Behaaloscha - Humility and Torah

At the end of Parshas Behaaloscha (Numbers 12) we read of the incident where Miriam and Aaron, the elder siblings of Moses, speak critically of Moses. As prophets themselves, they believed that they understood the demands that Moses' position placed upon him, and they believed that this did not justify his actions. (The exact nature of their criticism of Moses is left extremely vague in the text, and is discussed in the commentaries.) God Himself intervenes, and speaks to Miriam and Aaron (12:6-8):

And He said: "Hear now My words: when one of you is a prophet, I Hashem, I make Myself known to him in a vision, I speak with him in a dream. This is not so with My servant Moses; he is trusted in all My house. I speak to him mouth to mouth, in a vision without riddles; and he sees the image of Hashem. Why then are you not afraid to speak against My servant Moses?"

These verses teach us one of the most basic and central principles of Judaism, the supremacy of the prophecy of Moses. Maimonides included this principle as the seventh of his thirteen foundations of Judaism. Maimonides opens his discussion of this principle with this basic summary:

The Seventh Foundation is the prophecy of Moses our Teacher. This means to believe that he is the father of all the prophets, both those that preceded him and those who arose after him; all of them were below his level. He was chosen from all of Mankind, he attained a greater knowledge of God than any other man ever attained or ever will attain, and he rose from the level of man until he attained the level of the angels and, being on the level of an angel, there remained no screen that he did not penetrate and nothing physical hindered him. He was devoid of any flaw, big or small. His powers of imagination,  and the sensual perceptions were nullified by his understanding and the power of his desires was silenced, leaving him with pure intellect.

Maimonides goes on to detail how the prophecy of Moses differed in several basic ways from that of all other prophets.Much of his discussion is based upon the verses that we just quoted above.

But how did Moses achieve this exalted level? What was it about Moses that set him apart, not only from the rest of his generation, but from all mankind for all time? How was he alone able to reach such a great height of understanding and knowledge of God? 

The answer to this question can be found just a few verses earlier (12:3):

And the man Moses was very humble, more than any human on the face of the earth.

While Moses had many virtuous traits, his central virtue was humility. It was this that set him apart from all others, and it was this virtue that enabled him to become the greatest prophet of all time, and the one who would receive the Torah from God.

In the first mishna of Pirkei Avos, the mishna opens by saying:

משה קבל תורה מסיני

Moses received the Torah from Sinai.

Now, of course, Moses did not receive the Torah from Sinai. Moses received to Torah from God. Sinai was simply the location where this happened. Why then does it say that he received the Torah from Sinai? This question is addressed by a number of commentaries on Pirkei Avos, including the Tiferes Yisrael (R' Yisrael Lifshitz d.1860), who writes:

ר"ל משה שהיה עניו מאד, עי"ז קבל התורה שנמשלה למים שמניחין מקום גבוה ומתאספים בנמוך (כתענית ד"ז א'). ולכן קבל התורה מסיני הנמוך בהרים (כמגילה כ"ט א'). להורות דרק ע"י ענוה מקור לכל המדות ישרות יזכה אדם לתורה

The mishna wishes to tell us that it was because of Moses' great humility that he received the Torah, for the Torah is compared to water that flows away from the high spots and gathers in low areas (as it says it the Talmud, Taanis 7a). This is why Moses received the Torah at Sinai, the lowest of the mountains (as it says in the Talmud, Megilla 29a). This is to teach us that it is only through humility, which is the source of all upright character traits, that a person can merit to Torah.

We see that this idea is not only relevant to the initial reception of the Torah by Moses at Mt. Sinai, but is relevant for all of us. Proper Torah study is a reenactment of the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, and no success in Torah study is possible without humility. This principle is a basic theme in Jewish thought, found repeated in innumerable ways in innumerable sources. Torah can only come through humility.

Why is humility so important for Torah study? There are many layers to the answer to this question. 

On one level, of course, we know that excessive pride and arrogance can be barriers to understanding in secular studies as well as Torah. A degree of humility is necessary for success in all forms of scholarship and this is also true for Torah. R' Eliyahu HaKohen of Smyrna (d.1729) addresses this aspect in his classic mussar work, Sheivet Mussar (ch. 52):

Know and perceive how the Torah remains with one who is lowly (מי שדעתו שפלה עליו), and not by one who is prideful. One who is lowly will not be ashamed to say, "I do not understand," and his teacher will then review with him until he understands it. Also, if he sees that someone who is his social inferior knows more than him, then he will go to learn from him. Similarly, because his humility enables him to recognize his own ignorance, he continually reviews his studies, and this causes his Torah to stay with him.

The opposite is true of the prideful person. His pride causes him to hide his own ignorance, and all the more so does it prevent himself from going to study by someone who is his social inferior, even if he recognizes that the other person has the wisdom of Solomon! Similarly, the prideful person is not motivated to study, because his pride makes him incapable of recognizing his ignorance.

This brings us to a somewhat deeper understanding of the connection between humility and Torah. For not only does pride prevent one from properly studying the Torah on a practical level, it also can cause one to come to false conclusions in his studies. We all recognize the role that our personal biases can play in our understanding and interpretation of what we see and know, in all aspects of life. Pride is the ultimate bias, and Torah knowledge is particularly susceptible to being corrupted in this way. The study of Torah must be done in a state of kabbala - literally, reception - in which the student opens his mind to receive the Torah without imposing his own ideas upon it. The goal of Torah study is only to truly understand what God is teaching us. To study for the sake of true understanding is, as R' Chaim Volozhiner (d.1821) explains (Ruach Chaim 6:1), the essence of studying Torah lishma - "for its own sake." The prideful person, however, will inevitably impose his own thoughts upon the Torah, consciously or unconsciously, thereby creating a corrupted version of the Torah. 

The Talmud (Taanis 7a) states, "One who studies Torah for its own sake, his Torah becomes an elixir of life for him... and one who studies the Torah not for its own sake, it becomes for him an elixir of death." One who studies the Torah for its own sake, allowing the Torah to impose its form upon his mind, experiences the true Torah, which is an elixir of life. The one, however, who studies the Torah without truly striving to understand, creates something else, which is not truly Torah at all, and which is therefore an elixir of death.

This brings us to the deepest, and most basic, level of understanding the necessity of humility for Torah. For ultimately, the Torah is not of this world. The Torah is gift, it is given to us by God, not just once at Mt. Sinai, but continually, every time we study it. To truly succeed in Torah, each of us must emulate Moses himself, in his most basic character trait, humility. For God gives His gift of Torah only to those who truly open themselves to Him, who have eliminated all the various internal barriers of the ego that separate us from Him. (See Ruach Chaim 1:1.) This is what Maimonides is saying in the passage we quoted earlier, that Moses had reached a level in which "there remained no screen that he did not penetrate and nothing physical hindered him."

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I Want YOU to Love your Fellow Jew!

I made this into a poster for my classroom several years ago:

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Nasso - "One Who Sees a Sotah in her Disgrace..."

In Parshas Nasso we read of the laws of the sotah - the suspected adulteress - which is followed immediately by the laws of the nazir - one who accepts upon himself a special status of consecration to God. During the period of nezirus, which generally lasts 30 days, the nazir is forbidden from consuming any wine or grape products, cutting his hair, and from becoming ritually impure through contact with the body of a deceased person.

In a famous passage (quoted by Rashi), the Talmud (Sotah 2a) states:

תניא: רבי אומר, למה נסמכה פרשת נזיר לפרשת סוטה? לומר לך שכל הרואה סוטה בקלקולה יזיר עצמו מן היין.

It is taught: Rebbi said, "Why is the subject of nazir placed close to the subject of sotah? To tell you that anyone who sees a sotah in her disgrace should make himself a nazir from wine." (Rashi adds, "for wine brings one to adultery.")

Perhaps the most basic lesson we learn from this teaching is the recognition that any time we encounter sin it inevitably has a negative spiritual impact upon us, and that we need to take special steps to counter that impact. In such a situation, it may even be necessary to temporarily abstain from pleasures (such as wine) that are normally permitted. As Maimonides wrote (Hil. Deos 1) in his discussion of proper character traits, even though our ultimate goal is to follow the "middle path", it is sometimes necessary to temporarily go to an extreme in one area in order to counter-balance our inclination in the opposite direction. Similarly, in this case, when a person encounters the sin of adultery, which is rooted in self-indulgence, it is necessary for him to go to the opposite extreme of abstaining even from permissible indulgences, in order to counter-balance the negative impact of what he has witnessed.

Rav Reuvein Grozovsky (הובא בספר אמרי יצחק ממורי ורבי ר' יצחק נאבעל שליט"א) points out that we need to take this step even after we have seen the sotah "in her disgrace", i.e. after she has suffered a horrible death due to her sin. This teaches us that the knowledge of sin has a negative impact on us even when we have seen the punishment with our own eyes. We cannot rely on the emotional impact of the punishment alone to counter the negative influence of our knowledge of the sin, but we must take additional steps to protect ourselves from temptation.

R' Yeruchom Levovitz

In his discussion of this issue, Rav Yeruchom Levovitz (ספר דעת תורה, במדבר ו:ב) says that sometimes when we encounter a particularly depraved sinner we think that we have nothing in common with such behavior and that there is nothing we need to take to heart from such behavior. R' Yeruchem tells us that this is not so, "even this woman did not change into a harlot in one moment. There were many causes that brought her to this state, such as overindulgence in pleasures, excessive socializing, and similar. When one sees a harlot, one needs to learn and to consider for himself that he too is no exception from the rule, and he must be careful that he too should not come to such a downfall, God forbid!" No matter how far off a sin may seem we are never truly immune. Thus, when we encounter a sinner, we must take this message to heart and work to reinforce our resistance to sin.

Rav Zalman Sorotzkin (אזנים לתורה כאן) points out that the Torah does not only prohibit wine itself, but all products related to wine or grapes (including fresh grapes and raisins). This teaches us that when we are dealing with the temptation to sin, we must take steps to separate ourselves not just from the sin itself but also from anything related to the sin. Thus, just as the nazir must refrain not just from wine itself but from everything related to wine, so too when it comes to the sin of adultery, the Torah requires us to refrain not just from the act itself but from anything related to it.

Rav Moshe Feinstein (דרש משה כאן) notes further that while the Torah prohibits all grape products, even when they have no intoxicating effect, the Torah does not prohibit a nazir from consuming intoxicating beverages that are not made from grapes. This indicates that the primary idea behind the prohibition is not to avoid the risk of sin through intoxication but simply to accept upon ourselves a higher level of holiness by abstaining from a normally permitted pleasure. (Of course, the fact that the Torah specifically prohibits wine is still indicative of a moral lesson regarding intoxication.) R' Moshe concludes that we can achieve a similar result by increasing our state of holiness through the study of Torah. He cites the statement of Maimonides (Hil. Issurei Biah 22:21) that the study of Torah has a unique power to help us restrain our sexual desires.

Perhaps we can find a deeper insight into this teaching based upon a well-known teaching of the Baal Shem Tov. The Baal Shem Tov (ספר הבעש"ט בראשית קכ"ג-ק"ל) taught that when God causes a person to witness, or even hear about, a sinful act, this is a sign to the witness that some element of this sin also exists within himself which he must work to rectify. From this principle we can understand that the reason why one who sees “a sotah in her disgrace” must become a nazir is not simply to counter the influence of what he has seen, but also because what he has seen is itself a sign that he needs to work on this issue.

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The Evil of Unpleasant Realities - Why "Liberal" Jews are Turning Against Israel

I recently came across an article by a Rabbi Brian Walt, titled "Affirming a Judaism and Jewish identity without Zionism." Rabbi Walt obviously comes from a fundamentally different religious and theological perspective than I. That being so, I usually wouldn't even bother writing about such an article. However, I believe that Rabbi Walt's article expresses views that are, amazingly enough, at conflict with my own at an even more basic level than theology (which shouldn't even be possible). The differences touch upon the most basic issues of all, the role of rationality in human life and arguably even the basic nature of reality. Moreover, I believe that the kind of thinking underlying Rabbi Walt's article is becoming increasingly common, even in (perhaps even especially in) those circles that ostensibly celebrate rationality.

The article is a near-perfect illustration of the superficial romanticism that underlies much of what goes by the name "liberalism" nowadays, and helps explain why "liberal" Jews are increasingly finding themselves feeling like they have to chose between their identity as "liberals" and their support for Israel. By "superficial romanticism", I am referring to a worldview in which one's "feelings" have absolute moral authority. I am not addressing the various political and ideological positions commonly associated with liberalism (of any stripe), nor am I addressing the the fact that our emotions inevitably color our moral judgments. I am addressing the increasing tendency to see  superficial feelings, i.e. one's immediate gut reaction to an idea, image, or story, as having sufficient moral authority to render any further thought irrelevant. While such thinking certainly exists in all circles, my observation has been that this kind of thinking is increasingly seen in ostensibly "liberal" circles as not only respectable but as "deep" and "profound", and that much of what passes for "liberalism" today is simply advocacy for and celebration of such a worldview.

Thus, in Rabbi Walt's world, the emotional impact of images and stories reigns absolutely supreme. That which is ugly or unpleasant is inherently immoral. Necessity and survival are ugly concepts and are completely ignored. Context is a distraction. In this world, I need only look at an isolated image - such as a child's toy lying in the ruins of a demolished home - and my gut emotional reaction tells me everything I need to make a moral judgement. Similarly, if an image or story evokes an unpleasant association in my mind, that evoked association is morally conclusive in of itself.

Thus,  Rabbi Walt describes seeing soldiers demolish a home while the owners stand by "wailing." This is an ugly and unpleasant scene, and that is all he needs to know. Why were the soldiers doing this? What events had led to this scene? Not important, not even relevant. Soldiers=bad. Bulldozers=bad. Wailing=bad. All bad. (Oh, and toys=good!)

The underlying idea here is that the fact that the state of Israel is doing something that is ugly and unpleasant inherently means that what they are doing is wrong. Not because it is unnecessary, not because it won't work, not for any rational basis, but simply because it is ugly and unpleasant. No necessity can justify that which evokes unpleasant emotions in my mind. There are no hard choices, there are no necessary evils, there are no justifications.

Similarly, Rabbi Walt describes how the separation between Arabs and Jews in Israel is "very evocative of scenes" of Apartheid from his childhood in South Africa. Apartheid is, of course, a very bad thing, and therefore, in  Rabbi Walt's mind, anything that superficially resembles Apartheid is equally bad. No further thought is necessary.

And so on...

Uprooted trees = evil.

Arabs being processed at a checkpoint (evoking ugly images: "processed like a group of animals") = evil.

It is a sad irony that of all the Israeli "violations" of human rights described by Rabbi Walt, almost none of them go much beyond property damage, inconvenience, and bureaucratic red-tape. Yet, he sees these "violations"  as a justification for supporting the side of those who regularly engage in violence and murder not only against random Israelis, but even against other Palestinians! The moral scales are completely skewed, mainly because of another negative emotion: guilt. While I'm sure (or I hope) that Rabbi Walt feels just as horrified about the deaths of innocent Israeli civilians due to Palestinian rocket attacks and terrorism as he does about the bulldozing of an Arab house, he only feels guilty about the actions done by Israel. When Israel does something ugly and unpleasant, i.e. inherently unjustifiable, Rabbi Walt feels "implicated" in the crime, and he can only free himself from that guilt by opposing what Israel does. When an Arab terrorist blows up a bus, or a Palestinian rocket kills an Israeli civilian, Rabbi Walt does not feel implicated and therefore his emotional reaction is less severe. In the logic of Rabbi Walt's world, the fact that Israeli actions create more unpleasant feelings in his mind than Palestinian actions automatically means that Israel is the bad guy. Arguing that this is a subjective and illogical judgement would be missing the point.

Many aspects of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians commonly evoke such irrational reactions. In the mind of many modern "liberals", when they set the state of Israel, with its "white men in suits", uniformed soldiers, military hardware, factories, technology and emphasis on law and order, against the ragtag, hooded, "Che Guevara-esque"  "freedom" fighters of the "indigenous people", it is simply self-evident who the bad guy is. Israel is obviously the "Western imperialist power" oppressing the innocent natives.

That is the established narrative (despite the fact that that narrative developed in a very different context and has little relevance to the actual situation in Israel) and in that narrative the "liberal" knows which side he is supposed to support. There is no need to look for alternative narratives, there is no middle ground, and there is no ambiguity. All of these would require setting aside one's subjective feelings and dispassionately studying reality, and in this worldview that would be missing the point.

As long as Zionism was nothing more than the utopian dream of  Rabbi Walt's youth, it was fine. Like him, many of the early Zionists had utopian hopes for the  Jewish state. But then Zionism ran into reality, and reality is messy and ugly and has little tolerance for utopian fantasies. The founders of Israel thought they would be able to found a country where Jews and Arabs lived side by side in peace. They were fools and the Arabs quickly showed them that they were fools. The Jews in Israel found themselves in a fight for survival which has continued, with ups and downs, to this day. And, yes, its not fair, not to anyone, and yes, many Palestinians have suffered as much as the Jews, and that's terrible and sad and irrelevant.

Should the state of Israel have been founded? Perhaps not. (I am not a Zionist myself.) But that is also irrelevant. Like it or not, Israel exists, and the millions of Jews in Israel are not leaving. If peace could be negotiated on those terms, then Israel would jump for it (it actually has already, more than once), but the Palestinians have never accepted the continued existence of the state of Israel as acceptable, and continue to preach an ideology of irreconcilable hatred for the Jews.

In many ways, the issue I am addressing here is much bigger than Israel (although, from the point of view of Israel, it may well be a matter of existential survival). This kind of thinking underlies almost of all of the major political issues of our time, which is one of the reasons why it is becoming increasingly difficult to hold a civil conversation about politics. It also has a major impact on people's religious thinking. It is closely related to the issue of so-called "simple faith" (i.e. believing in God because you want to believe in God) that I discussed recently as well as the phenomenon of the pseudo-Chareidim I discussed some time ago. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum (well, the perceived opposite end), the so-called "argument from evil", which is commonly viewed as one of the most powerful arguments against the existence of God, is almost entirely an exercise in this kind of thinking. The reason that the "argument from evil" is seen as such a knock-down argument in favor of atheism is not because there are no rational solutions to the problem (there are, in fact, lots of such solutions), but because the underlying basis for the argument does not allow for a rational response in the first place. The real issue in the argument from evil is not that we can't explain why God allows or causes bad things to happen, but that we don't want bad things to happen regardless of the explanation. A rational response to the argument from evil would be missing the point.

The long-term consequences of this kind of thinking are very frightening. As the founders of the state of Israel discovered, reality doesn't change to suit our feelings. In the real world trade-offs are always necessary, difficult choices must be made, and ugly realities will always exist. Attempting to ignore reality never ends well, and our civilization's current attempt to do so will only make things much worse for us down the road. And, as has often been the case, the Jews are the canary in the coal mine, and may well pay the price long before the rest of Western society.

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Bamidbar - Everything Has Its Place

In Parshas Bamidbar we read of how God chose the tribe of Levi to be His, to a degree above and beyond the rest of the Jewish people. Originally, the Temple service was to have been performed by the first-born sons of the entire nation. When the people sinned with the golden calf, they lost this privilege and it was given to the tribe of Levi. The tribe of Levi was chosen because, at the time of the sin of the golden calf, they answered Moses' cry of "Whoever is for God, to me!" and took up their swords to punish the worshippers of the calf.

In his commentary on Bamidbar, Rav Avigdor Miller notes a surprising irony in this. At the end of his life, Jacob admonished his sons Shimon and Levi for the violent manner in which they avenged the honor of their sister, Dinah. Yet now the descendants of Levi were being rewarded for engaging in a violent battle against their fellow Jews!

Rav Miller explains that this teaches us an important lesson:

...we learn that no natural emotion or character-trait is intrinsically evil: "God made the Man right" (Koheles 7:29), but good or evil depends on the manner in which these emotions and character-traits are exercised. Anger and even cruelty, jealousy and ambition, indulgence and temperance, indolence and alacrity: each has its proper place, and when employed in Hashem's service all of these motivations gain recompense in this life and everlasting reward in the Afterlife. The anger which endangered Jacob's family was cursed and was punished by landlessness, but when the anger was utilized to combat idolatry it was rewarded by an eternal covenant: "The Levites shall be Mine."

This is an important lesson as we come into Shavuos, the festival of Matan Torah (the Giving of the Torah). One of the most basic messages of the Torah is that every aspect of human life has the potential for holiness. Judaism teaches us not to reject our natural drives and desires, but to channel them into the service of God. This is one of the basic symbolic messages of circumcision, which the Jewish people had to undergo before they could receive the Torah, and which every male convert must undergo to enter into the Jewish covenant with God. As Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch writes (Collected Writings III, pp. 78-79 - emphasis added):

All the physical aspects of of our earthly existence, with all its impulses and forces, its riches and pleasures, must be brought under the firm control of the holy will of God. This sign [of circumcision] poses, as the first and indispensable condition for our covenant with God that we must circumcise the ערלה [uncontrolled nature (lit. "foreskin)] of the physical aspect of our body. It is not the consecration of the spirit but the consecration of the body that marks the entry into the covenant of Abraham. This covenant categorically rejects the erroneous concepts of both extremes. It does not condone a mortification of the flesh one earth for the purpose of gaining life in the world to come. But it also rejects the worship of physical appetites and the cult of "beautiful" sensualism.

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What is the Torah?

On the festival of Shavuos we celebrate the event of Matan Torah - the Giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. This was the foundational event of Judaism, from which all else follows. It was at Sinai that God made the Jewish people into His nation, and gave us His Torah.

But what, exactly, is the Torah? By this, I am not asking about the simple definition of the Torah - i.e. the five books of Moses - or even the broader definition of the complete corpus of the Written and Oral Law. I am asking, what kind of "book" is the Torah? Specifically, what kind of information did God intend to reveal to us through the Torah and what kinds of expectations can we reasonably have when studying it?

To clarify, in order to productively read a book, we need to have a reasonably good idea as to what the author is attempting to do. If our understanding of the author's intent is significantly flawed, then our ability to understand and use the book will be, at best, equally flawed. Our understanding of the author's intent causes us to have specific expectations from the book and it is the author's success in satisfying those expectations that we use in assessing the quality of the book. Thus, we have very different expectations from a history book than we have from a cookbook, or a book on car repair, or a medical textbook, or a dictionary.

The same is true for the Torah. In order for us to properly study the Torah, we first need to clarify what the Author of the Torah is trying to accomplish. What is the intended function of the Torah? Thankfully, the Torah itself is fairly clear on what its purpose is; the function of the Torah is to instruct, i.e. to tell us what to do with our lives. As the Torah (Exodus 24:12) says, "And Hashem said to Moses: 'Come up to Me, to the mountain, and stay there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, and the Torah and the commandment, which I have written to instruct them.'" One of the most basic themes throughout the Torah is the absolute importance of obeying God's commands, as given to us in the Torah.

Everything in the Torah is there for the purpose of instruction. This is true not only for the mitzvos, but even for the stories found in the Torah.  The stories in the Torah are intended to teach us lessons, and are presented in the manner that best serve God's educational purposes. They are not there for our entertainment, or even to teach us history, but, like the mitzvos, to teach us how to properly live our lives.

This is an important principle, because it tells us two critical concepts:

• There is nothing extraneous in the Torah. Everything, down to the details of every story, is there to teach us something or it would not have been included.
• The Torah does not include information that is unrelated to its purpose. While there is historical information in the Torah, it is usually vague at best. The Torah is not a history book, or a science book, or even a philosophical work. (It also isn't a cookbook or a book on how to manage your money. But you already knew that.) It is book of Divine instruction.

Much to the disappointment of many a yeshiva student, God did not give us the Torah so that we wouldn't have to study history, or science, or math (or any other area of human study). The Torah is intended to answer questions that we can't really answer for ourselves: What are we here for? How do we fulfill our purpose?

Sometimes people ask why God didn't include scientific or medical information in the Torah, or why He didn't provide more precise historical information. Such questions are no more reasonable with regard to the Torah than they would be with regard to a cookbook (which is also a book of instruction). When we study the Torah, it is perfectly legitimate to ask what we are supposed to learn from a given story, or even a specific detail within the story. It is not legitimate to ask why God omitted the cure for cancer or the Grand Unified Theory for physics.

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Explaining the Torah in Seventy "Languages"

Just finished studying with my Torah Mate. We recently began studying Chumash Devarim with Rashi and Gur Aryeh (the Maharal's super-commentary on Rashi) and we came to Deuteronomy 1:5, "On the other side of the Jordan in the land of Moab, Moses began clarifying this Torah, saying:" On the words "clarifying the Torah" Rashi comments (based on Medrash Tanchuma), "בשבעים לשון פרשה להם" - "He explained it to them in seventy languages."

This comment obviously needs explanation. Is it plausible that Moses actually got up and orally presented the Torah to the Jewish people in seventy different languages? How many languages did the Jewish people speak? Did Moshe get up and "explain the Torah" to them in languages that none of them understood? For that matter, the word used by Rashi is "פרשה" - "explained" - not translate!

So we started looking around. My chavrusa reminded me of the discussion of languages in Genesis 10:5, which, in turn, led us to look at the story of the Tower of Babel, in Genesis 11. One thing we noticed immediately is that, in the entire story of the confusion of the languages in Genesis 11, the Hebrew word "לשון"  (lit. "tongue") is never used (unlike in Genesis 10:5). Instead, the word used for language in Genesis 11 is "שפה" (lit. "lip"). Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, in his commentary on Genesis 10:5, and again on 11:1, writes that the word "שפה" designates actual language, whereas "לשון" refers to dialect.

This was useful, in that it at least showed us that the "שבעים לשון" - "seventy languages" - mentioned by Rashi need not refer to seventy distinct languages. However, it didn't really make much sense to say that he explained it to them in seventy different dialects either.

At this point, both of us were already thinking that these "seventy languages" probably were not "languages" at all, but seventy different modes of interpretation, related to the famous concept of "שבעים פנים לתורה" - "there are seventy facets to the Torah." But we were hesitant to give such an explanation on our own, without some support. Baruch Hashem, we found exactly what we were looking for in the commentary HaKesav VeHaKabbala (by Rabbi Yakov Tzvi Mecklenburg, d.1865):

Rashi, from the Sages, says, "He explained it to them in seventy languages." They don't mean foreign languages, for what benefit would that be to the Jews? ... Rather, it is the way of the Sages to refer to the intent of a statement by the term לשון..., and so here, with the "seventy languages", it means "seventy intended meanings", similar to the statement of the Sages elsewhere, "שבעים פנים לתורה" - "there are seventy facets to the Torah" - which refers to the inner intended meanings of the Torah, asides from the initial, simple meaning.

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Emuna Peshuta - The Misuse of "Faith"

I frequently encounter people who claim that their basis for belief in God is "faith" or, if they are religious Jews, "emuna peshuta" - "simple faith". You're most likely to hear this when a religious person is confronted with a challenge to his belief in God by modern atheists, who claim that modern science and philosophy have eliminated any basis for belief in God. (This is not true, but that is a topic for another time.) To this, the response of many religious people is that they believe out of simple "faith"

I recently received an example of this kind of reasoning in an e-mail, which presents a fictional dialogue between an atheist professor and his religious Christian student:

Professor : You are a Christian, aren’t you, son ?

Student : Yes, sir.

Professor: So, you believe in GOD ?

Student : Absolutely, sir.

Professor : Is GOD good ?

Student : Sure.

Professor: Is GOD all powerful ?

Student : Yes.

Professor: My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to GOD to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But GOD didn’t. How is this GOD good then? Hmm?

(Student was silent.)

Professor: You can’t answer, can you ? Let’s start again, young fella. Is GOD good?

Student : Yes.

Professor: Is satan good ?

Student : No.

Professor: Where does satan come from ?

Student : From … GOD …

Professor: That’s right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?

Student : Yes.

Professor: Evil is everywhere, isn’t it ? And GOD did make everything. Correct?

Student : Yes.

Professor: So who created evil ?

(Student did not answer.)

Professor: Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don’t they?

Student : Yes, sir.

Professor: So, who created them ?

(Student had no answer.)

Professor: Science says you have 5 Senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell me, son, have you ever seen GOD?

Student : No, sir.

Professor: Tell us if you have ever heard GOD?

Student : No , sir.

Professor: Have you ever felt GOD, tasted GOD, smelled GOD? Have you ever had any sensory perception of GOD for that matter?

Student : No, sir. I’m afraid I haven’t.

Professor: Yet, you still believe in Him?

Student : Yes.

Professor : According to Empirical, Testable, Demonstrable Protocol, Science says your GOD doesn’t exist. What do you say to that, son?

Student : Nothing. I only have my faith.

Professor: Yes, faith. And that is the problem Science has.

Student : Professor, is there such a thing as heat?

Professor: Yes.

Student : And is there such a thing as cold?

Professor: Yes.

Student : No, sir. There isn’t.

(The lecture theater became very quiet with this turn of events.)

Student : Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don’t have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no heat, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.

(There was pin-drop silence in the lecture theater.)

Student : What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?

Professor: Yes. What is night if there isn’t darkness?

Student : You’re wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light. But if you have no light constantly, you have nothing and its called darkness, isn’t it? In reality, darkness isn’t. If it is, well you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?

Professor: So what is the point you are making, young man ?

Student : Sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.

Professor: Flawed ? Can you explain how?

Student : Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue there is life and then there is death, a good GOD and a bad GOD. You are viewing the concept of GOD as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, Science can’t even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing.

Death is not the opposite of life: just the absence of it. Now tell me, Professor, do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?

Professor: If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, I do.

Student : Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?

(The Professor shook his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument was going.)

Student : Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor. Are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a scientist but a preacher?

(The class was in uproar.)

Student : Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor’s brain?

(The class broke out into laughter. )

Student : Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor’s brain, felt it, touched or smelled it? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established Rules of Empirical, Stable, Demonstrable Protocol, Science says that you have no brain, sir. With all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?

(The room was silent. The Professor stared at the student, his face unfathomable.)

Professor: I guess you’ll have to take them on faith, son.

Student : That is it sir … Exactly ! The link between man & GOD is FAITH. That is all that keeps things alive and moving.

This little "dialogue" is a good example of what is, in my opinion, a fundamentally erroneous approach to religious belief. While the "student" makes a one or two minor points that are valid (or at least defensible), his core argument is simply absurd.

The essential problem here is that the word "faith" is used to mean different things, and the essay improperly lumps them together. The primary definition of "faith" is trust, in that we take something "on faith" from a person or authority that we trust. (This is the definition of faith being used by the professor, towards the end of the dialogue, when he says that we should accept what he teaches in his lectures on faith, even if we have not (yet) confirmed them with our own senses.) Of course, such faith has to be earned, in that there must be a reason why we trust a given authority figure sufficiently to take his statements on faith. Assuming that we have good reason for trusting the authority, then such faith is perfectly rational.

However, there is another, deeply problematic, understanding of faith, which is to believe something without any rational basis. This is the definition being used by the student, when, in response to his professor's challenge that there is no rational basis for belief in God responds that he has no answer, "...I only have my faith." Fundamentally, what this means is that the "student" acknowledges that the argument against his belief in God is valid, yet he believes in God anyways, simply because he wants to (which actually means that he doesn't really believe in God at all, since, in principle, he acknowledges that he could just as easily choose not to believe in God). This kind of faith has become increasingly popular amongst religious people in the modern world, who see it as the only answer they can give to the arguments made against religion by atheist "professors", but the answer is self-defeating because it is essentially a concession to the intellectual superiority of atheism. By claiming that their belief in God is based on nothing but "faith", they have openly surrendered the intellectual battlefield to the atheists.

If you only believe in God because of
your "faith", then your God is nothing
more than a figment of your imagination.

This mentality may be understandable with Christians (such as the author of the dialogue printed above) because many core elements of Christianity are, in any case, fundamentally irrational. However, this is not an acceptable approach within Judaism. Our belief in God is not based upon an irrational "faith"; rather it is based upon the objective historical experiences of the Jewish people. When the Jewish people stood at Mt. Sinai, they didn't believe in God just because they had "faith", their belief was based upon direct, objective knowledge. While we, today, no longer have that degree of direct knowledge, we do have the historical tradition of that experience, which (among other things) provides a rational basis for our belief in God and the Divine origin of the Torah. With that basis, we can then have faith, of the rational kind, that even when we do not understand why God does something, there must be a good reason for it.

It is only in this context that the concept of emuna peshuta - simple faith - comes into play. We trust God because we have simple faith in Him. But before we can trust him, we must first know that He exists. That initial knowledge cannot be based upon "simple faith."

This distinction is not always made clear in many seforim (classical Torah works) when they discuss emuna (belief), and in some cases, as when one comes across sources that are critical of philosophy (of which there are many), one might come away with the impression that the author is arguing in favor of an irrational faith. However (while there may be some exceptions), in almost all cases, these sources are only talking about using philosophy as a means to reinforce one's belief, and are not addressing the core basis for belief in God (a distinction which I discussed in the previous post). To my knowledge, almost all of these sources would acknowledge that, when it comes to one's basic belief in  the existence of God, this must be based upon an actual rational conviction that God exists, and not simply on an irrational "faith."

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Mitzva #1 – Belief in God

Maimonides and most other authorities consider the obligation to believe in God to be one of the six hundred and thirteen mitzvos, and understand this to be the obligation expressed in the opening sentence of the Aseres HaDibros – Ten “Commandments” – (Exodus 20:2), “I am Hashem, your God, Who took you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery.” There are, however, some authorities, such as the Halachos Gedolos (circa the 8th century), who do not include this obligation in their catalog of the 613 commandments.

It should be clear at the the outset that all opinions, whether or not they include it in their formal catalog of the mitzvos, consider belief in God to be absolutely obligatory and foundational to Judaism. Belief in God is axiomatic to Judaism and failure to believe in God puts one completely outside the bounds of Judaism. 

Nevertheless, despite its importance, there is good reason to omit the obligation to believe in God from a formal catalog of the mitzvos. The entire concept of a commandment presupposes the existence of an authority that issues commands. A commandment to believe in the existence of the authority that issued the commandment is logically impossible. So how, then, can a person be commanded to believe in God? Either he already believes, in which case the commandment is unnecessary, or he doesn't believe, in which case the commandment can have no meaningful authority or content.

It follows that the basic obligation to believe in God must exist independently of, and logically prior to, the mitzvos. This "meta-obligation", if you will, is one that is morally inherent in one's existence as a human being who is capable of recognizing the existence of His Creator and Benefactor. Being that God has created us and is the sole source of everything that we value in existence, to deny His reality is inherently immoral and no command is necessary. Being that God does exist, failure to believe in Him can mean only that one is in error, and to the degree that one is capable of correcting that error, he is morally obligated to do so. (This concept of a moral obligation existing independently of a Divine command also touches upon other important issues, such as the very nature of morality itself, but that is a topic for another time.)

This point is so basic that it raises the question of how to understand the position of those, like Maimonides, who do include the obligation to believe in God in their catalog of the commandments.

There are several answers to this question, all of which basically distinguish between the basic recognition of God's existence, which, in fact, cannot be commanded, and the mitzvah of emunah (belief) or yedias Hashem (knowing God), which can begin only after that first basic recognition has been achieved.

Essentially, the mitzvah of emunah requires us to internalize our basic recognition of God's existence into our personality. There is a great distance between intellectually recognizing a truth and making that truth an integral part of how you think and feel. The “meta-obligation” of belief in God is satisfied once we come to the intellectual recognition that God exists. This recognition must have a rational basis (not so-called “faith”, for reasons we will discuss in the next post). For the Jewish people at Sinai the knowledge of God was the result of direct experience. For us today, who have not directly experienced such an open revelation, our recognition of God must be rooted primarily in the historical traditions and experiences of the Jewish people and in our recognition of God’s hand in history and in nature. (See also my previous post, "Jewish Arguments for the Existence of God".)

It is only after we have achieved this basic recognition that the actual mitzvah of emunah comes into play. This mitzvah obligates us to take steps to reinforce and internalize our recognition of God, so that it becomes a basic part of our personality. Many sources see this as the intent of the famous verse in Deuteronomy (4:39), "And you shall know today, and take it to your heart, that Hashem is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath; there is none else." There are two stages, first you must "know" that Hashem is God, and then you must "take it to your heart."

There are a wide range of methods that can be used for this purpose. In fact, the bulk of Jewish practice is intended to help us work towards this goal. Thus, the observance of the Sabbath is intended to reinforce our belief in Creation, the various holidays reinforce our belief in God's supervision over the events of the world, prayer reinforces our belief in God's supervision over every aspect of our lives, and so on through almost everything we do as Jews. Moreover, the very act of living a life in obedience to God's will helps us internalize our belief in Him. When we refrain from a forbidden act, whether it be eating a forbidden food or speaking lashon hara, we reinforce in our minds the reality of God's existence.

However, there are also a number of methods that are uniquely suited towards reinforcing our belief in God. Many sources emphasize the importance of deeply studying the various philosophical proofs for God's existence. Others, however, see the engagement in philosophical study as potentially doing more harm than good (for reasons that go beyond the scope of this essay), and instead emphasize other techniques, such as studying the wisdom and kindness evident in the natural world, and the miraculous survival of the Jewish people through thousands of years of exile and upheaval. (Also see my previous posts, "The Role of Philosophy in Judaism" and "Why Study Jewish History? Part 3 - Strengthening Our Emunah".)

R' Elchonon Wasserman

A somewhat different, more mussar oriented, approach is given in a famous essay by Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman (d.1941) printed in Kovetz Maamarim. R' Wasserman writes that, in truth, God's existence is so self-evident that it should be clear to any rational person. Why then do so many intelligent people fail to recognize this truth? R' Wasserman answers that human beings have an extraordinary talent for self-deception, i.e. intelligence does not necessarily equate to rationality, and when we don't want to accept a truth, we are very capable of fooling ourselves into denying even the most self-evident of truths and of using our intelligence to provide apparently rational arguments for our self-serving desires.

Based on this, Rav Wasserman argues that the commandment to believe is actually a commandment to work on ourselves to subdue and rectify those natural inclinations and character flaws that cause us to deny that which should be obvious. Once we do so, belief in God's existence will come naturally as a self-evident truth.

While, to my knowledge, R' Wasserman is the first to clearly formulate this approach, it is firmly based upon earlier sources. The idea that the denial of God's existence is actually rooted in deeper character flaws is found, either explicitly or implicitly, in many earlier sources. For example, Maimonides, in his Guide for the Perplexed (3:51) writes:

...all those that have no religion, neither one based on speculation nor one received by tradition.... I consider these as irrational beings, and not as human beings; they are below mankind, but above monkeys, since they have the form and shape of man, and a mental faculty above that of the monkey.

Maimonides believed that only a fundamentally irrational person could deny this most basic of self-evident truths - the existence of God. The reason why so many of us struggle with belief in God is because, as in many other areas of life, what we are really struggling with is our natural inclination towards self-serving irrational behavior.

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Emor - Kiddush Hashem - The Mitzvah of Martyrdom

In Parshas Emor, we read (Leviticus 22:32), “You shall not desecrate My holy name, and I shall be sanctified within the children of Israel.” This is the mitzvah of kiddush Hashem, the sanctification of God’s name, which requires a Jew, under certain circumstances, to refrain from violating the laws of the Torah even at the cost of his own life. While the normal rule (which we learn from Leviticus 18:5, “You shall keep My statutes and My laws, which a man shall do and live through them”) is that the Torah does not usually require us to sacrifice our lives for the sake of the mitzvos, there are several significant exceptions. The poskim (halachic authorities) define three basic circumstances in which we are obligated to choose death over violating Torah law:

1. There are three categories of sin which a Jew may never violate, under any circumstances, even if it costs him his life: Murder, sexual immorality, and avoda zara. (Avoda zara, usually, and misleadingly, translated as idolatry, refers specifically to the worship of anything other than God Himself, and, more broadly, to any fundamentally erroneous belief about God.) Thus, not only must a person accept martyrdom rather than violate one of these laws, but he must even accept death from illness or starvation if the only way to save himself would be by committing one of these sins.
   
   
2. If a Jew is being forced, at the pain of death, to publicly violate any Jewish law for the purpose of making him violate the law, then the Jew is required to refuse to violate the law, even if it costs him his life. If however, the event is not public, or if the motivation is not to force him to violate Torah law, then he should not – and may not – sacrifice his life. (He is, however, required to sacrifice all of his material possessions, if necessary, to avoid such a violation.)
   
   
3. In a time of shmad, i.e. a government campaign against Judaism (such as what happened under the Greeks in the period before the Maccabean revolt), a Jew is required to uphold all Torah law without exception, even if he will be killed for this. This applies even in private and even for non-Biblical laws, including even Jewish customs.

There are many important lessons we can learn from this mitzvah (which we hope we will never have to put into practice). The most basic lesson of all is that as Jews we must recognize that, ultimately, what gives our lives meaning and purpose is our adherence to God’s Torah, and that we must therefore be ready and willing to sacrifice our lives in His service. This lesson is brought out by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (Horeb 615):

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch

You shall hallow by your example the Name of God among your brethren, you shall show by your example and bear witness by your deeds that the true son and true daughter of Israel hold nothing higher than God and the fulfillment of His Divine will. And you shall, if it be necessary, willingly seal this testimony with your life, in that, if it must be, you offer it up in order to preserve your loyalty towards God and to inspire such loyalty in your brethren.

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