Ein Ayah – Berakhot 123

Table of Contents

• The story of Rabbi Meir and Beruriah and the verse “Let sins cease from the earth”
• Praying for the death of those who torment you versus praying for their repentance
• Religious coercion, the value of commandments, and the distinction between result and process
• Rabbi Kook: free choice, help from Heaven, and the conception of the human soul
• Two conceptions of the nature of the soul: tabula rasa versus an underlying goodness
• A side note on Rabbi Rabinovitch: choice as the foundation of the Torah and confronting challenges
• Weakness of will, responsibility, and a possible explanation for sin despite wanting the good
• “Emet LeYaakov” (Netivot HaMishpat): sins as sinners whose sin has become their very name
• Questions at the end of the lecture: “Do not bring us to a trial,” examples of extreme evil, and the purpose of study

Summary

General Overview

The text opens with the well-known Talmudic story of Rabbi Meir and Beruriah regarding the hooligans who tormented him, and sets up two problematic possibilities for prayer: praying that they die, versus praying that they repent. It suggests understanding Rabbi Meir’s prayer as a request that the Holy One, blessed be He, “solve the problem,” without assuming that God would act like a rubber stamp, and it raises a fundamental difficulty with praying for another person’s repentance, since repentance depends on free choice. The discussion then brings Rabbi Kook, who formulates a basic dispute: are there “wicked people” who do not want the good at all, or does every person want the good and “his impulse coerces and misleads him,” so that one should pray for help against the obstacles and not for a change in the will itself. Along the way there are remarks about Rabbi Rabinovitch and about the value of choice as a motive to confront life’s challenges rather than run from them, as well as a philosophical discussion of weakness of will and moral responsibility. Finally, it brings the interpretation of “Emet LeYaakov” (Netivot HaMishpat), which distinguishes between “sinners” and “sins” as a term for people in whom sin has become so absorbed that they are called by its name.

The story of Rabbi Meir and Beruriah and the verse “Let sins cease from the earth”

The Talmud describes hooligans who were Rabbi Meir’s neighbors and caused him great distress, and Rabbi Meir prayed for mercy concerning them “so that they should die.” Beruriah, his wife, challenged him from the verse “Let sins cease from the earth,” arguing that it says “sins” and not “sinners,” and therefore one should pray that their sins come to an end, not the people themselves—that is, “he should pray for mercy for them that they return in repentance.” And indeed, in the end they repented. The text notes that some commentators question that reading and say that elsewhere we do find room to pray regarding violent or abusive people, and it frames both prayers here as raising questions: both the prayer for their death and the prayer for their repentance.

Praying for the death of those who torment you versus praying for their repentance

The text sharpens the point that the request “that they should die” is not an act of killing but a prayer to the Holy One, blessed be He, and therefore the decision remains in God’s hands, not Rabbi Meir’s. It suggests that the criticism of Rabbi Meir has to be kept in proportion, because there is no assumption that God will kill them “just because Rabbi Meir asked,” even if we say that “the righteous decrees and the Holy One, blessed be He, fulfills.” It adds that the request for their repentance is problematic from the standpoint of the Maharsha and other commentators, because repentance is supposed to be done by the person himself, and a forced change or “programming” gives no value either to the process of repentance or to its final state.

Religious coercion, the value of commandments, and the distinction between result and process

The text compares praying for another person’s repentance to religious coercion, and asks whether there is any value in “correct” behavior when a person is compelled to it. It distinguishes between the moral-social sphere, where coercion may be useful because the environment does not suffer harm, and the religious sphere, where the value of a commandment is not merely consequential. Therefore, observing commandments under coercion or through something like “hypnosis” is seen as lacking value. The conclusion is that just as there is no point in praying that repentance be done in place of the person, there is no point in forcing repentance either, because it has to come from him.

Rabbi Kook: free choice, help from Heaven, and the conception of the human soul

Rabbi Kook states that it is obvious that a person has free choice, “and no one compels him toward righteousness or wickedness.” But if a person “desires the path of righteousness, they help him,” meaning that the help comes only after the desire. He explains that in Rabbi Meir’s view, the hooligans were “corrupted to the utmost” and had no desire at all to straighten their ways, so prayer would not change their choice, because it is “a fixed general law that God, may He be blessed, does not compel human choice,” and this is “the foundation of the entire Torah.” Rabbi Kook attributes to Beruriah the opposite view: “there is no wicked person in the world who would not prefer to walk in a good path rather than an evil one”; rather, “his impulse coerces and misleads him.” Therefore one should not despair of asking for mercy even for the greatest offenders. He presents Beruriah’s view as a view about “the exalted value of the human soul,” which was created upright and good, in such a way that it cannot be completely corrupted, and therefore one may ask for mercy for such people “as for all the sick,” who cannot help themselves even though they would very much like to be helped.

Two conceptions of the nature of the soul: tabula rasa versus an underlying goodness

The text explains that according to one approach—those “who hold that the human soul is only a preparation for acquiring eternity” through beliefs, character traits, and actions—a person is born neutral, and therefore one can imagine the possibility of “a soul completely corrupted,” for which there is no point in praying for improvement unless it itself changes its choice “with a strong hand.” Against this it sets what Rabbi Kook calls “the correct view”: that the soul is “a living and exalted essence,” and only “accidentally damaged by bodily conditions,” and it always desires to rise in the levels of righteousness. Therefore it is fitting to pray “that the sins should return, and there should no longer be wicked people.” It connects this to the continuation of the verse, “Bless the Lord, O my soul,” as a blessing over the fact that the soul was created “from the light of divine wisdom and uprightness,” in such a way that total corruption is impossible; therefore, “let sins cease,” and not “the sinners.”

A side note on Rabbi Rabinovitch: choice as the foundation of the Torah and confronting challenges

The text notes that on the day of the passing of Rabbi Rabinovitch, head of Yeshivat Ma’ale Adumim, it was said in his memory that he was a uniquely great Torah scholar and that his loss was tremendous. It describes an interview in which Rabbi Rabinovitch uses Maimonides’ words in Laws of Repentance, chapter 5, about choice being “the foundation of the entire Torah,” to argue against Haredi conceptions of avoiding military service out of fear of spiritual decline, presenting that as a kind of denial of the task of choosing, based on “everything is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven.” The text also weaves in the words of the Elder of Novardok about Maimonides’ instruction to flee to deserts so as not to fail in evil speech, and concludes that an approach of running away from trials is not correct, that the Torah was given to human beings living in society, and that it is right to cope even at the price of occasional failures. It brings an explanation from the Meiri that Torah study is set aside for a commandment because study is intended, among other things, for practice, and it parallels this to the demand not to run away from important tasks even when they involve risk.

Weakness of will, responsibility, and a possible explanation for sin despite wanting the good

The text raises a conceptual difficulty: if every person wants the good, then how does he sin, and does that make him “coerced,” like an irresistible impulse that exempts him from responsibility? It presents Donald Davidson’s formulation of three assumptions that all seem reasonable but create a paradox, and illustrates it with the example of a diet and a whipped-cream cake, where a person does what he says he does not want to do. It suggests a solution in which a person does not “choose evil” but rather “decides not to choose”—that is, he lets go of the reins and hands himself over to impulses and circumstances. In that way he does something bad that did not stem from choosing the good, but he is still responsible for it. The conclusion is that prayer is relevant not for changing the will but for weakening the obstacles and impulses that make it hard for a person to keep hold of the reins of choice.

“Emet LeYaakov” (Netivot HaMishpat): sins as sinners whose sin has become their very name

The text brings the “Emet LeYaakov” on the Talmudic passage, which challenges Beruriah’s interpretation because in biblical language “sins” usually means “sinners.” It adds a difficulty from Rashi, who brings the written and read forms in a way that seems to support Rabbi Meir. It also cites the Maharsha’s question that there is no relevance to asking for mercy for one’s fellow that he be brought back to repentance, because “everything is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven.” “Emet LeYaakov” answers by using Nachmanides on “for game was in his mouth,” where a person may be called by the name of his habitual action, like “and I am prayer” or “wrongdoing” as a label for one who does wrong. He concludes that “sins” refers to people to whom sin has become attached so deeply that they are called by its name and cannot be separated from it. He proposes that in verses such as “evil pursues sinners” and “let sins cease from the earth,” the curse is directed at such people, and he reinterprets the dispute between Rabbi Meir and Beruriah as a question whether those neighbors were “sins” or only ordinary “sinners.” Accordingly, one may pray for destruction only regarding “sins,” but not regarding ordinary sinners, for whom one should pray that they repent. The text emphasizes that Rabbi Kook disagrees, in his optimism, and argues that there are no “sins” in the sense of people corrupted to the core, whereas “Emet LeYaakov” holds that there really is such a division, and it attributes to this also an explanation of the written and read forms.

Questions at the end of the lecture: “Do not bring us to a trial,” examples of extreme evil, and the purpose of study

In the questions, it is said that it is hard to reconcile the value of choice and standing up to trials with the request that God “not bring us to a trial.” The answer qualifies that there is no point in seeking out trials that have no value, but where there is a task of value, one should not recoil from the challenge. A question is asked about a murderer who planned mass killing as an example of deliberate evil, and the response either attributes this to the possibility of sociopathy or adopts the division of “Emet LeYaakov,” according to which there are “sins,” people corrupted to the core, in contrast to Rabbi Kook’s approach. Another question is asked about Torah study and action, and the answer states that study has value in itself as cleaving to God. It brings Rabbi Yisrael Salanter’s exposition on “the rebellious son never was and never will be… expound it and receive reward,” as well as Rashi on “if you walk in My statutes” as labor in Torah, which is not only a means to practice. It also mentions the claim of the Magen Avraham and the Mishnah Berurah that women recite the blessing over Torah because they study what is relevant to practice, even though they are not commanded in Torah study in the sense of study for its own sake. At the end, a question is asked about Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed, part 3, and the speaker asks for an exact reference so he can check it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, we’re at section 122. In principle we were supposed to do 122, but 122 is some kind of note, and I thought we’d already move on to 123. So I’m sharing it here. The Talmud—yes, the well-known story about Rabbi Meir and Beruriah. I’m reading from above, where the Talmudic passage is brought. “There were certain hooligans”—yes, those hooligans, violent people; there are several interpretations in that direction among the medieval authorities (Rishonim)—“who were in Rabbi Meir’s neighborhood.” They were neighbors, lived near Rabbi Meir. “They were causing him great distress.” Yes, they kept bothering him, distressing him, harassing him. “Rabbi Meir wanted to pray for mercy concerning them so that they would die.” So Rabbi Meir wanted to pray that they should die, so they’d stop harassing him—what you might call the final solution. Beruriah his wife said to him—yes, Beruriah, Rabbi Meir’s wife, his wife—said to him: “What are you thinking? How can you allow yourself to do such a thing? Because it is written, ‘Let sins cease from the earth’?” Because the verse in Psalms says, “Let sins cease from the earth”? “Does it say sinners? It says sins.” It doesn’t say “let sinners cease from the earth”; it says “let sins cease from the earth.” And the meaning is: their sins should cease, not the people. You should pray that they repent and stop sinning, not that they die. “He prayed for mercy concerning them, that they should return in repentance.” So he prayed for mercy that they should repent, and indeed in the end they did repent. That’s the Talmudic story, a well-known story, Beruriah’s famous exposition. And there’s some discussion here among the commentators. Some want to claim that in fact this isn’t correct, that in the end the Jewish law is not like Beruriah. It’s not exactly a halakhic dispute, but that’s the style of the formulation, and there are places where you do see that one may pray regarding violent people or people who harass you. It really is a question, and the question that arises here cuts both ways: both about praying that they die and about praying that they repent.

The prayer that they should die—yes, the question is self-evident: what, because they’re bothering you, that justifies killing them? But here you have to remember: we’re not talking about taking a rifle and shooting them. We’re talking about his praying to the Holy One, blessed be He. The decision of what to do with them is ultimately God’s, not his. So I’m not assuming the idea is that if Rabbi Meir prayed that they die, even if they didn’t deserve death, then the Holy One, blessed be He, would do it just because Rabbi Meir asked. I don’t know—granted, it says “the righteous decrees and the Holy One, blessed be He, fulfills,” but I assume the Holy One, blessed be He, is not a rubber stamp. So ultimately, the claim against Rabbi Meir for praying that they die has to be kept in proportion. What he’s really saying to the Holy One, blessed be He, is: listen, solve this problem for me. If the Holy One, blessed be He, decides not to kill them, then He won’t kill them. That’s God’s decision, not Rabbi Meir’s. That’s regarding the prayer for their death.

The prayer for their repentance, which is what he ultimately did following Beruriah’s advice, also raises questions. The Maharsha and other commentators there ask: what does it even mean to pray that a person should repent? The task of repentance falls on the person himself. What are you expecting the Holy One, blessed be He, to do—do the work in his place? Meaning, bring him to repentance instead of his doing it himself? That has no value. Even if the Holy One, blessed be He, did it, it would have no value. The value of repentance is when the person does it. If I program him, hypnotize him in some way, and suddenly turn him into a righteous person, that has no value. And we also spoke in the past a bit about the value in processes, or in repentance—beyond the value of finally reaching the end-state, there’s value in the process itself. And of course if the Holy One, blessed be He, does the process for me, then it has no value at all. And accordingly, even the final state I reach—say I suddenly become righteous—even that has no value. It isn’t to my credit, it isn’t my decision, it isn’t my work, so why should it have any value?

By the way, the other side of the coin is really our view of coercion. We try to force a person, or people, to behave morally or to behave in a way that is correct according to Jewish law—what’s called religious coercion. That too is the other side of the same coin. The question is whether, even if we succeed in forcing people to behave properly, there is any value in that. Because even when they behave morally, they’re only doing it because I forced them. Does such an act have any value? In the moral sphere, of course, there is value, because in the end, if I force a person not to steal or not to murder or not to harm others, then true, from his standpoint I haven’t made him into a better person. I simply forced him to behave in a way that is more pleasant for his surroundings. But it still has value because society doesn’t suffer. But in the religious sense, if I force a person to behave in a way that conforms to Jewish law, that’s not something that harms others in some way, but rather… well, again, there are the metaphysical issues—maybe it does cause harm in some way, but I’m setting that aside right now. Is there value, because a person ought to keep commandments and that’s something valuable? But if he does it because he’s coerced, then what value does that have? Here the value is not consequential. Here, if I hypnotize a person, I can hypnotize him into becoming someone who keeps commandments in the most meticulous way. Is there value in doing that? I think not, because those commandments would have no value. Therefore the other side of the coin is: just as there’s no point in praying that a person repent, there’s likewise no point in coercing a person to repent, because such a thing has to come from him. Otherwise, if it’s forced upon him, it’s not clear how much value it has. Those are the two problematic sides of this prayer.

But in the end, that was the dispute. Rabbi Meir wanted to pray that they die; Beruriah wanted him to pray that they repent. And both those sides are problematic. Okay, so let’s now look for a moment at Rabbi Kook’s words. “It is a simple matter that a human being possesses free choice, and no one compels him toward righteousness or wickedness.” Yes, meaning there is nothing that forces him to be righteous or wicked; he decides that himself. “However, it is also simple that if a person desires the path of righteousness, he is assisted.” Meaning, if a person wants to go in a good direction, then he receives some assistance from the Holy One, blessed be He. If that’s what you want to do, I’ll help you, I’m with you. But the desire has to be yours. If you have the desire, I’ll help you realize it.

“Therefore Rabbi Meir thought: since these hooligans were utterly corrupt”—what does that mean? People rotten to the root, with nothing good in them—“and do not turn at all toward the desire to straighten their path”—yes, “desire” here means will; they don’t even have the will to straighten, to make their path straight—“how can prayer help to change their choice?” That’s why Rabbi Meir didn’t initially think to pray that they repent. Because if they have no desire of their own to repent, then for the Holy One, blessed be He, to make them repent would be pointless; it would have no value. Okay, that still doesn’t mean you should pray that they die. Fine, don’t pray that they repent—but why pray that they die? That’s a separate issue. In any case, there’s no point in praying that they repent.

“For it is a fixed general rule that God, blessed be He, does not compel a person’s choice, and this is the foundation of the entire Torah.” Yes, the Holy One, blessed be He, does not force a person’s choice, and this is the foundation of the whole Torah. That reminds me—maybe just an aside, let me pause for a moment. Today Rabbi Rabinovitch, head of the Ma’ale Adumim yeshiva, passed away. He was a very special Jew, truly an exceptional Torah scholar in many respects—also in the breadth of his knowledge, also in his straight thinking, also in his general education, his intellectual stature, the way he connected all these areas together. Really very rare. His death is a real loss. And one of the things I saw today—someone posted some article in his memory, an old interview with him—and he really spoke there about the fact that… here it says that free choice is the foundation of the whole Torah; that is basically a quotation from Maimonides in chapter 5 of the Laws of Repentance. Rabbi Kook here is quoting it. And it just reminded me now: in the interview I saw, at a certain point he says that what is incumbent upon us is to choose. Meaning, choosing is the infrastructure of the whole Torah. And there he criticized the Haredim who do not enlist. He says: Haredim do not enlist for all kinds of reasons, but the main reason—leave aside all the troubles and all the ideologies—the main reason is the fear of what will happen to the Haredi recruit. That he will deteriorate, leave religion, Jewish law, no longer remain faithful to Jewish law, decline spiritually—whatever—the fear is that there will be some kind of bad influence on him.

And about that Rabbi Rabinovitch says that in a certain sense this is to deny the task laid upon us to choose. “Everything is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven.” Things that concern fear of Heaven are in our hands, not in Heaven’s. And if a person lands in a situation that threatens his fear of Heaven, then let him make an effort. His job is to choose and decide and act according to what he thinks, not to flee from places of trial. It reminds me that once I heard about the Alter of Novardok. The Alter of Novardok once brought the Maimonides who says that someone who feels he won’t be able to withstand the prohibition of speaking slander should flee to the deserts and live alone without people so that he won’t fail in that prohibition. And then the Alter of Novardok says, in an interesting pilpul: think what kind of person such an instruction is even relevant for. A person who, in order not to violate the prohibition of slander, is ready to abandon civilization and go live alone in the desert just to avoid failing in slander—that is an extraordinarily righteous person. Very few people are even candidates for such an instruction. And even to those people Maimonides says to flee to the deserts. Meaning, from the outset this instruction is directed only to very unusual people, and even they, Maimonides says, should go to the deserts so as not to fail in the prohibition—well, he mentions slander there, not idolatry, just to be clear.

But the truth is that when you think about that instruction—it was actually a good friend of mine who once told me—he said in the end nobody behaves that way and nobody thinks he’s doing something wrong by not behaving that way. With all due respect to Maimonides’ instruction, nobody takes it seriously. Not because he doesn’t live up to it, but because it is not a correct instruction. It’s simply not a correct instruction. If you’re afraid you’ll fail in some transgression—slander, or whatever, any other prohibition—then cope. The Torah was not given to monks, to people who are supposed to live alone just so they won’t fail. The Torah was given to human beings, not to ministering angels. And human beings live in society, in a world, and the world presents challenges. Our goal is not to flee and hide from the challenges but to face them, and sometimes the price is that sometimes we fail. Yes, you don’t always succeed. But still, better to face the challenge and fail from time to time than to run away and not face it at all.

Yes, there’s a certain outlook—I think it’s very widespread in the Haredi world—that says the entire world is some kind of test for us. Our goal is simply not to encounter it so it won’t trip us up. Whereas the Hasidic outlook, at least the original Hasidic outlook—today it’s no longer so simple—was the opposite. We are meant to live within the world, in the most prosaic places, the lowest places, places that are most secular, and within that to try as much as we can to do what’s right and not do what isn’t. The point is not—the world was not created in order to test us. It places tests before us, but we are not supposed to relate to it as a collection of tests. We are supposed to live in the world, because that is what we were created for, and this is where we must live. There are tests, so you have to cope with them. If you see the whole world only as a test, then the obvious solution is simply to run and hide. And that’s what Rabbi Rabinovitch said there about this Haredi outlook, that they don’t enlist because they don’t want to cope. He didn’t deny that many people do fail, that many people really do decline, and many people do abandon their religious commitment when they enlist in the army. By the way, many times it isn’t actually because of the army; the army is just the final blow. But he says that’s not a reason not to enlist. It’s not a reason not to enlist. If there’s value in enlisting, if enlistment matters, then one should enlist. And if there are challenges, one should face them. Face them. And if you fail—okay, people fail. That’s the world.

Meaning, as is well known, Jewish law and the Torah do not recommend asceticism, unlike Christian approaches. We’re not supposed to shut ourselves away; we’re supposed to live in the world. And for that he brought this Maimonides that says free choice is the foundation of the whole Torah. One who denies free choice denies the Torah. Now here you have to notice: Rabbi Rabinovitch understood this statement in a more far-reaching way than its simple meaning. Its simple meaning only says: know that you have free choice; don’t be a determinist. Rabbi Rabinovitch claims more than that. He claims there is a point in making use of it. Not just to believe we have free choice and not be a determinist, but to make use of it—meaning not to run from challenges, but to face them, to activate our power to choose and face those challenges. That’s a bigger innovation. That’s not the straightforward meaning of Maimonides’ statement that one who denies free choice denies the whole Torah. But I still think he’s right about that too. I don’t know whether that’s what Maimonides meant there, but as an idea in its own right, I think he is absolutely right. To run away and shut yourself in just so as not to encounter various stumbling blocks—that seems to me the wrong path.

And all the debates around the question of isolation or openness revolve around the question of who fails more. Then each side argues: no, you fail more; no, you fail more. The truth is the answer to that issue is not as simple as people think—who fails more—but in my view that’s not the criterion at all. The criterion is not who fails more; the criterion is who is doing his job. The one doing his job is the one living within life and dealing with it, not the one fleeing life. Even if he doesn’t fail in certain transgressions, if he never places himself in any trial and therefore doesn’t fail, then he is not really fulfilling what’s required. The Holy One, blessed be He, planted us here in the world in order to live in the world, not to flee it. And in that sense I think there really is a very strong and nontrivial statement here. Because the simple religious tendency is again to flee from trials—why get yourself into trials? Just go somewhere else and that’s it.

Now of course there are differences here. Meaning, in a place where there is no value at all in being there, and there are many obstacles, many trials you could encounter there, then indeed there’s no point forcing yourself into it. But where there is value in being there—even though there are challenges—such as, for example, serving in the army, where what can you do, there’s no choice, we must defend ourselves. That has value; it’s a basic obligation. He brings there the point that in the Torah they counted only those fit for military service. Yes, in the Torah itself, when they count who enters the census of the children of Israel, whom does the Central Bureau of Statistics count? Those fit for the army. Meaning, he says, only one who goes out to the army is really fit to be counted among the Jewish people. So clearly this has some kind of value—a value where it is needed. I’m not talking about some militaristic value, but a value in the sense that when you need to confront, and need to defend, and need to maintain an army for that, everyone has to shoulder his share. And if everyone has to shoulder his share, that means there’s value in it; it has to be done. True, there are obstacles in it, and I don’t know where people fail more—maybe people fail more in the army. So what? Does that decide the argument? The argument is over whether more people fail or not? Why should it be? Even if more people fail, that’s not a reason not to go. So go and cope, and maybe you’ll fail—true, what can you do? Maybe you’ll fail. But still, one must not flee tasks that need to be done simply because they involve some risk. That’s called throwing the baby out with the bathwater. When you don’t do what you’re supposed to do because maybe you’ll fail, then what are you even living here for? To do what you’re supposed to do. Not failing is important, but you’re not living in order not to fail. You’re living in order to do the job. Alongside that, you also need not to fail. But if, in order not to fail, you don’t do the job, then what have we accomplished? There’s no point to that.

There’s a Meiri that talks about why Torah study is equivalent to them all. Torah study is the most important commandment, so why do we set aside Torah study for every commandment? Any commandment that comes your way, you’re supposed to interrupt your Torah study. So Meiri explains: because among other things you study Torah in order to fulfill it. Now if, because of the study, you refrain from fulfilling, then the study also loses its meaning. It’s not that the commandment overrides the value of Torah study; rather, if you don’t fulfill the commandment because you need to study, then the study itself loses much of its value. Since the purpose of study, among other things—not its only purpose, but among other things—is to fulfill what you study. And therefore the same here: many times we’re afraid of something, and because of that we don’t do what matters, and that’s a mistake. One needs to do what matters and be careful about the thing one fears, even if one may fail in it. Okay, that was just a parenthesis, because it really is fitting to say a few words in memory of this great man.

So I return to Rabbi Kook. Prayer will not help change people’s choice, because the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene in people’s choice. The human being’s freedom to choose is a foundational principle in the Torah. If the Holy One, blessed be He, were to manage our actions, then our actions would have no value—that’s what I said at the beginning. “However”—this is Rabbi Meir’s view—“Beruriah understood that there is no wicked person in the world who would not rather choose to walk in a good path than in an evil path; rather, his inclination coerces and deceives him. Therefore he is miserable and walks in paths of wickedness.” What is she saying? Beruriah’s claim against Rabbi Meir was that there is no one in the world—meaning, what did Rabbi Meir say? Rabbi Meir held that these hooligans in fact don’t want to do good at all. It’s not that they fail, it’s not that the inclination overpowers them—they simply don’t want to do good. Therefore there is no point in praying for them, because if someone does not want to do good at all, then truly there is no point in asking the Holy One, blessed be He, to make him want to do good. That has no value.

If a person wants to do good but just doesn’t succeed—he has inclinations, it’s hard for him, he struggles and so on—then one asks the Holy One, blessed be He, to help him cope, because that really is what he wants. But one cannot ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to make sure that he wants the right thing. Because if that’s the case, then that isn’t really what he wants. We spoke about this on the previous page, page 9 there, “and they emptied Egypt against their will”—against the will of Egypt, and I explained there that when the Holy One, blessed be He, granted the people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians, God caused the Egyptians suddenly to fall in love with the people of Israel. So that is called “against the will of the Egyptians.” The fact that they didn’t feel they’d been hypnotized and felt that they wanted it—that’s what they felt, but that wasn’t the truth. The truth is that in the end it really lacked all value; it was against their will. So here too: if the people are utterly corrupted, as Rabbi Meir says here—what Rabbi Kook says in Rabbi Meir’s name above—they are completely corrupt, they don’t want at all to do good, then indeed there is no point in praying that the Holy One, blessed be He, should make them want to do good. All you can do is pray for people who do want to do good, but just don’t succeed, fail. You ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to help them.

And that’s what Beruriah said to him: there is no person who is completely corrupt. Contrary to what you think, there is no person in the world who is really corrupt to the root and simply doesn’t want to do good. Rather, it is always just that the inclination overpowers him, and all kinds of things—“his inclination coerces and deceives him; therefore he is miserable and walks in paths of wickedness.” So he walks in paths of wickedness, but that isn’t really what he wants to do. “But there is no person so utterly corrupt that proper education and wise rebuke would not help him, whether much or little.” Some need a lot, some need a little, but in the end, if you work enough, there is no person for whom it is useless, because no one is corrupt to the root. That’s his claim.

Therefore, by the way, in the previous class on section 121 here in Rabbi Kook, I said that “Amalek is the first of the nations” and “Israel is the first of His produce.” Amalek is perceived as some kind of ideal of pure evil with nothing good in it. As I said, this is a utopian—not utopian, theoretical—hypothetical pole of reality. There is no real person who does not have some good point in him. Amalek is some kind of typological creature, a type of pure evil, and theoretical Israel is some kind of pure good. But all human beings are somewhere in the middle, with both things mixed together. That is really what Beruriah was claiming. She says: you are talking about typological creatures; I am talking about flesh-and-blood people. The people next to us are flesh-and-blood people. Flesh-and-blood people are never evil to the root. There is in them some desire to do good. How much desire to do good? The whole question is how powerful their inclination is and how willing they are to struggle with it. And on that people differ. But every person wants to do good, and therefore everyone is worthy of prayer, of concern for his education—some need much, some little—but one cannot despair of anyone. Therefore she says: “Accordingly one must not despair of seeking mercy that they return to guard paths of justice, even the greatest sinners.” Even the sinners who seem to you the greatest—at the root they have some desire to do good.

Now there’s something here—I’ll pause for a second before going on—because there are two important points here. First of all, her claim is indeed that even the greatest sinners are like this. Meaning, there is no person in the world who does not want to do good. There isn’t. That’s the claim anyway; that’s what Rabbi Kook puts in Beruriah’s mouth. Rabbi Kook—this is apparently his own view too, we said he was an optimist—there is no such person in the world. Even the greatest sinners want to do good. It’s just that their inclination is very strong, they don’t succeed, they don’t exert much force in struggling against the inclination. They are guilty—it’s not that they’re not guilty. But they want to do good, and therefore it really is appropriate to pray for them.

And here there is another point worth thinking about. It’s really very hard to imagine a person—say a person who has no inclinations at all. Nothing. Nothing acts on him. He is a tabula rasa, a blank slate. And now he has to decide what he wants. Does he want to do this, want to do that, want evil, want good? Can we even imagine such a person, with no influence on him at all, choosing evil because that is what he chose? In a completely cold, intellectual, ethical sense, if you want to call it that, he chooses in a pure way. Not because he has strong inclinations, not because something draws him, not because something conditioned him, not because he had bad education—nothing. No influences. A completely clean person, an angel. Of course this is a hypothetical question. But suppose I strip a person of all inclinations and all surrounding influences. Can we even conceive of someone who in such a situation would coldly choose evil? To do evil, choose to be a murderer. Not because there’s a lot of money in being a hitman, not because he’s angry at someone and so he kills him—no. Just coldly, he feels like killing people. Well, there are sociopaths, I don’t know exactly. I’m speaking now about human beings responsible for their actions. And with a person responsible for his actions it is very hard to imagine such a thing.

Usually, really, a person would want to do good somewhere deep down, were it not for all the surrounding influences. What causes us to do bad things is not our will. Our basic will is to do good. What causes us to do them is the inclination. Now that doesn’t mean we aren’t guilty; we are guilty. But our basic will is still to do good. That is Beruriah’s claim, really. And Beruriah’s claim is much stronger, according to how Rabbi Kook explains it, than a claim about this or that individual. She claims that all human beings are like this. There is no person in the world who is corrupt to the bone. That really is a strong statement. Again I say: leave sociopaths aside. I’m not speaking now about people with something defective, people who are not healthy. I’m speaking about people who are not sociopaths, who don’t have something wrong in the brain, but simply choose evil—those are their values. And she says: there is no such thing. There is no such thing in the world. On the one hand that sounds extreme; on the other hand, think about it—there’s a lot of logic in it. You don’t have to be terribly optimistic to see the world this way. Because I really have more than once thought about Nazis or the craziest examples of evil you can imagine. Suppose there was nothing pushing them to it—no environmental or social pressures, nothing. Is the claim really that the Nazi is simply one who chooses evil because he is wicked, pure and simple, and that is the value he chose in a cold way, that’s all—without any influences, without any biases, without anything? I think that even the most evil creatures I can imagine, somehow it always connects to inclinations. It’s not some authentic inner desire arising from what I purely want in a completely clean way. Usually, if I were completely clean, without pressures, without anything, I would do good. A person who chooses usually chooses good. A person who does evil is, in a certain sense, a person who does not do what he really wants to do, for all kinds of reasons. So we’ll return to that in a moment. But that is what Beruriah claims.

“And this is the penetrating outlook regarding the lofty value of the human soul, which God made upright and good, and it is impossible for a person to alter its form and good nature.” You also cannot take control of that. Your soul was made by the Holy One, blessed be He, and therefore the soul is good. That is clear. And it is not in your power; you cannot change your soul into evil. What you can do is do evil, but—as relates a bit to things we discussed last time—you cannot change the soul itself. Therefore the claim that every person is like this is not incidental to Rabbi Meir’s neighbors; she is making a general statement about all human beings whatsoever.

“Accordingly, it is possible to seek mercy for such miserable people, as for all the sick who cannot help themselves despite all their desire to be helped.” Meaning, we are speaking of people who cannot manage to help themselves, so let us pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, that He help them realize what they themselves want—not that He make them want the right thing. On that there is no point in praying. Beruriah too agrees there is no point in praying for that. That is not the dispute. That’s obvious. Rather, we pray for someone who at bottom wants to do good, but there are obstacles. Now the claim is that everyone is like that. It isn’t that I now have to check whether he is really like that or not; I can’t check anyway. How can I inspect what is going on in a person’s innards? The claim is that everyone is like that. No need to check.

“Now according to those who hold that the human soul is only a preparation to acquire eternity by means of good, intelligible opinions and good traits and good deeds, there can be a soul utterly corrupted, with no way to seek mercy for its improvement, except insofar as the person himself changes by a strong hand his choice and habit through the power of the trait of strength in the human soul.” Meaning, there is one view that Rabbi Kook presents here—“those who hold that the human soul is only a preparation to acquire eternity by means of good opinions, traits, and deeds.” What does he mean? That we are born tabula rasa. Neither good nor evil. We are born blank. Whether we will be good or evil depends on us—what we decide. If we decide on good traits, good deeds, we’ll be good. If we decide the opposite, we’ll be evil. But our birth itself is completely neutral. We are born tabula rasa.

By the way, there was also a major dispute among linguists—I assume psychologists too have this issue, but I know it from linguistics—Noam Chomsky, for example, argued that we could not have learned language if we were born tabula rasa. A person is born with some linguistic faculty. We have some capacity to acquire languages in general. Now, wherever we are born we acquire the language of that place, but if this capacity were not imprinted in us, we could not learn language. Others argue that yes, one can learn language the way one learns other things, without any initial preparedness. It seems to me fairly obvious that Chomsky is right—not empirically, but from a priori reasoning. That’s how I see it. But that’s basically the claim. Here there is something like that dispute—of course not the same thing, but something akin to it. One view says that a person is born tabula rasa; everything depends on him. According to that view, says Rabbi Kook, there can indeed be a person who is utterly corrupt. A person who decides, who wants to do evil, will be evil. There will not be some basic good point in him that is merely led astray by inclinations, because there is no such basic thing. The basis is neutral. What will become of us depends on us. If we choose good we will be good; if we choose evil we will be evil.

According to that conception, then there can be people corrupted to the end. That is Rabbi Kook’s claim. And about them there is no point in asking mercy that they improve their ways. Though Rabbi Kook says that does not mean they will necessarily remain wicked in the end, because if they overcome and activate their power of choice, they can repair themselves. It’s just that praying that the Holy One, blessed be He, repair them—that one does not do. Why not? Because they do not yet want to do good at all, so there is no point in praying that they should want it. That does not mean it is deterministic that they will also die wicked. That’s not the claim. The claim is only that if they are tabula rasa, then good and evil are only in their own hands. They have no initial point independent of them. So there is nothing to pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, about, because the work is their work. They have to decide to be good and then they will be good. What are we to pray for—that they should want to be good? What’s the point of that? That is the tabula rasa conception. But of course, even without praying, if they decide to be good, they will be good. A person has the ability to choose. It isn’t determinism. It only means there is no point in praying for that kind of person.

“But according to the correct view”—yes, that was basically Rabbi Meir, but the correct view is Beruriah’s—“that the soul is a living and exalted essence, standing in its form like one of the higher beings.” The soul in its root is good; the Holy One, blessed be He, created it. That is what he described above. “It is only incidentally corrupted by bodily accidents.” It has inclinations and tendencies and such that do not allow it to actualize its good will, the soul’s will. “But its desire is always to ascend in the heights of justice and uprightness. Therefore it is fitting to pray that the sinners return and that there be no more wicked people.” If this is the correct conception, which is Beruriah’s conception, then yes, it is fitting to pray for people, because at their root they want to do good. We are simply praying that the Holy One, blessed be He, help them realize their will.

“And perhaps this is why the verse immediately continues: ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul’—that the soul should bless the Lord for its portion, for He created it from the light of divine wisdom and uprightness, such that its total corruption is impossible, and therefore there can be no complete end and nullification except of sins—so that there will no longer be wicked people, but not the sinners themselves”—meaning, the people should no longer be wicked; the sins should be nullified, but not the sinners themselves—“for the soul created from the upper light will not come to an end, but will live forever.” Fine, meaning that according to the true conception, says Rabbi Kook, which is Beruriah’s conception, the soul is not born tabula rasa. Rather, we have some basic desire to do good. The only thing that hinders this is the “leaven in the dough,” as in the well-known midrash: “Master of the universe, it is revealed and known before You that our desire is to do Your will; but what can we do? The leaven in the dough prevents us.” Yes, the evil inclination hinders us and doesn’t let us do what we want. If that is the conception, then it makes sense to pray that the Holy One, blessed be He, help people do what they want. And therefore the verse says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul,” because the verse “let sins cease from the earth” is the one Rabbi Meir and Beruriah are arguing about. “Let sins cease from the earth, and the wicked be no more; bless the Lord, O my soul, hallelujah.” Hallelujah was the subject of our previous class. So “bless the Lord, O my soul” is attached to this issue. Why? “That the soul should bless the Lord for its portion, for He created it from the light of wisdom and divine uprightness.” Bless the Lord, O my soul, for the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, created us good. We are not tabula rasa; for that we bless the Lord. And consequently, “let sins cease,” not sinners. Therefore it makes sense to pray for people that they realize their good will. Because if we were born tabula rasa, our soul would not be the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He, not something good but something neutral, and then there would be no point praying that sins cease; rather we would pray that sinners cease. That is also the connection the verse itself makes.

And here there are several interesting points worth attention. The first point is really this picture of Beruriah’s, which all in all seems to me a correct picture. A person detached from all biases and inclinations and interests—if he were really totally clean, he would choose to do good. It’s hard to imagine a person coldly choosing evil, as I said before. But then—how does a person sin? If he wants to do good, then why does he do it? Why doesn’t he do it? So we say: inclinations, interests, pressures. He doesn’t withstand the pressures. But if he doesn’t withstand the pressures, then he is coerced. So what’s the problem? Then he isn’t sinning. Shall we say he isn’t coerced? He could overcome the inclinations. Why doesn’t he overcome them? Because it’s hard. But you can. So why don’t you overcome? Because you don’t want to. Well then, you don’t want to do good? What do you mean telling me that you do want to do good? How can it be that basically you want to do good, but the inclinations don’t let you?

Now here we need to pay careful attention. The accepted view is that there are situations in which a person cannot realize what he wants to do. In legal or psychiatric language these are called an irresistible impulse. What does that mean? A person is in some state where he has no control over himself, he cannot overcome it. So although he doesn’t want to murder—according to his values he sees murder as wrong—he enters some situation, I don’t know what, is seized by some frenzy, enters some psychotic state that cannot be controlled, and murders. Such a person, on the legal level, is not responsible for his actions. Why? Because he had an irresistible impulse; he could not subdue it, and therefore that isn’t what he wanted to do. So he is not responsible. Of course one has to treat him, one must ensure he doesn’t do it again; society must be protected even from such a person. But punishment he does not deserve. He does not bear responsibility for his actions.

But from the fact that there is a criminal exemption for someone who has an irresistible impulse, we understand that someone not in that state, someone in a normal state, is responsible for his actions. Even though he too, when he murdered—it’s obvious he’s not someone who thinks it’s good to murder. Rather, he had an inclination, got heated up, I don’t know exactly. But it’s not psychotic, not something beyond his control. He does have control. But still—meaning, he understands it’s forbidden to murder, because if he doesn’t understand that murder is forbidden then there’s no point judging him; he simply isn’t with us. He understands murder is forbidden, he has inclinations, and he doesn’t overcome them. And here I ask: how does that happen? If he doesn’t manage to overcome them, isn’t that an irresistible impulse? Then that’s the same situation as before. He has impulses he cannot control, so he’s exempt from criminal responsibility. Unless—what? Unless he didn’t manage, but he could have managed. Right? That’s the normal case. An irresistible impulse means he couldn’t have managed. But the normal case, the one where you do have criminal responsibility, is one where you could have succeeded but did not. How does that happen? In philosophy this is called the problem of weakness of the will. Weakness of the will. And for analytic philosophers it’s seen as a paradox. It’s a paradox, this situation.

Why? You can formulate it like this. There’s an American philosopher named Donald Davidson who formulated it this way. He presents three assumptions, and all three seem reasonable. First assumption: a person ultimately wants to do what he thinks is right to do. If you think this is the right thing to do, then that’s what you want to do. Second assumption: if you want to do it, then absent constraints you will also do it. Right? What I said before. Third assumption: a person sometimes does things he does not think are right to do. That is what is called weakness of the will. We know such situations in a religious context: a person sins despite believing and being committed to Jewish law and understanding that one should keep Jewish law, yet he sins. It happens. So he did something he believes he should not do. But not only in a religious context; also in moral contexts of course, and even in more mundane contexts like dieting. A person wants to diet, but he sees some really delicious whipped-cream cake and cannot resist; he eats it. Now if you ask him, did you want to eat the cake, he’ll say: of course not, it was perfectly clear to me that I wasn’t supposed to eat the cake. But you ate it! That’s what is called weakness of will. How does he explain it? My will was weak; I didn’t manage to overcome the urge; my will was too weak. Okay? Those are situations of weak will.

Now Davidson says: all three assumptions are plausible. A, what I think is right to do is what I want to do. B, what I want to do is what I’ll do unless something prevents me. C, which also seems plausible because we know it from life, human beings sometimes do things they do not think are right. But the third assumption doesn’t fit with the first two. If what I think is right is what I want to do, and if what I want to do is what I do in the absence of other influences, then what I think is right is what I do. Put those first two assumptions together. How can it be that I do something even though I think it’s wrong? So what will you say? You’ll say the impulse acted on me. But that’s not an excuse. If the impulse acted on me, then one of two things: if I couldn’t control it, then I’m coerced, that’s not a sin. What can I do? It’s an irresistible impulse, I bear no criminal responsibility. Otherwise, I could have controlled it. Fine—then I’m back to asking: so why didn’t you control it?

Take the whipped-cream cake. I ate it. Why? Because I had a very strong urge. Why didn’t you control it? Could you have controlled it? Yes. So why didn’t you? Because I was weak. What does that mean, you were weak? It means you wanted to eat the cake more than you wanted, in the long term, to be thin. Let’s translate that into plain Hebrew without whitewashing it: the desire to eat the cake overcame the desire to be thin. So yes, you did want it. What are you telling me stories that you didn’t want to? You had a desire to be thin, but you also had a desire to eat whipped-cream cake, and the second desire was stronger. So in practice you did what you wanted. What are you telling me that you did something you didn’t want? You did it because you wanted to. If you hadn’t wanted to, you wouldn’t have done it. That is basically the claim.

In the end, the state of sin is a paradoxical state, because it contains two assumptions. First, at the moment of acting it was clear to me that I did not think it was right to do this—not now, but already at the time of the act. Second, I could have overcome it, because if I couldn’t, then I’m coerced. But in fact I fell. So how can that be? If I could have overcome it, and that is also what I wanted to do, then why didn’t I do it? If I didn’t do it, apparently I didn’t really want it, or I wanted it but wanted the other thing more. So in the bottom line, I didn’t want it. So what is this story that I did want it, but still didn’t do it? There is no such thing. We’re just selling ourselves nonsense. That is the claim. The claim that weakness of will is basically a state that doesn’t exist; we are fooling ourselves. So how can Beruriah’s picture be possible? And according to her this is the whole world—all people in the world are like this. It isn’t some special case; all people in the world are like this. If they do evil, it is only despite not wanting to do it. So I ask regarding weakness of will: if they didn’t want to do it, why did they do it? They did it because that is what they wanted. So how can you tell me you didn’t want to? You did want to.

There is a problem here that requires treatment on the philosophical, conceptual plane—not only on the psychological plane. Meaning, it’s not only a question of how it arises and what influences are involved—those are questions for psychologists. I’m talking here about the philosophical perspective, not the psychological one. How is such a situation even defined? That’s a definitional question. How can such a situation be defined at all?

Here it seems to me that the only way I can think of to explain this situation of weakness of the will—and even this is not free of problems; it’s a very delicate and confusing issue—it seems to me the only way to explain it is this: as I said before, if a person does something evil, it’s not because he chose evil. A person who chooses, chooses good. Rather, what is it? A person who slid into doing evil. I said: but if he slid into it, then he’s coerced. So is he exempt? Is it not a transgression? Is he not responsible? Is it an irresistible impulse? No. There are two kinds of sliding. There can be a situation where the person hands himself over to his inclination and says: right now I am not activating my power of choice. I am not struggling with the pressures around me, the interests, the inclinations, and so on. And then they carry me into evil. So ultimately I did not choose to do this thing, because if I were choosing I would not do it, because I don’t want to do it; it is evil in my eyes. So I didn’t choose it. Rather my inclinations, my interests, carried me there.

Then why am I responsible? After all, I’m coerced—they carried me. No. They carried me because I decided not to choose. Not that I decided to do the evil thing; I decided not to choose. I was a kind of lazy person. I ignored for a moment what would happen from my not choosing. At the back of my mind I knew that what would happen is that I would do this act, but a human being is a complex creature, so I put that aside for a moment and say: okay, I don’t have the strength to fight anymore, whatever happens, happens. Okay? And then my inclinations or my interests carry me into doing something evil. So in the end it turns out that I did something I didn’t want to do, I didn’t do it by my choice, but I also wasn’t coerced. It’s a kind of tangle like that; maybe this unties it. Why wasn’t I coerced? Because I bear responsibility for having decided not to choose. For that they certainly can come to me with claims. But it’s true that I didn’t choose the evil thing, because when I choose, I choose good. A person who chooses always chooses good; there is no person who chooses evil. You do evil because of inclinations. So on the one hand, the inclinations carried you; on the other hand, it wasn’t coercion. You are responsible for your actions. That is the game here, and I think there is no choice but to understand Rabbi Kook’s picture of Beruriah this way. I don’t see another way to explain it.

Then what emerges is that indeed a person at root wants the good, and still his inclinations carry him into doing something evil, yet he is responsible for his actions. Why? Because he decided to let go of the reins. To drop the reins, let the horses pull the wagon. He stops holding the reins. The metaphor, of course, is himself. Meaning, he does not hold and control what he himself is going to do; he surrenders himself to circumstances, and then the circumstances carry you into all sorts of things. It seems to me, at least, that we all know these situations. Somehow we find ourselves doing things that afterwards we regret. So why didn’t we think beforehand? Because we couldn’t withstand it. What does that mean, we couldn’t withstand it? Were we coerced—couldn’t not fail to withstand it? That can’t be. If we couldn’t, then we don’t regret it. What is there to regret? We were coerced, we couldn’t help it, we didn’t mess up here. No. We regret it because we understand that we could have coped. So why didn’t we cope? Because we decided not to cope. Not that we decided to do the evil thing. To decide to do the evil thing—that my inclinations decided. What I decided was only not to struggle, to hand myself over to the inclinations. That is what I decided. And that is what is called weakness of the will. I have a weak will; I decided to activate it weakly. Therefore I bear responsibility for it, but in the final analysis I did not, by my own decision, do something I wanted. That really doesn’t happen. I think that is the claim.

That is one point that touches what Rabbi Kook is talking about. And then, when we pray—when we pray for such a person that the Holy One, blessed be He, should help him—basically we mean there are two ways to help him. One can help him in the decision to remain a chooser, not to throw the reins from his hands. But as we said, there is no point in praying for that. The person has to make his own decisions. What we can do is pray that the inclinations which cause him to let go of the reins should be weaker. And if the inclinations are weaker, then perhaps he will succeed in holding the reins and not letting them go. And once he does not let them go, and he chooses, then he will generally do the good thing. That one can pray for. Not for the fixing of the will itself, but for the obstacles to your ability to realize what you want. For that one may ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to help you—if you truly want the right thing. That is the claim.

Now there’s another interesting point here, an observation connected to this Talmudic passage. I’ll show it to you—maybe I copied it into the file. It’s a work called Emet LeYaakov on this passage in the Talmud, by the author of Netivot HaMishpat. On Shulchan Arukh, Hoshen Mishpat, and he also wrote on tractates of the Talmud. Here it is, Emet LeYaakov on Tractate Berakhot. He says—let’s do this a bit quickly—he brings the Talmudic passage. “And this topic is very puzzling,” as the Rif and Maharsha were puzzled: what does Beruriah mean, “Does it say sinners? It says sins.” What kind of argument is that, that Beruriah says “let sins cease” and not “sinners”? What does “sins” mean in biblical language? In biblical Hebrew, “sins” means sinners. Not really sins in the sense we use the word today. In biblical language, “let sins cease from the earth” means let the sinners cease from the earth. So what is this word game she is playing with—since it says sins and not sinners, therefore the meaning is that I should pray for the sins to disappear and not for the sinners to disappear? That’s not right. “Sins” in its plain literal meaning means sinners.

That’s what he says: after all, in almost all places it says “sins” and the meaning is sinners, like “Happy is the man who has not walked…” Yes, in Psalms, the very verse we discussed in previous chapters. “Happy is the man who has not stood in the way of sins”—what does “way of sins” mean? The way of sinners. Where sinners go, there he did not stand. “Sins” means sinners. Or “the censers of these sinners,” in Numbers about Korah. Who are the “sinners”? The sinful people, Korah’s faction. “Evil pursues sinners” in Proverbs. And many more places too numerous to count. David cursed his enemies: “May his children be orphans and his wife a widow,” and much more of that sort. What is he saying? In the end, “sins” means sinners. And we also find in many places that we do in fact pray that sinners die, like David who cursed those who sinned against him. So what is this give-and-take between Beruriah and Rabbi Meir?

And there is another difficulty in Rashi’s explanation, who wrote—and this wording does not appear in our Rashi, so perhaps he had a different version—“It says sins; read it as sinners,” a textual variant. According to that, it’s difficult, because if so he supports Rabbi Meir. Beruriah brought the verse as support for her position, but if in fact we read “sinners” and not “sins,” then it supports Rabbi Meir: let sinners cease, not sins. And Maharsha further asks: granted, if a person seeks mercy for himself that he be brought to repentance, that makes sense. If a person asks mercy for himself, that’s fine. For although “everything is in the hands of Heaven except fear of Heaven,” still the sages said: “One who comes to purify himself is assisted.” If you want to purify yourself, the Holy One, blessed be He, will help you. Since he asks mercy for himself to return in repentance, he is like one who comes to purify himself, and so the Holy One, blessed be He, can help him. But to ask mercy for one’s fellow that he return in repentance is difficult. What good does his request do? Everything is in the hands of Heaven except… the fellow has to take the steps of repentance, not the Holy One, blessed be He. Like the question we asked before.

He says: regarding yourself, when you ask that the Holy One, blessed be He, help you, that is a sign that you already want to repent. So if your desire is good, then ask the Holy One, blessed be He, to help. But when your fellow does not want to repent and you pray for him, then in effect you are praying that his desire be changed, not that he be helped to realize his desire. That doesn’t make sense. Earlier we saw that his inner desire is nevertheless like that, but he assumes it isn’t. Then he says: and to answer this, it seems that indeed, everywhere it says “sins,” why doesn’t it say “sinners”? “Sins” is not said about the act of sin itself, while “sinners” is said about the doer of the sin. After all, even in biblical Hebrew there is also “sinners.” So why, he asks, is there this duplication in Scripture—sometimes “sinners,” sometimes “sins”—when the meaning is sinners in either case, as the Rif noted above? If the meaning is sinners, then use the word “sinners”; why use “sins”? “Sins” really describes the deeds, not the person, not the doer.

And he answers by citing Nachmanides on the Torah portion Toledot, on the verse “for game was in his mouth”—“Isaac loved Esau because game was in his mouth.” Nachmanides writes: “It is an idiom”: “for Esau was game in his father’s mouth.” He “named the man by his deed because of its constancy.” What does that mean? Essentially, Isaac’s name for Esau was “game.” “Isaac loved Esau because game was in his mouth” means that game supplied food to Isaac’s mouth. “Game” is Esau’s name. Isaac simply called him “game.” Why? Because he was constantly occupied with hunting. It was his main occupation all day. So in such situations one sometimes calls a person by his occupation. Someone who deals with donkeys all the time, you call him “donkey.” Here comes donkey—the one who works with donkeys. Or here comes game—the one who is always hunting. You see this in many places in Scripture.

He says likewise, “But I am prayer.” What does that mean, “I am prayer”? I pray. What does “I am prayer” mean? It means someone who prays all the time—that’s King David, who spent much time in prayer and wrote the Book of Psalms. Someone occupied much with prayer is himself called “prayer,” after his habitual occupation. The idea is that when an attribute clings to the essence so that it never departs from it, then the person is called by the name of the action. A person who performs some action and devotes much of his life to it, and is characterized by it, is sometimes named after it. “Game,” “prayer,” things of that sort. And that’s why, he says, David called himself by the name “prayer,” and so on. And similarly it says, “All injustice shuts its mouth.” When does injustice have a mouth? One who does injustice is called “injustice.” The sinner is called “injustice,” and he shuts his mouth. It doesn’t say “one who does injustice”; it names the person “injustice.”

According to that, everything is resolved. When Scripture calls sinners “sins”—for according to grammar it should say “sinners,” such as “evil pursues sinners,” and so on—the intention is this: Scripture is cursing only “sins,” meaning those from whom sin cannot again be separated. Namely, those from whom the paths of repentance are blocked, and sin can no longer be detached from them in any way. Sin has become essentialized in them, absorbed into them, until they are called “sins” and not “sinners.” Therefore Scripture curses them and says “evil pursues sins” or “let sins cease from the earth.” What does that mean? Like “game,” “prayer,” and “injustice,” a person who does things so much that they become part of his very being is called by the action. Sinners who are called “sins” are indeed people, not acts. It’s not “let sins cease” in the sense we usually read it in the Talmud, meaning let the acts disappear. Rather, it means let the people disappear—but only people so deeply immersed in sin, so constantly occupied with sin, that they are called by the name of that action, sinning. Such sinners are called “sins,” and about them one may pray and say “let sins cease.” That is his claim.

So when we return to the dialogue between Beruriah and Rabbi Meir, everything looks different. Because Beruriah’s exposition really does seem impossible. What does “let sins cease and not sinners” mean? “Sins” means sinners. So he says no—that isn’t the meaning, that the deeds should end and not the doers. Rather, the doers should end, but only doers who are corrupt to the core, who are already named by the sin itself—they are called “sins.” “Sins” is already their name; it’s not just what they do. Ordinary sinners, who are called “sinners” and not “sins,” are people not corrupt to the core. They commit sins like all of us, but they are not people corrupt to the core; they are not called by the name of sin. About such people it is forbidden to pray that they die. For such people one should pray that they repent.

So in effect this is very similar to Rabbi Kook, because the claim is that only regarding someone corrupt to the core may one pray that he die, because he has no hope. But a person who commits sins like all of us, and sometimes we suffer because of him, but at base there is something positive in him—he is not called by the name of sin, he has not become an object of sin—about such a person one may not pray that he die. For him one must pray that he repent. There is one difference between Emet LeYaakov and Rabbi Kook: Emet LeYaakov claims that there are such people and there are others; there are “sinners” and there are “sins.” Rabbi Kook, with his optimistic outlook, claims that there are no people called “sins.” There are only “sinners” in the world; there are no “sins” in the world. Therefore he reads the Talmud “let sins cease and not sinners” to mean that the acts of sin should cease, not the sinners. But in terms of the language, I think Netivot—Emet LeYaakov—is right. “Sins” means people, not acts. Then one really has to say there is a difference between two kinds of sinners. There are sinners who are “sinners,” like all of us, who sometimes sin. Such people one should pray that the Holy One, blessed be He, help them not to sin, help them progress. But there are also people—and this Rabbi Kook does not agree—there are also people who really are corrupt to the core. And regarding such people, one may pray, and perhaps it is even fitting to pray, that they die. They have no hope; they are damage itself.

Like, here’s an example: you call a person “damage.” When do you call him damage? A person who constantly causes harm, you call him damage. Yes, that’s an example. This person is sin. He isn’t a person who commits sins; he himself is sin. Okay, such a person one may pray about. The dispute between Netivot and Rabbi Kook is over whether such people exist. Rabbi Kook says there are no such people, from his optimistic perspective. Then he reads the Talmud as we all usually read it, that the prayer is that the deeds disappear, not the people. Netivot, in my view, is more correct in the plain meaning of the Talmud and the verses: the prayer is about people. Only these are people who really are sin to the core, and he claims such people do exist. The dispute between Rabbi Meir and Beruriah was over the nature of those neighbors—do they belong to the category of “sins” or to the category of “sinners”? Beruriah argued they belong to the category of “sinners,” and one may pray only regarding “sins,” not “sinners.” It says “let sins cease,” not “let sinners cease.” Okay? And that is what… And when Rashi says this is a textual variant, written “sins” but read “sinners,” that is exactly what the textual variant is meant to convey. It is meant to say that we pray only regarding “sins,” not regarding those who are merely “sinners.” About those who are “sinners” we may not pray that they cease from the earth. Therefore there is a written-and-read distinction there. Those “sins” are actually people who are “sins”; it’s not acts. And such people one may pray about, but not ordinary sinners. That textual variant marks the distinction exactly between “sins” and “sinners.” That too is what Netivot argues later on.

Okay, I’ll stop here. We’ll unmute your microphones for whoever wants to comment or ask, or whatever. As usual we’ll start with questions related to the class, and afterward if someone wants to speak about something else, that’s also possible. Okay. Anyone want to?