On Spiritual Solipsism (Column 236)

With God’s help

Here is a column following remarks I made in synagogue this past Sabbath.

In the Torah portion Re’eh, we find verses dealing with the commandment of charity (Deuteronomy 15:7–8):

If there shall be among you a needy person, one of your brothers, in one of your gates in your land that the Lord your God gives you, do not harden your heart and do not shut your hand against your needy brother. Rather, you shall surely open your hand to him, and surely lend him sufficient for his lack, whatever he lacks.

Those who enumerate the commandments disagree about how to count the commandments of charity. Maimonides’ approach, which is the most prevalent among those who enumerate the commandments, is that there is here a prohibition (Do not harden and Do not shut) and a positive commandment (You shall surely open).

In positive commandment 195, Maimonides writes:

The 195th commandment is that we were commanded to give charity, to strengthen the weak, and to be generous toward them. This commandment was indeed given in varied expressions. He, may He be exalted, said (Re'eh 15:8), “You shall surely open your hand,” etc.; and He said (Behar 25:35), “And you shall support him, stranger and resident,” etc.; and He said (ibid. 36), “And your brother shall live with you.” The intent of all these formulations is one: that we should assist them in their circumstances and support them sufficiently for their needs. The laws of this commandment have already been explained in many places, most of them in Ketubot (48b–50a, 66b–68a) and Bava Batra (8a–11a, 43a). And the tradition states (Gittin 7b) that even a poor person who is supported by charity is obligated in this commandment—that is, charity—if toward someone lower than him or even someone like him, even if only with a small amount.

And regarding prohibition 232 he writes:

The 232nd commandment is that we were warned not to withhold charity and generosity from the poor among our brothers once we know the weakness of their condition and our ability to support them. This is what He, may He be exalted, said: “Do not harden your heart and do not shut your hand against your poor brother.” This is a warning against acquiring the traits of stinginess and cruelty that would prevent one from doing what is proper.

In his view, the prohibition includes both directives (Do not harden and Do not shut).

A note on overlap between prohibitions and positive commandments

In the ninth principle, Maimonides determines that commandments that repeat the same content are not to be counted separately (for example, the commandment to keep the Sabbath appears in the Torah 12 times, and is counted as only one positive commandment). But in the sixth principle he qualifies this and writes that when the duplication is between a prohibition and a positive commandment, the two commandments are indeed counted separately. For example, the commandment to rest on the Sabbath and the prohibition against performing labor on the Sabbath are both counted even though they have the same content (the positive commandment commands rest, and the prohibition forbids doing labor).

It is important to understand that if there is a substantive difference between the prohibition and the positive commandment, that is not duplication. The rule in the sixth principle deals only with cases where there is no substantive difference between them other than the fact that one is a prohibition and the other a positive commandment. In our essay on the sixth principle (in the book Yishlach Sharashav) we explained why such duplication is counted, and what the definition of positive commandments and prohibitions is in general (in light of the fact that a prohibition and a positive commandment may have exactly the same content), but I will not go into all that here.

The relation between the prohibition and the positive commandment in charity

At first glance, the positive commandment (You shall surely open) and the prohibition (Do not harden and Do not shut) in charity are another example of a duplicated prohibition and positive commandment, meaning that both have exactly the same content. Seemingly, these are two sides of the same coin: the positive commandment commands giving charity, and the prohibition forbids not giving. But on a closer look at Maimonides’ formulations cited above, it seems that here the situation is somewhat different.

Maimonides writes that the point of the positive commandment is to improve the condition of the poor and needy person, and adds that it applies even to someone who is himself poor. By contrast, regarding the prohibition he writes that its main point is to correct the giver’s trait of stinginess, and there he also does not mention that the prohibition applies to givers who are themselves poor. In short, it seems that according to Maimonides the positive commandment is directed toward the recipient, that is, its main concern is improving the poor person’s condition (the result, a teleological commandment), whereas the prohibition is directed toward the giver (that is, a deontological commandment), meaning that its main concern is improving the giver’s character traits.

If Maimonides’ view were that a prohibition and a positive commandment cannot have overlapping content, that would be straightforward. That is indeed Rabbi Saadia Gaon’s view, at least according to R. Yerucham Fishel Perla at the beginning of volume 1 of Sefer HaMitzvot of Rabbi Saadia Gaon in his edition, in his essay on the sixth principle. But as I already noted, Maimonides’ view (and that of most medieval authorities (Rishonim)) is different. According to his approach, it is possible for a positive commandment and a prohibition to share the same content (and they are even counted as two separate commandments). If so, why, in the commandments of charity, did Maimonides choose to interpret the two commandments in a way that gives them different substantive content? What is the source for his view? I will begin with the question of source and then touch on the reason.

A possible source in the Talmud

It may be that the source for Maimonides’ words lies in the discussions of charity in the first chapter of tractate Bava Batra. On 9b we find the following midrash:

Rabbi Yitzhak said: What is the meaning of that which is written, “He who pursues righteousness and kindness will find life, righteousness, and honor”? Because he pursues righteousness, will he find righteousness? Rather, it comes to tell you that anyone who pursues charity, the Holy One, blessed be He, provides him with money so that he can perform charity with it. Rav Naḥman bar Yitzḥak said: The Holy One, blessed be He, provides him with worthy people to whom he can give charity, so that he may receive reward for it. To exclude what? To exclude that which Rabbah expounded. For Rabbah expounded: What is the meaning of that which is written, “Let them be made to stumble before You; in the time of Your anger act against them”? Jeremiah said before the Holy One, blessed be He: Master of the universe, even when they suppress their inclination and seek to give charity before You, cause them to stumble upon unworthy people, so that they will not receive reward for it.

Jeremiah asks God to cause the people of Anatot, who pursued him, to stumble upon poor people who are unworthy. The Talmud says that even if they overcome their inclination and give charity to such a poor person, they receive no reward for it. This is clearly a conception of charity as a result-oriented commandment. The person did everything he could in order to fulfill the commandment, but in practice the poor man was not poor but a swindler, and therefore he has not fulfilled the commandment and receives no reward. No poor person’s condition was improved, and so no commandment was fulfilled here.

Immediately afterward the Talmud brings the following discussion (ibid., 10a):

It was taught: Rabbi Meir would say, the litigant can answer you and say to you: If your God loves the poor, why does He not support them? Say to him: So that through them we may be saved from the judgment of Gehenna. And this is the question that the wicked Turnus Rufus asked Rabbi Akiva: If your God loves the poor, why does He not support them? He said to him: So that through them we may be saved from the judgment of Gehenna.

Here there is a completely opposite conception. In fact, improving the poor person’s condition is not really our task. If that were what God wanted, He would do it Himself. The purpose of the commandment of charity is the giver: to save him from the punishment of Gehenna. Here there is clearly a deontological definition of the commandment of charity, meaning that the goal is the act of giving (of the giver) and not the result (which is the improvement of the poor person’s condition).

This raises the question: how does the Talmud bring two contradictory sayings one after the other without remarking on it at all? This is not presented as a dispute; the statements are brought one after the other in the flow of the passage. One might perhaps say that there are two aspects to the commandment of charity, and both exist within it (“two legal aspects,” in Brisker terminology), but this is a problematic interpretation. Jeremiah asks that the people of Anatot be made to stumble over fraudulent poor people, but according to Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Akiva’s conception, that would not really succeed, for they would still have the aspect of giving even in a case where the poor person is unworthy (a fraud). Moreover, the Talmud itself senses this, since the formulation there is Even when they suppress their inclination… cause them to stumble…, that is, the Talmud is aware that there is also an aspect of subduing the inclination and a value in the act of giving itself, yet it nevertheless rules that there is no reward for such an act.

It may be that Maimonides asked himself this question, and that led him to read the passage more carefully. On further inspection, one can see that the first part deals with the positive commandment and the second part deals with the prohibition. In the first part the discussion is about reward, and reward is given for positive commandments and not for a prohibition.[1] In the second part the discussion is about the prohibition, since it speaks about the punishment of Gehenna. Punishment is given for a prohibition.[2] The conclusion Maimonides drew from this is that the positive commandment is result-oriented, and therefore if in practice there was no improvement in the condition of a poor person, there is no commandment and no reward. But the prohibition is for the sake of the giver, to save him from the punishment of Gehenna. A person who does not give charity reveals stinginess and flawed character traits, and because of that he may end up in Gehenna. The prohibition is meant to save him from those flawed traits and therefore also from the punishment of Gehenna. That is why, in the first part, the Talmud says with full awareness that even if the people of Anatot overcome their inclination—that is, even where there is value in this, since they are careful not to violate the prohibition—they will have no reward. When the poor person is unworthy, there is no result and no commandment, and therefore no reward either (this is only avoidance of violating a prohibition, and for that one does not receive reward).

This can also be inferred from the wording of the verses cited at the beginning of the column. Regarding the positive commandment, the formulation is You shall surely open, that is, the commandment lies in the act of opening one’s hand and giving. Regarding the prohibition, the formulation is Do not harden your hand and do not stiffen your heart. According to Maimonides’ view, that these two are counted as one prohibition, it is clear that its main point is the hardening of the giver’s heart, that is, his stinginess. On his view, the clenching of the hand is apparently a metaphor, and its concern is with character traits and not with the act in practice.

An analysis of this passage may be the source of the distinction Maimonides drew between the positive commandment and the prohibition.

Implications in Jewish law

If we consider this distinction from a more analytic perspective, it has implications in Jewish law. We have already seen one of them: giving charity to an unworthy poor person (a fraud) is not a positive commandment.[3] Another implication appears in Maimonides’ own words. I already noted that in the positive commandment he adds the obligation of a poor person to give charity himself, something that does not appear regarding the prohibition. We may now be able to explain this in our way. If the prohibition is against holding the trait of stinginess, then a poor person who does not give charity is not stingy. He does not give because he has nothing. Therefore such a poor person does not violate the prohibition. But the positive commandment is to give in order to improve the recipient’s condition, and this obligation applies even to a poor giver (to give a little to someone poorer than he is).

In a somewhat playful exercise in dialectical hair-splitting, I once thought of another implication. In the law of gifts to the poor on Purim, if the giver is from an unwalled city (celebrating Purim on the 14th of Adar) and the poor person who receives is from a walled city (celebrating on the 15th), when should one give him the gifts to the poor? According to the conception that the giving is for the sake of the giver, we would seemingly have to give on the 14th. But according to the conception that the goal is the recipient (his Purim meal, in this case), we should give on his Purim, that is, on the 15th. I should note that in the case of gifts to the poor this is a positive commandment (by virtue of Scriptural tradition) without a corresponding prohibition, and if we parallel this to the positive commandment of charity, it seems that the conclusion is that to such a poor person we should give on the 15th. But as stated, this is a bit of hair-splitting and can be rejected.

Once one raises the two possibilities in understanding the commandment of charity, one can also ask what all this says about the intention and orientation one should have when giving charity. Here too the same implication seems to emerge: according to the teleological conception, the giver is supposed to have before his eyes the poor person and his distress, and to give in order to improve his condition. According to the deontological conception, the giver is supposed to have before his eyes himself and the improvement of his own character traits (and the reward and punishment involved in this, in this world and the next). The poor person is only a convenient circumstance, that is, a set of circumstances whose purpose is to improve my own character traits.

Two ways of looking at the world and at Jewish law

In the second conception, the poor person is merely an extra, and there is no need to relate to him when giving him charity. He is like a dummy on a firing range, standing there in order to test me and allow me to improve my character traits and earn reward or avoid punishment. Giving charity is for me and not for him. There are conceptions like this regarding Jewish law in general as well. According to them, the whole world was created for my sake, and only I stand in it before God. Everything around me is a collection of tests and circumstances whose purpose is to challenge me and see whether I rise to the task. In that conception, a person who is on Purim, or even just in a situation where he sees no poor people around him, ought to feel distressed, and perhaps it would even be worthwhile to pay some thug to make sure there are poor people available for him, so that he can fulfill the commandment of charity or gifts to the poor through them and discharge his obligation.

This reminds me that with regard to sending away the mother bird, there are conceptions (rooted in Kabbalah) that even a person who has no need of chicks or eggs should send away the mother in order to fulfill the commandment. In my view this is a preposterous conception, one that is also contradicted by the language of the Torah and by the Talmudic passages in tractate Hullin, but it certainly exists among halakhic decisors as well, and many people indeed act this way in practice.[4] Here too one can see that the person sees himself at the center of the world and everything around him as intended for his service. He does not send away the mother so that she will not suffer, for he can simply leave her the eggs and chicks and that is that. He does it in order to gain one more commandment, even at the cost of the mother’s distress. Yes, yes, I know: the kabbalists explain that the mother, stunned by grief, goes and cries out or moans in the upper worlds, thereby arousing mercy for us. In my eyes, this explanation amounts to Have you murdered and also inherited? (have you murdered and also inherited?). Now I profit twice: first, the commandment itself was done for my sake at the mother’s expense; and second, I even use the distress I created in the mother by my selfish act for my own benefit. Here one sees all the more sharply the conception that everything is done and intended for my sake, and I am at the center. Even commandments whose purpose is to act for another person or creature are really intended for me. The environment is a collection of extras or target dummies whose whole point is to advance and improve my own standing.

Another example is the joke I already mentioned here once, of a friend of mine from Bnei Brak. Once he saw a book he had been looking for for a long time in the hands of another person sitting at the next table, and he said to him as follows: I have two options before me—either to take the book from you and violate Do not steal (do not steal), or to leave it with you and violate Do not covet (do not covet). Since either way I am committing a Torah-level transgression, at least let the book be with me. There is of course a mistake here in the parameters of Do not covet (which he knew quite well), but even if this were halakhically correct, the argument suffers from a fallacy that I will call below “spiritual solipsism.” From his perspective, the question whether to take or not take the book is a question of his commandments and transgressions before God. He does not see the person facing him as someone who must also be taken into account. This is a calculation he makes between himself and his Creator. But this is a mistaken conception, since at the basis of these prohibitions stand the other person’s rights. The other is not merely an extra on the stage of my world, but an entity with independent existence and rights. My actions are supposed to take those into account as well. My claim is that even if he were right in his understanding of the parameters of the prohibition of Do not covet, it still would have been forbidden for him to take the book. This is the basis for the common and mistaken conception that in Jewish law there is only a discourse of duties and not of rights. This conception sees my relation to the other as derived from my duties and not from his rights. I elaborated on this point in my article on rights and duties in Jewish law, and I will not do so here.

Back to our issue

Is that not actually correct? Seemingly, according to the second conception of the commandment of charity, the poor person is indeed only a circumstance for me (an extra). Even before we get to Maimonides’ distinction, it is worth noticing that the two passages in the Bava Batra discussion deal with different stages of the argument. The first passage deals with the question of why God creates poverty at all and does not solve it Himself. Here the question is why the world is as it is. The answer is that this is done in order that we be saved from the punishment of Gehenna (though here too one can wonder: why not save us from the punishment of Gehenna without this?…). But now, once God has decided to create a world that contains poor people, our obligation to give to them is first and foremost for the sake of the poor person and not only for the sake of the giver. The first explanation pertains to theology and not to the reasons for the commandments or their intentions.

In a world in which there are poor people, whatever the reason for that may be, the one who ought to stand before my eyes is the poor person and not I myself. I ought to give to him in order to improve his condition. True, all this (that is, the creation of poor people and the commands concerning charity) was done in order to produce a side effect of benefiting the giver, but now the focus is the positive commandment, and it has before it the poor person and not the giver. It should be noted that improvement of character is also important,[5] and not only on the theological plane, and therefore this also has expression on the plane of Jewish law: that is what the prohibition is for.

Example: the Euthyphro dilemma

An analogy to the matter is the Euthyphro dilemma. The dilemma formulated by Plato is: do the gods desire something because it is good, or is it good because the gods desire it? Translated into monotheistic faith: is something good because God wants it and commanded it, or did He command it because it is good? Both options are problematic, for the first presents the good as arbitrary (some would say that it effectively erases the distinction between Jewish law and morality. But even that is only on the assumption that Jewish law is arbitrary. See below), while the second is also problematic because it presents the good as existing above or prior to God (God is subject to it).

I think that here too the answer lies in the distinction between the two planes: the question why God created His world in this way is a theological question, and as such it depends entirely on His will. But once the world has been created as it is, the good is intrinsic to it and is not arbitrary or the result of a command. In the world as it is, precisely these are the good and bad actions and none other. There is nothing arbitrary here.[6]

Spiritual solipsism

There is an intellectual conception of Jewish law as something mechanical, according to which actions are not intended to achieve any results at all, but simply to be done, in the sense of: What difference does it make to the Holy One, blessed be He, whether one slaughters from the neck or from the nape… (what difference does it make to the Holy One, blessed be He, whether one slaughters from the neck or from the nape?). People draw from this solipsistic conclusions on the ethical and religious plane. Even if in the physical world you are not a solipsist—that is, you believe in the existence of a world and of other people and creatures outside yourself—on the religious and spiritual plane you see yourself as standing alone before God, and everything else as extras or scenery for the field of your tests and service. It seems to me that what stands in the background of this is Turnus Rufus’s argument: the results can be achieved by God alone. The commandments are meant for the doer and not for the world. But as I explained above, this is a mistake that confuses the theological plane with the reasons for the commandments and their goals.

There is a generalization of this approach with respect to the world. From this perspective, a person should shut himself up in Noah’s ark in order to preserve himself, and the world is nothing but the flood raging outside, meant to test us and put us through various trials. This somewhat characterizes the Haredi outlook (especially the Lithuanian one. The Hasidim in general think there is no world at all. There is none besides Him—the tzimtzum is not literal). By contrast, Religious Zionism and modern religious Judaism do not understand Jewish law and religious commitment in this way. From their perspective, the goal of religious service is the repair of the world. Of course we too come out benefiting from it (at least spiritually), but that is a byproduct and not the purpose of the service itself (though as stated, it may be that the world was created in this way so that we improve. See again Column 13).[7]

The lesson taught by the commandments of charity, at least in the interpretation I suggested here, is that the solipsistic conception is fundamentally mistaken. It is based on a correct assumption at the theological plane (that the world was created as it was, arbitrarily, by virtue of God’s will), but it draws from this an incorrect conclusion at the practical plane (what is incumbent upon us in the world as it is, once it is so). Above I brought the source for Maimonides’ words from the Bava Batra passage, and here I explained the reason for it. Maimonides distinguishes between the positive commandment and the prohibition because he refuses to give up one of the aspects of the commandment of charity and see it as the whole picture. The main thing is the positive commandment—the improvement of the poor person’s condition—and the prohibition is intended only to ensure that the personal spiritual result is also achieved.

I now turn to two additional points that require clarification.

Scriptural decrees and religious values

First, what I say here seems at first glance to contradict a view I present in many places—that Jewish law stands on its own. It does not come to realize moral values. Seemingly, this should lead specifically to solipsistic conclusions. But this is a mistake. What I claim is that the commandments are not Scriptural decrees in the accepted sense, that is, not an arbitrary matter. At their root are purposes that the commandments are meant to achieve. True, in my view these are not moral values but religious values (see Column 15 and much else), but there are still purposes there of some kind (see on this my essay on the fifth principle in the book Yishlach Sharashav). Those purposes were set by God when He decided to create the world as it is, but once the world was created as it was, the purposes are no longer arbitrary. They follow from the meaning of the concept of morality and from the nature of the world.

Emotion versus intellect

Another claim that may arise here concerns emotion. Seemingly, the distinction I presented here concerns the distinction between emotion and intellect. In effect, the meaning of what I wrote is that what is required of us is also emotion and not only cold, mechanical action. Commitment to Jewish law should not be cold and alienated (merely discharging one’s obligation), but accompanied by emotional identification with the other. Here an argument may be raised on the basis of the conception presented in my article on emotions in Jewish law (see also Column 22 and elsewhere), where I maintained that emotion has no significance either in terms of value or in terms of Jewish law.

That is indeed my view, and it is in no way contradicted by what I wrote here. My remarks in this column do not deal with the question of emotion in Jewish law. When I say that a person should act for the sake of the other and not only for his own sake or for the sake of his spiritual standing, I do not mean that he must activate emotions or act on their basis. A person can understand intellectually that the other’s condition is bad and that he needs help and that it is proper to help him, and act accordingly. None of this requires emotion (I discussed this in Column 120. See also Column 122, 168, and others). My claim is that this obligation requires relating to the other and not only to myself. All this can (and should) be done through intellect and will. This is a value judgment and not merely some feeling that happens to arise. In other words, what I say can speak even to a person devoid of emotion (Asperger’s. See Column 218).

I will illustrate this through the commandments of love and hatred in Jewish law.

Example: the commandments of love and hatred

In that same article that deals with emotions in Jewish law, I discussed the commandment to love one’s fellow or the convert, and the commandment of hatred toward the wicked. In both kinds of commandment, interpretations are common according to which one must not hate the person but only his character and values. Thus I also explained there that love should be directed toward decisions and character and not toward the person himself. Seemingly, what we were commanded is to love the convert’s status as a convert and not the person himself. And likewise, we were commanded to hate the wickedness in the wicked person and not the wicked person himself (Sins, not sinners — sins, not sinners).

This is another example of relating to ideas instead of people. According to this approach, people are extras (bearers of ideas), and they themselves are not the object of our regard. Here too I repeat that this is a mistaken understanding (as I explained there, and even more so in the eleventh book of the Talmudic Logic series, which deals with the Platonic character of Jewish law). Love and hatred are meant to be directed toward the person, except that this means love or hatred of the person because of his decisions and values, and not love and hatred of values and ideas as such. In other words, here too I do not advocate spiritual solipsism. See there in greater detail in the article and column mentioned above.

[1] There are sources in which one sees that there is reward also for refraining from a prohibition, but it is clear that when reward is mentioned without qualification, the intention is to positive commandments. Refraining from a prohibition does not bring reward but only prevent punishment. See a bit of the discussion of Nachmanides’ words cited in the previous column.

[2] And again, this is only in human law. In heavenly judgment there is punishment also for neglecting a positive commandment, but the main point of punishment is for prohibitions.

[3] One may discuss whether refraining from giving to an unworthy poor person, without my knowing that he is a fraud, counts as violating the prohibition. On the face of it, yes. Therefore the people of Anatot were made to stumble here against their will. When such a poor person comes before you and you do not know that he is a fraud, you are obligated to give to him in order to avoid the trait of stinginess. If in fact he was a fraud, you lost the positive commandment and its reward.

[4] See, for example, Chavot Yair sec. 67, and many others.

[5] And its importance is not merely instrumental. That is, the problem with the trait of stinginess is not only that as a result of it people will not give charity. Stinginess is a bad trait in itself. So it is with all character traits, as I explained in Column 13 (and also 154).

[6] In this conditional sense, God is indeed subject to the good. Given that this is the world, He could not decide that the opposite would be the good. But this is a conceptual and definitional matter, just as He cannot decide that a triangle should be round.

[7] I have always wondered why, in Religious Zionist and modern religious discourse, reward and punishment are almost entirely absent, especially those of the world to come. It seems to me that the basis of the matter lies in this dispute.