tells you a great deal about them. At the very least, a person’s writing sheds light on how they think. After all, writing is simply the symbolic expression of the ideas that flow through our minds.


I recently had the pleasure of reading Berman’s book Ani Maamin and Zimmerman’s book Torah & Rationalism. While I can report that I am still happily OTD and remain unpersuaded by either of their primary theses, I would like to save an analysis of the specific arguments for a different time. I want to discuss their writing style, and explore what their writing tells us about them.


There is an irony in the respective titles of these books. The words Ani Maamin evoke a haunting mystical tune (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oucFFlau2Vc) that many of us grew up with, as well as the highest expression of blind faith in our religion. Ani Maamin bi-Emunah Shilamah…” in sum, anti-rationalism at its greatest. Contrast this with the bold and provocative title of Zimmerman’s book, Torah & Rationalism. I could only imagine the logical edifices that the author intended on building, the 3D game of theological chess that was tantalizingly hinted to by the books cover. Rationalism and Torah, somehow fused for the modest price of $18.99 (and the requirement to wait on line with a group of people who seemingly assumed that, because they were in a seforim store, the Torah, and not masks, would protect everyone from the global pandemic). Holy moly was I in for a surprise. Ani Maamin—whether you agreed with the ideas it contained or not—was a tightly woven tapestry of clear logic and insightful and well-researched ideas. On the other hand, Torah & Rationalism was a hot mess of obfuscation, blundering and unfounded personal attacks, and a treasure trove of pseudo-rationalistic sentences that don’t mean anything.


Both Berman and Zimmerman attempt to defend the mesorah from a group of scholars whose academic conclusions are at odds with our tradition. Berman begins by clearly identifying his opponents, namely, bible critics who disbelieve in the historicity of the exodus, as well as promote the idea that the Torah is a fragmented, rather than unitary, text. Berman than lays bare his bias as an orthodox Jew, a Rabbi, no less. Berman acknowledges his perspective, but counters that the ideas he presents have undergone blind peer review by his fellow academics and have been published in the most distinguished forums within biblical scholarship. His goal is to expose the academic difficulties with his opponent position, not his religious discomfort with their conclusions. He is confident that his ideas will live or die based on how rigorous and well thought out they are, not how big of a Rabbi he is. The rest of Berman's book brims with controlled excitement; he would just love to show you his six reasons why the Exodus account should be believed, or nine reasons why the flood narrative makes more sense when viewed as a single work, or eleven parallels between the tent or Ramses and the Mishkan. Not once does Berman lob ad hominems at his opponents; rather, he lets his methodical thinking and clear logic make a case for him over his opposition.


My impression walking away from Ani Maamin was that Berman is a serious and passionate man who has spent his career slowly and carefully building a worldview that seeks to harmonize Torah belief with the fields of biblical criticism and archeology. He does not quote anything to show off his knowledge, yet it is clear that he has complete mastery of the subject matter. He is also wonderfully methodical. Before he begins, he carefully sets out the function and purpose of each chapter. His chapters are broken up with subheadings, and his ideas build up clearly and logically. He presents the underlying issues, respectfully explains the position of his opponents, proceeds to point out—often using numbers and bullet points—the various weakness of their approach, he then presents his approach and explains why it solves the problems that eluded his opponents. Throughout it all, he keeps his sentences tight and crisp. While I disagree with many of the points he makes, and I do not believe that he has sufficiently met the burden of proof that his position demands, nevertheless, I fully recognize him for what he is, an intelligent, thoughtful, well-researched scholar.


Torah & Rationalism is a mirror contrast to Ani Maamin. Zimmerman never clearly identifies his opponents. His rage seems mostly directed towards a nebulous group he calls “the Chochmas Yisroel,” a term that he defines in his chapter titled “The Falsity of Chochmas Yisroel” as “Academic Judaic Scholarship.” But that is not the only people/school he hates. He jumps around, darting from explaining “the great mistake” of Wittgenstein in Tractatus Logio-Philosophicus to highlighting “the foolish endeavor of Spinoza” to undercutting the “egoism of an [sic] Ayn Rand” to finally, exposing the “laziness” and “narrow-mindedness” of “the [sic] Chochmas Yisroel.” But more than anything, Zimmerman hates professor Ginzberg. Zimmerman fumes that “[w]hen a layman or non-expert in halacha sees the volumes of Ginzburg’s commentary on the Talmud Yerushalmi, he may be full of admiration towards Ginsberg because of his apparent insight, knowledge, memory of references and cross-references, and critical approach.” But Zimmerman is there to set the record straight, to expose all the cheat seforim that Ginzburg used, and to highlight every time Ginzburg was not mekayim the Chazal that a person must be Omer Davar Bishaim Omroi.


Zimmerman's book is crippled by the endless, exhausting, and juvenile insults he hurls at his opponents. But his book suffers from a far deeper flaw, an insufferable level of sophistry. Zimmerman revels in phrases like “…the formulae of Halachah and its logical equations” He loves the word “exponents” and comparing a Rashba to mathematics and geometry. If a paragraph is not busily pointing out the foolish unfounded and revolting plagiaristic ignorance of the Chochmas Yisroel, well then, it better darn well casually use the phrase “ontological structure” or, better yet, contain a choice quote of Bertrand Russell's conception of Wittgenstein’s understanding of molecular propositions as it relates to Hume’s understanding of Aristotle's philosophy and why it mathematically demonstrates that kabbalah is totally different than mysticism. Oh, you weren’t able to follow my brilliant train of thought—that was because the Rambam actually didn’t believe in philosophical doctrines and only used it as an ontological structure to convey the mathematically perfect aesthetical representation of the thirteen principles used to decode the Torah's logical symmetry. Also, you might be lost because you didn’t read my ten pages in Hebrew, showing how “professor” Ginzburg might have stolen a source in his book without acknowledging that he is a lazy michutzef who would totally use a Mesivta Gemara to prepare shiur with--if he was alive today.


Zimmerman’s big argument to counter the work of an entire academic discipline: astonishingly, nothing. Aside from the occasional jab here or there, at the end of each chapter, Zimmerman slinks back to the same refrain: if only you would spend sixty years hurvving over every line in Reb Akiva Eger as I did, you would understand that I am right and you are wrong. No logic. No counterarguments. No methodical lists of academic issues. Just a tired appeal to authority. I am right, and you are wrong. You think the Rambam was influenced by Greek philosophy, well, if you spent a hundred years learning the Rambam, you would see it my way. As the saying goes, “you had to have been there.” To this end, Zimmerman runs to his favorite model, mathematics. Just as a non-mathematician cannot opine on the correctness of a trigonometric equation, so too, writes Zimmerman, “all the writers of political science, or sociological and historical interpretations of the Rambam, as well as the other Rishonim, are absolutely ignorant of the mathematical logic of the halacha. To these people, the logical implication of the Rambam are as strange as a mathematical equation is for a man who has never studied mathematics. They cannot see or comprehend the brilliant elegance and beauty of what the Rambam wrote.”


Zimmerman’s appeal fails because of several reasons. Firstly, many academics and outsiders spent years delving into the words of the Rishonim and Achronim. It is classic yeshivish hubris to think that somehow, if only people would spend more time learning the way you learn, they would finally grasp the truth.


Secondly, Zimmerman's appeal can be used to immunize any religious stance, no matter how outlandish or absurd. Oh, you silly academics who spent your careers studying the history and origins of Mormonism, if only you would spend more time in church studying the works of our elders—the right way—than you would understand how amazingly brilliant and divine they were.


Thirdly, Zimmerman is incorrectly comparing the degree of knowledge needed to understand complicated mathematics to the knowledge required to understand some aspects of our mesorah. It does not take that many years of studying Chazal to get a good sense of how the system works. Indeed, much of the supposed inscrutability and “infinite depth” of our mesorah is self-generated by people chasing shadows. Zimmerman demonstrates this amply when, in his chapter on the Rambam, he spends several pages massively overanalyzing a few poetic lines in a letter that the Rambam wrote describing his passionate love of Torah. Zimmerman does this based on his (unfounded) assertion that “[The Rambam] does not use poetry for rhetorical fanfare. Every word written by him is Halacha.” Therefore, concludes Zimmerman in a beautiful leap of illogic, that when one discovers the Rambam writing poetically, he must be alluding to all sorts of hidden ideas and laws. Zimmerman is then off to the races, rummaging around in the laws of saying kirays Shima while lying naked in bed with one's wife to decode all the hidden allusions and ideas that can be extracted from the fact that the Rambam compares the Torah to “the wife of his youth.” (p. 119).


At the risk of pulling a Zimmerman, it is hard to describe how utterly irrational Torah & Rationalism truly is without experiencing it yourself. Here is a classic example of both Zimmerman's exhausting invective, and his inability to present logically sound arguments. Bracketed text is my own. On page 164, he writes:

“Besides the ignorance and false interpretations, the authors of Chochmas Yisroel did and do not write anything li-shmah. They do not seek the truth, but their own honor.”

[Ok. Firstly, it is utterly thick-witted to claim to know the motivations of the practitioners of an entire academic discipline. Really! Every person who ever wrote anything on Academic Judaic Scholarship was motivated by a desire for honor and not a passion for truth?! Is this the comments section of YWN or a book that uses the word rationalism in its front cover?


Secondly, it is silly to equate a lack of li-shmah with a desire for honor. There are endless motivations—aside from a pursuit for truth—that can motivate someone to write an article on the topic of Academic Judaic Scholarship. But wait, there is more. Zimmerman continues, ready to prove that the evil authors of Chochmas Yisroel are not out to find the truth, but only for their glory]

“The Ramban writes in the introduction to his book dinei de-garmi, ‘In case one will have suspicion on some things I have written not mentioning who said it, like one who does not learn Torah li-shmah, I excuse myself that I did not intentionally try to hide them, as it is known that my words are taken from the words of my teachers.”
“What is learned from the Ramban is that if one does not mention the author, it is considered not learning Torah li-shmah. And since most of the words of Chochmas Yisroel are taken from others, without giving credit to the author, it proves that they are not learning li-shamah, indicated clearly and evidently in a previous chapter.
And since Chazal, as well as the Rehsonim and the great achronim, learn Torah li-shamah, to seek truth and reveal the truth for Klal Yisroel, all their writings are objective without any personal motive….”

[First of all, before I zoom out on this bonkers banana pants hodgepodge of words, a nitpick from one lamdan to another: you are conflating a sufficient condition with a necessary condition. The Ramban wrote that not giving credit is an attribute that CAN be found amongst those who do not learn lishmah. You then blindly overextended the Ramban to create a necessary condition, that if one does not give credit, then, by fiat, “it [sic] is considered not learning Torah li-shmah.”


Secondly, if you wanted to prove that all Academic Judaic Scholars were only out for their honor, appropriate evidence to that proposition would be, surprise--things that indicate the motivations of the academic scholars—perhaps a trove of letters where they gleefully discuss with their family how much they hate truth and enjoy all the honor directed at them. I don’t know, like evidence, maybe. But, by all that is holy, what you should NOT bring to prove your point is your contrived diyuk and shtikel Torah in the Ramban’s commentary to Dina Di-Garmi.


Thirdly, do you realize how wildly naive you sound when you write—with no qualifications—that “ALL [the writing of Chazal, the Rishonim, and the great Achornim] are objective without ANY personal motive.” (Emphasis added). Really! Not a single line of any great Achron was penned with any underlying personal motive—these people had NO desire for honor or respect or anything else! No nuance. No understanding of humanity. No shades of gray. Just the mashgiach-level Musser-Sefer thumping black-and-white certainty of a true believer.


Fourthly, putting aside the whole "my rebbe’s kovitz is bigger than your rebbe’s kovetz'" vibe, your statement suffers the sad fate of being a classic tautology. What you said was that since everything they wrote was lishamah, it must be that everything they wrote had no personal motivation and is purely objective. Your premise contains what you are setting out to prove, just in Hebrew.]


As I wrote at the beginning of this article, I believe that one can learn a lot about a person based on their writing. I never heard of Rabbi Zimmerman before I read Torah & Rationalism, but from the little I read about him, it seems that he was considered by many as the classic "eccentric genius." Orthodox Judaism almost fetishizes this archetype. We love our illuim, our Rogatchover, our Rosh Yeshivas who know Kol HaTorah Kulah but do not know the names of all their children. There is nothing wrong with admiring geniuses, in fact, I am in awe of many people because of their piercing intelligence. My problem is that the “eccentric genius” in the frum community is often not that smart.


A personal story. When I was younger, I gained quite a reputation in my bais midrash as the local illui. I had been learning several hours of bikeyus a day since I was fourteen, and, like most younger people, one of my primary motivations for learning was a feeling of approval. Early on, I began noticing that people reacted differently when I would quote a Gemara in Menachos versus when I would quote a Gemara in Baba Kama or Succah. The more obscure a quote was, the higher people's eyebrows went up, and the quicker they were to approach me with a question the next day. Soon, I subconsciously began focusing more on mastering obscure texts over standard texts. I also became adept at noticing and retaining the quotable elements of a sugya, while discarding the details I knew were unlikely to come up. I also became very proficient in using indexes and cheat seforim, which allowed me to find almost any Chazal, Rishon, or Acharon on a topic.


I also started acting weird. The Gedolim biographies paint the picture of "the illui" as possessing a specific group of personality traits. Rav Sach could spot the tiniest flaw in a savara, but he would drink turpentine without noticing. The Rogatchover Gaon could list ten thousand gemaras to support his point, but he would bring the wrong child home from cheder. Rav Yankel Drillman can think more in-depth than anyone alive, but he walked into the bais midrash holding a garbage bag that he forgot to throw away when he left his house. I was always naturally a bit spaced out and introverted, and I fully leaned into those qualities as I was trying to discover who I was. I was going to be like Rav Yankel and the Rogatchover Gaon. When my glasses broke, I just taped them together. I stopped tying my shoes. I started sleeping in the bais midrash, lining up a few chairs to sleep on at 1:00 AM and waking up at 5:30 AM to continue learning.


Eventually, my Rosh Yeshiva sat me down and set me straight. I could be an illui without being crazy. Unlike the way the Artscroll portrayed the geniuses, many people are blindingly intelligent, yet also perfectly composed and normal. These illuim that I admired and attempted to emulate were suffering from behavior issues that often reflected on their ability to act in a socially acceptable way. I revered my Rosh Yeshiva, and his words had a strong effect on me. I stopped my strange mannerisms and began acting like a normal person.


But aside from my strange mannerisms, the truth was that I was no genius, I wasn’t even that intelligent. I was a sincere boy with perhaps a decent memory who had learned how to game the system. I knew how to sound and look like an illui to impress those slightly less erudite than myself. I had found the right cheat seforim and learned the right mesechtos, and to those uninitiated, I was able to sound like I had mastered a vast body of knowledge. But I knew very little and understood even less. It was only much later in my development as a person that I began to figure out how to think logically and coherently.


I never met Zimmerman, but I cannot help but suspect that Zimmerman is a classic fake yeshivish illui. He learned how to check all the right boxes. There is no denying that the sentences that he strings together can be quite dazzling. His ideas seem profound, even if no one seems capable of repeating them back to you. Additionally, unlike most talmidei chachamim, Zimmerman gives off the impression as someone equally proficient in Kant and advanced trigonometry as he is in a Ketzos or Taz.


But it does not take much to fool us pushter yidden. And once a Rabbi’s reputation becomes established, the sheer force of the talmidim’s hero-worship often propels the person's status far beyond its original confines.


Another truly odd point is the genuinely unusual zeal that Zimmerman sets out exposing Professor Ginzburg's sources. He begs his readers not to get swept up in the seeming brilliance of Professor Ginzburg because—ta-da—he found the indexes that he uses to appear smart. But Ginzburg is a sham, I promise! It is worth taking a moment to appreciate how utterly bizarre Zimmerman's attack on Ginzburg truly is. Sure, plagiarism is a big deal, but Zimmerman's vitriol points to something else. It seems like Zimmerman cannot fargin a fellow con-man who, using the resources at his disposal, convinced the world of his brilliance.


Rabbi Zimmerman had a reputation as a super genius and a prominent rabbi, and I do not know how people view Rabbi Dr. Berman’s intelligence or religiosity. But based on reading their books, it seems clear that Berman is more levelheaded, intelligent, logical, and coherent than Zimmerman. Berman's book also bears the imprint of a mature mensch, and possess quite a bit more Derech Eretz than the ill titled Torah & Rationalism.

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