On Metaphysical Considerations in Formulating Ideology (Column 238)
With God’s help
Several times in the past already (see, for example, here and here), I have pointed out that there is a major innovation shared by Religious Zionism and its fiercest Haredi opponents. Both sides assume that processes in the real world (history, values, modes of thought, and culture) reflect metaphysical dynamics. Behind them stand demons driving them (Satan, Ashmedai, the angels known as the prince of Esau, of the Belgians, or of the North Koreans, the New Israel Fund and the European Union—which are somewhat more modern demons incarnated in flesh—and, in an entirely different category, the Holy One, blessed be He). But beyond that, there is another innovation there, even more far-reaching: that our ideological and practical decisions should be made with this metaphysical analysis in mind.[1]
The first innovation, although in my opinion it is usually mistaken, is well anchored in Jewish thought throughout the generations. But the second innovation is truly an intellectual revolution. As far as I know, there has never been a central current in Jewish thought and leadership that made decisions on metaphysical grounds (such as what brings redemption and what does not, what advances the cause of this angel or that demon). At most, one may speak of the importance of observing commandments and refining one’s character because this will bring us various metaphysical bonuses (the world to come, redemption, destruction, and the like). These are things that one ought to do in any case, and the metaphysical considerations merely come to spur us on and give meaning to our decision. But I do not think we have found justifications for steps taken entirely out of metaphysical considerations, especially when they even contradict realpolitik considerations.
One may add to these renewed approaches the tendency to view individuals and groups through metaphysical lenses. For example, Rav Kook’s attitude toward atheist pioneers who drained swamps here as people who were fulfilling the commandment of settling the Land inadvertently, that is, unconsciously; or the view of wars as advancing the interests of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world; or viewing those killed in terrorist attacks or in war as holy ones (needless to say, this is of course an absurd and ridiculous conception, both logically and textually. It has no source). Ordinary wars mandated by Jewish law do not fall under this heading. For me, Jewish law here is not a metaphysical consideration. One does it because that is the law. I am speaking here about considerations that are not Jewish law but thought, or more or less grounded metaphysical conjectures.
As I understand it, both that part of Religious Zionism that decided to cooperate with Zionism and its institutions out of the consideration that the period is the beginning of redemption (even though this involved nontrivial ideological and even legal costs), and the Haredi opposition that is based on seeing the state as the sitra ahra (the demonic “other side”) or as an act of Satan, share the same renewed mode of thought. I suspect not many readers will be surprised to hear that this innovation is entirely unacceptable to me. What may perhaps surprise them is that on this issue, it seems to me—and uncharacteristically for me—I am actually following the mainstream of our tradition. Leaders and ideologues have always formulated positions and made decisions on the basis of realistic (and legal) considerations. The values were of course taken from the Torah, morality, and Jewish law, but the ways of implementing them, and the modes of public and personal conduct in general, were built on considerations connected to the real and concrete world, without smuggling into them metaphysical claims and conjectures (what will happen above the heavens or beneath the earth if we do this or fail to do that).
The story[2] that is foundational for me in this regard concerns Rabbi Herzog, who heard a rumor during the War of Independence that the Brisker Rav was about to leave Jerusalem out of fear of the shelling. Rabbi Herzog was concerned that this would demoralize people, and so he went to persuade him to remain in the city. His main argument was that we have a tradition that a Third Temple is not destroyed. The Brisker Rav did not blink and immediately replied: and I have a tradition from my father’s house that when people are shooting, one must run away. There you have, in a nutshell, metaphysics versus realpolitik.[3] It seems to me that Rabbi Herzog here expresses a typical Religious Zionist mode of thought, which speaks in ideological and metaphysical terms no less than in realpolitik terms (in varying proportions. Rabbi Herzog was, relatively speaking, a very realistic Jew, and precisely for that reason the story expresses the point so well), whereas the Brisker Rav here expresses a very typical and highly pragmatic Haredi conception (not the extreme opposition in the style of Satmar and Neturei Karta).
Incidentally, in column 19 I argued that this is basically a sectarian characteristic (that is, sects behave and think in this way). See there, from section 23 onward. In addition, see there also sections 5, 9-11, and more. And indeed, in that sense Religious Zionism, like ideological Haredism (Satmar and Neturei Karta), has characteristics of a sect (this is the subject of the study mentioned above; see especially its conclusions).
Rav Kook as the Originator of the Metaphysical Outlook
Rav Kook was a profound Jew, bold, an outstanding Torah scholar, and a man of many disciplines, and therefore he always arouses in me a great deal of admiration. At the same time, there are aspects of him and of his views that strike me as problematic. A major part of this is the mystification and the analysis of reality in terms of “forces of darkness” (not necessarily in the negative sense). More generally, I think his grasp of reality suffered from deficiencies—for example, in the establishment of the Chief Rabbinate, or in viewing the processes around him in terms of metaphysical forces of redemption and sitra ahra: the Jewish people versus everyone else, in the sense of Abraham the Hebrew (“Abraham the Hebrew”)—that he stands on one side of the river, and so on. All this despite the fact that his optimistic tendency to see positive points of light and truth in every movement or phenomenon is well known. But it is worth noticing that this too is essentially an outlook that appeals to the metaphysical glimpsed through real reality. In this case, the metaphysical vision appears positive and good in the eyes of most of us, but we still have not escaped the attraction to the metaphysical.
Therefore I have always thought that one of the main proponents of the problematic mode of perception (in my view) described above, and perhaps its originator, was Rav Kook, along with several of his followers who went even further than he did (namely, the Har HaMor sect and its offshoots—what is called “the Kav”). For them, a “deep gaze” at reality “reveals” the metaphysical dimensions that drive it and are driven by it, which of course allows us to formulate ideological positions and conceptions (namely, “the faith of our time” itself) and to determine our way of conducting ourselves in the real world.
Is There a Systematic Doctrine in Rav Kook’s Writings?
In a moment I will bring a surprising passage from one of Rav Kook’s letters that seemingly contradicts everything I have said up to this point, but first one more relevant preface. For a long time I have had the impression that Rav Kook’s writings contain no ordered doctrine, and that one can find in them a source for almost any idea or opinion (as with Hasidism, the Maharal, and others). Therefore attempts to reconcile contradictions in his thought are, in my eyes, a form of casuistry unless proven otherwise. These are different passages from different periods, and even within the very same composition there are passages that express different modes of perception and different moods, and therefore different positions appear in them, sometimes even contradictory ones. Rav Kook was no less a poet than a thinker, and even as a thinker his thought is eclectic and very unsystematic.
My intention is not to make a claim about Rav Kook’s books—that they are eclectic and unsystematic. That is a trivial fact. My claim concerns his doctrine itself. I doubt whether he had an orderly and systematic doctrine, or whether he related to each phenomenon locally (though of course he almost always placed it within his global-metaphysical framework). Therefore it is clear that his interpreters can try to impose order on his writings and ostensibly extract from them a systematic doctrine, sometimes even a grand architectonic one, but in my impression that structure is their handiwork. As is well known, when the Nazir undertook to edit Orot HaKodesh, he asked Rav Kook whether there was an ordered doctrine in his writings, and his purpose in editing that work was to expose it. I have not been persuaded that there really is an ordered doctrine there. But the passage cited here goes beyond the bounds of a mere contradiction. Seemingly, there is here a statement that is very much at odds with Rav Kook’s most fundamental views.
"The world abstracted from practical life is fit to be fuller and more exalted than limited life"
In light of everything said thus far, how astonished I was to discover (on WhatsApp. Thanks to Shay Zilberstein) the following passage that Rav Kook wrote in his letters (vol. 1, letter 79):
Conjectures concerning spiritual matters that stand beyond the bounds of practical and moral life—even though we cannot deny them—nevertheless, according to our holy Torah, we must not derive ways of life from them, for it distanced us from plunging into unclear visions, just as it forbade us all kinds of sorcery and consulting the dead, forbade priests to become impure through the dead, and tied all the commandments to life. And the Jerusalem Talmud says in Berakhot, chapter 3, ‘All the days of your life’ means the days when you are engaged with life, and not the days when you are engaged with the dead. (“all the days of your life” means days in which you are occupied with the living, not days in which you are occupied with the dead). The world abstracted from practical life is fit to be fuller and more exalted than limited life, but if we come to derive from it actions, norms, and ideas that concern the collective, they will surely defile the idea. Even the prophets prophesied only regarding the days of the Messiah, but of the world to come it is said: No eye has seen, O God, besides You (“No eye has seen, O God, besides You”).
Rav Kook comes out here against diving into unclear visions. But not only against consulting the dead and sorcery, but against a world abstracted from practical life in general, and even against prophetic visions. He argues that all these are not supposed to determine our relation to our real world, and that if we draw such ideas from them into the real world they become defiled.
However, when one looks more carefully and reads the passage cautiously, I am not entirely sure that the general spirit I described is indeed what is written there. First, it is not clear what these “conjectures concerning spiritual matters, standing beyond the bounds of practical and moral life” are. Seemingly, these are metaphysical claims, and Rav Kook here sees them as conjectures hanging in midair. Moreover, immediately afterward he says that “we cannot deny them.” At first I thought he meant that they are not open to refutation—that is, a rationalist (almost positivist) critique of metaphysics (one cannot adopt a claim that cannot be falsified). But on second thought it seems to me that he means the opposite: these are things accepted as true, like our tradition about the world to come, the Garden of Eden and Gehenna, and perhaps also the processes of redemption (although he is dealing here with matters that belong to the world of the dead beyond our world). And despite that, one must not make use of them.
He argues that the Torah forbids us to plunge into those unclear visions. As stated, he is not discussing prohibitions such as consulting the dead and sorcery, but reliance upon planes that are not within practical life and the moral principles that pertain to it. But note that the prohibitions of sorcery and the like are extreme cases of that same approach, except that there there is an explicit legal prohibition. For Rav Kook, those prohibitions are an indication from which one learns a more general principle rejecting recourse to metaphysical planes altogether. Notice that consulting the dead and sorcery are probably real phenomena, meaning that he apparently does not see them as nonsense or superstitions. The main problem he sees in them is the very recourse to planes detached from life and from our real world. Therefore the mention of those prohibitions, as distinct from idolatry (which is a false belief), comes here not to say that they are unreliable, nor to say anything about specific legal prohibitions regarding them, but rather to suggest a source for a more general prohibition against appealing to metaphysical planes when formulating policy and ideologies in the real world in which we operate.
Moreover, later in his words he explains that the world to which we are forbidden to appeal is a world “fuller and more exalted than limited life,” meaning that he does not deny it. It is not idolatry, nor is it an unreliable or false source of information. On the contrary, it is an exalted and sublime spiritual world, and it is actually our life and our world that are limited by comparison. But nevertheless, and perhaps precisely because of that, we are forbidden to appeal to it in determining our path and our conduct in the real world. In his opinion, this is the meaning of the prohibitions of sorcery and consulting the dead. The dead—or spirits and demons—are not supposed to run our lives and determine our decisions. Even if those dead are Torah scholars and prophets, and even if sorcery connects us to spiritual forces with unrestricted horizons of vision (cf. “communication with aliens,” and the rest of the New Age repertoire), and the messages we received from there are correct and true, still we must not appeal to them.
And What About Considerations of Redemption and Messiah?
Considerations connected to messianism and redemption certainly appear frequently in Rav Kook’s writings, and in my impression he certainly does not recoil from them. One could perhaps say that this is yet another contradiction in his doctrine, but on a further look at this passage I am not entirely sure that he means that we should not take redemption and Messiah considerations into account. It seems that, in his view, redemption and Messiah are considerations that belong to the real world (after all, they are supposed to occur here, on earth), unlike the dead, demons, and the like. True, Messiah and redemption are also types of considerations “that we cannot deny,” in the two opposite senses we have seen: 1. A critique of a positivistic character: these are speculations that cannot be examined and are not explicit in the sources, and therefore their reliability should be doubted. 2. They must be accepted because this is our tradition, and yet we still ought not take them into account.
As stated, it seems to me that in this case Rav Kook intends the second meaning. In my judgment he does not mean to make a positivist claim here, because he does not regard metaphysics as speculation (tradition is certainly a reliable source of information in his eyes), and therefore the prohibition against taking it into account does not stem from doubt about its truth. His claim is that even though we know metaphysical information (by virtue of tradition and prophecy), such as the world to come, the Garden of Eden and Gehenna, etc., and even though there are people who, when some deceased person appears to them, may assume that this is a true revelation (sometimes of a great figure), still we are forbidden to make use of all this in our world because these matters belong to another world.
He argues that using concepts and claims from the world beyond life in situations of the real world defiles them. In his eyes, metaphysical considerations taken from there and used here are like a body without a soul, which is of course impure with corpse impurity. As is well known, a corpse is the supreme source of impurity. In our world one should take only the “body” into account. Not because there is no soul within us (that is, not because reality has no spiritual dimensions), but because this is not their place here. The considerations should be realistic.
As stated, it follows from this that considerations of redemption and Messiah can indeed be a component in formulating our positions and making our decisions. True, these are speculations, but Rav Kook has no problem with that (apparently because, in his view, these are not speculations, as noted). They belong to this world and not to a world detached from it (worlds of souls and the dead that have no body), and therefore they are a legitimate consideration. By the same token, I assume that he does not object to analyzing spiritual-psychological processes as an explanation for real processes that occur here (such as his attitude toward the pioneers and toward Zionism mentioned above). In his view there is no obstacle to doing so, because the problem is not speculation but the very recourse to other worlds.
Appeal to Meta-Real Planes
I have proposed here a resolution of this passage in light of Rav Kook’s general doctrine, and it seems to me that this is not even casuistry but a genuine interpretation of his words. According to my proposal, he rejects recourse to other worlds, but not necessarily non-real considerations that pertain to our world (such as Messiah and redemption, or unconscious spiritual-psychological processes).
For my own part, I categorically object to taking metaphysical considerations into account when we come to make decisions and formulate positions. Not only those that concern the dead and sorcery, but also those that concern Messiah and redemption. Mainly because this is speculation that we have no way to examine and know whether it is correct, and perhaps also because of the principled prohibition (whose source is the prohibition of consulting the dead) of which Rav Kook speaks. As stated, in my understanding this too is the mainstream path of our tradition. Leaders and rabbis did not make decisions in such ways, and in fact even when there were those who did so, they were denounced (sooner or later) as false messiahs (see again here).
Beyond that, I also oppose analyzing personalities and movements in terms of their subconscious (personal or collective). The pioneers were not fulfilling the commandment of settling the Land inadvertently and unconsciously. Not only because I dispute the meta-psychological claim that this is indeed what motivated them (and I certainly do dispute it. In my eyes, the awakening of Zionism was part of the Spring of Nations and of the awakening of nationalism in general. It had nothing to do with the Holy One, blessed be He, or with observing commandments), but mainly because that plane is irrelevant to the evaluation they deserve. A commandment fulfilled unintentionally is not a commandment, and unconscious values are not values. A person deserves credit, positive or negative,[4] for conscious decisions he makes and actions done in light of them, not for processes that occur autonomously and into which he is pushed by processes that take place in the depths of his psyche.
Further Elaboration: On Subjective Dimensions in Jewish Law
We have seen that the avoidance of non-real considerations can be interpreted in two ways: 1. The concern that perhaps they are not correct. 2. Even if they are correct, one should not mix them into our considerations regarding the real world. The second conception assumes an obligation to separate the planes: a person is not supposed to make decisions on real matters on the basis of whether this brings redemption or not, and whether it strengthens this angel or that demon. Decisions and values in the real world are determined only on the basis of legal and realistic (or realpolitik) considerations. This very much recalls a similar discussion regarding the status of dreams in Jewish law. This is not the place to enter into the details, since my purpose is only to point to the analogy between the two contexts.
In the article Midah Tovah for Parashat Miketz, 5767, we discussed the status of dreams in Jewish law. Usually, the guiding principle is that dreams have no legal standing. Most commentators tend to explain this by the unreliability of dreams (“Dreams speak falsehood.”—“dreams speak falsehood,” Zechariah 10), or by the concern that idle elements became mixed into the dream, as the Talmud says in Berakhot 55a:
The prophet who has a dream should recount the dream, but he who has My word should speak My word truthfully. What has straw to do with grain? says the Lord. And what do grain and straw have to do with a dream? Rather, Rabbi Yohanan said in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai: just as grain cannot exist without straw, so a dream cannot exist without idle elements.
But as we showed there, at least according to Maimonides’ view, it can be shown that even in cases where there is strong corroboration for the information conveyed in a dream, one should not use it in legal discussion.
For example, a person dreams that a certain sum of money is located in a certain place, and in the dream he is told that the money belongs to so-and-so. He gets up in the morning and goes to that place, and to his great surprise he indeed finds there money in exactly the amount in question. Seemingly, this is corroboration for the dream, and we would expect the dream to be evidence that the money found really belongs to that person. But the law is that even in such a situation one may not use this as evidence in monetary law.[5] Without entering into details, my main claim there was that the problem with dreams is not only the concern about their reliability. I argued that a dream has diminished legal standing by virtue of being a dream. There is an obligation to disconnect the planes, since legal decisions must be made on the basis of proofs and arguments that belong to our world. Mysticism belongs to another plane, and even if it is true it should not be used on the legal plane. There we brought several additional examples of this principle (such as the rule of self-imposed prohibition (“shavya anafshei chatikha de-isura”)—self-imposed prohibition—which also reflects a subjective dimension of Jewish law, and more).
The analogy to our matter is clear: there is an obligation to separate the planes, and this is not necessarily because of reliability problems in the non-real plane. It is not supposed to become mixed into the real plane, and as Rav Kook wrote in his letter:
Conjectures concerning spiritual matters that stand beyond the bounds of practical and moral life—even though we cannot deny them—nevertheless, according to our holy Torah, we must not derive ways of life from them… The world abstracted from practical life is fit to be fuller and more exalted than limited life, but if we come to derive from it actions, norms, and ideas that concern the collective, they will surely defile the idea.
Although we cannot deny them (that is, there is no problem of reliability here), one must not use them on the real plane. As we have seen, this is the meaning of the prohibitions against consulting the dead and the like. There too, the matter does not necessarily stem from the reliability of the messages, but rather from a principled prohibition against appealing to them. It is possible that those prohibitions are also the source and explanation of Maimonides’ principle regarding recourse to dreams.
[1] In principle, one could also maintain that this metaphysical analysis is correct, or at least possible, and nevertheless that it should not be used in real contexts. See below in the column.
[2] This story is mentioned in an article by Rabbi Ari Shvat, "There Will Be No Further Exile (On Rabbi Herzog’s Statement)", Tzohar 21 (5765), pp. 111-120. Ariel Finkelstein published a response to this article: "’There Will Be No Further Exile’—A Reconsideration", Tzohar 24 (5766), pp. 45-53, and Rabbi Shvat replied in an article entitled "We Should Stop Seeing Exile as an Alternative!", ibid., pp. 55-70. See also Eli Gurfinkel, "’A Third Redemption Knows No Interruption’—In What Sense Is This Said?", HaMa’ayan, Nisan 5771, and all the sources cited there. See also my article, "’The Third Way,’ or: On ‘Religious Zionism’ Without a Hyphen", Tzohar 22, 5765, pp. 131-140. And more. Needless to say, in my eyes the story’s historical reliability is of no importance. Like any good myth, it accurately reflects the fundamental differences in approach, and for our purposes here that is enough.
[3] I am not entering here into the question of what ought to have been done. Considerations relating to morale are entirely legitimate realpolitik considerations, and still, the character of the considerations raised in the discussion between those two Jews faithfully reflects the two conceptions I have described here.
[4] Here I disagree with Susan Wolf, in her article asymmetrical freedom, which appeared in The J. of Philosophy, 1980, p. 151. She argues there that there is a difference between the evaluation we give to negative acts, where a basis of conscious decision and free will is required, and evaluation of positive acts, which is warranted in any case.
[5] It is still possible to explain this by saying that even in a dream that has been corroborated, there may be an element of idle matters. See our discussion there.
Discussion
I think there is value in rational thinking. That does not include metaphysical considerations. The considerations that arise in our consciousness should be drawn from our world, and we are supposed to act within it as any person does. Perhaps one could see this as a safeguard lest you come to use unfounded arguments, or out of concern that you may be mistaken even if you think the argument is well founded. In that case, there is something like a Torah-level safeguard here. But my feeling is that there is something beyond that. Our consciousness should be directed toward the goals of this world and operate within it like any reasonable and sensible person. Rav Kook suggests a source for this from the prohibition of consulting the dead. That is certainly original and interesting, and indeed, if consulting the dead is not problematic in terms of its reliability – then that is probably the explanation of the prohibition.
In the next post I’ll give a more precise and sharper answer to this question (this wasn’t planned in advance, but as I was writing it became clear to me that it would indeed be there).
Apparently “that his brothers’ heart not melt” is not a halakhic consideration.
As the elder already taught: “In the Land of Israel, one who does not believe in miracles is not a realist.”
In my opinion, it’s not so clear in the post what exactly is meant by “metaphysical considerations.”
On the one hand, at the beginning you also include appeals to the New Israel Fund and the European Union under this category, which implies that any speculation or appeal to a factor whose influence is remote and hard to measure is a metaphysical consideration.
On the other hand, toward the end of the post it seems that only things belonging to a plane detached from real life are metaphysical considerations. (This category still needs clarification, in my opinion – for example, is the consideration of avoiding an action because God does not want it considered detached from the real plane, or is that just another way of saying that according to Torah values it is not proper to do it?)
As I understand it, there should be a sharp and clear separation between the planes of discussion. The criticism of those who make use of speculation has nothing at all to do with the second question, which in my understanding is the fundamental one: is it proper to guide our actions by considerations that have no grip on reality?
In my opinion, contrary to what is claimed in the post, the answer to that question is yes. The reasons given in the post for avoiding considerations that have no grip on reality are somewhat weak. The claim that these are usually speculations, as noted, belongs to another discussion, and beyond that there is mainly an appeal to sources, but no convincing argument as to why one really should not do this.
I brought in the matter of the New Israel Fund and the European Union partly as a joke. It’s an extension of the tendency to look at the demons behind things instead of at the things themselves. But there is also a serious dimension to it, because it leads people to judge a phenomenon by who stands behind it and not by its intrinsic nature. If it’s an action of the New Israel Fund, one must oppose it regardless of what it is. In that sense, this involves the same problem as metaphysicization. As I wrote, this will be clarified more in the next post.
Above I also wrote that the explanation for this could be as a safeguard (since in truth you have no way of knowing what is happening on the metaphysical plane, so there is a concern that you are mistaken), but perhaps there is also a real problem with it. I brought Rav Kook’s words and the source he cites from consulting the dead. As for an explanation on the merits (what exactly is wrong with it) – I’ll address that more in the next post. But it is true that if someone thinks this is the proper way to act, I have no proof or crushing argument against him. In fact, in the last generation people on both extremes do this, so apparently there is no “error in an explicit mishnah” here.
In principle the matter is simple, but still a few comments are in order.
1. It seems to me that the reservation about “metaphysical considerations” is not due to their metaphysical nature as such. It is plain halakhah that one must obey a prophet’s temporary directive even against the halakhah, and prophecy is certainly a source of metaphysical information. But once a prophet has been established as a true prophet, that source of information is not only reliable but also has halakhic authority. In general, the Torah was given through Moses our teacher by prophetic revelation. What could be more metaphysical than that? It therefore seems that the (justified) reservation about metaphysical considerations stemmed from the fear of charlatan exploitation or honest error in interpreting obscure sources, etc. Needless to say, Jewish history has proven that these were hardly remote concerns.
Rav Kook evidently followed the path of kabbalists before him (for example, the Vilna Gaon) who were confident that they understood the movements of Divine providence in this world. I definitely understand the reservation, but this path is not really new. Maimonides, for example, stresses at the end of Hilkhot Melakhim that the thoughts of the Creator are beyond human grasp, yet he still claims that Christianity and Islam are merely instruments of Divine providence for preparing human hearts for the true faith. This teaches you that the boundary between Maimonidean rationalism and kabbalistic mysticism is not so sharp and clear.
2. And despite the reservation in section 1, once prophecy is removed from the equation I absolutely agree that no metaphysical consideration should be taken into account, and this includes my opposition to taking kabbalistic considerations into account in halakhic rulings (though I am neither a halakhic decisor nor the son of one). I have always been troubled by the words of the kabbalists (for example, Nefesh HaChayim, though he is certainly neither the first nor the only one) about the magical effect of human actions in this world upon the upper worlds. Really now – did every “Yiddishe” woman who did not recite Shehakol with the proper intentions according to the Zohar and the Ari damage the upper worlds and thereby incur great punishment? If so, you leave no creature able to live, and the Holy One, blessed be He, does not deal tyrannically with His creatures.
And note well: I am not claiming that human actions do or do not have an effect on the upper worlds. I truly do not know. I am only claiming that it is impossible to take such considerations into account in halakhah. It seems to me that I am not alone in this position, and that among those who share it are, for example, the Chatam Sofer, R. Yaakov Emden, and others – though I would still stand by my opinion even if someone proved to me that I had misunderstood their words.
And all this even if we assume that all the kabbalistic sources are genuine (that is, without entering into the discussion of the authenticity of the Zohar and other kabbalistic sources, which would take us too far afield).
As a side note: I have a tradition in the name of my late grandfather, who was a student of R. Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld of blessed memory, that he used to visit the Western Wall every single day even at the height of the riots and disturbances. When people argued before him that he was endangering his life, he claimed that if Jews stopped frequenting the Wall, the Arabs would say that the Jews had given it up. That is, R. Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld reached the opposite conclusion from the Brisker Rav specifically on the basis of an entirely non-metaphysical consideration.
With God’s help, 11 Elul 5779
When one looks at reality and sees only the ‘now’ – one can make a major mistake. After all, what is a baby? A helpless creature, incapable of seeing or walking, able only to scream and relieve itself without control. Someone who has only the ‘now’ can come to despair and disappointment and leave the ‘hopeless creature’ in the hospital…
But there is another kind of view, a view of ‘vision.’ It sees in existing reality its amazing potential. Maybe this baby is the Einstein of the next generation? Maybe he is the Messiah or the prophet who will save the people of Israel and the whole world (as the Sages said, that ‘my prophets and my messiahs’ are schoolchildren…), and maybe what is growing here is just an ordinary decent Jew who will live an upright life and establish a glorious Jewish home.
Either way – we understand that present reality is an opening to a great future development, and in our hands is something far greater than what can be seen now.
All this does not require any great ‘metaphysics,’ because we have all seen an educated adult grow out of a helpless baby. What we have seen less with our own eyes is how the redemption of Israel and of the whole world grows. The Torah promises us that such a process will happen someday, but does not lay out for us a clear description of how and when it will happen.
Here Rav Kook assumes (and he was neither the first nor the only one) that this is a long-term historical process, involving complications and crises, falls and ascents. Seeing redemption as a process that grows ‘little by little’ enables us to be partners in advancing that process even when present reality, at first glance, seems ‘stuck in the mud.’
When one looks at reality with a hopeful gaze, one can see its deeper aspects. The growth of European nationalism and the antisemitism associated with it led us to think that specifically in the backward Turkish province our hope of salvation would sprout, and to direct our efforts there, bringing up with tremendous effort one more Jew and one more dunam – and lo and behold: from a few tens of thousands who were here in 5679, there are now millions here, in material and spiritual flourishing alike!
And when one looks at reality with a hopeful gaze – one understands that even the spiritual rebellion that came as a result of exposure to Western culture also contains great hope. The development of science and human initiative will help us revive the desolations of the land, ‘for they are soon to come, My people Israel.’
Even the abandonment of faith due to the attraction of foreign culture – Rav Kook noted in the essay “The Generation” that it also contains great opportunity. It compels us to study our faith in depth, not to suffice with ‘the commandment of men learned by rote,’ but rather to seek to understand ‘what and why.’ And when we study deeply, we will find in the treasures of Torah and its depths the answers to humanity’s profound questions, and we will arrive at a greater and deeper faith, a faith that will sweep the modern person along with it.
Looking at present reality through eyes of hope does not lead us to detach from reality, but to study it in depth. To understand the positive processes that may grow out of it, and from that – to act effectively for improvement and repair.
With blessing, S. Tz.
Paragraph 2, line 3
… that ‘my prophets and my messiahs’ are children…
Paragraph 6, line 2
… exposure to Western culture…
What does the rabbi think about the book that proves beyond all reasonable doubt the very existence of the World to Come? There he shows that many religions are correct, as explained at length in the book Journey of Souls.
Dr. Michael Newton, a certified hypnotist and member of the American Psychological Association, developed a hypnotic technique that makes it possible to reach his patients’ memories from their lives in the world after death and back again toward rebirth.
The book describes in minute detail the memories of twenty-nine people who were brought into a state of super-consciousness while deeply hypnotized and described what happened to them between their various incarnations on earth. Each of them was brought back to the period between incarnations, that is, to the experience he underwent before being born this time. As happens in the course of ordinary hypnosis, directly out of the experience, the patient reports to Dr. Newton on the events, the encounters taking place, the places through which he passes, and the other souls with whom he shares his experiences. The doctor investigates gently and curiously, and afterwards compares the testimonies, joins one piece to another, and presents his understanding of the path that, apparently, each of us goes through between death and rebirth.
The patients reveal details of the sensations of birth and death; what one sees and feels immediately after death, who meets us, how life is conducted in the world between two soul-incarnations, where we go and what we do as souls, why we choose to return here in a particular body, different levels of souls, and modes of expression of the Creator. In addition, there is mention of a body that souls usually call the “Council of Elders/Sages,” to which all souls arrive at a relatively early stage after each final incarnation in order to analyze it and draw lessons, and usually also before the journey prior to renewed birth. A similar review is also conducted with a spiritual guide and with the members of the soul-group to which the soul belongs.
1-2. Your comments regarding the prophet are interesting. But I think that, as you wrote, even there the problem is not only truth. The permission to heed a prophet is twofold: the truth of his words and the permission to resort to them. When a prophet prophesies and issues a ruling, it is clear that there is no prohibition against relying on that. Not only because he is right, but because here the Holy One, blessed be He, who prohibited it (as Rav Kook says), permitted resorting to metaphysics.
I don’t think Maimonides derived any practical conclusion about Christianity and Islam from the analysis that they are tools in the hand of providence. After all, I wrote that metaphysical analysis certainly did exist; the novelty is relying on it in making decisions.
As for the story about R. Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, that is exactly what my footnote meant about realistic considerations that could underlie Rabbi Herzog’s approach.
I have no idea. But it has nothing to do with our discussion. If they bring me evidence that there is a World to Come, I’ll accept it. The question is whether that insight is supposed to affect my considerations. In general, I’m skeptical about such books even on the factual level, and also about the conclusions drawn from them (for example, these memories may reflect a psychological structure embedded within us rather than events those dead people actually underwent).
Hello Rabbi. I once heard in a lesson by Rabbi Yehuda Leon Ashkenazi (available on audio) that a secret is considered something that cannot be identified in reality, and the moment it can be identified, it is permitted to reveal it. I think I would interpret Rav Kook’s words this way everywhere as well. The intention is that the higher ideas only give us inspiration to contemplate reality and see, for example, that every idea contains a spark of truth, etc.
It is permitted to reveal everything. The question is which considerations should be taken into account.
Actually I think that after this letter of Rav Kook and your remarks in this article, I understand why higher matters should be hidden before they are revealed in reality – because of people who would make use of them prematurely…
In principle I oppose hiding things of any kind. I have elaborated on this in several places here. Everything should be revealed, and one should qualify and educate as to what it is right to do with the information or insights, and what not.
Reveal.
With God’s help, eve of the holy Sabbath, “And My kindness shall not depart from you,” 5779
To Ramda – greetings,
The matter of the soul’s eternal existence is explained in Abigail’s words to David: “And the soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord your God…” (I Samuel 25:29), and Ecclesiastes likewise explains that the soul returns to God after death: “And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (12:7).
The resurrection of the dead is mentioned in Isaiah: “Your dead shall live, my dead bodies shall arise; awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust…” (26:19); in Psalms: “…You take away their spirit, they perish and return to their dust. You send forth Your spirit, they are created, and You renew the face of the earth” (104:29-30); and in Daniel: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to reproaches and everlasting abhorrence. And the wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn the many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever” (12:2-3).
And if you say reason: after all, there is a “law of conservation” both for matter and for energy – why should the spirit of man and the breath of life that God placed within him fare worse?
With blessing, S. Tz.
In paragraph 2, line 3
… and some to reproaches and abhorrence…
Regarding method in Rav Kook’s writings.
In my opinion, to dismiss Rav Kook’s writing with the general statement that there is no method in his words is simply incorrect.
True, his writing is spontaneous, and a great many ideas are unique to a given place and issue, and it is true that there are different treatments of the same point in different places.
But those are still details. Within his masses of paragraphs are woven quite a few principled themes that are components of his philosophical method.
For example, countless paragraphs are built on the proper relation, in his view, between sacred and secular (the secular reveals God’s name, and has spiritual importance insofar as it is connected to the sacred), even if in a few places there is a treatment of a particular detail that does not fit perfectly with other places. But in any case the core idea is systematic, and unique to Rav Kook.
So too in other central themes in his thought, such as his harmonious view of all details of reality as revelations of God’s name, his attitude to the world and history as constantly developing and progressing, and many more of that kind.
All this concerns his philosophical thought. As for the kabbalistic method unique to him, Rabbi Aviv’i has already written about this in his major book The Kabbalah of Rav Kook, in which he showed systematically and clearly that Rav Kook had an orderly and innovative kabbalistic method.
I think one of the important distinctions in Rav Kook’s writings, which attempts to reconcile his apparently contradictory statements, is the distinction between his personal writings and his letters. Just as with Maimonides one can see a difference between the Guide for the Perplexed, which he wrote for his distinguished student, and his letters, which were intended to encourage the broader strata of the people, etc. The letters of both tend less toward abstract thought (I am not claiming that neither of them wrote that way at all in their letters), but even more so with Rav Kook: what he dared to put down in writing were thoughts and reflections not necessarily suited to become the possession of the many, or in more precise terms, the transition from the private domain to the public domain, in his view, requires precisely caution regarding the area in which he experiences the non-real world as a truly real world – full of content and existence. Yet in his second hat (and experience as a man of reality and halakhah), he knows that there is a distinction between absolute truth (as he understands it) and what reality is able to contain, and in this world there is no place for influence from the hidden world upon our real world.
I couldn’t understand this – if the rationale is correct and proven, why forbid relying on it in decision-making?
Science has not managed to explain everything fully, and yet we do not regard that as metaphysical and assign it to other worlds. If there were an alien communicating with us through Facebook telling us what to do, and it were wise and correct and had succeeded in predicting events, we would not immediately jump and say that this is “information from the other world.” But suddenly when it looks magical and mystical to us, we don’t deal with it because it does not belong to our world – a puzzling rationale in itself. After all, that rationale itself is proof that there is a connection between its world (if it is indeed entirely separate from ours) and our world.
I am not trying to claim here that those information sources from another world are true or false, but only taking as my point of departure that they are indeed true, and asking why they are called sources from another world and why they are not supposed to be connected to our world.
With God’s help, 13 Elul 5779
To Asaf – greetings,
But Orot already appeared in 5680 – three years before the first edition of Igrot HaRe’iyah appeared! Rav Kook did not intend for his thought to be esoteric. He handed his writings over for editing prior to publication. Orot was edited and published by the Ratzya in 5680, and Orot HaKodesh was edited by the Nazir, with Rav Kook in his lifetime managing to see part of the manuscript and to comment on it.
There are not two “Rav Kooks,” just as there are not two “Maimonideses.” The ideas begin with their spiritual roots in the writings of thought, and are then elaborated into practical application in the articles, letters, and halakhic rulings, and both must be read together as a harmonious teaching whose sides complement one another.
With blessing, S. Tz.
Orot HaTeshuvah too was published by the Ratzya in 5685, and Rav Kook himself used to study it during Elul.
I assume you do not expect me to produce a doctoral dissertation and systematic research on Rav Kook within the framework of this post. I wrote an impression I have. It is hard to define when something is called a method and how many exceptions are allowed for it still to count as systematic. On these broad issues I agree that there is consistency in his writings, but there are quite a few topics, including important ones (such as the one I addressed here), where I feel he does not have an orderly doctrine.
As for the systematic character in Kabbalah, I am also not sure that the systematicity is not the product of Aviv’i’s work. Very often systematicity is the product of the organizer’s doctrine, not the source’s. But I have not checked.
Of course, as I have written more than once, I am not an expert in Rav Kook’s writings, so my positions here should be taken with a grain of salt.
First, “correct” is not identical with “proven.” Even what I think is correct is not necessarily correct. Still, one generally follows what one thinks. In the mystical-metaphysical context this is not so. If something is proven, that is another issue, though even there my feeling is that in quite a few cases it is not desirable to do so. Here I did not really explain the matter but described a feeling (and brought a halakhic source from Rav Kook, from consulting the dead). In the next post I will try to explain it more from another angle.
Once I asked a Hardalnik what the falsification test would be that would cause Rabbi Tau to say the theory had been refuted. He replied: the destruction of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel. But as better and greater people than I have already noted, in the Land of Israel it was דווקא an active strategy that did not rely on timid realism that brought us many times to a higher equilibrium than could have been expected. And if today we have a state here with several million Jews that supports Torah study, it is mainly because the Zionists did not subscribe to the Brisker Rav’s approach (who also, for some reason, decided to immigrate to the Land of Israel when the Nazis occupied Brisk).
Does the book Kol HaTor, attributed to a student of the Vilna Gaon [and dubbed by the Ratzya “the Bible of Religious Zionism”], not express the very same approach that this article opposes?
With God’s help, eve of the holy Sabbath, “When brothers dwell together,” 5779
Two factors in the teaching of Rav Kook and his students that prevent being swept from the greatness of the vision into unworthy places are:
A. Preserving rigorous halakhic discourse
Thus, too, the halakhic innovations that the “shining light of salvation” brought about were cast into accepted halakhic concepts. Thus, for example, the heter mechirah could be accepted even by an openly Haredi rabbi such as Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and likewise the positive attitude toward the pioneers was placed within the framework of defining them as “children taken captive,” which was also accepted by Haredi rabbis.
In Rav Kook’s beit midrash, the Chatam Sofer’s approach was accepted, that one does not mix halakhah with aggadah or Kabbalah. Aggadah is indeed the soul of halakhah, but halakhic clarification remains “purely” in halakhic terms. Even in the method of study in the yeshivah, Rav Kook sought to emphasize the importance of studying asukei shema‘teta aliba dehilkheta and to make it primary even in relation to Lithuanian-style lomdus.
B. Partnership with other sectors
The view is that redemption comes through the unification of all sectors of the people of Israel, while seeing the unique point in which each stream excels and striving to weave all the partial “points of truth and goodness” into an all-inclusive unity, in which the religious, national, and universal aspirations are integrated.
A practical expression of this tendency is found in emphasizing the importance of “the statehood of Torah in Israel,” the Chief Rabbinate in which representatives of a broad range of Torah-world streams participate – Ashkenazim and Sephardim, Zionists and Haredim – and in whose selection public representatives from all sectors participate: religious, traditional, and secular; right and left.
And also at the level of political and military action, the emphasis is that redemption grows through the people of Israel returning to function politically as a nation; we conquer the land and actualize it as a public acting together. From this comes the concept of “statism,” so that even when one tries to pull in a more activist direction in the struggle for the wholeness of the land, one still maintains a basic level of state-centered responsibility: not to go head-on against the institutions of the state and its army, and to avoid “burning bridges.”
With blessings for a peaceful Sabbath, S. Tz. Lewinger
I don’t remember its contents. Maybe. It deals with signs of redemption, but the question is whether it draws practical conclusions from that analysis, and whether those conclusions are contrary to what we would do without them. If all that is true – then indeed I do not agree with it either.
With God’s help, 13 Elul 5779
To Y.D. – greetings,
The Ratzya grounded the idea that our period is “the revealed end” precisely by saying: “We are Jews of Gemara, and in the Gemara Rabbi Abba says: ‘But you, O mountains of Israel, shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to My people Israel, for they are soon to come’ – there is no more revealed end than this.” The “flourishing test” of the land’s desolations is explained openly, in the revealed teaching, in “our Talmud,” and here the Ratzya would add: and “Rabbi Abba” said so too 🙂
With blessing,, S. Tz.
Interesting how one should read the story of the Seer, the Maggid of Kozhnitz, and R. Mendel of Rimanov in light of the bitter end… as criticism in Rabbi Michi’s style, or perhaps as an attempt that did not succeed, but on the contrary, with heavenly powers assistance was given to move the world-clock.
In the last paragraph, line 1
And also at the level of political action…
With God’s help, at the conclusion of the holy Sabbath, Ki Tetze, 5779
On the Ratzya’s caution regarding involvement in mysticism and his complex attitude toward Hasidism – see my comments on Rabbi Elchanan Nir’s article, “The Loop that Connected,” on the Mussaf Shabbat website.
An incident of wondrous knowledge while refraining from halakhic reliance upon it, involving Rav Kook’s student – Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlap – was told to me by R. Eliezer Lewinger (grandson of Rabbi Dr. Yisrael Meir Lewinger, rabbi of Basel).
His grandmother, Mrs. Tirtza (Paula) Lewinger, wife of the Jerusalem physician Dr. Eliezer Lewinger of blessed memory, ran a convalescent home in which Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlap stayed because of his illness. During that time Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlap’s wife died, and they refrained from informing him out of concern for his health.
One day Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlap approached his friend the physician Dr. Lewinger and requested: “I know by intuition that my wife has died, but I cannot sit shivah because I was not informed of it verbally. Please inform me of my wife’s passing so that I may observe mourning!”
By the way, I am not related to the Lewinger brothers – Prof. Yaakov and Rabbi Moshe of blessed memory and, may he live long, Rabbi Dr. Yisrael Meir – they are “Yekkes,” whereas my family is from Hungary.
With blessing, S. Tz. Lewinger
Nobody is perfect (my parents are from Hungary too). 🙂
What is the difference between metaphysical considerations and the ideal vision / auditory thought / spiritual-metaphysical thought that your honor has founded?
The difference is simple:
My insights – are healthy intuition; that fellow’s insights – are improper and dangerous use of metaphysical considerations, blah blah blah 🙂
With blessings, I, the poor one
What do they have to do with one another? Take an example and you’ll immediately see the difference. And if you don’t see it, then please raise an example for discussion.
That one may rely on a statistical majority not present before us, all of which operates on the basis of the principle of induction, whereby I *foresee* the general law of nature through the eyes of reason. By contrast, one may not rely on the law of fixedness in the case of a majority present before us, where one does not rely on that same a priori thought because we do not have a metaphysical vision of the eyes of reason.
We see that although both operate on the basis of information that is not empirical, the same person has distinctly metaphysical feelings about the existence of the “good” world of ideas on which one may rely. Whereas an a priori consideration without metaphysical assistance cannot be relied upon.
And furthermore, one may not rely on prophecies that there will not be a third destruction.
Why not ask me about the laws of nature? What kind of nonsense is that? Obviously physical phenomena are based on laws. What does that have to do with viewing people as bearers of ideas, or treating them as transparent and seeing the demons that operate them as if only they exist and act?
With God’s help, 16 Elul 5779
A middle position regarding confidence that there will not be a third destruction is proposed by the Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim, in his article on “The breakdown of television broadcasts on the Sabbath” (from 29 Cheshvan 5730), in which the rabbi sharply protests the renewal of public Sabbath desecration, whose gravity is increased by the fact that it is being done by an arm of the state. He says:
“The people of Israel do not live by force alone. Their spirit and pure faith sustained them for two thousand years, contrary to nature and all logic. One must believe this. This is the secret of our existence. We believe that the people of Israel will not perish, and that Jerusalem – once rebuilt – will not again be destroyed, and we are assured of this. But not for this reason should one let the reins loose; rather, one must be concerned.”
(Ledor VaDorot, vol. 1: Essays and Speeches, Jerusalem 2013, p. 189).
Perhaps the explanation is somewhat like what is said regarding Jacob: even though he had a divine promise that he would return in peace, nevertheless he feared “lest sin cause it,” and in particular one should be wary not to rely on the promise in order to do whatever one pleases.
With blessing, S. Tz. Lewinger
Why, in the rabbi’s opinion, are Jews who were killed in war or in a terror attack in the Land of Israel not considered holy? Usually when such fallen soldiers and those killed are described as ‘holy ones,’ the intention is that they were killed sanctifying God’s name. According to the rabbi, is that not correct? Are Jews killed for sanctifying God’s name only those who refused to convert and were therefore murdered?
What sanctification of God’s name is there in the deaths of people who were shot in the street? This is a desecration of God’s name unlike any other. Beyond the fact that in terms of outcome there is no sanctification of God’s name here, those people did not perform an act of self-sacrifice; it simply happened to them. You cannot call someone holy because of something that happens to him.
An act that entitles you to be called one who sanctifies God’s name could be refusing to convert your religion, and even a decision to sacrifice your life in war, on two conditions: 1. that it was your decision and not merely something that happened to you; 2. that you really did it out of a religious consideration of serving God. Secular people cannot be sanctifiers of God’s name if they do not recognize Him and do not serve Him. They can be good people, and of course one should feel gratitude to anyone who sacrificed his life for us, but if he does not serve God then he is not one who sanctifies God’s name.
These are simple matters, and I don’t see what is so hard to understand here.
With God’s help, 17 of the month of mercy, 5779
To Yaakov – greetings,
Of those killed in the destruction Asaph says: “O God, nations have come into Your inheritance; they have defiled Your holy Temple, they have made Jerusalem into heaps. They have given the dead bodies of Your servants to be food for the birds of heaven, the flesh of Your pious ones to the beasts of the earth” (Psalms 79:1-2).
And in the Gemara (Sanhedrin 47a), Rava explains that “Your servants” in the verse are people liable to death, but since they were killed “not in the usual manner,” they were atoned for, and therefore Scripture calls them “the servants of the Lord.” Abaye there disagrees and holds that only “those executed by the government unlawfully are atoned for by their death.” In any case, according to all opinions, one who is killed unlawfully by gentiles has his sins atoned for, to the point that Scripture calls them “Your servants,” considering them servants of God.
Still higher is the level of people who gave their lives to save the community of Israel, like Pappus and Lulianus, about whom it is said in Bava Batra 10b: “And I heard that they would say: Those slain by the government – no creature can stand in their section [of paradise],” and the Gemara applies this to the “martyrs of Lod,” who were ordinary Jews who gave their lives to save all Israel.
We thus learn from the Gemara in Sanhedrin that a Jew killed by gentiles, even if he sinned, returns to fitness and to the status of “Your servants”; and from the Gemara in Bava Batra we learn that if that Jew gave his life to save the people of Israel, he rises to the level of “those slain by the government, in whose section no creature can stand.”
And since secular Jews in our time, who unfortunately are carefully educated so as not, heaven forbid, to stumble into “religionization,” are in the category of inadvertent sinners and those under compulsion, and even among the religious there are many who did not receive a proper grounding in the fundamentals of faith and therefore stumble into false beliefs – it would seem that their lot is no worse than that of deliberate sinners, of whom the Gemara explicitly says that being killed by gentiles atoned for them and they are considered “servants of God”; and if they also gave their lives to save the community – great is their stature.
With blessing, S. Tz. Lewinger
Paragraph 2, line 2
… (Abaye there disagrees…
There, line 3
… in any case, according to all opinions, one who is killed…
According to Rava’s statement (Sanhedrin 47), “Your pious ones” in the verse are actual pious people. Sinners who were killed and thereby atoned for are called only “Your servants.” However, according to Midrash Tehillim 79, even sinners who were punished attain the level of “Your pious ones,” as the Midrash says:
“Were they really pious? But does it not say: ‘They were lustful stallions, each neighing after his neighbor’s wife’ (Jeremiah 5). Asaph said: once judgment was executed upon them – they were pious. And so it says: ‘And it shall be, if the wicked man deserves to be beaten’ – at first he is called wicked, and after he has been beaten he is called your brother, as it says: ‘Then your brother shall be dishonored before your eyes.’”
We thus learn that according to the Midrash, “Your pious ones” in the verse are sinners who stumbled in the gravest sins, such as adultery with a married woman, and nevertheless when they were punished they rose to the level of “Your pious ones.” Perhaps the reason is that the gentiles who killed them did not kill them because of their sin, but because in the eyes of the gentiles they were considered representatives of God and His faith in the world – a faith which the gentiles sought to eradicate. Those Jews, even if they were not aware of it, fell in Judaism’s struggle for its survival, and therefore they merit the highest level, the stature of those who fight for the sanctification of God’s name.
With blessing, S. Tz.
Regarding the Holocaust, the question was raised whether being killed by gentiles because of one’s Judaism, when there was no possibility of choice and not even presence of mind to intend sanctification of God’s name, counts as sanctifying God’s name. This was discussed by Rabbi Yehoshua Moshe Aharonson, Rabbi Sholom Noach Berezovsky of Slonim, and the Piaseczno Rebbe.
Rabbi Dr. Yechezkel Lichtenstein referred to their views in his article “The Definition of Sanctification of God’s Name during the Holocaust” (Hadaf Hashavua of Bar-Ilan University, issue 805, Parashat Shemini and Holocaust Memorial Day 2009, near notes 7-16).
Among other things he cites Rabbi Aharon Rabin, rabbi of Lenovitz, who told his community: “Fortunate are you, fortunate are we, that we merited to die as Jews. Such a death is considered death for sanctification of God’s name, for all our crimes consist in our being Jews” (ibid., near note 13). Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman saw this as sanctification of God’s name, since it is like a sacrifice that will atone and bring repair to the people of Israel (ibid., near note 14). Later Rabbi Dr. Lichtenstein brings that sanctification of God’s name also includes the struggle to preserve life, and to preserve the Jewish character and the image of God in man, even under impossible conditions.
May it be God’s will that we merit to learn from the self-sacrifice of Jews under difficult conditions, and sanctify God’s name in all our ways of life even in a state of “joy and gladness of heart.”
With blessing, S. Tz.
Along the lines of Rabbi Aharon Rabin of Lenovitz, quoted above, Rabbi Yehoshua Moshe Aharonson says:
“But where the gentile abuses someone because he is a Jew, and the very concept of ‘Judaism’ is what bothers him – this is called being put to death for sanctification of God’s name, even if the gentile does not force the Jew to violate his religion, for all the nations of the world know clearly that the Jewish people are the people of God. All their harassment of this people and their hatred of it is only because of this… Therefore it seems obvious to me that the Jews who were put to death in all kinds of strange ways merely for being Jews – their death is called ‘sanctification of God’s name,’ since they were put to death simply for being members of the chosen people who are related to Him, blessed be He.”
(His words are cited in Esther Farbstein’s book, Bester Ra‘am – Halakhah, Thought, and Leadership during the Holocaust, Jerusalem 2002, pp. 400-401).
And I already mentioned above Rava’s statement (Sanhedrin 47) that Jews killed by gentiles in the war of destruction had their sins atoned for and are called “Your servants,” and Midrash Tehillim 79, which holds that they rise even to the level of “Your pious ones.”
With blessing, S. Tz.
All these discussions are very familiar to me, and there is not a shred of evidence in any of them for our issue. [Of course, even if there were evidence I still wouldn’t agree, because one cannot accept a foolish claim.]
The only source that ostensibly seems connected to our discussion is the Gemara in Sanhedrin that those who are put to death have their sins atoned for. But even that is no proof for our case, since in the categories of atonement in Yoma we find that death atones (because you have received the punishment due to you). That does not mean the act is a sanctification of God’s name, but at most that his sins have been atoned for. These are not at all the same thing.
This is not an answer; it is explicit there in the Gemara:
“Were they really pious? But does it not say: ‘They were lustful stallions, each neighing after his neighbor’s wife’ (Jeremiah 5). Asaph said: once judgment was executed upon them – they were pious. And so it says: ‘And it shall be, if the wicked man deserves to be beaten’ – at first he is called wicked, and after he has been beaten he is called your brother, as it says: ‘Then your brother shall be dishonored before your eyes.’”
Judgment was executed upon them, and therefore they were atoned for. What does that have to do with an act of sanctifying God’s name?
By the way, even the dubious incident brought in the name of R. Wasserman regarding those killed at the Ninth Fort in Kovno does not necessarily prove anything. There he asks those present to intend to die for sanctification of God’s name, meaning there is a decision in their actions for which it is fitting to give them credit. But as I said, even if he said that, I would not accept it.
With God’s help, 18 Elul 5779
To Ramda – greetings,
Rava’s words in the Babylonian Talmud, that sinners who were killed are called only “Your servants,” can be interpreted narrowly: that their sins were atoned for and they are no more than an ordinary valid Jew. But from the wording of the Midrash it seems that sinners who were atoned for also rise to the exalted level of “Your pious ones”!
With blessing, S. Tz.
First, the opposite is true. The Gemara there explains that they are not called “Your pious ones” but “Your servants” (“Your pious ones” is a different case). Second, when there are two interpretive possibilities, one chooses the more reasonable one.
The elevation of a sinner killed by the enemy to the level of “pious one” (as explained in the Midrash) is beautifully clarified by the laws of war, in which we do not judge in terms of the individual’s “saving of life,” since in a state of war the individual is judged as a limb of the collective.
Similarly, Rabbi Aharon Rabin and Rabbi Yehoshua Moshe Aharonson say that here the Jew is not perceived as an individual but as a representative of Judaism, against which wickedness is waging world war. He is killed not as Reuven or as Shimon, but as the representative of the people of God, the servants of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His pious ones. Whatever he was in his private life is nullified relative to his value as part of the collective, and in his death he merits the honor of “a soldier in the armies of God.”
With blessing, S. Tz.
On belonging to the collective as an essential component of the individual’s identity, Ramda expanded at length in post 209: “From Individuals to a Nation – On the Meaning of the Paschal Offering.”
With blessing, S. Tz.
And the fact that those Jews were killed because they were Jews, and also because they were settling the Land of Israel – does that not count as their sacrificing themselves for the people of Israel?
No. They did nothing beyond what any other Jew living in the Land does. They were simply unlucky, and the bullet hit them.
With God’s help, 18 Elul 5779
By the very maintenance of his identity as a Jew, and all the more so by living in the Land of Israel, a Jew places himself in a situation in which he constitutes a natural target for attacks and terror. Greater than that is one who goes out to fight, who sacrifices himself for the people and the land, and his merit is immense (as explained in Bava Batra 10). To one who is, God forbid, harmed is added atonement for his sins, which according to Rava in Sanhedrin 47 raises a sinner to the level of “Your servants,” and according to Midrash Tehillim 79 – even to the level of “Your pious ones.”
With blessing, S. Tz.
I would assume that if they had the choice to go abroad and live a better life there, and they chose to remain in the Land while taking that risk, and assuming that from their perspective it was worthwhile – that is, because of fulfilling the commandment of settling the Land of Israel – then one could say that they died because of the commandment of sanctifying God’s name. But I don’t think that is what the rabbi meant. Anyone who dies because of fulfilling a commandment (assuming one is permitted to be killed rather than transgress) would then be considered to have died for God’s holiness.
Hello, I read this post, and I have two simple questions about it:
A. You wrote that when making a choice, we should not take metaphysical considerations into account but rather be realistic and act according to the reality before our eyes. That may be true and nice, but it is important to remember that the view that sees the metaphysical world literally – that there is reward and punishment for every deed, that the Holy One, blessed be He, oversees and everything is visible before Him, that one hour of bliss in the World to Come is better than all the life of this world, etc. – if someone comes to life from that point of view, why should he not take metaphysical considerations into account? Granted, Maran Michi Abraham does not necessarily accept those beliefs as the masses understand them literally, but many do understand them that way – so why should they not weigh the metaphysical dimension in their lives? From their point of view it is absolute truth and it exists. To put it differently: if we read Rav Kook’s words, we would immediately ask him: Why, Rabbi Kook, do you claim that one should not take metaphysical considerations into account? After all, you are not denying it but accepting such a reality, so there is no reason not to take it into account.
B. I did not understand what is new in this article beyond what already appeared in the quotation from Rav Kook. Does anyone really take metaphysical considerations into account in his life? On the ground this does not happen…
Thank you.
Many rabbis do take such considerations into account (human effort and trust in God; Torah protects and saves). I don’t see how reward and punishment, even if one accepts it literally, affects one’s considerations. What affects them is what is permitted and forbidden, not reward and punishment.
Hello again,
A. True, many do take such considerations into account. The question is: why not? If I relate to metaphysical reality as an existing reality, there is no reason at all not to mix it into my considerations. Therefore, when I make choices that are not bound up with halakhic permission and prohibition, the considerations will be metaphysical. Should I go out into the street? Well, if I know that every forbidden sight expands worlds, I won’t go near the street. Should I relate to the members of my household and family and deepen my ties with them? Well, I will do what I am obligated to do by halakhah, but beyond that I will sit and learn Torah all day, since that is the greatest reward promised on earth, so why invest in other things? And thus a worldview that neglects the whole life of this world out of looking at the life of the World to Come. This is a metaphysical consideration that affects the entire course of our lives. There is really no reason that someone who accepts the metaphysical world that Hazal describe literally should not go in this direction. So why shouldn’t he?
B. Unrelatedly: do you happen to know where there are classes of yours on the topic of acceptance by the many (the Talmud, etc.), with the well-known words of the Kesef Mishneh and the Hazon Ish and so on? I mean recorded lessons that I think I once heard here on the site.
C. Are the lessons uploaded to Magal not available for download?
Those are not relevant examples. I am not talking about caution in halakhah. For that you do not need metaphysics. And even if you are concerned about the metaphysics of halakhah (like spiritual dulling of the heart), that is not relevant. I am talking about an action that runs contrary to the realistic consideration and does not emerge from the halakhic discussion.
There is a series on authority. Probably there.
I didn’t understand the reasoning for not taking considerations from the metaphysical plane into account, assuming they are in fact correct.
Is this a straightforward scriptural decree in the prohibition of sorcery?