JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

period that he worked with the Krokodil miniature theater
in Gorky, he developed an individual humorous style. He
wrote for musical comedies, and his tune “Katyusha” attained
popular success during World War II. His music, which made
use of folk melodies, also shows an urban vernacular and jazz
influences.
Bibliography: V. Zak, Matvey Blanter (1973); L. Genina, in:
Sovetskaya muzyka, 4 (1983), 4–7; Izvestia (28 Sept. 1990)
BLASER, ISAAC (1837–1907), Russian rabbi and educator.
Blaser was one of the foremost disciples of R. Israel *Lipkin
(Salanter), whose Musar (ethicist) *movement he helped develop
and lead. In the early 1850s, Blaser moved from his
native Vilna to Kovno, Lithuania, where he came under
the influence of Lipkin. In 1864 he reluctantly accepted the
rabbinate of St. Petersburg, hence the name by which he is
familiarly known, “Reb Itzelle Peterburger.” During this time
he wrote halakhic works and responsa, arousing the opposition
of the maskilim. He left the rabbinate in 1878, returning
to Kovno where he headed the kolel (“advanced talmudical
academy”), and sent emissaries throughout the world to gain
support for it. He helped to found the yeshivah of *Slobodka.
About 1891, as the result of bitter controversy concerning the
Musar movement, he left the kolel of Kovno and helped to
found other such Musar-oriented schools elsewhere. Increasing
opposition to the Musar movement (1896–98) and to Blaser,
its chief exponent, forced the yeshivah to leave its premises
in Slobodka, and it finally became established in Kelm (1898).
In 1904 Blaser, favoring the idea of Jewish colonization of Palestine,
immigrated to and settled in Jerusalem, where he died.
His main contribution to the Musar movement was his emphasis
on acquiring “fear of the Lord” (i.e., piety) by means
of emotional meditation in works of musar. Unlike other disciples
of Salanter, who expounded musar intellectually, Blaser
held that knowledge and conceptualization were inadequate
to the task of curbing man’s baser instincts. “Fear of the Lord”
could be aroused only by an unsophisticated contemplation
of man’s physical vulnerability, his moral lowliness, and his
punishment for continued disobedience. Since he held that
the form of such meditation makes a more lasting impression
than the contents, he prescribed the reading aloud of musar
texts in a melancholy melody, with frequent periods of weeping.
Similarly, his preaching was simple, sad, and usually accompanied
by tears. Blaser’s major literary contribution to the
Musar movement, Or Yisrael (“Light of Israel,” 1900), was often
reprinted, and for several decades was the only available
exposition of musar. Blaser here expounded the fundamentals
of the Musar approach and presented excerpts from the letters
of Israel Lipkin, along with evaluations of the teachings
of the founders of the Musar movement and of some of its
leading personalities. His major halakhic work is Peri Yiẓḥak
(“Fruit of Isaac”); the first volume was published in Vilna in
1881, some 14 years after he had completed writing it. The
second volume was published posthumously in 1912. He contributed
numerous articles, both on halakhah and musar, to
blasphemy
the various rabbinic journals of the day. Much of his writing
remained unpublished.
Bibliography: D. Katz, Tenu’at ha-Musar, 2 (1954), 220–73;
S. Bialoblotzki, in: Yahadut Lita, 1 (1959), 194–7; Ch. Zaichyk, Ha-
Me’orot ha-Gedolim (1962), 109–29.
[Norman Lamm]
BLASPHEMY, in the broadest (and least precise) sense any
act contrary to the will of God or derogatory to His power.
Blasphemy is the term employed to translate the Hebrew
verbs ḥeref, giddef, and ni’eẓ (e.g., Isa. 37:6, gdf, where the servants
of the king of Assyria denied the Lord’s power to save
Israel; and Ezek. 20:27, where it refers to Israel’s sacrifices on
the High Places). In the narrower and more precise sense, the
word is used to mean speaking contemptuously of the Deity.
The classic instance in the Bible is Leviticus 24:10–23, where
the pronouncement (nakav, naqav) of the name of God appears
in conjunction with the verb killel (qillel). God (Elohim)
also appears as the object of the verb qillel in Exodus 22:27 (see
also I Kings 21:10, 13, where qillel is euphemistically displaced
by its antonym berekh, “to bless” or “to renounce”; see *Euphemism
and Dysphemism). The rabbinic interpretation of
Leviticus 24:10–23 and Exodus 22:27 as wishing (i.e., wishing
harm, Sanh. 7:5) establishes a definition of blasphemy such as
to render the actual perpetration (and the application of the
penalty, capital punishment) out of the realm of probability.
The verb qallel rarely means “to curse.” Rather it subsumes a
wide range of abuse, often nonverbal in nature. “To curse”
the Deity meant to repudiate Him, to violate His norms; blasphemy
on the part of an Israelite, in the narrow sense, is a
concept alien to biblical thought.
[Herbert Chanan Brichto]
In the Talmud
The Mishnah (Sanh. 7:5), rules that the death sentence by
stoning should be applied only in the case where the blasphemer
had uttered the *Tetragrammaton and two witnesses
had warned him prior to the transgression. In the Talmud,
however, R. Meir extends this punishment to cases where the
blasphemer had used one of the *attributes, i.e., substitute
names of God (Sanh. 56a). The accepted halakhah is that only
the one who has uttered the Tetragrammaton be sentenced to
death by stoning; the offender who pronounced the substitute
names is only flogged (Maim., Yad, Avodat Kokhavim, 2:7). In
the court procedure (Sanh. 5:7 and Sanh. 60a) the witnesses
for the prosecution testified to the words of the blasphemer by
substituting the expressions “Yose shall strike Yose” (yakkeh
Yose et Yose). Toward the end of the hearing, however, after
the audience had been dismissed, the senior witness was asked
to repeat the exact words uttered by the blasphemer. Upon
their pronouncement (i.e., of the Tetragrammaton), the judges
stood up and rent their garments. The act expressed their profound
mourning at hearing the name of God profaned. The
custom of tearing one’s clothes on hearing blasphemy is attested
to in II Kings 18:37, where it is told that Eliakim and his
associates tore their garments upon hearing the blasphemous
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 741