Q&A: My Power and the Strength of My Hand
My Power and the Strength of My Hand
Question
I wanted to consult the Rabbi about a lesson I’m supposed to give on the portion of Eikev. Since this involves things that are very close to the Rabbi’s areas of interest, I thought perhaps the Rabbi could send me sources, other directions for thinking about it, and maybe even sharpen the ideas themselves.
I’m writing in outline form, since the Rabbi is much more at home in these topics than I am. Forgive me if what follows comes out insufficiently clear.
I’m supposed to give a lesson on Sabbath, the portion of Eikev.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the matter of “my power and the strength of my hand.” In the next verse it doesn’t say that your power and the strength of your hand did not produce wealth; rather, the wealth really was produced by you, except that one must remember that God is the one who gives you the power to produce wealth.
There are two directions one can fall into here.
The classic approach warns us against saying “my power and the strength of my hand.” That leads to arrogance, etc., etc.
On the other hand, the thought that we have no power and no strength of hand leads to passivity somewhat connected to the Rabbi’s last column. We’ll sit in synagogues and study halls and God will help.
Looking from the other side of the barricade raises something similar—
the atheist outlook really led to both of these things—
first to modernity. The modern sciences are based on the assumption that yes we can. Only after the separation between metaphysics and physics was made could people begin to formulate scientific definitions with which the world could be developed in a meaningful way. But the separation of physics from metaphysics brings heretical thoughts in its wake, because if one can define the whole world without metaphysics, then who needs God? “My power and the strength of my hand,” and not mystical forces, are what will make the world turn.
Afterward it led to postmodernity. It says that in fact we have no ability to know anything. Not out of the thought that all these forces must come from somewhere else see the Rabbi’s lectures on “If there were no watchmaker” — who implements the laws of nature? but rather out of man’s insignificance. Perhaps this begins from the thought that we are basically developed apes created by accident, so who knows what is true and what is not? And who knows whether the modern condition has any advantage over the ancient one? See “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” which argues this point at length.
[This connects very strongly to leftism in many respects—the claim that one cannot make claims; the claim that there is no moral standard that allows one to define one culture as preferable to another; the claim that all one can aspire to is equality of outcomes and not of rights which is even more connected to the Rabbi’s last column; and a host of other destructive claims that want to destroy the Western world. My feeling is that here in Israel, “fortunately,” we are too occupied with terror and a war of survival for the left to descend to the depths of the pit that leftism wants to dig. In the U.S. things look different. There, the upper classes, free of worries, can afford to go on deepening the pit they are digging—educating toward an aspiration for communism, bizarre claims about inequality as noted—of outcome, not of action—in the style that there is no reason why the fact that one person advances technology and another paints in his house for his own enjoyment should allow the former to be richer than the latter, and so on.]
What I’m trying to argue is that we have a tendency to focus on the first side—the flight from the arrogance of “my power and the strength of my hand” a flight from heretical modern thinking. Today there is also a need to contend with the other side—to say “my power and the strength of my hand,” on condition that “and you shall remember the Lord your God, for He is the one who gives you power to produce wealth” a struggle against postmodern thinking, no less heretical.
What does the Rabbi say about this? Which sources would be worth studying in order to sharpen the arguments?
Thank you very, very much.
I hope I haven’t overestimated things. It’s just that I have a lot to discuss with the Rabbi…
Only goodness and kindness
Answer
The well-known source is the Derashot HaRan, who explains the verse this way. But I don’t have sources on the matter, since I don’t generally deal in sources for things that are obvious by reasoning and in intellectual/philosophical sources generally.
Still, one can broaden the discussion regarding human actions in general: is the Holy One, blessed be He, responsible for them, or is the human being himself? On that, it is worth seeing Rabbeinu Chananel on Chagigah 5a “there are those swept away without judgment” — for example, a person who killed his fellow. Something similar appears in Or HaChaim on the Torah regarding Joseph being thrown into the pit; he writes the same thing there—look carefully.
Seemingly against this stand the words of the Talmud in Makkot 10 about the Holy One arranging for them to arrive at the same inn, which would apparently prove that everything comes from above. But that is not correct, because there it is speaking about an unintentional act, not about an act done out of a person’s own decision.
Similarly, one should explain Nachmanides on the Torah in the section about conspiring witnesses: if they convicted the defendant, apparently the Holy One caused it, because in truth he was guilty. There too it is speaking about an erroneous conviction, not an intentional one.
As for the end of your remarks, I’ll only note that I oppose evaluating ideas through their consequences. The view of “my power and the strength of my hand,” or its opposite, should be clarified on its own merits—whether it is true or not—and not according to the troubles caused by holding it passivity or heresy, etc..
All the best, and good luck,
Discussion on Answer
First of all, thanks for the updates. I’m glad things are progressing, and I hope you continue that way. By the way, Oshra Koren had an argument with me on the radio following my comments about women, and protested vigorously. It was evident that she has no idea what talmudic scholarship is, and no ability to assess talmudic scholarship. My feeling really was that this debate was especially miserable because my interlocutors didn’t understand what I was talking about.
Hello again,
First of all, thank you for the quick and detailed email.
I’ll respond briefly to the Rabbi’s last remark—my intention was not that I choose my values according to the possible consequences that may come out. My intention was that the Torah in our portion told me to think certain things, and I’m trying to think about what the purpose of the command to think that way is.
In the end I’m shifting the lesson in a different direction. The end of the portion distinguishes between the Land of Israel, “a land that the eyes of the Lord your God are upon,” and Egypt—but today, thanks to “my power and the strength of my hand,” we are in fact living in Egypt. According to this, the meaning of “And it shall come to pass, if you surely listen” is seemingly very different from what it once was. Even if we argue that the intention is the economy in general, today we are no longer different from Egypt. And apparently the Torah juxtaposed the distinction between Egypt and the Land of Israel to the section of “And it shall come to pass, if you surely listen” in order to emphasize the meaning of the section. And see the controversy around the drought fasts that took place seven years ago….
But that’s not what I came for this time.
I’m preparing a lesson on the issues of adding to the commandments and subtracting from them. Rashba wrote in Rosh Hashanah 16 that if the Sages determine that a commandment should be performed or that one should refrain from performing it, there is no prohibition of adding to or subtracting from the commandments, because this is the mandate given to them in the verse “and you shall do according to all that they instruct you.”
Already there is an interesting point here: we have two commandments that deal with operating the system and the proper relation to the code.
The Turei Even raised several difficulties against him. One interesting question is: how can it be that there is a prohibition that the Sages can simply tell us to violate? Fine, to refrain from fulfilling a commandment by passive omission—but adding commandments is forbidden, until the Sages tell us that it is permitted?
My initial answer is that there really is a relationship here between two meta-commandments. One commandment says: do not invent additional commandments, and do not nullify existing commandments. Another commandment tells the Sages that this is their role.
It occurred to me that the principle the Rabbi likes to cite in the name of Kovetz Shiurim in the name of Ramchal may affect the issue. As is known, the principle says that in every transgression there are two problems: 1. the act itself that you ate poison, damaged the upper worlds, or something of that sort; 2. the rebellion against the Holy One, blessed be He.
It seems to me that Radbaz formulated something like what I’m about to say with respect to rabbinic doubt being treated leniently. People ask: if there is a commandment of “and you shall do according to all that they instruct you,” then in every rabbinic commandment there is a Torah prohibition—if so, its doubt should be treated stringently! There are several famous answers to this, but if my memory serves me, Radbaz formulates that the prohibition of “and you shall do” does not refer to the act itself that the Sages instructed about; rather, its intention is only that one not rebel against their words. If there were a problem in the act itself, the Holy One would have prohibited it. If so, the Torah prohibition here is only not to rebel from this one can suggest several continuations, and I don’t remember his wording. Either: every Torah-level doubt is treated stringently only because of the “poison” side, not because of the rebellion side, or something along those lines.
I want to suggest that something similar happens with “do not add.”
To say that there is a commandment in four compartments of tefillin, but the fifth one is “poison,” seems unreasonable. What seems more reasonable is that there is a prohibition against rebelling and against refusing to accept the system.
Minchat Chinukh 454 asks what the initial thought would be that one gets lashes for adding to the commandments—he is warned and told: what you are doing is not part of the commandment. So now what? If he says: right, I’m just doing something foolish—then he himself said he’s not adding! And if he says: false, certainly this is part of God’s commandment—then either he is coerced by his own thought that we are mistaken in defining the commandment, or he is insane and doesn’t relate to us. In both those situations he certainly should not get lashes.
Apparently the essential nature of adding to the commandments is rebellion against the halakhic system itself. The claim that I know better—that is the problem. Since the Holy One defined the Sages as part of the system that produces the Torah, if the Sages tell us to do things differently, they are part of the system, so there is no rebellion against the system here, and therefore there is no prohibition.
And don’t object from Maimonides Laws of Rebels 2:9, who wrote that even the Sages are subject to the prohibition of “do not add” if they establish their enactments as if they were Torah law. That’s because they too are bound to the system. If they exceed their mandate and distort the systems, that too is adding to the commandments. It is incumbent on them to define the Torah, and even to say not to fulfill a commandment or to fulfill it several times one hundred shofar blasts, but they too are forbidden to mix the categories.
I’d be happy to hear the Rabbi’s opinion on these ideas.
Only goodness and kindness
I went to a wedding and came back, and the ideas became a bit sharper for me—
Commandments that are meta-commandments by nature define for us the boundaries of fulfilling the other commandments.
A person who fulfills commandment X in a way that detracts from it has done two things:
1. He did not fulfill the commandment in full in the category of commandment X he reached only X' and not full X.
2. He violated “do not subtract.”
If we distinguish between the defect and the rebellion, the defect will always be in the world of the category of commandment X. The meaning of “do not subtract” will be characterized only by rebellion, not by defect.
If we accept what is said in the Sifrei—someone put on tefillin with 3 passages.
There is a problem that he did not put on tefillin, or that he put on defective tefillin, etc. In other words, the defect remains in the category of the commandment of tefillin.
It is hard to identify a defect in “do not subtract.” The defect is in the relevant commandment in our case—tefillin. The meaning of “do not subtract” is only a meaning of rebellion.
Hope this is clear.
Thank you.
Hello B., I don’t have time right now to get into the details. In general, the Turei Even’s question never gets off the ground, and there is no need to look for solutions. If the Torah itself says that the Sages are exempt from adding to the commandments, then what is the problem? The mouth that prohibited is the mouth that permitted. Tosafot there on 4b, however, famously disagrees with Rashba, and this is not the place. I believe that this Turei Even is the source of the pilpul about whether the Sages can subtract from the commandment of “do not subtract” and thus solve the problem. And Maimonides also requires discussion, because in Laws of Rebels he writes that if a religious court enacts something and does not inform the public that it is rabbinic law, they and/or the public violate adding to the commandments. Now one must ask: what is the status of an ordinary person who adds and announces that this is his own addition—has he violated adding to the commandments? It doesn’t seem reasonable, but if not, then again there is no difference between the religious court and an ordinary person, contrary to Rashba.
As for uprooting something from the Torah by positive action, the medieval authorities already wrote in several places that when the hour requires it, this can also be done by positive action Raavad in Tamim De’im, and the medieval authorities on killing an informer at the end of Bava Kamma, and more.
There is room to discuss your innovation that “do not subtract” has no essence, only rebellion and obedience. In Derashot HaRan he explicitly writes against this, because he asks how a rebellious elder who knows that the religious court is mistaken is obligated to obey them and stupefy his soul. His answer is that deviating from their words also stupefies the soul. One can, however, distinguish between stupefaction of the soul and the essence of the transgression, but this is not the place.
As for all the meta-commandments, I wrote in my article on the fourth root of Maimonides that there is something different about them. It is a principle similar to yours, and I’m sending you the article:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwJAdMjYRm7IUlVsc25qXzczLWc
All the best, and good luck.
Hello Rabbi,
First, I’ll update the Rabbi a bit—
Thank God, I found a few things to occupy myself with this year.
I teach an advanced program for women. The program is made up of two parts: one is family purity, with the goal that they will be able to provide answers to women in that area, and the second is less defined. That’s where I came in. The definition I gave it is understanding the connection between conceptual analysis and Jewish law. In truth, my inner goal, which I already revealed to them, is that they should understand the Rabbi’s article and the columns that followed it, which explained why women’s Jewish law study programs are destined to fail. The problem lies in the fact that they do not have the 5–8 years of analytical study that most yeshiva boys receive before they begin entering what is called “Jewish law.” Even there the situation is not always brilliant, but at least within yeshivot and kollels people usually know how to distinguish between someone who rules from the Mishnah Berurah and someone who can issue a genuine halakhic ruling. I teach analytical foundations and show how those foundations affect the discussions of the halakhic decisors in practical Jewish law, so that they understand the difference between their study of family purity, where they’ll be able to answer the FAQ, and analytical study that leads to true greatness.
Part of my goal is that afterward, instead of continuing to another program where they read Mishnah Berurah and are tested on the laws of Sabbath, they will understand that this is not what will turn them into halakhic decisors, and in all their ways they will achieve real success.
At the moment, the women are saying that they don’t see any chance of becoming real halakhic decisors. I’m not under pressure that they specifically become decisors, so from my perspective that’s a success, at least on level A—the first stage is that they understand what halakhic ruling actually is. As we saw in the controversy around the Rabbi’s article, that is no small matter!
The second project I’m working on is the “Morenu” project of Eretz Hemdah. The amusing thing is that specifically there I’m trying to push more toward analytical study, while others are pushing the learning in the direction of studying later halakhic authorities. I try not to skip steps, and always to maintain the connection between the primary Talmudic passage, a bit of analysis, and only afterward to arrive at Jewish law.
I’m directing this to the Rabbi also because I know the Rabbi is connected to many students male and female who can go onto our site and download the source sheets. I think this allows laymen or yeshiva graduates whose time is not in their own hands a more successful yeshiva-style learning experience than most of the programs I’ve seen. I hope the Rabbi will take a look and derive satisfaction.
(We are currently reworking the first sheets; we’re constantly learning how to improve. I think the later sheets are more successful than the first ones, etc.).