Eulogy for Professor Baruch Levine, of blessed memory

Delivered at his funeral, Bet El-Kesser Israel Cemetery, Hamden, CT December 19, 2021, by Lawrence H. Schiffman

I am probably the person here who knew Baruch Levine longest. I first met him as a freshman at Brandeis when I took his Talmud course. In a sense for me it was an introduction to two things: the scientific scholarly approach to the Gemara and to what it meant to study with Baruch. I feel that I should speak here about him from three points of view: from the point of view of my personal obligation to him and relationship with him, as a representative of New York University, and finally as a representative of the fields of Biblical and Judaic Studies to which he made so great a contribution. 

The sages teach us that the commandment of ואהבת לרעך כמוך, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” is an overarching commandment that covers an entire list of obligations, positive and negative that appear as separate commandments. Perhaps everything that we may say today can be summed up by the statement of our NYU colleague Dr. Shayne Figueroa, “In addition to being a legendary scholar he was one of the most cheerful and kind people I have known. May his memory be for a blessing.”

On a personal level I cannot even begin to express my gratitude to him. His decision, made shortly after his arrival at NYU, to bring me there to teach Second Temple and rabbinic literature, brought me from a backwater of Jewish Studies to an institution that after its own enormous improvement would become a major center for our field. The many years of friendly discussion of so much Torah with Baruch presented an unparalleled learning opportunity that went way beyond the few courses I was able to take with him at Brandeis. I learned from him so much that I could not even begin to describe it. That constant combination of friendship and scholarly interchange was what made being one of his students and/or colleagues such a privilege.

Baruch’s arrival at NYU was not just the addition of a new faculty member. It meant that the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures was committing itself to becoming a strong center of Biblical and Judaic Studies, as well as encompassing the study of the ancient Near East. Baruch thrived in that environment and in fact was greatly hesitant about leaving it during the complex discussions that led up to the founding of the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. In those years Baruch represented not just his own field of interest but the notion that Jewish Studies had to be pursued in a purely academic manner. 

Despite initial misgivings, Baruch eagerly jumped into the process of setting the new department on its proper course. In certain ways, the decision to go in this direction, as opposed to some of the other alternatives, was a victory for Baruch’s concept of the field even if, as I mentioned, he had hesitations about leaving what was then abbreviated as NELL. Among Baruch’s most important contributions to the new structure was precisely the friendliness, devotion to students and colleagues, and the entire notion of the scholarly quest that made his work so significant. He set an amazing example for all of us. 

I could recite here the enormous accomplishments in scholarship that he achieved during his years at NYU. Suffice it for me to mention only the Jewish Publication Society commentary on Leviticus, the two-volume Anchor Bible commentary on Numbers, and publication of the Hebrew, Aramaic and Nabatean Bar Kokhba documents. The latter may never have seen the light of day if not for his involvement. All of these projects and many other interests spawned his numerous articles that have appeared in a two-volume collection. For those of us who had the privilege of working closely with him, the example he set in his devotion to scholarship was incomparable.

For the field as a whole Baruch’s service was extremely significant. Many do not realize that in the early years of the previous century Jewish biblical scholars were only in the process of being accepted into this American academic guild. Baruch was one of those who succeeded in helping to bridge this gap by virtue of his scholarship and personality. For those of us at NYU and for even wider circles, he served effectively as an ambassador to Israeli scholarship, constantly being involved in bringing Israeli scholars to speak to American academic audiences and himself spending enormous amounts of time in Jerusalem. 

Among his most important activities was his early role in the Association for Jewish Studies. Here, during his presidency, he presided over meetings at which issues of academic objectivity (a term we might not prefer today) of the field were being hammered out. Perhaps most importantly, under his leadership the new organization as well as the field as a whole successfully rebuffed attempts by the Jewish educational establishment and some communal organizations to somehow or another take control of Jewish Studies. Again, Baruch stood stridently and effectively for the development of an American community of Judaic studies scholars that would function according to the normal canons of academic scholarship.

For Baruch, none of this was in conflict with his identity and commitment as a Jew, and it is to this area that I now turn. Baruch liked to relate something he said when he was being hired NYU to a dean who was also a member of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures. He told him that he was a Jew from the top of his head, to another area we will not mention, to the tip of his toes, and that if in any way this did not receive respect they would never hear the end of it. While Baruch was dedicated to what he would have termed pure academic scholarship, there is no question that his scholarship and teaching, not to mention his entire personality, was greatly affected by his experiences in Jewish learning, at the Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland during his high school years and then at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he so greatly prized his studies with Professor Shaul Lieberman. He managed to integrate what he termed the “apperceptive mass” of traditional Jewish knowledge that he had acquired at those institutions, as well as the academic learning that he had gained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, with his Semitics training with Cyrus Gordon at Brandeis. But when it came to methodology, that wide massive knowledge, and the way he treated students and colleagues, one might say that he exuded that traditional Jewish background to an amazing extent. Perhaps that was the key to his success and to his charm.

I want to tell three stories about Baruch as a Jew. Beforehand, I want to take the liberty on his behalf to thank his friends from Congregation Beth El-Kesser Israel. He treasured his participation in the shul and felt so welcome there. And the shul continued to give support to him even after his regular participation became impossible. Here today, this synagogue, lead by its rabbi, took on the responsibilities of his burial as they did for his beloved wife Corinne.  

Each one of these stories was told to me by Baruch. And these are all beyond the tremendous pride that he felt in being a Levite, a descendant of those who served in the Temple the rituals of which he studied so assiduously. 

Baruch was sitting on a plane once and he realized that he was sitting next to a fellow Jew. They started talking and he asked his seat neighbor where he lived. Then he asked this fellow what the Jewish community was like there. The man responded by telling Baruch that they had a kosher pizzeria and a kosher Chinese restaurant. After a bit of silence in which Baruch processed this he said to the man, “Do you realize what you just said? I asked you what the Jewish community was like and you didn’t tell me about a shul, a school, a mikveh, you told me about pizza and a Chinese restaurant?” To this the man replied, “You’re right, I guess I wasn’t thinking.” Baruch did understand what was important.

Once, when Baruch crossed the Atlantic from the US to Israel or from Israel to the US, and I don’t remember which one it was, he realized that he had forgotten to take his pair of tefillin, and so he went to buy them. He described the entire process to me for about 15 minutes. What was so beautiful about this discussion that we had was that one could see the amazing שמחה של מצוה, the joy in fulfilling the mitzvah, that he derived from this experience.

The final story is about a dean at NYU who was also named Levine and who sadly was passing away of cancer. The man was not connected at all to the Jewish community. Somehow or another, the dean’s office got involved in making his funeral arrangements. They knew that Baruch was an ordained rabbi and sought his help and wanted him to officiate. Over some months in which this man was declining, they kept on calling Baruch from the dean’s office asking about how to make funeral arrangements in advance. While he was willing to give them the name of Riverside Chapels, he kept on telling them over and over that it is not in the Jewish tradition to make advanced plans for the funeral if the person was still alive. So he put them off over and over. He did agree to officiate if an active rabbi would also be present, and then Dean Larry Raphael ז”ל of Hebrew Union College joined Baruch at the funeral. It turned out that Dean Levine had a 90-year-old mother. As they finished the burial and were leaving the cemetery the woman said to Baruch, “My son was born a Jew and because of you he died a Jew.” This remark from this unfortunate mourning mother meant an amazing amount to Baruch.  He could not stop relating the story to anyone he could for several months. Again, the satisfaction of doing this great mitzvah. 

Let me close with an adaptation of a passage from Deuteronomy 28:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה, בָּעִיר; וּבָרוּךְ אַתָּה, בַּשָּׂדֶה. Blessed are you in the city in which your teaching and scholarship flourished, and blessed are you among all those who pursue the fields of Biblical and Judaic Studies;

בָּרוּךְ פְּרִי-בִטְנְךָ וּפְרִי אַדְמָתְךָ, וּפְרִי בְהֶמְתֶּךָ–שְׁגַר אֲלָפֶיךָ, וְעַשְׁתְּרוֹת צֹאנֶךָ. Blessed be all the fruits of your research and those many students who studied with you, as well as the research and teaching of all of them that are to your credit.

בָּרוּךְ טַנְאֲךָ, וּמִשְׁאַרְתֶּךָ. Blessed be all the future researchers and their work that will be indebted to yours. 

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה, בְּבֹאֶךָ; וּבָרוּךְ אַתָּה, בְּצֵאתֶךָ. Blessed were you when you entered this world, and blessed are you as you leave it.

ה’ נתן וה’ לקח, יהי שם ה’ מבורך. “The Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (NJPS).

לך בשלום. May you go in peace.