Ein Ayah – Berakhot 119
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- [58:30] The problem with giving the commandments a rational basis
- [1:00:00] A note about the wording of “May they be acceptable” before recitation
- [1:01:05] The development of the generations and the formation of intuition
- [1:03:34] The Torah as neutral to facts and halakhic intuition
- [1:04:46] The ego-centeredness of the commandments
- [1:06:54] Maimonides: upright or self-restrained – identification with the commandments
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So maybe I’ll start with Rabbi Kook. We won’t go back to the Talmudic text now. “When one comes to discuss when it is proper to say the short prayer about the prayer being acceptable—whether before the prayer or after it—there are grounds for both sides. There is an advantage to saying this prayer before the prayer, because it will arouse a person’s heart so that his prayer will be with desirable intention, and this is a great perfection aside from the benefit that comes from the prayer’s being accepted to fulfill the request.” So that’s the side for saying “May the words of my mouth be acceptable” before the prayer—that it will awaken a person’s heart before praying, so that his Amidah prayer will be with desirable intention, which is itself an advantage, beyond the further advantage that the prayer will be more readily accepted. Meaning, I’ll get more benefit from that prayer—but aside from that, it is itself a virtue. I’ll come back to that point in a moment, because it’s an interesting point.
But on the other hand, there is an advantage to saying it afterward, after the prayer, because it is proper to take to heart that the purpose of prayer is that it should continue to bear fruit in a person’s conduct, so that his ways should be good and proper also after his prayer, as an outgrowth of his soul’s elevation during prayer. So first he described the side of why to say “May they be acceptable” before the prayer, and now he says why to say it after the prayer. Saying it before the prayer is a kind of meditation, right? A kind of preparation, to elevate the prayer, to make the prayer better. What does it mean to say it after the prayer? The prayer has already passed—what good does that do? Clearly it is directed toward the continuation of the day. Meaning, after the prayer, “that it should continue to bear fruit in a person’s conduct, so that his ways should be good and proper also after his prayer.” In other words, “May the words of my mouth be acceptable” is directed toward the times that come after the prayer. It does not come to say something or do something for the prayer that was; it comes to do something for the life that comes after the prayer—“as an outgrowth of his soul’s elevation during prayer.”
And as the Khazar says in the Kuzari, that the light of prayer will illumine the soul and continue until the time of the next prayer. So there are three prayers a day, and each prayer gives some kind of uplift, some kind of pumping that keeps us going until the next prayer, “and it gradually fades and grows dim until its light is renewed in another prayer.” Right, it rises and fades, like a sawtooth wave. There’s a jump during prayer, then it gradually goes down, then another jump, then it gradually goes down, and that’s how prayer somehow keeps us in the saddle. “Therefore, it is fitting to pray after the prayer that the words and meditations of the heart should be acceptable,” and included in this acceptance is the wish that they should have a good effect on the soul even during those hours when one is separated from prayer—that prayer should act upon life even after I have already departed from the prayer. “Therefore it is more fitting to say this prayer when one is ready to take leave of his prayer and go out to his ordinary affairs, apart from holy thoughts.” You leave the sphere of holiness and go to everyday life, and precisely when you leave holiness, give yourself some kind of boost for your ordinary life so that you’ll continue to sustain it at a higher spiritual level.
“However, it cannot be denied that it is possible for prayer to affect a person at the time with such lofty holy feelings that he cannot adapt them to his conduct.” Sometimes it can happen that a person is elevated so high that the prayer becomes completely detached from life—some lofty thing above life, not something that can connect with my life and my daily conduct. “If so, it would have been proper to pray regarding those feelings that they be accepted for their moment,” meaning, before the prayer he should pray that he be elevated in his prayer to a lofty level. What he really wants to say is that he returns to the discussion of whether to place “May they be acceptable” before the prayer or after it. He says: if you place it before the prayer, then you give a boost to your life during the moments of prayer, not to life itself. If you do it after the prayer, then it’s a boost for life. If you give the boost before the prayer, then the prayer itself rises to such heights that it basically becomes detached from life—it turns into something entirely unrelated to life.
And therefore, “thus we learn from the fact that David said it after eighteen sections”—after eighteen sections in Psalms—“that there is more benefit in the elevation of prayer when it is close to one’s practical traits,” the kind that can actually be sustained in practice. “And this is more central to the purpose of prayer than the loftier feelings, which last only for their moment, even though they too are good and pleasant.” So again, here he presents the same dilemma as before, but from a somewhat different perspective. To say “May they be acceptable” before the prayer is to make the prayer very elevated, to raise it very high, and then it becomes detached from life. There is some value to that—you encounter heights that otherwise you don’t succeed in encountering—but it’s a momentary encounter. If I place it after the prayer, then true, the prayer itself will remain at what you might call a medium-high level, but life will be elevated more, and will actually be able to converse with the prayer at its level. That elevates all of life, instead of giving one very high moment while the rest of life continues to limp along in shallow water. So he says that we learn from King David that the second option is preferable. In other words, it is better to raise life to a not-so-great height, to the height of the prayer. The price, of course, is that the prayer is also not at a very high level—you don’t encounter things on an extremely lofty plane—but the medium level that you’ve attained, let’s say, stays with you not only during prayer but afterward as well. And that is what we learn from King David, who placed it after the eighteen sections.
“Therefore David, the sweet singer of Israel, was ‘the man raised on high,’” meaning that there was permanence in his ascent, in his lofty feelings. King David is almost the paradigmatic figure of a person who lived a spiritual life throughout his whole life. He said the Psalms; he’s not speaking about one particular prayer. It’s something that expresses the way he lived on a permanent basis. So King David is the person from whom one can learn how to reach these levels. And King David himself taught us: don’t go for the high boosts; rather place it at the end of the prayer, so that life itself rises to a higher spiritual level, even at the price that overall your level does not encounter the heights it might have encountered during the moments of prayer itself. Right, “for he would strive that his deeds resemble his lofty feelings at the time of his prayer, the prayer of the upright, and from him we learn the principal benefit that comes from the outpouring of the soul before its Creator in prayer—that it is the path closest to constant conduct in life.” In other words, don’t rise too high; stay in a place that can speak to your everyday life. “And thereby a person will learn to sanctify life, until it becomes close to the feelings of holiness conceived in the holy hours of prayer.”
Okay, so I’m going back to the beginning, and I want perhaps to start with a more general discussion about prayer. Anyone who knows a bit about my attitude toward prayer can probably imagine that I feel some sort of dissonance when I read these things from Rabbi Kook. Dissonance, envy—I don’t know what to call it—but I at least personally am not exactly there. And I want to show you—or maybe begin the discussion before I show it. Usually, when people pray, right, I think I won’t be saying something many of you can’t relate to if I say that usually when we pray, we are not even at a medium-high level, let alone at very lofty heights. In other words, prayer is, generally speaking, something pretty routine—something you do as part of life, because that’s what you do. And in a certain sense, I once had a conversation with some students in Yeruham: why is it that graduates of yeshivot—by the way, today this has changed a bit, but I think back then it was even more so, and before that even more—why is it that yeshiva graduates generally continue to pray, but many very many of them do not continue to study, certainly not serious study?
And my feeling was—there are many explanations—but one explanation is that prayer has somehow become fixed in our consciousness as something that is part of our daily obligations. It’s part of the schedule. Just as there are meals, there are prayers; there is going to work—so prayer is part of the schedule. It is obvious to us that it is part of the schedule in the religious sense, but it has settled in as part of our regular schedule. It’s a kind of constraint that we take into account and place within our daily routine. Study, on the other hand, is perceived by people as some kind of special volunteerism. If it happens, maybe I’ll do something—fine. You can even anchor this in the Talmudic text, when the Talmud says—well, that’s a topic in itself—but the Talmud says that one who recites Shema morning and evening has fulfilled his obligation of Torah study, and everything else looks like some sort of mere volunteering, or a non-obligatory commandment, or something you don’t actually have to do. Meaning, we recite Shema anyway because of the commandment of Shema, so in practice Torah study is emptied completely of content in the sense of a fixed daily obligation. Exactly the opposite of the place prayer holds for us today.
For us, after the fixed prayers were instituted—once, before they were instituted, prayer too was basically something like that—but after the Men of the Great Assembly instituted the fixed prayers, again following the Patriarchs, right, three prayers a day—there is room to debate when and how exactly this happened—but at some point we moved to fixed prayers, in a fixed text, at fixed times, and then prayer became part of the daily routine. Study did not undergo that process. In other words, study did not crystallize for people as some kind of basic religious obligation such that if you didn’t do it, you’ve committed a transgression, you’re not really religious. With prayer, that’s obvious. But with study, it’s one of the reasons, at least, why many people who are indeed faithful and observant and committed and careful about prayer—when it comes to study, okay, if it happens, it happens; here and there they hear some little teaching, but they don’t really devote much time to study.
Now if I return for a moment to prayer—our topic right now, unfortunately, is not study but prayer; we are studying prayer, so maybe that’s okay too. In any case, people who pray in this daily, prosaic way, as part of the daily routine, often have that presented as some low level, because basically it is “a commandment performed by rote,” praying out of habit, like this sort of, well… Where is the feeling? Where is the closeness to the Holy One, blessed be He? Where is the connection? Where is the spiritual elevation? Everything Rabbi Kook is talking about here. Our prosaic prayer is something where it doesn’t really matter to us whether we say “May they be acceptable” before or after. Does anyone really think it will actually do something for us? I don’t know. Maybe after we’ve studied it, for a day or two it’ll last, maybe it’ll do something. But it seems to me that somehow, in the long run—without being judgmental and without deciding whether that’s good or bad—factually, in the long run, these all seem like theoretical discussions.
And therefore, a very common criticism of this kind of fixed daily prayer is that it is “a commandment performed by rote.” It is not prayer with real value; you’re just doing it because you have to. Prayer is supposed to come from some kind of arousal from below—you want to draw close to the Holy One, blessed be He, to connect with Him, I don’t know, to create some kind of relationship with Him—and from that, you should come to prayer. But on this issue, perhaps as an extreme opposite pole, I’ll bring the well-known claim of Leibowitz, who basically argued that the commandment of prayer is like any other commandment. Meaning, you need to intend to fulfill your obligation, and to do it according to the rules and what is required, and that’s it. There is nothing special in prayer beyond the other commandments. I don’t know whether he wrote this or said it, but this is how I remember it in his name: that one could just as well recite the telephone book three times a day. Meaning, choose some passage from the telephone book and say it; as long as your intention is for the sake of the sanctification of the Holy One, blessed be He, that I am doing this because that is what one is obligated to do for the sake of the commandment of prayer—then excellent, your prayer has counted, and that is the best possible prayer.
Now, in Leibowitz’s characteristic way in many contexts, many respects—not just on this issue—he takes a correct point one step too far. Okay, I see that this appears in several of his books and also in letters. Fine. In any case, he takes a correct point one step too far. I think there is really something to his statement, but the moment he turns it into the whole picture, I think he misses something. And to see that, let’s take a look for a moment at a very interesting Maimonides, from the Laws of Idolatry.
[Speaker B] Just one second.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. Maimonides, Laws of Idolatry—I’m sharing. The background to this is a dispute between Abaye and Rava in tractate Sanhedrin about the question: what is the law regarding someone who worships idols out of love or out of fear? So Abaye says that one who worships idols out of love or fear is liable; Rava says that one who worships idols out of love or fear is exempt. So the medieval authorities (Rishonim) have a very hard time understanding this dispute. What does it mean that someone who worships idols out of love or fear is exempt? So then what exactly does a person have to do in order to worship idols in the ideal way? To be a deluxe sinner? If he loves and fears—if he loves and fears the idol, sorry, not the Holy One blessed be He—then what greater idol worshiper could there be? Therefore a lot of medieval authorities (Rishonim) indeed write, including the Raavad here in his glosses on Maimonides, including Rashi, the Rivash, several medieval authorities (Rishonim), that this does not mean worshiping idols out of love or fear of the idol, but out of love or fear of a person. Meaning: if I worship idols, but I’m doing it not because I believe in it or because I love or fear it, but because I love or fear a person and I want to please him or avoid some sanctions he’ll impose on me—because of love or fear—therefore I worship the idol. About that, Rava says that I am exempt, and that is how Jewish law is ruled: in a dispute between Abaye and Rava we rule like Rava. But the subtext is that if I love or fear the idol itself, then of course I am completely worshiping idols—there is no argument about that, because that is idolatry. What do you mean? The motivations that I am supposed to direct toward the Holy One blessed be He are love and fear of the Holy One blessed be He; if I direct those motivations toward the idol, that is called worshiping idols. How can Rava say that if you worship idols out of love or fear you are exempt—or that this is not the prohibition of idolatry, at least not the full prohibition? “Exempt” means exempt from punishment, but that doesn’t mean there is no transgression here. But still, it is not idolatry in the full sense. So that is how most of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) understand it.
But in Maimonides it does not seem that way. Maimonides writes—and I’m now reading his wording in this law: “One who worships stars and constellations out of love, for example because he desired this form due to its craftsmanship, since it was especially beautiful”—meaning, he really loves this idol, this image, this cult directed toward this idol; there is something about this ritual that really speaks to him. That is called worshiping out of love. “Or one who worshiped it out of fear of it, lest it harm him, as its worshipers imagine that it does good and evil.” So here Maimonides writes explicitly that love and fear are motivations directed toward the idol—not toward some third-party person, but toward the idol. So Maimonides says: “If he accepted it upon himself as a god, he is liable to stoning”—that is full-fledged idolatry. “But if he worshiped it in its normal manner, or by one of the four modes of worship, out of love or fear, he is exempt.” So he rules like Rava; in that sense this is like all the other authorities, because in disputes between Abaye and Rava we rule like Rava except for the well-known exceptions. But unlike all the other medieval authorities (Rishonim), Maimonides explains that the love and fear under discussion are love and fear toward the idol itself, not toward another person.
Look, for example, at the Raavad in his gloss here: “Out of love or fear—and we explain this as love of a person and fear of a person, not love of the idol and not fear of it.” Again—why not? Because it is obvious that worshiping the idol itself because I love it or fear it is idolatry. What else could it be? Therefore it is obvious that the meaning is love of a person and fear of a person. But Maimonides does not write that way. Maimonides speaks about love and fear of the idol itself. The question is how to understand Rava’s position—which was also ruled as Jewish law according to Maimonides. What does “idolatry” mean?
You see? “If he accepted it upon himself as a god, he is liable to stoning; but if he worshiped it in its normal manner,” and so on, “out of love or fear, he is exempt.” Meaning, the contrast to worship out of love and fear is what Maimonides calls “accepting it as a god.” What does “accepting it as a god” mean? “Accepting it as a god,” it seems to me at least, is what in another context Maimonides might call worship for its own sake. Let’s look, for example, at the Laws of Repentance. In the Laws of Repentance, chapter 10, the beginning of chapter 10, Maimonides writes: “A person should not say: I will fulfill the commandments of the Torah and engage in its wisdom in order to receive all the blessings written in it, or in order to merit the life of the World to Come; and I will separate myself from the transgressions against which the Torah warned us in order to be saved from the curses written in the Torah, or so that I not be cut off from the life of the World to Come. It is not fitting to serve God in this way, for one who serves in this way serves out of fear, and this is not the level of the prophets nor the level of the sages. And one serves God in this way only if one is among the ignorant masses, women, and children”—forgive me to the women here in the audience—“whom one trains to serve out of fear until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love.” So one should serve out of love and not in order to receive reward or avoid punishment.
Now what does it mean to serve out of love? In law 2 Maimonides says: “One who serves out of love engages in Torah and commandments and walks in the paths of wisdom not because of anything in the world, nor out of fear of evil, nor in order to inherit the good, but does the truth because it is true, and in the end the good comes because of it.” Meaning, Maimonides says there is reward and there is punishment, but your service should not be for the sake of reward and punishment. Rather, you should do the truth because it is true. And afterward the reward will come, but not to serve for the reward. “And this is a very great level, and not every sage attains it. And it is the level of Abraham our father, whom the Holy One blessed be He called ‘His beloved,’ because he served only out of love. And this is the level that the Holy One blessed be He commanded us through Moses, as it is said: ‘And you shall love the Lord your God’; and when a person loves God with the proper love, he will immediately perform all the commandments out of love.” Fine.
So what is love? Maimonides defines it as: “doing the truth because it is true.” Very interesting. We usually understand love as some kind of emotional outburst. We love the Holy One blessed be He, we yearn for Him, we want to connect to Him, some kind of emotional overflow. Maimonides says something very Lithuanian-style here: doing the truth because it is true—that is called serving God out of love. And then, basically, I think that gives…
Law 3 here is also interesting; maybe I’ll say one sentence about it. In law 3 Maimonides compares the proper love to Song of Songs, like those lovesick people whose mind is never free from love of that woman and who is obsessed with her constantly, whether sitting or rising or while eating and drinking, and so on. “Even greater than this shall be the love of God in the hearts of those who love Him.” Here it is really an emotional description. And everything in Song of Songs is a parable for this matter, as he writes later here: “And this is what Solomon said metaphorically: ‘For I am sick with love,’ and all of Song of Songs is a parable for this matter.” Suddenly here he moves to a surging emotional plane, some great storm of feeling that accompanies you all the time and never stops. How does that fit with this Lithuanian-style statement that to love means to do the truth because it is true?
It seems to me that here one has to be careful not to take the parable too far. I think law 3 only comes to say that just as emotional love accompanies you constantly, at every moment and in every activity, so too intellectual love—doing the truth because it is true—should accompany you at every moment in life. He does not mean that this intellectual love must also flood you emotionally, because I do not think that is the meaning of “doing the truth because it is true.” Rather, he means that it should be just as intense as our emotional loves. Meaning, even though it is ostensibly some cold intellectual matter, it is supposed to accompany me at every moment and in every one of my life activities: “In all your ways know Him, and He will straighten your paths,” or “I have set the Lord before me always,” and so on.
So basically what is written here is that Maimonides tells us we are not supposed to serve God out of any interest, but out of love. But the definition of love is not in the emotional dimension; rather, it is doing the truth because it is true. And that is an important point. In other places one does see that Maimonides does define love as something emotional, and it seems to me that he is talking about both aspects.
And now I return to the law in chapter 3, law 6 of the Laws of Idolatry. It seems to me that what Maimonides is saying here is the following—and I once heard this from my friend Nadav Shnerb. I’ve written it several times since, but he is the source so I say it in his name. The claim is basically this: when a person worships a certain idol out of love or fear, then basically this is service not for its own sake. It is service not for its own sake because in the end you are what stands at the center. You feel some need of love or fear, and therefore you perform the required actions. Basically there is something pulling you there; this is not a decision that starts in some autonomous way from the cold intellect. Rather, it is some force acting on you, taking you—you fall in love with someone, you fear someone, and that causes you to do all sorts of things. That is not service for its own sake.
Service for its own sake means doing it because it is the truth—doing the truth because it is true—without my loving and without my fearing in the emotional sense. Rather, love in the intellectual sense means understanding that this is the truth and doing it because it is the truth. And the contrast to worshiping idols out of love or fear is what Maimonides writes here: “accepting it as a god.” What does “accepting it as a god” mean?
People sometimes ask: what does that mean? Why do I need to do it? Suppose the Holy One blessed be He exists, and suppose He also revealed Himself at Sinai and gave me all kinds of commandments to do. Why do I need to do them? So He gave them—so what? Anyone can give me all kinds of things. Why do I have to do them? It seems to me that this question points to some incorrect conception of the concept of God. Meaning, people do not understand that the very concept of God inherently includes His being the one whose command I obey. When people look for reasons why to serve God, they invent all kinds of reasons: gratitude, because it is the truth, because it makes the world better, all kinds of things of that sort. In my opinion none of these explanations really holds water. And I also think none of these explanations is really the explanation for why people serve God.
If you ask a person—or ask yourselves directly sometime—why do you serve God, it is not because you love Him and not because you fear Him. And in my humble opinion, if you’ll allow me a speculation, it is also not because you think you’ll have a better life and that He’ll reward you in this way or that. Rather, there is some simple sense of obligation that says: if He says it, I do it. What He says has to be done. That is what is called “accepting Him as a god.” “Accepting Him as a god” means not understanding that He is God in the sense that He created the world; rather, the fact that He created the world lets me understand that He is God. What is “God”? In the Bible, by the way, “elohim” means judge. What is a judge? A judge is one who has authority, whose word must be obeyed. Like a judge, right? God is the Judge of judges. Meaning, what He says must be done—the supreme authority whose word must be obeyed. That is what is called God. That is what is called “accepting Him as a god.” “Accepting Him as a god” means I accept Him upon myself as God—meaning, what He says, I do. And it has nothing to do with the question of my emotional relation to Him—whether I love Him, fear Him, hate Him, it doesn’t matter. It simply doesn’t matter. I have to do it because He is God. Why? That’s why. That is the reason.
Just as service of God should look this way, so too idolatry should look this way. “Should” meaning not should, of course; I mean that in order for it to count as idolatry in the full criminal sense, it has to be done for its own sake. I have to worship the idol because I accepted it upon myself as a god, because I decided that this idol is in the category of “what it says, I do.” And not because I love it, and not because I fear it, and not for anything else. And if I do it because I love it or fear it, then that is not full idolatry, because it is not really a god. Idolatry means accepting some factor other than the Holy One blessed be He as a god. But if you are doing the worship because you love or fear it, then that is not called having accepted it as a god. You are acting because of other factors that you love or fear.
You’re driving on the road, you see a police officer, and you slow down. You were driving above the speed limit, and you slow down. Why? Because you’re afraid he’ll give you a ticket. Okay? Let’s say. Let’s say you did not have thoughts of repentance at that moment, but rather you’re afraid he’ll give you a ticket. So are you worshiping idols? That’s worshiping idols, isn’t it? You fear him, you fear the punishment he’ll give you if you don’t keep what he says, or what the legislator says, and therefore you do what he says. That is really idolatry. Idolatry out of fear—you fear what he’ll do to you, and therefore you obey his command. Why is that not idolatry? It is not idolatry because I did not accept the police officer as a god. I am not doing it because he said so. I am doing it because of the sanction. Or because I think this is what is required—it doesn’t matter. If I repented in my heart, fine, that is also good. But it is not because I accepted the police officer upon myself as a god.
By the way, if someone keeps the law—as people often say, also about the Sabbath—“because it’s the law,” what does that mean? In a certain sense that is idolatry. It is idolatry. Because you are accepting some factor—granted, maybe not a personal one, but still some kind of factor—as something that requires no explanation for why its command must be obeyed: its command must be obeyed because it said so. Like Mallory, the famous mountain climber. They asked him, “Why do you climb Everest?” He looked at the questioner as if—what do you mean? “Because it’s there.” I climb it because it’s there. Meaning, anyone looking for explanations of why to climb Everest will never climb it. The real people climb for its own sake, not because there is an explanation—because it’s there. So too the service of God should be done because He is God. And idolatry too, mutatis mutandis, to count as idolatry it has to be done in a way that one accepts it as a god. If I do it out of love or fear, then I am exempt.
The implication for our topic is that I think this applies also in the context of prayer. Although before that, let me just close the loop regarding “by rote.” What the spiritual supervisors are always scolding people for—those who pray by rote, like a habitual commandment, without the proper intentions, love and fear and so on—“it’s rote, it’s worthless.” Well, I have a new insight for those supervisors: that is the best prayer there can be. That is the most excellent prayer there can be, because it is done out of a sense of obligation and not out of any foreign motivation. That is called accepting Him as God. I go to pray because I have accepted the Holy One blessed be He upon myself as God.
That is the story of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev about the man who went out with his tefillin and prayer shawl to fix the yoke of the wagon in the middle of prayer. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev sees him and says: “Look, Master of the Universe, what a nation of righteous people You have. They pray in the synagogue, they pray at home, they pray while fixing the wagon—they are praying all the time. Truly a nation of righteous people.” Now, I always smirked at that line, because okay, a nice little Hasidic quip. But the truth is that there is something real in it. Because when I ask myself why this person really didn’t stay home and fix the wagon yoke instead—after all, he’s not praying, his prayer is worthless—why is he playing this whole game? When you really look closely, the pessimistic supervisor will say: it’s rote, he’s just used to it. And I claim: not true. There is some feeling inside him—we are all human beings, complicated creatures—but there is some feeling inside this person that there is an obligation to pray. What do you mean? The Holy One blessed be He said so; I must pray. Now true, I have urges, and I have no time, and the wagon yoke is bothering me, and in the end my prayer really is not… it is not prayer in the full sense. But there is here some expression of a very deep sense of obligation. The person goes to synagogue three times a day even though it does nothing for him, it dries him out. What a wonderful prayer that is. It is a wonderful prayer because it comes from a very deep sense of obligation.
Now, why did I say that Leibowitz is not entirely right, but rather takes a correct step and then takes it too far? Up to this point I agree with Leibowitz, but Leibowitz stops here. For Leibowitz, the claim is that this is what prayer is, and therefore you could also recite the phone book. That is unreasonable. My claim is that this really is the primary foundation, the basic floor of the concept of prayer. But on top of that floor, obviously, one can add love and fear and intentions and connections and experiences—whatever anyone wants to add. On top of it, as a second, third, fourth floor, all the way up. But if that comes instead of the basic floor, instead of the floor that does it out of obligation, then indeed that prayer is not… you have not fulfilled your obligation. You simply have not fulfilled your obligation of prayer. Because commandments require intention, and the intention is the intention to fulfill one’s obligation—not the intentions of the Arizal and not any other kind of intention. It is the intention to fulfill one’s obligation. That is the law that commandments require intention. There are additional intentions in prayer—Rabbi Chaim is well known on that. But first of all there is the commandment to fulfill… the intention to fulfill one’s obligation. Without that, you have not fulfilled your obligation in prayer.
And therefore this is the primary foundation both in idolatry and in the service of God. On top of it all sorts of exaltations and intentions and love and fear and things of that sort can appear.
So if I return to Rav Kook and to the dissonance I mentioned earlier with respect to what we read, to the passage we read, then there are probably these two things in prayer—if I want the balanced model. On the one hand, there is the service that comes from a sense of obligation, from the fact that I am commanded. If there is such a commandment, I have to do it; and the intention that accompanies floor A, this floor, is the intention to fulfill one’s obligation. But on top of this floor there can be many more floors of love and fear and intentions and connections and experiences and religiosity and all sorts of things that I don’t know personally but people say exist. Fine—they can be on floor B, C, D, all the way to floor T. And each of them can also have intentions and experiences that accompany it. Everything is fine and everything is true and everything is there. But first of all, on the first floor there has to be the service of acceptance of the yoke. That is really the task.
Now if I go back for a moment to what Rav Kook writes, I’ll make a few comments. This took me much longer than I thought. First I’ll make a few comments on his first—or second—sentence. He writes that there are two aspects, from two sides. “There is an advantage to praying this prayer before the prayer, because it will arouse the human heart so that his prayer will be with desirable intention. And this is a great perfection, aside from the benefit that follows from the acceptance of the prayer in fulfilling the request.” Meaning, Rav Kook says: what is the advantage of placing “May the words of my mouth be acceptable” before the Amidah? The advantage is that it elevates the prayer itself. And then what? It arouses the person’s heart so that his prayer will be with better intention, more desirable intention, “and this is a great perfection, aside from the benefit that follows from the acceptance of the prayer in fulfilling the request.” Meaning, I request requests—maybe they will be fulfilled, the Holy One blessed be He will answer me. Of course if I pray with better intention there is a greater chance it will be answered—happy is the believer. But beyond that, there is also a benefit in the prayer itself being with intention; not because it gets answered better. That itself is a great perfection, beyond the benefit of fulfilling the request. Okay? Prayer with intention is itself a benefit. What is the benefit in it? That is where he places himself: the benefit is the elevation I undergo during the prayer itself, not because my requests will be answered, but because I rise to some higher spiritual sphere.
Now notice that we are talking here about the requests in prayer. Meaning, even when we ask, there are these two dimensions. One dimension is that the request is fulfilled—that is the natural, expected benefit of prayer. I ask; I want it fulfilled. So if I ask with intention there is a higher chance it will be fulfilled. But Rav Kook claims that even in the section of requests there is another benefit, and the benefit is the very fact that I ask with intention. That itself is a kind of perfection.
And in fact there would be room here to hesitate, because in light of the discussion I gave earlier, one could ask what really is the more elevated prayer. One could say that the more elevated prayer is really prayer not only in the Leibowitzian sense, but with all the floors I described earlier—yet not for the fulfillment of the interest, not in order that my requests be fulfilled. On the contrary, one should pray because of the intention, because of the connection, because of whatever, and of course because of obligation—floor A is obligation, and on top of it all the other floors I mentioned. And here Rav Kook says no, no—the interest does the work. Meaning, what does that mean? When you ask the Holy One blessed be He for requests and you expect them to be answered, if you ask with intention, then not only does that give you a better chance that it will be answered, but a request made with intention has value in itself, not only because it leads to a higher chance of response.
Why? If I ask with intention, I simply want it more to be answered, so all I’m doing is something that works better for my interest. Why is that itself of value as an elevation? There is some claim here that says that in order to be elevated you do not need to detach from your interest. Go with the interest. But if you understand that this interest—and again, here I am only presenting Rav Kook’s view, not my own; I personally am not here, not in this conceptual place, not only in terms of my level but in terms of my whole outlook. But right now we are learning him. So Rav Kook basically wants to say that even when you ask, and when you ask you understand that you are dependent on the Holy One blessed be He—after all, it is from Him that you ask, because your dependence on Him is great—that itself has value beyond the fulfillment of the request. That sense of dependence, that sense that He is God, that He is the ruler of the world, that you are dependent on Him and He fulfills your requests—that itself is some kind of spiritual elevation. And you do not need to move over to the blessings of praise or thanksgiving or the other parts, which perhaps are the more naturally elevating blessings. No—even in the self-interested requests, when you want Him to answer, there too you have the possibility of gaining spiritual elevation and not only the answer to prayer, the practical benefit of having the prayer answered.
Now this is very interesting, because when you look at the verses under discussion—“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable before You, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer”—what does “be acceptable” mean? In the simple sense, “be acceptable” means: may they please You, meaning, may You answer my requests. And if I relate this to the requests indeed, meaning the middle blessings of the Amidah, then Rav Kook is clearly speaking specifically about the requests, not about the other blessings. The other blessings of praise and thanksgiving—that might be more natural, because there it is not my interest; there clearly the Holy One blessed be He is at the center. I praise Him, I thank Him. In the requests I am at the center; after all, I want to receive things from Him. Rav Kook says no, no: “May they be acceptable”—you say that about the requests. May they be acceptable, meaning that the Holy One blessed be He will be appeased and answer the requests. And that itself also gives you that same elevation as the blessings of praise and thanksgiving.
That is basically the comment on his first sentence—or comments on it. Afterward Rav Kook moves to discuss what exactly the two sides are: placing it before the prayer or after the prayer. And here he is basically comparing two models of spiritual elevation. One model is a life of prose, with some very high peaks in the middle—very high spiritual peaks. The second model is a model of everyday life, but not quite so prosaic—a life that also has a poetic dimension, a spiritual dimension, and not just life in prose. But on a level that is not ecstatic—not some very high peak, but spiritual life at an intermediate yet constant level. In such a way that prayer speaks to life at more or less the same height, can nourish it, can be nourished by it, and I essentially raise my life a bit instead of remaining down below with some peaks up above.
This may be somewhat connected to the usual explanation of the relation between Yom Kippur and Purim. Purim is basically the service of God within this world—we drink wine and eat festive meals, we eat and drink and rejoice “until one does not know,” and lose our minds and all kinds of things of that sort. And that itself is, in a certain sense, service of God within life—admittedly in an extreme form; I do not think a person is drunk in ordinary daily life, but still, within eating and drinking. And Yom Kippur is service of God at the level of a peak. The High Priest enters the Holy of Holies, and that is some tremendously high peak that is somehow supposed to nourish the whole year. And the sages say that Yom Kippurim is “like Purim.” What does “like Purim” mean? It means that really the value of Yom Kippur is that it is like Purim. And in the way of the world, as the sages say, the smaller is compared to the greater. Meaning, if the value of Yom Kippur is described by saying it is like Purim, that means Purim is the real thing, and Yom Kippur is like Purim.
And I think what stands behind that is what Rav Kook is talking about here. Purim is the service of God within life, in your eating and drinking. You can be an ascetic, you can go to some spiritual peak, detach from the world and from life and live in some spiritual sphere—like Christian monks, say, or priests who do not marry women or somehow abstain from the bodily aspects of life. And the claim here is that that is the category of Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur can provide some peak, can help somehow, but the main thing—the real main thing—is Purim. Purim basically tells me that in the very lowest places—you drink, you get drunk—there you are actually serving the Holy One blessed be He. You are doing it because it is a commandment. Once you do it for the sake of the commandment, even though the action itself is a very lowly action, very prosaic, very material, still if you do it for the commandment, that is greater than being at the peak of Yom Kippur.
And this itself is what Rav Kook says here: that King David taught us that one should say this, the “May they be acceptable,” after the prayer, because the ideal model is really not a model of high peaks. On the contrary: it is some model of monotonous life, life that is not turbulent, not very emotional and experiential, but a life of ongoing service of God. Like perhaps what we saw earlier: to do the truth because it is true, and not to be in some emotional ecstasy like Song of Songs describes, some storm of emotional love. Rather, to do the truth because it is true—but constantly, like the storm of emotional love in terms of constancy, only here without the storm of feeling. All of life: doing the truth because it is true, all the time. In that sense one should learn from the storm of emotions for the sake of doing the truth: that doing the truth, or rational love, intellectual love, should accompany us all the time in life and not only at a peak.
And that is a question that can of course spread in many directions. One can now really discuss models of spirituality and of the service of God in general, not only in prayer but in the whole service of God. Meaning, should the service of God really be about seeking islands where we jump, make a peak, travel to Uman and get energy for life? Assuming one really gets energy there—I assume people don’t go there for nothing. Not that I can imagine myself getting any sort of energy there, but there are people who evidently do. But the question is: even if that is true, is that what one ought to do? Or no—on the contrary, one should bring Uman to the Land of Israel. Meaning, one should bring it into our ordinary prosaic daily life, without these very high peaks, and live life in a way that is a bit more than plain prose.
And also in the context of ongoing daily life—when I say I want to bring holiness or spirituality into that daily life—there too there is room to discuss what exactly that holiness is that I want to bring into that life. Does it mean bringing emotions, only less ecstatic ones? Meaning, bringing the emotional dimension into life but at a lower level of ecstasy—something you might see in Breslov-style prayers or Carlebach-style prayers, whatever—prayers, meaning the ordinary three-times-a-day prayers, that somehow try nevertheless to raise prayer to places that are more experiential, more emotional, and less this Leibowitzian fulfillment-of-obligation? Or perhaps not. It may be that the issue is not only the height of the peak but also the character of the wave itself—not just how high it is, but a wave of what. Is the peak generally an emotional, experiential peak? But stable prosaic life is not just emotion at a lower level—not necessarily lower-grade emotion—but spiritual life of a kind that is perhaps not ecstatic, but constant.
And if I return to prayer versus Torah study—here I still can’t resist inserting myself—then in that context too it seems to me that part of people’s problem with study, beyond what I said earlier, and perhaps related to it, is that study is work with the mind. Cold work. We also work with the mind in other areas—scientific areas or whatever other field we engage in—we work with the mind there too. So what is really the difference? So people look around and ask: okay, where is the experience? Where is the encounter with the Holy One blessed be He? Where is the religious dimension of serving God in study, when study is supposedly meant to accompany us all the time? So where—where, where, where—is the Holy One blessed be He in all of this? The Lithuanians who serve the Shulchan Arukh and not the Holy One blessed be He, or who serve Maimonides and Rabbi Akiva Eger and not the Holy One blessed be He. Not specifically in the halakhic sense, but in the sense of intellectual learning and not the sense of religious experience.
And I say that perhaps one should continue this—again, I am not saying this is Rav Kook’s intention; I have no idea whether this is what he meant—but for our purposes, beyond the question of peak versus field, some sort of average and constant field, it may also be that the character of the field, not only its height, is supposed to be different. Ecstasy is something more emotional, more experiential; ongoing spiritual life is something more intellectual, like Maimonides wrote in what we read: doing the truth because it is true. Meaning, one must do it because it is true, and that is what it means to be religious. “Religious” does not mean being ecstatic and having connections to the Holy One blessed be He and seeing Him before my eyes all the time. That is almost idolatry, seeing Him before my eyes all the time. Rather, it means living life in the proper way. Meaning, doing what one should do, doing the truth because it is true, within life itself, within the pursuit of one’s interests, within eating, within drinking. Even when we study, we study what to do, how to catch thieves, and how to identify liars, and what happens with impurity and purity, and all kinds of things—as King David says, “my hands are dirty with afterbirth and placenta,” to render a woman pure for her husband. Meaning, we find spirit in the depths of prose. But not that we find poetry inside the depths of prose—it remains prose. But the prose itself is the spiritual matter.
And here of course one can soar off to Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin in Nefesh HaChaim, gate 4, where it seems to me the main message of that gate—which deals with Torah study; there is also a gate about prayer, and even prayer he presents a bit differently from what people usually attribute to him—but in Torah study this is extremely clear. He really describes there this intellectual life, which has spiritual and kabbalistic meanings and everything, but not in the experiential sense. On the contrary, he goes against Hasidism, which sees the ideal model as a constant life of experience—even if on a lower level, as Rav Kook writes here—but still a constant life of experience. And he claims: no, experience is not the main thing. Intellectual Torah study is not a means of connecting to the Holy One blessed be He; rather, being engaged in the instructions of the Holy One blessed be He—that is called being connected to Him, even if those instructions concern thieves and damages and liars. You are engaged in the instructions of the Holy One blessed be He—that is called being connected to Him. You do not need experiences and intentions and connections and existentialism here, all the things people today search for so much: where does it speak to me, where do I find my existence within this prosaic life? No—the prose itself, if you do what is right, if you do the truth because it is true, that is actually the correct model.
And prayer can provide some moderate peak; perhaps it even has an emotional dimension—if you insist strongly enough, I’ll believe you. But in the end prayer has to end with “May they be acceptable,” and take that into prosaic life itself, raising it—but again, not necessarily raising it in the emotional experiential sense, but in the sense of proper spiritual life.
In this context it is interesting to bring the Talmud. On page 21, the Talmud in Berakhot discusses the question of what happens if one is in doubt whether one prayed or did not pray. So the Talmud says this: if one is in doubt whether one prayed or did not pray, one does not go back and pray—unless it is a voluntary prayer. The Talmud says there: let him bring it as a voluntary offering; he does not go back and pray. And Rabbi Yohanan said: “Would that a person would pray all day long.” Pray all day! How wonderful. Why should you object to a person praying more, even if not in doubt, even if certainly? Now the decisors rule like him; this is ruled as Jewish law. But when you read the language of the decisors, it is brought in a much less enthusiastic form.
There it says—I’ll read Maimonides’ wording: “One who is unsure whether he prayed or did not pray does not pray again, unless he prays this prayer with the intention that it be voluntary; for if an individual wishes to pray voluntary prayers all day long, he may pray. There is no prohibition in this.” What happened to “Would that a person would pray all day long”? The halakhic translation—what a terrible clipping of wings. Maimonides, and also the Shulchan Arukh, all the decisors give Rabbi Yohanan a terrible clipping of wings. “Would that he would pray all day”? The translation is: if you pray all day, it is permitted; you haven’t violated a prohibition. It’s not a blessing in vain—if you did it voluntarily. If you did it not voluntarily, then it is forbidden; but if you do it as a voluntary prayer, then it is permitted. Permitted—but there isn’t even a hint here that, on the contrary, a pious ideal would be to pray all day. Not just that it is permitted. Fine—but ideally desirable to do it? No. Even though in the Talmud it is ruled as Jewish law: “Would that a person would pray all day long,” in the end it seems to me that the decisors preserve a healthy measure of Lithuanian sobriety.
Okay, I’ll stop here and open the microphones. Maybe we’ll begin with questions related to the class, and afterward if anyone wants additional things, that’s also possible of course. I’m leaving mute-all on, but I’m giving you control over the microphones. So leave it on mute unless someone wants to say something, and then speak.
[Speaker C] I have two comments, if possible. One is that I really identify here in this passage—wait, I’ll take out the earphones. Can you hear me? Yes, yes. So I’m saying that I identify here in this passage of Rav Kook some element that is very characteristic of him: this movement between the general and the particular, or between transcendence and the practicality of Jewish law, the afterbirth and the placenta. And it’s just very interesting. I mean, in his later writings, if I’m not mistaken, in Orot HaKodesh, I don’t know if poetry and prose is exactly right here—I think he was not looking for some poetry—but in his soul, I think, he greatly aspired to some kind of transcendence. Maybe the right word here is transcendence. The numinous. A longing for the sublime.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And it occupied him very much. It’s not “transcendent” but the numinous, yes—it’s a little different.
[Speaker C] Yes, but he writes in all kinds of really poetic and very personal passages in Orot HaKodesh, I think especially—I know it from there, anyway—about this tear in the soul, in this movement. So it really reminds me of what happened here with prayer. Meaning, when in prayer he reaches some upper worlds and sublime insights, I don’t think that’s emotion—it’s transcendence. It’s a place higher than emotion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Experience, perhaps, is even closer than emotion.
[Speaker C] Yes, some very comprehensive perceptions, very lofty. And the descent into the practical world bothers him. By the way, I assume you won’t especially like this, but he also has that distress when he descends from the great kabbalistic ideas to the details of Jewish law, and he deals a lot with this tension, that it doesn’t fit and yet does fit.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the poetry-versus-prose issue, the same thing. He says: I can’t contain my ideas in words. So therefore he writes poems, because he doesn’t manage.
[Speaker C] Well, his poems themselves are not exactly the thing, not that. But his poetic quality, yes; his honesty when he writes about his religious experiences—to call that emotional would diminish it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think “experience” is closer than “emotion” in this context, and perhaps indeed it’s numinous versus sublime.
[Speaker C] But the second comment is connected to what you showed in Maimonides around—again, there too I think love of truth… it’s interesting, the phrase “true love” has a double meaning: true love, meaning someone really loves someone, yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He’s not talking about true love.
[Speaker C] I know. He’s talking about the love of truth.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not that either. He’s talking about love of God, and the translation of love of God is to do the truth because it is true. He’s not talking about love of truth. Love of God means to do the truth because it is true.
[Speaker C] And you don’t see a connection between love of God and love of truth? I don’t—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] know. In the Lithuanian-style model he presents here, this alienated and cold model that Maimonides presents here—we’re talking about Maimonides, right? To do the truth because it is true, that’s all. That is called true love.
[Speaker C] And then in that poetic passage that people always quote at length, “he will be enraptured by her love, utterly enraptured,” and all that—what is that? That’s love of God, but it’s not emotion; it’s love of truth. There are even ups and downs in it, the way there often are in emotional and romantic love too, because someone who loves the truth suddenly runs into contradictions, suddenly something doesn’t work for him, suddenly… this became sharper for me, I wrote it down here when you were talking about it, but it’s not something emotional—it is emotional. There I’d say the opposite: there it is emotional. Around truth there are also emotional elements in this sense.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I once wrote on my website that people think Litvaks or Briskers have no religious experience, and you couldn’t be more mistaken.
[Speaker C] Exactly. That’s what I’m talking about.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They have a religious experience around the intellectual engagement in Torah study.
[Speaker C] Right. I think that’s what Maimonides is talking about there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. Yes. It seems to me—
[Speaker D] I have a question and a comment. The question is whether I understood you correctly: you presented a pair of words, “obligation to God,” if I heard correctly, and basically… what? I can’t hear. You said something like “obligation to God,” if I understood correctly? There was a pair of words that supposedly solves the problem David Hume raised three hundred years ago in the context of: even if there was a revelation at Mount Sinai, who says I have to accept the Torah and the commandments upon myself? And if I understood you correctly, you said there’s a certain obligation here because it’s part of the definition of God. Right. Okay. So that kind of solves a problem people discuss all the time, a philosophical-theological problem.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s an article by Yaakov Yehoshua Ross, Tamar Ross’s husband, who is a professor of philosophy at Tel Aviv University—maybe by now emeritus or something—but he once wrote an article on why observe commandments. It’s in a collection of essays edited by Avi Sagi, I think, and he discusses Wittgenstein’s answer there, which basically gives more or less this answer, and he makes a certain variation on it. But in the final analysis, everyone circles around this formulation: any attempt to rationalize the consciousness of a religious person, to explain why he observes the commandments of the Holy One, blessed be He, is doomed to fail. The moment you ground it in some value like gratitude, or wanting to attain this or that, that’s not where it comes from. There’s some very basic sense of obligation in one’s relation to the Holy One, blessed be He, as God. Once He is God, God means someone who, if He says something, I do it. Without explanations. Because if I give it an explanation, then the principle that explains why I do it also needs an explanation. Where does the chain stop?
[Speaker D] So it’s part of the definition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. The chain has to stop somewhere that is intelligible from within itself, from itself. It doesn’t need something prior to it to explain it. In other words, there has to be some source of authority whose authority stems from its very definition. Otherwise you simply get stuck in an infinite regress.
[Speaker D] Okay. And my second comment is connected… my second comment was about “May the words of my mouth be acceptable.” I thought there was a little too much arrogance in it when a person comes and says those words, “May the words of my mouth be acceptable,” before the Amidah prayer. It’s like it shows he thinks he’s pulling the strings and he’s the one now going and planning everything here,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and that—
[Speaker D] as opposed to if a person comes and says the Amidah prayer and afterward, by the way, says, “I hope this—I hope I succeeded.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think so. I think in both cases it’s a request, not a statement—“May they be acceptable.” I’m asking the Holy One, blessed be He, that the words of my mouth be acceptable. It seems to me that’s true whether before or after; I don’t think it’s a declaration that they will be acceptable. I can’t determine for the Holy One, blessed be He, whether yes or no. Okay, thanks. Anyone else?
[Speaker E] I’d be happy to. Can you hear me? Yes, yes. The Rabbi says in the book Two Wagons and a Hot-Air Balloon about the development of the generations: when does one generation end? When intuition weakens and the conceptual world becomes different—then they said, wow, okay, this is where the generation ends and a new generation begins. Meaning there’s a decline in intuitive ability. Yes. Right, so there basically the Rabbi says that the authority of the sages is also formal; it’s not formal, it’s essential. Okay, right? And in contrast, in the trilogy, in the second book, the Rabbi writes that the authority of the sages is specifically formal.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I don’t claim that. That’s a confusion between two planes. My claim is that the reason, say, the Amoraim gave the sages of the Mishnah, or the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and Geonim gave the sages of the Talmud, formal authority, is because they assessed that they had essential authority. When you appoint someone and say, “Here, take formal authority—whatever you determine will bind me,” obviously you take someone whose determinations are also likely to be correct. You take someone wise, or someone upright, someone whose directives you’re willing to obey; otherwise you wouldn’t accept him upon yourself. Now, the authority that was also given to the sages of the Mishnah or the sages of the Talmud is founded on the fact that we accepted them upon ourselves. Why did we accept them upon ourselves? Because we thought they had a straighter intuition, closer to the source, and therefore were more likely to hit the truth. On that basis we accepted their authority upon ourselves, and now it became formal. For example, even today there may be sages who are wiser than I am, and therefore I assume that if they say something they’re probably more right than I am. But I don’t ascribe formal authority to them; that’s only essential authority. And therefore, if I become convinced that I nevertheless think they’re mistaken, I won’t listen to them. In the Talmud, by contrast, because it’s not only essential authority but also formal, then even where I think they’re mistaken—again, within certain limits—I’m supposed to listen to them.
[Speaker E] But if their intuition is stronger, then in all kinds of factual questions, in principle, they should also be more right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, in factual questions I don’t think there’s much room for that kind of intuition. The intuition I’m talking about is halakhic intuition, intuition in Jewish law. We have Thursday classes—tomorrow will be the next class—where I deal exactly with this point, the relationship between reality and Jewish law. And I defined there that the concept of Torah is a concept completely neutralized from the factual dimension. Facts have nothing to do in the sphere of Torah. There is no authority regarding them, and the sages have no greater say than anyone else regarding facts.
[Speaker E] So all the sages’ intuition is Torah intuition, not some general intuition—more halakhic, basically.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is right or what is forbidden and what is permitted to do. What the Holy One, blessed be He, intended, what the Torah intended.
[Speaker E] Okay, thank you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re welcome.
[Speaker F] Miki, I want for a moment to try to compare the commandment of prayer to the commandment of honoring parents. Okay. Suppose the parent, in your view, isn’t all that worthy of appreciation and so on, but you were commanded to honor parents and you do it properly. You do it, but always out of the idea that you were commanded and you have to do it. Alternatively, there could be a parent who is inspiring, charming, wonderful, and you do it enthusiastically and intuitively and spontaneously. Do you need every time to stop yourself and return to the level of, “Wait, wait, don’t forget that I’m doing this out of honoring parents”? In practice, the Torah is a Torah of life, and the Torah says the opposite: work this way, in such a way that the commandment you do becomes something of you, part of you, with enthusiasm. And here, the attempt every time to bring me back—no, remember that it’s really because I was commanded—besides the fact that it makes it less of a Torah of life, it makes the person himself the center of the universe. It turns us into a kind of egocentric being, where I need to remember that my whole role in my world is to fulfill what I was commanded, and therefore I’m the center. Meaning, if, God forbid, I shifted the center of gravity, say, to the parent, and he simply draws me to help him, to be good to him, and so on, I need to bring it back to me, because I’m the focal point, I’m the center. The most important thing is what I feel in this whole story.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the end I completely disagree. I mean, with the beginning I agree in a qualified way. But the end—that if I fulfill the commandments then I’m at the center—that’s exactly the opposite. Meaning, if I do things because I’m enthusiastic, because I’m moved, because I’m this and that, then I’m at the center. If I do things because He commanded and I’m only obligated to what He commanded, it seems to me that that is precisely not putting myself at the center.
[Speaker F] Why? Why? When a nurse in a hospital treats a patient enthusiastically and sees the patient and his needs and so on, and not constantly “my role is…” then she’s actually less focused on herself and more focused on the obligation—did I meet my commitment, did I not meet my commitment. Less selfish. I’m claiming there’s a kind of spiritual egoism, meaning in the sense that I’m the center of the issue, it always returns to me: did I do it or not, did I fulfill it or not.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, I completely disagree with that. I think it’s exactly the opposite. If I’m constantly checking whether I fulfilled my duty, then that is precisely not putting myself at the center. That’s regarding the end of what you said. But what you said at the beginning—here I think we need to distinguish. We talked about this, I think, in one of the previous meetings, when I spoke about Maimonides in chapter six of Eight Chapters, the question of what is preferable: to be naturally upright or self-restrained, someone who overcomes his inclinations or someone who does things out of identification—from identification with them. And there Maimonides says it’s preferable to do it out of identification in moral commandments, but preferable to say, “I could desire it, and I could desire it, but what can I do—my Father in Heaven has decreed it upon me,” in ritual commandments. And in that context, if you take the example of honoring parents, then in the context of honoring parents, in my view someone who does it because he loves them—that really is a lower level of honoring parents.
[Speaker F] Poor guy, an ignoramus—what happened? His parents are wonderful.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait—by the way—listen to what I’m saying. I’m claiming that’s a lower level of honoring parents. Real honoring of parents is that you do it because you’re obligated. Now, obviously if you love them and desire their honor, there’s no point in extinguishing that. It’s not that now you need to neutralize it in order to be righteous. Rather, obviously you can also do it out of that—as long as you built the first floor in such a way that even if, by chance, your love for your parents or your feeling for your parents is no longer there, you’ll continue to honor them in exactly the same way.
[Speaker F] And how do you build that? Suppose, suppose they’ve always been wonderful, marvelous parents—how do you manage to build that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Through the sense of obligation. You don’t build it psychologically; you build it philosophically. You build it philosophically because you understand that there is an obligation to honor parents. And therefore in such a case—and I once brought as an example the Aglei Tal, the introduction of Aglei Tal regarding Torah study, the question—yes, he says there that someone who thinks it’s forbidden to enjoy learning is mistaken, but someone who learns for the sake of the enjoyment is also mistaken. Meaning, you should learn and enjoy it, but the indication of whether you are really learning for its own sake, learning for the right reasons, will arise when you don’t enjoy it. Let’s see whether then you still learn. And the same, in my view, with honoring parents.
[Speaker F] Wait, I want to sharpen this with honoring parents. If already today I’m supposed to build it philosophically so that perhaps in the future—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not perhaps—no, no, no, not perhaps. You’re not doing this as backup so that you’ll honor your parents even if you don’t love them. It’s not backup at all. It’s a value in itself. If in the end your feeling toward them doesn’t die out and you honor them, that’s an indication that you built the obligation of honoring parents correctly. Not that building honoring parents correctly is a backup device so that if one day I don’t feel like it toward them, I’ll still honor them. Rather, I need to honor them in the philosophical, normative sense first of all, and then of course also love and see—exactly like the Holy One, blessed be He.
[Speaker F] Wait, after all, if I build it philosophically, I build it as a triangle. I build it in such a way that I have the side of obligation toward the Holy One, blessed be He, not toward them at all. Toward obeying because He commanded me—so it has nothing to do with them. They’re not in the equation at all. I build the commandment because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded me.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not true. The Holy One, blessed be He, commanded me to honor them. And therefore this commandment—that’s the difference between commandments between man and God and commandments between man and his fellow. What’s the difference? Commandments between man and his fellow are also between man and God, but the commandment has an addressee, and that addressee is the other person.
[Speaker F] So how do you propose building the—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait. And therefore my obligation has to be built in such a way that it addresses both the Holy One, blessed be He, and the other person. Because I’m obligated to the Holy One, blessed be He, I have an obligation to the other person. Besides that, I also have feeling for the other person, I also have a relationship with the other person.
[Speaker F] But if we take the example of parents, how do you—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] propose to build it? Same thing with parents, exactly the same thing. To build it through your fear of Heaven. Through your sense of obligation, also your moral obligation. You need to know that you need to honor parents because it is an obligation, first of all. Besides that, of course you also love them and are grateful to them, and you act out of that too, and it’s perfectly fine to act out of that.
[Speaker F] But the basic level—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I know.
[Speaker F] But how do you propose to build it, you propose to build it—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You asked me a question, a technical question—how do you build it? I’ll answer you when I think about it; I don’t remember, I… we need to think about how to build it. In my view you build it like any other commandment: obligation to commandments, to do things, to do the truth because it is true. There is no difference between not eating pork and honoring parents. It’s the same thing.
[Speaker F] So you’re saying that if I don’t like pork, then what? Then I’m at a lower level if I don’t eat pork, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because regarding pork Maimonides says there is no issue of identification. In commandments between man and his fellow there is such an issue of identification. But that identification, even in commandments between man and his fellow where it exists, only comes on the second floor.
[Speaker F] On the first floor, both in commandments like these and in commandments—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] like those, there has to stand a sense of duty. Okay, thank you. Okay. Anyone else?
[Speaker E] Rabbi, can I continue the previous question? The Rabbi writes there in the book that the difference between science and Torah is that in Torah it’s the capacity for synthesis, and in science the capacity for analysis.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not analytical. I explain there—I think maybe I spoke with you about this on the site.
[Speaker E] No, it was someone I know—you spoke with him about this exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, that’s not correct. I explain there—the entire second book in the quartet is devoted to the fact that science too is synthetic. People in science have the feeling that they work analytically—a mistaken feeling.
[Speaker E] So what drives the progress of science in this generation?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Empiricism. But it’s not only empiricism. If it were only empiricism, we’d still have the science of Adam. Okay, that’s the second book, That Which Is and That Which Is Not; it is basically almost entirely devoted to this issue.
[Speaker E] Okay, thank you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re welcome. That’s it? Okay then, good night, goodbye, thank you. I’m heading out.