Of Making Many Books

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end (Ecclesiastes 12:12)

A pdf version of this essay can be downloaded here

[*] Years in brackets refer to an individual’s or book author’s year of birth

Thought experiment for the day: Anyone born 1945 would be pushing towards 80 and mostly past their prime. So name any Charedi sefer written by someone born post war that has or is likely to enter the canon, be it haloche, lomdus, al hatorah or mussar. Single one will do for now

— IfYouTickleUs (@ifyoutickleus) July 27, 2022

A tweet in the summer which gained some traction asked for a book by an author born from 1945 onwards that has entered the Torah and rabbinic canon or is heading in that direction. I didn't exactly phrase it this way and some quibbled about 'canonisation'. The word does indeed have a precise meaning though in its popular use it has no narrow definition. Canonisation, or ‘entering the canon’ is generally understood to refer to a book which has gained wide recognition if not acceptance and near-universal reverence and adulation. Alternatively referred to as a ‘classic’, it could refer to anything from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or any work by William Shakespeare to contemporary creations like the Harry Potter series. In its original sense the canon refers to certain hallowed religious works like the bible, which though not the subject here, still blends the original meaning with its contemporary popular use.

I was referring to written works in the field of Torah that have garnered near-universal acceptance and recognition within Charedi communities and from where they usually filter into the Orthodox Jewish world at large. For, rightly or wrongly, what is revered in Charedi communities will generally gain acceptance amongst Torah scholars in the non-Charedi world (yes, such scholars do exist), but which is not necessarily the case in reverse. Save for some notable exceptions – Kehati mishnayos ([*]1910) come immediately to mind – books on Torah subjects from outside the Charedi world do not very often breach the Charedi ghetto walls. Rav Kook (1865) and Rav J.B. Soloveitchik (1893) are a case in point. Both Torah luminaries in their own right, both prolific writers who trod a very non-Charedi path and both remain firmly beyond the pale for probably the majority of Charedim.

One argument advanced in the replies was that it's too early to judge. Books, the argument goes, are like a fine wine. They need time to mature and often will not reach their full potential within the author's lifetime. So given my relatively limited and recent timespan, a shortage of canonisation candidates at this point in time should not come as too much of a surprise.

My reply to this is that firstly, even if a work has not yet soared to stratospheric heights, the period since 1945 is still long enough for a book to have gained sufficient traction for an imprecise discussion like this. Moreover, there are plenty of exceptions to this generalisation and which firmly disprove the notion that death is a necessary precondition for immortality. Mishne Berureh (1838) took off immediately on publication and the Chazon Ish (1878) had achieved renown already within his lifetime when he was known by the title of his eponymous works. Even closer to our time, Shemiras Shabbos Kehilchoso (1927) was established as a classic well within its author’s lifetime, notwithstanding the controversy upon its initial publication and the sanitisation, or “chumreh-isation”, process it was required to undergo in later editions to make it more palatable for the times.

Furthermore, we are by now well into the fourth generation of those born in 1945, and given our young marriage age some may already be closing in on a fifth generation, so sufficient generational gaps have opened up during this period to allow for an author's work to gain fame and recognition. The seforim Chofetz Chaim and Shemiras Haloshen were published when the author was not yet 40 and the first two volumes of Mishne Berureh were published before the same author had turned 50, while the first volume of Chazon Ish was published when its author was a mere 33 years old. By contrast, someone born even in 1965 is now approaching their 60th birthday and it is legitimate to ask where is the magnum opus of the post-war generations and what masterpiece have we produced to show to ourselves and to the future as the fruits of the endeavours of our era?

This is a great question. I’m pretty stumped. Does ArtScroll shas or ArtScroll Siddur count?

— robertatweet (@robertadrive) July 27, 2022

Most commenters indeed understood the gist of my question and the responses, which were far more numerous than I had anticipated, provide a fascinating insight. What, however, shed most light was not any long or shortlist, but the paucity of serious contenders in the first place and the surprise shortage of worthy candidates. As one respondent put it, the question left him "pretty stumped". Truth said, I was stumped myself when the question first popped into my head and I'm happy to admit that that was my very point. So let's get some stuff clear.

I am after a work credited to an individual on a Torah subject, be it al hatorah, shas, halakha, lomdus, shalos utshuvos, machshove, mussar, or whatever Torah subject the author has chosen to write on. As I’ll go on to explain, our generation has produced some remarkable works by committee which will likely last for a long time but that’s not what this tweet was about. I’m after that work that is authoritative and revered, or one simply acclaimed as “genius”, which despite the overuse of that label still gives an idea of the how the work is popularly perceived. A Reb Akiva Eiger, Pnei Yehoshua, Noda Biyehudah, chidushim of Reb Chaim or Reb Shimen and countless others that fill the shelves in our shuls and homes. Books that are as known to Bar Mitzvah boys in those circles where they’re gifted seforim as they are to wizened and furrowed brows. Admittedly, not every classic perfectly fits this description and such lists almost invite disagreement by their very nature. Yet it should still not prove too difficult to compile even a contentious and invidious list if there was an abundance of candidates.

I chose the year 1945 because it is a watershed year in general and much more so for the Jewish people. Not only was it the end of the most catastrophic war in human history, but for Jews it was also the beginning of a new universe. If we ever came close to a tabula rasa, a wiped slate - I hesitate to use the more common phrase, clean slate, in this context - 1945 must be it. It marks a clear dividing line between what was on the one hand the culmination of the most calamitous half decade for the Jewish nation when countless communities were annihilated and an entire way of life eradicated, but which was also the beginning of a prolonged Jewish golden age. From the rebirth of Jewish life after the carnage of the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel to the rebuilding of destroyed communities by Holocaust survivors and others across the world, 1945 truly marked, particularly for Jews, the end of the worst of times and the start of the best of times.

For the purpose of this post, the year 1945 also set off an explosion of Torah study and Torah institutions in Israel, the United States, Europe and elsewhere, reaching the unprecedented numbers we are experiencing today. And not just in pure demographic terms as measured by the populace of Orthodox Jewry and Charedim, but even more so in the exponential growth of dedicated Torah students, those who colloquially "sit and learn", making Torah study in one form or another their lifelong occupation.

Someone born in 1945 would have come of age in the 1960s by when this Torah revolution was already well under way with the establishment of chadorim, boys’ and girls’ schools, yeshivas, seminaries and kollelim all created and nourished in this new era. Like never before, these institutions took root in a friendly environment where they were permitted to thrive with almost no hindrance by the authorities and broader citizenry and often with the strong support of national and local governments. And so, after several generations nurtured in this hospitable climate, it is fair to take stock and ask, what have we to show for this on the Torah intellectual front?

My enquiry is not a value-based question and if, for better or for worse, a sefer has "made it" then it must be included. Oz Ve'Hodor Levusho on tznius by R. Eliyohu Falk (1944) would have deserved a place as a classic of our time, but for the fact that the author missed the nominated period by a whisker. Whether or not one approves of its content, is hardly the issue. The fact is that the sefer is a constant point of reference on a central preoccupation of contemporary Charedi life. Just ask the countless women who've been driven up the creek and the children who've been denied a place in schools on the back of this work.

And so getting back to the question in my tweet, it would seem from the generated responses, that the answer, alas, is not much. Sure, some names kept cropping up. Minchas Osher by R. Osher Weiss (1953) seems a strong contender for the future, especially when the current fad for chumrehs has fizzled out. Badei Hashulchon by the recently departed R. Feivel Cohen (1937) was a warranted strong presence, although strictly speaking it is outside the date range. Its volumes are regularly spotted on the laden tables of almost any half decently stocked shul or shtiebel and they often feature as highlights in seforim sales. Piskei Tshuvos by R. Simcha Rabinowitz (c.1950s) was another strong contender with a fair number of mentions. There were also some nominations for Nitei Gavriel by R. Gavriel Tzinner (c. mid to late 1940s) which due to its many volumes, down-to-earth style and encyclopaedic coverage of minhogim has garnered wide recognition. Another nomination given to me privately was Chelkas Binyomin on Yoreh De’oh by R. Binyomin Cohen (son of the aforementioned R. Feivel Cohen) which is written and laid out in a similar style to Mishneh Berureh and which, according to the nominator, may in its field of Yoreh De’oh even surpass Mishneh Berureh in its parallel field of Orach Chaim. I’m not in a position to judge, though for the time being I think it would probably fail purely on recognition terms since both the book and its author are hardly household names and the sefer is not regularly seen or cited. There was then a variety of seforim getting one or two shoutouts plus, this being twitter, a fair amount of facetious suggestions too. Whatever the case, the addition or substitution of one or two nominations will hardly make a dent in the general picture because in total the point has been far better made than I could have envisaged when posing the question.

Near enough to eighty years or over three-quarters of a century of an almost unrivalled golden age of Torah and it would appear that we have abysmally failed. An explosive demographic, hundreds of millions if not billions raised in finance for Torah institutions, buildings erected on every other corner, yet when we try to evaluate the fruits to assess what those children have turned into and what those astronomical sums have bought us, the answer is, not that much. Our raison d'etre is Torah, yelled at us in piercing decibels, "TOIREH! TOIREH! TOIREH!" but try weighing up that Torah in tangible intellectual output by those People of the Book doing little else but poring over those books and you draw close enough to a blank.

Whether at best or at worst, we have barely more than a handful of indisputable classics by an individual born and raised in this era and within those even fewer that are actually innovative and which take our understanding and knowledge significantly further than where we were before. What is glaringly absent in almost all the nominations is a work of true scholarship by an individual that has gained near-universal adulation. A work where a subject is evaluated, where previous texts are engaged with and, dare I say, even criticised, or at the very least critiqued. I'm not saying that such works do not exist, but from the replies submitted it would appear that if our times have indeed produced a work of this calibre then it must be a very well-kept secret that has not come to the attention of many.

Even amongst the nominated titles, very few of them are al hatorah, none on shas, none on mussar, none on drush, none on machshoveh and almost all to a tee are on halakha. And Minchas Osher aside, even the halakha seforim are not so much applying and adapting halakha to modern circumstances, but are either kvetching each se'if in Shulchan Oruch for the last available chumreh, or merely amalgamating, reformulating and re-ordering what is already known and has been continuously said over the years numerous times.

It is as if the entire Torah has been entered into a giant database and all we are doing is applying ever more creative searches and then re-sorting and re-filtering the results. And once those results are returned, the author runs off to the usual roster of Gedolim and Rebbes for an approbation beginning "How esteemed is the day" to see yet another re-arrangement of the same material. Well, the day may be esteemed but our times are anything but. For if the answer to most shalehs nowadays is negative, not much is required to justify that stance. And in an age when even some of the most prominent poskim respond to shalehs monosyllabically or with a nod, why should anyone make the effort to provide reasoned decisions which no one will ever read and even fewer act upon?

To illuminate the point, it is useful to take the parallel period of seventy-seven years pre-, rather than post-, 1945, and compare seforim written by anyone born in the years between 1867 and 1944. Those generations were of course cruelly cut short by the Holocaust and yet they gave us (in reverse chronological order) Shmiras Shabbos Kehilchoso (1927), Tzitz Eliezer (1915), Shevet Halevi (1913) Minchas Yitzchok (1902) and Igros Moshe (1895) all on halakha. That period also produced giants of the stature of the Brisker Rov (1886) and the Chazon Ish (1878), each individually an author of classical works, and Reb Elchonon Wasserman (1874) whose Kovetz Shiurim and other works remain popular in the yeshiva world. In other fields there is Sharei Aharon al hatorah (1932) and Be'er Moshe (1889) also al hatorah but Chasidic interpretations. Also on Chasidus, there’s Nesivos Sholom (1911) which is considered a classic in its field. On mussar there is Chovas Hatalmidim (1889) first published in 1932 and whose popularity isn't related to the author's Holocaust martyrdom, while on machshovo and hashkofo there is Rav Dessler's (1892) Michtav M'Eliyohu (published posthumously). Also on hashkofo there is Vayoel Moshe (1887) which irrespective of one’s stance on the subject of Israel and Zionism is still considered a seminal work and an important contribution to a central issue of its and our times.

These are just some examples of seforim by authors born during the same period length, many of which took off during their author's lifetime, and that have so far stood the test of time in that they remain authoritative (especially those on halakha) and are still widely known and referenced. Yet despite the list being far from comprehensive it still highlights how far back we have fallen.

Rewinding slightly from this period by just a few years, and there were luminaries like Reb Chaim Ozer Grodzinski (1863) and his sefer Achiezer, seforim by Reb Shimon Shkop (1860) and Reb Boruch Ber Leibowitz (1862) on lomdus, Chofetz Chaim and Mishne Berureh (1838) on mussar and halakha and Shem Mishmuel (1855) and Yismach Yisroel (1853) on Chasidus.

Although not directly relevant, the not-too-distant past also produced such Torah giants as R. Menachem Zemba (1883) and the Rogatshover (1858), to name but two, who though not particularly famous for their written works had outsized reputations as Torah geniuses. The Rogatshover especially, is comparable in Torah lore to the place occupied in popular culture by Albert Einstein with parallels even in their respective unkempt hairstyles. Yet our post-war era, despite our far superior living conditions, economic prosperity, tolerant environment and technological advances, has predominantly only likutim after likutim and a mass of chumros to show for itself in written works, and a collection of charismatic babas and shamans in personalities.

It is worth pausing here for a moment. For make no mistake, we have not been sitting idle during this period and there has been an outburst of energy and innovation in our communities on other fronts to develop our culture and facilitate our way of life. Buildings have sprung up in our different neighbourhoods to accommodate our explosive demographics and house our flourishing shuls, schools and burgeoning religious institutions. Kosher food has been transformed in range and breadth and the kosher wine industry is beyond recognition. Charedi media has exploded exponentially in Hebrew, English and Yiddish propounding a Charedi outlook and lifestyle. It does so confidently, often swaggeringly, with an increasingly right-wing conspiratorial worldview on everything from Israel and covid to education and Trump. Hand in hand with the thriving media is the political awakening, predominantly in Israel and New York, with its distinct Charedi flavour of victimhood combined with special interests and favours, which is fuelled by the same media. So much so, that one leading Charedi newspaper went so far as to declare its “mission” to protect Trump from his detractors in the mainstream media. Irrespective of where one stands on the politics, it still seems a novel if not strange position to take on a matter which at best affects Charedi Jews only indirectly.

On the creative and cultural end, there is of course the never-ending stream of Charedi and particularly Chasidic music in a wide range of genres, from the ear-piercing to the soulful and a fair amount of the doleful too. The visual arts may be poorly served which is hardly surprising given the extent to which we eschew television, cinema and other forms of visual entertainment, but even here there are emerging music videos, advertising and publicity clips and even comedy clips such as Bardak on the fringes, which show creative minds at work. A real gap, though, exists in the pictorial arts which unlike music has hardly moved on from paintings of Kever Rochel, some moss on the Kosel, gedolim portraits and a dancing chosid with a fiddle.

And then there is the spoken word. Telephone and online resources like Kol Haloshon, Torah Way and many others host tens of thousands of hours of podcast equivalents in a variety of languages created by Charedim for a Charedi public. Shiurim and talks catering for every taste and preference, including special lines and talks for women, which are constantly being added to and available for the cost of a phone call or less if it’s online. Telephone resources have taken off even more in Chasidic communities that are largely offline (officially, at least) and which have developed phone lines for disseminating communal, local and international news, views, politics, the happenings in the rebbes’ “courts” and with a fair bit of propaganda thrown in for good measure. A trailblazer in this field is Kol Mevaser, a sophisticated telephone-based (recently also online as Yiddish24) smorgasbord of news, opinion, shiurim, interviews, call-ins, parsha and yom-tov droshes, business advice, dieting tips, coaching talks and a whole lot more.

On the book front too, our printing presses churn out reams of publications that did not make it into the tweet replies, and I’d say for good reason. First and foremost are the numerous bestselling Hamevoar/Hameforash and the likes. Linear translations of the prayer liturgy like sidurim, machzorim, selichos and kinos into a contemporary formulation. I dare not say Modern Hebrew, because when targeting the Charedi market the point is very much to avoid anything sounding too ‘modern’.

While classical texts with glossaries and commentaries are as old as Rashi and perhaps older, the current fad is for spoon-feeding the texts in the linguistic equivalent of a baby mush. The phenomenon started around the 1970s with Tehilim Hamevoar by Gedalya Segal, which then took off seriously with selichos and machzorim by Yaakov Weingarten during the 1980s and has since been imitated by many others on a much broader field and far beyond the original liturgical texts.

The formula is simple: take any text, reformulate it into a contemporary style, flesh out the often terse text of the original by rephrasing sentences, inserting conjunctions, deciphering abbreviations, adding punctuation and, far too often, by substituting five words for a single word that perfectly fulfils the task. If brevity is the soul of wit, one may ask what the soul of this outpouring of verbosity consists of. Almost any prayer or liturgical prayerbook is ripe for monetisation in this manner and that the style of the original is butchered in the process, converting beautiful prose into raw long-winded verse is hardly a concern to a utilitarian, undiscerning public that finds beauty in noise and aesthetics in size.

Walk into any seforim shop before the yomim tovim and it's not too different from entering a mobile phone shop where tens of models, all essentially doing the same thing with only minor differences in size, colour and weight, compete for your attention. Except that we're not talking AMOLED screens and processor speeds, but rather fodder for slowed down brains challenged by any mental leap of its own making. Anyone with even a smattering of an education would find a reformulation of the blindingly obvious a hindrance rather than a help, but these translations are targeted at a market that has not been taught how to parse a sentence. Or rather that has been trained not to approach even the most basic texts without a guide on hand.

And when these translations and reprints have been exhausted, some wily publisher will reprint the same text yet again but this time with the addition of nekudos (vowelisation) which suggests that our difficulties are not just limited to comprehension but even our reading skills may also fall short.

But let us not pretend that it's all doom and gloom because substantial books are also being produced. If we're scanning the last near-eighty years on the Torah scene, reference must be made to the monumental Schottenstein Shas, which started originally in English, but is now possibly even more popular in its Hebrew version. Similarly, there is the Artscroll siddur translated into English which doesn't have a Hebrew “translation” counterpart. These and similarly translated works are the mainstay of an English-speaking Charedi home and shul and deserve more than a mention when considering the post-war Torah-based intellectual output.

The Artscroll publishing phenomenon which started in the 1970s coincided with the Baal Tshuve movement which also emerged around that period. The Artscroll siddur also catered for new generations of English-speaking Charedi women who had moved on from the classic Korban Mincha siddur in Yiddish. Artscroll may for these reasons initially have spent some time lurking at the entrance to the Charedi world before gaining full admission though by now they have well and truly earned their place at the top table. The Hebrew Schottenstein Shas has also more than made its mark and stands its ground despite many copycat, supposedly more ‘heimish’, translations. When the Daf Yomi cycle hits a masechte a sea of royal blue volumes floods shul shelves and tables and no summary of post-war Charedi bookishness would be complete without dedicating space to them. And whatever the criticism of Artscroll, predominantly for chasing popular approval at the expense of intellectual integrity, and not to mention the marketing and industry behind it, the fact is that they have opened up Shas to the masses in a way few other did before them. Thanks to Artscroll anyone with a basic literacy of English or Hebrew can now read and comprehend even the most intractable of Talmudic texts.

However, besides the fact that I am looking for a work by an individual, preferably with an innovative streak, and not a project by a committee, one may also legitimately question how Charedi these publications in fact are despite their infiltration into Charedi communities. While the Hebrew translations and reformulations of sidurim and machzorim are largely by Charedim for Charedim, it is questionable whether the same applies to the Artscroll project. Firstly, given the relatively limited exposure to English studies provided even by Yeshivish schools, it is unlikely the Schottenstein endeavour could have come to fruition if it was based solely on a Charedi education. This is not to say that no Charedim are of the calibre required for a project of this magnitude. However, what is considered an ideal Charedi education and what is in fact the education and tuition for the vast majority of Charedim during their formative years would not generally equip those graduates with the required skills to produce a translation on this scale. And even less so on the scholastic level required to translate from Aramaic, extinct to a large extent outside the Talmudic world, into a formal, almost-academic English which barely any Charedi school teaches at a serious level. There is also the huge – lamentably unacknowledged – debt to the very non-Charedi Talmudic philologist Marcus Jastrow without whose seminal Talmudic dictionary any English translation of the Talmud would barely have been possible.

Nevertheless, one cannot escape the fact that these projects have been co-ordinated and led by people of Charedi Yehivish background for the Charedi market and where they are lapped up despite their 73 volumes and a price tag ranging from $1,500 to almost $3,000 depending on the format. Unlike the Steinsaltz Shas which for a variety of reasons is libri non grata in most Charedi institutions or the Tanach with the Daat Mikra commentary which despite its fidelity to traditional commentary has also not properly scaled the Charedi ghetto walls, Artscroll has become a stalwart and trendsetter within the Charedi publishing world and where it remains firmly ensconced.

Encyclopaedia Talmudit editors in 2018

Also worth more than a mention, though partially outside the nominated period, is the Encyclopaedia Talmudit in Hebrew which as its name suggests summarises Talmudic topics by subject and imposes a semblance of order to the congruent as well as discordant and discursive Talmudic texts. The encyclopaedia which started in 1942 already runs to 46 volumes but still it remains a work in progress.

While acknowledging and even celebrating the above achievements, and notwithstanding that my tweet didn’t ask for such works, the proliferation of many of these works is still informative about ourselves and further enforces my point about the intellectual output of our times, or lack of it. For while the various translations have no doubt opened the texts to the wider public they also expose a vacuum at the heart of Charedi education. For comparison, visit a local bookshop and head for the Shakespeare plays and sonnets or the classical poetry section where you are likely to find plenty of annotated works with glossaries, comments and notes, but relatively few line-by-line translations or reformulations other than those targeted at GCSE students. The average schooled reader interested in such material will by the time they have graduated from secondary school have been exposed to a challenging vocabulary and at least one or two Shakespeare plays and similar works and will not generally require translations at this level. So why does a public reared on Hebrew texts from 5 years old and on gemore from about age 9 to 19 and beyond for almost the entire study day and to the exclusion of almost all else, flock to buy such basic translations and commentaries?

If, as some claim, our education develops our critical thinking, why does a public thinking critically not reject translations which much of the time assume that there's only a single reading to complicated ancient texts? Rather than proof of intellectual vibrancy, what we have is a dumbing down of Jewish classics on a scale hitherto unknown. And when considering the industry of producing these reams of volumes and editions, it is apposite to ask whether the purpose is more of monetising the texts rather than developing the ideas behind them. This does not apply only to translations and commentary but can also be gleaned from the books that do take off. Consider as an example Otzar Pelo’ois Hatorah which is a collection of midrashim and other material with some added commentary. The well-thumbed volumes in shul suggest them to be rather popular and which was also confirmed to me by a bookselling friend. Few of the midroshim provide particular insight into the psukim and instead appear to be chosen for their ‘wow’ factor with the more fantastical the source the more suitable it makes it for inclusion. Perhaps we are to conclude that even a ‘vort’ is too much of a challenge for our times and our pious brains lap up only those works that make the fewest demands on them.

As to what the seforim scene might and could have looked like, while it’s impossible to say what a latter day Chazon Ish or Brisker Rov would have authored nowadays, though guessing on a successor to Mishne Berureh may be slightly easier, it is still instrumental to look to the past and at what was once popular to get an idea of the scarcity of our times. Take as an example Hamoadim Be'Haloche on the Yomim Tovim by Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin (1888), which first appeared as newspaper columns in the Mizrachi Hatzofeh newspaper. Each chapter deals with another Yom Tov by summarising the sources and development of the mitzvos and minhogim for the festival plus a brief discussion of some of the main Talmudic and halachic debates pertaining to those mitzvos. Unlike many pre-Yom Tov books which nowadays hit the bookshops, this is not a guide or rule book of dos and don’ts but rather an intelligent discussion of halachic themes. The material is presented in an approachable, easy-to-read style and tailored for a broad newspaper-reading audience, medium brow if you must, though it still assumes a basic education in the classics and is of course predicated on an interest in the content.

(Rav Zevin also has a collection of biographical essays called Ishim V'Shitos, where he engages with Torah Greats of the 19^th and 20^th century not in a hagiographic way, as we have become accustomed to, but analytically by evaluating their written works for their style and method and peppered with anecdotes that illuminate their character.)

Now, move over to the contemporary Charedi world and there are few if any equivalent seforim. There is either what could be fairly titled elitist literature in the form of books and quarterly journals which few will scan even the opening page, or mounds of seforim on halakha and reams of legends, shallow 'vorts' and 'inspirational' message of the chicken-soup-for-the-soul variety for the masses.

Where, however, there is a huge gap is at the intermediate level, for those intelligent enough to follow but lacking the interest for in-depth disquisitions. For them a market hardly exists. Whereas in the past works like Mikro'ei Kodesh by Rav Tzvi Pesach Frank (1873) and Mo'adim Uzmanim by Rav Moshe Sternbuch (1926) were published which are expansive essay collections on Talmudic topics and which gained traction in their time, such seforim are no longer being written. In general, seforim on the market today tend to have a narrower subject range, are more utilitarian with a focus on practice rather than theory, and more diffident with a tendency to quote endlessly rather than question, innovate and express a point of view. And even if a number of such seforim by contemporary authors were to be found, the fact that they are not registering in the seforim world as they did in the past and so don’t turn into instant hits or provide any indication that they could be heading in that direction for the future, is itself indicative of the lack of appeal for such works and which must in turn reduce the incentive to write them in the first place.

One point made to me as a possible reason for this parched intellectual landscape is that I’m using the wrong measure. In essence, very many Torah scholars are immersed in their subject for the sake of study and little else. While this is by no means universal, nonetheless there are a large number of Torah students who apart from a Kollel stipend, and sometimes barely that, their only ambition is to spend time studying and amassing knowledge of the Torah. They are not studying for prizes, for grades, for publication, for tenure, for a post, for fame, for money, but simply for the sake of study. Often it is for practical reasons to better observe the mitzvos, though sometimes not even that. It may be for a portion of the World-to-Come, for personal fulfilment, for spiritual elevation and a host of other reasons but whose common denominator is that their success cannot be measured in books, articles, speeches or any other output, if it exists at all. In Talmudic parlance they are studying Torah Lishmoh, study of the Torah for the sake of it. And so, the argument goes, measuring the Torah world with a yardstick of literary output while many of its students and practitioners do not even recognise it as a scale, is to apply the wrong test and very much miss the point.

While I agree that there are indeed very many in this school, still I must disagree. For intelligence will out. Human nature is such that capable minds provided with information and reasoning will analyse, question, critique, sort, filter, taxonomise, compare, contrast, and all the other processes creative and intelligent minds will apply when encountering information and logic. And when this is done at a superior level with sufficient frequency it is inevitable that some of it will be committed to writing. So if some have decided to forego this and disapply their minds to what they are studying then we are the poorer as a result. I am not challenging their personal choice and if this is how they feel spiritual fulfilment who am I to argue? However, it is equally the freedom of an observer to draw conclusions from such choices.

Let us ask ourselves, what would have been left of our heritage had this approach been taken by the generations before us, and how bare our shelves, if not our selves, would have been as a result. Halakha aside which is required for practical purposes, whoever preserved and compiled the very large parts, if not the majority, of the gemore with its dialogue, hypothesis, refutations, arguments, homilies and agadatas, and then the commentary that fills Rashi, Tosfos and the other Rishonim followed in turn by the Achronim and which make up the entire corpus of Torah literature that has reached us, they certainly did not approach Torah in this manner. Quite besides, we pray daily to be given the heart and mind “to study and to teach” and what is writing and disseminating of ideas if not a form of teaching?

The scholars of Narbonne, Provence, Catalonia, Andalusia, Morocco, Tunisia, Aleppo, Alexandria, Alsace, Silesia, Moravia, Bohemia, Wallachia Volhynia and any number of other places that Jews settled in during centuries of sojourns and where they set up schools for the study of Torah, these scholars could just as well been studying for study’s sake and fulfilling God’s wish while singing Mo Ohavti and Tov Li but they would have left us vacant minds, some cutesy legends and little else. Because by now the Torah would either have been forgotten altogether or it would have become fossilised like a glorious Rosetta Stone of immense interest to decrypters and decipherers, history students and museum visitors but with little practical application.

Some might argue that if the ultimate goal is to delve into God’s laws and teachings then He is just as happy with students simply toiling away at the Torah with no ambition in mind, though they are unlikely to be of an intelligent bent. Because intelligence demands to understand, review, critique and ultimately better what went before and most of the time that requires expression in some form which generally is in writing. There is no reason or evidence to suggest that our generation is any less intelligent than our predecessors and the wider world with its technological and scientific marvels would suggest to the contrary, that we are applying knowledge far more intelligently than our forebears and that we are constantly building on their achievements. So why only in the field of Torah does it feel as if matters have come to a halt?

Which returns me to my first question: where are the achievements of our age and era in the Torah world? Why with all our tremendous energy and industry do we appear to come up short precisely in the area that we claim matters to us most?

The comment, however, that most stuck in my mind was of Yeridas Hadoros, the decline of generations, or diminution of minds. This was offered as an explanation why our generation has not, and perforce never will, match and let alone surpass, the output of our forebears. This supposed explanation, instead of challenging my central premise or offering a solution, essentially agrees with my thesis that our output is sorely lacking in cerebral quality but implies that this is not so much a bug as a feature. According to this explanation, we cannot and should not complain about our dire output because living in 2022 or 5783 is as much the cause as the symptom and given where we are in time we will inevitable fall behind those in 1922 just as they must have been behind those of 1822 and so on until time immemorial.

I suppose Yerdias Hadoers is across the board. For arguments sake, there's no Beethoven and Einstein either nowadays.

— Swartzvald (@Swatrzvald) July 28, 2022

Yeridas Hadoros, the decline or diminution of generations, is a doctrine which alongside Daas Torah form the twin pillars of Charedi thought. Applied literally, which is indeed how it is applied, it means an ongoing intellectual and spiritual decline as we move further away from Kabolas Hatorah and the revelation at Sinai. Never mind that the central premise that the closer an individual is to an event geographically and chronologically necessarily makes them greater is itself open to question. And ignore also the fact that the very generation that stood at Sinai went on to worship the Golden Calf only a short while later. This is, however, what the doctrine of Yeridas Hadoros is taken to mean.

There's even an apocryphal story to go with it in which a rosh yeshiva meets a non-Jew on a plane - always on a plane because where else do they come into contact with a gentile? - and the non-Jew asks why our society reveres age while the general culture adulates youth. According to the story, the rosh yeshiva replied that if you originate from primates (or 'monkeys' in the classic telling) then you must be improving as you move further away from your earliest ancestors, whereas if you originate from the Patriarchs and the generation that stood at Sinai then you're in perpetual decline as you move further away from those epic events.

The story is usually told as much to marvel at the spontaneous wit emanating from the rosh yeshiva as for the message itself. There is also no acknowledgement that the anecdote has an antecedent in the Oxford Great Debate in 1860 between the biologist Thomas Huxley and the Bishop of Oxford and so misses out on Huxley’s famous repartee.

But returning to Yeridas Hadoros, while we can discuss the concept of perpetual decline in a spiritual or revelatory sphere or as a theological explanation why the Biblical nation-founding miracles and revelations no longer occur nowadays, transposing this concept to our practical contemporary life has just one effect and which we see occurring in front of our eyes.

If entire generations are brought up on the basis that not only did our ancestors inhabit mountains that they will never scale, but that the very ground they stand on is also in perpetual erosion and decline, then inevitably those occupying that ground will stop climbing. There's no point aspiring to greatness of yore if our destiny is diminution simply by dint of our age and era. And so by indoctrinating our children not with their potential but with their handicap inherent to the times they were born into, one cannot blame those children when they're more eager to regurgitate mediocrity of the past than innovate for the present and future.

Worse still, the same tweeter also mentioned Einstein and Beethoven as apparent proof of Yeridas Hadoros, which is what happens when you try and project your worldview onto a broader canvas. So let us be clear. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Alan Turing and Patrick Steptoe and Stephen Hawking and Tim Berners-Lee and any number of brilliant artists and writers and scientists and innovators of our near-contemporary times have given us the world we inhabit from IVF to DNA to html to organ transplants and all the other scientific and technological marvels of our age. Each and every discovery starts and finishes with a curious and innovative mind that knows and believes that it can build on what's gone before and do better. Only in our rarefied field of Torah have we called a halt to innovation and even proper analysis has become a dirty word.

But even that’s an illusion. For if Yeridas Hadoros were true then the combined greatness of Rav Hai, Saadiah, Chisdai and other Geonim (approximately 5^th to 10^th century) would have to surpass the genius of their successors like Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Rambam and the other Greats of the 11^th and 12^th century. Although I don’t pretend to be an expert on the Geonim, I think I can safely say that the output of the former is no match quantitatively and qualitatively for that of the latter.

The flipside of Yeridas Hadoros does not just stifle ambition and pummel confidence but it also works against those courageous enough to buck the trend. Where hermeneutics becomes synonymous with heresy those who do question and think independently will be shouted down and worse, often by those of a similar bent but who have stifled their own creativity and imagination. With the end result that the readership for original thinking and writing diminishes and instead the market gives way to minds numbed by piles of fairy tales littering shul Shabbos tables and mollycoddling vorts which require no enquiring spirit and inquisitive mind.

Genuine reviews of Charedi books are for this same reason a rarity, for if the book is on-track then how dare anyone cast a critical eye over it? And if it’s out of kilter then far from engaging with it by way of a review, it must not be mentioned at all other than for banning purposes. So why would any scholar invite this horror upon themselves when a collection of the laws of fridge bulbs will heap encomia and hagiographic articles on their heads? From the lambasted first edition of the Shemiras Shabbos Kehilchoso in the 1960s to the current ongoing controversy over Pshuto Shel Mikro, only the brave and the mad will try to stand out and ultimately for diminishing returns.

No man is an island and nothing exists in a vacuum. With the parched mindscape we occupy where questions are heresy and enquiry are silenced, you cannot blame our youth for looking elsewhere, be it grave worship at the more benign edge of the scale and conspiracies and political extremism at the far more dangerous end. Or they leave the fold altogether. Because without a homegrown intellectual base of enquiry and disputation, then all that's left is a shell and façade which must be protected at all cost because that is all there is. Hence abuse, fraud, educational neglect and many other of our society's ills must go unaddressed and unanswered because conformity and blind obedience is the ideal. And if decline is our destiny then perhaps the state we're in is just another symptom to be expected and accepted. Anything better and we might outshine our ancestors which we're told is not just undesirable but impossible due to the simple fact that they preceded us and we succeeded them.

But our collective minds are not asleep or dozing and if we won't provide our brains with homegrown fodder and the confidence to develop our own ideas, those skills will be acquired and expended elsewhere. I promised myself that I would steer clear of politics but if proof was ever needed where this is all heading see the political parties we now support with all the vigour once reserved for ourselves and within.

You may think that I am exaggerating and so I return to my very first thought exercise: Name a contemporary classic work in the field of Torah, already so designated or with reasonable expectations to be so designated in the future, written by an individual born during the last seventy-seven years of phenomenal Torah-growth possibly unrivalled and unprecedented throughout the entire Jewish history.

That stumped feeling is my Exhibit 'A'.

*I would like to thank those who afforded me the time to read drafts of this essay and provide helpful corrections and comments.