Rav Kook – Perfection and Becoming – Lesson 3

This transcript was produced automatically by means of artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

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[Speaker B] After all, I’m the owner of something; I have the right to get rid of it, and then I’m no longer its owner. When I own something I have a share in it, and I can get rid of it, and then I’m no longer its owner. So what, before that I couldn’t get rid of it? Was I not its owner?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but you can get rid of whatever you want.

[Speaker B] But you’re not transferring ownership.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re dividing it, you’re not transferring ownership.

[Speaker B] As a parable, as an example of something where I want to grant rights.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re dividing it, you’re not transferring ownership. Fine. It’s true that before the division it was mixed together, but that’s exactly the question: do I go by… As for getting rid of it, the simple intuition, it seems to me, says that in such a case this is indeed an act of someone who has a partnership in the entity, because when you come to perform the act, you come to it as a partner. After you perform the act, it becomes separate.

[Speaker B] What I’m saying is that your connection to it clearly has to be considered before whatever happens in the act that already…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, and he says it goes by the afterward. Now, that’s one example. I think that here again, it seems to me that the root of the matter is not at all the state before and after. It’s the question of how I understand the act of division. Again, notice: I’m looking at the act of division. I’m asking whether a prince can perform an act of division as an agent for the members of his tribe. And notice how I test this. Immediately—you see, without even getting a sentence out—we immediately asked: wait, is it determined by the state before or by the state after? Maybe it’s neither by the state before nor by the state after, but by the character of the process that moves me from before to after. Maybe that’s it. We immediately analyze the dynamic through states, meaning: what was before and what was afterward, and right away a yeshiva-style conceptual inquiry is born. Do we go by the state before the process or by the state after the process? Why? Because our simple assumption is that there is nothing in the process except the state before and the state after. That’s the process: start with one state, end with state two. That’s the process. But if I understand that there’s something else in the process—the process is the root of the matter, it is the potential—then as a result of the existence of a process there is a state before and a state after. Now, one could expand here within the topic and try to understand why the process really is what matters and not the states, but I’m just bringing examples here so we can get a taste of it. Look at another example. In Kovetz Shiurim by Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman on tractate Gittin, he writes there—he writes: Rashba brought in the name of Nachmanides that the reason it is forbidden to free one’s slave is because of “do not show them favor.” You know it says, “You shall work them forever,” so one has to use a Canaanite slave for labor; it is forbidden to free him. If you free him, he becomes Jewish. But it is forbidden to free him. Nachmanides says this is because of “do not show them favor.” “Do not show them favor” means you may not give non-Jews a gratuitous gift; it is forbidden to give a gratuitous gift. Why do we need another source?

[Speaker H] Why do we need another source?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s a big question. I think he misunderstood Nachmanides. All the later authorities (Acharonim) engage in pilpul on this Nachmanides, but it’s clear that that’s not what he’s saying. What Nachmanides means is this: he discusses Rabbi Eliezer, who freed his slave in order to complete a minyan. So Nachmanides says that this is like “do not show them favor,” meaning that what is forbidden—namely, that you must work them and may not free them—applies where it is a gratuitous gift. But if you do it for your own interest, then that counts as making use of him for labor. I derive benefit from him in that he completes a minyan for me, like in the case of “do not show them favor.” He doesn’t mean that it’s not… But I don’t know, some later authorities for some reason decided that it really is “do not show them favor,” but that doesn’t matter right now. And the difficulty is this: there is no issue of “do not show them favor” except with a non-Jew and a slave, but not with a convert or a freed slave. Yet here, at the moment he acquires the gift—that is, the emancipation—he is already freed. I’m forbidden to give a gratuitous gift to a slave, but after I give him that gift he becomes Jewish, because a freed slave is Jewish. So I gave a gift to a Jew, not to a slave. So why does Nachmanides say it is forbidden to free the slave because of “do not show them favor”? Again, he defines the process through the prior state and the subsequent state, and then starts discussing: is it determined by the before or by the after? Here too, by the way, he goes by the after, as we also saw in the “some explain” of Nachmanides.

[Speaker K] And not by the potential for Jewishness that exists in a Canaanite.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the potential for Jewishness doesn’t help at all, because right now he is a non-Jew, and the proof is that it is forbidden to give him a gift as long as he is a non-Jew. The fact that he has potentials isn’t relevant. But here, since this very act turns him into a Jew, here maybe there is room to discuss it. And he argues that since afterward he becomes Jewish, how can you say this counts as giving a gift to a non-Jew? It counts as giving a gift to a Jew. The recipient of the gift was Jewish. Or in other words—and now I’m already formulating a kind of solution—I gave a gift to a non-Jew, but the recipient was a Jew. So that’s really what happened here. Now the question is: what is forbidden? Is it forbidden for me to give a gift to a non-Jew, or is it forbidden that a non-Jew receive a gift from me? If the definition is that it is forbidden for a non-Jew to receive a gift from me, then no non-Jew received a gift from me; the one who received the gift from me was a Jew. The one to whom I gave it was a non-Jew. So maybe, for example, that could be a possible explanation. All right? But these explanations matter less to me than this entanglement with processes, where we try to define them in terms of the state before and the state after, and our constant dilemma is whether the state before determines things or the state after determines things. But who said we should discuss this in terms of states at all?

[Speaker C] But even here, when you’re trying to solve the problem, you’re still not looking for the process but rather…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not clear—I don’t know. That’s what I’m saying. And yes, clearly, I think that too. I’m saying: we are compelled to think this way because that’s how we’re built. We think statically. But notice that all these problems of all different kinds keep touching on the same point. Now look at another example, okay? Maybe we’ll continue just a bit more. Think about it: if one gave a gift to a non-Jew that he should acquire only after he converts. I give a gift to a non-Jew, and he will acquire it after he converts. Certainly there is no prohibition of “do not show them favor,” because when he acquires it he will be Jewish. So what’s the difference here? That’s his question. And of course it’s not the same. There he acquires it as a Jew; here, when he receives it, he is still a non-Jew. After he receives it, then he becomes Jewish. Even his way of drawing the parallel is already in terms of states, because he grasps a process as nothing more than change of states. Meaning, he has to discuss whether this is like giving a gift to a non-Jew after he converted—but it’s not that at all. The same thing appears in another Kovetz Shiurim, in Bava, in Ketubot. Rav Huna said: a minor convert is immersed with the consent of a religious court. Right? A minor convert—we accept him; it is possible to convert a minor. What is this teaching us? That it is a benefit for him, and one may act to a person’s benefit even in his absence. You can confer something upon him under the principle of benefiting a person in his absence. An adult convert converts by deciding for himself; a non-Jew who converts decides for himself and converts. But what about a minor? A minor has no legal capacity; he can’t decide. We do it on his behalf under the rule of benefiting a person in his absence, as if we were his agents. Fine? So Tosafot asks there: this is difficult, for benefiting someone is based on agency. Conferring a benefit is just a kind of agency. That’s a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), but that’s the position Tosafot takes. And since it is a benefit for him, we are witnesses, so to speak, that he would appoint him as an agent. Meaning, since this is a benefit for him, you don’t need an explicit appointment of an agent; you can be someone’s agent even if he didn’t appoint you. Why? In the simple understanding because… yes, benefiting—but what’s the idea here? The idea is: why do you need an appointment? It’s obvious that he wants it. The appointment is only the expression of the fact that he wants you to do it for him. But if it only involves benefits, and there are no obligations and no dilemma, then obviously you want it. There is an “anan sahadi”—that’s a rule—basically an implied appointment. It is obvious that he wants you to be his agent, so no formal appointment is required; that’s what Tosafot says. So he explains the law of benefiting in absentia this way. So then: if we benefit under the law of agency, how can we confer this on a minor, since a minor cannot appoint an agent, as we say in “Which is Usury”? A minor cannot appoint an agent, so the law of benefiting should also not apply to a minor. And Tosafot adds: after all, he is still a non-Jew. Besides, this minor is not only a minor; he is also a non-Jew. And a non-Jew also cannot have agency. So this is a double deficiency regarding the law of agency. He is both a non-Jew—and a non-Jew cannot appoint an agent—and he is a minor, and a minor also cannot appoint an agent.

[Speaker G] Even with a minor, you can’t just assume that it’s pleasing to him, because if he has no will, then…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s exactly what this solves. Once it’s a matter of benefiting, then it means that for any reasonable person this is desirable. There are no downsides here at all, only advantages. Being Jewish is all advantage. That’s a big novelty in the Talmud here, but it doesn’t matter; this is discussed by the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) too—it’s not so simple. But that’s what the Talmud says. So given that, fine, then it can apply to a minor too. But formally, there is no agency for a minor, and no benefiting in absentia for a minor, and also not for a non-Jew. So he says: and Ri appears to say—the second answer, there are two answers, and the second one is important for our purposes—alternatively, since through this very act of acquisition for his benefit he becomes a Jew, he is considered a full Jew regarding this acquisition. The problem of the non-Jew and the problem of the minor are solved one way, but the problem of the non-Jew—how can I be the agent of a non-Jew? So he says: I am not the agent of a non-Jew. After all, once I converted him as his agent, now he has become Jewish, so this counts as being the agent of a Jew and not of a non-Jew. That is what Tosafot says. So Kovetz Shiurim asks: his meaning seems to be that the rule that a non-Jew cannot benefit through another applies only where even after the legal effect of the acquisition he is still a non-Jew—so that even after you performed the act of acquisition for him, he remains a non-Jew. In that case it turns out that a non-Jew acquired through someone else, and that is impossible. But in conversion, after the acquisition takes effect he is already Jewish, and the one who acquires is a Jew and not the non-Jew. This is a bit like what I explained above: who acquired here? At the moment I perform the act of acquisition, he is a non-Jew, but once I perform the act of acquisition, he becomes Jewish. Now you ask: who received the acquisition? Meaning, when he received the acquisition, who was the recipient? The recipient was a Jew. Fine? So once the recipient was a Jew, then it’s okay. And then he asks: but Ran, in the chapter HaShole’ach, wrote in the name of Nachmanides—he brings that same Nachmanides in Kovetz Shiurim on Gittin—that there we see that “you shall work them forever” is because of “do not show them favor.” And what do we see? According to the above, this requires examination, because once the gift takes effect he is freed. The slave, after all, is forbidden to be freed because of “do not show them favor”—that is his assumption. But when I free him he becomes Jewish, so if so, I freed a Jew, I gave a gift to a Jew, not to a non-Jew. So Nachmanides says we go by the initial state, not the final state. Kovetz Shiurim objects to him: why don’t you go by the final state? But Nachmanides claims no—this counts as giving a gift to a non-Jew, despite the fact that as a result of this gift he becomes Jewish. So how does he reconcile that with this second answer of Tosafot here, which says we go by the final state? First of all, I don’t know—questions from Nachmanides on the second answer of Tosafot? So go with Tosafot’s first answer. What kind of strange questions are these? Usually when you have an answer, great—ask the question, because then, you know, you’re setting yourself up and then you can give a good answer. But here he leaves it unresolved, so he doesn’t understand what the difficulty even is. What? Kovetz Shiurim? Yes. Fine. It remains unresolved. Yes, it remains unresolved, so “requires further examination” certainly doesn’t help. If you had a good answer, I’d be happy to hear it. But anyway, for our purposes, we see—I can reconcile this in a few ways. I think it can be reconciled in several ways, even within a state-based way of thinking. But it seems to me that behind all these difficulties sits the same point. We are trying to handle a process in terms of the state before and the state after, and all the time we do a conceptual split: is what determines things the state before, or is what determines things the state after? And then we get contradictions. Why here do we go by the prior state and there by the subsequent state? Maybe we go by neither the prior state nor the subsequent state; the process has a different character. The process is simply different. The question is: what is the purpose of the process? Similar to what I said earlier, for example. What I said earlier is basically the question whether the problem is that it is forbidden to give a gift to a non-Jew, or that it is forbidden for a non-Jew to receive a gift from me. And again, of course, that too is a static formulation, a formulation through endpoint-states. But basically it is a question about what process is taking place here. Meaning: what happened here?

[Speaker C] If we go with the camera analogy, frame after frame, then we have to examine what…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s what we do, because we work with cameras; we don’t know how to work any other way. So that’s why we get tangled in all these complications. I’m only bringing examples.

[Speaker C] So the dichotomy between the state before and after is…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly—it doesn’t exist. What exists is a process. But what is a process? This is the arrow paradox. At this instant it is standing here, at the next instant it is standing there—so when does it pass from here to there? Nowhere. It doesn’t pass from here to there at any instant. At one instant it is here; at one instant it is there. The transition does not take an instant. The transition does not happen at some point in time. It’s not that it stands here, then it moves, and then it stands there. The transition happens in the course of being in different places. Meaning, it’s not something that is between the two. It’s simply a different way of looking at the dynamic concept. I’m looking at the dynamic, not at the states through which the dynamic passes.

[Speaker B] As a solution to these difficulties, the Rabbi spoke about a process or about looking at points, but there’s another solution: that it’s simply not a process and not states either, but one thing happening simultaneously; everything is totally point-like. Is a process point-like?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A process is point-like—that’s exactly the point.

[Speaker B] A process is extended; it’s not discrete.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] At every point there is velocity.

[Speaker B] No, that’s exactly the statement. No, more than that—it could be that here there aren’t two endpoints at all. Even in a process there are endpoints, with continuity between them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But here there are endpoints. At first he was a non-Jew and afterward he was a Jew.

[Speaker B] Simultaneously—simultaneously it happens that he both receives and…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That doesn’t matter to me; from the standpoint of the time-axis, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m not talking right now… The time-axis here, for me, is a metaphor. It doesn’t matter. It’s on the axis of causality. He was previously a non-Jew, he received a writ of emancipation, and now he became Jewish.

[Speaker B] In this case it’s simultaneous, it’s not before; it’s not two events, not even a matter of time, causally, that there was…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rather, there are two different states: before, he was a slave; an act of emancipation was performed; and now he became Jewish. What do you mean? Even if you don’t see this chronologically—that is, as two different moments in time—maybe it all happens in the same instant, but there was still a causal process here. That is obvious.

[Speaker C] Something happened here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not certain there was a temporal process here, but there was a causal process. By the way, this is “his writ and his hand come simultaneously”; all these paradoxes are solved exactly this way.

[Speaker B] The claim is that there is a causal process here, but not a temporal process. Meaning, it’s not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but you still have to ask: who received? A Jew or a non-Jew?

[Speaker B] It’s a creature now, it’s a creature…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now he’s Jewish, but he was previously a non-Jew. That’s exactly the point. I’m saying: in other words, what you are saying is that one has to look at the process and not at the endpoint-states. Not that there are no endpoint-states; there are endpoint-states. But one must look at the process. What is the character of the process? What was the act of giving that the Torah forbade with respect to a non-Jew? So again, in our language we have no choice—we make analytical distinctions about it. What? Is it forbidden for me to give a gift to a non-Jew, or is it forbidden that the non-Jew be the one who receives a gift from me? But again, we are forced to speak in the language of states, in a static kind of language, and we don’t know how to speak about the act of giving itself. The act of giving itself is not directly accessible to us. We can look at it from here, look at it from there, and hope that we are also grasping it. But in a certain sense those are only approximations. In fact, the meaning of this is much broader than dynamics, I think. And that brings us back to what Rabbi Kook—with his poetic opening to this question of perfection and perfecting—yes, I brought there a few passages that sound a bit like poetry, where he speaks about the infinite somehow peeking through the cracks of the finite. We are looking here at the world as we understand it, but among these things—behind them—we feel there is something else standing there, something that is not directly accessible to us. What is accessible to us is how we perceive it, not it itself. Like with Kant, right? The thing in itself and the thing as perceived by us. And our way of getting to what lies behind things is through the things. There’s no way around it. So dynamics is only one example of this. Perfection and perfecting is the example he himself deals with. But the fact that he gives that introduction shows that he feels there is a much broader phenomenon here. We are trying, with our analytical tools, to deal with different ideas. Those analytical tools will not always really succeed in capturing the idea. Sometimes they are only some kind of approximation of the thing. It’s like—yes?—like the rules of language, which we’ve already talked about several times. Rules of language that don’t really succeed in capturing the language. You can’t really—someone who uses only the rules of a language and tries to speak the language just by applying rules like a robot won’t be able to speak. You can’t speak that way. And not only because every rule has, of course, a few exceptions, and besides there are things that don’t fit the rules exactly—and certainly he won’t be able to write poetry, and things like that. Meaning, the rules of language seem to me to be a good example of this: on the one hand, those rules are the best approximation we can give of language. But clearly that is not the language itself. Behind the language itself—behind the rules, sorry—there is something richer, more dynamic, something that does not fit into rules that I know how to define sharply. Now, we think in a static or analytical way, and therefore we are captive to this dissecting, dichotomous thinking: this or that, or rules and applications and mathematics and definitions, either here or there. And then we always get tangled with all sorts of things that don’t really succeed in capturing the point. Like the giving of the get. Look at the giving of a get as part of a language, a halakhic language. So we try to define it with some rules. But those rules will always be approximations. They will never be the thing itself. Now on the other hand, when we don’t understand the thing itself, the way to understand it is through learning the rules. Learning the rules is the ulpan through which we enter in order to grasp the thing. But we need to understand that the rules are the introduction through which we grasp the real thing. There are those who, yes, beat the stick—like the dog that tries to bite the stick. If someone beats a dog with a stick, the dog tries to bite the stick; it thinks the stick is beating it. So we latch onto the rules as though they were the thing itself, and that is a common mistake. And it’s not true. The rules are only the tool with which we can begin to approach the thing itself. And in that sense there is something, in life in general and of course in Torah and Jewish law, that our analytical thinking—defined, sharp, and also static within time, because that’s how we are—really has difficulty grasping by logical means. Now again, I am not in favor of contradictory statements, absolutely not—really not. Contradictions mean that it’s false. But I’m only claiming that logic is only a framework, a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. Meaning, it is a framework within which a great deal goes on beyond it. Someone who thinks that logic is the whole picture is simply mistaken. It is an approximation, not the thing itself. So in fact, maybe we can bring a halakhic example for this. The Talmud, in tractate Shabbat, discusses the holiness of a Torah scroll. And the Talmud says there, discussing whether the blank parchment has holiness too—not only the place of the letters. The blank area, the part of the parchment that isn’t written on, right? And the Talmud brings a baraita there in which a Torah scroll that was erased appears, and we see that it still has holiness. So there you go—we see that the blank parchment has holiness. No, what I meant was a blank area that was never written on, not a blank area that had writing and was erased; rather, the spaces in between or around—I’m asking about that. But in fact you see more than that in the Talmud there: you see that there is at least a possibility that the blank area has more holiness than what is written. Than what is written. There is a view there that as long as it is written, it is holy, and once it is erased, it is no longer holy. The Talmud says: once it was erased, its holiness departed. But the blank parchment that was never written on remains holy forever. Meaning, there is something more holy in the unwritten parchment than in the written parchment. Now ostensibly, we usually understand the parchment as something whose entire function is simply to carry the text. What other function does the parchment have besides carrying the text? And here they are basically telling us some kind of symbol, I think. They are telling us that what lies between the lines is sometimes much more significant than the lines themselves. Meaning, the Written Torah, on the one hand, is something very fixed—it is written, you can’t contradict it, everything is from Sinai, rigid, and so on. But after all, we all know that the Sages handle it very freely. Right? What is written there—you can do with it whatever you want. No one would touch a single letter in a verse; no one would change a verse. It says “an eye for an eye”; if someone writes “eye” without a yod, they’d hang him on a high tree. But “an eye for an eye”—in Jewish law we erase the whole eye. We don’t remove the yod; we turn it into monetary compensation for an eye. Done. But that’s what the Torah says—“an eye for an eye”—it is written as a fixed decree. So what? Meaning, the writing itself gives the impression of being very rigid, but in truth the Oral Torah handles it entirely freely. That means there is something here that gives the impression of being rigid, inaccessible, unchangeable—but what surrounds it, the blank parchment or what lies between the lines, is of course the Oral Torah. Yes, the Oral Torah is something whose greatness lies in its flexibility. Meaning, it remains holy no matter what you do; whether it’s written or not written—it doesn’t matter. Even though ostensibly it is empty, it is a vacuum, there is nothing there, nothing is written there—but everything is there. After all, what is written is nonsense—not nonsense, but what is written determines nothing. The blank spaces really determine what we do. The Torah says “an eye for an eye”—what do we actually rule in a religious court? Monetary compensation. Where is that written? It is written in the space between the lines. Between “an eye for an eye” and the line beneath it—that’s where it is written. Meaning, I think there is something in the space between the lines that is basically a symbol of the Oral Torah. And the holiness of the Oral Torah is not derived from text, and that is also why it was forbidden to write down the Oral Torah. Because in Gittin 60a, the Talmud says that matters transmitted orally you are not permitted to write down, and matters that are written you are not permitted to recite orally. Matters that are written—you may not recite them orally—that makes sense, because the Tur writes there and asks: how do we recite the sacrificial passages and the Shema? After all, matters that are written may not be recited orally. So what? Because they are fluent on our lips. You won’t make a mistake there—even if it doesn’t seem so—we say it every morning, so we won’t get mixed up. Meaning, you see there that the problem with reciting written matters orally is simply concern for error. That makes sense; no issue there. But why is it forbidden to write down oral matters? The reverse side is not clear at all. On the contrary—write them down, so they won’t be forgotten. During the days of Moses’ mourning—the Talmud in Temurah says—during the days of Moses’ mourning, forty days, there was mourning, and the Jewish people did not study Torah, and three thousand laws and seventeen hundred a fortiori inferences and verbal analogies were forgotten. Forgotten. Because they did not study, and it wasn’t written. Oral matters, if not written, can be forgotten, and we see that—we forget things. So why not write them down? The most logical thing is to write them down. No—it is forbidden to write them. Why not? Because if you write them, once again they become Written Torah. The whole idea of the Oral Torah is that it must remain an unwritten blank parchment. Meaning, it has to remain this kind of thing that moves around the edges. Like I described earlier, for example, in the topic of the get or in these topics—that’s exactly the point. Meaning, you can try to write rigid rules for what the giving of a get is. But they will never capture the thing itself. Why won’t they capture the thing itself? Because they can give you some rules that are approximations, but the thing itself is what lies between the rules. The blank parchment is the thing itself. The rules help you understand the blank parchment; they provide a framework within which you try to understand it. But the giving of a get is in what is not written in Kehillot Yaakov, not in what is written there. Kehillot Yaakov deals in a collection of negations. He says: this is the definition—this one doesn’t pass the test, so he throws it out; this definition also doesn’t pass the test; and that one doesn’t either. Fine—so none of the definitions pass the test. Why are you writing this section? In order to give me a collection of definitions, none of which passes the test? So why write it? You write it in order to… all those are Written Torah, all those definitions. And the Oral Torah is what remains in the blank parchment around them. After you understand that this isn’t right, and this isn’t right, and this isn’t right, perhaps you will remain somehow—with something you don’t know how to define or formulate completely—with the real thing, with the correct thing. And therefore I think this is one of the reasons the Torah says, “And now, write for yourselves this song.” From here they derive the law that a person must write a Torah scroll for himself. The Torah is called a song, right? True, that depends—there are two interpretations there in Sha’agat Aryeh. And it goes there—Maimonides writes, Maimonides writes: why—how do they derive from “write for yourselves this song” the commandment to write a Torah scroll? So he says: because one does not write the Torah in separate portions. Meaning, the Torah essentially commanded us to write the song, but it is forbidden to write one passage of the Torah separately. So since that is so, one writes the entire Torah scroll. Because you can’t write a passage separately. Obviously—but the Holy One, blessed be He, also knows that. So why does He say to write the song? He knows one does not write the Torah in separate portions. So Sha’agat Aryeh offers two possibilities. One possibility is that this is indeed true: the commandment is to write the song, and the fact that we write the rest of the Torah is only so that we do not violate the prohibition against writing the Torah in separate portions—but basically the commandment is to write the song. But clearly the more plausible interpretation is that this is the Torah’s way of telling me to write a Torah scroll. Meaning, technically I get there by way of the prohibition on writing the Torah in separate portions, but the Holy One, blessed be He, also knew I would get there, because after all He established that prohibition. Once He knows I will get there, clearly that is what He intended too. And therefore the Sages derive from here the commandment to write a Torah scroll. Now the only question that remains is: so why didn’t it just write it plainly? Why do it this way? Let it say: write yourself a Torah scroll. Why say “this song”? So there has to be some explanation here anyway, even if you convinced me that according to Jewish law one has to write a Torah scroll, and you convinced me that the Holy One, blessed be He, also knew that in advance, and if He said this then apparently it is a commandment to write a Torah scroll and not a commandment to write the song—but still, still you need to give me an explanation of why it is formulated in such a strange way. And I think the answer is that He wanted to say that the Torah itself is called a song. Not for nothing did they use that terminology, to tell us that Torah is equivalent in some sense to poetry. And in what sense is it equivalent to poetry? I think it is in the same sense I spoke about earlier. And here one could give an entire lecture on this; I won’t get into it. I think I once mentioned that in Parashat Beshalach—which was last week, it was—but a few years ago I had to speak here in Monkatsh; they asked me to speak on Shabbat Shirah, to give a lecture. Fine, so I thought I would speak about the concept of poetry. So the first thing I did was go to the Hebrew Encyclopedia and look up the entry “poetry”—how is it defined? There is no such entry. There is no entry for poetry in the Hebrew Encyclopedia. Amazing. I was stunned. There isn’t one.

[Speaker K] The Hebrew Encyclopedia or the Talmudic Encyclopedia?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Hebrew Encyclopedia, yes. There is no entry for poetry. There is an entry for literature; there is no entry for poetry. Now I looked a little in the literature entry, tried to search online a bit too for definitions of how poetry is defined—there isn’t one. They bring me all kinds of sayings of poets: poetry is foam on a wave and cloud and what they call ars poetica. You know, ars poetica is like writing by poets, writing poems about how poetry is written or about what poetry is. So they call that ars poetica. But of course that gives you nothing; it’s just playfulness, variations on the theme of poetry. In the end you’re looking for the definition—there isn’t one, you can’t find a definition. It’s unbelievable. I don’t know—again, I didn’t ask professionals and people who deal with this—but I always had the feeling that there is terrible laziness there. Meaning, these people sit there in whole departments, consuming entire forests in Brazil over all kinds of articles, and no one first defined the field itself. Define what poetry is. Now of course it’s hard to define what poetry is. Hard. What—how do you define it? It’s a very complex phenomenon. There are all kinds of types. How—how—since you’re looking for what is shared, how do you define what poetry is? It’s a fascinating lecture. After I suddenly grasped this point, I worked on it and tried to define poetry systematically. And I think yes—I think I got reasonably close to it. What?

[Speaker C] Did you present that as well—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, online I opened some thread about it there in “We Also Think”; we had some discussion about it there. I gave a series of lectures there on what poetry is. There were arguments, of course, as is the way of the internet. In any case, I think the problem is that there is a methodological problem here. And I think it’s very beautiful. After I conceptualized for myself the method I followed, I thought it was a general way to define complex phenomena. Meaning, in the end, first of all put before your eyes all the types, everything that is called poetry in one way or another. After that, be aware that concepts are not judged in terms of one or zero, yes or no. The fact that everything is called poetry doesn’t mean that everything really is poetry. Something may be fully poetry, something may be fairly poetry, something may tend toward poetry, a little poetic, more poetic. We call all of that poetry because, fine, that’s how we speak in everyday language. But when you want to define, you have to look for where the phenomenon appears in its purest form. And then suddenly you see that all the other phenomena, which are terribly confusing because they are all called poetry and they are different—the possible answer is: if you find the pure phenomenon of poetry, define it there. If you can isolate it, define it there. And then arrange all the others on the axis between it and prose, for example. For example, an encyclopedia is prose. Fine? A person simply writes the content of the sentences; that is what he wants to tell you. The meaning is just the literal meaning of the sentences. That is called prose.

[Speaker B] But even the phrasing—even someone who writes an encyclopedia usually also tries to formulate things in a certain way. He could write it in the driest, ugliest, least elegant encyclopedic way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, an encyclopedia is dry. Let’s take an extreme phenomenon, a pure phenomenon. A dry encyclopedia is prose. By contrast, poetry is what we call—this is not meter and not that, and therefore one can reject all the simple definitions—not rhyme, not meter, certainly no melody is required. None of that is required for poetry. So what is? What is it? Afterward someone took my opening post there in that thread, where I asked what poetry is—I was trying to hear from the crowd, maybe they would contribute something before I gave the lectures there, because I hadn’t yet given the lectures. And then someone took my opening message—this was very nice—someone took it, broke it up, put it line by line, every three words one under the other, built stanzas out of it, added vocalization marks, and it became a poem. Now it had no rhymes, no meter, but that doesn’t matter; there is poetry without rhyme and without meter, so it became a poem. So what does that mean? That once you vocalize and segment it, it becomes poetry? After all, that simply presents the question much more sharply, of course. In that sense he made a wonderful move, because he only sharpened the question. He was basically saying: look, you can make something—how can you turn such a thing into a poem? Meaning, whether it is possible at all to turn such a thing into a poem. Seemingly it isn’t possible, but look, I did it. So I think that in the end—and I’ll say this in just one sentence, because this needs more elaboration—poetry in its pure form is simply a text whose message is not the meaning of the words. That is poetry. Meaning: a text whose message is not the meaning of the words. Not only? No—not the meaning of the words at all. I’m talking about the pure phenomenon. Again, I’m examining the dry encyclopedia versus the pure poem. In the middle there is a continuum of things. What is a play? A play is a story with a somewhat more poetic dimension, right? It has something. In short, there are many literary phenomena, and afterward you can arrange them along the axis. Now once—if you manage to identify the two ends of the axis—that clarifies the whole picture. Because your inability to define it comes from the fact that all these phenomena appear before you: what do they all share? Everything is poetry, nothing is poetry—you can’t define it. But if you are willing to look at it not with one-zero logic but with continuous logic—meaning: this is prose, that is poetry, and all the other phenomena I will place in the middle as, say, 0.9 prose and 0.1 poetry. What?

[Speaker B] By the Rabbi’s definition, encryption is also poetry. Something encrypted, a cipher that uses words, a cipher that uses words, a cipher that uses words that are easy to read—that’s poetry.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, because I would simply define it differently. That code is basically just another language for writing the message itself; it’s only a language. What’s the difference between that and translating from Hebrew into English? If you know the code, then you know the language, period. Exactly, there’s no code there, there’s no translation. It’s not a linear translation. That’s exactly the point. There isn’t. It’s not—it’s not a translation. It’s not that a simple message passes through here and gets translated into some language; that would be prose. In one way or another, it doesn’t matter how it’s translated, it’s just languages. But here, that’s the point: it’s not another language. It’s the same language, it’s just written in Hebrew. Only the connection between the signifier and the signified is different. The signifier is tied to the signified not through the meaning of the words. When in a poem you read, “The streetlamp was pale.” So if that were written in an encyclopedia, then okay, I understand, meaning the lamp, the light, was weak. Okay. But if someone explained a poem that way, you’d die laughing. He’s not talking about lamps, not about lights, not about paleness, not about any of that. He’s trying to evoke in you some feeling that arises in you if you suddenly live through some experience of a pale streetlamp. I don’t know, some abstract kind of thing like that, and for each person it can also be something else. Meaning, pure poetry is the same thing: its meaning is not found—or its message is not found—in the literal meaning, in the meaning of the words. That is pure poetry. Now of course there are intermediate shades. There are poems that are a bit more poetic, a bit less poetic. Now you can start classifying things. Okay. Now this is of course a negative definition. But what is the message positively? That I haven’t defined. I said that the message is not the literal meaning. What is it then? I don’t know. Again, that’s a definition through negation of something elusive. And that is why Torah is called poetry. Torah is called poetry because these rules that we think are the Torah itself—they’re not. These rules merely tell us what the giving of a bill of divorce is not. And then what we’re left with in the end—that is the real giving of a bill of divorce. That very thing that we defined only negatively, only by what it is not. We don’t know how to define what it is positively. The dynamic and the static was only an example through which I demonstrated this, but it’s much broader than the relationship between dynamic and static. Dynamic and static are kinds of processes. But I’m now talking about kinds of thinking. Analytical thinking is static thinking. Non-analytical thinking—a poet thinks dynamically. He thinks not in an analytical way. So there are those who will say: fine, there’s no message there at all, because today “message” is a dirty word. In poetry there is no message at all. That’s not true. That’s not true. It’s that same despair. That despair that says that if the message can’t be formulated in words, then there is no message. Not true. There is a message that cannot be formulated in words. That’s what Bialik said—I once saw this somewhere, and afterward I couldn’t find it—that if I knew how to write it in prose, I wouldn’t write it as a poem. Meaning, this message I cannot describe through prosaic words. So I write it as a poem, and I hope it somehow passes over to you. And that despair—the despair that paradoxically assumes that meaning is only literal meaning, and everything else is simply completely subjective—that is exactly the despair that leads us to define nothing. And I say that’s not right. We need to move toward that thing which, true, we won’t manage to define positively, but the definition—and this whole advance is through entirely analytical means, the method is an analytical method. We have no other method. We need to think and define things all the way through.

[Speaker B] But that method always—but if we could see everything in that way, if we knew how to grasp everything as a whole, we wouldn’t need these definitions; it would be better. Obviously.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But then you wouldn’t be able to define it. You would grasp what it is. Agreed. But when I want to define, we have no other way. Definition always works in this way. So be aware that the definition and the thing are not the same thing. The definition is the best analytical approximation I can give of the thing. So analytical tools are important. We can’t do without them. But you need to—he talks about this in the book Two Wagons and the like—the difference between analyticity as a method and analyticity as an ideology. And analyticity as a method is a very important thing. I am very much in favor of an analytical method. It clarifies things, it sharpens things, it prevents vagueness. Everything is fine. But you have to be careful not to turn it into an ideology. The ideology says that there is nothing else, that there is nothing besides it. That is already not true. So that’s not true. In that sense, I think Torah is also poetry. Okay.