Episode 115: The Maharal Triumphs in a Debate Against the Church Clergy

00:01 We go back a hundred years. We are here in the city of Poznań, where Moishe, the grandson of the Maharal’s grandson, has been chosen to head the Jewish community. The year is 5452. That is exactly a hundred years since the event that forced the Maharal to come to Poznań. We have spoken before about his arrival in the city, but now let us picture what happened here. The Maharal had been forced to leave Prague, where he served as rabbi, after being persecuted by Jews and non-Jews alike. The chain of events that led him to leave Prague was as follows. Rudolf II sat on the throne there at the time. Rudolf II was a man of liberal views. We remember that the king before him was Ferdinand I; now we are in the time of Rudolf II. Because of his liberal views, Rudolf was influenced very little by the priests. He also showed a special friendship toward the Jews and was an ardent admirer of the Maharal. The doors of Rudolf II’s palace were open to the Maharal, and the king would spend long hours taking great pleasure in his wisdom and knowledge. Their conversations were wide-ranging discussions of important matters: religion and science. The priests attributed the king’s indifference toward Christianity to his friendship with the Maharal. They therefore appealed to the pope to draw the king closer to the Christian church. The pope thought he could kill two birds with one stone: defeat the Maharal and bring the king closer to Christianity. In the year 5307, around 1647 by the secular calendar, the pope sent three cardinals to Prague. They were the three most distinguished cardinals in his service. Their task was, first, to rebuke King Rudolf

02:57 for his heretical views and kindle greater enthusiasm for Christianity in him. Second, they were to find a way to distance the king from the Maharal, whose influence on him had been reported to the pope as harmful. Among other things, the cardinals were instructed to arrange a public debate with the Maharal at the king’s palace. During that debate, they were to disgrace the Maharal—no less—in front of the king and the public by proving his ignorance of science and Christian doctrine. In his foolishness, the pope was certain that his three chosen cardinals would win the proposed debate. When the cardinals arrived in Prague, King Rudolf received them and heard the pope’s emissaries’ demands with a smile. He was sure the Maharal would demolish all their arguments. For that reason, he readily and gladly agreed to a public debate. He also hoped its outcome would publicly humiliate the cardinals and the church. King Rudolf therefore wanted the largest possible audience, particularly the country’s most distinguished people. He sent messengers throughout the land to invite the leading figures of both the church and the nobility. If there was to be a public debate, Rudolf said, let it be one that would be remembered for a long time. With the agreement of both sides, secretaries were appointed to record every detail of the proceedings, so that no one could later dispute what was said or how it was expressed. The debate itself lasted ten days. Throughout it, the cardinals bombarded the Maharal with questions, and he gave a decisive answer to each one. At the end of the ten days, the Maharal’s overwhelming victory over the cardinals was clear to everyone. The cardinals were prepared to swallow the humiliation quietly, but King Rudolf insisted

05:54 that the transcript kept by those carefully selected secretaries be approved and signed by both sides. Well, the cardinals had no choice but to agree. The transcript contained every word spoken by either side, so the Maharal’s victory was plain to anyone who read it. The cardinals were forced to sign it, as was the Maharal, and the king then placed the royal seal on the document. News of the Maharal’s great victory in the debate with the cardinals spread quickly throughout the country and beyond, and reached the pope in Rome. The most senior of the three cardinals—the one in whom the pope had placed particular hope to defeat the Jewish leader—took the failure entirely personally. He saw it as a personal failure as well as an affront to Christianity, and could not bring himself to face the pope. He shut himself in a private room in the church and let no one enter. Some time later, he was found hanging in his room. He had taken his own life out of shame and anguish. This gave the debate even greater significance. The priests were deeply dejected. King Rudolf went about with quiet satisfaction. The Maharal, however, did not feel happy at all. He feared that his victory would harm the Jews. He knew well that the priests would not forgive him for it, and that in their bitterness they would look for any way to take revenge on him and, through him, on other Jews. He therefore decided to leave Prague until the incident was forgotten. The Maharal spent three years in Nichor[?], one of them—the year 5452—in Poznań. While he was away from Prague, he left his son Rabbi Betzalel to take his place. The Maharal told him that if a difficult halachic question arose, he should consult his learned mother, Perl. This shows how highly the Maharal regarded his wife and her scholarship. During his stay

08:41 in Poznań, the Maharal founded a society for the daily study of Mishnayos. He kept a special register containing the society’s rules and the names of its members. Since then, the custom of studying Mishnayos in societies established for that purpose has existed in Jewish communities. Let us now return to Poznań, a hundred years after the Maharal’s stay there. On the hundredth anniversary of his arrival, the community marked the occasion with the participation of all its rabbis, heads of yeshivos and dignitaries. At their head was Reb Moishe, the Maharal’s descendant, who had just been chosen as head of the community, bringing a particular family story full circle. Reb Moishe’s son, Schneur Zalman, showed great talent from his earliest childhood. His grandfather, Yehuda Leib, was his teacher and studied Torah with him for years, with particular emphasis on mussar. Yehuda Leib passed away in 5464 at the age of ninety-three—around 1704 by their reckoning. When Schneur Zalman turned sixteen, he traveled to Hrodna in Lithuania to study at the local yeshivah. He studied there for five years, then went to the yeshivah in Prague, where he studied for two years. In 5475, that is, 1712 by their reckoning, he married Rachel, the learned daughter of Rabbi Baruch Batlan. So here we see the joining of two families: on one side, Rabbi Baruch Batlan, a chossid of Rabbi Yoel of Zamość, Rabbi Yoel the Baal Shem of Zamość; and on the other, the family of Moishe, the Maharal’s descendant. As we related, Reb Moishe opposed the study of Kabbalah, yet that did not prevent him from becoming related by marriage to Rabbi Baruch Batlan, the chossid. As long as Schneur Zalman lived in the wealthy home of his father, Reb Moishe, he lacked nothing. Later came a period, which we will speak about further, when the entire family had to leave Poznań

11:42 and wander to Poland. Then Shneur Zalman began to suffer financial hardship. Since Shneur Zalman held that women should not study Torah—a subject we have already discussed—he left his daughter Devorah Leah without that knowledge, even though his wife Rachel was a great scholar, as we know. Rachel herself, the daughter of Rabbi Baruch Batlan, did not share her husband Shneur Zalman’s view, but she respected his wish that their daughter not study Torah. Rachel tells all this to her daughter Devorah Leah. And now she continues: “Now, my daughter,” Rachel said, “you know how your father was educated among great Torah scholars and G-d-fearing people who nevertheless strongly opposed teaching their daughters Torah. I, on the other hand, was educated among scholars of Kabbalah and mussar who cherished even ordinary people, and whose view was clear: women, too, are permitted to study Torah.” These two kinds of education reflect two distinct approaches, two opinions in the Gemara. One requires a person to teach Torah to his daughter, and the other says he should not. Even the second opinion does not forbid women to study; it holds that not only is a person not obligated to teach his daughter Torah, but doing so might even cause harm. Devorah Leah asked her mother, “How could women’s Torah study cause harm? Why are boys obligated to study, and the more diligently they study, the more praiseworthy it is, while for girls that same study might be harmful?” “Well,” Rebbetzin Rachel told her daughter, “people differ in their natures. As our Sages said explicitly in the Mishnah in Sanhedrin, people differ from one another in their faces, features, and appearance. All the creatures Hakadosh Boruch Hu created in His world fall into four broad categories: the inanimate, such as stones, earth, and metals; plants, such as trees, grasses, and herbs; living creatures, such as domestic animals, wild animals, birds, creeping things, and insects; and the speaking being, humankind. Human beings have an advantage in their creation

14:40 over all three categories that came before them. All four categories—the inanimate, plants, living creatures, and speaking beings—have a soul. For everything G-d created, whether on land, in the water, or in the heavens, such as the sun, moon, stars, and angels, Hakadosh Boruch Hu created with a body and a soul. The soul gives life to the body, and each creature’s soul corresponds to its body. The soul of a plant cannot be compared to that of an inanimate object, nor can the soul of a speaking being be compared to that of an animal. The souls of angels also differ from the souls of the heavenly bodies—the sun, moon, and stars. The heavenly bodies differ both from the creatures of the earth and from the angels in the heavens. Their substance is finer than that of earthly creatures. What earthly creatures and the heavenly bodies have in common is that they are composed of four elements: fire, air, water, and earth. The angels, however, are composed of only two elements, air and fire, as it says, ‘He makes His angels winds, His servants a flaming fire.’ As I explained, all four categories of creatures—inanimate objects, plants, living creatures, and speaking beings—have souls, my dear. In every creature, the nature of its soul corresponds to the nature of its substance. So we must say that there are four kinds of souls: the inanimate soul, the growing soul, the living soul, and the speaking soul. In fact,” Rachel told her daughter, “each category has its own particular soul, but its inner makeup also contains the other three kinds of soul. The principal soul is the one that accords with what the thing is. A stone, for example, is inanimate, but it also has a growing soul and a living soul. Those two souls, though, are hidden within the stone and are barely perceptible: its growth takes many years, and its life shows no movement.

17:43 The stone’s principal soul is the inanimate soul. A plant’s body is inanimate, and it also has a living soul, but its principal soul is the growing soul. An animal’s body is inanimate, it grows from small to large, and its principal soul is the living soul, expressed in the movement of its limbs. As the well-known rule says, every living thing moves. As for the human being, the highest of creatures, Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave him an intellectual soul in addition to the inanimate, growing, and living souls. The human being’s advantage lies in this intellectual soul, which can grasp, understand, and delve deeply into every field of knowledge and wisdom, and can also communicate its understanding publicly in clear speech. In fact, the essence of the human soul is higher even than the ministering angels. As a creature, the human being is central to all of creation. The Sages of the Gemara said that a person has six characteristics: three like animals and three like angels. It is a well-known principle that joining two different things requires a power higher than both of them. This is the higher soul, the true advantage of the chosen people—that is, the Jewish people—over all the peoples on earth. And this soul is revealed only through studying Torah and fulfilling the mitzvos of the blessed G-d. Though human beings have a capacity for wisdom and knowledge, their minds are not all alike. In one person, abilities remain hidden; in another, they develop. Both the concealment and the development of these abilities result from various factors: birth, guidance, and education. The human being, a fundamental and central creature in all of creation, is also divided into two kinds, men and women. This division is not merely physical, a difference between a man’s body and a woman’s. There is also a spiritual and emotional difference in their natures, character traits, intellects, and the workings of their souls. The man

20:43 was created by Hakadosh Boruch Hu with a firm nature, and the woman with a gentle nature. Firmness and gentleness are two traits of human nature, and of course each has its advantages and shortcomings. But when it comes to acquiring knowledge and guiding one’s conduct by it, a man’s firmness has an advantage over gentleness, because a gentle nature is liable to change and to be less resolute than a firm nature that holds fast to its convictions.” Rachel continued explaining to her daughter: “When G-d gave us the Torah, including mitzvos pertaining to both men and women, He said to Moshe Rabbeinu, ‘Thus shall you say to the house of Yaakov and tell the children of Israel.’ G-d commanded that the women, whose nature is gentle, be addressed gently, with ‘saying,’ while the men, whose nature is firm, be addressed more forcefully, with words as hard as sinews. Because women have a gentle nature, and a gentle nature is liable to change, some of the Sages of the Gemara hold that Torah study—whose main purpose is instruction in the halachos of positive and negative mitzvos—should not be taught to women. They hold that, because of their gentle nature, women may be unable to delve into the depths of the halachos and may make mistakes. Moreover, they do not have the same firmness in maintaining orderly conduct as men, whose nature is firm.” Rachel explained all this to her daughter Devorah Leah. Despite her young age, Devorah Leah understood her mother’s words very well. In her great joy, she kissed her mother’s hands in gratitude for her kindness in explaining the fundamental reasons of those who opposed women’s Torah study. She asked her mother to tell her about her own education and guidance, and how she had conducted herself as a child and as a young woman. Then she, Devorah Leah, would do her utmost to conduct herself the same way—and do even more. She kissed her mother’s hands again. When Rachel saw her daughter Devorah Leah’s eagerness to study Torah, and the profound impression

23:27 made on her by the stories Rachel had told her each night that week, as well as how well she had understood everything Rachel had explained about human nature, she promised Devorah Leah that every day, when they were alone at home, she would set aside time to tell her about her education, the guidance she had received, and her conduct in childhood and youth, as well as how she came to be engaged and married to Devorah Leah’s father. But no one else was to know, and she must not tell even her older brother. Devorah Leah was naturally very measured and discreet; she kept things hidden even from her mother. Her mother did not know that Devorah Leah had already learned to write. When she saw her neighbor’s son Shimshon, a boy of about fifteen, studying a book and writing, she inquired and learned that it was a grammar book that taught how to write in Hebrew. Devorah Leah obtained such a book herself, and over the course of a year learned to write clear Hebrew in a fine hand. So she wrote in a notebook all the stories she heard from her mother each night that week and reviewed them many times. She was in very good spirits, with high hopes for a bright future in which her mother would establish a regular time for Torah study