Emotional Motivation and Intellectual Motivation: Between Emotion and Experience (Column 371)

I think the rabbi doesn’t really distinguish enough between emotion and spirit (motivation, meaning). Spirit is something parallel to the divine soul (but it is not intellect. It is not cold). True, that questioner said that the rabbi’s writings do not inspire enthusiasm in him (and perhaps even reduce it—“cool him off,” in Haredi language), but I think the position he represents, without knowing it, is that in fact the rabbi does not create spirit (and indeed actually takes it away). I definitely claim that the rabbi takes spirit away from people, and specifically not only enthusiasm (which is certainly a good thing). Spirit is not feeling and emotion. Spirit is like what is called the “spirit of life.” When spirit fills a person he is optimistic and happy, but with a quiet happiness, not an ecstatic one. He is active and productive. Like the Briskers, one might say, a bit (despite their melancholic tendency. But that, indeed, is the background reason they understood the importance of this spirit). What the rabbi actually takes from people is something like the will to live. In practice (like Leibowitz), in his world (in the taste of most people), it is more worthwhile to commit suicide than to live. The fact that the rabbi himself does not feel this is due to two combined reasons:

1. A kind of autism
2. The main reason—that apparently, unconsciously, this very enterprise itself gives him spirit. Without knowing it, he draws spirit from taking spirit away from others (this, in my view, was absolutely the case with Leibowitz; anyone who saw and heard him could say he was a hard and bitter man. He really did not look like a good person. Not someone who would pick you up for a ride if you were stranded on the side of the road)

Corrections:

“a quiet happiness and not an ecstatic one…”

“actually (like Leibowitz), in his world….”

Hello Rabbi. Perhaps there is an echo of your words in Rav Kook, Shemonah Kevatzim (1, 234): “In intellectual honesty and good character traits there is more faith and divine cleaving than in verbal faith and sentimental imagery.”

Immanuel, it seems you are talking about a general life-spirit and not about a spirit connected to the service of God, and what follows from your words is that even a secular person who adopts the rabbi’s whole doctrine about nearness and grazing will have the blowing of his life-spirit slowed. But you did not explain this in a single word (or half a word). In my opinion, by the way—and forgive me for saying it—but putting up with your unreasoned preaching is not a bad sign at all of courtesy and kindness.

Since the discussion here is about intellect, emotion, and experience, I can testify only about myself.
In the past I certainly used to be filled with pleasure from studying Gemara, and later also from reading the rabbi’s books.
But after years of involvement in applied science, I lost that pleasure.
Similar to your friend Prof. Schnarb’s criticism of psychology, it is hard for me to be impressed by hair-splitting analysis that depends on assumptions that are not well defined from the outset. One can divide the soul into three parts, thirty, or three hundred… how can we even know that we are aiming at any truth?
And as you honestly noted at the end—a candor I appreciate—you too have no such answers.
That is, from the outset we know we are dealing with something where anyone with rhetorical talent can spout whatever he likes.
Anyone looking for that kind of enjoyment will find it in the sciences, especially the applied ones.
The same flaw exists not only in theology and psychology but also in the vast majority of philosophy.
Therefore, anyone looking for intellectual pleasure would do well to seek it where it truly exists in its anorexic form (after a merciless shaving by Occam’s razor).
Anyone looking for morality should leave the books and help his wife with the children.
And anyone looking for spiritual experiences would do better to follow his animal soul to Breslov Hasidism, Chabad, or Kook (ChaBaKuK).
And anyone who, in addition to all this, is afraid to get vaccinated should go to Rabbi Asherov.
And nevertheless, despite everything, I still enjoy reading the rabbi’s words 🙂

With God’s help, Thursday, for the portion “Gold and silver and copper and blue and purple” 5781

It warms the heart to read on a frozen, snowy day about the importance of emotional freezing in the service of God 🙂 Precisely this week’s Torah portions, and the next one, which deal with the building of the Tabernacle and the priestly garments, teach about the importance of cultivating the emotional world of one who serves God. Being stirred by the beauty of the gold and silver, the blue and the purple—is a powerful tool to awaken a person to the service of God. By nature man seeks feeling and experience, and if he does not receive it in a positive context, he will seek it in negative places.

Suppressing emotion is out of the question, but what is important is balancing the emotional world. Thus alongside the splendor and glory of the Tabernacle, balanced expression is also given to the opposite feeling—cleanliness and simplicity.

The splendor and glory of the Tabernacle are concealed within. Only the priest entering the sanctuary saw the gold, blue, and purple. From the outside one saw only a black covering of goat-hair curtains, set on silver sockets, built from the half-shekel in which every hand among the people was equal: the rich gave no more and the poor gave no less.

The priests’ garments too were made of plain white linen. Only in the sash was the splendor and glory of the gold, blue, and purple preserved. The person approaching God to serve Him comes with a sense of simplicity, as “a slight creature standing with limited understanding before the King of kings,” yet he girds himself with strength and courage in the splendid sash that expresses his pride in the divine mission laid upon him.

The Tabernacle does not call for suppressing emotion but for balancing it, by cultivating powerful feelings in both directions: the humility and simplicity proper to man before his Maker, and together with it the pride and joy in our bond with our Maker, who chose us to be His emissaries to sanctify His name in His world.

The feeling of love is the “engine” that encourages a person to act, while the feeling of awe is the “brake” that arouses a person to beware of distorted action. The intellect—both natural intellect and the guidance of the Torah—gives a person the ability to navigate among the stormy emotions. Through the guidance of intellect, a person knows when to “step on the gas” and when to “hit the brakes.”

With blessings, Simcha Halevi Fish”l-Plankton

Just a note about the Eglei Tal:

Regarding the words of the Eglei Tal, you claimed: “He does indeed advocate that the learner enjoy the study, but he too agrees that if the learning is done for the sake of the enjoyment, this is learning not for its own sake. That is, even in his opinion, action driven by an emotional engine is invalid.”

In my view you are making here a non-necessary leap that explains a lot about the disagreement. The Eglei Tal says that this is learning not for its own sake, not that it is invalid. More than that, he adds, “And about this they said, a person should always engage… not for its own sake, for from…” precisely in order to argue otherwise—it is not the ideal, but not that it is invalid; rather, it can definitely be a step in the right direction.
He does not reject enjoyment as a motivation; he explains that it is not the final station.

And why is this very essential to the whole argument, in my opinion?
Because those who disagree with you claim that there is an advantage in the partial state. Even when we agree on what the ideal state is, the question is what path makes it easier to get there. By rejecting emotion even as an intermediate stage, you leave more people in the dead end in which you are found (igniting emotion) than the number of people who will remain in a dead end after reaching the intermediate stage of emotional motivation without intellectual motivation.

Therefore I can understand if you disagree with the Eglei Tal, but to bring him as support seems to me a surprising move.

Immanuel, your decisiveness is really a phenomenon.
As for Leibowitz, you are simply wrong on the facts. In his personal life he was a truly generous man. He received everyone, hosted every leper and outcast, and spoke with him. He traveled to every place that invited him, and spoke politely and attentively with every person. His public persona was different. Yet another example of the determinations you throw into the air without any familiarity with the subject.
As for the diagnoses of me, I thank you. You saved me the first payment to a psychologist (I already have the diagnosis).

Maybe. It is hard to extract clear meaning from his florid language.

You put into my mouth things I did not say. It is not true that everyone in these fields can spout whatever he wants. True, there are many nonsense-artists, but people with common sense will spot this fairly easily. See my series of columns on philosophy.

I don’t understand. You yourself explain him exactly as I do, and then say that my reliance on him is puzzling?!
I did not say that such study is devoid of all value. At least instrumental value.
After all, he says this is learning not for its own sake, and that is exactly what I said too! Moreover, the value he sees in learning not for its own sake is only because it leads from it to learning for its own sake, meaning that he is even more extreme than I am: there is no real value at all in learning not for its own sake.
Strange…

Indeed. The service of God is part of this matter—unless, that is, we identify the service of God with the meaning of existence, in which case there is no difference. In any case, it depends on what kind of secular person we are talking about. If it is a secular person who is to the left of the rabbi, then his words will actually give them spirit, for the reason that they have even less spirit than he does (they are even more autistic).

And regarding your remark—you don’t expect me to write a whole column here (this is Rabbi Michi’s blog) and explain every single detail of what I say. I have no problem preaching. I am not a fake intellectual. Also, all those who talk against preaching, from my experience, themselves have no problem preaching (left-wing lecturers in the humanities especially) when it becomes personal for them. My preachings are directed at whoever values me a little, and whoever does not—should not listen. I am not interested in any fake courtesy and kindness from anyone. If you don’t want to—don’t listen and don’t respond. Nobody asked you to suffer. I speak in code and want to draw attention to an idea so that people will think about it and try to understand it themselves or ask me. I am not a lecturer standing and entertaining an audience sitting back with a cigar, wanting everything proved and explained to them while making no effort at all (to understand something on their own), and during the intermission they drink coffee and listen to music, like all those ridiculous lectures for the general public at universities where in the end they offer the lecturer polite and empty applause as though he were some performing musician). I am trying to provoke you. If you were not provoked, fine. Move on, or ask a question and I will answer as best I can.

Paragraph 6, line 3
..ץ. to navigate among the stormy emotions…

[Or perhaps it is still correct to say: “to adorn among the stormy emotions,” since when there is proper harmony among opposing emotions there is beauty here, the beauty of a complete picture whose parts correspond and complement one another].

With blessings, Yaron Fish”l Ordner

A powerful sentence I didn’t know. Thank you!

I’ve heard many such things. I’m not impressed at all. I heard him speak more than once or twice. I’m surprised you are impressed by this at all. There is nothing generous here. A man of spirit likes to talk. That is the meaning of his existence. He is not doing anyone a favor by going somewhere to speak. He needs it more than the people who heard him. People of his type (to which both you and I belong) need the students more (even lepers and those with discharges, though supposedly he should not have patience for them) than the students need them (more than the calf wants to suckle, etc.). No one tells even a fragment of a story about him like the stories told about Rav Kook and Rav Auerbach. Those are generous people. To say Leibowitz was generous is to cheapen the term. At most he was autistic. And again—I’m not the only one who would say this.

As for decisiveness—I don’t care. Judgment is necessary, but only up to a point. I see the supposedly infinite judgment that you extol here as fake. There is a limit to how far I will not trust my own feelings. The vast majority of people around you are afraid of making fools of themselves because they are afraid of what people will think of them. I’m not afraid of anyone and I don’t care what people think of me (but I do care about the truth. Sometimes I am even provocative in order to see how people react and to test whether what I believe or know is really true). I don’t see how it makes sense here to separate the public and private persona (about the latter too I have great doubts, as I said—I heard from someone [I did not verify the rumor, but it would not surprise me at all because it suits the type] that even toward those close to him he was not warm and hated everyone [this was said by someone who claimed to have attended one of his classes]). I myself am also not an easy person, but at least I have self-awareness. And that is the whole point. My main claim against him is not evil but lack of awareness of it. And it is time that the rabbi develop some of that as well.

Is “invalid” not “devoid of value”? Usually “invalid” is a term for something entirely without value, not something partial.

If so, then I misunderstood you.

Indeed, the intensification of emotion in the portions of the Tabernacle comes after the portions of Yitro and Mishpatim. After the revelation at Mount Sinai, which was meant to internalize in the people’s heart the fear: “that His fear may be before your faces, that you sin not”; and after the Ten Commandments, most of which are about “what not to do.” And after the warnings not to become enslaved to “gods of silver and gods of gold,” but rather to serve God in simplicity and modesty; and after the portion of Mishpatim, which obligates a person to keep a careful eye on all the paths of his life so that “no mishap should come from him” to himself or to others—only then can come the portions of the Tabernacle, which deal with cultivating the emotional world of one who serves God.

With blessings, Yifa”or

And likewise in the service of God of Purim days, only after the spiritual recollection of God’s deeds through the reading of the Megillah night and morning, and after the practical cultivation of brotherhood and responsibility for others through “sending portions one to another and gifts to the poor”—only after the preparatory work of consciousness and cultivation of social responsibility can one give free rein to the enthusiasm of feasting and rejoicing.

To Ish Gamzu

I will spell it out and be more precise. For example, I could have grown up in the communist kibbutz movement. And suppose I had “gone off the path” and written reasoned articles on why it is bad and its people are bad. But what I am saying is that to a member of the kibbutz movement my words should not make an impression. He has a vision (which gives meaning to his existence), and as long as I do not give him a greater vision that includes the true elements that existed in his original vision, he should not listen to me and leave his society. At most he can take note of the criticism I convey to him and begin to think about what among them is right and what is not, and whether I am right and to what extent, and what can be fixed. But he must not be drawn after me and walk in my way (which in fact I have no way—no vision, let us say, in this parable). That would cause him the greatest damage (and that is a sign that in general I am lying to him, even if in the details I am right). Like in chess. You always need to have some plan of action. Any plan—even a bad one—is preferable to having no plan at all. Because a bad plan can be corrected and improved along the way and one can learn from mistakes. When there is no plan, then you flounder and lose and do not understand at all how we lost, and do not repair and progress (because we never went anywhere in the first place).

To Immanuel—greetings,

It seems to me that regarding Leibowitz the more accurate definition would be that of a “hot-tempered person,” someone of a warm and stormy temperament. A warm temperament leads a person both to an attitude of compassion and encouragement toward the troubles and hesitations of the “ordinary person” who comes to seek his counsel, and that same warm temperament leads him to a “Torah wrath” and a vehement outburst toward influential figures and schools of thought that in his opinion are distorted.

It seems to me that R. Michael Abraham too is a “hot-tempered person,” of a stormy temperament, in whom too there are the two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, immense patience (usually…) toward every questioner; and on the other hand, harsh and sharpened remarks toward influential personalities and schools that do not find favor in his eyes. It is likely that the intense engagement in fighting emotionalism in R. Michael Abraham also stems from the high dose of emotionality in his personality, which arouses the fear that if he grants it legitimacy, it will get out of control.

Rav Kook (and R. Shlomo Zalman Auerbach) were also “hot-tempered” people, but they succeeded in processing that stormy temperament into “elevated generosity,” refining the raw traits and extracting from them the proper essence. R. Aryeh Levin testifies that Rav Kook was by nature zealous, but through difficult inner work succeeded in transforming the zealot’s ardor into ardor for persuasion out of understanding and respect.

Rabbi Ari Yitzhak Shevat (from “Beit HaRav”) compared the drafts of Rav Kook’s proclamations with the proclamations as published, and one sees plainly that the inner storm that led to sharp expressions in the draft gradually softens and becomes more refined, until the version sent to print is more “ways of pleasantness” than “a whip of cords.” The draft expresses the writer’s emotional storm, while the printed version expresses the processing of the words into a pleasant and acceptable form.

With blessings, Yifa”or

The Sages too describe the transformation in Esther’s soul: in her emotional storm she is prepared to point toward the king and implicate him: “The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman,” but the angel comes, the rational thought, and redirects the accusing finger toward Haman, so as not to “burn the bridges with the king.”

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…harsh and sharpened toward…

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…the fear lest he grant…

Chayota drew my attention to these two articles published in Akdamot. Both touch on the question of religious feeling and fervor from the educational perspective:
1. A review by Rabbi Brandes of Ahrend’s book:
https://bmj.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/11.17.Brandes.pdf

2. Ahrend’s reply, which addresses this point in greater detail:
https://bmj.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/13.13.Ahrend.pdf

The discussion is typical, since it deals with the implications of emotional versus intellectual and restrained education and conduct, but ignores the very problematic nature of emotional conduct itself. Not because of the results, which may be problematic, but by virtue of its being emotional.
By the way, in the final analysis I don’t think there is any real disagreement between them. This is similar to many disputes on such topics.

I don’t know about spirit in the commentators on the service of God, but I personally did receive a general spirit. I came into Two Carts in a very confused and agitated mental state, and the process of persuasion at the focal point of the book stabilized and calmed me. If that is not spirit, I do not know what spirit is.

[By the way, I heard from you not long ago that you did a survey of what happened to be available to you and found that mathematicians hold a Platonist position. Since then I have asked, incidentally and briefly without digging too deeply into clarification of the concepts, several researchers in computer science myself (one of them world-renowned), and they all converged דווקא on “mental fictions.” In the end I asked each one, “In your opinion, does the function x-squared exist in the world itself? Yes or no?” The answers I collected were: “No.”]

The difference between “hot-tempered” and “elevated” in your language is the whole point, and it is a world of difference. What you call “hot-tempered” is intelligence in the service of the ego. That is the difference between a person driven by anger (whose anger is released like a nuclear bomb, and he is an animal) and a person who turns anger into positive, constructive energy (productive nuclear energy—like in nuclear reactors)—a redeemed person—who fights evil and not evil people. By the way, I accuse Rabbi Michi of this too, though much, much less. And I myself suffer not a little from hatred of man (though to my credit I will say that I am aware of it and know that I need repair and redemption—which Rav Kook achieved), and I said that my main problem is not so much with this reality itself as with the lack of awareness of it. Do not be impressed by the “compassion and encouragement” for the ordinary person. These are really pity that stems from lack of respect (in English, pity). That is all the compassion the Left keeps babbling about all the time, when it is clear to you that there is no compassion for anyone at all, only posturing. It is the worst thing there is. Respect is a basic and necessary condition for love. I am sure that most who were ever exposed to Leibowitz were exposed to his contempt for ordinary people (religious people who did not make pilgrimage to behold his face and bask in his wisdom…).

Don’t you see the pattern here? It is ordinary ego found in all people who see themselves as defenders of the weak and oppressed against the “evil oppressors” (in his case “the fascist Judeo-Nazis”)… In a certain sense this is also what I am doing here in these comments vis-à-vis Rabbi Michi… It is impossible to escape this. One really needs redemption. But first of all one needs self-awareness.) I once also heard a recording of him in a private setting, and with great emotionality (which is idolatry) he said that his whole purpose in the world is to fight idolatry… But you see that Rav Kook had the self-awareness to discern this paradox, and this compelled him mentally—not out of moralistic posturing—to develop further. By the way, this happened with all great people, not only Rav Kook. And that is what distinguishes a great person from an empty intellectual.

Rabbi Michael Abraham of Two Carts and the rest of the quartet, and of God Plays Dice and The Humanities and Truth and Certainty, is not the same Rabbi Michael Abraham as that of the trilogy. These are two different people. The first undoubtedly gave spirit.

Many thanks.
The last survey I conducted was in a seminar I gave in the mathematics department at Bar-Ilan. The answers were unequivocal, and the people there also claimed more generally that this is usually the case among mathematicians. In my opinion, some people are not aware of the precise definition of the question and therefore perhaps do not answer accurately. Thus, for example, a quadratic equation is not really a mathematical entity. Some number, a circle or a triangle, are mathematical entities (and I do not mean concrete triangles or circles but ideas). A group is a mathematical entity. A vector space, or a field, are mathematical entities. Ron Aharoni, for example, is probably not a Platonist.

I too am not aware of the precise definition of the question and did not understand the difference between a particular equation and the other things. And even if an equation is a proposition and not an object, why is a function (like x-squared) different from a group? What is there in a group (as opposed to just a set) besides a collection of objects with a function of a certain kind. [Or perhaps all I see is merely “the clever-Hans effect.”]

To Tulginus—greetings,

I was utterly astonished by your claim about the Platonism of mathematicians. See the following poem:

‘There is nothing in the world more poetic than a mathematical theorem,
Open your eyes and see, and you will find in it wonders upon wonders

Marvelous sights such as x multiplied by itself,
And if you wish, why then, at once it will be multiplied by a

And now, my friend, be encouraged, and look now at lonely x
But do not worry, my dear, for at once it will be multiplied by b

And now we have reached the peak, behold there stands c
Firm it will stand all alone, in all its splendor and glory

But how terrible, alas! Why, ax-squared
Plus bx and plus c—oh! their sum is all zero

With the blessing of “preciousness and freezing,”
Tulginus the frozen, from the street minyan named after Kar-li-bach

Let Plato fall and wonders remain in their place
The revealer of true mystery will delight.
And if he found or invented—certain things
It is the same experience in different clothing.

For the matter of realism is hard to grasp
And perhaps it is nothing but dross and discourse
And even if the matter is true indeed
It has no practical consequence when examined.

So to sum up: you speak in code, preach, try to create intellectual stimulation, and the one who is supposed to listen to you is someone who already values you, and then you will grant him a great vision. But you are still not a guru, and there are not here (as far as I can tell) disciples of yours who will expound your words in forty-nine ways beyond reason and understanding until they find a way to connect to them with devotion according to their strength and understanding. Why not focus on specific arguments, given that the Holy One blessed be He has graced you with them, instead of essays about the whole world and everything in it mixed with incessant psychologizing? You target everyone who crosses your path with the claim of “lack of awareness”; allow me to tell you that a slight lack of awareness peeks out in you as well. You are apparently convinced that you have uncovered exalted, deep, powerful, and clear truths and built for yourself large speculative structures, brick upon brick—but apparently not everyone outside sees it that way. And when one goes out into the public domain, the legal tender is orderly reasons and careful inferences; that is the way of the world.

With God’s help, 7 Adar 5781

To Immanuel—greetings,

A warm and stormy temperament, “hot-temperedness” in my language, does not necessarily mean that there is here condescension for egoistic reasons as you claim. Are there not situations of “This young Torah scholar who gets angry—it is the Torah that enrages him,” as Rava describes (Ta’anit 4a)?

There certainly exists the situation of a person driven by great ideals, and therefore full of anger at a reality that does not accord with the great ideals whose realization he expects. Not only in Babylonia did they agree with this conception. In the Land of Israel too they expounded the verse “a land whose stones are iron” as referring to its “builders,” the Torah scholars, who must be hard as iron in order to build and shape the world in the proper way and not leave it in its miserable condition.

Nevertheless, Ravina concludes there that even though there is room for “Torah wrath,” still “it is preferable for a person to teach himself gently.” Ravina, as the seal of the Talmud, teaches us how to channel justified anger by formulating it in a style that will be “a word that is heard.” Thus the sweetened and processed anger will lead to rebuke in pleasantness and in a form accepted by its hearers and positively influential upon them.

With blessings, Simcha Halevi Fish”l-Plankton

Also a topic for a post. When I get the chance. 🙂

Moses our teacher begins his path with “wrath.” He sees an Egyptian striking a Hebrew and strikes the striker; he sees a Hebrew striking his fellow and rebukes the striker. Even when he flees to a place where he is “a stranger in a foreign land,” he “doesn’t take things lying down” and rises up against the local men in protest over the injustice they did to those weaker than themselves.

This is a good foundation for one who is to be a savior, but the ardor must find its completion in much patience. Moses understands this already when he sees that his own people, whose quarrel he came to settle, do not receive it lovingly but instead challenge him: “Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?” And he grasps that a long-term deep process still awaits the people before they will be worthy of redemption.

Deep processes of repair are not done in one quick bang. He will need decades of “internship” with his father-in-law, the great revolutionary, who went to study all the religions of the world and was disappointed by all of them. Jethro, the great knower of the human soul, is the only one who imagines that the Egyptian dressed in royal clothing who dares to “set things straight” forcefully in another land—is himself an exiled refugee whom one must invite “to eat bread.” A revolutionary recognizes a revolutionary…

And Jethro not only offers his guest “to eat bread,” but charts for him the way “to be baked and cooked.” To establish a family, and to train in leadership as a shepherd of flocks. Only after some sixty years, at age eighty, will Moses be found ripe to return to Egypt and redeem his people.

Moses will be sent to redeem precisely when he feels he is not the right man, and perhaps there are others better and more worthy than he. Here Moses stands the second test of leadership. A leader needs not only firmness and courage, but also patience and humility.

Later in his path Moses will combine the two traits—firmness and patience—when he comes down from the mountain and sees the calf and the dances around it. He breaks the tablets decisively and punishes the inciters and sinners severely, but with that same courage and firmness he also asks his God to act patiently and forgive the people for the great sin they committed, and he “bangs on the table” and declares: “But if not, blot me, I pray You, out of Your book which You have written.”

The leader of the people must be its great educator. On the one hand he must know when it is necessary to be angry and rebuke sharply, and on the other hand he must also be filled with endless patience and defend his people even if it seems that “all deadlines have passed.”

With blessings, Ami’oz Yaron Schnitzel”r

I kept quiet for many years and didn’t care about the outside world, but I no longer have the strength to keep silent (because I too am harmed by the lack of understanding of other people. And I am willing to pay the price of speaking in code even though I have no disciples. Wittgenstein also had none, and he too spoke in code; and just as Wittgenstein did not need approval and grades from those around him, neither do I need grades and approvals from you or from outside. Even if I look stupid before everyone, I don’t care. The main thing is that the words should settle on the heart like seeds and in a few years, or whenever, bear fruit. I am actually very aware of how I look, but as I said, I don’t care what people think because the overwhelming majority of people don’t think at all. They are creatures of instinct. Stimulus-response, stimulus and response. Therefore there is nothing there for me to care about.) Therefore the public domain is worth nothing to me. I despise empty intellectuals. And I have no patience to become a guru, nor do I see any honor in that. There is no honor in being a shepherd of sheep and goats, and that is what gurus do.

And I don’t understand: in my follow-up comment I already detailed and reasoned. Isn’t that enough for you? Was something unclear? Truly, I am losing the patience that I did not have much of to begin with.

I do not understand what you want. The ideals that drive Leibowitz and Rabbi Michi are not high ideals but childish ones. There are a million such angry people in the name of reality not fitting them, but they are completely infantile. And my main claim is that they are not self-aware (which causes them to fall into paradoxes and madness—to hate their own people and love their enemies), not about the anger itself. Leibowitz is not a young Torah scholar. The Amoraim were people of spiritual attainment who could revive the dead. He is not. He is an empty intellectual. There are a million such people, and it is not Torah that enrages them but their childish ideology. Many Haredi rabbis too are not driven by Torah wrath but by childish anger, and that’s all.

From what I have learned, emotions will always come to expression in bodily sensations, and in fact emotions are experienced as pleasant or unpleasant because of the bodily sensation they create. Experience, as described here, is found on a higher plane, less physical, and perhaps here there is an opening for identifying the two.

And if it bothers you how I compare myself to Wittgenstein—then really I do not need to. Because if I truly am such, then I do not need your approval for that comparison (and even if I am not such, I do not need your approval for that either), and I also do not need to compare myself to him at all, because then he is not so great (for then he is at my height, and maybe he needs to compare himself to me). And if I am not such, I only wanted to give an example of how someone can speak in code without having any disciples beforehand, and that one should address the content of his words despite their coding. In short, if you feel there is something in my coded words, continue and ask (and I think there is, since you asked something to begin with). And if not, and I am some self-important blowhard (all human beings are such, even without knowing it), move on.

I stopped commenting on this site long ago, mainly because I found the arguments with the owner of the site exhausting and unhelpful, and I have quite a few other things to do. (I also do not have time to read all the posts; I read some of them at random.)
But when I came across this statement, I was utterly astonished, since I recall reading somewhere in the holy writings of the site owner that he admitted he had never met Leibowitz and did not know him personally. Well then, I met him quite a few times and knew him. A “generous” person is not the last thing one could say about him—simply because one cannot say that about him at all. True, he was not a thief, a murderer, or a rapist (as far as I know)—but is that his glory?
In everything that concerned relations between man and his fellow, he was a low and contemptible person. I saw it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears. He simply enjoyed abusing anyone who disagreed with him—shouting, humiliating, trampling, and crushing—usually without any real arguments, only with cheap theatrical gimmicks. The weaker his position was in the face of his opponent’s, the cruder and more humiliating he became.
The claim that he traveled to every place that invited him is also incorrect. He chose his platforms carefully, and avoided as much as he could appearing in places where he feared he would be challenged. Thus, for example, he consistently declined invitations from the yeshiva where I studied (Ma’ale Adumim), where his sister, Nechama of blessed memory, was hosted, taught several classes, and did not hesitate to defend her positions against the rabbis and students. Isaiah knew that nonsense like “the Messiah does not occupy any significant place in Maimonides’ thought” he could say only before adoring female students at “Beit Hillel,” but in a yeshiva before Torah scholars those things would be greeted with peals of laughter.

A conceptual note:
The term “animal soul” means the psychic force that enables and drives motion. The root is “animation,” movement, and from this “animal,” a being with the power of movement, as distinct from a plant.

Contrary to what is common, or to the first association of the term, no derogatory statement was meant by this at all; it is first of all merely a factual classification.
True, an animal too has a “motive soul,” but Maimonides (in Shemoneh Perakim, on the donkey-like soul) argues—and likewise Nahmanides (in his discussion of the soul, whether it is made of parts or is a single whole)—that when man is involved, this soul-force too receives a different meaning. And since we know nothing at all about the life-force, about the essence of the soul, this is apparently outside the argument, aside from dealing with sources.

The use of the term “animal soul” as something on a lower plane—which Maimonides apparently uses in the Guide of the Perplexed, regarding the matriarchs, in the matter of sending away the nest—also does not come to disparage that impulse but to determine its place, and together with that to determine that this is not what the Torah intends.
The fact that emotion can also take on tendencies opposite to everything that is man’s glory does not negate emotion as an exalted, human, and unique thing, and even divine, in the style of the Song of Songs, on the side of the Holy One blessed be He Himself. It is hard to determine that the Holy One blessed be He “accepts” only our intellectual experiences as something elevated. Everything depends on how one does it. It can be essentially different from instinctive animality that has no self-awareness at all. When it is instinct, without awareness, it is something entirely mechanical, neither good nor bad, neither base nor exalted. When a person who has a soul acts mechanically, this is defined as disgraceful. But emotion too is not necessarily mechanical.

Why assume that emotion cannot be elevated to heights, and why assume that then it is superior to an intellectual experience, which in the end it is hard to know whether it itself is not one type of emotion, just in its elevated form?
As is no doubt known, the matter itself is disputed in Hasidism between Karlin and Chabad, and within Chabad itself, between the Mitteler Rebbe and the student who broke away, Rabbi Aharon of Strashelye.

The term “animal soul” is used pejoratively by the author of the Tanya, and that is when the animal soul is what leads the person. The mere fact that it exists is certainly not derogatory, and nobody says otherwise. A person also has a body and the capacity for movement. That is a simple fact. The same is true of what I argued regarding emotion. There is in it, in itself, nothing derogatory (and also nothing elevating). The derogatory aspect is when emotion leads the person.
As for the question why I do not see value in emotion, I elaborated in the past in several places. And this is not connected to the potential of emotion to take a person to low places. My claim is that conduct according to emotion is disgraceful in itself, even when it takes me in “positive” directions.

By the way, the opposite of instinct is not awareness but choice/decision. Awareness can also exist in a completely deterministic and instinctive creature.

Whoever wants experiences and emotions should take psychedelic drugs at music parties.

Whoever thinks he can simultaneously do something meaningful while having as his goal to reach an experience (that is, the goal is not the act itself) is just a pig, and one can only hope he achieves nothing.

One must distinguish between conduct according to emotion and harmonious conduct, of a whole personality.
The kabbalists who speak of intellect within the traits and traits within the intellect came to teach the possibility of harmony, and the points of connection, which are emotional intellect and intellectual emotion.
My question is: when and if the emotion does not “take me,” but rather I use it just as I use my car, which clearly does not “take me,” but rather I drive to a good place—what is wrong with using it? Why insist on going specifically by means of intellect alone, without the help of the legs or the car?

Agreed. That is what I meant.

If you can make sure it is like a car, then indeed.

With God’s help, eve of the holy Sabbath, “And they shall take for Me a contribution,” 5781

The article on Rav Kook’s proclamations to which I referred in my comment “Generous or hot-tempered?” is: “The Zealotry and Patience of Maran Rav Kook zt”l as Reflected in the Editing of His Proclamations,” by Rabbi Ari Yitzhak Shevat and Rabbi Tzuriel Halmish, HaMa’ayan, Tammuz 5781 (available for viewing on the HaMa’ayan website).

With blessings for a good Sabbath, Pedatzur Fish”l Pri-Gan

I just want to note that one possible motivation for your doctrine is anger and protest at the ignorance of most streams in Judaism. Focusing on an enemy that supposedly needs to be fought is a very good method for spurring people on..

Well, so it turns out that for the second time in a row, maybe in fact the rabbi is the one who doesn’t know what he is talking about and not me. This was also the case the previous time, in the post about Ruth Dayan. There I was speaking about the type that I know very well, and not necessarily about her. Though the presumption is that she is no different from all the others. In the end, if she is not deranged (in which case she is not an example of anything—that is, she cannot count as a good person in any case), then it is impossible to say of her that she is a good person. One has to understand how the two contrary traits live together. One of them is fake. One cannot just remain with a complex appreciation of reality and not continue further—one has to reach some decision, even a rough one. I thought to myself what would happen if Arafat had personally killed, God forbid, one of the rabbi’s children. Would the rabbi and his wife then continue to be friends with her? It does not seem so to me at all (and if so, then you yourselves are deranged and I have nothing more to say). So what is really happening here is that the blood of Jews whom you do not know does not matter to you. I am not accusing. It is not something one is born with. But still, that is the reality. And still, one should at least fake it, because “hearts are drawn after actions” (fake it till you make it). This is in fact the reality of the Left of this kind. Simply, Jewish blood does not matter to them. They got used to it in exile. They live in the society of gentiles (to whom certainly Jewish blood does not matter—the inheritance of their fathers, part of the general collective consciousness of the world), and then they look at themselves the way those gentiles look at them (the influence of environment).

And also regarding Leibowitz, beyond the ridiculousness in my eyes of claiming that the man deigned in his goodness to answer people who asked him questions (for otherwise in the end no one would have related to him at all), and that this makes him “generous” (when he listens to people the way the Lubavitcher Rebbe listened, we’ll talk), I too can collect stories about Nasrallah (and also that one of Hamas’s spiritual leaders who was eliminated about 15 years ago—I don’t remember his name—the one in the wheelchair) about how he helps the poor of his people. But in the end it is clear to every Jew whatsoever that he is not only an enemy—he is an evil person (a human beast).

Let’s just say I would prefer to walk rather than spend an entire ride hearing him shout in my ear?

Every word. There is a tendency to turn every schmuck into a righteous man who has come “to repair the world”; the overwhelming majority of them are seeking honor at best, or desperate for attention at less than best.

1. I think you are not interpreting the Eglei Tal correctly. Only someone who learns purely for the enjoyment is “not for its own sake”; the novelty in his words is that a person who learns also because he enjoys it is considered entirely “for its own sake.” He comes not only to reject the basic mistake that one should suffer in learning, but also the deficiency in the engine of joy. Simply, one who enjoys a commandment incidentally is considered completely “for its own sake.” (By the way, in my opinion there is only one place where there is a problem even with incidental enjoyment, and that is levirate marriage according to Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov, who holds that halitzah is preferable.)

2. And regarding the whole article, I would say on the basis of the same logic that a person who is moved also by the power of the animal soul to do good and not only because of the divine soul is the righteous person above the beinoni, even though according to your logic he is worse because he acts from a lower motive.
Perhaps you claim that it is unrealistic to use emotion and not be led by it, but precisely intellectual people have some chance of this, if they nevertheless develop enthusiasm for doing good.

What can you do—some received a car without brakes and some received one without a battery…

That is just dodging the problem. What does it mean that he learns for both reasons? Suppose one day he gets no enjoyment—would he still learn? If not, then this is learning not for its own sake, plain and simple.

And to that I will answer you the same thing as above

With God’s help, 11 Adar 5781

It may be that one should distinguish between emotionalism in both directions and emotionalism that is expressed only on the negative side. It is reasonable to assume that one who tends toward emotionalism—his emotionalism will be expressed both in enthusiasm over positive things and in rage over negative things. By contrast, indifference toward positive acts, while becoming agitated only over negative acts, is a less sympathetic trait.

And perhaps the attempt to suppress and negate positive emotion in the service of God is what leads to channeling emotionalism only into the domain of negation. After all, emotion is an inseparable part of a person’s personality, and when it is not directed into a positive channel, it will surface only in the negative realm—which is a pity.

With blessings, Yaron Pash”l Corinaldi

Perhaps the meaning of “learns for both reasons” is that both reasons are necessary but neither one is sufficient on its own?
He might not study without the enjoyment, but also without the commandment and only because of the enjoyment he would not study.
Because according to your via negativa, he also does not study for the sake of enjoyment, so what is a kind of study that is not for its own sake but also not not for its own sake?

And perhaps the Eglei Tal does not think that trying to reduce a person’s motives gives a true answer:
A person does not always know what would happen in an if-case. Perhaps on a day when he has no enjoyment, he studies because he knows the enjoyment will return? Since the future cannot be predicted from a single event, then when a person’s motives are mixed he cannot always (or perhaps at all) answer what would happen in a parallel universe in which one of the motives did not exist in him. A person only knows his present state, in which he has two motives, and about that he has to make a self-judgment and decide whether he is in an optimal state or not—and to that the Eglei Tal answers yes.

I see no point in hairsplitting with forced readings of the Eglei Tal. Simply speaking, it seems to me that he means what I say, but even if not—then I am saying it in my own name. When a person studies for both reasons, what determines whether it is for its own sake is whether he would study also for the sake of the commandment alone. If yes—it is study for its own sake. If not—then not. If it is the combination of both, then still the commandment in itself does not move him to study, so it is not entirely study for its own sake.

“Emotionalism” is simply the Hebrew name for emotionality. And it stems from immaturity (immaturity in itself is not bad; getting stuck in it is bad). In fact emotionality on one side also increases emotionality on the other side (the opposite of what you said. That is, one who expresses “positive” feelings, meaning enthusiasm, will not thereby reduce his “negative” feelings—hatred, anger, etc.)

Emotionalism is impulse, and a person is not supposed to be driven by impulses (like a passive leaf in the wind), because then he gives the horse within him permission to lead him. Rather the opposite: he is supposed to choose what the Hasidim call “equanimity,” in which a person moves by means of goals (the person within him, riding the horse within him, is the one who leads). Equanimity is pure intellectuality. But it is not indifference, nor even coldness. It is something else. It is a kind of quiet that has power in it. Quiet that stems from caring and not from indifference.

With God’s help, 12 Adar 5781

To Immanuel—greetings,

The ardor of youth is the “engine” that moves a person to renewal and creation. To believe that the world is fundamentally good, and that it is directed toward greater good. We only need to “get our feet moving” and act energetically.

The ardor of youth burns in two-directional emotionality. Revolt against evil and distortion, and great joy over every advance toward the good, even if it seems small. As the poet said: “Evil must be seen in order to fight it. The good must be guarded in order to be consoled by it.”

The ardor of youth is the “engine” that streams energy, and together with it are combined the wisdom and experience of old age, moderation and settled judgment, which show the way to give all the opposing desires their proper and balanced measure.

With blessings, Yifa”or

Yes (I know this ruling in Rav Kook). But this youthful ardor is ego (selfhood). It is basically something that gives the youth a sense of importance (and therefore his social standing in his own eyes rises as well). His existence has meaning. He is one of those repairing the world, in contrast to the feeble, compromising, politically calculating old men (whose inner youth was crushed by the complexity of reality). The problem here is that it is not that he serves the meaning (the goal, the ideology). Rather the opposite: the goal and the meaning and the ideology serve him. Therefore, the moment there are already many fighters for that same goal, the wind goes out of his sails (especially if they betray him), and he becomes old and indifferent. This is unlike a true God-fearer, who is a chariot for the Divine Presence and whose ego does not drive him; rather, he refines his ego, and therefore he never withers.

“Youths may faint and grow weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

To Immanuel—greetings,

Indeed the sense of “I” is very important. A person’s feeling that “If I am not for myself—who is for me?” is what brings him to great action out of the sense that “the matter depends on me alone.”

But as a person is aroused to act, he discovers that “if I am for myself alone, what am I?”, and in order to succeed he needs to connect to the collective, with the understanding that he is only one part of a larger picture, whose greatness and beauty lie in the mutual complementarity of all its parts.

Therefore every person gives a “half-shekel,” to teach that without his unique part, the whole is not complete; but his part is only a “half” that needs connection to and completion by another. The “I” of the individual expands and becomes the “we” of the collective.

With blessings, Ami’oz Yaro”n Schnitzel”r

Hello Rabbi,

Perhaps you will find interest in the saying of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Hayom Yom, 12 Shevat: “Intellect and excitement are two worlds: a cool and settled world, and a boiling and tumultuous world. And this is man’s task—to join them so that they become one. Then the tumult turns into aspiration, and the intellect into a guide in a life of labor and action.”

With God’s help, 13 Adar 5781

In the law of the “threefold Purim,” the distinction between intellectual motivation and emotional motivation in the joy of Purim finds expression. The intellectual insight that we arouse through the reading of the Megillah is unified when the fifteenth falls on Shabbat, for then all the Jews of the world, those in unwalled towns and those in walled cities, are united in the reading of the Megillah.

By contrast, on the side of the “emotional motivation” in “feasting and rejoicing,” one cannot mix the unwalled towns and the walled cities. Whereas the joy of one in an unwalled town is the existential joy of his city’s being saved from death to life, in the joy of one in a walled city the existential rescue is less prominent, since in a walled city the personal danger had been smaller to begin with.

The joy of one in a walled city is more refined and deeper. Not over personal rescue from danger, but over the raising of the nation’s prestige by carrying out “root-canal treatment” on the central focus of hatred that was in Shushan the capital. This joy is first and foremost a national joy over long-term salvation, and therefore it should not be blurred by mixing it with the joy of the private rescue of each and every city; rather, one should designate for it a unique “day of feasting and joy.”

All Israel share in the “intellectual motivation” of reading the Megillah, but they differ in the “emotional motivation.” These celebrate the personal rescue of their city, and those celebrate the general salvation that took place at the “center of affairs.”

With blessings, Yaron Fish”l Corinaldi

Paragraph 3, line 2
…that without his unique part…

You write that if it were possible to swallow an anti-rational pill, you would not recommend it, since it lowers the stature of man.
I do not fully understand this. Even when I walk on my own legs toward the Temple to fulfill the commandment of pilgrimage, I am using my body exactly as the peace-offering bull beside me does. If I take an anti-rational stimulant pill so that I will fulfill the commandment with alacrity and devotion, and all this because intellectually I understand that I am supposed to do so, then I am not performing the commandment because of the feelings, but because of the intellect by means of the feelings. Am I missing something?

I myself made that comparison. And still there is a difference between someone who is driven by his emotions and someone who uses other tools. When you hand yourself over to emotions, they can themselves take you to all sorts of places. It is a kind of loss of control.