Intellect and Emotion, Lesson 4

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know if you can go that far. I’m bringing this up just to sharpen the point, because it is a possibility. Maybe he did not fulfill the commandment of faith for the same reason that he didn’t fulfill the other commandments—because even the inquiry he engaged in was not for its own sake. Yes, fine, so in any case, you can’t really say—if you are commanded to engage in inquiry in order to arrive at faith, then obviously that command does not presuppose faith. But the other commands do presuppose faith. Why? Maybe this command presupposes faith in the sense that it presupposes some kind of basic faith in the command itself? No. And I said, once again, let’s say not. I’m just trying to sharpen the point. Let’s say the command does not presuppose faith. It commands you to investigate in order to arrive at faith. Now you need to investigate, and whatever comes out will come out. Right now you know nothing; you are a tabula rasa. Okay? Just to sharpen the issue—it doesn’t matter at the moment what exactly the definition of this command is. There is a concern that it is really something else entirely. There is a certain heading in the Book of Commandments saying that this is not one commandment; it is a heading in the Book of Commandments, that this is the basic norm. “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt”—that is how they open it. Just as the lawbook of the State of Israel would begin: all the laws legislated by the Knesset are binding on every citizen of Israel. That ought to have been Law Number One in the statute book—at least if I were writing it. Okay? Now clearly that itself is not a law. It’s not a law. If someone violates that statement, has he violated the law? No—he simply does not accept the whole system. But on the other hand, clearly this has to be the clause that opens the lawbook. That is how you construct a lawbook in a systematic and reasonable way. So too in the Book of Commandments, which for Maimonides is the lawbook: he builds it systematically, and he begins with there being a positive commandment to know that there is a First Existent. And that does not mean this is really a commandment in the ordinary sense of a commandment. Fine, never mind. He also counts things that are not commands. We talked about this once—for example impurity: that one who touches a creeping thing becomes impure, one who touches a corpse becomes impure—according to Maimonides this is a positive commandment, commandments 156 and 157, the commandments of impurity. What does that mean? Maimonides writes there that there is no command in this at all. There is certainly no commandment to become impure, and there is also no prohibition against becoming impure. It is only a definition of your status as impure. Meaning, if you touch it, know that halakhically you are impure, and that has consequences: you may not enter the Temple, you may not eat consecrated food—but all those consequences are separate commandments. There is a separate command that says an impure person may not enter the Temple, that an impure person may not eat consecrated food, and besides that there is a commandment that one who touches a corpse is defined as impure. A definition only. What does that mean? It means that for Maimonides the Book of Commandments is the lawbook. In other words, clearly such a law must be written in the lawbook. We are just used to calling them commandments, so it is called the Book of Commandments, but really what it means is the book of the Torah’s fundamental laws, the lawbook. Not all laws are commandments. Commandments. Okay? So the first law that appears in the lawbook is also “I am the Lord your God.” So that too appears there not because it is a commandment in some sense, but because that is how you build a lawbook: it is clause number one in the lawbook. Fine, so that is not relevant to our issue. In any case, the claim is that maybe one can command an emotion. But even if so, that means commanding the actions that are supposed to bring me to the desired emotion—not commanding the emotion itself, not commanding the emotion itself.

Now it is true that here too there is room for at least two definitions, maybe even more. Three, actually—there is already some way out—but maybe even more. One possibility is to say that the commandment is about the emotion. But clearly not about a spontaneous arousal of emotion. Rather, the commandment is to make sure that you have the emotion; do what is needed so that you will have the emotion. On the assumption that you can control the emotions within you. Okay? Maybe not with certainty, but at least you can try. You have some influence over it. A second possibility is to say: no, the commandment is not about the emotion; the commandment is about the actions. Even though it is clear that the actions are not desirable in and of themselves—or at least it is likely, I don’t know if clear, but likely not—the goal is the emotion. But since the emotion is not in my hands, then on the halakhic level it makes sense that the command, the content of the command, is about the actions, even though the goal that the command seeks to attain is the emotion. Fine, but the command is a command about actions. One can also say that the goal is the actions themselves. For example, in the context of—if we define the commandment of faith the way I said earlier, then there is logic in saying that the goal is not faith; the goal is to formulate a worldview. That is the goal. The correct worldview is faith, but okay, if you didn’t get there then you didn’t get there. But the goal is that you reflect on your path and decide, decide what your path is.

If that were the command, one would expect the command to be “examine faith,” not “believe.” In any case, that makes positive commandment number one hard to interpret that way. Why? If we understand it as a means, then it makes sense: the command is to believe, and the means of getting there is however one can get there. Ah, that is the first formulation. I’m talking about the second formulation, which says that there is a commandment about the action that brings one to faith; that in any case leads to what you are saying. Right. Actually I gave the example of—or both of them, as someone noted earlier, that perhaps the commandment is about both together: both the actions and arriving at them. Rabbi Soloveitchik makes some very powerful analytical distinction, although I think he invented it, even though people always think it is some ancient Brisker distinction; in my opinion I don’t think it appears before him. It seems to me. Namely, there is the fulfillment of the commandment and there is the act of the commandment. Yes—those of you who know Brisker terminology, if you say Rabbi Soloveitchik’s term, what I just said, they will immediately tell you that the act of the commandment is the actions, and the fulfillment of the commandment is the emotion that is created afterward. To me that is a problematic formulation, and really rather devoid of content, but I won’t get into that now. So that is one possibility—to say that both of these things are required in one way or another. And I said that procreation is an example, because there too there are opinions that say that indeed the commandment is to make the effort, and you must keep trying all the time until you succeed. One of the implications—and I don’t remember seeing anyone say this—one implication would be that if you tried your whole life and never stopped because you never succeeded, then you fulfilled it. Because really the commandment is the trying; it’s only that the definition of when you stop trying is when you succeed. But really the commandment is the effort. So if I tried, and truly I never stopped as long as I had no right to stop, then I fulfilled it. I didn’t say—I don’t know anyone who says such a thing. I do know people who say that the commandment is the effort. But I don’t know people who rule—I don’t know, one would have to search more—who say that you even fulfill it without reaching the result. And there are those who say no: the commandment is the result, and the act is only an instrument of the commandment. There are those who say that the act is the commandment itself. There are those who say that the act is not; it is only an instrument of the commandment, while the commandment in the end is only the result—even though it is not in your hands.

Now again, the tension is clear. It is clear that the goal is the result, not the act. The Master of the Universe wants there to be children. But teleological logic—purpose-oriented logic—says that the commandment is the result: that there be children. But normative logic says that the commandment is about the actions, because the result is not in my hands. The commandment is about the actions because that is what is required of me, and in the simple sense a commandment is what is required of me. What is required of me is the actions. You cannot require results from me; you can require me to perform the actions until I reach the result. You cannot require otherwise. Fine. So the question is how I understand what a commandment is. Is a commandment the setting of goals, or is a commandment the instruction telling me what to do? The question is whether I am willing to accept this kind of commandment.

So let us try to get a bit into emotional commandments and see how this works. First example—this completely undercuts the very concept of commandment. What? The very desire—after all, I think there is no disagreement among the decisors. Suppose someone wanted to honor his father, and every time he handed him a cup to drink it fell, every time he brought him a chair his father fell. He did not succeed in fulfilling it. So he wanted to—so what does it mean that he has…? That is a dispute in the Talmud. He did not succeed. It is a dispute in the Talmud, Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish, whether one under duress is considered as though he did it, or not considered as though he did it. There are those who hold—we do not rule this way in Jewish law, true—but there are those who hold that one under duress is considered as though he did it. Meaning, if you were coerced and did not do it—in the realm of prohibitions this is well known, “and to the young woman you shall do nothing,” if you acted under duress you are exempt from punishment for a prohibition you transgressed. What happens with positive commandments that you were prevented from doing under duress? There is an opinion in the Talmud that says one under duress is considered as though he did it. What does that mean? That he is exempt from trying again? Yes, in the simple sense, yes. Now there are decisors who want to argue—that is one set of disputes—that you cannot say this about commandments; they say it only about conditions. Originally the dispute concerns fulfillment of a condition. Someone says, “This is your bill of divorce if I do not come within twelve months,” “if I come within twelve months,” and he was prevented and did not come. There is an opinion that says that if he was prevented and did not come, it is considered as though he came—but only as to the question whether he fulfilled the condition or not. But you cannot turn that into a general principle that one under duress is considered as though he did it. Fine, discussions. And earlier I also cited the Ben Ish Chai, who says it as practical Jewish law, meaning that it really helps. What does “as practical Jewish law” mean? He says that they fulfilled the commandment of tefillin. No, “as practical Jewish law” means that suppose I come to such a Jew in the afternoon, and then I reveal this to him—I teach him that he made a mistake in fulfilling the commandment of tefillin and that it was invalid for him. No—you could say it is not. Again, that is the same question as before. If I say that one under duress is literally considered as though he did it, then he would not need to put them on. No, it is the same question as before. It could be that this is not called duress if you can put them on now. If you were under duress—and what? Now it became duress. So what? But if now you can put them on, then you were not under duress regarding not putting them on. If you were under duress regarding not putting them on, then it is as if you did it. But here you were not under duress regarding not putting them on—put them on in the afternoon.

As we explained on another occasion, there is the Agudah concerning houses in walled cities. Houses in walled cities can be redeemed within twelve months. Now somebody postponed the redemption; he decided that on the last day of the year he would come redeem the house. Fine? He arrived on the last day and suddenly got stuck; there was a traffic jam on the way and he could not make it. That was it. Nightfall—finished. Now the question is whether such a thing is called duress. If he was under duress all year, then yes, then he can redeem it. But if he postponed and postponed and postponed, and on the last day he was under duress, this is somewhat related to putting oneself into a state of duress, which we spoke about earlier. The question is whether such a thing is called duress. Or the Nimukei Yosef brings this with regard to Minchah. There is the well-known Rabbi Chaim, the contradiction between the Nimukei Yosef and the Agudah. There is a contradiction between medieval authorities (Rishonim) here, and one must resolve it. In any case, the Nimukei Yosef discusses what happens when you postponed Minchah, the Minchah prayer. You did not pray, and then night arrived, and then you were under duress. In the last few minutes you wanted to pray, and you were prevented. The question is whether you can make it up. Are you considered under duress, or are you not considered under duress, because you were negligent since you should not have postponed it in the first place? But make-up prayer applies also to one who was negligent, doesn’t it? Only if he did not refrain with total brazenness. Here he postponed it, but this time it is not as though… As I remember from the Talmud, make-up prayer is for someone who could not pray. Make-up prayer excludes only one who deliberately refrained entirely, not someone who took a risk and postponed it. Entirely deliberately? What is “took a risk”? He entirely deliberately refrained. He too deliberately took a risk and postponed the matter. No, the question is whether such a thing is called entirely deliberate refraining, or whether such a thing is called not entirely deliberate refraining but merely taking a risk. And that is exactly the question. In the end it turns out that you only had two hours to put on tefillin, not three. And in those two hours you were negligent. In the third hour you were under duress. What does that have to do with it? But in those two hours—which were the only hours in which you could put them on—you were negligent. Or to recite the Shema or pray Minchah, it makes no difference. How did I get to this? The dispute of the Nimukei Yosef. Yes, no, that is where I got to, but I do not remember where I got to it from. And that is exactly it—you started opening a new issue with the preacher, you started something new. Not with the commandments? No, it was something else. I started with the commandments; I don’t remember.

Anyway, regarding the commandments, I began some lecture on Hoshana Rabbah, I think, in the synagogue. So I began with the commandment “and you shall rejoice in your festival,” where there—our sages expound that one of the reasons one does not marry on the intermediate festival days is because of “and you shall rejoice in your festival”—and not in your wife. Now the plain reading of “and you shall rejoice in your festival” is that the festival is the time of the joy, the timing of the joy. You need to rejoice—when? During the festival. The festival is the time when one must rejoice. But the midrashic reading reads it differently: that the festival is the cause of the joy, not the time at which you must rejoice. You must rejoice in your festival—that means the festival must be the thing that makes you rejoice, and not your wife. Therefore, if the reading is like the plain sense of “and you shall rejoice in your festival,” namely the timing of the joy, then what is the problem with marrying a woman on the festival? On the contrary—specifically marry a woman on the festival, because you need to make sure that you are happy on the festival. Rather, what the sages say in the midrashic reading is that the “in your festival” is not placed on the axis of time. It is not the time at which you have to make sure you are joyful, but rather it is the cause that is supposed to gladden you. In that you are supposed to rejoice, and not in something else—in the festival and not in a woman. What kind of joy is that? If you tell me to rejoice—what is the point? Rejoice in the festival. And if the festival doesn’t make me happy? If you tell me, rejoice in the festival—okay, I’ll drink wine, I’ll dance, I’ll make sure I become happy. That is what makes me happy; the festival does not make me happy. What am I supposed to do now? There is a commandment to rejoice in the festival. This changes the whole commandment of “and you shall rejoice in your festival”; one has to understand that. This midrashic reading does not just affect the question of why one may not marry on the festival; it tells us that people do not properly understand “and you shall rejoice in your festival.” “And you shall rejoice in your festival” is supposed to be joy whose cause, or ground of the joy—what are you rejoicing in? In the festival. That is the commandment; that is the definition of the commandment. Not that one must rejoice in something else—say, I married a woman during the festival. Today people already have all kinds of conceptual investigations: I married a woman during the festival and I rejoiced. Did I violate the prohibition against marrying on the festival but still fulfill the commandment of rejoicing on the festival? Did I fulfill a commandment that came through a transgression? Or not? Or did I fulfill only the commandment of rejoicing on the festival? What I am claiming now is that I did not fulfill the commandment of rejoicing on the festival. Because the commandment of rejoicing on the festival is not the plain meaning; rather there is an exposition saying that one may not marry a woman. That exposition also determines the contours of the commandment, not only the prohibition against marrying a woman. The contour of the commandment is to rejoice in the festival, and if I did not rejoice in the festival but in a woman, then I did not fulfill the commandment. The cause of the joy is part of the commandment of joy itself. Okay?

And this brings me to a question raised by Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner. He says—I’ll read you from what I have here in the book. I discuss commandments of the heart a bit in the book on the Platonic character of Jewish law, of Zionism. So Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner asks here: “It is a commandment upon every person to love each and every one of Israel as himself, as it says, ‘And you shall love your fellow as yourself.’ Therefore one must speak in his praise and be protective of his property as he is protective of his own property and desires his own honor; and one who gains honor through the disgrace of his fellow has no share in the world to come.” “The love of the convert who came and entered under the wings of the Divine Presence is two positive commandments.” These are two adjacent laws, Laws of Character Traits, chapter 6 law 3—that is what I just read, and now law 4: “The love of the convert who came and entered under the wings of the Divine Presence is two positive commandments: one because he is included among one’s fellows, and one because he is a convert. And the Torah said, ‘And you shall love the convert.’ He commanded regarding love of the convert just as He commanded regarding love of Himself,” yes, as it says, “And you shall love the Lord your God.” “Himself” means the Holy One Himself. “The Holy One Himself loves converts, as it says, ‘And He loves the convert.’” These are two commandments: a commandment to love every Jew, and a commandment to love the convert.

Now the question is why Maimonides counts this as two commandments. After all, one is included in the other. One could say that the commandment is to love the convert more than oneself, more than a person loves himself. Like love of God, like love of Himself—but he said that means love of God. Maybe that means: your fellow you must love like yourself, and a convert like God? So that is more. And who says one must love God more than oneself? I don’t know. I don’t know if that is even possible. In the simple sense it does not seem so. Maimonides does not say anything like that. So Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner claims that these are two commandments of love, and then he asks—he says some sage asked him: why do we need two commandments here? Wait, I brought the wording of the question here. Never mind, but that is the question. Because Maimonides, in the ninth root for example, writes that one does not count a commandment that adds nothing beyond another commandment, or that is included in another commandment. Since that is so, the question arises why the two commandments of love of the convert and love of Israel are both counted. By the way, what you are saying now, Arik, reminds me—in the Sefer HaChinukh one could understand what you are saying. The Sefer HaChinukh also notes this. The commandment concerning the convert—does that include also a resident alien? What? The commandment concerning the convert—does that include a resident alien too? No. Love of the convert—true, with regard to the prohibition of wronging a convert, the prohibition of wronging a convert in the plain sense refers to a resident alien. The commandment of loving the convert is because he entered under the wings of the Divine Presence. That applies only to a Jewish convert. Here, look. This is the Sefer HaChinukh in commandment 431, the commandment of loving the convert: “We were commanded to love converts, meaning that we should be careful not to cause them pain in any matter, and to do them good and show them kindness according to what is proper and possible. And converts are all who joined us from the other nations, who abandoned his religion and entered our religion. Concerning them it is said, ‘And you shall love the convert, for you were converts.’” “For you were converts”—that really does sound like, no, right. Fine, but it is expounded regarding an actual convert. “And even though this command is also included in the command regarding Israel, about whom it says ‘And you shall love your fellow,’ for a righteous convert is included in ‘your fellow,’ still God added for us a special command regarding his love.” Although it is included in the commandment to love one’s fellow, the Holy One added for us a special commandment because He very much loves converts. Here I might perhaps say, what you are saying. Because otherwise it really is difficult. What did He add us by adding a special commandment? The commandment adds nothing. What good does it do merely to say it? Haven’t you seen the Sefer HaChinukh? That is exactly the same objection raised against Maimonides, just phrased more respectfully. No, I objected to Maimonides, and here the Sefer HaChinukh itself asks it. Ah, he asks it—and what does he answer? I just read it now. Ah, he does not answer. He only says it is because of that. No, he says that as the answer to the question. The question is: why make a commandment of loving the convert? There is already a commandment to love Israel. He says: because the Holy One especially loves them, so He added another commandment for us to love them. So in the Sefer HaChinukh the question arises: so wait, is there no difference in definition here? In Maimonides I can say there is a difference in definition, as I am about to say. But here it seems that He merely added another commandment, though there is no real difference—only because He especially loves them. So practically this adds nothing for me, if in any case I already have to love him because I have to love Israel. So here maybe your suggestion could come in. But in Maimonides, what I said earlier is that Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner asks this, not Maimonides himself. And Maimonides himself also writes that one does not count commandments when one is included in the other, even though the Sefer HaChinukh follows Maimonides in all the commandments. Suppose in prohibitions—compare it to prohibitions. If you eat creeping things and swarming things, a person transgresses seven prohibitions, I don’t know how many prohibitions. Fine—what is the problem? So say that when you love a convert, you fulfill two positive commandments. But there are not two positive commandments—that is exactly the point. You do not count two positive commandments if one of them introduces no practical novelty relative to the other. This is a rule in Maimonides, in the ninth root; he writes it explicitly. More than that—he repeats it, by the way. There is a prohibition against taking a share in the spoils, prohibition 175. It is stated concerning the tribe of Levi and the priests. Now the priests are included in the tribe of Levi. You might think that these two prohibitions mentioned regarding the priests are two commandments and therefore ought to be counted. Know that once the prohibition was stated generally regarding the whole tribe of Levi, the priests were already included in it. The repetition regarding the priests is only for reinforcement. And likewise everything similar, of the relation between general and particular. But כאן he does not count priests and Levites separately. On the contrary: he says it may be repeated for reinforcement, and perhaps there is some added point regarding priests, but it is not counted, because in the bottom line they are already forbidden to take from the spoils because of that earlier prohibition. It adds nothing on the practical level. So therefore, from Maimonides’ perspective, he is not willing to accept a commandment that adds nothing and is included within another commandment.

So he says as follows. Maimonides in his commentary to the Mishnah—“And in order to explain this matter, let us look at the corresponding case on the side of love. Namely: Reuven loves Shimon, and Shimon truly is a member of the covenant and a Jew, but Reuven is mistaken about him and thinks he is not a member of the covenant. He thinks he is a gentile, and he loves him simply because he is a nice person, and he likes him very much even though he is a gentile. Shall we say that by this Reuven has fulfilled the commandment to love one’s fellows?” Has he fulfilled the commandment of loving one’s fellow? “And you shall love your fellow as yourself”—he loved a Jew. Certainly that is not the case, and this seems obvious to him. Certainly that is not the case, because every love has a reason, and the reason for the love is also included in the commandment of loving one’s fellows. That is to say, the commandment of loving one’s fellows is not interpreted as meaning that one should love a person who is from Israel, but that one should love a person from Israel because he is from Israel. So the fact that you love somebody and he is from Israel does not mean you have fulfilled the commandment; you must love him because he is from Israel. Okay? If you do not know that he is from Israel, then obviously you do not love him for that reason, so you have not fulfilled the commandment. Thus the reason for the love is included in the commandment itself. This is the meaning of the verse ‘And you shall love your fellow’: that you love him precisely because he is your fellow.” Again, just like “and you shall rejoice in your festival.” “And you shall love your fellow” does not mean: love, and whom should you love? Your fellow. Just like “and you shall rejoice in your festival,” when should you rejoice? In the festival. No. The reading is “and you shall rejoice in your festival,” meaning that the festival should be the thing that causes your joy, not that it should be the time when you rejoice. And so too “and you shall love your fellow as yourself”: the point is that the reason is that he is your fellow, not that you should love him and he happens to be your fellow. It does not merely identify the object of the love; it describes the reason for the love. Okay? Meaning that without that, you have not fulfilled the commandment.

And then he says: “Accordingly, if Reuven loves a Jew and does not recognize that he is a Jew, then the cause of this love is not the Jewishness of the beloved; it is simply unspecified love, without the reason required in this commandment, and therefore the commandment of loving one’s fellows is not fulfilled by means of this love.” And the same is true on the other side, with hatred. The same thing. Now hatred of sinners, or something like that, is only because they are sinners. If you hate that person, and the person you hate happens to be a sinner, you have not fulfilled the commandment of hating the sinner. You must hate him because he is a sinner. Now the same applies to love of the convert, which I did not quote here. The same applies to love of the convert. If you love a person—you love a Jew, fine—who is your neighbor, and you do not know that in fact he is a convert, you do not know he is a convert—have you fulfilled the commandment of loving the convert? He says no. Because you must love him because he is a convert, not merely love somebody who is a convert, but love somebody who is a convert because he is a convert. And if that is the definition, then the commandment of loving the convert is not included in the commandment of loving one’s fellow. Right? Because the commandment of loving one’s fellow is to love him because he is a Jew. And the convert too you need to love because he is a Jew, because he is also a Jew. But by that you have not fulfilled the commandment of loving the convert; by that you have fulfilled the commandment of loving one’s fellow. The commandment of loving the convert imposes on you a completely different obligation: to love him because he is a convert. And therefore one is not included in the other. That is why Maimonides counts these two commandments. And actually, after that—I earlier read Maimonides—perhaps one can even read this into his words. Maybe: “The love of the convert who came and entered under the wings of the Divine Presence is two positive commandments: one because he is included among one’s fellows…” What does “because” mean? Is that defining the commandment? Meaning, you love him because—or is it saying why these are two commandments? Because first of all he is your fellow, and then he is also a convert. One can read it that way. But maybe one can also read it: “one because he is included among one’s fellows and one because he is a convert.” Meaning, you love him because he is a convert and you love him because he is your fellow. That explains why these are two commandments—it does not just define the two commandments, but explains why in fact you are fulfilling two different commandments here. Maybe. I don’t know if that is of course compelling and necessary. At any rate, that is what he wants to claim.

This joins up with “and you shall rejoice in your festival,” which basically says that commandments connected to emotion are really commandments that cannot be detached from the reason. Now of course this also probably means that spontaneous love is not a fulfillment. Do you understand? The emotion of the sort we are describing here—both joy on the festival and love of one’s fellow and love of the convert, probably also love of God—in all these things. Although with love of God it is not so well defined, because to love God because He is God—well, of course. I mean, a convert you can love simply because he is a human being, you can love him because he is a Jew, you can love him because he is a convert. And here you must love him because he is a convert. And the Holy One is not included in some broader category of “holy ones,” generally speaking. I don’t know. In any case, in all these commandments we see in a fairly systematic way that the reason enters into the definition of the commandment. And it seems to me that this is an indication that really the commandment is not the bare emotion itself. There is some cognitive act that accompanies this emotion. And that is an essential part of the commandment. In other words, this is something controlled, something about which you must make decisions and eventually bring yourself to an emotional state. But the commandment is not merely that I simply have some feeling inside me. We see that there is some work here. In other words, it is not that if I have a feeling inside me then everything is fine. No, no. You have to do work. You have to decide that this is his trait, and this is the trait you teach yourself to love, and you create within yourself a feeling of love toward the person who has that trait.

There is room to discuss this, because in certain places it seems that later authorities (Acharonim), specifically regarding commandments of hatred, want to say that there is apparently a commandment to hate sinners. That is what seems to emerge from the Talmud—not completely clearly, but almost clearly. There are contradictions, never mind; many later authorities discuss this. There are those who want to claim that you are forbidden to hate the person; you need to hate the sin within him. Now the question is whether that is the definition I was speaking about here as well. You need to love the convert-ness in him, not him. I do not think that is correct. Clearly you must love him. You need to love him because he is a convert, but love is not directed toward ideas; love is directed toward human beings. You need to love a human being; you do not need to love an idea. But you need to love the person because he has this idea within him. It is a somewhat complex definition, but in the end the emotion of love is supposed to be directed at the person, not at something, not at an idea. Otherwise it really does become purely intellectual. That is the pinnacle of Lithuanianism, right? To love the conversion. My grandfather once said about some rebbe—never mind, we will not say who, so as not to speak slander—that he greatly loved the Jewish people as a whole, but with the individual members he did not get along so well. That is basically loving the Jewishness in them without loving the people. Yes—he loves the Jewishness, the collective of Israel, the idea, the ideal. He does not love the people who belong to the collective of Israel. That seems unreasonable to me. In the end these commandments are of course commandments to love, to hate, to fear, whatever it may be—someone. But it is true that the reason for the commandment, or the reason for the love, is part of the definition of the commandment. In other words, there is an intellectual dimension here, but one need not take it all the way to the Lithuanian extreme and love the idea in complete detachment from the person. One could detest him but love the convert-ness in him. So that is not called loving the convert-ness in him; that is loving conversion. What does that have to do with him? He just happens to be a convert, and I love conversion but not the convert. That is no problem. Clearly one must love the person. It is not the Jewishness and not the Jewishness-as-such. One must love the person. But it cannot be detached, as I said here, from the reason for the love. And that is precisely what says, I think, for our purposes, that I am not only trying to define emotional commandments, but to show you that emotional commandments are not just that some emotion arose within me and that is that. They involve some kind of intellectual work, evaluative work, I do not know exactly what to call it, cognitive. Yes, it is not intellectual effort in the sense of analysis, but it does require some work on my part. It is not just that I be in an emotional state. It requires some orientation, some focus, some decision to love someone because he is a convert. And I also need to work on that, because who says that is something that naturally causes me to love someone? And it may be that the person actually arouses disgust in me for other reasons, but he is also a convert. What do I do in such a case? Work on myself to love him because he is a convert, despite the obstacles I have.

What happens if he is both a convert and at the same time also a sinner? Exactly. Now that is the next step. What happens when he is a sinful convert? You need to hate him as a sinner and love him as a convert. Why? It could be that this cancels out the merit of his conversion. I don’t know—who says? I mean conceptually: he came under the wings of the Divine Presence, right? But he did not really come under the wings of the Divine Presence; it would have been better had he not come, from that perspective perhaps it cancels it out. He came under the wings of the Divine Presence and he sins—what does one have to do with the other? But he came under the wings of the Divine Presence by accepting upon himself the yoke of commandments. Now he does not keep them. One can argue. But I am saying, on the principled level—and people write this. Rabbi Kook also writes this in Middot HaRe’iyah, in the trait of love. He writes that you can love and hate a person from different aspects that exist in him. And still, notice, one could have taken this in the Lithuanian direction, and then it would be very easy: I love the conversion and hate the sins. “Let sins cease, and not sinners,” because one can even bring all sorts of sources for that. But clearly that is not correct. “Let sins cease, and not sinners” means let the sinners cease along with their sins together. So you should pray that the person cease together with the sin. Of course even better would be that the sinful person cease in such a way that he does not die, but remains a person who is not sinful. That too is a way in which the sinful person dies—without his literally dying. In other words, “let sins cease and not sinners” does not mean separating it from the person and praying only about the sins. “Sins,” in “let sins cease,” of course means sinful people. That is the literal meaning. And it is an exposition, according to the vocalization, on the pattern of occupational terms. Okay, I do not understand such matters. But clearly the plain meaning of the verse is that “sins” means sinners. Never mind. That is how Beruriah expounds it.

What I want to say is that this really is a tension between two poles. In other words, Lithuanianism—but not all the way. It is not just an emotion and that is it. There is work here—work that in the end is supposed to lead to emotion. But that emotion is not a relation to ideas; it is a relation to human beings. A relation to human beings because of the reason that is the basis of the emotion—love or hatred or whatever it may be, or joy and things like that. In the end you need to rejoice, right? To rejoice in the festival—you need to rejoice. Not be some kind of, I don’t know exactly what. Hallel under the rubric of joy. Yes, that is how Briskers rejoice. They say Hallel under the rubric of joy. Completely unrelated to the emotion of joy—in deep depression—but they say Hallel under the rubric of joy, so they have fulfilled the obligation of joy. They eat peace-offerings, or say lulav under the rubric of joy. Why should they be depressed? No, but depression is also an emotion. True—they are autistic, they feel nothing. And that is Lithuanianism in its purest form. Emotion—there, all these concepts, these are concepts in Brisk: Hallel under the rubric of joy, and lulav under the rubric of joy, and all sorts of things under the rubric of joy. What do you mean “under the rubric of joy”? You need to rejoice. No—waving the lulav is fulfillment of the commandment of joy. It has nothing to do with what I am supposed to feel in my heart. Is this saying that the law of joy is only to perform the act and not to have the feeling? I don’t know what they say about the obligations on the halakhic level. I know what their tendency is in practice. In practice they are not joyful; they wave the lulav. And that is Lithuanianism. These expositions come from the Lithuanian world. I actually love it.

Right—so what does it mean in the end to rejoice? Obviously one must rejoice. In the end, what brings joy? How does one arrive at the joy of the festival? Eat meat, drink wine. Maybe one must rejoice with meat? No, that is not the same thing as rejoicing in a wife. Because meat and wine are means to arouse a state of joy. And the wife—is she included in meat and wine? Right. What does “in” mean there? Is it the meat? No, the “in” there is not like “alive.” It may be like “in your festival” according to the plain sense. Meaning, you use meat and wine in order to rejoice. For the Briskers, no. Eating peace-offerings is joy. It does not cause joy; it is joy, the eating itself. Never mind what you feel. But for Maimonides it is not like that, because Maimonides says that nowadays, when there are no peace-offerings, you should do other things that make you happy. If that thing were what defines joy… And what is the difference between meat and a wife? Because the wife is not the way by which I rejoice; she is another cause of joy. Meat and wine are not a cause of joy. Meat and wine are the means by which I arrive at joy. But I make the meal for the sake of the festival. The meal is only the way I bring myself to joy. It is like dancing. Is dancing forbidden on the festival? Dancing is what brings me to joy, but I do it on the festival in order to rejoice on the festival. The reason for which I rejoice is the festival. What brings me into the state of joy is the meat and wine. I can say that I am getting married in order to be happy. So maybe then it would indeed be permitted? But through the joy of his wife he does not fulfill it. Because he has to make his wife happy. Why? Through his wife’s joy does he not fulfill his own joy? What? Does he not fulfill joy in his wife both regarding the festival and regarding… that he is also commanded to make his wife happy? If he gets married, there is no commandment to get married in order to rejoice. No—he has to make his wife happy. Which comes from something else. He gets married in order to rejoice on the festival, and because he gets married he is also obligated to make his wife happy, but that is not relevant. It reminds me of that priest who wanted to repent on his deathbed in order to refute the saying of the sages that the wicked, even at the entrance to Gehinnom, do not repent. That is roughly what it sounds like.

Anyway. So I am saying: the reason for joy is part of the definition of the commandment, but clearly I am not supposed to rejoice in the reason. In the end I am supposed to channel my joy—spring it, from a spring, yes—toward the festival, or toward a person. Love, or fear, or hatred, is toward an object; it is not toward an idea. Okay? Even though it cannot be detached from the idea. It is a very delicate matter. Many people immediately translate this with regard to hatred of sinners; most later authorities respond that way. That you may not hate the person; you need to love him because he is a member of the Jewish people, and you need to hate the sin in him. I think that is not correct. You need to hate him because he is a sinner, and at the same time love him because he is a member of the Jewish people, perhaps. Though it depends: if he is not “one who acts as your people,” then perhaps there is no obligation to love him at all. Never mind. But on the principled level there can be situations in which you hate and love the person—not the ideas. But you hate him because of this and love him because of that.

Now understand: this really is mental work. It is very difficult to live these things emotionally. I mean, it is very difficult to live them emotionally, but I do not think it is impossible. I do not think it is ill-defined. And so here again we return to the questions with which I began: what happens if I make the efforts and in the end I do not succeed? Meaning, I work on myself to love the person by reason of his being one kind of object, and to hate him by reason of his being a sinner. But in practice, when I now want to translate that into a person, I cannot manage to live both things. The actual emotions, these two feelings, do not coexist in me successfully. So did I fulfill the commandments? Did I not fulfill the commandments? All that we discussed earlier. Okay?

So it turns out that also regarding hatred of sinners, also regarding love of the convert, also regarding love of Israel, also regarding “and you shall rejoice in your festival,” all these things—in all of them the ground of the emotion enters into the definition of the commandment. And I think this should not surprise us. It should not surprise us because the Torah is not supposed to command us concerning emotions. Emotions are not something that is a goal in itself for the Torah. The Torah commands us concerning emotions that are part of our cognitive work. And something we do not work on, do not direct ourselves toward, do not focus on, and it is just some random feeling—that has no significance. It is neither a commandment nor a transgression; it is nothing. It simply arose on its own. It is irrelevant.

Maybe one more remark, because I think I am already going to stop; there is no point in continuing. Maybe I will comment on this a bit at the beginning next time. There is a contradiction in Maimonides—again, we talked about this. Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance—there is a contradiction, yes. In the Laws of Repentance he writes as follows, in chapter 10, laws 1–2. “A person should not say: behold, I perform the commandments of the Torah and engage in its wisdom in order to receive the blessings written in the Torah, or in order to merit life in the world to come; and I will separate from the transgressions against which the Torah warned in order to be saved from the curses written in the Torah, or so that I will not be cut off from life in the world to come.” Yes, that is service not for its own sake. “It is not fitting to serve God in this way, for one who serves in this way serves out of fear, and this is not the level of the prophets nor the level of the sages. And one does not serve God in this way except the ignorant masses, women, and children, whom one trains to serve out of fear until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love.” What is one who serves out of love? “One who serves out of love engages in Torah and commandments and walks in the paths of wisdom not because of anything in the world, not out of fear of evil and not in order to inherit the good, but does the truth because it is truth, and in the end the good comes because of it.” I think here he is going back to what he calls here service out of love—that is what he calls acceptance of God in the Laws of Idolatry. There he says that out of love or out of fear is not idolatry but acceptance of God. And when you look at the content, it is clear that what he calls here service out of love is acceptance of God. To do the truth because it is truth, because it obligates, because it is the right thing. Fine? That is called serving God out of love. It is a very interesting term. But what interests me is not so much the terminology as the contradiction.

That is laws 1–2. Law 3: “And what is the proper love? It is that he love God with an exceedingly great, surpassing, mighty, very intense love, until his soul is bound up in the love of God and he is continually obsessed with it, like one sick with lovesickness whose mind is never free from love of that woman, and he is obsessed with her constantly, whether sitting, whether rising, even when eating and drinking. Even more than this should the love of God be in the hearts of those who love Him, obsessed with it constantly, as He commanded us ‘with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.’ And this is what Solomon said by way of metaphor: ‘For I am sick with love.’ And the entire Song of Songs is a metaphor for this matter.” Now this is a frontal contradiction to the previous two laws. In the previous two laws he paints a cold Litvak, cold as ice: to do the truth because it is truth—that is called serving God out of love. And here he starts speaking to me about romantic loves, about an emotional flood that never leaves me, like love of a woman, that excitement that always accompanies me, these emotions. This is one law later. How do these two things fit together? “What is the proper love?” He is detailing the love he defined earlier, that one must serve out of love, doing the truth because it is truth. “What is the proper love? That he love like the love of a woman, and the whole Song of Songs is a metaphor for this matter.”

So once I thought—I don’t know, it may be right, I don’t know. Because it really is a bit difficult. One must be careful not to take a metaphor too far. A metaphor often contains details that should not be carried over into the thing being described. And it may be that what Maimonides means to say with the metaphor of Song of Songs and all he says about the love of a woman is the degree of intensity and the fact that it should dwell within me all the time and not stop for a moment. That too is required with respect to love of God—to be committed to the truth, to accept Him upon myself all the time. But not the emotional dimension of it, that it overwhelms me emotionally and all that. That is not—it is a detail irrelevant to the metaphor; he did not mean that. When he says that the whole Song of Songs is about this matter, Song of Songs comes to tell you how immersed I should be in this matter of love of God, of doing the truth because it is truth. It does not tell me that this love must be romantic or emotional. I simply do not see how one can love God in that way. I just do not understand it at all. It seems to me pretty clear that with regard to love of God—as opposed perhaps to love of one’s fellow, love of the convert, those kinds of things—there it is quite clear that this is a cold matter, an intellectual matter, not emotional. Not emotional. It seems obvious to me, not from the standpoint of sources, because really—how can you love something when you do not even understand what or who it is, and you have never seen it? How would some kind of feeling arise in me the way it arises in me…? There are all kinds of people who reach some ecstasy in this matter. I am not always sure I believe them. I don’t know—maybe. It is possible that I am a Litvak, and because of my own limitations of vision I am imposing limitations on what I see. I don’t know, maybe. But it seems to me that the simple meaning of what Maimonides writes here is this: that the metaphor comes to tell you how much you are supposed to be occupied with this, how intense it should be, how much it should engage you—every moment of the day, in depth, completely—but not specifically in the romantic-emotional dimension. Those are the parts of the metaphor that are irrelevant. Then there is no problem. To do the truth because it is truth—that is called serving God out of love. And what is the proper love? It means how much, what extent, what depth—how much? Like love of a woman. Imagine you are in love with someone and you are occupied with it all the time. Fine, that is the metaphor. But not that it has to be an emotional love of the same type. Fine.