Malbim

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MALBIM

MALBIM , acronym (MaLBIM) of Meʾir Loeb ben Yeḥiʾel Mikhaʾel (1809–1879), European rabbi and exegete. Born in Volhynia, Russia, Malbim was chief rabbi of Romania from 1858 to 1864, having earlier served as rabbi to a number of communities in eastern Europe.

Malbim's life coincided with the struggle of European Jewry to achieve political rights. Some Jews, considering that the Judaism of the ghetto impeded their acceptance by their Christian neighbors, drifted away from Judaism. Others, who called themselves reformers, questioned the binding authority of the oral law, much of which seemed to them incompatible with the spirit of their age and therefore an impediment to emancipation. Malbim, a passionate and unyielding exponent of traditional Judaism, challenged the new Reform movement in his sermons and in his major work, a multivolume commentary on the entire Hebrew Bible. Ha-Torah ve-ha-mitsvah, his commentary on the Pentateuch, and Miqraʾei qodesh, his commentary on the Prophets and Hagiographa, were published between 1845 and 1876. In them, Malbim undertook to demonstrate that both the written law and the oral law form a unity, each component of which can be understood only through the other, and that, since the entire corpus of law and lore contained in the Talmud and Midrash had been revealed at Sinai together with the written law, no provision of either could be abrogated or amended. His stern refusal to compromise his convictions brought him into repeated conflict with the leaders of the communities he served, and his rabbinate was not a happy one.

Malbim introduces his commentary to Leviticus with a detailed analysis of 613 features of Hebrew lexicography, grammar, and biblical style that he insists had been forgotten by the medieval Jewish exegetes. He denies, for example, that true synonyms are to be found in the Hebrew Bible. Instead, an apparent synonym really introduces a new thought that demands its own exposition. Every word in scripture is the only word that could have been used in that particular context, and every verse conveys its own sublime meaning, though often that lofty message can be fathomed only by reference to Talmud, Midrash, and the literature of the Jewish mystics.

Because of his vigorous advocacy of traditional Judaism, Malbim remains a revered figure in Orthodox Jewish circles. Unfortunately, he is little known to the world of biblical scholarship because few of his writings have been published in English.

Bibliography

Malbim's commentary on the Hebrew Bible has been republished in four volumes in the series "Otsar ha-perushim" (Jerusalem, 1956–1957). Volume 1, on Genesis, has been translated into English by Zvi Faier in two volumes (Jerusalem, 1978–1979). M. M. Yoshor has written a biography in Hebrew, Ha-gaʾon Malbim (Jerusalem, 1976). Yehoshua Horowitz's brief article on Malbim in the Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971) is the best source of information on Malbim in English.