Wednesday, June 13, 2007
History versus Reality
In this photo you see a classic piece of Soviet Revisionism. Stalin is famously walking with Nikolai Yezhov in the top photo. However, after Stalin had him killed in 1940 they simply removed him from the picture. He no longer exists. Simple as that. If a picture or popular image doesn’t fit with our ideology, we simply remove it.
They did the same thing with Trotsky after he was deported in 1929:
(Can you spot the difference?)
This removal of unwanted people makes life much easier. It removes the need to explain anything or have to deal with issues that could otherswise be inconvenient or embarrassing. If you have the money, you can even have people removed from family photos if they are no longer part of the family (or if they are making a silly face:
It is a good thing that Judaism believes in honesty and truth, rather than lies and revisionism - isn’t it! (m’dvar sheker tirchak)
However, not everything is as squeaky clean as it always seems.
In a recent interview with the Jewish Press, Rabbi Nosson Scherman is happy to state that Artscroll massages the facts to create the Godol that they want.
Interview with R’ Noson Scherman of Artscroll
How do you respond to critics who accuse ArtScroll biographies of whitewashing history by characterizing great rabbis as saints without faults?
Our goal is to increase Torah learning and yiras shamayim. If somebody can be inspired by a gadol b’yisrael, then let him be inspired. Is it necessary to say that he had shortcomings? Does that help you become a better person? What about lashon hara? You know in today’s world, lashon hara is a mitzvah. Character assassination sells papers. That’s not what Klal Yisrael is all about.
In other words, they don’t want people to be inspired by Gedolim as they really were, but rather as they should have been. Personally I am much more inspired by the shortcomings and how true gedolim overcame them or turned them into strengths, than by fairy stories and impossible feats.
I know that the Gemara in Chagiga says that the gedolim should be like angels in your eyes. But that is a law of honour, not necessarily for learning from them or being inspired by them. R’ Yaakov Kaminetsky himself often told people that as a child he read Jules Verne, to show that Jewish children are allowed to be normal kids and parents/ educators don’t have to worry.
Is anything that doesn’t fit the revised picture automatically lashon hara? I’m not suggesting that anyone publicise things that are humiliating or degrading about the gedolim (not that there are any such things of course, and not that I’m paskening that the issur of lashon hara applies to people after they are dead - ask you LOR for that one). But can’t we be inspired by the truth? Does it scare us that much that gedolim are gedolim precisely because they began life as normal human beings, just like you and me.
There are many other blogs about this issue. One related blog is What’s bothering Artscroll (I love their web address - elucidation-not-translation) who analyses the way that the biographies are written at the end of the Stone chumash. He is probably reading too much into it, but it shows how careful you must be once you start the game of rewriting history.
To quote Stephen Hawking: “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge”.
Originally from Wellington, New Zealand, Rabbi David Sedley now lives in Jerusalem with his wife and children. He currently teaches at both Midreshet Rachel and Darche Noam Yeshiva. Previously he served for four years in Scotland as the Rabbi of Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation, followed by four years as Rabbi of Beth Hamidrash Hagadol Synagogue in Leeds, England.
