More Thoughts on Prescriptive vs. Descriptive, or: How to Organize a Library

Sometimes, People Are Allowed to be Wrong, But Only if People Listen to Them

So I have trouble organizing things already, and when it comes to my library, particularly of Jewish texts, it’s even harder to organize. Traditionally, Jewish libraries have been organized by subject and time period: Rabbinic, Rishonim, Acharonim, maybe Geonim gets wedged in there if you count that as a separate time period. And then Tanach, Halakha, and Hashkafa. That’s how you organize your “seforim”

Go read Dr. Tamar Ron Marvin’s series on the Geonim, people! She does a great job in general on explaining who the writers in the canon are, and I’m looking forward to what she does on the Geonim, a time period I know nothing about. I’m a little bit mad, because I eventually wanted to cover this stuff in my “Who The Heck is That Guy” podcast series, but she is doing a better and more consistent job than me, to the point I’ve considered ceasing work on it. I probably won’t, but if you like that podcast, read her stuff! Link here.

The problem for me is, especially given my penchant for collecting heretics and outcasts, is that not every member of the medieval era is a rishon necessarily, nor are all members of the modern era acharonim. Some things I have not because they’re “seforim”¹ (and I’ll define that term in a bit) but because they’re interesting from a historical perspective. Where do I put my Azaria de Rossi and Naftali Herz Wessely? What about academic works discussing the time periods? Are those all modern works, or do they belong with the subject of the rishonim?

So what I have ended up doing is defining a “sefer” as a book that is part of the Orthodox Prescriptive Canon. In other words, if a book is something I would be able to quote in a rabbinic work as a source of authoritative doctrine or law, it goes on the “Seforim shelves”. My mikraos gedolos chumashim, my shas, my shulchan aruch, assorted other works go on the seforim shelf. Academic works and books of academic interest go on the “Jewish studies” shelves.²

Where this breaks down a little bit is for books that describe the contents of prescriptive works. Say, a book on contemporary problems in halacha, or a book outlining approaches to Jewish philosophy. How is that different from prescriptive works who also quote precedent and sources in order to make their arguments? At what point does our book on contemporary problems in halakha become just psak? At what point does our work of philosophy become something beyond a quotation of prior authorities?

So I think there’s a second, kind of counter-intuitive question to ask if we want to sort our books into descriptive and prescriptive³. Phrased admittedly provocatively, is this book allowed to be wrong? In other words, if I come across a factual error or an oversimplification in this work, is that something that invalidates the work, thus revealing that the work’s authority is dependent on merely repeating what others have already said? Or, is this factual error/oversimplification merely an act of creation, of articulating a chiddush in peshat/halacha/hashkafa⁴, revealing that the work is an authority in of itself?

I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about. I recently came back from a educator’s conference organized by the R. Jonathan Sacks foundation, and it was awesome, and the people running it were awesome, and I have nothing but good things to say about the conference and organization. Also, R. Jonathan Sacks’s works were formative for me, articulating a humane and sensitive vision of Judaism that was lacking in the world I grew up in.⁵ My copies of his works are dog eared and heavily marked with underlines and circled sources in the bibliography. R. Sacks has had a huge effect on me personally.

But one thing that came up in discussion with some people at the conference was that as I’ve gotten older, I notice things in R. Sacks’s works that don’t quite match up with the sources or historical reality. For instance, and I don’t know exact page numbers or even which work it is in, but at what point while extolling the value of education and the Jewish emphasis upon it, he said something like “Judaism has always believed in education, for both boys and girls.” When I read that when I was younger, I was like “hell yes we do! I love Judaism!,” but now, with the benefit of a greater awareness of Jewish history and the role women have been relegated to, I am left very much wanting to believe him but being unable to do so, because factually speaking…..nah. I’d like it to be true, but it ain’t.

So the question becomes, was R. Sacks writing prescriptively, in which statements about education and specifically gender equity in education are to be taken as pronouncements of Jewish values going forward regardless of what the actual historical data shows, whose truth depends instead on his authority to make such claims? Or was he writing descriptively, in which case the falsification of his historical claim invalidates it? Is he creating a statement of Jewish philosophy, or is he merely describing Jewish philosophy? Does he go on my seforim shelf, or on my Jewish studies shelf?