I read the article and thought it very poor and quite disgusting. The essay by 'Rabbi Charaidi' which it is intended to refute, is not by any means a great work of scholarship, but it is clearly the work of a sincere searcher after truth and this comes through clearly in every word. Conversely, the refutation displays every bad intellectual quality one might care to list.
Nevertheless, it makes one good point, really the only one that defenders of the Zohar have, which is that it was accepted by an overwhelming majority of major Rabbis for over 500 years, and used by a large number of them. For someone with a basically Reform perspective this is, indeed, sufficient to demonstrate that it is part of the Jewish canon, however, from the reactionary perspective this is simply a regrettable fact that we have to cope with as best we can. Another regrettable fact is that the Lurianic kabbala was the direct cause of the Sabbatean rebellion and has inspired dozens of antinomian cults that continue unto our day. Thus kabbala is like the proverbial cancer which one cannot cut out without killing the patient. The traditional Ashkenazi solution to this problem is to say kabbala is holy, but you're not allowed to learn it. This has its issues, for obvious reasons, but the alternative of teaching kabbalah also has much worse problems. I mentioned Ezra Scheinberg י''ש, but a better example is Eliezer Berland י''ש who - though people will lie through their teeth to deny it - was the no. 1 Breslev leader for 2 decades while he was violating אשת איש every other night. There is only one real solution, and that is to embrace the truth. For sure, it will be wrench, but less of a wrench than trying to make Judaism compatible with Zionism.
The medieval authorship of the Zohar is not a matter of dispute for reasonable people, it's a settled issue. It's like asking me for a source that Henry VIII had six wives, not nine, and was the King of England, not Timbuktoo.
If you don't mind, would you be willing to say what you found specifically objectionable about the article? The aim of the article isn't to argue for the antiquity of the Zohar (which the author admits that he doesn't have arguments for), but to counter RC's position that all of Kabbala is fake. His point about the Zohar was to show how much the Gedolim revered kabbalah, but he is not using that to make claims about the Zohar's antiquity. I wouldn't think you would mind the abrasive tone of the article, so I am assuming that you agree with the arguments of RC that kabbalah is fake, and you find the all/most of the counterarguments of Professor Chilonim without merit?
I object to the tone. Perhaps you think this hypocritical in light of my acerbic writings, but I like to think I don't abuse people who don't deserve it. 'Rabbi Charaidi' came off as a very sweet guy, probably from Flatbush or something who frummed out in his late teens and dedicated his life to living up to the Litvish ideal and then got exposed to the dirty secret that this 'mesorah' that your system is based on can just be tossed in the trash when someone 'discovers' a book. It was many years ago I read his piece (essay is slightly too charitable a word to describe it); as Slifkin said, it certainly needed a lot of editing, but it was very honest, and well-meaning. I don't think I respond to people like that, even when they are wrong, in the manner of Professor Chiloni. Perhaps I am deluding myself, but that's what I think.
"I think this undersells the issue. It'd be one thing to say those great Rabbis (amongst them bona fide geniuses and savants) were fooled by a great hoax (De Leon's Zohar), but it's another when you consider that it means many more hoaxes (eg Maggid Mesharim)"
Maggid Mesharim is not a 'hoax'. There are literally tens of thousands of Christians and Hindus and Sufis who have had visions which they were entirely sincere in reporting. If you want to pick your religion based on visions, you are kind of stuck because most religions have them. If you or I take a course in meditation and follow it properly, we will start having visions, though the content of those visions will depend on our own personalities and psychic recesses. Moshe DeLeon was clearly different, a kind of compulsive forger with no ethical boundaries. Similar to Nathan of Gaza, but probably worse.
"What obvious reasons are you referring to?"
The usual criticisms of traditional Ashkenazi Judaism is that it is dry, soulless, intellectually and spiritually barren, obsessed with detail and blind to the big picture etc. and all of this is true to some extent. This is a fairly inevitable consequence of declaring that kabbalah is the moral and spiritual core of Judaism while also saying it is too dangerous for anyone to study it.
"I am asking to be educated, not to argue."
OK, fair enough, and I apologize for being catty. Nevertheless, it is true that since Gershom Scholem set out in the 1920s to vindicate the authenticity of the Zohar as an ancient text and found incontrovertible evidence that it was no such thing, this is no longer an active part of academic research. The only people who continue to argue about the age of the Zohar are cranks and fanatics. It's like arguing about the dae of the 'Donation of Constantine'. For general reading, I would recommend 'Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism' by Scholem and 'Kabbala: New Perspectives' by Moshe Idel, which will give you the gist of the major debates. For more up to date, stuff, see Daniel C Matt, who is very pro Zohar and also thinks there are parts of it that Moshe de Leon didn't write (though, as far as I know he still believes they are medieval).
It is the final sentence that I am interested in because this is basically what Reb Yaakov Emden writes and many others seems to have had such a view (I once saw a list by Rabbi Inbal) and you seemed to indicate such an idea regarding the Teshuvos Hagaonim from Moshe de Leon. Additionally, the Kabbalistic theology does predate Moshe de Leon, and those understood Kabbalah seemingly felt that this was a brilliant work.
'So if Zohar was a forgery and R' Karo taken in by it - how are we to determine whether other aspects of the Oral Law (say, halacha l'Moshe miSinai) weren't also forgeries/hoaxes and that Rabbi Akiva et al were taken in by them?'
I think that the basic answer to this question is that oral tradition does not rely on the holiness of any given Rabbi determining which tradition is legitimate, but correspondence of different tradents. The ideal tradition is like the Kuzari principle (this being so regardless of whether you think the Kuzari argument holds up).
'This applies to Lithuaniansm, but surely not to Hasidic Ashkenazism, right?'
Exactly. The genius of Chassidus is that it gives out kabbalah in controlled doses, enough to give a bit of spark, but not to mess people up. But the truth is it goes wrong a lot i.e. Chabad, Breslev, Lev Tahor etc. The Satmar Rebbe זצ''ל used to say 'the way of the Besht is lost', which I take to be a polite way of saying 'don't look too closely at that stuff'.
'As other commenter Yehoshua pointed out, my operating hypothesis is that R' Emden was close to the truth and that there are kernels that are genuine and those that are not.'
The problem with this is that it completely undermines the whole 'but all these great Rabbis believed in argument' because *none* of these Rabbis ever provided any kind of guide to sifting the allegedly legit parts from the fake bits. Instead, they just treated the whole thing as authoritative. Tefilin on Hol haMoed is the perfect example. The 'issur' is taken from one of the most provably fake parts of the Zohar (it's literally called זוהר החדש i.e. the parts that were added after the original version had already circulated and Moshe de Leon 'discovered' yet more parts of this 'book'), but it was relied upon by all these authorities with the result that most Jews now don't wear tefilin on hol haMoed. Thus, the argument that 'they couldn't have been fooled by a forgery' is disproved because you have admitted they fell for a forgery.
I agree with you regarding halacha. That is why I wrote that I want to start making a bracha.
But regarding theology it appears to me that at least it shouldn't be less than Moreh Nevuchim.
Noone took your concerns about Sabatteanism more seriously than Reb Yaakov Emden yet he held steadfastly to the view that the Zohar contains much material of great worth, as did every gadol byisrael who studied.
Basically, I think anything in the Zohar should be judged on its own merit, similar to how we judge everything of questionable/medieval authorship.
It appears to me that judging it this way there is much insight to gain from it, and it seems all gedolei yisroel felt that way too.
Could you please be more specific exactly what Maggid Mesharim states about the Zohar that you find so convincing?
I can't recall right now but I seem to remember that Maggid Mesharim does have some shtuyos in it, and I don't have a problem with that. It seems that it was a vision similar to a chalom and we know that אין חלום בלא דברים בטלים.
Why does his maggid tell you anything about Tefillin? What about all the tannaim, amoraim and rishonim who rule that you should wear tefillin? They don't have as much ruach hakodesh as the Beis Yosef? I don't see why his maggid should be a consideration at all.
This is absolutely awful. Complete claptrap. I think people like this actually get some kind of perverse kick out of presenting Judaism as a religion for brain damaged mental deficients so they can drive out anyone honest and smart.
The main 'argument', which they arrogantly blabber on about in their stupid Golders Green voices for 20 minutes, is that, if the Zohar was a forgery, all these Rabbis who had total command of the Torah could never have fallen for it. But we have numerous examples of this happening, for example ברייתא דנידה (quoted by Ramban and many rishonim) or dozens of fake quotes from the 'Yerushalmi' in Rishonim. All it really shows is that pre-academic forms of Torah study are actually just inferior to academic modes, no matter how intensive they are.
Then they cherry pick a handful of the hundreds of clear proofs of medieval authorship and, even with these cherry picked examples, employ gross sophistry and borderline lies, shamelessly abusing the ignorance and naivety of their audience.
Then after all this blowhard nonsense, they admit that, in fact, the evidence is overwhelming that it could not have been written by Shimon ben Yohai, and spitball a bunch of cockamamie theories about how this is compatible with Shimon ben Yohai's authorship, which are, to be blunt, wordcel nonsense.
So, all in all, a case study in intellectual dishonesty, the use of words to mislead and obscure the truth, with every underhanded and sleazy rhetorical trick thrown in. A great exposition of everything wrong with orthodox Judaism today.
"But we have numerous examples of this happening, for example ברייתא דנידה (quoted by Ramban and many rishonim) or dozens of fake quotes from the 'Yerushalmi' in Rishonim. All it really shows is that pre-academic forms of Torah study are actually just inferior to academic modes, no matter how intensive they are."
I would say Eldad Hadani's hilchos shechita is a counterexample, that they were skeptical and didn't pasken it l'halacha, at most l'chumra (I am saying this from memory, correct me if I'm wrong). The Braisa d'Nida is quoted by the Ramban for aggadic purposes, right? I'm not sure what you mean by dozens of fake quotes from the Yerushalmi. I get the general sense that the rabbis weren't necessarily able to magically detect forgeries, but they did distinguish between works that were more authoritative or less authoritative, and were more skeptical of things that contradicted the more authoritative sources. Even this Bais Yosef about tefillin is only saying it because he feels that the halacha is not clear from Shas, and only after the minhag in Sefarad changed.
1) Yes, overall the record is not bad, but their point was that it is impossible for this to happen even once because gedolei Torah have some higher level of understanding that precludes them accepting a forgery. Even one counter-example is enough to show it is not so.
2) Fake quotes from Yerushalmi is quite a well studied field. Examples off the top of my head are a non-existent requirement to wear a tallis with 2 tzitzis at the back and 2 in front, and the proof the Magen Avraham brings for not being able to change nusah.
3) The BY says that the *sole* reason the minhag in Spain changed was because of the discovery of the Zohar, and, while he does say that the halacha is not clear from Shas, the reality is that it is clear (unless one adopts a standard of proof that would throw the entirety of halacha into chaos).
2. Thanks, was not familiar with this. Would you happen to have a link? I know the Rishonim will sometimes quote Yerushalmis we don't have or have a different girsa. I never thought that means they're fake, though I can see why somebody would say that. Or is this something specific to certain halachos?
3. Not sure if I agree. As you are aware, we have no small number of minhagim in which we don't do like the halacha as stated in Shas, and that's without any Zohars or any midrashim to help us! And the poskim give post-facto reasons why it's not really against the Gemara. So you might disagree in all those cases and say they are just excuses and really we should change the halacha, but I would think Tefillin on Chol Hamoed can't be worse than those.
3) Yes, we do lean that way in general, but tefilin on hol hamoed is different because the BY states that the aberrant minhag was *already* changed to fit with the talmudic halacha, and then changed back because of the Zohar.
While I am a mekoriist, I've come to learn over the years that a lot of simplistic Rambamism is (surprise!) an over simplification, and not infrequently it's just wrong. Common minhag often has unexpected justification, sometimes revealed by academic talmud research (I'm working on something big right now re. birchos hashachar, or see my very long article vindicating ashkenazi klaf) but every time I go over the tefilin on hol hamoed sugya I'm more and more struck by how the debate is fake and really just about creating doubt where there isn't any.
There's a button to see the transcript right next to the share button.
The transcript is horrible and hilarious but I was still able to follow along with the general flow.
Thanks for giving me a few months to decide. I wear Tefilin on Chol Hamoed, though without a Brachah. I think I will start making a Bracha.
I read the article and thought it very poor and quite disgusting. The essay by 'Rabbi Charaidi' which it is intended to refute, is not by any means a great work of scholarship, but it is clearly the work of a sincere searcher after truth and this comes through clearly in every word. Conversely, the refutation displays every bad intellectual quality one might care to list.
Nevertheless, it makes one good point, really the only one that defenders of the Zohar have, which is that it was accepted by an overwhelming majority of major Rabbis for over 500 years, and used by a large number of them. For someone with a basically Reform perspective this is, indeed, sufficient to demonstrate that it is part of the Jewish canon, however, from the reactionary perspective this is simply a regrettable fact that we have to cope with as best we can. Another regrettable fact is that the Lurianic kabbala was the direct cause of the Sabbatean rebellion and has inspired dozens of antinomian cults that continue unto our day. Thus kabbala is like the proverbial cancer which one cannot cut out without killing the patient. The traditional Ashkenazi solution to this problem is to say kabbala is holy, but you're not allowed to learn it. This has its issues, for obvious reasons, but the alternative of teaching kabbalah also has much worse problems. I mentioned Ezra Scheinberg י''ש, but a better example is Eliezer Berland י''ש who - though people will lie through their teeth to deny it - was the no. 1 Breslev leader for 2 decades while he was violating אשת איש every other night. There is only one real solution, and that is to embrace the truth. For sure, it will be wrench, but less of a wrench than trying to make Judaism compatible with Zionism.
The medieval authorship of the Zohar is not a matter of dispute for reasonable people, it's a settled issue. It's like asking me for a source that Henry VIII had six wives, not nine, and was the King of England, not Timbuktoo.
If you don't mind, would you be willing to say what you found specifically objectionable about the article? The aim of the article isn't to argue for the antiquity of the Zohar (which the author admits that he doesn't have arguments for), but to counter RC's position that all of Kabbala is fake. His point about the Zohar was to show how much the Gedolim revered kabbalah, but he is not using that to make claims about the Zohar's antiquity. I wouldn't think you would mind the abrasive tone of the article, so I am assuming that you agree with the arguments of RC that kabbalah is fake, and you find the all/most of the counterarguments of Professor Chilonim without merit?
I object to the tone. Perhaps you think this hypocritical in light of my acerbic writings, but I like to think I don't abuse people who don't deserve it. 'Rabbi Charaidi' came off as a very sweet guy, probably from Flatbush or something who frummed out in his late teens and dedicated his life to living up to the Litvish ideal and then got exposed to the dirty secret that this 'mesorah' that your system is based on can just be tossed in the trash when someone 'discovers' a book. It was many years ago I read his piece (essay is slightly too charitable a word to describe it); as Slifkin said, it certainly needed a lot of editing, but it was very honest, and well-meaning. I don't think I respond to people like that, even when they are wrong, in the manner of Professor Chiloni. Perhaps I am deluding myself, but that's what I think.
"I think this undersells the issue. It'd be one thing to say those great Rabbis (amongst them bona fide geniuses and savants) were fooled by a great hoax (De Leon's Zohar), but it's another when you consider that it means many more hoaxes (eg Maggid Mesharim)"
Maggid Mesharim is not a 'hoax'. There are literally tens of thousands of Christians and Hindus and Sufis who have had visions which they were entirely sincere in reporting. If you want to pick your religion based on visions, you are kind of stuck because most religions have them. If you or I take a course in meditation and follow it properly, we will start having visions, though the content of those visions will depend on our own personalities and psychic recesses. Moshe DeLeon was clearly different, a kind of compulsive forger with no ethical boundaries. Similar to Nathan of Gaza, but probably worse.
"What obvious reasons are you referring to?"
The usual criticisms of traditional Ashkenazi Judaism is that it is dry, soulless, intellectually and spiritually barren, obsessed with detail and blind to the big picture etc. and all of this is true to some extent. This is a fairly inevitable consequence of declaring that kabbalah is the moral and spiritual core of Judaism while also saying it is too dangerous for anyone to study it.
"I am asking to be educated, not to argue."
OK, fair enough, and I apologize for being catty. Nevertheless, it is true that since Gershom Scholem set out in the 1920s to vindicate the authenticity of the Zohar as an ancient text and found incontrovertible evidence that it was no such thing, this is no longer an active part of academic research. The only people who continue to argue about the age of the Zohar are cranks and fanatics. It's like arguing about the dae of the 'Donation of Constantine'. For general reading, I would recommend 'Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism' by Scholem and 'Kabbala: New Perspectives' by Moshe Idel, which will give you the gist of the major debates. For more up to date, stuff, see Daniel C Matt, who is very pro Zohar and also thinks there are parts of it that Moshe de Leon didn't write (though, as far as I know he still believes they are medieval).
It is the final sentence that I am interested in because this is basically what Reb Yaakov Emden writes and many others seems to have had such a view (I once saw a list by Rabbi Inbal) and you seemed to indicate such an idea regarding the Teshuvos Hagaonim from Moshe de Leon. Additionally, the Kabbalistic theology does predate Moshe de Leon, and those understood Kabbalah seemingly felt that this was a brilliant work.
'So if Zohar was a forgery and R' Karo taken in by it - how are we to determine whether other aspects of the Oral Law (say, halacha l'Moshe miSinai) weren't also forgeries/hoaxes and that Rabbi Akiva et al were taken in by them?'
I think that the basic answer to this question is that oral tradition does not rely on the holiness of any given Rabbi determining which tradition is legitimate, but correspondence of different tradents. The ideal tradition is like the Kuzari principle (this being so regardless of whether you think the Kuzari argument holds up).
'This applies to Lithuaniansm, but surely not to Hasidic Ashkenazism, right?'
Exactly. The genius of Chassidus is that it gives out kabbalah in controlled doses, enough to give a bit of spark, but not to mess people up. But the truth is it goes wrong a lot i.e. Chabad, Breslev, Lev Tahor etc. The Satmar Rebbe זצ''ל used to say 'the way of the Besht is lost', which I take to be a polite way of saying 'don't look too closely at that stuff'.
'As other commenter Yehoshua pointed out, my operating hypothesis is that R' Emden was close to the truth and that there are kernels that are genuine and those that are not.'
The problem with this is that it completely undermines the whole 'but all these great Rabbis believed in argument' because *none* of these Rabbis ever provided any kind of guide to sifting the allegedly legit parts from the fake bits. Instead, they just treated the whole thing as authoritative. Tefilin on Hol haMoed is the perfect example. The 'issur' is taken from one of the most provably fake parts of the Zohar (it's literally called זוהר החדש i.e. the parts that were added after the original version had already circulated and Moshe de Leon 'discovered' yet more parts of this 'book'), but it was relied upon by all these authorities with the result that most Jews now don't wear tefilin on hol haMoed. Thus, the argument that 'they couldn't have been fooled by a forgery' is disproved because you have admitted they fell for a forgery.
I agree with you regarding halacha. That is why I wrote that I want to start making a bracha.
But regarding theology it appears to me that at least it shouldn't be less than Moreh Nevuchim.
Noone took your concerns about Sabatteanism more seriously than Reb Yaakov Emden yet he held steadfastly to the view that the Zohar contains much material of great worth, as did every gadol byisrael who studied.
Basically, I think anything in the Zohar should be judged on its own merit, similar to how we judge everything of questionable/medieval authorship.
It appears to me that judging it this way there is much insight to gain from it, and it seems all gedolei yisroel felt that way too.
Could you please be more specific exactly what Maggid Mesharim states about the Zohar that you find so convincing?
I can't recall right now but I seem to remember that Maggid Mesharim does have some shtuyos in it, and I don't have a problem with that. It seems that it was a vision similar to a chalom and we know that אין חלום בלא דברים בטלים.
Why does his maggid tell you anything about Tefillin? What about all the tannaim, amoraim and rishonim who rule that you should wear tefillin? They don't have as much ruach hakodesh as the Beis Yosef? I don't see why his maggid should be a consideration at all.
Another source taking the other side on the zohar controversy - though a podcast this time, not an article:
https://rabbiaubreyhersh.podbean.com/e/kabbalah-ii-heresy-spain-1290-1350/
This is absolutely awful. Complete claptrap. I think people like this actually get some kind of perverse kick out of presenting Judaism as a religion for brain damaged mental deficients so they can drive out anyone honest and smart.
The main 'argument', which they arrogantly blabber on about in their stupid Golders Green voices for 20 minutes, is that, if the Zohar was a forgery, all these Rabbis who had total command of the Torah could never have fallen for it. But we have numerous examples of this happening, for example ברייתא דנידה (quoted by Ramban and many rishonim) or dozens of fake quotes from the 'Yerushalmi' in Rishonim. All it really shows is that pre-academic forms of Torah study are actually just inferior to academic modes, no matter how intensive they are.
Then they cherry pick a handful of the hundreds of clear proofs of medieval authorship and, even with these cherry picked examples, employ gross sophistry and borderline lies, shamelessly abusing the ignorance and naivety of their audience.
Then after all this blowhard nonsense, they admit that, in fact, the evidence is overwhelming that it could not have been written by Shimon ben Yohai, and spitball a bunch of cockamamie theories about how this is compatible with Shimon ben Yohai's authorship, which are, to be blunt, wordcel nonsense.
So, all in all, a case study in intellectual dishonesty, the use of words to mislead and obscure the truth, with every underhanded and sleazy rhetorical trick thrown in. A great exposition of everything wrong with orthodox Judaism today.
"But we have numerous examples of this happening, for example ברייתא דנידה (quoted by Ramban and many rishonim) or dozens of fake quotes from the 'Yerushalmi' in Rishonim. All it really shows is that pre-academic forms of Torah study are actually just inferior to academic modes, no matter how intensive they are."
I would say Eldad Hadani's hilchos shechita is a counterexample, that they were skeptical and didn't pasken it l'halacha, at most l'chumra (I am saying this from memory, correct me if I'm wrong). The Braisa d'Nida is quoted by the Ramban for aggadic purposes, right? I'm not sure what you mean by dozens of fake quotes from the Yerushalmi. I get the general sense that the rabbis weren't necessarily able to magically detect forgeries, but they did distinguish between works that were more authoritative or less authoritative, and were more skeptical of things that contradicted the more authoritative sources. Even this Bais Yosef about tefillin is only saying it because he feels that the halacha is not clear from Shas, and only after the minhag in Sefarad changed.
1) Yes, overall the record is not bad, but their point was that it is impossible for this to happen even once because gedolei Torah have some higher level of understanding that precludes them accepting a forgery. Even one counter-example is enough to show it is not so.
2) Fake quotes from Yerushalmi is quite a well studied field. Examples off the top of my head are a non-existent requirement to wear a tallis with 2 tzitzis at the back and 2 in front, and the proof the Magen Avraham brings for not being able to change nusah.
3) The BY says that the *sole* reason the minhag in Spain changed was because of the discovery of the Zohar, and, while he does say that the halacha is not clear from Shas, the reality is that it is clear (unless one adopts a standard of proof that would throw the entirety of halacha into chaos).
1. Agreed
2. Thanks, was not familiar with this. Would you happen to have a link? I know the Rishonim will sometimes quote Yerushalmis we don't have or have a different girsa. I never thought that means they're fake, though I can see why somebody would say that. Or is this something specific to certain halachos?
3. Not sure if I agree. As you are aware, we have no small number of minhagim in which we don't do like the halacha as stated in Shas, and that's without any Zohars or any midrashim to help us! And the poskim give post-facto reasons why it's not really against the Gemara. So you might disagree in all those cases and say they are just excuses and really we should change the halacha, but I would think Tefillin on Chol Hamoed can't be worse than those.
2) https://www.herzog.ac.il/vtc/tvunot/netuim/netuim20_aptowitzer.pdf
3) Yes, we do lean that way in general, but tefilin on hol hamoed is different because the BY states that the aberrant minhag was *already* changed to fit with the talmudic halacha, and then changed back because of the Zohar.
While I am a mekoriist, I've come to learn over the years that a lot of simplistic Rambamism is (surprise!) an over simplification, and not infrequently it's just wrong. Common minhag often has unexpected justification, sometimes revealed by academic talmud research (I'm working on something big right now re. birchos hashachar, or see my very long article vindicating ashkenazi klaf) but every time I go over the tefilin on hol hamoed sugya I'm more and more struck by how the debate is fake and really just about creating doubt where there isn't any.
Re the ספר ירושלמי I recommend reading what ר עמנואל מולקנדוב writes in ירחון האוצר יט and כ and ר אהרן גבאי in ירחון האוצר כז and מג
https://forum.otzar.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=31425&sid=5520eba15a9366017614bbee0862de22&start=160
https://forum.otzar.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=31425&start=200
https://forum.otzar.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=31425&start=200
Though I don't think anyone is saying it isn't a legitimate sefer but merely that it isn't from Chazal
>The Braisa d'Nida is quoted by the Ramban for aggadic purposes, right?
More like historical purposes. (The only place he quotes it is בראשית לא,לה יעו"ש בהשמטות ומילואים מוה"ק)
Thanks, looks interesting