By Rabbi Gidon Rothstein, WebYeshiva.orgIn recent decades, women have been re-examining their roles in many areas of life, including religion. Some of what they have found, areas into which they have fought to be included, have redounded to the good of all, enriching society as a whole. In Judaism, that process has uncovered areas of sensitivity, where the religion seems to relegate women to a role they find restrictive or dismissive. One particular such area has been the unequal levels of obligation between men and women, the fact of women having been exempted from many mitzvot. Those exemptions in turn prevent them from serving in certain public roles, such as blowing shofar for the congregation, since helping others fulfill a mitzvah requires that the agent be equally obligated in that mitzvah.Even leaving aside the question of participation in the public community, which is complicated by other factors, many women feel excluded by the very fact of being exempted from mitzvot such as the study of Torah, wearing tefillin, hearing shofar on Rosh haShanah, or sitting in a Sukkah on Sukkot. So many men experience these observances as central to their religiosity, that many if not most women see them as ineluctably central to religiosity, period. If so, the exemption can send the message that Judaism either cares less about women’s relationship with God, or does not imagine that women are capable of building such a relationship as well as men.A Different Lens: A More Autonomous ReligiosityIn the light of previous posts and what they have shown about the role of personal decisions in a religious life, I think we can look at women’s exemption from manyמצוות עשה שהזמן גרמא– positive commandments with a time element to them– with new eyes. Doing so will, I hope, further our understanding of how important personal input is to the religion while also rejuvenating our recognition that Judaism values women’s religious development as much as men’s.The first step is noticing that we have already seen that the Torah itself does not always value specificity of obligation as the highest value. Not being included in certain obligations excludes women in one way—they cannot be agents of fulfillment of that mitzvah, as we mentioned—but might leave them with an equally valuable result, a greater autonomy to shape their service of God as they see fit. Especially if some examples of God’s commanding us were responses to the human failure to develop the proper type of autonomy, women’s reduced heteronomy need not carry the bite it otherwise might.This suggestion differs, I hope, from the well-known, roundly rejected argument that women did not need certain mitzvot because of their greater innate spirituality or because other mitzvot already trained them sufficiently. As I have argued elsewhere, there is no obvious evidence that women are naturally better at serving God, or reason to believe that a woman’s obligations regarding her monthly cycle should teach her about seasonal mitzvot such as sukkah or shofar.My argument instead is that the category of positive time-related mitzvot, מצוות עשה שהזמן גרמא, establishes specific acts of worship, not general categories of religiosity. Since those acts all support broader goals—goals in which women are equally obligated—women’s exemption does not leave them out of anything of significance to the religion. Rather, while men are guided more specifically in how to achieve a proper religiosity, women are left with greater freedom as to how to shape their religiosity.Exemption is Not Exclusion: The Availability of These MitzvotI should also pause to stress the difference between exemption and exclusion. Women often feel that they are “left out” of these mitzvot. That impression is accurate in the realm of helping others fulfill their obligation and in the level of reward we assume each person receives for that particular mitzvah; someone obligated in a particular mitzvah does, indeed, receive greater reward for that mitzvah than someone not obligated. Were the mitzvot in question essential to the religion, or were there no other way to secure reward, exemption would in fact equal exclusion. If not, the difference remains crucial; women may use these acts to foster a relationship with God, but need not see them as the only path to that goal.Jewish men do experience these rituals as definitive of their religiosity, seemingly justifying women’s feeling that the exemption discriminates. For men, acts such as saying Shema twice a day, wearing tsitsit and tefillin, shaking a lulav on Sukkot, and counting the Omer between Pesach and Shavuot are the markers of their religiosity, how they define themselves as observant. Judging from men, truly serving God necessarily involves these acts.There are at least three simple errors in this view. First, even men overemphasize the centrality of these mitzvot; most of them are, in fact, specific expressions of broader religious ideals, acts by which the Torah hopes to inculcate less exactly delineated ideas. Rather than ends of their own, these mitzvot are tools to achieve a broader goal. Women, in each case, were exempted only from the specific acts, not the general ideals.That only leads to another question, why the system required these acts of men but not women. The Talmud’s derivation of this exemption, it is already interesting to point out, makes no broad claims about women, their nature, or their lack of appropriateness for these mitzvot. Rather, it cites verses, leaving to us the task of teasing out the implicit messages of those verses.When we turn to those verses next time, I hope to be able to articulate a valid and reasonable understanding of the assumed distinction between men and women that underlay this separation. Deciphering that distinction and its underpinnings will provide the deep comprehension of the exemption that we seek, and will, I hope, lead us to a better understanding of the role of religious autonomy for women and in the religion generally.Defining the Exempt CategoryWhen the Talmud mentions positive time-related mitzvot, it provides a list we can use as the basis for our discussion. The Talmud says:ת”ר: איזוהי מצות עשה שהזמן גרמא? סוכה, ולולב, שופר, וציצית, ותפילין; ואיזוהי מצות עשה שלא הזמן גרמא? מזוזה, מעקה, אבידה, ושילוח הקן. וכללא הוא? הרי מצה, שמחה, הקהל, דמצות עשה שהזמן גרמא, ונשים חייבות! ותו, והרי תלמוד תורה, פריה ורביה, ופדיון הבן, דלאו מצות עשה שהזמן גרמא הוא, ונשים פטורות! אמר רבי יוחנן: אין למדין מן הכללות ואפילו במקום שנאמר בו חוץ, …Our Rabbis learned: What are positive commandments with a time element? Sukkah, lulav, shofar, tsitsit, and tefillin; And what are positive mitzvot without any element of time? Mezuzah, ma`akeh [building a fence around any elevated platform], avedah [returning lost objects], and shiluah ha-kan [sending away the mother before removing babies from a nest]. Is it a general rule? Look at matsah, simhah [celebrating on holidays], and hakhel [the national gathering on Sukkot after the shemittah year], positive commandments with a time component, and women are obligated! In addition, look at Torah study, procreation, and redeeming a first-born son, which are not positive commandments with a time component, yet women are exempt! Said R. Yohanan: We do not rely [completely] on general rules, even where the rule was stated with some exceptions…Aside from the list itself, oddities in the presentation also help guide our analysis. First, calling these mitzvot, “commandments that time causes,” is problematic, since the time component of some of them is extraordinarily difficult to identify. The time aspect of sukkah or shofar is clear—they come around once a year—but less so for tsitsit and tefillin.Indeed, the Talmud recognizes that some opinions would exclude tefillin from this list, because they hold that tefillin can be worn on Shabbat and at night. In the general opinion that includes tefillin in the category—and, as we will see, uses it as the source for women’s exemption—the Talmud assumed that the fact that it could not be done on Sabbaths and holidays sufficed to consider it “caused by time.” So, too, tsitsit make the list because the mitzvah applies during the day but not at night (although it does apply every day). The Talmud does not explain how that justifies the term “שהזמן גרמא, that time caused.” Deciphering the term would seem crucial to understanding what the Talmud meant by this category.The whole interest in categorizing should itself raise questions, since there are so many exceptions– mitzvot in which women are obligated despite their being part of the category, and ones from which they are exempt despite their not being time-related. We continue to think of the category as useful because it does guide our assumptions about practices not specifically mentioned in the Torah or Talmud; faced with a new mitzvah that has a time component, we would assume that women are exempt.I suspect, though, that the positing of this category captures some truth about what the Torah meant in terms of women’s observance as well. If I am right, though, it is not immediate obvious what that would be, since there are no clear commonalities among all these observances.The Subsidiary Status of Time-Related MitzvotAlmost the only clear connection among them is their all being explicitly phrased by the Torah as an adjunct to a broader religious idea. Sitting in a sukkah and taking a lulav on the holiday of Sukkot, for example, are properly seen as contributing acts that help create and fortify the holiday, not as independently important.One way to note their contributing status is how minimal a time commitment these mitzvot tend to require. A few seconds suffice to shake the lulav; even its use as part of the prayer service is done by the end of morning services. Living in a sukkah sounds time-consuming, except that it only addresses itself to those hours when one is ordinarily home—eating meals, sleeping, relaxing. People can feasibly spend all day away from the sukkah, returning there only for those activities normally pursued at home. (Not incidentally, this aspect of these mitzvot would also seem to refute the frequent claim that women’s traditional child-care responsibilities are what led to the exemption—it is simply hard to accept that the need to take care of children would prevent women from shaking a lulav for 30 seconds).I have already argued that שביתה, rest, means more than just avoiding certain acts; that should prepare us to realize that the מצוות היום, the commanded practices, are there to provide substance to the day. The Torah makes this explicit at least for the requirement to live in sukkot, which it says is “למען ידעו דורותיכם כי בסכות הושבתי את בני ישראל בהוציאי אותם מארץ מצרים, so that your generations should know that I caused the Jews to reside in tents when I took them out of Egypt.”This verse does not mean that the Torah wants us to remember the Exodus only when actually inside that temporary residence; it wants the day as a whole to inculcate and fortify that awareness and commands these practices as obligatory avenues to that goal. Even for men, the Torah could have set up the holiday without such practices and still expected us to remember these aspects of the Exodus.This same analysis applies to other such mitzvot, as we will see next time; once we have demonstrated these mitzvot’s role in our religiosity, we can get back to understanding how the exemption from them shapes a different religiosity for women.(i)And which I have discussed elsewhere, such as in “Women’s Aliyot in Contemporary Synagogues” Tradition 39;2, Summer 2005, 36-58.(ii)”Men’s and Women’s Differing Religious Experiences, as Taught by the Category of Mitzvot `Aseh She-haZman Grama” (Winter 2002) in Women in Judaism, (www.women-in-judaism.com).(iii) bKiddushin 33b-34a.(iv)See, e.g., bKiddushin 29a, s.v. אותו, where Tosafot assume that being applicable only by day suffices to render a mitzvah time related. In the question, Tosafot entertained the possibility that only starting at the eighth day of life would also suffice for membership in the category.(v) bKiddushin 35a, with the sources mentioned by Rashi.(vi)That the whole distinction is assumed to apply only to positive commandments is itself suggestive, but beyond our current scope.(vii)Vayikra 23;43. The plainest sense of the text seems to apply that reason to the taking of the Arba Minim, the Four Species, as well, although many explain that obligation as related to the harvest aspect of the holiday. Either way, lulav is almost always seen as reflecting a deeper idea, not an end of its own.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva.org

R. Shimon would say: Three who eat at a single table and do not say words of Torah are akin to those who eat from idolatrous offerings as it says “For all tables are full of filthy vomit and no pace is clean” (Yeshayahu 28:8). However, three who eat at a single table and say words of Torah are like those that partake from God’s table as it says: “This is the table that is before God” (Yechezkel 41: 22). (Avot 3:3)

Just as he did in explaining the previous mishna, Tiferet Yisrael minimizes the scope of application, arguing that certain factors may justify a meal without a dvar Torah. He explains that R. Shimon specifically selects a case of three eating together because a larger group coming together for a joint meal indicates people with some leisure time at their disposal. People with time should feel obligated to converse about something of a substance. However, those wolfing down a sandwich to run back to the office can justifiably skip the Torah discussion.

Tiferet Yisrael adds added resonance to R. Shimon’s message explaining that introducing Torah into the meal clarifies how human consumption is not an end in itself. He cites the famous adage: “Man eats to live but does not live to eat.” It would be interesting to research when this adage, usually associated with Moliere but already appearing in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Philosophers, first made it into rabbinic literature. By studying Torah at the table, we emphasize how a good meal enables us to approach service of God with renewed vigor.

Rashi and R. Ovadia Bartenura state that we fulfill R. Shimon’s mandate by saying birkat hamazon. Thanking God for our food redeems the status of the meal so that we can not compare it to a pagan feast. Tosafot Yom Tov disagrees based on the important methodological assumption that Avot focus on acts of special piety rather than on basic obligations. Since Avot would not be addressing people who shirk the biblical commandment of birkat hamazon, R. Shimon’s directive must call for more.

What evidence does Tosafot Yom Tov have for his assumption? A Gemara in Bava Kama (30a) states that fulfillment of Avot leads to piety. Moreover the content of many of the mishnayot does not seem to revolve around concrete obligations. Yet even if so, this does not minimize the importance of our tractate. Numerous Issues of ethics and character ate not pinned down on a detailed level by halacha but this certainly does not reflect lack of significance. By their very nature, questions of character do not lend themselves to precise application on a universal plane. Indeed, the search for piety and excellence of character manifest in Avot should constantly energize us.

"The Personal Element in the Holidays, Charity and Honoring Parents" by Rabbi Gidon Rothstein, WebYeshiva.org

Before I start this week’s discussion, I note that Radak on Yeshaya 56:2 (the haftara we read at Mincha on Fast Days), on the prophet’s reference to keeping Shabbat, assumes there is a bodily component to such observance as well as a soul component. He defines that soul component as using the day to distance ourselves from our ordinary mindset and focus on God. For him, that means learning Torah and contemplating Creation and God’s acts. It seems clear to me that fulfilling Radak’s view of Shabbat would also involve individual choices as to what to learn, which acts of God to contemplate, and the lessons to be drawn from them. Now we can move on to this week’s topics.

The Personal Element in the Holidays, Charity, and Honoring Parents

In many senses, the holidays are all the same. For example, all the holidays have a similar rule about desisting from creativity, differing from Shabbat in that the holidays allow for several kinds of labor, known as מלאכת אוכל נפש, activity that sustains the soul.

While in that sense they are all the same, other components distinguish them from each other; Pesach celebrates the Exodus and the beginning of the harvest season, Shavuot reminds us of the offering of the שתי הלחם, the two loaves of bread that are the first sacrifices given from that year’s grain harvest and occurs on or around the anniversary of the Giving of the Torah at Sinai, and Sukkot marks both the completion of the harvest and commemorates God’s protecting us in the desert.

Separate Commandments, Separate Rests

Interestingly, Rambam counts the commandment to rest on each holiday as a separate commandment, instead of grouping them as one, “to desist from creative labor that is not soul-sustaining on the various holidays.” Yet he does not do so for the seventh day of Passover, since it is part of the same holiday. It is not that each day of holiday rest gets a separate mitzvah, it is that each holiday’s rest is separate; I claim that this differentiates the kind of rest expected as well.

Some but not all of the differences of the holidays are revealed by the מצוות היום, the special commandments of each day. The requirement to sit in booths on Sukkot, for example, tells us something about the day, but does not cover all of one’s actions over the course of the day; it would be mistaken, therefore, to see the sitting in the Sukka or the telling of the Exodus story as the entirety of the import of the day, but it perhaps provides information as to what the day itself is supposed to look like.

The traditional liturgy offers a complementary avenue to fleshing out the content of these special days, in the descriptions we give the days when we name them in our prayers. In both the Amida, the standing prayer, and the Grace After Meals of these days, we find Pesach calledזמן חרותנו, the time of our freedom, Shavuot זמן מתן תורתנו, the time of the giving of the Torah, and Sukkot זמן שמחתנו, the time of our happiness.

In my post on Shabbat rest, I suggested that rest is actually a stepping back from creativity to absorb the lessons learned and prepare for the next burst of creativity. Applying that here, presumably the experience of desisting from creativity should differ on each holiday as well. How we absorb the lessons of stepping back on a holiday of freedom would likely differ from how we learn from similar refraining in the context of receiving the Torah (or renewing our Godly service in the Temple), and yet again for how it might differ from that same rest in the context of remembering how God can protect and provide for us.

Once again, though, the laws provide only a basic and universally applicable guideline for the kinds of experience being sought; the task of fleshing that experience out fully is left up to the autonomous choices of each person.

To Give Charity

There are many ways to show the role of personal insight and understanding in shaping one’s fulfillment of the mitzva of giving charity, but I will focus only on two. First, common parlance might lead us to believe that donating money to any worthy cause qualifies as צדקה, charity, but the Talmudic sources and their resulting codification in the Shulchan Aruch concentrate more directly on the poor and their needs.[i]

There are many other good causes as well, such as Jewish education, building synagogues and houses of study, supporting medical research, visiting the sick, comforting the bereaved, and a host of others. Some of those also fit the rubric of helping the poor, such as by noting that the poor can certainly not pay for their medical care, and especially not for diseases whose cure is still unknown or experimental. Supporting medical research, in that context, might qualify as charity in the helping-the-poor sense as well.

Too, the common custom to give at least ten percent of one’s income to charity might not be restricted to charity in the technical sense, charity for the poor. Nonetheless, the plethora of causes and their relationship to essential charity show some of the challenges of using our money appropriately, even when all good will is involved. Some will choose to give ten percent, some more, some less. Within those monies, too, there will be a range of choices to be made about apportioning; while traditional sources offer some guidance, much is left to the individual.

Similarly, Rambam famously lists eight levels of charity, collated from various Talmudic discussions.[ii] The highest of those levels, the best fulfillment of the obligation, is to support another Jew or righteous non-Jew before that person’s financial situation deteriorates so much as to need actual alms.

The possible ways to accomplish this support include giving a gift, making a loan, forging a partnership with the needy person, or finding him some other source of livelihood. Each of these strategies, though, involves complex calculations of how to best steady a person teetering on the edge of the underclass. Since Rambam assumes that the mitzvah applies to the near-poor as well as the already-poor, the number and kinds of choices to be made are multiplied and are not in any clear way answered by codified halacha.

The person intent on giving charity in the best way possible, we now find, must make significant personal decisions at each stage. First, he or she must decide whether to give to the poor or other worthy causes. Within the amount being given the poor, the donor must identify recipients, choosing among the candidates and deciding how to divide the funds. Even once those decisions have been reached, the donor must further decide whether to give it by outright gift, loan, partnership, or finding the person employment. None of these choices is simple, each of them is largely a personal and autonomous matter, but the end result will change the quality of one’s charity considerably.

Honoring and Fearing Parents

While the commandments of honor and fear are obviously related, the Torah separates them, placing כבוד, honor, in the עשרת הדברות, the Ten Utterances at Sinai known as the Ten Commandments, and leaving יראה, fear, for the beginning of Leviticus 18. In seeking the balance between the well-defined and that left to the individual conscience, I will also try to explain both why the Torah would present them so separately, especially when works such as the Sefer haMitzvot and Shulchan Aruch[iii] juxtapose them.

Although כבוד is always translated as “honor,” the Talmud defines it by delineating specific services the child must perform, מאכיל ומשקה, מלביש ומכסה, מכניס ומוציא, giving (the parent) food and drink, covering and clothing, taking in and out. The list implies that “honor” refers to taking care of a parent’s physical needs.

The obligation of יראה, awe or fear, complements “honor” in a way that explains both of a Jew’s responsibilities to his or her parents. The Talmud defines “fear” as not sitting or standing in the parent’s place, not speaking before, contradicting, calling by his/her first name (or, if the name is unusual, calling someone else by that name), and not wading into a debate in which a parent is partaking, even to support the parent’s point of view.

All of these suggest that a child is supposed to view the parent with a certain amount of fear or awe, simply stated; indeed, Rambam says that the mitzva is to act towards the parent as towards someone with the power to administer meaningful punishment. It should be obvious that the fear is not in and of itself the Torah’s goal, so that here, too, we are prodded to look deeper into the mitzva.

Representing the Divine

A couple of Rabbinic statements clarify the Torah’s goals. The Talmud notes that Scripture uses the same terms for these mitzvot as for the attitude one should have towards God.[iv] Thus, the verse warns kabed parents, and elsewhere says kabed God; so, too, it warns איש אמו ואביו תיראו, every one of you must fear his mother and father, andאת ה’ אלוקיך תירא, fear the Lord your God. The use of similar terms, the Rabbis imply, indicates that one’s attitude towards parents should parallel the attitude towards God. As two of the three partners in a person’s creation, parents have standing akin to that of the third partner, the Creator.[v]

Recognizing that these commandments stem from parents’ role as creators also fits the Sefer haChinuch’s assertion that this mitzva inculcates gratitude, which he explicitly assumes will increase the person’s gratitude to God as well. The honoring of parents thus only partially cares about securing them their due; they also serve as a convenient vehicle to personalize our relationship with our Creator.

Rambam’s phrasing of two more rules supports this idea. Halacha prohibits restraining one’s parent (verbally or physically), even if the parent is embarrassing or otherwise causing distress to the child. In an extreme example, a child may not stop a parent from throwing a bag full of money into the ocean.[vi] Rambam highlights the relationship to God, by ruling that the child seeing such a parent throw the money away must “sit silently and accept the decree of Scripture.” Similarly, he writes that the child may not answer back if the parent embarrasses him publicly, but must maintain his fear of the King of Kings.

Note that his justification in both cases relies on the child’s obligations towards God, not towards the parent. In both situations, the goal is to see this physical person as in some way parallel to God, to use that as a stepping-stone to inculcating a more full honor and fear of God. If so, the parent’s actions must be seen as close to those of God.

This perspective of the commandments of honor and awe also shows us where the personal element enters the picture, completely unguided by specific laws. Alongside the codified laws, the Talmud gives numerous examples of admirable respect or fear of one’s parents. Perhaps most famously, Dama b. Netina is commended for refusing to wake his father, who was sleeping on the key to a cabinet that held merchandise he could have sold right then for an extraordinary profit.[vii] Since Dama was not even Jewish, the Talmud could not have meant his example as halachically instructive; rather, it meant it as evincing an ideal each Jew must strive to actualize in his or her own life.

Kibbud expresses this aspect even more fully. While a child could treat the obligations completely technically, insuring only that the parent eats, drinks, is clothed, and gets out regularly, the responsibilities of kibbud seem to call for a broader involvement in assuring that the parent’s needs, broadly speaking, are met. If so, the Torah places the more easily and exactly defined obligation, awe or fear, in a legal section of the Torah. Honor, the broader and more personally defined responsibility, is placed in the Ten Commandments.

Thus, eight mitzvot show us how poorly an over-reliance on codified halacha serves the Jew trying to fulfill the Torah. While mitzvot define a set of goals, they often give only general guidelines for how to achieve them, sometimes even when the guidelines seem very specific. In each of these cases (and I could have added others), full success requires the individual Jew to build off of halacha’s guidelines in defining how he or she fulfills the obligation in question.

I believe our failure to recognize the importance and value of autonomous religiosity has hurt us in another way, our struggles with the role of women in the religion. Next time, I will take up the topic of women’s exemption from certain commandments, and try to show that the Torah was actually suggesting a more autonomous form of religion for women, granting them a greater freedom to define their approach to God. If so, the flight to well-defined roles, the desire to be able to fit more and more into well-recognized forms of religiosity, might be not only a technical question, but go to the core of our understanding of what the religion wants of us.

[i] For some examples, see bBaba Batra 8a-11a and שו”ע יו”ד (Yoreh Deah) 247ff.

[ii] Laws of Gifts to the Poor, 10;7-14.

[iii] Sefer haMitzvot, Positive Commands 210 and 211, and Yoreh Deah 240.

[iv] bKiddushin 30b.

[v] The image appears in the Talmud, ibid.

[vi] Rambam, Laws of Rebellious Ones, 6:7. Others, noting that the obligation of honor does not extend to the child’s using his own money, disagree.

[vii] bKiddushin 31a.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva.org

The Torah includes two prophetic chapters of tochacha or rebuke outlining horrible punishments the Jewish people will receive for their transgressions. Ramban (commentary on Vayikra 26:15) draws a sharp division. Vayikra 26 describes the first temple’s destruction and the resulting Babylonian exile; Devarim 28 depicts the second temple’s destruction and the long exile that follows.

Ramban marshals several proofs supporting his thesis. Only the Vayikra passage mentions idolatry (verse 30) since that sin was prominent during the first temple period and not the second. Vayikra emphasizes punishment for violating the Sabbatical year (verse 34), something the prophet associates with churban bayit rishon (see II Divrei Hayamim 32:21). The Vayikra passage ends with God remembering the covenant of the patriarchs (verse 45) but not with authentic repentance or a full return of the exiles; indeed, this reflects the reality of the return from Babylon.

Devarim 28: 49 mentions a nation that arrives from afar since the culprit in the second temple’s destruction was Rome. The Devarim chapter portrays a widespread scattering among the nations which took place during the extended exile following the Roman Jewish War. In contrast to Vayikra 26, it does not state a clear duration for the exile but rather makes redemption dependent on repentance. This all fits the story of our current extended exile which we hope will conclude with the ultimate redemption.

Abravanel disagrees with Ramban’s interpretation and argues that each chapter refers to both exiles. Vayikra 26:31 refers to the destruction of “temples” in the plural. Devarim 28:25 states that the Jews will flee from their enemies. This matches the story of the first temple much more than that of the second during which they fought the Romans with great valor and courage in a losing cause.

More could be said about the verse by verse interpretation aspect of the debate but perhaps some broader issues lie at the heart of the argument. Abravanel objects to the possibility that Moshe would state a prophecy in Devarim that Hashem had not previously alluded to in the Chumash. Perhaps Ramban and Abravanel debate the balance between the divine role and Moshe’s contribution in the composition of sefer Devarim and the implications thereof.

They also may debate the nature of the second temple. Abravanel insists that the return from Babylon and the building of the second temple do not constitute redemption given that a small minority of Jews retuned, the second temple lacked the overt divine presence of the first temple, and the second temple period included frequent subjugation to the authority of Persia, Greece and Rome. Returning from Babylon was more of a brief respite to help render the ongoing exile endurable. Abravanel even compares the second temple to impressive synagogues constructed in the Diaspora. According to his view, Jewish history only incorporates one story of exile and return and it is this story that the Torah relates twice.

Ramban and Abravanel debate whether partial redemption constitutes redemption. Despite all the shortcomings of bayit sheni, Ramban saw the return of Jews to their homeland, the restoration of some sovereignty, and the rebuilding of even an inferior temple as quite redemptive. We need not conceive of salvation in all or nothing terms. The potential implications for twentieth century Jewish history are obvious. May we express appropriate gratitude for the current sate of affairs even as we yearn for the ultimate redemption that will repair the many remaining cracks in our fragmented world.

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By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva.orgMany of us know the four halachic categories of shomrim from elementary school. While this halachic information seems to us a given, the biblical verses about shomrim do not clarify the distinct categories. First, the Torah describes someone exempt in a case of theft but liable for negligence (Shmot 22:6-8). The second type of shomer also pays for theft but does not pay if the animal he was watching dies or if a wild animal attacked that animal (Shmot 22: 9-11). The third type, the borrower, pays even if the item broke or the animal died (Shmot 22: 13).According to Chazal, the first section refers to a shomer hinam, someone watching as a favor. He has the most limited liability and only pays in cases of genuine negligence. The second section refers to someone paid to watch; receiving a salary heightens responsibility. Such shomrim have liability even in a case of theft but do not pay in a case of ones or total duress. Our sages may have known this interpretation as an authoritative tradition or they may have logically reasoned who should have greater liability. Ramban adds another clue supporting this interpretation. The first section describes someone watching money or vessels while the second section speaks of someone watching animals. Ramban contends that it is more common to pay another for watching animals than for watching vessels.Ramban notes a discrepancy within the second section about shomrim. The second type of guardian takes an oath that the animal died or was captured by armed bandits (verse 10) and is then exempt from paying. Yet following that, the Torah says: “If it be torn in pieces, let him bring it for witness; he shall not pay for that which was torn” (verse 12). Why does he need to bring witnesses instead of just taking an oath as he does when the animal dies?Ibn Ezra and Rashbam state that the witness refers to the remaining parts of the attacked animal. According to their reading, the guardian need not provide human witnesses but he brings the carcass to collaborate his claim. Rambam raises two other possibilities. Perhaps the Torah simply describes the most common scenario. Animals die a natural death quietly but a lion’s attack raises attention and will likely be seen by others. Alternatively, this verse supports the position of Isi ben Yehuda (Bava Mezia 83a) who says that when the accident occurred in a public area, the guardian must bring witnesses to establish innocence. In that scenario, an oath will not suffice to exempt him from payment.A common theme emerges from the two issues we discussed. Even after Chazal interpreted legal sections, the rishonim still read the peshuto shel mikra carefully. Sometimes, they found more support for the traditional reading, as with Ramban’s argument for attributing the first section to the shomer hinam and the second to the shomer sakhar. On other occasions, they found support for an individual Talmudic position such as that of Isi. Several other models exist for what to derive from a careful reading of the peshuto shel mikra of legal sections but this lies beyond the scope of this blog posting.Even as we certainly accept the authoritative rulings of Chazal, we continue to scrutinize the biblical verses for pertinent information.

"Torah Study and Positive Observance of Shabbat as Loci of Autonomy" by Rabbi Gidon Rothstein, WebYeshiva.org

As we continue our study of mitzvot, remember that I am only discussing those aspects of these mitzvot that necessarily obligate us to make personal decisions, not exactly codified by the system. The next example is the mitzvah of Torah study.

Talmud Torah—Transmitting Cultural Knowledge

Three points Rambam includes in describing the mitzvah suggest that God was interested in more than the act of study per se. The first two– that the verse says ושננתם לבניך, you shall teach it to your children,[i] and that the Sifre rules that this obligates teaching any students who wish to learn, since Scripture elsewhere refers to students as sons–[ii] show that the focus is less on study than transmission, to sons or students.

Rambam also cites Sifre’s non-literal reading of ושננתם, where the Sifre midrashically twists the word so that it can mean we are obligated to know the literature of Torah well enough to answer all questions immediately. Leaving the derivation aside, since it is only persuasive within the context of Midrash’s ways of reading texts, part of what Sifre is saying is that knowledge is so that others will have access to it, not as an end of its own.

Further examples only confirm the view that the mitzvah seeks more than the act of study itself. Rambam follows the Talmud in assigning grandfathers a greater obligation to teach grandchildren than the ordinary one for Jews to teach others who wish to learn.[iii] This grandparental duty, almost unique in Jewish literature,[iv] also points us in the direction of the mitzvah as a vehicle of guaranteeing transmission of knowledge throughout the generations. Fathers are most responsible for that goal, but grandfathers are not far behind.

Remembering Sinai, Focusing on the Written Torah

The verse that led the Talmud to recognize a grandparental role enhances our sense of Torah as being about more than personal study in another way. Devarim 4:9 warns us to take great care not to forget that which our eyes have seen, adding the phrase we have already noted, that we are to make it known to our children and grandchildren. The next verse makes clear what memory we have to hold fast, “the day on which you stood before the Lord your God at Chorev…”

The plainest reading of the verse might limit the obligation to insuring that children and grandchildren remember the event of the Giving of the Law at Sinai. That the Talmud and Rambam read it as relating to Torah study as well—such that, as we have seen, it serves as the source for grandparents’ obligation to teach grandchildren—implies that part of teaching Torah to our descendants is keeping alive memory of the original event.[v]

The definition of the minimum fulfillment of this mitzvah cuts in the same direction. As the Talmud says it, fathers must at a minimum teach sons the Five Books of the Torah or, perhaps, the entirety of Scripture.[vi] The definition of “teaching” is not fully clear—it might mean that the child knows the Torah well enough to recite it by heart or could read from the Torah in synagogue on command, to pick two maximalist versions of the obligation– but it would seem to require at least that the children be able to read and explain any selection from the text of Torah. This makes most sense if we recognize the mitzvah’s interest in guaranteeing a basic cultural knowledge among Jews, the knowledge of the word of God vouchsafed to us directly through God’s Prophets.

That is certainly not an upper limit, and the Talmud intentionally and conspicuously includes stories of people who came to know the entire expanse of Torah-related literature, but that does not affect the basic obligation. All the rest of what people study– Talmud, commentaries, codes, etc.—serves to enrich our understanding of the original document both as a matter of knowledge and of how to apply it in practice to this world.

The Autonomous Choices Inherent in the Mitzvah of Talmud Torah

Those aspects of the mitzvah show the necessity of making personal choices at almost each step of its observance. Fathers will have to make individual choices as to how to best help each son absorb the lessons he needs; as Mishlei says, חנוך לנער על פי דרכו, educate the child in his own way.[vii] While one child might be ready for a full day of study at a young age, others will need a more patient approach. The how of fulfilling this obligation is thus left up to each father (intentionally, I believe).[viii]

Beyond that, people naturally achieve different levels of Torah knowledge and/or focus on differing disciplines. While some will be intellectually and emotionally suited to deep knowledge of all of Torah, others will focus on specific areas.[ix] Some learn best in one style, others another, and most such varying styles are perfectly acceptable. As before, the mitzvah gives a basic universal minimum, with much room for personal decisions and creativity.

The Positive Commandments of Shabbat

The positive aspects of Shabbat are less well-developed in Jewish literature than the prohibitions, perhaps precisely because they are meant to be so personal and autonomously chosen. I believe I can show, however, that Shabbat was meant to be a day of soul-refreshing freedom from creativity, with prohibitions to foster the atmosphere of the day, not define it.

I cannot claim this is a universal view, since some important authorities seem to see the positive content of Shabbat as a side note to the prohibitions.[x] While even this view knows that the Torah couches the requirement to desist from melachah, creative labor, as both a prohibition and an obligation, we might see that as a technicality, a way for the system to invest these rules with greater seriousness than just an “ordinary” prohibition. The author of Sefer HaChinuch, for a prominent example, sees no new content in the positive form of the mitzvah, telling readers to consult his discussion of the prohibition.[xi]

On the significant other hand, Rambam and Ramban saw the obligation as a religiously distinct requirement, and understood that positive content as the goal of the day. Rambam opens the 21st chapter of the Laws of Shabbat by mentioning that the Torah’s use of the word תשבות, you shall rest,[xii] requires cessation even of activities that do not fall under any melachah prohibition. He then spends the next several chapters listing Rabbinically prohibited actions, many legislated only because they are similar to Biblically proscribed ones.[xiii] In Rambam’s reading, tishbot taught the Rabbis that the Torah wanted Jews to avoid activities that smack of creative labor, not just the ones that technically qualify as such or carry the danger of leading to a transgression.

For Rambam, the Talmudic presentation of such laws means that the list of 39 prohibited labors established categories from which to desist on Shabbat; while only those particular labors incur capital liability, the intent was that Jews would refrain from those and similar activities. The Rabbis defined the Torah’s wishes more explicitly.

Ramban ordinarily disagrees with Rambam about how to understand the Talmud’s declaration that a certain mitzvah encompasses both an obligation and a prohibition. While Rambam will codify two mitzvot in such circumstances, Ramban will not.[xiv] In our reading of what positive obligations add to prohibitions, Ramban would be saying that the Torah does not always mean to add religious content when it enacts a separate positive requirement.

Here, whatever the technical issues, Ramban notes that the Torah commanded Jews to make the day a שבתון, a word he defines (for both Shabbat and holidays) as obligating rest—in the ordinary sense of the word– in addition to the technical laws of avoiding creative labor.[xv] In his view, this was to insure that the day not become one of labor that the prohibitions did not cover, such as moving furniture inside one’s house.

Positive Rest and Its Centrality

A verse that figures prominently in the Shabbat liturgy suggests that this positive rest is central to our experience of the day. The Torah speaks of the Jews “observing” Shabbat–often taken as indicating refraining from prohibited actions—in a verse that reads “ושמרו בני ישראל את השבת, לעשות את השבת לדורותם ברית עולם, the Children of Israel shall observe the Shabbat, to make the Shabbat in all their generations, an eternal covenant.”[xvi] The verb troubled commentators, since there is no making, no constitutive element to the prohibitions. However, were the Torah signaling that the prohibitions only lay the groundwork for the true positive essence of the day, we could understand how we would go about “making” Shabbat.

That also explains the Talmudic assumption that women’s being included in the prohibitions of the day inherently includes them in the positive obligations. In the Talmudic phrase, “anyone included in שמור (the word used in the second Decalogue; for the Talmud, it refers to prohibitions) is included in זכור (from the first Decalogue, taken to refer to Kiddush and other positive obligations of the day).”[xvii]
Unless there is a deep connection between the prohibitions and obligations, we would have to see this היקש, this informative juxtaposition, as completely technical. Seeing the prohibitions as preparatory to proper observance of the active obligation of rest gives it actual content. Since the prohibitions are there to guide us in achieving the desired positive state of rest, one who is required to adhere to those prohibitions must obviously be included in the obligations.

Rashi’s explanation of a strange Talmudic requirement for a person who loses track of the days of the week provides one last proof that Shabbat should really be about the positive experience. In the course of the discussion,[xviii] the Talmud assumes that on every day of that person’s life, until s/he rediscovers the actual date for Shabbat, such a person can only do as much Shabbat-prohibited labor as necessary to maintain life, since that day might be Shabbat. Nonetheless, the Talmud requires the person to treat one day a week as actually Shabbat, by reciting Kiddush and havdallah, verbalizations of the Jew’s recognition of the advent and departure of Shabbat.

Rashi explains that the recitations are symbolic, to insure the person not completely forget Shabbat. Considering that this person is daily refraining from anything other than life-sustaining labor, that claim seems difficult; would a person who daily must restrict his or her activities because it might be Shabbat possibly forget the concept? I think the comment shows that Rashi understood the Talmud to see Kiddush and havdallah as essential to the Shabbat experience.

What Makes For a Positive Experience?

The stress on the positive in these sources does not enlighten us as to how they should look. Kiddush and havdallah may define the chronological boundaries of the day, but they cannot be the whole picture. Two further seemingly technical pieces of information about the prohibited labors of Shabbat suggest an answer that also shows Shabbat observance to be highly personally defined.

Although the Torah defines the cessation of labor as imitating God’s “resting” on the seventh day of Creation, tradition assumes that the specific categories of prohibited labor come from the construction of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle built in the desert as a proto-Temple.[xix] The relationship between the two creations is never fully explained, but the Talmud seems to assume that the building of the Mishkan is the height of human imitation of God’s creation; the activities that make the list, then, are those that bring a person closest to the Divine standard of making the world.

The second technicality, the rule of חילוק מלכות, that each Shabbat violation can be punished on its own, shows that each of these acts independently destroys the Shabbat experience. The rule states that violating any of these types of labor incurs separate liability; in contrast to a holiday, a person who– without full knowledge– both plowed and cooked on Shabbat would be liable for two sacrifices. Unwitting violations within a category, cooking, baking, and frying, obligate only one sacrifice. It is not each act of Shabbat violation that is punishable, but each type of act.[xx]

The rule makes sense only if each of the categories is independently important. Were Shabbat just a composite created by observing various prohibitions, violating one should be no different than violating another, and the rule should either be that all acts can be covered by one sacrifice or that each act, regardless of type, requires a separate one.

The centrality of category distinguishes what the Torah means by “rest” on Shabbat from the ordinary meaning of the word. In addition to ordinary rest, as Ramban pointed out, hilluk melachot shows us that Shabbat was a conscious retreat from certain kinds of effort. It is not only that we do not act in these ways, we are meant to be conscious of each type of way in which we are not acting.[xxi] Rest involves retreat from certain kinds of effort.

The Imitatio Dei of Shabbat Rest

This also explains how we imitate God in desisting from these labors. The Torah tells us that God created the world in six days and ceased on Shabbat, adding the word וינפש. Rashi and Ibn Ezra translate that word as “and He revived Himself,” which is philosophically problematic, as Ibn Ezra notes.[xxii]

Perhaps those problems led the kabbalists to connect the extra word, וינפש, to the word for the soul, נפש, and see this as a reference to a נשמה יתירה, an extra soul, that inhabits a Jew over the course of Shabbat.[xxiii] Ramban also records the kabbalistic view that Shabbat maintains the soul, although he does not explore how that happens.[xxiv]

The attentive breaking off of creative activity would provide just such rejuvenation. Creativity, in all forms, cannot be continuous; bursts of activity depend on periods of contraction and criticism, where the creator (and/or others) analyze the work that has been performed, fully absorbing what has been achieved.[xxv] Used as a time to consciously, actively, and thoughtfully step away from the week’s various modes of creativity, Shabbat lays the groundwork for even more productive creativity in the week to come. The rejuvenation feeds the creativity; it is not separate from it.

Applying verses to God always involves difficult anthropomorphisms, but seeing va-yinafash as referring to an active rest that sets up the next period of creativity offers a palatable reading. It does not mean that God rejuvenated Himself, an abhorrent idea, but that God stepped back from His most active involvement in Creation for a period of review and consideration. Shabbat for people seeks the same kind of active review, in which the person considers how he or she created in the week gone by, learning the lessons of the past before embarking on the future.

As soon as we see Shabbat as internally productive, however, it necessarily must adapt to and be adapted by each person. A farmer will experience his stoppage of creative labor differently than a construction foreman or a scribe. In each case, the general parameters of the day are the same, but the resulting experience is and should be individualized.

This is not exactly true of the holidays, as we will see next time, but we can stop here having added two more observances that are important, vital, and central to Jewish experience, and yet leave much of the content of that experience up to the individual Jew.

[i] Deuteronomy 6; 7.

[ii] 34:7.

[iii] Based on the verse והודעתם לבניך ולבני בניך, you shall make them known to your sons and grandsons Deuteronomy 4;9; see Hilchot Talmud Torah 1:2, from bKiddushin 30a.

[iv] Shmot 10;2 refers to telling our children and grandchildren of how God toyed with the Egyptians, but that is not in the context of a mitzvah, nor is it codified by halachah.

[v] This would also seem to be the explanation for the otherwise inexplicable Avot 3;8, which uses this same verse as the source for assigning capital liability to one who forgets any Torah he has learned. Since the verse speaks of the event of Sinai, we can only understand the Mishnah by conflating that with the content.

[vi] See Rashi, bKiddushin 30a, s.v.Torah, and Rambam, Laws of Study of Torah, 1;7 and 1;12.

[vii] 22;6.

[viii] This also explains the Talmudic principle that courts need not interfere with minors who transgress the Torah. Since the child’s education was left up to the father, courts cannot judge a particular minor’s circumstances well enough to mix in.

[ix] A story, perhaps apocryphal, makes the point. In the nineteenth century, a man produced a forgery of the Jerusalem Talmud on the section dealing with sacrifices and Temple worship. He gathered rabbinic approbations for the work, fooling many Torah scholars into thinking it authentic. Supposedly, the Rogotchover spotted the forgery in that it did not mention any scholars unique to that tractate. In his mastery of Talmudic literature, he had noticed that aside from the giants whose names are all over the Talmud, there were always scholars who appeared only in a particular tractate. Apparently, their Torah skills had best prepared them to contribute lastingly to that area of study, but not others. It is exactly this kind of individual interest and expertise that the mitzvah welcomes, another example of expecting Jews to autonomously choose how to build on the Torah’s minimal obligations.

[x] The Talmud certainly spends more time analyzing the prohibitions than the obligations, which might suggest that the prohibitions matter more. I assume instead that discrepancy stems from the positive being less amenable to exact definition.

[xi] See Mitzvot 85 and 32.

[xii] Exodus 23;12.

[xiii] This is different than prohibiting an action because it might lead to a Biblically prohibited one. That would be protective, whereas Rambam is speaking of the Shabbat laws as a framework, not a final definition. For an example, see Laws of Shabbat 22;23, which codifies a Rabbinic prohibition against coloring one’s face because it was similar to painting or dyeing. It seems unlikely that the Rabbis worried that putting color on one’s face would lead to painting or dye an animal hide. Rather, the prohibition told the Rabbis that that kind of activity did not belong on Shabbat, so they named other activities that are inappropriate by extension.

[xiv] See his gloss to the sixth of Rambam’s introductory principles to the Sefer haMitzvot.

[xv] See his interpretation of the word in Leviticus 23;24 and his Sermon for Rosh haShanah, printed in Kitvei Ramban, ed. C. Chavel (Mossad haRav Kook: Jerusalem, 1968). Note that the Talmudic prohibition of feeding wild animals on Shabbat because of the effort involved, bShabbat 155b, also points towards an expectation that Jews would not exert themselves on Shabbat except as necessary.

[xvi] Shemot 31;16.

[xvii] bBerachot 20b.

[xviii] bShabbat 69a.

[xix] See, for example, Shabbat 49b. There are significant debates as to whether the categories built only off those actions necessary for the construction of the Mishkan or even its continued functioning, as well as the question of whether the purpose of these acts is defined by the purpose for which they were used in the Mishkan. Each of these, of course, would slightly affect the presentation in the text, but need not be fully elaborated here.

[xx] See Shabbat 70a, with Rashi, s.v. Hilluk Melachot.

[xxi] Prescribing sacrificial atonement for transgressions that lacked full knowledge implies some fault in the person’s ignorance. For Shabbat, that would mean we are obligated to be aware of each of these categories throughout the day; that forgetting is no excuse shows that part of Shabbat is the active awareness of desisting from each of the categories.

[xxii] Exodus 31; 17.

[xxiii] See, for example, Ramban’s comment on Exodus, 31;13.

[xxiv] Commentary to Genesis 2;7.

[xxv] As Matthew Arnold noted, in his essay, “On the Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” referenced frequently by mori ve-rabi R. Aharon Lichtenstein.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva.org

R. Chanina ben Toradyon would say: When two sit and do not exchange words of Torah, it is a gathering of scoffers as it says ‘and did not sit among the scorners’ (Tehillim 1:1). However, when two sit together and exchange words of Torah, the divine presence is among them as it says ‘Then they that feared the Lord spoke one with another; and the Lord hearkens, and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before Him, for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon His name’ (Malachi 3:16). I know this only concerning two individuals; how do I know that even a single individual who sits and studies Torah, the Holy One, blessed be He, designates reward for him? From the verse, “He sits alone in meditative stillness; indeed, he receives [reward] for it” (Eicha 3:27). (Avot 3:2)

Looking up the broader context of each biblical verse cited often enhances understanding. Rambam notes that the subsequent verse in Tehillim says: “But his delight is in the Torah of Hashem and he studies His law day and night.” The psalmist contrasts those that sit among scorners with those that study Torah, a context supporting R. Chanina’s reading.

Wider context also aids our insight into the verse from Malachi. In the verse two before the one cited, the prophet tells us of those who say: “It is vain to serve God and what profit is it that we kept his charge.” Context there reveals a challenge regarding which actions have worth and compensation. In response to cynics who fail to see any benefit in religious service, the prophet declares that God fearers engaged in productive conversation ultimately receive their deserved reward.

Tifferet Yisrael points out that the mishna explicitly speaks of those “sitting” and not engaging in Torah discourse. “Sitting” conveys a relaxed tranquility free of cares and responsibilities. In other words, R. Chanina understands very well that business meetings have other agendas and cannot always focus on Torah. However, a meeting with no purpose whatsoever should at some point turn to a constructive field of conversation.

Why does R. Chanina apply the term “scorners” to those who do not discuss Torah? Perhaps they scorn the value of Torah. Tosafot Yom Tov alludes to the parable of someone given an hour to collect gold coins who eschews the opportunity. In the same way, someone passing up the prospect to grow in Torah knowledge lacks an adequate appreciation for pearls of Torah wisdom.

Tosafot Yom Tov adds a profound second interpretation. R. Hanina speaks of “two who sit and do not exchange words of Torah.” Each one studies Torah independently but they do not share Torah discourse because each one assumes the other has nothing to contribute. They do not scorn the Torah per se; they scorn each other’s Torah. How quick we are to assume someone else has nothing of worth to say just because they are not as bright or because they study with a different methodology. Yet if we could just get beyond our arrogance, we would discover authentic insight emerging from the conversation we foolishly avoided. Good Torah discourse awaits us if we simply begin the discussion.

By Rabbi Gidon Rothstein, WebYeshiva.org

Of all the areas of human activity, mitzvot would seem least amenable to autonomous behavior, since they are, by definition, commandments from God. There is some human input in understanding the Biblical and Talmudic texts that define those mitsvot, since traditional sources recognize that the Biblical text leaves room for differences of interpretation that produce halachically different outcomes. For an easy example, Rambam (Hilchot Mamrim 1;2, but I don’t think the point is disputed) is comfortable with the idea that courts might apply the rules of interpretation to the same Biblical text and come to differing conclusions about what the Torah wants from us.

That form of autonomy is too limited to interest me here, since that is meant to be an attempt to get at original intent of the texts themselves, in all their legal, spiritual, and conceptual ramifications. While it may be a part of the human condition that we differ even in our best efforts in this regard, the only hoped-for originality and creativity in this context is in achieving truer insight into what God and the Torah wanted. This is not autonomy, it is a recognition of the necessary barriers we strive to overcome in our search for an externally-determined truth.[i]

Central Mitzvot As Exemplars of the Need for Personal Input

If forced, I might use that to back up my autonomy claims, but I can do better, since numerous central requirements of the religion are expressed so loosely as to necessitate significant personal decisions about how to achieve the Torah’s desideratum. Filling in these blanks is an individual and personal matter, although Chazal often provide useful guidance. By looking at some of the most basic of those obligations, I hope to show how the very fabric of a Jew’s life is or ought to be set by each Jew for him or herself.

It will take several posts, but we will see that while this is true of men, it is even more so for women, who were left with even greater autonomy in defining their service of God. Rather than seeing them as excluded from commandedness—a phrasing that assumes the superiority of being told exactly what to do—I plan to show that women are exempted precisely from those mitsvot that go beyond the basic obligation to specify a particular way of achieving one or more of the Torah’s goals. Women are given obligations that set up a similar desired outcome, but with a more open path to get there.

Proving this contention for all or even a representative sampling of mitzvot requires a book of its own, so I will take seven central commandments as a representative sample– to love God, follow His ways, study Torah, rest on Shabbat, rest on the various holidays, give charity, and to honor one’s parents. I hope that as we go along, we will see that the seven show a system where commandments are the necessary basis of our actions, but are only the basis, not the sum total of the expected actions.

What has been perhaps neglected in our experience of those and other obligations is that they necessarily involve people making significant religious choices of their own. Try as we might to hide in the world of well-defined obligation, these mitzvot– some of the most central to being a Jew– show that a true religious life involves decisions that are not, and cannot be, subordinated to the commands of tradition.[ii]

Love of God

The centrality of the mitzva to love God, if not inherently obvious, expresses itself in the Torah’s separately commanding men to twice daily recite Shema, so that at least male Jews will be repeatedly reminded of “ve-ahavta et Hashem Elokecha, you shall love the Lord your God.”[iii] Defining that obligation presents significant challenges. I hasten to add that women are equally obligated in the underlying mitzva, just not the need to articulate it twice daily.

The Torah seems to be commanding an emotion towards God, which is difficult when it comes to a Supreme Being. Love ordinarily involves a sense of deep identification, a connection that can be based on blood relationship, living together, or shared interests. God’s Otherness would seem to preclude that form of love, leaving unclear what the Torah seeks in this commandment.

Rashi and Ramban offer one way around the problem. They assume that ve-ahavta refers to performing the mitzvot me-ahava, out of love, which they define as without any ulterior motive. This view relates ahava, love, to lishma, performing these acts simply because God commanded them, without any interest in rewards that accrue from such performance.[iv] The love of ve-ahavta, for these commentators, is at least partially expressed in the underlying motivation in submitting to God’s rule.[v]

The Emotion of Love of God in Rambam’s View

Rambam takes the requirement of love more literally. Early in the first book of the Mishneh Torah, Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, he notes that contemplating the wonders of the created universe engenders a sense of love for the One who put all this into place.[vi] The love that comes from this experience, it seems, parallels the human love that arises in gratitude for a longstanding relationship of giving. While that might only be a starting point, Rambam implies that a Jew should start building love for the Creator in the same way, contemplating His kindnesses and the wondrous world He created.

Later in that section, Rambam records the Talmudic claim that foregoing certain kinds of medical treatment constitutes a fulfillment of the obligation to love God even at the cost of one’s life.[vii] He closes the section by writing of constant, almost obsessive, focus on God as either itself constituting love or helping to build it.[viii] Although commonly thought of as an arch-rationalist, Rambam parallels the relationship he is describing to that of a lovesick man, who thinks about his beloved constantly.

He does not mean that the person simply states his or her love of God, just as human love does not consist solely of what one says. Rather, he means that the person is always thinking of God, just as a person in love cannot get his or her mind off of the beloved. The basic principle seems to be that acting as if one is in love, using the human tools of constancy of concern and thought, will lead towards love itself.

Particularly since he explicitly relates love of God to human love, Rambam seems clear about the personal aspect of this mitzva, at least in the first and third examples he gave. We all appreciate different aspects of Creation, meaning we would all contemplate God’s role in that creation from different perspectives and with varying emphases. So, too, we each have our individual approaches in our expressions of love. As such, the commandment shifts with each Jew, meaning, at least in Rambam’s presentation, that each Jew must construct a personal and loving relationship with God, one that goes beyond the programmed, as in his or her other relationships.

To Mold One’s Character to Become “Similar” to Him

The Torah repeatedly refers to the Jews’ needing to follow His ways, ללכת בדרכיו la-lechet bi-drachav,[ix] which we might have taken as referring to those ways God identified, mitzvot. Rambam, based on several rabbinic statements (and, I believe, without serious dispute from others), understands this mitzvah to include personal character development.

For him, that meant the Aristotelian middle path, which inherently forces personal input into the activity. Judging one’s character traits and how best to bring them more to the perfect middle is inherently an individualized activity; the person can seek advice from a sage or other counselor, but the actual efforts will need to be defined and executed by that person alone.

Rambam expands our understanding of his idea by his differing presentations in his various works. In Sefer haMitzvot, he cites the Midrash[x] rather than the Talmud. Commenting on the key words, ללכת בכל דרכיו, to walk in all His ways,[xi] the Midrash says, “Just as He is called חנון (compassionate), so you be chanun; just as He is called, etc.” The Midrash does not claim that God is compassionate, merciful, or any of the other listed traits, just that he is called such.

Given Rambam’s concerns about ascribing emotions and actions to God, the Midrash’s saying only that God “is called” those characteristics serves the vital function of maintaining a distinction between God and humans; Scripture uses certain words for God not because they describe Him but because they instruct people as to how to best improve their character.

Two other of his sources complicate the picture. First, the verse, “אחרי ה’ אלוקיכם תלכו, You shall follow after the Lord Your God,”[xii] leads the Talmud to assert that God’s clothing the naked (as with Adam and Eve), visiting the sick (Avraham after his circumcision), and comforting the bereaved (after Sarah died), obligates humans to do so as well.[xiii] In contrast to the Midrash, the Talmud stressed God’s having acted in those ways, suggesting that the obligation to follow His ways is more literal than Rambam saw it in Sefer haMitsvot.

This may not go that much farther than the Midrash, since it only calls on us to imitate God’s actions as they impact this world, which does not involve claiming that we could become like God. As another possibility, we could say that here, too, the Talmud really only meant that God is described as acting a certain way, but that it, too, is a metaphor for saying we should just learn a lesson from the Torah’s description.

Rambam also cites Abba Shaul’s statement, recorded in the Talmud, that the verse “zeh eli ve-anvehu, this is my God and I will glorify Him,”[xiv] means that just as God is חנון, so, too, Jews have to be חנון, and so on, leaving out the crucial words “is called.”[xv] Here, the verse speaks only of identifying and glorifying God, but Abba Shaul reads it as requiring us to become like God, apparently assuming that those terms accurately describe God.

Rambam’s explanation of this last source helps us understand his view of the mitzva. He says that God’s impact on this world—not how He does it, but the results of His influence—would, if a human were to have such impact, betray certain traits of character, particularly those listed in the 13 Attributes so central to the liturgy of Yom Kippur.[xvi] Those character traits are binding, and it is in that sense that we can meaningfully say that God is compassionate (He has created a world which, if a human had created it, would betray its Creator’s compassion), or any other such description.

Rambam’s reading of “walking in His ways,” an actual obligation, thus shows the balance of heteronomy and autonomy I have been discussing. Based on human beings’ best powers of discernment, one aspect of character formation is to adopt the Golden Mean. Beyond that, the descriptions of God in Scripture are at least partially intended to provide an example of the kinds of acts and emotions to cultivate. Finally, the world also provides evidence of God’s “character,” meaning we should extrapolate from the world to figure out how to mold our characters.

Obviously, in a world as multifaceted as ours, the attempt to extract from it a picture of an ideal character can be almost infinitely productive. Depending on personal proclivities and with little halachic guidance, Jews seeking to imitate God will necessarily differ in which aspects of the world around them they emphasize in shaping their own character. Some might focus on how God sustains all living creatures and enter or volunteer for wildlife conservation, others might think of how God feeds the hungry and seek to alleviate the plight of the poor.

Trying to help the poor itself could fuel numerous ways of attempting to imitate God; some might choose to study agriculture or plant biology to help find ways to make food more readily available in certain parts of the world, others might study economics to identify inequities in the system and how they can be best remedied, others might enter politics to try to implement those ideas, others might actively collect excess food and distribute it to those in need. As with loving God, the definition of the mitzvah leaves much to individual choice, a venue for autonomy.

Next week, we will continue our study of some central mitzvot, finding more venues where personal choice legitimately shapes how we serve our Father in Heaven.

[i] Rabbi Soloveitchik’s philosophical writings stressed exactly this kind of autonomy. For him, Torah scholars’ innovative understandings of tradition revolutionarily impacted the world of Torah and mitzvot. I am arguing here that the system also sought a much broader autonomy from all people, one that moved beyond (without in any way discarding) the mitzvot.

[ii] Note that I am not implying that Jews were supposed to come up with new laws, a clear prohibition. It is in applying minimally defined mitzvot that leaves Jews have maximum room to meld the religion’s stated concerns with his or her own interests and talents.

[iii] Deuteronomy, 6:5.

[iv] Judaism’s defining love as fulfilling mitzvot out of pure obedience seems to run counter to my endeavor here, as well as to the project of ta`amei hamitzvot, finding reasons and rationales for the commandments. The contradiction falls away when we recognize that the rock-bottom motivation that insures observance can differ from the experience of mitzvot; we ultimately keep the commandments because God told us to do so, but our experience of those mitsvot can, should, and must be informed and enriched by understanding the contribution this particular observance makes to the entire framework of Torah.

[v] I see no reason Rashi and Ramban could not accept Rambam’s view of love of God as well.

[vi] Laws of the Foundations of the Torah 2;2. The experience also fuels yir’a, awe.

[vii] Ibid, 5; 7.

[viii] Laws of Repentance 10; 3 and 6.

[ix] For some examples, see Devarim 8;6, 10;12, 11;22, 19;9. Note that in each, the Torah juxtaposes “following His ways” to some other experience, fear, love, or cleaving to Him, as if the “following” leads to or is the result of the others.

[x] Yalkut Shimoni Parshat Ekev, Paragraph 873.

[xi] Deuteronomy 10:12 and 11:22

[xii] Devarim 14; 5.

[xiii] Sota 14a.

[xiv] Exodus 15:2.

[xv] Guide I;54. Rambam cites the Midrash on Parshat Kedoshim; we have it in Shabbat 133b.

[xvi] 34:6.

Insights in Pirkei Avot by Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva.org

R. Chanina Segan Hakohanim would say: You should pray for the welfare of the government because were it not for fear of it, man would swallow his friend alive. (Avot 3:2)

Jewish communities today still adhere to R. Chanina’s directive and recite a prayer for the government every Shabbat. Apparently, we prefer government, warts and all, over anarchy. Human flourishing depends upon some form of authority capable of preventing the powerful from devouring the weak. R. Yisrael Lipschutz offers a brilliant reading of how susceptible unchecked humanity is to this kind of evil.

In theory, factors such as human dignity, friendship, reluctance to do something truly wicked, and the risk of a crime not producing any tangible benefits might stop mankind from devouring each other. Yet despite all of the above, human beings do terrible things. R. Chanina’s original Hebrew reads: “ish et re’ehu chaim ba’lao.” According to R. Lipschutz, each phrase refers to one of these four factors. “Ish” means a person of dignified nobility, indicating that such people commit crimes as well. “Re’ehu” conveys that even friendship does not always stand in the way of corrupting influences. “Hayyim” refers to indifference to a victim’s pain including willingness to devour a live creature suffering torment. Finally, “ba’lao,” swallowing, is a form of eating devoid of enjoyment, thus communicating the potential of not achieving anything in wrongdoing.

Some rely upon a combination of human decency and prudence to feel totally secure. Surely people will not attempt to cause harm because their conscience or good sense will stop them. For R. Lipschutz, R. Hanina was warning us not to adopt such complacency. Unfortunately, humanity is capable of terrible things and requires some kind of governmental authority to provide prevention and deterrence.

Of course the wrong kind of government also proves dangerous. Why does the mishna refer to “malchut” and not to a melech? R. Lipschutz explains that R. Hanina wanted to include various kinds of government including the democracies of ancient Rome and of modern Switzerland. Abravanel, on the other hand, thinks R. Chanina indicates a preference against the monarchy. Governments help us avoid anarchy but monarchs simply bring us to tyranny.

We could view this mishna as quite pragmatic and negative, saying only that we need a government so that we do not tear each other apart. Rashi and Rabbenu Yona add a more idealistic element. Rabbenu Yona writes: “A person should pray for the welfare of the entire world and be pained by the travails of others.” Rashi cites sources indicating our caring for the welfare of gentiles. Lurking in this mishna is a powerful message of universal concern. We want the world to flourish and we envision decent government as the only way to achieve that worthy goal.

By Rabbi Gidon Rothstein, WebYeshiva.org

Last time, I made a couple of suggestions I don’t know of as being generally recognized. First, I offered reasons for my belief that it was at Sodom that Hashem taught Avraham that he was allowed, if not expected, to make petitions in his prayer. Not only could humans talk to God, he was being told, humans have the right if not responsibility to ask God to shape the future as they prefer.

The best way to do this, I then also argued, was to show how the course of events the person wants actually produces a better outcome than the one currently expected. In the example we saw, Avraham noted that saving all the cities because of the presence of righteous people would leave open the possibility of improvement, of moving away from evil, without the death and destruction God intended. While in that case the prayer failed, the lesson remained.

A first example for our purposes is Moshe, who, like Avraham, is taught about prayer at a crucial juncture in his career.

God Teaches Moshe How to Pray

Moshe’s early prayers suggest that it was not a natural skill. When Pharaoh asks Moshe to pray for him, he uses the verb העתרה (“to entreat”).[i] The Torah describes Moshe as צועק (“shouts out”),[ii] פורש כפים (“spreads his hands”),[iii] and מעתיר, all verbs of notable effort.[iv] The master of prophets, at this stage, seems unsure of how to speak effectively to the living God.

His early difficulties contrast remarkably with his handling of two later incidents. When God afflicts Miriam with leprosy, Moshe successfully elicits relief in just five words.[v] A chapter later, when God mentions destroying the Jewish people, Moshe composes a lengthy, eloquent prayer that elicits the desired response: “סלחתי כדבריך, I have forgiven as per your request.”[vi] Elsewhere, the text uses the simple verb ויתפלל, and he prayed.[vii]

The Biblical report of the conversation after the sin of the Golden Calf shows us that it was there that God trained Moshe how to pray, feeding him the arguments that would allow him to avert the people’s destruction. The Torah records the Jews’ sin in Chapter 32 of Exodus, followed (in verses 7-14) by God and Moshe’ dialogue about how to react. The relevant text reads:

God spoke to Moshe: “Go, descend—for your people that you brought up from the land of Egypt has become corrupt. 8They have strayed quickly from the way that I have commanded them. They have made themselves a molten calf, prostrated themselves to it and sacrificed to it, and they said: ‘This is your god, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt.’” 9God said to Moshe, “I have seen this people, and behold! it is a stiff-necked people; 10And now, desist from Me. Let My anger flare up against them, and I shall annihilate them; and I shall make you a great nation.” 11Moshe supplicated before God, his Lord, and said: “Why, God, should Your anger flare up against Your people, whom You have taken out of the land of Egypt, with great power and with a strong hand? 12Why should Egypt say the following: ‘With evil intent did He take them out, to kill them in the mountains and to annihilate them from the face of the earth? Relent from Your flaring anger and reconsider regarding the evil against Your people. 13Remember for the sake of Avraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Yourself, and You told them, ‘I shall increase your offspring like the stars of heaven, and this entire land of which I spoke, I shall give to your offspring and it will be their heritage forever.

A thousand years ago, Rashi already understood that God’s telling Moshe to “desist from Me” actually informed him of his right to carry the conversation further.[viii] In fact, every one of God’s utterances frames Moshe’s reply. God tells Moshe that his (Moshe’s) people, the ones he (Moshe) took out of Egypt, have sinned, quickly leaving the path of righteousness, making other gods, and declaring them their own; now, God says, leave Me alone and I will allow My anger to destroy them.

God’s words deny all connection with the people—they are Moshe’s, not His. This severing allows God to react with the full harshness appropriate to their act; partners to a long-term bond bear an obligation to view any act, no matter how egregious, through the prism of the entire relationship, which might reduce the impact of this one incident; a slap in the face administered by a stranger is different from the same physical act coming from a close friend or relative. Denying the connection is a first step to justifying the Jews’ destruction, which their current sorry spiritual state merits.

The Themes of Effective Prayer

Moshe takes up each claim in turn. First, they are not his people but God’s, whom God took out of Egypt. Further, not only are they God’s people, God deliberately publicized their leaving Egypt to convey His power not just to the Jews, but the world at large. Should God now destroy the people, He would completely negate the lesson— a lesson that the Jews themselves have learned insufficiently, as their sin shows. Finally, while God asks Moshe for permission, as it were, to destroy the Jews, Moshe notes that he, Moshe, cannot grant it, since God must fulfill his promises to the Patriarchs.

As with Avraham, God’s omniscience should mean that He knew Moshe’s arguments even before they were said; that God raised each of the useful points for Moshe’s response suggests that the introduction was a guide. Indeed, the themes Moshe strikes in his plea remain those in use until this day: showing how it would be inappropriate or ineffective (in God’s terms) to continue as we fear the Divine Plan dictates.

The Jews who left Egypt were the fulfillment of God’s promise to the Patriarchs and the living embodiment of God’s singular power, His ability to reduce even the strongest nation in the world to abject submission. Moshe seems to be “reminding” God of His relationship with the Patriarchs, who taught the world of His existence, and the Jews whom He took out of Egypt, who served as His representatives to the world.

Moshe’s experience confirms the lessons of Avraham’s prayer at Sodom, that petitionary prayer ideally combines absorbing God’s plans and goals for the world—a heteronomous experience—with the autonomous human ability to formulate plausible alternate ways of reaching those goals.

Chana’s Contribution to Prayer

Chana’s prayer for a son highlights how we can make autonomous petitions to God. As Scripture portrays it, despite her many personal reasons to want a son, she only vows to dedicate the child to God, to make him a Nazirite all his days.[ix] I note that that is a promise rather than a prayer; Scripture’s characterizing it the other way only makes sense if she was showing that her personal desires would actually further God’s goals for the world.[x] God’s plan did not include a child for Chana (for reasons of His inscrutable Will); her unusual willingness to dedicate the child completely to the Lord presented a less obvious plan that furthered God’s goals even better, giving God a prophet who served to spread His words and service among the people.

Thus, while prayer expresses human autonomy to reimagine the future, it only became available by God’s having shown it to us on several different crucial occasions. Further, it seems to work best when humans find alternative ways of achieving God’s goals; the successful supplicant will have to submit fully to God’s worldview before he or she could possibly understand a suggested future to include in prayer. Consistent with our general theme, we find an autonomy preceded by a dose of heteronomy.

Voluntary Modes of Worship: The Lost World of Avraham

Avraham is sometimes seen as the paradigmatic Noahide, since the Talmud assumes that Biblical statements about Avraham inform us as to the extent of Noahide obligations.[xi] He is also HaIvri, separate and distinct from the rest of the world. Similarly, while he obviously observed all of the Noahide laws, much of what he became most famous for—welcoming guests, building altars where he would call out in the Name of God, trying to convince others of the truth of monotheism—was not in the Noahide code, was Avraham’s understanding of how a God-focused individual should act.

Returning to prayer, we can now appreciate that it is but one example of a broader aspect of Avraham’s life. God taught Avraham that he was allowed to pray, but Avraham decided to institute regular morning prayer. Tradition sees the next two Patriarchs as each instituting one further prayer, suggesting that they had learned from their father the importance of innovating in one’s worship of God.

Indeed, Rambam thinks Avraham articulated an entire tradition of how to live a God-centered life.[xii] In his view, the move to Egypt and the influence of idol worship destroyed the Patriarchs’ legacy, making clear that a voluntary system would not work. Moshe’s contribution, for Rambam, was to convey God’s decision to legislate, with reward and punishment ensuring that the system—probably similar to the one Avraham enunciated– would take hold and last.[xiii]

How Important Is The Commanded Aspect of Mitzvot?

Rambam’s idea of a voluntary religion formulated by human beings, even Avraham, runs counter to the stress on mitzvot many assume is so central to Judaism. We will get to mitzvot, but already here Rambam’s picture encourages us to question whether commandments were always part of the Divine plan. In his view, it seems, had Avraham’s descendants and students maintained their commitment to his principles and practices, the events at Sinai might have been unnecessary, or at least radically different.

That would seem to reject the literal meaning of the Talmudic claim that the Patriarch kept the entire Torah, and call into question the ordinary reading of several other Talmudic statements as well. Focusing on a few will prepare us for the next chapter, where we show that mitzvot themselves were not meant as the sum total (or even the central focus) of how one worshiped God.

Berachot 8b says that from the day the Temple was destroyed, all God “has” in this world are the four cubits of halacha. On its face, the statement suggests that God’s concerns narrowed with the Destruction, that all He currently “cares” about is halacha and its observance. That interpretation does not explain, however, why God’s interest in halacha was intensified by the loss of the Temple. It seems that the Talmud is arguing that the world of halacha became the substitute for the overall function of the Temple, much as prayer came to substitute for the sacrifices.

I suggest that the Temple’s role as a location where people could experience God[xiv] was lost in the Destruction and can be regained by immersing oneself in the study of halacha. In the terms we have been discussing here, analyzing the heteronomous halacha allows the person to experience God in a way that can then infuse and inform that person’s autonomous contributions to God’s world.

The Talmud’s rule that גדול המצווה ועושה משאינו מצווה ועושה, one who is commanded to perform an act is greater than one who performs the same act without being commanded,[xv] is also often taken as demonstrating a general preference in halachah for heteronomy over autonomy. Here too, a moment’s reflection reminds us that the statement compares performances of a particular act; it does not mean that an obligated person who recites Grace After Meals, for example, is necessarily “greater” than one who voluntarily studies Torah. The Talmud only means that once God obligated certain people, they receive the greatest reward for fulfilling those obligations.[xvi]

This clarification of the Talmudic statement will be especially important later, when we compare the role of the commandments in the lives of Jewish men and women. Here, it is crucial to noting that the Talmud does not necessarily promote commandedness as an inherent good.

Although the Giving of the Law at Sinai is the central event of the Jewish religion, our thrust so far has been to show that there is room within Jewish sources to recognize that it did not have to contain the legislative content it eventually did. Had Noahides recognized their responsibility to serve God in all the ways a reasonably intuitive person would, or had Avraham’s students and descendants done a better job of handling his legacy, the Revelation at Sinai might have been of a different sort altogether, and we might today adhere to a system largely defined by humans. Working off of Divine guidance, of course, but with rules and details of our own making.

That realization has absolutely no practical ramifications, since we cannot turn back time. Seeing what might have been serves a positive function, however, in preparing us to look with new eyes at the system that developed, to realize that it is less concerned with punctilious observance of specific rituals for their own sake (although that is vital as well), and that there is still much room for autonomy in the human relationship with God.

[i] Exod 8: 4 and 24, and 9: 28.

[ii] Ibid. 8: 8.

[iii] Ibid. 8: 29. I construe Moshe’s extending his hands in prayer as an intensification of the experience.

[iv] Ibid. 9: 29.

[v] Admittedly, for this prayer he was צועק, cried out. Perhaps the difficulty stems from the prayer’s brevity, lack of argumentation, and hurried composition, not a discomfort with formulating effective prayer.

[vi] Num 14:18.

[vii] Num 11:2, 21:7, and Deut 9:20, where Moshe terms his prayers for Aaron after the Golden Calf a תפילה.

[viii] Verse 10, commenting on the words הניחה לי, desist from Me.

[ix] I Sam 1: 11.

[x] See I Sam 1: 10-12. The text says that Hannah prayed, and then records her vow. Even if we assume that she prayed in addition to the vow, the text still characterizes the vow as part of her prayer.

[xi] Sanhedrin 56b.

[xii] See his presentation at the beginning of Laws of Idol Worship. While many assume the Talmud meant Yoma 28b’s claim that Avraham kept the entire Torah literally, Rambam probably understood it to mean that he observed all the underlying principles and purposes of the system commanded at Sinai.

[xiii] In addition to ibid., see his presentation of the evolution of commandments in Laws of Kings, 9;1. Note that Rambam sees Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov as undertaking various acts on their own, but Amram, in Egypt, as commanded. See also Guide II;13, where the belief that God created the world is repeatedly credited to both Avraham and Moshe. I first heard this reconstruction of Rambam’s ideas from Aviezer Ravitsky at Harvard University in Spring 1993; it is now, I believe, commonplace.

[xiv] Rabbi Soloveitchik is reported to have noted that Scripture describes the experience of being at the Temple as being לפני ה’, before God.

[xv] Kiddushin 31a.

[xvi] Incidentally, the whole expectation of reward for voluntary performance is not as obvious as we take it. It is at least possible that acts obligatory upon one set of people are not particularly desirable for another set. The Talmud might have meant, then, that the metzuveh ve-oseh is greater because only he can be sure his act is wholly positive. Along these lines, see R. Nissim b. Reuben Gerondi (RAN), Derashot haRan, Sermon 13, who argues that God’s commandments are so specifically tailored that only those commanded to perform an act can fully accomplish its goals.

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Insights in Pirkei Avot by Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva.orgAkavya ben Machalelel would say: Reflect upon three things and you will not come to sin. Know from whence you came, and to where you are going, and before whom you will give an accounting. Form where did you come? From a putrid drop. To where are you going? To a place of dust, maggots, and worms. Before whom will you give an accounting? Before the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He. (Avot 3:1)Many commentators explain that Akavya addresses three different sources of sin. Since arrogance represents an influential cause of transgression, Akavya begins by reminding humanity of their humble origin. Recalling the less aesthetically pleasing aspects of human generation, gestation, and birth helps us realize that humanity is not just about dignity and grandeur.Temptation and desire also lead to numerous transgressions. Akavya tries to forestall this by mentioning that the human body ultimately lies consumed by worms in a grave. How does this thought help us resist our cravings? Perhaps a sense of temporality encourages the realization of the short term impact of physical delights. Internalizing that realization, we direct our energies to the enduring joys of study, charity, and cleaving to God.R. Yisrael Lipschutz raises a different possibility. Reckless pursuit of desire often hastens arrival at the grave of worms. Overeating or drug addiction can break down the body in dangerous ways. A hedonistic lifestyle brings a person into environments not conducive to health and well being. Single minded pursuit of pleasure also destroys the network of support from family and friends that enable our weathering life’s more trying components.What challenge does Akavya’s third statement address? Abravanel thinks that Akavya focuses on the lure of money and possessions. We make our ethically dubious financial calculations while forgetting to calculate the divine reckoning that awaits us. According to his reading, this mishna’s three themes parallel the “kina, ta’ava and kavod” mentioned by R. Eliezer Hakapar as those items that remove a person from this world (Avot 4:21).R. Lipschutz suggests that the third category refers to heresy and intellectual error. Denying fundamental beliefs can certainly engender sin. Akavya asks the scoffer to consider the possibility that he errs and divine judgment looms at the end of history.Although Akavya seems to take a heavy handed approach utilizing harsh imagery and focusing on fear of punishment, two commentators altar that picture. Rambam writes: “Reflecting on the greatness of the commander will lead a person to fulfill the divine command with alacrity.” Despite the mishnaic imagery of accounting, Rambam thinks that Akavya does not emphasize potential reward or punishment. Rather, he asks us to reflect upon the grandeur of God, thereby gaining the inspiration that forestalls sin.Furthermore, Abravanel notes the limitation of a constantly heavy handed message. Stressing mortality and corruption can also motivate a person to despair of spiritual accomplishment and justify a dissolute lifestyle. We sometimes need Akavya’s message to prevent our spiritual downfall; at other times, we need to hear about human dignity and the greatness of our potential. May we successfully combine these two necessary themes.

By Rabbi Shimon Felix, WebYeshiva

The parsha this week begins with God praising and rewarding Pinchas for an act he committed at the end of last week’s parsha; the killing of Zimri ben Salu, one of the heads of the tribe of Shimon, and Kozby bat Zur, a Midianite princess. He killed them because they were having an intimate relationship; “And behold a man from the children of Israel came and brought before his brothers a Midianite woman, before the eyes of Moshe and before the eyes of the entire congregation of Israel…” The Torah tells us that this was not a personal problem, but rather a communal one; “…and the people began to whore with the women of Midian. They called on the people to offer sacrifices to their Gods, and they ate, and bowed down to their Gods.”

The Rabbis have wondered why it was davka Pinchas who was the one to act against Zimri and Kozbi. Where were Moshe, and the other leaders of the people? We know they were aware of the situation; why did they not take action? Why was this relatively unknown member of the priestly family the one to act, and why did he act so violently? The Rabbis offer an interesting answer. Moshe, when faced with the sin of Zimri and Kozbi, did not know what to do. As the Rabbis say, “The halacha escaped him.” For some reason, Moshe, the law-giver par excellence, was at a loss as to how to respond legally to this situation. Pinchas, however, remembered the law: “He who has intercourse with a non-Jewish woman, zealots should kill him.” Pinchas, the zealot, and not Moshe, the law-giver, remembered this law, and acted on it.

This Rabbinic embellishment to the story only exacerbates our original problem. Why is this sin, the sin of intermarriage (or perhaps a very advanced form of inter-dating), not dealt with in the usual way, as other criminal acts in the Bible are dealt with: through a legal process, with witnesses, a court case, and a judicial decision? Why is it left for “zealots” to kill these particular sinners? It would seem that the Torah realizes that the crime committed by Zimri is the ultimate crime of passion – a crime rooted in deeply felt emotions, a crime rooted in love. Somehow, a crime of this nature eludes the rigors and strictures of the normal judicial process, which is why Moshe “forgot” the law in this case; after all, how can you legislate about love? How can you adjudicate emotions? That is why the only possible solution, the only possible response, if there is to be a response, must also be extra-legal; the passion of Zimri and Kozby can only be matched by the passion of Pinchas, the zealot. The response to the emotional crime committed here must itself be emotional.

To translate this into a less bloody and violent framework than the one in the parsha: Only an intense love relationship with God, the Torah, and the Jewish people can stand up to the act of intermarriage, which is itself an expression of love. The kinds of laws that work in other spheres of human activity will not work here, they do not apply. Only passion can stand up to passion.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva.org

And now, behold, I go to my people; come, and I will announce to you (“i’atzeha”) what this people shall do to your people at the end of days (Bamidbar 24: 14)

Commentators differ greatly regarding the interpretation of this verse. Rashi, citing Chazal, says that Bilaam advised Balak regarding harming the Jewish people. Since Hashem hates sexual immorality, use the Moabite daughters to entice them to sin. Although Bamidbar 31:16 makes it clear that this council did indeed come from Bilaam, Chazal’s interpretation creates difficulties regarding the last part of the verse. The verse apparently refers to something the Jewish people will do to Moab, not something that Moab or Midyan will do to Am Yisrael? Rashi divides the verse into two distinct components– unstated advice against the Jews and a prophecy regarding what the Jews will do to Moab later in history.

Interestingly, Rashi’s solution differs from that of Chazal themsleves in Sanhedrin (106a). They say that Bilaam was akin to someone who curses himself but expresses it as a curse of others. The story truly reveals lowliness on Balak’s part in his pursuing a way to bring about Israel’s downfall. Bilaam protects Balak by inverting the reality and talking about what the Jews will do to Moab.

Ibn Ezra raises a different problem with Rashi’s approach. The phrase “at the end of days” seems to refer to a messianic prophecy and not to council for the here and now. Rashi already solved this difficulty. Once we divide the verse into two separate ideas, the phrase “at the end of days” no longer conveys the time of Bilaam’s council.

Ramban agrees with Ibn Ezra that the phrase “end of days” implies that the council addresses a messianic prediction. Not everyone agrees that “acharit hayamim” has clear messianic resonance. Netziv explains that this phrase refers to the end of a historical period or process. Obviously this would impact on our reading of the verse.

In any case, according to Ramban, we do not hear about Bilaam’s advice at the time of the actual episode but learn about it from a later chapter in Bamidbar. A later comment of Ramban (Bamidbar 25:1) explains the gravity of this sin. The liaison with Moabite women was not a story of lust, an instinctive desire, but rather a manipulative attempt to lead others astray. Ramban argues that this type of transgression deserves far more serious punishment. While we reject all immorality, giving in to desire does not involve the same moral decrepitude as trying to corrupt another. Therefore, God called for vengeance against all involved in this plot.

By Rabbi Gidon Rothstein, WebYeshiva.org

Three preconceptions about prayer get in the way of the theory I want to advance about the significance of Avraham’s entreaties on behalf of the people of Sodom. First, many people and even some traditional sources assume that prayer is natural, that people always knew of their right to pray. Second, the Biblical text allows the impression that Avraham thought of praying for Sodom himself. Third, Avraham’s words seem to focus on the injustice of collective punishment as the reason he objected to God’s intention to destroy Sodom; this, of course, also matches contemporary moral assumptions.

My own view of the conversation between Avraham and God rejects each of these assertions, leaving me to claim that this was where God taught Avraham both that humans are allowed to ask God to change His plan for the future and also the most effective ways to make such requests. I bring it up here because I believe the kind of petitionary prayer God teaches Avraham once again shows the interplay between heteronomy and autonomy I have been laying out.

To begin, I note that our history of praying, as individuals and as a nation, might mislead us into seeing prayer as natural, much as a child naturally calls out for a parent when in trouble. The analogy breaks down, though, when we consider that God is omniscient. If God has “chosen” what is happening right now, the idea that our entreaties should alter the Divine logic requires explanation; even if we assume that until then God had not been directly impacting the events in question, it is not clear why our supplications should bring about greater Divine involvement.

Timing the Advent of Petitionary Prayer to Sodom

However we might answer that theoretical problem, when we look at the Torah itself, we find strong reason to believe that Avraham’s prayer at Sodom differed qualitatively from earlier ones. The early chapters of Bere**** contain few direct and clearly stated petitionary prayers, if any.

While some texts can be read as including a petition—Ramban saw Cain as asking God for a lighter punishment after killing his brother, the Midrash thought Noah prayed for deliverance from the Ark, Rashi thought Avraham asked for a sign to prove that God would fulfill one of His promises, and Ramban thought Avraham meant to ask for Ishmael’s life—in none of those cases was the human being seeking a radically different future than the one God intended.[i] Even sacrifices were brought either to thank God or to announce His rule of the world (to be קורא בשם ה’, “to call out in the Name of God”, in the Biblical phrase), not to petition Him to change the course of history.[ii]

The famine stories sandwiching the incident at Sodom support my claim that Avraham learned the power of petitionary prayer in between. In each of the episodes, Avraham asks Sarah to pose as his sister, fearing the people would kill him to get to her. In the first instance, Pharaoh’s officers praise her to the king, and she is taken to his palace, apparently to become his wife or concubine. As a result, God afflicts the Egyptians, which Pharaoh on his own realizes is related to Sarah’s arrival. Properly chastened, he returns Sarah to Avraham with many gifts, and they leave the area.

Then in chapter 20, the first story the Torah tells us after it finishes with Sodom and its aftermath, Avraham goes to Gerar. Events proceed similarly to the first time, except that when Avimelech, the king of Gerar, takes Sarah, God appears to him in a dream to warn him of his impending doom. Avimelech protests his innocence, correctly noting that he did not know Sarah was Avraham’s wife. God agrees, yet still orders him to ask Avraham to pray for him– the first appearance of the verb root פלל (“to pray”) in Scripture.

The Torah does not explain the paradox of God accepting Avimelech’s claims of innocence while yet still requiring him to ask Avraham to pray. Seeing Sodom as when Avraham himself learned about prayer explains the matter. In Egypt, prayer could not be a factor in the recovery of Sarah, since Avraham did not yet know of his right to pray. At that point, the story is of Avraham having to wander the world, relying on God’s protection, and becoming wealthy and famous.

When Avraham moved to Gerar, though, he had new knowledge he was supposed to share with others. To insure that Avimelech would learn that lesson, God insisted that he ask Avraham to pray.[iii] Rather than simply repeating an earlier incident, the second famine story shows Avraham’s growth, and the broader set of ideas about God he was now able to teach the world.

Time and Place: Sodom as the Paradigm for Prayer in Avraham’s Life

My suggestion that Avraham first learned about prayer at Sodom adds a new element to the Talmudic reading of Avraham’s actions the morning after. The Torah reports that the next morning Avraham rose early (“וישכם”) “to the place where he had stood there before God,”[iv] which the Talmud interprets as a veiled reference to prayer, fueling its belief that Avraham instituted שחרית, the Morning Prayer.[v]

The Talmud does not say that Avraham decided to institute daily morning prayer because of the incident with Sodom, but the verse is suggestive. Just after a discussion with God where prayer was a central issue, the Torah uses a verb that to the Talmud means Avraham instituted regular morning prayer. So, too, this reading illuminates the Talmud’s claim that Avraham also rose to the same place as where he had prayed for Sodom, which fuels its assertion that all people should establish such fixed personal venues for prayer.[vi]

If prayer was always part of Avraham’s life, there would be no reason to fix this place and time of day. If, on the other hand, this was where Avraham first learned of his right to pray, we can well understand why he would be so moved that he would use it to anchor all his future prayer experiences.
God’s Invitation

In addition to all of the circumstantial evidence I just offered, the Torah tells us of God’s words prior to His discussion with Avraham, and those words make clear that God intended to teach Avraham some lesson. Explaining His decision to tell Avraham about Sodom ahead of time, the Torah quotes God as saying:

Shall I hide from Avraham that which I intend to do…For I have known him in order that (Heb.: למען) he command his sons and household after him that they shall guard the path of God, to perform justice and righteousness…[vii]

The first key to understanding this passage is remembering that when Scripture reports God’s thoughts, it is using a literary device to inform us of underlying aspects of the action we would not otherwise understand. God does not “think,” at least not in the way we do, and God does not justify to Himself, as it were, the decisions He makes. These verses, properly read, are there to tell us something more than the fact of how God approached the issue; they are there to set up a framework for the conversation we might not have known from the rest of the text.

In that framework, we have to realize how incomplete those words are. God seems to say He cannot hide what He wants to do from Avraham, because He has known Avraham so that he will teach his descendants about justice and righteousness. We are not told the connection between telling Avraham about Sodom and God’s having known him, nor how that knowledge would facilitate Avraham’s teaching his descendants about God.

The question has been answered numerous times,[viii] but I think Ramban offers a promising start on which to build. Ramban reads “כי ידעתיו למען” (“for I have known him so that”) as meaning that God has cultivated His relationship with Avraham to prepare the Patriarch to properly teach his descendants how to serve Him. In this view, God’s “knowing” of Avraham is the only way Avraham would have been able to raise a family properly dedicated to the service of God.

That already contributes to our broader discussion, since it reminds us that at least some of God’s commandments to us are actually there to foster our understanding of how to worship God properly. Since God extends that idea to telling Avraham about Sodom, Ramban would seem to be implying that here, too, God is easing Avraham’s ability to prepare his descendants for a life of service to God.

Reading that interpretation back into God’s words produces the following translation: “Will I hide from Avraham what I am going to do to Sodom [thus missing an opportunity to educate him about how to serve Me], when Avraham is going to be a great and mighty nation, in whom all the nations of the world will be blessed? For [after all] I have known Avraham [gotten him to the point that he would be the progenitor of this great nation] so that he can command his descendants after him, etc.”[ix]

The Lesson of Prayer

God’s words tell us that He sees the coming conversation as part of the education of a Patriarch, but we have to turn to the conversation itself to discover the content of that lesson. God tells Avraham that He intends to descend to the city of Sodom, to check whether the reports about it are true, in which case He will destroy the city.[x]

Since Avraham knew as well as we do that God does not need to investigate a situation in order to ascertain the facts, the way God says it seems to call for a response from Avraham,[xi] as if God were opening the floor to discussion and debate. Despite an existing plan for how the future would unfold—the cities would be wiped out, righteous with the wicked— the right arguments could perhaps affect it.

Details of the ensuing discussion ratify that reading; to appreciate those details fully, we should note the very fact of the Torah having recorded them. If the central point of telling us about Avraham’s prayer was to show his concern for Sodom, it seems odd that the Torah would go to such lengths to tell us of one of Avraham’s failures in life, noble as it might be—let the Torah tell us Avraham prayed, and leave it at that. On the other hand, if it was the act itself that was supposed to educate us, with each detail adding to that education, we fully understand why the Torah would record it.[xii]

In other words, I am saying that the shape of the conversation supports the reading that God was showing Avraham his right to pray, tolerantly replying to each of his attempts, simply to encourage the endeavor itself. By doing so here, God was encouraging prayer even when seemingly hopeless; since people cannot know when a decree is final and when conditional, they can and should always try praying for a different outcome.

Arguing For Sodom—A Manual of Prayer

God’s informing Avraham that He was going to see whether “as their cries, they had done,” invites the Patriarch to offer a different way of viewing the facts. It cannot be that God was really as yet unaware of the facts; even if we argue that God had limited His providence to that point so that God really did not know the facts, nothing Avraham could say would change them. The only open question was whether the cries God heard fully captured the situation; facts are facts, but Avraham was being told he could give context to those facts that might change the reaction to them.

And Avraham picks up on that well. His opening claim is often read as decrying the apparent injustice of God’s plan to kill the righteous with the wicked. That is, I admit, the simplest reading of the words– “Will you destroy the righteous with the wicked…it is profane for you to kill the righteous with the wicked…Shall the Judge of the entire earth not execute justice?”[xiii] He seems to be protesting God’s punishing the few with and for the many.

Common and enticing as that reading is, it presents philosophical and textual problems. First, it assumes one of two weak premises for the conversation. If Avraham is protesting the plan to kill the few with the many, it seems to imply that God had, indeed, immorally intended to do so, and Avraham educated the Creator about morality.

Slightly less of a problem is to assume that God did not intend to kill the righteous people in Sodom, and Avraham’s whole complaint is an error, a misread of God’s intentions. That reading would need to explain why God allowed Avraham to argue at length over a course of action that had never been contemplated, and then recorded it in full in the Torah. It would have been simpler for God to interrupt the first time, say, “Listen, Avraham, there aren’t any righteous people in Sodom, so don’t sweat it.”

A Missed Implication of Avraham’s Prayer

Another problem with the common reading becomes clear when we add back a piece of the text I omitted above. In addition to his other complaints, Avraham also says, “Will You destroy and not bear the place for the sake of the fifty righteous in its midst?” Avraham was not arguing to save Sodom’s righteous, he was claiming their presence should forestall the destruction of the others as well. Seeing that forces us to reconsider his protest of killing the righteous with the wicked, since that gives no reason to save the wicked with the righteous.

What seems more likely clear is that Avraham and God both knew the question was whether to save or destroy the cities as a whole. Modern morality tends to dismiss corporate responsibility or collective judgment as an option, but if Sodom was fated to live or die as a unit, the discussion becomes instantly more comprehensible.

Rather than objecting to the idea of killing the righteous with the wicked per se, Avraham was suggesting that the presence of the righteous might give reason to stay God’s hand on the whole city; I suspect it is because those righteous might still have a positive impact on the larger entity. Treating a group as a unit means judging them as a whole, but it should also extend to assessing the likelihood they will change and improve.

The decision to destroy Sodom focused on the sinners, whose acts and overwhelming influence on society more than justified the annihilation of the city, including any relative innocents. Avraham raised the possibility that even just fifty righteous people might change that, making it unjust to take away that chance.

Given a little time, I read Avraham as arguing, those Fifty could change the cities so that they would no longer deserve annihilation, an outcome that better reflects the balance between justice and mercy portrayed elsewhere in Scripture. Avraham’s plea wasn’t a protest of God’s injustice so much as a hope that God would make room for a significantly less likely option, but one whose upsides were incalculably better than the currently envisioned future.

“Will You destroy the righteous with the wicked” is more properly read as focusing less on the righteous—God could always extract them if He wanted, as with Lot—than on God’s not giving them more time to positively influence the wicked. It is better read, then, as “will You destroy righteous and wicked together? Perhaps there are fifty righteous people [who can affect the character of the city] will you erase and not give the place [more time] for the sake of the fifty?” So, too, the justice of “shall the Judge of the Earth not do justice,” refers to the justice of giving sinners every possible opportunity, however slim, to find a way to step back from their evil and repent their sins.[xiv]

“Convinced,” God accedes to his prayers.

Taking this as the paradigm of successful petitionary prayer suggests that such prayers involve both submitting to God’s view of the world while still exercising the right to suggest other ways of achieving God’s goals. The petitioner stands at the edge of a worrisome future, which can sometimes be changed by articulating a hoped-for alternative that will lead to a better fulfillment of God’s wishes for the world.

I see this ability to argue in favor of a less likely path, to commit to working to bring that path into reality, as the gift of petitionary prayer God gave to Avraham. Next time, we will see how the model plays out in the rest of Scripture, and how it can affect our prayers and our understanding of our relationship with God.

[i] Cain says “My sin is too great to bear,”Gen 4:13, which Ramban saw as a prayer for protection from those who would kill him. Aside from the indirect phrasing, it would mean Cain was looking to uphold God’s decree, not change it. So, too, Rashi reads Avraham’s (Gen 15:8) “With what shall I know that I will inherit it?” as asking for proof of the promise, not a change of the future. Finally, Ramban reads Avraham’s words “Would that Ishmael live before You,” (Gen 17:18), as a prayer that the boy not be killed. While here Ramban may have assumed Avraham was trying to change the planned future, the request is indirect, almost as if expressing a wish in God’s hearing was the most he was allowed to do.

[ii] See, for example, Gen 10:8.

[iii] R. Achituv, Megadim (No. 31, Tevet 5760, Winter 2000), “שומע תפילה במקרא, The One Who Hears Prayers in Scripture” notes that prayer in Scripture is generally offered by prophets or functionaries of the Temple. On 109, he refers to the incident with Avimelech as proof of his contention—Avimelech’s prayers are unacceptable, but Avraham’s will be accepted. He does not explain why Avimelech had to pray at all, since he had done no wrong, leading me to prefer my reading.

[iv] Gen 19; 27.

[v] bBer. 26b.

[vi] bBer. 6b.

[vii] Gen 18; 19.

[viii] Rashi reads the verses as God saying that since Avraham will command his descendants follow God’s path, to do His bidding, God “has” to tell Avraham about Sodom’s impending doom. That reading interprets the two appearances of the word למען differently in the same sentence—once as “because” and once as “in order that.” Also, Rashi’s reading does not explain why each of Avraham’s arguments on Sodom’s behalf was worth recording.

Others, such as the late fifteenth century Don Isaac Abarbanel and the early sixteenth century Italian Jewish commentator Sforno, saw God as telling Avraham about Sodom to reassure him of the justice of their destruction. The details of Avraham’s protests, in this view, show us that he fully explored God’s justice by exhausting all possible other options. He could then walk away renewed in his dedication to raise children who would follow the paths of the Lord.

Their reading questionably assumes that without the prior conversation, Avraham would have considered God unjust. This stands at odds with Avraham’s general acceptance of God’s decrees, as shown by his later willingness to kill Yitschak at God’s command. He might puzzle over God’s decision, but we would expect the discoverer of monotheism to seek guidance rather than lose faith. Their reasoning, then, does not convincingly justify God’s need to tell Avraham about events ahead of time.

[ix] The nineteenth century R. Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (Netsiv) saw this incident as educating Avraham about how God deals with evildoers, which at least agrees that the conversation sought to educate Avraham. Rambam includes the verse למען אשר יצוה (“in order that he should command”) twice in the tenth chapter of his Laws of Gifts to the Poor, in paragraphs one and fifteen, in the specific context of prayer; although he does not explain, his citation suggests a similar sense of the text.

[x] Gen 18: 21. For comparison, note that in Exodus 3: 9 and I Samuel 9: 16, God also mentions that cries have reached Him. In each of those cases, God is taking action in response, not “going down” to check the accuracy of those cries.

[xi] The way God opens a conversation with humans is often instructive, as Rashi noted on God’s words to Moshe at the Golden Calf (Exod 32:10), to Adam (Gen 3:9), and to Balaam (Num 22:9).

[xii] My thanks to Rabbi Barry Kornblau for questioning why God would encourage Avraham to pray in a futile situation.

[xiii] Gen 18:23-25.

[xiv] This reading also explains Avraham’s dogged pursuit of ever lower numbers. The more righteous people there are, the greater the chance of their success. So, too, Rashi assumed the righteous might be spread among the five cities, giving further reason for Avraham to test each new number of righteous. If five cities each contains a coterie of righteous people (a Morality Institute, perhaps with panel discussions and public lectures), they would wield greater influence than if any of them stood as lone voices in a sea of wickedness, enhancing the likelihood of success. Each reduction in the number of cities containing such people would raise new doubts about the odds of their meaningfully affecting their own city, meaning also whether their presence should affect God’s decision.

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By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva.org

R. Tarfon would say: The day is short, the work is significant, the workers are lazy, the reward is great, and the master is pressuring.

He would also say: It is not incumbent upon you to finish the work nor are you free to desist from it. If you studied a good deal of Torah, you will be greatly rewarded. Your employer is reliable to pay for your work and know that the righteous receive their reward in the world to come. (Avot 2: 15-16)

R. Tarfon’s message preserves a delicate educational balance. On the one hand, we want to impress people with the magnitude of authentic responsibility. Our obligations of this world include a great deal of Torah to study, many mitzvot to perform, and much charity to donate. Even a relatively longer lifetime of, say, a hundred years may seem inadequate for the task. Therefore, R. Tarfon instructs us to get busy productively filling our time while trying to meet immense responsibilities.

Having acknowledged the importance of the above message, we also understand the need for a counterpoint. A solitary focus on the above can produce despair and fail to recognize genuine achievements along the way. Keep telling people that becoming learned demands mastering the entire Talmudic corpus and those struggling to finish a single chapter may give up. Those who finish a tractate will not feel some justified and religiously appropriate pride in their accomplishment. R. Tarfon teaches that we are not expected to complete the task.

He avoids the opposing extreme by asserting that the above does not free a person from increasing his efforts. Continued emphasis on lowering expectations can destroy standards and prevent any striving for greatness. We need not finish the task but neither can we desist from it.

Naftali Hertz Wessely, in his Yein Levanon, adds an insightful point about the relationship between the two mishnayot. The first employs a parable including several components, most of which are precisely accurate. Indeed, the work is great, the time is short, the workers are lazy, and the reward is significant. However, the image of a master pressuring needs some fine tuning.

Imagine a rich fellow who hires builders for a job while offering enormous compensation on condition that they finish the work in a day. This reflects the situation evoked by the original parable of R. Tarfon. Yet while God does make demands, He values fruitful endeavor even when the product remains unfinished. Most employers have a result orientated outlook which only sees value in a completed end. Hashem cares about process and effort and understands that different people have varying capabilities. Religious success does not depend upon completion but upon doing our utmost while achieving smaller victories along the way.

Wessely notes that the comparison of the parable breaks down in another way as well. Workers who finish the stricture usually collect their paycheck, go home, and relax. Religious striving knows no finished product since new horizons always beckon. After any success, we could develop more and push further. When R. Tarfon teaches that we are not free to desist, he points out how we never hand in our completed efforts and head off to religious retirement.

May we never cease shooting for the stars even as we joyfully experience more prosaic accomplishments.

By Rabbi Shimon Felix, WebYeshiva.org

This week’s parsha tells the interesting story of the pagan prophet, Bil’am. Frightened by the approach of the Jewish people as they near the Land of Israel, Balak and the other Kings of Moav and Midian hire Bil’am to curse the Jewish people – “Now, please go and curse for me this nation, for it is too mighty for me; perhaps I will prevail, smite them, and drive them from the land…”. Bil’am takes the job, but, again and again, try as he might, his curses are turned by God into blessings: each and every time he tries to curse the Israelites, God miraculously puts the most beautiful poetry into his mouth, in which he praises the people Israel.

I have always felt that there is a bit of a strange game going on here. After all, God could, I imagine, allow Bil’am to curse the Jewish people to his heart’s content, and then simply ignore his words, or he could he could kill him, or turn him into a toad, or something. Why make such a big deal out of his words? Why does God seem to believe that what comes out of Bil’am’s mouth is important, and, therefore, He must perform this playful miracle of fooling around with what Bil’am says so that it comes out good for the Jews?

It occurs to me that if we discount the supernatural nature of a curse or a blessing, whatever that may or may not be, we are taught an interesting lesson about the power of the spoken word. Were Bil’am to successfully condemn the Jewish people, were he to curse and revile them, those words would have power: the Jews who heard them would be disheartened, the Midianites who heard them would be encouraged; the atmosphere, the balance, between these people would be effected, subtle and not-so-subtle psychological changes would take place, which would, apparently, weaken the Israelites and strengthen their enemies. If, on the other hand, Bil’am himself, prophet of Midian and Moav, heaps praises on the Jewish people, proclaiming “mah tovu ohalecha Yaakov…” – “How goodly are thy tents, Yaakov, and thy tabernacles, oh Israel” – that, too, has an effect; demoralizing the already nervous Midianites, and strengthening the resolve of the Jews.

The crucial thing here is the mystery of the power of the spoken word. Why, as children, do we cry when we are called nasty names? Why does the wrong word at the wrong time have the strength to end a relationship, or the right one, to ignite it? Why am I still embarrassed when I think of certain things I said in high school (and yesterday)? Why does it still hurt, or feel good, to remember things that people said to me years ago? The power of speech, which, perhaps, is precisely that which makes us human, is awesome; words are the strongest things there are; words, being the way we understand and explain our existence, are what we are. Allowing Bil’am to curse the Jewish people would have done us irreparable damage, would have changed something forever; miraculously wringing these blessings from him gives us encouragement that we still take strength from today.

As I was writing this, I could not help but think of the language that is so often used against Israel, and the Jewish people, today; the unbelievably vicious, sick, nature of so much of what is said against us; the 1984-like quality to the curses and accusations that are so often heaped upon us by some. I realize that these words, as much as one tries to discount their importance, to laugh them off, do have an effect: they weaken us, they hurt us. Like the curses Bil’am tried to hurl against the ancient people of Israel, these modern-day curses, like all spoken words, have real power; the power to poison the minds and hearts of those who are unfortunate enough to hear them, and, perhaps even more tragically, of those who thoughtlessly mouth them.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva.orgAfter Moshe draws water from the rock, God suddenly informs both Moshe and Aharon that they have sinned and will not lead the Jews into the Promised Land. According to Bamidbar 20: 12, their sin involves lack of belief and failure to sanctify God in the eyes of the people. The precise sin remains unclear and the attempt to identify it has occupied commentaries for centuries.Rashi famously says that God commanded Moshe to speak to the rock; he erred by ignoring the divine command and hitting the rock. Ramban (Bamidbar 20:7) raises several difficulties with this approach. Hashem told Moshe to take the staff; it would then be reasonable for Moshe to assume that he should use that staff. Furthermore, extracting water from a rock is the same miracle whether Moshe speaks to the rock or strikes it. Why should the distinction matter so much? Finally, how does Rashi’s suggestion cohere with the Torah associating the sin with meila (Devarim 32:51)?In his introduction to Avot (Shmoneh Prakim chapter 4), Rambam suggests that Moshe’s sin was anger, unjustified anger which served as a negative model for the people. Ramban levels cogent criticism at Rambam as well. Moshe’s utilizing harsh language when referring to the people as rebels (20: 10) does not clearly establish that he lost his temper. Even if we assume that Moshe did give in to rage, constant complaining might deserve an angry response. In fact, Bamidbar 31: 14 provides a more obvious example of misplaced anger and we do not see Moshe punished in that scenario. Additionally, how does Rambam’s explanation account for the Torah terming Moshe’s actions a lack of belief?Ramban prefers Rabbenu Chananel’s interpretation that Moshe’s sin was using the plural form: “Hear now, you rebels; are we to bring you forth water out of this rock.“ That formulation implies to the people that Moshe and Aharon perform the miracles independent of divine assistance. Rabbenu Chananel’s suggestion fits the Torah’s phraseology when describing the sin. They fail to sanctify the divine name because their language removes the divine role. While they themselves do not lack faith, their language minimizes the place of belief. The term “meila” also makes sense because it refers to taking something away that truly belongs to Hashem.This interpretation relates to an important Torah theme. Our tradition includes a pantheon of great sages and prophets, none greater than Moshe. At the same time, we emphasize that only God runs the world and only He is worthy of worship. Moshe was the greatest prophet in history but when he inadvertently took credit for divine intervention, punishment was swift and decisive. This sensitive area of religious life leaves no margin for error.

By Rabbi Gidon Rothstein, WebYeshiva.org

Having started with non -Jews, and the Jewish attitude towards their autonomy in shaping their service of God, we have already seen indications that God at some point would have accepted, even welcomed, human input into defining morality, within broad parameters. When they failed to do so, God gave them the Noahide laws; at least once the Talmud got hold of those laws, they became defined ways that were not as obvious as some have assumed them to be. Today, I will finish looking at aspects of the Noahide laws that further substantiate that perspective, and then conclude by summarizing the lessons these laws teach us about God’s view of human autonomy.

Theft

Like murder, theft as a broad concept is intuitive, but its exact definition and the punishment accorded it in the Noahide code goes beyond the expected. First, Noahide law punishes theft of even minimal amounts of money, even if the victim is not the rightful owner. Second, like all Noahide law, theft is considered a capital crime. In the most extreme example, if one non-Jew steals a minimal amount of money and another steals it from him, Noahide law would call for both to be put to death.[i]

The Talmud and later writers do not state it this way as a practical expression of how to deal with thieves—by the time the Talmud recorded these discussions, it had already been hundreds of years since Jewish courts had the power to execute sinners, especially non-Jewish ones—but to make a moral point. Theft in Noahide law is not primarily intended to protect property, it is a way to stress the absolute inviolability of others’ property. As we might say to a child, if it’s not yours, don’t take it. Obviously, however, that extreme reaction to even minimal theft is neither intuitive nor universally obvious.[ii]

Ever Min haChai—The Limbs of a Living Animal

Many who study Noahide law assume that the prohibition against eating parts taken off a living animal is a safeguard against cruelty.[iii] That already gives the commandment an educative component, although perhaps one we would see as obvious. What that does not explain, though, is why the law prohibits eating such pieces of animals, rather than removing them. Further, the law does not care how the limb was removed; an amputated limb, under full sedation and for the animal’s health (such as an animal born with an extra leg), is just as prohibited as one torn off cruelly.

The details point us in the direction of what seems to me the law’s true focus, making clear when meat can be thought of as food. The Talmud assumes that God only first permitted animal flesh after the Flood;[iv] the prohibition of ever min hachai makes it capitally clear that that permission only starts after death.

Cross-Breeding—A Simple Prohibition

I think I have already shown that Noahide laws do more than articulate obvious and universal ideas about how to live a good human life. Fundamental (and non-obvious) Jewish ideas about how to relate to God, to sex, to others’ lives and property, and to food are all incorporated here; non-Jews need not become Jews, but they are expected to accept core beliefs about the proper conduct of the world and human society.

A lesser known aspect of the Noahide code is that it is not limited to the seven capital crimes. There are several opinions in the Talmud about which prohibitions do and do not apply to non-Jews, but Rambam, at least, understood the Talmud to include grafting fruit from one type of tree to another or mating animals of different species—cross-breeding– as simple Noahide prohibitions. Jewish thinkers commonly understand that prohibition, for Jews, as teaching us to see the sufficiency of God’s Creation, a lesson we could imagine God wanting non-Jews to learn as well.[v]

Loosely Defined Obligations—Reminders of Continuing Autonomy

Tradition also assumed that non-Jews bore responsibilities to the world, to others, and to God; we will take an example of each. First, the Mishna assumes a general human obligation to populate and inhabit the world. The original context was a debate about a slave who is freed by one of his original two owners; the House of Shammai convinces Beit Hillel that the remaining owner must be coerced to free the slave, since otherwise all women would be prohibited to this slave, putting him in violation of Isaiah 45;18, “not for chaos did He create it, to be inhabited He formed it.”

The explicit discussion focuses on sexual relationships, but Beit Shammai introduced the prooftext with the words, “the world was only created for procreation.” The locution convinced numerous Jewish scholars that non-Jews, too, are obligated to bear children.[vi]

More than just the physical act of bearing children, that would seem to include passing on a healthy and well-managed world to the next generation.[vii] This at least implies raising children to be productive adults, acting with an eye towards ecological responsibility (however we define that), and quite possibly urges some level of political involvement.

This first obligation, then, already shows us that God expected human beings, even once given laws, to make personal and non-obvious choices as to how to contribute to God’s world. Personal and communal intuition would be the guide for each person to fulfill the Divine mandate to settle the world and help it avoid descending into chaos.

Charity

Noting a verse where God speaks of Avraham commanding all his descendants to perform righteousness and justice in the land, the Talmud assumes that non-Jews are required to give charity.[viii] While the Talmud could imagine that male descendants might be obligated only to set up courts, women’s “righteousness” had to mean acts of charity. The Talmud does not define that with any specificity, nor is it clear that men have to follow it. Either way, this is another example where the fulfillment of an heteronomous obligation is left to the individual and the community.

Prayer

The last obligation I will mention here, that of prayer to God at least in times of need, was extrapolated by R. Moshe Feinstein, the leading rabbinic decisor of the late 20th century.[ix] Although he recognized that the Talmud nowhere mentions such a duty, he assumed that belief in God, implicit in Rambam’s requirement that they fulfill these laws in recognition that they came from God,[x] includes turning to Him in times of distress.

Rabbi Feinstein’s assumption is certainly not obvious, but it suggests whole ranges of autonomous behavior expected of humans even after God gave Noahide law. Aside from thanking God in times of bounty and praying to God in times of crisis, he would seem to require other acts that stem from belief in God, such as acting in ways that maintain God’s world. It is possible, then, that the search for sustainability is itself an extension of belief in God.

Conclusion—A First Theory of the Balance between Heteronomy and Autonomy

Originally thrust into a world with remarkably few rules—eat the fruit of the Garden other than that of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil—people failed to recognize that they were supposed to themselves develop a sense of the proper way to live a God-related life. In response, God set down rules that conveyed important foundational ideas.

Humans from then on were required to know that God existed, that they could not worship any other God, and that they could not openly rebel against that God. They had to set up relatively cohesive societies with well-enforced laws, express their sexuality away from their family of origin, and use only dead animals as food. Finally, they could not openly change Creation, such as by creating a new, better species.

All of those prohibitions, however, just set the stage for a more positive aspect of human life, fostering the productive habitation of God’s world. Through the basic requirement of procreation, Isaiah communicated God’s desire that humanity guard and maintain the world, just as when God placed people in the Garden of Eden. The prohibitions help human beings find their way to the best fulfillment of the positive goals God still holds out for them.

How Would They Know About This?

Perhaps the most perplexing aspect of the Noahide laws is that Judaism makes no provision for communicating them. Unless we envision God as taking joy in others’ continuing failure, there would have to be at least some way non-Jews could be expected to come to understand their obligations towards God and the world.

The Talmud’s view of the respect non-Jews are supposed to show Jews suggests just such an avenue. Cynics will see this Talmudic emphasis as an attempt to burnish our self-image, to see ourselves as superior to those around us. I believe, instead, that it was meant to lead non-Jews to ask how we see their responsibilities in life. While human history shows that few non-Jews have thus far acknowledged Jews as the source of this vital information, the Talmud at least lets us see how the system expected or hoped non-Jews would learn how to live properly.

Acknowledging Jews’ Otherness

Several rules highlight Judaism’s insistence that non-Jews recognize and respect Jews’ separateness.[xi] First, the Sifre, an authoritative extra-Talmudic collection of legal inferences from Scripture, requires even gerei toshav, non-Jews who adhere to the Noahide laws, to live in their own cities within a Jewish commonwealth.[xii] Since halachah entitles such non-Jews to the same social welfare benefits as Jews,[xiii] this cannot be an expression of disapproval. Rather, it articulates who owns the Land; gerei toshav are welcome outsiders, but not full members or citizens.

The Talmudic rhetoric about a non-Jew who hits a Jew, observes the Sabbath, or studies Torah, goes even further in emphasizing their need to accept their fundamental differences from Jews. The Talmud compares a non-Jew hitting a Jew to doing so to God, a comparison the Talmud elsewhere makes in the context of stressing how Jews are supposed to treat their parents.[xiv] The permissibility of taking a day a week to cease all productive activity, the Sabbath, is seen as a special gift to the Jewish people; normal humans had to daily contribute to the settlement of the world.[xv] Similarly, the Talmud sees study of Torah as the vehicle of a unique bond between God and the Jewish people, so that a non-Jew who studies Torah other than that directly relevant to him or her deserves death.[xvi]

The Talmud saying that someone “deserves death,” when only God would enact that punishment, expresses a value rather than predicts a result. Here, the several examples of how the Talmud hoped or expected non-Jews to behave towards Jews speak of a desire to have non-Jews understand the Jews’ special role in the world and respond accordingly.

The World of Mitzvot

Non-Jews’ exclusion from these observances highlights Judaism’s general openness to their performing other commandments, even without converting.[xvii] Most surprisingly to me, Rambam allows a Jew to circumcise a non-Jew, as long as the non-Jew intended his circumcision to fulfill the Biblical commandment.[xviii] I note that in particular because the Bible and Talmud stress the covenantal significance of circumcision.[xix] Allowing non-Jews to perform the act without joining the covenant is an extreme example of the religion’s openness to partial observance.[xx]

This permissiveness highlights those practices from which they are excluded. Taken together with the requirement to live in separate cities and the harshness of the reaction towards a non-Jew assaulting a Jew, I understand these rules as expressing the system’s hope that non-Jews would recognize Jewish exceptionalism and treat them accordingly, especially in terms of turning to them for guidance as how to live a proper human life.

That non-Jews have never seen Jews this way is a tragedy of history, but it does not diminish the underlying assumption of how God still hopes the world will work.

Conclusion– When Autonomy Yielded to Heteronomy

The model of the world we have found in the Noahide laws differs markedly from that of other religions and from most contemporary writers’ views of Judaism. I hope I have shown that Judaism did not see itself as the sole or best way to act; it assumed that people were originally empowered to define their relationship with God almost completely on their own. Only in response to their crashing failure to do so did God set up some rules to guide them. While strict, those rules left the basic structure of life—what kind of a job to have, where to focus one’s energies in improving the world, how to raise a family, how to use leisure time—to the individual.

That view of the puzzle shifts what Jews represent to humanity. The picture I have laid out here suggests that traditional Judaism took the Scriptural characterization of Jews as “a kingdom of priests”[xxi] more seriously than has hitherto been realized. Jewish priests lived markedly different lives from ordinary Jews; they had a different relationship to the Land, significantly more restrictions on whom they could marry or touch, and needed to hold themselves always ready to serve in the Temple if called. This was not a more ideal life, it was a different one.

The Noahide laws and the sources adduced here point towards Jews filling a similar role in world society. Like priests, Jews live an unusual life, more focused on God than perhaps necessary for ordinary human beings, in a place that had special characteristics in terms of relating to God, and were meant to be living representatives of the God Who hoped to bring all humanity to recognize Him.

Even the rules for Jews, while vastly more extensive than the ones applied to non-Jews, leave room for autonomous input than has been hitherto stressed, as we now turn to show. The first step on that road is analyzing a crucial episode in the life of the man who straddled the gap between being non-Jewish and Jewish, Avraham.

[i] See Laws of Kings 9;9, based on Avoda Zara 72a.

[ii] I suspect most of us find it difficult to justify putting someone to death, even in theory, for stealing a few dollars, which proves how inured we have become to theft’s ubiquity. Were we more sensitive to the theft’s damage to a social sense of unity and common purpose, we might understand better how it could arouse the kind of moral revulsion usually reserved for murder or rape– which, incidentally, is seen as a kind of theft by at least one rabbinic author.

[iii]Aaron Lichtenstein, The Seven Laws of Noah, 2d ed. (New York: RJJ School, 1986), 56 mentions the cruelty aspect but also gives the suggestion I give in the text, that it helps define food.

[iv] Sanhedrin 59b. A similar stress on reminding humans of the seriousness of eating animals might underlie the kashrut rules given to Jews.

[v] Laws of Kings 10; 6; for the reason, see Sefer haHinuch, Mitzva 244. That the rule is limited to trees and animals, where Jews could not crossbreed plants either, suggests that the visibility of the crossbreeding was the central problem. What that would mean for various industries today is an interesting halachic discussion worthy of further thought in another venue.

[vi] See, for some examples, Sheiltot R. Ahai Gaon, Sheilta 165, Tosafot Chagiga 2b, s.v. Lo. Two important commentators on R. Joseph Caro’s Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law), Beit Shemuel and Magen Avraham, similarly assumed a general human obligation to marry (or cohabit) and bear children, see their comments to Even haEzer 1 and Orach Chaim 146 respectively.

[vii] This also reflects God’s original desire, in Genesis, to put humans into the Garden “to work it and preserve it,” as R. Aharon Lichtenstein has noted in public lectures.

[viii] Sanhedrin 57b, citing Genesis 18;19. The exact derivation is not straightforward, but also not our issue. Note that the Talmud infers ideals of non-Jewish behavior from Avraham, meaning it sees him as an exemplary non-Jew, aside from his role as founder of the Jewish people.

[ix] Responsa Iggerot Mosheh, Orach Chaim 2;28.

[x] Laws of Kings 8;11.

[xi] In any discussion like this, I repeatedly stress that these differences are religious and not genetic or racial. Any non-Jew is free to convert and enjoy the rights and responsibilities of Jewish life, such as they may be.

[xii] Sifre Deuteronomy 259. Rabad, ibid, assumes that Rambam would maintain that rule even today, while he himself only draws that distinction when the Jewish commonwealth is fully functional.

[xiii] See Rambam, Laws of Gifts to the Poor 7;1 and Rabad’s gloss to Laws of Prohibited Relations 14;8.

[xiv] Sanhedrin 58b with Rambam, Laws of Kings, 10;6. For parents, see Sanhedrin 50b.

[xv] Ibid, which derives the prohibition from Genesis 8;22’s reference to the world’s functioning productively, “day or night.” The rule sounds more onerous than it is, as Chatam Sofer (R. Moshe Sofer, 1762-1839), notes in his novellae on the tractate. He speaks of vacations specifically, but his point is that any productive activity– spending time with one’s children, attending meetings for charitable causes, and demonstrating at political rallies—are also ways to contribute to the world’s running. Medieval commentators such as Rashi, R. Meir haLevi Abulafia, and Rambam have slightly different versions of what exactly the non-Jew may not do.

[xvi] Sanhedrin 59a. If we recall Rema’s view that dinin included all of Jewish civil law, he would have to allow non-Jews to study all the topics and tractates that elucidate those laws, a huge chunk of the Talmudic corpus. Rather than caring about non-Jews gaining certain kinds of knowledge, the Talmud seems focused on prohibiting the act of Torah study as an independent religious experience.

[xvii] Not all scholars gave blanket permission. Radvaz (R. David ibn Avi Zimra, 1479-1573, Spain, Israel, and Egypt), glossing Laws of Kings 10;10, forbade non-Jews’ fulfilling commandments requiring holiness and purity, such as wearing phylacteries; R. Moshe Feinstein (1895-1986), Iggerot Moshe 2;7 assumed non-Jews could only keep general commandments such as donating to the Temple and giving charity, but none particular to Jews. On the other hand, Magen Avraham 304;12 and R. Israel Meir Kagan (1839-1933) Beur Halacha ad loc assumed that a non-Jew could accept certain additional commandments while becoming a resident alien, and those would become permanently obligatory for that non-Jew.

[xviii] Laws of Circumcision 3;7 and Responsa 148.

[xix] See Genesis 17, bShabbat 132a, and bNedarim 31b.

[xx] Rambam’s comment, Guide III;49, that circumcision serves to reduce sexual desire, and his claim that the foreskin is disgusting, Laws of Circumcision 3;8, might explain why he allows this for non-Jews as well, since it contributes to the ideal of reining in sexual desire. In his view, it would seem that God made this a sign of the covenant to indicate that sexual restraint is central to Jewish identity.

[xxi] Exodus 19;6.

By Rabbi Shimon Felix, WebYeshiva.org

This week I want to do something a bit different. As I’m sure many of you know, in addition to reading in the synagogue the weekly Torah portion, there is a tradition to follow that reading with a short selection from one of the books of the prophets. Typically, this section, called the ‘haftarah’ or ‘leave-taking’ (the idea being that it is a kind of epilogue or coda to the Torah reading) is connected in some thematic way to the Torah portion. This week I would like to talk about the Torah reading together with the Haftarah.

In the Torah reading, near the end of the parsha, which, according to the Rabbinic understanding takes place towards the end of the 40-year trek through the desert, we are told that there was a water shortage: “Now there was no water for the nation, so they gathered against Moshe and against Aharon…saying…why did you bring the congregation of God into this wilderness to die there, us, along with our cattle…?” God appears to Moshe, and tells him to take his staff, assemble the community, and speak to a rock, which will give forth water. Famously, Moshe somehow gets it wrong, and commits what for him will be an ultimate, tragic sin, for which he will be punished by being denied entry into the Holy Land. Moshe assembles the people, and says, “Listen here, you rebels, from this stone shall we bring forth for you water?” Moshe then strikes the stone with his staff, twice, and water flows out of it. Subsequently, God informs him that by doing so he has sinned, grievously: “You did not believe in me, to sanctify me before the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this congregation into the land that I am giving them.”

For centuries, the Rabbis have debated the precise nature of Moshe’s sin. Some feel that it was Moshe’s anger – his branding the people “rebels”, and his nasty tone of voice and choice of language. Others focus on the speaking to/hitting the rock question; although Moshe was instructed by God to take his staff, he was clearly told to speak to the rock, and, instead, he hit it, twice. Many commentaries see this as another sign of anger, and/or of disregard for the precise demands made by God. It may be that Moshe, who has consistently, over the period of the Exodus from Egypt and the 40 years of wandering in the desert, used his staff to hit things, was now being instructed to symbolically take the people of Israel, as they ready themselves to enter the land of Israel, to a higher, more mature level, in which speech, rather than violent action, was to be preferred. If so, his regressive behavior in hitting the rock communicated precisely the wrong message to the Israelites, whom, had he spoken to the rock, could have the learned the value of obedience to the word of God, rather than a fear of His wrath, as being the desirable mode of interaction with Him, and that speech, rather than violent action, is the preferred mode of human behavior.

After this episode, there are a series of diplomatic and military interactions between the Jews and the first Canaanite peoples they encounter as they approach the Land of Israel, including a successful campaign that Moshe and the Israelites waged against the Amorites, who attacked Israel, after refusing Moshe’s request to pass peacefully through their territory, in which Israel captures Amorite territory. It is this last episode, the conquest of the Amorite land, which clearly seems to be the connection to the Haftarah that is read in conjunction with parshat Chukat – the story of Yiftach the Giladi in the book of Judges. The story begins by telling us that Yiftach, Gilad’s illegitimate son (we are told that his mother was a prostitute) was thrown out of his parental home by his younger half-brothers, who denied him a share in their father’s inheritance because he was “the son of another woman”. Yiftach takes up with a group of men described as “worthless fellows”. Yiftach seems to be a typical marginal youth; unfairly rejected by his family, he opts for a life on the edge, surrounded by other marginal people.

But then, the people of Israel are attacked by the Ammonites, who seek to conquer the Amorite territory that, 300 years earlier, in our parsha, Moshe had captured in his defensive war against the Amorites. Yiftach’s old tormentors, the men of Gilad, approach him and ask him to lead them in battle. It would seem that the personality-type that Yiftach was – an adventurous roustabout, was exactly what was needed. The respectable burghers of Gilad knew that they were not fighters, and turned to Yiftach to do that job for them. Yiftach agrees, and becomes their leader. He then does something that is somewhat unexpected. We have been prepared by the narrative for a Yiftach who is a man of action, who will be a captain for the beleaguered and frightened people of Gilad. And what does this man of action do? He sends a diplomatic mission to the king of Ammon asking for peace. In the discussion that follows, Yiftach argues that the land that Ammon is attacking was conquered legitimately by Israel from another nation, the Amorites, some 300 hundred years earlier, in a defensive war, after Israel was attacked by the Amorites. The Ammonites, whom Israel did not fight at that time, have no legitimate reason to attack Israel over that land now.

All the diplomacy is to no avail; the Ammonites attack, and Yiftach goes into battle. Before he does, he makes a vow to God, saying that, if he is victorious, and returns from the battle, “whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the people of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.” He was assuming that it would be a goat, or sheep, or cow, which would first come out to greet him upon his return. Tragically, after Yiftach returns home, victorious, it is his daughter, his only child, who comes out, singing and dancing, to greet him.

The end of the story is horribly tragic: “When he saw her, he rent his clothes, and said, ‘alas, my daughter, thou hast brought me very low, and thou hast become the cause of trouble to me, for I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I can not go back’. And she said to him, ‘my father, if thou hast opened thy mouth to the Lord, do to me that which has come out of thy mouth’ “. She is given two months to ‘weep for her virginity’, and is then forced to live out her life, alone, remaining unmarried.

Although Moshe’s fight and Yiftach’s fight over the same piece of land, separated by some 300 years, is the obvious connection between the parsha and the haftarah, I am struck by the connections between the Yiftach story and the story of Moshe and the rock. Moshe, back in Exodus, began his career as a man of action. Like Yiftach, he was estranged from his family (albeit under very different circumstances), and what we know of him is very like what we think we know of Yiftach – the first act he does in the Torah is to smite and kill the Egyptian oppressor of his Jewish brethren. Later, at the burning bush, when God calls on Moshe to go to Pharaoh and lead the Jewish people out of Egypt, he demurs, claiming that he is not a man of words, not a speaker. God insists, but does seem to agree with Moshe’s self-assessment and supplies him with his brother Aharon to act as a spokesman. The staff, which accompanies Moshe, and through which he accomplishes all the plagues and miracles, seems to underscore Moshe’s personality as a man of action, rather than words.

It would seem that in our parsha, as the 40 years in the desert come to an end and the Israelites ready themselves to enter the land of Israel, God’s telling Moshe to take the staff but TALK to the rock is a kind of final test. Moshe is challenged to transcend his persona as a man of action, of violence, and clearly opt for the role of the speaker, the person who achieves not by hitting, but by talking. Moshe fails, and is denied the right to enter the land, his goal for the last 40 years and more, as a punishment. It is worth noting that the same word “va’yach” – “and he smote” – is used back at the beginning of his career, when he killed the Egyptian, as well as here, in our parsha, when he hits the rock. It would seem that the act of talking to the rock, and, in effect, rejecting the staff that he held in his hands, was meant to be Moshe’s final apotheosis, from the man of action to the man of words. It is this that he failed to achieve.

Yiftach’s story seems to contain a similar tension between speech and action. Yiftach refuses to be typecast as a simple strong-man, and tries diplomacy before military engagement. When the Ammonites refuse to listen to reason, Yiftach is forced to be what everyone wants him to be; a tough guy, the son of a prostitute, who hangs out with worthless bums, a man of action and violence. In a fascinating twist, his tragedy comes about not through anything he does, but through something he says – his vow to offer the first thing to come out of his door to God. It almost seems as if the story is telling us that Yiftach was wrong to try and become a man of words, to “open his mouth to God” and express a religious sentiment, and that his real role, the role that he is now called upon to play, that needs to be played, and in which he can succeed, is that of a man of action. As Israel now faces a brutal, implacable enemy, with whom we have tried to talk, unsuccessfully, for years, I pray that we, and our leaders, will have the wisdom to know when to talk, and when to act.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva.org

R. Elazar would say: Be diligent to study Torah. Know how to respond to the heretic. Know before whom you toil and your employer is faithful to pay you for your efforts. (Avot 2:14)

Rabbenu Yona wonders about the emphasis on reward in R. Elazar’s concluding statement. Does this sage disagree with Antignos who taught that we should not serve God in order to receive a reward (Avot 1:3)? Rabbenu Yona offers two explanations. Perhaps Antignos outlines the ideal while R. Elazar responds to our human limitations. We sometimes lose our idealism and only the thought of reward and punishment helps us fulfill the word of God. Alternatively, R. Elazar does not address motivation for mitzvot; he stresses a fundamental Jewish belief. Even the most idealistic and devout people need to affirm reward and punishment as part of their appreciation of the compassion and justice of God.

This second interpretation focuses on Jewish beliefs, a topic discussed earlier in the mishna in the context of replying to a heretic. What enables a successful response to such an opponent? Commentators debate the relationship between R. Elazar’s opening two statements. Meiri says that R. Elazar first instructs us to study Torah and then adds that confronting the heretic depends on philosophic training beyond traditional rabbinic sources. Rabbenu Yona reads R. Elazar as saying that we should diligently study Torah so that we can respond to the heretic with success. According to this reading, R. Elazar does not call for expanding the curriculum. Tosafot Yom Tov discusses variant girsaot impacting on this interpretive debate.

I suggest that the two interpretations compliment each other. Meiri correctly contends that a steady diet of rabbinic sources often leaves a person unequipped to deal with philosophical and historical challenges. Only a broader reading list exposes us to terminology, categories of thought, and types of arguments enabling our confronting a hostile questioner. Note the weakness of contemporary arguments against evolution coming from those who never opened up a modern book of science.

At the same time, Rabbenu Yona provides an important counterbalance. Responding to the heretic also depends upon a thorough grounding in traditional Jewish learning. Otherwise, how will a person know that what he is defending accurately represents traditional Judaism? No one can Intelligently discuss what Judaism believes about capital punishment without having studied Sanhedrin or analyze the Jewish view of divine providence without ever opening Iyov, Moreh Nevuchim and the Sefer haIkkarim. An overemphasis on broader trains of thought can obscure the need for intensive Jewish studies which make authentic analysis of Jewish ideas possible.

At the end of the day, we would do well to keep both interpretations in mind. The genuine talmid chacham who also knows contemporary currents of thought in the broader culture is the person most equipped to deal with the intellectual challenges of the day.

By Rabbi Gidon Rothstein, WebYeshivaLast time, I argued that a Talmudic statement with halachic ramifications points us in the direction of realizing that God originally wanted and expected human beings to define right and wrong themselves, which could have then been a perfectly reasonable alternative to the Noahide laws. Here, I take up the laws God eventually commanded, showing that they function differently than people often assume.One position, for example, claimed that the Noahide laws were really a type of alien law, a way for Jews to govern the non-Jews who lived among them.[i] While these laws are certainly also that, the Talmud is certain that the laws apply to all non-Jews wherever they live, making it more correct to say that they articulate the minimal requirements God set out for humanity. This also, by the way, might explain why Judaism saw each of these as capital crimes—they were defining the absolute minimum of what it means to be human, so that violating them forfeits one’s right to life.A second segment of thinkers, who have some Talmudic support, claims that Noahide laws are really just expressions of principles any rational human being would have to accept, Divine command or no. Many Jewish thinkers have understood the Noahides this way, and some Talmudic sources seem to support their position.[ii]Others, such as the late Prof. Marvin Fox, disagreed.[iii] He argued that the Talmud only meant that we could explain these laws in a way that made sense to outsiders, not that we would have figured them out ourselves. Central to his view was Rambam’s ruling that non-Jews only earn a share in the World to Come if they keep these mitzvot because of God’s having commanded them.[iv] If Rambam insists on an awareness of divine command, whether or not these laws are obvious is apparently irrelevant.A Third Way: Noahide Law Assumes Natural MoralityMy rosh yeshiva, R. Aharon Lichtenstein of Yeshivat Har Etzion,[v] offers a middle view that fits well with what I noted last time. R. Lichtenstein says Judaism certainly assumes a natural morality, intuitive and universally binding on all human beings.[vi] That morality, however, is not the same as Noahide law, a point also made by R. Dr. Norman Lamm and Prof. Aaron Kirschenbaum.[vii]This is an important distinction for our purposes here; it means that there is an intuitive and universal human morality, yet God decided (or, as we saw last time, was “forced” by human failure to act on that universal morality) to make more specific legislation. As we turn to the salient details of those laws, we will see that they teach much more than basic morality, they inculcate a worldview. This will be a first example, then, of where the failure of human autonomy led God to define principles of action that go beyond universal morality, but leave still-significant freedom for human input into defining the good life.In our case, the Noahide laws– as understood by the Talmud–[viii] obligate people to: build a society, not just see themselves as a concatenation of individuals who happen to live near each other; submit themselves, in heart and mind, to the One God; strictly respect life and property rights; express their sexuality away from their family of origin and only in relationships that could theoretically produce offspring; and to recognize that animals only become food after they have died. These were, I contend, the basic building blocks God wanted of any human society; from there, societies were free to move in multiple directions, as long as they did not lose sight of those basics.Dinin—The Social SystemWhile the Talmud is clear that non-Jews are obligated to establish courts, it does not define that further. The later writers who discuss it agree the courts are supposed to do more than just stop or avoid conflict, and seem to me to see it as requiring establishing, in each society, a shared vision of social structure and ideals.Rambam, the earliest of the three best-known contributors to the topic, justified Shimon and Levi’s killing the people of Shechem[ix] based on their capital liability for not judging or punishing their prince for kidnapping Dina.[x] This solves the theological problem of how two of Yaacov’s sons– progenitors of Tribes of Israel, deeply admired by Jewish tradition– could commit mass murder, but it also takes a position on individual and communal accountability for society’s legal health. Rambam’s assumption of extensive observer-responsibility is certainly not universally obvious, since current Western morality sees such bystander involvement as meritorious but not obligatory.In addition, Ramban disagreed, which means Rambam’s idea is not obvious even to Jews. Ramban instead thinks that dinim mandates establishing a system of civil law. He did not set exact parameters for what this system had to cover, but gave numerous examples, including “theft, overcharging, withholding wages, bailments, rape and seduction, torts, lending, business, and so on.”[xi] In this reading, the non-Jewish obligation was primarily to set up a functioning legal system, including courts. Incidentally, he saw all this as a positive requirement rather than a capital crime.Ramban does not mention how he expects non-Jews to arrive at their laws, which would seem to leave the process up to them. If so, he is assuming that members of each society must band together at least enough to agree on a set of rules governing their conduct, which necessarily involves decisions about that society’s character and ideals.R. Moshe Isserles, the sixteenth-century codifier of Jewish law known as Rema, reads Ramban as having gone a step further; Rema thought non-Jewish courts were required to adopt Jewish law in these areas.[xii] Jewish civil law is not only not universally intuitive, it conveys very pointed moral and spiritual lessons about how to handle business and social dealings. For Rema, Noahides need to adopt that value system in their civil law.Whichever of the interpretations we adopt, dinin pushes for a society that shapes its’ citizens’ lives and worldviews in more than minimal ways. Rema seems to have expected all human society to adopt the Jewish mode of handling civil matters and Ramban at least required non-Jews to make decisions about those questions, which inherently involves deciding what kind of society to inhabit. Rambam’s different approach still requires citizens to see society as a cooperative, cohesive venture, in which they police each other’s conduct at least around their basic laws.Idolatry Laws as an Introduction to Jewish MonotheismIf the first lesson of Noahide law was that people need to build a society instead of just live in close proximity, the commandments to forego idolatry and refrain from blasphemy teach central aspects of monotheistic belief. Making idolatry a capital crime rules out accepting any other power as ruler of the universe; it is difficult to imagine that even Jews saw these commandments as intuitive,[xiii] since paganism was alive and well in the time of the Talmud— Christianity did not conquer the Roman world until the fourth century, and paganism survived in Persia well beyond then.Too, traditional Jewish law counted at least some versions of major modern religions as idol-worshiping.[xiv] When the Talmud refers to idol worship as a prohibition that all understood, then, it can only have meant that non-Jews would understand monotheists’ prohibiting idolatry, not that they would instantly accept that point of view.Another element to this law, in the Talmudic understanding, is that it includes any bowing down, offering incense, sacrifice, or libation to a power other than God, even if the sects that serve those powers don’t value those forms of worship. The Talmud notes that because these were central practices in the Beit haMikdash, the Jewish Temple, they count as worship whenever they are done.[xv] Just expressing admiration or love for an idol does not incur the same penalty, but performing avodot penim, acts of worship that occurred within the sanctuary of the Temple itself, is instantly death-penalty worthy.[xvi]I highlight this because it means that to fully understand the obligation to avoid idolatry, a non-Jew would need to learn about Judaism and its Temple. True, the non-Jew could avoid all this by simply refraining from expressing any positive feelings for powers other than the Creator of the World, but that, too, means he has accepted Jewish monotheism.The Jewishness of the Laws of BlasphemyThe blasphemy laws also inculcate a particular view of what constitutes unacceptable rebellion against God. Simply saying, for example, “I hate God, I hope He x,” while not lauded, would not qualify as capital blasphemy. Instead, the Talmud limits the death penalty to where the blasphemer uses a name of God as part of the curse. In the Talmudic idiom, only saying “Yose should hit (or kill) Yose,” with Yose being a euphemism for names of God, is a capital crime. Cursing God is legally meaningless unless the power invoked is the only Power that could conceivably affect that Being.The laws of blasphemy also introduce Noahides to the esoteric matter of the Names of God. The Talmud assumes that the special name of God (YHWH; Rambam thinks the four-letter name that starts AD__ also qualifies)[xvii] and any kinui, nickname, would be a problem. Rambam thinks kinui includes: 1) names that are not among the seven special names of God, such as Elokim or Tzevakot, 2) the words for qualities Scripture attached to God, such as compassionate and merciful, and 3) Other languages’ terms for God, such as Allah, God, or Dieu.[xviii] Others[xix] limited capital liability to Scriptural names of God, such as Elohim or Tzevaot. Either way, a non-Jew who wants to be positive about avoiding blasphemy would have to learn about what Jews see as a name of God.The first three Noahide laws, then, show us that there is more going on here than the universal morality we all would have come to on our own. They teach about building a society, the absolute necessity of belief in one God who is the sole power that runs the universe, and about the need to treat that God with respect, a full definition of which only comes from understanding how Jews worship and refer to God.MurderMurder in its starkest form is perhaps the most intuitive crime around, but the Noahide code prohibits and punishes forms of killing that are today the subject of much debate. Noahide law labels as capital murder killing a person who is terminally ill (or wounded), a fetus, oneself, and even indirectly but premeditatedly causing another’s death.[xx]The vigorous debate about each of these issues in modern societies—abortion, assisted and ordinary suicide, and the level of liability for indirect killing—sufficiently proves that the Talmud’s definition is not universally obvious. More than that, these rules make a significant programmatic claim, that all human life, however underdeveloped or certain to expire, is off limits to active intervention to end it. Again, a rule that might seem minimal teaches a specific perspective of an issue important to any society, and one that is vigorously argued today.Incest—Focusing Sexuality on Marriage and ChildbearingWe often assume incest laws are intuitive, that any right-thinking person would see their logic, but, interestingly, neither Rambam nor Ramban agreed; when the Torah lists those prohibitions for Jews, each saw the need to struggle to an explanation of the prohibitions.[xxi] For non-Jews, the problem is perhaps even harder, since the Talmudic definition does not follow any sort of inherently intuitive model. There is debate about the conclusions of that discussion, but Rambam rules that the Noahide laws prohibit sexual relations for a man with his mother, his father’s wife, married women, his maternal (but not paternal) half-sisters, other men, and animals.[xxii]I suggest the Talmud’s derivation also gives its underlying logic. Parsing the verse that first discusses human marriage—“Therefore shall a man leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife and they shall be one flesh”–[xxiii] the Talmud infers that human sexuality must involve leaving one’s parents (the father’s wife stands in for the father himself) to create a physical interlocking (of the sort only men and women can create, not men and men)[xxiv] with one’s wife (and not a woman married to someone else), that will, in the ordinary course of events, lead them to become as one flesh (in the form of a baby), which rules out bestiality.Sexuality, in this presentation, is an extension of marriage and childbearing; only those relationships that could be marital, of the form where the physical union could produce children, are allowed.[xxv]The first five Noahide laws thus teach a raft of lessons. Society, God, the value of life, and now, sex, have come under their purview, in ways that humans on their own would not, did not, and, often do not approach them. Next time, we will complete our discussion of the Noahide code, letting us see where that instance of Divine legislation was supposed to take humanity, and the freedom it left for people to add their own personal and creative input into their relationship with God.[i] Of course, a Jewish state run according to halacha would require adherence to those laws by any non-Jews who wished to reside among them, see Rambam, Book of the Commandments, Prohibition 51 and Laws of Idol Worship 10;6. The idea starts with Hugo Grotius, who called them a Jewish version of ius gentium, laws the Romans promulgated to govern their relationships with non-Romans. On this, see Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (U. of Notre Dame: Notre Dame, 1988), p. 149. For my own ideas about how Noahide law could serve as a useful model of alienage law for the U.S., see my “Involuntary Particularism: The Noahide Laws, Citizenship, and Alienage” 18 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 543.[ii] For a discussion of Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, and other similar thinkers, see the relevant chapters in David Novak, The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism: An Historical and Constructive Study of the Noahide Laws (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1983). Novak offers his own views in Natural Law in Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1998). See also Nahum Rakover’s “Jewish Law and the Noahide Obligation to Preserve Social Order,” Cardozo Law Review 12 (1991):1073-1136 and Law and the Noahides: Law as a Universal Value (Jerusalem, 1998), a translation of his Hebrew book on the topic.Two Talmudic discussions come closest to portraying Noahide laws as natural, but each has significant problems as well: 1) Eruvin 100b states that even without revelation, humans would have learned modesty from the cat, thrift from the ant, incest from the dove, and sexual etiquette from the rooster. Even were we to grant that this meant people would have inferred a religious obligation to be modest, etc., Noahide laws do not deal with all of those, and in some cases, expect a lot more than we would have gotten from the animals. 2) The second source, Yoma 67b, defines mishpatim, one of the words the Bible uses for laws, as rules worthy of being promulgated even had the Torah not done so. The simplest interpretation of that statement is that these laws are so intuitive as to be part of every society’s legal system, especially as mishpatim are being contrasted to chukim, laws outsiders attack as senseless. Five of the examples given are also in the Noahide list, suggesting they are, indeed, universally intuitive. As we will see, though, there are two others on the Noahide list, the obligation to set up a legal system and the prohibition against eating a limb cut off of a living animal, and the details of the other five—as I discuss– should make it clear that the Talmud at most meant the outlines of these laws were intuitive, but not their full content.[iii] Marvin Fox, “Rambam and Aquinas on Natural Law” Dine Israel 3 (1972), pp. 10 and 26. See also J. David Bleich, “Judaism and Natural Law,” Jewish Law Annual VII (1988), 5-42.[iv] Laws of Kings 8;11.[v] Not to be confused with Aaron Lichtenstein, author of Seven Laws of Noah (New York: RJJ, 1986), who also figures in discussions of Noahide law.[vi] Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, “Does Jewish Tradition Recognize An Ethic Independent of Halacha?” Modern Jewish Ethics (Ohio State, 1975), 62-4.[vii] A. Kirschenbaum and N. Lamm, “Freedom and Constraint in the Jewish Judicial Process” Cardozo Law Review 1 (Spring, 1979), p. 120ff. See also J. David Bleich, “Judaism and Natural Law”, pp. 13-25.[viii] This leaves the possibility, as I noted last time, that the original Noahide laws themselves were open to various definitions, especially since some of the halacha to which the Talmud relates those laws had itself not yet been given. This would depend on the extent to which we believe that Talmudic references to Torah’s always existing and to the Patriarchs having kept all of halacha are meant literally, or in terms of broad ideals and worldview, itself a debated topic that I leave for another time.[ix] Genesis 34.[x] At the same time, Rambam does not require Noahides to sacrifice their lives to fulfill this precept, see Laws of Kings 10;2. If so, Rambam assumes Shechem did not have the power to impose his will on the people, which then raises the question of when Rambam would obligate protested a corrupt system or leader and when he would concede that circumstances exempted them from that.[xi] Commentary on Genesis 34;13.[xii] Responsa Rema 10. Responsa Chatam Sofer 6:14 and Responsa Tzitz Eliezer 16;55 analyze Rema’s view at length; R. Sofer at least seems to accept it. R. Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin (Netsiv), Haamek She’ala, 3;2 disagreed, citing Psalms 147;20—“He has not done so to any nation, nor has he informed them of laws [mishpatim]”– as proof that Jewish civil law was given only to Jews.[xiii] Rambam thought he could logically prove the existence of a single God. At the same time, in Laws of Idol Worship 1;3, he assumes that Avraham spent thirty-seven years struggling with the issue before deciding that there was only one God.[xiv] An extensive literature discusses Jewish definitions of idolatry, too vast to analyze here. For some examples, Catholic views of the Trinity have been widely considered idolatrous, while many Protestant versions are not. Hinduism worships many gods, but some argue that what Hindus term “gods” should be seen as avenues to, or expressions of, the one central god. Similarly, the apparent idolatry in bowing down to a statue of the Buddha is explained by some adherents as only enunciating respect for the life he lived and the ideals he taught. In each case, the Jewish view is at the very least not intuitive to millions of people, even after thousands of years of monotheistic rhetoric, supporting my claim that these laws were doing something more than ratifying well-accepted truths.[xv] Sanhedrin 60b.[xvi] Laws of Kings, 9;2, based on Sanhedrin 56b, which ties a Noahide’s liability into a Jew’s being killed by a court for his worship.[xvii] Sanhedrin 56a and Rambam, Laws of Idol Worship, 2;7.[xviii] Laws of Oaths 2;2.[xix] See, e.g., Rashi to Sanhedrin 56a, s.v. ve-aliba de-Rabi Meir , who lists only actual names of God when he refers to kinuim.[xx] For indirect killing, see Laws of Kings 9;4. Although not our issue here, I believe Rambam sees Jews’ exemption from capital punishment in such cases as stemming from the belief that God will take care of those forms of the crime, see Laws of Murder 2;2-4 and 3;10. That non-Jews cannot rely on Divine intervention seems to reflect a belief that Providence affects Jews more directly than others.[xxi] Although, interestingly, neither Rambam nor Ramban assume it to be so, see Rambam, Laws of Kings 9;5-8, and Ramban, Vayikra 18;6.[xxii] Rambam devotes significantly more space to incest and eating a limb cut off of a living animal than to the other Noahide laws, perhaps because these were least intuitive. Other medieval authorities such as R. Meir Abulafia, Yad Rama to Sanhedrin 57b-58b, defined the incest prohibitions differently, but the overall principles seem to be the same[xxiii] Genesis 2;24.[xxiv] The prohibition of homosexuality was also not intuitive, in Talmudic times or our own; its inclusion in the Noahide laws is not what everyone of the time knew to be right; it is a corollary of the assumption that sexuality should relate to producing children.[xxv] I stress that this requirement is formal rather than practical. It is not that this man and this woman need to be able to have children—people beyond childbearing years are also allowed to marry—but that the physical act they engage in be one that could produce children. I would note, however, that the Biblical story of Sarah suggests, inter alia, that our knowledge that a woman can no longer give birth is not as absolute as we tend to assume. If so, relations between a man and a woman are always able to produce children, at least in theory.That the Talmud prohibits a maternal half-sister but not a paternal one, Laws of Kings 9;5, removes genetics as our concern. The Talmud does not explain the distinction, but I suspect it has to do with the man having come out of the same womb as a maternal half-sister. That the system allows Noahides to have intercourse with a daughter, a fact that needs detailed discussion in another venue, also highlights its indifference to genetic consequences.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva

Many commentators wonder what the spies did wrong. Moshe, with divine approval, charged them with a mission to report on the nature of the people, the cities and the land of Canaan and they did so. How can God fault them for faithfully carrying out His directive?

Ramban’s answer takes note of the spies’ two distinct speeches, one prior to Caleb’s response and one following. Although the spies are already in their initial discourse, the truly pernicious behavior only occurs in the second speech. According to Ramban, the reportage of facts in their first communication was fully legitimate. However, the spies used the word “efes” to imply that that the Jewish people have no chance of successfully entering the land. Spreading this kind of defeatism was not part of their mandate and was not justified.

After Caleb responded that Am Yisrael can enter the land despite the strength of its current inhabitants, the people were considering the two opinions and it was unclear which way popular sentiment would go. At this point, the spies switched tactics and exhibited a willingness to lie. The Torah says: “Va’yotziu dibat ha’aretz” (Bamidbar 13:32). Ramban contends that the phrase “motzie diba” means to fabricate whereas the phrase “meive diba” is to tell a true negative tale. The latter verb conveys bringing an authentic report; the former refers to extracting a tale out of nothing. Based on this linguistic distinction, Yosef tells the truth regarding his brothers (Berei**** 37:2) and the spies prevaricate about the land. They pretend the harsh conditions make it impossible for anyone but giants to reside there.

Apparently, this second speech brings about their death by plague. When the Torah recounts their death, it says that the men who were “motzie dibat ha’aretz” (14:37) perished. The Torah emphasizes the specific transgression that brought about their death.

What moral flaw caused their downfall? We could easily identify cowardice as the fatal defect yet Ramban’s approach opens up a different possibility. Ten spies debated Yehoshua and Caleb about the strategic situation. This debate need not have brought calamity but the spies felt they needed to win the debate and upped the ante. Pride and the desire to win an argument often leads us to sins we did not consider beforehand. When their position was challenged, ten Jewish leaders committed to their mission suddenly found lying an enticing possibility.

By Rabbi Shimon Felix, WebYeshiva

This week we read the story of Korach, who is traditionally seen as an arch-villain, the archetypal rebel against Moshe and Aharon – the ‘establishment’ of the Jewish people. When we look at it carefully, however, Korach’s complaint against the hegemony of Moshe and his brother, who between them and other members of their family run the entire show in the desert – has a compelling ring to it: “You’ve taken too much! For the entire community, all of them, are holy, and God is in their midst. Why should you exalt yourselves over the congregation of God?”

The complaint, to our ears at least, has a lot going for it. What is wrong with Korach’s desire for a more equitable division of power, which would involve and enfranchise “the entire community”? Would that not be a good thing? Does it not flow naturally from the democratizing tendencies we saw manifested a few week ago when Moshe, under attack from the people, delegated power to 70 elders, in an attempt to take some of the pressure off of himself, and involve others in the effort of governing and leading the nation? Korach’s position is also in synch with the suggestion made back at Mount Sinai to Moshe by his father-in-law Yitro – that he not judge the people by himself, but rather that he should establish a court system, whereby thousands of judges share the load with him. Is not Korach, who was himself a Levite and therefore part of the power elite, asking for the most basic of democratic principles – a fully participatory democracy, in which everyone is an equal partner? And if he is, why is he punished so horribly, by having the earth swallow up him and his followers?

I think the answer to these questions is apparent both in the Biblical text and in the Rabbinic literature that embellishes it. Let’s take a look at Moshe’s response to Korach’s challenge. Although clearly troubled by Korach’s words (the Torah tells us that his first response was to “fall on his face”), Moshe seems willing to accept the possibility that he is not God’s only chosen leader, and that, perhaps, the entire nation IS equally holy. He therefore suggests a test – let Korach and his followers bring incense offerings to God. If they are accepted, then his claim will be substantiated – it will have been made clear that we are all, in fact, equally holy, equally chosen, and that we therefore should, as Korach suggests, all stand equally before God. However, in addition to immediately agreeing to put Korach’s claim to the test, Moshe also expresses his uneasiness, and his mistrust of Korach.

This is what he says: “Is it but a small thing to you that the God of Israel has separated you from the community of Israel to bring you near to him, to do the work in the Tabernacle of God and to stand before the congregation to serve them? He has brought you and all your brothers the sons of Levi near, and you also ask for priesthood?” Moshe’s words are interesting. At first glance, he seems to not get it; Korach presented himself as a champion of equality before God – “the entire community, all of them, are holy” – and Moshe is trying to placate him by reminding him that he is in fact a big shot, part of the establishment, a Levite. It would seem that Moshe saw through Korach’s claim that he was representing “the entire community” and understood that he was simply out to gain more power for himself; “you also ask for priesthood?” Moshe knows that this is what is really hiding behind Korach’s egalitarian shpiel; the desire for more personal power. The Rabbis pick up on Moshe’s understanding of Korach’s true motivation, and traditionally discount the seriousness of Korach’s commitment to the “community” and the “congregation”, and see these claims as simply ploys in his attempt to consolidate more power for himself.

This is, of course, a dynamic which, tragically, has played itself out over and over again in any number of 20th century “People’s Republics”. After telling Korach what he really thinks of him, Moshe then sends for Datan and Aviram, the non-Levites, regular Israelite “rank-and-file” supporters of Korach’s rebellion. We will never know what Moshe intended to say to them, for they refuse to meet with him, but they damn themselves with their own words: “We will not go up! Is it not enough that you have brought us from a land flowing with milk and honey to cause us to die in the wilderness, that you should rule over and continue to rule over us? You haven’t even taken us to a land flowing with milk and honey to give us an inheritance of field and vineyard…we will not go up!” It seems clear that personal gain – “field and vineyard” – is what they were after. At this point Moshe loses it: “And Moshe got very angry and He said to God ‘do not turn to their offering, not even one donkey of theirs have I taken, I haven’t done anything bad to any one of them.’”

Pretty strange response, eh? And what’s up with the donkey? I think we should compare Moshe’s response here with the words of Datan and Aviram and with what Moshe says about Korach. They are depicted as wanting, taking, desiring things for themselves – “you also ask for priesthood?”, “…you haven’t giv[en] us an inheritance of field and vineyard…”. Moshe’s words make clear the profound gap between them and him – “not even one donkey of theirs have I taken…” – My relationship with power, leadership, government , has never been about improving my own situation, it has not been about my taking things. ( Interestingly, the parsha begins with the words “Vayikach Korach” – “and Korach took”, which would seem to summarize his basic mind set.). Therefore, Moshe says to God, do not turn to them and their offering, do not choose them, because their understanding of leadership is one that is rooted in self-aggrandizement, in material gain, and is therefore unacceptable.

Tellingly, the Hebrew word for donkey is chamor, similar to the Hebrew word for the physical, the material – chomer. If we also remember the reluctance that Moshe showed to accept a leadership role, back at the burning bush, while the Jews were still enslaved in Egypt, the differences between what motivates Moshe to lead as opposed to Korach, could not be clearer. I would argue that Moshe’s unmasking of the true motivations of Korach and his followers leaves open the possibility of a real “people’s revolution”, which seeks a truly egalitarian society. We are however left with the suspicion that those who claim that that is what they are after need to be looked at very carefully, as those high ideals and exalted aims have often (invariably?) masked a raw desire for personal power and gain. Moshe’s model of leadership stands in stark distinction to that of Korach and his followers, stemming as it does from a desire to help those who need it, rather than from personal considerations of profit, loss, and position.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva

R. Shimon would say: Be careful regarding keriat shema and tefilla. When you pray, do not make your prayers rote but rather mercy and supplication before God as it says ‘for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in kindness and repents of evil’ (Yoel 2:13). And do not be wicked in your own eyes. (Avot 2:13)

Rabbenu Yona has a different version of the text in which the first statement calls for extra zeal only when saying shema. He explains that shema demands greater caution than tefilla (meaning the amida) since halacha allows expanded time for fulfilling the latter obligation. Most commentators assume that R. Shimon cautions us about both shema and the amida.

Tifferet Yisrael points out that R. Shimon did instruct his students to merely recite these prayers; after all, Avot addresses the quest for supperogatroy chassidut and not just basic obligations. Rather, R. Shimon teaches about the importance of praying specific texts with sincerity and devotion. Precisely because we recite both of these prayers multiple times a day, we frequently lose concentration lapsing into rote recitation. Moreover, these prayers reflect cornerstones of religious life. Shema affirms the basics of Jewish faith including monotheism, love of God, halachic obligations, and reward and punishment. Prayer is the most profound experience of a religious individual standing before God. Surely, these two texts deserve extra seriousness of purpose.

What was R. Shimon’s third message? Rashi explains that we should not do things that we will later look back upon with regret. Given certain pressures or temptations, it may seem reasonable now to lie or steal but we will eventually look back despairingly at our earlier wickedness. Do not make decision that will lead to a retrospective negative self – evaluation.

Rashi makes a reasonable point but his approach means that R. Shimon’s three statements do not cohere into unified theme. This does not disprove Rashi’s interpretation; Avot may incorporate the essential teachings of each sage even when those teachings remain disparate educational points. Yet Tifferet Yisrael’s methodology assumes that the varied teachings of each sage in Avot do relate to a singular theme.

R. Shimon’s first two points address the world of prayer so perhaps the third does as well. A person should not look upon himself as wicked since that evaluation often proves a self – fulfilling prophecy. Adopting the identity of a rasha means an assumed inability to study Torah, perform acts of kindness, or approach God in prayer. A person who decides he is wicked will also determine the pointless nature of their beseeching or praising God. Why would the Almighty listen to the words of a wicked person?

The quest for kavana remains an ongoing challenge, even as we affirm the need to devote special care to shema and the amida. Facing this battle demands a degree of self–worth. While the arrogant fellow also struggles to pray, someone declaring themselves wicked may render prayer even more difficult.

By Rabbi Gidon Rothstein, WebYeshivaTo me, the best place to begin thinking about Judaism’s view of the proper balance between heteronomy and autonomy, between slavishly following God’s commands and expressing our independent human creativity, is with non-Jews. I believe Jewish tradition assumed non-Jews are obligated to follow the fairly minimal set of commandments God gave them as well as to contribute creatively to building their spiritual personae; I start with them because the smaller set of commandments is easier to work with, but the model will remain the same as I move on to thinking about Jews and their relationship to God.Even as I begin, I should note that some would already disagree with my assumption that Judaism has a religious vision for non-Jews. Some of the derogatory Talmudic statements about non-Jews might give the impression that Judaism sees “them” as a lost cause. Perhaps adding to that, many have assumed that the commandments Judaism does apply to non-Jews are universally rational, meaning that the religion only asks them to adhere to a basic morality that is and should be obvious to everyone.Let me pause here to make a note about terms. Last post, I referred to certain ideas being “intuitive,” by which I meant something different than “personally creative.” I thought of intuitive or rational as referring to those ideas or moral propositions that everyone should agree to, regardless of their training or cultural background—such as that it is wrong to kill a complete stranger with no good reason. To me, the obligation to follow such rules is not the same as autonomy; rather, I am trying to find places where God and the Torah left room for communities and individuals to make personal and nonobvious decisions about how to serve God, enriching the world in ways that are very much their own, not imposed upon them by God.It will take me two steps to show this is true for non-Jews. In the rest of this post, I offer evidence that the Talmud thought Scripture blamed non-Jews precisely for failing to realize that they were originally expected to figure out how to worship God on their own, and were only given the Noahide laws only when they failed to do so. In the following posts, God willing, I will then show that the laws God gave them are not nearly as obvious, universal, or eminently rational as they are made out to be, that the laws in fact impose a vision of goodness and service of God that is far from obvious.Loosing the Bonds of the Nations: A Verse and Its RamificationsBefore I cite the Talmudic statement that anchors my argument, I want to note ahead of time that it sounds aggadic, like many other homiletic statements, and might therefore seem unable to bear the weight I will place on it (as I noted in post 5 of the Mission of Orthodoxy project, aggadic statements have to be used with great care). In this case, though, the statement comes as part of a series of inferences from a single verse, and those inferences carry halachic weight, meaning they were meant to be acted upon.The Talmud is interpreting a verse in Chabakkuk, “He stood and measured the earth; he looked and shook the nations; then the eternal mountains were scattered, the everlasting hills sank low; his ways were as of old.”[i] Medieval commentators understood the text as referring to punishments administered to the generation of the Flood or of the Tower of Babel. The Talmud, however, sees the verse as revealing that non-Jews’ failure to observe the Noahide laws led God to punish them in everlasting ways.[ii]Most of the examples the Talmud gives for that punishment involve the loss of certain protections of law. For one example, the Talmud assumed that a Jew is not required to pay if his or her ox gores that of an idolatrous non-Jew. That is obviously a fraught legal position that would necessitate much discussion to fully explain, but is not my issue now; I raise it only as a reminder that this is an halachic conversation in the Talmud, not an aggadic one.In that series of punishments, the last one asserts that the reference to God’s having “loosed the bonds” refers to the Noahide commandments. At first glance this sounds like God absolved non-Jews of the need to follow those commandments (loosing those bonds); the Talmud rejects that possibility, since it would mean God had rewarded evildoers for their rebellion. The Talmud suggests that non-Jews are still obligated in the laws, but God rescinded the reward for following them. That view contradicts the accepted truth that non-Jews receive great reward for keeping those laws that apply to them. The Talmud therefore concludes that non-Jews only get reward as if they were performing these acts voluntarily, not the greater reward given to those who act out of obedience to a command.The give and take can be distracting, but in sum the Talmud reads the verse in Chabbakuk as meaning that non-Jews’ failure to observe the Noahide laws left them with the lower reward given those who voluntarily undertake a positive practice. And yet, the Talmud and later authorities still assume that a non-Jew who specifically and formally recognizes that God commanded those observances returns to the state of being rewarded as if commanded, a prime example being R. Meir’s claim that a non-Jew involved with Torah receives reward like a High Priest.The Elusive Commandment of Noahide ObligationsThe Talmudic discussion leaves out important information to understanding its point. First, it does not tell us the timing of this verse—if God punished non-Jews for their failure to observe God’s laws, when did God command them and when did God punish them? Second, if God decided to punish them, why was it done so passively, limiting itself to a loss of a level of reward (which, incidentally, would matter little to non-Jews who had already demonstrated their indifference to these laws).On God’s commanding the Noahide laws, the Talmud presents a mixed message: sometimes it refers to the Noahide laws as having been commanded,[iii] but other times speaks of non-Jews having accepted the laws upon themselves, [iv] which suggests voluntary adherence. Perhaps most interestingly, the Talmud interchanges the terms on occasion,[v] as if there were no significant difference, although we have just seen one.The Scriptural source the Talmud cites for these laws does little to clear up the matter.[vi] The Talmud points to the verse, “And the Lord God commanded the man saying, “From all the trees of the Garden you may freely eat,”[vii] and understands each word in the verse as indicating a different one of the laws: idolatry, blasphemy, establishing a court system, prohibiting murder, incest, theft, and the eating of limbs from live animals. Since words elsewhere in Scripture mean those laws, the words in this verse can mean them as well, according to the Talmud.For just one example of how this works, the word “commanded” (in the phrase “And the Lord God commanded”) is taken as referring to the requirement to establish a court system, because another verse in Genesis uses the same verb when referring to Avraham’s ordering his children and descendants to act justly. Since courts are also venues of justice, “commanded” indicates issues of justice.The technique is commonplace in the Talmud but startling here because it seems to assume that Adam and his descendants would have understood God’s words according to their meaning elsewhere in Scripture (which had not yet been revealed to humanity). As if he were alert to this problem, Rambam writes in a notably convoluted way about Adam’s introduction to the Noahide laws:Adam was commanded about six matters, idolatry, blasphemy…and courts; even though all of these are a tradition in our hands from Moshe our teacher and the intellect inclines towards them, from the general tenor of the words of the Torah it appears that he was commanded about these.[viii]Rambam could have said simply that God commanded Adam about six rules; instead, he recognizes the authoritative tradition that these were commanded, notes that they are the kinds of obligations everyone accepts (a claim I will dispute in coming posts), and grudgingly concedes that the “general tenor” of the Torah’s words could mean that he was expected to observe them. He does not explain why he said it this way, but the obscurity of the Talmudic derivation seems a likely candidate.When he throws in that our intellects would point to these laws anyway, Rambam obliquely reminds us to wonder why God would have felt the need to command propositions and modes of behavior that were intellectually obvious. Although Rambam does not to my knowledge say this, R. Nissim of Kairouan, a 10th century North African scholar, took for granted that non-Jews must honor their parents, because he assumes non-Jews are obligated to fulfill any intuitive responsibility.[ix]Rambam would likely have known R. Nissim’s work, but not that of Rashbam, a twelfth century Biblical and Talmudic commentator, who made a similar assumption when reading a verse that speaks of Avraham as having observed God’s Torah and commandments. The verse is difficult, since both Torah and the commandments had yet to be given. Rashbam assumes that Avraham observed all the commandments the human intellect can come to on its own; indeed, he went further, arguing these are fully in force even absent a command by God. Some of Rashbam’s examples are in the list of Noahide laws, but others are not, such as welcoming guests.[x]Could Rationally Obvious Ideas Be Considered Commanded?All of these oddities make sense if we assume that, at least until the time of the Flood, people were both privileged and required to define their obligations to God on their own. That is not true, I note now, of the Noahide laws the Talmud defines, since elements of those were decidedly not universally intuitive, as we will see next time. Rather, I am suggesting that had human beings shouldered their responsibility correctly, God might have been equally satisfied with a similar but not identical set of laws.That explains the prooftext the Talmud offers, in which the literal sense says that God permitted all the trees in the Garden but one, and the Talmud showed how each word could refer to another elsewhere in Scripture. Perhaps the statement was indeed meant to be filled with meaning, each word symbolizing a mode of behavior, but that it was originally Adam’s right and obligation to articulate that meaning. After the Flood, God defined them more exactly, and we could never go back. My point is that perhaps before the Flood, the command was fluid enough that it could also have encompassed other visions of law. It is that fluidity, perhaps, that Rambam was noting when he spoke of the “general tenor” of the Torah’s words.Humanity’s neglect to flesh out a life of morality and striving to get closer to the Creator finally “forced” God to react to the generations of the Flood or the Tower, with the punishment mentioned by Chabakkuk. If so, the punishment was not for specific transgressions, it was for the failure to articulate and adhere to a reasonable standard of behavior.This would mean that before the event referred to in Habakkuk, a non-Jew who behaved morally out of a belief in a God who desires moral behavior would have been rewarded as if he had observed a commandment, a specific order from God to act this way. Thus, for R. Nissim of Kairouan, for example, a non-Jew who honored a parent– despite there having been no specific command to do so– would have been rewarded by God as if he or she were responding properly to a Divine dictate.A First Example of Autonomy LostThat is not the state of Noahide law in Jewish thought since at least Talmudic times. Rambam and Ramban each note that non-Jews only get full reward for their observances if they follow them because God told them to do so, as articulated in the Torah and Talmud. Rambam famously writes that non-Jews who keep the Noahide laws are only considered of the “righteous of the nations” and earn a share in the World to Come if they accept those obligations because God commanded them in the Torah. I am suggesting that that only became true after the time of the Divine decision reflected in Chabakkuk, when God limited their right of autonomous legislation.Ramban explicitly differentiates an ordinary moral non-Jew from a ger toshav, a resident alien, along these lines. Though their actions may be exactly the same, the former is rewarded only as a volunteer while the latter is rewarded as one commanded, precisely because he has formally agreed to observe the Noahide laws as Jews see them.[xi]To my mind, then, the Talmud’s use of the verse in Chabakkuk indicates a significant shift in God’s relationship to humanity, somewhere around the time of the Flood or the Tower of Babel. Originally, God wanted us to articulate or create our own morality, as long as it fit the one explicit command not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.When humans failed at that task, God required humans to accept and adhere to pre-determined laws, a first instance where the descent into heteronomy starts with the failure to properly handle the responsibility of autonomy. Even so, these commandments were not so restrictive as to take away creative human input. Rather, they are a way to inculcate a worldview that was supposed to form the basis of many independent and personal contributions to the world, as we will begin to see next time.[i] Chabakkuk 3;6.[ii] Baba Kamma 38a and Avodah Zara 2b.[iii] Tosefta Sota 6;9, Avoda Zara 7;4, and Sanhedrin 74b refers only to their having been commanded.[iv] See, for example, Avoda Zara 2b and 64b, where the Sages require a ger toshav, a resident alien, to formally accept the seven commandments that the Noahides accepted. This example is particularly interesting, since it is in the context of requiring the non-Jew to repeat an earlier commitment, yet refers to that original commitment as having been self-initiated.[v] Baba Kamma 38a and Sanhedrin 56a-b.[vi] Sanhedrin 56b.[vii] Genesis 2;16.[viii] Hilchot Melachim 9;1. There are only six because Rambam agreed with another Talmudic tradition that eating meat was prohibited until after the Flood, so the commandment of ever min ha-hay, eating a piece of an animal that was removed in the animal’s lifetime, could not have come until then.[ix] Introduction to the Talmud, printed in the Rom Talmud. R. Nissim further assumed that Chullin 92a’s reference to 30 commandments that Noahides accepted meant ones they intuited before the giving of the Torah at Sinai. The Talmud does not list the 30, but others have tried to reconstruct it, notably Samuel b. Chofni Gaon of the 10th century and R. Menachem Azaria da Fano of the 16th.[x] Rashbam, Genesis, 26;5, s.v. Chukkotai.[xi] Novellae to Makkot 9a.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva

Have I conceived all these people? have I brought them forth, that you should say to me: Carry them in your bosom, as a nursing-father carries the sucking child, to the land which you did swear to their fathers? From where should I have flesh to give to this entire people? for they trouble me with their weeping, saying: Give us flesh, that we may eat. I am not able to bear this entire people myself alone, because it is too heavy for me. (Bamidbar 11: 12-14)

The desert generation complains abut lack of meat while longingly recalling fish consumed in Egypt. These frustrated people deem the manna a poor substitute for a more substantial Egyptian cuisine. In response, an angry Moshe asks God why He placed the burden of leadership upon Moshe. Netziv offers insightful analysis of the imagery utilized in Moshe’s complaint. According to Netziv, “Have I conceived all of these people” refers to mothers while “have I brought them forth” refers to fathers.” Recall that Moshe also mentions the nursing-father.

Netziv explains that parents have a natural love for and connection to their children. They know how to say the appropriate calming words that alleviate distress. Mothers have the additional advantage of the ability to nurse. A female nurse lacks the natural parental bond but shares the maternal ability to provide sustenance. Thus, both father and female nurse each have one advantage in caring for children. The omein, the male nurse, lacks either helpful quality. Moshe identifies with the omein because his inability to afford meat matches the male nurse’s helplessness in supplying milk. Moreover, Moshe resembles a nurse rather than a parent since he cannot possibly say the right thing to every individual in such a large nation. According to Netziv, Moshe’s imagery accurately conveys the difficulties he experiences in trying to care for an entire people.

When Moshe asks for help in shouldering the burden, God commands him to gather seventy elders. How will these sages aid him in finding meat for a massive number of people? Ramban asserts that the seventy elders do nothing to increase the available meat in the camp. Nor will they minimize the daily quantity of complaints reaching Moshe since those upset would still view the son of Amram as both responsible for taking them away from the free fish of Egypt and the best source for alleviating their ills.

If so, what do the elders accomplish? Ramban suggest that these leaders would speak to the people, thereby calming anger, at times of building tension. An important idea emerges from this explanation. We could view the art of problem solving as figuring out what to do when the crisis hits. From this perspective, a solution means procuring meat or making sure that the complaints are spread out among many recipients. God’s solution of appointing the elders chooses a far more effective approach. Instead of waiting for an angry mob and then dealing with it, it sets up an educational system that prevents that mob from ever developing. Preventing rebellion and despair begins with effective and varied leadership that reaches the all levels of society with a reassuring and understanding voice.

By Emuna Diamond, WebYeshiva

In our parsha we read of the Meraglim, the spies who were sent by Moshe in the second year after they left Egypt to spy out the land of Israel, as preparation to enter into it. We know that because of the slanderous report that they brought back to Moshe, they, along with all of Bnei Yisrael, were condemned to wander another 38 years in the desert, during which time all of the people of that generation died out, before they were finally allowed to enter the land.

After a somewhat demoralizing account of what the spies saw on their excursion –Enemies! Fortified cities! Children of giants! – the verses there state (Bamidbar 13: 30-31):

וַיַּהַס כָּלֵב אֶת הָעָם אֶל מֹשֶׁה וַיֹּאמֶר עָלֹה נַעֲלֶה וְיָרַשְׁנוּ אֹתָהּ כִּי יָכוֹל נוּכַל לָהּ:
וְהָאֲנָשִׁים אֲשֶׁר עָלוּ עִמּוֹ אָמְרוּ לֹא נוּכַל לַעֲלוֹת אֶל הָעָם כִּי חָזָק הוּא מִמֶּנּוּ

Caleb silenced the people to [hear about] Moses, and he said, “We can surely go up and take possession of it, for we can indeed overcome it.”

But the men who went up with him said, “We are unable to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we [ממנו].

On this verse, Rabbi Chanina bar Papa comments (Sota 35a) that rather than reading the text as “they are stronger than we (ממנוּ – mimenu)”, it can be read alternatively as, “they are stronger than Him (ממנוֹ – mimeno)” – that is, God. They are in essence saying that God Himself is not strong enough to go up against the enemies in the land and help Bnei Yisrael succeed in overcoming them!

The spies’ unfortunate lack of self-esteem, expressed through anxiety and wariness of overcoming the obstacles necessary to inherit the land, as we see here, can be interpreted as doubt in God’s greatness! In contrast, in that each and every person is bestowed with a Godly soul, having self-esteem – that is, loving yourself and trusting in yourself – is also a way of expressing love for and trust in God in all His greatness.

Certainly, life brings its fair share of challenges. It would be placing the bar very, very, high, I think, to ask or assume that we all overcome them without the slightest trace of self-doubt, anxiety, or lack of self-esteem. I think, however, that it is definitely something to strive for. The more we love our self – our Godly self – the greater we can come to love God and to appreciate His greatness.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva

R. Yossi would say: The property of your fellow should be as precious to you as your own. Prepare yourself for the study of Torah, for it is not an inheritance to you. And all your deeds should be for the sake of Heaven. (Avot 2:12)

R. Yossi’s second statement seems to contradict a biblical verse: “Moshe commanded us a law, an inheritance of the congregation of Yaakov” (Devarim 33:4). R. Yisrael Lipschutz explains that the pasuk refers to Torah as an inheritance for the collective Jewish people. Some Jews will always observe Torah but no single individual has a guarantee. Furthermore, the Torah resembles a fixed inheritance in that the law remains eternally binding. Of course, this says nothing about someone born into a scholarly family achieving greatness by virtue of birth.

In fact, a gemara takes the opposite position, arguing that sons of scholars tend to not duplicate their father’s feats precisely so that people not say Torah is an inheritance (Nedarim 81a). That gemara apparently attributes this phenomenon to divine plan. We can also offer some powerful naturalistic explanations for this pattern. Children of famous scholars tend to suffer from exaggerated communal expectations and pressures, parents too busy to give them sufficient time, and a loss of sense of self due to an overwhelming family identity. Indeed, being a child of prominent parents is very much a double edged sword.

Another gemara suggests that once a family has produced three successive generations of scholars, it will invariably maintain a connection to Torah (Bava Metzia 85a). R. Lipschutz refuses to accept the simple meaning of that text. He understands the gemara as conveying that a descendant of such a family might not need to work as hard as another fellow. However, even the scion of rabbinic excellence certainly needs serious commitment and effort. No wisdom or erudition exists without toil and exertion.

Meiri refers to R. Yossi’s final statement as “very significant.” Humanity needs involvement in worldly matters including even the more sensuous and corporeal aspects of human existence. Yet even these activities, given the proper motivation and context, serve God. Mishlei 3:6 says: “Know God in all your ways” and a gemara explains that this verse refers even to a sinful matter (Berachot 63a). Rashi comments that, in rare circumstances, halacha justifies a temporary sin such as when Eliyahu offers sacrifices at Mount Carmel. Meiri, on the other hand, contends that the gemara refers not to actual sins but to aspects of existence that seem more coarse and spiritually barren. A more mature religious attitude understands that these areas also serve as an arena for religious striving.

By Rabbi Gidon Rothstein, WebYeshiva

Introduction: The Question of Mitzvot

Welcome to my new project for the WebYeshiva blog. In my Mission of Orthodoxy project, I shared what a wide range of sources identify as the core of the religion. Part of my point in those posts was that halacha, Jewish law, sets out so many ideals that we can lose sight of the overall thrust of the religion by focusing on the details of a subset of its laws. In very short sum, I tried to emphasize that our observance of halacha must always contribute to service of God, the true goal of human life.

Part of what I began to show there, and want to expand upon here, is that while halacha is necessary to service of God, it is insufficient. That is, even a Jew who did not pick and choose but observed all of halacha would not find enough information about how to construct an ideal Jewish life. Rather, traditional sources show that God insists on our making personal choices as to how best to express our connection to the Divine. Halacha and hashkafa (Jewish thought) offer necessary and indispensable guidance as to how to do that, but significant aspects of a well-lived life are almost entirely personal, for each of us to figure out for ourselves. I mean to show, then, that halacha is more of a framework than the be-all, end-all of religiosity it is sometimes taken for.

Isn’t It Obvious?

While I am most interested in this idea because it is true and it shows us untapped fields of religious excellence where we could roam free, it also contributes to solving a problem many have with Judaism. Particularly in democracies, we are acutely aware of our own importance, of the value of our personal opinions. The idea that religion tells us exactly what to do grates on us, yet Judaism steadfastly—and correctly, I will certainly say—insists that the tradition knows better than we do.

In philosophy, Immanuel Kant highlighted the problem when he derided Judaism’s inferiority on these very grounds. In his view, Judaism wants obedience, whereas Kant insisted that other-commanded acts cannot be as morally valuable as personally chosen and free-willed ones. The philosophical debate uses words like heteronomy and autonomy, but many Jews have sufficiently absorbed that perspective regardless of the terminology. This instinctive preference for personal input creates some tension when the religion “merely” wants us to follow God’s laws.[i]

I won’t review the history of attempts to defend Judaism against Kant’s claims, I will only note that I here hope to contribute by showing that he was wrong on both counts. First, Judaism is not as heteronomous as he assumed; most of my thrust will be to show that God “prefers” free-willed human choices. On the other hand, I can note why commandments would be necessary as well.

It Is Good That You Hold On To This, and Also From This Rest Not Your Hand

I am claiming, in other words, that I can stress both obedience to halacha and the importance of personal choice within a fully traditional religious view, and that doing so will materially advance our understanding of Judaism’s message (for all humanity). As with the Mission project, our discussions here will lead us to see ways that even observant Jews need to recalibrate their observance, their worldview, and their educational systems.

One difference from the Mission is that here I will not try to be unequivocal, only persuasive. In line with my stress here on personal intuition, I offer the product of my own, and must therefore relinquish my attempts to be indisputable. The understandings of texts I will offer will be my best attempt to understand those texts’ original intent, but I cannot say that they are the only possible way to read the message of tradition.

And there are sources that seem to stress the opposite of what I am saying. Perhaps most famously, Jewish tradition took pride in the Jews’ saying, “we will do and we will comprehend” when offered the Torah, placing obedience before understanding, chronologically and conceptually.[ii] On the other hand, sufficient sources celebrate human creativity. For the most famous and oft-quoted example, R. Joshua’s rejection of a Heavenly voice, arguing that the Torah is “not in Heaven,” in the Talmud’s presentation, elicited laughing acceptance from God.[iii]

One proponent of a middle view, emphasizing the role of both obedience and creativity in a Jewish life, was Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, whose works Halachic Man and Halachic Mind elaborated on the freedom and creativity of the halachic thinker.

The Necessity and Role of Halacha

I believe R. Soloveitchik left me room to explore further in two ways. First, he did not, as far as I have seen, fully discuss why God commanded mitzvot rather than just allowing us to formulate ways to worship God on our own. I will try to show, in the next few posts, that God’s original plan indeed envisioned a more minimal legal territory than currently.

Crucial episodes in the history of humanity show that God “preferred” human autonomy in figuring out how best to serve Him. The rules we have today, those sources suggest, only came about when humanity failed to come up with reasonable options of its own.

God legislates, that would mean, where humanity was either unable or unwilling to understand the task ahead, failed to shoulder its responsibility to build a life of service based on the information at hand. The rules, I argue, were God’s way of helping us avoid dead-ends, maintain our hold on basic values we might otherwise have misunderstood.

That might lead some to assume we can return to making our own rules. If the original plan accepted or sought our creative input on how to serve God, some look to return to such a system today. The error lies in losing sight of time’s arrow; the job of each generation is to further the world we were bequeathed, not to try to create it anew. Born into a world where God has legislated, we can note the lost autonomy such legislation demonstrates, but we have no ability to turn the clock back to before that legislation had been promulgated. The Word, once given, lasts for the rest of eternity.

Confronting the Infinite

Yet it seems clear that God always intended to legislate some rules (even if only the one to desist from eating from the Tree of Knowledge). Aside from why that should be, we might easily also wonder why the response to human failures to observe a set of rules would be to give them more rules.

The answer to those questions, I think, lies in fully registering a fact Kant failed to take into account. He assumed that human intuition, intellect, and understanding are up to the task of understanding the best way to handle our lives. But Judaism plays in the garden of the Infinite, where we cannot on our own come to the right answers all the time. Where we fail, we have identified a place that the task is beyond our ken, where we need help in finding the path to God, and God responds by giving us rules that lay out the path more fully.

A brief detour will help show why this would be. Frequently, we speak of God as infinite, and the way mathematicians dealt with the transfinite offers a good parallel for how I am suggesting halacha was meant to work. For much of human history, mathematicians shied away from the infinite itself; Aristotle famously denied the possibility of an actual infinity in the world, and his view held sway.

Only in the nineteenth century did mathematicians achieve reasonable understanding of the infinite, and only by separating their studies from any “real world” parallels. They had to leave their intuition behind because the infinite works counterintuitively, such as in the fact that adding to a transfinite set, even another transfinite set—such as adding the odd numbers to the even numbers– does not change that set’s size, since all three sets are still infinite. And yet, some infinities are larger than others, as Georg Cantor, one of the early and most important students of the topic, demonstrated.[iv]

Their work provides a productive parallel to our discussion of how people try to relate to God, the Infinite.[v] As in math, we will see in these posts that ordinary human intuition cannot understand God well enough to define its own correct forms of service. In any interaction with an Infinite Being (including many “ordinary” moral situations), our intuition must be trained before it can act correctly. Similar to how the human mind needs workable rules, however strange, to avoid boggling in confronting a mathematical infinite, we need rules for how to relate to God. Some of those were given by God, some came later, but all were intended to ready us for autonomous activity once we had absorbed the thrust and intent of those rules.

Did Ramban Already Say This?

During most of these posts, I will operate under the assumption that these ideas are mostly implicit, requiring me to prove them, but two well-known comments of Ramban, the thirteenth century Spanish scholar, might lead some to assume that this idea is obvious and well-known.

Commenting on the Torah’s commands קדושים תהיו and ועשית הישר והטוב, “You shall be holy” and “You shall do the right and the good,”[vi] Ramban clearly calls for action that goes beyond the letter of the law. If we were sure that “going beyond” means creatively shaping our personal religiosity, I wouldn’t need to write these posts.

A closer look reveals that Ramban’s position is not so clear. In the first comment, he says that the laws of the Torah do not necessarily prevent a person from being enslaved to such baser instincts as eating or sexual relations. To counterbalance that, he says, the Torah issues a general command to “be holy,” to make clear that one cannot be satisfied with adherence to the letter of the law.

It is the insufficiency of law to fully determine good conduct that he is stressing, as we see in the second of those comments, where he adds

וזה ענין גדול, לפי שאי אפשר להזכיר בתורה כל הנהגות האדם עם שכניו ורעיו וכל משאו ומתנו ותקוני הישוב והמדינות כלם, אבל אחרי שהזכיר מהם הרבה, כגון לא תלך רכיל (ויקרא יט טז), לא תקום ולא תטור (שם פסוק יח)… וכיוצא בהן, חזר לומר בדרך כלל שיעשה הטוב והישר בכל דבר, עד שיכנס בזה הפשרה ולפנים משורת הדין, וכגון מה שהזכירו בדינא דבר מצרא (ב”מ קח א)…

And this is a great matter, because it is impossible to mention in the Torah all of the ways in which a person conducts himself with his neighbors and friends, and all of his business dealings, and the way to set up society and states in the best way; instead, after mentioning many of them, such as “you shall not go talebearing,” “do not take vengeance or hold a grudge,” …and similar ones, it went back to say generally that one should act well and good in all matters, to the point that the person will, because of this principle, compromise and act supererogatorily, as the Talmud mentioned in the rules of bar metzra…[vii]

Ramban could be making my point, that the Torah gives examples from which we are supposed to extrapolate in building a life lived in relation to God, but he equally might be assuming that we have some kind of innate intuition as to what constitutes goodness or even sanctity, and sees these verses as appealing to that sense.[viii] If so, these comments say only that the Torah could not list all that we know to be right and good, so it threw in a couple of catchalls to remind us to follow those rules as well. That version of Ramban’s view says much less than I seek here.

One More Way of Thinking About It

There is a scientific concept that seems to me remarkably similar to how I will try to portray the balance between what God tells us and what we are supposed to get on our own, that of the complex adaptive system (CAS). Kevin Dooley explains,

A CAS behaves/evolves according to three key principles: order is emergent as opposed to predetermined, the system’s history is irreversible, and the system’s future is often unpredictable. The basic building blocks of the CAS are agents. Agents are semi-autonomous units that seek to maximize some measure of goodness, or fitness, by evolving over time. Agents scan their environment and develop schema representing interpretive and action rules…[ix]

If you substitute ‘the nature of service of God’ for his reference to ‘system,’ ‘Torah and mitzvot’ for ‘environment’ and ‘people’ for ‘agents,’ you get a good description of the kind of world I understand God to have been setting up. Torah, I will be suggesting, sets an environment that is emergent as opposed to predetermined, is irreversible (so that we can’t bypass the history of halacha to get back to a previous time we’d prefer), and we can’t fully predict the direction the world will take.

By immersing themselves in the “environment,” Torah, people elicit feedback as to the definition of service of God, with that feedback then shaping their future actions in a never-ending search for goodness, drawing them ever closer to God. Our absolute dependence on that feedback in improving our fitness to serve God is the piece Kant failed to see.

Or so I hope to show. I will begin next time with non-Jews; while many assume that the Torah is largely indifferent to them, I find the topic provides a productive first example of Chazal signaling that it has always been our failure to use our autonomy properly that leads God to make rules.

[i] That explains, for example, our discomfort with the halachic principle thatגדול המצווה ועושה משאינו מצווה ועושה, that a commanded person who performs a deed is better or greater than one who does so voluntarily.

[ii] See, for example, bShabbat 88a-b, R. Yonah Gerondi, Sha`arei Teshuvah II;10.

[iii] bBaba Metsia 59b. Few English writers have mentioned that medieval authorities debated whether we accept R. Yehoshua’s claim; in another famous case, the Talmud seems to advocate following the rulings of the Academy of Hillel because a Heavenly voice said to, see Tosafot ad. loc., bBerachot 52a, s.v. ve-Rabbi Yehoshua, bEruvin 6b, s.v. Kan le-Ahar, and elsewhere. The issue matters little here, because sufficient alternate sources support the basic idea, as we will see.

[iv] Cantor’s proof showed that we can never match irrational decimals to the integers, because there will always be an irrational decimal missing from the list. That is, Cantor showed that he could always construct a missing decimal from any list matching decimals to integers. He did so by noting that each decimal would have as many digits as the number of the integer to which it was corresponding; by checking the value of that place within the decimal, Cantor said, he could say that his missing decimal would have a different value. This would mean that his constructed decimal would differ from every decimal on the list at at least one place; no matter how far down our list we would go, our decimal will differ from the nth one on the list at the nth spot.

[v] David Foster Wallace, Everything and More, notes that Cantor saw his mathematical studies in just such religious terms.

[vi] Vayikra 19;2 and Devarim 6;18, with Ramban’s comments there.

[vii] The Talmudic principle that a person must give his neighbor the right to buy his property before selling it to others.

[viii] Strikingly, Ramban’s examples are hardly intuitive, although people assume he meant them that way. Human insight does not naturally reject gossip, does not see saving another’s life as an absolute obligation, and does not even fully accept the wrong in holding a grudge. We cannot know whether Ramban chose these examples to make that point or these were just the ones that came to mind as he wrote.

[ix] Complex Adaptive Systems: A Nominal Definition, http://www.eas.asu.edu/~KDooley/casopdef.html, emphasis added. Dooley acknowledges earlier work by numerous scientists, including Murray Gell-Mann, in whose The Quark and the Jaguar (New York: Freedman & Co., 1994) I first encountered the concept.

By Rabbi Ron-Ami Meyers, WebYeshiva

This Parshat B’ha’alotcha, I celebrate 36 years since my Bar Mitzva.

Date: June 8, 1974.

Location: B’nai Avraham Synagogue, Winnipeg, Canada.

Between swallows of rum torte and cheesecake, I graciously receive yet another envelope.

Even Eighteen dollars is a lot to a young teenager in 1974. Unaware of the halacha proscribing handling money on Shabbat and Yom Tov, I ponder the swelling figures in my new bank account.

A generation later, I’d like you join me as I revisit the Torah portion chanted on that fateful day.

Come On, Aharon, Light That Fire

The parsha opens with G-d’s instruction to Aharon, the Kohen Gadol, to light the Menorah in the Beit Hamikdash. Our sages note that the Torah uses the term b’ha’alotcha in reference to lighting.

Question: What does this term denote?

Answer: G-d is conveying to Aharon that he must hold the fire next to the wick until the flame of the menorah “goes up on its own”. In other words, until the wick begins to draw oil, fueling itself.

A Simple Question

Rav Avigdor Nebenzhal, whose classic shiurim continue to enrapture, raises an obvious question:

Surely, this is the way to light a fire!

What new information, chidush, is being conveyed by this verb?

If the unique term bha’alotcha had not been used – would we have thought that holding the fire to the wick – without that flame catching and drawing its own oil – would constitute lighting ?

Jewish Education: Transforming the Individual

Girded with proofs that our tradition views the menorah’s light as a symbol of Torah knowledge, Rav Nebenzhal offers the following observation:

The Kohen is the paradigm of the Jewish educator, the wick – the student. Fire? Knowledge. The Kohen must hold the fire to that wick until it draws oil on its own.

Translated: A Jewish educator must teach his or her talmid to become independent.

A true indicator of this independence?

When approaching a new text, an authentic talmid will attempt to apply the educator’s system of thinking:

* What questions would my teacher pose on this piece?
* What categories would he create to make sense of the material?

A Personal Story

About 15 years ago, I was asked to tutor up-and-coming students of Talmud in a Jerusalem Bet Midrash. A young man approached me; I interviewed him, inquiring about his background. His high school entry exam required him to answer dozens of intricate questions on ten folios of a complex Talmudic tractate. Five years later, motivated to probe deeper, he came to learn.

After a couple of minutes, I realized that this young man not only had a long way to go in deciphering a page of Talmud with Rashi, he had virtually no analytical skills, the bread and butter of Talmud study.

How could this be?

His middle school teachers certainly taught Torah, but they didn’t teach him. Reams of information were no doubt absorbed over the years, but he, the student – wasn’t truly educated.

Since then, I hear he has developed into a noted Torah scholar and educator, and I’m sure that since 1995, he has far surpassed me.

But this story has stuck in my mind. It’s a wonderful illustration of Rav Nebenzhal’s message.

A Final Thought

Rambam, the great Maimonides, states unequivocally that the highest level of Tzedaka is helping a person find employment.

In other words, ridding him of his dependence on classic charity.

Why is it that we have not looked to Hilchot Tzedaka as a model for Chinuch, Jewish education? No doubt motivated by lofty goals, we‘ve become accustomed to feeding our students facts and information, in much the same way a generous person pulls out his wallet to aid a needy person.

Why the disconnect?

Why the widespread failure to take the cue from the world of Tzedaka?

Ironically, it may be because we ourselves have much to glean from Rav Nebenzhal’s message. Perhaps it’s time that we, as Jewish educators, make greater efforts to apply the lessons taught us by other disciplines within Torah.

Let us become the wicks and let the wisdom of the Torah – light our fire.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva

And if you sell to your neighbor, or buy from your neighbor’s hand, do not wrong one another. According to the number of years after the jubilee you shall buy from your neighbor, and according to the number of years of the crops he shall sell to you. According to the multitude of the years you shall increase the price, and according to the fewness of the years you shall diminish the price; for the number of crops he sells to you. (Vayikra 25:14-16)

The verses above forbid ona’at mammon, defrauding another in a business transaction through overcharging or underpaying. In this context, the Torah reminds us that sales of real estate only last until the jubilee; therefore, we must accurately calculate the years remaining when setting the price for selling a field. Apparently, the Torah provides an excellent example of avoiding ona’a and that these laws very much apply to selling land.

Nevertheless, Chazal explicitly exempt real estate from the laws of ona’a (Bava Mezia 56a). Some commentators explain that real state has a priceless quality. Indeed, many people would likely agree to sell a book or painting they were very attached to for the right price but would refuse to sell their houses even for an exorbitant amount. Some things transcend evaluation based on official market value. If so, perhaps halacha places no restrictions on fixing prices when selling land.

Yet Ramban (Vayikra 25:14) and Pnei Yehoshua (Kiddushin 42b) resist that conclusion, contending that we cannot ignore the simple reading of these verses which talk abut selling real estate in the context of observing the laws of ona’ah. Ramban offers two alternative approaches. Perhaps halacha distinguishes between the prohibition against defrauding and the laws of repayment or of sale cancellation in a case of unfair pricing. The former applies equally to real estate and chattel; the latter is limited to movable property. Thus, the verses correctly refer to real estate when discussing the prohibition which applies across the board.

Alternatively, the verses refer to a mistake in measuring which differs from an incorrectly fixed price. Perhaps real estate transactions can ignore market value but they cannot deviate from the agreement. If they agree on two acres, the seller must provide two acres. If a person sells land for a fifteen year period, the buyer should not discover that only fourteen years remain until the jubilee. Thus, this type of issue in business ethics very much applies to real estate and the Torah mentions it when discussing ona’a.

An important methodological point emerges. Neither Ramban nor Pnei Yehoshua had any hesitations about Chazal’s authority to interpret Torah and establish the halacha. At the same time, they took the peshuto shel mikra seriously and thought that it should play a role in determining the Torah’s halachic message.

By Rabbi Shimon Felix, WebYeshiva

At the end of the parsha, Aharon and Miriam, the brother and sister of Moshe, speak badly of their brother. It is not crystal clear what they actually said, but the Torah tells us that it was something about the Cu****e woman whom Moshe had married. After they speak, God appears to them, suddenly, and upbraids them for their behavior. Miriam is then punished with the skin disease tzara’at, usually mistranslated as leprosy (there is a kind of poetic justice – called by the Rabbis ‘midah k’neged midah’, or ‘measure for measure’ as Shakespeare translates it – in Miriam being punished with a skin disease for speaking badly about a woman identified as being black). Aharon, in the biblical narrative, seems for some reason to escape this punishment, although the Rabbis ingeniously read the text to say that he, too, was stricken in the same way. Moshe then prays for Miriam to be cured, and God responds in an interesting way: “If her father had spit in her face, would she not be put to shame for seven days? Let her be shut up for seven days outside the camp; afterwards she may be gathered up.”

This in fact is what then happens; after seven days of isolation, the Jewish people received Miriam back into the camp and continued on their trek through the desert. In the Mishna in Tractate Bava Kama, which deals with damages done by or to one’s livestock, this story is mentioned. There is an argument about how much damage should be paid when an ox does damage by attacking another animal or a person in the private property of the victim. The Rabbis feel that the damages paid should be the same as when the attack takes place in public property, whereas Rabbi Tarfon feels that they should be greater, since, in certain situations, the Halacha does view doing damage in the victim’s private property as being worse than doing damage while in public property. The Rabbis bring God’s speech about Miriam as a proof against Rabbi Tarfon. They point out that God says that if Miriam had been spit on by her father she would have withdrawn in shame for seven days, and He does not then draw the conclusion that, since God has just ’spit in her face’ (scolded her and given her leprosy), she should now be shamed for fourteen days – twice as long. Such an assumption may well have made sense; after all, being shamed by God is certainly more severe than being shamed by one’s parent, so if it’s seven days for dad, it should be 14 for God. But that is not what God says in the story. God is satisfied with giving Miriam the same punishment, the same seven-day cooling off period, which would have been appropriate if it were her father who had shamed her.

From this, the Rabbis say, we learn an important Halachic principle – called ‘dayo’ which literally means ‘it is enough’ (it comes from the same word as ‘Dayenu’ in the Passover Haggada). The idea is that, when we adduce logically from one thing to another, it is enough – dayo – to say that the two things will now have the same rule, and we should not attempt to extrapolate beyond that to the adduced thing. The way dayo works in the case of Miriam is the classic example of this principle – we do NOT make the leap from seven days for the father to fourteen days for God. If it’s seven days for the father, then all we can reasonably say is that for a punishment from God, it should certainly be the same seven days. Similarly, the Rabbis want to limit damages done in private property to the same liability as there is in public property; if for this kind of damage done by your ox on public property you would pay x, then all we can adduce is that in private property you will pay the same, even though it is true that we generally view damage done to the victim in his own property as being more serious than damage done on public property.

I find the reasoning of the Rabbis very suggestive. To me it seems similar to the scientific method. I can extrapolate, I can learn from one situation to another, from one phenomenon to another, but, when I do so, I must be careful not to make theoretical leaps which take me beyond what I know to be true. I can assume the seven day to seven day correlation, but not make the leap to 14 days. I also see here an inclination to limit the way in which I relate to the divine, the absolute. The tendency to think like Rabbi Tarfon – if it’s this much for humans, it must be twice as much when God is involved – is rejected by God, the Rabbis, and the subsequent Halacha. The Rabbis want us specifically to see our interactions with the divine through the lens of human experience, to measure it with a human yardstick. My understanding of my relationship with the Absolute is something I extrapolate from what I know about my relationship with man. Therefore, when I make that extrapolation, I must be careful to stay within human boundaries, human standards, and not hypothesize overblown, perhaps unrealistic, divine standards. Man is the measure of all things.

The principle of dayo – it is enough – as expressed by God and understood by the Rabbis in Bava Kama – tells us that my human, mundane, every-day understanding of right and wrong, of what is appropriate and what is inappropriate, must continue to be the way I see things even when I am dealing with absolute, divine issues. I never stop relating as a person to situations, even when they are in the realm of the religious and metaphysical. I have no right to automatically assume that, with God, everything must be somehow different, exaggerated, amplified, writ large. My relationship to God, to the holy, partakes of the same rules as my relationship to my fellow man. What is right and decent in one realm is right and decent in the other.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshivaR. Yehoshua would say: An evil eye, and the evil inclination, and hatred of humanity take a person out of this world. (Avot 2:11)The first and third negative traits mentioned lend themselves to several interpretations. R. Ovadia Bartenura says that the evil eye could refer to a person causing damage to another with an aggressive glance. Alternatively, it means not being satisfied with what we have and looking with jealousy at another’s portion. All too often, we fail to appreciate our own treasures while foolishly and enviously looking across a neighbor’s fence.Tifferet Yisrael interprets the “evil eye” as doubting foundational beliefs such as divine revelation and immortality. An earlier comment by R. Lipschutz on the identical phrase (Avot 2:9) further elucidates the concept. There, he depicts a person afflicted with the “evil eye” as someone who judges everything negatively. The same cynicism that motivates such a person to denounce his peers also leads to a rejection of teachers and of God. Once a person chooses the cynical path, divinity is not immune from insults and castigation.According to an interpretation cited in Tosafot Yom Tov, “hatred of humanity” means that a person proves so irritating that all his friends and neighbors end up hating him. On the other hand, Rambam understands that the person himself hates humanity. This hatred leads to a path of solitude in a desolate desert far from the humanity he so despises.Ibn Tibbon’s translation adds that the person selects isolation not as a fulfillment of “perishut” but due to petty jealousies, desires, and hatreds. Interestingly, R. Kapa says this reflects an interpolation that does not appear in the original Arabic. In the original text, Rambam rejects this kind of solitude without qualification, including even a more nobly motivated form. Despite Rambam’s frequent elitism, he did not advocate the life of a hermit. Indeed, he spent the last years of his life mostly engaged in acts of chessed in his capacity as a doctor.Human society often creates significant frustrations and complications; to some degree, we can understand the desire to take flight. In addition, jealousies and temptations motivate us to seek a seemingly safer solitude. Despite the above, the Torah does not endorse abandoning society. With all the difficulties of humanity, it is only in the interaction with their company that the highest levels of spirituality can be found.

By Rabbi Shimon Felix, WebYeshiva

According to Rabbinic tradition, the holiday of Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. The commandments are prefaced by the following simple verse: “And God spoke all of these words, saying:” This is exactly what one would have by way of introduction to the words dictated by God to Moshe and the Jewish people. However, the commentaries notice an unnecessary word: had the verse left out the word “all”, and just said “And God spoke these words, saying:”, we would have assumed that he spoke all of them. After all, “these words” means these words, all the words that follow. Why does the Torah need to emphasize that he spoke all of them?

A simple answer might be that the Torah wants to disabuse readers of the notion that Moshe, or someone else, was actually the author of the Ten Commandments, or of some of them, and so the word ‘all’ emphasizes the divine source of the entire text. However, Rashi (France, 11th century), does not bring us this straightforward explanation. Rather, he says this: the word ‘all’ indicates that the first communication from God at Mount Sinai, heard by the Jewish people, consisted of all of the words of the ten Commandments, spoken together, as one sound; “all” means all at once. Now, this is something which, Rashi points out, no human being could do, it is a clearly divine, albeit incomprehensible, communication. Rashi then explains that the word-for-word, sentence-by-sentence version of the commandments written in the Torah – “I am the Lord your God” and the nine others that follow – is what God said next, after the strange, mashed together, all-at-once version.

Well, the obvious question is, why? What is God, a comedian? What is this first communication of all the words of the Ten Commandments spoken at once meant to convey? If God will immediately afterwards speak the commandments normally, one word at a time, what is the message of the jumbled up commandments? Why did God do this strange little parlor trick, and why did the Torah need, with the word ‘all’, to tell us about it, before telling us the actual content of the commandments?

Perhaps we can understand this first, incomprehensible communication as teaching us this: by prefacing the normal text of the commandments with their all-together-at-once version, perhaps God is modeling for us the nature of Torah study. Just as the Israelites experienced it on Mount Sinai on Shavuot, the first time the Torah was given, as an incomprehensible text, which was only subsequently elucidated, so, too, the Torah must always be experienced as a text whose essential meaning is divine and yet (therefore?) always obscure, not-yet-understood, which challenges us to interpret and elucidate it. The mashed-together version is a model for all of our interactions with the text of the Torah, an interaction which we do not understand, and which demands of us an effort to clarify, make sense, interpret, and explain.

How true or relevant this dynamic is in terms of other, non-Torah texts, be it Shakespeare, a Seinfeld episode or a comic book, is an interesting question, one which is much dealt with by postmodern literary theorists. I’d like to suggest that the greater the text is – the more it is like Torah, the more it is ‘divine’ – the closer to infinite are its implications, and, therefore, the more it can successfully and meaningfully inspire and bear the endless inferences and interpretations of its creative and active readers. Shavuot, as the holiday of the interpretation of the Torah, is an excellent opportunity for us to rededicate ourselves to being those kinds of readers to those kinds of texts – or to comic books, if that’s where your personal literary theory takes you.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva

The Torah appends the phrase “chukat olam” to several mitzvot, indicating that these commandments remain eternally binding. Yet the Torah does not do so for many mitzvot equally enduring. Apparently, we had reason to think that certain mitzvot were limited by context; the Torah clarifies that these mitzvot also continue to obligate us.

Vayikra 23 enumerates the festivals and applies the phrase “chukat olam” to the Shavuot holiday (verse 21), to the prohibition against eating from the new grain prior to the omer offering (verse 14), and to Yom Kippur (verse 31, see also Vayikra 16:29, 34). That biblical chapter does not mention this phrase in the context of Sukkot, Rosh Hashana, Shabbat or Pesach. However, Shemot 12:14 does employ the phrase in reference to Pesach.

Ramban (commentary on Vayikra 23: 16) explains that we had no reason to consider limiting the duration of Sukkot or Rosh Hashana but we did think that other holidays might depend upon the temple service. The extended avoda on Yom Kippur (Vayikra 16) inspires the thought that this holy day loses its identify in a world without a mikdash. Therefore, the Torah emphasizes that we observe the Day of Atonement with or without a temple. The linkage between both the prohibition against eating the new grain and the holiday of Shavuot with the omer offering also might suggest that absent that offering, these mitzvot do not exist. The Torah counters that thought as well. Shemot 12 needs to make the same point about Pesach since that chapter highlights the centrality of the paschal offering to the holiday.

This theory also explains why the Torah uses this phrase when discussing the prohibition to eat blood and certain fats (Vayikra 3:17). We could root this prohibition in our burning fat and sprinkling blood on the altar and conclude that the prohibition cease once we lose the temple. Once again, the Torah must stress the ongoing nature of these commandments.

Perhaps a broader point emerges. The temple service once played a dominant role in Jewish religious life. Note the many chapters of Chumash dedicated to outlining the details of the temple service. As a result, the Torah needed to clarify that religious life does not ultimately depend on a temple. Achieving atonement, accepting the Torah, religiously guided eating, and coming close to God can be accomplished anytime and anywhere. Indeed, Torah observance represents a chukat olam.

By Rabbi Gidon Rothstein, WebYeshiva

Dear Readers,

While this is the last of the Mission of Orthodoxy posts, I am pleased to announce that the WebYeshiva Blog will be hosting my next series, to begin the week after Shavuot. That series, titled The Religious Creativity Project, will pick up where the Mission leaves off. I will be trying to show how much personal input into our religiosity the religion not only wants but expects from us, even within full halachic observance. I will take about 20 weeks to do this, but the overall goal will be to show how and in what ways halacha is only meant as a starting point, not an ending point, of our relationship with God. I look forward to seeing you on the blog! Gidon Rothstein

Schools may prepare children for adulthood, but– as a sociological fact rather than an halachic one[i]– synagogues are where Jews live out that adulthood. A Judaism aware of its mission takes advantage of that fact, but sees synagogue as an efficient organizing tool for religious life, not the sum total of it.[ii] My question here, therefore, is whether synagogues serve their basic function, helping Jews achieve the core mission of the religion.

Complicating the answer, synagogues are also, properly and appropriately, institutions of communal cohesiveness. Building that communal bond and sense of connection involves activities essential to the synagogue’s becoming and remaining a venue to which congregants turn for friendship and support. Those activities should, again, be seen as the necessary foundation on which to build a synagogue’s communal function, not the sum total of them.

Weighing a Synagogue’s Mission Base

Rather than any specific prescriptions about how synagogues ought to shape themselves, understanding the core shows ways for synagogues to analyze their balance between ancillary and mission-inspired activities. Each specific choice may be legitimate, but synagogues also need to insure that their overall thrust pushes in the direction of fostering better worship of God.

This concern arises in all of a synagogue’s official activities. Beginning with the rabbi’s various communications with members—speeches, classes, bulletin articles, eulogies, fundraising calls—and expanding throughout the synagogue’s functioning, communities need to check themselves for mission drift. Some rabbis (and their communities) are fascinated by details of ritual halacha (even or especially details that do not obviously or immediately connect to broader issues of service of God), some by acts of kindness that mostly create social integration and welfare, and some by political and/or pastoral activities.[iii] Any and all of these can be positive and important contributions to the broader Jewish community and reflections of a particular community’s niche in bringing about a world more focused on God.

The danger lies in their becoming ends of their own. Not every sermon can be about ways to better serve God; not every class can discuss “big-picture” issues; not every activity can be directly mission-based; but the sum total of all of those must be, else the community must begin to consider whether it has lost its way.

A synagogue in which the vast majority of congregants do not study Torah regularly; observe the holidays or Sabbath only by avoiding prohibited activities but fail to use those times to focus more on God and to get closer to God; do not understand their mission in life as revolving around the love, fear, and slow growth in imitation of God; is failing to serve those congregants in the way it might.

To phrase it the other way, a synagogue in which the majority of congregants see prayer and Torah study as ways to connect with friends rather than deepen their connection with and understanding of God’s law and worldview; in which congregants observe the Sabbath or holidays as days to rest and relax from their weekday exertions by sleeping, sunbathing, or hanging out with family; in which congregants see the sum of their mission in life as raising good families and earning a reasonable living, is a synagogue that has lost sight of its mission.

I would even go one step further and wonder whether such a synagogue and its rabbi are misusing the funds donated to its upkeep. The donors may want it to be exactly what it is, but if it fails to make those donors and other congregants aware of what a synagogue is supposed to be, it has failed at a core component of its mission and taken moneys it probably should not have.

Evidence of Synagogues Adrift

This concern spotlights at least two phenomena that are admittedly minor in technical terms, but underline how far we have come from understanding what synagogue is supposed to be about. Consider the issue of talking during services. It has been a problem for hundreds of years, and rabbis have bemoaned their inability to rein it in for almost all of that time. In the face of what is so deeply ingrained as to resist generations of protest, many would counsel choosing a wiser battle to fight. Apt though the advice may be, we need to also recognize that talking during services is one of the easiest indications that fear of God does not inhabit a particular place.

When a person or community feels him, her, or themselves to be in the presence of God—perhaps the reason so many synagogues place the phrase דע לפני מי אתה עומד, Know before Whom you stand, so prominently[iv]—talking to a neighbor should be impossible (as it would be if one had a private audience with the President, let alone the Master of the Universe). The talking is less offensive in and of itself (it is certainly not of a level of other sins we’ve discussed) than as communicating an underlying apathy to what synagogue and prayer is about. (And there, it’s really problematic).

In noting that, I add how infrequently attempts to secure quiet focus on exactly that aspect of the problem. While it is often effective to shape our concern with talking as a matter of sensitivity to those in the synagogue who seek to pray in quiet, phrasing it as a matter of disrespect to God takes the opportunity to reinforce the synagogue’s sense of itself as dedicated to a particular task, not just serving as a convenient gathering point.

Kiddush Clubs—Freely Admitting I Could Care Less About God

This same concern with the synagogue’s holding to a baseline mission explains my choice of Kiddush clubs to single out for attention. That members of a synagogue insist on a break in services and time it to the reading of the haftara[v] should irk us for many reasons, among the most prominent being that it openly declares a preference for food, drink, and socializing, to hearing words which, as we have seen, convey central theological messages of the religion. In condoning or turning a blind eye to members’ doing so, communities reinforce the sense that they are a social club rather than a group gathered for the service of God.

Taking up the core values we have articulated here would give rabbis and communities convenient shorthand for knowing which congregational problems to combat vigorously, how to better triage their activities, and thus how to insure that their Mikdash Me’at, their small sanctuary, merits the maximum possible Divine Presence.

With this review of some of the ways in which a mission-based Orthodoxy expresses itself, I bring this discussion to a close. The economics of spiritual energy can be expanded to all decisions in a religious life, but I have here only and purposely taken on the simplest of issues, to show situations where Orthodoxy is clear, unequivocal, and absolute in its assignment of priorities. A well-lived Orthodoxy involves more than that, but that “more” involves personal choices, some open to pluralism, some to tolerance, and some absolute.

Budgeting is a lifelong process, never completed and never perfect, and this presentation of an essential or core Orthodoxy does not claim to be either. I hope here to start a journey, to shift a frame of reference, to offer a set of questions and attitudes that will bring us back to the path we were supposed to have been walking all this time, the path of service of God. As defined and clarified by halacha, to be sure, but with its focus being service of God. Not social membership, not Reconstructionist cultural heritage, but fear and love of our Creator, the Holy One, Blessed Be He. The rest, as Hillel said in the much-misused dictum with which we started, is commentary. Go and study.

[i] While halachic sources record the importance of synagogue participation (for men, at least), see, e.g., Shulchan Aruch 90;9, R. Moses Isserles, in that same paragraph, speaks with equanimity of people who live in places where there is no regular minyan. It was not only conceivable, but fully acceptable, to live in a place where public worship would be occasional at best.

[ii] This fact points up a flaw in the efforts of those who expend time, energy, and money on securing greater synagogue participation for Orthodox women; if the religion focused on activities like serving as a rabbi, getting an aliyah during Torah reading, or leading the services, the hue and cry over women’s exclusion would be understandable (although possibly still wrong). That so much of our resources and goodwill are being spent on issues the religion itself deems trivial—for men, let alone women– is itself a problem.

[iii] Many rabbis speak of a hospital visit or shiva call as opening the door to a greater relationship with a particular congregant. I have no reason to doubt them, but I do wonder how often those encounters actually translate into a changed relationship with God as opposed to only having that congregant like the rabbi better or feel better about the community. Those are also valuable, and may plant seed, but until and unless those sprout, the goal of a synagogue and a rabbi has not yet been fully met.

[iv] Taken from Berachot 28b, the words are R. Eliezer’s response to his students’ request that he teach them ארחות חיים, the proper way to live.

[v] The need for a break at all is surprising. While Shabbat morning services used to be closer to three hours, they today tend to stay in the 2 ½ hour range for main sanctuary services, less for auxiliary ones. I have heard people argue that shorter services would solve both the talking and Kiddush clubs problems. My experience suggests otherwise, both in that most people do not want such an abbreviated service and that those who enjoy talking and/or leaving for Kiddush will do so anyways (many of them have not been in the synagogue for even an hour before they’re leaving for their Kiddush club).

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva

They would each say three things. Rabbi Eliezer would say: The honor of your fellow should be as precious to you as your own, and do not be quick to anger. Repent one day before your death. Warm yourself by the fire of the sages, but be cautious not to be burned by their coals; for their bite is the bite of a fox, their sting is the sting of a scorpion, their hiss is the hiss a serpent, and all their words are like fiery coals. (Avot 2:10)

The introduction informs us that each sage emphasized three essential teachings yet R. Eliezer apparently include four distinct ideas. R. Ovadia Bartenura explains that the first two themes combine to form a single idea. Success in guarding our friend’s honor depends upon maintaining equanimity and not becoming angry. The angry fellow loses any sense of reasonable judgment and inevitable says something insulting to colleagues.

Tiferet Yisrael agrees that honor and anger influence each other but notes the opposite causal direction. Just as anger leads to not honoring others, excessive concern for honor engenders anger. R. Lipschutz describes an escalating fight in which the anger of someone moderately slighted leads him to up the ante in a harsher response which then generates an even grander insult from the other party.

If we only remembered to guard our friend’s honor as our own, we could avoid this petty squabble. We do not want our peers to say something even mildly insulting about us, be it in a straightforward fashion or through hints and innuendo. Additionally, when we do insult others, we do not want them to retort with a far more severe slur. Internalizing these thought would prevent the cataclysmic conflicts that break out among friends, family, and neighbors.

R. Lipshutz adds an insightful interpretation of the fire imagery. Students want to receive both illumination and warmth from their teachers. Disciples can access the light of an instructor’s insight and knowledge even from afar, sitting in the back of the classroom or reading the works of the master. However, the warmth of inspiration and emulation requires a personal relationship involving closer interaction. A fire across the room provides light without heat, so too the teacher who instructs from afar.

Perhaps this idea relates to our earlier theme. Ideally, teachers model for students a personality slow to anger and not overly zealous about personal honor. Not every teacher reaches these lofty goals but some do; and our student should meet them. Our students will not fully benefit from such models by simply reading good lecture notes; they need direct encounter with the warmth of a powerful ethical personality.

By Rabbi Chaim Brovender, WebYeshivaThis week we begin the fourth of the five books of the Torah – Bamidbar, called Numbers in English. Bamidbar means “in the desert”, which is where the entire book takes place. The name Numbers comes from the fact that the book begins with, and again later on contains, a lot of counting of the Jewish people. In Bamidbar, the Nation of Israel readies itself to enter the Land of Israel. Just before actually doing so, in the portion of Shlach, which we will read in a few weeks, spies are sent to investigate the situation in Canaan. They return with the pessimistic message that the land is impregnable. The Jews decide to go back to Egypt, and are punished for their faithlessness with the decree that they will die wandering in the desert for forty years, and only then will their children enter the land. In this week’s parsha, at the opening of the book, God commands Moshe, in the Sinai desert, to number the Jewish people.Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno (Italy, c.1470-c.1550) has an interesting take on this process. He says the following: “[Moshe was commanded to count the Jewish people] in order to arrange them so that they might enter the Land immediately, each man under his banner, without any fighting; rather, the [Canaanite] nations would leave of their own free will, as some of them eventually did…. It was the sin of the spies which enabled the seven [Canaanite] nations to do evil for forty more years, which necessitated their destruction. [The Torah commands Moshe] to count Jews by name because in those days each person of that generation was counted by his name, which indicated his individual nature, due to their exalted status… This was not the case [forty years later] with those who actually entered the Land, which is why they were not specifically mentioned by name when counted; only the head of each family and the general number were mentioned. This indicates that the original intention was that every single member of the nation would have entered and inherited the Land, and not one of them would have been missing.”

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva

Why does the Torah sometimes conjugate verbs in future tense when referring to an event that already happened or is currently happening? “Az yashir Moshe” (Shemot 15:1) seems to indicate that he will sing in the future; an inaccurate connotation. Chazal contend that this verse establishes the doctrine of resurrection since it implies Moshe and the Jewish people will sing in the future (Sanhedrin 91b). However, this approach reflects homiletical creativity more than the simple meaning of the verse.

Rashi offers two explanations for this grammatical phenomenon. It may convey that a character decided in his heart to carry out an action; the future tense indicating a person looking ahead. Moshe first decided to sing and then proceeded to do so. This approach finds support in a suggestion of Hazal that “az yivne Shlomo bama” (Melachim I 11:7) means that he planned to build a private idolatrous altar but did not actually do so (Sanhedrin 91b).

Alternatively, the future tense indicates an ongoing action. “Al pi Hashem yahanu” (Bemidbar 9:23) means that the Jewish people in the desert continuously camped based on divine directives. “Kacha ya’ase Iyov” (Iyov 1:5) indicates that Iyov constantly brought sacrifices on behalf of his children. Future tense indicates an endeavor that continues beyond the present.

Ramban points out that these theories cannot account for verses such as “ya’asu egel be’chorev” (Tehillim 106:19). The psalmist recounting the sin of the golden calf is not planning towards the future nor does he describe a continuous activity. He argues that biblical style uses future tense to describe the past and past tense to describe the future and he adds a sophisticated literary explanation for the shift in tense. A narrator can situate himself at any point in the chronological continuum. Thus, he can view a current action in anticipation and he can look back at an action yet to occur. Ramban notes that this happens more frequently, for obvious reasons, in prophetic passages.

There are many good reasons to admire Ramban’s Torah commentary. It incorporates parshanut, halacha, machshava, and kabbala. It surveys broad sections of Chumash rather than only looking at each verse narrowly. As we have seen, it also includes a deep understanding of literary technique.

By Rabbi Gidon Rothstein, WebYeshivaThe ideals and mission of Judaism, including the issues about charity we saw last time, are transmitted in various places, but none so important as home, school, and synagogue. The home front and how it runs might be affected by our discussions until now, so I intend to use the next two (and the final) posts to discuss those other institutions.As the primary location of childhood education, let us consider how a mission-based religiosity would approach schools. The first step is realizing how problematic school has become,[i] even outside of Jewish contexts. One deep problem lies in schools’ trying to get students to achieve goals whose value is unclear to many, especially students. For example, Michael Bradley, a child psychologist, was trying to explain school to teen readers of his Yes, Your Parents Are Crazy. Describing what school is not, Bradley writes:School is definitely not relevant (useful), at least not in the way that parents seem to think it is. Most of the subjects you learn in high school you’ll never use as a grown up [emphasis added]… As an adult, you might end up using some of your high-school courses, but, at best, most of what you learn is forgotten fast and forever after the final exam…[ii]Bradley argues that the value of school only lies in the discipline it gives,[iii] a sentiment echoed by some Jewish educators as well.[iv] While this is a tragic state of affairs in general education, the starting point for many social ills, it is doubly so in Jewish education, where the drain on communal resources and the vital importance of conveying two curriculums means we cannot allow this state of affairs to continue.Jewish schools, I believe, exacerbate the problem by striving to accomplish too much in the time they have, with too little an awareness (or agreement) about their educational priorities. For one simple example, schools’ constituencies– students, parents, and educational staff—often never come to agreement about the appropriate balance between the General Studies and the Jewish side of those schools. The odds of accomplishing a meaningful education decrease proportionately to the level of confusion about a school’s mission.What School Ought to Be AboutHoward Gardner, whose work in multiple intelligences has begun to percolate into the Jewish educational community, shows us a way out of this. Gardner summarizes a review of different societies’ educational agendas by noting that in all of them, distinct as they were historically and geographically, education had two major goals, “the modeling of adult roles and the transmission of cultural values.”[v]By “adult roles,” Gardner means the jobs that that society needs to function. In other words, the goal of education, Jewish or not, is to ready students for adulthood in the society they inhabit. By that standard, graduates of Jewish schools should be ready to take their place as adult Jews in the society they inhabit.I stress that because educators often entertain dreams of inspiring students’ interest in fields they might not otherwise study. There is value to this as well—I got a PhD in Jewish history largely because I came across an entrancing teacher, R. Dr.Chaim Soloveitchik, while in college—but we have to weigh the time, effort, and distraction of coercing students to learn subjects in which they have no interest against the possibility of their finding it suddenly fascinating. If students are required to hear “exposure” lectures, or take one or two such courses in their years in high school, that is different than if almost all of their courses are irrelevant unless they go into that field.By the standard of readying students to be adult Jews, the role of post-high school year or years in Israel in contemporary Jewish education gives a sense of how far short American Jewish schools are falling. Were schools to promote that year only because Torah knowledge is so infinite, it would be unarguable. That articulation would be saying that elementary and high schools have succeeded as much as possible, and yet further time of Torah study is valuable.Many schools, though, tacitly or explicitly acknowledge that the year in Israel is necessary because twelve years of schooling have not produced a basic readiness for Jewish adulthood. Considering that more children today are being educated for longer than ever in history, this rate of failure is dismaying, and a shocking use of communal funds besides.To adjust Jewish education so that graduates would be ready even to take on the most basic mission of the religion, we must think of the three realms of successful education, realms that are not always parallel or consonant– affect, skills, and knowledge.The Affect of a Successfully Mission-Based EducationAffect means the impact of education on the students’ persona, his or her interest in living according to the ideas and ideals taught in school. From a Jewish perspective, that means insuring we not only teach what Judaism says, but also imbue students with the commitment to implement what they learn. One benchmark of success would certainly involve the rate at which students act upon the messages transmitted in school.Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to measure that, because post-graduation choices also affect eventual standards of observance. A student who had a successful high school experience might lose that in college; while that might signal some failure to convey the importance of supportive environments, I don’t think we would assign the school full responsibility for that student’s later religious laxity.At the same time, schools sometimes deserve more credit than the obvious. There are students who leave school with little obvious affect who later encounter situations that bring alive the lessons learned; that later observance should, to some extent, be credited to the school that laid its foundations.Aside from the difficulty of assessing affect, though, schools have other tasks as well, such as content, conveying to students the technical skills and knowledge of Jewish adulthood. As we have seen, an adult Jew has many obligations, such as molding his or her character in a Godly fashion, acting honestly in business (according to the halachically defined version of honesty), laying tefillin, buying and shaking a lulav, running a kosher kitchen, and others. Graduates of a Jewish school, to fulfill Gardner’s ideal of education, need to have the technical knowledge as well as being imbued with the desire to do so.Reading Hebrew Texts: A Skill and Its MaintenanceA third side of Jewish education, the one traditionally the focus of Jewish schools but today the bane of educators and students, is the textual, which involves both skills and knowledge. Some of those skills, such as the ability to navigate the yearly Siddur or read and understand the haftarot belong as much to the realm of being able to participate in Jewish adulthood as to any ideal of Torah study. Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that few graduates of Jewish high schools can read and understand the Siddur, haftarot or other texts central to a practical experience of Judaism, let alone an intellectual one.There is also the separate mitzva of Talmud Torah. As we have noted, the Talmud treats the mitzva not only as a commandment, but also as a form of remembering the Giving of the Law at Sinai. Successful Jewish education must prepare students, effectively as well as in skills and knowledge, to fulfill that mitzva as well. A fluent ability to read at least some Hebrew texts thus figures prominently in several scales of Jewish education.Important and central as these skills might be, literacy, by which I mean more than the technical ability to sound out words, is vanishing. Where ivrit be-ivrit, Hebrew language instruction—a huge aid to textual proficiency—used to be routine in many schools, it is increasingly the exception. That aside, educators’ ability or will to demand textual proficiency has waned with students’ increased resistance. That resistance itself deserves further study, but I suspect it is connected to a loss of the sense of mission that would have spurred its importance.These developments are particularly surprising and distressing because a generation or two ago, to be Zionistic was to take for granted that a Jew would develop Hebrew proficiency; Hebrew language newspapers flourished in early 20th century Europe and America. Lest this be seen as only a Zionist issue, I note Rambam’s assumption, Commentary on Avot 2;1, that the study of Hebrew is itself a mitzva, an example of the “light” mitzvot the Mishna adjures us to treat as seriously as “stringent” ones. In fact today, though, graduates of non-Zionistic schools often if not always have greater textual skills than graduates of more Modern or Centrist ones.That may sound exaggerated or overly harsh, since people can now study Torah in English, or by listening to others. Aside from what should be astonishment at our sanguine acceptance that our students will have to forego first-rate Torah study— when we demand first-rate work in other areas, such as university education and professional achievement– a brief review of the basic parameters of the mitzva shows that such an attitude loses sight of the unarguable minimal standards of Talmud Torah.The Basic Standard of the Mitzva of Talmud TorahThe Talmud defines the fundamental obligation in a purely halachic context, seeking to define when a father can feel he has fulfilled the commandment to teach his son Torah, at least minimally. What I am about to record, in other words, is a simple halachic reality, much as we tend to ignore it.The most lenient interpretation of that Talmudic discussion requires the child to know the Five Books of the Torah.[vi] The Talmud does not define “knowing,” but it seems to me that the minimum would be the ability to read and understand. If so, the most minimal reasonable standard of Torah education would be for students to be able to open and read, with understanding, any text in the Torah. I feel confident that more than half of graduates of Modern or Centrist Orthodox high schools today cannot meet that standard.Making it worse, I suspect the Talmud actually meant for Jews to have the words of the Torah so well-memorized that it would be resident in their knowledge base, like sports or stock statistics. For proof, I note that that same section of Talmud adjures us שיהו דברי תורה מחודדין בפיך, which it defines as knowing how to answer any question someone raises. In case we think of that as an ideal rather than a requirement, the Talmud often assumes that anything written in the Torah itself is known by all Jews, which it indicates with the phrase זיל קרי בי רב, that any schoolchild knows such matters.[vii]Regular Encounter With Texts: The Halachic and Practical SideHighlighting the religion’s insistence on knowing the text of the Torah itself, there is a rabbinic obligation to review the entirety of the Five Books each year,[viii] twice in the original and once with a translation, either Onkelos[ix] or Rashi.[x] If so, a basic Jewish education would seem to necessitate the ability and interest to read the entirety of the Five Books of the Torah, a portion a week with Rashi, completing it each year. This is no mean task, and becomes more difficult with lesser textual proficiency.Once we move away from that basic minimum, we find that schools fail to prepare students for other texts they will see repeatedly as adults. In the first of two simple examples, the Navi curriculum in many schools leaves students incapable of deciphering haftarot, texts tradition defined as basic to weekly Torah study in synagogue.Finally, the Siddur in all of its manifestations is opaque to many graduates of Jewish schools. Challenging in language, the yearly liturgy is the text that shapes and accompanies the Jew’s conversations with God, and binds communities across the world. Knowing how to read these texts is fundamental to fostering a synagogue life in which prayer involves actual communication between Jews and their Father in heaven.I harp on these because they are so basic and yet so far out of reach of at least most Jews with whom I am familiar. It is not only that schools are not succeeding at conveying the literacies and emotional attachments I am recommending, it is that they often do not recognize them as foundational and indispensable to even minimal success.I once suggested, in casual conversation, that all students should have read the entirety of Torah (I may have said, “with Rashi”) by the end of eighth grade. The principal to whom I said this replied, in all seriousness, “It can’t be done.” While he obviously meant it can’t be done given the competing priorities such schools struggle to balance, I take it as the clearest evidence that we need to recalibrate those priorities.Slower and Steadier: The Key to SuccessOnce we recognize how fundamental these skills sets and knowledge bases are, we can question schools’ pretense they can accomplish all I have suggested and more, at least if we use their introductions of new literatures as a guide. In schools I know, students are introduced to the Siddur in first grade, Chumash in second, Rashi in third, Navi in fourth, Mishna in fifth, and Talmud in sixth (or earlier). This pace generally creates a situation where ninety percent of students, at least, are illiterate in six textual milieus by the time they complete six years of Jewish education.Most of them are, in fact, illiterate in all of those literatures at the end of twelve years as well. Confusing the issue is that in almost every school, the upper echelon of students—the top five to fifteen percent— acquire reasonable to impressive textual skills. This has less to do with educators’ success than with these students’ innate talents and demonstrate little about how education could or should work. Yet, increasingly, even many of these students are not developing skills they easily could, and certainly not skills comparable to those they have in the General Studies side of their day.The Approach of a Mission-Based SchoolThe struggle with texts points up the mission drift that plagues many schools. A mission-based school knows it has to achieve and sustain the minimum goals before expanding to more ideal ones.[xi]Just as non-Jewish schools sequence learning in English, math, and sciences, Jewish schools need to return to the appropriate order in mastering texts. I say “return” because Avot 5;21, an early statement of Jewish curricular concerns, assumed that mastery of Scripture—whether the Five Books or all of Tanach—took five years, of the Oral Law five years, and only then, at age fifteen, would the student take on more sophisticated analysis. This approach was advocated by Maharal, the Vilna Gaon, and niche educators since, such as those who follow the Zilberman method in Israel and abroad.The common tendency to leapfrog to new texts regardless of whether the old ones have been mastered may be impressive in what it allows students, parents, and schools to say they are studying, but also counterproductive.Worse, it also clouds the sense of mission and commitment the basic texts convey. In the simplest example, spending half or more of a student’s weekly Judaic class time to study five or ten pages of Talmud—out of a 2200 page corpus—cannot but fail to compete with the need to acquaint the student with crucial other areas of Jewish thought and concern. Were that time instead used to cover the entirety of the Written Torah, it would at least expose students to the range of what God discusses as relevant to a Jewish life. Such localized Talmud study is also unfair to the Talmud itself, in that it necessarily leaves students with a sense of the corpus as narrow, plodding, and overly detailed.The Political Side of the ProblemAccomplishing what I have called minimal goals would quite possibly fill all the time allotted to Judaic Studies in most Orthodox schools. Indeed, it is this fact that leads many such schools to reject adjusting their curriculum, since their constituent bodies insist on a school that includes Mishna, Talmud, halacha, Jewish law, Jewish thought, and Jewish history, without regard to the educational realities of those choices. Undeniably important as all these are, they also offer paradigmatic examples of the perfect being the enemy (indeed, the ruin) of the good, or in Talmudic terms, תפסת מרובה לא תפסת, loosely translated as “trying for too much gets you nothing.”[xii]A more realistic approach seeks to teach only what can be mastered.[xiii] In one sense, this sounds terrible, since it might mean that by the end of fifth grade students will still be studying Chumash and Siddur. On the other hand, by using the available time judiciously, these students will know the material they have studied. It is a trade-off of a failed ideal for realistic goals that could actually come to fruition.Of course, more motivated or talented students can always be offered the opportunity to move faster or into other literatures—a student who is already reading the Siddur well and with enthusiasm, is already skilled at Chumash and Rashi (even if s/he has not yet covered it in its entirety) can be introduced to Navi earlier, to Mishna, and, once a meaningful agglomeration of Mishna has been studied, Talmud and other more advanced texts. My point is not the timing of the sequence, but the discipline of only moving on to a new stage when each old one has been mastered, at least in skills and affect if not yet in knowledge.I will close here because I have come to the end of my unequivocal thoughts. I note, though, that once we remember that Judaism is about developing a relationship with God through a set of practices, not about the practices per se—and that those practices are broader than we often realize— Jewish schools might also realize that we have thus far been too narrow in our view of our students. Given that different students learn differently, and are attracted to different aspects of religiosity, a good Jewish education would grant students the skills, affect, and knowledge to meet minimal standards as well as to develop their own individual foci in their relationship with God.The details of how to do that are certainly debatable, but the greatest challenge to such creative rethinking of Judaic Studies is sociological, in that many local communities care less about whether students reach valuable goals than that their educations fit a hard-wired picture of what a Jewish school should involve.Jewish schools, then, are beset by many challenges. Among them is that they still pretend they can accomplish what old-style European yeshivot did with less time per day and fewer days per year. By refocusing on the mission-central aspects of education, schools can do what they are meant to– give students, of all types, skills, and preferences, the grounding in Judaism that will prepare them to be full and productive members of the adult society they inhabit.Next week, the final of this series of posts, synagogues and mission-based Judaism.[i] I note that a recent issue of Jewish Action took up the question of Jewish education, noting some of the same failures I outline here.[ii] Michael J. Bradley, Yes, Your Parents Are Crazy (Harbor Press: Gig Harbor, WA, 2004), p. 266. Bradley, in my view, correctly diagnoses how this happened: From being institutions that served a select population, they became a place for all children, without ever adapting their curriculum to that new reality.[iii] I once heard the comedian Jerry Seinfeld say the same about his college years.[iv] I have heard Jewish educators candidly accept the possibility that high schools can do no more than keep students out of harm for four years, after which they would be ready to go to Israel and really study Torah.[v] H. Gardner, The Disciplined Mind: Beyond Facts and Standardized Tests, the K-12 Education That Every Child Deserves (Penguin Books: New York, 2000), p. 28. Student resistance to learning is understandable when they are being forced to perform in subject areas that neither interest them nor have any bearing on their future lives.[vi] Kiddushin 30a. The other opinion understands the word מקרא to mean all of Scripture, which would seem to indicate that until some mastery of Scripture has been reached, other areas of study—Mishna, Talmud, or other—should take a secondary role. I have included some more curriculum thoughts in “Walking Before Running: Towards a More Practical Judaic Studies Curriculum” in J. Saks, S. Handelman eds. Wisdom From All My Teachers: Challenges and Initiatives in Contemporary Jewish Education, pp. 323-340. My point here is not to promote a specific set of curricular choices as to lay out what those choices must include to be legitimate options.[vii] See, e.g, Sanhedrin 33b and Shevuot 14b. I note also the Talmudic practice of asking a child to recite the verse he learned in school that day, פסוק לי פסוקיך, which assumes they were taught verses so well they could recall and recite them at least later that day.[viii] Berachot 8a-b, codified in Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim, 285;1.[ix] Kiddushin 49a. See also Megillah 3a, which sees Onkelos as the authoritative translation of the Torah, recovering the one used in the time of Ezra.[x] Orach Chaim 285;2.[xi] In this context, I am frustrated to distraction by educators who claim to have found the key to teaching Mishna or Talmud when those same students cannot yet read more simple and central texts. Whatever that key is, they should be used on basic texts first.[xii] Rosh haShana 4b. The corollary, my motto here, is תפסת מועט, תפסת, if you take on a small amount, you will succeed.[xiii] Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, (Little, Brown: New York, 2008) discusses KIPP academies, in which students spend significantly more time in school than other public schools. That extra time is not used to teach more, but to insure that students master each aspect of a subject before moving on to the next one.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshivaHe [R. Yohanan] said to them: Go and see which is the best trait for a person to acquire. R. Eliezer said: A good eye. R. Yehoshua said: A good friend. R. Yossi said: A good neighbor. R. Shimon said: One who has foresight. R. Elazar said: A good heart. He said to them: I prefer the words of Elazar ben Arach to yours, for his words include all of yours.He said to them: Go and see the worst trait, which a person should distance himself from. R. Eliezer said: An evil eye. R. Yehoshua said: An evil friend. R. Yossi said: An evil neighbor. R. Shimon said: To borrow and not repay; one who borrows from man is as one who borrows from God, as it says, “The wicked man borrows and does not repay; but the righteous one is benevolent and gives” (Tehillim 37:21). R. Elazar said: An evil heart. He said to them: I prefer the word of Elazar ben Arach to yours, for his words include all of yours. (Avot 2:9)Most of the scholars establish a precisely inverse parallel between the trait they recommend and the trait they say to avoid; R. Shimon represents the one exception. Why did he not caution against a general lack of foresight, choosing instead to highlight a specific example? R. Ovadia Bartenura explains that not paying back debts proves destructive because others will no longer be willing to lend money to a person who defaults. That specific absence of foresight come back to haunt a person. On the other hand, not everyone who lacks foresight hurts himself. Some have the ability to respond creatively to difficulties in the last minute and still work things out.Tosafot Yom Tov suggests that lack of foresight does not represent a religious or moral flaw since a person who does not anticipate well might yet be of sterling character. In some contexts, we might even perceive not looking toward the future as a mark of character. Some commentators say that the person with foresight looks ahead at the potential reward and punishment for his actions, thereby finding motivation to observe the commandments. Perhaps the person without foresight adheres to an ideal out of the most idealistic motivation without thoughts of pragmatic results.R. Yohanan ruled that the good heart encompasses all the other positive traits. We can easily comprehend how the good heart incorporates a good eye, a good friend, and a good neighbor but how does it include having foresight? Tifferet Yisrael defines a good heart as finding joy in doing the right thing. Such a person finds easier contentment with life and that tranquility enables the peace of mind necessary for foresight. Those easily irritated or looking for the quick fix cannot think long term while people happy with their dedication to family and charitable work can.Meiri adds an interesting insight explaining why the mishna had to add the comparison between borrowing from others and borrowing form God. The fellow who fails to pay back debts does not think of himself as a thief since the lender handed him the money willingly. However, the truly honest person would also view defaulting on payment as a form of theft. The parallel to borrowing from God emphasizes the seriousness of this transgression.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva

1: And Hashem said to Moshe: Speak to the priests the sons of Aaron, and say to them: He shall not defile himself for the dead among his people; 2: except for his kin, those near to him, for his mother, and for his father, and for his son, and for his daughter, and for his brother; 3: and for his sister a virgin, that is near unto him, that has had no husband, for her may he defile himself. 4: He shall not defile himself, being a chief man among his people, to profane himself. (Vayikra 21:1-4)

The above translation, adapted from the 1917 JPS edition, translates “she’ero” in the second verse as kin. According to that interpretation, the passage begins with a general term for relatives and then proceeds to list six specific examples. An analogous usage of the word in Vayikra 18:6 bolsters this reading. If so, the passage only mentions blood relatives and does not include a wife among those for who the priest can become ritually impure. Ibn Ezra says that, were it not for Chazal’s alternative reading, he would have explained the passage in this manner.

This approach impacts on the last verse cited above as well. What does the word “baal” mean in the phrase “Lo yetame ba’al be’amav?” JPS says “chief” but the word also means husband. If it refers to the husband, the verse explicitly informs us that a priest does not defile himself for his deceased wife. However, Ibn Ezra ultimately follows Chazal in translating “she’ero” as his wife, which means the Torah clearly mandates that the priest defile himself to tend to his wife’s funeral. How then do we read the fourth verse? Rashi says that a husband does not become ritually impure for a wife who was forbidden to a priest. One when he marries a halachically appropriate woman does he become tame to tend to her funeral.

Onkelos and Ramban offer an alternative approach to our final verse. Onkelos translates “ba’al” as “be’rabba” meaning an honorable person or a nobleman. Ramban cites other examples in Tanach where “ba’al” has this meaning. According to this approach, the last verse says noting about husbands; it reiterates that a priest should not defile himself. Does the verse then add anything? Ramban explains that we might have thought that the prohibition against a priest becoming tame met is limited to priests coming to serve in the temple. This verse clarifies that the prohibition stems from priestly nobility which always exists and has nothing to do with the temple service.

What justifies Chazal’s interpretation of “she’ero?” R. Yosef Bechor Shor argues that when the Torah tells us that a priest only defiles himself for an unmarried sister, it implicitly suggests that the married sister’s husband takes care of her funeral. Apparently, this applies even if the husband is a priest. Perhaps Chazal were also motivated by their understanding of Judaic ethics. A husband and wife may not be blood relatives but they form the most precious and loving relationship in our human experience. Surely, we allow those priests who become tame for siblings to do the same for their spouses.

By Rabbi Gidon Rothstein, WebYeshivaIn multicultural Western society, pluralism is understood to mean that we should accept just about all ways of life as legitimate options. Orthodoxy’s insistence that there are objective standards of right and wrong sits poorly with this ideology, since it means that we are less open to different ways of life or approaches to the world.In confronting the challenge this constitutes, some Orthodox Jews celebrate and exaggerate our closed-off stance, proud of the moral certainty they see it producing, especially as compared to the rudderlessness of Western culture. Others, convinced of the fundamental truth and value of openness, chafe at what they see as the religion’s intolerance; to free themselves, they seek to expand the bounds of Orthodox pluralism.I believe our discussion in these posts has shown support for each side. In some places, Judaism speaks unequivocally, with no room to accept diverging views. Perhaps even more often, there are areas of legitimate and lasting debate about which view is correct, and, lastly, areas where Judaism is in fact pluralistic, recognizing many equally valid views. As I lay out those categories, I hope we will see how Judaism is sometimes absolutist,[i] sometimes tolerant, and sometimes fully pluralistic.Absolute Right and Wrong: An Internal ValueOrthodox Jews cannot be pluralistic about central issues we have discussed here, such as the existence of God or the historicity of the Exodus and the Giving of the Torah, an event where we all witnessed God communicating with the Jewish people. We can only tolerate other views on these matters as a practical tact, depending on the costs of making an issue of it, or the benefits of getting along, waiting for a more fruitful time to bring a return to the truths we know. Even for those who adopt such strategies, though, it would seem incumbent upon all Orthodox Jews to reiterate, at least inside their heads, their implacable opposition to any view that runs counter to these fundamental aspects of Orthodox consciousness.Suppose, to give some practical examples, that an Orthodox Jew is a member of a conversation in which someone else assumes, out loud, that Nature always runs its course without any possible influence or impact from God. There is no way, as far as I can tell, for an Orthodox Jew to view that statement as anything other than wrong; how to navigate the incident in practice is another kind of a question, but on the pluralism/tolerance scale, this would allow for none. At least internally, that person would have to say to him or herself, “This statement operates from a worldview I find wrong, since it leaves no place for God and God’s impact on the world.”This need to keep in touch with our personal values as we operate in a society that makes very different assumptions reminds me of the story Elie Wiesel includes as the frontispiece to one of his books, of a preacher who goes to Sodom in the hopes of helping them repent their evil ways. The first day he draws a huge crowd, but as time goes on and his message stays the same, the audience dwindles, until he is standing on his soapbox, speaking to no one.A boy, still too young to be indifferent to his plight, asks him why he continues to preach when no one is listening. Replies the preacher, “I used to try to convince them of what I believe; now I try to remind myself of what I believe.” (Why the preacher did not simply leave Sodom does not appear in the story.)There are many politically sensitive issues for which the answer would seem to be the same—any suggestion in a Western context that adultery or any other kind of wrongful sex is anything other than completely intolerable (on a level with idolatry and murder), that assisted suicide is compassionate, that evolution happens with no overall purpose and independent of the will of God, and so on and so on, would seem to be occasions an Orthodox Jew would have to register his or her vigorous disagreement, at least internally.The Dangers of AbsolutismAt the other extreme, we can imagine Jews who overstate what Orthodoxy requires, who ignore or fail to realize the many times the religion leaves us with multiple valid options, such as in choosing a profession or which acts of kindness to perform. Where some might assume that God wants all Jews to either study Torah full-time, become a doctor, lawyer, or accountant and to either visit the sick, clothe the naked, or feed the hungry, we should again correct the misimpression, reminding ourselves that God created a rich world with many right ways to contribute to its smooth functioning, both professionally and in our mitzva acts.In between, there are the areas where we can be tolerant. On such issues, we might disagree with others, we might see them as wrong, and yet still recognize and respect that their views are legitimate perspectives of what the religion wants. The simple example is when reputable halachic authorities, following an appropriate halachic process, nonetheless come out on different sides of an issue. Here, as I follow my own halachic authority, I likely see those following the other view as wrong or in error, but fully tolerable error.[ii]Even that pluralism has limits and differing levels of tolerance. Non-Orthodox versions of halacha, for example, cannot be seen pluralistically, but are often more welcome than complete abandonment of the religion. Whereas Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews accept the full legitimacy of the other perspective, even as they may disagree, that is not true in the case of different denominations within Judaism, or certain ideas imported from general society.The issue of pluralism and tolerance from an Orthodox perspective can thus guide much of our internal conversation as we interact with others. How much of that mental chatter we share depends on the person and the situation, but the sifting of ideas by whether we reject, disagree with, or accept them should be one characteristic aspect of the essential Orthodox life. In my experience, it often is not.It’s Not Your Money[iii]: Making Charitable Contributions with the Required CareOur thought processes, either around halacha or in whether we are pluralist, tolerant, or absolutist, might not yet seem practical enough for our discussion to have been worthwhile,[iv] so let me move a step closer to specific recommendations, by considering how we donate money to charity. The overall shape and thrust of charitable giving is a complicated topic since it touches on money,[v] one of the last taboos of American society, but I will try to share a few relevant thoughts.A first interesting point about charity is that people assume where and how much they give is a matter of deep personal choice. In a mission-based Orthodoxy, once we have made ourselves aware of the limits of both religious energy and money available to accomplish that mission,[vi] we need to also notice that there are better, worse, and wrong choices about charity. Let me review a few.With limited resources, it becomes that much more important for us to strive to budget our charitable dollars to insure that both each act of giving as well as the sum total of our giving reflects our sense of mission and purpose. In an Orthodoxy where God sits at the center, our giving should focus on advancing our core commitments—those causes and institutions that help us build a better relationship with God, help us and others become more God-like (including, especially, by performing the kinds of kindnesses Scripture portrays God as performing, but also by avoiding wrong beliefs about the natural and metaphysical workings of the world and wrongful sexuality), and further the spread of awareness of God in the world.Not Worthy “Worthy” CharitiesThat list leaves flexibility for personal decisions while ruling out some decisions as illegitimate. What it seems to require is that charity should be given not just to “worthy causes,” but primarily to those worthy causes that match our sense of personal mission.[vii] Some otherwise worthy institutions may promote a different worldview than ours; while Gittin 61a already enjoins us to give even to idolatrous causes in the name of fostering good social relations, we should also keep in mind the weight and tone of our charitable giving as a whole.For example, if a Jew believes in God yet gives significant percentages of his or her charitable dollars to institutions that promote at best an agnostic and often a stridently atheistic view of the world (such as many modern universities); or, in reverse, if a Jew who believes in the State of Israel as a positive historical development gives significantly to institutions that view that State as at best tolerable, those choices need re-examining for mission drift, for losing sight of what our religious actions are supposed to be about.[viii] A mission-based Orthodoxy sees charity as an extension of a person’s overall religiosity, and should express the same values and goals as in the rest of his or her life.This is not to rule out supporting causes outside the essential. Just as we recognize the importance of all mitzvot, not just those at the core, charitable causes can be valuable even if not indispensable. Essentialism, here and elsewhere, only provides a way to check whether the broad outlines of our giving further our central causes or lose sight of them in the welter of other causes and goals we have taken on.The Proper Frugality of Charitable InstitutionsRecognizing the competing claims on our charity dollars argues in favor not only of budgeting the causes to which we give but also of carefully considering how we expect those funds to be spent. In a world of abundance, another new and expensive building presents no problem to a donor blessed with ample charity funds. And, to be fair, such a building is often necessary to an endeavor’s success. To support a worthy institution of learning, or a research institute, or a mental-health clinic, only to see it fail because of its ugly or outdated facilities is at least as foolish as wasting money on extravagances. The Temple was famously beautiful, and avoided the appearance of concerns about money.[ix]In a budgeted world, though, each extravagance needs to be weighed and revisited. As with our spiritual energy, the money spent on one cause cannot be spent on another; even as this must not translate into a miserly doling out of each charitable dollar with begrudging care (the perfect is the enemy of the good here), it does obligate individuals and communities to consider where they are sending their charity and how the institutions are spending them. Such budgeting may not, in the end, alter actual giving, but the repeated self- evaluation will insure that money is an extension of a person, a living out in action of the ideals he or she carries internally in life.Two more areas in which the Mission argues for recalibrating our observance, then, are our sense of pluralism and our charitable giving. For the first, I argued that the Mission should at least mean that we evaluate ideas as to whether they contradict our irreducible minimum of right and wrong, are legitimate views even if I personally disagree with them, or are views that may not be my cup of tea, but are as right as anything I am choosing. For charity, I argued for a heightened sense of what I am giving to, an awareness that my giving is supposed to be an extension of my ideals, that my profile of causes should match the ways in which I hope to improve the world.Next time, I will move on to the two central institutions, schools and then, in my last post, synagogues. See you then.—[i] Some claim that even our absolutism is not so absolute, since we may not be obligated to bring others to our perspective. On this issue, see M. Broyde, “The Obligation of Jews to Seek Observance of Noahide Laws by Gentiles: A Theoretical Review” in D. Shatz, C. Waxman, and N. Diament, eds. Tikkun Olam: Social Responsibility in Jewish Thought and Law (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997). While Rabbi Broyde may be right technically, it seems clear to me that if we are in possession of a truth that affects the lives of others, how could we not try to make them aware of it? Regardless of obligation, if you had a way to make others aware of the risks of smoking, high blood pressure, or similar physical phenomena, would you not?[ii] To some extent, that depends on our understanding of Eruvin 13b, אלו ואלו דברי אלוקים חיים, these and these are words of the Living God. As Avi Sagi documents in his Elu va-Elu: A Study in the Nature of Halachic Discourse (Tel Aviv, 1996), most rishonim understood the statement to mean that while one side was right and one wrong, both were praiseworthy for having attempted to understand God’s Will, and that God allowed us to follow the majority, wrong as it might be. For these authorities, halachic disagreements were a clear example of tolerance, not pluralism. Later, more kabbalistically influenced writers suggested the phrase meant that both perspectives in fact drank of some larger truth. If so, the two sides to a halachic debate could view each other pluralistically rather than tolerantly.[iii] See Avot 3;7.[iv] Although I repeat that I see the issues of pluralism and tolerance as not only a matter of how we think, but also how we talk. Wherever plausibly productive, I believe Jews should be articulating these ideals, saying out loud how their belief in God works its way into their views of various issues. If the only specific change Jews made in their lives was that they more frequently and sincerely said “Well, as part of my belief in God, I…” it is my understanding that the world would be hugely improved.[v] For a recent halachic work on the topic, see יסודי צדקה, Foundations of Charity, a 600 page discussion by R. Menachem Kasdan. I have not yet had time to consult it; more to the point, I doubt many people will put in the time and effort to understand the topic in the depth and sophistication with which he presents it.[vi] Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah, 249;1 imagines a person wealthy enough to provide all the needs of the relevant poor. In a different vein, Reynold Levy, Yours for the Asking, assumes that wealthy people have plenty of money to give, and the challenge for fundraisers is to convince them to open their wallets further. This may be true, but should not be confused with the right to dispense with careful thought in where and how we give. In a globalized world, even the wealthiest’s charity does not suffice. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which disburses billions of dollars a year in charity, nonetheless budgets its giving carefully and with an eye towards maximal impact. The Orthodox world should be doing no less.[vii] My teacher, R. Lichtenstein, just published a more lengthy discussion of this issue in Tradition. His conclusions are, I think, largely similar to mine here.[viii] A friend once told of receiving a fundraising call from an elementary school in a different community, with a different outlook than his own. He showed the presence of mind to say, “I’m glad you called, because I was just about to call you to support my local school.” It may be a stereotype, but it seems true that many “left-wing” Jews, of various levels of affiliation, support institutions outside their perspective of Judaism —educational, cultural, and otherwise– to a greater extent than others. It seems to me that if an institution promotes a differing view of how the world should look, people should generally look elsewhere, for institutions with whom they share core concerns.[ix] See, e.g., Ketubbot 106b, אין עניות במקום עשירות, and other citations of this phrase.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshivaRabban Yochanan ben Zakkai received the tradition from Hillel and Shammai. He would say: If you have studied much Torah, do not take credit for yourself because for this you were created. R. Yochanan ben Zakkai had five disciples: R. Eliezer ben Hyrkanos, R. Yehoshua ben Chananya, R. Yossi the priest, Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel, and R. Elazar ben Arach. He would recount their praises: R. Eliezer ben Hyrkanos is a plastered cistern that does not lose a drop; R. Yehoshua ben Chananya—fortunate is she who gave birth to him; R. Yossi the priest is a chassid (pious one); R. Shimon the son of Netanel fears sin; Rabbi Elazar ben Arach is a welling spring. (Avot 2:8)Why did R. Yochanan state that those who study much Torah cannot take credit? Rabbenu Yona suggests that, due to the endless breadth and depth of Torah, a person can never truly feel that he has finished study. Instead of resting content with previous accomplishments, someone attached to learning naturally focuses on the next challenge. Furthermore, “for this you were created.” Rabbenu Yona compares this to a debtor paying off debts who surely does not act as if he did the lender a major favor. In the same fashion, Torah study reflects payment of a basic debt to the God who created us.R. Yisrael Lipschutz provides an alternative reading. According to him, the phrase “for this you were created” refers not to the purpose of humanity or to their debt to God but rather to the specific character and abilities of each individual. Perhaps God generously granted a given person sharp intelligence and a prodigious memory. This fellow outstrips others in the beit midrash because of innate ability from birth and not due to effort and diligence. A peer who accomplished less academically may have done more with the talents God gave him. This realization enables a more successful scholar to avoid arrogantly asserting academic achievements.Several commentators wonder about R. Yochanan’s praise for R. Shimon. An earlier mishna said: “A boor cannot be sin-fearing, an ignoramus cannot be pious” (2:5), implying that sin fearing does not represent a great level of religious excellence but only a rank the boor cannot reach. R. Ovadia Bartenura explains that R. Yochanan’s usage of the term “God fearing” refers to a higher level of religious observance in which a person takes on extra stringencies to avoid sin. R. Lipschutz also thinks this “God fearer” goes far beyond the one mentioned earlier in the chapter. Instead of refraining from sin in order to escape divine punishment or to amass reward from above, he loves God and fears doing something that jeopardizes his connection with the Holy One. He fears the sin itself, not the potential punishment.Among the many important statement of R. Yochanan ben Zakkai, he taught his students to evade the pitfalls of boasting about scholarship and he praised students in a way that highlighted certain admirable traits. Apparently, concern regarding the dangers of arrogance need not contradict praising deserving students.

By Rabbi Gidon Rothstein, WebYeshiva

Last time, we took the first step of figuring out how Orthodoxy should be experienced differently than currently, noting that Orthodox Jews are supposed to continually attempt to shape their characters to be more God-like. Our observance of mitzvot and our ordinary human activities are, ideally, supposed to be expressions of our continuing attempts to become closer to God, to develop our love and fear of God, and to mold ourselves ever-more similarly to the characteristics of God described in Scripture.

The Mission and a View of History

Another example of how Orthodoxy seeks to shape Jews is in the view of history it gives us, a history saturated with purpose. From the moment of Creation, through the Exodus from Egypt and the Giving of the Law at Sinai, the Jew sees history as moving– slowly, with many detours and perhaps steps in the wrong direction, but inexorably– to a time when the entire world will recognize the Kingdom of God and act in ways that reflect that awareness. The belief in the Messiah is not just a backup plan for whenever human history gets too benighted, it is an ever-present awareness of the direction of human history, that we know the end of this movie, although not how we will get there.

That does not free us of the need to worry about the political future and its consequences. The guarantee of a Messiah does not preclude horrific suffering for the Jewish people, as the Holocaust proved, and we certainly want to do all we can to minimize suffering wherever and whenever we can, for all Jews, all people, and all creatures—another expression of our search for greater Godliness. But knowing that certain scenarios of history are impossible because God has promised they will never occur puts Jews across a conceptual abyss from those who do not accept that perspective.

How most of these truths play themselves out in the day to day life of Jews can be highly personal, so specific statements would likely ensnare me in debatable positions. What I can say is that the God-centered focus of the mission tells us to look at history with questions in mind, such as whether God is intervening in x or y historical event, and, if so, to try to understand the message of that intervention. Most importantly, our constant awareness of God’s role in history reminds us to always wonder how my (and my community/nation’s) actions can bring us closer to the time when God’s kingdom is recognized throughout the world.

The Mission and a Jew’s Perspective of Work

Moving from character and history to what might seem more mundane parts of life, we come to work. Faced with a moral dilemma at work, for example, I cannot say whether a particular Jew will feel comfortable articulating to coworkers how faith in God is shaping his or her handling of the incident, but I know that each Jew should be experiencing the dilemma that way. The question is not only what is right or wrong, it is what is right or wrong as God defined it, and phrasing issues that way is itself part of fulfilling Judaism’s goals in the world. The same form of question should arise for choices about profession, place of residence, lifestyle, and family structure, with the mission-concerned Jew informing those with his or her experience of God and what God would want, as revealed through Torah, through mitzvot and halacha, and through the world God created.

I write those words fearing they sound fluffy or inexact. To avoid that, I turn now to the center of Jewish life, halacha and the observance of mitzvot, to show in more exact terms how these underlying ideals would influence the life of a person dedicated to the mission we have gone to such length to uncover. I stress at the outset that the view of halacha I propose is not currently true for many Orthodox Jews.

Not Just Pots and Mikveh

In earlier posts, I noted that people experience halacha as limited to the well-defined areas of Jewish practice, such as kashrut, the kosher dietary laws, nidda (often known in English as Family Purity laws), Shabbat and holidays. Less well-defined obligations, such as the one to shape a Godly character, can get sloughed off into the realm of hashkafa, Jewish thought.

The understandable aspect of this is that when Judaism has not articulated a definite answer to a question, it can feel less obligatory. We know of the obligation to love and fear God, perhaps, but the lack of cut and dried defining practices of that mitzva may signal to some that there is no specific way to observe it.

This is not necessarily a flaw in halacha itself so much as our awareness of the full richness of the system. Many well-known halachic works draw the connection between technical halacha and service of God, although not often enough or pointedly enough to insure that the reader is forced to absorb the point. For one striking example, Mishna Berura 156; 4 pauses in his explanations of the Shulchan Aruch to note, at length, mitzvot important to Jewish experience not addressed by Shulchan Aruch.

Mishna Berura is a popular work of halacha, often referred to, and yet I do not recall ever hearing that note discussed in public, let alone repeatedly referred to as central to a proper Jewish experience. This might be understandable within yeshivot, where the curriculum strives to cover the entire range of Torah, so that students will be exposed to all the ideas of the religion, including those raised here. In the community at large, this is less true.

This becomes a problem because, as I once heard Mary T. Grasso– the director of Harvard’s Principals’ Center and a former high school principal herself—put it, behavior is belief, and that applies to halacha as well. When Jews fill their speech about halacha with only the areas where tradition has ruled definitively, they tend to concern themselves only or mostly with those issues, neglecting ones that are more fundamental to the character and persona of a Jew.

Remembering the Catastrophe of Wrongful Sexuality

To use examples that we have seen: While no Orthodox leaders promote wrongful sexuality, Jewish agendas seem to me to forget that fostering a world in which sexuality is properly engaged is more mission-shaping than keeping the kosher laws or even, possibly, than guaranteeing the political future of the State of Israel, though the latter two receive much more attention.

Aside from our too-minimal awareness of the role of proper sexuality in Jewish life, we have also come to mistake that concern as primarily focused on homosexuality. Bombarded by the homosexual rights’ movement, Jews respond in a range of ways, from the more compassionate to the more strict. What is often lost is the articulated recognition that homosexuality is, for Jews, one kind of wrongful sexuality among many.

In Orthodox terms, as we have seen, almost all sexual activity other than within a heterosexual marriage is wrong. Granted, they are not all wrong at the same level, and some such activity might be “only” Rabbinically prohibited. I would note, though, that many forms of such inappropriate activity—including bestiality, adultery, and, in times when unmarried women do not immerse themselves in the Mikveh, nonmarital sexuality—rival such well-recognized problems as murder, idolatry, and violating the Sabbath in their severity.

Further, though, nitpicking on sources in this case misses the larger point that Judaism understands God to reject wrongful sexuality more forcefully than other wrongs. This is clear, first, in the notion of אביזרייהו (see Sanhedrin 74b), where halacha assumes that the extensions of sexual prohibitions might also require allowing oneself to die rather than transgress them.

More clearly, we can look at tradition’s view of the Biblical story of the Jews’ sinning with the Moabite women, Bamidbar 25. Sanhedrin 106a sees the incident as having been initiated by the Moabites as a result of Bilam’s advice, based on his understanding that God hates sexual immorality. Second, here as elsewhere, the Torah is clear that sexual impropriety is not only inherently problematic, but leads to accepting other wrongful values, such as idolatry.

Critical Openness, Not Wide-Openness

The topic of sexuality leads almost ineluctably to noting that the mission-shaping prohibition against following our eyes and minds also fails to define a practical continuing reality for many Jews. In what are called more “right-wing” circles, the prohibition is taken expansively, prohibiting all or almost all movies, treating college classes and most non-Torah literature with suspicion, etc. Other segments of Orthodoxy, at least by their practice, define the mitzva more narrowly, but –again, judging only from their practice—might be neglecting it altogether.

I could take each of the propositions in the earlier chapters and expand upon them, but there is no need to be repetitive. The clear point is that current halachic practice often focuses on real and yet lesser issues, allowing us not only to lose the forest, but to pay attention to the smaller trees while neglecting the biggest ones. It is not that we are too halachic and not theological or hashkafic enough (although we may be), it is that even our halacha neglects issues of central importance.

Improving the Situation: First Steps

Opportunities to alter this reality abound. For rabbis, congregants’ questions present frequent chances to reorient their thinking. Imagine a congregant who appears at public worship only on Saturdays and holidays, never (to the best of the rabbi’s knowledge) studies Torah, and, perhaps, is employed in an occupation where complete honesty seems rare. This congregant is in mourning for a relative, and calls the rabbi to ask a question about the conduct of that mourning.

As background, remember that the laws of mourning, beyond the first day (and possibly only when that first day is both the day of passing and of burial) are Rabbinically ordained. Further, many questions regarding mourning, particularly after the first thirty-day period, are guided only by post-Talmudic custom. We need not in any way detract from the importance of adhering to those customs to yet notice that such a person has more pressing religious failings that might be addressed.

Not that the rabbi could ever be so straightforward in that assessment, but thinking in those terms seems to be a part of recalibrating our understanding of halacha. For the example at hand, the rabbi might work to engage the questioner so that he or she walks away understanding that mourning is not about particular practices, but about absorbing a loss in a God-focused and Jewishly faithful way. While refraining from buying new clothing might be an expression of that path, turning to God, studying both more Torah and doing so more deeply, dedicating oneself further to mitzvot, and giving more charity are all also part of that picture, perhaps a more important part.

One question and answer will not change that person’s life, nor a community’s, but repeated and conscious consideration of where we place our religious and halachic efforts and priorities, the kinds of topics on which we present public lectures, host speakers, and recommend Jewishly-themed books, would be a first step to bringing our halachic practice in closer line with what the system itself commands and commends.

If we find ourselves, as individuals or communities, spending the bulk of our religious efforts insuring that we can eat animals, birds, and fish; that we avoid violating the prohibitions of the Sabbath, Yom Kippur, and holidays without caring about the positive content of those days; that we have what to eat on Passover without considering what freedom it means to inculcate in us; if this characterizes our practice, we need to rethink the extent to which those lives are succeeding at the basic point of Orthodoxy, let alone its ideal expression.

Even if we spend our time studying Torah, praying, and visiting the sick, we might still need to check that we are doing so out of a sense of obligation to and connection with God. People can become accustomed to any sequence of actions and make them an end of their own, forgetting the larger framework into which they were to be integrated.

Precedent for a More Mission-Focused Halachic Practice

We can never discard one area of halacha for another, but we might question which practices we spend our time and effort expounding. Much as R. Yisrael Salanter slaved to rejuvenate awareness of character issues in Judaism, and the Chafetz Chaim focused on matters of slanderous speech, I am suggesting we expand their model to insure that all the central parts of Judaism are at the top of the Orthodox agenda.

Such a shift in the communal and rabbinic agenda would yield another dividend that leads us to the next topic. Since many of the areas of halacha I discuss here have yet to be as exactly codified as others, and perhaps are immune to such exact codification, the experience of the inexactness of the answer to questions in these areas would remind Jews of another important aspect of Orthodoxy, its balance of pluralism, tolerance, and absolutism, the topic we turn to next time.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva

The Torah requires some form of counting on three occasions – sefirat haomer, years until yovel, and the days when a zav or zava waits to become pure. Hazal interpret the three commands in different ways. Only the court counts the years toward yovel whereas every individual counts the omer. In contrast to both of the above, the zav and zava have no mitzva to count; they simply keep track of days to retain awareness of their halachic status. Ramban argues that the zav and zava clearly have no mitzva to count days towards becoming pure since they have a halachic right to remain ritually impure. Unless a Jew needs to eat from a sacrifice or enter the temple, he or she has no obligation to maintain a state of ritual purity.

Ramban also notes a parallel between the number of days counted during sefirat haomer and the number of years counted until the jubilee year and he suggests that they share a rationale. Although Ramban may refer to a kabbalistic idea, a very straightforward parallel emerges from Abravanel’s analysis (see Abravanel’s commentary on parshat Behar).

Abravanel contends that God performed two particularly wondrous and history altering acts – creating the world and taking the Jews out of Egypt. Note that our weekly kiddush mentions both zekher le’maaseh berei**** and zecher le’ytziat mitzrayim. Shmeita and yovel commemorate these two major events. The former follows the six days of work one day of rest pattern from creation and from Shabbat; the latter mirrors the omer and Shavuot in that we count forty nine units to arrive at a holy fiftieth.

Several parallels between the revelation at Sinai and yovel bolster Abravanel’s understanding. We blow a shofar during the jubilee year proclaiming that slaves go free just as a shofar was sounded at Sinai. Even more striking, the Torah uses the term “yovel” in both situations (see Shemot 19:14). Additionally, both accounts mention an act of sanctification performed by the people (Shemot 19:11 and Vayikra 25:10). Literary parallels suggest a conceptual connection.

One important factor distinguishes these two events. Only God acts in creation but the revelation at Sinai depends upon human willingness to accept the covenant. In the same way, God declares the sabbatical year but the sanctity of the jubilee somehow depends on our actions (see Meshech Chochma Vayikra 25:2). The annual parallel counting of omer days demands our own preparation in anticipation of receiving the Torah.

By Rabbi Chaim Brovender, WebYeshiva

This post was originally posted in 2008/5768 when Yom Haatzmaut fell on Shabbat, and as such celebrations were pushed back to Thursday. While this is not the case this year, the question of whether to say Hallel or not, and with a bracha or not, is still of relevance and interesting to note.

Question

Dear Rabbi Brovender,

What is your opinion regarding saying Hallel on Yom Haatzmaut (for those of us living in chutz laaretz)? If the celebrations are pushed back to Thursday, do we say Hallel on that day (versus the fifth of Iyar)? Should we recite it with or without a bracha? Also, are haircuts permitted on that day? How about listening to music?

Answer
This question has become complicated because it connects to the community that you are interested in being part of. We are not going to determine why there is a difference of opinion on this matter, but I will tell you what I do.

I say Hallel in the morning and have done so even as a young student in chutz la-aretz. [Last year, 5769] the 5th of Iyar is on Shabbat and everyone will celebrate on Thursday. I say Hallel without a bracha in the morning, and will do so this year on the “mukdam” date, Thursday. Some also say Hallel on the preceeding night at Maariv, but that is not my practice.

Listening to music is not a problem. Even live bands are employed in the Daati Leumi Yeshivot. Haircuts are permitted for people who have a personal simcha (like a bris) and would be permitted for anyone who feels that this enhances his simcha on Yom HaAtzmaut.

I stress that it is important to remain part of a larger community and not take obvious stands against the group that you feel you are part of all year long. Sometimes we have to disagree in principal but not rock the boat.

I wish you well and have a joy filled Yom HaAtzmaut.

All the best,

Rabbi Chaim Brovender

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshivaHe would also say: One who increases flesh increases rot; one who increases possessions increase worry; one who increases wives increase sorcery; one who increases maidservants increases promiscuity; one who increases slaves increases theft; one who increases Torah increases life; one who increase study increases wisdom; one who increases counsel increases understanding; one who increases charity increases peace. One who acquires a good name acquires it for himself. One who acquires words of Torah acquires the world to come. (Avot 2:7)So many of the things humanity relentlessly pursues often harm their pursuers. Overeating brings a host of health problems. Extensive possessions generate fear of theft while their management exhausts a person. How do many wives increase witchcraft? I had always thought that the mishna assumes women were more involved in sorcery and superstition and a gemara (Sanhedrin 67a) explicitly articulates that assumption. However, many classic commentaries offer alternative explanations.Rabbenu Yona suggests that the various wives become rivals for their husband’s affection. They may turn to magical means in an attempt to secure a privileged place in the husband’s heart. R. Yisrael Lipschutz says that the husband looks for an aphrodisiac or a love potion. Consumed by the desire for physical pleasure, he becomes foolish and asks various magicians for supernatural help in securing the love of women. Jealousies and excessive desires bring people to the witch, warlock, or tarot card reader.What explains the mishna’s sequence of foolish pursuits? R. Lipschutz sees a progression through a human lifetime. A child wants good food, represented by the flesh. At a slightly older stage, he learns to desire money and soon after becomes interested in the sexual. The adult prefers honor as manifest in a house full of maidservants. Finally, the elderly want male servants to care for them in their declining years.R. Ovadia Bartenura thinks that each stage of the sequence brings about the next one. A person who acquires much property decides he has sufficient wealth to marry multiple women. Each wife in turn wants her own maidservant. The many fields and vineyards needed to feed this large clan create a need for a large workforce of servants. According to his reading, the sequence furthers the idea that hell bent pursuit of the wrong needs generates fresh needs rather than satiating the old ones.We need not adopt an ascetic position to appreciate how pursuit of wisdom and benevolence ultimately proves far more satisfying than chasing physical pleasure, honor, and wealth.

By Rabbi Gidon Rothstein, WebYeshivaWhile last time I used the English term ‘sociology’ for practices generated more by people than by the system itself, there is an halachic concept, minhag, that helps us evaluate the Jewish value of such practices. Through a brief and decidedly not comprehensive review of some of the basic issues, I hope to show where such customs fit in the priorities of a committed observance.The first step is to note that the source of the obligation to follow minhag is either a verse from Haazinu (Devarim 32; 7), שאל אביך ויגדך, ask your father and he will tell you, or from Mishlei 1; 8, שמע בני מוסר אביך ואל תטוש תורת אמך, where the latter part of the verse, do not abandon the Torah of your mother, is taken as a metaphorical reference to the Jewish people and its customs. As we have seen, Haazinu is a part of the Torah we are all supposed to know well, but this particular verse’s role and its nonlegal context (all the more true for verses from Proverbs) might lead us to question whether the context doesn’t already show that customs cannot compete in importance with the mission-shaping ideas and observances we have discussed until now.I need not push that point, however, to show that the contemporary attachment to ‘custom’ has become overgrown, and often gets in the way of realizing our mission as Jews.What Constitutes a Custom? Not a Mistaken RulingOne often neglected point is that binding minhag is not always created by a Jew or group of Jews acting in some way. For one thing, if those Jews mistakenly believe that halacha demands such conduct, that is not a minhag, it is a mistake. Under the rubric of דברים של היתר ואחרים נהגו בהם איסור, permissible matters that others treat as prohibited, we find two modes of reaction. Where the people know they have chosen to refrain from something otherwise permitted, halacha prohibits engaging in that activity in front of them, out of a sense of halachic politeness.The crucial caveat is that they must know that it is their choice. If they erroneously believe it is legally forbidden, we are allowed, perhaps encouraged, to reject that in front of them. To give a practical example, take kitniyot, the Ashkenazic custom to prohibit rice, legumes, and now corn, on Pesach. Were Jews to forget that this is a custom, others would be permitted (and, depending on how we read the discussion in the Gemara, perhaps encouraged) to eat such foods in front of them, to show them their error.I think of that example because one noted Israeli rabbi has said that as far as he is concerned, it should be emotionally impossible for a Jew to eat something that looks and tastes like chametz, like leavened bread, on Pesach. I think this position needs to be vigorously denied. The Torah knew how to define prohibitions, and if it wanted Pesach to be a time to avoid all leavened-type foods, it knew how to do so. The Gemara itself knew of rice as a grain-like food—so grain-like that the Gemara determined that it needed a blessing of בורא מיני מזונות, Who creates types of nourishing foods—and yet had no qualms about permitting it on Pesach.I bring this up not only because I feel strongly about it, but also as an example of how we allow our customs to change our understanding of what God wants from us. Whatever the reason for the prohibition of leavened bread on Passover, it did not extend beyond the five central types of grains. That Ashkenazi custom did so is an important fact for Ashkenazi Jews, but it can never be allowed to be seen as defining the Torah prohibition.A Ruling Is Not a CustomJust as mistakes cannot become a custom, decisions about the law also cannot, at least according to some authorities. For Ran (R. Nissim of Gerona, 14th century Spain), accepting one side of a debate does not create a custom to follow that view, it becomes a person’s or community’s understanding of the demands of halachah. When Ashkenazic Jews follow the Tosafists’ reading of Talmudic topics and Sefardic Jews follow Rif or Rambam’s (or, sometimes, vice verse), Ran would tell us, those practices are not matters of custom, they are differing (and equally binding on their relevant communities) reads of what Judaism wants of us.This is important for cases when people move from one place to another. As far as the Gemara indicates, customs are adopted by communities, and are binding upon members of those communities for only as long as they reside there. Moving with no intent to return would seem to free a person of his or her allegiances to the preceding set of customs, and obligate taking on the customs of the new place. For Ran, that would not apply to those situations where our practice was based on ruling according to one authority over another.It would, however, apply to situations where it is not a question of ruling, but of simple practice. We fail to recognize this now because people have long assumed that they should transport their communal customs with them. That is not at all clear, however, as highlighted by the following question: If the custom of my place is to prohibit some item, and I then move where there are two communities, one of which continues the custom to which I have always adhered, am I also obligated to do so?This came up in the 20th century, where the Seridei Esh was asked about a person who moved from a place where Jews ate only glatt kosher meat to a place where some did and some did not (there was a time when it was possible to buy meat that was clearly kosher, even if not glatt). I will not attempt to answer the question (Seridei Esh is himself leery of doing so, but has no clear reason to prohibit the person from joining the non-glatt community in his new town) because it is, in fact, a vexed one with too-significant ramifications to hope to entertain in this space. What is clear, though, is that much more of custom is place-specific than we currently realize.Customs Are Only Matters Related to ProhibitionAnother limitation on the applicability of questions of custom is that some authorities did not think that every Jewish activity qualified as custom; most prominently, many authorities, starting with Maharashdam, a 16th century rabbinic leader in Salonika, thought that nusach, the words of the prayers, was not a matter of custom, since it bore no connection to matters of prohibition. (Later, the teachers of Chatam Sofer adopted what we call Nusach Sfard, even though their prior custom had been Nusach Ashkenaz, which seems to rely on that idea as well). That means that before we call something a minhag, we would have to be sure that it touched on matters of prohibition (so, for one easy example, upsheren would not be a custom by these standards, since it bears no connection to any issue of allowed or prohibited).Family CustomsThe last type of custom to consider is family customs, those passed down from parents to children, which, in the Talmudic presentation, might seem least amenable to change. The Gemara tells the story of בני ביישן, either the children or the people of Baishan, who ask to be freed of their parents’ (or ancestors’) custom not to travel at all on Fridays, and are told they must adhere to the practice even though it is no longer as easy for them as it was for their forebears.The story seems to show that some customs are obligatory and incontrovertible. Further supporting that is another tradition that a cherem accepted by a certain community can also obligate all generations to follow. (It is in this sense that Ashkenazic Jews follow what we call cherem Rabbenu Gershom, the set of communal ordinances, that prohibit such practices as marrying more than one wife).Some limit all that to where the descendants still live in the same city; were they to move to another city, the custom would fall away, unless the descendants knowingly reinstituted it in the new place. Chavot Yair also notes that it is inconceivable that the practices of a parent automatically become obligatory upon one’s descendants. He does not elaborate, but would seem to require some kind of explicit acceptance by the child—outside of the parent’s presence or influence—before the custom would obligate that child, even if they still lived in the same place.What should be clear from this brief discussion, one that is obviously too brief to capture each or any of these topics in their full complexity, is that custom is an important area of Jewish practice, but should be clearly differentiated from any mission-shaping parts of Judaism. The broad idea that the legacy of the past is significant might be part of our Haazinu-awareness, but beyond that, custom is another part of the many that make up the whole tapestry of the religion.Where Does That Leave Us?Having taken care of two relatively ancillary points, halachic process and custom, we can get back to the mission, only now in its most practical sense, the ways in which it tells us that we as Jews have lost sight of what it most essentially means to serve God. To recall, in trying to see what Orthodox Judaism unequivocally puts as its mission, we found that it calls for a life in which God sits at the center, because Jews have a constant obligation to maintain an awareness of the existence, uniqueness, and unity of God, to seek to improve their awe of God, love of God, and to distance themselves from any distractions from that program.True as that is, billions of people believe in God, in some sense, and assume they are guiding their lives in ways calculated to build a better relationship with that God. One place where Judaism differs is that it insists that the way—the only way– for a Jew to know whether his or her actions are distancing or enhancing the relationship with God is by passing them through the prism of halacha, a set of mitzvot and their concomitant laws, that show how God defines a well-lived human life.The Mission and Character DevelopmentOne easy place to notice where the mission should affect Jews’ lives is in character development. Whereas an ordinary human being tries to become more kind because it is right or good to do so, the Jew tries to become more kind also, and probably primarily, as an expression of his or her attempts to become God-like, as expressed in God’s Attributes of Mercy. This is not to say that the ordinary human reason is not enough; it is that the aspect of becoming more God-like is always there as well.This alters the insight that comes out of the story told of a student whose teacher was ill. The student called up and said, “Rebbe, let me come fulfill the mitzva of bikur cholim, of visiting the sick!” Responded the teacher, “I’m not your lulav.” As usually told, the teacher seems to have been pointing out that acts of kindness cannot treat the recipient as a means to an end; human beings’ inherent worth and dignity obligates kindness as a response and for no other reason.Based on my understanding of the mission, I would add that Jews understand that in treating others with kindness, we are partnering with God in furthering the perfection of the world God created. Whereas an ordinary human visits a friend who is ill because it is the proper expression of friendship, the Jew sees the proper expression of friendship, with full appreciation of the value and human dignity of the sick friend, as an extension of establishing a world that operates as God wanted it. When God visited Abraham as an model of visiting the ill, informed him of the impending destruction of Sodom to teach him about charity and justice, and later revealed a longer list of God’s Attributes to Moses at Sinai, God was giving Jews the great gift of a blueprint of how we can mold ourselves to be more God-like.That means that a first part of seeing ourselves as Jews assigned a mission is that we see ourselves as obligated by God to constantly question ourselves and our development in very specific ways. Questions of health, financial security, emotional and relational development, career success, may all have their place but should be, for the mission-sensitive Jew, subordinated to questions about how well I have yet done in shaping myself and my character to make myself a servant of God. That question, which accompanies a mission-sensitive Jew at every moment of his or her life, is whether and how he or she can further develop a character that is more God-aware, more God-driven, and more God-like. It is a lifelong project, one that should be enhanced by all Jewish observances, not lost in the welter of them.Next time, we will continue our discussion of the mission’s impact on our lives, with specific examples of how our current experience of Judaism would change with proper awareness of what Orthodoxy essentially requires.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Blau, WebYeshiva

He also saw a skull floating upon the water. He said to it: Because you drowned others, you were drowned; and those who drowned you, will themselves be drowned. (Avot 2:6)

A literal reading of this mishna leads to a simplified conception of divine providence. Since anyone who drowned must have been guilty of a crime worthy of this fate, Hillel could look at a person’s skull and determine which crime brought about this person’s death. However, many commentaries reject such a reading. As R. Yom Tov Lippman Heller (Tosafot Yom Tov) points out, our experience mitigates against this view of providence. Not all murder victims are killers deserving of death nor do all murderers receive the fate they meted out to their victims. Furthermore, logic dictates against the assumption that all murder victims were themselves murderers because someone had to be that first innocent victim.

Commenting on this mishna, Rashi (Sukka 53a) says: “and he recognized that he was a murderer.” Arguably, Rashi contends that Hillel knew the fellow and the violent life that he led. Therefore, he could see this dead skull and pronounce that justice had been served.

Offering a naturalistic interpretation, Rambam suggests that killers teach others to emulate their horrific actions. In addition, they enter a culture where they interact with others who share their vicious values. A Mafioso or a thug seems a more likely victim of murder than a librarian or a professor. According to Rambam, Hillel said nothing about how God runs the world; he simply pointed out how poor moral choices often come back to haunt those that make them.

Tosafot Yom Tov cites an earlier commentary who maintains the literal reading of the mishna but reconciles it with out contrary experience by introducing the concept of giligul neshamot. If we consider the other lifetimes of our protagonists, we would see how justice worked out and how violence returned upon the violent. Tosafot Yom Tov rejects this view since Hillel would not teach an esoteric kabbalistic secret such as reincarnation in a mishna. I add that not all rabbinic voices agree that Judaism believes in reincarnation.

Instead, R. Heller explains that this mishna links with the following mishna which teaches: “One who increases flesh, increases worms; one who increases Torah, increases life.” We do sometimes see how good moral and religious choices lead to more satisfying results than poor decisions. Those experiences provide us with faith that the same phenomenon covers a broader range of human existence even when our experience does not match this. Thus, Hillel did not know the particulars of why this fellow was killed; he merely made a general declaration about our faith in divine providence.

This serves as a good model for our thinking about God’s justice. We avoid simplistic formula in which we assume that anyone intensely suffering committed a serious sin worthy of such afflictions. At the same time, we affirm God’s wisdom and care in His providential running of the world.