The Place of Religiosity in Religious Faith: C. Calm Emotionality (Column 313)
In the previous column I pointed out the problems inherent in operating out of religious ecstasy. But ecstasy is not synonymous with emotion, and my aim, as noted, is to discuss the status of emotion in general.[1] Here I wish to examine emotional conduct itself, even in “calm” situations. From here on I wish to make two claims: 1) In this column I will argue that even in such situations, improper use of emotion can lead to problematic results.[2] This column will conclude the discussion of the problems with using emotion. 2) In the next column I will address the question of the value inherent in the very existence of emotions.
Emotional Decision-Making
When I taught at the Hesder Yeshiva in Yeruham, students would often come to me and ask about a match. The dilemma was whether to follow the mind or the heart. Their heart told them one thing and their mind another, and the question was how to decide. It is commonly thought that it depends on the person—whether he is an emotional or a rational type. But in my view that is a mistake. As I answered them, I think one should always decide with the mind, since that is the right tool for making decisions. Emotion can provide information and data that ought to be weighed, but the tool that weighs and decides is the mind. If there is good chemistry with the young woman, that is an important datum to take into account. But it is not right that the decision itself be made by the heart. The heart pulls us in various directions in an uncontrolled way, and therefore it is not right to hand it the reins.
If my heart inclines toward a particular woman but I know she has qualities or views that are problematic (at least for me), it would be a mistake to hand the decision to the heart. This does not necessarily mean that one must prefer the qualities and views over the emotional bond. I am not saying that either. My claim is that the mind is what should weigh the various considerations and arrive at one conclusion or another. I am not stating anything here about the content of the decision, only about the way it is made.
Let me emphasize that I am not dealing here with stormy, fiery emotionality as described in the previous column. Here I am speaking of emotion that can also be minor. My intention here is to argue that, contrary to what one might say about my words in the previous column, the problem is not only the emotional storm that eclipses rational-logical consideration, but that the very act of handing the decision over to emotion is the core of the problem.
On Emotion and Intuition
From my experience, one of the things that greatly hinders such a discussion is a conceptual confusion that creates a perceptual confusion. People feel that sometimes, in an intuitive and non-deliberative way, they reach better decisions. It is therefore important here to distinguish between emotion and intuition.
Think of a complicated mathematical problem you have been working on for months, racking your brain without managing to solve it. Along comes Moshe, a brilliant fellow and a mathematical genius, and says to you: “Ah, you can see right away the solution is y=sin(3x2+4).” To your astonishment you plug in the solution and find that indeed it is so. That infuriating chap was right again. You ask Moshe: “Tell me, how did you know that? Did you do the computation quickly? By what method?” And he replies with Olympian calm: “Not at all. I had a clear feeling that this was the solution.”
Is this really a matter of feeling (emotion)? Without getting into terminology and semantics, I will say that the term “emotion” in this context is not a good one; it is very confusing. When I feel some emotion toward someone, say intense love, and someone else does not feel that way toward him at all, do we have a dispute? Not really. I am built in a certain way and therefore I love that person, and the other is built differently and therefore does not feel love toward him. Love is an emotion, and as such it asserts nothing about the world. When I say that I love someone, I intend to report my emotional-psychic state, that and nothing more. Someone else has a different emotion or psychic state. So what? Is there a dispute here? It seems not. It is not correct to judge such a report in terms of true or false, right or wrong. It is simply my emotional-psychic state, no more. By contrast, the solution proposed by Moshe the genius is indeed judged in terms of truth and falsehood. After substitution into the equation I can discover that he was right (as indeed happened) or not. That is, the claim “the solution of the equation is y=sin(3x2+4)” is a claim, and it can be true or false. Therefore the term “emotion” with respect to it is unsuitable; it places it in the emotional category whose concern is not with claims—i.e., not with truth or falsehood.
Claims like Moshe’s, which are judged in terms of truth or falsehood, derive from intuition, not from emotion. Intuition is a thoroughly intellectual capacity; however, because it does not rely on recursive thinking and explicit logical justification, people tend to call it “feeling.” In my books I have elaborated at length on intuition, its meaning and importance, and, among other things, I have shown that the sense that there are two tracks of thought—intuition and logic—is mistaken. A logical argument also rests on premises whose source is usually intuitive. We have no way to bypass this important yet deceptive capacity. Logic always comes afterward (by it we infer conclusions from the premises we reached intuitively).
But for our purposes here, what matters to me is only to claim that conclusions reached by intuition are not emotional conclusions. That terminology is confusing, and it is better to dispense with it. These are conclusions reached by the mind. Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate in economics, wrote a bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, in which he shows the advantage of intuition and of unconscious decision-making (not exactly the same thing) over conscious, reasoned decision-making. This is a distinction within the intellect, not between emotion and intellect.
Some will argue that what I called decision-making by emotion is actually the use of intuition. That young man who wanted to choose a partner “by the heart” actually meant intuition and not emotion. This claim in effect seeks to deny the very existence of emotional decision-making. I do not agree. There certainly are people who let the heart lead them and make decisions, and that is not the use of intuition but the dropping of the reins from the mind to the heart. That is what I spoke against above. In a rational decision, after weighing emotions and logical and other considerations, one makes an informed decision—either by formulated and explicit reasoning or by intuition. But one must make a decision and not be dragged after emotions.
In short, making an intuitive decision and following emotion are emphatically not the same thing. It is not always easy to diagnose when it is one and when the other, but that is another question. The heart knows its own bitterness. With respect to ourselves we have the ability to try to diagnose this (of course, not with complete certainty either). In the first Hassidic intermezzo in my book Enosh Kechatzir (“Man is like Grass”), I proposed an interpretation of Chapter 9 in the Tanya that clarifies this distinction nicely. I will bring the gist of it here.
Chapter 9: Animal Soul and Divine Soul
Chapter 9 in the Tanya is apparently an interpretation of the “Gate of Kelipat Noga” in the Etz Chaim of the Arizal. I will deal below mainly with the first part of the chapter, but I will begin with a full quotation so you can get a feel for it:
“Now the dwelling-place of the animal soul that stems from Kelipat Noga in every Jew is in the heart, in the left chamber which is filled with blood. And it is written: ‘For the blood is the soul (life).’ Therefore all lusts and vainglory and anger and the like are in the heart, and from the heart they spread throughout the body, and they also rise to the brain in the head to think and meditate on them and to contrive in them, just as the blood has its source in the heart and from the heart spreads to all the organs and also rises to the brain in the head.
“But the dwelling-place of the divine soul is in the brain in the head, and from there it spreads to all the organs, and also to the heart in the right chamber, where there is no blood, as it is written: ‘A wise man’s heart is at his right.’ And this is the love of God like searing flames that blaze in the heart of the enlightened, who understand and contemplate with their knowledge in their mind on matters that arouse love. Likewise the joy of the heart in the splendor of God and the majesty of His glory, when the eyes of the wise that are in his head—in the brain of his wisdom and understanding—behold the King’s glory and the splendor of His greatness without search and without end or limit, as explained elsewhere. And likewise the other holy attributes that are in the heart derive from Chabad (wisdom, understanding, knowledge) in the brain.”
“Yet it is written: ‘And one people shall be stronger than the other,’ for the body is called a small city; and as two kings wage war over a single city, each wishing to conquer it and rule over it—that is, to direct its inhabitants according to his will, and that they be obedient to him in all that he decrees—so do the two souls, the divine and the vital animal from the kelipah, wage war with each other over the body and all its organs. The divine soul desires and wills that she alone rule over him and direct him, and that all the organs be obedient to her and nullified to her entirely, and be a chariot for her; and that the body be entirely filled with them alone, and that no stranger pass among them, God forbid.”
“That is, the three brains in the head be filled with the Chabad of the divine soul, which is the wisdom of God and His understanding to contemplate His greatness, which is beyond search and without end; and from them, by means of knowledge, to beget fear in his mind and dread of God in his heart, and the love of God like a burning fire in his heart like searing flames, such that his soul yearns and even expires in desire and longing to cleave to Him, the blessed Infinite, with all heart and soul—very much, from the depth of the heart in the right chamber—so that its interior be paved with love, full and overflowing, until it spreads also to the left chamber to subdue the other side (sitra achra), the source of the evil waters therein, which is the lust that comes from Kelipat Noga, to transform it from the delights of this world to the love of God. As it is written: ‘With all your heart’—with both your inclinations. And this is to rise and come and reach the level of great love and surpassing affection beyond the level of fierce love like searing flames. And this is called ‘love in delights,’ to delight in God—a foretaste of the World to Come. And the delight is in the mind, in wisdom and intellect that delights in comprehending and knowing God according to the grasp of his intellect and wisdom. And this is the aspect of water, and a ray of light sown in the holiness of the divine soul, which transforms for good the aspect of water in the animal soul—from which came the lusts of worldly pleasures at first—as it is written in Etz Chaim, Gate 3, Chapter 3, in the name of the Zohar, that the evil is turned to absolute good like the good inclination itself, by removing from it the filthy garments, namely, the worldly pleasures with which it was clothed.”
“And so all the other attributes that are in the heart, which are branches of fear and love, will be for God alone. And the faculty of speech in the mouth and the thought in the brain will be filled only with the garments of thought and speech of the divine soul—namely, the thought of God and His Torah, so that his conversation be all the day; his mouth shall not cease from study. And the faculty of action in his hands and the rest of his 248 organs will be in the performance of the commandments alone—which is the third garment of the divine soul. Even the animal soul from the kelipah wants the opposite, for the good of the person—that he overcome it and conquer it, like the parable of the harlot in the holy Zohar.”
The author of the Tanya deals with a person’s struggle with his inclinations, his choosing good or evil, and through these—with his picture of the soul. This picture is spread before us in three “acts,” one above the other:
First Act: It is commonly accepted to describe the struggle between good and evil in a person’s soul as a struggle between the good inclination and the evil inclination. The inclinations here represent the emotional dimension of the person. The struggle in this form can be described as a struggle between right (the good inclination) and left (the evil inclination).
However, as the very terminology suggests, the good inclination is also an inclination. In addition, if indeed the two inclinations are those that struggle with each other, who is the person caught between them? Does he himself have nothing to say in the matter? My claim is that the two inclinations are the periphery of the person, not the person himself (these matters are set out in more detail in the topographic model in my book Sciences of Freedom, and in an article here on the site). If so, a person’s determinations cannot be made by the inclinations. They constitute the environment within which the person operates, but they are not the person himself.
Second Act: In light of these considerations, the author of the Tanya offers a completely different description of the struggle in the human soul: a struggle between a divine soul and a vital-animal soul. Instead of a description of a struggle between two sides (the two inclinations), here we have a description of a struggle between the higher and the lower. As will be seen below, the animal soul is not necessarily evil, but primarily low. And the divine soul is characterized by being high and not necessarily by being good (that is a corollary). A person’s judgment—good or evil—is derived from the place the animal soul occupies in his psyche, that is, from the relationship between these two souls. The fundamental struggle within us is not between a good emotion and an evil emotion, but between the lower emotional dimension and the higher intellectual one. Each of the two souls can, in principle, lead to good or bad behavior. The question is whether we choose between good and evil, or are dragged toward good or evil. In the second act we have rotated the axis described in the first: instead of a struggle between good (right) and evil (left), the struggle is between up (divine soul) and down (animal soul).
But even this is not the whole picture. It would seem to be a struggle between mind and emotion, that is, between wisdom and foolishness. But this is a simplistic and inaccurate description. Every person operates on both planes together. Emotional people also employ their minds, and rational people also employ their emotions. The question is: What lies at the root point? From where does the entire system draw its power (who rules the city)? Is it emotion, or the intellect?
Third Act: As the Tanya explains, these two souls fight one another “for all the marbles,” like two kings waging war for rule over the entire city. Each wants complete control (that all the organs—i.e., the parts of the soul—be subject to his authority). There is no room for any division between them; one must rule over the other. Both heart and mind have a place in functioning, but it is impossible that both be sovereign. As the Sages already said in the Midrash (though there it is said with a negative connotation): “Two kings cannot serve with one crown.” If so, it is also not a struggle between up and down in the simple sense. In each of the two souls there is an “up” (intellect) and a “down” (emotion, inclination).
So what, then, is the struggle about? Who are these two souls (the divine and the animal)? In fact, who is the person himself within whom the struggle takes place? And what is the connection between this struggle and the notions of good and evil common to the standard descriptions? A first clue to solving the riddle lies in the terminology. The animal soul is also called the “vital soul.” The reason is that our vitality (aliveness) lies precisely in the animal soul. The intention here is apparently to those things we feel in the (metaphorical) heart—the one that expresses emotion. Emotion is lively; it arouses us much more than the intellect or will, which are detached from our vitality, that which we share with all animals. The divine soul is apparently an expression of the intellect and the will, which are unique to us among all other creatures. But because of their loftiness, they are somewhat detached from our natural, simple vitality. An indication of this is that when there are values/desires with which a person identifies in his heart and emotions, he finds within himself tremendous energies to act for them and according to them. But values in which he believes intellectually, detached from emotional identification, will usually be realized with difficulty and reluctance. Therefore the animal soul, which is connected to emotion, is also called the “vital soul.” It is what gives a person vitality.
If this interpretation is correct, then the struggle here is a struggle between a life of inclination and emotion and a life of intellect. Emotion is alive, strong, and compelling; the intellect is lofty, and thus weak and detached. A person does not act with great force for ideas he is convinced are correct so long as he has not internalized them at the emotional level as well. If so, it would appear that the struggle is over who will control the entire picture: emotion and inclination, or intellect.
The picture that emerges in the third act is not even a struggle between up and down in their simple sense. It is a struggle between one complete system of intellect + emotion (up and down) driven by emotion (the “down”)—this system is called the “animal soul”—and another complete system of intellect + emotion (up and down) driven by the intellect (the “up”), and this is what is called the “divine soul.” One could say that the struggle here is over whether to choose (to follow the divine soul) or to be dragged (to act in accordance with the directives—or impulses and pressures—of inclination and emotion). Therefore, the fundamental dwelling (root) of the divine soul is in the brain, that is, in the intellect and the will (the higher parts of the person), while the fundamental dwelling of the animal soul (its root) is in the heart, which is full of blood (“for the blood is the soul”—from there come a person’s aliveness and sense of life).
Another Explanation of the Third Act
At first glance, the Tanya offers us a description of a struggle between intellect and emotion, or between wisdom and instincts (animality), instead of the standard description that speaks of a struggle between good and evil. But this picture is very partial, closer to the picture presented in the second of the three acts. The animal soul is not necessarily something evil (otherwise the Tanya’s description would coincide with the standard one). We also see this from the mention of “Kelipat Noga” at the beginning of the chapter as the place of the animal soul’s dwelling. In Kabbalah there are four kelipot, three of which are utterly evil. Kelipat Noga is the fourth, and unlike the first three, it contains good mixed with evil. Emotions and inclinations, which come from this kelipah, are not bad things in themselves. We have inclinations in every direction. We have a tendency to do good because it is emotionally and psychically pleasant for us. But the good inclination is also an inclination, and we are not permitted to follow it either. As I explained above, decisions must be made by the mind and not by emotion—not by the evil inclination, but also not by the good inclination. The inclinations, at most, convey relevant data to the mind that makes the decision. This is the conduct of a divine soul, in which the higher parts—the intellect and the will—overcome the lower and stronger parts (the animal), use them, and direct them. And again: one must overcome the good inclination as well, not only the evil inclination. No inclination is supposed to make decisions. In the conduct of an animal soul, the situation is reversed: emotion uses the intellect and leads it.
In this picture, a person’s standing is not determined necessarily by whether he does good or evil. A person who by nature does good is not a good person in the ethical-moral sense. He is a person pleasant to live alongside. But a moral person is one who acts according to moral rules because he decided so (and not because that is how he is built by nature). He can, of course, tend toward the good, but that is not what determines his standing. A person’s standing is determined by the outcome of the struggle described above: whether the animal soul will rule over the whole person—that is, whether the person will be more emotional (and emotion will rule the intellect)—or whether the divine soul will rule everything and subjugate even the animal soul to its authority (the intellect rules the emotion). In such a state, the animal soul—and more precisely, emotion and inclinations—will constitute an inseparable and even essential part of our good composite. That is their original purpose, were we not to let them take over the whole (the conduct of an animal soul).
Therefore the Tanya explains that these souls leave their dwellings (the intellect or the heart) and spread to the other parts of the psyche (to the heart and to the intellect, respectively). The animal soul is not static. It does not remain there but seeks to rise up to the brain (lusts and inclinations, which function like the physical-biological blood, make use of the intellect for their purposes). The divine soul aspires to the opposite process. Its basic dwelling is in the brain, yet it too has “imperialist” aspirations. It wants to spread to the heart (to the right chamber, where there is no blood—that is, not too powerful an inclination and emotion [= feelings of vitality]—and therefore it can enter there). Powerful emotion is the ecstasy of the idolatrous urge described in the previous columns. It is the blood that boils in the heart and gives a feeling of aliveness. The divine soul must overcome this powerful urge, conquer it, and channel it. Note well: my intention here is to subdue both inclinations—the evil and the good.
At the beginning of the chapter, the Tanya writes that the animal soul (which includes inclinations, lusts, and emotions) “rises to the brain in the head to think and meditate on them and to contrive in them.” That is, emotion, inclinations, and lusts don an intellectual garment. In the third act we arrive at the full layout of the psyche. The struggle is between the animal soul driven by emotion—which nevertheless tries to conquer the intellect as well, that is, to make decisions in its stead—and the divine soul, which resists and wants to make decisions autonomously and rationally. Therefore this is not a battle between wisdom and stupidity but between intellectuality and emotionality. Emotional people also employ their intellect, and some of them can be very wise. Likewise, rational people also employ their emotions. There are wise people whose behavior is ruled by emotion, and there are foolish people whose behavior is ruled by intellect. The important question is what lies at the root point. From where does the entire system draw its power (who rules the city)? Who holds the reins and makes our decisions: emotion (in which case the conduct is that of an animal soul), or intellect (in which case the conduct is that of a divine soul)?
In that intermezzo I clarified and illustrated these two modes of conduct further (mainly via discussions in philosophical ethics), and showed how wise people who employ their intellect sometimes do so in the service of the heart (the blood that rises to the brain to contrive and meditate there); and despite the intellectual veneer and sharpness of mind, it is emotion that makes their decisions. In addition, as I have described above, I also distinguished there between people who are led by emotion and intuitive people who are led by the intellect (important to sharpen: in this map, the moral conscience is not an emotion but part of intuition).
From this description it emerges that within a person there is a struggle between his psychology (inclinations and emotions, for good and for ill) and his choosing will (the intellect and the will). The “good” state is when emotion is subordinate to intellect (then a person chooses and is not dragged), and the “bad” state is when intellect is subordinate to emotion (then a person is dragged and does not choose). The two souls are not evil or good in essence. A person’s spiritual standing is determined by different states of the relation between them. In a common witticism, based on the Kabbalistic association of the soul (neshamah) with the brain, the spirit (ruach) with the heart, and lusts with the liver, we say thus: when the mind leads at the head, there is a “MELeKh” (Moach—brain, Lev—heart, Kaved—liver), but when the heart leads at the head there is a “LeMeKh.”
Our World
In the previous column we saw that emotional behavior is not only the domain of a “primitive” past but continues to accompany human societies to this very day. Further observation suggests that in fact, in our era the emotional component in the behavior and culture of us all is becoming more dominant. Our world is increasingly driven by the animal-vital soul. As stated, this is not a statement about stupidity or lack of intelligence, but a claim about a philosophical stance. In that intermezzo I showed that this tendency has expressions in many and diverse aspects of the contemporary world.
Dov Sadan, a well-known literary scholar at the Hebrew University, once said that the next world revolutionary would probably be a Jewish orthopedist. Why Jewish? That is obvious. But why an orthopedist? He explained that the first Jewish revolutionary in the world was our forefather Abraham (or Moses our teacher), who taught us to use the head (“Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these”). The next Jewish revolutionary was Jesus of Nazareth, who taught that the heart should be at the center. The third Jewish revolutionary was Marx, who hung the main matter on the belly (livelihood, the economy), and the fourth Jewish revolutionary was of course Freud, who pinned us below the belt (Eros and Thanatos). Until now we have descended from the head to the heart, from there to the stomach, and then to the reproductive organs. Where else can we go down? Apparently to the feet. Therefore the next revolutionary will be a Jewish orthopedist.
Beyond the jokes, there is, in my view, a genuine claim here. This is an ironic description of a process of the world’s deterioration, abandoning the intellect and despairing of it: passing to the heart (emotion and experience), from there to interest (capital), and finally (?) to the inclinations—such as sex, honor, and the like. Today the despair of the intellect is so great that experience and emotion occupy almost the entire screen. It appears among us in several contexts. On the philosophical level there is today a very deep despair of the intellect. Among many there is a feeling that there is no way to reach clear conclusions in any significant domain (policy, security, philosophical issues, religious faith, art, etc.), and therefore everything operates in an emotional way—and that has become an ideology. Things are assessed mainly by the measure of how “moving” they are (from works of art, through cars, and up to savings plans at the bank). The decision whether to observe commandments, and which commandments to observe, is also often made in an emotional and existential way (whether I “connect,” and perhaps also “benefit,” and not whether it is true or obligating). In the context of faith this of course also has an ideological cover, for it is a matter of “faith” and not something rational.
Even the decision whether to vote for this or that politician (more precisely: there are many “this-ones,” but unfortunately very few “that-ones”) is made on the basis of tribal loyalty or other emotions. One who defines himself as “national” will always support a policy of a strong hand, war, or immediate military response; and one who defines himself as “left” will always oppose it. Whoever has ever seen a military action—just and wise as it may be—that “Peace Now” supported—let him step forward. Alternatively, whoever has ever seen a military action—no matter how infantile and bungling (and we have had many, thank God)—that Likud and the NRP opposed—let him raise his hand high. Higher—we can’t see!
I now recall a musical reality show on television in which one of the judges said to some contestant something along these lines: “My head says no, but my heart says yes.” I watched the show with my children and immediately wondered aloud: “Well, and what is the decision in the end?” The folks around me of course burst into boisterous laughter (and I too meant it as a joke). It was clear to all of us that the meaning of his statement was that the answer is positive. If the mind says no and the heart says yes—the answer is obviously yes. But why is that so? Seemingly he is describing a conflict. Why, if you said that the heart says X, is it obvious that that is also your decision? Very simple: because the heart decides—and that is obvious to everyone. There is no need to add a word, because everyone understands what the decision is.
Many of us also anchor morality in emotion and in the heart, and therefore discussions of ethical issues are charged, and positions come mainly from the gut. One who raises a logical argument is attacked for alienation and coldness and for denial of morality (which of course resides only in the heart). In such an atmosphere it is difficult to raise a substantive argument when an intensive and fanatical brainwashing is conducted opposite you (headed, of course, by political correctness). Want some examples? Please—here are a few from very recently. Here is Zehava Gal-On in an intellectual and substantive debate with Kalman Libeskind. Want something not from Israel? No problem. Here you have it straight from the New York Times. And for dessert, another example from just recently, about the Black protests in the U.S.
On Emotionality and Religious Faith
I cannot avoid discussing a quintessential example (which I brought in that intermezzo). A few years ago the press reported a case that occurred in Bnei Brak. A woman went to immerse in a mikveh, and upon leaving she was raped by someone. Since her husband is a kohen, the law requires them in such a case to divorce, and so the halakhic authorities instructed them to do. In the case at hand, the couple had a good and happy home, and of course the divorce was a severe blow for them, in addition to the trauma of the rape the woman had experienced. It goes without saying that neither of them wished for this. When the matter became known, a great uproar arose among the public and the media. How can it be that two spouses who love each other and wish to remain married—and especially when they have children who need their parents very much—are required to divorce against their will? Moreover, the public raged, no one really cares if they remain married. Everyone would be happy about it (except for the halakhic decisors, added some malicious tongues). Who is bothered by leaving them as a married couple?! Who does it disturb?
Seemingly there is here a dispute between religion and morality—different basic assumptions that lead to different conclusions. However, the main argument heard in that debate was: “Where is their heart?” or “Do they have no heart?!” That is, people felt that there was a moral wrong here, and that those who ruled thus had no human feeling in their hearts. The treatment of the discussion was not as a values-based and ideological debate. The decisors and the halakhah were not accused of stupidity or error but of evil and wickedness—or more precisely: of lack of feeling. I told several people who spoke with me about this that they had a grave misunderstanding. There is no doubt that the hearts of the decisors (virtual ones in this case, for in time it turned out to be a journalistic hoax) are made of flesh and blood like anyone else’s heart—and perhaps even more so. Likewise, it is clear that this fleshly heart ached for them greatly, like the heart of anyone who heard of the case—and perhaps even more than anyone else. However, those decisors act according to a rational-normative determination and not according to the heart. That is the principal root of the misunderstanding.
The halakhah that instructs us to act in such a manner apparently holds that the value of preserving the sanctity of the priesthood outweighs the value of preserving the integrity of the household (it seems difficult to suspect halakhah of not valuing the home; usually the claims go in the opposite direction, about the difficulties judges place before couples who wish to divorce). Even one who does not accept this value hierarchy ought to focus on the reasons and the debate about the values themselves, and at least understand that there is here a dispute between positions, not a clash of righteous versus wicked. At times it seems that almost no one understands this simple point.
The fact that almost the entire public appealed to the decisors’ hearts indicates that it is obvious to everyone that a person is supposed to make his moral-value determinations by the feeling of the heart, not by the mind. This is a postulate that no one even finds it necessary to justify; it is taken for granted. By contrast, people of halakhah are accustomed to subject their hearts to their minds, and so it should be. The heart provides data and relevant information, but ultimately the decision is made in the head and by reason—according to what is correct (in my view), not according to emotion.
As I explained in the first column (311), people think that religiosity is connected to emotion and secularism is more rational. This is the view Kant assumes regarding religious faith and religiosity, which—as I explained—has its origin in Christianity and, via Hassidism, also penetrated deeply into our camp. But it is nothing but a joke. Of course we are speaking in generalizations, but at least as a generalization the situation is simply the opposite. In Jewish halakhah there is a strong measure of rationalism, at times extremely so, to the point that at times it seems entirely detached from the emotion of the heart. In my estimation, a significant part of the public’s misunderstanding of the world of halakhah is connected to this point. The broader public cannot grasp rationalist behavior, especially when emotion opposes it. This contrast is a sharp expression of the confrontation between the animal-vital soul and the divine soul. As we said: the secular world is fundamentally emotional, and the religious world is much less so. It has not yet despaired of objective truths and of the intellect. In that intermezzo I also discussed the nature of our political debate, which is largely focused on the emotional plane.
These examples, like many others, express an emotional tendency that very much characterizes our world. In our world few are interested in whether some artistic creation was “clever” or “deep” (in the intellectual sense, not the emotional), for “each one has his own depth” or “his own cleverness.” In a postmodern world there is no objective wisdom. To be sure, there is no objective emotion either, but in the realm of emotion subjectivity and relativism are legitimate. That is precisely what people today are seeking—and that is apparently the secret of emotion’s allure (in addition to the vitality I described above in the discussion of the animal soul).
I think this is the foundation for the very prevalent contemporary view that sees emotion as a central element in the soul; and as noted, after this phenomenon entered our world in recent generations, there is a sense that emotion should take a central place in religious faith as well.
Summary
Up to this point I have not dealt with the question of the value of emotion but with the proper way to make decisions and with the problem of handing decisions over to emotion. In the previous column we saw the problem in stormy emotion and religious ecstasy, and here I broadened this to emotions in general. But this is only an instrumental question. I argued that emotion is an unsuccessful and unsuitable means for making decisions. Going forward, I wish to address the question of the value of emotions in themselves (regardless of decision-making), including discussing commandments that address emotion, and finally to return to the questions I posed at the end of the first column (and the beginning of the second).
[1] This is the place to applaud with a hearty “well done” all the commenters who called my attention to this subtle and hidden point—even though I wrote it explicitly and even though it is self-evident. I will judge them favorably; apparently they acted only out of concern for “do not make yourselves loathsome.”
[2] The matters are set out in more detail in my book Enosh Kechatzir, in the first Hassidic intermezzo (p. 205 and on).
Discussion
The article gives a very cosmopolitan impression; there is a very deep analysis here of the inner life of the human being as such. I found no reference at all in the article to nationality.
What I don’t understand is whether all of the above analysis, with all its surprising conclusions, applies only to the Jew? Because according to the author of the Tanya himself (a reminder for those who forgot), the divine soul belongs only to a Jew and not to a gentile. A gentile has only an animal soul, as is known, and even that is from the impure kelipot in which there is no good at all, unlike a Jew whose animal soul is from the neutral kelipat nogah.
I would therefore be happy to see a follow-up post also about the inner life of the gentile. How does the gentile function? Does he have different rules? Do all the conclusions of the article apply to him as well, or does he operate according to a different system of principles? From what we know about the impure kelipot, and in the absence of a divine soul, what does that say about the nature of the gentile? Does that explain their actions?
What about conversion? Does a gentile who converts undergo an automatic transformation with respect to all the above active souls? Do the righteous among the nations get some sort of discount?
I must note that this whole theory raises a great many questions. Layers upon layers of questions that need to be explained, justified, and resolved, story upon story, one higher than another. Is anyone willing to pick up the gauntlet and get into the thick of it? Rabbi Michi?
Various comments:
1) Emotion certainly says something about reality. That is the whole purpose of emotion: to predict reality. Love is an emotion that makes a strong claim about reality: that the beloved object is good for me in a significant and even absolute way.
2) Intuition lies on the spectrum between emotion and intellect. As a result of extensive use of the intellect, various emotional-intellectual elements are formed, which can make a quick and successful prediction of “what the intellect would say” without an actual intellectual analysis. But this is created, improved, and refined only through experience. And because the intellect starts analyzing anew each time, the chance of error in the intellect can sometimes be greater than the error of intuition. Sometimes.
3) Divine-animal soul reminds me of what Freud says: that the battle within a person is between drives and the superego (another name for the conscience shaped by education—morality). And the person (the ego) suffers in the middle. And the person must decide between the drive and the conscience against the backdrop of his worldview (reality). And that is the whole person. It’s just unclear what is divine about conscience. It is merely a rigid template of what is forbidden and permitted that a person learned as a result of education. It is not divine. It is robotic and not flexible.
4) Conscience is not intellect. Intellect is what thinks and makes logical decisions. Conscience is what decides good or bad. Conscience may be awakened as a result of using the intellect, but that does not turn it into intellect. A drive can also be awakened as a result of using the intellect.
5) A moral person is a rigid and cruel person toward everything that does not accord with his morality.
6) Intellect has no power at all. It serves only for analysis and drawing logical conclusions. If, as a result, no drive or conscience is awakened, then the intellect will have no power whatsoever regarding a person’s behavior. That is, at most, intellect can arouse drives by creating imagination. And thus it can have only an indirect influence.
As for religions.
The big question is whether they do not bring a person into exile from himself and prevent the realization of his potential.
Of course, one can answer that from a broader perspective, losses here and there are inevitable. And the goal is greater and sanctifies the means.
A somewhat extreme formulation, but there is something to it.
Raise a question and it will be possible to address it. Do you expect me both to write the questions and answer them?
I used the author of the Tanya not because I adopt his doctrine, but because it contains a nice description of the picture I believe in. So it really doesn’t matter to me what he thinks about a gentile. I wrote in the trilogy that in my view there is no essential or metaphysical difference between a Jew and a gentile.
You can see that you are following in Aristotle’s path. But it’s interesting how he himself would cope with love, without which why should we live at all? Wittgenstein said that conscience is the voice of God. And indeed I listen to my conscience more than to commandments whose source is entirely dubious and wholly contradicts it. In my life I will never understand how death by stoning or burning can be the will of God.
I bring here the words of Prof. Yoram Yovell, whose statements are backed by research, to contradict what you say: “We cannot help but think through emotion. There is no such thing as not thinking through emotion. Our emotional systems are integral; they are part of the operating system. Once, on computers, it looked like Windows, but underneath DOS was running. Underneath ran the old disk-management system and so on, on top of which they put a new system. That is what is true in our brain. The emotional system is alive and well, and without it there is no consciousness. When you disconnect a person’s emotional systems, you do not get a person who is emotionally flat; what you get is a person in a coma, a person in deep unconsciousness. Because our basic systems of consciousness—‘Where am I?’, ‘Who am I?’, ‘What day is it?’—these things are inextricably tied to our basic emotional systems, for better and for worse. And that basically means that it is impossible not to think emotionally. And that is why people reach opposite conclusions, and you ask, ‘Is there something that this one knows and that one doesn’t?’ Their entire history sits inside a load of emotional memory, most of it unconscious, and this affects their whole way of conducting themselves. There is no such thing as not thinking emotionally; what one must do is think emotionally wisely. Because our emotions are a very, very sensitive compass, but one that can also be very inaccurate. And here our cognitive abilities can give us an advantage.”
Those are just empty words. He is probably defining emotion differently (mixing it up with intuition).
These are words backed by research. This is his field of expertise, and he is updated on the latest research on the brain, and he gave a lecture series about it. As for the matter itself, there is no such thing as not thinking and not reaching conclusions from emotion. Whether you like it or not. We are all driven from there. As for intuition, it does not seem that he made any distinction. If you want to prove otherwise about the whole issue, please, I’d be glad. Just let it be backed by research.
The meaning of the word ‘philosophy’ is ‘love of wisdom.’ ‘Love.’ It was through sophia that they came to investigate truths. Rabbi Akiva saw in ‘Love your fellow as yourself’ a great principle in the Torah, and waited for the moment when he would fulfill the verse about the love of God. From that same religious feeling, prophecy was reached among the nations of the world and among Israel. Religiosity is blessed in the teachings of the great philosophers. ‘The greatest blessings come to us through madness—that madness which is nothing but a gift of God,’ claims Plato. And indeed, ‘divine madness is more beautiful, according to the ancients, than human sobriety,’ says Socrates. ‘He whom the gods have favored with such madness is blessed beyond measure,’ says Socrates. On its wings, as in the Greek myths on the wings of Eros, we will reach that which is divine. If there is something I have lacked and that has remained unresolved in me since leaving religion, it is that blessed religious feeling.
Isn’t it true that you didn’t understand a word of what Michi answered you?
Y.
Well, so what…
The human intellect is grounded in emotions. That is certainly true, without a doubt. But it is not correct to say that thinking is done through emotion.
The fact that a computer is built on silicon does not mean that the algorithm running on the computer is a silicon algorithm. The same algorithm would also run on an optical computer.
With human beings it is true that the intellect develops thanks to emotions. But that does not mean it is necessary.
There is no obstacle to imagining an artificial intelligence that thinks.
A bunch of nonsense.
With God’s help, 20 Sivan 5780
An old man and one who has no children are disqualified from judging capital cases, because the feeling of compassion is weak in them. It seems that the existence of compassion is an essential foundation in a fair process of judgment.
The feeling of compassion intensifies, in this case, the judge’s deliberation both toward the rod and toward kindness. His compassion for the victim and his family arouses him to punish the offender severely and deter him, in order to save future victims. And on the other hand, his compassion for the defendant keeps sleep from his eyes out of fear lest, God forbid, he convict a person whose guilt has not been sufficiently proven.
The strong emotion intensifies the judge’s anxiety over not rendering the correct judgment, and that is what obligates him to weigh again and again with his intellect whether his decision is indeed one hundred percent just. Emotional numbness would bring the opposite result: a quick and decisive ruling without a strong examination of all the ‘possible contrary aspects.
The story is well known of the great Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer, who at the beginning of his career served as the rabbi of a town. After some time, Rabbi Isser Zalman approached the Chafetz Chaim and told him that he wanted to leave the rabbinate because he was afraid to issue halakhic rulings. The Chafetz Chaim answered him: “And who should be a rabbi? Someone who is not afraid to issue rulings?” 🙂
A halakhic decisor must be anxious about both possibilities of error. If he is lenient by mistake – he will end up causing innocent Jews to stumble into prohibition; if he is stringent by mistake – he will end up robbing Jews of their money. And since both possibilities are emotionally very difficult for him – he exerts himself and goes deeply into the matter, clarifies and revisits and analyzes, until he is sure that he has ruled according to halakhah, has not caused a Jew to stumble in prohibition, and has not caused monetary loss unlawfully.
In short: the great emotional involvement of the decision-maker – is what leads him to exhaust the intellectual inquiry in order to arrive at a just decision.
Best regards, Shatz
Paragraph 5, line 2
… he ends up robbing them of their money…
There is a risk that emotion will bias judgment, and that is when the emotion is intensified only to one pole. When emotion is intensified toward the ‘attribute of justice,’ there may be bias in one direction, and when emotion is intensified toward the ‘attribute of mercy,’ there may be bias in the opposite direction.
The solution is not to disparage emotion or repress it. That is also not just, for emotion is founded on a real matter. It is important that we be full of anger at wrongdoers, but it is also important that we be filled with compassion and identification with the sufferer. And it is also not effective: repressed emotion does not disappear, and in the end it will erupt.
The real solution is to intensify the emotion also in the opposite direction. When anger awakens in us – we should also awaken compassion and mercy, and vice versa. Thus the opposing emotions racing within us will bring us to a careful and exhaustive clarification.
Best regards, Shatz
Shatz. You’re just confusing yourself. I’m sure you wouldn’t want a person driven by emotion to judge you. This is the time to pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, to come down and show Himself a bit and judge by Himself; He’s surely devoid of emotions. Ah, I forgot. He isn’t either.
To A. – greetings,
And would you want an emotionless ‘robot’ to judge you?
Best regards, Shatz
I’m A-dot. They won’t be devoid of emotions. And yes. I pray for the day when they rise to power.
In the Kabbalistic work Torat Chacham it is stated that a gentile has no divine soul except in “valuations.” As is known to those initiated into esoteric wisdom, this term is highly dominant and claims to be a key to all the contradictions in the teachings of the Ari. (See Rabbi Spielman’s monumental work, Tal Orot.) In brief, the gentile too has a divine soul and an animal soul, and the tension between them. Except that relative to a Jew, who acts according to the 613 commandments, his soul is animal (whatever that means). I’m not sure the Tanya would sign off on that, but perhaps the Ari would, and the Torat Chacham writes this explicitly.
Exactly right. And this is backed by research. 🙂
I understood every word and answered accordingly.
For a change, a calm column about calm emotion; I hope it will also allow a calm discussion…, for overall I agree with the spirit of the words. And yet, a few associative remarks.
I know Kahneman’s arguments, and I do not accept most of them (and I even argued with him in the past). His students and followers, and especially those among them who chase publicity and sensation (such as Dan Ariely), have already reached realms of delusion, demagoguery, and absurdity. For example: Ariely reports on an enormous number of experiments he conducted which, in his view, prove systematic irrational behavior. His experiments are rife with methodological errors, and most of them are worthless, and in any case many of their results follow directly from Arrow’s impossibility theorem (which he probably does not know), so what is he teaching us?
Even if there is a clear philosophical distinction between intuition, emotion, and instinct, its practical application is very complicated (and Prof. Yovell is completely right; and see also Nagele, whom I have already mentioned ad nauseam…). The claim that intuition is a kind of “abbreviated logic” also requires great examination. Instinct is probably an algorithm embedded in our BIOS (apparently in the spinal cord), and it is very difficult (if at all possible) to control it. The practical distinction between it and emotion—unlike, as stated, the theoretical distinction—is very difficult. Presumably instinct evolved to provide a quick answer to emergencies. Thus a rabbit that hears a rustle takes to its feet and flees. It may only be the whisper of the wind, and it’s a shame to miss out on fresh cabbage, but it may also be a signal of an approaching predator, and a mistake could be fatal. The instinct of fear is therefore an example of what Prof. Aumann called “rule rationality,” which in many cases is preferable to “act rationality,” and in the present context gives a survival advantage.
Years ago I dealt with the economic aspects of altruism, on which an extensive literature has already been written. This is an emotion that also exists in animals. You can find “moving” videos on YouTube in which animals are seen rushing to the aid of others even though they are not from their herd and not even from their species, sometimes at risk and self-sacrifice. (Search YouTube for animals save other animals.) Is this altruism a “moral emotion” or an instinct? And what exactly is the difference? Similarly, there are experiments proving that animals too have a certain sense of fairness. (For example, search YouTube for the monkeys were paid unequally—it’s very amusing. Incidentally, similar findings were also discovered in animals much less intelligent than monkeys.) Are we talking about the moral intuition of animals? Do they too have a “conscience”? Let philosophers say what they will, it turns out that such emotions function as “rational rules.” (In the past I gave on this holy site several reading recommendations; I do not remember whether the book Rational Emotions by Prof. Eyal Winter was among them, and if not, then this is the place to correct that oversight.)
I have many more comments, but I have less time. Therefore I will make do with one additional remark. The story about the conflict of the judge between emotion and intellect mentioned above is too laconic and lacks many details. But sometimes this expression is used to describe the dilemmas between “law” and “beyond the letter of the law.” A famous Gemara (Bava Metzia 83a) tells of Rabbah bar bar Hanan, whose porters clumsily broke his barrels, and so he took their cloaks as compensation. The porters sued him before Rav (it is not clear where they got the nerve for that), and surprisingly, not only did Rav obligate Rabbah to return the cloaks to the workers, he even obligate him to pay their wages. Twice during the discussion Rabbah wonders: “Is that the law?” and Rav answers in the affirmative, citing the verse (Proverbs 2:20): “So that you may walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous.” Did Rav mix emotional identification and empathy for the distress of the clumsy porters into his legal ruling? Apparently yes. I find it difficult to point to a moral consideration standing “against” the halakhah and obligating payment to negligent workers after the employer had already waived (and this too beyond the letter of the law) the compensation due to him. It seems, then, that this is indeed an emotional ruling, and from this it follows that sometimes that is proper. After all, the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself is often described in the Torah and the words of the prophets as “possessing emotion” (mercy, humility, etc.). Indeed, the proper circumstances for this are a subject for learned studies, and this is not the place. (Someone above mentioned the disqualification of an old man for capital cases; one could add the Tur in Choshen Mishpat sec. 1 on the emotion that should envelop the judge sitting in judgment, etc., and perhaps I have given the master of this holy site an idea for the next column…).
And I still haven’t said a word about the place of emotion in the service of God, in my opinion…
🙂
I also felt that there are problems in Dan Ariely’s theses. I definitely agree that he seems a bit of a sensation-chaser (even his formulations always sound as if they are for provocation, and in many cases in the end you discover something simple or incorrect).
But I do think there is substance to Kahneman’s claims (without relating to the empirical findings. He indeed describes various failures in conduct—thinking errors—and also shows that intuitive conduct is sometimes preferable to conscious conduct. Everyone knows the situation of “autopilot driver” and the like.
As for the practical application of the distinction between emotion and intuition, I already noted that myself. I am dealing here with a principled determination and not with applications. And Yovell is really not right, but is mixing up the two concepts. The fact that it is hard to distinguish between them does not mean they are the same thing.
Regarding animals, if one accepts the assumption that they have no judgment and choice but rather act in an automatic-mechanical way, then clearly we are dealing with instinct and not conscience or moral intuition and genuine altruism. Precisely there I do not see a problem. The events in the videos you described are indeed moving, but they do not arouse in me admiration for their morality at all. That is exactly the difference between emotion and moral intuition (in me and in them).
As for beyond the letter of the law, of course I do not agree. If he decided and obligated payment according to his emotions, he is a criminal and a robber. Therefore, in my opinion, he felt the suffering and difficult situation of the porters, took it into account, and decided with his head. I already wrote at the beginning that emotion can provide data that the intellect must take into account in its decision. But emotion cannot decide on its own. This is a subtle and very important distinction. It is not for nothing that he brings verses such as “that you may walk in the way of good men.” It is not enough that you have intense feeling; you need a source.
At the margins I will add something I have already written here in the past. Emotion should provide information for interpersonal decisions. A person devoid of emotion and the ability of empathy will not feel the pain of the other, and therefore will not behave morally toward him. But that does not mean he is not moral, and it does not mean that morality is rooted in emotion. Absolutely not. Emotion and empathy provide relevant information, and then the intellect can weigh and make a decision. When you feel the pain of another person, you have important information that he is in distress or that you caused him suffering. Your decision is based on that information. But the feeling of distress and the understanding of another person’s distress are not in themselves a reason or justification for decisions.
I too have still not said anything here about the place of emotion in the service of God. That is the subject of the next column.
Well said, Gil. Perhaps the author of the Tanya would sign off on the idea that “the Jew has truly a portion of God above,” whereas the gentile has “a portion of God above,” and the expression of the difference is in the obligation of the 613 commandments.
Gil, it seems to me that the great rabbis of the Mizrahi and Yemenite communities tend toward a more forgiving attitude regarding the status and essence of the gentile, compared to the great rabbis of Ashkenazic communities. This is of course a very poorly grounded claim, to say the least, because I have not conducted or encountered a comprehensive study on the subject; it is only my impression, because over the years I generally found harsher statements in Ashkenazic writings. Perhaps this stems from the differences between Jewish-gentile relations in Europe compared to Islamic lands, and also from cultural arrogance that exists among those of European origin with greater intensity. A good example of this can be found in the golden language of Rabbi Kook in Orot Yisrael, chapter 5, section 10:
“The difference between the Israelite soul—its essence, its inner desires, its aspiration, its character and standing—and the souls of all the gentiles, at all their levels, is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of man and the soul of an animal, for between the latter there is only a quantitative difference, but between the former there prevails an essential qualitative difference.”
We have been privileged, my friend—we are in a different league.
On the eve of the holy Sabbath, “They shall take a contribution for the Lord,” 5780
And to Yosef (Shveik) he said –
One of the energetic representatives of the view of the unique treasured quality of the souls of Israel is R. Yehuda HaLevi, who grew and worked within Islamic Jewish culture. And precisely he emphasizes that the Jew is a different species from the “speaker” [i.e., ordinary human], for the Jew’s soul has a preparation to receive the divine matter, the potential to reach prophecy and cleaving to God.
Indeed, there is reason to say that in Christian lands Judaism was attacked much more than in Islamic lands. Among the Muslims the Jews were another tolerated religion of the “People of the Book,” such that as long as they were submissive and paid the taxes – there was no special interest in pushing them to convert to Islam.
By contrast, the Christians had a very complicated relationship with Judaism. They claimed that Judaism was a “living fossil,” that God had rejected them and chosen the Christians in their place as “spiritual Israel.” Christianity did not tolerate whatever was under its rule. The very existence of Judaism was legitimate only so that we would serve as a “control group” whose humiliation would demonstrate Christianity’s superiority. The Christians invested great efforts to Christianize the Jews, whether by enticement or by decrees and persecutions.
It is natural that when the gentiles try to convince you how inferior and unnecessary you are—a stubborn “living fossil” that refuses to disappear—the need grows to raise the national and religious pride of the persecuted and humiliated Jew, and to make clear to him how important and precious he is in God’s eyes.
In this respect, R. Yehuda HaLevi was in a unique situation, for in his time and place in Muslim Spain, the Almohad movement arose and persecuted the Jews. The Kuzari is called “The Book of Refutation and Proof in Defense of the Despised Faith.” In R. Yehuda HaLevi’s time the Jew needed to lift his spirit and emphasize his unique superiority.
Best regards, Shatz
In the words of R. Yehuda HaLevi, an additional aspect of the uniqueness of the people of Israel is explained: in relation to the other nations they are “like the heart among the limbs.” The uniqueness of the heart is in being the “engine” that channels energy to the whole organism.
Indeed, the moral tendency of most of the world’s inhabitants is to be “decent,” to reach a proper state of “live and let live.” In contrast, among the children of Israel there is much more commonly the aspiration “to carry the world on their shoulders” and bring about the repair of the world—a tendency befitting the special role of “Israel My firstborn son,” the firstborn who is supposed to be the “vanguard force” striving to draw the world to a more perfected state.
And similarly Ramchal writes (Derekh Hashem, part 2, chapter 4:6) that “the Holy One, blessed be He, willed that they should have some measure of what is fitting for true humanity, namely that they should have a soul somewhat like the souls of Israel, although its level is far lower than the level of the souls of Israel, and that they should have commandments through which they acquire bodily and spiritual success as well, according to what is fitting for their aspect—and these are the commandments of the children of Noah.”
The children of Noah attain through their commandments material and spiritual success, but the drawing down of abundance to the whole world is unique to the people of Israel, as Ramchal says there (end of chapter 4): “However, on the actions of Israel the Master, blessed be He, made dependent the repair of all creation and its elevation… and He subordinated, as it were, His governance to their deeds, to illuminate and bestow, or to hide and withdraw, God forbid—according to their deeds.”
This is the unique power of the heart, which imparts vital forces to the whole organism; “but the deeds of the nations will neither add to nor subtract from the reality of creation and the revelation of His blessed name or its concealment; rather they will draw for themselves benefit or loss, whether in soul, and will add strength to their flesh or weaken it.” (ibid.)
In short:
The other nations, which are like limbs – their influence is local, on the limited circle around them. The people of Israel are like the “heart,” whose influence channels life-force to the whole world.
With blessings for a peaceful Sabbath, Shatz
Shatz, as Winnie-the-Pooh said to wise old Owl after Eeyore the donkey lost his tail:
“I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words, grandiose statements, and bombastic slogans confuse me very much.”
From the website
Friends, listen:
We will answer the question from another angle. It seems that among the great rabbis of Israel there are three basic attitudes toward the nations (I wrote this from a bird’s-eye view; in practice it is of course more complex): A. There are those who see the people of Israel as the heart among the limbs, and accordingly the attitude toward the nations is positive, as toward the limbs of the body (the expression already appears in the Kuzari 2:36 and is elaborated more by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in The Nineteen Letters, and by Rabbi Kook in many places, such as Orot Yisrael chapter 5, sections 1, 2, 11). B. There are those who relate to them as “neutral”: they do not fulfill a significant role, but they are not necessarily evil. C. There are those who relate to them as something evil. The intention is not to relate negatively to every gentile and project a negative attitude toward him, Heaven forbid. The intention is a statement on the spiritual plane: just as the souls of Israel are divine and exalted, so the souls of the gentiles come from a different place.
Examples of the second attitude, the “neutral” one—Ramchal (in Derekh Hashem 2:4) explains that in the early stages of the world all descendants of Adam had the possibility to rise and be on the level of the people of Israel, but they worsened their deeds and did not merit it, and thus only the people of Israel attained this level. The result is that they too have a certain system of commandments, and a possibility of attaining a certain world to come, but all on a smaller scale. That is, what he wrote at the beginning of Mesillat Yesharim also applies to gentiles, but in miniature. There is not merely a quantitative difference here, but an essential one: whereas the deeds of the people of Israel repair the world and bring it to its destiny, the deeds of the righteous among the nations at most earn them reward. The world could get along even without those deeds. According to him, the purpose of the nations in this world was initially like the purpose of Israel, but because of their deeds they lost that level, and that is not the actual situation.
The Maharal, throughout Netzach Yisrael, sharpens this point even further. According to his view, they have no world to come and belong only to this world. Their powers are small, expectations of them are small, and therefore paradoxically their trials are smaller and their failures are smaller (Netzach Yisrael chapter 49). Therefore it is also easier for them to repent than for the people of Israel! According to him, the people of Israel are of course the main thing (Netzach Yisrael chapter 57), and the purpose of the gentiles is to serve as their help, like a peel to the fruit and straw to the grains of wheat (Netzach Yisrael chapter 19), “Strangers shall stand and pasture your flocks, and foreigners shall be your plowmen and vinedressers” (Isaiah 61:5). That is certainly a role, even if not as significant and important as ours.
Examples of the third, negative attitude—in Kabbalah and Hasidism such an approach is often found. The gentiles are connected to impurity and evil, and in the future, when evil is destroyed, the nations of the world too will be destroyed. So in the name of the Baal Shem Tov, so in the Tanya (end of chapter 6), so in many places in the writings of Rabbi Charlap, and many others. We already wrote before that the intention is the soul, and this does not necessarily find expression in their everyday life, just as our divine soul does not necessarily express itself in practice. So what, then, is their role in the world? The forces of evil in general fulfill a role: to present before us the possibility of choosing them, so that we will receive reward for choosing the good (as in the famous parable brought in Zohar II 163a, and mentioned many times in works of Hasidism such as the end of chapter 9 of Tanya). That too is a kind of role. In every military exercise there are soldiers whose role is to “play the enemy,” that is, to disguise themselves as enemies and fight against the army. Without them, the exercise would simply be a waste of time.
Jewish superiority began with good taste in R. Yehuda HaLevi, Ramchal, Maharal, and Rabbi Kook. But today the accepted approach is that of the Hasidic books and Rabbi Charlap: the gentiles belong to the forces of impurity—and wickedness—and in any case are destined for destruction. You don’t need to open books to understand that this approach won—just look in the street at religious thug teenagers whispering among themselves that the gentiles are beasts walking on all fours. It’s enough to hear sermons by rabbis who call gentiles monkeys.
Your sweet and pleasant pet religiosity belongs to the past; today Judaism is a tribal fundamentalist religion.
To Shveik
Rabbi Kook was still moderate.
Today the discussion is not about what status the gentile has, but whether he has a right to exist.
Apparently that’s what happens when an entire people is alone in its land. And perhaps after everything it has gone through—that is also justified.
The place of emotion in the service of God is exactly like the general place of all the parts of the body or soul in the service of God.
For example, the place of the feet in the service of God is derived from which commandment a person is fulfilling. If he goes up on pilgrimage on the festival and is fulfilling the commandment of pilgrimage, then presumably he uses his feet for the sake of the commandment. The use of the feet is naturally part of fulfilling the commandment.
But only an idiot (and there are such people) would think that in this way the feet created a connection with God. Or that the person created a connection with God through his feet.
The same applies to emotions and experiences. It does not matter at all which emotion or experience is involved—sadness, joy, cleaving, and so on. You do not create a connection with God through emotion. Emotion is a natural result of fulfilling the commandment that arouses it. And it makes no difference whether we are dealing with an emotion aroused as a result of fulfilling a commandment, or with a commandment whose content involves a certain emotion (“And you shall rejoice on your festival,” or “Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling”).
“After the Lord your God shall you walk, and Him shall you fear, and His commandments shall you keep, and His voice shall you obey, and Him shall you serve, and to Him shall you cleave.”
Whoever thinks this refers to some emotional attachment like that of a pair of lovers with hormones raging in them:
Rashi: “And to Him shall you cleave” — cleave to His ways: do acts of kindness, bury the dead, visit the sick, as the Holy One, blessed be He, did (Sotah 14a).
That is, there is no issue here of emotional arousal. And Rashi’s words connect directly to the matter of kindness, justice, and righteousness.
With God’s help, Saturday night, Shelach 5780
To “the only source of good” – greetings,
What determines the worldview of Judaism today is not the outlook of “religious thug teenagers,” nor even the words of anonymous popular preachers.
As in halakhah, so too in matters of worldview, what determines things are the authoritative sources: Scripture and the words of the Sages, as interpreted by our early and later rabbis.
In Scripture it is explained, on the one hand, that the people of Israel are “My firstborn son” and a “kingdom of priests,” and that a day will come when all the nations will stream to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob in order to learn His ways.
And on the other hand, Scripture set this hope—that the nations will be drawn after the faith of Israel and its Torah—in a period when the nations, almost to a man, were the complete opposite of the values to which the Torah calls, full of idolatry, sexual immorality, and bloodshed, and fighting against the existence of the people of Israel and its land. Therefore there are also harsh prophecies against the nations that oppose the Lord and His Torah.
The division into “positive,” “negative,” and “neutral” exists because such three categories exist among the nations of the world. There are the “righteous among the nations” and “resident aliens,” who observe the seven Noahide commandments out of faith and recognition of the Torah; there are “children of Noah” who observe the seven Noahide commandments out of intellectual and moral judgment, without faith in the Torah; and there are gentiles who do not observe even the seven Noahide commandments (this basic distinction is brought in the article of Rabbi Yehuda Gershuni, Techumin 2, p. 181ff., in the name of Ramban and Ritva on Makkot 9a).
And since there are non-Jews who are “positive,” “negative,” and “neutral,” it follows naturally that Torah literature should contain references to each of the categories. Torah sources must express the hopes for a future in which the “righteous among the nations” will be the leaders of the nations, but they must also relate to the painful reality in which the “tone-setters” among the nations are “a nation lacking piety.”
With blessings for a good week, Shatz
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And on the other hand, Scripture set this hope…
A nice and beautiful interpretation.
I have a tradition from my father’s house that one who cuts himself off from the views of the majority of the observant public of Israel cannot be considered part of the people who worship the Holy One, blessed be He—
And since the approach I mentioned is the one that dominates the street today—and since I do not agree to accept it—I decided to leave the path of Torah and commandments, for in many ways I had already left the ways of the community—and later I discovered how full religion is of contradictions and internal failures. Piles of vain pilpul. I am convinced that even if God exists, He has long since disappeared from our people.
It is a great pity that in Hasidic literature, in the writings of Rabbi Charlap, the Ari, and the Baal Shem Tov, the distinction between the three types was not made. And in all of them they opened the door for brazen, self-satisfied, and arrogant youths to represent the way of Torah, to behave like vandals, and even to commit abominations like price-tag attacks and the arson at Duma from time to time. Because after all, the Arab or Christian Muhammad who lives next door is just an impure shell—what is his life worth?
I heard apologetics like yours before I went off the religious path, and I tried to believe in it, but I simply could not. In my opinion, as time passed and Muslims and Christians persecuted Jews, the approach of “if only all the gentiles would be destroyed” increasingly developed. It is a pity that those sages forgot the existence of good people around the globe—the righteous among the nations who saved Jews from death, quiet peoples around the world who never heard of or saw Jews in their lives—and decided to adopt the approach that every foreigner is a criminal. (And as in a sermon I once heard in synagogue when I was a boy: even when you see him doing a good deed, being nice, or helping, deep inside “they are all utterly impure.”)
It is also a pity that today, instead of educating toward normal relations between the sexes, because of the panic over identity and promiscuity in the street they drill into the heads of boys and children that every smile and greeting to a woman in the street is a matter of “be killed rather than transgress.”
You probably belong to the previous generation of cute light Mizrachi people who used to speak about a Torah of peace and kindness. And because of that it is hard for you to believe that in the sources I brought these things exist, and in their plain sense.
You, and all those study halls of the bourgeois, liberal, sweet rabbis—they are basically an archive of history, which will be a fascinating object of academic research in another 100 years—when the fully secular or the fundamentalist religious take power and become the majority in the state.
And that is a pity.
Corrections.
And the panic and promiscuity in the street.
And they are all impure and evil…
smug and arrogant…
from identity and promiscuity in the street…
they are basically…
it is “be killed rather than transgress”…
The author of the Tanya writes (end of chapter 36):
“Only afterward sin caused them and the world to become materialized until the end of the right side, at which time the materiality of the body and the world will be refined, and they will be able to receive the revelation of the light of the Lord that will shine upon Israel through the Torah, which is called strength. And from the surplus of the illumination to Israel – the darkness of the nations too will be brightened, as it is written, ‘And nations shall walk by your light,’ etc.… and as it is written, ‘Appear in the splendor of the majesty of Your strength over all the inhabitants of Your world…’”
The words of the author of the Tanya are based on explicit verses, that in the days of the Messiah all the nations will accept the yoke of the kingdom of heaven. But even in the stage after the messianic era, in the world to come (which is the world after the resurrection of the dead), there will be existence for the souls of the righteous among the nations, as Ramchal says: “However, in the world to come there will not be nations apart from Israel. And to the soul of the righteous among the nations an existence will be given in an additional aspect attached to Israel themselves, and they will be subordinate to them like a garment subordinate to a person, and in this aspect they will attain what they attain of the good” (Derekh Hashem, part 2, chapter 4:7).
According to Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Charlap, the redemption of the people of Israel is the hope and correction of the nations of the world: “for without Israel and the fulfillment of their abundance, their holy abundance, they will have no revival at all… and there is no hope for the nations unless they accept upon themselves the authority of Israel, and say: House of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the Lord, and He will teach us of His ways and we will walk in His paths” (Ma’ayanei HaYeshuah, p. 104).
In short:
All of us repeat three times a day at the end of our prayer the hope: “May all creatures call upon Your name; may all the inhabitants of the world recognize and know that to You every knee must bend, every tongue must swear… and may they all accept the yoke of Your kingdom, and may You reign over them speedily forever and ever… and the Lord shall be King over all the earth; on that day the Lord shall be one and His name one.”
Best regards, Shatz
In the words of Rabbi Charlap (paragraph 3, line 5) it should read:
“…and they will say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths” (Isaiah 2:3) …
I do not reject Kahneman’s empirical findings across the board (actually, Tversky’s findings, whose fame Kahneman inherited after his early death). Indeed, human beings err in assessing probabilities, and sometimes (not always) intuition shows better performance. But I do reject the radical interpretations of these findings, as well as the methodology of many experiments by their successors from which they tried to derive built-in irrationality in human behavior. In my opinion this is simply not true, and some of the findings follow directly from mathematical theorems (the impossibility theorems of Arrow, Sen, Gibbard-Satterthwaite, and others), which those psychologists apparently do not know. The inability to satisfy a set of behavioral axioms that turn out after the fact (through the above theorems) to contain an internal contradiction does not prove irrationality. But that really relates here only very indirectly.
As I understand it, Yovell is dealing with the practical question, and argues that even if there is a sharp philosophical distinction between the concepts, in practice it is not applicable, because there is no person capable of thinking detached from his emotions, even if he is not aware of it and deceives himself that he is thinking “only with his head.” I am inclined to agree that there is no such creature. (Perhaps there is such a dead creature—the computer.) It turns out that people mix emotions even into tasks apparently entirely devoid of emotional charge, such as creating a sequence of random numbers. It has turned out that no human being is capable of producing a truly random series of numbers, even if he is sure that he is, and associative emotion is always involved in some way.
As for animals—we do not really know whether or not they have free choice. The information on this subject is accumulating, and the categorical determination that denies free choice to animals (especially the intelligent ones among them) is by no means self-evident. I pointed to experiments that showed monkeys have a certain sense of fairness, and they do not at all appear to act like programmed robots. In videos where animals endanger themselves for others, not the whole herd rushes to help. It is always just a few, while the others look on from the side. The mechanism selecting the volunteering individuals is unclear, and the assertion that they act from instinct and not from choice requires proof. Indeed, there is also no proof that they have choice or even emotion, but there are indications of it that are hard to ignore. For example, it turns out that elephants have an artistic sense, and I find it hard to believe that such a sense can develop in animals whose behavior is entirely instinctive. For art, instinct is not enough. You need at least emotion, if not more than that. (Search YouTube for suda the painting elephant. Many years ago I heard of experiments indicating that chimpanzees have musical sensitivity and that their preferred composer is Mozart. Definitely good taste…).
And as for beyond the letter of the law—the words “he ruled with his head” do not explain anything. Apparently, according to the law, not only did Rabbah not owe the negligent workers a penny, but they owed him compensation for the damage they caused through their negligence. Certainly he did not have to pay them after waiving (beyond the letter of the law) the compensation. If Rav was so sensitive to the porters’ distress, he could give them charity from his own pocket, as the Gemara tells of King David (Sanhedrin 6b). The verse in Proverbs certainly cannot serve as a halakhic basis for extracting money contrary to halakhah. Therefore it seems to me that Rav did not really obligate Rabbah to pay, but recommended that he act this way. Rabbah was entitled to refuse, and Rav had no way to coerce him. According to this, the story comes to teach that a judge may propose to a litigant to act with exceptional piety, and also to tell us of Rabbah’s piety, since he did indeed act that way. And for our purposes, if we are not dealing with a binding legal ruling but with a recommendation, it can certainly be completely emotional.
As for morality, Leibowitz argued that it is an atheistic category and you disagree with him, and in my eyes this is a strange argument. In my humble opinion morality is altogether a fictitious category. It simply does not exist. Our conscience is that same emotion/instinct that apparently also exists in animals and developed in us evolutionarily (and whoever says Hitler also argued כך—indeed, so what? And Eichmann used the Kantian categorical imperative—so what?). There is extensive literature explaining the evolutionary role of altruism and the rest of the “moral” emotions, and in my opinion that is the only “value” they have. What we have beyond the explicit obligations of Torah and halakhah is the “will of God,” which need not identify with our moral intuition, and in my opinion your book Walks Among the Standing Ones proves this by inversion. But again, this too is the subject of another debate.
Most of the findings of theirs that I know are not related to impossibility theorems but to probabilistic errors. Failures of representativeness and the like, for example, are not related in any way that I can see to impossibility theorems.
I no longer remember where Yoram Yovell came up here, but on the practical issue I do not necessarily have an argument with someone who claims that emotions are involved in thinking. On the contrary: precisely because most people mix emotion with intuition, there is great importance in sharpening the distinction and demanding of them to cleanse their thoughts and decisions as much as possible (even if not completely). The very fact that someone determines that emotion is always involved proves that he has the ability to distinguish—otherwise how does he make that very determination? For example, someone who fails less often in Kahneman and Tversky-type fallacies is probably acting more from the head and less from emotion.
I have written more than once (and I think here too) that I have no clear position regarding animal choice. If one goes according to the accepted view that they do not have it, then I said what I said. If they do, then they do. Our subject is human beings, and animals serve only as test cases.
Incidentally, I have seen videos and arguments in the past, and I was never convinced. Indeed, one cannot prove that they do not have choice, and by the same token one cannot claim that they do. All these videos (the ones I saw) prove nothing. In particular, videos about altruism prove nothing. Dawkins already wrote that evolution deals with the survival of the gene and not of the individual phenotype. The same applies to their musical taste. You yourself write at the end of your comment that there is no morality and it is all evolutionary imprinting. So what is the discussion here at all? You do not believe in human choices either, so what are the dogs and cats by the wall supposed to say?!
If Rabbah ruled only because his heart ached, then he is simply a robber. And if he merely recommended, I don’t see what is novel in saying that a judge may recommend. Let him recommend whatever he wants. The principal question is what he is obligated to rule.
If you see conscience as an instinct imprinted in us by evolution, then as stated there really is no difference between us and the monkeys. Not because they too have choice (as you wrote), but because we do not either. We are machines driven by instincts.
I did not manage to understand, according to this, why halakhah (that is, what you called “the will of God”) is an exception to this rule. Are those not instincts there too? What is the difference between it and morality? There is extensive literature explaining the evolutionary role of religion and faith, exactly like morality. So what does that mean? Evolutionary literature can explain everything (I have already elaborated elsewhere that this is an unfalsifiable theory. Whatever happens has a de facto explanation in terms of survival value. And proof? It happened).
And I haven’t even asked how you interpret “and you shall do what is right and good.” To obey the evolutionary instinct? What is the point of commanding if there is already an instinct within us that compels it? Truly a strange view.
Mordechai
Aren’t the 7 Noahide commandments the proof that according to Judaism there is an absolute morality not connected to religion? True, only the righteous among the nations are guaranteed a share in the world to come. But still there is a difference between the wise among them, who enjoys a positive or at least neutral attitude and has a right to exist, and a criminal who does not keep the 7 commandments at all and is liable to death?
who merits*
The seven commandments are not conclusive proof, since it is not clear that they include all moral obligations. Beyond that, according to at least some opinions (such as Maimonides regarding the commandment of laws), there is a difference in the legal parameters between Israel and the children of Noah even within the seven commandments.
A. Indeed they do not include all moral obligations. But as far as I recall there is a fairly widespread approach, and perhaps even the accepted one (?), that the 7 Noahide commandments are the minimum required of a gentile / child of Noah. But in matters that reason obligates them in (such as the prohibition of sexual immorality, charity, honoring father and mother, and the like), gentiles too are commanded. (Rabbi Sherki and some Chabad rabbis who are obsessed with the subject brought this in the name of one of the great later authorities, if I remember correctly.)
B. Do you mean the determination that a child of Noah is executed for less than the value of a perutah, whereas in Israel this is not so? And that he is executed for forbidden sexual relations, unlike Israel, and the like?
Obviously the 7 commandments also have a religious and discriminatory dimension—between Israel and the nations. (And also a distinguishing one, since a child of Noah, if my memory serves me, is not obligated to be killed rather than transgress regarding idolatry, sexual immorality, and bloodshed.)
But I do not see in this a contradiction to the view that there is an independent morality that is not religious, since:
A. A wise man of the nations (who has no religious chosenness and is not guaranteed immortality of the soul) is preferable to a gentile who does not keep these prohibitions at all. (And in truth—again, from what I have heard a lot from Sherki—there is not even a commandment for the children of Noah to have faith, only a prohibition of idolatry; and the privilege of living in the Land of Israel as a resident alien and meriting a share in the world to come seems to be a privilege of choice and not an obligation.)
B. In the only prohibition that has a distinctly religious dimension—idolatry—there is even a dispute whether associationism is permitted to them or not.
From here one can conclude that even when we are dealing with people on whom the Holy One, blessed be He, did not impose religious obligations, and who perhaps do not even have an obligation (at least at the minimal level) to reach the religious truth, He still expects them to behave with basic morality.
I meant that according to Maimonides, the commandment of laws for the children of Noah is not our Choshen Mishpat (unlike what seems from Ramban), but rather a legal system as they understand it.
One should remember that Maimonides at the end of chapter 8 of the laws of kings wrote that the children of Noah need to fulfill their seven commandments by virtue of the command given at Sinai. That is, he sees this as a religious command (which for the most part accords with morality: “and they are matters toward which reason inclines”) and not a moral one.
I once saw a saying in the name of the Chazon Ish that the book Yesod VeShoresh HaAvodah is intended for Lithuanians who are too cold, and Nefesh HaChaim is intended for Hasidim who are too fervent.
Truthfully this whole system is beyond me, but I do remember that once, many years ago, you gave a lecture, if I recall correctly, about the evil inclination and the good inclination, and you mentioned the author of the Tanya (I have an intuition that this is probably the same passage cited here in his name). I only remember that I was intellectually moved when you said that when you first encountered these words of the author of the Tanya, a million things suddenly made sense to you all at once.
That’s just it—this is the point. I don’t think they are commanded to fulfill the 7 Noahide commandments as a religious obligation. Rather, their fulfillment of the commandments as a religious obligation grants them the status of a resident alien and immortality of the soul.
It is said in the name of the Chafetz Chaim that when a person reaches the world above, they will not ask him: were you a Hasid or a Litvak, Sephardi or Ashkenazi, etc. Rather there are five levels in the service of God: boiling, hot, lukewarm, cold, and frozen—and that is what they will focus on.
Indeed. And the frozen one gets a prime cut in Paradise above everyone else.
“But where shall wisdom be found?” (Job 28:12) — this teaches that Solomon searched and said: Where is wisdom to be found? Rabbi Eliezer says: in the head. Rabbi Yehoshua says: in the heart. This accords with Rabbi Yehoshua’s view, who said: wisdom is in the heart, as it is written: “You have put joy in my heart” (Psalms 4:8), and joy means nothing other than wisdom, as it is said: “My son, if your heart is wise, my heart too will rejoice” (Proverbs 23:15).
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik explained:
“The truth is that there is no disagreement at all between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua. The two views complement one another. Rabbi Yehoshua cannot refute Rabbi Eliezer’s opinion, that intellectual wisdom is found in the head, and Rabbi Eliezer cannot refute Rabbi Yehoshua’s opinion that emotional wisdom, intuitive-psychic wisdom, is found in the heart. It is impossible to exist without both.”
“The Judaism of the Torah and halakhah greatly valued the wisdom in the head, because it is itself founded upon the pillars of intellectual understanding. Torah study is the foundation of foundations in Judaism. In order to study Torah and understand its problems and approaches, a person needs great intellectual talents.”
“However, we must not think, even for a brief moment, that the wisdom in the head alone is the essence of the image of God in man, and that one whom the Holy One, blessed be He, endowed with it is free of sin. Rather, this is the rule: the image of God rests in a person only if within him dwell together the wisdom of the head and the wisdom of the heart. Judaism was the first to discover the idea of the wisdom in the heart. What is the wisdom of the heart? It does not deal with mathematical calculations, nor with the foundations of logic, nor with the construction of machines and the uncovering of the laws of nature, but rather with the pure emotional life of man. The wise-hearted person is not satisfied with distinguishing between truth and falsehood, but also seeks to discover and do the good and remove the evil; he is not satisfied with finding through science the facts of life and reality as they are, but also devotes himself to the traits of kindness, love, and mercy.”
“The first who found and discovered in the world the wisdom of the heart was our father Abraham. He did not suffice with diligently investigating under the skies of Ur of the Chaldees the movement of the stars and the rhythm of the cosmos, but sought first and foremost to know the Creator of the world and the foundations of righteousness and justice. Abraham our father was the first to teach human beings that man’s purpose lies not only in his intellectual achievement by virtue of the wisdom in the head, but primarily in his moral achievement by virtue of the wisdom in the heart.”
It’s not so wise to bet on something that now, in the middle of life, seems distant and detached from us; we shall see that same frozen one ready to gamble away the loss of his house so easily.
That is, from their point of view, observing the commandments to the fullest is in the category of piety and doing the will of God, and not in the category of “commandment” (I hope I’m being clear enough). What I mean is that a gentile is not punished for not believing in Him; rather, that is his choice—if he wants to believe and keep the prohibitions out of the religious truth-obligation of the prophecy of Moses our teacher, he will receive the right to be a resident alien and merit a share in the world to come. If he does not want to—that is perfectly fine; he has a right to exist, and there is no disgrace in it. But he does not merit to live in the Land, and to receive a share in the world to come.
That also seems to me from the language of Maimonides, since it says “and whoever does not accept them—shall be executed.” But only one who accepts them on account of the command of the prophecy of Moses our teacher merits the status of a resident alien. And one who does not is called wise—but certainly is not executed.
Unlike Jews, who are obligated to believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, and to perform positive commandments (which do not always have rational moral explanations, and whose rationale is religious)—if they deny them they are in the category of criminals, and not in the category of “they are not among the pious of Israel but among their wise men.”
deny them
=
if they are heretics
Stupid keyboard
And of course from here comes my assumption that according to Judaism morality has absolute value, since it is incumbent upon us to turn everyone at least into
“wise among the nations,” even if we do not manage to turn them into “resident aliens,” so that at least they will keep what is required of a normative, rational human being.
And likewise Ramban’s distinction between resident aliens, children of Noah, and criminal nations of the world—that the children of Noah, regarding whom it is not known whether they observe the commandments out of faith in the prophecy of Moses our teacher, but it is known to us that they do keep the prohibitions and conduct themselves “decently with their fellows” (and here there is a clear link between the commandments and morality)—it is permitted to save them and forbidden to kill them, unlike criminal nations of the world, whose lives, in principle, are worth nothing.
In a reality show there is no reason not to follow your heart… after all, that’s what it’s for.
And more generally – there are many areas in which there is no reason not to follow your heart. We pay more for tasty food or food that looks good (and is also unhealthy). And still, a person who conducts himself with an extreme and stingy diet will usually come out unhealthy from it – not physically, and certainly not mentally. Reason only rules the situation and makes sure we don’t buy a bottle of wine costing thousands of shekels when our bank account is overdrawn.
And really this brings us back to the case where “the intellect will take the feelings of the heart into account.”
And in general (this was actually already written in the article), in a secular world, where there are no absolute truths, indeed there is no reason not to follow the heart – because no intellectual factor is important enough to suppress the heart. The secular person cannot go into overdraft in the bank of “truth,” and therefore he can allow himself to follow his heart freely.