For the Perplexed of the Generation – Lesson 2

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think it’s more than just whose nation it is. I think the wording Rashi uses is not accidental. Rashi says, “He gave it to whomever was upright in His eyes.” The Book of Genesis is called the Book of the Upright. “The Book of the Upright” means that it really comes to describe not only that the Holy One, blessed be He, has the right to give it to whomever He wants, but actually why He decided to give it. Why did He decide to give it specifically to these people? He decided to give it to these people because they were upright in His eyes. This is the Book of the Upright—the book of the upright ones, as the Sages expound. The book of the upright ones is really also telling us the reason why the Holy One, blessed be He, chose to give the land specifically to them. Meaning, there is some kind of moral teaching here, a teaching of a certain uprightness beyond Jewish law, and therefore there is room for additional portions beyond the halakhic portions. There is also—even Rabbi Kook himself, I once saw somewhere in his letters, he writes—I didn’t see it firsthand, I brought the quotation here—“I have not seen a great person like one who is engaged in Talmud and Tosafot.” In other words, there are all kinds of newer attempts to think that maybe engagement in literature of thought can also produce great people, without the addition of Jewish law, of course. So Rabbi Kook says no; this requires a kind of greatness founded first of all on halakhic greatness. After that, other additions are needed, more branches, but the basic greatness is halakhic greatness. There is a famous letter of Rav Sherira Gaon—not in the letter, I think he writes this somewhere else—Rav Sherira Gaon says that the aggadot are mere estimation. Meaning, some kind of thing that is not really unequivocal; it comes from the interpreter himself, not really the core of Torah, let’s put it that way—that’s the simple meaning of what he says. What exactly is the meaning of this matter? So maybe before I connect it more, I’ll describe one more empirical point—that is, simply to look around and see. There are very common characterizations today of religiosity in our time, and usually when we go around the world and ask what counts as a religious person, the main expressions of religiosity are perceived as morality on the one hand and religiosity in the sense of religious experience, religious feeling. That is basically what I think are seen as the central characteristics of the religious person, at least in today’s Western world. When you look empirically—and now I’m saying this without getting into the question of whether it’s good or not good, right or not right—first of all, empirically, it seems to me that in the Jewish world it’s not like that: neither morality nor religiosity. Now, when I say it’s not morality, I don’t want to speak ill; I’m not talking right now about whether people are moral or not moral, but about the question of how much importance is assigned to morality. I’m not talking now about who is more moral and who is less moral, but whether morality is really perceived as a basic religious characteristic. Like people always say, yes, someone who stole is a religious thief, but someone who eats non-kosher is not religious.

[Speaker D] There is a reference that the Rabbi makes to this in the article “Nehamat Yisrael” in Ma’amarei HaRe’iyah, where he says that in every falsehood there is a small measure of truth; you just have to set it at the right proportion. He says that the falsehood in Christianity is something true, but it’s an over-involvement in the details, and he says the solution—the point that Judaism comes to learn from this—is to engage more in aggadah and in philosophy, more inwardly. Okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, in any case, I think here too, in the sense of morality, not only in aggadah. There is, factually it seems to me, no—the morality and the religious feeling are not perceived as foundation stones of Jewish religiosity.

[Speaker A] So what about the Mussar movement? What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the Mussar movement? Yes, but even what it calls the Mussar movement is not only morality in the sense of interpersonal ethics. There is there some kind of morality of all 248 limbs, meaning there is something here even broader than morality in the ordinary human sense. It’s also being more careful in the commandments and also following the spirit of the matter. True, it also places emphasis on morality, but still, the very fact that it had to establish a movement—I don’t know—I don’t think that in Christianity you need to establish a movement on behalf of morality. Christianity as a whole is, in a certain sense, a movement on behalf of morality. Maybe it doesn’t always succeed so much, but there it’s not something where suddenly someone wakes up and wants to reinforce it—that is the thing itself. Once you—afterward, whenever I say this, I always remember: no, there is “and you shall do what is upright and good,” “you shall be holy,” lots of commands, lots, wonderful. None of them are really central, as is well known, and all the same this remains on the margins; and the fact is that you always need to awaken people to the idea that it’s not only the Shulchan Arukh but also the things beyond that and so on, because people understand that the Shulchan Arukh is basically the main thing. Empirically, even before the question of whether that is right or not.

[Speaker A] The Shulchan Arukh itself actually contradicts a great many explicit interpersonal commandments.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there are interpersonal commandments, but you fulfill them as commandments; you don’t fulfill them as a moral person. Yes, but the question is their relevance in the scale of weights. A person who cheats with weights—a person who cheats with weights, even though there is a section about it in the Shulchan Arukh—will not be perceived the way a person who ate non-kosher food will be perceived.

[Speaker C] And that’s certainly not what the Sages thought.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t think so. I think that actually is what the Sages thought. In just a moment I’ll get to that.

[Speaker A] There’s a lot here in the emphasis of the prophets. In the prophets you really find the contrast between formal religiosity—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but that is something ancient. I’m talking about Judaism in the later period.

[Speaker A] But Judaism moved far away from that approach because of Christianity.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, but still, the bottom line. There are many reasons, but the bottom line is like this. Now, there are also some justified reasons for this. Meaning, once too I happened to participate in some debate that touched on this point, and the basic claim that I think underlies this conception—and here I’m still inside these parentheses—is that when what Aristotle defines—how does Aristotle teach us to make a definition? A definition is to take the—I mean, if I want to define a human being, I say it is a living being that speaks. Right? You take the genus and define the species relative to other species. “Living being” is the more general genus, and the human species is distinguished from the other species included under that genus of living beings by the fact that it speaks. Okay? So in order to define something, you always have to define it through a genus and a property that distinguishes this species from the other species included in that same genus. And when I want to define a religious person, to define him through morality, I think that is a mistaken definition. It is a mistaken definition because morality is something I expect from every person. I expect every person to be moral. That’s like defining a human being as a creature that breathes. Almost every living thing breathes; that is not a unique property. When you want to define what really distinguishes a religious person from a non-religious person—and I’m speaking for the moment only on the logical level; this is connected to the question of what is more important—on the logical level, what distinguishes a religious person from a non-religious person? I don’t think it is right to place that on morality.

[Speaker C] Because there are religious people who will tell you that they don’t believe in morality, don’t believe that someone can be moral without religion. Which is totally not true, really not true—I’m just explaining.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I know there are facts in this matter, but there are many people who can choose not to believe in facts. Fine, and people are comfortable living in their own world, and that’s perfectly okay. In any case, if I could, I wouldn’t even believe that fact either, what you’re describing now—but I’m familiar with it. In any case, the claim is that I’m not talking right now about the principled importance. Certainly the prohibition of theft is no less severe than the prohibition of eating pork. But the prohibition of theft is something that many people who are not religious feel obligated by no less strongly. I demand it from everyone regardless of their religious faith. So automatically I cannot define the religious person by the fact that he does not steal. But I can define him by the fact that he does not eat pork—a religious Jew. For example, with regard to conversion this is a very significant question. The question is: what are really the things that are the true measure of a convert? So there are always these criticisms in recent years: what do you mean, you don’t care if he steals, you don’t care if he speaks slander, if he murders—but whether he eats kosher, that’s what has to be checked? Right, I actually think that’s true. Of course I care if he steals and murders. But the criterion, if I want to know whether this man has really decided to become Jewish or not—the criterion is not murder. The criterion is eating kosher.

[Speaker C] That’s just specific, like you can’t say—exactly, we just talked about how in America they define someone as Sabbath-observant. They don’t define him as someone who wears a kippah. Wearing a kippah is not a moral matter. Why not wearing a kippah? Because many very non-religious people—not everyone—wear kippot at work.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn’t ask which of the ritual commandments you choose as a definition; that can be a question of what the reality on the ground is. But it is not correct to take moral commandments. That is in any case not correct.

[Speaker C] You have to take—because other commandments too—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, and secular people do that too, therefore—

[Speaker C] That’s what I’m saying.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What, not? It is very principled, because basically the religious platform is not built on morality; morality rests on the human platform. Every person is supposed to be obligated to that. The fact that you belong to this specific group within humanity—you cannot define that through morality. That is not correct. It’s like defining a Jew through the seven Noahide commandments. It’s simply not logically correct. Again, I’m not talking about importance. Certainly “you shall not murder” is a much more severe prohibition than eating pork. No one disputes that. That is not the point. The point is a logical point. Morality isn’t logical?

[Speaker C] Fine, something that doesn’t define anything.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I define—

[Speaker C] Someone who doesn’t eat pork?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t define a Jew; it defines a Jew or a Muslim. Fine, so add to that also not eating creeping things and I don’t know exactly—

[Speaker C] That doesn’t say what is more important and what is less important.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say it tells us what is more important. I said it is a logical definition. It has nothing to do with importance. “You shall not murder” is more important, certainly, more severe, certainly. I’m speaking right now only on the logical level. But that is really just to close the parentheses. So there is something, first of all empirically, first of all factually, in Jewish conduct that is somehow more attached to the law, less to the spirit of the matter, morality, thought, what lies beyond. It is very attached to law. Judaism is a very, very law-centered religion. That same first Rashi we spoke about earlier. Now, what exactly is the point in this matter? So look at the page I handed out. There is a passage here from Nefesh HaChaim—this is Gate 4, I didn’t write it, Gate 4 chapter 6—and after that there are two chapters from the Tanya, the Book of Tanya. Seemingly two opposing camps, but the similarity between them is very great, although there are definitely differences. So Nefesh HaChaim writes as follows. Maybe before that, you know what, let’s begin with the Tanya. “And every divine soul has three garments, which are thought, speech, and action, in the 613 commandments of the Torah. When a person fulfills in action all the practical commandments, and in speech he engages in the explanation of all the 613 commandments and their laws, and in thought he comprehends all that it is possible for him to comprehend in the Pardes of the Torah, then the entirety of the 613 limbs of his soul are clothed in the 613 commandments of the Torah. And specifically the aspects of Chokhmah, Binah, and Da’at in his soul are clothed in the comprehension of Torah that he attains in the Pardes according to the capacity of his understanding and the root of his soul above.” Meaning, his claim is that thought, speech, and action all need to be bound up with Torah; each one of them must be bound up with Torah. So action is through performing commandments; speech is through explanation—that I study Torah, I study the commandments, so my speech is occupied with Torah; and thought is by understanding the ideas behind it. “And the qualities, which are awe and love and their branches and offspring, are clothed in the fulfillment of the commandments in action and in speech, and that is Torah study, which is equal to them all, for love is the root of all 248 positive commandments, and from it they are drawn, and without it they have no true existence,” and so on. In the end: “And although the Holy One, blessed be He, is called Infinite, and His greatness is beyond searching, and no thought can grasp Him at all,” and so also with His will and wisdom—you cannot grasp anything of the Holy One, blessed be He, because it is written, “His understanding is beyond searching,” and it is written, “Can you find the depth of God?” and it is written, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts.” “Concerning this the Sages said: In the place where you find the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be He, there you find His humility. The Holy One, blessed be He, contracted His will and wisdom into the 613 commandments of the Torah and their laws, and into the letter combinations of the Hebrew Bible and their expositions in the aggadot and midrashim of our Sages of blessed memory, so that every soul or spirit and life-force in the human body would be able to grasp them with its understanding and fulfill them, insofar as possible, in action, speech, and thought. And through this it will be clothed in all its ten faculties in these three garments.” Meaning, the claim is that what the Holy One, blessed be He, did was contract Himself into the letters of the Torah, the commandments, and the aggadot of the Sages and so on, so that we would succeed in cleaving to Him, grasping Him, because to Him Himself one cannot cleave. So He contracts Himself into these things, and when we engage with them and they are clothed in us and we are clothed in them, then in effect we are attached to the Holy One, blessed be He. One can bring a kind of midrash for this—the well-known midrash about Moses and the angels when he ascends on high and they ask, “What is one born of woman doing among us?” And then the Holy One, blessed be He, says to him, “Hold on to My throne of glory and answer them,” and then he says, “Do you have a father and mother that you need to honor them? Do you murder, such that ‘you shall not murder’ must be given to you?” Meaning, really, a wonderful answer. What did the angels think? What did they want? What did they do with the Torah before? So clearly among them there was some abstract idea that among us takes the form of “Honor your father and your mother” or “You shall not murder.” They dealt with the abstract idea. They have no father and mother, they cannot honor them, but this expresses some idea that presumably exists among them too, and they dealt with that idea. When the Torah came down below, this is what he describes here, the Holy One, blessed be He, contracted those abstract ideas into commandments, laws, letters, and words, so that we would manage to cleave to the Holy One, blessed be He, in thought, in speech, and in action. When we honor parents, or keep the Sabbath, or do not murder, or things of that sort, then our actions too are in some way holding onto the Holy One, blessed be He. That is the meaning of contraction. That is why the Holy One, blessed be He, contracts Himself into these things so that we will be able to be attached to Him. And then he says, “Therefore the Torah is likened to water: just as water descends from a high place to a low place, so the Torah descended from the place of its glory—from His blessed will and wisdom, and ‘the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are entirely one,’ and no thought can grasp Him at all. From there it descended, fell, and descended in the hiddenness of levels from level to level in the chain of the worlds, until it became clothed in physical things and matters of this world, which are most of the commandments of the Torah, all of them, and their laws in combinations of physical letters in ink on parchment—the twenty-four books of Torah, Prophets, and Writings—so that every thought would be able to grasp them, would be held by them. And even the levels of speech and action, which are lower than thought, can grasp them and become clothed in them. And since the Torah and its commandments clothe all ten faculties of the soul and all its 613 limbs from head to foot, then all of it is bound in the bond of life with God Himself, and the light of God Himself surrounds and clothes it from head to foot, as it is written: ‘My rock, in Him I take refuge,’ and it is written: ‘With favor You surround him as with a shield,’ which is His blessed will and wisdom clothed in Torah and its commandments. Therefore they said, ‘One hour is better…’” So just three lines before the end of the first passage: “And although the Torah has become clothed in lowly physical matters, this is like embracing the king, by analogy. There is no difference in the degree of closeness and cleaving to the king whether one embraces him when he is wearing one garment or when he is wearing many garments, since the king’s body is inside them. And likewise if the king embraces him with his arm, even though it is clothed within his garments, as it is written, ‘His right hand embraces me’—which is the Torah, given from the right, which is the quality of kindness and water.” So basically his claim is that when I embrace the king or when the king embraces me, even if he is dressed in all kinds of garments that contract him, this still counts as cleaving to the king. And the claim is that Torah study is a kind of cleaving. When we study Torah, we are in a certain sense holding onto the Holy One, blessed be He; He is clothed in us and we are clothed in Him, in thought, in speech, and in action. That is the meaning of Torah study. Maybe he expands this a little more in the next chapter: “A further explanation of the phrase ‘can grasp,’ as Elijah said, ‘No thought can grasp You.’ Every intellect, when it understands and grasps with its mind some concept, the intellect grasps the concept and encompasses it with its intellect, and the concept is grasped and encompassed and clothed within the intellect that attained and understood it.” Meaning, the thing we grasp and the grasping intellect actually unite; they become one unit. “And the intellect is also clothed in the concept at the time that it grasps and comprehends it with its intellect. By way of example, when a person understands and grasps some law in the Mishnah or in the Talmud clearly and correctly, his intellect grasps and encompasses it, and his intellect is also clothed in it at that time. And this law is the wisdom and will of the Holy One, blessed be He, for it arose in His will that when Reuven claims such-and-such, for example, and Shimon claims such-and-such, the ruling between them will be such-and-such. And even if this matter never happened and never will happen in court with these claims and demands, nevertheless, since this is what arose in the will and wisdom of the Holy One, blessed be He—that if this one claims this and that one claims that, the ruling will be thus—then when a person knows and grasps with his intellect this ruling as arranged in Mishnah or Talmud or the halakhic decisors, he thereby grasps and encompasses with his intellect the will and wisdom of the Holy One, blessed be He, whom no thought can grasp, nor His will and wisdom, except through their being clothed in the laws arranged before us, and his intellect is also clothed in them,” and so on, in short. What he is basically saying is that when we study some law in the Torah—an ox that gored a cow—we are not studying it necessarily in order to know what to do. Rather, the oxen and cows are the physical garment through which the idea finds expression: the will of God. God’s will is that when I claim such-and-such and you claim such-and-such, the ruling should be such-and-such. So when I study this, I am not learning what to do with two human beings, one claiming this and the other claiming that, and what I should tell them. What I am learning is actually a piece of divine will. Only if that divine will were formulated in the language of the angels—without oxen, without cows, without parents, without murders, without anything—it would mean nothing to us. We would not really be able to grasp it. So the Holy One, blessed be He, contracts Himself into oxen and cows and things of that sort. We are ostensibly studying completely prosaic things—halakhah, this one gored, that one, this one pays, and so on. Those prosaic things are garments within which the Holy One, blessed be He, is found. Then I can grasp them, and in that way I grasp Him—or He grasps me—from both directions. Okay? Meaning, the view of Torah is basically a collection of abstract ideas, and our world is only the mediation through which those ideas appear. Without the mediation we would not discern it. There are many things that without a mediation through which they appear, we cannot discern them. Here too it is the same. An abstract idea in the language of the angels—we would not know what to do with it. So that idea undergoes some translation, some contraction, into a practical language. In that practical language we can study it, understand it, internalize it, and also fulfill it. And this form is our only way of cleaving to that abstract will to which the angels cleaved in their own language, which was less contracted, less material. In our case it came down lower, it is more contracted, and therefore we actually succeed in grasping it more strongly. Therefore, in a certain sense, the lower we are—just a second—the lower we are, the more strongly we grasp the Holy One, blessed be He, even though it is more prosaic and lower.

[Speaker A] What is the difference between study and fulfillment—what is that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All of them. Fulfillment is connection through the limbs and actions, physical connection. Speech is connection through the power of speech to the Holy One, blessed be He. And thought is connection through the power of thought to the Holy One, blessed be He. That is exactly the point—it is a threefold connection.

[Speaker A] Yes, and that basically takes us away from discussing human life in cases of—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But why does it distance us? It’s the same thing. His claim is that the engagement—the goal here is to try to explain why the simple perception I described earlier, that Jewish religiosity is bound at the navel to law, to Jewish law—why it isn’t the ideas, religiosity, morality. The claim of the author of the Tanya answers that. He is basically saying that when you study a particular halakhah, you have grasped a piece of the Holy One, blessed be He, a piece of the will of the Holy One, blessed be He.

[Speaker C] You said that law too is law—what? Civil law too is law; reasonable things too are God’s will.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is God’s will. It is reasonable because we understand it, but it is God’s will. Fine, true, there are statutes and there are laws, but both of them all express some kind of will of the Holy One, blessed be He, and the purpose of study is cleaving to the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. That is basically the issue; therefore the importance of law. Now I’m moving for a moment to Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, who says something very similar, though there is nonetheless an additional point. Similar to an extreme—so much so that it is actually troubling. These are of course two books that are supposed to be wrestling with one another. “In truth, this is the true path that He, blessed be His Name, chose: that whenever a person prepares himself to study, it is fitting for him to settle himself before beginning, at least for a short time, in pure fear of God, with purity of heart, to confess his sin from the depths of his heart, so that his Torah will be holy and pure. And he should intend to cleave in his study to Him—through Torah, to Him, to the Holy One, blessed be He—meaning to cleave with all his powers,” yes, thought, speech, and action if we translate it, “to the word of God—this is halakhah. And by this he is cleaving to Him, blessed be He, literally, as it were, for He, blessed be He, and His will are one, as is written in the Zohar. And every law and halakhah from the holy Torah is His blessed will, for so did His will decree that the law should be thus: fit or unfit, impure or pure, forbidden or permitted, liable or exempt.” Up to this point the similarity to the author of the Tanya is simply amazing, to the point that I don’t know—it’s hard even to believe they didn’t see one another.

[Speaker A] Maybe a shared source?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Hm? I don’t know, maybe. But the conception—you remember, there are many such things—but to put this at the center and turn it into a principled conception, that nevertheless is certainly something from them. But now look at the difference. “And even if he is engaged in matters of aggadah in which there is no practical legal implication at all…” What is the question? What is the problem? Why does he need to make excuses that someone who engages in aggadah is also okay, so we shouldn’t be bothered? Yes, we are returning to the starting point: aggadah versus halakhah, yes? Why does that require explanation?

[Speaker A] It’s the will of God.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Meaning, he is now doing this at a higher resolution than the author of the Tanya. Torah is the will of the Holy One, blessed be He; He and His will are one. Since we cannot cleave to Him, we cleave to His will. That is what both of them say. But what is “will”? Up until the portion of “This month shall be for you the first of the months,” there are no wills of the Holy One, blessed be He. There are only stories. Stories are not wills. Stories are perhaps ideas, they teach us many things, help us respond to the nations, all good. But wills are expressed in commands. Therefore Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, the father of the Lithuanians, yes, basically says that the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, and He are one. Therefore, when we engage in Torah, for the same reason as the author of the Tanya, but the conclusion is different. The conclusion is that the focus is really halakhah, because halakhah is the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, and He and His will are one. Meaning, he continues the same direction of Torah study as cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He, but from his perspective cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He, means cleaving to His will, because He and His will are one, as is written in the Zohar, and His will is halakhah. Okay? Now he comes to explain what happens with aggadah. So is aggadah neglect of Torah study? So he says no, don’t worry, only half neglect of Torah study. “And even if he is occupied with matters of aggadah in which there is no practical implication for any law, he is also cleaving to the speech of the Holy One, blessed be He. For the entire Torah, in its general principles, details, and fine points, and even what a young student asks his teacher, all came forth from His blessed mouth to Moses at Sinai. As our Sages of blessed memory said at the end of chapter 2 of Megillah,” and so on, “‘Write these words for yourself’: at the time when the Holy One, blessed be He, was revealed at Sinai to give Torah to Israel, He said to Moses in order: Scripture, Mishnah, laws, and aggadot—yes, the aggadot too—as it says, ‘And God spoke all these words,’ even what a student asks his rabbi.” End quote. What is the answer? We had a difficulty, right? He and His will are one, so I understand that engaging in halakhah is cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He. So we had a difficulty: fine, and what about aggadah? So he answers—what does he answer?

[Speaker A] The speech of the Holy One, blessed be He. In order to cleave to the Holy One, blessed be He. How? Exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not will, it’s speech. Halakhah is God’s will, and aggadah or other things are the word of God. It’s speech. He said it. Once the Holy One, blessed be He, said it, when we engage in it we cleave to His speech. Now let’s do a simple calculation. Clearly the commandments too were spoken by the Holy One, blessed be He, right? Meaning that someone who engages in commandments is cleaving both to the speech of the Holy One, blessed be He, and to His will. But someone who engages in aggadot or in things that are not halakhah is engaged only with His speech, cleaving only to His speech and not to His will. So there you have the Lithuanian conception that really sees the focus in halakhic study, because that is the true cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He, even though it is the lowest thing, the most prosaic matters—oxen, cows, amniotic sac and placenta. But this is the greatest cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He. Like the author of the Tanya, with one more step, because this is cleaving to the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, as distinct from cleaving to His speech. And engagement in aggadah is cleaving to His speech. And the Holy One, blessed be He, did this so that the other things too would receive some status as Torah, so that one who engages in them would also have some kind of cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He. Now look at the continuation.

[Speaker A] What? The author of the Tanya says that too? Yes. That at the beginning, when you find the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, there you elevate the content of the Holy One, blessed be He—His will and wisdom—the 613 Torah-level commandments and the 613 letters of the Torah. Well, and at the end, that in the aggadot hidden secrets are concealed there, and the end of the whole soul is the essence of God, of Atzilut, and he also mentions that aggadot… Exactly, so he doesn’t distinguish.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] His will and wisdom are the same thing. He does not place emphasis on His will; it’s all wisdom. His will and wisdom are almost synonymous terms. Yes, but he does not make the ranking. He’s a Hasid, not a Lithuanian. There is no ranking. No ranking—on the contrary. If anything, then the ranking is the opposite, that there hidden lofty secrets are concealed, and so on. And with the Lithuanian, you go low. You go low, and there you grab the Holy One, blessed be He, by the throat, yes? You seize Him as closely as possible. Because He came down low. If He is high, it is hard to grasp Him. Okay? That is basically the subtle difference, although they are moving on the same track. Now look how he continues. “And not only that, but even at the very moment when a person engages in Torah below, every word he utters from his mouth, those very words are, as it were, also coming out from His blessed mouth at that very moment.” Not only did He say it then to Moses our teacher, but when I engage in it now, the Holy One, blessed be He, is speaking it in parallel with me. As stated in the first chapter of Gittin, the passage we brought last time, regarding the concubine in Gibeah: “And his concubine played the harlot against him.” Rabbi Evyatar said, he found a fly on her; Rabbi Yonatan said, he found a hair on her. “Rabbi Evyatar encountered Elijah. He said to him: What is the Holy One, blessed be He, doing? He said to him: He is engaged in the matter of the concubine in Gibeah.” Unbelievable. “And what is He saying? ‘My son Evyatar says thus; My son Yonatan says thus.’” And this was because Rabbi Evyatar and Rabbi Yonatan were engaged with each other in the matter of the concubine in Gibeah, so at that same time He, blessed be He, was also repeating their words exactly. “And He, blessed be His Name, and His speech are one.” Not His will—above he spoke of His Name and His will—but “He, blessed be His Name, and His speech are one.” So they are speaking—“My son Yonatan says thus, my son Evyatar says thus”—and the Holy One, blessed be He, says it together with them. Meaning, the speech of the Holy One, blessed be He, is an alternative means of cleaving to Him. This is of course an aggadic topic, the concubine in Gibeah, so we are actually engaged in cleaving to the speech of the Holy One, blessed be He. Now look at the continuation. And as stated explicitly in the holy Torah, in Deuteronomy—no, the continuation of the Talmud before that. What is the continuation of the Talmud? So he says to him: Heaven forbid, can there be doubt before Heaven? He said to him: No, “these and those are the words of the living God.” He found a fly and did not mind; he found a hair and did mind. Notice: “these and those are the words of the living God.” “The words of the living God” means that He said this and He said that. Meaning, therefore both are Torah. I think we mentioned this Talmudic passage a little last time in another context, “these and those are the words of the living God,” but here it seems to me there is a different focus, or a somewhat different angle, on the continuation of the passage. “These and those,” because truly with the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, either He wants this or He wants that; He cannot want both this and its opposite. So what does “these and those are the words of the living God” mean? In the halakhic context we have to create all kinds of rather sophisticated structures in order to try to understand how this happens, how a will and its opposite both become “the words of the living God.” But in speech, “the words of the living God,” there is no problem at all. “These and those are the words of the living God”—He said it, He studied the passage like Rabbi Evyatar, He studied the passage like Rabbi Yonatan. These are aggadic matters; they do not pertain to practice. Ideas stand behind them, ideas; both ideas are true. “These and those are the words of the living God.” Therefore this is cleaving to the speech of the Holy One, blessed be He, and not to His will.

[Speaker A] Amazing—and what an idea. What? That it’s because of a fly and a hair or something like that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, what the idea is there is a question I don’t know how to answer.

[Speaker A] That needs thought. But it says that before that there was… what did I understand?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So there is some idea behind it there, otherwise why study it?

[Speaker A] I don’t know, so it needs analysis.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Later we can think about what the idea was; not important right now, it—

[Speaker A] Isn’t this conceptualizing the Holy One, blessed be He? This whole approach?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes—well, actually I don’t think so.

[Speaker C] What I mean is the “why were they attached specifically to this?” and what is special about it. Well, that’s what Maimonides says… that’s what the author of the Tanya says, thought as cleaving.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but he is still asking what stands behind it. What is the idea, if it’s a fly and a hair? Fine, one can go look for ideas.

[Speaker C] Okay. Fine, does anyone know?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is some idea there, otherwise why were they dealing with it? Clearly there is some idea behind it. So the passage itself is not important right now. I’m talking right now about the structure—what it reflects, what it expresses. Basically, up to this point I have really been speaking about the thesis. About the thesis-antithesis-and-synthesis announcement, as it were. Meaning, the thesis says that halakhah really is the core, it is the focus. It really is the thing. You cannot grow in Torah without it. It is basically the essence of Torah. Fine. So where does our intuition about the importance of ideas and knowledge of God and things of that sort fit in? So here indeed this is a complex issue in its own right. In Maimonides, as I already mentioned, and in additional sources as well, Maimonides certainly recognizes the importance of engaging in additional areas. Not only does he recognize the importance of these areas—with “small thing” and “great thing” he perhaps even places them above halakhah. In the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, chapter 4—actually maybe let’s start with chapter 2. In chapter 2 Maimonides writes: “And what is the way to love Him and fear Him?” Yes, Maimonides is famous. “When a person contemplates His deeds and His great and wondrous creatures, and sees in them His wisdom, which has no comparison and no end, immediately he loves and praises and glorifies and desires with a great desire to know the great God, as David said: ‘My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.’ And when he reflects upon these very things, immediately he recoils and is afraid and knows that he is a small creature…” So this is also love; this is the way to love Him and fear Him. Both recoils and loves, yes. But up to this point that still does not mean that engaging in these things is Torah. Right? It only means that they are preparatory means for the commandment of love of God and fear of God. Not everything that has positive value counts as Torah. Putting on tefillin is not Torah study, even though it is something positive—it is a commandment. I am fulfilling the will of God. And certainly preparatory means for a commandment—when I build a sukkah, that is something positive. Without it I won’t be able to sit in the sukkah. It is not even a commandment, and certainly it is not called Torah study. Meaning, the fact that Maimonides writes here that this is important still does not mean that it is also Torah. Okay? But somehow the impression from what follows—after that Maimonides begins to elaborate in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, he expands there for two or three chapters, giving us a general overview of his Aristotelian doctrine in matters of physics and metaphysics, yes, all kinds of intellects and spheres and other such plagues. And at the end of chapter 4 he writes, at the end of this section, chapter 4 law 13: “The matters of these four chapters, concerning these five commandments, are what the early Sages called Pardes, as they said: ‘Four entered the Pardes.’” Here this is already a statement that these things are Torah, not merely things of value, a means to the love and fear of God. This is the Pardes part of Torah; it is part of Torah. “And although the great men of Israel were great, and the sages were great sages, not all of them had the power to know and attain all these things properly. And I say that one should not stroll in the Pardes except one whose belly is filled with bread and meat. And bread and meat means knowing what is forbidden and permitted and the like from the other commandments”—yes, halakhic study. “And even though the Sages called these matters a small thing, for the Sages said, ‘A great thing: the Account of the Chariot; a small thing: the discussions of Abaye and Rava,’ nevertheless they are fit to precede them, because they settle a person’s mind first.” To take this Maimonides and do with him what Rabbi Kook did, and say that Maimonides uses Greek philosophy only to answer people’s criticisms or questions, is very puzzling. Maimonides here establishes a scale of values that is completely the opposite. Maimonides here says: put halakhic study first, and then you will be able to enter the great thing—physics and metaphysics. Elsewhere he explains that the Account of Creation and the Account of the Chariot are physics and metaphysics. Okay, I don’t know if he is right, but that was at least his view. So here there really is a statement that this thing is actually Torah. And now, of course, the question arises: where does it stop? So what is not Torah? Almost every kind of wisdom on earth, on this approach, actually turns into a kind of Torah. So where is the line between Torah and non-Torah? If I return to the question we dealt with earlier, aggadah and halakhah: aggadah has behind it all sorts of ideas—philosophical ideas, ideas of faith, these and those. That is certainly Torah according to this definition of Maimonides. More than that, perhaps it is even Torah more important than halakhah, which is only the introduction that settles a person’s mind. The question that arises here is of course the opposite question: where does it stop? So what is not Torah? What is wisdom? After all, in the language of the Sages there is Torah and there is wisdom. We saw it in the blessing, yes? If one sees a wise man among the sages of the nations of the world, there is one blessing—“who has given of His wisdom to flesh and blood”—and for Torah wisdom, “who has shared of His wisdom with those who fear Him.” So here it looks like “shared of His wisdom,” meaning it is part of Him. That is Torah. And there it is wisdom; He also gave human beings wisdom. Fine, so there is some relation between Torah and wisdom, and somehow in Maimonides it is not entirely clear where the line passes. Meaning, somehow it seems that all wisdoms are actually located somehow within Torah.

[Speaker A] So maybe the status of wisdom that is not Torah is simply less important. Meaning, even if something is not Torah and it is important, then he would say that it is above the study of…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but then what is the meaning of Torah? Just something elevated? Then it’s only a semantic substitution. What difference does it make now what we call Torah and what not? It’s important to the same degree. So for our purposes, what we call Torah is usually just whatever we think is important—only semantics. And still, Maimonides does not draw a boundary between these two different domains. That’s the point. If you call it Torah, then you’re just calling it something important. Fine—but what does that actually mean? That any kind of study anywhere, right, is included? Then from now on it would be forbidden to study for a physics exam in pairs, because “one does not expound the Account of Creation with two people.” And that is the Account of Creation—physics, right? So you have to be careful. It’s a little strange. After all, the feeling is somehow that when you study Schrödinger’s equation, that’s not something that is more Torah than “an ox that gored a cow.” That’s the intuitive feeling, I think, that… Again, I don’t even understand the arguments; it’s just common wisdom. It’s not something I know how to justify, but it sounds obvious. Okay? So how exactly should we relate to these things? It seems to me that here we arrive at a very important point. I have a feeling—again, it really is just a feeling—but it’s pretty well grounded in our tradition at least, that there really is a difference between these fields of aggadah and thought, and this field of Jewish law. And those differences have two aspects. And those two aspects stand behind the two contradictory phenomena with which I began. On the one hand, it seems that the Ketzot is Torah and the Maharal is less Torah, if at all; and on the other hand, somehow it seems specifically that the Maharal and the engagement with ideas are much more important—a great matter—while the Ketzot is the small matter. So the point is that it depends in what respect. Like the way people always make pilpulim—there are two laws. Meaning, there are… Now let’s formulate it this way. There are things that in their essence are… Maybe I’ll formulate it through… I’ll first describe the difference between them. When we study Torah, Jewish law, Talmud or Jewish law, the feeling is that we are basically engaged in interpretation. That, I think, is the basic feeling, the basic experience of anyone involved in this. You are engaged in interpretation. Meaning, you take some law, some Talmudic passage, some Mishnah, some later authority, some medieval authority, it doesn’t matter, and you try to understand what it says. Okay? Now of course you do not interpret it in exactly the same way as someone else does. The interpretations differ because the people are different. But each of them is clearly aware that he is engaged in interpreting the sources before him. I think that someone who feels that way in the literature of thought is fooling himself. I do not think there is a tradition in that field. I do not think that the Maharal interpreted earlier generations in any sense, not even the sayings of the Sages that he brings. I don’t know—the connection between what he says and the sayings of the Sages that he cites, in many cases at least, seems to me so remote that I very much doubt whether he had the feeling that he was serving here as an interpreter. Or perhaps he simply had certain theses, and he took sayings of the Sages in order to anchor them or to use them to express those theses. But notice: that is the exact opposite direction. The inner movement is completely the reverse. In the study of Jewish law, basically you are facing backward. You look at what has existed until now and interpret it. Sometimes your interpretation is original, sometimes different from everyone else’s, but still, in your own feeling, you are offering an interpretation—to the Talmud, to the medieval authorities (Rishonim), to the later authorities (Acharonim). You are an interpreter. So what comes out of this? That Jewish law is some body of Torah that was given to Moses at Sinai; it undergoes development, understanding, conceptualization throughout the generations, but all the time it is only processing—and we saw this last year, I think, not too badly—all the time it was some kind of processing of those same things that Moses received at Sinai and transmitted to Joshua and Joshua… And I would bet not. I wasn’t there, and I would bet not, because the feeling is that there is no continuity there, none at all. Meaning, then the Maharal arises in the sixteenth century and invents a completely new method, a completely new way of thinking. He is not continuing something; he is not interpreting those who came before him in any sense. He uses those who came before him; he does not interpret them. So that is not—it is my feeling, at least. And the same is true of Rabbi Kook, and the same is true of all the great thinkers throughout the generations. Now I’m not coming to denigrate; I’m coming to describe facts. I think there is some difference here that cries out for explanation, and the meaning of that difference is that Jewish law is actually the Torah that was given to Moses at Sinai. That is the thing that was transmitted, and when people work on it—I am continuing Nefesh HaChayim and the Baal HaTanya—when you study Jewish law, you study what was given to Moses our teacher at Sinai, with all your innovations and all the interesting and new implications, everything, it doesn’t matter—it is all interpretation and expansion of what was given there. That is the meaning of tradition. Thought comes from man, not from Mount Sinai. Thought comes—maybe there is some dimension in man too, yes, people sometimes call it an ongoing revelation at Sinai—but it comes from man. It is not some body that passes from generation to generation and undergoes development, continuation, understanding, deepening. No. Here each person invents what seems right to him, what sounds reasonable to him, what he somewhat understands here and there. Of course this is not pure in either direction; there is a subjective dimension and an objective dimension both in Jewish law and in thought, but the proportions are very strong in the two directions, polarized very sharply in the two directions. And what this actually means—and this is the point I perhaps want to end with, because it is also a good introduction to the book here—the difference is, I think, that when you study Ketzot, you are studying Torah in the object itself, in halakhic terms. Torah in the object itself means that this thing is Torah in an objective sense; it does not matter what you do with it, whether you agree with it, disagree with it, whether it speaks to you, whether it does not speak to you—that is not important. If you study it, you are engaging in what was given to Moses at Sinai; you are engaging in Torah. The other things, the various kinds of literature of thought—from the Maharal, Rabbi Kook, it doesn’t matter, Yitzchak Hutner, anyone—because it emerges from there so weakly, that…

[Speaker C] Every Midrash Rabbah, Bereishit Rabbah, he takes verses…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and about Midrash Rabbah I would say the same thing. Midrash Rabbah too—but it emerges so much… I do not think that the authors of the Midrash in Midrash Rabbah felt that they were interpreters. They didn’t either—not only the Maharal didn’t. That’s it. So that means it does not emerge from there; it gets clothed in some way upon it. What exactly the connection is there is an interesting question, but it does not emerge from there—it comes from you. Meaning, at least the proportion is much stronger, the proportion of the subjective as opposed to the objective in thought. And therefore, in Jewish law we are engaged in Torah in the object itself; this is objective Torah. No matter who studies it—whether it speaks to him, does not speak to him, whether he agrees, disagrees, understands, does not understand—he is engaged in Torah. That is an objective statement. Someone engaged in other literature, that really is something subjective. If it truly speaks to you and helps you understand the world and understand the Holy One, blessed be He, and understand the Torah, then that is Torah in its full sense for you. But if it does not speak to you, then you are just wasting your time. It is not like the Ketzot. If the Ketzot does not speak to you, you still studied Torah; but if the Maharal does not speak to you and you study him, then you wasted your time. Because this is Torah—let’s say, if that is Torah in the object itself, this is Torah in the person. Meaning, it is Torah in the subjective sense. If it speaks to me, if it builds me, then that is Torah. And if not, then truly not; then it is the thought of the Maharal. Meaning, if he helps me, then he helps me understand something better, so certainly I studied Torah here. But if not, then not—so what did it do? Then I learned something the Maharal said. But with the Ketzot, whether I agree and whether I do not agree, I am learning something that the Holy One, blessed be He, said; it was given to Moses at Sinai.

[Speaker C] What about Ravina and Rav Ashi, who compiled everything? Why divide it this way? If it is something individual that each person can develop, there is free will here…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They want to tell you that this too is Torah. They want to tell you that the word of God too, and not only the will of God, is Torah—that is exactly what they are telling you there. Nefesh HaChayim chapter 4—it is the Talmud, the Babylonian Talmud, which is mixed with everything; that is exactly the point. And then what happens is this: in terms of the order of importance—and this is the synthesis I am now arriving at—in terms of the order of importance, I do not think one can say that Torah in the object itself is more important than Torah in the person. It is not a question of importance. If truly Torah… you find some thinker who speaks to you—the Maharal, Rabbi Kook, whoever it may be—and this really builds something in you, you understand divine providence better, the ideas better, faith / belief better, then that is the most important Torah there is. It is not that it is unimportant. But it depends on whether it speaks to you; that is, it is subjective. Because if not, then you are simply wasting your time. With the Ketzot it does not depend on that. The Ketzot, of course, is just an example. It does not depend on that. This is objective Torah; it does not matter. It does not matter whether it speaks to you or not. Therefore, in the sense of being foundational, Torah in the object itself is the most foundational. There is no person great in Torah, as Rabbi Kook writes there, without his being engaged in Talmud, Rashi, Tosafot. So that is in the sense of being foundational. I want to finish because I have to finish. In the sense of importance, it could be the complete opposite. In the sense of importance, if you truly succeed in formulating a worldview, as Maimonides says: “A great matter is the Account of Creation and the Account of the Chariot; a small matter is the discussions of Abaye and Rava.” It is not a question of importance at all. Therefore, I really think that the fact that the Torah mainly studied, say, in the classic yeshivot, is Jewish law, stems from the fact that it is the most foundational, not necessarily that it is the most important. And also because other things—if they speak to you, good, and if not, then not—so there is no point in establishing some study program for everyone together; each person should find for himself what speaks to him. But what is more important is a completely different question. And perhaps this too is the double meaning with which I opened in Rabbi Kook: on the one hand, it seems that this is only a means of speaking with others. It is no accident that it is only a means of speaking with others. The way in which you articulate it toward others—that is exactly the meaning of thought. The meaning of thought is to try to reach the subjective, to try to reach the person and show him, to teach him some kind of structure. Therefore it depends on whether you are speaking to others or not. If you are not speaking to others, then what have you done? Then you have done nothing. So therefore he says that the great sages of previous generations did well when they studied Ketzot. But one must know that in every generation, thought has to be developed so that it will speak to later generations. We are not talking here about preaching or propaganda. This is the essence of the field of thought. The essence of the field of thought is the ability to grasp the ideas of that time and through them understand God’s conduct, through them understand the Torah. That is the meaning of the field of thought. So that is what Rabbi Kook is doing here. So if it speaks to us, we’ll speak; and if not, then we’ll see. That’s it. Okay.

[Speaker C] On the subjective level, is it okay—it doesn’t matter whether it sounds like something Rabbi Kook said or something I said, I understand something from what you said here, subjective, I don’t know—the Ketzot of Penehizer speaks to me and causes me to connect.