A Gadol is one of the highest accolades Judaism knows to bestow: a top scholar. It takes at least 40 years of non-stop adult study to get there, along with various other requirements. Shmuel Rosner has some glum thoughts about why there aren't any being produced.
Yet another reason for reflection this year. Rosh Hashana isn't really a holiday, in the "we're having a great time" sort of way - but Id el-Fiter is. So if there are any Muslim readers here (I doubt it), may they have a fine holiday; for the Jews among us, Gmar Tov.
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Well, there are plenty of top jewish nobel prizes and math/phys top scholars. In math (which a recent Israeli winner called "the secular talmud") there´s an amazing tradition. Check the book "Driven to Innovate: A Century of Jewish Mathematicians and Physicists - Hardcover (May 28, 2009) by Ioan James
First of all, Rosner was only talking about America. In Israel there's a new generation of highly respected rabbis.
Second of all, there are three major problems with his argument:
a) Part of the problem is purely psychological - in fact, maybe most of it is. Part of the reason the previous generation was given the authority and esteem it got was *because* it came from Europe. Leaders like Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, R. Hutner, the Satmar Rebbe, R. Aharon Kotler, R. A. J. Heschel, R. Saul Lieberman, R. David Weiss Halivni, R. Yaakov Kamenetsky, R. Moshe Feinstein, R. Louis Ginsberg, and whoever else you can even think of. Even before the Holocaust (and even more so afterward) European Orthodox rabbis were considered more authentic and thus more authoritative than Americans, and, though to a lesser extent, the same goes for the Conservative movement.
b) Can you name a major scholar during the Copernican era? Me neither. Know why? Because there are times in Jewish history where we don't have leaders with SUCH broad shoulders, that can unite all of Judaism, and where each individual group goes to its own individual leader. Can you name any of the leaders between Rav Ashi and Rav Hai Gaon? What about during Shabtai Tzvi?
3) (Here I'm only speaking for Orthodoxy because I don't know much about contemporary Conservative and Reform leaders) Time will tell whether R. Herschel Schachter or R. Aharon Lichtenstein get put down in history as the gedolim of our era, whether R. Norman Lamm will be transformed from leader to legend when he passes away, and whether R. Dov Linzer (founder of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah) will be regarded as a major visionary and eventually spiritual father of a new movement.
Sergio
I just finished my second book on the econ crisis plus innumerable long form journalism on the subject plus months of letting myself getting taught on a blog
math/phys wizards played to say it politely a vital role in it and no I can't help them out by concluding that they were misused, they succumbed to hubris exactly as believers are said to be prone to do. Only difference they didn't believe in something divine from high on down but in their own superior albeit possibly a bit narrowly focused abilities.
Which made me in best Miss Marple tradition conclude that scientists are in no way an improvement over any other theorisers, religious or otherwise. That said I believe theory people are important and good to have around just as the rabbis are and the plumbers and the accountants etc. etc.
Silke
Silke,
That´s what happens when math/phys "wizards" decide to make money fast by applying ideas from a field (say, physics) that just don´t work in another one (say, economics and finance). In doing that they abandon wizardry and embrace sorcery tout court. BTW, Economics is not a sound science. It is at most a proto-science. In any case, not at the same stage as physics, chemistry and biology. And possibly it won´t ever reach such stage. However, one can´t to without advance math in actuarial sciences.
In any case, I was refering to the legacy of jewish mathematicians and physicists to maths and physics. It is impressive. Many of them were german jews. Some had to convert in order to have an academic career.
Sergio
as a member of the dumb public with by now quite some decades of witnessing life to my credit I am getting fed up that whenever scientists have meddled in something that turned out to be not bad they had strayed from the path of virtue. I am fed up with groups who claim that all their credit and honour and prestige doesn't suffer from their reckless members. I see nobody who steps up and says that this was violation of mathematics or physics ethics, that they did wrong but the high standard of pure science isn't blemished by their evil doing.
That econ is no science is perfectly clear but the math and phys wizards or sorcerers had quite a bigger part in it than just being unwitting subalterns. Where is the community coming forward and saying we disapprove of their behaviour?
Silke
Silke,
I think the problem here is more of the financial institutions that hire those guys for big $$$$$$. As soon as a scientist is out there in the corporate world, he´s subject to the ethics (or lack of it) of that world. If those big shots want to hire those "wizards" in order to make more bucks, that´s within the logic of the finance world, which is full of self-delusion and cranks. And in fact, nobody complains until they begin to lose money.
Scientists don´t have any privileged ethical wisdom, but as scientists they have to respond to the science code of ethics. The scientific community has other concerns, such as fighting and detecting fake data, fighting obscurantism and pseudoscience within the academic world (like creationists and postmodern charlatans) and desperately fighting for funds.
There was a famous scandal of a young physicist, surname Schön, that was publishing wildly (like one paper in top journals every week) till some people suspected of his data. It turned out that many were faked. Since then, those papers were withdrawn and he lost even his PhD. As for physics, this guy is finished. If he wants to go to wall street, that´s another thing entirely.
Sergio
you can't eat the cake and keep it
either it is always the individual
or it is "science is better at saving the world" than religion
If scientists of the most pure kind there is can be bought as easily as priests can then as a group they aren't any more trustworthy than priests.
John Lanchester tells that after multi five-, six- and seven sigma-events no one concluded that there might have been something wrong with the statistical models.
By which I mean to say that any of those events was much bigger than a single wunderkind faker and the community should have taken note.
I don't blame them for not being drawn in at the time. Correcting the past is impossible and thus pastime for academics;-)
I blame them for not speaking up now, for not coming up with something like the iron ring that Canadian engineer told me he wore to always remind him that he should never be slack on cement quality or another bridge might crumble and kill.
and lo and behold this guy has surfaced in China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_X._Li
Silke
OT - there is an inerview with Erdogan at WSJ
by my reading he does quite some wink-wink to the "Burqa"-faction
Silke
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703453804575479651464540536.html?mod=WSJEUROPE_hpp_MIDDLETopStories
The goal is the happiness of the people. Democracy, all the other systems, and all religions -- they are all tools for the happiness and peace of the people. I am not saying only democracy, and I am talking about all the systems, all the government types, religions -- all of them. All of them are tools. The goal is the human being and happiness of humanity.
Silke,
It is not a question of eating cakes, which I don´t like that much anyway. :) One has to make distinctions in rational discourse, otherwise everything becomes blurred and muddled. So, e.g., you end up blaming science for the evils of the world, like the counter-culture people. This is very convenient ideologically speaking and avoids discussing hard questions such as the difference between basic science and technology, the political and social decisions on the use of technology and the intrinsic ambivalence of every new discovery.
As I mentioned, scientists are human beings and subject to all weaknesses of human beings. Some can be bought and most can´t. Most top scientists fled nazi germany, for instance.
Still, conflating scientist with priest is sloppy thinking. Science promotes free inquiry, criticism, moderate skepticism, disciplined open-mindedness, empirical test, logical consistency and many other self-correcting principles.
I also find it most amusing when anti-science people use their computers to castigate the evil science and technology they use all the time.
Sergio
calling me an anti-science person is stretching things a tiny wee bit
I am a pro-taking-responsibility person and in that field I note that the community of pure scientists is as flawed as theologians are
I haven't the faintest as to what is the difference between a theologian and a priest, being believe-wise illiterate but if I compare Paula Frederiksen and Richard Dawkins and his buddies (possibly with the exception of Dennett), I just experience that Fredriksen satisfies me much more because she leaves me with more to chew and re-chew. If that makes me an anti-scientist new-ager homeopathy adorer I'll be happy to concede the point.
One of my heroes is Feldenkrais btw ...
Silke
Silke,
I was not calling *you* in particular as anti-science. Why is it that any debate nowadays is take personally the moment one disagrees??
I was just poiting out an inconsistency of anti-science and anti-tech people, that blame these for the evils of the world why enjoying the benefits they brought, which are many (life extension, mobility, access to culture, communications, etc).
You brought the straw-man that scientists are "pure" or such. I mentioned that scientists are humans. But there´s a huge difference between the scientific and the religious stance, and conflating the two is sloppý thinking, akin to the tactics of creatinists. (no, I am *NOT* saying you are a creatinist).
Sérgio
it isn't "nowadays" it is "us women have always been like that" at least those of us unwilling to change ;-)
and pure scientists is meant as a compliment as BBC's IOT mathematicians have told me time and again one flaw kills the theory - that is music for the ears of somebody who has seen Murphy's law as commonly understood vindicated again and again .
Silke
Silke,
I don´t believe in pure scientists, but I do believe in "pure science" in the sense of the disinterested pursuit of truth and understanding of the world, through reason, creativity and evidence. Of course, I am pro-responsibility too and I know very well that reason can go together with evil. But science is not evil per se. Techology can be evil and science can be used for evil purposes. Is that news??
Any tool can be used for evil purpose, including art.
Yaacov,
Fake Ibrahim is a Muslim reader of your blog, isn't he?
Otherwise, Gmar tov to you and your other readers...
Fake Ibrahim has one Jewish grandfather and the rest of his forebears are Catholic, if my information is correct. In any case, he's no more Muslim than I'm Hindu. Anyway, I think he's stopped reading this blog.
Ibrahim the Fraudster is a bit volatile. Here he claims to be jewish - he also seems to be a master of lots of professions - I am especially grateful to him for proving in one of his early posts beyond a doubt that the Spanish language is vastly superior to the English one why all of us writing in English can't express our thoughts as well as a Spanish writer could - this is a bit confusing since Alberto seems to be devoted to Catalan, but maybe that's a language only for the Catalan lobby ;)
If somebody should feel called upon to try his/her hand at thriller writing, I am quite prepared to share my Ibrahim expertise free of charge, he might be good material for a colourful but irrelevant side-kick.
Silke
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A3QZYJCL94JEDY/ref=cm_pdp_rev_more?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview#R2TWMYUF5ML9KX
It will be far less welcome, however, by those Jews who, like the author of this review, don't like to be told what they should think about Israel in order to be good Jews.
As the leader of New Judaism, I am the gadol of our generation. I am the heir of Rabbis Kook and Feinstein, and only thru NewJudaism can American Jewry be saved. Currently, organized Judaism which hasnt been absorbed by NewJudaism engages in tribal worship of land, which was warned against by Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Today his grandson Shammai sits as a prisoner of conscience in a US prison. Peter Beinart and Jay Michelson have demonstrated that young Jews are fleeing towards NewJudaism away from Toynbees fossil.Get behind the 800 lb guerilla of social justice, economic justice and rights of return of endogenous people, or get stomped on by the world community of justice
Oh, God, when we thought we were free from one fraudster, here comes pseudo-rabbi Amandla to prove me wrong.
Hi, Amandla!
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