User:Lisa/Novak

David Novak
Unfortunately, if a reliable source uses poor scholarship, that fact can't be mentioned in a Wikipedia article unless another reliable source makes the point. And I don't feel like writing an entire book about how bad Novak's scholarship is. A blog entry, maybe, but more than that would be a waste of time, in my opinion.

Tim (SkyWriter) cited David Novak earlier, and what he attributed to Novak was so wild that I had a hard time believing Tim. But to whatever extent I was skeptical of Tim's veracity in this case, I both withdraw and apologize for that skepticism. Tim correctly reported what Novak wrote. Novak, however, deserves condemnation for his shoddy use of sources and his presentation of half truths. I'm of two minds regarding Novak. I don't know whether he was so intent on making the case of his book that he was willing to take shortcuts, or whether he just messed up.

To begin with, the book in question is Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A Jewish Justification. The title alone tells you that the book isn't going to be a work of historic scholarship, but rather a polemic/apology for a kind of dialogue which is very controversial among Jews. In fact, the first section of the book is entitled "Jewish Opposition to Dialogue" (pp. 3-9).

I'm not going to go through the whole book poking at all of the mistakes Novak makes. I'm not interested enough. But I do need to address the material on shituf, because it's this material that Tim wants to use as a source for what shituf is. This material appears on pp. 46-49.

Novak cites the Talmud (Sanhedrin 63b) as forbidding a Jew to set up a partnership (shutfut) with a non-Jew, because the non-Jew might be required to swear by his god. The Tosfot on that statement brings the view of Rabbenu Tam that "even though they associate [meshatfim] the name of God and something else, we don't find that it is forbidden to (indirectly) cause others to associate."

It would probably be a cheap shot for me to note that Novak transliterates the word for "associate" as mishtatfim, a related word that's more common in modern Hebrew. Nevertheless, it speaks to both his scholarship and his knowledge of Hebrew.

At this point, at the end of page 47, Novak says something astounding. He claims that Rabbenu Tam has "reworked" the idea of shutfut, changing it from partnership between Jew and non-Jew to the relationship between the non-Jew and his god. While the words shutfut and meshatfim share the same root stem in Hebrew, they do not share the same grammatical form (binyan). The noun derived from meshatfim is shituf. And at no time does Rabbenu Tam ever use shutfut to refer to the relationship between a non-Jew and his god.

Then on page 48, Novak says that the rabbis were able to extend this leniency even to the Christian trinity because the term shutfut, which Novak claims had been reinterpreted from meaning a partnership between two people into a relationship between Christians and their god was "now seen as being interchangeable with a related term, shittuf, which in philosophical Hebrew denites an interdivine relationship."

How many mistakes can be made in a single sentence? In this case, it'd be three:


 * The first mistake is Novak's claim that shutfut was understood as referring to a relationship between Christians and their god, something which he appears to have invented from whole cloth.


 * Next, Novak claims that the reinterpreted shutfut was then considered interchangable with shituf. Since the latter refers to a divine relationship and the former refers only to a human partnership (the Hebrew shutaf, or partner, with the suffix -ut, indicating a state), this is an empty claim.


 * Lastly, Novak claims that shituf refers to an "interdivine relationship". I suspect that he means "intradivine", but criticizing his English as well might be seen as going too far.  Tim, following Novak, wants to contrast this with an "extradivine relationship" (shutfut, although this word has never meant anything but a human partnership).  The difference being that an interdivine one would be between parts of a single deity, while an extradivine one would be between two different deities.  But there's not a single rabbinic source that speaks in these terms, and Novak appears to have made this up as well.

For these bloopers, he cites Jacob Katz, in ''Exclusiveness and Tolerance", pp. 163-164, particularly note 2 on page 163. I didn't have to take this one out of the library, because Google has most of the book available online, including those pages.

Katz, unfortunately for Novak, does not claim that shutfut was used in the way Novak claims. Nor does Katz equate shituf and shutfut. Nor does Katz say anything about interdivine, intradivine or extradivine relationships. Nor do any rabbinic sources.

Yes, Novak says all of this. But he brings not a single source for any of it. Except for Katz, who as everyone can see said nothing of the sort.

So is Novak's book a reliable source? It depends. Is it a reliable source for what shituf is? Certainly not. Novak has originated certain views, but he has no sources of his own for them. But it's a published book, and Novak is a Conservative rabbi. Certainly that should confer a degree of reliability upon the book as a source. And clearly it does. The book is a reliable source for the iconoclastic and novel ideas of one man: David Novak. As such, I used the book as a source for the statement "It is frequently used as a reason to justify interfaith dialog with Christians".

I would not suggest that it is a reliable source for anything else in this article. Not even in the Conservative section, because to the best of my knowledge, despite his being a Conservative rabbi, his views are purely his own here, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Conservative Movement.