Passover Column: Between Leaven and the Evil Inclination – Another Look at Homiletics (Column 65)
Why the chametz-evil inclination link looks like derush
The column opens by recalling a distinction the rabbi proposed earlier: derush is a faulty inference with a correct conclusion, as opposed to pilpul. On that basis, the usual explanations for the link between chametz and the evil inclination – chametz puffs up like pride, leaven is external to the dough as the inclination is to the person, both chametz and the inclination have good and bad uses – teach us almost nothing we did not know already. Whoever accepts the message will accept it even without chametz, and whoever does not accept it will not be persuaded by the analogy.
The explanations mostly assume the link and then fill it with content
The rabbi stresses that the problem is not only the weakness of the explanations but the fact that they are retrospective: first one assumes there is a link, and then one generates derush around it. Once we decide that two things are connected, we can load onto them countless ad hoc parallels; that is why he shows that with the same ease one could link sukkah to the evil inclination, tefillin to clouds, or honoring parents to Australia. Precisely because there is no real constraint in such a connection, it will usually yield only trivial conclusions that were already in our hands.
A Popperian test for derush: is there anything that could falsify the link?
From here the column proposes a Popper-like criterion: if the link between chametz and the evil inclination is more than derush, it should generate an insight we would not have reached without it, or at least be open to refutation. The question is not only how one can show the link, but what we would have to find in order to be convinced that no such link exists. In the rabbi's view, derush-type links of this sort are almost never falsifiable, and that is why it is so easy to prove them from any sugya and any wording.
Even when the evidence comes from Hazal, it may be a rhetorical device rather than the foundation of the commandment
Here the rabbi is careful: he is not claiming that Hazal could not themselves have linked chametz to the evil inclination, and he also admits that there are analyses better than ordinary homiletics. But even if one is convinced that Hazal did intend such a link, one still has to ask what their basis was: tradition, a biblical hint, or simply a free derush meant to sharpen a moral message. He therefore raises the possibility that some of the aggadot in the Talmud entered it not as binding interpretive material but as vorts, wordplay, and free associations; not every aggadah is necessarily built for a systematic unpacking of all its details.
Esther as Sarah's daughter: a midrash explicitly said in order to wake students up
To illustrate this, the column brings the midrash about Rabbi Akiva, who linked Esther's one hundred and twenty-seven provinces to Sarah's one hundred and twenty-seven years in order to wake the students. In the rabbi's eyes, this is an explicit case in which the derush is not presented as uncovering a necessary deep connection but as a pedagogic device. The fact that later commentators manage to build interesting interpretations on it does not prove that this is the correct meaning of the midrash; it may simply be a creative use of the midrash as a source of inspiration.
Kabbalah and Hasidism do not automatically solve the grounding problem
The column is willing to concede that in kabbalistic literature, for one who believes in mystical tradition or revelation, it is possible to assume a different kind of basis for such links. If the link is known from such a source, the freer explanations may merely interpret it rather than generate it. But in Hasidic literature, which is supposed to persuade on the basis of material visible to all of us, the mere fact that a rebbe or a Hasidic book links two things does not seem to the rabbi to be a sufficient basis for accepting the link.
Penei Yehoshua's vow sharpens the suspicion that the problem is not only with the learners
The discussion of the introduction to Penei Yehoshua serves the rabbi to sharpen another methodological possibility. After the disaster that struck him, Penei Yehoshua vowed to devote himself to halakhic study and hardly to write on derush and aggadah, because there it is difficult to reach genuine scholarly truth. He himself assumes that the aggadot are deep, and that only the learners do not invest enough effort in them; but the rabbi suggests a partial reversal: perhaps, at least in some aggadot, the recurring failure is not accidental, but follows from the fact that there is no single binding interpretation there from the outset. That is why he even conjectures that experts could give impressive interpretations to fabricated aggadot as well, precisely because the whole field suffers from an excess of ad hoc readings.
Inspiration is not Torah study: not every association is interpretation
From here the column moves to a principled question: even if an associative reading of aggadah produces beautiful insights, why should that count as learning? The rabbi rejects the deconstructionist approach according to which the meaning of a text is only the impression it leaves on the reader, and argues that if one adopts it there is no principled difference between a Talmudic aggadah and a cat in the street or a telephone pole that triggers thoughts in me. Such associations can be important for personal work, morality, and psychological coping, but Torah study in the precise sense is an attempt to understand the source in a systematic, critical, and well-grounded way – not to squeeze out of it whatever our heart desires.
The basis of the chametz prohibition lies in the plain sense of the verses: a remembrance of the Exodus
At the end the rabbi returns to the practical question: if not the evil inclination, then what is the basis of the chametz prohibition? His answer is simple: the Torah itself ties matzah and the prohibition of chametz to the Exodus and to the fact that the dough did not have time to leaven, and therefore all the laws of eating, benefiting from, and possessing chametz are part of that historical-halakhic remembrance. He points to a halakhic article of his in which he tried to anchor this systematically in the details of the law, and ends with a methodological conclusion: when a conceptual conclusion is rooted in a binding halakhic analysis, it is stronger than a יפה derush that is attractive but uncritical.
With God’s help
In column 52 I defined the difference between pilpul and homily. I argued there that a homily is a flawed inference with a correct conclusion, whereas pilpul is a correct inference (apparently) with an incorrect conclusion (a kind of riddle). We are accustomed to associating the term homily in this “lower” sense with various preachers, Hasidic witticisms (Ma’ayanah Shel Torah) and the like. But the aggadic midrashim of the Sages are usually perceived by us as stories of depth, and the assumption is that if we do not see this, then If it is empty, it is from you (if it seems empty, the deficiency is ours). But sometimes I have the feeling that at least some of the Sages’ aggadot are in the category of homily. I mean to say that, like preachers in our own time, the Sages too sometimes use free associations in order to express ideas, and do not seriously intend to ground them in the homiletic inference. If that is so, then it is not always correct to examine their inference with too punctilious an eye, or to explain all the details of the aggadah and its structure in a coherent way. Sometimes perhaps they only want to express some idea in a fairly free manner, and the links and sources are not necessarily good and valid proofs of that idea. In this post I would like to illustrate the point with respect to the prohibition of leaven.
On Leaven and the Evil Inclination
What do I mean? Preachers of every era (and of course in our own time as well) frequently link leaven to the evil inclination. It has almost become an article of faith that removing leaven is the removal of the evil inclination and the battle against it. “It shall not be seen” and “it shall not be found” (“it shall not be seen” and “it shall not be found”) are universal symbols of the struggle against the evil inclination. The search for leaven in holes and crevices naturally receives metaphorical meanings in this direction as well. The exodus to freedom is interpreted as taking control into our own hands and freeing ourselves from the yoke of the inclination.
This homiletic tendency is not a modern invention. It appears in the literature of Jewish thought, and especially, of course, in Hasidic literature, but it seems that already the Sages linked leaven to the inclination (mainly in the Zohar and kabbalistic literature)[1]. Some have understood in this way also the prayer that appears in Berakhot 17a:
And Rabbi Alexandri, after he prayed, would say this: Master of the universe, it is revealed and known before You that our desire is to do Your will; and what prevents us? The leaven in the dough and subjugation to the kingdoms. May it be Your will that You save us from their hand, and we will return to perform the statutes of Your will with a whole heart.
Admittedly, the connection to leaven here is not necessary, since the term the leaven in the dough can also be interpreted simply as a metaphorical designation for the inclination. There is not necessarily any link here between the evil inclination and the prohibitions of leaven. And yet, this connection is deeply rooted in Jewish thought regarding the prohibitions of leaven.
Explanations in the Homiletic Mode
A brief look through homiletic literature shows that the connection between leaven and the inclination can be explained and viewed in all sorts of ways. Leaven causes the dough to rise, and so too the inclination (or the desire for honor) inflates a person. The inclination seems to us as though it is inside us, but in fact it is something external, exactly like the leaven in the dough. The evil inclination has good and bad uses (with both your inclinations, “with both your inclinations”), and so does leaven (leaven is forbidden on Passover, but it is useful and entirely permitted during the rest of the year).
What all these themes share, in the relationship between leaven and the evil inclination, is that all of them are self-evident to us even without the connection to leaven. If I were to tell you that the inclination has good and bad uses, or that it inflates a person, and so on, I could say that with no connection whatsoever to the analogy of leaven. This analogy adds nothing. Moreover, someone who does not agree with such a conclusion will not accept it on the basis of the connection to leaven either, and someone who does accept the conclusion will accept it even without the connection to leaven. So what does this connection add? Here one can see the hallmarks of homily as defined above. There is a correct conclusion here (usually even a trivial one), but the argument that leads to it is rather shaky.
Another problem with this connection, which of course is related to the previous one, is that all these explanations are ex post facto explanations. I could take them seriously if there were a clear source for the connection between leaven and the inclination; then perhaps I would try to look for what it is based on and what it expresses. But if one begins the discussion with these homiletic interpretations and from them infers that there is a connection between leaven and the inclination, this connection seems to me highly dubious. By the same token I could also connect the sukkah to the evil inclination (it encloses us away from the world within our four walls, expresses betrayal of our home, disconnects us from the heavens, and so on), tefillin to clouds (after all, both point upward and express spirituality), and honoring parents to Australia (for just as our parents tower above us, so too Australia is distant from us. And in general we do not understand Aboriginal language either, just as we do not understand the reason for tefillin). Clearly, once we decide for some reason that there is a connection between two things, we can always find masses of homiletic interpretations that pour various and diverse ad hoc contents into that connection. Incidentally, such connections will always be trivial (that is, self-evident), for otherwise we would not accept them. After all, we have no constraint that tells us there really is such a connection, so why should we accept it if it were not something we already knew in advance? Therefore such connections always yield trivial conclusions (that is, conclusions we knew even without the connection).
Popper’s Criterion for Homily
In fact, I would try to propose here a criterion similar to Popper’s criterion for a scientific theory (which he made depend on falsifiability). Can the connection between leaven and the evil inclination predict something we would not have thought of without accepting that connection? In other words: can the claim about the connection be subjected to a test of refutation? After all, showing and explaining such a connection ad hoc is very easy (see the examples above). Popper teaches us that sometimes what matters more is to define what we would need to find in the sources (and where) in order to be convinced that there is no connection between leaven and the evil inclination. Is that even possible? Clearly, at the level of freedom and association used to ground and explain such homiletic connections, they are certainly not falsifiable (see the examples I gave above).
And What About the Sages?
What is confusing is that sometimes commentators manage to show, in an apparently persuasive way, that some Talmudic passage really did intend to connect leaven to the evil inclination.[2] The first question we should ask here is whether this is indeed a real basis, or merely evidence brought ad hoc (after we have assumed that such a connection exists). Could we not have proven other connections from that same passage? But beyond that, another question arises: even if we are convinced that the Sages really did intend such a connection, it is not clear from where the Sages themselves learned it. Did they have some basis for this connection? Divine inspiration? A tradition from Sinai? Unlikely. Is there a hint to it in the Torah? Even connections made by the Sages are not beyond criticism.
And from here, after I began to reflect on the connection between leaven and the evil inclination and had difficulty finding for it any anchor or reasonable basis, I began to think that perhaps the Sages are really presenting here nothing more than a homily. Perhaps they have a goal of exhorting us to fight the evil inclination, and they choose to express this through an associative and speculative connection to leaven. They do not really mean to say that this is what the prohibition of leaven comes to express.
But if this is indeed a homily, it is not clear how important or meaningful it is to enter into all the details of the aggadot and passages in order to show this connection and learn its significance. Perhaps the lesson is really only the obligation to struggle, or not to surrender, to the inclination, and the inference that leads to that conclusion does not truly stand on solid ground. As we have seen, that is the nature of homily in our own day as well. Would anyone think of beginning to examine the inference of a preacher at a sheva berakhot celebration, and analyze its validity, whether it is necessary, and whether it really follows from the sources he cited?
A priori, it is reasonable to assume that the sages of the Talmud behaved as the sages of our own generation do. Sometimes some sage spices up his moral or value-laden lesson with a charming homily that does not really purport to derive something seriously from the text on which it relies. It may be wordplay, numerology, or merely free analogies and associations. Of course, it is possible that the sages of the Talmud did indeed do this, but that the editors of the Talmud filtered it out and did not include homilies in it, but only serious and disciplined material. But is it impossible that this is not the case? Is it not possible that such homilies also entered the Talmud together with all the legal discussions, and together with the more serious and disciplined kind of homiletics? The Talmud is full of various odd materials (strange remedies, demons, and other nasty things), and I am not at all sure this assumption about its redaction is valid. I do not mean to say this about all the aggadot; I am only wondering whether some of them might not be of this kind. As every student knows, the structure of the Talmud is very associative and fairly free (I am not persuaded by structural arguments that try to explain the structure of the passage and why and how each section and each part was placed where it was). So why assume that homilies built on free association were not slipped in there as well?
An Example: What Do Esther and Sarah Have to Do with Each Other?
Take, for example, the aggadah brought in Esther Rabbah (1:8):
Rabbi Akiva was sitting and expounding, and the students became drowsy. He wanted to rouse them, so he said: By what merit did Esther reign over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces? Rather, thus said the Holy One, blessed be He: Let Esther, the daughter of Sarah, who lived one hundred and twenty-seven years, come and reign over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces.
The midrash states explicitly that this homily was said only in order to awaken the drowsy students. And yet that did not prevent many commentators from soaring off into profound interpretations of this comparison. Some of the interpretations are very interesting, and most of them are trivial (as noted above), but the important question is whether they are true. Or perhaps, once again, the a priori assumption that there is a connection yields results just as it would with any connection whatsoever.
Perhaps one may assume that this itself is what Rabbi Akiva was trying to do. He floated a connection between two things that are externally similar, and challenged the students to raise associations and possible “explanations” according to the best of their creative imagination. The goal was not to expose real explanations for a real connection, but to awaken them. As noted, he could have done the same with a connection between honoring parents and Australia. You can ask all the beanbag-learners in modern study halls, who take some aggadah or other, put it down before them, and soar off into interpretations of it along the lines of free association. The results can certainly be creative and interesting, even fascinating. And still the question remains whether those results are an interpretation of that aggadah, or simply a use of it as a source of inspiration (as they usually state explicitly: for them the Talmud is a source of inspiration, not a source of authority).
What Could Serve as a Basis for the Connection?
If we were to find in the Torah or in the Oral Tradition a source that links leaven to the evil inclination, there would be room to suggest various interpretations of that connection. In such a case, our standards regarding the validity of those proposals would not be very high. After all, the connection is known, and now we need only explain it. But if these explanations themselves are the source of the connection, I tend to regard them with some suspicion.
I did mention that the main connection between leaven and the inclination is found in kabbalistic sources. Such kabbalistic connections may be based on some mystical tradition or various revelations (for those who believe in such things), and then perhaps the connections there can be freer. When kabbalists say that there is a connection between leaven and the evil inclination, this may be rooted in a tradition, or in revelations or mystical experiences that are a possible source; and if it is justified to assume that there is such a connection, then the explanations, as noted, can be freer. But even if one accepts this with regard to mystical literature, in Hasidic literature it seems to me harder to view matters this way. It seems to me that, aside from committed Hasidim, most of us do not really believe that rebbes experienced revelations from Elijah the Prophet, or received private traditions unknown to the rest of us. They speak on the basis of the arguments and material available to all of us. So if the analogies and connections are persuasive—fine. But the very fact that some Hasidic book makes such a connection does not seem to me sufficient basis for adopting it.
The Vow of the Pnei Yehoshua
The Pnei Yehoshua is one of the greatest of the later commentators on the Talmud. What distinguishes him is that he never gives up on any tentative line of thought in the Talmudic text, in Rashi, or in Tosafot. He clarifies every stage of the passage down to the finest detail. Surprisingly, you will not find in him any treatment of the aggadic parts of the Talmud. He skips over them consistently. In his introduction to the book he explains this. There the Pnei Yehoshua recounts the disaster that struck him when an earthquake occurred in his city:
And one more thing: I had accepted upon myself as an obligation, and I vowed with a binding vow in my time of distress, on the day of the burning wrath of God, Tuesday, the 3rd of Kislev, in the year 363 according to the minor count, in the holy community of Lvov. I had been at ease in my home and flourishing in my halls, with colleagues and students listening to my voice, when suddenly the city was overturned into a heap in an instant. No hands had yet begun to act, and we heard no cry of terror, only the sound that the conflagration had broken out in one quarter. And the sight of the great blazing fire that rose in our palaces and windows, through several great and terrible barrels full of gunpowder for burning, until houses collapsed from their storehouses—many large and fortified houses, walls reaching to the heavens, were brought low to the dust, laid bare to their very foundations—and some thirty-six holy Jewish souls were killed. Among the slain were also the members of my household: this, my first wife of blessed memory, and her mother and her mother’s father, until the calamity also reached my daughter, my little daughter, her mother’s only one, and especially beloved to me. And I too was among the fallen, cast from a lofty roof into a deep pit, and I came into the depths of the mire in the lowest earth, truly as if inside a furnace, because of the crushing weight of the wave upon wave that fell on me and the beams of our house, more than the beams of an olive press. They gave me no rest to recover my breath; my hands and limbs were no longer under my control. I said: I am cut off in the midst of my days; I shall go, I have been deprived of the rest of my years; I shall no longer see any man among the inhabitants of the world. And I feared that my house would become my grave, one fitting for those stoned, burned, slain, and strangled; all four were upon me at once, and the law of the four death penalties had not ceased from me. Moreover, the beams of the house, its rafters, timbers, and stones seemed to me like fully qualified witnesses, and I said: perhaps they will strike me, so that the hand of the witnesses will be first upon me to put me to death. But in God’s mercy upon me, God did not permit evil to befall me, and after about a third or a quarter of an hour, once the furious noise of the collapse had quieted and passed, though the swelling roar of the masses—thousands and tens of thousands—still surged onward, trampling upon the roof so that the earth seemed to split at their sound—and many whom they killed by their trampling even more than at first, though it could hardly have been otherwise, since their intention was to save and clear the rubble—in the end I had already passed from the certainty of mortal danger into doubt. Then I said, while still under the debris: If God will be with me and bring me out of this place in peace, and build for me a faithful house and enlarge my borders with students, I will not keep myself from the walls of the study hall, and I will diligently attend the gates of analysis in the Talmudic passages and the halakhic decisors, and lodge in the depths of Jewish law, even spending many nights on one subject. In this my soul longed to follow in the footsteps of my forefathers—namely, my mother’s grandfather, the famous deceased gaon, Rabbi Joshua, may the memory of the righteous be for a blessing, whose name is within me, the head of the religious court and rosh yeshiva of the holy community of Krakow, who composed the book Magenei Shlomo to resolve the difficulties raised by Tosafot against Rashi, and to explain what Tosafot leaves in wonder. At that time we had not yet merited the light of that book, but from what our fathers told us, and from hearsay alone, my soul yearned to walk in his ways as well:
Before I had even finished speaking these words to my heart, the Lord heard the voice of my affliction and gave me a way through the pillars—an actual sort of path was made for me—and I went out in peace, unharmed, without a scratch. Then I knew with certainty that this was truly from the Lord, in a place where there is no rescue,From that time on, I took it to heart that the main focus of my study should be practical Jewish law in the Talmudic passages and the halakhic decisors, and that I should not commit to writing anything on homiletics or other studies that are far from the center of true learning, except on rare occasions.Only whenever I discovered some new insight in a Talmudic passage, or in Rashi or Tosafot, and it seemed to me to incline toward the path of true learning according to the way of our early sages and teachers—that I would choose and draw near to write in this book of records:
While still trapped beneath the ruins, after many members of his household had died, he vows not to engage in aggadah but only in Jewish law, since in aggadah one generally does not strive for the truth, and therefore does not hit upon it either.[3] It should be noted that the assumption here is the opposite of the one I proposed above. He assumes that aggadot are not homily, and that they have a serious and profound meaning. His claim is only that people who study aggadot do not invest serious effort in them, and the interpretations are mere witticisms (homily). In other words, the aggadot are not homily; our interpretations of them are. And indeed, in recent generations much effort has been invested in interpreting aggadot, and in a more systematic way as well (beginning in academia and continuing in yeshivot), and yet in many cases I still have the feeling that these are ad hoc proposals and interpretations that do not stand up to any objective test.[4]
So if a lion like the Pnei Yehoshua admits that, like many others, he does not strive for or does not reach the truth in the study of aggadah (except on rare occasions, “except on rare occasions”), what can lesser mortals say? When I see a broad and sweeping failure in some field, it prompts me to think that perhaps this is not a failure at all, or that it is a necessary failure.[5] Perhaps even the lions do not succeed when they come to interpret aggadot because there is simply nothing here in which to succeed. Perhaps the problem lies in the basic assumption (that there is any serious interpretation at all), and not in the seriousness and method of the learners. Again, I do not necessarily mean this about all aggadot (for nowadays there really are more serious and more successful attempts to interpret aggadot), but it may be that some aggadot truly have no serious interpretation, because they are homily and not serious study. If so, it is no wonder that people do not find a disciplined and systematic interpretation for them. In many cases, even in places where I am impressed that the interpretation of a given aggadah is more serious and disciplined, there is still a sense that this is an ad hoc interpretation (as can be done with any connection between two things, or with any story), and not truly an interpretation that can stand up to serious critical scrutiny.
Incidentally, this thesis can be put to an empirical test (once we thought of doing such a test with modern, or postmodern, art). One could give experts in aggadic literature fabricated aggadot and have them interpret them and offer a systematic and serious analysis. I believe that in many cases you would see beautiful interpretations of these “aggadot,” and it would be difficult to distinguish them from genuine aggadot from the Talmud.[6]
What Is Study: Between Poetry and Prose
I assume that at this point the obvious question arises: why are such associations not study? Perhaps aggadah really was meant to be interpreted precisely in this way? Many people will tell you that aggadah is like poetry, whereas Jewish law is like prose. Poems must be interpreted as poetry, whereas prose is interpreted as prose. If so, even if I am right, does this diminish the value of studying aggadah? Is an associative interpretation not truth? Particularly if we adopt the deconstructionist thesis according to which the interpretation of a work is the impression it leaves on the reader (and not the creator’s intention), then that is exactly what is happening here.
I personally reject deconstruction entirely, and I will not go into that here. Here I will only say that if one adopts it, one can study in the same way any fiction, any event, and any object we encounter. Any telephone pole can arouse fascinating associations in us. So what is the difference between it and a Talmudic aggadah? After all, the impression aroused in me is not connected to the author’s intention, so in what sense is this Torah? Why is the inspiration aroused in me by a Talmudic aggadah essentially different from the inspiration aroused in me by a work of art, a person, or a cat passing by me on the street, or by the weather?
Study is the striving to understand the source being studied. In that sense, free associations cannot be considered study. One may of course refer to them as study, but that is merely an equivocation. If one grants this the value of Torah study, I do not see why an interesting impression from a telephone pole should not qualify as Torah study as well.
Such impressions and associations can of course be very important. The analogy between leaven and the evil inclination may help people in coping with the evil inclination or in understanding how it operates (it does not really help me, the Litvak that I am. But nobody is perfect). And yet, at most we have here an activity of value, a means to achieve a worthy goal, but not Torah study. Torah study is an attempt to understand the Torah and its contents in a systematic and critical way. When one studies a text, the goal is to learn its content and understand it, not to be impressed by it in a free way. Free impression is not study of the text, but at most personal work and self-discovery. The result of study must stand up to a test of plausibility if we are to assume that we have indeed reached the desired result. It is difficult to regard the mere kneading of a text in order to extract from it whatever our heart desires as Torah study. And again, we must not confuse the bottom line with the inference. The bottom line can be correct and even valuable, but for study to be study and not mere homily, the inference and the details are important as well. Study is not merely arriving at a correct bottom line (and especially not at such a conclusion that was already clear to all of us in advance), but at least anchoring it in the sources being studied; and preferably this study should also have novel conclusions that were not understood and known in advance.
And in Conclusion: So What, After All, Is the Basis of the Prohibition of Leaven?
Well then, if leaven is not a symbol or expression of the evil inclination, what can be said about the basis of the prohibition of leaven? I think that on this question there is no need to resort to homilies. The Torah itself tells us (Exodus 13:3):
And Moses said to the people: Remember this day on which you went out from Egypt, from the house of bondage, for with a mighty hand the Lord brought you out from here, and no leavened food shall be eaten.
And so too here (Exodus 13:6-8):
Seven days you shall eat matzot, and on the seventh day there shall be a festival to the Lord. Matzot shall be eaten throughout the seven days, and no leavened food shall be seen in your possession, nor shall leaven be seen in your possession, throughout all your borders. And you shall tell your son on that day, saying: It is because of this that the Lord acted for me when I went out of Egypt.
The prohibition of leaven and the obligation to eat matzah are part of the commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt. Our ancestors left Egypt and did not eat leaven, but only matzot, because their dough did not have time to rise. Therefore we too are commanded for all generations to remember the Exodus from Egypt, both in recounting what happened to us there and in the prohibition of leaven and the commandment of matzah. This is the plain straightforward meaning, and I see no need or value in all the homilies about the evil inclination and the like. The prohibitions on deriving benefit from leaven, eating it, and having it in one’s possession are all a commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt, and not because of some duty to chase after the inclination and rummage through the crevices of the heart.
All that remains for me is to refer the reader to my article here, in which I show these matters using purely halakhic tools. It seems to me that although the interpretation is novel (legally speaking. Conceptually it is trivial and of course anchored in the plain sense of Scripture), it is difficult to say that this is homily. To the best of my judgment, the arguments are systematic and disciplined. Let the reader read and judge.
A further methodological conclusion can be drawn from this. A systematic anchoring of the conceptual conclusion in the details of Jewish law can certainly strengthen it. Thus the more systematic halakhic method can contribute to strengthening the looser aggadic method. A kosher and happy holiday to us all.
[1] See, for example, the Zohar, parashat Bo, sec. 178, and more.
[2] Rabbi Yaakov Nagen’s article cited above is an example of analysis that is better than the conventional homiletics. I suggest that the reader go through it, and then consider how persuasive the arguments there really are. I tend to think they are not. To the best of my judgment, these are ad hoc arguments that could have grounded almost any connection one might want, as I described above. He essentially assumes the connection between leaven and the inclination rather than proving it. As noted, once we equip ourselves with such an assumption, we can always “prove” it with signs and wonders from the structure of the passage, by comparing the meanings of expressions and words, and the like.
[3] I seem to recall that I once read a similar story about Rabbi Shlomo Cohen.
[4] I assume that some readers will say here that this is also the case in Jewish law and in Talmudic analysis. My feeling is different. There are, of course, speculative proposals in the analytical halakhic context as well, and yet the feeling is that there the method is more systematic, controlled, and grounded (cf. Pnei Yehoshua).
[5] See, for example, column 27 on the allusions of Elul.
[6] By the way, I would add that one can do something similar with fabricated halakhic passages as well, and with a certain measure of success (cf. the forgery of the responsa collection Besamim Rosh and of the Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim), but it seems to me that the situation there would be different in several respects. The fact is that those works were ultimately recognized as forgeries, and not only on grounds of sources and textual version, but also on grounds of content. I find it difficult to imagine a similar determination regarding an aggadic text (that is, a determination that it is a forgery because of its content and not because of philology, history, and manuscript witnesses). I will not go into that here.
Discussion
Since today is the yahrzeit of Rabbi Aryeh Levin, of blessed memory, I will mention what is brought in one of the books of R. Simcha Raz, may he live long: that R. Aryeh Levin used to say that one who cannot say to his fellow, “No!” will not be able to say “No!” to the evil inclination.
This giant of lovingkindness teaches us that even the good trait of kindness has its limits, and one must know how to set them when necessary. Kindness is proper when it comes from the strength of truth, not when it comes from mere weakness and softness of heart.
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
The prohibition of leaven and the commandment to eat matzah were first stated in chapter 12 (the reading for Parashat HaChodesh), even before the Exodus from Egypt. So yes, the Torah says that eating matzah commemorates the dough that did not have time to rise, but that shows that this was “planned in advance”—that is, there is an essential connection between matzah and the Exodus from Egypt. It is also unlikely that only because they ate matzah then, we too must eat matzah; do we have to reenact everything they did at the time of the Exodus? Therefore it is called for to find an underlying conceptual connection between the two. Of course, that does not mean that everything that is said is indeed correct. But to dismiss us with “that’s what it says, period”—that seems insufficient. Especially since this is connected to the general issue of the reasons for the commandments, where it is accepted that one fulfills the commandment because that is what the Torah says, yet this does not prevent us from thinking and finding reasons for the commandments. Certainly we do not fathom the full mind of the Holy One, blessed be He (“My thoughts are higher than your thoughts”), but with that in mind He gave the Torah to human beings, so that they should think and reach conclusions as best they can.
The parallel between leaven and the evil inclination was accepted in Second Temple literature, and not only among Hazal. This may support an ancient tradition on the matter. Here are a few citations:
First Corinthians
“Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as indeed you are unleavened. For our Passover sacrifice has also been slaughtered for us—the Messiah. Therefore let us keep the festival, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
Galatians 5
“This persuasion is not from Him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump.”
Matthew
“And Jesus said to them: See to it and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And they discussed it among themselves, saying: It is because we brought no bread. But Jesus, aware of this, said to them: O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves that you have brought no bread? Do you still not understand, and do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand men… How is it that you do not understand that I was not speaking to you about bread, when I said to you: Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees? Then they understood that he had not told them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.”
And the matter is straightforward as stated. Go and learn it in the schoolhouse.
The ancient tradition can indeed rest on the Exodus from Egypt, in which the definition of nomads’ bread was matzah (an ancient cultic bread; see the entry “Matzah” in the Encyclopaedia Biblica), in contrast to the culture of prestigious bread and beer in Egypt—which, incidentally, continued even into the Second Temple period:
The house of Garmu were experts in the making of the bread and its removal, and they did not wish to teach it. They sent for craftsmen from Alexandria, and they were experts in making the showbread, but they were not expert in removing it from the oven (Jerusalem Talmud, Yoma 3:11, and parallels).
Here are the relevant quotations from Amar’s article cited by Levinger above (Rabbi Yoel bin-Nun also wrote a must-read article on leaven and matzah in Scripture):
“Egyptian records show that enormous quantities of loaves in a rich variety of shapes were offered as gifts to the priests of Egypt and its idols. We are dealing, then, with a land of bread culture—or, as the Greek geographer Hecataeus (550–476 BCE) called the Egyptians: ‘bread-eaters’…”
“Thus, behind the prohibition of eating leaven on the Festival of Matzot stands a fundamental principle—the demand to separate and free oneself from the spiritual and material culture of Egypt. The Exodus from Egypt was also a departure and purification from leaven and from the rich bread characteristic of settled, pampered, and corrupt Egypt, with its pride and tyranny, its temples and its idols.”
“Eating matzah on the festival of freedom symbolizes the return of the people of Israel to their quarry of origin. Bread is therefore a marker distinguishing Israel from the nations. Maimonides already addressed the reason for the prohibition against offering leavened bread and honey on the altar (Leviticus 2:11), and wrote that it came in opposition to the practice of idol worshippers, as was customary in Egyptian worship.”
A kosher and joyful Passover (and not in the manner of the secularists who say “Happy Passover”—for whichever way you look at it, if it’s kosher then it is happy anyway, and if it’s not kosher—how can it be happy?)
Free of leaven and the evil inclination
In the introduction to the Talmud by R. Shmuel HaNagid (printed at the end of tractate Berakhot), he says that from the aggadot of Hazal “one should learn only what is reasonable”—as I understand it, he is saying exactly this: that one cannot derive novel ideas from aggadah if they are not trivial/self-evident.
And regarding defining them as free homiletics—Ramban too, in his disputation, already argued that aggadot are of that sort, comparing them to the free sermons of the priest in church:
“We also have a third book called Midrash, meaning sermons. As when the bishop stands and delivers a sermon, and one of the listeners likes it and writes it down. As for this book, whoever believes in it, good; and whoever does not believe in it, no harm.”
Uzziah,
you need to explain what is good about believing in that written sermon. Incidentally, there is a kind of good that may perhaps be harmful later, but in the second case—where the one who does not believe in it will never be harmed—then it is preferable (and good) not to believe. Do you understand?
S.Z.L.,
“Relieve the oppressed”—that isn’t really derived from the word chametz, because sourness usually separates, and you may ask what the connection is. Does the wrongdoer and the extortioner separate the good from themselves? Or does he take things out from another person without justice.
Sourness also spoils foods, if overdone—and here the “oppressor” overdid it.
It seems to me that leaven and honey are unsuitable because they shorten the shelf life of bread! The more airy, soft, and light it is, the more room there is for bacteria to remain inside it!
And I did not like the saying: that R. Aryeh Levin used to say that one who cannot say to his fellow, ‘No!’, will not be able to say ‘No!’ to the evil inclination.”
because Heaven forbid that someone compare his fellow to the evil inclination!
With God’s help, 9 Nisan 5777
To Gil—Gil forever!,
Matzah is bread suited to a nomadic life because its preparation is quick, and its small volume also allows it to be bundled as provisions for the road; in the form of wafers it also keeps for a long time. Eating matzot on the night of the departure from Egypt, in haste, made clear to the eternal people that they were setting out on a long journey.
So too in the metaphorical sense: the ability to shake oneself free from fixed patterns of thought and habit is essential on the path to freedom from the straits of the evil inclination and to rising in goodness from one level to the next. Perhaps that is why the poles remain attached to the Ark of the Covenant even when it is hidden in the Holy of Holies—to teach us that the Torah goes with us in every situation.
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
As for the greeting “a kosher and joyful Passover”—it is not self-evident that if the holiday is kosher, it is also joyful. It can happen that caution spills over, Heaven forbid, into irritability, and the matzah turns into “matzah and strife.” In my humble opinion, דווקא when one acts with joy, and the cleaning is done with lots of “relax-ation”—the kashrut benefits too.
Some used to say “a kosher and joyful Purim” and “a joyful and kosher Passover,” because Purim will certainly be joyful, but it needs the blessing that the joy be kosher; and Passover will certainly be kosher, but it needs a blessing and prayer that everything be done joyfully. (In the days of the secretary of Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav, R. Shabtai Shmueli, one of the first students of the yeshiva, the good wish at the end of letters sent from the yeshiva office was: “A happy holiday with the advantage of its kashrut.”)
Incidentally, one of the reasons given for the custom of refraining from legumes is that legumes do not convey festivity, as mentioned by Rabbeinu Manoach. Mahari”l (cited in Be’er Heitev, Orach Chayim sec. 131, subsec. 15) says that the people of Austria used to refrain from legumes on every day on which Tachanun is not recited, because legumes are mourners’ food. [Whereas we refrain from legumes only on Passover, when one must take extra care against “small-mindedness” 🙂
To “Nomads’ bread”
You talked nonsense.
Legumes are mourners’ food? And matzah is poor man’s bread, so why do people eat it on Passover? Isn’t it supposed to convey festivity?! Enough!
And why do you eat legumes on the other festivals if legumes don’t convey festivity! Come on, better keep quiet.
Incidentally, regarding “a kosher and joyful Passover,” it’s because it’s hard to tell people “a happy and kosher Passover” when they are exhausting themselves day and night cleaning and scrubbing and polishing all the dishes and the whole house in honor of this kosher holiday.
To Mosheh—many greetings,
Indeed, Beta Israel refrained on Passover not only from leaven but from anything sour.
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
And we make use of sourness in the charoset, which needs to have kiyuha [sharpness/acidity] corresponding to the kafa in the lettuce; we dip the bitter herb into the charoset, but immediately shake it off.
“Good” here in the sense of “fine, enjoy.”
With God’s help, 9 Nisan 5777
Indeed, according to Rabbeinu Manoach (who lived in southern France in the 13th century), people refrained from legumes on every festival day and not only on Passover. And according to the custom of the people of Austria that Mahari”l mentions (in the 15th century), they refrained from legumes on every day on which Tachanun is not recited.
Already in the Gemara in tractate Bava Batra it is mentioned that they would eat lentils at the meal of consolation after a burial, and two reasons are given: (a) lentils are round, hinting that mourning is “a wheel that turns in the world,” and (b) the lentil is like a mourner, who has no mouth.
And of course, the Ashkenazi custom to refrain from legumes only on Passover is not connected to these customs, but is based rather on the fact that rice and legumes resemble grains in being seeds, and they too can swell, and therefore there was concern that the unlearned might err and infer permission from one to the other, or concern about mixture in the places of growing and packing. Because of that concern, the Sephardim adopted the practice of checking three times, whereas the Ashkenazim refrained altogether.
On the foundations of the custom of refraining from legumes I brought sources in my comments on the interview with Prof. Daniel Sperber, “Between Hinduism and Legumes,” on the site “Shabbat Supplement – Makor Rishon.”
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
As for your remark that matzah is poor man’s bread—throughout the Seder night there is a combination of opposites, between states of poverty and wealth. We eat poor man’s bread and bitter herbs, but while reclining, like “high society,” and with roasted meat and wine, which are also foods of important people.
A Jew knows that even in his poverty he is a “king’s son,” and even in his wealth he knows that it was not his own power and the strength of his hand that made him this wealth, and that everything he has is a gift from his God.
From the totality of Ramban’s writings it appears that he relates to the aggadot and midrashim as an authoritative source. It seems quite likely that his words in the disputation were said against his apostate opponent, who tried to seize upon a literal interpretation of aggadic statements in order to propose ideas utterly contrary to the beliefs of Hazal themselves. What Ramban is saying is that the preacher often speaks in parables in order to make things understandable to the listeners, and there is no necessity to accept the descriptions in their literal sense; but certainly the foundations of faith contained in the words of Hazal are binding.
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
S.Z.L., indeed, a splendid homily. But the question still remains: what is new here, and what is the connection between the prohibition of leaven and its elimination, and the evil inclination?
These ideas are ancient. Ramban, Rav Kook, and Beit HaLevi, among others, already noted them. But still, what is the connection to the evil inclination? And what will you do with the halakhic proofs that I brought?
Still, what is the connection? I already said that even ancient traditions are not exempt from critical thought. Let not the innkeeper (Christianity) be like the priestess (Hazal).
I recall an article in Tzohar that discussed these statements of Ramban (which originated with the Geonim) and raised serious doubts whether they were said only for apologetic purposes. And I think many have already noted this.
Thank you for the response. However, I do not understand it. I cited the connection between leavened bread, which symbolized Egypt’s technological abilities—standing in contrast to the meager bread of the Israelites while they were slaves (the well-known Ibn Ezra, and the food of Micaiah son of Imlah: scant bread and scant water), and later while they were nomads. Their meager and lean food formed an antithesis to the corrupt and hierarchical culture of Egypt. To ask for a reason behind this associative linkage is incorrect with regard to mythical thinking. There need not be a connection. Once a link was formed between the earthly lamb, for example, and the Egyptian god Amun, the lamb became an object of worship. The Israelites slaughter it on Passover—like eating matzah—in order to oppose Egyptian worship. That is how it was understood in their eyes, and there is no place to ask what the connection is. There is no connection. There is an association, and that is a language much more suited both to the development of language, to the language of dreams, and to mythological richness. What connection is there between a cloud and divine revelation? Yet this is a common motif throughout the Torah (and the ancient Near East). There is an associative hint, as Abraham Joshua Heschel noted following Maimonides, that the cloud visually expresses the concealment and obscurity of our consciousness even at the moment of revelation. Therefore even when God “is revealed,” He is actually hidden. Another example: what is the connection between panic and the hairy legs of the flute-playing god? There is no connection. It is built on the tale of the god Pan, who greatly frightens those who encounter him in the wilderness, until they are seized by fear—that is panic. He happens to have goat legs, because goats—hairy creatures—dwell in the wilderness (incidentally Pan is the Greek equivalent of our Azazel). There need not be a connection between everything in the hidden world of mythology.
The ancient traditions that connect the evil inclination with leaven, the robber with leaven (“relieve the oppressed”), the prohibition of leaven with the altar (which originally was meant to be a temporary and modest structure—the counterpart to the sukkah—made of unhewn stone, and on its top neither leaven nor sweets are offered), all these more than hint that this is how the matter was perceived in the eyes of those who received the law of matzah. (Incidentally, this would push this cult very far back, to the nomadic era in which leaven could be considered luxury food. That era, of course, is the Exodus.)
Your whole question about critique and finding a connection (as in the nice examples about tefillin and clouds) was based on your assumption that Hazal invented the homily, and since no connection was found, your wisdom decreed it should be dismissed as yeshiva-boy vertlach. (That was also the view of Moshe Leib Lilienblum, one of the leaders of Hibbat Zion, in his fine essays from his religious period.)
But once we have shown that the tradition is ancient and was not invented by Hazal, it may have already existed in the era in which the commandment was given, and as such was based on the cultural, linguistic, and associative space in which it lived. And with respect to a cultural space, it is unnecessary to ask logical questions. Simple enough.
P.S. The terrible story about the Pnei Yehoshua (who decided to refrain from explaining aggadot, but when he tells about it his entire language is full of allusions and verbal gems from all over Scripture and aggadah—which is just a nice touch), that his good decision saved him from suffering, also recalls in our generation the rescue of Rabbi Meir Mazuz, head of Kisse Rahamim Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, after he was badly injured. Here is his testimony:
…What made me ask to see a copy of Rav Kook’s words is that I have a personal story about this. More than twenty years ago I had a serious accident, may the Merciful One spare us, and I lay in the hospital for about eight months. I began physiotherapy (because half my body was paralyzed, may the Merciful One spare us), and it was exceedingly difficult for me.
Then I remembered that on Shabbat, the 15th of Shevat 5734 (about nine days after I fell from the third floor), I was discussing learning with a relative in tractate Berakhot, and the conversation turned to what Rav Ovadia Yosef, may he live long, wrote in his introduction to the first edition of Yalkut Yosef (which had appeared around those days), that Rava was praised for straight reasoning. And I went on to say that in my opinion, the story brought in Bava Batra (149a), which seemingly shows a lack of integrity on Rava’s part toward Rav Mari, is really only in a humorous vein, and Rava was not offended at all. For had Rava wanted, he could have concealed entirely that he was holding twelve thousand zuz belonging to Isur Giyora. Why publicize it and engage in all that discussion? It would have been better simply to take them quietly. And if Rav Mari came after his father’s death to claim them, he could have said to him: you have no legal claim to them. (And this is not as Tosafot there seem to imply, as though Isur Giyora had asked Rava to transfer the money to his son Rav Mari, for the Gemara says nothing of the sort.)
Rather, Rava sincerely wanted to give the money to Rav Mari, but he wanted to sharpen the students, in the way of Torah, so that they would find the legal mechanism by which Rav Mari could acquire it according to the law. (Perhaps that is what Rashbam meant there when he wrote: all those things that Rava said are legal principles; and consider this well.) And indeed that is what happened, and Rav Ika found the mechanism of odita. And the odita came forth from the house of Isur, and Rav became upset, etc.—only as a show. So I said to him, and fell asleep. It was around Minchah time on Shabbat, the time of ra’ava de-ra’avin. And I saw in my dream that Rava, of blessed memory, was standing over me and blessing me with the priestly blessing: “May the Lord bless you and keep you…” I did not see his face, but it seemed to me that he was short and his beard was reddish. He touched my face, blessed me, and disappeared. I awoke, and behold, it was a dream. And indeed, on Saturday night it suddenly occurred to me to wash my legs in hot water (as is known from the hint that “and he who devises schemes” for their sadness is an acrostic for “hot water on Saturday night is a remedy”), and thank God the situation kept improving, until after a few days the therapist was amazed and said, “Look, you are moving your legs and they do not hurt you.” When I told him the advice of hot water, etc., he dismissed it; but I know that this is what helped me (and I tried it every day), by the merit of judging one of the Amoraim favorably, may their memory be blessed …
With God’s help, 10 Nisan 5777
In short: the connection between leaven and the evil inclination, which Hazal expressed when they called the inclination “the leaven in the dough,” is reinforced both by Scripture and by reason.
Scripture: for in the biblical writings one who does evil is called “unjust and ruthless,” and his victim is called “oppressed”; and reason: for leaven symbolizes in its puffed-up form haughtiness, and in its superior taste the pursuit of pleasures—both of them among the principal damages of the evil inclination, addictive forces from which we seek to free ourselves in “the season of our freedom.”
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
Leaven’s being a symbol of pride—about which Maimonides wrote in Hilchot De’ot that it is not enough to reach the middle way, but one must distance oneself to the extreme of humility (as the Sages instructed: “Be very, very humble”)—nicely explains why leaven alone is singled out by the rules of “it shall not be seen” and even the prohibition of the slightest amount, unlike other prohibitions!
As for what Rabbi Shmuel HaNagid wrote, that one should learn from aggadot only something that is reasonable—it seems to me that he meant only to exclude something absurd, contrary to logic or to what is accepted in Torah and tradition. Not for nothing did Hazal instruct that one who wishes to know the One who spoke and the world came into being should study aggadah. For there the Sages concealed the depth of their outlook. Is it conceivable that the Sages, who examined and analyzed thoroughly every detail in halakhah, did not apply their wisdom deeply to matters of faith, which are the foundations of Torah and divine service?
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
It may be that Ramban’s comments about the validity of statements found in aggadic literature stem from the fact that the Sages sharply opposed the writing of “books of aggadah,” a practice common in their day when listeners wrote down what they heard in sermons. The Babylonian Talmud (and to a lesser extent the Jerusalem Talmud) underwent sealing and “canonical editing,” whereas in aggadic literature there is a greater chance of blurred boundaries between what was edited by an authoritative sage and endorsed by the early rabbis, and collections whose editor is unknown; therefore these materials require greater caution.
And this is similar to what my late father, Prof. David Shmuel Levinger, wrote, explaining the Sages’ opposition to reading external books, where they cited as an example the book of Ben Sira—that around the original book of Ben Sira there developed a popular literature of collections such as “The Alphabet of Ben Sira,” into which strange stories and ideas also entered, such as what is quoted in the Gemara: “A bearded slave is a clever one, a sparse-bearded one is a glutton,” which is not found in the original Ben Sira but was apparently in one of the popular collections attributed to him.
Perhaps. It is hard for me to know what the context was in the period of the giving of the Torah. I can only learn from homilies being made today and assume that they did so in the past as well.
Our master Shimshon HaLevi of the Land of the Deer,
As great as your painstakingness, so deep are your words.
And just as grain cannot be sifted without straw,
Do not depart, like your teacher Rabbi Yirmiyah, from this study hall.
Standing in the breach before those who slaughter white she-asses,
Riders upon Midian.
Well, indeed it is your right to mix different periods together; we are now speaking about our own times and not about the silly customs that don’t have a strap on a shoe, practiced by those French practitioners in the 13th century…
We need to understand that matzot are eaten only because the bread that the Israelites ate when they were driven out on that night of the plague of the firstborn did not become leavened. And it does not matter whether it is poor man’s bread or rich man’s bread. Incidentally, the bread is secondary to the roast. The fact that it takes precedence in blessings is something else. Therefore one who eats roast is considered rich because the roast is the main thing.
We are king’s children even if we are devoured by sand. For man does not live by bread alone….
And you made me laugh—people can make mistakes about anything, so there is no end to it!
See the article by Rabbi Ari Yitzhak Shevat, “The Authority of Hazal’s Midrashim – Ramban’s Approach in Light of the Barcelona Disputation,” Tzohar 11, pp. 38–49 (also on the Da’at website)
Any telephone pole can arouse fascinating associations in us.
Michi, you’re great.
I hereby refer the writer of the post to the excellent article by the gaon Rabbi Michael Abraham, may he live long:
http://www.tzohar.org.il/wp-content/uploads/10_19.pdf
I hope that the writer of the post will grow wiser from the article and compare the matters. The author of the article, the above-mentioned gaon, is already widely known for his great power and force; no postmodern secret is hidden from him, he dismantles myths and grinds them against one another, like a hammer that shatters the rock of conservatism, and so on and so forth.
With God’s help, 10 Nisan 5777
That matzah is “poor man’s bread,” the bread of the poor who are forced to wander—is explained in the words of the Torah (Deut. 16:3): “Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it, bread of affliction, because you came out of the land of Egypt in haste, so that you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt all the days of your life.”
The reason that the Israelites ate matzot when they left because their dough did not have time to rise is not mentioned here, for that reason explains only why one must eat matzah on the first day—but why must one eat matzah for seven days?
Therefore the reason is given that matzah is poor man’s bread, expressing the departure in the undignified form of haste—not like free people who leave “in calm and tranquility” did Israel leave Egypt, but as “compelled by the word [of God],” forced to leave in haste. This state of haste accompanied Israel throughout all the years of their walking in the wilderness, when they had to set out immediately whenever the cloud rose, with no advance notice. .
Eating poor man’s bread throughout the seven days of the festival is also a striking break from routine. After all, we are speaking of a people dwelling securely on its land, having attained rest and inheritance, and ascending joyfully to the chosen house. And now it returns for an entire week to the atmosphere of the period of wandering in the wilderness. Such a change is indeed seared into consciousness for “all the days of your life.”
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
On the Festival of Matzot the days of wandering are made tangible by eating nomads’ food, and on Sukkot the period of wandering is made tangible by dwelling in a temporary abode.
Corner-sitter, please—”One who blesses his fellow in a loud voice early in the morning…”
Leave the rabbi modest and do not cause him, Heaven forbid, to grow proud, for the Holy One, blessed be He, loves modesty and the “humble of heart.”
I understand that your intention is to point out an apparent contradiction in my words. In my poverty, I found no contradiction between them.
Great column!
To bring the Zohar as a source for the thought of Hazal is not serious. It’s the kind of thing that can help us understand what ideas influenced the author(s) of the Zohar. Presumably these were Christian ideas..
With God’s help, 10 Nisan 5777
The root ani/anah in Scripture also has the sense of humility and submissiveness, as in “How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me” (Exodus 10:3), which Onkelos translated “to submit oneself.” Indeed, the opposite of puffed-up leavened bread is matzah, the “bread of poverty/humility,” which does not exalt itself.
With blessing, S.Z. Levinchar
Maybe the direction is the opposite: first they spoke about leaven, as Shlezinger writes, and afterward they separated out from it the evil inclination.
Overall, a nice article, which should be taken to useful places (“the question is what the midrash taught you, not what you taught the midrash”…). Thank you.
And nevertheless, two comments:
A. Regarding Rabbi Akiva’s statement, I think the commentators (those who did not explain that Rabbi Akiva really only wanted to wake the students up) tried to find meaning in it not because Rabbi Akiva said it, but because they wondered why the editor of the midrash bothered to include the story. (Unless Midrash Rabbah is trying to teach us pedagogical methods, which is plausible but a bit odd.)
B. I think that one who quotes some Hasidic rebbe’s interpretation does not do so because he thinks the rebbe had divine inspiration or that this is the plain meaning in the Gemara, but simply because the Kedushat Levi / the Baal Shem Tov / R. Nahman said it. Those who use them think they pioneered a path (beautiful and deep and true) in the service of God, and apparently they do indeed have non-trivial things to say about serving God. So it doesn’t entirely matter whether they aimed at the plain meaning.
Hello.
I did not understand the remark about what the midrash taught me.
A. Why not think that the midrash comes to teach us a bit of pedagogy? What’s wrong with that?
B. The question is what the interpretation is based on. If it has beautiful and deep conclusions in serving God, excellent. Let it present them without the problematic interpretation on which they are based. The question is whether the interpretation stands up to critical scrutiny or not. And the statement that it does not matter whether they aimed at the plain meaning (this is the rule: one does not challenge a homily) is exactly what I was addressing. In my opinion it matters very much. A faulty inference that leads to a correct conclusion is problematic.
A. It really could be. It could also be comic relief. Still, I can understand someone who thinks that it seems unusual, and that usually the purpose of the midrash is educational/moral. Don’t you, Rabbi?
B. Right, I think the point is that we’re not *certain* they were wrong. And one who is (Rav Shagar?), relates to R. Nahman (for example) as an independent source. (And sometimes they really do emphasize that it does not seem to be the straightforward plain meaning.)
Regarding the end of your remarks, just to inform the rabbi that his friend Rabbi Prof. Nadav Shnerb has already pointed out that evidence for understanding a text is the ability to distinguish between a “real” text and one pulled out of thin air. Enjoyment guaranteed:
http://woland.ph.biu.ac.il/?page_id=154
There are text generators like that for several figures, and they produce not-bad results at all. But it seems to me that the connection to my remarks is rather tenuous (or at least I didn’t understand it).
Our master Michi, your people thirst for your columns.
How long will this column remain a stumbling block for us, every time we enter the main page and still the leaven and the evil inclination star at the top?
Give us a new column, like those dogs that bark.
I’ve only just survived the leaven and the matzah. Working on it. 🙂
Rabbi, I found a proof that leaven is not the evil inclination:
-Leaven is a carbohydrate.
-The evil inclination is not a carbohydrate.
Conclusion: leaven is not the evil inclination.
Q.E.D.
And why didn’t you bring proof from the fact that the name of Rav Elyashiv’s housekeeper, of blessed memory, was the Rebbetzin Pachima?
In short, it was an unsuccessful joke, about as good as the logical inference presented here. But the silly idea I presented—that Rav Elyashiv is good, and the woman who served him and prepared him scrambled eggs with salt every morning (from an interview in Mishpacha) had a name like “carbohydrate,” and from here that carbohydrates are connected not to the evil inclination but to the good—I would not have needed to explain this whole hallucination had my first response not sounded (through misunderstanding) like disrespect, Heaven forbid, toward Torah scholars. Gut moed.
P.S. In any case, it is a lovely thing that the leading Lithuanian sage of the generation had a thoroughly Sephardi housekeeper who was very close to him.
With God’s help, Ushpiza of Moses 5780
To A.B. Katz—many greetings,
Simply put, leaven is not the evil inclination, but symbolizes it. Its puffed-up nature symbolizes pride, and its being processed and tasty symbolizes the pursuit of pleasures. The struggle against leaven symbolizes the struggle against the evil inclination.
With holiday blessings, S.Z.
It is worth noting that the leaven forbidden on Passover becomes a mitzvah on Shavuot, for on Shavuot the meal-offering of the “two loaves” is brought from it.
And so too in the metaphor. At times, the impulse that finds negative expression as the “evil inclination” is fundamentally good and can lead to positive outcomes. One simply needs to know how to control it, and then it can be directed into positive channels.
And thus the “metaphorical counterparts” of leaven—the aspiration to selfhood and to enjoyment—are a wonderful tool for attaining Torah. When a person aspires to understand everything with his intellect, he will toil to descend to the depths of things; and his success in grasping them brings him tremendous satisfaction.
At the first stage, one studies Torah through difficulty, even when one feels no taste. But the more one labors, the more the heart opens to understand and enjoy.
[Carbohydrates too are fundamentally positive; they are the fuel that supplies energy to the body, but one must take care not to overdo their consumption lest one harm one’s slim dietetics 🙂 But when one knows how to consume carbohydrates in the right measure—they “sustain the heart” and give a person tremendous strength..
With God’s help, 9 Nisan 5777
Not only did Hazal link leaven to evil by calling the evil inclination “the leaven in the dough”—the connection between leaven and evil is embedded deep in the language of Scripture itself, where the root ch-m-tz is used for both: for dough that has risen and for one who does wrong, as the Psalmist asks: “Deliver me, O God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and the ruthless” (Ps. 71:4), and as the prophet says: “Learn to do good, seek justice, relieve the oppressed” (Isaiah 1). And on the basis of these verses they called one who snatches his fellow’s share a “son of the extortioner” (Kiddushin 53).
Haughtiness and arrogance lead a person to break the bounds of the world and sin against God and against other people, and thus swelling leaven nicely symbolizes the evil inclination. Leaven also has the quality of being tastier, and the pursuit of pleasures and luxuries is likewise one of the foundations of the evil inclination; perhaps that is why the Torah forbade offering leaven and honey on the altar, and likewise forbade baking the meal-offerings as leaven.
Leavened bread was one of the symbols of Egyptian culture (there is an article by Prof. Zohar Amar about this on the “Shabbat Supplement – Makor Rishon” site; if I recall correctly, it is called “We Shall Not Eat Egyptian Bread”). Egypt symbolizes materialism and hedonism—”like the practice of the land of Egypt”—and the pride of “My Nile is my own; I made it for myself,” and for that reason Egypt is called in Scripture “Rahav.” Even the horses for which the land of Egypt was praised are a clear symbol of pride,
Just as the symbol of Israel’s freedom, the king of Israel, is commanded not to multiply horses for himself, so that he not send the people back to Egypt—so too on the festival of freedom we distance ourselves from leaven, the symbol of arrogance and hedonism, and develop our ability to say to those urges: “No!”
With a blessing of joyful freedom, S.Z. Levinger
And like the evil inclination, which is bad when it goes beyond its proper bounds, yet is vital in stirring a person to powerful positive action—so too with leaven: we begin by completely eliminating it for seven days, in order to return to it in a controlled and restrained way, until after seven weeks we can even bring the leaven in the dough into the service of God in the “two loaves” on Shavuot. For receiving the Torah requires, alongside great humility, also faith in our ability to understand as much as possible of our Creator’s will, and a constant striving to broaden and deepen our understanding, .