Ein Aya – Berakhot 130

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] David said this verse, “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and a teaching of kindness is on her tongue,” about David. What’s the idea here, really? Is “wisdom” and “a teaching of kindness” wisdom versus poetry? Or are we talking about emotion versus intellect, or all kinds of oppositions that came up here and also in the earlier passages? He dwelled in his mother’s womb and said song, as it is stated: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name.” He came out into the air of the world and looked at the stars and constellations and said song, as it is stated: “Bless the Lord, His angels, mighty in strength, who do His word, hearkening to the voice of His word. Bless the Lord, all His hosts,” and so on. So there’s the mother’s womb; we talked about that as something that is, ostensibly, lowly, degraded, something shared by a human being together with the lowest creatures—and yet David saw in it some meaning beyond the state as it appears in itself, the objective state. After that, he came out into the world and looked at the stars. There there’s nothing lowly, but this is a kind of looking at nature as it is, and people are usually used to that, and we talked there about this issue of looking at the laws as a substitute for those who ask about the laws themselves. There are those who ask about the laws—why they are the way they are—looking for an explanation, and there are those who see the laws as an alternative explanation. We talked a bit about faith and evolution and all kinds of things of that sort. Again, there’s some kind of looking here that goes beyond. In his mother’s womb, when he speaks, the perspective is ostensibly: here is some lowly condition that all lowly animals also go through, and yet David sees in it something beyond that condition. After that there are the stars and constellations, which are simply the nature of the world, and that too is something our hearts have grown coarse toward because we’re used to it—the stars are here and that’s there and it rotates and does this; there are laws and nature behaves according to them. And David stops for a moment and asks: wait a second, what do you mean—who causes all this to behave like such a coordinated and impressive orchestra? So he can stop and reflect on the prose around him and speak song to it, and see what stands behind it or what lies at its foundation. The third stage: he nursed at his mother’s breasts and looked at them and said song. Again, this too is basically part of the laws of nature: a person nurses like every other baby, and he says song, as it is stated: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.” What does “all His benefits” mean? Rabbi Abbahu said: that He placed breasts for her in the place of understanding. The medieval authorities (Rishonim) explain here that the intention is that for a woman, for a human being, a woman’s breasts are not located in the places where they are found among animals. Among animals it’s in the area of the sexual organs or the anus or the nakedness, and for a woman it’s higher up, detached from there. And that’s what the Talmud says: what is the reason? Rav Yehuda said: so that he should not look at the place of nakedness. Rav Matna said: so that he should not nurse from the place of filth. There are two implications here. Rabbi Kook explains this in terms of emotion and intellect—“and do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes”—somehow to preserve them in their purity. And it ends, almost ends: he saw the downfall of the wicked and said song. Again, breasts—ostensibly, you can look at it as a simple thing: a woman has breasts, and that’s how the baby nurses and grows. But David asks himself: wait, wait, why are they exactly here, while among animals they’re somewhere else? Behind the simple things we’re all used to, David sees something that still requires explanation, still has some guiding hand in it, and that’s what causes him to say song. We talked about how song symbolizes some kind of harmony that exists in things. We’ll come back to that a bit more today. He saw the downfall of the wicked and said song. As it is stated: “Let sins cease from the earth, and the wicked be no more; bless the Lord, O my soul, hallelujah.” So that’s the downfall of the wicked, which again is usually hard events—people suffer, people die—but David sees what’s going on behind the scenes, basically, and still says song. He looked at the day of death—this is the end of the passage—he looked at the day of death and said song. And again there’s something here that is ostensibly very depressing, very sad; the ordinary person who looks at it certainly doesn’t think of saying song in the face of such a thing, and David does. David says song, as it is stated: “Bless the Lord, O my soul; O Lord my God, You are very great; You are clothed in majesty and splendor.” How do we know that this was said about the day of death? Who says that this verse speaks about the day of death? Abba bar Rav Sheila said: from the end of the matter, yes, the end of the verse, as it is written: “You hide Your face, they are terrified; You take away their spirit, they perish.” Yes, so perishing, death—the verse is speaking about death. So basically there’s some kind of look here at various things that people somehow pass by. I mentioned Alex Levac’s photograph with the Arab workers there at Herzl’s statue in Herzliya, at the HaSira junction. I said there are all kinds of things that we ordinary people pass by and don’t even notice that there’s something interesting here, something special, something that evokes an insight, something that calls for explanation, that has some guiding hand behind it, something like that. Artists can stop for a moment and see this prose and notice that behind it there is poetry. Yes, that there is something behind it that is not just a prosaic, natural, simple, self-evident matter, but something that does require attention, something that says something to us. So David too passed through all these stations that every person basically goes through. Everyone is in his mother’s womb, everyone comes out and sees nature, the stars and the moon and everything, everyone nurses from his mother, everyone sees the world unfolding, rise and fall, wicked and righteous, everyone also sees the day of death—and nobody thinks to say song about all these events. And David dwelled in five worlds, yes, in these five contexts that he passed through in his biography, and in the end he said song about all these contexts. So that’s really the point. Maybe I’ll preface things a bit before I go into the last two passages, which are our topic for today—but really I want to take some kind of general look at the sugya: why is all this connected to saying song? What does it have to do with saying song? And that brings me to the discussion of the question: what is poetry, anyway? Something we did on my fiftieth birthday—there’s at least one person here who was there. So look, these are excerpts I brought from a discussion I once opened on some website on the internet called “Stop Here, Think.” There were all kinds of threads on various subjects, and I opened a thread there trying to define what poetry is. And the background was that I was asked to say some Torah thought on the Sabbath of Parashat Beshalach, the Sabbath of Song, in a synagogue near us in Petah Tikva, and I thought I’d speak a bit about the concept of poetry. And since I’m a very small expert in the matter, the first thing I did was go to the Hebrew Encyclopedia and wanted to see what it tells us about this subject. To my amazement I discovered that there is no entry there on poetry at all. There is literature, there is poetics, but not poetry in this sense, not this concept itself. Then I started poking around a bit—again, as is well known, I’m not a professional and I don’t really understand this—but still I poked around and poked around and didn’t really find an orderly treatment of the definition of this elusive concept, what exactly poetry is. Then I started thinking about the matter a bit, and of course there’s the context that Torah is called song, so maybe that also has some implications for how we understand what Torah is. But for our purposes here, I want to touch a little on this issue of poetry, because that’s what David basically said in all five worlds or contexts he passed through. So the question that arises is really how to define this concept. Look at the paragraph with which I opened that thread—these are, of course, only excerpts; it was a long and detailed thread. In the end I gave a series of lessons there on the concept of poetry, written lessons. But it started with some discussion, until things took shape for me, and then I put it into some more structured pattern and tried to speak about it or describe it in several longer posts. In any case, I asked there, yes, in anticipation of the Sabbath of Song I began to ponder what the definition of poetry is as opposed to prose, for example. And whether there are additional categories on this axis. For example, the Psalms seem to me to belong neither to prose nor to poetry. It’s something in between somehow. So maybe psalms are a third category. In short, there are many concepts here that somehow belong to this semantic field, but they’re not exactly poetry: psalms, ballads, sagas, romances, I don’t know, all kinds of things. There are subgroups of poetry, there are things outside poetry but close to it. Even literature basically belongs here under poetics. All kinds of accompanying or related concepts. So I asked people to suggest definitions, to bring sources, or at least characteristics, in order to define this concept. So one of the people there, Nadav Shnerb, a good friend of mine, offered some initial definitions here. It seems to me that I ruled out in advance writing in rhyme. That’s a very late invention, from around the seventh century. So rhyme isn’t the criterion for what poetry is. Before that, from what I understand, nobody wrote in rhyme, and certainly there are no such things in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). By the way, they attribute the invention of rhyme there to Kalir. By the way, strangely enough there’s a passage in the Kuzari where he says that rhymes are a harmful thing—they draw attention to the aesthetic side, and it would be preferable just to write straightforwardly and directly what you want. Precisely Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, one of the greatest Hebrew poets, writes this. Now we can retreat to meter, or simply speak about writing in short lines and in elevated language, or in language that contains unusual grammatical forms—“you will fill them,” “you will cover them,” yes, from the Song at the Sea. Alternatively, one can think that poetry is simply what is accompanied by music, like Miriam and her timbrels. As far as I remember, Radak explained that the word “selah” in Psalms—every now and then there’s a “selah,” yes, usually at the end of psalms—means a musical sign, something like fortissimo and things like that, as though it tells the singer or conductor to change the octave and so on. So in short there’s some hesitation here, and I think that certainly through our lenses today it’s quite clear to us that none of these characteristics really defines the essence of poetry. Yes, today there is poetry without meter, of course poetry without music, poetry with short lines and wide lines, elevated language and thin, low language, all kinds of things. In short, all these matters—certainly not rhyme—all these matters don’t really define poetry. They probably have some connection to poetry, because usually what is written in that form is poetry, but it’s not true that poetry is always things written in that way. So what, after all, is the essential definition of this concept? There was one person there—I’ll maybe bring one proposal out of that thread—who brings from Aristotle’s Poetics a definition that seems to me completely absurd, certainly in our eyes today. Again, it may be that there is a difference between our poetry and ancient poetry. “It is not the poet’s task to tell what happened in reality, but what could have happened—that is, what might occur according to probability or necessity. For the historian and the poet differ from one another not in that the one tells in measured language and the other not in measured language,” that is, with meter, “but in this they differ: that one tells the events as they were, while the other as they might have been. And for this reason poetry is more philosophical and nobler than history.” Did you notice that suddenly he moved to history? Because history is basically the historian—it’s the antithesis of poetry. “For poetry speaks chiefly of universals, whereas history speaks of particulars.” Well, first of all it’s clear that what he defines here is not poetry but literature. That’s obvious. He probably doesn’t make a sharp distinction between those two things. And we know, yes, the Iliad and various Homeric writings are stories written in a form that has poetic dimensions, but one can definitely also see them as story, as literature. But beyond that, I think this is also not correct. That is, you can describe things that happened in a literary genre and not in a historical genre. And you can describe things as they were. They could have been—but that still isn’t really literature, and certainly not poetry. So this definition definitely doesn’t hold water, certainly not for the poetry we know today. And the next step was a very amusing trick there—I’m still talking about “Stop Here, Think”—a very amusing trick that one of the participants there pulled. As is well known, it’s customary to conceal the screen names; those are the rules of the genre. So he took my opening post—I read it above—and look what he did to it. “What is poetry?” Yes, Rav Niki, that’s the poet. “As the coming Sabbath of Song approaches, I began to ponder what the definition of poetry is as opposed to prose. For example, are there additional categories on this axis? For instance, the Psalms seem to me to belong neither to prose nor to poetry, or perhaps psalms are a third category? And so on.” In short, some of this is clowning—or a lot of it is clowning—but it does provoke thought. Because he took a dry little piece of prose of mine, broke it up, vocalized it, and somehow suddenly turned it into something that, if you saw it outside the context in which I’m speaking about it here, you would say was a poem. Maybe less successful or more successful, but clearly you would classify it as a poem. And why? What did he actually do to it? What he did was simply to vocalize and break up—sometimes not even logically—the paragraphs and the sentences. Is that what turns prose into a poem? As I said earlier, that seems highly unlikely. But still there’s some feeling that this does tell us something. Somehow he did turn it into a poem. The next participant there—she’s a poet herself, by the way—asks who the poet is. Is it me, who wrote the things, or perhaps Muad’Dib—yes, the one who made them into this; later there was someone else who did it too—who discovered the poetry in them and created them as a poem. So let’s say it’s a poem—who’s the poet? Is the poet me, or is the poet the guy who abused the prose text I wrote? The prosaic text, in Rabbi Kook’s terms. So this question—what is poetry?—I won’t weary you with all the possibilities and hesitations, and in the end my conclusion was—and I also wrote this on my website in a series of several columns—in the end my conclusion, in a nutshell, and you can greatly elaborate here, is that poetry is a text whose message to the reader is not found in the words. Not in the words and not in the sentences. I think that’s the closest thing, at least in my view, to a definition of the concept of poetry. And under that there are many kinds, and I really built a whole structure there, and then later gave a general lesson on this subject. But broadly speaking, if I need a concise definition of the concept of poetry in its pure and general sense, I would say it’s a text whose message is basically not found in the words. Yes, I said, for example, that when we read the sentence “Once there was a lonely lamp at the end of a neighborhood”—yes, a story, okay, one could also tell a story like that. But somehow it’s a song. Why is it a song? First of all because they attached a beautiful melody to it. But beyond that, it’s a song because the message it conveys to me has nothing to do with lamps or neighborhoods. That is, the message is not in the meaning of the words or in the sentences. Rather, the words and sentences are some kind of medium through which something is meant to pass to me. Something like an atmosphere, for example. In that context it gives you some old-time atmosphere. “Once there was a lonely lamp,” yes, “just one more minute, Mom, and we hardly had time to play at all,” a well-known song, I assume. So that song doesn’t come to describe the situation, to give me information, dry information. It uses the situation and the words that describe it as a medium through which something else entirely passes. Something that perhaps could also have passed through a completely different medium. One could have conveyed to me that same melancholy atmosphere of bygone days—maybe tranquil melancholy—through a completely different text dealing with other situations or describing things in other words; it doesn’t matter. The information conveyed by the words isn’t really the true message of the song. The message of the song passes somehow through the words. Fine, one can elaborate on this a lot, and I think that therefore literature too is basically a kind of poetry, if I return to Aristotle above. Literature too doesn’t come to convey information, and therefore Aristotle was right to place history at the opposite pole. Today I would put the encyclopedia there. The encyclopedia is the opposite pole to poetry. The encyclopedia is a text whose whole purpose is to convey information; one has to choose the simplest, most efficient, clearest way to convey the information. The information is only in the words and their meaning, and nothing beyond that. The structure and the way the entry is edited and so on—all of it is derived from efficiency in transmitting information. There are no poetic considerations here, no literary considerations. Therefore that is the opposite pole. The opposite pole of prose is the encyclopedia, or history in Aristotle. History is also a kind of encyclopedia; you’re conveying information to me, that’s all. Therefore a historical novel, for example, is a very interesting hybrid creature, because it’s written in the form of a novel and can also have literary value, depending on how it’s written, but it also has some tendency to convey information—that is, to understand the period, to know the situations—but to do it through a novel and not through a dry prose book. Therefore it too lies somewhere on the axis between history and encyclopedia and poetry. So a novel and a historical novel are somewhere along the way. Let’s say a novel is closer to poetry; a historical novel is already to the right of the novel but still to the left of the encyclopedia, okay? Or history. And so on. You can see here that all the Iliads and all those things are basically also a kind of poem that conveys a story. It’s a bit like a historical novel in that sense—a historical poem, if you like. Historical or fictional, it doesn’t matter right now; I won’t get into those historical reliability questions of what from all that actually happened. In any case, that’s more or less the definition of poetry. If we return for a moment to the slide you see before your eyes, then notice now: what I want to argue is that this slide really is poetry. This is poetry, and the poet is definitely not me. But it’s not poetry because it’s broken into lines and vocalized—that’s a mistaken view. It’s poetry because this passage doesn’t come at all to tell the content of its words. Yes? The content of its words you can read here. See? This passage here—it’s exactly the same thing, exactly the same words. This. That is what’s there. Here nobody would dream of saying this is a poem, right? This is the passage I wrote. Then that Jew there, called here Muad’Dib, comes and breaks it up and vocalizes it, and he is the poet, without question. Why is he the poet? Because what this poem conveys to us is a very interesting message. It basically tells us the definition I gave earlier. It basically says to us: look, I take the same words of a prose passage; if I convey through them another message that has nothing to do with the content of the words, it has become a poem. What message did he convey? This very message itself: that a poem is something that conveys a message that does not pass through the words. It’s really like a fractal, a snake swallowing its own tail. That is, it became a poem because he takes my text, breaks it up and so on, but through it he tries to convey a message about what defines poetry—that is his message. And the definition of poetry is basically a text whose message does not pass through the words. Again, I’m not sure Muad’Dib intended this, and like any good poet, if you ask him what the poem means he’ll send you to Kurzweil. That is, same thing here. But never mind—from my perspective, that is really what his poem did. In that sense it’s entirely a poem, a poem in every respect. It’s not a game or anything like that; it is simply a full-fledged poem. And he is entirely the poet. Entirely the poet, because he took my words, and now when you read those words, don’t pay any attention at all to what they said—that is completely irrelevant. That’s not the point at all. The point is: notice that we took a piece of prose, abused it a little, broke it up and so on, and suddenly it became a poem. What does that mean? That a poem is the transmission of a message using prose as a medium to transmit the message, and not as the subject of the message itself. The meaning of the words is not the message. And that really comes through this poem. In that sense he made a beautiful poem here, in my opinion, very creative—and I’m not complimenting myself at all, so I can allow myself to say that, because I had no hand or foot in the matter. I just wrote a simple prose passage and there is nothing special about it. And therefore I really think that in that sense this truly is a poem. That’s the definition. Let’s go back now to King David. Let’s descend from the heights of “Stop Here, Think” to the depths of Psalms. King David basically looks at all the prosaic situations that each of us goes through, and he says song about them. What does that mean? Why? Because what King David sees when he looks at those prosaic situations is some kind of message that passes through them. When we see Herzl’s statue there at the HaSira junction and a few workers working—if I described the situation to you, you would understand that there were workers, Arabs, they were fixing something, and there was a statue and they fixed it and that’s it. Totally prose. The moment he photographed it—what’s his name? Levac—the moment he photographed it, he turned it into a work of art, into a poem. Because it’s obvious that what we see there has nothing to do with the situation at all. The situation is a medium through which the message passes. That’s really a definition of art, not only poetry, but I won’t get into that here; I also spoke about that there. So the claim is that each of us can pass by things and not notice anything beyond the situation itself that he sees. So for him it is prose. But if a poet passes by those same situations and suddenly sees that there is something behind them that the ordinary person, with our simple prosaic eyes, does not see—then he is a poet. That is, then he understands that there is some poetry here. When King David passed by all these situations and suddenly understood through them a great many things—I mentioned in the first lesson when I spoke about this sugya that I brought the verses in Parashat Shelach where they send the spies, and the leading verb in that passage is “to scout,” to scout the land. And they all tour and look, and as tourists do—or usually, at least; there are deep tourists—but as ordinary tourists do, they come, see the landscape, nice, interesting, see beautiful buildings, see interesting and new scenery, and that’s all. Those are tourists. Then at the end Parashat Shelach comes and tells me to wear tzitzit, and tzitzit is the correction for the sin of the spies, because regarding tzitzit it says: “And do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes.” “Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes” means: don’t look at what you see with your eyes and your heart like tourists; rather, look at what stands behind it. Then you won’t sin with the sin of the spies, as Rashi indeed brings there—that they saw throughout the land people burying their dead and did not understand that the Holy One, blessed be He, had killed those people so that they wouldn’t notice them. He was taking care of them. And they came back crying and said, “It is a land that consumes its inhabitants,” and so on, because they looked at the facts as they are and not at the meaning hidden behind them; they looked at the prose and not the poetry. And therefore the tzitzit, which is the correction for that—our sages say that the blue thread resembles the sea, the sea resembles the sky, and the sky resembles the Throne of Glory. Basically, through the tzitzit we are meant to remember what lies beyond, what it symbolizes. Not the tzitzit itself—the tzitzit itself is just a collection of strings and cloth. It says nothing. But if I look at the context, at what it is, at the association, at where it leads me, then it becomes poetry. And therefore it is the opposite of scouting: “do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes,” but rather think about what really stands behind things. And that is tzitzit’s correction for the tourist’s outlook, the tourist’s prosaic outlook. Tzitzit is the poetry that corrects it. And King David is basically the same: we all pass by these situations as tourists, and King David basically asks himself: what does this mean? Where does it come from? Why is it this way and not another way? He asks all kinds of questions that we would not think to ask, and therefore it is said that he said song. That is the meaning of the fact that David said song about all these situations, because he did not see them as prose; he understood that there is a message behind them passing through this prose, and maybe not even related to it—it could have passed in a completely different way—but he understood that there is something behind things, and that is why he said song. Now we’ve already gone over some of these matters. What still remains for us here is: he nursed at his mother’s breasts and looked at them and said song. Right? Then: that He made breasts for her in the place of understanding, okay, so that he should not look at the place of nakedness, or so that he should not nurse from the place of filth. Again, this is just like the spies. We see breasts—breasts are there, that’s the laws of nature. Does anyone ask himself why they are there and not somewhere else? And King David asks himself: wait a second, the Holy One, blessed be He, created the human being in a certain way; He probably had a reason. Why did He place it precisely there and not elsewhere? And he looks for explanations. So when he asks these “why” questions behind the simple prosaic facts that he encounters, that is called saying song. That’s what he says song about. The next passage is: he saw the downfall of the wicked and said song. And again—we see it, we see tragedy, we see something sad, all true—but King David sees that there is something broader behind it, some message that passes through the matter, and about that it is fitting to say song. The same with “he looked at the day of death,” which is the concluding passage. And there too—it’s just a day that usually makes us sad; of course this is part of the nature of the world, but it is also the sad part of the nature of the world. We really would not say song in the face of the day of death. And yet David says there is probably something broader, deeper, and probably also more encouraging than the ordinary depression that accompanies death, and therefore he says song about that too. So now I move to the words of Rabbi Kook. We are basically in the concluding section of this sugya. “He saw the downfall of the wicked and said song.” “That very mode of conduct itself”—I am now reading Rabbi Kook—he is speaking both about the downfall of the wicked and about the day of death. There are two… this is the passage dealing with the downfall of the wicked. The unmarked passage deals with the day of death. “That very mode of conduct itself, when a person looks at it according to its surface,” when one looks at it superficially, “will produce in his heart wonderment and feelings opposed to the concepts of God’s justice and kindness.” In many cases we look at things and they seem to us opposed to the concepts of justice and kindness of the Holy One, blessed be He. And this creates wonder and perplexity and difficulties in faith and doubts, and unsettles us, and so on. “As the sages and prophets spoke much about this: ‘Behold, these are the wicked, and at ease forever, they have attained wealth.’” That’s in Psalm 73, a psalm entirely devoted, basically, to the issue of “the wicked prospers.” “Why does the way of the wicked prosper?” So the wicked are tranquil, attain wealth, life is strawberries and cream for them. All of us get depressed by this, and David says what a song. “But one who observes with a penetrating eye, in wisdom and depth, who investigates to every end the inner life of the wicked and the chain of history through different periods, will see the wonders of the Most High: the downfall of the wicked.” That is, when you look behind this depressing reality, you basically see the wonders of the Holy One, blessed be He—the downfall of the wicked—and about that you say song. Truly, in the end, after the lofty height, they fall into the deep pit. They get what’s coming to them. That doesn’t exactly explain the lofty height; it only says that the lofty height is not the end of the story. In the end there may also come the deep pit. And then he continues: “And even the very existence of the wicked and their evils, which according to the external appearance are a stumbling block”—if you look at it with the external gaze of tourists, then it really seems a stumbling block, that is, something that leads us into difficulties in faith, to a lack of understanding; it contradicts what we would expect the Holy One, blessed be He, to do. “But one who understands the depth of all the plots of reality and their causes will recognize how in the end the great evil itself will bring about a purpose of goodness and perfection, until one must marvel at the supreme kindness and hidden wisdom in this.” And he says: not only the downfall of the wicked—that is, what will come at the end—but also their very life, even the stages in which they succeed, even that itself aroused song in King David, because he understood that even in this thing itself one sees the hand of God and there is some optimistic message. Even this thing itself is conveying something to us that gives us some correct picture of life. It is not supposed to arouse difficulties in us, except from a superficial glance, if we are tourists. But if we really look from a more inclusive perspective, then we can see the poetry in it and also say song about this thing. And here Rabbi Kook is making several theological assumptions. He is basically assuming that everything that happens in the world is ultimately brought about by the Holy One, blessed be He, and its purpose is for good. And therefore even the astonishing and difficult things, like the success of the wicked—even that falls under this rule. Now he says more than that. He says not only that in the end the wicked will also fall, that their success is temporary, but that the success itself is in some sense beneficial to the world, the success of the wicked. That is, even it itself has some purpose, not only the downfall that comes in the end. Because if the Holy One, blessed be He, did this, then apparently there is some good reason for that too, and it’s not just some accidental case that the wicked succeeded. That is, if the Holy One, blessed be He, brings about all that happens, then everything that happens must have some reason. And that itself gives some optimistic outlook on life, even on the more depressing, less understandable, or more difficult parts of reality. That is, faith can lead a person to see optimistically what an ordinary person sees pessimistically, what the tourist sees pessimistically. Fine. We are all very familiar with this way of looking and with the explanations that are always given for various things, and here I can’t avoid making a few comments. Comments to disagree with what he says, or to explain what he says. I find these statements a bit hard to buy, even though they are of course very common, because first of all this basically says that everything that happens in the world is the result of the actions of the Holy One, blessed be He, and everything is planned. And the question is whether such a thing accords with the ordinary natural outlook that says there are chains of cause and effect in the world, that there are laws of nature. That is, if someone goes into fire, he gets burned, whether he is righteous or wicked. And if he is righteous and he happens to end up in a fire, then he will be burned even though that is bad for him. And I don’t think I would see behind that the hand of God for good, or understand from it some mission or important message or some important effect this thing has in the world. Here I only see something bad. True, everything—well, I’ll still talk about the questions this raises. In any case, I’m not sure to what extent—or I’m pretty sure not—that this poetic outlook, yes, the outlook that says: come see what is behind things, that the Holy One, blessed be He, brings things about and they are all aimed at good—to what extent that accords with the physical outlook that says things happen because they have a natural cause, and therefore they happen. And I think that if you take these two outlooks all the way, there is no doubt that they do not fit together. The question is where to draw the middle line. That’s a question over which many arguments have already been conducted on my website and in other places. But it is clear that the simple outlook—as if every single thing basically has some higher outlook, some more optimistic outlook—cannot be right. It simply does not fit with the natural outlook, the laws of nature. The laws of nature also do things, after all. And it cannot be that everything that happens here is basically directed by the Holy One, blessed be He, in a positive direction, because there are things dictated by the laws of nature. There is an interesting source on this in the Talmud in tractate Chagigah 5b. The Talmud says there: “There are those swept away without justice.” A person can die without deserving to die. And on that Rabbeinu Chananel says: for example, when a person kills his fellow. What does he mean? It seems to me that what he means is that when Reuven decides to murder Shimon, one might think that here too—true, Reuven is wicked and decides to murder Shimon—but if Shimon dies, then there was a divine calculation that justified the fact that Shimon died. There is a good reason why Shimon died. It didn’t happen for no reason. The Holy One, blessed be He, did it, so He did it for some reason. One could have said that. And on that Rabbeinu Chananel says: what are you talking about? That is called “swept away without justice.” This man died not because the Holy One, blessed be He, decided that he should die, but because Reuven chose to murder him. That’s why he died. There is nothing good in this at all, only evil. “There are those swept away without justice”—that means without a judicial calculation. It’s not because the Holy One, blessed be He, made some calculation here and concluded that this person should die. There is a Talmud in tractate Makkot discussing the question: what is a case of unintentional manslaughter? That’s how the Talmud puts it there, I think on 10b. And the Talmud says there: for example, a man who killed his fellow intentionally—he was liable to death, but there were no witnesses, so he couldn’t be tried, and he went unpunished. And another man killed his fellow unintentionally and was liable to exile but was not exiled. The Holy One, blessed be He, brings them together at one inn. One is above on the roof or in a tree, and the other below. Then the iron slips unintentionally from the axe of the one above, falls below, and kills the one below. The one below is the intentional murderer for whom there were no witnesses, so now he got what was coming to him. And the murderer above is the unintentional murderer who was liable to exile, and now there were witnesses, so now he will get the exile that is due to him. And of course one can ask about this: if so, how can Rabbeinu Chananel say that when a person kills his fellow, it is basically his choice—it is not directed by the Holy One, blessed be He, from above, but rather natural evil or human choice, though not directed from above? Here we see that our sages tell us that every death of a person, every such event, is directed from above. And the simple answer is that the rabbi is speaking about intentional murder. Reuven chose to murder Shimon. Shimon will die even if he does not deserve to die. Why? Because that is the meaning of saying that Reuven has free choice. And if Reuven chose to kill him, then he can succeed in doing so. He won’t always succeed, but he can succeed in doing so. And in such a case Shimon dies without a reason. Without a theological reason, I mean—there is a natural reason. By contrast, the Talmud in tractate Makkot is speaking about unintentional manslaughter. An unintentional killer is someone who did not intend to kill the other person; it just happened through him. Here the Talmud says this is apparently an event directed from above. Then indeed there is probably a reason; otherwise why would the Holy One, blessed be He, arrange that the one above should kill the one below? Apparently there was a reason: the one below was liable to death, and the one above was liable to exile. So the Holy One, blessed be He, arranged for the one above to kill unintentionally in order to carry out justice. Therefore these events really are guided from above. But events that happen intentionally are the result of our own actions, not of the Holy One, blessed be He. There is always the question why the Holy One, blessed be He, did the Holocaust to us. There are many divine explanations for that matter. I never understood the question. The one who did the Holocaust was the Nazi, not the Holy One, blessed be He. Therefore complaints should be directed at them. You can ask why He did not intervene. That’s a good question. But first of all, it’s not that the Holy One, blessed be He, decided these six million should die. The one who decided that was Hitler. Why didn’t the Holy One, blessed be He, intervene? That’s a good question. I’m not sure I have a good answer to it. And that is a good and different question. First and foremost, they died because Hitler decided to murder them, not because they deserved it, not because of one theological consideration or another, because they were for Zionism or against Zionism or because they did not keep commandments or did keep commandments, or all kinds of excuses of that sort that seem to me completely idiotic. They don’t fit in any way with the statistics of who died and who did not die. No theory stands the test. And therefore all these theories are worthless. In the end it seems to me that the required explanation, even if only partial, is that Hitler did the Holocaust, and whoever died died because Hitler killed him—that’s why he died. Not because of any theological reasons whatsoever. Why didn’t the Holy One, blessed be He, intervene? Another question; we won’t get into it here. Not “we won’t get into it” because I have exalted secrets—I don’t have a good answer. I have an answer, but not much of one. In any case, the point is that Rabbi Kook assumes here, as though incidentally, that everything that happens in the world is basically the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He. I find such a thing hard to accept, and therefore this optimistic outlook, or this poetic outlook on reality, which sees the hand of God behind everything that happens and messages passing to us through everything that happens—I refuse to accept it. I think this is an outlook that ignores the fact that reality unfolds according to its own rules. It may be that here and there the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved, or not—one can argue about that—but certainly not in every single thing can one find this. And in the routine things that happen to everyone by way of the laws of nature, I see no reason to assume there is some exalted poetry behind them. What there is, is the laws of nature managing the world as they manage it. Of course, as I said before, one can still ask why the laws of nature are this way and not another. For example, there is definitely room for the question why among humans breasts are located differently than among animals. Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, direct the laws of nature so that this thing would come into being in such a way and not another? Good question, and there indeed there may be room for answers of this sort. But it is not true that every single thing I look at, every wicked person who succeeded, has some theological explanation such that in the end you will see it contributed to the world or that something good came of it. No. That wicked person succeeded because he succeeded in robbing the righteous person and taking all his money, unfortunately, and that is why he succeeded. That’s all—without any comforting explanations. At least in my humble opinion. Therefore I think this outlook is, in my eyes at least, very problematic. So I’ll say again: one can ask how far to go with this—whether the Holy One, blessed be He, is still involved on some larger scale or in certain places here and there, I don’t know, one can debate that. But to say that every single thing can be looked at both from the perspective of prose and from the perspective of poetry, in the sense he defines here—I don’t accept that. That’s regarding the first part. The second part is the day of death. This is the passage that really concludes this aggadah. He says as follows: “And after all these, behold the even greater wonder, which terrifies the faint-hearted and brings sadness and desolation to those who follow only the feeling that comes from the impression of the senses alone—it is the day of death.” That is, if there is one thing that depresses us just by looking at it, for one who goes only by the senses, by the initial feeling that follows from the senses, it is the day of death. The most depressing, most terrifying thing for every faint-hearted person, and so on—yes, this is the hardest thing. “He, peace be upon him,” King David, “looked at the day of death and saw how great is the wondrous transition,” “transition” meaning changeover, “by which man is exchanged from bodily life to spiritual life.” Yes, he sees in death not annihilation but a new birth. Basically, the body dies and what is born is the life of a soul detached from the body. Yes, it’s only a changeover; there is no annihilation here, we are only changing, taking off a suit. And now that’s also “suit” in the everyday sense. We have shed the suit of matter, and now spirit alone remains. “From a life full of the darkness of doubts and the shadows of wickedness, to a life full of light and righteousness and pleasantness, the pleasantness of God.” Because once there is no matter, there is no wickedness and no evil; everything is pleasantness and righteousness and light. “He recognized with greater force”—when King David saw this, he says song in the face of death. Everyone else is depressed because we look only at what is seen. We are tourists. What do we see? We see a person who was alive and is now dead. And King David looks at what is behind it, at the spirit, which admittedly is not seen by the senses, by the eyes. But that is what stands there, after all. If a person was alive, this lump of matter moved and acted and thought and loved and lived—so what does that mean? That behind the physical form we encounter, there is something called a soul. And therefore when the body dies, King David basically looks at it optimistically and says: it’s not that the person was annihilated; the person changed clothes. Instead of being wrapped in his body, now his spirit has gone out from the straits, gone out into freedom. And therefore he said song. Again, this is looking at what lies behind what simple tourist eyes see. “For this explains to us the tremendous level of the holy spirit of David, peace be upon him, whose feelings, when he sensed the kindness of God and his song was filled with majesty and pleasantness, were the product of profound wisdom penetrating into the hidden secrets of the acts of God. And how was he the man raised on high in the levels of empirical wisdom and judging in the depth of its inquiry, and at the same time the sweet singer of Israel, in the outpouring of the soul of song that comes from feelings of innocence, pleasantness, and the splendor of holiness.” Yes, there’s a typo in the print there; it should be “the splendor of holiness.” His concluding sentence, of course, is taken from Psalm 123—actually one psalm before the end of Psalms—the verse that opens that psalm: “I am the man raised on high, the sweet singer of Israel.” “I am the man raised on high”—Rabbi Kook speaks about “the levels of empirical wisdom and judging in the depth of its inquiry,” that is, scientific wisdom, philosophical wisdom, which observes the world and analyzes it—and “at the same time the sweet singer of Israel,” which is the outpouring of the soul in song. How do these two things fit together? That is how Rabbi Kook concludes this passage, precisely because this is the motif threading through the whole section. He says: because “wisdom that judges in the depth of its inquiry”—if you look not as a descriptive scientist; I talked about phenomenological theories and essential theories, yes, remember Einstein’s black-body radiation? So we’re back. All the things I spoke about along the way basically come together here. When you look at what stands behind things, not only at their external appearance, at what I grasp with the senses, then song bursts forth. The poet and the scientist come together in King David, but there is no contradiction, because the scientist who investigates and examines carefully what stands behind the phenomena he sees, is basically saying song—as we saw that Einstein many times said song about the things he saw, and this is not a contradiction; on the contrary. If you understand the harmony that stands behind the phenomenon—the phenomena in themselves seem disconnected, each in its own place—when you understand what stands behind them, you find the general law, you suddenly see that there is harmony: all these things are manifestations of one and the same law. And then you say song. Therefore saying song and empirical wisdom that judges in the depth of its inquiry are not two contradictory things, but two complementary things. If you follow wisdom all the way, then you become the sweet singer of Israel. And that is what he says: “I am the man raised on high, the sweet singer of Israel.” That is, I am basically—after all, King David had his hands dirty with an afterbirth and placenta; he rendered Jewish law, he judged between people as king; a king’s role was also to judge, at least in that period—and therefore he was basically a sage in the sense of a philosopher-sage on the one hand, and on the other hand the sweet singer of Israel. And why? Because if you follow the philosopher and the sage all the way through, then you basically arrive at saying song. You understand that behind things there is actually some other message, and then you understand: “Your statutes were songs to me,” as King David says. “Your statutes were songs to me”—the engagement with laws is the learning, the sage, the one occupied with the legal side, who sees Jewish law as legal material. But for King David, “Your statutes were songs to me.” When he understands what stands behind the laws, what ideas stand behind the laws, he says song. When he understands that the laws are not detached from their root, that it is not a collection of laws each standing by itself, but he sees some harmony, some structure. And therefore I think that indeed intellectual Talmudic analysis has a very strong poetic dimension, because analysis basically looks and says: what stands behind this law or that halakhic ruling? What conception stands behind it? And the moment you understand the conception, it also connects for you to all sorts of other laws—just as in scientific theory all sorts of facts connect to one another—and the moment you see the harmony, the harmony standing behind things that on the surface seem detailed, each standing alone, then you say song. And you discover the harmony standing behind it. Therefore I think the scientist and the poet are not really two contradictory figures, but two contradictory figures only when the scientist stops at prose, stops at facts and clings only to them. But the moment he asks himself what stands behind them and what ties the facts to one another, then he basically finds himself very close to the domains of the poet. And therefore the verse—if I now close this Talmudic passage we read—then the verse that King Solomon said at the beginning, wait, yes: what is the meaning of “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and a teaching of kindness is on her tongue”? It begins with wisdom, and then “a teaching of kindness is on her tongue”; it begins by saying “a teaching of kindness,” meaning: to say song. Wisdom and song are two sides that do not contradict one another. “They said this only about David his father, who dwelled in five worlds and said song.” He lived within the five worlds; he went through everything we all went through. But behind the facts and experiences he passed through, he basically looks and says: something stands behind this. And that turns wisdom into a teaching of kindness, and therefore he said song about it. We saw the examples in all the stages along the way. Fine, I’ll stop here, and now it’s your turn. Does anyone want to comment or ask? This is the time.

[Speaker C] What turns poetry into good poetry or bad poetry? Good evening.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, I’m really not qualified for that. At most I can sometimes get an amateur’s impression of better or worse poetry, but that’s a question for experts.

[Speaker C] No, but in the poem that Muadib made out of it—that is, he revealed something to us, we defined what he did there. He took something that was a prose text and turned it into something that illustrated something for us. So the question is: is that just personal taste, or is it something you can measure according to some kind of mediation, or revelation, or something hidden that gets revealed here? Or like with King David, that on the day of death—specifically the day of death, the lowest place, the hardest place—he finds kindness there, so is that gap what does it? The sophistication? What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Clearly one of the motifs a poet can use in order to intensify the message is strong contrast. But I don’t think that’s an exclusive, necessary, essential criterion for good poetry. It’s one of the moves you can use. By the way, when you do it too strongly it turns into kitsch, into something that works on you only because of the intensity and not because of the poetic quality. So here too you have to be very careful.

[Speaker C] But in essence, that’s what we said poetry is—that we see something that wasn’t said, something we don’t see.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s not what good poetry is—not what poetry is.

[Speaker C] So poetry does involve contrast, it’s just that strong contrast doesn’t make it good poetry.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Contrast is a poetic device, obviously. An encyclopedia doesn’t use contrast; an encyclopedia says what it has to say. Contrast is a poetic device, okay? But when are you using it in a high-quality way— aesthetically, artistically, at a high level or not—I don’t know how to define that.

[Speaker C] And just one more small question: do you think Alex Levac, who took the picture, thought about what you thought? Clearly, without a doubt—what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Otherwise why did he photograph it?

[Speaker C] He took the picture—he photographs, he sees something, he clicks the camera.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? Why did he photograph this? There was also a house next to it—why did he photograph דווקא this? There’s no doubt he saw something there. Anyone who sees that picture immediately understands what it’s saying. If you had just passed by the situation, you wouldn’t have understood it, you wouldn’t have noticed it.

[Speaker C] That’s exactly it, right. I’m saying that we, if we had walked by, wouldn’t have noticed it. Could it be that Alex also didn’t notice it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then he wouldn’t have photographed it. Why would he photograph it? It’s just an ordinary prose situation. He could have photographed the meter next to it or the one before it. Why did he photograph specifically this? There’s no doubt he understood—what do you mean? It’s obvious. No, more than that: he also says so. It appears on the cover of one of his books—meaning he sees this as a meaningful photograph in one of his books—and he tells there, in some interview or in the book itself, I don’t remember anymore, that a friend of his saw it and called him over to photograph it. It’s not accidental.

[Speaker C] If he testifies to that, then there’s no question at all. I thought the Rabbi was just guessing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. But even if he hadn’t testified, this testimony—I read it, I think, before the class where I mentioned him for the first time. Two or three weeks ago. No, but it was clear to me even beforehand that he understood it. No doubt about it.

[Speaker C] Thank you very much, more power to you. Yes.

[Speaker D] So after what we learned from Rav Kook, we have a group of words, but we don’t have an objective definition of whether it’s prose or poetry. Meaning, the moment one person looks at it and sees something behind it, he says, what beautiful poetry; and the other, who doesn’t see it, says it’s prose.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. The first part of what you said—I agree with. The second part, I’m not sure. Because the first part says that the collection of words does not define whether it’s poetry or prose, and I think we saw that in the example I brought. But then you went one step further and said that it depends on the observer. And here I’m not so sure. That’s already deconstruction, or at least a heavy hermeneutic question, and I’m not sure I agree. It’s entirely possible that there is a message—for example, in what Muadib did there with my text, right? And also in Alex Levac’s photograph—there’s no doubt that the message I understand is also the message the creator intended. It’s not a question that depends on the interpreter’s understanding. And still, that message is not found in the situation and not in the words; it passes through them. That’s why I call it poetry. You went one step further and said that the interpretation of poetry, or the message of poetry, depends only on the observer. I’m not sure I agree with that. But that’s already a major debate in hermeneutics.

[Speaker D] But isn’t the interpretation objective?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, does interpretation depend on the perception

[Speaker D] of each person who sees the words?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. I’m claiming that the interpretation is objective. Certainly in the two examples I brought here, the interpretation is completely objective. But it isn’t located in the words; it passes through the words, even though everyone who reads it, it seems to me, ought to understand this interpretation. This is the correct interpretation.

[Speaker D] Objective, fine—but everyone is different from everyone else.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t agree. I’m claiming that anyone who reads my punctuated passage after Muadib toyed with it should all understand the same thing. It’s an objective message. It’s just that this message doesn’t pass through the words, but through what was done to the words. That’s not the same thing. I’m claiming that if someone understood that poem differently, then he understood it incorrectly. There is correct and incorrect even in the interpretation of poetry, or at least there can be. Okay?

[Speaker B] Rabbi, may I ask a question? Yes. I’m trying—if we said there’s meaning in turning prose into poetry, then my question is about Torah study, and after all that’s also what David speaks about with “Your statutes were songs to me.” Is it that in words of Torah—the Rabbi mentioned this in a positive sense—when I learn some prose, clearly that’s Torah study; when I turn it into poetry, first, is that considered Torah study itself, as some sort of added level, and second, the Rabbi mentioned understanding the harmony, but could one say that this is, say, studying Hasidut? I studied the laws, the laws of the Sabbath, in depth, and now I build on that heaps and heaps of great ideas, and let’s say, here is the prose that I turned into poetry.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, this connects to the question that was asked earlier, by J, right? J? It connects to his question. Because it depends on how you understand Talmudic conceptual analysis of a Talmudic passage, and how you understand Hasidut. And here, for example, I do not relate to those two things in the same way. I assume you know that, but I do not relate to them in the same way. Meaning, as far as I’m concerned, Hasidut has no connection to the text at all—it’s an invention. It’s deconstruction, the way J presented poetry in general earlier. And therefore in my eyes Hasidut is not study. Because in my eyes study is something that conveys some message, information, insight—whatever—from the teacher to the student. And in my opinion, the way Hasidut treats verses or Talmudic passages is not an attempt to understand what is written there. It’s an attempt to generate insights of its own and to hang them, as a mere support, on a passage or on verses. In my eyes that is not called studying the passage or the verses.

[Speaker B] So it’s not like poetry?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because in conceptual Talmudic analysis, for example, it is poetry. Conceptual analysis is, in my view… it’s something that exposes an infrastructure that really is present within the passages. There can be disagreements; I’m not claiming everyone learns it in the same way. But even if you disagree with me, you’ll understand the logic of what I’m saying—you’ll just present an additional logic, and we’ll have to discuss who is right. But it’s not free creation. Therefore I relate to conceptual analysis as study, and to Hasidut as not. And that connects exactly to what I said earlier to J. Because what Muadib did to my text as well—I think he taught something in this matter. But he taught something because that really is what he intended to teach, and I think I understood what he intended to teach. Again, I’m not sure he himself fully conceptualized everything I drew out of it, but in my opinion it’s there in him. He intended it. I also helped him understand what he intended. Okay? And in the end, something passed from him to me and perhaps also from me to him. There was study in partnership. And in that sense there really was learning here. Whereas when you do free creation and you abuse a verse or a passage, then what? From that verse and that passage I could extract whatever you want in all kinds of strange ways, and it says nothing. The fact that I examine how the volume of Talmud I’m dealing with was bound—that’s not called studying Torah. Even though I extracted various bits of information from that volume called Talmud. And certainly not if it inspired me—I don’t know—to think about the beauty of a bird flying here. I don’t know, for some reason it connects in my mind to the Talmud volume or the Talmudic passage I just saw. That’s not called study.

[Speaker D] But I still don’t understand. Are you saying every verse has one correct interpretation?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say one. I said there are correct and incorrect interpretations, and you can argue. But there are correct and incorrect interpretations. In the kind of creation you described before, there’s nothing to argue about. It’s not that there are many interpretations, but rather that anything goes. I don’t agree with that. Where there is something to argue about, then even if you don’t agree with me, we’re learning. Because I’m proposing something to you, and you’re checking whether I’m right or not; I’m checking you, and in the end maybe we can reach a conclusion, or maybe not, and we remain in disagreement.

[Speaker D] Right. If it’s completely subjective, then it certainly isn’t right. Everyone can do whatever he wants. You’re saying there’s an objective element within the words themselves that I have to take into account, and therefore it binds me in a certain direction, and I’m not allowed to ignore the objective data such as grammar, style, context, whatever.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly.

[Speaker D] So then what about Agnon’s answer when they asked him, “What is your meaning?” and he said, “Why are you asking me? You read it—you put your own meaning into it.” There’s a story like that; I didn’t make it up.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, of course there is.

[Speaker D] So what is Agnon trying to tell me?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a question of outlook. The question is how you conceive of literature. If you conceive of literature as transmitting a message from the writer to the reader, then there’s no room at all to say what Agnon said. Okay?

[Speaker D] So he had no intention of conveying a message?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Apparently not. Apparently Agnon, at least, thought not. And then reading a story by Agnon—I wouldn’t define that as study.

[Speaker C] This agrees with what the Rabbi once proved with Nadav Shnerb about the writings of Rav Kook. That if they don’t really say anything, then anyone who reads them basically draws out whatever he sees in them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly the same claim, yes. Meaning, the random generator came to illustrate that phenomenon.

[Speaker B] Rabbi, where does study become—where does prose become poetry? When I’m learning a passage now and I’ve learned it, now I also understand its principles—how does that happen? Everything here is prose. Why does it become poetry?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not at all. You’re giving poetry a bit of a bad name. You’re basically saying that whenever we reach the poetic dimension, we’re on a subjective plane. That there is no poetry in reality. I don’t agree. Reality is full, saturated with poetry. Meaning, what happens is that when the message does not pass directly through the facts, or through the words, or through the phenomena—words in a poem, facts in science, and the laws in the Talmud or in Jewish law—but rather the message lies in what stands behind them, that’s what I call poetry. But still, what stands behind them requires creativity, yet that does not mean there is no truth and non-truth here. It does not mean I haven’t grasped something that is true, or ought to be true. Do you understand? Those are two different things. Just like the message that passes through the words in this text of Muadib—I think there was a correct message that passed through there. And someone who didn’t understand it that way simply did not correctly understand what Muadib wrote. But I still call it poetry. That’s why it’s poetry. Conceptual analysis—anyone who studies a passage knows that the conceptual idea does not emerge in a straightforward way from the facts in the passage. You need creativity for that. You need to suddenly understand. After you hear it, you understand that it’s true—or at least, if it is true, then it ought to be understandable also to those who hear it. But the one who found it was creative. It’s not something you derive by simple deduction from the passage. That really is prose. And with prose you won’t get anywhere in conceptual analysis. And that is the mistake of many people who think conceptual analysis is free creation. Absolutely not true. There is right and wrong in conceptual analysis, even though it has many creative dimensions. Gershom Scholem writes this, apropos Agnon who was mentioned here earlier. Agnon—no, Scholem writes it. He brings from Agnon’s Book of Deeds, where Agnon wrote that someone met some mystic, and he heard from him all kinds of abstract ideas, and he suddenly grasped that all these ideas existed within him. But he himself had not managed to bring those ideas out of himself. He needed a mystic to formulate them, and after he formulated them I suddenly understand that this is true—it’s in me too. So there is mysticism here on the one hand, but on the other hand it’s not something completely subjective. The fact is that the listener also recognizes that there is something true here. I don’t have the ability to create it, so I’m not a significant mystic. But after the mystic creates it, I understand that there is something true here. The same with conceptual analysis. The outstanding analyst is someone who succeeds in producing things that other, less gifted analysts won’t be able to produce. But after he produces it, people understand that he is right—that he has hit on something true here.

[Speaker D] What is the function of time? After all, time also—what was a hundred years ago, all those objective points, the correct, right? But a hundred years later people learn, they know things, they see from history. So can the truth, the correct interpretation, change according to the passage of time?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll answer: it depends what field you’re dealing with. Clearly in Jewish law, Jewish law can be different because it has to be applied in the circumstances in which you live. So Jewish law can be different, and what was correct then remains correct—but for then. For today there is something else. Sometimes the situation is one of progress. For example, Newtonian mechanics was correct, and it is still correct.

[Speaker D] I’m talking about poetry, you—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is correct in poetry—also like Jewish law.

[Speaker D] What? I can’t hear. You’re saying there are also two fields. There is Jewish law and there is poetry. Meaning, in both of them there are objective points by which one says this interpretation is correct and another thing is incorrect. I’m asking whether over time that correctness can change.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’ll answer—I understood the question. I answered. I’m saying there are two answers to this, or at least two. One answer is that if you’re talking, for example, about Jewish law, then Jewish law can be different from one period to another, and therefore what they ruled as Jewish law, say, in the fifteenth century was correct and remains correct—but correct for then. And today there is different Jewish law, and that doesn’t mean what was there wasn’t correct, because under today’s circumstances the halakhic ruling has to be different. That’s one possibility for change over time. A second possibility for change over time is that sometimes there is progress, as in science. I started saying this before. After Newton comes Einstein. So does that mean Newton missed everything? No. Newton discovered the truth, but not the whole truth—an approximate truth. And now relativity comes and makes corrections, or quantum theory makes corrections. And it says: now the truth is more complete. So what was there was correct, but partially correct. And now it is even more correct. So there’s no problem—things can change in that way too.

[Speaker D] Thank you.

[Speaker B] Rabbi, a small question about the first part about Rav Kook. So what does the Rabbi do, for example, with a Talmudic story like the story of Rabbi Akiva, where he says that everything God does is for the good, and there it’s talking about the townspeople not even wanting to let him sleep in the city. They behaved badly, and still he says everything God does is for the good.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are several Talmudic passages like that; it’s not the only one that attributes various events to the motivations of the Holy One, blessed be He. One of two things. Either—at that time, and this is a thesis I’ve already written in several places—the policy of the Holy One, blessed be He, is that He gradually withdraws from the world over time. Once He was more involved; today He is less involved. Not for nothing our science is more advanced; it seems to me that this is also because today nature itself is really more consistent—there is less involvement of the Holy One, blessed be He. But beyond that, it could be that he was mistaken. And I disagree with him.

[Speaker B] With Rabbi Akiva?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes.

[Speaker C] Going to die?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He didn’t grasp reality correctly, and I think I don’t—I don’t grasp reality that way, at least today. What was then, I don’t know; I didn’t live then. So either it changed, or even then I wouldn’t have agreed. Our commitment to the Talmud is to its halakhic rulings. Worldviews—there are all kinds of worldviews. In the Talmud there are deterministic views, there are views of all types and kinds. Even if you want to stick to the Talmud, you can choose. Anyone else?

[Speaker C] I still want to sharpen for myself the point about poetry. Meaning, anything that reaches me through mediation, that I reach through mediation and not by the thing itself—that is poetry, something that says something.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The dimension of poetry—again, poetry is usually defined for us as texts. But the general idea of poetry—conceptual analysis is also poetry, because it is something that passes through the plain facts; it is not located in them themselves.

[Speaker C] Oh, right—like the Rabbi took poetry, for example, also into conceptual analysis, then maybe we can take it to other places too, for example emotional intelligence: when a person reads, through another person’s behavior, what stands behind it, then basically he doesn’t know what that person really feels, but according to body movements, body language, I know—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Someone who has that ability—it can certainly be seen as a kind of poetry,

[Speaker D] Yes.

[Speaker C] Okay, more power to you.

[Speaker D] It’s like the Netziv in the introduction, who says that the entire Torah is poetry, and that connects very nicely with what you explained.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] People think Torah is a collection of facts. Torah is not a collection of facts. Torah is the way of looking, or the framework, within which those facts appear. The facts can change. We talked about the presumption that a person does not pay a debt before its due date. Fine, it could be that today he does pay before its due date. That’s not the Talmud, that’s not the Torah, that’s not the important part. Okay, good night. Goodbye.

[Speaker B] Good night. Good night, thank you very much.