2019-04-22 – The Thought of Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel – A Law Given to Moses at Sinai – Lesson 2

Table of Contents

• [0:00] The relationship between language and content
• [2:16] The dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad about the Shema
• [4:01] Kol HaNevuah and the discussion of the sacred language
• [8:27] Speech as a halakhic act – vows
• [13:01] The essential connection between word and idea in Hebrew
• [15:06] Lack of concepts among a Brazilian tribe
• [16:25] The connection between a name and personal identification
• [20:37] Is thought verbal?
• [25:29] Auditory logic versus visual logic
• [27:00] Media: television versus radio
• [28:26] The distinction between the visual and the auditory in communication
• [29:43] A difference in interpreting black sheep – a physicist and a mathematician
• [30:44] Defining poetry as opposed to prose
• [32:45] The components of the Hebrew language: letter, vowelization, punctuation, declamation
• [41:06] The importance of declamation in interpreting verses
• [49:29] Totafot – the universal language of tat and pat
• [53:55] Academic research versus Haredi thinking
• [57:42] The inner and outer voice – summary thoughts

Summary

General Overview

At the end of the first part of the book, there is an appendix on the ways of language, on page 38, which states that language exists in order to frame content and to organize a person’s concepts for himself, not only to convey a message to others. From that, a distinction is developed between situations in which language is merely a carrier of content and situations in which language itself, the form of the utterance, and halakhic speech have meaning and real operative force. Along the way, evidence is brought from the Mishnah in Sotah, from disputes among medieval authorities (Rishonim) about the sacred tongue and the status of translation, and from examples of prayer, reading, and intonation, until the presentation of kabbalistic conceptions of language as world-creation and a discussion of the question of thought and verbality. In the end, this mode of thinking is connected to the figure of Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel and to a description of Haredi life as a stance opposed to looking from “the outside” and to systematic research, while Rabbi Gedaliah is presented as politically sharp yet intellectually open.

The purpose of language as a framework and an organizer of concepts

Language exists in order to frame content, to give content a framework and an ordered form, and it also serves the person himself so that his concepts will be organized and clear. Framing content is seen as something broader than merely a means of communication, because language enables the internal grasp and processing of ideas.

Things said in any language versus the sacred tongue

The Mishnah in tractate Sotah, in the chapter “These are said,” lists things that may be said in any language and things that may be said only in the sacred tongue, and from it it emerges that when something may be said in any language, the main thing is the content, and therefore the language matters less. When something may be said only in the sacred tongue, there is significance beyond conveying content, in such a way that the medium itself carries a message.

The dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad regarding the Shema

Maimonides, in the laws of the recitation of the Shema, writes that the Shema is among the things that may be said in any language, and he conditions this on one’s enunciating carefully in that language just as one would in the sacred tongue. The Raavad objects and says, “All languages are translations, after all, and who is there that can be exacting about his translation?” From this he presents linguistic precision as non-essential in other languages, whereas in the sacred tongue itself he accepts the need for precision. Precision in the sacred tongue means that the original verse carries something beyond its content, and that the very manner of saying it is meaningful in its own right.

Rabbi HaNazir, Guide for the Perplexed, and most medieval authorities (Rishonim) on the holiness of the sacred tongue

Rabbi HaNazir brings, at the beginning of Kol HaNevuah, a dispute between Maimonides and most of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) who disagree with him. Maimonides, in Guide for the Perplexed, defines the sacred tongue as a language in which no expressions were coined for the reproductive organs, and from this it follows that in his view it is a refined and modest language, but in essence it is like other languages in being conventional. Nachmanides and the Raavad, along with others connected to Kabbalah, disagree and argue that the sacred tongue has a special correspondence to the nature of things themselves, unlike ordinary languages, which are conventional and arbitrary. Sforno on “And she called his name Moshe” is brought as an example of the question of how a Hebrew name could be given when there were no Hebrew speakers, and the reading of the Zohar regarding the name Moshe and the deeper meaning intended in it is also hinted at.

Beyond essentialism: language, utterance, and action in Jewish law

The essentialist claim of the kabbalists is described as saying that the sacred tongue represents content in a non-arbitrary way, but even then its central role is still to express content, only in a more precise and essential way. Beyond that, another claim is made: that at least speech in general, and certainly also the sacred tongue, contains something beyond the representation of content, because there are utterances in Jewish law that are not statements addressed to someone but acts constituted by the very act of speaking. The declaration over first-fruits (bikkurim) is presented as an utterance not directed toward a recipient, and the expressions “Hear, O Israel” and “Kol Nidrei” are presented as examples in which the utterance carries charge, connotation, and a sense of holiness even when there is no full understanding of the content. Speech is described as an operative force in Jewish law: in a vow, speech brings the vow into effect, and the rule is stated, “Speech does not come and nullify an act; speech does come and nullify speech,” which teaches that an act created through speech has a different status from an action created through deed.

Language as an instrument of thought: the Pirahã tribe and personal names

An article is mentioned about a tribe in Brazil, the Pirahã, which uses a counting method of “one-two-many system” (one, two, and many), and it is described that the absence of numerical concepts harms the ability to perform simple mental operations even without any lack of talent. The example leads to the claim that the absence of a conceptual system prevents one from “working” with ideas even if they exist in some abstract way. Also brought is the experience of becoming acquainted with a person through knowing his name, where the very attachment of an arbitrary name creates a feeling of grasp and familiarity, and sometimes also enables the retrieval of additional associations and memories.

Verbal thought, the Rashba, Tosafot, and the Rashash

In Berakhot 15, the question of the Rashba is brought: how can Rabbi Yosei derive two laws from the same word? His answer is that they are one law, because when the main thing is the expression of the content, there is no importance to saying it aloud or to the language in which it is said. The Rashba assumes that thought is not carried out in language, and therefore there is no need to determine in which language to think. The Rashash on Sabbath 40 brings Tosafot, who forbid thinking words of Torah in filthy alleyways only in the sacred tongue and permit it in other languages, and he concludes that this assumes thought is verbal and therefore language-dependent. The Chazon Ish is presented as offering two possibilities for understanding this, and there is also a discussion of Antonio Damasio’s book Descartes’ Error on the question of whether thought is verbal or not, alongside a distinction between the ability to “speak in thought” and the essence of thinking.

Auditory logic and visual logic in Kol HaNevuah

In Kol HaNevuah, “Hebrew auditory logic” is presented in contrast to “Greek logic, which is visual,” and at the end of the book there are articles by Rabbi Goren and Rabbi Lichtenstein from an evening in the home of Zalman Shazar in honor of the publication of the book, with mention of Baron Ginzburg and their shared study. Hearing is described as deeper but less unambiguous than seeing, and seeing as something that creates a strong impression but may remain on the surface. Reading a book is defined as hearing because it is verbal rather than visual representation, and a comparison is brought between the Talmudic “come and hear” and the Zohar’s “come and see.”

Prose, poetry, and the representation of content in words

Poetry is defined as words that do not represent content in a linear way, but convey meaning through atmosphere, context, meter, and structure beyond the direct literal meaning, whereas prose represents content through simple verbal means. Literature is presented as lying somewhere between a dry encyclopedia and a poem, because in it the structure and stylistic choices are not merely a transfer of information.

The four factors of language: letter, vowelization, cantillation, declamation

Language is composed of four factors: the letter, whose pronunciation exists even without vowelization; the vowelization, which sets the letter in motion and is therefore called vowels, with a distinction made between the vowelization itself and the vowel signs; the punctuation of the cantillation marks, which determines the sequence of reading and the content, with “and they understood the reading” brought as referring to the cantillation punctuation; and a fourth factor, which has no full written signs, namely declamation, “declamatio,” explained as a Latin word given a Hebrew form, and it is said that one may borrow words from other languages because of a lack of linguistic richness.

Declamation, intonation, and the example of “And David blessed”

Declamation is described as having the power to change content even when the letters, the vowelization, and the cantillation are all precise, because intonation creates the language of question, wonder, irony, and the like. In the verses “Yours, Lord, are the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the splendor, for all that is in heaven and on earth,” it is argued that the correct declamation clarifies that “Yours” also governs “all that is in heaven and on earth,” in the sense of “for Yours is all that is in heaven and on earth.” On “Yours, Lord, is the kingdom and You are exalted as head over all,” the interpretation of the Sages is brought, according to which “and You are exalted as head over all” means that all appointments and positions of authority come from Heaven, “even the head of the well-diggers is appointed from Heaven.” From this, “Yours, Lord, is the kingdom” is interpreted to mean that every kingdom and sovereignty in the world is from Him. This understanding is attributed to a subtle difference in declamation, one that has no written signs and depends on understanding the content.

Totafot, tat and pat, and a universal language

A baraita is brought: “For totafot, for tatafet, for tatafet—here there are four, these are the words of Rabbi Ishmael,” and Rabbi Akiva says, “Tat in Katpi means two, pat in Afriki means two.” The difficulty is presented as the astonishment: does the Torah speak in the language of Katpi and Afriki? The answer given is that the languages of primitive tribes preserve a natural universal language based on sounds that mark a concept in a simple way. Tat is described as a doubling of a strong consonant that expresses “two,” and pat as a breaking sound that expresses change and division, and so tat and pat are two natural ways of expressing the concept of “two.”

Closing the circle: Haredi life, research, and Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel

At the end, the speaker returns to the opening about Haredi life and presents the mode of thought studied here as connected to the question of what Haredi life is beyond politics and current events. It is argued that a whole shelf of literature on kal va-chomer and on the hermeneutic principles by which the Torah is interpreted was written mostly by modern rabbis, while Haredim hardly engage in research and object to the very act of standing “outside” and systematically searching for rules and parallels. Rabbi Shimon Shkop, Rabbi Chaim, and their conceptual system are described as understanding “from within” without using outside techniques, whereas research requires distance, comparison, and criticism. Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel is described as someone who brings himself into the analysis, uses intellect “from outside,” demands conformity to human logic, and in that sense is “very non-Haredi” on this plane, even though on the political plane he is presented as extreme. An obituary in Haaretz for Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel by Tamar Rotem is cited, marveling at the combination of openness and extremism, and it is said that openness and extremism are not opposites but can both stem from deep acquaintance with what is outside and the formulation of a position. It is argued that Rabbi Gedaliah has followers, but they are hidden and lack a public platform, and that there was a struggle not to publish the book, while a book of his Torah novellae was designed so that it would look like just another ordinary kollel student’s book, so that “he would remain in the pantheon.”

At the end of the first part of the book—and here there’s an appendix on modes of language, on page 38—the point is that language exists in order to frame content, to give content a framework and an orderly form. Not only in order to convey content to others, but also for the person himself, so that his concepts will be ordered and clear. So that’s already a very interesting claim. To frame content—that’s something, really a much broader expression than just a means of communication. Right, it’s also there in order to organize our concepts for ourselves. Maybe in this context one could bring a Mishnah from tractate Sotah, the Mishnah in the chapter “These Are Said,” chapter seven. The Mishnah there lists the things that may be said in any language. There are things said in any language, and there are things said only in the holy tongue. And there too, it seems to me, you can see that the things said in any language are really about the content of what is being said. So it doesn’t really matter what language you say it in, because what matters is the content of what’s being said there. By contrast, the things said only in the holy tongue—clearly there’s something there beyond transmitting content. Because if it were only about transmitting content, then why should it matter what language you say it in? It seems there’s significance here to the medium is the message, as they say. Marshall McLuhan said that, I think, about electronic media. So here too, sometimes there’s a situation where the language matters not only as a device for transmitting content, but there’s something in the very expression of the things themselves.

There’s an interesting dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad in the laws of the recitation of Shema. Maimonides writes there that the recitation of Shema is one of the things that may be said in any language. So Maimonides says that one can say it in any language, provided he articulates it carefully, just as he would articulate it carefully in the holy tongue. It says, who can articulate carefully? What? It says, who can articulate carefully? So the Raavad—yes—objects to Maimonides and says to him: after all, all languages are translations, and who is the one who can be exact about his translation? In the sense of: what is there to be exact about in the language? The language in itself doesn’t—doesn’t matter at all. At the end of the day, when you transfer Shema into English, say, then what is there to articulate precisely—whether you pronounce the “th” or whatever in a certain way—what difference does it make? At the end of the day, what passes from one language to another is the content, so just say the content. But why is linguistic precision important? Yet the Raavad does agree that when speaking in the holy tongue—about that he has no difficulty with why one is precise. That’s interesting. Meaning, on the one hand he understands that preserving the content is really the point, so what does it matter now, the precision of the speech itself, so long as you convey the content faithfully. But on the other hand, all the languages are translations. Yet in the holy tongue itself, even the Raavad says that it is obvious, yes, that one must be exact in the wording. What does he mean? You see that he understands that in the verse itself of Shema, when it is not translated—the original verse—there is something in it beyond the content written in the verse. The way that content is expressed also has some significance. I don’t know exactly what, but it has some significance. It’s not merely a means of transmitting content.

And Rabbi HaNazir brings this at the beginning of Kol HaNevuah. He says there is a dispute between Maimonides and most of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) who disagree with him. Maimonides writes that the holy tongue is called the holy tongue because expressions for the organs of reproduction were not coined in it. That’s what he writes in the Guide for the Perplexed. And Nachmanides brings this and disagrees with him; the Raavad also disagrees with him in the introduction to Sefer Yetzirah, it seems to me, and Nachmanides on the Torah as well—they disagree with Maimonides and say that the holy tongue is the holy tongue because—each in his own style—it has some special fit to the nature of things themselves. Meaning, there is a difference between the holy tongue and other languages, because ordinary languages are conventional. That is, you can decide on whatever word you want—what difference does it make, so long as everyone knows that the word “book” denotes such objects, or the word “lectern” denotes such objects. As long as we agreed among ourselves, that’s the language. Language is ultimately something conventional, right. Kripke calls this baptism. You baptize a concept, yes, just like you baptize a baby. So can one say the prayer in English? Or another language? Shema? Yes. People don’t generally do that, and the halakhic decisors say that one who knows Hebrew should recite it in Hebrew, but yes, according to the Mishnah’s law, yes. What? Even someone who doesn’t know Hebrew says it. Yes, that’s actually more problematic, by the way. Someone who doesn’t know Hebrew—the halakhic decisors say that even if you don’t know Hebrew, it’s still fine. Another language, if you don’t know it, no. But Hebrew—like with the Megillah, you find such things too. But according to the Mishnah’s law, yes, it can be in any language. Meaning, that’s exactly the idea I said earlier: what needs to be said is the content. It doesn’t matter what language. If saying it in Hebrew is enough, then that means—yes, and again you see there’s something here beyond the content itself that is conveyed in these verses or statements.

In any case, Rabbi HaNazir says that Maimonides apparently assumes that even the holy tongue is only conventional, like all the other languages. So why is it called the holy tongue? Because it’s a more polite and refined language; it has no terms for the organs of reproduction, as he says. But Nachmanides claims that this is not the point. There is a language here that is different from the other languages. Nachmanides and the Raavad and all those who are connected to Kabbalah, who have some connection to Kabbalah, understand the holy tongue, the holiness of the holy tongue, differently. They understand that there is something in this language that is different from every other language. Other languages are conventional, but this language has some essential connection between the word and the concept it denotes. Something—I don’t know exactly what that means—but Sforno writes on “And she called his name Moshe”: she didn’t speak Hebrew, right? So how did she call him Moshe? So presumably that’s what they told her; she described the act, and then they told her that in Hebrew this is Moshe, from drawing him out. And then, look what the Zohar writes about the name Moshe—that she somehow aimed at great things precisely with that name. Yes. Fine.

In any case, indeed most of the medieval authorities (Rishonim)—or I don’t know, at least most of those Rabbi HaNazir brings—hold that there is something in the holy tongue that is not conventional, but essential. But even this essential aspect is still not what we were discussing earlier, because the essential aspect means that it represents the content in the best possible way. It’s not something beyond the content, but rather that with conventional languages I represent the content in a way agreed upon by all of us, so that we understand each other. In the holy tongue, I represent the content in a way that is not arbitrary, but there is some essential connection between the term and the thing that the term expresses. But still, at the end of the day, the language’s role is to express content. It’s just that the holy tongue does it in a non-arbitrary way. But here I’m saying something more than that. The claim is that in the holy tongue—or at least in speech generally, certainly also in the holy tongue, but in speech generally—there is something that is not merely representation of content. Not merely representation of content, but something beyond that.

Speech in Jewish law—sometimes there are things that require speech, or things that have to be said, and there’s a sense that the saying has some significance not in the sense that it conveys content to someone. You’re not even talking to anyone. You utter a statement. You don’t say it to someone. There’s also a difference between saying and speaking, right? If I speak—I don’t remember which is which—to speak is with someone and to say is just to say. Right? And to say is simply to utter. So there are utterances in Jewish law that are not utterances to someone. You recite the first-fruits declaration, mikra bikkurim. You recite the first-fruits declaration; you’re not saying it to someone. Meaning, you have to say a certain thing. So the question is whether here language functions as a carrier of content, or perhaps there is something in it beyond that. As when people say “Hear, O Israel”—the recitation of Shema—that many died with “Hear, O Israel” on their lips and things like that, so it has significance. No, clearly it has significance. No, but beyond the content—the utterance itself, the sentence itself, has some kind of… because it acquired that connotation of sanctifying God’s name or… Yes. And if he doesn’t understand? What? Even if he doesn’t understand what he is saying. But the very fact that he says it, he knows… Better that he say it in English. Wait, wait, go back for a second. He knows the meaning and the heroism. “Hear, O Israel,” everyone understands. What is it? Not necessarily, by the way. Not necessarily. Ask people what the literal meaning is. What does “Hear, O Israel” mean? Translate it for me. There are many people who understand that it’s something very holy and one always has to say it, but I don’t know whether everyone also knows what “hear,” “Israel,” “the Lord,” “one” mean. Right, not certain, but it has significance; he understands the connotation. Yes. A feeling of holiness, of something. Yes. Fine.

In any case, there’s Kol Nidrei. What? Yes, exactly. Kol Nidrei is a classic example. They open Yom Kippur with it, everyone trembles in fear, and all it is, in the end, is a legal technique of releasing vows. So why is everyone trembling there? So much so that, because they’re trembling, they don’t even understand that the vows are not actually being released—you don’t understand at all that what you’re doing is release of vows. They think it’s some holy prayer that is supposed to repair the gates of heaven. Fine, in any case.

The holy tongue having significance—meaning that this is the language God chose? Yes, that’s another thing they say, all the kabbalists—not only that God chose it, but, as it says, “Forever, Lord, Your word stands firm in the heavens.” The Holy One, blessed be He, created the world with ten utterances, and God’s utterances are actually the skeleton around which the world was created. Those utterances are still standing. It’s not some utterance for its moment that dissipated after being spoken; rather it stands there, and stands at the foundation of things. Rabbi HaNazir calls this the Logos; in the Greek concept this is what is called Logos, the intellect within things, as though it is really the utterance of the Holy One, blessed be He. So in that sense, that’s why they say there is an essential fit. Suppose you call a lion “ari.” In a regular language, if in English you call it “lion,” fine, they decided on “lion”; they could also have decided on “face,” I don’t know, whatever they wanted. But “ari” is not an arbitrary decision. There is something here that somehow hits the mark. This is even one of the indications of it—for example, in Hebrew some significance is given to letters. The basic unit is not a word, but a letter. Again, in English too there are letters of course, but there is no relation—I think at least—there is no relation where people search for meanings in letters. Letters are only the building blocks from which words are formed; that is, the words are the basic units of meaning. In Hebrew there are quite a few discussions about the meanings of letters. That’s in esoteric teaching, in secret lore. Yes, I’m saying, this belongs to the branch of the kabbalists, to a Kabbalistic conception. I’m not sure English has gematria. I don’t know, yes, I also don’t know. This whole approach to letters in general is something unique to here. And that again says that there is something in language beyond its conveying content. There is something here perceived as something beyond mere transmission of content.

So as I said before, this can be built in several levels. First of all, there are the claims of the kabbalists who say that the Hebrew language conveys the content in the best way. But that is still only conveying content, nothing beyond that. It conveys content in the best way because the fit between the word and what it signifies is an essential fit; it’s not just an arbitrary decision. Here I’m saying something more: there is something in language beyond transmitting content. So he speaks about our concepts being ordered and clear, and certainly language does such things, but it seems to me that even that is not the whole story. There is something, at least in halakhic references to things that have to be said, where there is something beyond ordering concepts. There is something in the utterance itself—the utterance acts in some sense. When you say, “I vow a vow,” then the vow takes effect; the speech effects the vow. The speech acts. It does not merely express something; it does something. There is a rule in Jewish law that speech cannot come and cancel an act; speech can cancel speech, but speech cannot cancel an act. Meaning, you see that something created by speech has a different status from something created by action. That means speech is not just the way in which I expressed something; speech is a working tool. It produces something, it creates, it creates a certain thing. It doesn’t seem that you performed your action merely to show in practice that you had firmly decided to do that thing. Yes, but the fact that a vow is also like that. Definitely, but that’s because you said it—that’s it, once you said it, it’s no longer just thoughts. So a vow can be dissolved by speech, but an action cannot. Speech cannot cancel an act, but speech can cancel speech. If speech is only an expression of what I think, then once they saw that I really meant it, the vow takes effect. Once the vow takes effect, why should I care that it was done by speech? So you see that something done by speech—the fact that it was done by speech says something about the thing. Speech is not merely a means to express what I mean; there is something in speech—it is the hammer and chisel. That is, with it I made the thing. It is the work tool, or the building blocks, if we put it better.

I once saw a very interesting article in Nature, I think. There was an article there about a tribe in Brazil, the Pirahã tribe—I don’t know how to pronounce it exactly—who have a counting method called the one-two-many system. That is, they have one, two, and many. Those are the numerals they have—the numbers they have. And the researcher who got there, who then wrote the article, gave them elementary exercises. He asked them, what is more? He put, I don’t know, five batteries here and eight batteries there. He asked them: where are there more? He said that most of them did not know how to answer him. Now they are not stupid; this is not stupidity. The moment you are not equipped with concepts, you do not know how to use numbers; you have not conceptualized the perceptions, which obviously exist within them. Afterward he taught them, and they understood; that is, they are no less talented. Rather, they don’t have the tools, so the cognitive system is damaged by that. You don’t manage to perform mental operations because you have no concepts for them. Often this is very interesting.

You see someone who is extremely familiar to you, but you don’t know from where. Then you ask what his name is. Moshe Yankel. Now I understand. You know nothing besides the fact that his name is Moshe Yankel; it’s just a name his parents happened to give him. What did you learn about him beyond what you knew before? Nothing. But now the feeling is that you know him. Because now you know his name. Meaning, there’s something there, even though attaching a name to a person is something completely arbitrary. You can attach this name or another. But I think this is everyone’s feeling: until you know his name, you don’t know him. You can know his parents, you can grow up with him from childhood, you can know what he loves and what he hates and everything; as long as you don’t know his name, you still haven’t grasped the thing itself. Even though attaching a name to a person is something completely arbitrary. There’s something here—again, yes, there is mysticism about assigning a name—but there is something in these assignments that seems arbitrary, and yet once they are made they have a very, very important role. By the way, often because of the name I then also remember where I know him from, and now I really do remember more about him than I knew before. Although if he had said to me, yes, we met in that place at that time, that wouldn’t have done it for me. But if his name is Moshe Yankel, now I remember that we met and… Meaning, there are times when the concept lets you grasp something better, even though what difference does it make? All you did was call him by a name. Nothing beyond that. But the idea of three, I assume, existed in some abstract sense also in the minds of that tribe there in Brazil, but until they called it “three,” they couldn’t work with it. Not only express it; they couldn’t work with it, couldn’t think by means of these terms. There is something in the conceptual system without which—what he says here—that the concepts should be ordered and clear.

By the way, I mentioned this once—there are two possibilities that come up in the Chazon Ish, but there is apparently a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) on the question of how we think: do we think in verbal language or not? In Berakhot 15, the Gemara brings a dispute among tannaim about recitation of Shema. And Rabbi Yose says that recitation of Shema may be said in any language and does not require articulation by mouth or aloud; it doesn’t require a raised voice. He learns this from that same place, from the same word in the verse. So “hear”—in any language that you hear—and make it heard to your ears; I no longer remember exactly. From the same word in the verse he derives these two laws. The Rashba asks: after all, throughout the Gemara the rule is always that if you derive one law from a certain word, then that word is already occupied; you cannot derive another law from it. Now you need to find another source for the second law. And that is what the Gemara always does with these calculations: what does he do with this word? And what does he do with that word? And from where does he derive this law that the other one derives? So how can Rabbi Yose here derive two laws from the same word? So the Rashba says there that these are not two laws; it is the same law itself. Because when you say that one can say Shema in any language, by that you have also said that one does not need to say it. Why? Because what you have actually said is that the saying itself is not important at all; what matters is only the expression of the content. So then, basically, if one doesn’t need to say it, that automatically means one can also do it in any language. What difference does it make? Because, after all, thought in any case, as he says, is not done in language. Thought is the ideas themselves; it is not their linguistic expression. So naturally it is obvious that it also doesn’t matter in which language you say it, if even when you say it. The whole point is only what you think, not what you say. So why should I care in what language you say it? Therefore his claim is that Rabbi Yose can derive these two laws from the same word in the verse because it is one and the same law, not two different laws. And from here later authorities infer that according to the Rashba, it comes out that we do not think verbally, that thought is non-verbal. Because if thought were verbal, then that is not true. If thought were verbal, then you would need to tell me in what language to think.

No, that’s not so. What? When you think—when you speak English, don’t you translate in your head, unlike someone who speaks English natively? What do you mean? I didn’t understand. When someone is a Hebrew speaker and he speaks English, then he thinks in Hebrew and keeps translating the words. No. Try not translating at all; just try thinking about something. In your mother tongue, whatever it is—think about something. Is that thought conducted by words, or what passes through your head is the ideas that the words express, but when it’s in the head it’s not in words; it’s the thing itself? Good question, I don’t know; an interesting question. Clearly sometimes we do, yes; sometimes we certainly think verbally. The question is, first, whether that is always so, and second—and I think this is the more essential point—whether that is the essence of thought. Meaning, I think what the Rashba is actually saying is not a psychological statement of fact about whether we think verbally or non-verbally. His claim is that once something takes place in thought, the verbality is unimportant. Meaning, even if you express it by words, what is required of you is only to think the ideas, not to use words. You may choose not to use words. Because if the words are important, then that usually finds expression in the fact that you have to say them. But if it is enough to think the thing, then even if you do it verbally, in essence you do not need to do it verbally. If you want, do it that way; but what you need is to think the ideas themselves.

And in contrast to this, the Rashash comments in Shabbat 40. There Tosafot discuss speech in filthy alleyways, and Tosafot say there that it is forbidden to think words of Torah in filthy alleyways, but that is only in the holy tongue. Other languages are permitted. So the Rashash says that this Tosafot disagrees with the Rashba in Berakhot, because this Tosafot assumes that thinking is indeed done verbally, and therefore there is a limitation in one language or another. I’m not sure he is right. I said there are two views in the Chazon Ish, where the Chazon Ish suggests both possibilities. It seems to me that the Rashba does not mean to make a factual claim about how we think, but rather that once something is done in thought, I don’t care in what language you do it—that is what he means to say. Because what I need is simply that you think these ideas. Why should I care in what language? Language has significance when you speak the thing, not when you think it. If it is enough that you think and you need not speak, then language is irrelevant; it is not important, even if in fact you think verbally. That is, I don’t think the Rashba necessarily says that does not happen. Later I saw some discussion—there is a book by Damasio, Antonio Damasio, a brain researcher, a psychologist, and he has a book called Descartes’ Error, and there he speaks a bit about the question whether we think verbally or not. Fine, this is a somewhat tricky question; one needs to define carefully what one means when one says “we think.”

Clearly we can speak in thought, right? I can think words, speak in thought—no one can argue that it’s possible to do that; obviously it is. But when we think about certain things, the question is whether we do it by means of words or not. And the moment I reflect on this, then when I think I’ll try to pay attention, so it will be done in words, because once I’m already focused on the matter, I think I usually express it in words. But a thought that just passes on its own, without my noticing—I don’t know. What? And many times it’s also images. When someone thinks about a sequence in chess, he doesn’t think about it in words. Well there it’s not such a novelty, because you have a very concrete image to think about, so that’s not a problem. But try to think about things for which you have no visual representation. There the question is—I don’t know—what happens there? It’s an interesting question.

In any case, that’s what he says: language is not only to convey content to others but also for the person himself, so that the concepts will be ordered and clear. Human cognition is connected to the senses; a person thinks in images. There are also non-sensory concepts—not chess, yes?—but they float. And a person tends to connect them to images and emotions. Language marks content with words. Instead of an image, an emotion, or some other content, we have a word that points to it. Meaning, this is Rabbi HaNazir’s book called Kol HaNevuah, and its subtitle is The Hebrew Auditory Logic. The Hebrew auditory logic—from hearing. And he contrasts it with Greek logic, which is visual. Now what exactly is the difference between visual logic and auditory logic? Logic is neither auditory nor visual; logic is logic. What does hearing and seeing have to do with it? At the end of the book there are several interesting essays, one by Rabbi Goren, who was his son-in-law, and one by Rabbi Lichtenstein. There was an evening at Zalman Shazar’s home for the publication of Kol HaNevuah, because he had studied with Rabbi HaNazir under Baron Paolo—well, from Moscow, I forgot. Baron Ginzburg, Baron Ginzburg. They studied together, Zalman Shazar and Rabbi HaNazir. So when he published the book there was an event. There they explain—I really don’t remember which of them sharpened this point—that sight is far more concrete, whereas hearing is deeper. Meaning, when you see something, it is terribly unambiguous, terribly clear, it makes a very strong impact on you. But in hearing there is something deeper than in sight.

This was in the Gulf War, when people saw the cormorants in the oil out there on the sea—remember the first Gulf War? They saw the cormorants in the oil, and the heart of the whole world broke, while meanwhile people were being killed there in the war. But when you see the image of the cormorants, you can’t—it grabs you. So there is something in an image that on the one hand is extremely powerful, and precisely because of that—not on the other hand, it’s the same thing—precisely because of that, it is somewhat superficial. That is, television is a more superficial medium than radio. Essentially it is more superficial because it captivates you. You are its captive. They always say something like: one picture is worth a thousand words. You don’t need to explain an idea; in one image you can explain everything. You can tell him stories endlessly and he won’t grasp it. No, that’s where I want to get. Come on—what do we say according to this about a book? When I read a book, is that sight or hearing? In my opinion, hearing. Of course hearing, right? It’s obvious that it’s hearing. Content in words. Because the representation of the content is verbal representation. You do not see the thing; it is not visual representation. It is representation by means of words. Therefore, in principle, reading a book is hearing. It is not sight.

So when they wrote down the Oral Torah, it still in some sense remained auditory. “Come and hear”—that’s the language of the Gemara. By the way, in the Zohar they say “come and see,” right? And in the Gemara it says “come and hear.” There’s a comment of Rabbi HaNazir, I think, that in the Gemara everything is “it was not heard by me”; everything works with hearing. Shemateta, tziluta de-shemateta. Everything is reports heard. That is, things that appeared orally. Now when they emptied it into a book, it did not become visual, because even the book is only a verbal representation of ideas. If they had turned it into a movie… Now even with a movie there’s room to discuss. If they show you the message straightforwardly on the table, they explain the message to you and simply film it, then yes, that is visual. But there are sometimes more sophisticated films. The message does not pass through the image in a simple way; rather, the direction, the positioning—there are things that come through the context, not directly through what you see. That already has a dimension of hearing, not of sight. Meaning, it’s some kind of thing… Therefore, for example, hearing—we can hear something that is behind a wall. But as for seeing, every partition stops it. Meaning, there is something in hearing that is deeper, even though it is less unambiguous and less sharp, but it is deeper. Meaning, in it there is… it grasps things more from within than sight does. Sight is captive to the surface. That is, what is on the surface is what you see, and often that is terribly misleading. Because you are sure you know, because I saw it—but you saw the surface. And therefore it… And it leaves a stronger impression because of that. Of course—on the contrary, that’s the problem. Because it leaves a stronger impression, and then you are convinced that it is also the correct thing, but you don’t understand that what you saw was only what faced you. Yes, it’s like the story—I don’t remember, there’s some famous joke—like with pictures displayed and glasses and standing on them and all that. No, about a physicist and a mathematician and I don’t remember who else, who see a sheep. They see a sheep or what? How does it go there? In Scotland. So he says that only the half facing us is black. Yes, that’s the mathematician, right, exactly. That is, one says: I saw a black sheep, so all sheep are black. The second says: I saw that there is at least one black sheep. And the third says: there is one half of a sheep facing us that is black. The half that faced me was black—that is what I saw. Okay, so that—okay. By the way, the last one is the hearer and not the seer, because he understands the limitations of sight, and so he puts it in its place. He does not draw further conclusions from it. The failure in sight is that what you saw, you saw; but when you infer from that to what lies beyond, that often becomes the failure. And if you stick only to what you saw and truly do not draw further conclusions, then on the contrary, you are more cautious. Okay.

Yes, also regarding poetry—we once spoke about this in Monkatsh—about how poetry represents content. What is the definition of poetry? Once I had to speak here in Monkatsh on Shabbat, parashat Beshalach, about poetry. So I looked up the entry “poetry” in the Hebrew Encyclopedia, just to read a bit. And there is no such entry in the Hebrew Encyclopedia. So I started trying to think, to search—there really is almost no treatment of this, no theoretical treatment. What is the definition of the concept? And in the end my conclusion was that poetry, as distinct from prose, is words that do not represent content in a linear way. When someone says to you, “There once was a lonely lamp at the edge of a neighborhood.” That’s not meant to tell you that there was a lonely lamp at the edge of the neighborhood—that would be prose. So if you read that sentence in the context of prose, you understand that there was a neighborhood and at its edge there was a lonely lamp. But if you understand that it’s in the context of a poem, then you understand that it’s meant to convey things to you through the words. It’s not the meaning of the words, the literal meaning. And when you represent content by simple linguistic means, that is prose; when you represent content not through the words in the simple sense, but rather through the atmosphere, the context, the meter—I don’t know exactly all those things—then that is poetry. So there is a poetic dimension, a lyric dimension, also in prose, obviously. Literature, for example—literature is not an encyclopedia. A good encyclopedia is supposed to be completely dry prose. It should tell you exactly what it means in the simplest words, and clearly you should understand exactly what it wants. Literature is not like that. In literature, the structure matters too; what you begin with matters; what you look at matters; what you describe matters. It is not just transmission of information. So that’s kind of prose and not poetry, but clearly it is something in between an encyclopedia and a poem. Fine, okay.

Language is composed of four factors that allow us to express content verbally. One factor is the letter. The letter itself has its own pronunciation even without vowels. A second factor is the vowelization that moves the letter; therefore they are called vowels, because they move the letters and make them audible in different ways. The question of when the vowel signs were invented does not interest us now, but it is clear that the vowels themselves determine the pronunciation of the word and are part of it. An interesting point, by the way, because he distinguishes here between vowelization and the vowel signs. And that is not the same thing. He says the question is when the vowel signs were invented—that is, when they decided to mark the kamatz this way. But the kamatz itself preceded the sign, just as the word preceded its writing. Fine. His claim is that vowelization is not this collection of marks. The signs are the visual expressions of the vowelization, but the vowelization is the movement, the kamatz—that is the vowelization. Okay.

The third factor is the punctuation of the cantillation marks. Here too it is not clear when people began using the graphic signs of the cantillation marks that we know, but what matters is that in reading, every word has a cantillation. And thus the sentence is punctuated, which determines its standing in the sequence of words and affects the content of what is being said. Fine. He brings the Gemara in Nedarim: “And they understood the reading”—this is the punctuation of the cantillation marks. So for now we have the letter, the vowels, and the punctuation of the cantillation marks. And the fourth thing—there is a fourth factor for which we have no signs, and that is declamation, the recitative rendering of the reading. Parentheses: the word “diklum” is a Latin word that was given a Hebrew form. I didn’t know that. There is declamatio in Latin, and “diklum” in Hebrew is simply a Hebraized inflection of that Latin expression. And he says we are permitted to do this—after all, he lived in Bnei Brak. We are permitted to do this. In biblical language there was certainly a root to express this concept—again, Bnei Brak—but we do not know all the riches of the language. We are missing many words, and therefore we may borrow a word from another language and give it a Hebrew form, like “diklum,” whose pattern is Hebrew but whose root is foreign.

There is some assumption that in the language of the Bible there must be, must have been, a word expressing everything. But you don’t see from where or why. Everything that existed in that period. What? Everything that was known in that period. Yes, but even that—I don’t understand why. Maimonides—why must that be so? What biblical language wanted to say, it said; what not—not. Again there is some assumption, on those little crowns of the letters, that Rabbi Akiva said this. Right, he gets to the little crowns at the end. Again, there is some specifically Kabbalistic assumption here—even though he was far from that—that if the world was created through words and letters, then there is nothing in the world that does not have some word from whose power it came into being. The word does not come after the thing; the thing comes out of the word.

But Maimonides writes in the Guide for the Perplexed that the Holy One, blessed be He, said—or that speech—he says it was not actual speech that created the thing, so there doesn’t need to be a word for everything. He even brings a proof there from Moses, where the Egyptian said to him, “Do you mean to kill me?” So he says: for everything you intend. Exactly—he says that’s what was running through your head. So he says that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world, and those utterances—just the thought of them created something in the world. Yes, but he doesn’t say—God has no mouth. I don’t know what the difference is between His thought and His speech. But still there is something there that is some sort of action, I don’t know, verbal, that He did. Whether it is verbal or only… No, it is thought, never mind, but still there is some action of expressing something that came into the world. Never mind that physical speech—it certainly was not.

In expressing or sounding verbal speech, declamation is of great importance. He wants to explain what exactly this fourth thing is, why it matters, this declamation, this recitative delivery. God says, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” He said it. Yes, but that is an anthropomorphic description. I don’t know if it is a historical description of what happened there—He said the words “let there be light” and then there was light. It is described to us that way because we need it, they speak to us in our language, so they want to tell us that God spoke. So they say He said, “Let there be light.” But that is a representation; I don’t know if that is what actually happened there. Just as in “I am the Lord your God,” when He spoke at Mount Sinai—there too I don’t know exactly whether there was an ordinary ear there that heard the words “I am the Lord your God” the way it is described in the Torah. It is not clear to me; I don’t know. There are even commentators who say that it just entered directly into their intellect; it was not really an acoustic wave striking their ear, but was inserted directly into…

In expressing or sounding verbal speech, declamation is of great importance. I can pronounce the letters correctly, the vowels correctly, and the punctuation of the cantillation marks correctly, and yet if I change the declamation, I change the content. For example, a questioning tone, a tone of wonder, a tone of irony, and the like. Great artists know how to declaim. Yes, I didn’t yet know—Dan Kaner and all those people, the experts among announcers. There is an art to broadcasting. That is, there is something there that one needs to know. Great artists know how to declaim what they read in such a way that one hears all the content latent in the speech. And they also found a few signs, such as a question mark or an exclamation point. These are exactly signs that belong to declamation. They are not cantillation, not vowels, not punctuation marks. A question mark and exclamation point are not punctuation marks; they are intonation. But that is something else; it is another linguistic function. Yet this is not enough compared to the abundance of possibilities. There is of course also body language; when you see a person, it is different than when you hear him. One of the arts of the declaimer—the radio declaimer, I mean, Dan Kaner, yes—is to convey all this to you without your seeing him. That is, the tone of voice, the intonation, because he does not have the whole body to do what an actor can do. If an actor reads something, then the body speaks as well. But if an announcer does it over the radio, then he must know how to convey much more nuance through the speech, because he does not have the bodily tool. He also needs a certain kind of voice. Hm? He also needs a voice. Yes, but beyond the voice, I’m saying, it’s not just the voice. I have a friend who once called my attention to something, and a light bulb went on for me: the great singers are not the singers with the prettiest voice. It is not true that a singer is simply a beautiful voice. It is the mode of presentation, I don’t know exactly, something else. There are many singers whose voice is nothing special, and there are singers who have a wonderful voice but don’t know how to sing—they don’t sing well. It’s simple—think a little and you’ll see. It’s not determined by the simple natural vocal quality.

Let us bring an example where we can distinguish between cantillation marks and declamation. Every morning in prayer we say verses from Chronicles beginning “And David blessed.” The verses from Chronicles: “Yours, Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and on the earth; Yours, Lord, is the kingdom, and You are exalted as head over all.” What does “for all that is in the heavens and on the earth” mean? Because usually “for” gives a reason. You do something because, right? What is “for all that is in the heavens and on the earth”? What does that mean? Here it is not understood how “all that is in the heavens and on the earth” gives a reason for “Yours, Lord, are the greatness…” “Yours, Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and on the earth.” What is the argument here? Why are greatness and power and glory the Lord’s? What is the “for” doing here? What does it have to do with it?

But if we declaim the verse correctly—and it is hard to hear this in the reading of someone who is not an artist in declamation—the words will be understood: “Yours, Lord, are the greatness and the power…” etc., “for Yours is all that is in the heavens and on the earth.” The “Yours” also applies to “all that is in the heavens and on the earth.” You need to push in the reading “all that is in the heavens and on the earth” back toward the “Yours,” even though we have already passed it. This is a certain rhythm in the reading that changes the meaning. The truth is, here I didn’t quite grasp his point; maybe I need to hear an announcer. What is interesting is that the interpretation of the verse is an interesting interpretation. I just don’t understand why he hangs it on declamation. That is, he claims: “Yours, Lord, are the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, because Yours belongs all that is in the heavens and on the earth; therefore greatness and power and glory and victory and majesty are fitting for You.” So the word “Yours” does not appear again. “Yours, Lord, are the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and on the earth.” But we need to duplicate “Yours” once more. We need to duplicate the “Yours” again; they simply relied on the earlier “Yours.” Fine. So now the “for” really is giving a reason: “Yours, Lord, are the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for Yours is all that is in the heavens and on the earth.” Fine? So that’s that.

You also need to explain here why “Yours.” Meaning? Look, everything there is in heaven and on earth—so greatness and power and so on are fitting for Him. Why? “For all that is in the heavens and on the earth”—what? Everything that exists. Because all that exists in heaven and on earth—what? Look at the sophistication, look at all these things—because everything in heaven and on earth is so sophisticated. What is “for all that is in the heavens and on the earth”? What a strange sentence. How does this sentence begin and end? It wants to say and show that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world. So let it say that. The sentence stops in the middle. Let it say: because if you look at all that is in the heavens and on the earth, you will see that it is so sophisticated. Therefore, Yours, Lord, are the greatness and the power. But that’s not what is written. “Yours, Lord, are the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and on the earth.” What? What is “for all that is in the heavens and on the earth”? “For all that is in the heavens and on the earth was built with wisdom.” “How manifold are Your works… You made them all with wisdom”—right? We have a verse like that; that I understand. But what is “for all that is in the heavens and on the earth”? What kind of sentence is that? “I love you because…”—I don’t know—“because you…” It’s a sentence cut off in the middle; say something. I don’t mind leaving me something to infer on my own, but the verse has to end on a linguistic level. How does the verse end? It breaks off: “for all that is in the heavens and on the earth.” What? But surely it has a continuation. Well? “Yours, Lord, is the kingdom, and You are exalted as head over all.” Fine? But that sentence stops here. “For all that is in the heavens and on the earth”—so what? After that comes “Yours, Lord, is the kingdom, and You are exalted as head over all.” Yes, but “for all that is in the heavens and on the earth” stops dead. So he says you have to duplicate “Yours” again. There are such phenomena; I once saw this. There are words not repeated again in the same verse because they rely on the earlier word. And that’s what he says: the “for” pushes “all that is in the heavens and on the earth” back toward the “Yours” that appears at the beginning. “Yours, Lord, are the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for Yours is all that is in the heavens and on the earth.” Fine? So that is the claim. What I don’t understand in this context is that it’s an interpretation I think is interesting, but I don’t understand how declamation does it. I’d have to hear once some declaimer explain to me how the declamation shows this interpretation. It’s not that I don’t know how to do it; I don’t understand, I can’t imagine how one does it. What kind of declamation would make that clear? I don’t know.

Now he says in the continuation of the verse: “Yours, Lord, is the kingdom, and You are exalted as head over all.” Again, what sort of collection is this—what is this thing? What is this sentence? “Yours, Lord, is the kingdom, and You are exalted as head over all.” “Yours, Lord, is the kingdom, and You are exalted as head over all.” What—“and You are exalted over all as head,” perhaps? Or what is “Yours, Lord, is the kingdom, and You are exalted as head over all”? Ostensibly the meaning is: “Yours, Lord, is the kingdom, and You are exalted as head over all.” But what kind of wording is this: “Yours, Lord, is the kingdom, and You are exalted”? Why does it not say, “and You are exalted”? However, in the Sages we find that the meaning of “and You are exalted as head over all” is different: every appointment, great or small, among human beings, all of it is from heaven. Even the chief water distributor is appointed from heaven. According to this, the meaning of “Yours, Lord, is the kingdom” also changes. It does not mean “You are the king”—“Yours is the kingdom” meaning You are king of the kingdom, the kingdom is Yours. No. He says rather that every kingdom in the world is Yours and from You. Every king in the world who rules over a kingdom—his kingship is from You.

And according to this, the meaning of the whole verse is as follows: “Yours, Lord, are the greatness and the power” etc., “for Yours is all that is in the heavens and on the earth”—he inserts “for Yours,” yes?—“for Yours is all that is in the heavens and on the earth; Yours, Lord, is the kingdom” of every king; “and Yours is the exaltation of everyone to become a head over anything.” Meaning, yes, just as “Yours, Lord, is the kingdom”—the kingship of every king comes from Your power—so too every exaltation of anyone in any office, in any role, even the chief water distributor, yes, even that really comes from You. This is a Gemara in Yevamot; I think the Gemara there discusses appointing converts to positions of authority. There is a prohibition on appointing a convert to positions of authority. And the Gemara says: even the chief water distributor. That is, even the one who distributes water. And they derive this from the king, because a king cannot be a convert, and then all other positions of authority also cannot be held by converts. So there too you see that perhaps the Gemara took this from that verse in Chronicles: after bringing kingship itself, it goes on to say that all forms of authority also function as a kind of miniature kingship. And just as kingship comes from the Holy One, blessed be He, so too all authority—even charity collectors, water distributors, I don’t know, the mayor, whatever—every person in his authority, all this comes from the Holy One, blessed be He.

Understanding the verse in this way depends on a subtle difference in the declamation of the verse, which pulls everything toward “Yours.” There are no written signs for this, and everything depends on understanding the content. Up to this point I agree: there are no signs for this, and everything depends on understanding the content. I just don’t understand how declamation would do it. I can’t understand how one could make this interpretation clear by declamation. What one can see here, though, is that there really are things you understand not from the simple structure of the sentence. That is, there is something beyond the collection of words and their order; rather, the meaning somehow expands beyond what the simple words, taken literally, express.

Now the last section—here he gets to “totafot,” yes? “Frontlets.” So he says: the rabbis taught: “Totafot,” “totefet,” “totefet”—that makes four, these are the words of Rabbi Ishmael. Rabbi Akiva says: no need. “Tat” in Katpi means two; “pat” in Afriki means two. Right? In the languages of Katpi or of Afriki there are the words “tat”—that’s two tets—and “pat” is two in African or Katpi, and therefore “totafot” is really four. Then he says: at first glance, the words of the Sages are puzzling. Does the Torah speak in the language of Katpi and Afriki? Meaning, the Torah speaks in a language that is not Hebrew? Why should I care that when the Torah says “totafot” it is tet-tet and pat? So the Sages say “tat”—the first tets—means two in the language of Katpi, and “pat”—simply “totafot,” tat and pat together make totafot—so “pat” is two in the language of Afriki. So what—the Torah doesn’t know Hebrew? Let it say what it wants to say: four. Let it say what these frontlets are. What is this tat and pat?

So he says rather one must understand that the language of primitive tribes is really a universal language. The less sophisticated the language, the more universal it is. A language created from sounds that mark the image or the concept in a simple and natural way. What is two? The word “two”—to repeat means first of all to do something again, right? To repeat is from two. To repeat something is to go over it again. In the army too, yes—fire again, shoot a second time. “Tat”—this is an example of doubling, of repeating a consonant twice. The letter tet is a strong consonantal letter, “tet,” yes? A strong consonantal letter, and repeating a consonant twice is called “tat.” That is “tat in Katpi means two.” But the concept two is also from change, not only from repeating, but also from changing. The one extends to infinity and lacks form. Form is created only when there are at least two. When a straight line is broken, there is a change; there are two. “Pat” is the sound of breaking a sequence. “Pat.” Like something breaking, yes—like a long stick broken in two. Parenthetically, even today people imitate the sound of breaking with a syllable like “pak” or “pakh” or something like “pat”—that is breaking. So it turns out that “tat” and “pat” are two ways of expressing the concept of two in a natural universal language. Two is to repeat, and two is to change. So “tat,” t-t, is to repeat, and “pat” is to break, to change something. And therefore he says that the tat and the pat are not in African and Katpi; they are in universal language. Those languages simply preserve it, but it is universal language. And the Torah uses here that universal language, and our proof that this is the universal language is the fact that it was preserved in this way in the languages of Katpi and Afriki. But it is not written in Katpi or Afriki; it is written in Hebrew, in universal language.

Fine. So this is really the end of the first part of the book. And actually I want to go back for a few minutes with what time I have left, to return a bit to the opening I gave at the very beginning. You remember I talked a bit about what Haredi-ness is, and why Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel was, as it were, Haredi, but not really. And here, ostensibly, we learned conceptual things. He didn’t deal with politics, with who to vote for, and whether to say Hallel on Independence Day. But I think that in his way of thinking, which we encounter here, one can see almost everything we talked about. That is, if we try to sum it up, he gives some kind of framework for all that we saw.

The outlook, first of all—it seems to me I told this once. The first article I wrote—the second actually—was an article on kal va-chomer, a fortiori reasoning. And I had some idea about the logical structure of kal va-chomer. And when I was searching, I went to Bar-Ilan to look for material; I was doing my doctorate at Bar-Ilan then. I went to the open shelf downstairs to look for material on kal va-chomer—that is, literature, what people say about it, what they say about the logic of it, about trying to put the matter into context. I found a shelf dealing with the hermeneutic principles by which the Torah is interpreted, and the amazing thing was that all the books were written by modern rabbis, from Mizrachi and leftward. There are no Haredi rabbis who wrote on this. Now that is very interesting, because it says that there is something in Mizrachi, let’s call it that—or not Mizrachi specifically, only as a representative; it is not only a political worldview, of course, and not even only an attitude toward redemption or toward Zionism, but a different attitude toward the world and toward Torah and a different way of thinking. There is something different here. That is, the search for rules of how things work, which among the earlier later authorities existed—but among us, once things are divided between Haredi and non-Haredi, Haredim almost do not deal in what is called research. They even have a kind of antagonism to research. Not always; sometimes it seems this is because of the conclusions of the research. But I think there is something deeper here. The fact that researchers come to various conclusions that are not pleasing in Haredi eyes—that’s true. But it seems to me that their antagonism to research does not start there. It works the other way around. Their antagonism is to research itself, regardless of its conclusions. Because there is something in the search for rules that says: I put everything on some logic that I can understand, on a set of principles for which I can also find parallels elsewhere. That is part of research, making comparisons. And Haredi-ness, Haredi thought, is not prepared to accept such a thing.

So how is Rabbi Shimon Shkop studied in all the yeshivot? Rabbi Shimon Shkop also did not do that. Rabbi Shimon Shkop… he did not do academic research. He did not make comparisons to other places. He did not—I don’t think it was research in the academic sense, though it is certainly closer. For research, you have to have sources from outside Torah. Exactly. Not only sources—you look at things from outside. Rabbi Shimon Shkop looks from inside. He looks from inside, and fine, he tries to decipher how the business works. Research, at some level, requires distance. There was a very large dilemma among the early anthropologists: is it proper for the anthropologist to live within the tribe he is studying, or should the anthropologist sit on the hill with binoculars and paper and pen and document, but insist on academic distance from the object of research? There are arguments both ways, by the way, definitely two sides. And there is something in Haredi thought—or classical traditional thought, I don’t know what to call it—that is from within. It is not prepared to look at things from outside. Not only can it not, it simply is not willing. It doesn’t identify with that. Exactly. You are putting it to the test, you are comparing it, and the next step is that you will also say whether it is true or not true. Criticism. It cannot be entertained. There is something there—you are not willing to take the position of an outside observer. You have to work only from within.

Even Rabbi Shimon Shkop, who is perhaps indeed one of the people closest to systematic research among the classic Lithuanian analysts—still, this is an inside view. Not only does he not bring sources from outside; the whole move is an internal move. He does not resort to outside techniques, not only to comparisons with other legal systems, but even the techniques themselves—nothing. He is not willing to do that at all. Even Rabbi Chaim, who invented a conceptual system and defined things, was a very analytical person—it is all concepts from within. Concepts like hefza and gavra are from the beginning of tractate Nedarim; the fact that he expands them and gives them much broader meanings, fine, but it is all from within. Because Haredi thought is not prepared to look at things from outside. And I think anyone who looks can see that religious people who are not Haredi, however religious they may be, are a little outside. A little outside. I know this about myself too. There is something—I am rooted in other worlds as well. That is, I look at things from outside, and I can also criticize, and I do agree and disagree. I’m a bit academic in that sense. I am not only inside trying to understand what… When I hear someone say, “What do we think about this,” I break out in a fever. What do we think? Tell me what you think; I’ll tell you what I think. “What do we think.” There is something there—that everything is the collective, and “Israel, the Torah, and the Holy One are one,” that sort of thing. Exactly. “Israel and the Torah are one,” that sort of thing. Ideologically, you are not willing to look from outside. It’s not that you are alienated from academia because it leads to bad conclusions and you may become a heretic—those are external things. There is something very essential there.

And in that sense Rabbi Yehuda Leib was very not-Haredi. Very not-Haredi. First of all, of course he knew other literature, spoke about it, and you see it here in the whole outlook. This whole outlook is the outlook of an intellect standing outside. He doesn’t draw his ideas at all from the sources he deals with. They are Talmudic sources, of course, but the mode of analysis is completely new. He relies on no one. Nothing interests him. He brings himself. He simply looks at the things and analyzes them and explains their logic. And all the time—this is what he writes explicitly, in many places—that everything must fit our human logic. Everything has to fit. This is the opposite of Haredi-ness in the strongest possible way. Because Haredi-ness in its essence is supposed to explain to you that everything must not fit our logic. If it fits our logic, then you are a gentile. On the contrary, the more righteous you are, the more you do things that are strange, not understood, not logical, not fitting with what a reasonable gentile or a reasonable person not obligated to this would do.

So in that sense I think there is here a demonstration that is not at all political and not at all current, but it demonstrates—perhaps even because of that, and precisely because of that—in a much stronger way where he was not Haredi, or what Haredi-ness really is. Through what he was not, you can understand what it is. There is something here. And therefore I think that all the “everything new is forbidden by the Torah,” and all those things that very quickly become politicized, have very deep roots. And they have far more ideological, abstract, philosophical roots, while the practical side is only the foam on the edge of the matter. They are not willing to see anything from outside, because “the whole earth is filled with His glory,” Torah is everything, there is nothing outside Torah. The conception of morality becomes different because there is no such thing as morality. What obligates in halakhic terms is morality—or even if there is morality, it is not morality. Morality is, yes, what is written between the lines in the Torah. But it is not what I bring with me from home, these natural feelings, what is called conscience. But he would not accept such a thing.

And in that sense he really was not Haredi, and that is very interesting precisely against the background that in his political worldview he was very extreme. He was very extreme, at least from the little I knew. He was extremely sharp against the way the state is run, and the state and all that. Once I met—at his lesson once, and that was actually the first time I met him—at some lesson of Rabbi Gedaliah, we sat there. He was an old student of Rabbi Gedaliah, and I had joined for about half a year with Rabbi Gedaliah, I’ll never forget. And there in the course of what he was saying, he said: “Well, that’s with you Mafdalniks, or your Rabbi Amital,” something like that. A Mafdalnik recognizes the whole thing, but he says it dismissively, he’s not… And this was when he was open; he was closed. He was an open extremist. That’s what I spoke about at the beginning: the article that made the light bulb go on for me on this point was an obituary in Haaretz on Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel. What obituary? An article about Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel when he died, by Tamar Rotem, I think—Tamar Rotem the writer, or the journalist’s daughter, I don’t remember—who had been Haredi and left. So she wrote there that she marveled: how could it be that a man who was so open and dealt with so many things was at the same time so extreme? And in my eyes openness and extremism are not opposites at all, as we discussed. Openness and extremism are not opposites at all—on the contrary. The more open you are, the more you can afford to be extreme, because you know what you are standing against. Extremism in a person who is not open is hysterical extremism; it is extremism out of fear of what is happening outside, what you do not know. Often there is a sense of inferiority, so you are extreme. And there is extremism that comes from acquaintance: I know what is happening outside, and I am against it. I formed a position, and that’s it.

Anyway, I think this is the point I wanted to sharpen, because the introduction seems unrelated to everything we did afterward, and I wanted to close that circle here. The introduction supposedly dealt with politics and Haredi sociology and so on. What does the whole passage we read have to do with Haredi-ness? It has a great deal to do with it. I think this is the focus of Haredi-ness, not the political and social aspects.

Does he have followers today in Haredi society? He has followers, but in their manner they are hidden in all sorts of places. They have no public platform; usually they also do not come out of the closet, most of them. They are not willing to reveal their being Nadelists. You know, I once spoke about there being two kinds of Chazon-Ishniks: there are Chazon-Ishniks who do everything written in the books of the Chazon Ish, and there are Chazon-Ishniks who do what they think, just as the Chazon Ish did what he thought. Those are the real Chazon-Ishniks. Those are the real Chazon-Ishniks. Now Nadelists too come in two kinds: there are Nadelists who quote Rabbi Gedaliah and everything they say is only what they heard from Rabbi Gedaliah, and there are Nadelists in the sense that they too do what they think, as he did. What both groups have in common is that both make sure to do it quietly. You mustn’t say it out loud, otherwise you get into trouble. Like Rabbi Gedaliah himself—he was rewritten. There was a war over not publishing this book; they fought against it, the whole family came out against it. They published some book of Torah novellae by Rabbi Gedaliah. You read it and say: “Fine, just another kollel fellow from some Ponovezh who wrote a book of Torah novellae.” They rehabilitated him, turned him into a standard yeshiva scholar so that he could remain in the pantheon. Fine.