Ein Ayah – Berachot 114

Table of Contents

• The favor of Egypt, “against the will of the Egyptians,” and free will
• “Please speak,” great wealth, and the prison parable
• Ein Ayah by Rabbi Kook: nobility of spirit, a double message about money, and a national purpose
• A request instead of a command, “beyond the letter of the law,” and three levels of beautification
• Result versus intention: tycoons, Rome on the Sabbath, and a transgression for the sake of Heaven
• The value of the ordinary and of life: those exempted from the battle lines, saving life, and optional matters
• Closing discussion and questions: levirate marriage, moral holiness, certainty, and divine service for a higher need

Summary

General Overview

The text raises a difficulty regarding the language of the Talmud on 9b, with the expression “against the will of the Egyptians,” as opposed to the verse describing that “the Holy One, blessed be He, gave the people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians.” It develops this through a philosophical distinction between a will that stems from external influence and an inner will, while criticizing compatibilist conceptions of freedom. After that, it brings the Talmud on 9a about “please speak” as a language of request, and explains why the Exodus “with great wealth” came as a request rather than a command—both because of fulfilling the promise that “afterward they shall go out with great wealth,” and because of an ambivalent value-message regarding money. It then cites Rabbi Kook in Ein Ayah, who explains that the purpose of the wealth was to uplift the spirit of a people of slaves and to cultivate a nobility of national soul that would allow political and social influence in the world. From there the discussion broadens to the relationship between result and intention, praise and blame, the value of prosaic life, and the question of “optional matters” as opposed to an ideal of value-driven living.

The favor of Egypt, “against the will of the Egyptians,” and free will

The text assumes that the Egyptians lent Israel silver vessels and gold vessels because the Holy One, blessed be He, gave the people favor in their eyes, and asks how the Talmud can say this was “against the will of the Egyptians.” The text explains that the view of the “there are those who say” understands this as an external influence on the Egyptians’ will, and therefore the giving was not an authentic, free desire, even though the Egyptians themselves would explain that they were giving “because I’m crazy about you.” The text illustrates this through hypnosis, in which a person does “exactly what he wants,” but his will was implanted, and emphasizes that the Talmud here rules against the compatibilist conclusion that an act is free so long as it is done in accordance with one’s present desire.

“Please speak,” great wealth, and the prison parable

The text returns to the Talmud on 9a: “Please is nothing but a term of request,” and presents the Holy One, blessed be He, asking Moses to ask Israel to borrow from Egypt silver vessels and gold vessels, so that “that righteous man,” Abraham our father, should not say that “and they shall enslave them and afflict them” was fulfilled, but “afterward they shall go out with great wealth” was not fulfilled. The text describes that Israel answered, “If only we could get out by ourselves,” because freedom is the main thing and property is not uppermost in their minds, and explains this with the parable of a prisoner who prefers to go free today and does not ask for money. The text suggests that the request also reflects a dimension in which Israel is doing this “against their will” in a certain sense, because the Holy One, blessed be He, is persuading them, but says that this is less central to its main point.

Ein Ayah by Rabbi Kook: nobility of spirit, a double message about money, and a national purpose

The text brings Rabbi Kook’s explanation in Ein Ayah, according to which “the main higher intention of going out with great wealth” is to elevate the spirit of the people, who had been degraded by slavery and no longer seek great things. Therefore this came as a request and not as a command, in order to clarify that the purpose is not love of silver and gold. The text presents Rabbi Kook’s claim that precisely the language of request expresses that the wealth is needed for psychological and social uplift, but is not “the ultimate object sought,” whereas matters that are ultimate ends are stated as command and warning. The text continues with Rabbi Kook’s words that Abraham sought to establish a nation “that recognizes God and makes His great name known in the world,” and that in order to influence many peoples, nobility of spirit and an aspiration for property and acquisition are needed, since “through this many peoples draw near to one another and each learns from the ways of the other,” provided it is done as “wealth with justice.” The text adds Rabbi Kook’s point that if Israel were to suffice with being merely “shepherds of flocks and farmers,” with no connection to other peoples, the light of God would not spread. Therefore, after the “iron furnace” of Egypt and submission to the yoke of Torah, there is also a need to become accustomed to nobility of spirit and to political and social life. The text notes Rabbi Kook’s comment that although the “plunder of the sea” was greater than the plunder of Egypt, the plunder of the sea came about because of the pursuit and was not part of the original plan, and therefore there was still a need for the request concerning the plunder of Egypt.

A request instead of a command, “beyond the letter of the law,” and three levels of beautification

The text argues that in the Torah and the words of the Sages there is a phenomenon of desirable conduct that is not formulated as a binding command, in order to convey a “double message” of expectation without coercion. It connects this to examples like “You shall be holy,” according to Nachmanides, as “sanctify yourself in what is permitted,” which is not counted as a positive commandment, so that it should not itself become an obligation and thereby cancel its own essence as something “beyond obligation.” The text gives examples of three levels in the Hanukkah lamp: one lamp for a man and his household, those who beautify the commandment, and those who beautify beyond the beautifiers; and three levels in the measures of terumah: one-fortieth for a generous eye, one-fiftieth for an average eye, and one-sixtieth for a stingy eye. It explains that the halakhic detailing of levels of beautification is meant to hint that “we are expected to do the maximum,” but not to turn that into an obligation that would undermine voluntariness. The text applies the same logic to “please speak” in the Exodus: there is a need for “great wealth” to be fulfilled, but there is also a need to make clear that money is not a supreme value, only a local need “so that that righteous man should not say” otherwise.

Result versus intention: tycoons, Rome on the Sabbath, and a transgression for the sake of Heaven

The text develops a distinction between evaluating the result of an act and evaluating the personality of the person who did it and the process by which it was done. It argues that one can see an outcome as beneficial even if the motive was self-interested, without granting personal admiration. The text gives as an example the dispute between Rabbi Yehudah and Rabbi Shimon regarding praise for the Roman public works, and connects this to the tension between following the deed and following the intention. The text uses the public’s ambivalent attitude toward “tycoons” to illustrate that one can recognize their contribution to the economy even while disagreeing with their motives, and even adds that the fact that a person has an interest does not prove that he acts only from that interest. The text then moves to the topic “A transgression for the sake of Heaven is greater than a commandment not for its own sake” in tractate Nazir, including Yael the wife of Hever the Kenite and Lot’s daughters, and criticizes the approach that makes the very permissibility of such a transgression depend on intention for the sake of Heaven. It argues instead that the need for the result is what justifies the exception, even if the intentions are not pure, whereas praise and personal greatness do indeed depend on intention. The text concludes that this split—between justifying the act because of its result and evaluating the person because of intention—recurs on different levels of the discussion.

The value of the ordinary and of life: those exempted from the battle lines, saving life, and optional matters

The text argues that ordinary acts and “prose” are legitimate and do not always require spiritual justification. As an example it brings those who return from the battle lines: “Who is the man who has planted a vineyard and not redeemed it,” “who has built a house and not dedicated it,” and “who has betrothed a woman and not taken her,” as evidence that the Torah allows one to return from war for basic reasons of life, livelihood, home, and family—and not because “I still haven’t finished the entire Talmud.” The text points to the tension in tractate Yoma regarding the reasons that saving life overrides the Sabbath, between “and live by them, and not die by them” and “desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths,” and presents it as a tension between seeing life as a value in itself and seeing life as a means for commandments. The text criticizes conceptions that deny the category of “optional matters” or require turning all ordinary life into holiness, and presents a view according to which it is permitted to live, to enjoy oneself in reasonable measure, and to engage in day-to-day affairs without forced “excuses,” while keeping within the framework of commandments and prohibitions.

Closing discussion and questions: levirate marriage, moral holiness, certainty, and divine service for a higher need

At the end, an open discussion is described in which a question is asked about levirate marriage as a commandment that is avoided when it is not for its own sake, and the answer given is that this is a special case because levirate marriage involves a transgression. A question is asked about “putting value” into all ordinary activities, and the answer distinguishes between preferring value-consciousness and rejecting compulsiveness and forced rationalizations, while arguing that one is allowed to enjoy things even without turning that enjoyment into a spiritual act. A question is asked about the two reasons for saving life, and a kind of accounting clarification is offered, according to which the ruling of “many Sabbaths” can stand even without dependence on the value of life compared to the value of the Sabbath. A question is asked about “how one can say that the Holy One, blessed be He, needs human beings,” and the text presents this as “the secret of divine service for a higher need,” connecting it to Rabbi Kook’s words about “perfection and self-perfection,” according to which there is a kind of perfection of self-perfection that is not possible in the Absolute except through the creation of a deficient human being. A question is asked about certainty in prophecy and about the difference between faith and proof, and the text argues that there is no one-hundred-percent certainty, because every proof rests on foundational assumptions and trust in the senses, while distinguishing between philosophical uncertainty and practical skepticism.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Thanks for the reminder. The Holy One, blessed be He, granted the people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians, and that’s why they lent us things. So how can the Talmud, on page 9b, how can the Talmud say that this was against the will of the Egyptians? After all, the Egyptians suddenly loved them, so that’s why they gave us all this stuff. This brings us back to what we talked about in the lesson the day before yesterday: if in the end there is some external factor influencing what I think, want, do, and so on, compatibilists say that in fact this is something not done freely. Sorry—that it is something not done freely. But if it’s an internal matter and there’s no external factor causing me to do it, then I’m a free person, even though that internal thing may itself be the product of deterministic processes. Meaning, they don’t require that the decision itself be free, in the sense of non-deterministic, in order to call me a free person. As long as it’s my decision and not the result of external influence, I’m free. And the opposite mistake, what I said in the previous lesson, is to see me as unfree when the influence is internal, whereas the brain’s plasticity as a result of outside influences doesn’t bother us. And I said that neither of these really fits the essential idea of freedom. You can call it freedom, but it’s not the essential conception of freedom.

Now here, what the Talmud is basically saying is that when the Holy One, blessed be He, rearranges the Egyptians’ minds—call it external influence or internal influence, you can argue about that, but bottom line there was some kind of external influence here. Now, when you ask the Egyptian why he’s giving you silver vessels and gold vessels, he says: Because I adore you! I really love you, and that’s why I’m giving you silver and gold vessels. Is that called something he did of his own free will? So the first view, the “some say,” says no—this is called against the will of the Egyptians. Why? Because the fact that at the moment they feel that they want to do it is because someone programmed them, intervened in their minds, and made some change there. It’s not their authentic will. It’s not their real will. Even though if you asked them, that’s what they would say they want.

Think of a person whom, say, I hypnotize. Then I wake him up after the hypnosis, and he proceeds of his own “free will” to do various things that I actually instructed him during the hypnosis to do. Is he a free person? No, he isn’t a free person, even though right now there is no problem—he is doing exactly what he wants. True, what he wants was dictated in some deterministic way, and here even by an external factor, but right now what he’s doing is exactly what he wants. So the compatibilist will say: he is a free person. And therefore in this case the Talmud tells us no, this was against the will of the Egyptians. It was against the will of the Egyptians, even though if you had asked them they would have said, we’re giving to the people of Israel because we love them. And the reason is that this love is the result of external intervention; it is not really their free choice.

So that’s just a supplement to last time, and now I’m moving to our topic. I’m going back to the Talmud on page 9a toward the bottom. Let’s start with the Talmud and then we’ll read Rabbi Kook. “Please speak in the ears of the people,” and so on. The school of Rabbi Yannai said: “Please” is nothing other than a term of request. Yes, when it says “please speak,” the meaning is: do me a favor, ask the Egyptians for silver vessels and gold vessels. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses—by the way, the question is whether this fits with what we saw earlier, that it was against the will of the people of Israel. It could be that it does. The Holy One, blessed be He, somehow persuades them in some sense, and that too could be called against their will, and then it continues what I said before: that even though the people of Israel seemingly did this of their own will, if the Holy One, blessed be He, caused it, then perhaps there is some dimension here of against their will. Or maybe this goes only according to the second opinion there in the Talmud, but that’s less important for our purposes.

I continue reading: The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses: “Please, go and say to Israel: Please ask the Egyptians for silver vessels and gold vessels, so that that righteous one will not say”—that righteous one means our father Abraham—“‘and they will enslave them and oppress them’ He fulfilled for them, but ‘afterward they shall go out with great wealth’ He did not fulfill for them.” Yes, our father Abraham will come with complaints if the people of Israel do not take the spoils from the Egyptians. In the covenant between the pieces the Holy One, blessed be He, promised him: “They will enslave them and oppress them four hundred years, and afterward they shall go out with great wealth.” So “they will enslave them and oppress them”—that You fulfilled splendidly; he’ll come with complaints to the Holy One, blessed be He. But “afterward they shall go out with great wealth”—that You are not fulfilling. Therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, says to the people of Israel: do me a favor and get Abraham off my back—take this property so that “afterward they shall go out with great wealth” will also be fulfilled for you.

They said to Him: If only we could get out ourselves. So the people of Israel basically said to the Holy One, blessed be He: leave it, we don’t have the energy. We’re now heading into the desert. This again recalls the previous Talmudic passage, that this borrowing was against the will of Israel, because they’re now going into the desert—they don’t need all this silver and gold hanging over their heads. And so they really didn’t want it. The Holy One, blessed be He, asks them even though they themselves were not interested in it.

Then the Talmud brings a parable: It may be compared to a man who was imprisoned, and people were saying to him: Tomorrow we will take you out of prison and give you a lot of money. And he says to them: Please, get me out today, and I’m not asking for anything. Meaning, a person imprisoned in jail, and they tell him, look, tomorrow you’ll get out and they’ll give you lots of property and wealth and gifts and so on—he says: you know what? I’m in prison. Let me out. Forget the gifts and the money. Let me out and that’s it. The money is not the issue right now. So too, when the people of Israel left Egypt, what mattered to them was getting out. Silver and gold vessels were not on their minds at that moment, and so the Holy One, blessed be He, in effect had to beg them.

Now that’s the Talmud. I’ll stop sharing the Talmud and now bring up Rabbi Kook’s words. I’ll share again—this time not from Ein Ayah but from Wikitext, because there I can mark where I’m reading, and that’s more efficient for us. So here is the text of Ein Ayah. The Talmudic quotation above: “Please speak”—“please” is nothing other than a term of request. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses: Please tell Israel, please ask each man from his fellow and each woman from her neighbor, and so on.

Rabbi Kook says as follows: The main lofty intent of going out with great wealth was to uplift the spirit of the people, who had been sunk in the lowly state of slavery for many years. By nature his soul had been degraded, and he does not seek greatness. In other words, a person who has been a slave for many years naturally has a lowly spirit and does not aspire to great things. He is not looking for wealth, not aspiring to accumulate wealth. Therefore, the Holy One, blessed be He, in intending that they go out with great wealth, meant to uplift their spirit, to bring them out of the slave mentality in which they had been trapped.

Therefore, he continues to explain, in order to show that this is not the primary goal—that one should aspire to the love of silver and gold—therefore it did not come in the form of a command, but as a request, so that the matter would elevate the completeness of their spirit: the lowly one would be raised by seeing himself clothed in wealth, and at the same time they would know that this is not the ultimate object sought. In other words, the Holy One, blessed be He, speaks to them in the language of request and not command. Why? If You want them to do it, say it as a command. Why as a request? Why “please speak”? Rabbi Kook says that this is so the matter will be more complete. What does that mean? If the Holy One, blessed be He, commands them to take silver and gold vessels, they may understand that perhaps this is an end in itself, that money and gold are a lofty goal, a supreme goal. So the Holy One, blessed be He, says to them: on the one hand I want you to take it, on the other hand I want to hint to you that this is not really such a great value—this is not the ultimate object sought.

For, I continue reading, all matters of ultimate purpose were said to them in the form of command and warning, whereas this matter was said in the language of request and apology, “so that that righteous one should not say.” Let me stop here for a moment. So the Holy One, blessed be He, essentially tells the people of Israel to take all these things in the language of request because He is dancing at two weddings here. He wants it to happen so that that righteous one will not say anything, but He does not want them to draw the wrong lesson from it. In the end, He does not want them to understand that money and gold are lofty values. They have to understand that this whole business is a kind of necessary prose. It isn’t really something important. And therefore it is said in the language of request.

On this point I just want to make one comment before I continue reading. There is a phenomenon you can see in several places in the Torah: the Torah defines things it wants us to do but does not command us to do them. Things we might define as going beyond the letter of the law, acts of piety, categories of that sort. You could ask: why does the Torah allow or leave such categories outside the realm of binding command? If it wants us to do something, let it command it, and that’s it. In other words, there are things the Torah leaves as a kind of desire that is not expressed in the form of command. The question is why.

It seems to me that at least in some cases—there are others that can be explained differently—but at least in some cases, the Torah perhaps wants to tell us that it wishes to send us a double message. It wants to say: look, I expect you to do this, but I deliberately do not command you. I’ll give one example. You might call it—I think I once saw someone call it this, but I’ve been used to calling it this for years—the scoundrel paradox. Nachmanides, at the beginning of the Torah portion Kedoshim, where the Torah says “You shall be holy,” says that this comes to tell us to sanctify ourselves regarding what is permitted. That is, to be stricter about things where, from the standpoint of Jewish law, we are not obligated to be strict—like not indulging excessively in pleasures and desires and things of that sort, even though these pleasures and desires are permitted. But if one indulges excessively, that is not holiness. So the Torah tells us: “You shall be holy.”

Now the question that arises here is whether this thing is a commandment—“You shall be holy.” If you look at the enumeration of commandments, no. Maimonides in the fourth root explains that “You shall be holy” is not a commandment, and indeed he does not count it, for his own reasons. But Nachmanides, when he critiques Maimonides on the fourth root, explains the verse differently, and still, when you look at Nachmanides’ additions to the Book of Commandments, “You shall be holy” does not appear there as a positive commandment. The question is why. Nachmanides says that “You shall be holy” is a kind of directive: sanctify yourselves regarding what is permitted. Why doesn’t this appear in the count of commandments? Why is this not a positive commandment?

The answer, I think, is that the Torah wants to tell us that on the one hand it expects this of us, but on the other hand it is deliberately not done in the form of a command. Why? Because if it were done in the form of a command, it would lose its value—or not only lose its value, but completely lose its value. It would cut off the branch it sits on. Because the idea of “You shall be holy” is to do things not because we are obligated, but to do what is beyond what we are obligated to do. Now if that itself were counted as a positive commandment, then we would be obligated to do it. But the moment we are obligated to do it, it is no longer beyond the letter of the law; it becomes the law, because there is a positive commandment of “You shall be holy.” But the whole idea of the positive commandment “You shall be holy” is to do things beyond the letter of the law, not by force of command. Otherwise the whole business is pointless. If the Holy One, blessed be He, had wanted us not to eat a lot or not to indulge too much at a certain level, He would have commanded us not to do that. He deliberately left it permitted. He does not want to command us that it be done. He wants to convey it to us as an expectation, as something you should do beyond the command—don’t overindulge too much in desires beyond some reasonable standard.

And so He deliberately insists on conveying a double message. On the one hand He tells us “You shall be holy,” and on the other hand He makes it clear in various ways that this is not a command. It is not a command because we are meant to do this out of an understanding that this is what is proper, not because we are absolutely obligated to do it. There are, by the way, a few more examples. Maybe I’ll give one more example—actually two examples. I once wrote an article about this. Two examples in which we see that there are three different levels of fulfilling the commandment. We know this regarding the Hanukkah lamp: there is one lamp for a man and his household, then those who enhance the commandment, and then those who enhance it to the highest degree. There are three levels. The same is true of separating terumah. There too there are three levels: one-fortieth, two and a half percent—that is a generous eye in separating terumah; one-fiftieth, two percent, that is an average eye; and one-sixtieth is a stingy eye. So you see there are three levels of separating terumah.

And again, you can ask: why did the sages, in the context of Hanukkah lights, if they wanted us to do the highest level of enhancement, not simply establish that this is what one must do? If they want us to separate terumah at one-fortieth, or whatever amount they want, let them define how much one must separate. Why leave it as three levels? One could elaborate, but I won’t do that. Briefly I’ll say that there too the message is the same message. On the one hand they want to tell us: we expect you to do the maximum level. Light in the highest enhanced way, or separate terumah at one-fortieth, the maximum rate. But on the other hand they deliberately do not impose it as a halakhic obligation, because they want you to do it out of your own voluntary initiative, not in response to a command. Exactly like “You shall be holy.” So they are giving us a double message. On the one hand they tell us one grain of wheat exempts the whole pile—in other words, from the Torah’s perspective, one grain for terumah is enough. On the other hand, the sages come and tell us: separate one-fortieth, one-fiftieth, one-sixtieth—not just one grain, but some actual amount, two percent, something like that. So the sages did establish a certain amount. Why didn’t they establish one fixed amount? Why leave three levels? Because even after they established an amount beyond what the Torah itself suffices with—one grain—they still did not want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. They still wanted to preserve the idea that the amount of terumah is left to our choice. And so even after setting the boundaries between one-fortieth and one-sixtieth, they left three levels so that we would understand that even after their enactment we are still meant to do this voluntarily. If they had fixed the amount one must separate, then we would do it because we are obligated—true, rabbinically and not on the Torah level—but because we are obligated. They wanted, on the one hand, to define the boundaries: don’t give the priest one grain of wheat; do something more meaningful. But on the other hand they didn’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater and make it a complete obligation, and therefore they left three levels here.

The same thing with the Hanukkah lights. They wanted us to do it as a kind of enhancement, not as an obligation. So they could not establish as an obligation that one must light at the highest enhanced level. So they tell us: one lamp for a man and his household is enough. Halakhically that is enough. But they give us a hint as thick as a house-beam that there is also a level of enhancement and a level of enhancement to the highest degree, and they define exactly what each level is, because that is the sages’ way of conveying to us the message that they basically expect us to do the maximum. They cannot command it, because that would throw out the baby with the bathwater. But this is how they hint that they expect us to do the maximum. Therefore they define very carefully: there are levels, this kind of enhancement and that kind, and all kinds of halakhic discussions about how this enhancement is done and how that enhancement is done, and disputes. If it were merely a vague enhancement, you’d say: do something nice, whatever seems good to you—what’s the problem? Why is there a need to define all kinds of halakhic parameters for this enhancement or that one? Because they want to tell us that it is really an obligation—but without commanding it. So how do they hint it? They set out in Jewish law, in great detail, all the levels of enhancement. We’re supposed to understand on our own that this is really what should be done. Why didn’t they command it? Because they didn’t want us to do it out of command, but out of our own decision. This is a transmission that there is an expectation here, not a command.

There are explanations—interesting explanations—why terumah is like that and why Hanukkah lights are defined that way, but I won’t go into that, and for our purposes these are just examples. I return here, return to our discussion. The Holy One, blessed be He, asks the people to ask each man from his fellow and each woman from her neighbor silver vessels and gold vessels. Even though, if He wanted it, He could command it. If He commanded it, we would do it. Why ask? He asks in order to convey a double message, exactly the same logic I mentioned in the previous examples. On the one hand, He expects us to do it, so that that righteous one will not say something. On the other hand, He wants to convey the message: but know that this is not a command. It is not a command because I need you to do it not because it is an important value, but because it is a side necessity. And together with that I am conveying to you that there is no general obligation to chase after silver and gold. This is not a real value. It is a local need. So the way to convey this double message is exactly like the examples—but the logic is similar. It’s not going beyond the letter of the law here to take silver and gold vessels. It is beyond the letter of the law in the sense that it is not obligatory—the Holy One, blessed be He, asks. But not because it is such a lofty act that it is beyond the letter of the law; on the contrary, because it is a lowly act, but we are doing it now for specific reasons relevant here. But the message is double: on the one hand I expect you to do it, on the other hand I do not command it. And from this the lesson learned is a kind of ambivalent attitude toward accumulating wealth. There is some need for it—so that that righteous one will not say something—but don’t make this wealth into your god. It is not a value.

And now I continue reading in Rabbi Kook: And Abraham’s statement as well can be explained by the fact that his whole goal was to establish a nation that recognizes God and proclaims His great name in the world through its existence and conduct, the way he himself, peace be upon him, did while he was alone in the world—our father Abraham. In other words, the goal was to create a nation that would make the Holy One, blessed be He, known in the world, proclaiming His great name through the way it conducts itself, just as Abraham did while he was still just one man. Afterward, the nation that came from him was meant to continue walking in his ways and to act upon many peoples. Let me continue reading.

And to affect many peoples one needs greatness of soul and aspiration as well—greatness of soul not in the sense we use modern Hebrew, but in the sense of operating on a grand scale. Not greatness of soul in the sense of fine character traits, but of working big, being a person who aims high. In this case, high aspiration in the material sense. And also aspiration for property and possessions and acquisition, because by this many nations come closer to one another and each learns from the ways of the other. Therefore, through the love of money, from which come possessions and acquisition, when it is in proper condition—to make wealth justly—it also leads to the desired end, to illuminate the light of God in the world through Israel.

In other words, he says that if we aspire to acquisition and succeed in attaining it—and apparently we did rather well at that over the generations—then that makes an impression. Of course, one must do it justly, not corruptly. But still, the aspiration for wealth in itself has positive value, because it leads to the desired purpose: to illuminate the light of God in the world through Israel. In this way we have some influence, we gain standing, and we have the ability to illuminate the light of God in the world through our striving for and acquiring possessions.

I continue reading: Whereas if they had been content, in the lowliness of their soul, merely to be shepherds of flocks and farmers alone, and have no dealings with other people, and other nations would not know them—if we shut ourselves up in our own little patch, how does the light of God spread in the world? So the light of God will not spread; we will have no contact and discourse with our surroundings. Therefore Abraham, for his lofty purpose, sought to accustom their souls, after the lowliness of their slavery which had been the iron furnace to refine their dross—there is a midrash of the sages that Egypt was an iron furnace in order to refine the dross and in effect melt us down into becoming a people—and to accustom them to the submissiveness required for the yoke of Torah and its commandments, so that together with this they would also become accustomed to greatness of spirit and aspiration for national and social life, which would come through the desire to increase wealth.

In other words, together with the lowliness of spirit that we were meant to acquire in order to be subjected to the yoke of Torah and commandments, together with that there was also supposed to be in us a certain aspiration to grow, an aspiration to independent ownership, to increase wealth and all kinds of things that seem, at least superficially, to contradict the values of serving God.

And he explains beautifully through the parable—I continue reading: And he explained well through the parable that Israel, because of their degraded condition, being likened to prisoners in jail, could not at all imagine any greater wealth than the very exit from slavery and becoming masters of their own souls. And the elevation of spirit through wealth had to be done by way of request, in order to reach the desired goal. And even though the spoils of the sea were prepared for them, as the sages said—that they were greater than the spoils of Egypt—after all, we really did not need to take from Egypt the silver and gold vessels, because at the sea there was already a great deal of spoil prepared for us after the miracle of the splitting of the sea. It can be said that this spoil was caused by their pursuit, as the sages said. In other words, he explains that this money we received at the sea was not part of the original plan. Therefore there was a need to ask the people to ask the Egyptians for silver and gold vessels when they left Egypt.

Fine. Up to here, Rabbi Kook’s words. I want to talk a bit about what he writes here. On the one hand, there really is some sort of double message here, as I opened with. On the one hand: take, increase wealth, aspire to wealth, so that you can influence the world, so that people will appreciate you, and so that you will have discourse and contact with your surroundings. Only that way can you really influence. This quickly projects, of course, onto the question of our attitude toward money and the pursuit of money and wealth in general.

Today the ambivalent attitude toward what are called tycoons is very popular. On the one hand there is a kind of admiration, the pursuit of their closeness, seeking their company, and so on, and on the other hand a tremendous hatred of these people, as if they exploit the public and build themselves on its back, and there is no equal distribution. And again, without getting into socialism and capitalism—I’m not entering those debates right now. I just want to say that this ambivalent attitude, as we also see in Rabbi Kook’s passage, toward money, can be understood on several levels. On the one hand, what Rabbi Kook is basically saying is that the aspiration for wealth—or the increase of wealth, and the aspiration only because through aspiration we will attain wealth, without that we won’t have it—the value lies in having a lot of wealth, not in the aspiration itself. Why? Because it allows us to influence, gives us status, gives us contact and discourse with our surroundings, and so on.

That does not necessarily mean that we are supposed to esteem the person who deals in this. The outcome-based question—whether a state in which you have a lot of wealth is a good state, an efficient state, an effective state, a state that enables you to do good things—that does not mean that the pursuit of wealth is a positive thing in terms of personality. Those are two different things. I can relate to this phenomenon in a complex way and say that someone who devotes his whole life to the pursuit of wealth—there is something problematic about that. And at the same time say that without it we wouldn’t have wealth, and therefore the situation produced by that pursuit—that is, the fact that we have wealth—is a positive situation. Very often we fail to make this distinction between our attitude toward the outcome and our attitude toward the process that brings it about. I may not value the person for the path, for his conduct. I’m not talking right now about pursuit of wealth in a corrupt sense, making wealth unjustly, as Rabbi Kook says. I’m talking about making wealth justly. But a person whose whole life is dedicated only to accumulating wealth—I don’t know whether he deserves great admiration. It doesn’t strike me as some supreme value. On the other hand, that does not dictate contempt for or rejection of the resulting state. The fact that you have a lot of money enables us to do many good things. Of course, if the accumulation of wealth itself is done with the intention of using that wealth to do good, then the process of accumulation is also worthy of appreciation, not just the result. But even if not, even if it is done for reasons of impulse, that still does not prevent—personal appreciation does not belong to the person, personal appreciation depends on the question of your personal conduct, and here intentions are what matter.

I’ll maybe bring another example. The Talmud in tractate Shabbat brings a dispute between Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Shimon. When Rabbi Shimon came out of the cave, he looked around there at the Romans, and someone there praised the Romans: look what roads and markets they made, and bathhouses and theaters and all kinds of things like that. Rabbi Shimon says: they did it all for their own benefit, not for the public. They needed it for their own purposes, to move troops or whatever, to run their own lives. That is not worthy of appreciation. And Rabbi Yehuda does appreciate it, because Rabbi Yehuda values the result. And the result is that there is more ordered life here—markets, theaters, all kinds of such things that can be used for good or bad. Maybe they weren’t done for good reasons, but in themselves they certainly contribute to our lives. You can appreciate that together with condemning the one who did it if he did it only for utilitarian reasons.

As is known, some connect this to the disputes between Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yehuda also in the laws of the Sabbath: whether we follow intention—an unintended act and a labor not needed for its own sake—whether we follow the intention or the deed. Rabbi Yehuda goes after the deed, Rabbi Shimon after the intention. So this too is a kind of tension: whether to value a state of affairs brought about by people acting for their own self-interest—am I supposed to appreciate them for it, to feel gratitude for what they brought me, or not? They did it for themselves, so they deserve nothing, even if in the end some good came to me through them. And this is exactly like the question of the tycoons. In the end, there is no doubt that they benefit the economy. I think anyone who denies that—I’m no great economist—but I think anyone who denies it is denying facts. The question is whether the fact that they do it for themselves means they deserve no appreciation or gratitude. That can be debated. But gratitude is gratitude for what they give us. That does not yet mean they deserve personal admiration for what they did. Personal admiration concerns your personal conduct, and here intentions are what determine things.

I’ll perhaps bring one more example. The Talmud in tractate Nazir says: A transgression done for its own proper sake is greater than a commandment done not for its own proper sake. The example brought there is Yael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, who had relations with Sisera and killed him, and thus in the end helped the people of Israel be saved from this fellow. This principle of a transgression for its own proper sake creates great tension among the commentators. Because a transgression for its own proper sake is a very problematic concept from a halakhic perspective, as in any legal perspective, not only halakhic. It essentially tells us that there is value in deviating from Jewish law in very specific circumstances. And when the circumstances justify it, you are supposed to deviate from Jewish law.

One of the examples brought there in the Talmud—at least from the context it seems that this is also an example—is Lot’s daughters. Lot’s daughters had relations with their father because they understood that the world around them had been destroyed, and they said that otherwise no human being would remain, all humanity would be wiped out. So they violated forbidden sexual relations, the most severe transgression in the Torah, but they did it for positive reasons: to preserve humanity, so that humanity would not disappear. And the sages—people don’t know this so well—but there in tractate Nazir the sages praise them highly for this. This is brought immediately after the sugya of a transgression for its own proper sake, so I think the association in that context is fairly clear.

And because of the difficulty in this notion of a transgression for its own proper sake—because they’re telling you, in effect, to violate Jewish law, and by the way this is a personal decision of the individual in that situation, he doesn’t go ask a halakhic authority. Rather, it is the decision of the person. When you are in that situation, you need to make decisions, use your own judgment. Even if you are not a great Torah scholar, you need to understand: this is a critical situation, and here even though Jewish law says X, I will do Y. My own personal decision, the decision of the ordinary person. That is very problematic, and therefore many commentators take it in directions suggesting that this itself is actually a halakhic rule. But that doesn’t stand the test of reality. In the Talmud itself it is very clear: there is no halakhic rule that permits forbidden sexual relations in any context, and there they permitted themselves forbidden sexual relations in order to preserve humanity, to prevent the extinction of the human race.

So what is this subversive, radical message that says: commit a transgression for its own proper sake where necessary? Some of the commentators—for example the Netziv in his responsa Meshiv Davar, and Rabbi Kook in his responsa Mishpat Kohen, and several later authorities—want to argue that there is legitimacy to do a transgression for its own proper sake in a place where your intention is for the sake of Heaven. If your intention is for the sake of Heaven, then it is permitted. But if your intention is not for the sake of Heaven, then you are supposed to act according to the rules of Jewish law. You may not deviate from the rules of Jewish law. That is the accepted approach in this sugya of a transgression for its own proper sake, and I have never understood it. I think it’s not correct. It cannot be correct. Because if the act really needed to be done—suppose Lot’s two daughters did not do it for the sake of Heaven, or Yael the wife of Heber the Kenite did not do it for the sake of Heaven—after all, in the end the permission to do the act is because I need the result. They did it because otherwise there would be no humanity; or Yael did it because otherwise the people of Israel were in danger. So the result is achieved regardless of the intentions of the person doing it. Even if Yael or Lot’s daughters did it with bad intentions, in the end the result is a positive result.

Now suppose I find myself in the situation of Yael or of Lot’s daughters and ask myself: am I allowed to do it? Not allowed halakhically—halakhically it is forbidden—but am I expected to do it? Again that same double message: halakhically it is forbidden, but I am expected to do it. This runs through all these matters like a thread—the double message. So when I’m wavering, and I say to myself: look, I’m not such a huge righteous person, so I’m engaging in these relations because I feel like it, not because I want to save Israel, say in place of Yael—so what? So now I shouldn’t do it? Because my intention is not for the sake of Heaven, so therefore I shouldn’t do it, and then what—let Israel be destroyed? That doesn’t sound reasonable to me. If there is permission to do it, the permission to do it is because of the result, not because of the intention. Keep your intentions at home. In the end you need to observe Jewish law, not your intentions. And if there is permission to do it, it is not because you thereby come out as some ultra-righteous person. Rather, it is because the result justifies violating Jewish law. And if the result is sufficiently weighty that it justifies violating Jewish law, then why should I care about the person’s intention? If the person’s intention is otherwise, then we shouldn’t do it? We should all die because Yael is not righteous enough? That seems completely unreasonable.

Therefore I think that in the end the notion of a transgression for its own proper sake also illustrates that same dual significance I’ve been talking about all along. On the one hand, what justifies the act is the result, and therefore if the result is positive and it is achieved, the act is justified, even though it deviates from Jewish law. On the other hand, if you ask me whether I would esteem the person who did it, obviously not. A person who did it for his own lust and not in order to achieve the result is not worthy of appreciation. Say, in the sense of the Talmud, when it says a transgression for its own proper sake is greater than a commandment not for its own proper sake, that sounds like a statement not only that it is permitted to do it, but that it is great—that someone who does it is even greater than one who performs a commandment not for its own proper sake. In that sense I agree with Meshiv Davar and with Rabbi Kook. In that sense of appreciating the person, appreciation for the person really is conditional on his intentions. If he does it out of lustful motivations, out of desire, he deserves no appreciation. What I do not agree with is their conclusion that if so, then the permission to do it is also conditional on intention. That is not true. The permission to do it depends on the result. And that is once again the same split between the decision, which depends on the result, and my evaluation of the person, which depends on his intentions.

And the same, if I return once more to our tycoons: I can appreciate what they do—their abilities as well as their contribution to society, which definitely exists—and at the same time I don’t have to assume they are towering righteous people. If they do it for self-interested reasons and not to benefit society, and by the way, sometimes there can also be a tycoon who does it for the sake of Heaven—that happens too. There is no decree that they are all wicked opportunists. There are… It reminds me of Jonah’s a fortiori argument, in the book of Jonah, where the Holy One, blessed be He, destroys the castor plant, and Jonah says—he asks for his soul to die. Then the Holy One, blessed be He, says to Jonah: Is it good for you to be angry about the plant? And he says, yes, I am angry enough to die, I am very angry unto death. Then the Holy One, blessed be He, says to him: You had pity on the plant, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow, and should I not have pity on Nineveh, the great city, with its many people and beasts? So what do you want—that I should destroy Nineveh? Understand that I too pity Nineveh. That’s the a fortiori argument. You didn’t labor over the plant and didn’t grow it, and yet you pitied it, so should I not pity Nineveh? This a fortiori argument is very strange. Because ostensibly it is obvious that Jonah did not pity the plant—he pitied himself. He needed the plant for shade. It wasn’t that he felt bad for the plant. So what kind of strange a fortiori argument is that?

I won’t elaborate. I once gave two directions on this in one of the lessons in previous years. But the direction relevant to our topic is this: who told you? Who told you that Jonah’s pity for the plant was not pity for the plant but for himself because he had an interest, because the plant gave him shade? So what? The fact that you have an interest means you act because of the interest? No. Not necessarily. It may be that he really did pity the plant, besides also needing it. Who says he didn’t pity the plant? And the Holy One, blessed be He, too—the claim is that He pitied Nineveh, and at the same time He also needs them. Otherwise He would not have created the world if He did not need us. He needs us. This is what the medieval authorities call the secret of service as a need on high—that the Holy One, blessed be He, needs our service, and that’s why He created us.

So for our purposes, what that means is that our assumption about Jonah stems from our own criminal mindset. The fact that someone has an interest and does something to realize that interest—obviously he’s doing it for the interest. Not true. Not necessarily. The fact that a person has an interest and wants to achieve it still does not mean he does the actions only for that interest. A person can make a lot of money, and of course be happy to have a lot of money, and still also have good intentions. He genuinely wants to use it for good purposes, improve the economy, benefit the public—that too can motivate him. So I’m just saying parenthetically: the fact that a person has an interest does not necessarily mean he acts because of the interest.

The interpretation we give to tycoons—until now I said that even if the interpretation is correct, they still deserve gratitude for the result. What I want to say now is that even the interpretation itself is not necessarily correct. It may be that some of them do it from good motives—they really want to benefit others, in addition perhaps to also wanting to fulfill their own interest, which may also exist. And two intentions—the Talmud in tractate Zevachim discusses what happens when someone offers a sacrifice with two intentions: is it considered as though he offered it with the correct intention or not? For Passover and for peace-offering or something like that—double intentions. Fine, that’s an interesting halakhic topic in its own right.

Another comment I may want to make is about the status of money in an additional sense. Up to now we dealt—both Rabbi Kook and I following him—with the value in possessing wealth. That there is consequential value, meaning it brings good into the world. Suppose it had no value. If it had no value, would that invalidate the occupation with or aspiration to accumulate wealth? I’m not at all sure. Suppose it has no value whatsoever—still a person wants wealth, he wants to live well, so he goes and accumulates wealth in order to live well. Is that forbidden? What’s wrong with that? In other words, the ascetic conception from which this whole discussion proceeds is that if I act for my own interest, then I’m not okay. Fine—but if there are good results, and maybe I even intended those results, all the better. If there are good results and I didn’t intend them, okay, then the result is good but my intention is terrible, so I don’t deserve credit—but why? Who said so? Why can’t I do things simply because I really want to? I want to enjoy myself, I want to accumulate wealth, it’s convenient for me, it’s good for me, I want to engage in it. Why must everything have an explanation in spiritual-value terms of one kind or another? Engaging in everyday prose, in our daily life, even if one is not gathering sparks from it, can still be perfectly legitimate.

I’ll maybe bring a few points where you can see this, and with that perhaps we’ll end the lesson. The Torah says there are three kinds of people who return from the battle lines. One who planted a vineyard and did not redeem it, one who built a house and did not dedicate it, and one who took a wife and did not marry her—betrothed a woman and did not marry her. I would have expected that those who return from the battle lines—that is, don’t go to war because they don’t want them to be killed before they have managed to do those things—I would have expected those who return from the battle lines to be people who still haven’t finished the Talmud. You haven’t finished studying enough. I haven’t studied enough, right? I haven’t done all the commandments, so therefore I need to return from the battle lines. Notice which three prosaic reasons the Torah invokes when it permits us to return from the battle lines: livelihood—you planted a vineyard—building a house, and taking a wife. Basically, in the end: housing. These are Jabotinsky’s “M’s.” In the end, three very basic human interests. Of course you can turn them into values too, but I don’t think that’s the point. The point is that the person has three basic interests that he has not yet fulfilled. If you haven’t fulfilled them, return from the battle lines. And what if I haven’t finished the Talmud? That doesn’t matter. Why? What is the point? It takes us back to the question of the value of prosaic acts, what I spoke about earlier. Prosaic acts are not only legitimate acts—it is permitted to engage in mundane matters. Not everything—when I eat an apple, contrary to what the Hasidim say, I am not necessarily doing it in order to gather sparks of holiness from it. I eat an apple because I feel like eating an apple and I like it. That’s all. I’m allowed. I don’t need to look for explanations for it.

And so likewise, one who planted a vineyard, betrothed a woman, built a house—this is life. These are simply three aspects that altogether constitute our simple, natural, prosaic life. And in the end, we are in the world for that—for living. The Torah tells us what to do within our life—commandments, transgressions, what to do and what not to do. But here, in those who return from the battle lines, you can see that the goal that ultimately justifies returning from war, that tells me continue living, is if you still haven’t lived enough—not if you haven’t studied enough. In other words, if you haven’t yet fully lived, go back—you still need to live.

There was once some comic sketch about wondering why they don’t draft people from age eighty—why from age eighteen? At age eighty they’ve already lived enough; at worst they’ll die in the war. But at age eighteen—and with apologies to the older people among us—at age eighteen they still have a lot ahead of them, they haven’t lived yet. Why are you sending them into battle? Some of them will die. Have you no pity on them? Obviously that’s a joke, but behind the joke there is a real idea. If it were realistic, there would be a lot of logic in sending the eighty-year-olds and not the eighteen-year-olds, if it were possible. Why? Because they haven’t lived yet. Not because they haven’t fulfilled enough commandments.

This touches somewhat on the Talmud in tractate Yoma. The Talmud there discusses saving a life—whether it overrides the Sabbath or not. And the Talmud brings several reasons there why saving a life overrides the Sabbath. The two central ones that remain in the conclusion—it seems one remains in the conclusion but one can show that the second does too—are “and live by them, not die by them,” and the second is “profane one Sabbath for him so that he may observe many Sabbaths.” These two reasons, when you think about them a little, seem completely opposite to each other. “Profane one Sabbath for him so that he may observe many Sabbaths”—what are you basically saying? Better to violate this Sabbath, save his life, because in doing so you enable him to observe many Sabbaths. So you lost one Sabbath but gained many Sabbaths, so on balance it’s worth it. What does that mean? That life is a means for observing Sabbaths. Basically life is the means and the commandments are the goal. Right?

Now what does “and live by them” mean? “And live by them”—that is, by the commandments—and not die by them. Meaning if the commandments require me to die, then no. Meaning life is not a means for the commandments. If I am required to give up my life to keep commandments, then no—don’t give up your life; forgo the commandment. That is exactly the opposite conception, which sees life as a value in itself and not as a tool for keeping commandments. So how can both these… Here again is the tension I discussed earlier. The question is whether our prosaic, natural life is intended only so that we fulfill commandments and perform acts of value, and all the prose is merely a means for that—or not. Maybe we were born here in order to live; we just need to live properly. Alongside life one should keep the commandments and not commit transgressions, but life is a value in itself, not only a means to fulfill commandments. Ostensibly these explanations in tractate Yoma are in dispute about that. There is room to discuss it, and we also spoke about it once. So how do both explanations remain in the conclusion when they express opposite, contradictory conceptions? How can both be accepted in the conclusion? And there are implications. Both remain in the conclusion. I could show that in fact both explanations say that life has value in itself. Even “profane one Sabbath for him” says this, but I won’t go into the logical accounting here.

I just want one more comment in this context. It is commonly thought that there is a dispute between Maimonides and the author of Duties of the Heart on the question whether there is anything at all that is optional. In the yeshivot they always quote the Vilna Gaon: for this you will in the future be called to judgment and accounting. What is the difference between judgment and accounting? For every transgression you commit you will be judged for it, and they will also make an accounting with you for the wasted Torah study during the time you committed that transgression. Or in other words: you cannot do anything optional, because the moment you do it, the implication is that you did not do something of value, and therefore it becomes wrong to engage in an optional matter. So that is a common conception. Hasidim and their opponents give it two different meanings, although both come from the same starting point.

The opponents of Hasidism say: fine, so occupy yourself only with holy matters. Leave the mundane world outside. The yeshivot are Noah’s ark; they are supposed to protect us. We are meant to engage only in holy matters, and all that is outside we are supposed to avoid, because what is outside is prose, it is mundane, one must not engage in mundane things. What do the Hasidim say? The Hasidim say there is no outside at all. There is no outside. Even when you engage in prosaic matters, these too are really holy matters. The contraction is not literal. The Holy One, blessed be He, is present in everything. Even in mundane occupations, when you eat an apple, you take from it, extract from it, sparks of holiness. There is no act that is a mundane act. They deny the existence of the category called the mundane. The common denominator between both the Hasidim and their opponents is that mundane action is illegitimate in the eyes of both. One says therefore avoid the mundane, and the other says do the mundane in purity of holiness—meaning, do that too in order to achieve clarification of sparks or other spiritual-value goals.

And that is also a bit what we saw in Rabbi Kook’s words here: that acquisition has value because through it one can achieve spiritual-value purposes and the like. Against both conceptions, both that of the Hasidim and that of the Lithuanians, I’ve always told people many times: usually when I see an argument between two sides, I agree with neither of them. So here too, I agree with neither of them, because there is a consensus between the two opposing sides that the mundane is not legitimate. And I claim that engaging in the mundane is a legitimate thing. There is no need either to deny its existence or to avoid it. One has to do it in the right measure, and that is “You shall be holy”—you should sanctify yourself in what is permitted, true—but that does not mean there are no permitted things. There are permitted things that are not obligatory, and each person will place himself as to how much he wants to be abstinent, holy, and so on, and how much not. But it is permitted to engage in mundane matters. It is completely legitimate. You don’t need spiritual justifications for that either.

All right, I think we’ll stop here. As I said, the lesson is recorded. Good that someone reminded me a little after the beginning to start recording. I’ll send you the recording, and Oren will also upload it to the site—thanks to Oren for all his work. And now I’m unmuting all the microphones. We can discuss, talk more freely. Whoever wants, of course, can leave. At first maybe we’ll start with questions related to the lesson, things that came up in the course of the lesson, and afterward whoever wants to talk about other things, as we did last time, is welcome to do so. I’ll unmute the microphones for a moment, one second. Unmute all. I’ve unmuted. I just suggest that you still close your microphones. Wait. Still close your microphones. I’m now enabling you to close and open microphones. Now it’s yours, in your hands. You close and you open. I suggest everyone close except whoever is asking something, because otherwise there will be echo and we won’t be able to understand anything. So okay, you can speak, whoever wants is welcome. Who’s first? Asaf? Wait, there’s an echo. Who didn’t close a microphone? Barak, did you want to ask something? Wait, why can’t I unmute you? There. Wait. Can you hear me? Yes, yes, now we can.