The Place of Religiosity in Religious Faith: B. Religiosity and Surging Emotion (Column 312)

"If someone thinks it is possible to learn something from the Bible, then it seems to me there is material here for thought about what is required of us."
Sounds like an interesting idea for a column… or has there already been one?

There has, ad nauseam.

In the verses you cited, it is told that Moses grew angry with Aaron and his remaining sons because they had not followed the precise sacrificial instructions:
“And Moses diligently inquired about the goat of the sin offering, and behold, it had been burned up; and he was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron’s remaining sons, saying: Why did you not eat the sin offering in the sacred place? For it is most holy, and He gave it to you to bear the iniquity of the congregation, to make atonement for them before the Lord.”
“Behold, its blood was not brought inside the sanctuary; you should certainly have eaten it in the sanctuary, as I commanded.”
Since this was not an inner sin offering but an outer one, the priests were supposed to eat it, and their eating effected atonement. Therefore Moses rebukes them for not doing so.
But Aaron argues with him:
“And Aaron spoke to Moses: Behold, today they presented their sin offering and their burnt offering before the Lord, and such things have befallen me—had I eaten the sin offering today, would it have been good in the eyes of the Lord?”
“And Moses heard, and it was good in his eyes.”
To my mind, Aaron’s response is wonderful: I cannot return to routine, he says to Moses, after all this has happened to me today. Can I eat a sin offering today and atone for others, when apparently the attribute of judgment is stretched taut against me myself and my family?
What is beautiful here is that despite Nadav and Avihu’s sin of breaching the boundary—“which He had not commanded”—Aaron does not automatically accept the law and the rule, but dares to argue with it and change it! And regarding the subject of this post—there is a very clear reference here not only to the legal situation but also to the emotional one (all this happened to me today; am I fit to atone?).
And Moses definitely accepts that. He is persuaded. There is reference to events; we are not clerks of the law. We respond to it and change things when circumstances change. In this case—circumstances of mourning and death.

1. What about “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…”? Can one not learn from here about the value of emotion in the service of God?
2. It seems to me that just as between a man and a woman, so too between a person and his Creator, there is value to passion and love when they are in the right place. Giving examples of passion in the wrong place (as in the sin of the golden calf) does not prove that there is no value in “passion” and emotion in the service of God when they are in the right place—that is, when they come out of genuine will and genuine commitment to God’s will.
3. By the way, you said in an interview with Makor Rishon, “Hasidism doesn’t speak to me; in my eyes it’s nonsense.” It seems to me that from here comes the answer to your question in one of the columns as to why Yehuda Yifrah referred to your words with the expression “the arrogant certainty…” Take your analogy of love between husband and wife—do you know how to say with certainty that closeness and passion between husband and wife have no value? Similarly, do you know how to say that a person’s emotional stirring in prayer, or the emotional excitement of Hasidim at a tish of melodies with their rebbe, has no value? Whence this certainty?

With appreciation, (I already devote many, many Sabbaths to reading your interesting and enlightening books)
Ya'ir

Even if you are right, there is here a request to take his emotional state into account, and it is granted. That has no connection to the question of what is required of us. The criticism shows that the discussion is about what I wrote.

I’ll get to all that later on.

If his request that his emotional state be taken into account is granted, that means it has some importance. Q.E.D.

I haven’t yet touched on the question of importance in this column. But I don’t think even that can be proved from here. When a person cannot do something, it is proper to take him into account. That does not testify to the importance of emotion in the service of God. Q.E.D. (= what I had to answer)

Thank you very much, Rabbi, for the columns! Will there be more learned/Talmudic columns like there were before the interview?

I don’t have a detailed plan for what comes next (beyond the current columns on emotion and experience). But I assume there certainly will be.

You haven’t touched on the question of the importance of emotion?!? I thought that was why we gathered here.
Actually, I thought you would argue with me about the very existence of the emotional element in the verses I cited. After all, one could say: Aaron and his sons are mourners and therefore exempt—not because of emotion but because of halakhah (renewed here!).

That is indeed why we gathered, but as you recall, we have not yet dispersed. There are more columns to come, and I wrote here that the subject will still be discussed. Here I was not dealing with the importance of emotion but with the expected damage from emotional upheaval and religious ecstasy.
I certainly can argue with you about additional points in the interpretation you offered, but as I wrote, there is no need for that. Even if I adopt your interpretation, it does not prove the importance of emotion.

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

It seems to me that the Torah explains the meaning in the following verses (and this is not about the work of emotion, but about the practical meaning):
With all your heart – “And these words that I command you today shall be upon your heart.”
And with all your soul – “And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the way, and when you lie down and when you rise.”
And with all your might – “And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

A very interesting way of resolving this contradiction in the Rambam, [David Henshke wrote a beautiful and, in my opinion, true way of resolving the contradiction, I think in the article “On the Unity of Maimonides’ Thought,” but I’m not sure]
But do you really think idolatry still exists, that same urge for idolatry, or what?
There’s also a bit of a contradiction here with what was written in an earlier column—199?
Thank you, Rabbi

Isaiah:
“What need have I of all your sacrifices? says the Lord. I am full of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; and in the blood of bulls and lambs and he-goats I have no delight. {12} When you come to appear before Me, who asked this of your hand, to trample My courts? {13} Do not continue bringing vain offerings; incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and Sabbath, calling of convocation—I cannot endure iniquity together with solemn assembly. {14} Your new moons and your appointed festivals My soul hates; they are a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them. {15} And when you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; even when you multiply prayer, I do not hear; your hands are full of blood. {16} Wash yourselves, purify yourselves, remove the evil of your deeds from before My eyes, cease to do evil. {17} Learn to do good, seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the orphan, plead for the widow.”

Jeremiah:
“Thus says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat flesh. {22} For I did not speak to your fathers, nor command them, on the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. {23} But this thing I commanded them, saying: Obey My voice, and I will be your God and you shall be My people; and walk in all the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you. {24} But they did not obey, nor incline their ear, and they walked in counsels, in the stubbornness of their evil heart, and went backward and not forward.”

Ish, definitely yes. As is well known, the sages of evolution and biology have already taught us that within the brain stem of each of us there are deep layers from earlier stages of evolution. It bursts out from time to time, as in trance parties.
What does Henshke write there? Do you remember?
By the way, I don’t think there’s a contradiction with column 199, but דווקא a complement. The ignoring of the point within us is made possible by clinging to emotion that eclipses the intellect.

Interesting. By the way, the charta researchers are divided on whether that idolatrous urge really was nullified from the Second Temple period onward; Urbach and several others argued that it was, and others disagree. In practice it is fairly clear that in the Persian period / time of the Men of the Great Assembly, the attraction to idolatry declined dramatically.

Henshke expands there that on the contrary, this fits his view exactly. For concerning what he wrote in the Guide, people were very angry that it made it a temporary matter, and the basic point is—that indeed this is the reason for the commandment, but once God sanctified it, then it is holy in itself. And this is really the language of the Rambam, that God sanctified it with His word, all the more so from wood and stones [where it is actually hinted that in a commandment there is no substantive reality…] by God’s word…

In that column, you suggested that a person seeks ideology (along the lines of “in their will was sexual immorality,” I don’t remember whether you mentioned that) and repression. Before Camus and his post-rational friends, was the ideology to run after emotions? A bit Catholic, perhaps?

Your interpretation regarding those drunk with wine was explained at length, in line with your view, by Emmanuel Levinas. Recommended reading. He absolutely proves from this passage the Lithuanian ethos of Judaism; see there.

Gil, did I offend you? 🙂

Regarding sacrifice as a substitute: “And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by its horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son.”

And also in the writings of the Rebbe of Chabad. He has a wonderful lengthy discussion of this, with many references and originality in his usual fashion. Worth seeing.

1. Is it possible that there is value in this urge, and that it is not a “manufacturing defect”—if it is so deeply rooted that even the Torah is willing to make room for it?

2. Idol worshippers too were strict about laws and rules—as I recall, Plutarch reports that the Romans were so strict about the rules that on one occasion they repeated a sacrifice that had not been offered properly 31 times until it was offered correctly.

Your columns are like a dream…

(Rabbi Yoḥanan said in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai: Just as grain cannot be without straw, so a dream cannot be without idle matters. Berakhot 55a).

You build cardboard fortresses and then charge them like Don Quixote and conquer them heroically. Thrilling.

Indeed, “religious” emotions (what the hell is that), mystical experiences, and various ecstasies are not the goal of serving God, and there is great danger in them. But who said otherwise? With whom exactly are you arguing here? With Nadav and Avihu?

You ignore the path described by Rabbi Pinḥas ben Ya’ir in his famous baraita (in which “Torah” is only the first station), and above all—the goal at its end. In this ignoring lies the flaw in your whole thesis, according to which the complete Jew is an intelligent robot or a “commandment-observing gentile,” as you called it in your second book, whose Torah study too is (primarily) because of the command. (For not everyone is meant to be fascinated by Talmudic pilpul.) In this you have drawn very narrow boundaries into which only a very few can enter, and left the masses of the house of Israel—Jews, sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, beloved and accepted before the Omnipresent no less than you—outside. It reminds me of the outrageous saying of R. Yoel Teitelbaum of Satmar: “There are only a thousand Jews in the world, and they all live in Williamsburg.”

But the Holy One, blessed be He, did not address only outstanding scholars or Satmar Hasidim, but all Israel, and therefore gave them Torah and commandments in abundance, as R. Ḥanania ben Akashya said—according to Maimonides’ interpretation, which you mocked—so that every Jew could find the path suited to him on the road ascending to the house of God. Not for the sake of “religious” experiences and emotions (for the umpteenth time—what is that?) but in order to bring Him pleasure, may He be blessed, and draw near to Him, each person in his own way and according to his ability, talents, intellect, and heart. (You rushed to mock Maimonides without trying to understand him, but it is quite clear that he comes to resolve a grave difficulty in the words of R. Ḥanania—does an abundance of Torah and commandments indeed bring merit to Israel? Does it not rather increase the chance of causing them to stumble, as in the famous words of the Mishnah Berurah in his introduction to part 3, and this is not the place to elaborate.)

Of course, none of this should be read as belittling the value of in-depth Torah study and meticulous observance of the commandments. But I am in no way willing to accept that there are only a thousand Jews and they all live in Williamsburg, or that there is only one Jew sitting in Lod. All Israel have a share in the world to come, and each arrives there by one of the paths that the Holy One, blessed be He, opened before the people of Israel. It may be that your way is the preferred commandment (and even that is very much up for discussion), but in no way the only one.

And perhaps by way of a homiletic reading of a specifically halakhic sugya: we learned in the chapter Bameh Madlikin (Shabbat 25a and Jerusalem Talmud there 16b): R. Tarfon says, “One may light only with olive oil alone.” Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Nuri stood on his feet and said: “What are the people of Babylonia to do, who have only sesame oil? And what are the people of Media to do, who have only walnut oil? And what are the people of Alexandria to do, who have only radish oil? And what are the people of Cappadocia to do, who have neither this nor that, but only naphtha? Rather, you have only what the Sages said.”

R. Tarfon (a tanna with a Greek name!) stands guard over the “flask of pure olive oil,” while Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Nuri (son of the lamp?) says that there is more than one way to illuminate the darkness, even if we say that olive oil is the preferred mitzvah. Indeed, as the poet said, “Learning Torah is the best thing,” but not every mind can bear it, and for the rest of the masses of Your people Israel too, the Holy One, blessed be He, paved many ways to draw near to Him, each according to his level, even the empty ones among them being as full of commandments as a pomegranate, etc., and this is not the place to elaborate.

1. It is possible. That will be discussed later.
2. Certainly possible. I am speaking in generalities, of course, just as the Rambam does in the Guide. Though one should remember that the Romans were a developed culture, and their idolatry passed over rather quickly into Christianity.

Mordechai,
By your own measure I would say that your comments are the nightmares within the dream. The gap between the awful reading comprehension you display here again and again (in fact, you usually completely ignore what is written) and your actual abilities (from my impression, though we do not know one another) is so great that it nicely illustrates the wonders of tendentious reading. If in a dream there are here and there a few true things in addition to the idle ones, then in your nightmares I cannot manage to discover, even by accident, a single substantive argument for medicinal purposes within the jumble of nonsense you write with such great confidence. My words really do succeed in bringing out the worst in you. It is rather amusing, but a bit unfortunate for you.

Ad kadon da? Haha

Despite your sincere impression of my wondrous abilities (many thanks), I did not manage to understand whether my comments cause you nightmares or amusement.

You complain about my reading comprehension, while you do not even try to understand. After all, I basically agree (almost) with everything you wrote in this column, except that in my opinion it and the previous one are unnecessary, as is the war of annihilation you declared on the religious demons—whose whole purpose seems to be only to distract from the main question: what is the purpose of the service of God, and what goal is it aimed at? The creation of human robotics, or drawing the human being near to his Maker?

My claim against your method is that, by your own account as well, it marks out a single path for drawing near to God (tailored to your measurements, of course), and excludes anyone who is not fit for it. If I erred in my interpretation of your “thin theology,” you could simply have said so and explained how the gospel according to Michi also allows Jews at my level and below (if there is anyone there…) to reach the kingdom of heaven. If I was right, then minimal intellectual honesty requires admitting it, just as R. Yoel Teitelbaum of Satmar (who also did not excel in intellectual honesty) admitted in the saying I quoted above that one who does not follow his path is not considered a Jew in his eyes. (That was not an offhand remark. I know he believed it, but what is in my heart about him I shall save for another opportunity).

But your response is neither this nor that. It contains only mockery, condescension, and insults. But why should I complain after seeing in your book that you mock even Maimonides and call his words in the Laws of Repentance “childish”? (By the way, your discussion there is demagogic on the level of “Da’at Emet” and below, but this is not the place).

As for everything else—the reader will judge.

Hello to his honored Torah greatness,

Since you brought the Rambam’s words in the Guide for the Perplexed regarding sacrifices, I would like to bring and add some of his other words, which pierce and descend to the depths, connected to two matters you mentioned in your article, and thereby strengthen your words.

A.
• “In light of this, it may be that the details and laws of the Yom Kippur service are not important in themselves.”

• “What truly deserves to be compared, regarding parts, is sacrifice: for the commandment of offering sacrifice has a great and manifest benefit, as I shall explain. But that one sacrifice should be a lamb and another a ram, and that their number should be a particular number—it is impossible to assign a reason for this at all. Anyone who troubles himself to give a reason for any of these details is, in my eyes, seized by a prolonged madness; and he does not thereby remove the difficulty, but rather increases the difficulties. And one who imagines that these have a reason is as far from the truth as one who imagines that the whole commandment is without any useful purpose. Know that wisdom required—or, if you wish, necessity brought about—that there be details without a reason, and it is as though it were impossible by the law of the Torah that there not be something of this class in it. The manner of impossibility here is this: if you ask, why was it a lamb and not a ram?—that very same question would have been required had a ram been said instead of a lamb, for there had to be some one species. And similarly, why were there seven lambs and not eight?—they would ask the same if there had been eight or ten or twenty, for there necessarily had to be some number. It is as though this resembled the nature of possibility, where one of the possible alternatives must necessarily exist; and it is not fitting to ask why this possibility and not another among the possible ones, for that question would still apply if the other possible existent had been in this one’s place. Know this matter and understand it.” (Guide III:26)

B.
• “Beyond the contradiction between the explanation here, according to which sacrifices are meant to wean us from idolatry, and the Rambam’s words at the end of the Laws of Me’ilah, where he sees these laws as scriptural decrees, it is not clear why the laws of sacrifice in general constitute a confrontation with idolatry. How do these commandments, which apparently amount to yielding to the urge for idolatry and giving it a channel for catharsis, help us avoid idolatry? Is this a matter of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’?”

• “By this very same mode of governance from that Exalted Leader came many things in our Torah. It is impossible to move suddenly from one extreme to the opposite, and therefore it is impossible, according to human nature, for a person suddenly to abandon everything to which he has become accustomed. When Moses our teacher was sent to make us ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ through His knowledge, may He be exalted—as He said, ‘Unto you it was shown, that you might know,’ and ‘Know this day and lay it to your heart’—and to give ourselves to His service, as He said, ‘and to serve Him with all your heart,’ and ‘you shall serve the Lord your God,’ and ‘Him shall you serve’; and the custom widespread in the whole world in those days, and the general mode of worship in which they had been raised, was to offer various kinds of animals in those temples in which they set up images, to bow down to them, and to burn incense before them—and the ascetic devotees were then the people devoted to the service of those temples made for the sun, moon, and stars, as we have explained—His wisdom and manifest contrivance in all His creatures did not decree that He command us to abandon all these kinds of service and abolish them. For then there would have occurred something the heart could not accept, according to human nature, which always inclines to what is habitual. It would then have been like a prophet appearing in our own time, calling for the service of God, and saying: God has commanded you not to pray to Him, not to fast, and not to seek His help in time of trouble; rather, your worship should be thought without deed. Therefore God left these kinds of worship in place, but transferred them from being directed to created beings and imaginary things without true existence to His name, may He be exalted. And He commanded us to perform them for Him, may He be exalted; He commanded us to build Him a temple—‘And let them make Me a sanctuary’; that the altar be for His name—‘An altar of earth shall you make for Me’; that the sacrifice be for Him—‘When any man of you brings an offering to the Lord’; that they bow down to Him and burn incense before Him. And He warned against doing any of these acts for anyone else—‘He who sacrifices to gods shall be utterly destroyed’; ‘You shall not bow down to another god.’ And He set apart priests for the Temple service and said, ‘And they shall minister to Me as priests.’ And He required that gifts be assigned to them in every case, sufficient for them, because they are occupied with the house and its sacrifices; these are the gifts of the Levites and the priests. By this divine stratagem the memory of idolatry was blotted out and the great true principle of our nation was established—namely, God’s existence and unity—while the souls did not recoil or fall into confusion through the abolition of the forms of worship to which they were accustomed, knowing no other form of worship.” (Guide III:32)

All the best, and many thanks for your great work and enormous effort on behalf of the public.

Rabbi Mordechai, may he live long. I wrote explicitly that I am not dealing here with the question of emotion itself—which I will discuss later—but only with eruptive emotion, about which indeed there can be broad agreement. But that fact did not really prevent you from repeating it in an aggressive and emphatic tone (which in itself I like very much) as though there were some disagreement here, and from expressing a forceful position with apologetic arguments that would make R. Levi Yitzḥak of Berdichev turn pale, all regarding something I did not address at all and for which I raised no arguments or reasons either for or against.

Many thanks. Sharp words indeed.

And you still come to me with complaints about tendentious reading and lack of reading comprehension?

How many times must I repeat and emphasize that I am not dealing at all with emotion? Not “religious” emotion (and again, what is that at all?) and not any other emotion! No emotion whatsoever, garnisht. (Among my few friends and admirers there are those who claim that I am on the autistic spectrum and devoid of emotions at least as much as you are…).

Nor did I come with any apologetic arguments on behalf of anyone. (Not at all my style. If I dealt in litigation I would probably be a prosecutor.) It all started because for some reason you decided to devote a column to me (what an honor), because in response to a comment in a previous column I remarked that the main question regarding your “thin theology” is where it leads and what its purpose is. Afterwards I explained that even if we grant that your path is the finest of paths (and at the moment I am expressing no view on that), there must necessarily be another path in the service of God (call it a “bypass” or any other nickname), which is no less legitimate. I objected only to the monopoly you claim (in my opinion explicitly, but at the very least implicitly) as a guide in the service of God. That and nothing more. But again and again you deflect the discussion and drag me into emotional whirlpools that are no less foreign to me than they are to you.

Perhaps I am limited in reading comprehension, but you certainly are not, and these rhetorical tricks do not honor you (even though they are common in the mouths of threatened monopolists). Likewise, I most certainly do have a musical ear (and also a bit of knowledge in the field), and I certainly know how to identify an “emphatic tone” and distinguish it from other tones. Enough said.

You do not owe me an answer at all (I have noted in the past that you even have the right to block me here on your site). But please, do not try to throw dust in my eyes.

A side note:
Perhaps Nadav and Avihu thought, through their dialectical reasoning, that it was permitted? And the sin was that they ruled autonomously without consulting the greatest sage of the generation.
With such an explanation there is a win-win, but only for one side—then we do not learn that emotion is problematic, and we do learn that even a competent scholar must consult the leading sage of the generation. One who says that eruptive emotion is very important will set up the verses as meaning that they erred in their dialectical reasoning and nevertheless were punished, and then, with interpretive integrity of the highest order, will learn something new about the limits of autonomy.
Even though one does not derive halakhah from the Bible, it can guide one’s conception in understanding halakhah, and it can spur scholars and decisors to interpret the halakhah itself accordingly and arrive at the truth. Perhaps that is in general a direction toward solving the dilemma you raised about learning from the Bible (we don’t derive halakhah from the Bible, and in practice regarding values we learn only what seems right to us)—a third possibility is that the Bible helps guide halakhic intuitions (of course examples are needed, and personally I tend to think there are none, but if so, that seems to me the direction, so as not to get impaled on either horn).

Where was it? Even when there were columns dealing with kindness and charity they were branded as obligation (moral obligation), and where did kindness disappear to? (By the way, I really do think that theoretically there is no such domain as kindness—all that is fitting to do is a full obligation, only it is difficult.)

With God’s help, 15 Sivan 5780 (the second birthday of my grandson David Itgab, may he live and prosper)

It seems that R. Michael’s view is like Michal’s view, for when she saw David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she said to him: “How honored today was the king of Israel in the eyes of his servants’ maidservants, as one of the base fellows shamelessly uncovers himself” (II Samuel 6).

But David did not accept Michal’s rebuke, saying: “And I will celebrate before the Lord. And I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be lowly in my own eyes; but with the maidservants of whom you have spoken—with them I shall be honored.” And so too Maimonides says, in describing the joy of the Water-Drawing Celebration: “The joy with which a person rejoices in the performance of the commandments and in the love of God, blessed be He, who commanded them, is a great service… and whoever humbles himself and makes his body light in these places—he is the great and honorable one who serves out of love… And greatness and honor are nothing but rejoicing before the Lord, as it is said: ‘And King David was leaping and dancing before the Lord’” (end of the Laws of Lulav).

The bursting forth of the emotion of joy is positive when it is bound up with the feeling of being “before the Lord,” not out of frivolity and lightheadedness, nor out of drunkenness, for “drunkenness, excessive jesting, and lightheadedness are not joy but debauchery and foolishness… and we were commanded only regarding service in which there is service of the Creator of all” (Laws of Festivals 6:20).

An additional essential condition for joy before the Lord is that it be bound up with humility, as David said to Michal, “but with the maidservants… with them I shall be honored,” and as Maimonides says in the Laws of Festivals (6:15), that true joy is that which brings a person to gladden the poor.

With blessing, Shatz

Paragraph 2, line 2
… “and I will make myself yet more contemptible than this” …

Paragraph 4, line 3
… “that which brings a person to gladden the poor.”

What compels you to depart from the plain meaning of the verse? In the verses there appear both expressions of the service of emotion and soul, and also the practical obligations that accompany this.

If a person offered sacrifices intuitively, out of his own natural feeling, and did not do it according to halakhah, would that, according to your view, be idolatry?
Because if the main essence of sacrifice is its being brought into the halakhic framework, then what is essential is missing if it was not done according to halakhah.

With God’s help, 15 Sivan 5780

To Avishai – greetings,

Even if a person offered the sacrifice in its proper place and according to halakhah, there must be, among other things, intention for the sake of the Lord and intention “for a pleasing aroma”—to bring pleasure to Him who spoke and the world came into being, by doing His will (mishnah Zevaḥim 4:6).

These intentions create, in the opinion of R. Aharon Lichtenstein, the ḥefẓa of the sacrifice (see the lecture by R. Avihud Schwartz, “For the Sake of Six Things Is the Sacrifice Slaughtered, and the Law of Lishmah,” on the website of the Virtual Beit Midrash of Yeshivat Har Etzion), except that in practice the halakhah follows Rabbi Yosei, that the stipulation of the court is that the intention follows the officiating priest, and only he has the authority to define the nature of the sacrifice (and one might say that the owner presumably relies on the judgment of the officiating priest. Shatz)

With blessing, Shatz

I am asking about the opposite case: he offered it for the sake of the Lord but not according to halakhah. Is it a sacrifice because the main thing is the intention and the act of sacrifice in itself, or is the main thing fitting the act of sacrifice into the halakhic rules?

To Avishai – greetings,

About offering a sacrifice not according to halakhah, the Torah says (Leviticus 17): “Any man of the house of Israel who slaughters an ox or sheep or goat in the camp, or who slaughters it outside the camp, and has not brought it to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting to offer it as an offering to the Lord—blood shall be accounted to that man; he has shed blood, and that man shall be cut off from among his people.”

The Torah regarded offering a sacrifice outside its halakhically designated place as the murder of an innocent animal, and the purpose of this severity is stated explicitly later on: “So that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices which they sacrifice in the open field, and bring them to the Lord, to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, to the priest, and sacrifice them as peace offerings to the Lord. And the priest shall throw the blood on the altar of the Lord at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and burn the fat as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. And they shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat-demons after whom they stray. This shall be an eternal statute for them throughout their generations.”

The Torah wished to uproot the custom prevalent among the people of sacrificing to the goat-demons (= demons), and therefore while they were in the wilderness it was forbidden to them even to slaughter ordinary non-sacred meat outside, and they were required to bring it as peace offerings to the Tabernacle. In Deuteronomy, as they approached entry into the Land, they were permitted to slaughter animals for ordinary meat anywhere; but sacrifices they were commanded to bring to the place that the Lord would choose from the moment that “you have come to the resting place and the inheritance.” (And even during the interim period, when “you have not yet come to the resting place and the inheritance,” the offering of sacrifices was permitted only on local altars, in accordance with the sacrificial laws explained in Leviticus.)

With blessing, Shatz

An important rabbi from Yeshivat Yeruḥam writes that when one offers a sacrifice not according to halakhah, it still bears the name of offering a sacrifice, and it stands to reason that there is reward for the act of sacrifice, because the act of sacrificing and the intention are the ḥefẓa of the sacrifice; and as for the laws—if Scripture did not repeat them, they are not indispensable.
An important rabbi from the Torah Institute writes that the essence of sacrifice is to do it according to halakhah and the sublimation of emotion into rules, and therefore if Scripture did not repeat them, they are not indispensable, because the point of halakhic rules is their very existence and not their content.
What would Tosafot answer? Perhaps there are 2 Rabbi Michis

Perhaps I put words in the Rabbi’s mouth a bit, but at the very least the spirit of the matter is opposite, because there it implies that the matter of the laws is not the body of the commandment of sacrifice, but only something that invalidates if absent; and here it is the very essence, and the practical difference would be in the case I presented.
Perhaps I can accept that with regard to sacrifice the laws are part of the essence, as is written here and as Rabbi Shatz wrote from the laws of outside slaughter, and there also would not be reward for the act of sacrifice.
But it does not seem to me that one should infer from here to the whole issue of emotion, as for example regarding prayer—does the essence of prayer instituted by the Sages also serve to channel religious emotion into defined rules and laws? Is prayer too a kind of catharsis whose purpose is to channel and not to develop the feeling of closeness to God?

To Avishai – greetings,

There are details of halakhah that do not invalidate after the fact, and there are halakhic requirements that invalidate the sacrifice even after the fact and turn it into piggul, which will not be accepted. You are invited to study the books of “Temple Service” and “Sacrifices” in the Rambam.

With blessings for success, Shatz

To Shatz,
the distinction between le-khatḥilah and be-di'avad is not the issue here.
The question is about the essential role of the laws: is the simple reasoning that the laws do not invalidate if Scripture did not repeat them because the Torah did not come to negate natural service of God, or the opposite—that the Torah came mainly to negate service of God not arising from halakhic rules, but their importance lies in their very observance and not in their content?

With God’s help, 15 Sivan 5780

To Avishai – greetings,

In my humble opinion, all the commandments are meant not only to “channel” religious emotion but also to cultivate and intensify it, for the Torah explicitly demands of a person to love God, fear Him, and cleave to Him. I discussed this at length in my comments on the previous column; see there. Obviously, the observance of a commandment enthusiastically but without care for its laws may constitute “a commandment that comes through a transgression.” Halakhic precision is the body of the commandment, while religious emotion is its soul, and a living organism is composed of body and soul together.

With blessing, Shatz

What I wrote is the plain meaning. And there is no other plain meaning in the world:
1. “To love with” has no meaning.
2. It would have been enough to write “And you shall love the Lord your God,” as with “and you shall love the stranger,” or “and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
3. How can one love God? Love is directed toward a specific object. One must imagine it. One cannot love something without an image. And God has no image.

Therefore the Torah explains what it means to love God. That is, one should love the word of God, in these three ways.

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: {2} Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. {3} Every man shall fear his mother and his father, and you shall keep My Sabbaths; I am the Lord your God. {4} Do not turn to idols, and gods of molten metal you shall not make for yourselves; I am the Lord your God. {5} And when you sacrifice a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord, you shall sacrifice it so that it may be accepted for you. {6} It shall be eaten on the day you sacrifice it and on the next day, and what remains until the third day shall be burned in fire. {7} And if it is eaten at all on the third day, it is piggul; it shall not be accepted. {8} And whoever eats it shall bear his iniquity, because he has profaned the holy thing of the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from his people.

A suggestion for improvement to his honored Torah greatness—just copy the entire Bible here already. Then later, whenever you want to accuse someone of idolatry, you can note: “as it is written in the Bible that I brought above.”

Hardly even a shred of proof. Acknowledging the existence of something does not require recognizing it as an important tool (certainly not as a goal) in the service of God. After all, the discussion was not whether emotion exists or not.

By the same token, one could use this very passage as proof of the opposite claim.

Let us be careful with the honor of all the Q.E.D.’s out there and reserve them for cases where something has really been properly argued and duly proved.

I have never understood the tendency to interpret God’s actions in a way that does not accord with His character as it emerges from the Torah’s own narratives. Anyone who reads the Torah and tries to assemble a character profile of God must admit that He is not exactly the responsible, level-headed, restrained adult who doesn’t get overly emotional. God is portrayed as hot-tempered, impulsive, disproportionate in His reactions, quick to anger and relatively easy to appease. God is a complex figure, but one must admit that in the Torah narratives He inclines more toward the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, and less toward a patient, containing school principal with his students. Therefore, when the children of Israel refuse to go up to the Land, God is simply deeply offended. Even after the children of Israel acknowledge their sin, God remains adamant: Oh really? You didn’t want My help? Then now go fend for yourselves. That is a reaction fitting God’s character like a glove. I have no idea where the interpretive impulse comes from to load the text with meanings that are not there, as though God had some hidden message to Israel, as if hinting to them that next time they should not act from the gut but from the head. That is not the God of the Bible.
The same goes for Nadav and Avihu. Here too this is a characteristically divine outburst in response to the fact that Aaron’s sons innovated worship on their own initiative (an entirely technical matter), not because they sinned with unwanted ecstasy. The interpretation that they were drunk is unconvincing. If they were drunk, the Torah would say explicitly that they drank wine and entered the sanctuary—what is stopping it? And even if we assume they were drunk, the plain meaning of the verses clearly implies that God would have burned them to death even if they had offered strange fire in a sober and clear state of mind. Here too God has no hidden message; He is simply upset as usual, and there is no reason to ascribe intentions to Him that never entered His mind, as though He wished to teach us a lesson not to enter ecstasy. His lesson is much simpler and clearer than that: Do what I tell you, exactly as I tell you, and heaven help you if you don’t.
The most surprising thing is the attempt to interpret sacrifices as though they came to moderate the religious ecstasy found in idolatry. If I understood correctly, God does not want the children of Israel to offer sacrifices to idols and thereby come to ecstasy, so He provides them with an alternative sacrificial system, only with lots of details and minutiae??? Honestly, that is an especially bad plan. How exactly does the Jewish sacrificial system prevent ecstasy? In whom exactly—from the priests alone, or from all Israel? Does anyone here really imagine that Sukkot in the Temple did not look like the Lag BaOmer celebration in Meron? Does anyone here really believe that God planned the sacrificial system, which includes mass worship rituals, in order to prevent the children of Israel from entering ecstasy? Really, does anyone here buy this???
Personally I am amazed again and again to see how theologians study a sacred text outside its context and load onto it all sorts of conclusions.
As far as I understand, God simply wants the act of sacrifice itself because it is a status symbol, just as a king in medieval Europe demands a castle and palace, a retinue of knights, and courtiers—it is part of the package. What makes you gods in the ancient Near East? If they build you a temple, a pillar, or an Asherah and worship you, in what other way do you become gods? God does not want the children of Israel sacrificing to goat-demons, not because He cares about ecstasy, but because He is the new sheriff in town, the king, and it is fitting and proper for Him.
I have gone over the Five Books backward and forward, and if you asked me what I learned, in one sentence, the very last thing that would occur to me is that God advises us to worship Him from the head and intellect and not from the gut and emotion. It is truly amazing how one can squeeze such far-reaching conclusions out of the text.

Btw your theory on the rambam on sacrifices is famous in the name of r gedalya Nadel that's what I heard while studying in bnei brak

Here we have already reached the realms of parody. Here are your apologetic arguments (which you claim were never written at all), about which I wrote that R. Levi Yitzḥak of Berdichev would turn pale upon reading them:

You ignore the path described by Rabbi Pinḥas ben Ya’ir in his famous baraita (in which “Torah” is only the first station) and above all – the goal at its end. In this ignoring lies the flaw in your whole thesis, according to which the complete Jew is an intelligent robot or a “commandment-observing gentile,” as you called it in the second book, whose Torah study too is (primarily) because of the command. (For not everyone is meant to be fascinated by Talmudic pilpul.) In this you have drawn very narrow boundaries into which only a very few can enter, and left the masses of the house of Israel, Jews sons of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, beloved and accepted before the Omnipresent no less than you – outside. It reminds me of the outrageous saying of R. Yoel Teitelbaum of Satmar: “There are only a thousand Jews in the world, and they all live in Williamsburg.”

But the Holy One, blessed be He, did not address only outstanding scholars or Satmar Hasidim, but all Israel as a whole, and therefore gave them Torah and commandments in abundance, as R. Ḥanania ben Akashya said according to Maimonides’ interpretation, which you mocked – so that every Jew could find the path suited to him on the road ascending to the house of God. Not for the sake of “religious” experiences and emotions (for the umpteenth time – what is that?) but in order to bring Him pleasure, may He be blessed, and draw near to Him, each person in his own way and according to his ability, talents, intellect, and heart. (You rushed to mock Maimonides without trying to understand him, but it is quite clear that he comes to resolve a grave difficulty in the words of R. Ḥanania – does an abundance of Torah and commandments indeed bring merit to Israel? Does it not rather increase the chance of causing them to stumble, as in the famous words of the Mishnah Berurah in his introduction to part 3, and this is not the place to elaborate.)

R. Mordechai of Berdichev, defender of Israel, whose measure of humility reaches unto the Throne of Glory, and who therefore even rejected the title of defender bestowed upon him. Fortunate is the eye that has seen all this; indeed, our soul was pained by hearing of it.
No wonder I was reminded of what R. A. Wasserman wrote about the Ḥafetz Ḥayyim: if a genius like him tries to hide from us, how shall we, mere snot-nosed nobodies and hyssop on the wall, succeed in uncovering his innermost thoughts? Brilliantly said.

The Sages already said that they issued a halakhic ruling in the presence of their master.

We were speaking here about columns on what can be learned from the Bible. How did you get here to kindness and charity?

Are you speaking to me? Where did I take anything away from its plain meaning? I still have not dealt with the question of emotion and emotional commandments. In the meantime you can look at column 22.

After the Torah was given and halakhah determined. That is the difference between before and after the giving of the Torah. See my article on “Scripture repeated it to make it indispensable.”

Shatz answered nicely. This move seems to me like those studies where, once they hit a difficulty, they immediately ruled that there must have been two Isaiahs, and three Rav Ashis and five Rambams. And any yeshiva schoolboy can resolve it easily.

I’m glad to hear it. I did hear a bit from him and argued with him, though not about this.

I am amazed every time anew at how theologians read the text I just wrote and put into it what is not there, because of their limited understanding. It is not enough for them to write their own opinion—they have decreed upon themselves to insert their opinion into my words?!

I suppose he was replying to the Posek and to the little homily he gave above. Good that there is someone to explain to us what love is. Very important.

With the blessing: “There is no other plain meaning in the whole world.”

🙂

You pulled a well-known dialectical trick on me. Clever—I expected no less. I admit it, 1-1.

Are you serious?

Actually no, for you testify that this is parody. Apparently you mean a self-parody of your own reading comprehension. As one who purports to mediate for us, the common folk, the deep and complex texts of Kant and his disciples, one might have expected you to understand that the fairly simple text you quoted is not a defense of Israel, but an indictment of you—for the fact that you, like R. Yoel Teitelbaum in his time, exclude from the service of God (and in fact from Judaism) everyone who does not follow your path.

You could have said that I am mistaken in my interpretation and that you do not claim a monopoly for yourself over the correct path in the service of God. Alternatively, you could have said that I am right, and indeed this is the one and only way. Instead, you turned again to buffoonery, mockery, and derision—except that this time it is an own goal. If you enjoy it—please. It is your site, and who am I to withhold pleasure from an important Jew? (And perhaps in the spirit of the end of your words, are you in fact a hidden Novardoker?…)

Mordechai, you still haven’t understood. Because of the sin of the golden calf many commandments were added (the portion of Terumah, sacrifices), in order to prevent the pursuers of idolatry from sinning again and again. Therefore He gave them Torah and commandments in abundance—to merit them away from sin. The reason is negative, not positive.

Perhaps I saw what my own heart was thinking. From the context of the column I understood that the “material for thought” regarding what is required of us (if one learns from the Bible) is the doing of kindness, justice, and righteousness in the land; and if there is going to be a column on learning (or not learning) that from the Bible, I assumed it would also contain a conceptual clarification of kindness and charity (for example, whether these are value-definitions or practical ones, and what is the point of preaching kindness that is not an obligation).

With God’s help, 15 Sivan 5780

The uniqueness of joy on the festival of Sukkot is expressed in the unique style in which the joy of Sukkot is described in the section of the festivals in Leviticus 23. All the festivals are described as “holy convocations,” in which “laborious work” is forbidden and “a fire-offering to the Lord” is to be brought.

By contrast, on Sukkot the Torah repeatedly emphasizes that there is something unique here: “But on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you gather in the produce of the land, you shall celebrate the festival of the Lord for seven days.”

The joy of the festival is carried out by special acts of rejoicing: “And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of a beautiful tree, branches of palm trees, boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.”

In the festival section in Deuteronomy 16 as well, the joy of Sukkot is emphasized, for only there is it said: “And you shall rejoice in your festival… and you shall be altogether joyful.”

It stands to reason that the extra joy of Sukkot stems both from its being the Feast of Ingathering, summing up the success of the crops of the whole year, and from its coming after the period of repentance and supplication of the “Day of Remembrance” and “the Day of Atonement,” after which the Jew stands before his Creator purer and cleaner.

With blessing, Shatz

Since “the festival of the Lord” without qualification means Sukkot, I have suggested interpreting the verse in Psalm 81, “Blow the shofar at the new moon, at the covering of the moon for our festival day,” as meaning: “Blow the shofar at the beginning of the month, on the Day of Remembrance, in order to prepare and purify oneself toward ‘our festival day,’ the festival of Sukkot.”

As Shai wrote, I meant The Last Posek regarding what he said about “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…”

Sorry, Shai (not Yishai)

With God’s help, 18 Sivan 5780

Indeed, the main emphasis in the Torah on the emotions of love, fear, joy, and cleaving comes in Deuteronomy, close to the entry into the Land of Israel.

After the children of Israel had become accustomed over forty years to a life of Torah and commandments, and had lived under the shadow of Moses and Aaron, they were riper to “rise a level” and be commanded not only regarding commandments in action, but also regarding commandments of the heart.

A natural national life on its own land also requires emotional identification with the Torah and strong faith in the Creator of the world. Only when one serves the Lord “with joy and gladness of heart” can one live in the land with faith.

With blessing, Shatz

With God’s help, 18 Sivan 5780

To Yehoshua – greetings,

The prophet Micah, in defining “what is good and what the Lord requires of you,” demands “to do justice,” the fulfillment of duty, but also “to love kindness”—to love doing kindness.

The third leg is “and to walk humbly with your God”—even the person who energetically engages in doing justice and loving kindness must not take credit for himself, but rather be in great humility before his Creator, who implanted in him the desire to do justice and love kindness and who assists him in bringing them into actuality.

This is the trait of Israel who stood at Mount Sinai: the more they increase as “merciful and doers of kindness,” the more they are also “bashful,” not taking pride in their achievements.

With blessing, Shatz

Mordechai,

I think you got the impression that I support your side in this debate as a matter of principle.

Even so, something is unclear to me in the last things you said:

“My claim against your method is that, by your own account as well, it marks out a single path for drawing near to God (tailored to your measurements, of course), and excludes anyone who is not fit for it. If I erred in my interpretation of your ‘thin theology,’ you could simply have said so and explained how the gospel according to Michi also allows Jews at my level and below (if there is anyone there…) to reach the kingdom of heaven.”

In my opinion, philosophy and theology, if well founded, should first and foremost search for the first and most necessary principle in order to “draw near to God.” To the best of my judgment, this is exactly what Michi is trying to do (even if in my opinion he fails completely in this case, and even if he perhaps… glosses over the failure). In other words, Michi is trying to find the one path that can serve as the theological ground floor, but he is not “forbidding” the existence of additional stories. What is wrong with that?

Doron. Are you assuming here that “closeness to God” is specifically a feeling, or that it can be a state (a spiritual status) even without an experience?

Shulyata

First, I don’t really understand the connection between your question and what I asked Mordechai. I argued that in principle there is a theological ground floor on which additional stories are built.
As for your question itself, I tend to think that “closeness to God” is first and foremost an intuitive apprehension of Him (or of “something” of Him)—what you call a spiritual status.
On top of that there comes, in my opinion necessarily, some sort of religious experience.

On the virtue of joy that spurs and strengthens a person in doing good, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook writes (in the essay “Pleasure and Joy” in Ikvei HaTzon):

“Pleasure and joy must necessarily accompany every spiritual occupation; only when a person takes pleasure and rejoices in doing what is good and upright will he be diligent in doing them with the utmost perfection and in adding to them day by day…

Only when there is inward pleasure and joy in the heart, joined to the good and just deed, are they established in a person so that he remains steadfast in the ways of the good God, blessed be He; and from the source of his soul he will find living waters flowing to enlighten him and guide him in the paths of life.”

That is to say:
Joy spurs a person to do good; it strengthens him to persevere in doing good; and last but not least, it breathes into a person a kind of understanding that can guide and direct him in developing his good path.

An additional aspect that joy contributes is in helping a person “to be adorned with a thread of grace and kindness, so that his deeds and actions too may find favor in the eyes of all creatures, and they too will go in his ways, and blessing and goodness will increase in the world.”

It seems to me, in my humble opinion, that the difference between joy and pleasure is that joy is over the good that already exists, as the Torah says: “And you shall rejoice in all the good that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.”

By contrast, “taking pleasure in the Lord” appears in the context of confidence in the good hoped for in the future, as it is written in Isaiah 57:4: “Over whom do you make yourselves merry?” and the Da'at Mikra commentary explains: In whom do you trust, and your trust in him gives you pleasure and joy?

A person needs delight in the Lord when he is in the situation described in Psalm 37, where one needs strengthening upon seeing the success of the wicked; then David says to him: “Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and feed on faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” The desires have not yet been fulfilled, but the person delights in his hope and trust in the Lord.

Similarly, in Isaiah 58, a person faces a great test when he must stop tending to his pressing needs on the Sabbath day, and nevertheless he rests and honors the Sabbath. And to him the prophet promises: “If you turn your foot away because of the Sabbath, from pursuing your affairs on My holy day… then you shall delight yourself in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth, and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father…”

Then the one who trusts merits the inheritance of Jacob, who when he lay with nothing but a stone outdoors, fleeing for his life from his brother seeking his life—even in that terrible state his God promises him: “And you shall spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south.” The inheritance of one who trusts in the Lord is “without bounds,” for he delights not only in the limited good already in his possession, but in the infinite good still latent, which he expects will surely come.

With blessing, Shatz

Paragraph 3, line 5
… “the desires have not yet been fulfilled” …

Paragraph 4, line 3
… “and nevertheless he rests and honors” …

Paragraph 5, line 5
… “he delights not only in” …

It is not true that Judaism has always been rationalistic.
Throughout the generations, Judaism spoke of cleaving to God, and cleaving is an emotional thing. Presumably you do not believe in the concept of cleaving, but on the other hand you do not have an exclusive privilege over Judaism, and the overwhelming majority of spiritual figures spoke about this concept…

Some will toil greatly in the study of creation and nature,
and others will devote all their thought to technology and engineering,
and others to crafts.
And others will enter more into the sacred, namely, the study of the holy Torah:
some in dialectics of the laws,
some in Midrashim,
some in legal rulings.
But few will be of the kind who set aside thought and study on matters of perfection in divine service—on love, on fear, on cleaving, and on all the other aspects of piety.

The service desired in His name, blessed be He, consists of: fear, walking in His ways, love, wholeheartedness, and guarding all the commandments.

Fear is awe of His exaltedness, that one should fear before Him as one fears before a great and awesome king, and be ashamed because of His greatness at every movement one is about to make, all the more so when speaking before Him in prayer or engaging in His Torah.

Walking in His ways includes all matters of uprightness of character traits and their correction. This is what the Sages explained (Shabbat 133b): “Just as He is compassionate, so you be compassionate,” etc. The sum of all this is that a person should conduct all his traits and all his actions according to uprightness and morality. And our Sages summarized it (Avot 2:1): “Whatever is an ornament to the one who does it and an ornament to him from man,” meaning: whatever leads toward the end of true beneficence, namely, that its outcome is the strengthening of Torah and the ordering of civic fellowship.

Love: that love for Him, blessed be He, should be fixed in a person’s heart to the point that his soul is aroused to bring Him pleasure, just as his heart is aroused to bring pleasure to his father and mother, and he is distressed if this is lacking on his part or on the part of others, and is zealous about it and rejoices greatly when he does something of this sort.

Wholeheartedness means that one’s service before Him, blessed be He, should be with purity of intention, that is, solely for the end of His service and for no other ulterior motive. Included in this is that he should be whole in the service, not limping on two branches, nor performing commandments by rote, but with his whole heart devoted to it.

Guarding all the commandments: as it sounds, namely, guarding all the commandments in all their details and conditions.

Michael Abraham thinks he is inventing Judaism; many preceded you, and wiser men than you. You exploit the weakness of your readers, who do not know the books.