On the Meaning of “Intimations of Elul,” or: Elul in Lithuania (Column 27)

Shlomi:
Everything is true, but I have encountered heartbreak, not hysterics, among our brethren from the Eastern communities, and not a little of it.
Bitter weeping by community elders while reciting “Lekh Eli” on Yom Kippur. Emotion that keeps building over the long journey of saying selichot for 40 days (gross). The Ashkenazim dampen a lot of it with incomprehensible selichot and the other things you described.
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The rabbi:

Allow me to be Lithuanian and not be all that impressed by those tears. The fact is that usually they don’t last much beyond the High Holidays. In your view, isn’t that itself also habit?

Hizki:
A truly Lithuanian post 🙂
You inferred what happens in the upper worlds based on spiritual dullness of the senses…
(I once saw, I don’t remember exactly where, about the difference between a Hasid and a Lithuanian when they find an error in Rashi. The Hasid places the blame on his own lack of understanding, and the Lithuanian corrects the text 🙂 )

As for the substance: “If the earlier ones were like angels, we are like…” — one of the signs of the times is “lack of sensitivity” to sins, and the coarseness of spirit that leaves no room for inner remorse.
I imagine that (like me, so too) anyone whom the month of Elul does not arouse to dread, threats and warnings of Gehenna also speak to him less.
Perhaps this is a lack of “fear of Heaven” in its simplest sense.

Another point: in yeshiva (a Hasidic one) they explained to me that Hasidism and its perspective arose for lower generations (“if the latter ones are like…”), who need different ways to bring them to awakening and repentance.
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The rabbi:
Hello Hizki.
Why do you think these things express lack of sensitivity to sins? In my opinion it is excess sensitivity. The hysterics are the lack of sensitivity to sins. I’m talking about the need to do soul-searching, not fear of judgment. What does that have to do with sensitivity?
As for “fear of Heaven,” some would call it naïveté and some would call it pure fear of Heaven. I already mentioned here the myth of the Hasid Yaavetz about the simple folk who gave their lives and did not convert during the expulsion from Spain, as opposed to the Torah scholars. And I wrote that I do not have any special appreciation for that simplicity, because in many cases it is naïveté in the usual sense (not in the sense of wholeness).
As for Hasidism, I’m already so far gone that even Hasidism really doesn’t speak to me. But as a Lithuanian, I certainly agree that it was created for people who had declined.
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Hizki:
Just on Motzaei Shabbat I learned chapter 4 of Tanya in the second book of the quartet, and I enjoyed the connection to the topic of the book very much 🙂
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The rabbi:
Thanks

Hanan:
The whole concept of ‘Elul’ is relatively new. After all, there is no such thing in the Gemara, nor in Rambam, and presumably not in the other Rishonim either.
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Yitzhak S.:
Its basis is in Kabbalah, which speaks of the “illumination of the 13 attributes of mercy”…
Though it does have a basis in Scripture, since the 40 days of receiving the second tablets are from Rosh Chodesh Elul until Yom Kippur…

A.:
I assume I’m not saying anything new in noting that, contrary to the myth, Litvaks are not emotionally cold people, and that the world of melody and devekut belongs to them as well and not only to the Hasidic world; and what you wrote about Litvaks, that unlike Hasidim they don’t know how to “simply rejoice” and that everything with them is purely intellectual — I assume that was half joke, half truth.

R. Barukh Ber, for example, was completely Lithuanian. Beyond being a Torah scholar and a learner of great stature, he was known as a ba’al menagen who composed quite a number of melodies of devekut and tunes. Here is an example of a very beautiful and moving melody [to my taste, of course] for the verse, “I sleep, but my heart is awake — the voice of my beloved knocks: open to me,” which he composed, and to the best of my knowledge it was sung for years in Hebron Yeshiva:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bN857IZaH8

P.S.

And yes, I know that in the Lithuanian yeshivot, besides songs of devekut, there are also depressive songs like “The sun has set.” That really does seem to me something very Litvak-musar-oriented that the Litvaks do not share with the Hasidim.
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The rabbi:
This is about the Lithuanian ethos. Even when they experience devekut, it’s over a vort of the Ketzot HaChoshen that really stirs emotional excitement in them.
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A.:
I still think they do have emotional devekut also in the “Hasidic” sense of melodies and dancing, like the example I brought from R. Barukh Ber.

By the way, at the Simchat Beit HaSho’eva celebrations of the Hasidim in Mea Shearim — I go every year — which have already become famous, very many Lithuanian yeshiva boys come, even though they have Simchat Beit HaSho’eva in their own yeshivot as well. They don’t come to watch the dancing Hasidim as some anthropological experience; they themselves dance with bren.

P.S.

By the way, since the topic came up: as a graduate of Lithuanian yeshivot, I’d be interested to ask you — what are the High Holiday prayers like there? Similar to the style of the prayers in our yeshivot? Very different?

I’ve had the chance to pray with Hasidim on the High Holidays, so I’ve seen several of the models that exist there, but I don’t know the style of the High Holiday prayers in the Lithuanian yeshivot.
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The rabbi:
I think it’s fairly similar.
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A.:
Thank you very much

And by the way, on the topic discussed in the post, I’ll bring a link to an article from a few years ago by Rabbi Haim Navon that you might like. He also talks about the gap you discussed between the atmosphere of dread of judgment in the past and the situation today. He sees it as a deviation from the former atmosphere, and not positively — which seems to me contrary to the opinion you expressed in the post — but it could be that there are certain points in his article with which you would דווקא identify. In any case, although I generally like Rabbi Haim Navon’s articles and his Edmund Burke-style conservatism, I didn’t identify with that particular article. Maybe you’ll find it interesting:

https://musaf-shabbat.com/2011/01/17/%D7%94%D7%99%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%94%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%90%D7%95-%D7%94%D7%A0%D7%90%D7%94%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%97%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%A0%D7%91%D7%95%D7%9F
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The rabbi:
Indeed, I disagree (and in general as well with his Burkean conservatism).

Amir:
Hello Rabbi,
The article reminds me of what we always used to hear in yeshiva at the beginning of Elul — that they tell how in the musar yeshivot in Lithuania, when the mashgiach would cry out “Elul,” everyone would immediately burst into bitter tears just at hearing that word and the dread of judgment, and similarly to what is quoted here from R. Israel Salanter zt”l. I wonder whether there are still people alive among us who studied in the musar yeshivot in Lithuania — people who should be very elderly — who can testify to this…. It could be interesting.
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The rabbi:
I assume there are such people. For testimony, it might be worth asking my friend Dr. Shlomo Tikochinsky, a researcher of Lithuanian yeshivot (and a graduate of Lithuanian yeshivot in the Land of Israel).

Tuvia:
Regarding the lack of sensitivity — see Rabbi Lichtenstein zt”l’s article in the collection ‘When He Is Near,’ in memory of Yehiel Shay Finpter hy”d

Niram Yehoshua:
I wrote a post about the matter of Judgment Day and heavenly judgment.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_PnyO1LWQWocTVzMUhKRHdKTUU/view?usp=sharing

It seems to me that you commented on it in the past.
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The rabbi:
Hello Niram.
I vaguely remember it. In any case, it joins what I said here.

Yisrael:
Although as a graduate of Chabad yeshivot the connotations are a bit different — such as “the King in the field” and all the fuss around traveling to the Rebbe, etc. — I still identified very much with it, and your article brought a smile to my face as I read it.
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The rabbi:
Careful with smiles in Elul when we are seized by hysteria (as it is said: one can learn from the flowers not to be stingy with smiles).
I mentioned the lesson from the Litvaks’ fear as opposed to the Hasidim.

G.:
Even in the Lithuanian yeshiva world they have for quite some time now — at least in the last decade — been talking much more about the joy and the great closeness of the month of Elul, and much less about fear and dread.
This has also found expression in a number of articles published in the past in Yated Ne’eman, as well as in other newspapers read by the Lithuanian-yeshivish sector.

See here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwJAdMjYRm7IQjdFSS1mMTRlb1E
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwJAdMjYRm7Ib0VlMmxqYkhSdFU
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwJAdMjYRm7IdWgwRVRBUWU3b00
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The rabbi:
Thanks for this. But these things still deal mainly with the educational and practical dimension, and it is not clear how all this relates to the essential dimension. Is there judgment on that day? Are we sealed for life or death? Is our fate decided then? If so — then what place has joy here? The sources that command rejoicing (“eat sweets…”) and even the explanation for it (“before whom are you purified”) are known and clear. But the question is how all this fits with the accepted picture of judgment. How do you expect a person to rejoice when on that very day judgment is decreed upon him and his entire household? Is this not an impossible demand (unless implicitly that person does not really believe that this is the situation)?
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G.:
True, it is very difficult to combine joy and dread. They say that only a Jew can combine joy and fear, “and rejoice with trembling”…

The joy is over the fact that the One who causes death and gives life is our Father. He knows best what is good for us. After all, even when the Holy One, blessed be He, causes death, in truth that is what is best for that person.

Once, quite by chance, I read a sentence from one of the great Hasidic masters, who said that even if he reached the heavenly court and it were decreed that he be burned and become dust under the feet of the righteous, he would rejoice to fulfill the decree of the Holy One, blessed be He.

There is also joy in the fact that the Judge Himself explains to us how to come out acquitted in His own trial, and what we must say/think/want in order to get along with Him (though it is a bit hard to rejoice, when in the end there is still the possibility of death or suffering…)

And by the way, the Vilna Gaon whom I cited speaks about joy in the very privilege of crowning the King of the world over us. The Gra rejoiced at the time of the shofar blasts, the moment of coronation.
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The rabbi:
With all respect, this is not merely a psychological difficulty. It is not serious to demand that a person rejoice on the day when his sentence is cut to death or life. Not because it is difficult, but because it is not right. When a person is about to die, he ought to be sad and not happy, even if the one killing him does so because it is the least bad thing for him (not the best). For example, do you think that when a person goes to die sanctifying God’s name, he is supposed to rejoice? In my eyes this is a detached demand. Rabbi Soloveitchik describes in his book Halakhic Man the love of life and fear of death of the halakhic man (= R. Hayyim). That seems to me much more connected to reality and much more correct.
As for the Gra, joy over the coronation is perfectly fine. The question is whether along with it judgment is also taking place. If so, then what place has joy here?! It seems absurd to me. And if you are happy because you are sure that you emerged righteous in judgment, then this is not a real judgment (because you know the result in advance).
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G.:
A. First, he is not now going to slaughter. There is a fifty-fifty chance that this year he will also win millions of dollars, finally marry off his stuck daughter, or receive loads of pleasure and abundance. The trial focuses on millions of moments and issues that will accompany him during the year, perhaps specifically upward to great heights. Not necessarily a trial of life and death, but also a trial for receiving many sweet opportunities. (Personal example: last year I was a kollel avrech, and from this coming Elul I am a rebbe for the third-year shiur in a lovely yeshiva, my son was accepted into a large yeshiva that I very much wanted and did not believe he had any chance of getting into, I wrote a new book on the festivals and Machon Yerushalayim published a set of responsa that I edited, I received a wonderful written approbation from R. Haim Kanievsky — which I had not even thought to ask for and receive, my daughter was accepted to a good seminary, and most importantly: all the children were healthy and delightful all year, learned well and were happy… And this is only a tiny fraction of the sweet things I received with Heaven’s help on Rosh Hashanah last year. And who knows what will be decreed in my case next year? Maybe many more wonderful surprises?).
B. There is no promise that a Jew will emerge righteous in his judgment. In Hazal and their commentators it is explained that there is only a general promise that the collective of Israel will emerge acquitted. Not the individual.
C. I am not speaking about what is common, but about what is ideal. True, it is very complex. Maybe not so practical, but correct in theoretical terms. No doubt, it takes a lot of mental labor to get there.
D. How does Rabbi Michael Abraham, one of the busiest people on earth, find time to correspond with so many people?
E. By the way, I remember you as a child/boy. My father prayed on Shabbatot and festivals at Netivot Olam. We lived on Hashlosha Street. I also remember you from one of the cheerful Purim parties there. Who would have believed that…
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The rabbi:
A. This is a trial in which there is a chance that you are being judged for death. And even if the chance were 10% (and not 50% as you say), nobody can or should be happy in such a case.
As for the successful year you had — fortunate are you. I wish you a continuation of this and more. But in this context I will remind you of a fine letter by Rabbi Shach zt”l about the Entebbe operation (I think it is letter 2 or 3 in one of the volumes), where it is told that he opposed the operation because it involved risking soldiers’ lives, and a doubtful success does not override a certainty (the soldiers’ lives). After the operation they came to him complaining that, look, it succeeded and the rabbi was mistaken. He answered that everything is judged according to that moment (as he is there). Before the operation there was a low chance of success and a high chance of losing soldiers, and one makes the decision according to the data of that moment. Of course even a low chance can materialize (that is what chance means). So what does it prove? That the small chance came to pass, and nothing more. Analyze that carefully.
Though I do have another pilpul on this, and perhaps I will put it in writing someday.
B. If so, then what place has joy here? A Jew is required to exult as he goes toward a significant chance of death. That is a vicious demand. Actual abuse.
C. It is not labor, for this is not only a psychological difficulty but an illogical demand (not true, not merely difficult to implement). See above.
D. Torah is found by chance. Besides, thank God, I am among the lighter typists (who cook with a second click).
E. Interesting. Perhaps this was the Purim when I was the Purim rabbi, and there I began my heresy when I spoke in my Purim Torah about how amazingly they found the word Esther in minimal skip precisely in… the Book of Esther (a skip of one letter, of course). Wonder of wonders. People (including some of the yeshiva’s rebbes) were truly offended and came to me afterward shocked by the heresy I had cast upon the sacred letter-skips on which all faith is built. All this was on Purim, and if you remember, then it was probably that Purim (I don’t think there was another one when I had a role).
Shabbat shalom and all the best. Success in everything this year and those that follow.
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G.:
A. Looking through all the books of the early authorities, like the Akedah of R. Yitzhak Arama and others, shows the abyssal difference between any life-and-death trial and the trial of Rosh Hashanah. The Akedah, for example, goes in the direction of “the judgment of sons,” which is a completely different judgment from that of all subjects. There is also the line (specifically Lithuanian… rooted in both the Bavli and the Yerushalmi) of judgment on the instant of “as he is there.” If at this moment you are good and drawing near, and if at this moment you prove that there is a need in you for God’s kingship in the world — you merit acquittal. Therefore it is difficult to define the judgment of Rosh Hashanah as an ordinary trial of probabilities and percentages. After all, in the Gemara and in the Tur and Shulchan Arukh it is ruled that one must wear white clothes, eat, and rejoice. That is surely significant!!
B. Therefore the comparison to Rabbi Shach’s words does not fit.
C. The Akedah explains at length that the very judgment of the King is a reason to celebrate. And one who recognizes this (this, I believe, is an addition of others, later ones) — that itself is a reason to merit acquittal.
D. There were many Jews over the generations who rejoiced as they went to die sanctifying God’s name. At least so they say (after all, I wasn’t there myself…).
E. Indeed, you were then the Purim rabbi. But I do not remember the topic of the letter-skips. Weak memory. What can one do..
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The rabbi:
It is over this that I weep. The fact that in the Tur and Shulchan Arukh it is ruled that one wears white and rejoices. And already in the prophet they say (to the general public, not to spiritual elites): “Eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks” — you are going to die (not sanctifying God’s name, but because of your sins). Does that sound serious to you? After all, the address here is to the public at large, not to chosen elites. Even in death sanctifying God’s name this is inapplicable, all the more so in death not for sanctifying His name. Therefore my claim is that the judgment of Rosh Hashanah is nothing but a metaphor whose purpose is to prod us to soul-searching. And thereby several additional, varied, and unconvincing pilpulim are spared, similar to my own Purim pilpulim, back when I was a child, concerning various aspects of these Days of Judgment.
Even “as he is there” does not help. At the end of the day there is still a chance of being judged to death. At most this changes the odds of success. A trial in which you are judged for life or death cannot be accompanied by rejoicing and eating rich foods.
And how does all this bear on rejecting the comparison to Rabbi Shach’s words? Even if we are judged “as we are there,” before the trial we still do not know what the outcome will be. And what does it help to say that after the trial one emerges acquitted? Those are precisely Rabbi Shach’s words.
I very much doubt (put mildly) that many Jews rejoiced as they went to die sanctifying God’s name. I would bet there was not even one such person, unless he was not sane. Some held firm, and some sanctified God’s name proudly. But joy? What place has joy here? It reminds me of the Kli Chemdah in the name of the Gerrer Rebbe (parashat Vayeshev; see link below), where he claims that one should not rejoice on Hanukkah because we did not succeed in dying sanctifying God’s name and thus missed the mitzvah. With all respect, that may be good for empty pilpulim.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwJAdMjYRm7IWHBlVk9IelZXLTQ
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G.:
The judgment of Rosh Hashanah is a metaphor? What do you mean? We are not judged for life or death? Is “Unetaneh Tokef” merely a parable? I don’t understand.
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The rabbi:
It seems to me that you understood very well (I already wrote to you that from that ancient Purim, heresy had already been cast into me). You said you had read the post of mine on which you commented. See there. “Unetaneh Tokef,” with all due respect, is one piyyut that does not testify much about the essence of the day. True, it has acquired status, but its origin is shrouded in mystery (of course, its attribution to Rabbi Amnon of Mainz is baseless, as is known, since it already appears in the Genizah; but this Rabbi Amnon is not Moses our teacher either), and I see no need to accept it and its content literally.
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G.:
Fine, leave Unetaneh Tokef aside. What about the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah 32, that on Rosh Hashanah the books of the living and the dead are open? A metaphor?
And what about this Tanchuma? “Before His host — these are Israel, who tremble and shudder at the sound of the shofar and return in repentance in order to merit acquittal on the Day of Atonement, for great is the day of the Lord and very awesome, and who can endure it? This is the Day of Atonement, on which the books of the living and the books of the dead are sealed.”
And what about: “Rabbi Kruspedai said in the name of Rabbi Yohanan: Three books are opened on Rosh Hashanah, one of the wholly righteous, one of the wholly wicked, and one of the intermediates. The wholly righteous are immediately written and sealed for life; the wholly wicked are immediately written and sealed for Gehinnom; the intermediates hang in the balance from Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur. If they merit, they are written for life; if they do not merit, they are written for death”? Is that also a metaphor?
After all, all the Rishonim explained, each in his own way, how we find wicked people still alive after Rosh Hashanah. So?
I do not believe that you disagree with Hazal.
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The rabbi:
I do not know whether I disagree with Hazal, but I do not always shrink from that, in my sins.
Rambam already wrote in his introduction to the Mishnah how we are to understand the aggadot of Hazal, and he divided people into three groups on this point (those who necessarily understand them literally belong to the group of fools). And see also all the articles printed at the beginning of vol. 1 of Ein Yaakov. Rambam also wrote in three places in his commentary to the Mishnah that there is no halakhic ruling in matters that do not pertain to practice.
And another Jew, much less important (= yours truly, the minor one), also wrote that with regard to facts there is no such thing as authority. Authority applies only to norms, that is, halakhot; there one can demand that I do X even though I think it is wrong, because of authority. But beliefs deal with facts (is there or is there not judgment in heaven on Rosh Hashanah). And with regard to facts, if I have reached a different conclusion, what good is a demand that I accept authority? At most I can move my lips and say “I believe” like the chirping of a starling.
As for the strained explanations you mentioned — those very unconvincing explanations are, among other things, what led me to the hypothesis I raised.
Let me remind you that Rambam, by force of his own reasoning, decided to disagree regarding the laws of the evil eye and the rest of demons and harmful spirits (which are halakhic laws, not aggadot irrelevant to practice), and rejected the belief in corporeality (and Onkelos as well), and rejected explicit verses that speak of God’s hand and His wrath (and not for nothing did the Raavad attack him, saying that many better than he had thought this). And the author of Havvot Ya’ir already wrote: Plato is dear and Socrates is dear, but truth is dearest of all — and even cited sources for this.
The Brisker Rav’s belief that the Messiah must come riding on a white donkey because that is what Hazal wrote is as far from me as east is from west.

The words of Hazal themselves can be metaphorical. The books of life and death — meaning the books in which our deeds are recorded, deeds that have consequences for the final judgment in the future to come. That does not mean that a judgment is currently taking place as a result of which we can actually die. And you yourself already described that the Rishonim’s answers here are strained (as also with the matter of joy).
I have already cited Rambam’s words about the approach to the aggadot of Hazal. This is not about throwing them out, but about interpreting them metaphorically. For example, Tosafot already wrote concerning what we find in the Mishnah — that one is liable to death — that the meaning is merely a rabbinic prohibition, but they wanted to emphasize its severity (again, you will say that what Tosafot are permitted is forbidden to us. And I am not of that opinion). And so too there are countless metaphorical interpretations of verses, such as God’s hand and His fury and wrath and anger, and also of Hazal, like the presence of all souls at Mount Sinai — which kindergarten children indeed interpret literally.
Only after all this will I add that in my opinion Hazal were people and could err like any person. They have authority, but they do not have prophetic powers, and they are human beings like me and you. Some of what they said came by tradition or as a halakhah to Moses from Sinai from the Holy One, blessed be He, and some came from their own reasoning. And in matters of reasoning, I see no necessity that they were right. On the contrary, I am fairly convinced that they erred not a little, for the Torah was not given to ministering angels. These things are simple and clear, and in my view almost no one truly disagrees with them apart from slogans we have grown accustomed to and ought to shed.
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G.:
Erasing dozens and dozens of sayings of Hazal on the subject of the judgment of Rosh Hashanah just because of the question of joy on Rosh Hashanah — a subject on which countless early authorities dealt — is really funny. It reminds me of the ignoramus who erased the Gemara about “camel wine” because he had a difficulty… You reached the conclusion that there is no judgment of death and life in heaven? What a sad sentence. Both you and Rambam reached conclusions to reject things? What an embarrassing statement.
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The rabbi:
Hello. Amid the clouds of confusion that envelop you, sir, just don’t forget reading comprehension (and the reading itself). As for the matter itself, we probably have very different starting points.
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G.:
I know all the material cited. But it still does not justify opening a wide-open door for every dissenter to strip the words of Hazal, for the overwhelming most part, of their plain meaning. Indeed, we live in different worlds in approach and outlook. The approach of the beit midrash versus the approach of professorship and research, according to which “everything is justiciable” and “everything is fluid.”
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The rabbi:
Here I am again forced to disagree. I was and still am one of those who sit in the beit midrash. Within the walls of academic research, I did not engage in Torah and its study. And in my opinion the beit midrash (the proper one — I know not all are such) is critical and asks questions, and sometimes also arrives at answers (like Rambam and Tosafot; so too we are allowed). There are evidently several batei midrash, but to my mind and understanding the crown of the beit midrash, with which you crowned a certain group, belongs more to me than to the beit midrash you are talking about. But apparently on this too we will remain in disagreement.
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G.:
I deliberately divided the two lines into the beit midrash versus the world of academia, although I knew that you consider yourself one of the clear inhabitants of the beit midrash… No and no. Because in the beit midrash we, unlike the Rishonim who were like angels, the great sages of the world, do not disagree with Hazal at all, ever. We all know the approach of Rambam and others (see also Rambam’s words concerning astrology, in his letter to the sages of Marseille, etc. etc.), but even so we do not disagree with Hazal nor with the Rishonim. Many thanks, and may you be inscribed and sealed for a good year, with much success.
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The rabbi:
Fine, even ex post facto of ex post facto, that too is a beit midrash. But “the beit midrash” it certainly is not. May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year, and all the best.

Yair:
As a graduate of the Gush, you surely know the joke:
At the beginning of the Elul term in the Gush, the mashgiach approaches the lectern, silence descends over the study hall, and the mashgiach cries out in a voice full of terror: September!! And everyone faints in dread.
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The rabbi:
I didn’t know it. Nice — happy laughing icon (there are no icons here. Apologetic icon).

Amir:
Just a question — does the signature at the end of the post, “May you be written and sealed for good,” indicate that no posts will be published until after Rosh Hashanah?
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The rabbi:
Absolutely not. As it is said: You won’t beat me that quickly (Yehoram Gaon). It was just a paraphrase on the content of my remarks.

Yitzhak S.:
These are the thoughts that came to me when reading Rambam’s words in the Guide of the Perplexed about Rosh Hashanah…

He writes that the reason for Rosh Hashanah is that since Yom Kippur is a few days later, a day was established so that we would awaken…
It follows from his words that the talk about “the Day of Judgment” is not relevant (apparently this is against Hazal. As for Rosh Hashanah itself, in the Torah it only says that it is “a day of blasting” — and since for Rambam the meaning of the shofar is “Awake, sleepers, from your sleep,” he concludes that it is a day of awakening and nothing more)…
Although according to him Rosh Hashanah is not really the Day of Judgment (or perhaps he took it as a metaphorical day of judgment), Yom Kippur is indeed a day of atonement… (apparently because that is written in the Torah itself, unlike the Day of Judgment on Rosh Hashanah) — but his words on Rosh Hashanah led me to explain Yom Kippur that way too…

I will only note that in my opinion many take a middle path — chiefly those who follow the way of esoteric teaching (Hasidism, Rav Kook), but not only them. There is no emphasis at all on “judgment” in the simple sense, but yes on a significant event in creation by virtue of which a person is judged… “the world returns to its source” and the like… A metaphorical explanation is given for judgment as the ability to stand before the “divine truth,” and from that standing afterward to separation, etc…. And then the emphasis is not on judgment of every detail, but on the stance in which the person stands (and for many people there is in this a rescue from childishness)…
But of course one can also take those concepts themselves as metaphors, and many probably do so…
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The rabbi:
Beautiful. I can only agree.

Dvir:
Rabbi, is it possible that Hazal acted here (and I suspect in other places too) in the manner of holy lies?
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The rabbi:
I didn’t understand what “here” means? Regarding the judgment on Rosh Hashanah? Perhaps.
I think Hazal definitely did take this approach, and perhaps it was also justified in their time. Today, it seems to me that this should be avoided, as I wrote in the post about holy lies.

Shimon:
In one of the previous comments the question was asked how you would sustain some of the sayings of Hazal, and you answered
A) that their words are not according to the plain meaning in this matter, and so your article indicates
B) that you disagree with them.
And the truth is that I did not understand your view at all on this, because I still have not found in your words even one strong argument why to take the words of Hazal out of their plain meaning or to disagree with them. I am very astonished to read the “argument” that the picture does not sound convincing to us. Obviously, it is incumbent upon you to explain why you are not convinced by it and what strangeness you found in it.
And how can one persuade by saying that “it doesn’t really sound convincing to us”? If the reader is not convinced, he does not need your article; and if he is convinced, how can you write that he is not convinced?
As for the questions about wicked people who do not die and the second day of Rosh Hashanah — indeed these are questions that need thought, but it does not seem from your words that it was on the basis of these questions that you built your theory.
I will only further note that I do not understand why you write an article on an intellectual matter in a mocking tone toward the common approach, without discussing the matter with due seriousness, which arouses [in me at least] the feeling that there is here an attempt to persuade people to agree with your view by means of ridicule, which does not convince the intellect but the heart.
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The rabbi:
Hello Shimon.
I will repeat a few of the things I wrote in the article, and perhaps that will help you find them (all in all, this article is not that long).
A. Practically, if we are honest, almost none of us tremble from fear of judgment. The metaphysical framework doesn’t really convince us. Fine, maybe this is decline of the generations.
B. There is no source for it in the Torah.
C. What judgment is taking place on the second day of Rosh Hashanah?
D. Why do we not see the mass death of the wicked after Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur? Let me remind you that Rambam writes: “immediately he dies in his wickedness.”
E. In the comments there was a stormy discussion about “Eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks,” and also about the Shulchan Arukh’s words “they wear white and rejoice,” and this during the very Days of Judgment, when our judgment is about to be sealed for life or death. Does that sound reasonable to you? Or at least a reasonable demand of normal human beings (“Rejoice when the court is judging you for life or death”)? Perhaps I have strange thinking, but to me it definitely does not sound reasonable.
One may add to this several other arguments that were not written, but here I have brought, as a service for you, only what I wrote in my remarks and you did not find.

These remarks of mine are intended to answer many who feel the difficulty as I do, and among them the few who have intellectual honesty and do not buy strained and pilpulistic excuses and do not cling to strange things just because good and wise people said them. As for this group, if one continues to sustain them with such excuses they will lose all trust — and justifiably (and I have met quite a few כאלה). Therefore I offer here an interpretation that in my humble opinion is far more reasonable, and that will leave the work of these days intact, just without the metaphysical wrapping.
I will add that this is my way in many answers and articles that seem to the conservatives among us harmful and destructive, whereas in my opinion they are constructive. They are harmful to mediocre people lacking honesty who prefer the conventional even when it is unreasonable, and beneficial to their alternatives. And each person will choose what seems right in his eyes. And that is what, in my humble opinion, I have written.

Shimon:
Thank you for the special service for me, as you put it.
I would like to argue with your conclusion, and would be glad if you would discuss the substance of the matter with me.
A. The fact that we do not tremble from fear of judgment does not seem strange to me at all, because as is known the way of the wicked prospers and many wicked people are alive and well [and this is a question in itself, see below, letter D], and usually even if one acts wickedly he will continue to live, as our eyes see.
B. I have nothing to answer to this, except that in my eyes this is not a sufficient argument to reject the words of Hazal.
C. It may be that there is no judgment on the second day, and it is only a technical custom of Rosh Hashanah, founded on doubt, just as there is no special matter of matzah and maror on the second night of Passover.
D. Even according to your line of thought, at most you can prove from this that “the wicked are immediately sealed for death” is a metaphor, but from where do you prove that the whole judgment, etc., is only a metaphor?
E. This definitely seems reasonable to me, because as I wrote in letter A, it is only natural that we should not feel the dread of judgment to such a degree in a situation of merely reasonable doubt of death.
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The rabbi:
I do not see a discussion here.
A. In practice we do not tremble. That is, the world does not really believe this. This shows that even one who does not usually admit it does in fact think this way, because that is what common sense says. That in itself is not a bad argument.
B. In my eyes it is fit to combine with the others.
C. But that does not stop everyone from engaging in pilpul regarding the judgment on the second day. Do you dare disagree with all those pilpulists? On what basis?
D. Fine, according to your view, wicked people live and righteous people die, but the awesome and terrible judgment in the midst of the day still stands in all its implications. So what is the difference between your words and mine? It is a metaphor and nothing happens as a result of these days. Rather, one must repent and examine one’s deeds. Which is exactly what I said.

To sum up, you basically agree with almost everything, only saying that it is not enough to reject the words of Hazal — and then in fact you come very close to what I am saying.
As I wrote, in my opinion all this (and other reasons that, as I said, I did not bring here) is enough either to reject the words of Hazal or to interpret them metaphorically.

Arteh Zuta:
Rabbi Michi, who is very dear to me,
I am sorry for you.
I feel that you have entered a mode in which you do an enormous number of things and just flow with them without stopping for a moment.
My advice: suspend this website for a moment.
Don’t keep running with the stream of a million answers to every question.
This is part of what the Days of Judgment can give us: a turning point.
Sorry for the personal writing.
I cannot help analyzing (analyticity!) your slide into Leibowitzianism.
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The rabbi:
Hello.
Let me begin by saying thank you for the concern and the advice (really).
It seems to me that I do things after thought. The change does not come from lack of thought, but on the contrary, from the thought that I no longer want to lock these things inside simply because it is customary to think otherwise. This is part of what led me to writing the book (the trilogy), and what you see here is actually a kind of spoiler (not in the marketing sense but in the real sense. The things are beginning to come out).
As far as I’m concerned there is no Leibowitzianism or non-Leibowitzianism. What seems right to me in him is right, and what not, not. It doesn’t bother me that it agrees with Leibowitz, and it doesn’t bother me that it goes against him. I’ve already written my criticism of him quite a few times, but there is definitely no small amount of importance and truth in what he says.
But I will try to use these days for further thought.

The tradition of Rosh Hashanah as the Day of Judgment is not an invention of Hazal, and already existed in the ancient Near East thousands of years earlier: “In a Hittite document from the second millennium BCE: ‘For the storm god a great New Year festival of heaven and earth is held. All the gods assemble and enter the house of the storm god; every god who has grief in his heart should banish it from his heart. They said (=decided) life for the king… regarding the crop they decided…’ In the Neo-Babylonian period Nebuchadnezzar says: ‘In Ubshukinna, where on New Year’s Day the king of heaven and earth… takes his place… the gods of heaven and earth praise him in awe… and there they decree the fate of life.’” (Olam HaTanakh, Numbers 29). The Torah did not need to say this because it was obvious. However, regarding the simplistic question whether God indeed judges on one single day — not necessarily. But just as on Passover we recall the Exodus as a mitzvah, despite mentioning it every day and in various other mitzvot, so a person reminds himself on the Day of Remembrance of judgment, though he is potentially judged every day. The idea is not metaphysical but psychological — the arousal of coronation and judgment helps raise a person to heights by virtue of which he will be worthy to merit acquittal in judgment — in general. The judgment is not external to the person; it is itself a karmic product (from karma) of his spiritual level. One can attain an especially high level in this respect on the day of coronation, for to the extent that he crowns and surrenders himself to God, the significance of servitude to God is engraved in him for all his days..
It may be that this works only positively: if you do not feel a significant elevation of spirit in a way you will not forget all year (“Happy is the man who will not forget You” — from the Rosh Hashanah prayers), then indeed it is not the Day of Judgment for you. The judgment on your level that day will be exactly like on every day, and you missed the opportunity for an illumination that could change your life. People, as the masters of musar testify, changed from one extreme to the other following the Elul journey and the High Holy Days. Is it not reasonable that such a change would also alter a person’s spiritual and therefore physical judgment? And as R. Hayyim Vital wrote in the name of the Ari, Sha’ar HaKavanot, discourse 1 for Rosh Hashanah: “A person upon whom abundant weeping falls of itself in these days during prayer is an indication that he is being judged at that moment above” (and “above” is nothing but “below,” for the person’s very request for judgment is itself the judgment, ibid.)… “And this is ‘Remember us for life, O King who desires life,’ and all this is in the secret of the souls within us, and afterward we pray to draw life from there to our bodies,” ibid.

In sum: Passover is one day meant to engrave in the Jew the idea of freedom, and the mention of the Exodus every day is only a reactivation of the memory of the Exodus awakened on the Seder night (this is a novelty! It is not a memory of an event from thousands of years ago, but of an event from a few months ago that represented it in ritual). Similarly, Rosh Hashanah is one day meant to engrave in the Jew the idea of crowning God and surrendering to His service, and the service of God (and soul-searching) of every day is only a reactivation of the memory of God’s coronation awakened on Rosh Hashanah. Whoever takes these days seriously — as they do in the holy yeshivot — merits a great momentum in the service of God, and through this it is undoubtedly reasonable that he succeeds in arousing God to change His decree (“The purpose of the blast is to draw God’s attention,” Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus — The Book of Ritual and Ethics, p. 294)

בס”ד 26 Elul 5778

To Gil — greetings,

To establish that Rosh Hashanah is a day of judgment, you did not need to go as far as the Hittites and Babylonians. We said it this morning in the “Psalm of the Day” (Psalms 81): “Blow the shofar at the new moon, at the covering of the moon on our festival day. For it is a statute for Israel, a judgment of the God of Jacob.” But the example brought in your discussion is an example of judgment for good: “He appointed it as a testimony in Joseph, when he went forth over the land of Egypt,” where the judgment is a “window of opportunity” for the one judged “to get out of the pit” in which he is stuck.

In Scripture, the teru’ah is usually a cry of rejoicing, and so too in our psalm: “Sing aloud to God our strength; shout joyfully to the God of Jacob. Raise a song and sound the timbrel, the pleasant lyre with the harp.” How does one welcome a new king? With sour and fallen faces? In a mournful voice? A king is welcomed with song, with joy that “something new is beginning.”

Obviously, the joy must be accompanied by much self-criticism and self-reflection: are we properly ready for the mission the king will lay upon us? The checking and the improvements are done before the “inspection,” so as to stand ready for the order.

With blessing, S.Z. Levinger

In the section on the trumpets (Numbers 10) it is explained that the tekiah is meant to assemble the people, whereas the teru’ah signals setting out on the journey and going out to war — situations in which one must summon courage. When we sound the teru’ah, there will be fulfilled in us: “and you shall be remembered before the Lord your God, and you shall be saved from your enemies.” The feeling that God remembers us instills in us strength to fight our enemies, the physical and the spiritual, and out of inner strength we charge toward the goal and win.

With blessing, S.Z. Levinger

בס”ד 27 Elul 5778

Perhaps the three descriptions in the Gemara of standing before God “like bnei maron” reflect three types of standing. Some stand before God “like sheep,” their eyes dependent on the shepherd, bleating to him in request for mercy and help. Some stand as “the troops of the house of David,” standing and waiting for the command. And some ascend the narrow ascent of Beit-Horon, and cannot think too much. Their whole gaze is focused on the narrow path and on the one going before them, lest they Heaven forbid make one wrong step that might, God forbid, send them down the slippery slope — all are beloved, all are clear, and all complement one another.

May it be God’s will that we have “a year of good standing” before God, each person in his own way, as S.Z. Levinger blesses.

In paragraph 3, line 1:
Obviously, the joy must be accompanied by much self-criticism and inner reflection…

In the comment “Tekiah for gathering and Teru’ah for courage,” line 2:
… “and you shall be saved from your enemies.” …

In the comment “‘Like bnei maron’ — three standings,” lines 3–4:
… and they cannot think too much. Their whole gaze is focused on the narrow path and on the one going before them, lest they Heaven forbid make one wrong step that might…

Gil, what you wrote here does not contradict my words in any way. You can dedicate this day to soul-searching (like freedom on Passover), and certainly that has consequences for your life. Where did I write otherwise? The question is whether this has a metaphysical basis. Does something happen in heaven that is supposed to cause this? And can I not do this on any other day of the year?
The sources from ancient beliefs seem to me evidence to the contrary.

‘בס”ד 27 Rahamim 5778

To RMDA — greetings,

The verse states explicitly: “Blow the shofar at the new moon, at the covering of the moon on our festival day, for it is a statute for Israel, a judgment of the God of Jacob” (Psalms 81); and in the Torah’s very calling of the day “the day of remembrance” it is explained that all creatures and their deeds are remembered before God on this day, and therefore there is a need on the tenth of the month for a “Day of Atonement” to correct the flaws found on the “day of remembrance.”

The recoil of people in our time from the concept of “judgment” stems from the criminal connotation, where only suspects in criminal offenses stand trial in order to be punished. A normative person does not come to “criminal trial.” But that is not how God judges, for He examines not only a person’s sins, but first and foremost his good deeds, and “the measure of good is greater than the measure of punishment.”

It is more fitting to define the judgment as the test of an educator examining the achievements and failures of his student, encouraging him for his achievements and efforts, and rebuking him and sometimes punishing him for his failures — not in order to remove him from the path, but to bring him to correction and improvement. He will not let the student off on anything; on the contrary, he will “stand over his head” until he realizes his abilities.

The fact that there is meticulous attention to every deed of a person causes him to feel that every act of his matters in God’s eyes, and the more a person will grieve over every failure — so will he rejoice with every success. And this joy will give him the strength to face all his difficulties with freshness.

May it be God’s will that there be fulfilled in us, “God has judged me and has also seen my affliction,” and may He judge our case for healing!

With blessing, S.Z. Levinger

You claimed that you do not accept the whole idea of Judgment Day, because there is no mention of it in the Torah, we do not see mass death, and nobody feels terror in these days.
Would you also claim that the coronation of God does not really belong to this day? After all, there is no explicit mention of that in the Torah either, only teachings of Hazal.
According to your view, what is the essence of Rosh Hashanah? How do you understand “a memorial of blasting” or “a day of blasting”?

“A day of blasting” is blowing the shofar. The reasons for the verse are not my area. Hazal told us that this is the coronation of the Holy One, blessed be He, and that is fine from my point of view because there is no factual claim here. But the claim that this is the Day of Judgment is indeed a factual claim, and about that I wonder how they know it. It does not look to me like teachings of Hazal. I do not know a clear source for it (not even an exposition). It is some kind of tradition whose origin I do not know.
“A memorial of blasting” has no halakhic significance, aside from the Yerushalmi’s approach regarding Rosh Hashanah that falls on Shabbat. I proposed a meaning for this in the article that appears on the site: https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%AA%D7%94-%D7%A9%D7%9C-%D7%AA%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A2%D7%AA-%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%A8

According to Rashi’s view, “a memorial of blasting” does have significance in terms of reciting Zikhronot. See the above article.

The plain peshat in Tanakh, by the way, is neither coronation nor anything of the sort. It is a day of blasting so that God will remember us in heaven (that is, look at us from above — as in the precise biblical meaning of z-kh-r. And as in: “The children of Israel sighed from the labor and cried out… and their cry rose up… and God saw the children of Israel and God knew.” He sits in heaven occupied with His affairs and hears a sound — a cry [over trouble], like the cry to the king in the case of the widow and David, or one of the sons of the prophets crying to Elisha, or the woman whose son had been eaten up crying to Jehoram, “Save, O king!” — reaches Him from below, and He decides to check what it is [as in Sodom: “The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah has come to Me… I will go down now and see”], and He looks down and sees and then knows what they cried out to Him about. And with the Israelites, He then sent Moses).

As it says: “It shall be for you a day of blasting”… and also “it shall be for you a memorial of blasting.” And as in the book of Numbers: “And when you go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresses you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets, and you shall be remembered before the Lord your God, and you shall be saved from your enemies… And on your days of gladness, and on your appointed seasons… you shall sound the trumpets over your burnt offerings and over… and they shall be to you for a remembrance before the Lord your God.” It’s just not clear what needs to be remembered — what salvation, or whatever the devil knows.

בס”ד 19 Elul 5780

Divine remembrance in Scripture has a clear meaning: divine visitation that brings intervention. Thus: “And God remembered Noah and every living thing that was with him, and God made a wind pass over the earth and the waters subsided.” And so in Egypt, God hears the groaning of the children of Israel and “God remembered His covenant.” And so in Numbers 10: “When you go to war in your land against the enemy who oppresses you, and you sound an alarm with the trumpets, you shall be remembered before the Lord your God, and you shall be saved from your enemies.” And thus Samson prays: “Remember me, I pray, O God, only this once.” And thus Hannah prays: “Remember me, and do not forget Your maidservant, and give Your maidservant male offspring,” and many more like these.

The shofar blast, like the trumpet blast, arouses divine remembrance in a request for intervention and salvation; and attached to the “remembrance” of the “first day of the month” is “the Day of Atonement” on the tenth of the month — atonements are the completion of salvation from sin. So too it is explained in Psalms 81: “Blow the shofar at the new moon, at the covering of the moon on our festival day, for it is a statute for Israel, a judgment of the God of Jacob.”

With blessing, S.Z.

Z-kh-r alternates with s-kh-l or sh-kh-l (lamed and resh alternate as liquid letters LMNR), meaning “look” or “contemplate” (our word sekhel comes from the biblical meaning of contemplation. And indeed it says, “Write this as a remembrance in a book”… and in Deuteronomy, “Remember what Amalek did to you.” That is, look and contemplate what Amalek did to you. And indeed we look in the Torah scroll [in which the copy of that original “remembrance in a book” of Moses was written] when we fulfill this mitzvah. And sh-kh-kh, by the way, has the same letters [as z-kh-r]. “Remember the covenant and do not turn to the evil inclination.” And it alternates also with s-g-r. Closing the eyes. In Tanakh, forgetting means not looking — shutting one’s eyes. And that also fits with male versus female. The female is open and the male is closed. David prays several times that God not forget him, next to a verse saying that He should hear his cry. He prays that God not ignore [hide His eyes from] the sound of the cry that rises from under the king’s hall floor [from the earth], but rather look down at him and watch over him (sh-g-kh also alternates with z-kh-r: “The Lord looked down from heaven; He saw all mankind. From the place of His dwelling He watched over all the inhabitants of the earth”). As it says: “How long, O Lord, will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?”

The interesting thing is that the Days of Remembrance and Atonement, on which a person pleads through his blasts to be remembered for good by his God, come precisely near the Feast of Ingathering, close to the peak of the farmer’s success, as he gathers into his home the fruit of his yearly labor.

Precisely at the peak of success, a person is called upon to remember his God who gave him the power to prosper, and precisely then a person is examined and called to gather in all his deeds done during the “working year,” and decide about them: what is fit to be brought home, and what should be “thrown into the recycling bin” 🙂

With blessing, S.Z.

This comment was supposed to come after the one below it, and of course I meant that the root sh-kh-kh alternates with the root s-g-r (and also s-kh-r), only that surprisingly it also alternates with its opposite, z-kh-r. And that one can explain why z-kh-r is therefore the opposite of n-k-b (that is, it represents both opening the eyes and closing). I found hundreds of such root alternations in Tanakh (classified into dozens of families of roots), by means of which one can explain a great many things in our Tanakh that today are not understood because of the different reality back then and the development of our language since then (language development = development of consciousness = development of the perception of reality = distancing from understanding the ancient perception of reality). I have a theory that each family of alternating roots evolved from one primordial and primitive proto-root, and that they are all different manifestations of the same primordial essence pointed to by that original root. And this is a phenomenon not necessarily in Hebrew alone, but in Proto-Semitic (the language from which all the Semitic languages developed), meaning the families are supposed to include all the roots in all the Semitic languages (including all the various Canaanite ones like Ugaritic).

And perhaps this is the plain meaning of “Blow the shofar at the new moon, at the covering of the moon on our festival day”: the blasting at the “month,” at the beginning of the month, awakens a person to prepare himself, purify himself, and be worthy in anticipation of “the festival of the Lord,” the festival of gathering in his deeds.

With blessing, S.Z.

Additional roots in the same family: s-kh-r, s-q-r, sh-q-r. To lie about the covenant is the opposite of turning to or remembering the covenant — of not seeing it (it was written on some monument or scroll). The false prophets were those who blinded the eyes of the people. The daughters of Israel paint their eyes — they cause people to survey them, to look at them.

To Emanuel — greetings,

According to your method (which R. Samson Raphael Hirsch dealt with extensively), one might say that zakhar is like sakhar, a dam that concentrates and gathers the river waters that flow. So too remembrance concentrates and gathers all the deeds that flowed in free flow, and by means of remembrance they are examined and directed into a new channel.

With blessing, S.Z.

Emanuel,
If you’ve found hundreds that can be classified into several dozens, that’s already interesting. But the examples you brought are very weak. What great many things are not understood in Tanakh? Not many, and I find it hard to believe that tricks like these would make a significant contribution (though I’d be happy to read). Every root dictionary lists all the meanings and shades of meaning of each root, and many roots have one identical or nearly identical meaning, and arranging all the chaos seems to me impossible (Malbim tried, and others before and after him; in my eyes most of it was ad hoc, forced, and strange. But as I said, I’d truly be happy to read). Letter substitutions are used when there are exceptional occurrences of incomprehensible words, so one aligns them with something familiar (cherev netushah? cherev letushah. nishkato? lishkato), but central words in the language establish their own place. Not for nothing, when Rabbi Breuer edited R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, he reduced the font in Hirsch’s etymological pilpul sections (and so too should be done with the cunning verbal acrobatics of Rabbi Moshe Shapira zt”l). Zikaron means remembrance, period. Zakhar and nekevah because zakhar means source and strength. Therefore ayil in Hebrew means strength, and in Aramaic dikhra means male. I also didn’t understand the orthographic connection between hishgiach (looked, peered) and zakhar; if you replace sh with z and g with kh and r with h you can scramble half the language. By the way, in general I think the attempt to milk significant insights out of language is futile, because those people were really not great geniuses, and the connections one finds this way are usually trivial. I’ve heard many who tried, and maybe you really are the one who will reveal hidden depths. If you can prove the theory, you will be called a great craftsman and earn much reward, and as I said I’d gladly read if there’s something ready.

S.Z., if anything then sakhar is like sagar (and that really does fit and is correct — both a rare word, and the sound of a soft gimmel really is close to a soft kaf, and the sound of a hard gimmel close to a hard kaf, and the contexts in Tanakh fit. Yemenites pronounce kuf like gimmel. The equivalent of Hebrew gimmel is the Latin c).

And by the way, I remember that Yehoshua Blau has an article where he shows that things that seem to us very similar, like cherev and lehakhriv (if I’m not mistaken, that’s one of his examples), actually come originally from completely different places, and that to establish such things (as opposed to preachers who usually point only to what suits them and do not bother to build a systematic picture) one needs a truly comprehensive knowledge of the Semitic languages (I don’t have the faintest idea about them; I’m just parroting).

I’ll note in passing, and sorry for the flood, that in my opinion le’atzem in the pi’el stem is the opposite of etzem, which means appearance, as in “like the appearance of the heavens in purity,” and from there it came specifically to mean closing the eyes. The pi’el stem serves in many (very many) cases as a reversal, like dashen / ledashen, shoresh / lesharesh, and in the language of the grammarians “ikkar ve-ikkur.” “Mesakrot eynayim,” in keeping with “stretched-forth necks,” probably most simply refers to the girls’ own eyes, not those of others. I don’t know of such a thing as “to turn to the covenant.”

I read the article, and if I understood correctly, you explain there that the remembrance we are commanded about is to remember our standing before God, and that this is the work of crowning God over us.

But the following baraita in the Gemara seems to imply otherwise:
Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 16a
“And say before Me on Rosh Hashanah Kingship, Remembrances, and Shofarot. Kingship — so that you may crown Me over you; Remembrances — so that your remembrance may rise before Me for good; and through what? Through the shofar.”

And so also in Sifrei:
Sifrei Bamidbar, Beha’alotekha, sec. 77
“If so, why did the Sages see fit to say Kingship first and afterward Remembrances and Shofarot? Rather: first crown Him over you, and afterward ask mercy from before Him so that you may be remembered before Him — and through what? Through the shofar of freedom.”

And in the Tosefta, Rosh Hashanah, too.

It seems here that the remembrance is God’s, not ours. How can this be explained if not by the dimension of Judgment Day, where His remembrance of us “comes before Him for good” and constitutes a “request for mercy”?

I don’t see the difference. Of course “the Day of Remembrance” is the remembrance by which the Holy One, blessed be He, remembers. But the purpose of the day is to create in us the awareness that He remembers and that we are remembered before Him.

The zakhar / shagach alternation is a relatively strong alternation (sakhar / sagar more so), but in order for you to see this you need to see the full theory, and that is really doctoral-work territory. And the proof I brought is in fact a strong proof. But it is known that in the humanities there are no proofs like in physics or mathematics. There, the quality of the proof is often determined by ego: the one who publishes thinks it is good, and the one who reads (peer review) thinks it is weak. That is human nature. In any case, give it a little time to sink into your consciousness. It is quite clear that in Tanakh, in many cases, “remember” is not like our “remember,” though in some cases it is. That indicates that they used the word differently from us, in a more primordial meaning, which in some cases had the manifestation of our “remember,” and in other cases had other manifestations with a different meaning. The strength of a theory in the humanities lies in its explanatory power. And I understand Tanakh much better since I understood that “remember” means “to look.” Now you do the work and go through Tanakh again with this insight and see whether you understand the verses better. Your feeling will decide the matter. You can’t really criticize what I’m saying without seeing how I arrived at it. You wrote: “What great many things are not understood in Tanakh? Not many.” What are you talking about? Are you Haredi? Have you never studied Tanakh? Tanakh is very difficult to understand. Biblical Hebrew is really a different language from ours. And what makes it even harder to understand are precisely the lines of similarity and the fact that our Hebrew is an evolutionary development of it. One has to understand how they perceived the world then, and they perceived it very differently from us.

What you call scrambling the language is exactly my goal: to show how many roots developed from a few. That is the meaning of understanding and explanation everywhere — taking many phenomena and inferring or building them from a small number of basic phenomena (laws of nature) that themselves cannot be explained (postulates). To achieve unity. To turn multiplicity into one. So your claim against me is really a claim in my favor. By the way, I use more substitutions than just the groups by articulation. Also the dentals (ṭz/q/k/t). Also the liquid letters (l/m/n/r). Also Hebrew-Aramaic substitutions (d-z, tz-t-ayin, sh-t), which happens in all languages (these are lateral substitutions). And also typographic substitutions (r-d, b-k). And I also have a scale for the strength of substitutions. In any case, for shagach / zakhar there is another example: “looking through the windows, peering through the lattice.”
And by the way, your explanation of zakhar was not just weak — it was not an explanation at all. What connection is there between the root zakhar and strength? I tried to make an analogy between the word nekevah, which comes from the root n-k-b (a female has an opening), and why zakhar — who not only lacks an opening but is the opposite — is connected to the root zakhar. I have a weaker alternation: zakhar / dakar, that the sexual organ is like a sword (dakar, dagger; cherev in Ugaritic is also a long dagger). Then there is another alternation: zakhar / shegel (which in Tanakh is an indelicate term, unlike in our language — apparently because of the visual similarity of intercourse to stabbing with a sword), and another alternation: zakhar / degel / dekel. Degel in Tanakh is something high, apparently something that can be seen from afar (“distinguished among ten thousand,” “and his banner/look over me was love,” though “the banner of the camp of Judah” is not clear).
Apparently ayil is called that because of its horns, which are like stabbing weapons.

And by the way, yet another alternation of this root: sh-kh-r, because a drunk’s eyes are closed, unlike a sober person (p-kh-kh / p-kh-ḥ), whose eyes are open. And similarly p-kh-ḥ / k-kh. To rebuke is to open the eyes of the one rebuked. To rebuke is to show.

I don’t have time right now, but later today I’ll answer all the rest of your messages. By the way, cherev alternates with ch-r-f and ch-r-m. Cherev means drying up. A sword draws blood out of a person and “dries him up.” And the edge of the sword is called chorpah. And to ban is to destroy. Every alternation here explains some verses in Tanakh, and I no longer have space to write it all here.

That’s not quite precise either. There is ‘atzam in the qal stem, and it comes with the same meaning of closing the eyes. In the pi’el stem it means closing the eyes of others: “and He closed your eyes, the prophets, and He covered the heads of the seers.” And the meaning of the root ‘atzam is not appearance. The word “appearance” is simply missing there (“and like the appearance of the heavens in purity,” as in several places in Ezekiel where the word “appearance” is missing, like at the beginning there). ‘Etzem is something else. But this is not the place to do it here. Just see Da’at Mikra on Ecclesiastes on the verse “like the bones in the womb of her who is full.”

Where is there ‘atzam in the qal stem in the sense of closing the eyes? Enlighten me, please. “And He closed your eyes — the prophets” means that the prophets are the watchers who see and watch and warn of troubles, and God כביכול closed their eyes, as in “His watchmen are blind, all of them know nothing; they are all dumb dogs, unable to bark.” I don’t have Da’at Mikra. Also in Lamentations, “their appearance was redder than pearls” is translated “their appearance was more ruddy than glittering stones” (for after all bone is white, and also you don’t see it). I’ll turn to your long response above later.

I thought I’d postpone this till later, but I found it buzzing in my head and disturbing my thoughts, so I’ll respond now.
For me, grammar is an exemplary scientific discipline, and for me it was also the first time in my life that I encountered a theory that with a small number of rules imposes nearly perfect order over the whole Tanakh — in vowels, in dagesh, in inflections. It may sound strange, but for me admiration for and attraction to science actually took shape through learning grammar (Mikhlol, Tzachot, and part of the Rikmah), when I saw the power of a systematic structure that effortlessly sews together masses of occurrences. Completely different from yeshiva learning in the early stages, where one is mainly training in techniques and everything is still messy, local, and accidental. In cantillation there are even fewer rules and even fewer exceptions, but there it is less impressive. Most grammar books (Rikmah, Tzachot, Mikhlol) are in fact mostly occupied with syntax rules and biblical exceptions and proofs, but the grammatical rules themselves are few, simple, and solid as a foundation stone. To treat grammar (and by extension linguistics and comparative linguistics) as part of the “nonsense sciences,” in terms of the rigor of its proofs and the power of its conclusions, is itself nonsense in my eyes, and you certainly can’t accuse me of that. The best example in my eyes is that after Hayyuj and Ibn Janach developed the theory of triliteral roots and all the weak forms, R. Yosef Kimhi came in Sefer HaGalui and effortlessly shredded the grammatical errors in Mahberet Menahem, who had held the old system, and everyone can see it.

I learned Tanakh with Ibn Ezra and Radak (where they exist), and I know it not badly; allow me to assume that not less well than you. Though in retrospect I regret very much the effort wasted in vain (even though initially what led me to study Tanakh and grammar was mainly a strong fondness for the poetry of Spain’s Golden Age, which is hard to feel without the allusions and phrases popping up in one’s head. Tanakh as such, on its own, never especially interested me, and for me it is a kind of literature, nothing more, and I am not looking to derive fundamental insights from it. Back when I was in first-year shiur, I had a friend who studied Bible and archaeology, and I told him in long email exchanges of Og-like proportions that the Tanakh is a candy that has been sucked dry and there is nothing to look for there, and after laying out his arguments he threw back at me: but you yourself have studied such-and-such and know such-and-such. Still, as above.) I don’t know about you, but the Hebrew inside me is basically biblical Hebrew as already interpreted by the classical grammarians and commentators, and Tanakh as my Hebrew home port is for the most part very understandable to me.

Your general tendency, presumably, I know not from today. And after all, you don’t think you invented this tendency, nor the method you use, but rather that you are proposing a specific theory within a broader family of theories. I expressed my conclusion about the general tendency (which one might call burrowing into the “basic” meaning of words and from it building the meaning of verses, where the burrowing includes heavy reliance on substitutions of similar letters — and not, as I think should be done, precisely the reverse). Many have tried, much I have read, and I am ready and willing to read your doctoral dissertation too if you write it, and I promise also to make constructive comments without the polemical tone I use here as a souvenir of past discussions. But yes, for me the requirement is systematicity and comprehensive order, including false positives, and not flashes of sparks collected together. If I manage to learn from you something ordered like that, you will be a crown on my head. And with this I’ll wrap up this topic, since I have no strength to get into trench warfare over every detail, and there’s no point, because the method, as you pointed out, is judged by its unifying power and the number of epicycles. If you’ve managed to build something comprehensive, ordered, and convincing, I’ll be the first to marvel and cheer you on.
[There need not be an etymological link between zakhar and strength in order to argue that this was the basic meaning of the root in the sense of male and female, and there is no necessity at all that male and female are opposites in terms of their literal meaning. If the proof from Aramaic doesn’t convince you, then not; it does convince me, but that’s not important to me, and I brought it only as a small curiosity against myself.]

A. You were right that there is in the qal stem “one who shuts his eyes from seeing evil.” I still don’t think it’s accidental that closing the eyes specifically comes in the language of ‘atzimah, which also has a sense of appearance (the appearance of the heavens, admu etzem — though one can interpret it as body or essence), and we don’t say “I shut the pot with a lid.” But indeed I thought it existed only in the pi’el stem, and I was mistaken.
B. I interpreted the verse about the prophets for no reason, while you brought it only in order to parallel “closed” and “covered” by others. I was writing on hot coals and didn’t notice.

A. My whole speech about grammar was unnecessary, because you hadn’t aimed any arrow at it. I was writing on hot coals and not paying enough attention, and I apologize. A bit in my defense: the grammarians also dealt with etymology and syntax and interpretation; with them everything was mixed together, so it is also perceived by me somewhat as one unit.

בס”ד 19 Elul 5780

To “MRA” — greetings,

Remembering can be in the sense of springing up, a leap of impressions from the past into the consciousness of the present, as the ram leaps. The problem with such jerky springing-up is that it is not always effective, and the impressions of the past do not always leap up at the right time; more than once they bring embarrassment and confusion.

Preferable, in my humble opinion, is remembering that is in the sense of a “dam,” which indeed, as you noted, parallels “close,” since the dam stops and gathers the flow of water — except that the “dam” not only closes and keeps the water, but also opens an opening for a more efficient flow of the water that has been collected.

With blessing, S.Z.

As you wrote, I have nothing against linguistics (it is a serious science, though I wouldn’t say exemplary. An exemplary science is only one of the natural sciences). By the way, linguistics, musicology, and in principle philosophy too are, as far as I remember at the moment, the serious sciences among the humanities. Though in principle every field there can be scientific (that is, with experiment and prediction), its seriousness depends on the explanatory power of the theories proposed there and on the level of persuasion among the scholars as a whole. In practice, it seems to me that at least today this doesn’t happen. My criticism is mainly directed at the people who populate that faculty, whose ego plays a central role in the claims there and in their acceptance or non-acceptance. It seems that sensation and/or the promotion of various agendas stand at the center of activity there.

I, by the way, learned all my Tanakh through Da’at Mikra. I wouldn’t even know about the books of the early grammarians were it not for that. Today they teach Hebrew grammar in high school, and the additions and modifications for biblical Hebrew grammar are a simple matter. No one disputes the reliability and seriousness of those grammarians (R. Yonah Ibn Janach, Menahem ben Saruq [whom people know from Rashi on the Torah], R. Judah Ibn Balaam, Ibn Hayyuj, and R. Saadia Gaon), nor of Ibn Ezra and Radak, nor of R. D.Z. Hoffmann and Malbim. But with respect to modern Bible scholars and linguists, I am terribly suspicious. I study their claims, but I am not impressed by what is or is not accepted in one circle of scholars or another. I am convinced only by what sounds true to me in what they say, not by some university fashion or another.

By the way, regarding the explanatory power of substitutions, I suggest you look at the example of zakhar with sakhal. I suggest you read my comment here about why the meaning of zikhron teru’ah and yom teru’ah on Rosh Hashanah. I think it is a successful explanation (true), though not complete.

Memory, in abstraction, is making present in consciousness, and therefore resembles understanding; but memory concerns things previously known, whereas understanding concerns new things. This similarity emerges from the known meanings of the words and their contexts of occurrence, and is known even without the substitution. Forgetting is the opposite of memory, but sometimes the verb is used to describe identical behavior even if from somewhat different motives (“and he will deal with you according to your deeds,” as it says), and more generally for any abandonment of something that one once had. This is the entirely standard interpretation, and the free substitution (z = sh + r = h) actually broadens the meaning too much and abandons the main difference, namely that zakhar and shakhakh refer to something that existed in the past, whereas sakhal refers to novelties.
There are three kinds of substitutions. One is a substitution like zakhar-sakhal that uses the known meanings of the words and says, look, this fits the substitution. The second is a substitution in the context of discovery, which gives a lead for thinking about the meaning of a word, and then one tests the idea as one tests any other interpretive proposal. The third is a substitution that functions in the context of justification, meaning that if not for the substitution we would not accept the proposed meaning, but because of the substitution we absorb it.
By the way, these same three types also exist in explanations of an amora’s (usually) “according to his view,” and in my opinion the criticism of both methods (substitutions and “according to his view”) is really similar — they are curiosities that are sometimes smooth and apt (type one), but they do not provide a complete picture; usually they do not propose a new idea (type two) but direct attention to something shared that was mostly already known, and excessive use of them is a recipe for problems (type three). The substitutions that I know and am persuaded by are usually substitutions of one letter, in a small number of occurrences, where also the sound of the whole word sounds very close and the meaning is really close. Maybe if you can find a path of intermediate fossils, it would seem more plausible to me. Just as there are also apt “according to his view” cases where, as Rabbi Zevin wrote somewhere, it suffices only to point to the two laws for us to feel the connecting thread. Perhaps there is some lack of conceptual subtlety on my part in accepting only solid things (that is, simple substitutions), but the more one expands the flexibility of the method, the more risks there are of distortions and forced explanations. As is known, with a sufficiently high polynomial you can fit any set of points (the words where the substitution works), especially if one is permitted ceremoniously to ignore a set that doesn’t look good (words where the substitution is irrelevant). Which of the above three types, in your view, is the zakhar-sakhal substitution?

Zakhar is seeing. Its manifestation in our Hebrew, as you said, is seeing in the intellect — contemplation — gazing, but of things within our consciousness. There are occurrences of zakhor in Tanakh that clearly mean “pay attention.” Sakhal is actual seeing with the eyes, and sekhel I do not know exactly what it means — it is also seeing with the mind’s eye, only I don’t know exactly why they use it and not zakhar. In any case, there should be — and in many cases there is (and I also believe in all cases there is) — a continuum of substitution-strength from one-letter substitutions to three-letter substitutions (and accordingly there is also a continuum of substitution type — point of articulation, LMNR, dentals, typographic). In interpretation I pointed to the concept to which the root points.

Some of my substitutions are of the second type and some of the third. Sometimes I guess a substitution and see if it explains something. Sometimes I don’t understand something and look for a substitution that will explain it. Not the first type: I start from the assumption that the meaning of the word is very different from that in our Hebrew, and then I search for the meaning according to the way it is used in Tanakh. Only afterward do I ask myself how, evolutionarily, our meaning developed out of the more primordial ancient meaning.

Zakhar-sakhal is clearly of the third type at the first stage, but also of the second type in later stages. You see that Tanakh in countless cases does not use the root zakhar in the sense it has in our Hebrew, but in the sense of looking. After I thought about it, I thought of the substitution (I looked for it), and afterward I saw that it also explains other verses in Tanakh that I didn’t even know I hadn’t understood. It is like any good theory that comes to explain an unclear phenomenon and in the end explains additional phenomena that we didn’t even feel the need to explain (we notice that in fact we never understood them, we just suppressed that). The fact that an explanation contains more — explains more — than what we built it to contain (the phenomenon it came to explain) is one of the clear signs of its truth.

I don’t know whether sakhal belongs to novelties, and I need to think about that. There is sakhal that also means contemplation and paying attention. “Happy is he who considers the poor; in the day of evil the Lord will deliver him” — that is someone who does not hide his eyes from the poor. There is sakhal connected to success: “David prospered in all his ways” (like “then you shall not prosper in your ways,” if your way prospers). I still need to think how the substitution explains that — a true and good explanation, not a vort. But I’m in the middle of that work. I am sure of the zakhar-sakhal substitution, but I still don’t know how to explain all the occurrences of sekhel by means of it.

Fine. For my own part, I am not paralyzed by academic fear of saying nonsense (distortions and forced explanations or things that are not true). I test every substitution-idea: does it explain something? I do indeed come with standards from physics and mathematics (that is my background) for explanation. I hate vorts — forced things. But precisely for that reason I am not afraid of risks. This isn’t driving a car. So you’ll say nonsense. What will happen? Are you afraid people will laugh at you? The main thing is that you exercise your own critical sense and don’t deceive yourself. One has to develop a love of truth.

בס”ד 21 Elul 5780

To Emanuel — greetings,

You rightly noted “and David prospered in all his ways” in the sense of “succeeded.” One may say that understanding (like remembering) is the establishment of the thing. When knowledge becomes clarified in its reason and rationale and in its boundaries, and attains clear conceptualization — then it endures and becomes fixed in a person’s consciousness.

And so too “understanding” in the sense of “success,” which brings the thing into long-term existence. And similarly on the negative side: folly, lack of understanding and confusion, bring frustration — the nullifying of counsel.

And on the positive side: zakhar is bound up with zohar, tzohar, and tzachar. When things are clear and bright, they have firm and stable existence in human consciousness. And tzohar leads to tzehalah, joy, when “a person’s wisdom lights up his face.”

With blessing, S.Z.

Even milk has an aspect of transformation, for the materials in the mother’s body are transformed into milk that nourishes the child. There is in milk a side of change, but also a side of bonding, of connection between generations, creating a cord and a companionship that continue the chain of generations.

The long-term preservation of milk is created by turning it into butter, from the root ch-m-a, which in Aramaic means “saw.” “Seeing” is the enduring of the thing, as Ramban says on “And God saw the light, that it was good” — that He decreed existence for it; and as in the language of the Sages: “I find the words of Admon convincing.”

I accidentally inserted this comment in the wrong place, so it is not clear at all what it refers to. I ask, if possible, that the owner of the eraser come and erase it promptly.

Even “thinking” has a meaning of connection, and thus “the skillfully woven band of the ephod” is the girdle that connects, fastening the ephod. Thought, which defines things and concepts, is the basis for conveying ideas that connect one person to another.

And the end of action is first in thought — thought connects the planning in the present to the execution in the future.

With blessing, S.Z.

“Thinking” is also in the sense of “hew” and “carve,” the ability to define concepts.

Even in teru’ah there is a double meaning. There is in it breaking: “the earth is utterly shattered,” and there is in it the connection of “beloved companions.”

And the one depends on the other. As long as a person is full of pride and full self-confidence, he cannot open himself to the “other.” But when something cracks in the sense of self-completion, the way is paved for longing and yearning for the completion that comes through connection with one’s fellow.

Therefore the shofar that breaks is also the one that improves.

With the blessing “May it be a year of loving openness,” S.Z.

Emanuel,
It seems the distance is smaller than I thought. After you described the tendency, the loves and hates, the background, and several other things you wrote, it appears that we are probably in rather similar places — and also that it is time to shorten. Indeed, understanding is everything you said, and no one disputes that roots expand in meaning so that language can encompass more matters. Radak wrote a sophisticated Sefer HaShorashim (and I think I’m one of fifteen masochists in the generation who read it all), and there, root by root, he goes through all its meanings and where possible tries to unify several meanings under one. And if it doesn’t go smoothly enough, then one says that a root has several meanings or several shades. Look there at the root s-k-l, how he carefully broadens the meanings (and in substitutions he makes very minimal use throughout the book). Listing the meanings of a root and pointing out — where it is simple and comfortable — what unifies them are things I entirely join in (though I do not engage in innovating there. I produce knowledge only at the spout of the kettle that I deal with day to day, and in the rest I eat from the fruit of sages wiser and more industrious than I). If you aim to write a book of root-roots, you could build it on Radak’s, just as the Beit Yosef chose to build on the Tur (Menahem is too scattered; Ibn Janach is basically an unpolished Radak, since Radak in both the Mikhlol and the Shorashim plundered all his words and added deletions and polishing). And don’t forget to find me and sell me a copy when it’s ready.

Does all this stem from your view of providence?
I do not agree that nobody feels tension and anxiety toward Judgment Day. It is like in the post you wrote about prayer, that everyone reads pamphlets during prayer. We probably live in two different worlds.

It is worth seeing in this matter the words of Meiri, which are somewhat similar to the rabbi’s opinion:

Beit HaBechirah (Meiri), tractate Rosh Hashanah 16b
Although every single day it is fitting for a person to examine his deeds and return from his evil way, as the Sages said (Avot 2:10), “Repent one day before your death,” nevertheless at this time, that is, Rosh Hashanah, it is fitting for him to awaken himself all the more. The Sages said by way of metaphor that three books are opened on Rosh Hashanah — for the wicked, the righteous, and the intermediate — meaning that each and every one is judged according to his deeds, as we explained in the Mishnah, and he should be aroused to examine his deeds and return from the sins in his hand. And one who is lax about repentance at this time has no share in the God of Israel, for all year long arousal is not so common, and even the Attribute of Justice despairs of him and waits for him until this time. And this, in my opinion, is what they said: the heavenly court does not enter into judgment until the earthly court sanctifies the new month.