Ein Ayah – Berakhot 128

Table of Contents

• The aggadah of King David singing about every stage of life
• Rabbi Kook: superficial observation versus the true sage and the thread of kindness
• A mirror image between the depth of reality and the depth of the subject, and poetry as an inner resonance
• The examples of the artist and prose: Alex Levac’s photograph and the ability to see what lies behind the data
• “Dwelling in his mother’s womb”: the hidden potential of human powers
• “He came out into the air of the world”: the relation of the senses to the world and the formation of intellect from the beginning of creation
• The portion of Shelach, “to scout out,” tzitzit, and the correction of the gaze of the eyes and the heart
• Science, intuition, and theory: Einstein, blackbody radiation, and the true sage
• The limits of scientific explanation and the question of the source of the laws: beyond metaphysics and into poetry
• Against “tabula rasa”: Bacon, history, Chomsky, and the innate ability to understand depth
• Chatam Sofer, the Yaavetz, and Lag BaOmer: judgment within judgment and what is hidden behind the rules
• Conclusion and a linguistic note on “to scout out” as going out in order to see more deeply

Summary

General Overview

The text presents a reading from Ein Ayah by Rabbi Kook on the aggadah in the Talmud that describes King David singing about different stages in his life—from the womb, through gazing at the stars, to the day of death—and interprets it as David’s mature contemplation of the depth of reality rather than fetal awareness. Rabbi Kook distinguishes between superficial observation, which sees only the visible signs of wisdom, and true wisdom, which penetrates the hidden wisdom and gives rise to exaltation of the soul and to song; the text expands this into a mirror image between the depth of the world and the depth of the human being. The discussion then connects this to an example from art—Alex Levac’s photography—to the portion of Shelach and to tzitzit as a correction for shallow “scouting,” and to the tension between empirical science and deep intuition and theory through examples from Einstein, blackbody radiation, philosophy of science, and Chomsky. The ending brings a responsum of the Chatam Sofer about the custom of Lag BaOmer together with the Yaavetz’s explanation based on the hidden, mystical dimension, and suggests a connection to the idea of “judgment within judgment” as a striving toward what lies behind the rules themselves. Then there is a note on the connection between “to scout out” and “to look / turn aside” as going out from one’s position in order to deepen one’s sight.

The aggadah of King David singing about every stage of life

The Talmud describes King David as dwelling in his mother’s womb and singing, coming out into the air of the world and looking at the stars and constellations and singing, nursing from his mother’s breasts and looking at them and singing, seeing the downfall of the wicked and singing, and looking toward the day of death and singing. The text explains that the aggadah does not require us to assume a developed consciousness in a fetus; rather, David sang these songs in adulthood about natural and familiar stages of life, even without actually remembering them, out of mature amazement at their deeper meaning.

Rabbi Kook: superficial observation versus the true sage and the thread of kindness

Rabbi Kook says that there is a difference between someone who looks at reality with a superficial perspective and cannot recognize the exaltedness of God, the splendor of His greatness, and the majesty of the human soul, and someone who recognizes what lies beyond the visible things. He cites Duties of the Hearts as saying that with regard to the visible signs of wisdom, the enlightened person and the fool are equal in them, and the text qualifies that wording but accepts the basic principle that the essential difference lies in penetrating what is hidden. Rabbi Kook describes the true sage as one who penetrates the hidden signs of wisdom, recognizes “the thread of kindness” that runs through all deeds from their beginning to their purpose, gives thanks to His name, and out of “gladness of heart” sings directly to God and to His goodness. Rabbi Kook also connects this to self-recognition, when a person recognizes the majesty of his own soul that perceives the glory of the King of honor, and from that recognition there awakens an exaltation of soul that leads to song.

A mirror image between the depth of reality and the depth of the subject, and poetry as an inner resonance

The text presents an objective reality that has an external dimension and an inner dimension that unifies different phenomena into a harmonious meaning, and places opposite it a human being who also has both outer sensory perception and an inner power that penetrates beyond the senses. Noticing the depth in reality outside the person serves as evidence that there is in the person himself a corresponding depth that makes such perception possible, so that knowing the world also becomes knowing the self. Poetry is described as the product of the connection between the depth revealed in the world and the inner echo awakened in the person, so that the meeting between the inwardness of the human being and the inwardness of reality gives rise to poetic expression.

The examples of the artist and prose: Alex Levac’s photograph and the ability to see what lies behind the data

The text illustrates the difference between ordinary seeing and deep seeing through a well-known photograph by Alex Levac at the HaSira junction in Herzliya, in which a large sign of Herzl is being repaired by Arab workers, and the absurdity caught in the photograph becomes a profound expression of reality. It argues that many people pass by the same situation without seeing anything in it, whereas an artistic eye notices a dimension of depth behind the prosaic data and turns it into a work of art that contains poetry. From this we learn that the ability to grasp depth in reality testifies to an inner depth in the perceiving soul, and the expression of that connection is poetry or art.

“Dwelling in his mother’s womb”: the hidden potential of human powers

Rabbi Kook explains that from an external point of view there is nothing remarkable about the period of gestation, because in that respect a person resembles other non-speaking living creatures and even the level of creeping things, and most people’s hearts are coarse toward this. He adds that when one reflects, then דווקא in this lowly state, “all his faculties were completed and formed,” and all the organs that serve the loftiest powers of the soul were prepared there, even though they are not visible. The text emphasizes that the amazement is born from the recognition that in that initial natural reality there is hidden the potential for the human being who “embraces the arms of the world and endless expanses in his knowledge and intellect,” and that David already sings about this stage out of a penetration into what is hidden.

“He came out into the air of the world”: the relation of the senses to the world and the formation of intellect from the beginning of creation

Rabbi Kook explains that according to a superficial perspective, the external world does not affect a person until he grows up, lifts his eyes, and through studying books understands the value of the great and broad world. He states that in depth of understanding we realize that it was not for nothing that the human senses and feelings were connected with everything around him, and that the fully developed intellect is not created out of nothing but develops from what was prepared from the beginning of his formation. Accordingly, since the external world affects a person powerfully when his intellect reaches completion, we must recognize that already “as soon as his eyes opened,” wisdom had begun secretly weaving this wondrous relationship, even though its results were not yet recognized then, and this is tied to “the supreme kindness toward its exalted purpose” about which David sings.

The portion of Shelach, “to scout out,” tzitzit, and the correction of the gaze of the eyes and the heart

The text connects the idea of deep observation to the motif of “scouting out” in the portion of Shelach and emphasizes that the section of tzitzit at the end of the portion repairs the sin of the spies through the verse, “Do not scout after your hearts and after your eyes.” It explains that the spies saw external phenomena such as funerals and death and interpreted that as “a land that consumes its inhabitants,” without understanding the inner meaning of providence, whereas Joshua’s spies are described mainly through their encounter with Rahab and their understanding of the mood and fear of the inhabitants of the land. Tzitzit is presented as a symbol that carries one from the external to what lies behind it, in line with the rabbinic teaching: “Tekhelet resembles the sea, the sea resembles the sky, and the sky resembles the throne of glory,” and the text connects this to Rabbi Kook’s phrase “a thread of kindness” as an echo of the threads of tzitzit. The eyes and the heart are also presented as sources of error, and tzitzit is meant to activate a cognition that reveals hidden meaning beyond the initial impression.

Science, intuition, and theory: Einstein, blackbody radiation, and the true sage

The text warns against belittling scientific adherence to empirical data and emphasizes that modern science could not have emerged without it, presenting Aristotle as a case of the absence of experiment despite apparently sound logic. At the same time, it argues that science cannot be done on the basis of facts and statistics alone, because deep intuitions are needed to guide which experiments to perform and how to interpret the results. Einstein is presented as an exemplar of the combination of scientific genius and poetic sensitivity, and as someone awakened to foundational questions such as time, as well as someone who struggled with quantum theory out of fidelity to his intuition in the spirit of “God does not play dice.” The text explains a distinction in philosophy of science between a phenomenological theory that describes facts and an essential theory that asks what stands behind them, and illustrates this through blackbody radiation: moving from a formula that describes a distribution to an insight about particles, as the opening of a quantum world that cannot be seen with the eye.

The limits of scientific explanation and the question of the source of the laws: beyond metaphysics and into poetry

The text argues that when you keep asking “why,” you eventually arrive at the question of the laws themselves, and from there to theology or religious faith, in the spirit of “Lift up your eyes on high and see Who created these,” and along the lines of Maimonides’ description of Abraham at the beginning of the Laws of Idolatry. It describes a search for unity like Einstein’s aspiration for a “unified field law,” and ultimately places the Holy One, blessed be He, as the unifying foundation that grants an overall meaning to reality. Poetry is described as a response to the discovery of order and harmony behind phenomena that appear arbitrary, and as the meeting between the discovery of depth in the world and the discovery of depth in the human being, to the point of recognizing that a person is not merely a collection of senses but possesses the capacity to understand hidden structures.

Against “tabula rasa”: Bacon, history, Chomsky, and the innate ability to understand depth

The text criticizes the Baconian conception of collecting facts and then deriving theory, arguing that you cannot know which facts to collect without a prior framework, and brings an example from Carr’s book What Is History? about the study of the Battle of Waterloo. It describes a process of back-and-forth in which theory and facts are built together, and concludes that there is in the human being a capacity prior to observation that directs him toward the depth of things. It adds Noam Chomsky’s argument against tabula rasa in the context of language acquisition, and expands it to general human thinking as something laid within the person from the outset, enabling generalizations that go beyond point-by-point learning. From this it argues that the capacities are implanted in the person from the beginning, and that the human being discovers the Holy One, blessed be He, through capacities whose source is in Him, in a circle of mutual recognition between the person, reality, and its source.

Chatam Sofer, the Yaavetz, and Lag BaOmer: judgment within judgment and what is hidden behind the rules

The text brings a responsum of the Chatam Sofer about the custom of going up to Safed on Lag BaOmer for the celebration of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, in which he testifies that he heard that the generation had become fit for it and many come there with the intention of Heaven, and their reward is great, but he himself refrains so as not to alter their custom in their presence. It cites the Chatam Sofer’s claim that establishing a Jewish holiday over a local miracle is supported by the Talmud’s a fortiori argument in tractate Megillah: “If from servitude to freedom we say song, then from death to life all the more so,” whereas on Lag BaOmer there is no explicit miracle and it is not mentioned in the Talmudic text or by the halakhic decisors, and therefore the reason for the custom is not clear to him. It brings the words of the Siddur of the Mahari Yaavetz, “according to the hidden teaching,” that Lag BaOmer is “splendor within splendor,” like the case of “a religious court that is entirely condemning is actually acquitting,” and adds the Chatam Sofer’s question that according to this one should also have established a celebration “when we reached the mighty acts on the ninth day in the counting of the children of Israel,” except that in the days of Nisan eulogies are not delivered anyway. The text proposes an interpretive idea according to which “judgment” in rabbinic language refers to an a fortiori argument and to the logic of rules, and “judgment within judgment” expresses a search for justification for the rules themselves—a justification that cannot be supplied from within the rules. Therefore the hidden, mystical dimension and Kabbalah are appropriate as a symbol of penetrating what lies behind the revealed and behind the normative system.

Conclusion and a linguistic note on “to scout out” as going out in order to see more deeply

At the end, a participant’s remark is brought connecting “tur” with “shur” in the sense of seeing, through the interchange of the letters tav and shin, and also with “sur” in the verse “Let me turn aside now and see,” and this is interpreted as going out of one’s state in order to make possible entry into deeper understanding. The text accepts the suggestion that in a certain sense a shift in perspective does make deeper seeing possible, and notes the Ashkenazic pronunciation “asura na ve’ereh” as a linguistic approximation that strengthens the connection.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, we’re at section 128 in Rav Kook’s Ein Ayah. The Talmudic passage we actually saw last time: King David sang, there’s a verse that Solomon writes but it’s said about David, and David sang, and therefore it’s called a Torah of kindness. We spoke a bit about emotion and intellect. And the Talmud here—Rav Kook is discussing the passage in the Talmud, I’m sharing the Ein Ayah here—a passage in the Talmud that talks about King David, who “dwelt in his mother’s womb and sang, came out into the air of the world and looked at the stars and constellations and sang, nursed at his mother’s breasts and looked at them and sang, saw the downfall of the wicked and sang, looked at the day of death and sang.” Right, so he basically sees all kinds of things, some good, some bad, some just prosaic, everyday things—stars, constellations, I don’t know what, dwelling in his mother’s womb and the natural processes he went through—and about all of them he sang. And I already noted that this is of course aggadic literature, but even if I want to think a bit in the direction of what the aggadah is saying, I assume the intention is that he sang already in adulthood, only he sang about those situations he had gone through all along his biography. So when he writes Psalms as an adult, he can write certain psalms that deal with stages when he was in his mother’s womb. And that of course also doesn’t mean he had to literally remember it; rather, he knew that people go through that stage, and he marveled at that stage from the perspective of an adult. We don’t have to assume that this midrash relates to King David as someone already fully conscious while still a fetus. “There is a difference”—I’m now reading Rav Kook—“between one who looks only with a superficial view at reality, and he cannot recognize the exaltedness of God and the majesty of His glory, and with that the splendor of the human soul, except from the things openly visible in the signs of wisdom in reality.” Right, meaning: if he looks superficially, he sees only what appears on the surface. So he won’t be able to recognize either the exaltedness of God and the majesty of His glory, or the splendor of the human soul, except for those visible things he recognizes in reality, including the signs of wisdom in reality—but still, only what we see before our eyes. Later I’ll try to sharpen this a bit more. “As Duties of the Heart says, regarding the visible signs of wisdom, the intelligent person and the fool are equal in them.” That too sounds to me a bit exaggerated. Once he says there are signs of wisdom here, then even if they’re visible, you still have to be wise in order to notice them, to absorb them. A fool sees what he sees with his eyes—he sees just like the wise person—but even in visible wisdom, or the visible signs of wisdom, I assume there is some added value in being wise rather than foolish. But at the principled level he says it’s on the same plane. Meaning, they’re both ultimately seeing what stands before their eyes, and therefore in that sense it’s not a difference—maybe a quantitative difference, not an essential one. “But the true sage”—whom he distinguishes from the merely intelligent person, the wise person who sees what happens in front of his eyes—“will penetrate to the hidden signs of wisdom, from which the eye that sees only the externality of things will derive no elevation of soul.” Meaning, the true sage somehow penetrates through the signs of wisdom in reality and looks at what stands at their root. Then he sees something that the wise person who looks from outside—and again we see that even external observation has wiser and less wise forms; it’s not that the wise person and the fool are identical and there’s no difference between them—but there are certain things that neither the regular wise person nor the fool will grasp. Only the true sage can grasp those—things hidden behind the wisdom of the external things. “And from them no elevation of soul will be born”—here of course he’s alluding to singing. After all, this is about King David, who sang about all these things because he contemplated deeply. He was the true sage. In order to sing, some kind of elevation of soul is needed. Elevation of soul doesn’t arise even from perceiving wise things if they are only the external aspect of things, in the visible dimension. Song—or the elevation of soul that leads to it—is connected specifically to a grasp of what lies behind the things. And we spoke… we spoke a bit in the previous lesson about Einstein, and I’ll come back to him. “But the true sage will recognize the thread of kindness that runs through all deeds, from their beginning to their purpose, and will recognize the wonders of the blessed God and give thanks to His name. And from gladness of heart”—gladness of heart here means like “when his heart is gladdened by wine,” not “good-hearted” in the sense of having a kind heart—so elevation, what he called earlier elevation of soul—“he will sing to God and to His goodness.” Once you have elevation of soul, then you break into song, to God and to His goodness. “And he will recognize the splendor of his soul.” He also recognizes himself, as he said above: one who looks only at the external will not be able to recognize “the exaltedness of God and the majesty of His glory, and with that, the splendor of the human soul.” He doesn’t really know himself fully either. Not only does he fail to know the Holy One, blessed be He, the depth of reality, but he also doesn’t know the depth—not only of the objective, but of the subjective. And the true sage who looks deeply into things does. “And from gladness of heart he will sing to God and His goodness, and recognize the splendor of his soul, which recognizes the majesty of the King of glory.” Meaning: through your succeeding in recognizing what is happening in the depth of reality, you understand that there is also within you something beyond a system of senses that perceives what stands before them. Therefore, recognition of the depth of the reality outside you—the objective reality and the Holy One, blessed be He, who stands at its root, in the background of the whole matter—that recognition returns and illuminates something that is also within us. We suddenly discover that we too are not just a collection of five senses and their simple derivatives, but that there is in us something that processes sensory data and succeeds in understanding what lies behind reality. He presents here a very interesting picture of the subject facing objective reality. In objective reality there is some external part, and some inner dimension that stands at the base of the external part, explains it, perhaps even unifies all the external phenomena and gives them some harmonious meaning, some kind of wholeness. If you understand their depth, you suddenly see different phenomena connecting into one thing, emerging from the same point. A bit like scientific generalization—I’ll come back to that too. Standing opposite this objective reality is the human being as subject. But I too have two things. I have the collection of sensory perceptions that tells me: I see the things before me. But the fact is that if I were only that, then the reality I perceive would also be only the external reality. Once I diagnose within myself that when I perceive reality I also see in it something deep, that tells me something about myself too. That is: I too am not only the collection of senses, the direct and simple observations; rather, there must also be in me something that succeeds in penetrating through what the senses bring me, to what lies beyond those sensory data. So that thing which succeeds in penetrating beyond sensory data—just as the senses grasp sensory data—what is beyond the senses, the intellect, my deeper intellect, penetrates beyond the senses to the deeper structure of reality. So there really is a mirror image here of subject and object, with the external facing the external, and behind the subjective external there stands something inner that grasps the inner thing behind the external in the objective world. And one is not without the other. Therefore, knowing the world, in a certain sense, also helps me know myself. The singing itself apparently comes from the combination of these two things. Because when I see something outside myself, apparently—and this is the claim if I understand him correctly—that isn’t enough to arouse in me elevation of soul, or what he calls here gladness of heart, the thing that leads to song. It has to find some echo within me. Meaning, the depth I discover in reality connects to something that exists deep within me, and that connection, the link created between these two things, is what gives rise to song. “Therefore David, peace be upon him”—I continue reading—“in whom depth of knowledge was joined with the pleasantness of divine song, sang concerning things whose splendor and wonder are recognized only through great wisdom and insight.” Right, all the things he looked at around him, as I said, are the prosaic world: stars, constellations, being in his mother’s womb, nursing at his mother’s breasts, seeing the downfall of the wicked, looking at the day of death. All these are events we all experience, we all pass through, but David succeeded in seeing what stands at their root. It reminds me a bit—I think I mentioned this once, I don’t remember anymore—there’s a photograph by Alex Levac. A very famous photo of Herzl—I wrote about it once in a column on the site—at the HaSira junction, at the entrance to Herzliya. There’s a big sign there with a photo of Herzl. And below there were Arab workers working, fixing the sign, I don’t know, renovating it. Levac photographed this. Obviously there’s an absurd dimension there: Herzl, who dreamed of Hebrew labor, is being repaired by Arab workers. That is an artist’s perception. Meaning, Levac, who passed by there—I assume many others passed there too. If I had passed by there, I’d have looked and not given it a second glance, I’d have gone on. I wouldn’t have noticed any interesting point behind that situation, something that expresses something so deep touching our whole reality here. And it’s all there, reality is there, and we all pass by it—I don’t know, all of us; I know that when I pass something like that I probably wouldn’t look again. But a photographer like that, with an eye that can see—in fact he later said someone, a friend of his, called him there; some friend noticed the matter, it’s not that he himself passed by and noticed. But never mind. In that case the friend was the real artist. He grasped something there that stood behind the prosaic data everyone saw as they passed. But he caught something behind it, and therefore suddenly it became a work of art. There is in it some dimension of song. Anyone else who passed there would just have passed there, okay. So there’s something in that perception that, first, sees a depth dimension in reality, but it also testifies to the artist: that within you there is some ability that grasps this depth dimension of reality, so in you too there is some such depth dimension. And from that comes art, or from that comes song. The expression of this connection between my inner self and the external inner dimension is song. Right, so “whose splendor and wonder are recognized only through great wisdom and insight.” Now he begins to explain: “He dwelt in his mother’s womb.” From an external point of view there isn’t much to marvel at; in this, the case of the human being is like that of the other non-speaking living creatures. Every lowly animal passes a period in its mother’s womb. It’s a biological process, part of our world. Most people are coarse about this, basically. Okay, that’s the world, we’re used to it, that’s how it works. A baby is born, a baby grows, everything’s fine. Sometimes we have these brief moments of grace when suddenly we see—wait, there is something really amazing here—and then we get what he earlier called gladness of heart and elevation of soul. But in the prose of life we pass by all these amazing things. That’s the nature of the world; it doesn’t say anything to us. Right, so he says that in this respect the human is also on the level of creeping things, which are at the low level of the animal system. They too pass through their mother’s womb, and so does the human being, and in that sense there is nothing special. “But when we contemplate”—King David, that is—“then while he was in this lowly state, all his formations were completed and created”—“formations” here means his capacities—“and all the organs serving the loftiest powers of the soul, not one of them was missing.” After all, all the human capacities that develop as we grow and mature were rooted in us, at least in potential, already as fetuses. In some sense they are there in potential if not in actuality from our earliest stage, and certainly while we are fetuses. True, there it is hidden. When a person is active and thinking and creating, we already see those things in him—they are on the surface. But when you look at the fetus in its mother’s womb, that is still behind the reality. Reality as such is natural reality. And suddenly you see that what develops within that simple natural reality can, on the one hand, become some lowly creeping creature, and on the other hand become a human being who creates the greatest, most exalted, most intelligent creations imaginable. And it all comes from that same fetus in its mother’s womb. Meaning, within it, deep inside it, whoever is endowed with the ability to look into the depth of this reality and not only at what it itself reflects or what can be seen in it, sees that already there, already there, there is something to sing about. He doesn’t wait for the stage when the human being matures and his powers become manifest. Already when he dwells in his mother’s womb, King David succeeds in seeing through this simple reality, which looks like just the reality of some creature, a certain depth that only deeper wisdom can grasp. “If so, how great is the quality of what is done in the full womb—the formation of the human being—such that, in a state so far from completion and development, all the powers and all the spiritual and physical instruments needed for him when he becomes an elevated human being, embracing the expanses of the world and limitless reaches in his knowledge and intellect, must be prepared for him.” You can actually understand this if, as an adult, you contemplate the fetus. You already know what comes out of a fetus; you have experience, you know that human beings are impressive—so many talents, so many abilities—and all of that was latent in them even when they were in that embryonic, initial form. All of that was there inside. So precisely by your contemplation as an adult looking at the fetus, you understand what lies behind that fetus. And this is interesting, because it ties in to the first remark I made: when it says that he dwelt in his mother’s womb and sang, I don’t think it means that as a fetus he sang. Here Rav Kook says almost explicitly: the point is not that as a fetus he sang, but that as an adult he looks at the state in which he dwelt in his mother’s womb, and about that he sings. And as an adult you understand that even this raw, initial fetus contains within it all the tremendous powers that will emerge from it when it grows up, matures, and so on. “He came out into the air of the world and looked at the stars and constellations and sang.” So again Rav Kook explains: from a superficial point of view, the external world does not affect a person at all until he grows and raises his eyes, and in learning from books comes to understand the value of the great and broad external world. A small child looking at the reality around him—we’re always used to this in literature, I think—people always speak about the wonder with which a small child looks at everything in the world. But actually I’m not sure that’s true. Precisely a small child takes many things for granted. It’s just like that. After all, he doesn’t know anything anyway, so why should he be amazed by this and not by that? The whole story is new to him, so what he sees—he asks, “Dad, why this?” or “Mom, what’s that?” and “Why isn’t it like this?”—but that isn’t some kind of real wonder. Real wonder develops only when you truly have the capacity to understand that things are not self-evident. For the little child it’s self-evident; as far as he’s concerned, everything is clear. In fact, in this sense I think children have many questions, maybe they want to understand how it works and why it happens, but they don’t ask why it is this way rather than another. Because if it is this way, then obviously it is this way. He only wants to understand how it works, at best. But an adult—at least an adult who has the kind of wisdom Rav Kook is talking about—is someone who looks at this reality and says to himself: wait a second, Lord of the universe, where did this come from? Why is it specifically this way and not another way? How did it come out so sophisticated? How do the stars and constellations that accompanied me all my life—until now I saw them every night—but suddenly now I ask myself: wait, how does this actually work? Who made all this? “Lift your eyes on high and see: who created these?” They expound this about Abraham, whom Maimonides at the beginning of the Laws of Idolatry describes as looking at the stars and suddenly asking himself: wait, who made them? Who keeps moving them all the time? Is there some being standing behind this phenomenon? Einstein once said about himself that the reason he began thinking about the concept of time was that he matured late. He remained childlike for many years and matured late. Because a person who matures early encounters the concept of time already as an adult, and then he doesn’t start thinking, wait, maybe yes and maybe no. This is a bit the opposite of what I said earlier. Einstein encountered the concept of time when he was already intellectually mature enough, but not yet “grown-up”—that is, he was still a child. And in that sense he could still ask: wait, why is time specifically this way and not another? Then when he matured further and acquired the tools to do the work of analyzing and thinking about the issue, he indeed came to the conclusion that time is not what we think. So in that sense he actually describes a situation in which the child does live in wonder in a way the adult doesn’t. Maybe there’s also such an aspect, I don’t know. I think there are two aspects here. But I don’t know—I very often feel that wonder characterizes adults more, wise adults. Not all adults; many adults are just accustomed and not very amazed by everything around them. But adults who are wise are amazed, and in my opinion more so than a child. Because for a child everything is… not exactly self-evident, but simply this way because this is the way it is; he doesn’t know anything else, so what he encounters is simply reality. I’m speaking, for example, about adults in many arguments about the existence of God. Very often the argument revolves around this point. A person says: what do you mean? Those are the laws of nature, that’s all, what is there to be amazed by? Evolution explains everything, everything is explained. What? There is no astonishing dimension to this reality, from their perspective; everything is fine. What, those are the laws, what do you want? Now my claim in the book on evolution, for example, that I wrote, was that even if I accept the laws as some explanation for how the world behaves, that does not exempt me from thinking why the laws are like this. Why can’t I ask about the laws themselves: why are they specifically these and not others? Why are they so special? They could have just been some laws that create nothing special in reality. And there is something here that definitely arouses wonder. Therefore I think specifically an adult—but an adult who doesn’t allow himself to fall into molds and get used to what he sees, but someone who stands before what he sees and asks himself: wait, why is the thing as it is? So what if it is as it is? But why? Is there some explanation, something behind it? That is essentially Abraham’s midrash, where he asks himself, “Is there a master to the palace?” Is someone turning all these things, managing all these things? Therefore I think these two ways of looking exist both in adults and in children, but in a certain sense, in my opinion, the simple common view is mistaken. Real wonder lies with the adult, not the child. Okay. “And by learning from books he will come to understand the value of the great and broad external world, but with depth of knowledge we will understand that not for nothing were human senses and feelings connected with all that surrounds him. And one must know that the complete intellect found in the most exalted sage does not arise from nothing.” It’s not just that senses connect with what surrounds us. There is something behind the senses that connects with what lies behind what surrounds us. Therefore, even though we discover this only after we mature and become capable of drawing conclusions and making generalizations and understanding what lies in the depth of things, it was there in potential from the beginning. And that’s what he says: “One must know that the complete intellect in the most exalted sage does not arise from nothing; rather, it is the development of what was prepared in him from the beginning of his formation.” It was in potential, there from the start. “And since we see that when a person is completed in his intellect, the external world acts upon him beyond measure and limit—upon his emotions and knowledge and all his mental powers—we must recognize from this that as soon as his eyes were opened”—while he was still a fetus, or immediately when he was born—“wisdom had already begun to weave this wondrous relation, although its results were not yet recognized at all”—until that point the person did not yet understand the deep potential within him, but it was already there—“being woven in secret by the supreme kindness toward his exalted purpose.” And then, once he understood all this, “when his eyes were opened and he found himself…” and so on, “he sang.” Okay, so these are basically Rav Kook’s claims. This is really a point that can be taken in many directions. The first connotation, the first association that came to me in this context, was what we know from Parashat Shelach. In Parashat Shelach, the spies go out “to scout out” the land. The verb “to scout out,” by the way, is one of the leading words there in the portion; it appears many times. “They returned from scouting out the land,” “they went to scout out the land,” “send men for yourself that they may scout out the land,” and so on. The word is very central there, a major motif. And the last place in the portion where the verb “to scout out” appears is in the section of tzitzit. At the end of Parashat Shelach there is the section of tzitzit, and there it says: “And you shall not stray after your hearts and after your eyes.” “It shall be tzitzit for you, and you shall see it and remember”—meaning, you are supposed to see the tzitzit, remember, and not stray after your hearts and after your eyes. It is quite clear from the structure of the portion that the section of tzitzit comes to correct the sin of the spies. And the sin of the spies was apparently rooted in this: they were sent to scout out the land. To scout out—at least in our modern Hebrew, though I haven’t checked biblical usage and that should be checked—but in our language today, a tourist is someone who wanders around, a temporary visitor. He sees what is happening, goes around here and there. Rashi there brings the famous midrash: they returned saying it was a land of giants, all depressed, saying we have no chance of conquering it. Why? “It is a land that consumes its inhabitants.” What does that mean? Rashi brings the midrash that everywhere they went they saw the inhabitants accompanying their dead to the cemetery—there was some plague, many had died. And they did not understand that the Holy One, blessed be He, had killed those people in order to protect them, so that the spies would not be noticed. So they looked at reality and described it as-is. They described what they saw. Ostensibly that is the job of a spy; they were sent to scout out the land: be tourists, tell me whether they live in camps or fortified cities, what the land is like here and there, and so on. By the way, the antithesis to this is Joshua’s spies. The two spies of Joshua, I assume they went through the land, but the verses focus not at all on how they scouted the land, only on the fact that they stayed at Rahab’s house. Why? What kind of lazy spying is this—hiding in a woman’s house and learning from her the morale of the inhabitants of the land? But no, that is exactly the opposite of scouting. Sometimes, by conducting a depth interview with one person, you can learn far more than by roaming all over the land superficially, looking around and seeing what’s happening. Sometimes this is called something I’m not so fond of, but in the social sciences they sometimes call it qualitative research: you take a few examples of certain people, interview them in depth, and see this as some kind of substitute—or under certain circumstances—for established statistical scientific research, with large groups and control groups and the like. Because scientific research based on large groups is “to scout out”: to look from outside at the rigid external characteristics that I can substantiate. And qualitative research—at least if we are optimistic and accept the assumption that these researchers really have such a capacity—claims to get to the root of things, and for that purpose it is sometimes better to interview one or two people deeply than to pass quickly, externally, and superficially over a hundred thousand examples. In that sense Joshua’s spies conducted a depth interview with Rahab, and from that they basically understood what was happening in Canaan. How afraid they were of them, how they were being pursued, how much they feared them—and in the end that said everything. There was no need to pass through the land to see it; qualitative research on Rahab was enough. Moses’ spies passed through the whole land, took samples—they were real scientific researchers. They brought samples, grapes with all the symbol of the Ministry of Tourism, and “they carried it on a pole between two men”—that symbol comes from there—and they showed: yes, we have facts, you can see for yourselves, look at these facts and those facts. They probably also brought them statistics and all kinds of things of that sort. They were exemplary scientists—empirical observational scientists. And this is what the verse describes with the word “to scout out.” They were tourists. And sometimes tourists, although they gather many facts, do not really get to the root of things. If you want—by the way, this is also a major dilemma in early anthropology. Margaret Mead and several others, students of some great anthropological guru whose name I now forget, had debates about this. Margaret Mead is representative of the newer anthropology, anthropology that says—qualitative research—let’s live inside the population and understand from within how the business works, rather than looking from outside, from the mountain above, without speaking with them, just documenting what they do in this or that situation, comparing it to another tribe, and drawing very solid, well-founded, statistical conclusions, doing regressions and all kinds of things of that sort. Sometimes the immediate encounter gives you a better sense of the depth of things than a very, very systematic look at external dimensions. And yes, I know this contradicts what I usually say, but true, there is such a dimension. In any case, if I return to the spies: the correction of tzitzit is really—tzitzit are the blue and the white, and the Sages expound: “blue resembles the sea, the sea resembles the sky, the sky resembles the throne of glory.” You look at the blue thread, okay, you have some thread dyed a certain color. But tzitzit comes to teach you that you are supposed to look at what stands at the foundation of external reality. What lies behind it? It is supposed to remind you of something. And not for nothing does Rav Kook here use—here’s the expression, look at it—“the true sage will recognize the thread of kindness that runs through all deeds.” I don’t know whether the connotation to the threads of tzitzit is intentional, but the threads of tzitzit are exactly that thread of kindness. Because the threads of tzitzit are meant to remind us of what stands behind them. It says, by the way, in the verse itself: “And you shall remember all My commandments.” Meaning, the purpose of tzitzit is to remind us of the commandments. Tzitzit is supposed to be some symbol that we contemplate and think about what lies behind it, and what it represents. Therefore the Sages’ midrash in this case is somewhat rooted in the verse itself: blue resembles the sea, and so on up to the throne of glory. And this is the antithesis to the spies’ description. That is why the correction at the end of that same portion is the section of tzitzit: “And you shall see it and remember all My commandments, and you shall not stray after your hearts and after your eyes.” Because the heart and the eyes are the two brokers of sin, as the Sages say. On a deeper level it’s not only a matter of sin. Very often the first feeling of the heart or the look of the eye seems terribly convincing to me. What do you mean? I saw it with my own eyes. It’s unequivocal. And many times that misleads us. Think a bit about what stands behind things and you’ll see that there is something behind them that is a little different from what you thought at first glance. Therefore tzitzit is supposed to teach us not to stray after our hearts and after our eyes, but to understand what stands behind what we see with our eyes, or behind the simple, initial, instinctive feelings of the heart. There is something behind all this, and we need to activate our cognition in order to understand what lies behind it. And that is the correction for the sin of the spies. Now, I want to return to the usual perspective, the one I’m more fond of, namely that this is really dangerous. Scientific adherence to statistics, facts, empirical data, is not something one can dismiss. Modern science would not have come into being without it. Aristotle, to a great extent, did not advance in his scientific understanding, I think, because he did not cling to observation. On the other hand, Aristotle in many cases described more than he explained, and therefore there is also in him an aspect that adheres to observation more than modern science does. In modern science, after you collect the facts, you also analyze them and generalize on that basis. Anyone who says quantum theory is reached by means of observations—I don’t know what he’s talking about. There are things here where it is completely clear that there were very deep intuitions that told me what experiments to observe, what to do in order to observe. It’s not that suddenly I saw something, whoops, it didn’t fit, whoops, quantum theory came out. It doesn’t work like that. There is something here such that even if I cling to observation, I still need to examine very carefully which observation, how to do the experiment, what to test. In that sense there is definitely involved here that inner wisdom Rav Kook is talking about, not only external wisdom. But in principle modern science characterizes itself mainly as adhering to empirical, factual, external data—what I saw with my eyes or through an instrument, what I measured. In that sense the qualitative research I described earlier really tries to do something that is somewhat speculative—not somewhat, very speculative. Because in the end it leaves things to the impression of the researcher. And what sits in my head here is Miah Bibilich, which is why I’m saying “researcher” in the feminine. But the claim is that you place some trust in your intuition, and therefore you essentially render systematic testing unnecessary. You basically say: leave it, I don’t need systematic testing because I know. In that sense you somewhat return to Aristotle. That is very dangerous. Aristotle too felt it was obvious that if there is a heavy stone and a light stone, then the heavy stone will fall faster than the light stone. And to perform that experiment, as I think I said one of the last times, you don’t need a particle accelerator. Take two stones, drop them, and see that they fall at the same speed. It doesn’t depend on their weight. Why didn’t Aristotle do this? Because it never occurred to him to perform an experiment. It seemed so logical, so why shouldn’t it be so? It’s not a complicated experiment. Any child can do it at any moment. But it did not occur to him that he had to do an experiment, because it was so logical, so what’s the problem? So in a certain sense our intuition is a very great power, but it is also something that can greatly mislead. Therefore I think it is a very interesting question how to build the balance between adherence to facts, statistics, solid research, and questions of why, intuition, depth, what lies behind things. For me this is an unresolved matter. I don’t know exactly where the balance lies, and I don’t think anyone knows how to give a complete answer about that balance, how exactly to combine these two things. But I definitely think both have weight. And this point really lies, it seems to me, behind the very well-known term of the Nazir Rabbi, whose book is called Kol HaNevuah, “The Hebrew auditory logic.” A student of Rav Kook. What he calls auditory logic is basically the antithesis of what he calls Greek logic, the visual one. The visual Greek logic is really what adheres to logic and direct observation, and auditory logic, I think, parallels what Rav Kook here calls true wisdom, which enters to the roots of things and is to a great extent speculative, and therefore one must be very careful with it. But on the other hand it seems impossible without it. If you remain attached only to facts and statistics, then you’ll be a tourist—even in the kingdom of science you’ll be a tourist—because science too cannot be done only that way, not even natural science. There is behind these observations something that, if you don’t activate your deeper tools but stay only with logic and statistics, you will not understand. You won’t understand it, and you won’t discover any scientific law. This is really interesting, because in philosophy of science they distinguish between two types of scientific theories: a phenomenological theory and an essential theory. A prominent example is black-body radiation. Einstein, at the beginning of the twentieth century, 1905, the miraculous year, published three papers, each of which opened up a huge new field in physics. It’s simply unimaginable what happened in that year. And one of them dealt with black-body radiation. Black-body radiation is also statistical mechanics, but it is also quantum theory, which later Einstein became one of the greatest opponents of—even though he took an active part in its development, he became one of its greatest opponents. He kept discovering things and refusing to accept what he had discovered, refusing to accept what he himself had found. And that is very interesting, because it is exactly the conflict I spoke about earlier. He says: the facts say what they say, but I am not willing to abandon my intuition. My intuition says this cannot be, God does not play dice. But reality says yes, so one has to seek an explanation—I don’t know, it can’t be. Einstein had such strong faith in intuitive tools that he was willing on their basis even to challenge empirical findings. This is very interesting. In that context, black-body radiation really passed through two stages. The first was the phenomenological stage: they gave some distribution formula for the radiation, for the frequencies of the radiation, how the frequencies emitted by a black body are distributed. It doesn’t matter now; for some of you this is Chinese, but I’m describing it so you understand the principle. Then suddenly someone came and gave it meaning and said: this distribution that the formula describes—the formula only describes the facts. Even to describe the facts, you need to be wise, to do it correctly. This too we saw in Rav Kook: that the external level itself can also be viewed wisely or unwisely. But after they described it that way, suddenly Einstein comes, and after him the quantum theorists, and says: wait a second, this distribution—it already looks, Einstein said this already, as though there are particles here and not waves. Radiation is not waves at all; it is particles. This was really the opening of quantum theory, okay? And that is already asking: what stands behind the distribution I am describing? So notice that the three levels Rav Kook is addressing here all appear there. The first level is simply to address what happened in reality. Everyone knew what happened in reality. There was some entity there, everyone knew about it. Then Einstein came and gave a phenomenological theory, meaning he said basically—I’m not even sure it was his; maybe it was even before him—they gave some theory of how the radiation is distributed, how much radiation of each frequency is emitted by a black body, according to temperature. So that is some formula, and already for that you need to be wise. But that formula explains nothing; it merely describes the facts in mathematical form. You need to be wise in order to do that, but this is a wise way of looking at the facts themselves, the facts that I see. That is the second stage. There are indeed the ordinary facts—that’s the fool looking at reality. Then there is the wise person, but the first kind of wise person, the one who looks only at external reality—he already knows the threads of wisdom in it, as Rav Kook says above, the visible signs of wisdom, where the wise person can discern that there are signs of wisdom here, and say: ah, this fits that formula. Interesting. The fool didn’t catch that. Now comes the second kind of wise person, the true sage, who says: wait a second, behind this formula stands something else. This means that everything we thought until now about radiation—that it is waves—what are you talking about? It’s particles. Because this formula fits particles, not waves. Then people suddenly begin to think, and an entire world of quantum theory opens before us, a world no one sees with their eyes. It’s not something you see with your eyes. It’s a whole world hidden behind these threads of kindness, these visible signs of wisdom, and in order to bring it out, observation and adherence to observation are not enough. With only that, we would have remained with formulas and phenomenological theories. Without asking what stands behind the things, we would have had nothing. Therefore, in the scientific context too, and not only in the Torah context, there are these three levels. In fact, in the Talmudic passage and in Rav Kook here, when they speak, they are not speaking about the Torah aspect. They are not looking at interpretation of the Torah; they are looking at how I see reality, right? The whole description here is of how I see and interpret facts in reality, which is basically on the scientific plane, not the Torah plane. Therefore all this song and true wisdom and all that really concern, in a certain sense, scientific observation. Of course, once you ask too many “why” questions, then you already go beyond the domain of science and move into speculation, and then in the end, after all the quanta and after all the scientific explanations, there sits something that apparently instituted all this, otherwise it just isn’t plausible. Who made these laws, as I said earlier? It just can’t be. And that final question leads us to the Holy One, blessed be He. In the end, even scientific observation concludes in metaphysics, or theology, or if you like, even religious faith, if you connect it also to religion. There is also a philosophical God, but this picture really takes me from the external facts inward, to the explanations, further inward to more fundamental explanations—perhaps the unified field law, as Einstein searched for, one force uniting the four fundamental forces of physics—but in the very end, at the root of all these things, sits the Holy One, blessed be He. This way of looking is the one that arouses song in people. And that’s what I spoke about in the previous lesson too; the previous lesson was really an introduction to this. Because there I spoke about the poetic quality in Einstein’s expressions. It’s no accident that I’m referring here to Einstein, because he is really a very clear figure on this issue. Beyond being a scientific genius, he was alert to the poetic dimensions of the matter, to the aesthetic dimensions, and he absolutely sang. He expressed song. I don’t know whether he wrote poems, but he expressed things very poetically—those feelings that reveal to you something about reality hidden from all other eyes. The genius manages to see it, but by doing so he probably also discovers something within himself. Because if I can grasp that thing within reality, then I too probably am not just some donkey with two legs and two arms. Rather there is in me something capable of grasping this realistic depth. So I discover something about myself too, and that gives me elevation of soul, and I sing. In a certain sense, song is a kind of meeting point between what I discover about myself and what I discover in the world. When they connect, song is created. In the course of Rav Kook’s discussion he also talks about the fact that all the powers that are revealed in a person when he grows and matures were really already latent in him in potential as a fetus, or if you like, even in the sperm and the egg. But here too I think this has an important meaning in the picture I described earlier. Because indeed, the naive view that sees scientific work or scientific research in the Baconian sense—Francis Bacon, who first formulated the logic of science, inductive logic, how we eliminate phenomena, how we make generalizations, tried to build a systematic logic of analyzing scientific facts and reaching generalizations—but his outlook was mistaken from the start. Because he conceived of it, and several writers have pointed this out—I’ve seen three such people, and I think none had heard of the other. One was a historian, one a philosopher of science, and one I think was even a physician. Each from his own perspective described the same thing. The Baconian outlook says: let us collect facts, and after we collect the facts we will analyze them and arrive at a conclusion, at the generalization, at the scientific law underlying the facts. But of course it can’t be that way. Because if you aren’t equipped with the scientific law, how do you know which facts to collect? Take the historian. There is a British historian named Carr who wrote a book called What Is History?, translated into Hebrew too, around the middle of the twentieth century, I think. He is one of the three I mentioned earlier. He really speaks about this and says: historical research cannot be done in the Baconian way. Suppose you want to discover how Napoleon defeated Blücher at Waterloo. Okay? Then according to Bacon you have to collect facts—the weaponry, who knows what—collect facts, and after collecting them analyze them and arrive at a historical conclusion about how Napoleon won—or sorry, lost, not won—lost the battle. The problem is that if you have no concept of what determines victory in battle, how will you know which facts to collect? How will you know which facts to collect? The name of the mother of the adjutant of the fourth battalion? The average height of the soldier carrying the standard? From which side the sun rose, who stood more eastward or westward? Next to whom grass grew? How do you know which facts to collect? There are billions of facts. Clearly we have some intuitive ability that guides us from the start, even before we know the explanation, as to where it is worthwhile to seek the explanation and where less so. And this performs some initial elimination of the facts we will look at. After we choose the facts and look at them, we go back and build our intuition. We build the intuition, return to the facts, do another sorting, more analysis, check again, perhaps collect other facts that suddenly turn out to be relevant. We go back again, make another generalization—in this sort of back-and-forth process. It does not move from facts to theory. Theory comes before the facts, or together with them—not before in a temporal sense, but it does not come after the facts. That is a naive outlook. But if so, where does it come from? If not from observation, from familiarity with the facts, where does it come from? It comes from some ability we have to contemplate the depth of reality without yet knowing the particular facts, but to understand what might be there. It is to contemplate the depth of reality. And that ability is something planted in us from the outset. Each person according to his abilities, but it is an ability planted in us already while we are fetuses. Therefore, when we grasp our ability to grasp the world, we really understand that we are not a tabula rasa. As Noam Chomsky says with respect to language, he says it cannot be that we are born without linguistic capacities. Clearly, before we know any language, there is in us something not acquired but innate—linguistic abilities. Afterwards, on top of that, one can acquire a language. Without that, we could not acquire language. It is impossible to acquire language. You can perhaps learn word by word by pointing—this is a pen, this is a phone—but from that you won’t acquire a language. How do you construct a sentence? How will you build a sentence you have never heard before? You need to generalize. You need to understand the rhythm of the language, how it works—not the grammar rules, but how it really works. You cannot learn that if you do not have prebuilt linguistic capacities, so he argued. I think this is true of all contexts of thought, not only language acquisition. In that sense, at the base of our rational thinking too, there stand certain capacities that are planted in us. We are born with them, in a certain sense. And this illuminates for us once again something both about ourselves and about the Holy One, blessed be He. For who planted these capacities within us? The one who planted them within us is the same one who enabled us also to recognize Him as standing behind reality. So He planted the capacities in us, and with these capacities we discover Him. And after we discover Him, we suddenly understand where these capacities came from—they came from Him. So we understand Him, and through Him ourselves, and through ourselves Him—again that same back-and-forth process I described earlier. And this is exactly the mirror image Rav Kook draws here: reality and its depth, external reality and the depth behind it, the human being in his simple functions, his sensory capacities and simple logical abilities, and what stands behind them—so that in the end the depths of both sides connect together. And song is always something that emerges when you discover harmony. Again, there is much poetry and many songs that express fracture, some despair before disharmony, but the song of Scripture generally—let me put it that way; I’m no expert in poetry—the song of Scripture generally is, I think, song that stands before some revelation of the Holy One, blessed be He. But so what if the Holy One, blessed be He, is revealed—why does that require song? Because the revelation of the Holy One, blessed be He, means that there is an order behind the reality we see before us. There is someone managing the whole thing. All kinds of things that seemed to us like arbitrary facts with no connection to one another are all really expressions of Him. The Holy One, blessed be He, is like a king who in the Hebrew Bible is called “the one who makes the people one”—“almost one of the people would have lain with your wife.” He makes the people one. The Holy One, blessed be He, makes the world one, makes reality one, because He gives us some consistent, coherent, grand meaning to reality in its different parts. Even with all the small contradictions in the middle, of course, and this does not resolve all the things we struggle with, but it does give some more general perspective in contrast to the broken world you face if you do not believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, behind it. Then you see a collection of laws with no connection among them. Each determines what it determines, and somehow their combination created all sorts of things. In the end you’re not even amazed by it, because okay, those are the laws of nature, that’s what there is—like the child I described earlier who is born into reality and says: this is reality, that’s all, what is there to be amazed by? So there is something in the revelation of the Holy One, blessed be He, that gives you harmony, or reveals to you the harmony in the world itself and the harmony between you and the world. Your ability to grasp the world expresses some kind of similarity between how you think and what happens in the world; otherwise you could not grasp what happens in the world if those basic mechanisms, or the ability to understand those basic mechanisms, were not planted within you. Therefore these connections, this harmony, are really the elevation of soul that leads to song. I just want to say one more thing in conclusion. Maybe I’ll share a passage from the Chatam Sofer, a responsum of the Chatam Sofer. Maybe today I wandered too far beyond my proper measure into poetry and anti-science and qualitative research, so I’ll return to Jewish law. Again, this isn’t really Jewish law; it’s a responsum, and not exactly Jewish law either. The Chatam Sofer talks—Lag BaOmer has just passed not long ago—and there are famous responsa of the Chatam Sofer, he repeats this in another responsum, where he discusses this custom of Lag BaOmer and writes a kind of riddle. So I’ll read it quickly, and in the few minutes I have left I’ll connect it to what is happening here. “Indeed I knew, for I heard that now the generations have become fit, and from afar they come to seek God in the holy city of Safed on Lag BaOmer, at the celebration of Rashbi.” He heard that there was a relatively new custom—by his time it had already existed for some generations, but still relatively new—that supposedly now the generation had become fit, a nice custom, to come to Safed on Rashbi’s celebration on Lag BaOmer. “And although all their intention is for the sake of Heaven, their reward is certainly great”—I’m skipping a bit—“yet precisely for that very reason I am among those who separate themselves, like Ben Duraṭai.” For that very reason I distance myself from them, I separate from them, so that I won’t have to sit there and challenge their custom in front of them, and so that I won’t go join them in this, because in the end their intention is good. If it were something bad, I would sit there and fight against it. But since I know their intention is good, for that very reason I don’t come there, because if I come there I’ll have to fight against it, and I don’t want to break people who have good intentions. By the way, some claim that here the Chatam Sofer is giving an explanation for why he did not immigrate to the Land of Israel—maybe, I don’t know. In any case: “For the Pri Chadash already made many efforts in Orach Chaim 496, in his tract on customs of prohibition, paragraph 14, regarding places that establish a festival on the day a miracle occurred to them.” There’s Purim Frankfurt and Purim Casablanca and all kinds of places where a miracle occurred, and so they establish some sort of festival for generations to thank the Holy One, blessed be He, for the salvation, for the miracle, and so on. The Pri Chadash writes in the laws of customs that this can be done. “In my humble opinion, for we say [it is learned] from this a fortiori argument: if from slavery to freedom we say song, then from death to life all the more so.” We left Egypt and sang, and that was a transition not from death to life but from slavery to freedom. So if we are saved from death to life, all the more so we should sing. This is how the Talmud bases the singing on Purim, the saying of Hallel on Purim. From here the Talmud in tractate Megillah learns that one should say Hallel on Purim, except that in the conclusion “its reading is its Hallel”—the reading of the Megillah itself is the saying of Hallel. But in principle one should say Hallel on Purim, and it is learned from that a fortiori argument. So he says: if so, then all these local Purims too—Frankfurt and Casablanca and the like—are also probably based on that same a fortiori argument: they were saved from death to life, so they simply learn it by a fortiori reasoning. And an a fortiori argument is one of the interpretive principles by which the Torah is expounded, so there’s no problem; this is not called adding to the Torah. It simply branches out from the obligation to say Hallel on Passover. This of course also relates to Independence Day and all such days. “But to establish a festival on a day on which no miracle occurred, and which was not mentioned in the Talmud or among the halakhic decisors anywhere, not even by hint or allusion, but merely a customary avoidance of eulogy and fasting—the custom exists, but the very reason for it I do not know.” In other words, on Lag BaOmer no miracle happened to anyone. There is no a fortiori argument here of “if from slavery to freedom, then from death to life all the more so.” So what is this rejoicing? There is some ancient custom not to eulogize or fast on that day—that is an old custom—but why did you suddenly start celebrating it? You turned it into a holiday. That is adding to the Torah. Even when you celebrate a salvation, it requires an explanation why this is allowed and not considered adding to the Torah. We found an explanation. So why are we saying song about this? Where does it come from? It is adding to the Torah. Therefore, says the Chatam Sofer, I do not join that practice. Now look at the next passage, the riddle I wanted to discuss briefly. “And in the prayer book of Rabbi Yaakov Emden, he wrote according to the esoteric teaching that it is like a court all of whose members found guilt, and yet the accused is acquitted; that is, Hod within Hod—see there. But according to this it would have been fitting to establish every good thing when we reach Gevurot, on the ninth day in the counting of the children of Israel; only that in any case those are the days of Nisan, and one does not eulogize then.” This is a riddle. So I’ll explain it myself. Rabbi Yaakov Emden says: why do we celebrate Lag BaOmer if it is adding to the Torah? He says this is like the rule that if a court in a capital case unanimously convicts, the accused is acquitted. You know there is such a rule in capital law: a court of twenty-three judges judging a person—if all twenty-three judges find him liable for death, he is acquitted. A court that unanimously rules that the defendant is guilty, the ruling is that he is innocent. This raises all kinds of interesting paradoxes, but let’s not get into that now. So that is the rule. He says Lag BaOmer is that rule, where the court all finds guilt and therefore the person is acquitted—that is, Hod within Hod. What does Hod within Hod mean? During the counting of the Omer, the forty-nine days are arranged according to forty-nine sefirot, seven times seven: Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malkhut. The seven lower sefirot. The upper three, Chokhmah, Binah, and Da’at, are not in play here. Within each of these there are also seven. So within Chesed there is Chesed within Chesed, Gevurah within Chesed, Tiferet within Chesed, and so on. Seven within Chesed, seven within Gevurah, seven within Tiferet, and so on. Therefore it comes out to forty-nine, seven times seven sefirot. Now, among these seven sefirot, if you arrange them in three columns—as is the accepted arrangement—there is an arrangement in a line and one in the form of a person. A person in Kabbalah is three columns. There is the body and two arms and two legs on the sides. So there are three columns. In the right column are the attributes of kindness, and if you do the calculation you’ll see that it goes Chesed, then Gevurah is on the left, Tiferet in the middle, then Netzach on the right again, which is the side of kindness, Hod on the left, Yesod in the middle, and Malkhut in the middle below. That is two on the right, two on the left, and three in the middle. The two on the left are the sefirot of strength, judgment. The two on the right are the sefirot of kindness. Who are the two on the left? We have Gevurah—the second in the first triad, since the first is right, second left, third middle. Then the second in the second triad is Hod. If we want to talk about judgment within judgment, says the Yaavetz, we have two options: Hod within Hod, or Gevurah within Gevurah. We won’t get into why he omits Hod within Gevurah and Gevurah within Hod, but in any case, Hod within Hod or Gevurah within Gevurah. Hod within Hod is exactly Lag BaOmer. It’s the fifth day of the fifth week. Twenty-eight days are four weeks, plus five days is thirty-three. That is Lag BaOmer, which is exactly the counting of Hod within Hod. So he says, that is what he means: Hod within Hod is a court all of whose members found guilt and therefore acquits. “But according to this it would have been fitting to establish every good thing when we reach Gevurot.” What does “when we reach Gevurot” mean? Gevurah within Gevurah is also judgment within judgment, and that is the ninth day of the counting of the children of Israel—the ninth day of the Omer. Why didn’t they establish the celebration on the ninth day of the counting? Because in any case that falls in Nisan. So if you establish there that no eulogy is made, it gets swallowed up, because in any case one does not eulogize during Nisan. They wanted a day on which this determination—that it is a festival day on which one should not eulogize—would have practical consequence. So you can’t do it in Nisan, because it would be like lighting a candle in broad daylight—what good does that do? You need to light a candle at night so that people will see a candle is burning. Therefore we do not take days on which eulogy is already forbidden and forbid it again. So the only thing left is Lag BaOmer. That is why Lag BaOmer is celebrated. Now just as a hint of how this connects to us: what is “judgment”? In the language of the Sages, “judgment” means an a fortiori argument. Right? “Is it not an argument?” If so, then all the more so. Or: “one does not derive punishment from an a fortiori argument.” “Judgment” in the language of the Sages means a fortiori argument. Why is that? What is the difference between judgment and kindness? Judgment is something determined by the rules of Jewish law. If I borrowed from you, then Jewish law determines that I must repay you, right? There is a legal claim here; I need to repay you. Repaying a debt is a commandment. So this is an obligation by law. Giving charity is kindness. I do not owe you anything. And I give you charity, therefore that is kindness. There is a commandment to give charity—there’s much more to say here and I don’t want to get into it—but at the basic level there is no juridical obligation to give it; I don’t owe you that money. In a loan, there is a legal obligation: I owe you. Therefore giving charity or doing kindness is called kindness. In other words, judgment is going according to the rules. Kindness is going outside the rules. That is the definition. That is why even in contexts involving animals—or I think in the case of lying with one’s sister, I don’t remember exactly—it says “it is kindness.” What does that mean? It means it doesn’t fit into the rules. It’s simply not graspable within the ordinary rules. That is why it is called kindness. Not necessarily in a positive sense. A departure from rules is kindness. Now then, judgment represents the rules. And judgment is also a fortiori reasoning, right? And a fortiori reasoning is of course the most logical rule among the thirteen interpretive principles by which the Torah is expounded. It is logic, the rules. Therefore judgment really represents, expresses, a fortiori reasoning, which represents thinking according to rules. This a fortiori argument sound familiar? In the previous paragraph of the Chatam Sofer, an a fortiori argument was brought as the explanation for why all those days are not considered adding to the Torah. There is an a fortiori argument, right? He said: from slavery to freedom, then from death to life all the more so. But the Chatam Sofer asked: on Lag BaOmer we have no a fortiori argument. We have no a fortiori argument, so on what is the permission based to make it a festival? The Yaavetz says: there is no judgment here—it is judgment within judgment. If you ask what is the logic behind the a fortiori argument—give me a logical rule that explains why an a fortiori argument is logical—can you? No, you can’t. Because you cannot explain with logical rules the logicality of the rules themselves. So what is it based on? Judgment within judgment basically means that you are asking why logic is logical, what rule explains the rules. You won’t find such a rule. There is no such rule. Or in other words, what Wittgenstein described in his famous argument about following a rule: he shows that when we think we operate according to rules, we are deceiving ourselves. It is impossible to act according to rules. Behind the rules there always sits an intuitive understanding. There is no such thing as acting according to rules detached from intuitive understanding. The rules can describe what intuition says. Therefore when you get to the root of things and ask: wait, why is this true? Because there is such a rule. And why is the rule true? There is no answer. What does it mean, why is the rule true? Because it is true. What do you mean, what is this? The answer is kindness, not judgment. There is no rule that explains it. There is intuition, something that does not proceed according to rule, that tells you why this is true. Lag BaOmer is judgment within judgment. It is one day in the year when we depart from the rules of adding to the Torah, from the a fortiori argument that tells us on which days we are allowed to make a festival and on which days we are not. When we ask, what is the a fortiori argument that explains the a fortiori argument? What is judgment within judgment? We discover that at the root even of the a fortiori argument there is something deeper. The logical rules are not the foundation; something else lies behind them. And that is what we celebrate on Lag BaOmer. Therefore it is no accident that this is the festival of the hidden, of Kabbalah, of Rashbi and the like. Why? Because in the hidden realm we really try to deal with those things that stand at the basis of the revealed phenomena. Therefore judgment within judgment is the best day to celebrate and to violate the prohibition of adding to the Torah. To violate it, because according to the rules this is called adding to the Torah, since there is no a fortiori argument here, and the rules say that if there is no a fortiori argument, then you violate the prohibition of adding to the Torah. But wait—who said the rules are correct? Do you have a rule that justifies the rules? Here we arrive at the hidden. And according to the hidden teaching we celebrate Lag BaOmer in order, once a year, to mark for ourselves that the rules are not the end of the story. I think this is an expression—I don’t know whether merely homiletical or actually true—but a beautiful expression of the principle we saw in Rav Kook, and that I expanded on earlier: that behind scientific observation, observationalism, statistics, laws, stands the question: who made the laws? What is the justification for the laws themselves? Sometimes a non-systematic look, not at the law but at a particular case, gives you an insight much deeper than all the laws together. It tells you what stands at the base of the law. And about that one sings. Okay, let’s stop here. I’ll unmute you if anyone wants to ask. Yes, your microphones… Okay, we’ll stop here. Good night.