Home לעניין האם מחוייבין החברה קדישא לטוח ראש המת בביצים מטורפין (1974) / לעניין האם מחוייבין החברה קדישא לטוח ראש המת בביצים מטורפין (1974) / Letter to Mr. Carmel about Remarriage of a Divorcee in the Bene Israel Community (1961)

Correspondence

Feb. 27, 1961

Letter to Mr. Carmel about Remarriage of a Divorcee in the Bene Israel Community (1961)

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Dear Abel, I am putting into letter form, special delivery, some of the thoughts I tried to express over the phone this morning. When the new J.P.S. translation was first announced, I did not share the alarm of some of our fellow Orthodox Rabbis. At most, I felt slightly revolted by the cheap publicity. However, I now have some authentic information, in advance of the official publication, that is genuinely alarming and that, I believe, requires immediate action by the R.C.A., which has, at the last Executive Meeting, referred the matter to the Publications Commission for a report in March. My recommendation is that the commission, or preferably a specialized sub-committee of it, report before February 14th, which is the official publication date for the book.The information came to me from a lay scholar who is an observant Jew and who attended a meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis. (I ask you to keep this particular aspect confidential since I do not want to be revealed to the others.) At this occasion, Prof. \[ ] regaled his learned audience with contemptuous references to Orthodox Jewry, to which he referred as "the lunatic fringe." He maintained that the restraint the translators felt on their account during the preparation of Genesis was almost completely abandoned by the time they reached Deuteronomy.The major departures from the Masoretic tradition should be sought in footnotes throughout the text which refer the reader to "superior readings" in the Samaritan, Vulgate, and—I believe—Septuagint translations.I would like to refer you and the committee to a particular verse which, according to my informant, can best serve as a criterion for loyalty or disloyalty to the Masorah. That is in Genesis 10:10, where four cities are mentioned, in the land of Shinar, as being in the kingdom of Nimrod. Biblical scholars have identified the first three, but have not excavated the fourth, identified in the Bible as Kalach.Non-Masoretic exegetes have …
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