JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

mahot be-Yisrael, 2 (1948), 33; idem, Die Drei-Gemeinde (1966), 66;
A. Eckstein, Nachtraege zur Geschichte der Juden im ehemaligen
Fuerstbistum Bamberg (1899), 5; Loewenstein, in: JJLG, 3 (1905), 233;
ibid., 8 (1910), 72.
[Yehoshua Horowitz]
BERLIN, RAYNA BATYA (c. 1817–c. 1875), learned East
European woman remembered for her concern with the
status of women in traditional Judaism. Berlin lived her
entire life in the orbit of the Volozhin Yeshivah. Her grandfather,
R. Ḥayyim *Volozhiner, founded the yeshivah, and
her father, R. Isaac *Volozhiner, would later take over. In 1831
Rayna Batya married R. Naphtali Ẓevi Judah Berlin (Neẓiv),
a promising student who became leader of the yeshivah in
1854. The couple had four children, R. Hayyim, who married
Rivka Zeitlin and was a rabbi in Moscow and later in
Jerusalem, Michael, who died in his youth, and Sarah Resha
and Dreyzl, who were married consecutively to R. Raphael
Shapira.
In this environment of intense engagement with Jewish
texts, where knowledge of Torah was honored above all else, it
is not surprising that some of the women in the family would
also take an interest in Jewish study and knowledge. Family
stories about Berlin’s grandmother, as well as Berlin and her
sister, describe sharp-witted and sharp-tongued women committed
to upholding the rabbinic world view. By far the most
complete picture of Berlin comes from the memoirs of her
nephew, R. Barukh ha-Levi Epstein. Epstein, whose mother
was the Neẓiv’s sister, spent the middle years of the 1870s as a
student at the Volozhin Yeshivah. During these years he was
also a frequent visitor at the home of his uncle and aunt. In a
volume of his memoirs devoted to R. Naftali Ẓevi Judah Berlin,
Epstein included one chapter on his aunt, entitled, “Wisdom
of Women.” The portrait of Rayna Batya Berlin produced
by Epstein is of an unusually learned Jewish woman,
frustrated by the limits imposed on her by gender and Jewish
law. According to Epstein, Berlin spent her days sitting in her
kitchen surrounded by Jewish texts including volumes of the
Mishnah and aggadah as well as historical and other works.
On his visits, she would frequently engage him in discussions
about women in Jewish law, especially with regard to the study
of the Torah. In recent years a number of scholars have taken
an interest in Rayna Batya Berlin and her anomalous position
in Orthodox Judaism.
Bibliography: M. Bar-Ilan, Fun Volozhin biz Yerushalayim
(1933); idem, Raban shel Yisrael (1943); B. Epstein, Mekor Barukh
(1954); D. Seeman, “The Silence of Rayna Batya: Torah, Suffering, and
Rabbi Barukh Epstein’s ‘Wisdom of Women,’” in: Torah U-Madda
Journal, 6 (1995–96); D. Seeman and R. Kobrin, “ ‘Like One of the
Whole Men’: Learning, Gender and Autobiography in R. Barukh
Epstein’s Mekor Barukh,” in: Nashim, 5 (1999); S. Zolty, ‘And All Your
Children Shall be Learned’: Women and the Study of Torah in Jewish
Law and History (1993).
[Eliyana R. Adler (2nd ed.)]
berlin, saul ben Ẓevi hirsch levin
BERLIN, SAUL BEN ẒEVI HIRSCH LEVIN (also called
Saul Hirschel; 1740–1794), German rabbi. His father was
Hirschel *Levin (Ẓevi Hirsch) and his brother, Solomon
*Hirschel. At the age of 20, he was ordained by some of the
greatest rabbis of the time. In 1768 he was serving as av bet din
in Frankfurt on the Oder. In 1778 he wrote an approbation for
Moses Mendelssohn’s commentary on the Torah Biur (Be’ur;
Berlin, 1783). Some time before 1782 Berlin, becoming disenchanted
with what he considered antiquated rabbinical authority,
retired from the rabbinate and settled in Berlin. There
he joined the Haskalah group whose members, known as the
Me’assefim, were the pupils and admirers of Mendelssohn.
He was also an ardent supporter of Naphtali Herz *Wessely
at a time when the most eminent rabbis of Germany violently
opposed him. After the publication of Wessely’s Divrei Shalom
ve-Emet (Berlin, 1782), Berlin wrote a satire Ketav Yosher
(published anonymously after his death, 1794), in which he
sharply criticized the methods of education and the scholarship
of his time as well as the customs and superstitions which
had spread among the people. It also sought to dispel the rabbis’
opposition to the work of Wessely. In 1784 he traveled to
Italy, ostensibly to seek a cure for his rheumatism, but, quite
conceivably, to meet those rabbis who had placed themselves
in Wessely’s camp. In Italy Berlin wrote a provocative anonymous
pamphlet of objections to the Birkei Yosef of R. Ḥayyim
Joseph David *Azulai (Leghorn, 1772), to which the latter replied
in his book Maḥazik Berakhah (ibid., 1785). Interesting
himself in manuscripts, Berlin began to edit the Or Zaru’a of
*Isaac b. Moses of Vienna, to which he added his own notes
and novellae; these were omitted, however, from the posthumously
published version in 1862. In 1789 his book Miẓpeh
Yokte’el appeared in Berlin under the pseudonym of Obadiah
b. Baruch Ish Polonyah. It contained the most extreme criticism
of the novellae to Yoreh De’ah, entitled Torat Yekuti’el,
by Raphael b. Jekuthiel Susskind *Kohen, rabbi of the united
communities of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbeck. Berlin’s
book, in which Raphael is accused of plagiarism and of condoning
corruption, stirred up a storm among the rabbis, including
Berlin’s own father, who placed a ban upon the book
and upon its author. When the identity of the author became
known, his father regretted his action and tried to protect his
son. However, before the storm had subsided, another of his
books, Besamim Rosh, appeared in Berlin in 1793 and touched
off a new tempest. The book contains 392 responsa purporting
to be by Asher b. Jehiel and his contemporaries: on the
title page it was stated that these responsa had been collected
and prepared for publication by R. Isaac di Molina. Although
Berlin maintained that he had copied the book from a manuscript
in Italy and that he had only added his own notes and
novellae (Kassa de-Harsana), it soon became evident that the
statements attributed to Asher and the other rabbis quoted
were full of strange leniencies which actually bordered on antinomianism.
The suspicion was soon raised that the whole
book was fictitious and that its author was Berlin. The first
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 459