More on Hasidism: Examples (Column 105)

Which Hasidic books do you consider worthy of serious study?

True, the rabbi is a great Torah scholar and wise, etc. etc., and on top of that also knowledgeable about worldly matters, and also funny and likable, and on top of all that also right in his basic argument about study: that study is the transmission of information, its internalization, and its retention. But the rabbi skipped the most important part of study – once we have internalized and remembered, we add and innovate. Otherwise, we would never get anywhere: we learned what was passed on to us, and then what?
Here there is room for a great many approaches. Some will say – let’s keep learning as usual; some will say let’s innovate; and some will deny it, turn their backs, and study other things – on the basis of prior study, at least on the basis of methods of study. The approach that comes through between the lines is: I and only I, and there is none besides me, and that is not becoming.

The world is large; it contains many people, many currents, many approaches. The phenomenon in which a person stands, observes, and then criticizes what he does not like, hurting what is important to others and thereby hurting others as well – admittedly it is a widespread phenomenon, but what is gained by it? Why should the honorable rabbi care that these people call it study? How does it harm him? What difference does it make to him?
For me – this is the study of *Hasidism*. I would like to see the rabbi learning to become enthused in the service of God, learning to roll in the snow, to jump like a madman, to scream “Father, Father, I love You, Father help me, Father,” to see the rabbi weeping and wailing, weeping and cursing, and then getting up and returning to his daily work. Can the rabbi do that? Is it natural for him? Let the rabbi know that this is very difficult, and that there is room to study it and become proficient in it.

I would also note that not all people possess the rabbi’s intellectual abilities, and they do not find joy in “straight” learning (and straight it is indeed). They need stimulation and other approaches to things. The rabbi should also remember the birth of the Hasidic movement parallel to the era of the Haskalah, and the need to make the content accessible to certain audiences in a different, “experiential,” and not necessarily traditional way.

And I will also say to the rabbi that the aspiration that every definition appearing in one place should apply in every place and on every page, the aspiration to uncompromising consistency, is mistaken and deadly, and leaves no room for development. Language would not have developed that way; DNA, if it only replicated itself, would not have evolved; and humanity, were it not for countless approaches, would today still be dwelling in caves, teaching the next generation to be careful when approaching the nearest mammoth.

Come on, rabbi, you’re right, it’s not really study, but so what?

May the light of Hanukkah illuminate your sharp mind on the one hand, and your dull one on the other.
(Or perhaps it is your heart that has grown dull?)

I won’t get into examples.
In the first column I thought its purpose was criticism, and indeed the criticism was conveyed. There is room for criticism against the therapy that studying Hasidism, as well as reading Psalms and perhaps prayer too, provides. Indeed, this is more on the emotional plane than the intellectual one. And in study, as in study, one uses the intellect and not emotion.
Indeed, in my view, anything not grounded in the intellect is anything but study.
But the additional column and the confrontation with examples that supposedly portray Hasidic teaching as a heap of gibberish – that is cheap demagoguery.
The attempt to empty words and sentences of content by asking terminological questions is a problem of approach.
You can’t understand politics through scientific eyes, because politics is not science.
You can’t understand Hasidism through the eyes of science.
But you certainly can understand Hasidism through intellectual eyes and deep, proper thought.
Hasidism is like Kabbalah in this respect. The concepts are different, the terminology is foreign, but there is depth and truth there.
The great kabbalists spoke about deep and correct things and concepts.
The whole war with Greece and the Hasmoneans has deep explanations in Hasidism and Kabbalah, even more than what we have in the straightforward/Talmudic sources. (If you want an example, I assume you know the Maharal.)

The Torah is built as Pardes and has many layers; you cannot understand the secret through derash, nor derash through peshat. These are different teachings with different rules of learning and understanding. But the thinking is the same thinking, pure logic underlying the things being studied.
I intentionally write Hasidism and Kabbalah in one breath, because in my view both belong to the same category, as opposed to the study of halakha and Gemara.

Indeed, the criticism of study that is not study is correct, but to say there is no study there at all is an error.
There are also university students and yeshiva students whose learning is only therapy and data absorption rather than deep learning – that criticism applies to everyone. The criticism is of the learners, not of the texts.
I would change the title to: Studying Hasidism versus the Feeling of Hasidism.

Hello and blessings!
First, I would like to thank you for continuing the discussion, in a substantive and reasoned way, with citations and examples. I’m also glad that you chose to demonstrate from two classic Hasidic books, and not from Chabad, Breslov, and the like, which constitute a genre unto themselves. I am trying to be as brief as possible, but because of the importance of the discussion I was forced to elaborate. I ask that you read my words with due seriousness.

In my opinion, three different kinds of claims have been mixed together here, and it is very important to separate them (I am referring to the passage from Kedushat Levi):
The first claim concerns the Hasidic idea itself. Is it correct or nonsense? You argued against the words of Kedushat Levi that “on the face of it, this seems completely implausible. In halakha it is accepted that the main thing is to perform the commandment, and joy is at most an additional virtue”… That is to say, even apart from the question whether studying Hasidism is Torah study or not, you simply do not agree with the idea itself.

The second claim concerns the methodology of presenting these things. In general, you do not understand the point of loading verses and sayings of Hazal with meanings they did not intend (just as rabbinic midrash of this kind on Torah verses also does not appeal to you). And in particular, when you find specific contradictions and flaws in this particular “teaching.”

The third claim is that engaging in these things is not “study,” and therefore not “Torah study.” This is a claim in its own right. Even if the idea itself seemed plausible to you, and even if you understood the motivation to find it some “support” in a verse, still, since the things “do not pass through the cognition and recursive thought” of the readers, this is not study.

So as not to burden things too much, I will divide my response to the three claims into 3 separate comments:
First, regarding the idea itself. You write (1) that there is no basis for thinking that the essence of serving God is through enthusiasm. (2) That the conclusion of Kedushat Levi is trivial: “Were it not for his words, we would apparently have thought that if we have no enthusiasm then we should desecrate Shabbat, steal, fail to recite Grace after Meals, and perhaps also eat forbidden carcasses and non-kosher meat.” (3) You expect him to provide support.
It is a bit ridiculous to enter here into the tired debate on this issue; this is really a discussion unto itself. The Hasidic approach emphasized serving God מתוך דבקות והתלהבות, through cleaving and enthusiasm, to the point that the Hasidim were often accused of letting this cleaving cause them to violate the Shulchan Arukh. This question is unrelated to the question of “studying Hasidic books.”
See the words of Nefesh HaChayim (IV), which polemicizes with Hasidism on this issue: “Therefore guard your soul very much. Let not your evil inclination persuade you to say that the main thing of all is that you should be occupied all your days only in purifying your thought properly, that your thought be cleaving to your Creator constantly without faltering… for the old and foolish king has already learned to blind the eyes and bring his proofs from Scripture, Mishnah, Talmud, Midrashim, and the book of the Zohar… And now see his ways and be wise in this too, how he is wise to do evil and not good. Today he will tell you that any Torah or commandment without cleaving is nothing, and that you must prepare your heart and raise the flight of your thought before performing any commandment or prayer to a pure thought of the purest sort. And thus your thought will be so preoccupied with preparing the commandment before doing it that the time for the commandment or prayer will pass… And when your evil inclination accustoms you so that it becomes fixed in your heart not to be so concerned about changing the fixed time of some commandment or prayer because of your fixing your thought to purify and clear the heart first, in time he will lead you little by little, with smooth speech, from level to level, and you will not notice at all until it will automatically become permitted in your eyes to let the time of prayer or commandments pass by, even to empty your heart into idle matters, and he will drive you from everything and leave you with neither the deed of the commandment in its proper time nor good thought. And this is the destruction of the entire Torah altogether, God forbid, if one should consent to incline his ear to the smoothness of his lips in this way…”

In short, the words of Kedushat Levi were not spoken in a vacuum. The Hasidim of that period truly believed that the essence of serving God was enthusiasm and longing. There were those who went too far and did not fulfill commandments until “the spirit rested upon them.” Kedushat Levi came and moderated this idea. True, the essence of serving God is enthusiasm and cleaving, but without the practical foundation a person can lose everything. Ideally he too agrees that the main thing is enthusiasm and inner feeling, but after the fact, one should fulfill commandments even without enthusiasm.
And it suits the one who said it. Beyond being the defender of Israel, Kedushat Levi was famous for his exceptional enthusiasm and emotion, and for his stormy movements during his service of God. This became a badge of honor among the Hasidim, and a byword and a mockery among his opponents. [He also had a period of “spiritual decline,” something not very well known from the storybooks, and even in those times he insisted on maintaining the binding framework.]
In short, in detailed response to your points: 1. “There is no basis for thinking that the essence of serving God is enthusiasm and cleaving” – this is one of the points over which the controversy between Hasidim and Mitnagdim raged. In his view it is not only a possibility but also the conclusion. (For an extended discussion of this controversy from the “Mitnagdic” side: Sefer “HaGaon,” p. 947ff., p. 972ff.) 2. “His conclusion is trivial” – in his generation it was not trivial. 3. “You expect support” (just as you are required to support your own words) – first, he did mention some source from the Zohar (III, 8a). Second, the idea that cleaving is the essence of serving God is not the main idea of the text. It is a premise. It is obvious to him and to his readers that cleaving is the main thing. Kedushat Levi came to emphasize that when there is no cleaving and no ability to “awaken,” one should still fulfill the commandments according to halakha. (He does not support his main claim. He presumably regards himself as already being an authority, one qualified to instruct his disciples in the Hasidic path he received from the Maggid of Mezeritch, who received it from the Baal Shem Tov. Unlike you, whose views are not in consensus, and therefore the demand that you provide support is more justified.)
[continued below…]

(continued from the previous comment):

The second claim concerns methodology. This claim should be divided into 2 claims. The first is about the very connection between ideas and verses and sayings of Hazal, by way of “hint” that removes the words from their context. The second is about specific flaws in the passage under discussion.
As for taking verses out of context: as you noted, Hazal themselves already adopted this method (and incidentally, there are Hasidic books that are not built this way, such as Yosher Divrei Emet, for example).
First it must be clarified that it is obvious both to the writer and to the listener that there is no real connection between the idea and the verse. The verse serves as a basis.
The idea being conveyed is often an abstract idea, a general directive in the service of God. The rebbe can say it to his Hasidim once or twice, but he cannot implant it in them, rehearse it, and set it in their hearts. The “vorts” serve as a platform. In a vort there is a question, an answer, sometimes a clever twist that the listener enjoys. A vort can be repeated, can be quoted. The Hasidim can repeat the idea several times, each time in the name of a different rebbe and on a different verse.

Take, for example, a rabbi encouraging a sick person to believe that everything is for the good, and that everything is from Heaven (say R. Meilech Biderman, if you know him). How much can one elaborate on this idea? You can say it once, twice, and that’s it. But when there is a vort about it, and a story, and a parable, all on the same idea, then the idea can be repeated, played with, and internalized. That is the role of the question, the answer, the hint. It is a platform.
I heard from someone who heard from an elderly Jew who had lived in Poland in the time of Tiferet Shlomo of Radomsk. He said that he remembered that Tiferet Shlomo had said a certain “teaching” at a tish on the subject of prayer (later printed in his book, the first passage in Parashat Balak). That “teaching” “spread like wildfire, and all of Poland shook and stirred because of it,” in his words. The idea of that “teaching” is not innovative. So how did the discourse manage to become famous and occupy so many Jews? The answer lies in the external features of the idea, in the identity of the speaker (an admired figure), and in the manner of its presentation (a nice interpretation of a verse).

To a certain extent, this is a literary tool. In literature there are motifs and characters that function as allusions and represent a certain idea or outlook. The “vort” is the literary tool that carries the idea. (In the educational-didactic sphere, platforms are often used to convey messages, like “Little Red Riding Hood” to teach toddlers caution around strangers, “Crime and Punishment” to teach about morality and conscience, and so on.)
And by the way, even in classic Hasidic yeshivot, they do not focus on the question and the answer. The learners know that this is the shell. The depth is in the idea itself.
Now as for the specific flaws in the vort. In my view the greatest flaw was where he wrote, “The one who says that lighting performs the commandment holds that if it went out, one must relight it,” and you rightly noted (though only in a footnote) that this is mistaken. In your words: “From my experience I have already seen that authors of homilies and pilpulim tend to invent Gemaras and sayings of Hazal in order to complete and embellish the homily, but here I do not see what this adds or what reason there is to invent it. This requires investigation.” I think this generalization is unfair to Kedushat Levi. I do not suspect him of “inventing material” to embellish things. In my opinion he simply got confused, and this was indeed a blunder. See the Sefat Emet (the Hasidic one!) on Shabbat 31, who indeed commented on Kedushat Levi as you did.

The rest of your claims, with respect, I did not really find compelling (I will number them): 1. “Is he willing to carry the identification all the way through?” – No. He understands that it is only a game. 2. “Should such a Hasidic teaching have some internal consistency?” – Yes. There is no contradiction here. He holds that there is no dispute between the opinions, and the final paragraph does not contradict this. On the one hand, when you are in a state of smallness, ideally do everything to get out of it, and after the fact, if you did not succeed, still do not give up fulfilling the commandments properly. (The use of the term “ideally” is in the original.) What contradiction is there here? 3. I did not understand. There is indeed a dispute in the Gemara, but he uses the principle “These and those are the words of the living God.” What is the problem? 4-5-6-7-8 I answered above (in the previous comment). The idea seemed correct to him even before he learned the Gemara; this is the Hasidic outlook that, by virtue of his authority as a continuer of the path of his master the Maggid of Mezeritch, he teaches to his disciples. Anyone who does not accept the idea certainly will not accept the vort. The goal here was only to clothe the idea in a literary platform.
Later you brought another passage from Kedushat Levi showing that elsewhere he explains the term “placing” differently, and you explained that the vorts were said on many occasions, so changes and contradictions arise between them.
In my opinion, placing the passages side by side like this shows that he did not see any contradiction between them. Rabbinic derashot also appear this way, when there are different interpretations of the same words. The reason is that the author does not see these hints as anything more than a game, a platform for an idea.

Your claim that this happens because the passages come from different years is not always correct. It is clear to me that there are many books containing different interpretations of the same verses, where these vorts were written consecutively at the same time. But such a debate should be decided by historical research, not a priori (I do not currently have the data on this, though I could try to check).
[In the specific example, you are actually right. The first passage you brought was printed in his lifetime in Chiddushei Aggadot, and the second in a collection published after his death. But in many cases commentators do devise different “hints” at one time. Take, for example, the 42 hints of the Or HaChayim, R. Chaim ibn Attar, on the verse “If you walk in My statutes.” There is an entire story around those interpretations, and according to what is told, he devised them all at one event while in exile. These are obvious matters that require no proof at all.]

In conclusion, there is a certain ingenuousness in your remarks: on the one hand you understand that the author did not regard his interpretations as serious exegesis but as mere hints; on the other hand, from time to time you forget this and demand that he be consistent and use the same hints in every passage in the book.
(continued below…)

(continued from a previous comment)
The third claim: let us assume we agree that a Hasidic vort is essentially an idea that includes practical guidance in the service of God, which has been clothed in a verse. Suppose, for instance, that when eating one should intend to elevate sparks, and on that basis a certain verse is understood. Or: the righteous person must repent for his sins, and by this he causes the wicked to repent as well, and thus some verse is explained (the practical implication being how a righteous person should behave, and how a simple person should relate to the righteous person, etc.).

The question is whether such a structure constitutes “study.”

The point is that the question of the definition of “study” is not a general philosophical question, but a specific one: what is the definition of the concept of study in the eyes of halakha? Does halakha regard such a thing as study or not? The practical implication is whether engaging in it is defined as a commandment or as neglect of Torah study. Another practical implication: may one recite the blessing on Torah study over it?

Now, structures of this kind are already found in the words of Hazal. For example: “Rav Huna bar Natan said to Rav Ashi: What is the meaning of that which is written, ‘Kinah and Dimonah and Adadah’? He said to him: It is listing towns of the Land of Israel. He said to him: Do I not know that it is listing towns of the Land of Israel? Rather, Rav Geviha of Argiza said a reason in it: Whoever has jealousy toward his fellow and is silent, the One Who dwells forever executes judgment for him. He said to him: If so, then Tziklag and Madmannah and Sansannah as well! He said to him: If Rav Geviha of Beit Argiza were here, he would say a reason in it. Rav Acha of Beit Choza’ah said this about it: Whoever has a cry over his fellow and is silent, the One Who dwells in the bush executes judgment for him” (Gittin 7a). Here there is instruction in proper conduct, plus a hint from Scripture. Is studying this passage of Gemara considered study?
I find it hard to believe that you would rule that this is not study. It is accepted that even in such passages there is a mitzvah of Torah study, and one may recite the blessing on Torah study over them.

If so, even if philosophically this is not “study,” halakhically it still carries a mitzvah and the blessing on Torah study. So why does it matter whether one calls it “study” or “recitation” or “song,” and the like? Halakhically, an idea that expresses a path in the service of God, especially if it has some “support” in a verse, has the same value as Torah study.
True, the boundary is not clear, and someone may come and seek to include being impressed by an electric pole as study. But as you often say, the fact that the location of the boundary is unclear does not mean there is no boundary. There is a boundary, and activities such as reading aggadah or Hasidic books fall within it.

(To conclude the discussion, I would note that even in Hasidic yeshivot they understand that the main Torah study is in Shas and poskim. Nobody studies “Hasidism” during the morning or afternoon study sessions. Engagement with these books is confined to the breaks between sessions, or to a short session of about 20 minutes, similar to the musar session in Lithuanian yeshivot. Any sensible person understands that the Hasidic book is only meant to guide how to behave in real life, which includes Torah, prayer, and character refinement. It is like an ordinary person studying “Daf Yomi” during his fixed times for Torah study, and not “musar,” and certainly not “Ein Yaakov.”)

https://myanimasite.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/%d7%a4%d7%a8%d7%a9%d7%a0%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%a9%d7%aa%d7%95%d7%98%d7%a0%d7%99%d7%a7%d7%99%d7%aa/לפני Some time ago I read a post that explained, in its own way, the nature of Hasidic “derash” –
Here is the link

I was already asked this and answered that I don’t feel qualified to answer. I’m not familiar enough with the field.

David,
I brought examples in order to focus the discussion. But you declare that you will not get into the examples, so you remain at the level of slogans. That is exactly what I wanted to avoid in the current piece, and therefore I see no point in discussing things this way. If you want to comment on the examples that were brought, there will be room for discussion.

https://myanimasite.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/%d7%a4%d7%a8%d7%a9%d7%a0%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%a9%d7%aa%d7%95%d7%98%d7%a0%d7%99%d7%a7%d7%99%d7%aa/

This is the correct link, sorry.

Avishai, I didn’t find such a post there.

With my dull mind I didn’t see any argument here, so I see nothing to respond to. Rolling in the snow is hard, so that makes it Torah study? Running a marathon is also hard, so is that Torah study too, or study at all? Not for nothing did I bring examples here, so that the discussion would not remain at the level of slogans.
Usually, when there are no arguments, people explain to me that even if someone isn’t like me he can still be okay. That’s the genre of “you don’t have a monopoly on _” and “what is this condescension?!” and the like. I don’t conduct discussions with slogans but with arguments. With such empty claims one can justify anything, and they silence any criticism whatsoever. Intellectual laziness, as we already said?…
Whoever wants can occupy himself with Hasidism; I only wanted to clarify that someone capable of more would be a shame to remain at this low level. Someone who isn’t – let him go on rolling in the snow.

Fine, so up to this point his innovation is that one must fulfill commandments even when there is no enthusiasm. Fascinating.
The claim that enthusiasm is required is indeed widespread in Hasidism, and I was not talking about that. But he advances the claim (correct in his eyes) that this is the main thing, meaning that without enthusiasm there is no point at all in observing the commandments. Moreover, although ostensibly he rejects that, even according to him one still has to fulfill them only in the sense of “set up waymarks for yourself.” And that, of course, is nonsense. In short, so far I have seen nothing new.

What I am claiming is that if this is done only as hints and amusements, then it has no value as Torah study. It is just a game. If there is someone for whom this is useful, good for him (though then his condition is indeed serious). Again, I saw nothing new here. To amuse the public you could also dance in front of them with a bottle on your head and a clown’s hat, and then they will remember the profound Torah for a long time. Is that dance also Torah study?
I am demanding nothing of him, only pointing out that he is merely playing. My claim is that there is no consistency and no commitment there, and therefore it is just a game. I demand nothing of him. I demand something of others: that they stop taking these things seriously.
And all these games are meant so that we internalize the profound message that one must fulfill commandments even when one has no enthusiasm. Well, well…
Again, I saw nothing in your words here beyond what I already wrote.

I tried to define the question of what study is. Is there value in these things? Perhaps. One may engage in things that have value, and that is not neglect of Torah study. So that is not the practical issue. My claim is that if someone is looking to study Torah, it is a shame for him to engage in these childish games. Better that he study. If he nevertheless wants to (his condition is apparently very serious), let him do so. And if it has value for him, then perhaps he has not even neglected Torah study. So whoever wants not to neglect Torah study can study Hasidism. But whoever wants to study Torah – better that he find something to study rather than games.
In the end, the Mishnah has not budged from its place.

I read it and completely agree. But that is true for a sharp, short aphorism like the one brought there on the saying, “A person can see all blemishes except his own blemishes” (quite nice indeed). There is a correct and nontrivial insight there, the hanging on the verse is sharp and יפה, and it is clear that the reliance on the Talmudic saying is plainly homiletical. It is just a way of expressing the idea in Talmudic language.
But here I am talking about a whole “teaching” hung on a Talmudic sugya and purportedly explaining it. If the Baal Shem Tov had gone on and wearied us with interpretation and close readings of the saying about blemishes and disputes about it, etc., I would say the same about his words. Alternatively, if R. Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev had said “lighting performs the commandment, and from here we learn that one must be enthusiastic when performing a commandment” – I would have kept quiet. There is a difference between an idiom, an aphorism, and a whole developed teaching. All the more so when there is no sharpness in it at all, just a tedious, pointless game with Talmudic concepts. So the two are not comparable.
Perhaps one can at least see from here where and how the genre grew. It began with charming, short, sharp aphorisms that contained a genuine insight worth saying (like the above example about “a person can see all blemishes”). And then it passed into long, laborious homilies, not sharp at all, that contain no innovation (one part being trivial and another part simply incorrect).

Amazing how you and your like always return to “that’s not an argument, so there’s nothing to address.”
As though only you are rational and fully grasp the foundations of logic in a way beyond questioning. You have overcome the barrier of humanity. More power to you.

After all, I explicitly write – you are right, it is not study – explicitly, black on white, and I repeat this again and again.

Only there is nothing wrong with that.
Not everything has to be study, and even if people present it as “studying Hasidism” and the rabbi leaps up to defend the word “study,” because it bothers him, because he feels like it, because he is precise and punctilious, he has not answered properly.

I asked you – what do you want? Why does it matter to you?
Do you want the whole world to be like you? Don’t you understand that this is not good?

You asked me whether running a marathon is Torah study, or study in general. The answer is yes. Without a doubt. There is no way to run a marathon without learning how to run a marathon: how to get past physical and mental barriers, how to prepare the muscles, how to breathe, what to think about. That is study. Study through the body and through the mind. And clearly, it is not Torah study.

Besides that, I wrote that your mind is sharp in one respect, and you chose to see only the dullness. That is not true. I think you are wonderful and an excellent teacher, and your books are excellent for me, even if I find myself disagreeing with you on certain points. Especially then. If only I were disciplined and learned enough to attain even a small percentage of your achievements – in Torah, in philosophy, in science, in society, and even personally (for example, I did not manage to marry and build a family).

I just didn’t understand what you want. Should we abolish the Hasidic movement now? Should we despise them because they introduced nothing new?

Eyal, first of all I suggest that you take a breath.
I have explained here several times what I want: that whoever can study should study Torah and not play Hasidic games. Whoever can’t – good health to him. You say that true, it isn’t study, but that’s not terrible. So what are we arguing about?
I don’t want everyone to be like me, only that everyone who can should study. That’s all. Not really complicated.
As for the marathon, I assume I need not explain the nonsense in your words. You probably wrote them in a moment of anger.
I think we are done.

…Every time I am newly amazed (yes, your posts, Michi, excite even a Litvak like me, who rejoices in the torrent of your springs bursting forth with courage and talent).
What is certain (isn’t that so, Michi?) – is that this post genuinely generates actual learning-learning.
May this learning be for the elevation of the souls of the foolish Hasidim who shout in forests, prostrate themselves on graves, and stumble into idolatry in the resurrection-of-the-dead of our revered living master.

And may it be God’s will that Rabbi Steinman teach merit on our behalf and say amen.
Waiting, and may Michi not tarry, for your forthcoming posts, speedily and soon.

What a shame, rabbi, that you have reached this place.

You clarified your position in a very reasoned way, but you did not leave any opening for another understanding, for a different way of thinking.

The readers here understood what you think, but did you try to understand the others?

The study of Hasidism is not an esoteric pursuit. Beyond the Hasidic public that engages in it (a public that makes up more than a third of the Haredi public), it is increasingly influencing other publics.

Did you try to understand what this study does for people? Which strings it plucks?
Did you try to understand how these people explain to themselves the meaning of these “stupid hints” and these strange “teachings”?
You claimed that the ideas in Kedushat Levi are mistaken or trivial. Does that mean that the entire public that studies Hasidism is stupid?

Did you try to find even a possibility, just a possibility, for an alternative conception?
Not in order to behave by it, but in order to understand. Just to understand.

I myself do not really study Hasidism today. And still, with all my criticism of it, I approach the phenomenon with a certain humility, and above all with curiosity.
In your words I found a great deal of self-confidence. I looked for humility and curiosity, and did not find them.

Aharon, as I wrote, I brought examples here in order to focus the discussion and bring it down from the level of slogans, which does not allow focused discussion, to a plane that does allow discussion. Therefore I do not see the point in discussing these sermons and/or your assessments of my character and conduct. Maybe you are right and maybe not, but I am not the subject of the discussion here. I addressed your substantive remarks above in detail, even though they too did not focus on the examples, and if you have more substantive comments I will be glad to see them.

I don’t understand how you continue to say that significant study of Hasidism is possible, when you say that if Hasidism can be translated into ordinary language then it is not Hasidism, and if it cannot then it is nonsense.

I have been following with interest (and great enjoyment) the posts on Hasidism, from the very depths up to the new one with the analysis of the words of Kedushat Levi.

It seems to me that there is a point here that perhaps has not been clarified enough. The question is presented (among other things) as a normative discussion about the meaning of the concept “study” – what is called study and what is not, such that being moved by a work of art or a song or a sunset or an electric pole, which produces something in the soul, is what it is and not study.

But here someone may come and say: why should I care what counts as “study”? Was Mount Sinai “study” by these standards? Did someone who witnessed that event, instead of occupying himself with Ketzot, neglect Torah? (Of course the commandment of Torah study was given there, and it is a case of “his divorce document and his hand come at once,” but generally speaking, that is the idea.) Therefore, when people say that a certain “teaching” works on them emotionally, the claim “but this is not study” cannot be equivalent to the claim that it is unimportant. (This is somewhat similar to Karl Popper, who insisted that his criterion of scientificity was not a criterion of meaningfulness; that is, he did not deny that there are very meaningful things that cannot be formulated as falsifiable theories, he just thought that this is not science.)

In my view, there are several points here.

One is that a person needs to know how to assign the proper weight between, say, intellect and emotion, meaning to understand that things that affect the emotions are more subjective, and therefore, for example, cannot serve as the basis for demanding something of another person (there is no disputing taste and smell), or even for the person himself, there is a limit to the level of commitment to difficult or troubling acts he should take upon himself because of such or such emotional experiences.

Second, some of the commenters are making an ad populum argument – if everyone says this, it is probably true – while others say that it is “obvious” that Hasidic homiletics is a game that does not really aim at the intent of the text, but that it is still important. In my humble opinion there is a connection between these two lines of argument.

The question is more basic than the question of Hasidism – it is the question of homiletics and its value. If it is really just wordplay based on the text, with no pretension of correctly interpreting the text, then why should it interest anyone at all?

In my humble opinion, the only reasonable answer is esteem (in some manner) for the person who said these words – in the Hasidic case, admiration of the rebbe. Therefore those who try to separate between “Praises of the Baal Shem Tov” and the supposedly deep or truly deep teachings of various rebbes are mistaken: the miracle stories and wonders, the blessings that come true, the horses that fly by miraculous leaps, and the Hasid who beat up the nobleman and kept the thousand rubles in his pocket, are the *only* basis on which Hasidism could become a mass movement. Even today I have no doubt that it works this way. [Someone once approached me, a bit over ten years ago, and asked what I thought of Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu. I said I had no particular opinion, so he asked me, “If I tell you miracle stories about him, is there a chance you’ll become his follower?” I said the answer was probably no, and he moved on in search of another satisfied customer.]

And once we have come to this, then first of all I would be glad to hear this explanation – namely, that these are word games producing an aesthetic impression (even if one claims it is a very important one) – from the Hasidim and their rabbis themselves, not from their defenders. For some reason it seems to me that this is another instance of the phenomenon of Geviha ben Pesisa, where one thing is said inwardly and another outwardly.

Second, specifically footnote [2] on R. Levi Yitzchak is, in my view, the heart of the matter: clearly, in the course of weaving this homily, the man made an embarrassing mistake (even if we say there is no connection between “lighting performs the commandment” and “if it went out one need not relight it,” there certainly is no inverse connection either). And so one thing is clear: this is not a homily said with any kind of “holy spirit.” (Incidentally, I collect such mistakes by rebbes and kabbalists; I have a few more nice examples.)

I am making a descriptive claim: what I remember or can think of right now falls into those two categories. This does not mean that there could not be a Hasidic text that has meaning and cannot be simply translated (that is, one in which the Hasidic terminology has added value). That is unlike postmodernism – where this is a general statement.

“The righteous men of Karlin say in the name of the Baal Shem Tov, of blessed memory, that the essence of Torah study for its own sake is to learn from it a good character trait” (Baal Shem Tov on the Torah, Vaetchanan 54).
Assuming that the whole Torah must be studied for its own sake, one can understand that according to the Baal Shem Tov there are indeed good traits to be learned from the entire Torah; presumably the intention is not only, as R. Israel Salanter formulates it in Iggeret HaMussar, that the laws of interest inculcate caution with another’s money, and the laws of forbidden carcasses inculcate abstinence from desires, and the like. From here I infer that according to Hasidic Torah there is supreme importance to learning practical guidance in the realm of good character traits from every part of the Torah, and in a certain sense this is specifically Torah studied for its own sake.
(I am not expressing an opinion, only noting a source.)

Many thanks. As I explained, there can be things that have value and yet are not study (like redeeming a firstborn donkey, for example), and engaging in them is not neglect of Torah study. Mount Sinai too, even if it is not Torah study, is engagement in something valuable, if only as a preparatory act for a commandment (without which there is no possibility of studying Torah). One just needs to be aware that one is not engaged in study, and this has implications for someone who discovers that in fact these things have no real value for him (in my opinion many would discover this if they bothered to think again about what they are doing). It also has implications for what I expect from genuine Torah study. There are those who want to do to halakhic sugyot too what is done in Hasidic teachings, and then they lose the commandment of Torah study altogether. So the distinction is not mere semantics.

As for the example of “if it went out one need not relight it,” indeed there is something of greater significance here than I had thought. After all, it is obvious that even if we draw the “learners’” attention to the fact that there is actually no such Gemara, and that in fact the Shulchan Arukh makes precisely the opposite connection, none of this Hasidic teaching will collapse. This means that even if there were such a Gemara, it would contribute nothing to the matter, and the writer is merely playing with the Gemara (or with what he thought was in the Gemara).

This reminds me that when we were working on the logic of the nonlogical hermeneutic principles, we developed an algorithm that reached the correct conclusion on the basis of combinations of any complexity of a fortiori arguments, the two forms of binyan av, and objections to all of these. There was a stage where we got stuck. We were doing this while tracking the course of the sugya of chuppah (Kiddushin 5a-b), and at every stage of the Gemara we narrowed things down and saw that our algorithm indeed gave the correct result. Then, at a fairly complex and advanced stage, we got stuck. We had a table representing a nontrivial composition of kal va-chomer and הצד השווה and various objections, and the answer we got was not the Gemara’s answer. We tried all kinds of ad hoc solutions (to modify the model), but that itself was infuriating, because it meant our model had an ad hoc component and did not really predict a priori the outcomes of all the inferences. Bottom line: we could not in any way fit the model to that result, and so we already thought the whole project had gone up in smoke. It doesn’t work.
Amazingly, we checked our data table again and discovered, to our surprise, that we had made a mistake in copying one of the data points. In one cell out of dozens in the table there was a 1 instead of a 0, and that had completely jammed things. The moment we changed it, everything worked smoothly.
For us, the significance was that this strongly confirmed our model, since one sees that it is impossible to force it to produce the wrong result even if one tries to alter it by sheer force. If changing the data changes the result unambiguously, that confirms the model. What happens here is exactly the opposite: you can change everything and nothing in the result changes. This means that it is not really a result of the data (= the Talmudic sugyot), but just something the writer inserts with his own hands. The function of the Talmudic sugya here is completely fictitious. And that is exactly what I claimed. Indeed, an important point.

Moshe, even if that statement (which in my opinion is unfounded) were correct, we would still be left having to explain how one learns any good character trait from the sugya of “if it went out one need not relight it” (the importance of serving with enthusiasm and the need to serve even without enthusiasm): does this really emerge from the sugya, and is this method study?
By the same token I could learn humility from the telephone pole next to me. After all, “telephone” begins with tet, and that is even smaller than yod, which is the smallest of the letters. Go and learn from here how great the trait of humility is. There, I learned a trait which everyone agrees is a good one. The question is whether it is really learned from the telephone pole, and whether such a thing is study at all or merely an unsupported declaration.

When two sides are arguing about a principled issue and one of the sides starts with examples, you understand that he hasn’t grasped the point itself.

Hello Nadav Shnerb,

I don’t know whether you noticed, but above I brought the words of the Rebbe of Gur, who pointed out the mistake in Kedushat Levi, in his book Sefat Emet on the Gemara (Shabbat 21a; above I mistakenly wrote Shabbat 31a, and from here there is painful proof that my words are not written with holy spirit).

And this is his language: On the words “must relight it,” etc., perhaps he was negligent, etc., and it is surprising why he did not explain that one might forget… but the Taz there raised this difficulty, see there, and one can indeed explain as above. And see in Kedushat Levi in the interpretation of aggadot what he wrote that according to the one who says lighting performs the commandment, he holds that if it went out one must relight it. Indeed his words are puzzling, for we hold that if it went out one need not relight it, even though we hold that lighting performs the commandment, and this requires investigation.

If you can share with me the collection of mistakes you have gathered, I would be very glad. Perhaps you have a link, or something similar.
And by the way, thank you very much for your excellent review of Yuval Noah Harari’s book, which was republished a few days ago in HaShiloach.

Rabbi Michi,
Until now I responded to you privately. This time, since you mentioned my name, I am responding here. And more than being for your ears [that is, your eyes], this response is for the discourse that has developed here [which from the outset addresses a very small segment of the population… certainly not including most of those for whom Hasidism is a guiding light. In that respect this is a deficient discourse]. And nevertheless –
Since most of my sacred study is Gemara and halakha, my starting point – as I told you in the past – is indeed that much of Hasidic teaching is not study. I definitely exclude a very great deal of Chabad teaching from this, and I completely exclude Kabbalah studies from here. In my view, these require the toil of study, language, thought, and tools.
But as those before me wrote, the question is what place there is for engaging in these teachings. What does this serve? And in essence, how is the service of God defined, and on what is it founded?
Is it really so absurd to think that someone who draws strength from a Hasidic teaching like that of Kedushat Levi is basically using it like a “pill,” etc., as you put it? After all, medicine – of whatever kind – does not solve any problem at the root. Here there is an attempt to correct a distortion in thinking. One that could impair the service of God. True, we all know that commandments must be fulfilled in every state, and preferably with enthusiasm. This teaching comes to say that there is value in a period of “placing.” Value. Not only in the sense of obligations. That it can then make enthusiasm possible afterward.
Is there value in repeating again and again the same thing we already know in the realm of applying things to the service of God? Certainly there is, for “four things require strengthening…” There are no grand new teachings here, only repetition of the familiar and internalization of it. But this is critical in the service of God. One who does not need this: perhaps, perhaps he is a righteous person, but more likely he simply does not regard these important things as important.
Is there value in refining one’s character in the service of God? Should a person devote time to learning about this? Fine, maybe this does not satisfy the definition of fulfilling the commandment of Torah study, but is it not obligatory for the repair of his spiritual-psychological-moral world?
Obviously it is! One who does not attend to his spiritual and psychological completion, so that it may rise in accordance with the divine will – in my eyes, he sins. True, this sin is not visible to the eye, and perhaps no one else is affected by it [for of course if we are talking about bad deeds – practical or moral – we would surely both agree], and it is possible that the person himself is not aware of it, but it is entirely part of a person’s duty in his world. The ability to adopt eyes of faith and trust [and let us go with the Chazon Ish’s definition and not that of some of the Rishonim nor that of all the Hasidim] requires work; to fulfill commandments with enthusiasm [not childish, as you speak of it] and joy [let us remain only in the commandment-related sphere, per the Rambam’s requirement, and not speak of a commandment to be always joyful in the Hasidic sense] also requires a great deal of work. And so on and on. The problem is that in your world these things have no taste or smell.
Is someone who devotes all his time to this acting improperly? Certainly yes. All the more so if he has learning abilities.
But in your world, in which prayer has little value [for you it is merely a halakhic obligation and nothing more; there is no true belief in the capacity of prayer to accomplish anything]; in which “there is no place empty of Him” and “the whole earth is full of His glory” are defined very narrowly, and differently from the aspiration of Hasidim, though not only them…; the understanding that the Master of the Universe wants us connected to Him not only through Torah study [which is the highest and closest possible], but also through every commandment and even when we are not performing commandments – this is indeed a dispute about the service of God. And one more second and we would get to fear of Heaven as well, but let us leave that for another time [and no, I do not think fear of Heaven is some obscure feeling, but something entirely intelligible, acquired through study and labor…]
And at the margins of the margins of the discussion – one more thing –

And even more than that – at least Hasidism saw a need to repair the world. And in this it certainly succeeded! Entire sectors of the Jewish people connected and still connect, feel they belong, and try to learn and act, each according to his own level.
Whereas your own outlook, suited to the top one-thousandth, is [perhaps] a path for minorities; it focuses on the individual and neglects the collective.
I even dare say that from an educational standpoint, your path seems to me doomed to failure, forgive me. Perhaps it is capable of producing great scholars, but will those who hear your teaching truly grow up also to be people of cleaving [and again, I too follow Nefesh HaChayim, but for him Torah study certainly should lead there as well, whereas in your approach I am very doubtful]? Will they grow up with “As for me, closeness to God is good for me”? I have my doubts.

Meirav

Hello Meirav.
1. In my sins I was unable to understand why this teaching solves at the root problems that a pill cannot solve. In my opinion, the situation is exactly the opposite. A teaching like this is not supposed to solve any substantive problem. Perhaps if someone is depressed this can help him (I have no idea how), in which case it really is like a pill, except that a pill does it better. After all, one learns nothing from it, and therefore it will not change any conception or anything substantive.
Beyond that, even if it did solve the problem completely, still, as I explained, in my opinion there is no Torah study here.
2. Repeating things again and again may strengthen, but it is not Torah study. What did we learn here? Nothing.
As for the “innovation” that there is value in a period of “placing,” I already addressed that in my remarks (partly trivial – that one must fulfill commandments even in a state of constricted consciousness, and partly obviously unfounded – that the whole value is only in the sense of “set up waymarks for yourself”), and I do not see what I have to add to that.
3. One can debate the question of learning how to refine one’s character, but for the moment I will accept your premise for the sake of argument. The problem is that there is no such learning here. What did we learn here? And how does that connect to the Gemara and all the strange vorts that appear here? If they had taught me how to acquire enthusiasm, or given me the new idea that there is value in fulfilling commandments during periods of “placing,” fair enough. But there is nothing here beyond unsupported recitation. How can anyone see such nonsense as study?!
4. On the factual question whether there is value here even if it is not study, I am very doubtful. But if there is value in it, then I agree (and have already written this many times) that it is worth engaging in.
5. What I called childish was not the very idea that one should serve with enthusiasm. Where did you see that in my words? My claim was directed at the form of argument and the connection to the Gemara. That was completely childish.
6. Indeed fear of Heaven is a matter of study and thought. Who said otherwise? The problem is that here it is not being done. As for the proportions between fear of Heaven and Torah study – Nefesh HaChayim already discussed that at length in Gate IV, and I assume you know his words well. But here I am not entering that debate, because I do not see the connection to the issue at hand.
7. I already wrote that if there are wagon drivers whom Hasidism keeps alive, then good health to them. My claim is directed at those capable of more, whom people mislead into thinking that this too is Torah study and that this too has intellectual value. It is a shame for such a person to engage in these things instead of studying.
8. My educational path is not relevant here. I expressed a specific position about questionable engagement with questionable teachings. One can engage more seriously with more serious teachings, and then be a fully observant Hasid, and I would have no principled problem with that (except perhaps a disagreement about part of the content). My other views, in my opinion, are not relevant here. I will only say that I do not evaluate worldviews and conceptions by their results and utility. Even if it were to lead all Israel astray – if it is the truth, that is where I stand. Perhaps there is room for carefully measured noble lies. But certainly not to make them into a way of life. See post 21.
9. By the way, although I do not evaluate worldviews teleologically, it seems to me that this criticism constitutes a rescue for a considerable public, just as Hasidism in its time was a rescue for the wagon drivers of that era. One may direct positions and considerations toward elites as well. The Hasidic path has left us with the wagon drivers and causes us to lose a considerable part of the elites, who have lost trust in the nonsense that many identify with Torah and its study. So each river follows its own course. With all due respect to those who make a joke of Torah in order to save the wagon drivers, I am permitted – indeed obligated – to criticize them and protest for the honor of Torah in the name of the scholars.

I am moving here Nadav’s response, which addresses Meirav’s remarks:

To Meirav,

If I understood correctly, what emerges from what you wrote here is that character refinement and enthusiasm in serving God (or, if we call it something else, some kind of seeking closeness to God) are central things in Judaism. Not only that, but you wrote that “one who does not attend to his spiritual and psychological completion, so that it may rise in accordance with the divine will – in my eyes, he sins,” meaning that a person can put on Rabbeinu Tam tefillin and wear only tzitzit spun for their own sake and give generously to charity and visit the sick, and all this is worthless to you if he is not engaged in processes meant to deliberately affect the soul and “repair” himself so that his spiritual-psychological state “rises in accordance with the divine will.”

In my opinion, there is a loss of proportion here. Where in the Torah is anything written about something besides fulfilling commandments? What weight do all these “moral” matters occupy in the Shulchan Arukh, in the Mishneh Torah, in the responsa of Noda BiYehuda? What did Jews do in the period between the giving of the Torah and the “discovery” of the Zohar in the fourteenth century, or the spread of Hasidism in the eighteenth century? They did not have these wonderful tools for character refinement and cleaving to God, right?

With respect, there is a bit of history known to us, responsa, sermons of rabbis throughout the generations, and books, and one can say that systematic character refinement (as distinct from character refinement in the context of a specific sin a person commits) interested most of the great sages of Israel in all generations about as much as last year’s snow on a stormy day. “Permissible secondary taste of permissible food” takes up a hundred times more space than all these moral discussions, and in my opinion that should be the proportion for us as well. Otherwise this is taking Judaism out of its context.

[The discussion here http://www.bhol.co.il/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=2272938&forum_id=1364 seems related to this topic.]

As one who believes that the Lord God is truth, certainly you are unable, or unwilling, to accept postmodernism.

After all, the nations and peoples too (not all of whom “shall come forth from you”) have their own particularist notion of “You have chosen us”; they too believe in Hasidic-style cleaving, in which the center of the world and the rock of their existence is in Mecca or Yehupitz or Nehardea and the like; they too believe in their master of prophets.
As it is written in the words of the prophets of postmodernism: “Each one has his own narrative,” and hierarchy comes to an end in a relativistic conception.
You, as a scientist and physicist, arbitrarily posit the axiom of your religion, that there is none besides it.
– – – Who told you so?
Do you receive a heavenly voice?
Or perhaps you have a glimpse behind the curtain?!
Is it all the fruit of education, socialization, parents, books?!
And what is the difference between the cherubim, the Urim and Tumim, and beating willow branches – and paganism and idol worship?
So they defecate before Baal Peor and throw stones at Markulis –
and we, in the name of our God – kiss sacred writings, wear Polish suits, and swing slaughtered chickens over our heads because this is our substitute.
We are all (apparently) human beings who need strange, deranged, and bizarre rituals, whatever they may be.
– – – And you?
A refutation of Rabbi Michi is indeed a refutation.

I am moving here Nadav Shnerb’s response to Aharon:

To Aharon,

[I am writing from memory, so please check inside.]

The famous example is in the Maharal, Derech Chaim on Avot, on the Mishnah “What is the difference between the disciples of Abraham our father and the disciples of wicked Balaam?” He elaborates on why with Abraham it says “and his two attendants were *with him*,” while with Balaam it says “and his two attendants were *with him*,” but in the Torah it is exactly the other way around.

The author of the Tanya, in Torah Or, gave a long homily on the Rambam’s words that musk comes from an animal *known* in India, and understood this to be the very same animal from which comes the yidoni bone (“the bone of an animal called yidua”), and that it is from the three impure shells, etc. etc., whereas it is obvious that “known” means known and is not the name of the animal. See what is discussed at length about this in Kovetz He’arot U’Biurim BeTorat K.K. Admor Nesi Dorenu, vol. 6, Shabbat Parashat Bo 5756, p. 75.

R. Nachman of Breslov, in Likkutei Tinyana 4 (“and the bear”), expounds on the verse “and the lion came, and the bear, and took *this* from the flock,” apparently based on the meaning the word “this” has among the kabbalists, but the verse says “and took a lamb from the flock.”

Someone once told me – and his words are worth taking seriously – that he had read in Netivot Shalom, and after several such mistakes, abandoned it (I remember one example he pointed out, that there is a homily there on why Shavuot is called Atzeret, whereas Shavuot is the only festival that the Torah does not call Atzeret). I have not checked this.

Nadav, the discussion is scattering here into many different regions.

I already emphasized in my first comments that there are several questions here: about the ideas of Hasidism, about the methodology of Hasidic “teachings,” and about whether they are “Torah study.” In my opinion it would have been worthwhile to separate the questions from the outset.

In your last response to Meirav, you focus on Hasidic ideas. You claim that the Hasidic idea that the essence of Judaism is cleaving is a new idea. Our distant history focused only on halakha.

Let’s put things on the table: Judaism is dynamic and evolving, and those who bear it see it differently in each generation. It is obvious that the Hasidic movement has roots similar to the Romantic movements of the modern era. So what? Does that make it not Judaism?

If we go back, we will see that original Judaism was a cultic Judaism, centered on agricultural festivals celebrated around the local shrine. Does this fact mean that we should aspire to return there? Does it mean that our Judaism is fake?

A new movement arose that decided to emphasize certain features within Judaism, and its Torah teachings focused on those features. What is the problem?

Rabbi Yirmiyah Jr.,
If only I had to deal only with refutations like this. If that is the greatest difficulty you found in my words – I’m in good shape.
It is not my way to answer when the questions contain no arguments, and certainly not when they appear in a place where they are irrelevant. If you wish, please formulate an orderly question and post it in a separate place, and I will be happy to discuss it. Beyond that, before you put various assumptions in my mouth, it would be worth checking whether I in fact hold them. After all, my views are written out clearly enough even on this holy site.

To Aharon,

The problem is that there are religious people who are interested in doing things that express God’s will. Since He has not spoken to any of us lately, the method is historical: some believe that the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself at Mount Sinai and gave the Torah to the people of Israel, and the words and deeds of those who preceded us provide us with an indication (even if not certainty) of what the Lord our God asks of us.

Whoever thinks there is no problem with inventing a new Judaism every few years (or shifting its decisive weight in a new direction), on the basis of the spiritual or mystical intuitions of some group of people who, as you described them, “understand that it is only a game” – good health to him, but in my humble opinion this is not something that should persuade anyone to observe commandments.

I summarized my position on this in my article “The Jewish Ark of Lies,” and I do not have much to add to it.

Nadav,

Your article “The Jewish Ark of Lies” is not relevant to the matter. There you dealt with deliberate deception, where a rabbi distorts halakha for the sake of the “success” of Judaism.
Here there is no deliberate deception. The Hasidic rabbi believes in the content of the idea; he does not fully believe in the framework on which he clothed the idea. When I wrote that “he knows it is only a game,” I meant presenting things as though the verse intended them – that really is only a game, and the Hasid also knows that it is a game.

You could have mentioned your article “And Hasidim Will Stumble Through Them,” where you did indeed raise claims similar to what you wrote here.

And you did not answer my question. A real analysis of Jewish tradition shows changes in conceptions over the generations. The religious conception of the First Temple period is not that of the Second Temple period, and that of the Second Temple period is not that of the Amoraim and Geonim.

The halakhic system, the faith system, and religious motivation change over time. It is somewhat naive to think that the Lithuanian Mitnagdic conception is the one that has existed since the giving of the Torah.
Did belief in heaven and hell, and the consciousness of “prepare yourself in the vestibule,” exist in the generation of Moses? Were the aims of the commandments as presented in Sefer HaChinukh accepted in the time of Rabban Gamliel? Were the halakhic minutiae of “secondary taste from secondary taste,” “enough to peel,” and “enough to rinse” practiced in the time of the prophet Samuel? (I am not speaking about the minutiae themselves, but about the conception that religion is expressed through meticulous observance of such details.)

There are ways to deal with developments of this kind (and of course one can deny them). I do not know your positions well enough, but I believed that in your view there is a theological basis for such developments, and that they have a place.

That is why I innocently asked why you do not make room for the Hasidic development.

I think Nadav’s formulation is somewhat extreme, but even so there is a difference between the developments you describe and Hasidism. If we want to know God’s will, then each stage should come as an interpretation built upon its predecessors. Inventions ex nihilo are the fabrication of a new religion. In that respect, one definitely sees halakhic stringency, determination of details, and formal thinking in the Talmud. Of course it develops over the years, but there is no invention here, only development. Also, the reasons for the commandments given by Sefer HaChinukh, the Guide, and Saadia Gaon are the responsibility of their authors, and it does not really matter whether you accept them or not. They do not have much significance in the religious conduct of any of us. As you know, not many study these works and these topics in yeshivot, except perhaps when there is something there that illuminates the very definition of the commandment itself. Even the Rambam, who introduced several very significant innovations, did everything as straightforward interpretation of the words of his predecessors (even if someone may come and show that this is not a simple interpretation, in his own consciousness there is no doubt that he saw himself as a commentator. Of course interpretation includes a conceptual component and not just textual considerations pure and simple, if such a thing even exists).
By contrast, Hasidism is an invention that is much harder to connect to previous stages, and after all you yourself say that both the writers and the readers (learners) understand that this is not really interpretation but invention. That is very problematic. Of course one can distinguish between the ideas themselves and their being hung on sources (verses or Talmudic sugyot). But there is innovation in the conceptions as well, and certainly in hanging them on sources (which all of us agree is a kind of amusement).
One might perhaps argue that this was done in the past as well (Hazal with verses), but it seems to me difficult to base such a claim on early generations, where we do not know exactly what happened or what their interpretive tools were.

I do not agree with the distinction between kinds of development, between the Rambam-style development and the Hasidic one.

You write, “Even the Rambam, who introduced several very significant innovations, did everything as straightforward interpretation of the words of his predecessors.” Is “straightforward interpretation” an indication of natural continuity? If so, then Hasidic interpretation is also “straightforward interpretation.”
I am not speaking of the “teachings” as such, but of the basic ideas. The Hasidic ethos holds that the essentials of Hasidism are not new ideas, but existing layers in the tradition that became blurred over time. The Hasid who sees cleaving as a supreme value interprets the behavior of the heroes of Tanakh and of Hazal as people immersed in “cleaving” according to his outlook, and he does so straightforwardly as well.

In all apologetic Hasidic literature it is argued that the ideas of the Baal Shem Tov had existed from ancient times, but were forgotten. The Baal Shem Tov “shook the dust off Judaism,” reemphasized neglected points such as joy, cleaving to the righteous, and so on.

Obviously, one who does not accept Hasidism argues that there is change here and not renewal. But in my opinion this claim is rooted in opposition to Hasidism. Only because you are a “Mitnaged” do you see change here.

An example: take an average Lithuanian Haredi from Bnei Brak. He thinks Haredism is a continuation of the religiosity of medieval Vilna. Someone opposed to Haredism finds in it unnatural changes (“the doctrine of da’at Torah,” “the society of learners,” “aversion to modernity”), caused by various catalysts. Someone who belongs to Haredism sees it as a natural continuation, even if he is perceptive enough to see the developments.
Another example: someone who is “Pharisaic” sees rabbinic Judaism as a continuation of the Judaism created at the giving of the Torah, while a Karaite sees it as change.
Basically, we have arrived at the question: what is the watershed line, crossing which means one has “changed” rather than developed? (Leibowitz argued that the line is commitment to halakha.)

In conclusion, I ask that you clarify how one knows what counts as development and what counts as illegitimate change.

There is no watershed line. This is a matter of general impression, and it is hard for me to give criteria (if anyone can at all). Can you explain why Christianity is not a development of Judaism? And Reform? Karaism? The sects of the Judean Desert? All of these claim that they are developments of Judaism, and you will not be able to give any criterion for why they are right (because even your criterion is only yours). Anyone can claim anything, but claiming is free. People understand when a claim holds water and when it does not. These are arguments that do nothing beyond neutralizing a priori the ability to criticize.
But all this is not the discussion here. My remarks were only a side comment on your response to Nadav. Here I am not dealing with Hasidism but with its teachings and their significance, especially the examples I brought. Let the Hasidim do what they want, but when one studies, one should study. And before we discuss the general criteria for changes in Judaism, I would be glad for an explanation of what can be learned from the passage in Kedushat Levi and why that is study. In short, some sort of answer to the questions I raised above. Escaping to general discussions may be convenient, but it is still an escape.

For anyone who wondered what Hanukkah is, and who Mattathias was, and who the Greeks and Hasmoneans are, today we finally received an authoritative answer. I hereby have the honor of bringing before you a Hasidic-kabbalistic homily from our master the divine kabbalist rabbi, to whom no mystery is hidden, Michael Laitman, may his light shine, who reveals to us the hidden chambers of our souls and helps us gather sparks from the doughnuts and the powdered sugar upon them:
http://kabbalah.walla.co.il/item/3119426

Are you Maccabees or Greeks?

Inside each of us there are Greeks and Maccabees fighting one another. The festival of Hanukkah symbolizes the struggle between the forces that seek the light and the forces that entrench the darkness.

Kabbalah La’am
Thursday, December 14, 2017, 14:23

Let us try for a moment to shake off the powdered sugar from the old conception of terms that was instilled in us back in kindergarten, when they stuffed us with oil-soaked doughnuts and latkes and lined us up like Hanukkah candles, with golden paper candles perched on our heads. Let us try to look inward, in the hope of finding an answer to “What are we really celebrating on Hanukkah?”

Within all the holiday bustle, we may discover a rich, new, wondrous inner world that exists specifically within us. Precisely where we never thought to find the answers. The festival of Hanukkah contains a special spiritual meaning, one that opens a new direction in life. Why? Because within every person there exists an entire reality, a kind of miniature model of a complete world that resembles in all its details the world we know outside ourselves.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, one can distinguish between two main kinds of desires within every person: “Maccabees” and “Greeks.” We have desires that cause us to be drawn to what is comfortable and obvious, that are reinforced by existing knowledge, by logic, and by the various philosophies we have adopted over time. These desires entrench in us the thought that the everyday reality we experience is the only one that exists. Because of this egoistic conception, we are convinced that our lives have no purpose or goal, and that it is best for us to focus only on ourselves and hasten to enjoy life in every possible way. These desires are symbolized by the “Greeks” within us.

Opposed to them, there also exist within us more inward desires, burning with an intense longing to discover the secret of life and to directly feel the reason for what happens to us in life. These desires are symbolized by the “Maccabees” within us, and they are the ones who reject the rule of the “Greeks” over them and “rise up and rebel” against that rule.

When does a person begin to identify the various forces operating within him?

The few against the many
A person identifies the forces at work from the moment a point of light awakens in his heart, a first spark that serves as the starting point from which he sets out on his new path. This is the point of the High Priest, symbolized by “Mattathias.” At this stage, the person feels that the “Greeks” are stopping him and preventing him from rising above his perception of reality, above this world, in order to find the longed-for connection to a higher world, through which he will succeed in understanding the meaning of his life.

The process is accompanied by an inner struggle taking place between a person’s egoistic nature, to which he has been accustomed from infancy, and the desires that aspire to rise to an altruistic nature, through which he can feel the spiritual world. According to Kabbalah, this is the true war symbolized by the festival of Hanukkah – the war of the Maccabees against the Greeks, the war of “the few against the many.”

At the beginning of the struggle, the desire for spirituality appears small and helpless in contrast to the great egoistic desire, which rules and threatens, to the point that at times it seems impossible to overcome it. But when a person begins to identify with the inner spark burning in his heart, he discovers the tremendous power latent within it. A person who develops and expands that point into a complete desire begins to feel the spiritual world, a sensation of wholeness and eternity that cannot be conveyed in words.

The wars of the Maccabees and the Greeks symbolize an inner struggle taking place within us to banish the darkness that conceals the truth.
The festival of Hanukkah is only the middle of the process. It symbolizes the dedication of the spiritual Temple within us. “House” symbolizes a person’s desires, and “holy” symbolizes the quality of bestowal to others. In simple words: every person by nature is egoistic and wants only his own good, but when we are all like that, it is a recipe for trouble. Therefore, a person who has corrected all his desires – that is, changed the way he uses his desires from self-benefit to benefiting others – is called one who “built the Temple” within himself. He has developed a quality that takes others into account, a faculty that operates above his egoistic nature.

But that is only half the way. The complete correction of the desire burning within us, whose entire essence is to receive pleasure, is divided into two stages: the first half is carried out by a person on Hanuk-kah, and he “stops for a rest” after correcting his desires only partially. The second half of the path is completed when he reaches the spiritual level called “Purim,” at which point he comes to understand that all human beings on earth must rise up and attain the eternal sensation he has discovered.

But in the meantime, things are not boring. “The war of the Maccabees” is not yet over, and we must subdue the “Greeks” within us and begin living life differently. The “cruse of oil” has not yet run out and is waiting for us to light the torch in the heart that will lead us all to a better place.

A happy Festival of Lights!

To you too.

I have now found another marvelous vort that I cannot refrain from bringing here:

There are those who argue against Torah sages that they are “wise after the fact”: after an event occurs, they come and show that the event was already written or hinted at in the Torah. These people are interested in predictions made before the event.

So this time, for a change, we will bring a prediction written many years ago, in the book “Eliyah Rabbah,” composed by Rabbi Eliyahu Shapira, head of the academy and preacher of Prague, who lived between the years 1660-1712 (about 300 years ago). His books are considered foundational works in Ashkenazic halakhic rulings.

And these are his words in section 685, paragraph 4: “I found written: whenever Rosh Chodesh Shevat falls on Wednesday, then there is great cold and snow in that winter. And the mnemonic is Vayigash, an acronym: Friday = 3 Shevat [if Friday falls on the 3rd of Shevat, then Rosh Chodesh Shevat was on Wednesday, as above, so we expound the initials of the word ‘Vayigash’ in reverse order: Great snow will fall and cold]. For this has been tested and proven; and whoever fears the word of the Lord fled, etc. [that is, whoever believes the words of Hazal, spoken from the mouth of God, should prepare himself in that winter for snow and cold].” End quote.

His words were also brought in the book “Magen Avraham” – a very foundational halakhic work – in the section “Eshel Avraham,” at the end of section 685.

Please take note, and let the “Electric Company” and the “local councils” take note as well! This current year, 5772, Rosh Chodesh Shevat falls on Wednesday, and therefore prepare for heavy snows and great cold.

The words are brought on the site Yahadoot.net, and in my opinion they have no connection to Judaism. Perhaps they should be placed on Hasidut.net.

http://www.yahadoot.net/item.asp?id=280&cid=13

Incidentally, I did not find these words in the Magen Avraham, but in Eshel Avraham, which is not part of Magen Avraham but the Pri Megadim’s commentary on it. Its source is indeed in Eliyah Rabbah there, where it appears briefly, and this requires investigation. This teaches you that even great halakhic decisors can behave like latter-day cranks, and that is an immensely important lesson. (And from now on the author of Eliyah Rabbah is the eminent rabbi who taught me this Torah.)

As far as I recall, the Magen Avraham did not see this book, and certainly did not quote its words.
And when did he have time to add a section Eshel Avraham to his book without my knowing?!
And perhaps the intent of the holy site .net was to Pri Megadim?

And our master already beat me to it 🙁

But from here one can speak in defense of those who go to the seashore to sunbathe on Rosh Chodesh Shevat, for in truth they wish to roll in the snow, as the Rokeach prescribed to afflict penitents by rolling in snow. True, it is hot there and the sun reddens their skin, but we have a presumption that no word of our sages falls to the ground, and surely there is snow there, while the heat and the sun are but hallucinations of cold that enveloped them like men close to death. Blessed is He who chose them and their teaching.

A. Ch., that is a quotation from this holy site, not my own words. Just now, right above you, I corrected it.

And now kindly fulfill, please: who has gone before me, that I should repay him?…

Please do not suspect me of such a trait. Since I do not value your honor at all, when I see words of wisdom and sayings of understanding such as these, I do not attribute them to you but to the great kabbalists of blessed memory.

What did you mean by quoting this? Is this also evidence for your claims about Hasidism?

Seemingly there are claims here (perhaps somewhat vague) about the human soul and its desires, and about the soul-work incumbent upon us (contemplating these desires within us and identifying with the altruistic desire) during the days of Hanukkah.

The Magen Avraham died in 1682, the Eliyah Rabbah 30 years later (1712), and the Pri Megadim another 80 years later (1792). So the Magen Avraham does not quote the Eliyah Rabbah; rather, the Pri Megadim does, as is of course known to anyone familiar with the books on the Magen Avraham.
As for bringing these words, I don’t understand what the connection is to the discussion at all. Has this article now become a collection of superstitions said by our sages over the generations?
If so, then one can also add here the belief that the earth is flat, that the messiah would come in the years 5408-5409, or the Ramban’s statement that “a menstruant woman at the beginning of her flow, if she looks into a bright iron mirror and gazes at it for a long time, drops of red like drops of blood will appear in the mirror,” and so on.
With all due respect to the rabbi, the article here has shifted from a serious discussion of the “teachings of Hasidism” to a derisive collection of mistaken or foolish statements said by all the sages of Israel.

Aharon, this is very relevant, because we see here that people who are serious by any standard can write things that are entirely bizarre, contrary to the ad hominem claims voiced here more than once, including by you. Especially when one reaches the realms of the hidden and of Hasidism, where the ground is open to everyone and the burden of proof and substantiation has completely vanished, and anyone can say whatever he likes with no critic in sight.

And thus our master the author of Avi Ezri of blessed memory used to sign his letters: “who values him according to his value.” Simply wonderful. 🙂

This is not proof of anything, only another example of Hasidic vorts that hang what was taught on what was never taught, and create empty, homiletic drivel lacking sense and basis. Laitman acts here exactly like one of the Hasidim (not for nothing he is connected to Ashlag – Hasid and kabbalist). I see no principled difference between this vort and the Kedushat Levi cited above, though personally of course there is no comparison between them.

A response to the Laitman quotation
Maybe I am just repeating myself, but let’s separate the speaker (the clown Laitman) from the words, and the external framework –
the construction – from the content.
The content speaks about a war between the good inclination and the evil inclination (“the element of earth,” in traditional language), or between the id and the superego, in the language of psychodynamic psychologists.
One can argue that the words are trivial, one can argue that his reliance on Kabbalah is false. But at the level of the basic idea, I do not find in his words any claim that is really open to dispute.
Here, briefly, are his claims:
An ordinary person has a struggle between the desire to “live life” and the desire to behave altruistically, which in many people’s eyes is connected with a kind of satisfaction, meaning, and spiritual “nirvana.”
A person should seek out that inner desire and develop it.
At the end of the path, he reaches complete altruism, and then he feels fulfilled and happy.
(These things do not speak to me, but to many people – they do.)
Let us identify the forces. Who are the “bad guys”? The Greeks (for now; on Purim it will be the Persians, and on Passover the Egyptians). Who are the “good guys”? The Maccabees. And who is the initiator (the ego)? Mattathias the High Priest.

Many people seek out this discourse, to discuss the struggle between their impulses, to hear encouragement that in the end the “good guys” can win (like the Maccabees). This helps them in daily coping.
Someone gullible who believes the source of these things is in Kabbalah (classical or Lurianic) is in trouble. And someone who at the end of the lecture goes to sign a standing order for the kabbalist is even more in trouble.
But someone who takes these things as a kind of framework for emotional problems and dilemmas, each generation according to its condition, I do not see a problem with that.
I distinguish between understanding things objectively, and using ideas as a framework for new challenges. Did the story of the Maccabees not serve as a basis for nationalist-Zionist ideas in the period of the founding of the state? It did. Were modern nationalist ideas in the consciousness of the Maccabees? Certainly not. So that is use.
This is the way of human culture. It makes use of symbols and foundational texts, as needed.

Aharon, it seems to me that you are simply being stubborn. We have no disagreement. We both agree that Laitman is entirely parallel to standard Hasidic teachings.
If someone seeks these childish things, good for him (that is what I called therapy). Like in kindergarten, when they tell children that Esau had a wicked and disgusting appearance and then it is easier for them to feel revulsion toward him. One can attach evil to Ahasuerus or the wicked Greeks as needed, since in any event you are saying nothing here besides childish games. You are simply repeating my claims, but for some reason doing so in a tone of argument and defense of Hasidism. With a defense like that, no accusers are needed.

True, regarding Laitman’s words, which really are “Hasidic teachings,” we have no disagreement. We do have two other disagreements.

The first concerns the legitimacy of kneading canonical materials and creating something new from them. You claim that this is not legitimate.
I claim that this behavior is human and widespread in many places, religious and nonreligious alike.

I claim that “necessity is no disgrace” (the Maharsha’s phrase), and that human beings, with all their cognitive weaknesses, are compelled to recycle old symbols and pour new content into them. Perhaps there exist individuals (doctors of physics) who can distill the content and do not need the wrapping, but it is unfair for them, out of elitism, to mock the majority of the population who cannot do so. That is not fair, and it is also unhealthy for their listeners.
I claim that you did not properly separate the methodology of Hasidic teachings from their content, but used the methodological problem as a tool to dismiss Hasidism as a whole, which you happen not to like.

The second disagreement: you claim that Hasidism is not a development of Judaism, and I claim that it is.
I proposed the watershed line suggested by Leibowitz, according to which any stream committed to halakha is a continuation of Judaism. You did not answer me what your line is.

(I don’t know why exactly your words bother me so much. After all, today I am not a religious person, so ostensibly why should I care. It seems to me that what bothers me is your striving for total realization, in everything. You leave no room for creativity, for play, for art, and for amusement. The Hasidic “teachings” used such tools, at least in their methodology. In this they continued and developed an old tradition of “cycles and numerologies are desserts of wisdom,” whose source is already in Hazal.
As I already wrote: go to tractates Nega’im and Oholot!)

Hello Aharon.
A. I did not write that this is not legitimate. Everything is legitimate. What is wrong with it? This is child’s play, and whoever enjoys it, good health to him. What I wrote is that this is not Torah study, not that it is illegitimate. The fact that this behavior is widespread is itself the reason I wrote these things. Unfortunately, people capable of more also descend into these games, originally intended for wagon drivers, and that is a shame.
B. I did not claim that Hasidism is not a development of Judaism. Nadav claimed something along those lines, and to that I wrote that in my opinion it was extreme. I only remarked to you that there is a difference between the examples you brought and Hasidism.
A halakhic watershed line is an illusion. The question is: what is halakha? Reform Jews also build themselves a halakha, and so do Christians to some extent. And certainly Karaites and Sadducees. And of course I too construct halakha, and many will say (and do say) that I am a heretic (for example, I permit wearing a wristwatch, against the explicit ruling of R. Chaim Kanievsky that was brought here). Quite a few Litvaks will tell you that the Hasidim too are not faithful to halakha (prayer times, Chabad’s sleeping outside the sukkah, “for the sake of the unification” formulas, ministering angels, etc.). That is why I wrote that there is no real watershed line.
I do not strive for realization in the sense of logification. I strive for clarity and the removal of ambiguities insofar as possible, which is not always possible, and especially for the dispersal of illusions, which is highly desirable and indeed necessary. I certainly strive to give things meaning and not remain with empty games. Almost all my writings are devoted to the need, the necessity, and the possibility of going beyond logic (not against logic, but beyond it. Logic is a necessary but not sufficient condition). But even that must be done clearly and attached to logic as much as possible.

If you’ll forgive me, to conclude I’ll add one personal remark and a familiar joke (in true friendship).
Yentl and Berel are a couple, survivors of the Shoah, who abandoned the God of mercy and forgiveness. One clear morning Berel begins cursing Heaven (because of the mercy and forgiveness revealed in the Shoah). Yentl, utterly shocked, protests: Berel, how can you talk like that? Berel answers her: Yentl, did you forget? We no longer believe in Him. And Yentl, with a tearful face, replies: Yes, but the God I don’t believe in is merciful and gracious, slow to anger. How dare you speak to Him like that?!
Some mock this dialogue, but I think it is very real and authentic, and in fact reflects implicit faith. Yentl is a believing woman with all her heart, except that her heart does not reveal itself to her mouth. She cannot explain it to herself or resolve her difficulties, and so she arrives at the conscious conclusion that she does not believe, even though in fact she does. So too, in my opinion, with quite a few atheists. And well known are Rabbi Kook’s wonderful words about a faith that appears as heresy and a heresy that appears as faith. I do not know you, but reading between the lines of what you write here, that is my impression of you as well. Therefore I say to you: repent, and then I (perhaps), you, and Ben-David will stroll in Gan Eden (if there is such a thing).
This sounds very much like a Hasidic vort (although it is not. It is a Hasidic Torah thought, completely serious), but here you see that I too use the genre and do so entirely seriously. Perhaps I will manage to extract sparks from a rock… Sorry for drifting onto a personal plane, but I felt it proper that these things be said.

Hello Rabbi!

I have no problem at all with remarks on a personal background; on the contrary, I’m glad of them.

The fact that Judaism occupies me so much does indeed seem puzzling on the face of it. I assume the real reason is that if the place in which I grew up [and in which I continue to live], and the learning in which I invested, should appear to me utterly absurd, I would come out in my own eyes as a fool. So I insist on showing that even if there is a mistake at the foundation, that does not mean that all those years I was a complete idiot. This is cheap psychology.

But thank you for your explanation; I will think about it and take it to heart. (In my view, to walk with you in Gan Eden, everything, but everything – is worth it.)
By the way, I am not an atheist but a full-fledged deist (a view that in your eyes is less absurd).

If I may, let me ask your opinion of the “teachings” of the Or HaChayim (like the 42 interpretations you mentioned on the verse “If you walk in My statutes”)?

What is your opinion of Rabbi Kook’s essays?

And here is another very interesting passage from the Chatam Sofer; I wonder whether you know it. He testifies about himself that he innovates interpretations not entirely in accordance with the truth, because the pilpulim help him remember! Here it is:

Chatam Sofer, tractate Shabbat 140b
And by way of jest, based on what seems to me, this custom was born among us to innovate too many new interpretations, and each builds his own altar, one this way and one that way. Perhaps we may seek merit for ourselves by saying that our early geonim, of blessed memory, decreed this when they saw forgetfulness increasing in the world, alas, and it became impossible to preserve one’s learning. But by means of new interpretations on every page and folio, one thereby remembers everything, and “a surprising matter is readily remembered,” and experience testifies for us to this, and I know it about myself. Thus, even if the innovation is not quite correct, nevertheless it helps against forgetfulness, as above. And perhaps this is the interpretation of the Talmud, “We are like a finger in a pit regarding forgetfulness,” and the other adds, “And we are like a finger in wax regarding reasoning,” which at first glance is unrelated to the first. But according to the above it is fine, for at first it was like a finger in a pit regarding forgetfulness; still, one could help through new interpretations, but now we are like a finger in wax with respect to reasoning as well, so what can be done? And it is known that olive oil restores one’s learning of seventy years, as explained at the end of Horayot. That is what this young scholar said: “I have no oil” – that is, no memory, which is called by the name of olive oil – “let us draw with notched water,” by the method of the “sharp ones” known in our time, acute and keen – and understand this well.
[Incidentally, in this passage there is something like a “Hasidic teaching” – “this young scholar who has no oil.” And it seems to me that if I looked, I would find in his words on the Torah actual Hasidic teachings.]

Deuteronomy 28:47-48: “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart when everything was abundant – therefore you shall serve your enemies, whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, nakedness and utter want; and He will put an iron yoke upon your neck until He has destroyed you.”

(And it seems to me that the Rambam counts this in Sefer HaMitzvot.)

Just as a person in love sees his beloved everywhere, so the Hasid sees his God everywhere, in every place and in every teaching.

In Rabbi Yosef Naftali Stern’s introduction to Derashot Chatam Sofer, he notes that the Chatam Sofer cites Hasidic teachings in the name of “kabbalists” (incidentally, the Chatam Sofer was a student of the Baal Hafla’ah, who was a student of the Maggid of Mezeritch).

With blessing, S. Tz. Levinger

Rabbi, could you address my last comment here (from 19/12 at 01:52)?

I answered, and it is not clear to me what happened to the response. I’ll reply again briefly.

I am not familiar with the teachings of the Or HaChayim (I do not deal with biblical exegesis). But on the face of it, to propose 42 interpretations of one verse sounds suspiciously like pilpul that is not striving for truth. Along these lines, I once heard from Rabbi Medan that he knows 22 explanations for why we read the Book of Ruth on Shavuot, but only one explanation for why we read Esther on Purim. Mark this well.

Rabbi Kook’s essays are not Hasidic teachings. True, in his other writings (not the essays) there is an element of poetry, but those familiar with the genre are able to decipher and understand what he means.

First, even the Chatam Sofer speaks of something that is “not entirely true,” meaning that there is a measure of truth in it. In any event, pilpul in his case is not the bulk of his teaching but peripheral. And if there are such things, then indeed I would not study them either. Beyond that, good pilpul is an intellectual delight (a riddle, as I explained in post 52), and as he writes, it also helps the listeners absorb the Torah. Whereas in the Kedushat Levi I brought, it is simply childish and devoid of any sophistication. So it is not true, not enjoyable, not sharp, and not useful either – so what is the point of engaging in it?!

(I was privileged with an excellent student/colleague, an outstanding learned student, who smacks me on the head every time I write nonsense.)
In my view an important question is why you write nonsense with such self-confidence and with such expressions of contempt and dismissal toward other things; sometimes your words even verge on crudeness.
Sorry, but it jars me, and to my mind it says something about the quality of the claim.
To my mind, belligerence indicates lack of confidence in the truth of the claim.

In my view that is actually not such an important question, but if in your view it is, I will try to address it.
I write confidently about things I am confident in. When there are things deserving of contempt, I sometimes show contempt as well (see the clarifications for readers of the site on the opening page on the left). When I receive comments that persuade me, even if they are contemptuous, I try to overcome that and retract, and therefore I am happy with every comment, and certainly with comments that make it clear to me that I was mistaken (though I must say that at the moment I do not remember something I wrote with confidence and then retracted. But perhaps there was such a thing).
In general, I form my view about positions and arguments according to their quality and validity, not according to the degree of contempt in them or according to other irrelevant criteria that pertain to style and/or to the person making the claim rather than the argument itself. Apparently in this too we disagree. Someone who forms his opinion about arguments based on their style – I recommend that he not read this site. It is not intended for him.

We writers too are not afraid to strike the rabbi soundly on the crown of his head, and it seems to us that if he did not accept it with humility we would suspect him of not doing so out of fear of Heaven.

First of all, thank you, Rabbi Michi, whose words always provoke and challenge me in equal measure, in a way that forces me to clarify and sharpen my own outlooks each time anew.
I saw that the rabbi complains that among all his critics there is no one who is “taking up the gauntlet” and defending the words of Kedushat Levi against his orderly critique.
Let me preface by saying that in my opinion the reason is that there is a problem here of attacking a straw man, though of course not intentionally. Things that are clear and simple in Rabbi Michi’s eyes never entered Kedushat Levi’s mind.
I will try to reconstruct Kedushat Levi’s words (and in my opinion everything I write is exactly Kedushat Levi’s intention, not merely an asmachta), though I am neither worthy nor fitting to do so, because of the narrowness of my mind and the shortness of my years.
I will begin with a general introduction (which in my opinion pertains to the entire discussion): I think that Kedushat Levi and Rabbi Michi identify in completely different ways what the essence of Judaism is, and indeed what “the essence” is at all. For Rabbi Michi (of course this is just an impression; I have not seen him write so explicitly), the essence of essences is thought. Of course thought need not be purely analytical, and indeed it must not be only that, and truths may be revealed only by synthetic thought, and emotions too are not unnecessary and must be given their place, but in the final accounting – the king of kings of all important domains is thought. Therefore the existence of God, His Torah, and His commandments are all manifestations of thought processes. Therefore it is proper for the complete person that every important decision he makes, every idea he believes in, whether spiritual or material, every meaningful act he performs – should contain as much thought as possible, and as little as possible of the… what? I don’t know exactly how to define it. A lot of definitions have been thrown around here: emotion, insights, existentialism, being moved, and perhaps others. Consequently, the complete person will believe in God, accept His Torah, carry out His commandments (even if he cannot understand their reasons by this recursive thought), and even take upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven and earth, and in this spirit will conduct his life, the lives of those near and far, and his state.

According to Kedushat Levi, thought is not quite so important. How do I know? Because he said so. Deepening understanding is a tool (admittedly not a negligible one) for cleaving and enthusiasm arising from encounter and relationship with God. Yes indeed – that very fickle emotion, easy to ignite and easy to let rest, to which the man of thought gives such little weight, is in the eyes of Hasidism the essence of essences. And deepening understanding is only its instrument. Being moved is what matters. The change in the human soul is what matters. If according to the Rambam, the more I strip God of every description, the more I cleave to Him, because intellectually I become more aware of His abstraction, then Hasidism claims that the relationship with God is simply in the experience of His presence. What is called: “beyond reason and understanding.” Yes, I know that in the language of recursive thought, what is written here is complete nonsense. But the fact is that it speaks to me. It speaks to me like a poem, like a story, like a vort; it does not seem to me like a phone book or a telephone pole. (By the way, what is with the telephones? Why do they keep appearing here in such unflattering contexts?) (And not because one cannot be moved by a telephone pole, but because it is obvious that when it comes to a telephone pole there is no doubt that the emotional response is unrelated to the pole, and not even to the one who set it up. It is related only to the structure of my soul. Whereas when I encounter a text, however obscure, I can make claims about the aims and intentions of its author.) And it speaks not only to me. It speaks to many other people, who discuss it, are moved by it, and stir one another by it, even if they cannot describe it in the familiar language of “thought.”
What is this like? A person with no sense of smell who sees many people walking around Super-Pharm, smelling perfumes, being impressed by their fine fragrance, and discussing the differences among them. That person would go and laugh at those fools – how they prattle on with vain nonsense about things that do not exist at all, for the concept of “smell” is a complete invention. And when they ask him: but so many people repeatedly claim that they feel the smells and the differences between them with actual sense perception – are they all making it up? – that smell-blind person answers that he does not care how many err; he is after the truth. Except that in our case it is not a smell-blind person. It is a person with a sense of smell, who could perhaps even have developed it to become particularly discerning, but chose to live all his life with a clothespin pinching his nostrils shut, because smells interfere with judgment, and only the latter is fit to lead life. Such a person, when he needs to buy perfume, will not remove the clothespin from his nose, but will study the ingredients of the perfume, and by a process of recursive thought, while consulting an encyclopedia of perfumes and additional references in the literature and scholarship (of other experts who spent all their days with a clothespin on their noses), will discover which perfume is perfect for his needs. He will then go on his way bearing that perfect perfume, while inwardly and on his site mocking those people who let their sense of smell confuse them and followed, time after time, the counsel of their impressionable nostrils.

If I am right, then the whole conception of the commandments in general is different. According to the “thought people,” the commandments are operating instructions given by the intellect, blessed be He, in a way that advances His hidden aims, for His thoughts are not our thoughts, and we are obligated to fulfill them without knowing their reasons (beyond reason and understanding!!!), unless there is an internal contradiction in thought, in which case one may give up (see prayer), and there is no drawing near to God through the commandments. If there is any gain, it is because God created man in such a way that when he fulfills a commandment he is somehow perfected in a way he does not understand. And since our wisdom has decreed that God must surely be right, great, let’s go with that. And therefore, with the commandment of Torah study, one must understand exactly which criteria have to be met in order to fulfill it, and then – if we have met them, wonderful – we have been somehow perfected by magic! (Or perhaps not, and we have only fulfilled our obligation to fulfill our obligation to fulfill our obligation – note the recursive thinking! I need to look at my notebooks again.)

According to Hasidism, the essence is not thought but the psychic relationship. By its nature, this cannot be captured in brief, precise definitions, and in order to describe it as well as possible there is specifically a need to use many words. These words will not describe the experience in the narrowest possible way, as is recommended in science, but will provide a field of boundaries within which the soul can be moved and find echoes. The words, from this point of view, are signifiers full of free associations that people invented and created in order to enable themselves to stir one another (in the sense of influence and interaction, not, God forbid, in an instrumental sense), and not existing definitions for entities that people thought hard about and then “discovered.”

I have much more to say on the matter, but I am sure that in the rabbi’s eyes the things I have said are nonsense, so I will wait. Perhaps he will nevertheless ask a concrete question about my words, and from there I will continue.

More power to you, David. In general, I support what you’ve written here. But in the end, even you did not really take up the gauntlet.
My advice is that you try to show, in a “thought-like” way: 1 – the path to reaching “beyond reason and understanding” (how “deepening understanding is a tool for cleaving and enthusiasm arising from encounter and relationship with God,” as you put it); 2 – and the importance of this (why emotion is more important than logical conclusions); 3 – and show that the text of Kedushat Levi really does serve one who walks this path, and brings him to an experiential encounter with God. Then the gauntlet (and not only the gauntlet) will be very much elevated.
This is a very difficult task (which is why I am not doing it), but in my opinion, without it there is no chance that your words will be heard and accepted here.

Dear David, your words are definitely not nonsense in my eyes, but they repeat claims that have already been raised here (namely, that if many people find meaning in these things then apparently I am the smell-blind one). There is not much I can do with that, other than repeat that such criticism rules out any criticism of anything. After all, you have not shown here in any way any answer to any of my questions, except for the declaration that there are probably lofty depths here that none of us (including you) really understand. We have, of course, returned to the telephone pole. Even though you declared that it is different from our case, you did not explain how. As I wrote to those before you, I have no way of dealing with declarations.
As for the basic question whether enthusiasm or the commandment is the main thing, this requires a separate discussion, and the question is indeed important and significant, but in my opinion it is not the main point of the discussion here. See my questions above. I would be happy if you proposed an answer to each of them in an orderly way; then we can discuss it. Otherwise we remain in the realm of declarations. It is very convenient to respond to substantive criticism by saying that these things are “beyond reason and understanding.” That way one can justify any nonsense. Especially if one adds the declaration that thought is not primary but emotion is. That does not help the discussion, and I do not know what I am supposed to say in response to it.

If my words do not sound like nonsense, I would be glad to continue.

Apology and warning: what follows is long. Very long. Whoever wants can read everything. Whoever doesn’t have the strength can read what he likes. Whoever has even less strength need not read at all. I won’t be offended. I wrote this mostly for myself, because I felt that the rabbi’s posts challenge me to define certain things for myself. Of course I would be glad to discuss fragments as well.

As a continuation of my words in the previous comment:

If we assume that relationships are what matter, and thought is only a tool for them, and language is the creation of a space in which souls meet souls and stir one another by means of words, not in the mode of objective minds free of psychic bias, chopping each other down on the road to pure, absolute, objective truth, until it shines forth in the splendor of its genius and overwhelms with its blinding force every subjective hue that presumes to dim it, but rather in the mode where from the outset it is understood by all that words are conventions between souls, and that they describe the way objects are interpreted within the souls of subjects, such that although much is shared between them, much also separates them, and one is no more “true” than the other – if all this is correct – then we can turn to the next important question, much discussed here: if I am performing such far-reaching manipulations on the text, why use this text at all? Moreover, the whole reason one uses a canonical text is because one attributes to it some kind of intrinsic truth, or an inviolable sanctity; but by amusing myself with it so wildly, am I not sawing off the branch I sit on? For if the text can be so flexible, what meaning does it have? And if it has no meaning – what is gained by hanging my thoughts on it?

This, of course, is an excellent question beginning with the rabbinic derashot of the tannaitic period, and certainly for the halakhic ones too, which mercilessly uproot the plain sense of Scripture; through the derashot of the Zohar, the Ari’s interpretations of verses, and all the way to Hasidism.

But for all how this question gnaws, none of those guilty of creating it seem to have felt it, nor does it appear that any of them took their object of wild play lightly in the least. On the contrary: they believed that since they had succeeded in finding an echo for their words, however associative, in the sacred text, this was a sign that their words were true, or at least one aspect of the truth.

When I look at these giants of spirit, whose hands were mighty also in the fields of “ordinary” logical thought – that is, Talmudic dialectic, alongside foundational statements in philosophy, ethics, society, state, law, family, and many other areas – I cannot dismiss their homiletics as “desserts,” or “encouragement for the masses” unnecessary for the intelligent strata, and the like. From the totality of their words there blows a sense of great significance attached to this activity. Therefore, even if I were a person who believes only in “logical” thought, I think I would have to address this question seriously. And even if I found no answer, I would remain with a genuine unresolved difficulty, and would not dismiss or mock.

Now, I will nevertheless try to give an answer of my own. Of course, if it works at all, it will only be according to my own way, and even then perhaps.

(Apology: I have no doubt that what I am about to write has already been said and rehashed countless times in the past, in a much more apt, simple, and precise way, by people far more educated, wise, and articulate than I am. But because of my ignorance, I cannot send you to references or simply say “hocus pocus the Copernican revolution” or something of that sort and everyone will already enter the proper context. So I have no choice but to be long where brevity would be preferable.)

In my opinion, as I already mentioned, words do not describe reality as it is. They describe reality as it is interpreted in the soul of the subject. Of course there is external, objective reality in itself (yes, don’t worry, it exists!), and it even seems that the correlation between it and the way it is perceived among subjects is fairly perfect; but still, I think one cannot deny that when I say a word describing reality, that word speaks about the way reality is organized in my head (that is, in my soul, since the use of words is not conscious but rather “being moved”). For example: when I say that I see a house on a hill, the house and the hill in themselves are not identified as two separate organs. The totality of particles composing the house are not essentially different in any way from the totality of particles composing the hill. In my head, they become organized according to the way my soul is built (which is a result of genetics, environment, and in my opinion also personal creativity). Obviously definitions will also be culture-dependent. The word “hill,” for example, will define entirely different realities (noumena) for Tel Avivians and for Jerusalemites. And this is before we even start speaking of words that describe spiritual and psychic entities. I do not mean to claim in any way that different people see different realities. I claim that different people see the same reality in sensory terms, everyone’s brain sees the same exact picture, but the words they use are completely dependent on the soul. (Sorry that I am overexplaining such a simple and obvious claim; I just saw that some people have trouble understanding the difference between sensory perception and verbal definition.)

Since this is so, when at a young age we learn to give names and words that will organize for us, within our souls, the arbitrary reality outside us (which is composed of particles without intrinsic identity, whether material or spiritual), this happens in a very associative way, of course, and a very, very, very recursive one. Thus we connect the word “no,” which our parents say to us many times during infancy, with negation, anger, constriction, and so on; and the word “yes” with affirmation, joy, affection, multiplicity of possibilities, etc. Therefore too, in different cultures, various words will be associated differently.

After all this exhausting introduction, I will try to approach the main point. In my opinion, the Jewish people have always valued words (and not so much numbers, but that’s just a jab), because they always valued the dynamism of the soul. When our myth tells us that external reality was created through the use of words (and the creation story is clearly occupied with giving names to things even after they were created by divine utterance), it tells us that reality itself, which seems to us so rigid, so stable and uninfluenced by the stormy soul, is in fact wholly soul-dependent – dependent on the soul of the Creator. (Thus Genesis depicts the Creator as venturing more and more, seeing that it is good more and more, and finally making man in His image and likeness by breathing into him His inwardness, which is the speaking spirit, in the combination of the Zohar and Targum Onkelos.) Thus changes in reality are in fact the way the Creator expresses Himself toward His creatures – whether in routine matters like rainfall and agricultural success, or in times of overt miraculous manifestation – the Flood, brimstone from heaven, the splitting of the sea, and much more, of course. (I am really not trying now to discuss whether these things happened and whether God actually created reality this way, and so it will contribute nothing to object with questions like “but our own eyes see that not so,” etc. I am only claiming that this is how Judaism has understood itself from ancient times, and whoever associates himself with “Judaism” as a tradition saw created reality this way – as a mirror of the Creator’s psychic relations with His creatures.) From here it is a short path to the Psalms that personify physical reality and identify its daily movements (waves, treetops, winds, flaming fire, lightning and thunder, etc.) as reality’s turning to God in praise and thanks, and as an expression of the storminess of God’s own soul toward creation.

Therefore, when I encounter a word written in the Torah, I encounter a psychic expression of the writer (whoever he may be), which has been set before me in order to create a contextual space, to provide boundary lines for the dynamic associative organization of the concept within my own soul.

Here especially, recursion is the name of the game. One does not work here in a logical way, as in “numerical” thought, whose aim is to neutralize the influences of the soul as much as possible, but in learning the concept through its various appearances, each of which broadens it further, until it encompasses a system of associations that allows for the sharing of psychic experiences. That is why Scripture mostly appears as a literary creation, within which are embedded collections of laws, detailed cultic instructions, and also censuses. (And the well-known “realistic” difficulties with the censuses, which do not work out historically. In general, whenever Scripture turns explicitly to numbers, things “don’t run well.” Something always fails. I find it hard to believe this is because the writer lacked mathematical ability in addition and subtraction. It seems more likely that the cause is equal respect for different versions and a decision to combine them despite the contradiction, or importance attributed to typological numbers, or perhaps other reasons. In any case, it is clear that Scripture simply does not think it is so important that the numbers work out; what really matters is that the things settle into the reader’s soul and activate it.)

Now let us take an example of a strange and irritating rabbinic derasha (one of countless examples).
Hazal expound the verse “If a man acts maliciously against his fellow to kill him with guile, from My altar you shall take him to die.” The derasha claims that the word “acts maliciously” means “ripens,” like “Jacob boiled a stew,” and from here there is proof that a man, meaning an adult, is already “ripe” and fit for begetting children (like wheat that has ripened and is fit to be sown and sprout), as opposed to one who has not yet reached the stage of “man,” i.e. a minor, who cannot beget children. Utter nonsense, cheapening of the Torah, ridiculous word games, etc. But if I claim that of course the preacher had already reached his conclusion beforehand, that in terms of “reality” a minor does not beget children (a problematic empirical claim in itself, since a minor is defined as one who is nine years and one day old and has not yet reached signs of puberty, which teaches you that even the claims about reality themselves, before they receive “confirmation” and “proofs” from the all-knowing and all-defining verses, cannot stand up to harsh reality itself; and against your will even they too deal with the psychic relation to reality and not reality itself. But that is for another discussion), and he sought only a loose support in the verses, in the sense that: “If my soul, which is occupied all the time with being moved by the Torah, and by God’s words, and by the words of those who study His Torah and cleave to Him, if this soul of mine finds in an association, however wild, an echo to the idea that the concepts ‘man,’ ‘stew,’ ‘ripeness,’ ‘deliberateness,’ ‘maturity,’ ‘killing with guile,’ ‘cooking’ all come together for me in the idea that when one is dealing with a person who has not yet reached minimal ripeness, one cannot obligate him to take responsibility for life, neither for creating it nor for taking it – if so, ‘my heart tells me’” (an authoritative Hasidic concept of the first importance!) – “thus will I rule, and to hell with the question of whether it is true in reality.” And after all, the whole concept of a dispute on such a subject (and there is one there between Rav Chisda and Rabbah) is simply laughable from any other perspective. All the more so the attempts to bring proofs for such a scientific claim per se from verses. Except that clearly Hazal were not occupied with scientific reality. It did not interest them. What interested them was how it was interpreted or perceived in their individual and collective souls. So too with claims rooted in folklore about the cruelty of ravens, or the reproduction of lice, and countless other examples. In fact, my impression is that anyone who claims that Hazal were actually trying to discuss reality with the scientific tools available in their time, while maximally subtracting “the soul’s impressions,” is in my opinion burying his head in the sand (or walking around Super-Pharm with a clothespin on his nose).

In light of all this, here is how I would explain Kedushat Levi’s vort. (By the way, it is funny that we have become so fixated here on Kedushat Levi. For all his importance as a central figure in Hasidism, his book is not all that studied, and his teachings – unlike stories about him – are not regarded as especially foundational in Hasidic thought. Even today he is not studied all that much. Besides, the connoisseurs know to remark that this book is a surprising blend of very meaningful vorts alongside quite a lot that are mediocre or worse. Still, let us try to restore to him a little of his lost honor.)

The first question is: why expound associatively דווקא in this way and not another? Or in other words: if everything is associations, what makes anything significant?
The answer would be, as I argued, that the “necessity” of the derasha does not arise from the text being expounded, but from the soul expounding it. Indeed, when R. Levi Yitzchak read the sugya dealing with the concepts of “lighting” and “placing” in their “commandment” context, he obviously was ignited by it, and assumed that everyone else would be ignited like him. If this did not happen to someone, let him rest easy – at least he did not lose out as someone reading Torah…
By the way, Rabbi Michi’s derasha here is in my opinion much less successful, because the question whether a commandment is named after its finisher or its initiator is a formal one, and there is no point in deriving a formal matter x by associative-intuitive derasha in order to explain another formal matter y of the same hierarchical level. By contrast, if the rabbi were discussing whether a commandment is named after its finisher or initiator on the basis of a derasha from a verse, he would rise to the rank of a tanna. Strength to your Torah!

The second question is: is he prepared to carry this identification all the way through? Then various possibilities, with only associative connection, are brought in order to make it look absurd.
The answer is: of course yes. And I will explain. Not only is he “prepared to carry it all the way through”; in my opinion, in his view, it is already “there all the way through.” Obviously in the sense we have explained. Everywhere someone used the concept of “lighting,” he had embedded within it all the associations of that concept. This is, of course, the logic of analogy between one matter and another, where one must cling only to its logical aspect when discussing monetary law, but may and even must expand it to its associative aspects when it comes to matters of the soul (this is derasha in the narrow sense; I mean, of course, service of God). Just as I would not remain with the thin concept “fire” when faced with some other case of something that naturally goes and causes damage and consumes everything in its path in general (say, if some machine were invented that creates hurricanes), and I would rule by “logical” thought that here too we would make one liable for hidden goods, so too if I have a meaningful association for matters of serving God, I would certainly discuss it in that way. (In the case of fire, “my heart tells me” that the fire will be interpreted as the danger in enthusiasm in the service of God without paying attention to the hidden, concealed damages outside my own domain, and the need for “placing” as a balance to “lighting.” Blessed are you, Rabbi Michi, who have gotten caught up in words of Torah!)

The third question is: should there be consistency in Hasidic teaching? As I recall, this question was already answered, and I too will offer my answer.
My answer is: yes, there should be consistency. But the consistency should be faithful to the idea of the derasha, not necessarily to the logical structure of the text being expounded. If suddenly the concept “placing” were interpreted in the sense of a discount at the grocery store, that God cuts us slack and gives us discounts (say, according to strict law one needs to light only one candle), which cheer and warm our hearts, then there would be an unexplained twist here, and in my eyes that would be a flaw. But as long as we are dealing with two opposing concepts, and the relations between them are consistently preserved, everything is fine. The Talmudic sugya is only an asmachta; there is no need to inspect the preacher step by step. He did not try, and it would have produced no gain had he succeeded.
(Incidentally, in this case Rabbi Michi’s questions about consistency according to the sugya are not good, as others explained. But it really would not have mattered if they had been, so onward.)

The fourth question is: what is the connection between the sugya of “lighting performs the commandment” versus “placing performs the commandment” and the concepts of enthusiasm in the service of God and the loss of it?
In my opinion, associatively or psychically, there is a strong connection here (in my sins, I do not know the later discussions about this sugya, but as I wrote, that does not really matter, since we are dealing with matters of the soul and not with what I will do practically next Hanukkah):
Lighting the Hanukkah lamp is a commandment intended to remind the public of the miracle. The appearance of the lamp’s light is an expression of God’s intervention in reality in that dark period. In this sugya, there is a discussion of the nature of the miracle. What exactly changed? The crowning point of that miracle (whose main point was of course the Jews’ victory over the Greeks) was the purification of the Temple (until they “forced in” a supernatural wonder to emphasize this, against the background of all the more “hidden” miracles that happened along the way). The return of Israel to practical and bloody cultic life, expressing relationship with God.
The statement that “lighting performs the commandment” says that the very change from “no fire” to “fire” is what most precisely expresses the miracle that occurred on Hanukkah. When the Temple is in Greek hands, it is as though the lamp of Israel has gone out. There is no meaning to learning in caves, circumcisions in secret, or in general to the spiritual relationship of each individual with God. Only when the people of Israel declare openly, as a collective, their commitment to God, and express it in the form of cult (than which there is nothing more capable of moving the soul enthusiastically and ecstatically), only then can one say that the lamp of Israel has not gone out.
By contrast, the statement that “placing performs the commandment” claims that as long as there is any connection at all between Israel and God, as long as repair is possible, the lamp is still burning. The miracle was simply taking the light existing in secret, in dim form, and placing it before the eyes of the whole world. That is to say, the significance of the miracle in this view lies in God’s manifestation as one who declares that the way the relationship is displayed matters to Him, and not only its bare existence, which can be preserved even indoors.
Therefore Kedushat Levi claims that they do not disagree. For both hold that ideally the best state is one in which there is a Temple, continual burnt offerings in their order and additional offerings according to their law, and the flame rises of itself, and the people of Israel feel closeness to God through sacrifices and Temple service. The question is what one does in a post-facto state, when there is no experience of closeness to God, when God’s indwelling on earth departs, when those who seek His dwelling have nowhere to come. According to the one who says lighting performs the commandment, there is no point to commandments without a close and tangible experience of divinity; according to the one who says placing performs the commandment, there is a point, for in due time, when it becomes possible, the dim light that burns in secret will be displayed proudly and publicly. And here is a little cheap lomdus for reinforcement: the Gemara assumes simply that according to the one who says placing performs the commandment, if the lamp was already burning not for the sake of the commandment, the law would be that one must extinguish it, move it, place it, and light it. This is unlike the law ruled according to the one who says lighting performs the commandment, where one need only extinguish and relight. Seemingly, according to the one who says placing performs the commandment, why add the lighting? The lamp is already burning! Rather, it must be that even according to the one who says placing performs the commandment, one certainly needs lighting for the sake of the commandment – meaning enthusiasm – but that is not the emphasis; that was not the meaning of the miracle. All this is of course only possible interpretation, but in my opinion it remains within the boundaries of the context. And even if you say that the Amoraim were really disputing an empirical question of what “to light” means according to the Aristotelian science of the time, and did not intend any of this vort at all, and that R. Levi Yitzchak would not understand what I am talking about in the least, still – thanks to R. Levi Yitzchak’s vort, I gained something for my service of God, just as he, thanks to the Amoraic dispute, gained something for his service of God…

The fifth question is:
How does he know the claim that the essence of serving God is joy? Why does he not bring proofs for it? And if he has no proofs, why not present it as a prior assumption?
Here I no longer understand Rabbi Michi. What do you mean, how does he know? The concept of serving God is mentioned in verses (where it is not referring to a specific labor) generally in the context of devotion of heart and soul: “to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,” “to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul,” and if all heart and all soul are not enough for Rabbi Michi and he demands support specifically for joy – that too exists: “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy,” and if that is not enough, here is the impassioned call from the psalm of thanksgiving: “Serve the Lord with joy.” I hope that closes the file. Why does he not bring these supports? Because they are obvious to anyone who reads his book, and to anyone who reads the Torah. On the contrary, anyone is of course entitled to argue otherwise, but the claim that “this seems completely absurd. In halakha it is accepted that the main thing is to do the commandment, and joy is at most an additional virtue” itself requires proof, and I would have expected some substantiation..

The sixth and seventh questions, in my opinion, are one and the same: what does it add for him to latch onto the Talmudic sugya? After all, even if he were to prove in so “logically unforced” a way that according to the sugya in the Gemara there is a halakhic obligation to be enthusiastic in performing commandments, since the law is ruled that lighting performs the commandment, how would this persuade anyone who did not already think so from the outset? After all, there are no proofs here of the sort that “compel” the listener to admit the rightness of the claims because he is forced to concede the logical necessity, but only a collection of declarations?
According to our approach, the answer is obvious, and we will try to be brief: he does not come to prove anything. In general, Hasidism does not prove that it must be this way and not the opposite. Hasidism makes a claim (or, if you prefer, declares a declaration) that it believes in because it resonates in the soul as authentic. This is a discourse in which the touchstone is not logical consistency but authenticity. The claim that lack of logical consistency necessarily leads to nonsense may perhaps be impossible to deny logically, but in my eyes, and in the eyes of many others, it is intuitively rejected out of hand. Logic is nice, and sometimes there is no choice but to use it, but the things that really matter in our lives – children, relationships, morality, kindness, faith, art, justice, and many others – our engagement with them, as well as the decisions we make about them, are committed far more to psychic authenticity than to logic. We leave logic for the less important things: science and technology (without, of course, denying their significant contribution to the comfort of our lives), mathematical amusements, chess puzzles, and charming paradoxes with which to occupy the head when we want to relax a little from the demands of tyrannical authenticity, which gives us no rest.

Wow, that really is long. But the effort doesn’t let me ignore it, especially from someone who reads my own long-windedness. I’ll try to respond, and forgive the brevity (relatively speaking). In fact, all these points have already come up here in one form or another.

The first part before the parentheses has already been discussed, and I said that echoes in people’s hearts are not something I have anything to say about. To each his own telephone poles.
The part after the parentheses is being discussed right now in my posts on poetry. As I argued there, and will repeat here, reading a poem is not study. Therefore words that are not used to convey information are poetry, not a text for study. And from here comes my attitude to states of soul and their creation by means of words. I repeat and claim that this is not study. According to that logic, one could take part of the Shulchan Arukh or a responsum of the Rashba and explain what it does to my soul, taking it entirely out of its intent, and call that study. In my eyes that is treating the Rashba like a telephone pole. Such engagement with the Rashba is not study of the Rashba, and such “study” of the sugya of “lighting performs the commandment” is not study of the Gemara – just as binding a book is not study, even though one is engaged with a book.
I have already stated my attitude to the derashot of Hazal. By the way, there are quite a few of them that are not like the one you cited. But indeed, those that do not treat the text seriously, I do not treat seriously either. And even in such derashot, if a twist is used merely to attach a known idea or law to a verse, I have no problem with that. If the word “acts maliciously” serves as an asmachta, that is perfectly fine, since the law that comes out of there is innovative and not nonsense. That is exactly what I wrote above regarding the Baal Shem Tov’s nice turn on “A person can see all blemishes except his own blemishes.” It is indeed a nice twist, and I have no problem with the use the Baal Shem Tov makes there of the saying, unless he claims that by doing so he is really learning that sentence. That is of course nonsense. One may play with words, and it can even be useful in order to express an idea. I did not dispute that. But that is not what happens in Kedushat Levi, as I already explained.
As for ruling according to what your heart tells you, of course that is not a Hasidic invention. Reason itself is from the Torah (“Why do I need a verse? It is logical!”). Just say that this is a ruling from reason, and don’t sell me nonsense about deriving it from a verse or learning the verse itself.
As for the questions about Kedushat Levi:
1. I already answered. What his heart told him has no connection whatsoever to the text. It is not the author’s intention, and I am sure he himself did not suspect that the authors intended that. Therefore this is not study of the text. If someone thinks there is something useful here (which I do not see in any way), good for him. Let him do it. But study it is not. The excuse about my own derasha is completely tendentious. There is no logic to it except that it brings you to the conclusion you desire (= a Hasidic answer). If you want, I can give you nine kavs of holy enthusiasm at the beginning of a commandment and at its completion. For some reason you turned this into a formal question. What about enthusiasm before performing the commandment? Your distinction is itself a full-fledged Hasidic vort. And even if there were something to it (and there isn’t), there are one hundred thousand other derashot, all full of holy enthusiasm, that I can hang on that Gemara. It’s not serious.
2. According to that logic, one can do anything with any text. I see no point in discussing it. Extending this childish nonsense to every place where “lighting” or “placing” appears only intensifies the difficulty; it does not resolve it.
3. According to your logic, I can explain the Gemara about “lighting or placing performs the commandment” in the following fully consistent way: lighting is 1. commandment is 2-1. “Lighting performs the commandment” means 2-1=1. That is perfectly consistent. It just has no connection to the text. So what? It has internal consistency unrelated to the text. In your eyes, that is perfectly fine.
4. I’ll skip the subsequent Hasidic vorts that hang Hasidism on Hasidism. I’ll just note on your ending: so they do disagree. Why then does he write that they do not?
5. One needs no basis for what is obvious to every schoolchild. Ask Kedushat Levi himself what is preferable: a commandment without joy, or joy without the commandment. Then ask that question to every decisor since the creation of the world. Let us guess what the answers would be.
6-7. So what is gained by hanging things on the Talmudic sugya? Again, resonance in the soul?
Indeed, we leave logic for the less important things (like halakha). Joy is what matters, and it works without logic. He hangs what was taught on what was never taught. Well, begging the question is also a logical problem, so I understand that does not trouble you. It is a bit difficult to speak with someone who does not operate within the framework of logic. I do not even know how to relate to what you wrote. Perhaps, although I disagree, that is only on the logical plane, while in truth it was supposed to resonate in my soul rather than tell me something.
In short, to put it in my own terms: the question that arises for me is whether I am supposed to study what you wrote here, or to relate to it as a telephone pole – that is, as a source of inspiration trying (without success) to create resonance in my soul.
As I already wrote above too, the type of arguments you are raising here can justify any nonsense in the world. You can take Chipopo in the Congo or Alan Sokal’s article and hang all of Lurianic Kabbalah on them. No one can say a thing to you, because that is how it resonates in your soul. (No wonder the system saw fit to publish Sokal’s article.) And what of someone who does not find this resonance in the depths of his own soul? His problem. Nu, fine…

I will try this time to be brief as well, as far as possible of course…

0. To rule according to what your heart tells you and at the same time sell nonsense as though it were learned from a verse – that has been the Jewish way for ages. Why are you picking on Kedushat Levi? Let’s see you act like a man against Abaye and Rava, and the rest of the Amoraim! At least he doesn’t go according to the reasoning of his belly in practical halakhic matters, unlike them – who simply gave us operating instructions that often seem super-arbitrary, and then hung them on the least relevant verse imaginable.

1. The question whether this is study or not is semantic. You call “study” a certain thing that you like to do; I call “study” what Hazal called study and said one should recite a blessing over. Everything is fine, and it doesn’t personally bother me that we call different things by the same name – we just need to understand one another. The question whether what I call study contains something useful – to me that is a far more significant question than the semantic one. I won’t add beyond what I already elaborated in the previous comment, but I would be glad to hear what, in your opinion, is so useful in repeatedly saying meaningless statements like “Speak to the children of Israel, and let them take to you a red heifer, perfect, in which is no blemish, upon which no yoke has come,” and of course there is no comparing one who says it 100 times to one who says it 101. (And of course do not answer that it is useful because there is a commandment to study Torah, because by that logic it is also useful to repeat those strange derashot of Hazal to which you yourself said you attribute no more significance than Kedushat Levi’s vort. The question is what this is useful for in any intelligible sense.) As for the excuse – I apologize. I didn’t realize you were coming at this with a Hasidic head. Had I known, I would not have snuffed out the wick that was beginning to burn. And more seriously: since there is no halakhic importance to this mode of learning, then if you want to talk about enthusiasm – why go through beginning and end of a commandment? Do like Kedushat Levi and derive it straight from lighting and placing, and in the sugya of in whose name the commandment is called – pull out the enthusiasm card once again!

2. In my opinion one cannot do just anything with any text. One can do anything true with any text. Sometimes it sounds attractive, sometimes like violence, sometimes like slander. But that is not terrible, so long as it is true in itself. That is exactly the point. The main thing is to regard the text as a source of inspiration whose words were written by people for whom the most important thing in their souls was cleaving to God.

3. Here you are simply stubbornly pretending not to understand. I did not say there need be no connection to the text. I argued that there is no need for every logical move in the original text to be copied one-for-one into the free interpretation. And as a certain person once said – the fact that I do not know exactly where to draw the boundary does not mean there is no boundary. And to my mind, the boundary between your “vort” and Kedushat Levi’s is quite clear.

5. Of course Kedushat Levi and (almost) every decisor since the beginning of the world would answer the same thing: best of all is a commandment with joy. And if only one can exist, then a commandment is preferable. But that is a post-facto situation. And if by setting aside the commandment we will gain joy, which will later cause there to be a commandment with joy – but clearly if we do not do so, the person will never perform the commandment with cleaving – then “weigh the loss of a commandment against its reward, and the reward of a sin against its loss,” and perhaps it is preferable to violate one commandment in sadness now in order to observe many commandments in joy afterward. For example: if you are tired and cannot concentrate in prayer, then go rest for three days, calm down, and then return to cleaving to God. But if in any case you are a dry fish (for if the earlier generations were like angels, we are like Litvaks), and you will never manage to reach cleaving – forget it, doze through some Ma’ariv, go to sleep, and tomorrow get up before midday to mumble some Shacharit.

6-7. As I recall, one of your discussion rules is that sarcasm may be used only as an accompaniment to a serious answer, not as a substitute for one. From the fact that I do not identify such an answer here, I understand that you did not identify any meaningful argument here, because I am supposedly attacking logic in the language of resonances. But that is not the case. My claim that logic contributes nothing in the truly important domains is valid even in the language of logic itself. (I did not present proofs because it seemed obvious and agreed upon by everyone, but apparently that is not so.) Halakha is explicitly not founded on logic. That is, not on the sort of logic you present. This logic, whether analytical-mathematical or what you call synthetic or recursive, is a logic of necessity. Like a fortiori reasoning (of course not in its halakhic context, where there is no necessity at all and everything there is pure resonance, but דווקא in its biblical context – “If you have run with footmen and they have wearied you, then how can you contend with horses?” for example). Halakha always presents several sides of a problem, leading to several possible rulings, and in the end chooses among those possibilities. The sides are psychic, the possible rulings are psychic, and the ruling among them is also psychic. It is an arbitrary decision, whose correctness cannot be proven in such a way that reason compels that it could not be otherwise. It could have been otherwise, and indeed we have seen that someone does hold otherwise, but it was decided to weigh the sides in this way rather than that. Why? Just because. Because my heart tells me so. Maybe in another generation or two, additional considerations will enter, or reality will change, and it will be decided differently. Because that is what the heart of the decisor(s) of that generation tells them. If I am wrong, I would be glad if you would bring an example of a ruling that is compelled by logic. The touchstone for such a ruling, in my opinion, should be whether it is clear that the dissenting opinion that was not accepted was simply less successful at logic – that is, less intelligent. In short, that it is possible to explain logically why this and not that. (If you don’t have the strength, please at least bring references, and then I will elaborate and discuss.) If I am wrong in my understanding of the concept “logic,” and the truth is that it is much broader – I would be glad to understand where the line runs between it and the “theory of resonances.” It need not be a razor-thin line; it can also be a gray area.

Postscript: from the walls of your response I can detect the spaces of omission. I understand that all my extensive words about the issue of resonance are interpreted by you as belonging to a realm you do not feel like engaging in at best because you feel “not at home” there, or as nonsense at worst. If the first possibility is the correct one, I respect your decision not to engage in a field that is not the home ground where you are used to playing, but I do not understand the criticism of those who do. If it is nonsense, I would be glad if you would point to a specific place where the nonsense is expressed. If there is another reason, I would be glad if you would present it. And even if not – thank you for the response. I am aware that my writing is not especially fluid, and that your engagement with it is not something to be taken for granted.

Hello.
It seems to me that I have made my intention quite clear to anyone willing to read and understand. Yes, yes, I mean understand – that despicable concept from logic, as opposed to “resonating.” I have nothing to say about resonances and about those who ignore logic and its role in discourse between people. If you expect a serious answer to such claims – I have nothing better. This is not a matter of personal taste regarding what I choose to engage in and what I do not. Nonsense is nonsense, period.

As for your question, of course it is difficult to point to what is wrong with nonsense except that it is nonsense. Perhaps you can tell me what is wrong with the following interpretive claim: 1+3 = 8. Where 1 is holy enthusiasm, + is the cooling of the bath by Amalek, 3 is Amalek (by gematria, with the kolel), and 8 is cooling in the performance of commandments (by gematria after translation into spoken Turkish). This arithmetic statement resonates for me (arouses associations in me, even if there is no connection to the words and numbers) with Amalek’s cooling of the bath. That’s all. Do you have anything intelligent to say about that? Because I don’t.

I already said what I had to say about Abaye as well. The fact that you choose not to read it or not to understand it – that is, of course, your right.

As far as I am concerned, the discussion has run its course, and everyone can form his own view (or lack of one).

At one time I saw in an article on the life of Rabbi Shmuel Shmelke of Selish that he studied in the Chatam Sofer’s yeshiva, where the latter would also employ the method of pilpul in his lessons to sharpen the students. Until Rabbi Mordechai Bennet, rabbi of Nikolsburg, visited the Chatam Sofer’s yeshiva and remarked to him that it is not fitting to teach students in a way that is not the true meaning of Torah, and the Chatam Sofer accepted Mahar"m Bennet’s position and refrained from pilpul that does not accord with the plain meaning of things.

With blessing, S. Tz. Levinger

As for derash, it may be that things are different, because here, by the very definition of “derash,” it is made clear that it is not plain interpretation but the expression of an idea that is correct in itself, while using an artistic device – uncovering a different and surprising meaning in a familiar text – an artistic device that helps implant the idea in the heart. After all, the main aim of the sermon is to bring about the internalization of values in the heart. See also Rav Kook’s distinction in his introduction to Ein Ayah between “interpretation” and “explanation,” the latter being like a “well” from which an idea springs forth out of the text.

A few comments, with your permission, Rabbi Michi, if you find it appropriate to address them:
1. You mixed together different claims: one claim is that study is something very specific, and that anything that departs from it, even if it has value, should not be called “study”; and the second is that in many cases in Hasidic texts what we have is a total distortion of texts in order to fit them to the author’s worldview, basically projecting onto them a far-reaching, made-up interpretation of what the author wants to say, as in the passage from Kedushat Levi. I do not know why you make such a great and sharp distinction between Torah study or non-Torah study and that which is not study. Why, when a Hasidic student learns from a Hasidic book with substantive claims about the way the Holy One, blessed be He, manifests in the world as X, Y, and R, is he not studying? If in your opinion these things are sheer nonsense – that is something else entirely. But from the Hasidic point of view, vague concepts like whether the tzimtzum is literal or not literal are truly real concepts; one really has to try to come with an open mind and see what they mean, and become convinced of it.

For the most part, this is not merely a description of subjective feelings and psychic states. (Just as, for example, when Spinoza described the world/God, he did not do so by way of allegory and metaphor, but really meant that in his opinion nature in a certain sense is a conscious entity that operates harmoniously and there is nothing beyond it – at least according to some scholars. Or when Aristotle described God as the active intellect, he did not mean some nice feeling or cosmic illumination that above him there is some magical being with infinite consciousness.)

2. Even if you think all of this is nonsense – that is already a different discussion. But if in the eyes of Hasidim the issues of tzimtzum and all sorts of Hasidic vorts are the intention and the intended meaning, this really can count as “Torah” for the person. (Except that then one has to open an entire discussion about why, in your opinion, these things are complete bullshit, and I assume you do not intend to get into that.) But the tradition of forcefully clothing things onto Torah texts is something deeply rooted in our tradition. It exists also among Rishonim with healthy and upright intellects, like the Ramban when he studied Kabbalah and interpreted the Torah both on the plain level and also inserted Kabbalistic interpretations that did not match the plain sense of the verses. Even among clearly plain-sense commentators like Rashi there are often attempts to expound Torah verses and take them away from their plain meaning in order to fit them to his view. This genre did indeed gain tremendous momentum in Hasidic and Kabbalistic literature – and I am quite sure that if you read the interpretation of the Ari and his student Chaim Vital, you will want to tear your hair out in frustration. And nevertheless, even the most clear-minded people, those most devoted to straightforward and honest truth without evasions and without far-fetched interpretations, respected these thinkers. And that stems from the thought that perhaps, so long as the thinker is God-fearing, truth will be found in his words in any case, because all his intention is directed upward – toward the revelation of heavenly will – and he devotes his whole life to Torah. Perhaps he succeeded in finding in the small letters something we did not? Perhaps by reason? Perhaps from the thought that the Torah is wholly a sacred text that descended from above just as it is, and contains within it all the secrets and all the forms of thought and truths in the world, even if only in very tenuous hints? And perhaps one should not reject this way of thinking from every side?

And another point – as a convinced Litvak I have a question for you, the other way around: what the hell is fulfilling commandments? If I study that God’s will in the world is that an ox that gored should be fined five shekels, am I fulfilling any practical commandment whatsoever? How exactly? By sitting and imagining that I am a judge and that an ox that gored gets a five-shekel fine, while crying out in my heart “King of kings of kings”? What commandment exactly am I fulfilling when I study the laws of the Canaanite slave? So that from now on when I see a Black person in the street I’ll know that in principle he could be a Canaanite slave? Does my heart thereby fill with fear of Heaven and I fulfill my Creator’s will? If so, then why can Torah study not count as my reading a whole chapter of the stories of the patriarchs every weekend in order to learn God’s way in the world? Why should I not study the story of Sodom and Gomorrah from 3,000 different commentators all my life, and thereby broaden my horizons as to how God’s will was revealed there?

Good week.
First, contrary to your assumption, I do know the literature of the Ari, and I definitely do not compare it to Hasidism. There is a difference between translating verses or sugyot into the language and conceptual world of the esoteric, and the empty sleights of hand in the Hasidic style, or the existential interpretation in the style of modern learners.
“Tzimtzum as literal” is an example of an idea without content. Mere words. This is another phenomenon I have pointed out, beyond distortions of texts.
Some of the things you attribute to me are things I did not say (for example, that speaking about God’s modes of conduct is nonsense).
As for your other remarks, such as forceful clothing among Hazal, I have already answered them here ad nauseam. Take it from there.

“His follower of Noah,”

Was your comment written on Shabbat?

Several possibilities:
1. One can judge favorably: it was abroad.
2. Or perhaps: His follower of Noah is one of the children of Noah (as the saying goes, “whether as children or as followers”).
3. Or perhaps His follower of Noah belongs to a group, growing larger in my impression, that defends the God in whom it does not believe.
4. Or perhaps he joins the even larger group of those who study Hasidism (like modern students of Kabbalah) but object to halakha and observing it (which is nothing but the realization of the Vilna Gaon’s fears).
5. Perhaps he wrote with a change of method (and indeed there are places in his words where it seems so, in which case it fits nicely).
6. Or perhaps he holds that writing on a computer is not considered writing (since it does not endure, and is not in ink or vitriol on gall-water, and perhaps in general it counts as engraving by itself).

7. Or he follows Rashbam’s view (on Genesis 1:4), that the night follows the day, so for him Shabbat begins at dawn.

Especially with regard to sacrificial matters, for that is indeed the halakha.

The matter is explained beautifully, based on what Mikneh (the well-known one) wrote, that for gentiles the night follows the day with respect to observing Shabbat, and with this he explained how Abraham our father observed Shabbat.

And therefore, here, where we are dealing with a “convinced Litvak” who is also “a follower of Noah,” it stands to reason that he would observe Shabbat like the Noahides (though then he falls under the prohibition “a gentile who keeps Shabbat,” and this requires investigation).

And this is Mikneh’s language: We have already written in our Torah novellae many proofs that before the giving of the Torah the night followed the day, as it is written, “day and night shall not cease.” And with this one can understand what the commentators asked: how did Abraham our father fulfill the whole Torah and keep Shabbat, although they had not yet been commanded, seeing that they were commanded “day and night shall not cease”? For there is no difficulty at all, because since he kept Shabbat according to the command later given to Israel, as it is written, “from evening to evening shall you rest your Sabbath,” and the day follows the night, therefore since he did labor on Friday day and on Saturday night, he thereby fulfilled “day and night shall not cease,” even though he kept Shabbat. And with this we explained what is stated in Sanhedrin 58b: “A gentile who keeps Shabbat is liable to death,” etc., and Ravina said, “even on a Monday,” etc. Maharsha asked why he should not have said “even on a Sunday.” According to what we wrote, one can say that Ravina hinted that he is not liable if he kept Sunday until he also keeps the following night, which for Israel is already Monday. And since the main liability is for the final hour, when a full day and night have passed without labor, therefore Ravina said “even on a Monday” (Kiddushin 37b).

And most incisive. Though of course one may object: how did Abraham keep Shabbat, since he was a gentile who kept Shabbat, as the Parashat Derakhim wrote in homily 1-2 according to one view that the patriarchs departed from the status of Noahides only toward stringency? According to our approach, however, one may readily resolve this for that view, for with respect to Shabbat observance one must keep day and night, but with respect to the gentile prohibition of observing it, the sequence is night and day. Mark this well.

With respect, on the straightforward reading, that very point is what Mikneh wanted to answer. That is, he was troubled by how Abraham kept Shabbat, since “a gentile who keeps Shabbat is liable to death.”

And when Mikneh wrote, “what the commentators asked, how Abraham our father fulfilled the whole Torah and kept Shabbat although they were not commanded, seeing that they were commanded ‘day and night shall not cease,’” he still intended the prohibition of “a gentile who keeps Shabbat,” since in Sanhedrin (58b) the prohibition of cessation for a gentile is learned from the verse “day and night shall not cease.”

And at the end, it seems to me that the rabbi reversed the phrases, and if I am not mistaken it should read as follows:
With respect to Shabbat observance one must keep night and day, but with respect to the gentile prohibition of keeping it, the sequence is day and night.

As for Mikneh’s words themselves, in my opinion they are very novel and do not fit so well with the various explanations of the prohibition of a gentile keeping Shabbat. Whether the prohibition is because Shabbat is a sign between God and Israel, or because of “theft,” or because of the prohibition of refraining from labor according to Rashi, or because of the prohibition for a gentile to “invent a religion for himself” according to Rambam, it would seem that if a gentile rests night and day like a Jew, he would be liable to death. The Arukh LaNer and the Binyan Tziyon already raised this point against Mikneh’s view.

Indeed, but that is difficult only according to the view of Parashat Derakhim that they departed from the status of Noahides only toward stringency. For if they departed entirely from the status of Noahides, they would have no prohibition at all in observing Shabbat even if they were not yet commanded. And according to the view that they departed only toward stringency, I wrote that their Shabbat was day and night, not night and day. Therefore in the Noahide prohibitions night follows day, while in Israelite commandments (which they observed as a stringency) day follows night. Therefore their Shabbat observance was like Israel’s – night and then day – while the prohibition applies to Noahides, who therefore must not observe day and then night. I now see that I indeed reversed it. But all this is of course mere pilpul, just for joking purposes (the difficulty is no real difficulty and the answer no real answer).

Here is a quotation from the letter of R. Eliezer son of R. Elimelech of Lizhensk, printed at the end of Noam Elimelech, which he wrote to someone who had questions about the righteous:

And to one who does not believe my words I say this: first let him repent for the sins of his youth, and seclude himself and take to heart how many times he shamed another person, even one of his own household, and how many times he spoke falsehood, even in idle matters, and the rest of the matters explained in the books of the God-fearing, and let him do great repentance and great remorse for them; and pride surpasses them all…

And thus my revered honored father, may his light shine, said: if you wish to heed these words of mine, you will see that my words are true and sincere. And if someone still has doubts and questions about the servants of God, I give him this advice: let him sit in solitude and examine his deeds as explained above, though I have not explained even a little because the page is too short to contain it. I give him further advice: let him begin to study Torah for its own sake in every aspect, without ulterior motives, and let him rise at midnight always to weep bitterly over the sins he committed from his youth until today, in bitterness of soul, and let him study Torah for its own sake, and the Torah will remind him of all his sins and make the hairs of his flesh stand on end, and the Torah will teach him to repent. Then a sin that had seemed like a trifle in his eyes will loom great before him, and his flesh will bristle in fear. Then all the doubts will be resolved for him, and he shall return and be healed, and he shall see the greatness of the righteous who truly serve God:

With God’s help, Wednesday, Rosh Chodesh Shevat 5778

This year too the 3rd of Shevat will fall on Friday, and indeed the forecasters predict snow in the northern mountains and on the high peaks even in the center; the storm and the snow will begin on Thursday afternoon and continue until Friday. See Dan Lavi’s article, “Storm on Thursday: Snow in the Central Mountains?” on the Israel Hayom website (dated 16.1.2018).

And let us say to the snow, “Blessed is its arrival,” in accordance with the view of the author of Eliyah Rabbah, with abundant blessing, S. Tz. Levinger

With God’s help, 20 Adar 5778

Since you have entered into the question whether the day follows the night or the reverse –

I will mention the words of the Chatam Sofer, who explains that the Purim feast must be specifically by day, because it must resemble Ahasuerus’s feast, for he wanted “to do according to the will of each and every man,” which in tractate Megillah is expounded as “according to the will of Haman and Mordechai.”

Therefore, if we make the feast on the night before the 14th – Mordechai, who holds that the day begins from the night, will not agree. And if we feast on the night after the 14th – Haman, who holds that the night follows the day, will not agree.

Therefore, we remain neutral 🙂 and hold the feast at a time that is the 14th of Adar according to both Haman and Mordechai..

With the blessing of balanced neutrality, S. Tz. Levinger

“The rain that falls between Passover and Shavuot, like this morning (Tuesday), according to one of the great Hasidic masters – drinking that rainwater is a blessing.

In the book Imrei Pinchas, by the holy Rabbi Pinchas of Koretz, a disciple of the Baal Shem Tov, of blessed memory, there appears a special remedy: to drink rainwater between Passover and Atzeret.

‘The rains that fall from Passover until Atzeret are a great remedy for all illnesses, beyond anything else among remedies. That is, to stand in the rain and uncover one’s head a little so that the rain falls on his head, and also to open his mouth so that the rain falls into his mouth on the right side. And from Atzeret onward some of them are beneficial for healing.’

‘And this is the language of the holy Zohar, Parashat Tazria, page 94a: At a time when the Holy One, blessed be He, increases kindness in the world, a person should go out into the street, etc., and by that, etc., he does good – see there carefully. Also I heard in his name that there are male rains, which are a sign of blessing, and female rains, which are a sign of curse.’ – (from B’Chadrei Charedim).