The Bat Man, Part II

Another Perek Shirah surprise

FYI: I have availability as scholar-in-residence in the US for Shabbos of September 5th and October 24th. Please write to me if you’d like to arrange something.

And now for something lighter.

Many years ago I published a post called “I am the Bat Man.” It recounted a story being publicized by a kollel about a problem with several infestations of bats in people’s homes. The story goes that the bat curse was interpreted and solved via studying and reciting the bat’s passuk in Perek Shirah, an ancient rabbinic text that lists various elements of the natural world and associates each with a verse that reflects its spiritual message.

The funny thing was that the bat is not actually in Perek Shirah. But it appears in the popular English translation of Pereh Shirah published by ArtScroll, as a (mis)translation of a bird called retzifi. And they got this translation from me!

I had previously published my own extensive commentary on Perek Shirah, called Nature’s Song (available from Amazon and from the museum website). ArtScroll made generous use of it (as they graciously acknowledged in the first and third editions, but not in the second edition, which came out during the notorious ban on my books when I was considered too controversial to mention). In my book, I had written that the identity of the retzifi is unknown, but that I would translate it as a bat because that matched the theme of the passuk (which I subsequently retracted in the second edition and changed to a type of dove called a laughing dove). Little did I imagine that my mistake would one day be rated as the actual identification of the retzifi and create mystical powers for driving away bats!

Meanwhile, there’s a new commentary on Perek Shirah that was just published by ArtScroll. And this time the retzifi is not a bat or a laughing dove. Instead, there’s a surprising new species that takes their place - and it illustrates a difference between rationalist and non-rationalist approaches to Judaism.

The new book is called A Daily Dose of Perek Shirah and was authored by Rabbi David Sutton, son-in-law of Rabbi Nosson Scherman. He’s of a zealous nature; during the controversy over my books, he gave a talk titled “We Believe In Midrashim” about the importance of believing every statement made by Chazal as being literally true. The highlights included his insistence that the Biblical giant Og was 800 feet tall, that dinosaur bones are remnants of Og’s pets, that all Jews in all communities always believed in the literal truth of Midrashim, and that those who follow Rambam’s approach and dismiss literalism are making a mockery of Chazal. (A very sharp response was published in Hakira.)