some stray thoughts on Rabbi Steinzaltz: first draft

If I may be permitted a middle-of-the-road view on a subject of some controversy:
Rabbi Adin Even-Yisrael (Steinzaltz) recently completed his Hebrew commentary of Talmud Bavli.

The tone of the chatter is either the kind that signs on to the condemning, excommunicating flavor of R Schach's attacks in the 80's, or the adulation of his followers, only strengthened by the resolve to fight off the attacks.

I think he did not deserve those attacks.  Yes, there! I said it.

On the other hand, I think that he made errors in judgment in how he went about his work.  Some of those errors were avoided by  the Artscroll Shas people, who were there to pick up the pieces of the effort after the Bnei Brak crowd tried to crush him.  And NO, I don't think there was a conspiracy. I just think Artscroll took advantage of a window of opportunity by working on a Shas commentary, in English and Hebrew, that avoided the weak points of R Steinzaltz's efforts.

1. First of all, but last chronologically, I think the Random House English version of his commentary is a huge waste of time.  I don't know who convinced him that would be a good idea. But even before Artscroll came out with its version, The English Steinzaltz Talmud is just a big fluffy waste.

2. Who knew that changing pagination would create such a stir? But it did.  The Orthodox Talmud learning community attributed tremendous value to a two century old pagination, as if it was handed down at Sinai.  He did learn that lesson, and later editions provided Vilna Shas pagination. All later Hebrew elaborators, (Artscroll, Mesivta, Oz V'Hadar etc) learned that lesson too, albeit the easy way.  I can't blame the traditional community for thinking there was some hubris on R Steinzaltz's part by displacing Tosfos.   I don't think he was thinking anything sinister. But when as Arthur Kurzweil has written, you want to "revolutionize" the study of Talmud, you are implicitly criticizing the way it has been studied.  That will earn you the ire of the establishment.  Over-reaching might be the right word.  Over-reaching is often good, but sometimes you get burned.

3. Someone who wants to write a work that changes the face of Torah learning usually gets haskamos. R Steinzaltz does have a letter from R Moshe Feinstein.  But those in the know know that those letters were (too?) easy to procure.  Being a Lubavitcher hurt him in this regard. He would never have gotten the kind of institutional support that the Artscroll group did.

4. His work on the men of the Bible contains no kefira.  Yes! I say so. But it does contain a tone that is unnecessarily flippant in a few places. Perhaps he thought we needed to move away from the yeshivish "nobody in Tanach ever did anything wrong in the slightest" school of commentary and pushed the other way.  But that's gonna get you burned.

5. Traditional Jewry wants its revolutionaries to have a mesora.  Unless you claim and are believed to possess an angelic mesora, like the Arizal or the Ramchal or the Baal Shem Tov, we want to see a human chain of which you are the latest and extraordinarily most brilliant link in a while.  R Steinzaltz is a Chabad Chossid, but he is an independent thinker, so what is his mesora in Limud Hatorah?  Maybe he is such a genius that he doesn't need one. Did Einstein need a mesora?  Well Torah is not like Physics.  We like to see or imagine a chain.  Not having one will hurt you.