Correction and Apology For an Earlier Post

Correction and Apology For an Earlier Post

Comments 64 comments

Correction and Apology For an Earlier Post

A few months back we featured a fascinating two-part post about newly discovered documents from Rav Herzog’s Archive.

One of the discoveries of the post was a document about Meir Kahane written to President Chaim Herzog by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in the summer of 1984 which was surprisingly supportive of Kahane.

A careful examination of the document by the family of Rabbi Soloveitchik reached the opposite conclusion. This letter is a crude forgery. Their conclusion was not derived because they disagree with the opinions expressed in it nor because they know that the Rav would never have expressed such opinions, but because of many characteristics of the signature such as misspelled name, the firm handwriting from the hand of a man suffering from Parkinson’s (comparing it to other autographs of the Rav from even earlier dates and the difference is immense), title and reference of his own father etc. It is simply an egregious forgery.

We apologize to our readers for posting and thereby disseminating this false piece of information.

Seforim Blog Editors.

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64 thoughts on “Correction and Apology For an Earlier Post”

  2. Did the forgery happen at the time, did Chaim Herzog receive this letter and think it was from r solivatchick?
    Or was this made later if so for what purpose?

    Reply

    1. Yes, Herzog received it at the time and wrote a response to the Rav. I posted it in the comments section of the original post. (Unfortunately the comments have since disappeared, and I don’t know how to post an image to comments under the new blog format.)

      Reply

  3. The letter feels very authentic. Me thinks this is spin. The Rav adjusted his opinions of RMK over the years, it does actually make a lot of sense.

    Reply

    1. The letter is not typed on the Rav’s stationary, which he used for all of his correspondence, rather on YU inter-office memo scrap paper. And dated to a date (Tu Bav) when the Rav was in Boston, but it was allegedly sent on YU paper from YU in New York. It is not his signature, nor his style, and is riddled with typographical errors that he, nor any of his trusted students, would have permitted in a letter to the President of Israel. Even if it reflected his public opinions of Kahane, which it did not, it would still be a poor forgery.

      Reply

      1. In your objection you address the contention that the letter may be the work of “one of [the Rav’s] trusted students”; presumably at his behest. You seem to think that the typographical errors preclude this possibility, but that is not a convincing argument. Rav Soloveitchik’s didactic nature – before succumbing to his final debilitating illness – is indeed well known, but who can testify to the nature and ability of an anonymous “trusted student” who may have been tasked with writing the letter at a time when Rav Soloveitchik found it difficult to do so himself. Little biographical information regarding the Rav’s last years has been made public (understandably, mipnei hakavod), but in this context it is important to ascertain the answers to the following obvious questions: What was the degree of Rav Soloveitchik’s confinement at this time, and which of his trusted students had access to him? What was the Rav’s frame of mind at the date of the purported letter and what was the nature of his involvement with worldly affairs during this period?

        Reply

        1. You raise important questions about the Rav’s last couple of decades. There is no secret that he started going down at least two decades before his ptirah. It was a general progressive decrease because of his illness.

          As for the letter itself, when it was first mentioned I questioned the authenticity based on a complete change from his known views and frankly I am not a handwriting expert but at time I noticed some differences compares to handwriting of the Rav in my possession. Material, ideas, statements of the Rav that were not disclosed when he was the active leader are on every side to be treated with caution.

          Reply

          1. The Rav was niftar in ’93. Rav Rakeffet once said in his class at Gruss, and I forgot how he said it exactly, but something to the effect that the Rav’s last year that he was still in his prime was 1979 and he started going down thereafter.

            Reply

  4. It is good that this as published now, as with the news from Israel with Otzma and Benny Lau, lots of people have been thinking about the Rav’s view of Kahane based on what we now learn is false information.

    Reply

    1. Seconded – you should indicate on the original post that it is a forgery, as a reader may only stumble upon that post and not see this one.

      Reply

  6. The wording of the correction is rather clumsy, I think, when you wrote that the family reached “the opposite conclusion.” Opposite of what? That it was surprising? That it was voicing support for Kahane? Realizing that the letter is a forgery is not “the opposite” of how you read the letter—it’s saying that there actually was no such letter at all.

    Reply

  7. I don’t understand. If Herzog responded to the letter, then wouldn’t we have a response in the president’s archive of R’ Soloveitchic responding that he wrote no such letter?

    Further, if this was a pro-rav Kahane forgery, wouldn’t it be less ambivalent?

    This seems like wishful thinking by people who wish the Rav would have not written such a letter.

    Reply

      1. From what I can see, he didn’t have one consistent signature. This whole story is very strange. And maybe it is a forgery, but there is nothing that obviously makes it so.

        Reply

      1. Nati makes a good point. If this was a forgery wouldn’t the Rav have sent a message back to the President of Israel clarifying that he sent no such letter?

        And why is the supportive letter so ambivalent? If someone took the trouble and risk to forge a letter in the name of the Rav wouldn’t that person have composed a more supportive letter?

        Reply

  8. A forgery? But how is that possible? Surely no one, especially a Jew, would ever do such a dishonest, shameful thing!

    Reply

  9. The forgery claim, due to the firm signature and typos, would be more convincing were we to ascertain that this letter is a complete anomaly, that no other such letters exist. Surely, the Rav’s longtime students would know whether it was ever the Rav’s practice to delegate letter writing to others and whether some of those letters were similar in style to this one.

    Reply

  10. Is the letter a forgery? Perhaps….

    But question whether you would be giving the same benefit of the doubt to a Hareidi Gadol given the same set of circumstances.

    I think we all know the answer to that question….

    Reply

  12. I can’t know if the letter is a forgery or not (let alone an “egregious” one). I will however say that the key paragraph of this post is hopelessly biased, and falls short of the dispassionate honesty necessary in historical matters.

    Their conclusion was not derived only because they disagree with the opinions expressed in it nor because they know that the Rav would never have expressed such opinions…

    Not only because, but somewhat. These considerations reveal unseemly prejudice and beg the question; they are precisely the issue at hand – did the Rav hold these opinions. To argue (even in part), “no he didn’t – because he wouldn’t” – is a crude logical fallacy. (Although – to their credit – at least the authors here tip their hand and prejudicial approach.)

    Reply

    2. That’s only the half of it. Saying it is inauthentic because R’S didn’t agree with it is one thing – saying it isn’t real because they (the students/family) disagree with it is incoherent. The first half of that sentence indicates that part of their reason for claiming it is a forgery is because “they” disagree with its opinions!

      Reply

  13. When he first saw it, R’ Rakeffet said that it was clearly written by a student, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.

    Reply

  14. I will also note that the bolded sentence above:
    “This letter is a crude forgery.”
    states as fact that the letter is a forgery without qualification, not that the family has concluded or believes that the letter is a forgery.

    The Seforim blog editors appear to have some vested interest (ie personal negios) in denying the authenticity of the letter. Such an unqualified statement of fact certainly does not pass academic muster, and in my view is an embarrassment to the Seforim blog editors who wrote or approved it.

    Reply

  15. Question for the editors,
    Just curious – did any members of the family request that this post be written? I notice that you don’t write that the family asked for this clarification.
    My suspicion: I’ve been in contact with some of the members of the family, and they have told me what is written above, that they believe the letter to be a forgery. I have shared that info with a few of my friends, along with the family’s reasons for believing so. I am guessing that the info somehow made its way to one (or more) of the Seforim blog editors who took it upon themselves to post this apology/retraction/clarification, because they can’t bear the thought that the Rav would mildly support Kahane. (This may have been written with approval of the family, or without approval, I don’t know.)
    Again, this is just my suspicion as to what happened. But if this is the case, this is not exactly objective scholarship.

    Reply

  17. Can’t get to the government archives PDF yet, but the original letter has three CC:s, which should be able to be verified. And maybe they responded in writing, too.

    Reply

    1. I’m not sure what would be verified by pursuing the cc’s. The letter was sent to Chaim Herzog for certain, the question is did it come from the Rav or from someone else. If, for example, it is in Dr. Lamm’s papers, that doesn’t indicate who sent it. The only possibility would be to ask Dr. Lamm if he discussed it with the Rav at the time, but from what I have been told, Dr. Lamm is unfortunately not in condition to discuss the matter.

      Reply

  18. Not buying this “retraction” in the slightest. Because a signature – in his 80s – doesn’t match up with some others?? Please, gimme a break. Amazing how this “crude forgery” managed to fool the President.

    Marc Shapiro has noted that the game of censorship isn’t limited just to charedi Jewry. Here you have a great one to add to the list of left wing examples. On the eve of elections in Israel, some of the doves in RYBS family are nervous, so they come up with some this. Come now. Politics is politics, but among us, cant we have at least a little intellectual honesty?

    Reply

    1. And, how revealing, both among the editors who posted this and the commenters who are happy to believe the Rav’s letter was a forgery – uniformly, they all refer disrespectfully to “Kahane”, without his title. Yep, politics has nothing to do with the retraction, riiiight….

      Reply

  19. Is there a response here from the blog editors to the queries about the wording and timing of this retraction? Did the family request this second post?

    Reply

    1. The Rav had many sides to him. A Rabbi Walter Wiurzberger was a student, as was a R. Hershel Shachter. People with diametric opposing viewpoints considered themselves his students. So is it any wonder than his views on an equally complicated figure like R. Kahane are also nuanced? זימנן דאמר הכי וזימנן שאמר הכי.

      Let those who are quick to believe this retraction, let them ask themselves what they would think if a letter from a well known Rosh Yeshivah in favor of college was suddenly claimed by his students to be a forgery. They would smile indulgently and shake their head at the lack of intellectual honesty. They would sagely quote from Marc Shapiro’s Changing the Immutable. But the one thing they would not do is look in the mirror, bc that’s exactly what they’re doing here.

      Reply

  20. ALERT!
    The 10 Commandments were plagiarized from Egyptian writings!

    2 Divine Principles of the Maat

    In Chapter 125 of The Papyrus of Ani, we find the petitioner led by Anubis into duat and pronouncing his/her 42 affirmative declarations, listed below from Budge’s public domain translation of the 42 Divine Principles of Maat:

    I have not committed sin.
    I have not committed robbery with violence.
    I have not stolen.
    I have not slain men or women.
    I have not stolen food.
    I have not swindled offerings.
    I have not stolen from God/Goddess.
    I have not told lies.
    I have not carried away food.
    I have not cursed.
    I have not closed my ears to truth.
    I have not committed adultery.
    I have not made anyone cry.
    I have not felt sorrow without reason.
    I have not assaulted anyone.
    I am not deceitful.
    I have not stolen anyone’s land.
    I have not been an eavesdropper.
    I have not falsely accused anyone.
    I have not been angry without reason.
    I have not seduced anyone’s wife.
    I have not polluted myself.
    I have not terrorized anyone.
    I have not disobeyed the Law.
    I have not been exclusively angry.
    I have not cursed God/Goddess.
    I have not behaved with violence.
    I have not caused disruption of peace.
    I have not acted hastily or without thought.
    I have not overstepped my boundaries of concern.
    I have not exaggerated my words when speaking.
    I have not worked evil.
    I have not used evil thoughts, words or deeds.
    I have not polluted the water.
    I have not spoken angrily or arrogantly.
    I have not cursed anyone in thought, word or deeds.
    I have not placed myself on a pedestal.
    I have not stolen what belongs to God/Goddess.
    I have not stolen from or disrespected the deceased.
    I have not taken food from a child.
    I have not acted with insolence.
    I have not destroyed property belonging to God/Goddess.

    Reply

  21. Did anyone think to ask Rabbi Dr. Michael Strick who worked for YU in Israel at the time and is cc’d on the letter – perhaps he has some insight.

    Reply

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    Reply

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