“Psychohistory and the Imaginary Couch: Diagnosing Historical and Biblical Figures,” Journal of...

Psychohistory and the ImaginaryCouch: Diagnosing Historical andBiblical FiguresZev Eleff*

This article discusses various attempts at crafting psychohistory inJewish studies and rabbinic communities. Early on, Salo Baron andothers rejected psychohistory as a discipline in Jewish studies. Baronargued that Freudian psychoanalysis cannot be performed posthu-mously, especially based on a limited number of documents andaccounts. However, others like Gershom Scholem embraced it. In therealm of rabbinics, different denominations had varying reactions tothe implementation of psychoanalysis in rabbinic sermons. However,the Orthodox community was unique in its rejection of psychohistory.I conclude that like Salo Baron, the Orthodox community’s rejection ofpsychoanalysis of biblical figures is due to the fact that this communityviewed biblical personalities as historical (not literary) figures.

ONE OF THE FIRST FORMAL so-called psychobiographies (abiography constructed through the lens of psychoanalysis) was written

*Zev Eleff, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University, 415 South St.,MS 054, Waltham, MA 02453, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. Several individuals offered theirsupport and constructive criticisms of earlier versions of this paper. Foremost, I thank Dr. JacobJ. Schacter for his incomparable mentorship and critical attention to detail and style. My wife,Melissa Eleff, as well as my grandparents, Dr. Morton and Annette Eleff, graciously and carefullyread previous drafts. I am also grateful to Robin Axelrod, Dr. Hillel Davis, Dr. Adam Mintz,Joshua Schwartz, and Rabbi Simcha Willig for their time and help. Finally, my thanks to theJournal’s reviewers who offered comments that improved the content of this article.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion, March 2012, Vol. 80, No. 1, pp. 94–136doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfr105© The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy ofReligion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]

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by Sigmund Freud in 1910 on the life of Leonardo da Vinci.1 Thatwork, in brief, sought to understand what it was “that preventedLeonardo’s personality from being understood by his contemporaries”(1964: 9).2 Shortly after Freud’s death, William Bullitt, an Americanjournalist, published Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.The work, co-written by Bullitt and Freud, claimed that the former U.S.President was a pathological personality driven by religious fanaticism.3

This approach has always had detractors. Besides the general oppo-nents of Freudian analysis, another group deeply concerned thatFreud’s methods posed a threat to the “objective ideal” of historicalwriting, denounced the concept of psychobiography. These scholarsargued that “historical individuals, groups, classes, nations, are notpatients on the couch, not even an imaginary couch” (Gay 1986: 3).4

Although these scholars might not have been completely comfortablewith Freud’s theories, they accepted his approach as a valid one withinthe larger field of psychology. They accepted Freudian method, that is,insofar as it was conducted like any other psychological evaluation: withthe patient fully present and available for the psychoanalyst to probeand study. Scholars of this school of thought rejected, therefore, anyattempt to study history books, primary documentation, and otherresources that cannot respond to a psychologist’s line of questioning.

Nevertheless, the craft of writing psychobiography progressed, albeitslowly and through the efforts of mostly nonhistorians. In particular,drawing from comparisons made between mysticism and schizophreniaby William James, subsequent studies of esoteric historical figuresdominated a large section of psychobiographical writing. Althoughnone of his works would be considered proper psychobiographies,James, intrigued by Freud’s psychoanalysis and his own studies in mys-ticism, examined the supernatural lives of many historical personalities

1Scholars give much credit for linking psychology with historical figures to Cesare Lombroso forhis book, The Man of Genius, which appeared in 1891. Lombroso affirmed that the genius requiredof great historical figures is connected with his conception of “degenerative psychosis.” Howeverrevolutionary, Lombroso did not go so far as to pen an entire biography based in psychologicalresearch. For a discussion of this form of historiography, see Howe (1997: 235–248), Friedlander(1978: 43–79), and Fearing (1927: 521–539).

2For a path-breaking discussion on Freud’s psychohistory and his influence on later writers, seeGarraty (1954: 569–582). For a criticism of Freud’s use of psychoanalysis on historical figures, seeAndersen (1994: 61–78).

3For more on this, see Simonton (1994: 134–136).4For more criticism of psychohistory, see Damousi and Reynolds (2003: 1–3), Greenblatt (1986:

210–224), and Mazlish (2003: 251–262). For a survey of the debate surrounding psychohistory, seeMazzio and Trevor (2000: 1–13). For a survey of writings on Freud’s implementation ofpsychoanalysis on history, see Elms (2003: 65–78).

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(James 1958; Wapnick 1972: 153–174). James concluded that the experi-ences of many mystics, which he termed a “diabolical mysticism,” couldbe identified with what psychologists would diagnose as insanity(Barnard 1997: 75–76). In 1958, Erik Erikson made ample use of James’stheories when he published a psychobiography of Martin Luther.

While Erikson was preparing his book, William L. Langer, one ofthe first historians to advocate for the discipline, dubbed psychohistorythe “next assignment” for history researchers. In a presidential addressdelivered before the American Historical Association in 1957, Langerdeclared that “psychoanalysis has long since ceased being merely atherapy and has been generally recognized as a theory basic to thestudy of the human personality.” Yet, Langer must have known that thehistorians in the audience would not drop their skepticism so easily. Hetherefore wondered aloud “how can it be that the historian, who mustbe as much or more concerned with human beings and their motiva-tion than with impersonal forces and causation, has failed to make useof these findings?” (1958: 286).

Few historians heeded Langer’s call before the 1970s, when it maybe said that the field finally emerged in earnest and within universitydepartments of history. Curiously, this trend, the convergence of psy-choanalysis and history, made its way into Jewish circles long beforeLanger’s speech; and not without debate and discord. In fact, somehave taken psychohistory to the extreme by offering precise psychiatricdiagnosis of historical figures. Within the academy, several historianshave attempted to construct psychobiographies of mystical and kabbal-istic historical figures, with varying degrees of success. More recently,rabbis of all denominations have taken advantage of popular psychologyto diagnose characters of the Torah. By treating biblical narratives asstraightforward and historical, these preachers have hoped to use themto provide greater meaning to the hardships and ordeals facing the livesof their congregants. Like the Jewish historians, rabbinic rhetoricianshave encountered mixed reactions to their pulpit psychoanalysis. Yet,there are marked differences between the two groups and the reactionsthey have respectively generated. This article identifies the challengesfacing psychohistory as it relates to the fields of Jewish history and rab-binic homiletics.

A final note on methodology: whereas we have used historicalmethods to analyze attempts by historians to revise the collectivememory of Jewish figures of the past, psychoanalysis of biblical figures ismore of a literary investigation. Despite the different methods utilizedin this study, both practitioners of historical and biblical psychoanalysisare interested in providing a varying account of the Jewish past than

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were previously considered. These varying motivations, reactions, anddefenses of these attempts are what draw these issues together.

BEGINNINGS: JACOB EMDEN AND MORTIMER COHEN

Today, the controversial life of Jacob Emden, the eighteenth-centuryrabbinic scholar, is a widely discussed topic in Judaic studies. One ofthe first to engage in this discussion on a comprehensive level wasRabbi Dr. Mortimer J. Cohen. Cohen received rabbinic ordination fromthe Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in 1919 and was appointed asrabbi of Congregation Beth Shalom in Philadelphia that same year. Notsatisfied with the roles of pulpit rabbi and synagogue school educator,Cohen longed to make his mark on the world of Jewish academia and,in 1932, expressed his desires in a local Jewish newspaper (1932a).Although Cohen presumed that rabbinic and scholarly pursuits couldfit together, he estimated that at the outset of the 1930s the “two orthree rabbis in the American Jewish pulpit who have achieved genuinescholarship are the rare products of one hundred years of AmericanJewish life.” The Beth Shalom rabbi attributed this low number to thereality that rabbinical “aspirants to scholarship find they purchase theirknowledge at the cost either of health or neglect of [their] congrega-tion.” Cohen wrote that “the scholarly type is so rare in general, and hisslant on life is so peculiarly his own, that the genuine scholar wouldfind no place as a rabbi in the congregation of today” (1932a: 1). Cohenwas deeply committed to changing this modern trend and he enrolledas a doctoral student in nearby Dropsie College shortly after relocatingto Philadelphia. On March 14, 1935, he submitted his doctoral disserta-tion on the life of Jacob Emden and published a popular version of thatwork in 1937 entitled, Jacob Emden: A Man of Controversy (Nadell1988: 59–61).

The majority of the Emden biography is straightforward. Cohentook advantage of an immense number of published and unpublisheddocuments written by Emden to investigate the most well-known aspectof Emden’s life: his bitter controversy with Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschuetz.For the uninitiated, it will be sufficient to state that Emden accusedEibeschuetz and his followers of practicing as clandestine Sabbatians.Emden utilized every resource available to him in order to inform the“Triple Community”—the Jewish communities of Hamburg, Altona,and Wandsbek—of Eibeschuetz’s supposed heretical amulets and otherwayward religious practices. Cohen merely glossed over the details ofEmden’s business ventures and aspects of his early social life andfocused almost exclusively on the details of this fight—much of it


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weighed down in mystical messianic concepts—that consumed thecommunal lives of European Jews in the middle of the eighteenthcentury. Most important to the current discussion, however, is Cohen’sthirteenth chapter, the final section of his book, which deals with thepsychological makeup of Jacob Emden’s personality.5

At the outset, it is important to take notice of the time period andintellectual atmosphere in which Cohen lived. In the 1930s, Freud’s psy-choanalytic school heavily influenced the humanities and social sciences(Cioffi 1998: 17–19). Another influential scholar, Carl Jung, departedsignificantly from Freud to establish another highly popularized analyti-cal study of psychology that emphasized the role of religion on thehuman psyche (Hoffman 2003: 1–41). Mortimer Cohen not only recog-nized these new waves of scholarship but believed that the authoritythey carried was sufficient to dismiss all previous historical treatmentsof Jacob Emden, most of which paid little attention to writings thatrevealed psychological elements of Emden’s persona. “That former gen-erations did not deal with them nor understand their significance neednot forbid their use by us,” wrote Cohen. “Today we believe that thatinformation which has been so completely overlooked or forgotten isthe crucial element in better understanding Jacob Emden and his partin the controversy” (1937: 268). Cohen contended that previous histori-ans chose to ignore some of Emden’s autobiographical informationbecause it did not seem, at least on the surface, to relate to the contro-versy with Eibeschuetz. However, armed with the studies of Freud andJung, Cohen was in a new position of being able to link aspects ofEmden’s biography with his role in his controversy againstEibeschuetz.6

Most significantly, Cohen linked several sexual stories that aredescribed by Emden in his autobiography, Megillat Sefer, with accusa-tions leveled by Emden to demonize his archrival. Emden chargedEibeschuetz with conducting a “house of immorality,” and worse,engaging in an incestuous relationship with his own daughter (1937:268). Another section of the autobiography detailed Emden’s experience

5Interestingly, Cohen’s interest in the psychological constitution of renowned personalities inJewish history preceded his research on Emden. In a quasi-academic analysis of Baruch deSpinoza, Cohen wrote the following: “His personality enchants us. We find him a man ofexceptional sweetness of disposition—all the more to be wondered at because of the bitterexperiences he endured, experiences that would have soured a lesser spirit on life itself.” See Cohen(1932b: 1).

6It should be noted that, despite his claim, Cohen did not review an original manuscript ofEmden’s autobiography. For this claim, see Cohen and Baron (1940: 118). The original manuscriptof the autobiography is no longer extant. See Schacter (1998: 446, n.13).


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with sexual impotency. Emden’s impotency, his biographer concluded,“was undoubtedly the secret that weighed down Emden’s spirit, bring-ing with it the psychological effects of frustration that made him bitter,quarrelsome, a disturber of the peace wherever he went” (1937: 62).Another point raised by Cohen was that the only Jewish legal casesmentioned in Megillat Sefer involve sexual matters (1937: 271).Moreover, Cohen argued the very reasonable point that, for Emden, themost powerful sect of Sabbatianism of his day, Frankism, was intrinsi-cally linked with “gross sexual immorality” (1937: 271). To Cohen,therefore, when Emden levied his Sabbatian accusations againstEibeschuetz, it made sense for him to, at the same time, propagate thebelief that Eibeschuetz was also an extreme sexual deviant.

All this, accompanied by much other documented evidence ofEmden’s supposedly strange behavior, led Cohen to posit a “theory thatJacob Emden’s was a pathological mind.” And while he admittedmatter-of-factly that “it would be hazardous to state the exact nature ofhis mental illness,” he did not hesitate—and in fact was “quitecertain”—that every piece of evidence “reveals a mind distorted bysexual repressions, afflicted with persecutory delusions, and weighteddown with a deep-seated sense of inferiority.” In Cohen’s words (1937:273–274):

There is a tendency in men to attribute to others what they themselvesexperience. They discover their inner emotions and passions in others.When Emden decried the sexual vagaries of his day, when he foughtSabbatianism, when he denounced Eibeschuetz for sexual crimes, hewas fighting his own psychic battle projected outward into the socialworld of his community, into the Jewish life of his time, and intoEibeschuetz.

Cohen received support for his psychohistorical methods from elitemembers of the American Jewish community. Dr. Solomon Zeitlin,Cohen’s mentor at Dropsie College and a renowned Jewish public intel-lectual, concurred fully with his student. “Jacob Emden, as Dr. Cohenhas proven conclusively, was a pathological case, and, thereby,” Zeitlinasserted, “all his personal attacks on Eibeschuetz can be better under-stood. They came from a man who was physically and mentally sick.”At the same time, however, Zeitlin recognized the methodological diver-gence taken by his pupil from mainstream historical research.Anticipating criticism from those associated with more traditional aca-demic modes of study and analysis, Zeitlin was quick to proclaimCohen’s biography a “new approach in Jewish history.” Even more


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forward, Zeitlin stated for the record that while “some readers may bereluctant to accept [Cohen’s] views or conclusions,” they are neverthe-less “based on strong foundation, on thorough study of the documents,and on impartial research into original sources. I sincerely hope thatthis book will encourage Jewish historians to follow the same methodwhich Dr. Cohen has advanced” (1937: 15).

Another prominent figure, Dr. Louis Finkelstein, Cohen’s teacher atJTS, published a very positive review of Cohen’s book, three years beforehe would become chancellor of JTS. Finkelstein also congratulatedCohen for composing a masterful work of history. He lauded the Emdenbiography as “one of the first attempts by an American author to applythe current sociological and psychological methods to Jewish historiogra-phy.” He had no misgivings about Cohen diagnosing Emden and hiscrusade against Eibeschuetz as the “result of psychological complexesand emotional maladjustment.” On the contrary, the eminent Seminaryprofessor predicted that Cohen’s kind of research “will prove to havegreat value to the historian and sociologist” (1937–38: 267–268). In addi-tion, the pioneering American Jewish educator, Samuel Dinin, calledCohen’s work “an excellent book in every respect” and a “fine example ofthe new historical approach.” Dinin was fully convinced when he wrotethat “Dr. Cohen undoubtedly prove[d] that Emden’s mental illnessaffected his behavior,” although he did acknowledge that Cohen rode“the theme a little too much” (1939: 53).

THE CRITIQUES OF SALO BARON, MEYER WAXMAN, ANDGERSHOM SCHOLEM

In addition to the three scholars described above, three of the mostinfluential Jewish scholars of that day, Professors Salo W. Baron, MeyerWaxman, and Gershom Scholem, also publicly recognized MortimerCohen’s path-breaking attempt. Baron, for example, declared Cohen’sbiography “an intrinsically meritorious attempt” (1939a: 483–487).However, this second group’s attitude toward Cohen’s book did not atall parallel that of Zeitlin, Finkelstein, and Dinin. Columbia University’sBaron published a scathing critique of Cohen’s biography, finding it“vitiated by faulty execution.” Accordingly, “with keen disappointment,”Baron “found a deplorable gap between the author’s laudable intentionand its highly unsatisfactory realization.” First and foremost, Baron cen-sured Cohen for leaving out virtually all mention of Emden’s significantbusiness dealings. Leaving out biographical material unrelated to thecontroversy was in Baron’s view, tantamount to “writing the biographyof Abraham Geiger by telling the story of his controversy with


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[Solomon] Tiktin, without examination of his achievements as a rabbi,reformist and scholar.” As for Cohen’s psychoanalytical approach to theEmden biography, Baron admitted that he “has long been distrustful ofthe feasibility of reconstructing from autobiographical and other chancerecords the dark background of the subconscious mind of persons longdead.” Baron called into question the use of a methodology that whenemployed by psychologists with a living patient is still nevertheless metwith “extreme difficulties.” It was for Baron quite spurious that suchstrategies could be used in the field of historical research as scholarswould be faced with “insurmountable obstacles confronting psychoana-lytic research in the careers of great men of the past” (1939a: 484).7

Regarding Cohen’s diagnosis of Emden as a sex-minded pathologi-cal person, Baron was likewise unequivocally unimpressed. Baronbelieved that Cohen’s book did not cite an adequate number of reputa-ble psychological studies to reach its conclusions. And, were he toaccept Cohen’s conclusion even without more psychological evidence,Baron contended that he would still be unsatisfied. In his view, forCohen to state that, given Emden’s psychological constitution, he was“inclined to pick a fight and to pursue it vigorously and without scru-ples,” distracts from the crucial discussion missing from the biography:the credence of Emden’s grave accusations against Eibeschuetz. Indeed,in lieu of engaging in psychohistory, Baron argued that Cohen shouldhave attempted to investigate Eibeschuetz’s life and contemporaneousSabbatian literature to see if there was, in fact, any merit to Emden’saccusations. Baron also determined that Cohen’s work naively acceptedthe traditional historical assessments, that Eibeschuetz was an innocentvictim in another man’s ill-conceived Sabbatian crusade. “If oneattempts a new approach to historical research one ought to be evenmore careful with detail than the ordinary investigator,” chided Baron.“Otherwise, one is likely to discredit the entire approach” (1939a: 487).

Meyer Waxman, a noted rabbi and scholar at the HebrewTheological College in Chicago, matched Baron’s disapproval in hisreview of Cohen’s biography. Similar to Baron, Waxman focused thebrunt of his critique squarely on Cohen’s attempt to “analyze[Emden’s] personality from the point of view of Freudian psychology.”

7Cohen responded to Baron’s charges (and Baron back to Cohen, as well) in an impassionedletter printed in the subsequent volume of Jewish Social Studies. However, the clearly upset Cohendid not address Baron’s criticisms for the biography’s psychohistorical content and is thereforedirectly unrelated to the discussion of this paper. See his response—and Baron’s response to hisresponse—in “Communications,” Jewish Social Studies 2 (1940): 117–123. For biographical data onBaron and his path-breaking career, see Liberles (1995), Ritterband and Wechsler (1994: 150–171),and Lederhendler (2001: 86–89).


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Waxman accepted that appropriate historical methods would lead oneto “readily admit” that “Emden was of a quarrelsome nature, unsuccess-ful in his aspirations, and in his attacks often resorted to gross exaggera-tion.” However, to suggest that Emden “possessed an inferioritycomplex, lacked courage, or that sexual repression played such animportant part in his personality is more than dubious.” What is more,Waxman suggested that due to Cohen’s biases in favor of Eibeschuetz,“many pages [in Cohen’s book] read like apologies for his favoritehero” and “the translation of passages from the original documents” isthus adversely affected, as well (1939: 611).

Gershom Scholem, Professor of Jewish Mysticism at HebrewUniversity, shared Baron’s and Waxman’s general dissatisfaction forCohen’s book, but he took particular exception to what he perceived asCohen’s lack of research into the kabbalistic issues surrounding theEmden-Eibeschuetz debate. Consequently, the lion’s share of Scholem’sextensive nineteen-page review of Cohen’s book addressed the possibil-ity that Eibeschuetz’s mystical amulets, may, in fact, have been influ-enced by Sabbatianism. However, as far as Cohen’s comments on thesexual components of Emden’s psychological constitution, Scholemrefrained from serious criticism. Based on his reading of Emden’s auto-biography, Scholem took his sex-driven psychoses as fact; he only ques-tioned whether Emden’s neurosis was developed during childhood (asposited by Cohen) or whether Emden was born with the condition. Infact, Scholem was so given to the probability that Emden suffered froma psychological disorder that he was uncertain whether Cohen hadadvanced his psychoanalysis enough! Consequently, and connected tohis larger criticism of Cohen’s biography, Scholem contended that amore thorough psychological evaluation of Emden could only beaccomplished through an equally thorough investigation of kabbalisticliterature (1940: 320–328).8

Gershom Scholem once remarked that “in treating the history andworld of the kabalah, using the conceptual terminology of psychoanaly-sis—either the Freudian or the Jungian version—did not seem fruitfulto me” (Scholem 1976: 29). Those familiar with Scholem’s work wouldlikely be surprised by this unfavorable view of psychohistorical writing.

8Similar criticisms are voiced by at least one of Scholem’s students. See Perlmutter (1947: 14–25).Scholem, of course, is considered by many to be the pioneering scholar of what is today a major scholarlydiscipline in Jewish mysticism scholarship. See Biale (1979: 147–153) and Werblowsky (1982: 155–158).In addition to the earlier-mentioned critical reviews, briefer and more recent criticism of MortimerCohen’s book were levied by Abramsky (1979: 26, n.10) and Jacobs (1995: 146). See also Antelman(1992: 43–44).


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As Steven M. Wasserstrom has pointed out, despite the claim,Scholem’s scholarship—especially his earlier studies—certainly “didfavor vocabulary familiar from Freudian thought” (1999: 188). More tothe point, one scholar noted in an article exploring the historiographyof psychohistory and Jewish mysticism that Scholem was not the first tolink Sabbatai Sevi with mental illness, but he was the first to offer aprecise psychological diagnosis (Elqayam 2003: 15–19). In an essay pub-lished in 1935, two years prior to Cohen’s publication of Jacob Emden,Scholem heaped criticism on his fellow Jewish historians for followingthe direction of nineteenth-century Jewish historiography in ignoringthe psychological aspects of historical writing (1970: 78–141). In thesame essay, Scholem wrote candidly about the “sexual pathology” of theSabbatian extremist, Jacob Frank. He stopped short, however, of outlin-ing a detailed diagnosis of Frank’s psychological disposition. Yet, ifScholem had reservations about providing a clear diagnosis of Frank in1935, he had no such hesitations six years later when he wrote thatSabbatai’s character “hardly lacks a single trait of maniac-depressivepsychosis as described in the standard handbooks of psychiatry” (1941:290).

Less than twenty years later when he published his Hebrew biogra-phy of Sabbatai Sevi, Scholem was just as explicit when he diagnosedSabbatai as one who suffered from manic depression (1957: 101). WhenScholem’s biography was translated into English in 1976 by R. J. Z.Werblowsky as Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, Scholem addednew material to “understand the nature of [Sabbatai’s] illness.”According to Scholem, any and all opposition from scholars to diagnoseSabbatai “has changed completely with the discovery of the originalSabbatian sources” (1973: 125).9 Scholem collected no fewer than eight-een contemporaneous reports on Sabbatai’s psychological constitution.Apparently, Scholem was certain that the accepted categories of mentalillness described by psychologists and psychotherapists in his day couldbe retrojected back into an earlier time period.10 He believed that thesesources, including a letter written by Sabbatai himself, were sufficient tosatisfactorily inform historians of Sabbatai’s schizophrenic nature and“paranoid traits.” In Scholem’s words (Scholem 1973: 129):

9It is interesting that in his own scholarship, Werblowsky cautioned against relying onpsychoanalysis in historical writing. See Werblowsky (1958: 310).

10For a similar argument in favor of this method, see Meissner (1995: ix). It should be notedthat of all of the documents used by Scholem to determine the nature of Sabbatai Sevi’s psychosis,he can only locate one letter written by Sabbatai himself to help justify his psychological argument.See Scholem (1973: 841).


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The description corroborates the statement in psychiatric textbooksthat although the depression is keenly felt by the patient and consid-ered by him an acute illness, no such consciousness of disease existswith regard to his manic euphoria.

To be sure, criticisms of Scholem’s psychoanalytical methodsappeared at the time his Hebrew biography was published in 1957(Shochat 1958: 417–418). Yet, Scholem persisted in evaluating andwriting about historical figures and events through a psychoanalyticallens. It would seem, as attested in one testimonial, Scholem subscribedto the small but growing minority camp of historians who “acceptedpsychiatry as a medical given” (Rotenberg 1991: 92, n.6). And, twodecades later, when Werblowsky’s English translation of the SabbataiSevi biography was published, his psychohistorical approach seems tohave been accepted and few if any took exception to it. One reviewer ofthe Werblowsky translation felt obligated to note how “Scholem hasbeen criticized for this excursion into psychological analysis” twentyyears earlier. However “in this day,” continued the reviewer in 1978,“when psycho-history is the rage and all sorts of excesses are committedin its name, Scholem’s approach is balanced and believable” (Greenfield1978: 489).

PSYCHOHISTORY AND JEWISH STUDIES

As a matter of fact, the seventies was a formative and fruitful decadefor psychohistory. With a flurry of publications and the founding of TheJournal of Psychohistory in 1973, a group of trained historians finallyetched out a place for their craft (deMause 1974: 7–27). A few years later,it was reported that courses in the specialized field were being offered “atapproximately thirty major colleges and universities” (Kren andRappoport 1976: 2). Perhaps most notably, psychohistory became suffi-ciently relevant and noticeable in the seventies for doubters and rivals topublish their criticisms and concerns of the emerging discipline (Barzun1972: 36–64; Barraclough 1973; Himmelfarb 1975: 72–78). In the yearssince, neither the practitioners of psychohistory nor its opponents lostmomentum.11

In step with this trend, scholars of Jewish studies have made use ofpsychohistorical methods when constructing biographies, usually ofmystical and esoteric personalities. For example, Arthur Green studied

11For good examples, see Spanos (1985: 60–66) and Demos (1985: 180–181).


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Erikson’s Young Man Luther when he sat down to write a biography ofRabbi Nahman of Bratslav, “a figure . . . so interesting from a psycho-logical standpoint” (1979: 18). Likewise, a survey of secondary literatureon Sabbatianism reveals that in the past few decades, many scholars ofmysticism interested in the pathology of Sabbatai Sevi basically agreedwith Scholem’s diagnosis.12 One notable, oft-quoted treatment ofSabbatai Sevi by Avner Falk took issue with Scholem’s approach andfinal analysis (1982: 5–29). With all of Scholem’s “great knowledge ofthe Kabbalah and the Sabbatian movement,” Falk averred that the tow-ering scholar of Sabbatianism lacked the adequate and updated knowl-edge of psychotherapy to draw proper conclusions about the exactpsychoses that plagued the mind of Sabbatai Sevi. Hence, Scholemincorrectly posited that Sabbatai’s manic-depressive illness was constitu-tional and not the result of a severely traumatic childhood, as deter-mined by Falk. Yet, notwithstanding the difference in psychoanalyticapproach, the fact that Falk deemed it appropriate to offer a diagnosisfor Sabbatai’s Sevi supposed insanity indicates the degree to which psy-choanalysis has achieved acceptance in recent decades, even in thecontext of historical writing.

After Falk, the number of those who psychoanalyzed Sabbatianismhas only increased. Several scholars of Sabbatianism echoed Scholem’spsychoanalytic remarks about Shabbatai Sevi with little deviation(Tishby 1982: 247–256; Wirszubski 1990: 177–181). One writer, usingthe sources provided in Scholem’s works, psychologically labeledNathan of Gaza, the alleged prophet of Sabbatai Sevi, as a “hypomanicpersonality” (Ostow 1982: 223–230). What is more, in the past decades,scholars of the Sabbatianism have focused a good deal of time consider-ing the homoerotic personality of Abraham Cardozo, a prominentbeliever in Sabbatai even after the latter’s conversion to Islam in 1666(Rosenstock 1998: 63–104; Rosenstock 2003: 199–227; Littlewood 1984:705–715). Scholars involved with research of Cardozo’s life have alsoexamined the psychological impact of Christianity on Cardozo’s pecu-liar prophetic dreams (Halperin 2003: 31–49). Even a more traditionalhistorian, Jacob J. Schacter—who wrote his Harvard University disserta-tion on Jacob Emden in a manner that breaks distinctively from themethods employed in Mortimer Cohen’s book—recently published arestrained but psychoanalytic-filled essay on the propensity of close rel-atives of Sabbatian followers to emerge as virulent anti-Sabbatians(2001: 31–49). In short, Sabbatian scholarship has by and large ignored

12See, for example, Meissner (1995: 128–139) and Goldish (2004: 173, n.6).


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the advice of Salo Baron to steer away from reconstructing psychohis-tory from a finite number of documents that may or may not capturethe total personality of the deceased historical figure.

THE RESPONSE OF MORTIMER COHEN

The impact of these harsh reviews by some of the Jewish scholarlyworld’s most heralded leaders weighed heavily on Mortimer Cohen.Cohen remained, to some extent, within the Jewish scholarly world.Over the course of his long career, he published hundreds of bookreviews of scholarly and nonscholarly works. In addition, as a memberof the Publication Committee of the Jewish Publication Society, Cohen,by his own admission, “on occasion read manuscripts and helped inrevising and editing some of the manuscripts accepted” (1965).However, archival materials available at the JTS Archive reveal thatMortimer Cohen likely retreated from his psychoanalytical approach tohistorical research, despite the fact that the historiographical trend laterturned in his favor.

The first indication that Cohen backed down from his argument isfound in notes prepared for a memoiristic lecture delivered at a syna-gogue banquet held in his honor on March 7, 1965. There, Cohenspoke boastfully of the fact that several of his works have “found theirplace in Jewish homes.” He was proudest of his Pathways through theBible, which had been translated into several languages so that it couldbe “used throughout the Jewish communities of South America andMexico and Japan.” The Emden biography, by contrast, received justthe briefest of mentions (1946).13 Furthermore, Cohen’s entire speechreflects a lifetime of dedication to adult and child education. That henever produced another academic study after his Jacob Emden bookand that the work received just a brief acknowledgment in his autobio-graphical speech, hints at his disappointment in how his biography wasreceived.

More telling, though, is a letter Cohen wrote to thank Rabbi IsraelH. Levinthal for sending him a volume of collected sermons thatLevinthal had published in 1963 (1963). After offering his congratula-tions for the recent publication, Cohen commented that “this veryimportant matter of preaching stirred me to re-read a book I greatlyadmire” (1972). The reference was to Studies in Jewish Preaching,

13Cohen even reported that “a Catholic priest uses [Pathways] for the student Nuns he teachesin Namaqualand . . . and in colleges as supplementary reading.” See Cohen (1965).


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written by Israel Bettan, professor of homiletics at Hebrew UnionCollege, a study that Cohen had been familiar with, since it was firstpublished as an article in Hebrew Union College Annual, just as Cohenwas immersed in his dissertation research (1935: 553–597).

Bettan’s penultimate chapter of his book examined Eibeschuetz, the“passionate pleader” and preacher of his time. In fact, the long essaydeals very little with the controversy, only assessing that Emden’s accu-sations were incomprehensible and “too fantastic to merit serious con-sideration” and that Eibeschuetz’s “learning and sagacity preclude thepossibility” that he was a Sabbatian. Further, it was Bettan’s positionthat “the ceaseless bombardment of petty annoyances and grievous dis-tractions interfered but little with [Eibeschuetz’s] literary productivity,”and the controversy was therefore beyond the purview of his study(1935: 557–559). For Mortimer Cohen, it was Bettan’s ambivalence tothe issue that was the most interesting part of the latter’s entire article.“I was most interested,” confessed Cohen, “in [Bettan’s] puzzlementover Emden’s dislike of Eibeschuetz. Naturally, Emden was hostile toEibeschuetz because Eibeschuetz was elected the Chief Rabbi—some-thing Emden thought [he] ought to have inherited from his father. Butwhy Emden reported to the charges of hypocrisy and Sabbatianism inthe amulets, Bettan confessed, escaped him.”

“I think I discovered the reason,” reminisced Cohen. He informedhis correspondent that in Emden’s time, “the Jewish community had topay a high tax of protection to the King of Denmark. The Jews—likegood people everywhere—resented having to pay the taxes, especiallythe rich Jews.” Jacob Emden was the wealthy class’s voice while“Eibeschuetz was [the] spokesman for the poor folks.” BecauseEibeschuetz “kept hammering away, in his sermons, at the rich fortrying to evade their taxes,” the wealthy Jews “resented Eibeschuetz’stirades and were eager for Emden to ‘get’ Eibeschuetz—and Emden didhis work well . . . I’ve written up the whole business in my JacobEmden” (1937: 235–237). Cohen had indeed dealt with the economicfactors influencing the fight between Emden and Eibeschuetz; however,this explanation occupies just three pages, whereas an entire chapter isdedicated to Cohen’s psychoanalytical thesis.

At Cohen’s funeral in 1972, the eminent historian SolomonGrayzel recalled that Cohen’s “wide curiosity led him to an interestin psychology; and this in turn led to his preparing a scholarly dis-sertation” on “a notorious feud between two great rabbinic author-ities of the eighteenth century,” Emden and Eibeschuetz. Grayzelremembered out loud that, for his friend, “it was not the fact of thefeud that he found absorbing, but rather its obvious psychological


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implications.” Most important, Grayzel put it quite kindly when hesaid that “nowadays, historical research takes such motivations as anatural subject for research; but forty years ago, this was not quitethe accepted thing; so that Cohen was some decades ahead of histime” (1972).

Finally, toward the end of his life, Salo Baron published a slimvolume reflecting on his career in Jewish historical scholarship and pro-viding a “brief review of the older and newer methods and approaches”(1986: 4). The aged scholar surveyed several methods of research anddedicated an entire chapter to psychohistory, expounding on the posi-tions taken by the method’s “ardent admirers as well as [its] sharpcritics” (1986: 50). Contrary to the stance taken very clearly in hisreview of Jacob Emden, at this point in his life, Baron provided a favor-able view of psychohistory. In fact, it is a point of great irony that in afootnote, Baron recalled his review of Cohen’s book in a most histori-cally inaccurate fashion. Baron remembered his scathing criticisms, buthis memory failed him when he stated that he “certainly did not intendthen, or later, in any way to repudiate on principle the use of psycho-historical methods in historical research” (1986: 126, n.67). No doubt,Baron recollected many of the faults he found with Cohen’s researchunrelated to psychohistory, and even the issues he took with Cohen’spsychoanalytical claims that he believed stepped beyond the acceptedlimits of committed psychohistorians. These points notwithstanding,there is no denying that Baron had many years ago written that he “haslong been distrustful of the feasibility of reconstructing from autobio-graphical and other chance records the dark background of the subcon-scious mind of persons long dead.” Fittingly, Baron’s mistake speaksvolumes of the change in attitude toward the fusion of historical andpsychoanalytical research that had taken place in the decades sinceCohen published his book.

PSYCHOHISTORY AND AMERICAN JUDAISM

One of the first to review Freud’s Moses and Monotheism, a revi-sionist psychohistory of the Torah’s greatest prophet, when it was pub-lished in 1937, was Salo Baron. Perhaps because he viewed Freud’sbook more as a religious work than a historical one, Baron was farmore tolerant of Freud’s psychohistorical analysis than he had been inhis review of Mortimer Cohen’s psychobiography, printed the sameyear. Nevertheless, after acknowledging the renowned Freud’s license towrite on topics within his scholarly field, Baron revealed his jaundicedopinion of psychohistory. Calling Moses and Monotheism a


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“magnificent castle in the air,” Baron criticized Freud for his “limitlessarbitrariness in the selection and use of the little existing evidence.”Although he credited Freud for trailblazing a “psychoanalytical inter-pretation of the history of religion,” the fact that Freud made little useof historical method or biblical data in his study of Moses “render[ed]the entire factual basis of Freud’s reconstruction more than question-able” (1939b: 475–477).14

Years later, Baron’s student, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, placed Freud’swork within a broader historical context. Far more amicable to it than histeacher, Yerushalmi wrote that:

[h]istoricism of one kind or another has been a dominant characteris-tic of modern Jewish thought since the early nineteenth century, whilethe “historical” bent of psychoanalysis itself is, theoretically and thera-peutically, part of its very essence. (1991: 19)15

In Yerushalmi’s view, Moses and Monotheism was a “history of theJewish psyche,” never meant to be conceived of as a biographical por-trait. Further, Yerushalmi wrote that Freud “employed a blatantly ahis-torical, even antihistorical method, at least as we ordinarily conceive therules of the game.” Put simply, since Freud’s intention was to use hispsychoanalysis to decode the Bible and gain a better understanding ofJewish thought, his pretense to frame the work as history was accept-able, even if it was not typical.

Whether or not the trend was inspired by Freud is unknown, but asthe twentieth century unfolded, the American congregational rabbibecame more accustomed to incorporating popular psychology in hisSabbath and holiday sermons and other public discourses (Heinze2004).16 On many occasions, rabbis would draw upon psychologicalstudies to buttress the message they wished to impart to their congrega-tions. Characteristic of this was Harold I. Saperstein, a prominentReform rabbi in the New York area, who often utilized psychologicalfindings to sensitize his congregants to race issues. A case in point, in a1958 sermon, Saperstein cautioned that “psychological studies” haveshown that “the person who is prejudiced against Negroes is usually

14For discussion on the place of psychoanalysis in biblical research, see Gelernter (2009: 222–229), Kille (2001: 1–37), and Rabin (1998: 1–9).

15On Yerushalmi and his scholarship, see Birnbaum (2008: 332–373).16By contrast, in a work dedicated to trends in American sermons during the previous century,

very little is mentioned about rabbis’ use of psychology. See Cohen (2008). Another author has alsoassumed a paucity of psychological analysis among religious sermonizers, see Birnbaum (2005: 70).


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also prejudiced against Jews and other minorities” (Saperstein 2000:198).

However, while rabbinical students within more liberal circles wereencouraged to combine social sciences and exegesis of biblical episodesto better relate to their congregants, their leading rabbinic mentors dis-couraged investigation into the historical lives of biblical personalities.One such example is Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, who taught at JTS forover fifty years and founded Reconstructionist Judaism. To Kaplan, his-torical analysis of the patriarchs, or any biblical figure, was an untenableconcept. “The teachings of religious folklore,” wrote Kaplan in his per-sonal diary, “should be distinguished from the teaching of history notonly in the nature of the content but chiefly in the type of approach.”According to Kaplan, the stories in the Bible should be viewed as“poetry and as the product of the imagination.” If they were read liter-ally, he argued, Judaism in America was liable to lose many vulnerableyoung people who, after confronting controversial narratives and moralwrongdoings, would leave the faith. By redirecting how congregants andtheir children viewed the Bible, he believed that threat could be avoidedaltogether (2001: 408):

It is that very struggle and readjustment that we must spare the childwhen we teach him any of the narrative parts in which God figures asa participant or as interlocutor. All these facts must be given to thechild as ancient religious folklore not as history fact. Why should notthe child realize that the Greek myths he studies at school are the reli-gious folklore of the Greeks? Our ancestors had likewise stories inwhich they tried to express their religious beliefs. But while the Greekmyths have one kind of beauty, the Jewish myths have a different kindof beauty. If the stories of creation, the flood, the patriarchs, Moses,Israel in the wilderness, etc., were told in this spirit there would beonce and for all an end to that mental conflict which has alienated ouryouth from the Jewish religion. (See also Honor 1953: 417–435.)

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was another figure in Americanrabbinic life whose teachings penetrated into the writings and dis-courses of many graduates of JTS. To be sure, Heschel held to a muchmore literalist understanding of the Bible than did Kaplan. Hescheltreated biblical figures as historical and also recognized “scientifichazards involved in the attempt to expose, on the basis of literaryremains, the subconscious life of a person who lived thousands of yearsago.” Therefore, Heschel maintained that “a reliable diagnoses of theprophet’s mental health remains beyond our scope” (1962: 397). Since


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he was concerned mostly with the spiritual and philosophical meaningsunderlying the sacred text, Heschel tried his best to avoid analyzing his-torical issues about and within the Torah. Invariably, argued Heschel,historical discussions “will revolve around the adventitious, just as a dis-cussion of colons and semicolons will hardly bring out the content of asentence. The words and their meanings”—or in our case, the lessonsculled from the Torah’s stories of the patriarchs—“have to be graspedfirst” (1955: 178; see also Levenson 2000–01: 25–44; Scult 2002: 3–14;Kaplan 2007: 210). Similarly, Rabbi Israel Bettan, who served as a pro-fessor of homiletics at the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union Collegefrom 1922 to 1957, instructed his students to examine a biblical andrabbinic text for its “application of the material to utilitarian sermonicpurpose” rather than to come to a historical or literal “understanding ofthe sources” (Goldstein 1961: 39).

Perhaps due to the influence of men such as Kaplan, Heschel, andBettan, cases where progressive rabbis published sermons that psycho-analyzed biblical personalities garnered little reaction or were justsimply dismissed as irrelevant. One such psychological diagnosisappeared in The Reconstructionist as late as 1990, arguing that theBible’s account of Isaac is similar to the characteristics of an individualsuffering with mental or physical disabilities.17 The essay was writtenby Rabbi Judith Z. Abrams, then rabbi of Congregation Ner Shalom, aReform synagogue in Woodbridge, Virginia. She observed that “in con-trast to his energetic father and son, Isaac seems markedly passive,manipulated first by his father, then by his wife and children” (1990:20–21).18 Relying on a host of scriptural and midrashic sources, RabbiAbrams marshaled several proofs in support of her claim. Her openingargument was Isaac’s name, derived from the Hebrew word for laugh-ter. Both Abraham’s (Gen. 17:17) and Sarah’s (Gen. 21:6) reaction tothe news that they were to have a son was to laugh. Abrams theorizedthat, considering their age at the time, their laughter signaled an excla-mation of sadness, not of joy, as traditionally understood. “Perhaps,”she wrote, after his birth, “[Isaac] suffered from prenatal malnutritionor a poor uterine environment, due to his mother’s advanced age.”

17While the following discussion centers on individuals who have diagnosed Isaac withpsychological or mental disorders, it should be noted that at least one writer has suggested thatIsaac suffered from diabetes. See Levin (1988: 81–83). A similar form of analysis concludes thatHannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel, was initially unable to conceive due to anorexia. SeeSchiff (1998: 8–10). For a broader discussion of physical disabilities in the Bible, see Henkin (1983:452–462).

18Isaac’s passivity is a topic dealt with by many writers. For one of the most cited examples, seeShoham (1976: 329–349).


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Moreover, Abrams suggested, upon taking note of the “great feast onthe day of Isaac’s weaning” (Gen. 21:8), that Isaac’s parents, aware ofhis defects, did not expect him to reach that age. As Isaac progressedinto childhood, his mother felt that it was best to remove his half-brother, Ishmael, from Abraham’s home. As the author understood it,Sarah took such action only after witnessing Ishmael taunt Isaac,perhaps because of her son’s condition.

Furthermore, after Sarah, who must have served as Isaac’s caretaker,died, Abraham sent his servant, not Isaac, to find a wife for his son(Gen. 24:3). “Perhaps,” Abrams stated about Abraham’s motive, “he didnot trust Isaac to make the trip successfully. Perhaps there was some-thing in Isaac’s appearance or behavior that might have scotched thematch.” Once Rebecca is found and becomes Isaac’s new caretaker, herinteraction with Isaac becomes another source for Abrams’s argument.“Later in their marriage, Rebecca was clearly confident that she couldmanipulate Isaac. When Isaac commands Esau to bring him somevenison, Rebecca assumes she can substitute a different dish, and a dif-ferent son, successfully,” stated Abrams. “Isaac seems vulnerable andchildlike in this episode of his life.”

However compelling these arguments may be, Abrams’s strongestargument for assigning a mental or physical ailment to Isaac is herinterpretation of the story of Abraham’s binding of Isaac on MountMoriah. Given Abraham’s station in his community, as a wealthy shep-herd and religious leader, he was very likely to have been concernedwith raising a suitable heir. Therefore, Abrams offered the followingexplanation for how a father could conceivably consider slaughteringhis own son (1990: 21):

Abraham was an independent, successful, powerful, and charismaticman. He was a man for whom a disabled son may have been an intol-erably shameful burden. Like any parent in this situation, Abraham feltdisappointment, guilt, and anger. Part of him wished Isaac had neverbeen born. Part of him loved this child more than any of his others.Abraham may have taken Isaac to Mt. Moriah out of frustration anddisappointment, vowing to rid himself of this burden. In the end, anangel commands him to make no blemish on his son. Perhaps thedeeper message of the angel is: “your son is perfect as he is; don’t youdo any harm to him.” Such a trial is one many parents face: acceptingtheir children as they are, with all their faults and disabilities.

In the end, Abrams’s theory regarding the historical Isaac carries asincere moral message. Despite his difficulties, Isaac was an inextricable


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link in Jewish history. Her reading of the Bible’s description of Isaac’sstory reaffirms the belief that, no matter how severe one’s disability maybe, every individual has the capability to lead a heroic and historic life.

What is more, at the onset of the article, Rabbi Abrams acknowl-edged that she anticipated that her assertions might seem blasphemousto some. And, while letters were published in the following issues ofThe Reconstructionist responding to her portrayal of Isaac, noneaccused Abrams of overstepping her position by denigrating a forefa-ther. Quite the contrary! One writer complained that such a literalistinterpretation of the text was philosophically at odds with those com-monly published in the flagship journal of Reconstructionist Judaism.“Does Reconstructionism take everything that appears in the Bible asliterally true? Why,” asserted the critic, by way of example, “would weassume that the ages of Abraham and Sarah—reported at one hundredand ninety years old respectively—are to be understood as factual?”(Morgenstern 1991: 3).19

Another letter advised Abrams and other readers to review anarticle published in the very same journal, in 1976 (Steinhart 1991: 3).That article, written by Dr. Herman Tannor, a psychiatrist by training,similarly diagnosed Isaac with a form of mental retardation (1976: 7–11). Crediting Rabbi Shlomo Balter, a member of JTS’s faculty, for hisinsights and encouragement, Tannor used the same proofs to connectIsaac with mental illness marshaled decades later by Abrams. In fact,perhaps more attuned to the topic due to his occupation, Tannorpointed out two additional reasons to suspect Isaac’s mental condition.First, as a son of close relatives—Sarah was Abraham’s niece—Isaac’schances of being born with some form of mental retardation was drasti-cally increased. Second, unlike his father and his sons who took multi-ple wives and concubines, Isaac remained monogamous. The fact thathe and Rebecca were childless for twenty years and that the Torahnever relates that he considered finding another wife reinforces thisclaim.

In Rabbi Abrams’s defense, the Tannor article received little atten-tion, if any, in subsequent letter submissions or in the footnotes of laterpsycho-biblical commentary. In other words, a typical researcher whodid not know to look for the essay would not have easily come acrossit. In more recent years, several other progressive congregational rabbishave made similar diagnoses of Isaac’s behavior and, like Abrams, do

19Aside from this complaint, Morgenstern also questioned the overall strength of RabbiAbrams’s argument, calling the article “filled with hypothetical suppositions, speculations, andpersonal projections, as based on shaky evidence.”


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not formally credit prior authors with previously suggesting the idea.20

Given the strength of the question—i.e., Isaac’s actions or lack thereof,included in the Torah—and the heightened attention paid to mentalillness over the past several decades, it is conceivable that each rabbideveloped the basic point of the theory on his or her own. Indeed, bothDr. Tannor and Rabbi Abrams anticipated some backlash for advancinga provocative diagnosis of Isaac, but that reaction was never forthcom-ing. Each writer was unaware that the idea had been considered previ-ously, in all likelihood because every preceding attempt failed to stirsignificant discussion.

PSYCHOHISTORY AND ORTHODOX COMMUNITIES

As opposed to the liberal end of the Jewish community, variousOrthodox rabbis seeking to employ popular psychology to analyze thelives of the holy patriarchs have been charged with crossing the lineinto the realms of disrespectfulness and even heresy. Especially duringthe past century, it was especially critical for rabbis of Orthodox syna-gogues, who were fighting desperately to keep members from defectingto Conservative and Reform synagogues to find fresher modes of com-munication. In the pre-World War II era, one of the best Orthodox rab-binic orators was Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein of Congregation KehilathJeshurun in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Dr. Norman Lamm, formerpresident of Yeshiva University, called Lookstein “probably the greatestorator of his generation of rabbis, certainly of the Orthodox rabbinate”(1980: 8). Lookstein became deserving of this sort of accolade aftersecuring a reputation as a preacher who was, as one historian has putit, “mindful of the emotional and psychological needs” of his congre-gants (Joselit 1990: 32).21 Moreover, Lookstein, who held a doctorate insociology from Columbia University, became revered by the congrega-tion he served from 1923 to 1979 for his ability to borrow from thevocabularies of social scientists when crafting sermons that produced“emotionally stirring appeal for the relevance of Orthodox Judaism tothe modern world” (Joselit 1990: 32). To be sure, Lookstein was a con-summate believer that all interpretations should be articulated using thewords of traditional rabbinic commentators. Nevertheless, there was

20See, for example, Kushner (1996: 73–74) and Salkin (1999: 31). Although Kushner does notcite his name or article directly, it is clear that he drew his insight from Herman Tannor’s essay.

21For a good description of Rabbi Joseph Lookstein’s relationship with his congregation, seeMedoff (2009: 386–391).


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perhaps no one more responsible than Lookstein for acquainting theOrthodox rabbinate with the latest in the field of psychology.

As a professor of homiletics at Yeshiva University’s Rabbi IsaacElchanan Theological Seminary, Lookstein taught his oratorical techni-ques to more than two generations of Modern Orthodox rabbinical stu-dents. Most relevant to our discussion is Lookstein’s approach tobiblical homiletics. Recognizing that American Jews in the first half ofthe twentieth century were far more removed from the Scripture thanwere their parents and grandparents in Europe, Lookstein advocatedfor more creativity in biblical exegesis. “People today are not as Bible-oriented as were their forebears in former days,” wrote Lookstein.“Sodom and Gemorrah mean much less to them than New York andChicago.” The same could be said, he noted, of “the wrestling matchbetween Jacob and his unknown adversary,” and “Jonah and thewhale.” For Lookstein, the upshot of all this was that “the Biblical textmust be used differently. It can no longer serve as a light to look at butas a flashlight to throw upon the dark problems of life so that they canthen better be seen and the more easily solved” (1979: xiii).22

Rabbi Lookstein urged his rabbinical students to follow his lead andmake use of social sciences whenever relevant. For example, in 1941Lookstein took on the responsibility to calm the worried men andwomen sitting in the Kehilath Jeshurun pews shortly after the Japaneseassault on Pearl Harbor. When the congregation needed his spiritualguidance to assuage their sense of panic, Lookstein turned their atten-tion to two most disparate sources (1943: 183):

Says Francis Bacon, “The virtue of adversity is fortitude,” “And virtue,”continues the famous philosopher, “is like precious odors, most fra-grant when they are incensed or crushed.” Our own rabbis had theirown illustration for it. They said that the olive gives forth its oil onlywhen it is pressed and crushed. It is by a tightened belt that man raiseshimself to heights immortal.

Energizing traditional sources with more modern, secular ideas wasthe trick of Lookstein’s trade. Speaking from his pulpit on RoshHashanah during the early 1950s, Lookstein even drew upon the writ-ings of Presbyterian minister, Harry Emerson Fosdick and the Frenchessayist and psychologist, Marcel Proust, to encourage his congregantsto increase their participation in synagogue life (1952: 22). Another of

22For more on Lookstein’s rhetorical theory, see Friedenberg (1989: 124–127, 137).


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Lookstein’s sermon from the same decade, this one on the occasion ofSukkoth, quoted from John Milton’s Paradise Lost to elucidate the stateof Adam’s loneliness in the Garden of Eden before God created Eve(1953: 204).

In the past several decades, as psychological elucidations of theweekly Torah portion have become commonplace in the Orthodoxpulpit, some critics within more right-wing Orthodox circles havefound reason to object to some of the more psychologically imaginativeinterpretations offered by Orthodox rabbis that they found disrespectful(Wikler 1991: 26–31). For example, an editorial published in the JewishObserver, the official organ of the right-wing Agudath Israel ofAmerica, excoriated the syndicated English writings of Rabbi ShlomoRiskin for what the editors felt described the Jewish patriarchs in amanner outside of the bounds of acceptable Orthodox thought.Evidently, Agudath Israel felt compelled to react to Riskin, who becamea prominent spokesman for Modern Orthodox adherents after foundingand serving as the spiritual leader of Lincoln Square Synagogue inManhattan (Abramson 2008: 79–89). The Jewish Observer editorialexcerpted material from three essays published by Riskin in Anglo-Jewish newspapers from 1989 to 1991. It pinpointed instances whereRiskin, bothered by the Binding of Isaac, passed judgment on Abrahamand Sarah, and identified shortcomings in their own relationship—alack of trust that the other was always doing the right thing—whichmay have contributed, along with God’s commandment, to Abrahamand Isaac’s ascent up Mount Moriah. In another essay, Riskin took noteof the fact that in the years subsequent to his release from prison, thebiblical Joseph never attempted to return home or notify his father thathe was still alive. Owing to this, Riskin hypothesized that Joseph, even-tually a major political officer in Egypt, had assimilated into the nativeculture and likely “hated his family and resented his faith.” Not onlywas Riskin “flirting with disaster,” stated the Jewish Observer, he was“blatantly violating both the letter and the spirit” of the Torah’s depic-tion of the holy patriarchs. For a leading Orthodox rabbi “to write insuch an outrageous manner regarding seminal figures in Jewry,” theeditorial surmised, “indicates that something is deeply, deeply wrongwith [Riskin’s] basic, fundamental understanding” of the sainted patri-archs (1991: 48–51).23

23Riskin’s interpretation of the Akeida episode is by no means the most extreme. In the pastdecades, several Jewish writers, interested in developing oedipal theories, have given attention tothe relationship between Abraham and Sarah and to how that relationship affected Isaac. SeeKaplan (1990: 73–81), Elitzur (1987: 173–211), and Wellisch (1954).


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Four years later, while Riskin lectured before an audience inManchester, England, a group of Horodenka Hasidim picketed outside.The protesters were apparently upset by an essay Riskin had publishedin The Jerusalem Post (1997: 14). The article entitled, “Great Prophet,Lousy Politician” argued that Moses’s experience with the Divine hadcut off his ability to relate to his people, and as a result “he made everypossible mistake when it came to inspiring his people to follow him”(1994: 5B).

In 1997, Riskin finally did respond to his opponents in a thirty-pagepamphlet distributed by his organization, Ohr Torah Stone Institutions.Appropriately titled Confessions of a Biblical Commentator, Riskinwrote that his particular style of exegesis was developed from a dozenyears of broad and careful reading of traditional biblical commentators.Riskin cited the writings of Rashi, Rashbam, Maimonides,Nachmanides, Rabad of Posquières, Solomon Luria, and the Gaon ofVilna, to show that there is sufficient precedent for commentators todepart from the most traditional explanations of the Torah. Next,Riskin identified instances found within the biblical commentaries ofNachmanides, Samson Raphael Hirsch, and Naphtali Zevi YehudaBerlin, where these traditionalist exegetes afforded themselves license tocriticize biblical figures (1997: 3–13).

To defend his claim that Abraham was never meant to slaughterIsaac, and that Joseph may well have led a non-Jewish life in Egypt,Riskin marshaled evidence from talmudic, medieval, and early modernsources; albeit, he admitted, many of his proofs were minority positions.Riskin refused to back down from the essential points of his interpreta-tions, explaining that they reflect his personal engagement with the text.“The Divine voice has the capacity to speak in manifold—and oftenseemingly contradictory—ways,” claimed Riskin, “to many people, andeven to the same person at different moments of his life” (1997: 19).

Although it maintained a very purist view of the patriarchs, theJewish Observer would have to concede to Rabbi Riskin claim thatmedieval and modern traditional commentators did criticize the actionsof Judaism’s forefathers. Yet, more than likely, the Jewish Observerwould have responded that Riskin did not have the stature and licenseto admonish the way the sages of the Talmud, Nachmanides, RabbiSamson Raphael Hirsch, or Rabbi Naphtali Zevi Yehudah Berlin werefound to have done in their biblical commentaries.24 Moreover, they

24For a very good discussion on different approaches taken by traditional commentators toevaluating the actions of the patriarchs, see Schacter (2006: 1–9). For more bibliographical


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would have argued that those figures were less provocative in theirwriting than Riskin was in his exegetical rhetoric.

Indeed, Riskin realized this last point. Confessing that he had“learned a great deal from the voices raised in protest,” Riskin formallyretracted from the presentation of his contentious remarks. Heexplained that several of the articles in question “were re-workings oforal lectures,” written by ghost writers. As for The Jerusalem Post articlethat angered Manchester’s Hasidic community, Riskin avowed that thetitle of the piece was chosen by one of the newspaper’s editors, not byhim. “In retrospect,” wrote Riskin regretfully, “I believe that the style ofwriting which emerged lacked a properly respectful tone for the greatpersonages under discussion. . . . I apologize for and retract thesepieces, and have already stopped using such a method of transcription”(1997: 26). For Riskin, as an Orthodox rabbi, the lesson learned fromthe protests and criticisms was the reaffirmation that “there are limita-tions on and standards for the traditional biblical commentator.” Thebiblical interpreter must be circumspect in articulating his thoughts inthe clearest of manners and must be sensitive to the nuances of the lan-guage in which he is communicating. “He must not color his linguisticand conceptual investigation,” Riskin concluded, “with an attitudewhich strives to undermine the traditional consensual axioms regardingthe text” (1997: 27–28).

Among Hebrew speakers in Israel, too, psychological interpretationsof the actions of biblical figures were condemned by right-wingOrthodox spokesmen. Moreover, very similar to the Riskin case, theoffender held to his views in principle, but reluctantly apologized forthe manner it which his commentary was conveyed. In the summer of1989, during conference for laymen, Rabbi Eliezer Menahem Shachdenounced the “heretical works” of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. A notedscholar and teacher of Bible, Talmud and Jewish thought, Steinsaltz’sbooks sold thousands of copies to Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jewsalike. Steinsaltz himself was born into a secular family and became animportant figure for those utilizing innovative measures in attempts toreclaim Jews into the Orthodox fold. By contrast, as the head of thePonevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak and leader of Israel’s Haredi Jews, RabbiShach personified the most conservative end of Orthodox Judaism.Shach was not at all sympathetic to secular learning and was verypublic in his condemnation of those who sought to reinterpret

information see Schacter (2006: 9, n.21). For a discussion concerning some traditionalcommentaries and their presentation of Isaac, see Wolowelsy (1999: 35–44).


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traditional texts through modern lenses. Thus, in 1984, when someonebrought to his attention a collection of Zionist essays by Rabbi JosephB. Soloveitchik, the uncontested leader of Modern Orthodox Judaism inAmerica, Rabbi Shach was none too pleased with the former’s rereadingof Abraham and Joseph as leaders who were forced to separate them-selves from their old way of life to pursue a new, more pious cause. Forexample, Soloveitchik candidly compared the actions of the founders ofthe Zionist Mizrachi movement when they broke away from the ideo-logical stance of other Orthodox leaders to that of “Joseph the dreamer[who] was lonely among his brothers who mocked him” (1974: 19–20;2002: 25–26). More poignantly, Soloveitchik remarked:

The tragedy above all, lay in the fact that the controversy between theJoseph of 5662 [i.e., 1902, the year the Mizrachi movement wasfounded] and his brothers, the Tribes of God, was in truth based on amisunderstanding—just as the ancient controversy between the firstJoseph, the son of Jacob, and his brothers was a result of “they sawhim from far off (Gen. 37:18): a lack of communication.”

Although he addressed Rabbi Soloveitchik with all of the honorificsdeserving of a first rate rabbinic scholar, Rabbi Shach denouncedSoloveitchik’s “completely heretical” work as a “complete distortion ofthe Torah’s viewpoint.” Most of Shach’s criticisms were leveled againstthe significant role with which Soloveitchik credited the religiousZionists in rebuilding Torah institutions in Israel after the Holocaust.Still, Shach was just as upset with Soloveitchik’s biblical comparison. Soperverted was Soloveitchik’s portrayal of Joseph’s brothers as opponentsof God’s divine will, wrote Shach, that he wondered out loud why “somuch time has passed and [American rabbis] had yet to protest” (1990:36; see also Shapiro 2003: 2–3).

With even greater flare, Shach attacked Steinsaltz’s “PunctuatedTalmud,” for which the latter won the prestigious Israel Prize in 1988.By adding punctuation and translating the text from Aramaic into easy-to-read Hebrew, Steinsaltz’s edition of the Babylonian Talmud wasdesigned to make Talmud study easier and more accessible to manytrying to study these fundamental Jewish texts. This was precisely theproblem Rabbi Shach had with Rabbi Steinsaltz’s Talmud project.“People say that these new-style Talmuds increase the number oflearners. But God does not need this learning,” Shach proclaimed. “Godwants the ‘old’ learning in the ‘old’ Talmuds” (Landau 1992: 221;see also Mintz 1994: 135–137; Rosenak 1997: 388–390; Lorincz 2008:418–419).


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Possibly more hazardous to the spiritual well-being of OrthodoxJews, Shach believed, was Steinsaltz’s work profiling the patriarchs andtheir families. Among the positions taken by Shach and others was thatthe rabbi made psychological inferences to describe and trivialize thelives of the patriarchs and matriarchs as “romantic tales.” Moreover,Steinsaltz had dared to criticize the holy ancestors when he calledRebecca a “manipulator,” dubbed Samson “something of an adolescentruffian” and described the Song of Deborah as “bloodthirsty” (1984: 35,100, 102). This wave of Rabbi Shach’s attack came in the YatedNe’eman, Shach’s political party’s organ. In its August 11, 1989, edition,the Hebrew newspaper “warn[ed] the reader in advance that the quota-tions cited below are full of terrible, horrible things that insult the foun-dations of the Torah, the Holy Forefathers, the Judges and theProphets.” Although it certainly was “not easy” for the editors to“reproduce such things” they were given strength by “letters againstSteinsaltz by our Great Men of Torah” (Landau 1992: 222).25

Once other rabbis of the ultra-Orthodox Eda Haredit joined RabbiShach’s crusade, Steinsaltz apologized and agreed to amend the prob-lematic passages in a new printing (Landau 1992: 224). While thisappeased the Eda Haredit, Shach stood firm stating that “there can beno repentance and no recall” for the damage Steinsaltz had done to theOrthodox community. Throughout the ordeal, Israel’s NationalReligious Party supported Steinsaltz and condemned “the haredi, anti-Zionists” who opposed him. Yet, for the most part, Steinsaltz declinedto comment on the affair and Shach’s unrelenting opposition to him.The little he did say was that his commentaries were never intended forright-wing Orthodox readers. “Basically people objected to my style, myuse of language,” explained Steinsaltz. “Someone once said that Aliceand Wonderland is full of sexual symbols and advised that anyoneundergoing psychoanalysis shouldn’t read it. In some cases, somepeople who were not even meant to read my books might have beenoffended” (Landau 1992: 224–225).

RABBI AVI WEISS AND THE STORY OF ISAAC

It may be said that Modern Orthodox thinkers are more acceptingof psychological content in Torah commentary. Yet, in instances whenit is perceived that psychoanalysis is overused or abused in the discus-sion, criticism has not been limited to just Orthodoxy’s most right-wing

25The English edition of the Yated Ne’eman (August 18, 1989) covered the story, as well.


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exponents. Rabbi Shalom Carmy, currently the editor of Tradition, aJewish thought journal published by the Modern Orthodox RabbinicalCouncil of America, took issue with the way one Orthodox rabbi(Carmy does not reveal his name) framed his analysis of Abraham’srelationship with Ishmael. “Within his own family Abraham neededdesperately to improve his intergenerational skills,” wrote the Orthodoxrabbi. “Even as great a personality as our patriarch Abraham hadproblem prioritizing family warmth—his quality time with his son, intohis life routine” (1990: 10).26 Carmy was immediately struck by theauthor’s willingness to use “quasi-scientific psychology talk” and cau-tioned the rabbi that “reliance on psychobabble undermines even validpoints.” Moreover, such a characterization lessens the basic level of aweone should have for God and the apprehension one should have for thepatriarchs. “Once you employ his kind of language,” concluded Carmy,“you have already half-surrendered to the social worker’s happythought that, somehow, Abraham’s going to the right therapist couldhave spared us the Aqedah.”

Most open-minded Modern Orthodox biblical commentators haveaccepted that there is an unstated limit as to how much psychologicalinterpretation can be applied to Torah exegesis. And, like AvivaZornberg, perhaps today’s leading psychoanalytical commentator of theBible, those who push the boundaries are aware that some OrthodoxJews may refuse to pick up their books (Marmer 2009). The cases ofRabbis Riskin and Steinsaltz’s confrontations with the right-wingOrthodox community—and their respective retractions and apologies—have added clarity to the boundary of acceptable commentary. On thewhole, psychologically charged sermonizing is a norm, although, asboth Riskin and Steinsaltz acknowledged, finding the proper languageto express modern interpretation can make all the difference betweenan acceptable reading of the text and heresy. Seeking human rolemodels to inspire congregants, many Orthodox rabbis have alwaysdevoted great attention to speaking and writing about the historicallives of the Jewish forefathers. Taken one step further, we now turn ourattention to a case when a prominent Modern Orthodox rabbi wasattacked for humanizing the patriarchs through psychological diagnosis.

Unlike what happened to his denominational counterparts, whenRabbi Avi Weiss diagnosed Isaac with Down syndrome in an essayin 1999, he was met with harsh and hostile criticism. Every week, Weiss

26For a related discussion by the same author, on the topic of “metapsychiatry”—the term usedthere to describe the overuse of psychology in biblical interpretation—in Orthodox biblicalexegesis, see Carmy (1991: 16–21).


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e-mails a sermon for the upcoming Sabbath’s Torah portion to thehundreds of members of his synagogue, Hebrew Institute of Riverdale,New York. In addition, for that week in 1999, nearly a thousand othersreceived a copy of the sermon in that week’s edition of Toras Aish, apopular electronic Torah newsletter. Weiss began this particular sermonsuggesting that “[t]here is something naïve, almost simplistic, about oursecond patriarch Yitzhak (Isaac) that jumps out of the Genesis narra-tive. Indeed, in virtually every chapter that describes his life,” Weissaffirmed, Isaac “is portrayed as being reserved, nonaggressive, and even,dare I say, slow” (1999a: 2).

Weiss pointed out the usual cues—that Isaac was born to agedparents, mocked by Ishmael, did not resist when Abraham bound himon the mountain, was absent from the decision to find him a wife andwas easily deceived by Rebecca and Jacob. In addition, Weiss seizedupon the Torah’s description of Isaac digging wells. “The Torah notesthat they were the ones originally dug by his father (Gen. 26:18). Here,”deduced Weiss, “Yitzhak seems to lack independence; succeeding in abusiness his father developed.” Crediting Rabbi Saul Berman, anotherprominent Modern Orthodox rabbi, Weiss suggested that the “commonthread that weaves itself through each of these characteristics” is that“they are often found in those who have Downs Syndrome.”

Rabbi Weiss wrote all this while simultaneously acknowledging that“there is no classical opinion that suggests that Yitzhak had Downs.”Yet, continued Weiss, refusing to retreat fully from his psychoanalyticdiagnosis, the fact that Isaac’s personality fits a standard depiction ofsomeone with Down syndrome provided him with the license to teacha “vital lesson”—that those with Down syndrome possess “the image ofGod,” “the ability to spiritually soar” and “to spiritually inspire” and tolead.

By the weekend, Rabbi Weiss’s sermon had reached countlessreaders, some reportedly receiving the essay third or fourth hand. ThatWeiss’s article had been so widely disseminated within the AmericanOrthodox community demonstrates, in contradistinction to the essayistsaffiliated with the other Jewish denominations, just how sensitiveWeiss’s community was to talk of Isaac and Down syndrome. Thesermon elicited a flurry of mixed responses in AshDas Society’s onlineJewish discussion forum. Weiss’s detractors found it “totally appalling”that he could diminish Isaac’s stature by connecting him with a form ofmental retardation. Weiss’s defenders, though not nearly as vocal as hisopponents, defended the rabbi claiming that he ultimately stoppedshort of this diagnosis because no classical source could be used toverify it. Rather, they declared, Weiss wished to draw from certain


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characteristics to show how much there is to learn from those withDown syndrome.

The vociferous discussion was enough for Weiss to clarify hisremarks in the following edition of Toras Aish. “People have misunder-stood my words,” appealed Weiss, “and as the author I assume fullresponsibility.” Weiss stressed that the assertion that Isaac had Downsyndrome “has no basis.” However, that Isaac possessed “some charac-teristics” of Down syndrome could, by Weiss’s logic, teach somethingabout the disease and the people who have it. Troubled by the concep-tion that “spirituality is exclusively bound with the intellect” and that“those of lesser intelligence” lack the capacity “to have spiritual depth,”Weiss contended that his sermon “was an attempt to say that spiritual-ity emerges from the whole being—not only from the mind, but alsofrom the soul” (1999b: 1).

Despite Rabbi Weiss’s attempt to clarify his words, many remainedincredulous. After all, they challenged, if Weiss truly meant what hesaid—that Isaac did not have a condition resembling Down syndrome—how could the Torah’s portrayal of the second patriarch elucidate any-thing about individuals with Down syndrome? All the points in thesermon did not logically cohere. Yet, with the strident and very publicrumblings that were taking place over the Internet, the Jewish media inNew York did not cover the incident—neither through a formal newsstory nor editorial—and the reactions it generated. Even the studentnewspapers at Yeshiva University, where Weiss served as a member ofthe faculty, made no mention of the essay. The singular exception was acarefully crafted e-mail response by Rabbi Shalom Carmy. The YeshivaCollege professor of Bible and Jewish philosophy was just as intolerantof Rabbi Weiss’s content as he was of the Orthodox congregationalrabbi who suggested that Abraham required better intergenerationalskills to properly handle his son.

Carmy withheld outright mention of Rabbis Weiss or Berman,referring to them only as “two leading lights of Modern Orthodoxy.”That Carmy recognized the rabbis’ position within his Orthodox com-munity was one of the major reasons why he felt so obliged to respondto the “silly performance that circulated last week.” While sensitive tothe fact that the Orthodox community could stand to be more consid-erate of the mentally and physically challenged, to couch that messageby revising the biography of Isaac, for Carmy, was “silly” and downright“outrageous.”

The gist of Carmy’s response charged Weiss with usurping theTorah and its intended meaning to relate a good-hearted message. “Theprimary figures in the Torah are history-makers,” remarked Carmy.


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“Blind people, cripples, asthmatics, can be history-makers. People withDown’s aren’t, all sentimentalism aside.” Consequently, to assert“groundlessly” and “ridiculously” that Isaac had Down syndrome “onlyreinforces the audience’s conviction that religion is nothing but senti-mentalism, and that neither Torah nor its lessons are anything morethan a way to keep drowsy congregants awake.” Further, Carmy theor-ized that the modernist tendency to denigrate Isaac is derived from thefact that Isaac is completely unlike his father, Abraham, “a mover andshaper.” Isaac, on the other hand, “keeps to himself, he doesn’t goaround converting people. He doesn’t even leave Israel to attend confer-ences or raise funds for his institutions or finance his mother-in-law’soperation. He represents a withdrawal from the world that annoys themodernists.”

Interestingly, Carmy anticipated that in defense of Rabbi Weiss,some might claim that Weiss had just as much license to illustrate thehuman, imperfect side of the patriarchs as any of the handful of tradi-tional commentators who had done so previously. As a preemptiverebuttal, Carmy drew a distinction between Weiss’s essay and RabbiNaphtali Zevi Yehudah Berlin’s oft-quoted insight with regard to nega-tive aspects of Isaac and Rebecca’s relationship (Gen. 24: 61–65). In theTorah’s account of the couple’s first meeting, Rebecca fell off her camelat the sight of Isaac, who, in Berlin’s language, appeared to her as “aterribly awesome angel” with “his arms prostrated in prayer.” Asa result of her awe for Isaac’s spirituality, Rebecca was forced to wear aveil, presumably in a psychological sense, whenever she was with herhusband. Due to this trauma, it was extremely difficult for Isaac andRebecca to communicate with one another, and in Berlin’s view, thisconsequently severely hindered their ability properly to raise their chil-dren, Jacob and Esau.27 According to Carmy, in Berlin’s interpretation,“the patriarch remains an awe-inspiring figure.” By contrast, in Weiss’sinterpretation, “with his one-sided worldliness and impatience withsubtlety, Isaac is summed up in a one word bumper-sticker: he is‘passive.’ And then diarrhea of the mouth and pen can take over.”28

27For more on Berlin’s comment, see Perl (2006: 310–312) and Riskin (2007).28Incidentally, the gist of Rabbi Weiss’s argument and Rabbi Carmy’s rebuttal were articulated a

decade later in a popular Jewish magazine. See Freedman (2000: 4). Furthermore, recently, anOrthodox writer has used many of the same indicators in determining that Isaac suffered frompsychological trauma. See Klitsner (2006: 47). So far, however, reviewers of Klitsner’s work havenot picked up on this particular remark.


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The primary issue here for Carmy, therefore, is one of respect. TheTorah does on occasion recount the failings of great human beings, buthuman beings who, notwithstanding their imperfections, are neverthe-less holy.

CONCLUSION

For thousands of years, Jewish religionists of all stripes and denomi-nations have looked to the Torah to shed light on contemporary humanexperience. Maimonides already expressed this idea: “Know that all thestories that you will find mentioned in the Torah occur there for a nec-essary utility for the Torah; either they give a correct notion of anopinion that is a pillar of the Torah, or they rectify some action so thatmutual wrongdoing and aggression should not occur between men”(1963: III: 50, 613). Aware of the statement or not, rabbinic preachersand teachers have followed Maimonides’s dictum, linking the experien-ces of the human biblical figures with their own societies. In moremodern times, psychological conditions and terms have served as aneffective way for sermonizers to connect the men and women of theTorah with the men and women in the pews. It is only the traditionalistrabbi who is expected to insist upon degrees of distinction between thehistorical and lofty personalities of the Bible and their more-ordinarycongregants.

Perhaps even more than the historian, the Orthodox rabbi faceseven greater opposition when he uses psychoanalytical terminology toanalyze figures in the past. Without a doubt, it is one thing for theprofessional historian to face, in Salo Baron’s words, the “insurmount-able obstacles confronting psychoanalytic research in the careers ofgreat men of the past.” Like Baron in his review of Mortimer Cohen’sbook, one may indeed question those who believe that lifeless docu-ments can substitute for the give-and-take between an inquisitivetrained psychologist and his patient lying patiently on the psycholo-gist’s couch. The difference between the two positions is methodologi-cal; a debate over the historical record of individuals long since dead.For the traditionalist rabbi heavily invested in the historical lives ofbiblical heroes, however, harsh criticisms, let alone psychological diag-noses of Torah personalities, cut at the very core of Orthodox valuesand its historical memory.


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