Ein Aya – Lesson 22

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, what does “the rules of the genre” mean? If it’s the rules of the genre, then you haven’t seen anything yet. I’m still trying to understand this logically, even though I understand that this is a story that didn’t necessarily happen—in all likelihood it didn’t happen. But I’m saying: there still has to be some kind of internal consistency, even within the rules of the genre. What—what did he see there? And if he saw it, then what is he trying to change? So again, even if he sees it in the stars, what does he see in the stars? He doesn’t see the future in the stars; he sees a hypothetical future: that if I have a child, and so on, then the child will turn out this way or that way. But I still have the option not to have the child, and then it won’t happen. Meaning, even if I’m talking about astrological foresight, astrology is not looking at the future; it’s looking at a hypothetical future. In other words, looking at the future means: if I have a child, this is what will happen. But I still have the option not to have a child, and then it won’t happen. And that’s what lies at the heart of this story in any case. You can’t ignore that. So even if these are the rules of the genre, then those are the rules of the genre. The rules of the genre are that by means of astrology I see what is going to be, and now I can change it and then it won’t be. In other words, I see a hypothetical future, not a concrete future. And in the end that future becomes concrete with the kind assistance of Isaiah, because Isaiah tells him yes, marry a woman, and therefore in the end he does marry a woman and has a child, and indeed Manasseh is born. But the very fact that he tried to prevent it means that what he saw was a hypothetical future, not a concrete one. Anyway, for our purposes, he says: “Perhaps my merit and your merit together will cause children of worth to come forth.” Again, you see: meaning, if you give me your daughter, right? Then maybe your merit and my merit together will succeed in changing the harsh decree. Yes, that hypothetical astrology is open to change—we see that. If you don’t marry a woman, that’s one way to change it; and if you marry a woman who is Isaiah’s daughter, that’s another way to change it. How? That the merit of the two of us will overcome those forces, that astrological destiny, yes, that would lead my child to do evil; maybe our merits will succeed in overcoming that. He said to him, son of Amotz: “Finish your prophecy and leave.” And there are all kinds of explanations why. “Thus I have received from the house of my father’s father: even if a sharp sword rests on a person’s neck, he should not withhold himself from mercy.” And then a whole topic begins about not withholding oneself from mercy and not despairing, and again it’s a topic of astrology versus my ability to overcome what that astrology says. That’s already the next topic, so I’m leaving it aside.

Okay, so that’s the story. Just one more remark maybe before I get to Rav Kook. The Talmud begins with this: “Who is like the wise man, and who knows the interpretation of a thing?” Who is like the Holy One, blessed be He, who knows how to make a compromise between two righteous people. Meaning, there’s some special ability here that belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He. What is that special ability? Why don’t people know how to make a compromise? Why is the Holy One, blessed be He, the only one who knows how to make a compromise between two righteous people? So I saw an interpretation that says this means making a compromise between two people who are both right. I think it’s in Ein Yaakov. But usually a compromise is when you don’t know who is right: one is right and one is wrong, you don’t know which, and because you doubt your ability to uncover the truth… But what happens when you have two people who are both making completely correct arguments? Like the judge’s wife—yes, you’re right, and you’re also right. What do you do there? If both are right, then there’s a problem. You can’t rule in favor of either one of them. So here you have to find some way out that leaves both of them right. How do you do such a thing? That’s hard for human beings to do. In our case, the king claims that the prophet should come to him. The prophet claims that the king should come to him. And again, assuming they’re not just honor-seekers, but that there are principles here—real value-based principles. Meaning, the honor of kingship is a value-principle. The honor of the prophet is also a value-principle. So neither one of them wants to give in not because he’s chasing honor, but because this is genuinely the right thing to do. Fine. So if that’s the case, how can you find a compromise between two people who are both right? Those are the hardest conflicts: conflicts where both sides are right. How do you find—how do you make a compromise between two people who are both right? You need to find a way out, you need to find a way out that leaves each side with its full due in hand. Because both are right. Here it isn’t really a compromise; I would call it an outlet, a solution. The word “compromise” here is not such a good word in our language. Rather, it means finding a way out that leaves both sides right.

How did the Holy One, blessed be He, do that? Very simply. Look—I’m leaving the Talmud now and sharing Rav Kook. “The power of prophecy that the Holy One, blessed be He, bestowed upon Israel in the age of prophecy—its role, its purpose, was to fulfill the eternal needs of the nation, to bequeath to it eternal spiritual life. Also to teach it ways of life through which it would attain enduring existence, so that its spirit would live forever and it would merit national existence in the future.” The purpose of prophecy is the eternal needs—it’s some kind of gaze toward eternity, a gaze toward spirit, enduring existence, a spirit alive forever, and so on. That is prophecy. “And the power of kingship”—you see that here he’s describing the clash between Isaiah and Hezekiah. So between the power of kingship and the power of prophecy. The power of prophecy he has described until now—that is spirit, eternity, the long-term distant perspective. “And the power of kingship was to establish the people in national life in the present.” To make it prosper, or to make it function properly and normally in national life in the present. “For there are matters and modes of conduct that add courage to the nation for the moment, but take from it the power of future existence. And the opposite: many things that, though they weaken it for the moment, nevertheless add future strength and valor.”

There is a dilemma here between present and future, between eternity and now, or between matter and spirit. And that’s what Rav Kook is trying to say was the dilemma or the conflict between Isaiah and Hezekiah. It’s a conflict between king and prophet. The king is about the now, about matter, about the present; and the prophet is about eternity, about spirit, about the future. And this conflict is one where very often the present comes at the expense of the future, the future comes at the expense of the present, and there’s a dilemma about what to take into account: the immediate, the present, the tangible—or spirit, the abstract, the future, the long term. And that’s how Rav Kook explains the dilemma between Isaiah and Hezekiah, between prophecy and kingship.

“And behold, the tendency toward one of the extremes is always hard and damaging.” You see, Rav Kook here already gives the solution. A dilemma—and immediately the solution. What is the solution? The solution is some kind of compromise. What does that mean? It means that you have to take both present and future into account. And you must not veer too far either toward the present or toward the future. Not toward eternity and not toward the present. Someone who lives only eternity is in trouble, and someone who lives only the present is also in trouble. There has to be some mixture, some reasonable dosage, of the immediate and the eternal, and every deviation is hard and damaging. “A tendency toward one of the extremes is always hard and damaging. For if the nation places its concern only on its future existence, and pays no attention to its present condition, then strangers will come upon it and it will fall among the fallen.” Someone who looks only at spirit and at the future and at eternity, and doesn’t worry about survival in the present, will simply die. He will have neither a present nor a future. They’ll simply overrun him. He won’t build an army, he won’t build—he won’t build an economy, he won’t build something material, immediate, entirely present, not spiritual and not long-term, but something for now. So if he doesn’t do that, he won’t have a long term either. And someone who focuses only on the long term won’t have a long term, because they’ll destroy him now. They’ll overrun him. He has no army, no economy, he can’t stand before any ordinary threat, he’ll be eliminated now.

By contrast, “how great is the destructive value”—how problematic and corrupting it is—“if the heart of the nation is seduced to place on its banner only temporal life and temporary strength,” meaning temporary resilience, the economy, security, and so on, “for then after a generation, if a generation passes, its strength will disappear and it will stumble and fall.” If you look only at the present and don’t pay attention to what will happen in the future, then you fall. Looking at the short term without paying attention to long-term plans is also a major stumbling block. In short, there is a kind of pendulum here, or a tension, between looking at the future and looking at the present, and one has to be very careful with the dosage, not to overdo it in either direction.

“And behold, the blessed God, the Guardian of Israel, always prepared regular causes that would weigh together the force that sustains eternity and the force of temporary existence, so that the steps of the nation would not falter and it would endure for generations.” Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, gives us tools that enable us to weigh the eternal and the immediate in a properly moderated way, so that we do not fall. We’ll have a future and we’ll have a present, and we’ll be able to move forward with the right balance between the temporary and immediate and the eternal. “As the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall endure before Me, so shall your seed and your name endure.” Therefore Isaiah feared lest, by honoring—meaning by preferring—the power of kingship over the power of prophecy, the nation would collapse spiritually and forget its eternal concern. Right? To go in favor of the king. If Isaiah goes to the king—that was the dilemma, right? Who goes to whom? If Isaiah goes to the king, what does that mean in the symbolic sense that Rav Kook gives it here? Essentially Isaiah, who is concerned with eternity, says: if I subordinate myself to the king, then the scale will tip in favor of the present, in favor of the king, matter, the immediate. Prophecy bends before kingship. And that’s why he didn’t want to go to the king.

And Hezekiah was concerned that if the people saw that the power of kingship was weak compared to the power of prophecy—if Hezekiah goes to Isaiah—then his present political strength would depart from him, and bad consequences would come from that for the moral state as well: for Torah and fear of Heaven and good character traits, all of which are supported by the strength of the king. He says: if you subordinate the king to the prophet, that’s also not good. Because the king also has a role—not only in the present, in matter; this also has implications for spirit. One of the roles of the king, as is known—Derashot HaRan talks about this, and Maimonides talks about it—is to uphold religion. The king is the force of coercion. The king’s role is to make sure that people conduct themselves morally, that they conduct themselves according to the commandments. In other words, he also has a role in spirit, he also has a role in eternity. The present, or the concern for a healthy social fabric, is actually a means that is supposed to ensure our spiritual or eternal existence as well. And therefore each of these two forces—Isaiah on the one hand, who is the prophet, and King Hezekiah on the other—each is really concerned for his side of the scale, and if there isn’t a delicate balance, then in the end we won’t survive, neither in the present nor in the future.

And the Holy One, blessed be He—that was the dilemma. Now you see that there is really a dilemma here between two righteous people, between two righteous people—that’s what the Talmud says. Two righteous people in our sense means two people who are both right. Each one raises an argument that is substantive; it’s not an argument about honor. It really is wrong to subordinate kingship to prophecy, and it really is wrong to subordinate prophecy to kingship. So what do you do? There is some impossible dilemma here. What should you do? Prefer the present? Prefer the future? How do you do it? How do you handle this dilemma so that we don’t pay too heavy a price in either direction? That, says the Talmud, only the Holy One, blessed be He, knows how to do. To make a compromise between two sides that are both right. Not between one who is right and one who is wrong; not between two litigants where one of them is a thief and one isn’t, only I don’t know which, so I make a compromise. Here both sides are right. What do you do in such a situation? Only the Holy One, blessed be He, knows.

So what does He do? He says as follows: “The Holy One, blessed be He, cast a compromise between them, for His providence foresaw” that “the matter required that these two forces be balanced in precise measure. Namely, that outwardly kingship would have superiority over prophecy, in order to strengthen office and national power.” Meaning, outwardly it has to be that the king stands above everything. And the public has to see that the king is the supreme authority. Yes, according to outward appearance. Kingship has to have superiority over prophecy. Why? In order to strengthen office and national force, so that everyone will obey the king. Meaning, the king’s power has to be unquestioned. “But inwardly, penetrating within, it must be seen that the king yields in his temporary governance and nullifies himself before the eternal prophetic good.” Inwardly, in essence, the king really has to be subordinate to the prophet. So outwardly the prophet has to be subordinate to the king, and inwardly the king has to be subordinate to the prophet. And that is exactly what happened there.

What happened there? Hezekiah became ill. Then Isaiah went to visit him. So the people look and say: obviously, it’s not that the king submitted to the prophet and went to him. On the other hand, the prophet also didn’t go to the king in that sense; he went to visit him—he was sick. Therefore the authority of the king was not damaged here. On the other hand, when I ask myself who is subordinate to whom—listen to the conversation between them. In their conversation it’s clear that the king is subordinate to the prophet, not the prophet to the king. True, the prophet went to the king. Externally, the prophet went to the king. But internally, when the prophet got there, who rebukes whom? Who tells whom what to do? The prophet tells the king what to do.

So what comes out here is a kind of—yes, you might say—a kind of model like the Council of Torah Sages. The members of parliament, the finger is theirs. They determine what will happen. They sit in parliament, in the government, wherever it is. But who gives them the instructions? Quietly, without anyone knowing, they go to the Council of Torah Sages and get instructions about where to put their finger. The description, of course, is very utopian and very far from reality, but as a model, that’s basically what the model was supposed to be. The Torah sages determine what will happen—that’s the prophet. He determines what needs to be done. But the one who carries it out, the one who has the authority, the one people obey—that’s the members of parliament, that’s the king, that’s the ruler. That is basically the model being described here.

“This is the compromise of the Holy One, blessed be He: He brought suffering upon Hezekiah and said to Isaiah, ‘Go and visit the sick man.’ For outwardly the kingship was exalted, since Isaiah the prophet nevertheless went to Hezekiah the king.” Meaning, externally, when the people look, Isaiah went to Hezekiah—the prophet went to the king. “But in the inner reality of the matter, who suffered pain and was cast down? The king.” Meaning, the king was the one in the wrong; the king receives instructions, the king suffers, receives afflictions. Why? Because in the end he is supposed to listen to the voice of the prophet. The halakhic principle here—of be fruitful and multiply—the command of the prophet is what decides, the spiritual thing is what decides, and the king is subordinate to it. “To teach that sometimes one is obligated to subdue the temporary outlook of national strength when it opposes the eternal purpose.” So in the end, the prophet, with his view of eternity, is the one who has to determine what the king does.

So the king has to have absolute authority, right? “A good wife does her husband’s will,” as they say. So “a good wife does her husband’s will” means she makes her husband’s will. That is, she determines what her husband will want, and now she will do what he wants—after what he wants is what she determined he would want. Okay, that is basically what happens between the king and the prophet. The prophet tells the king what to do, and the king has supreme authority. Whatever the king decrees, everyone obeys him—provided that what the king says is what the prophet told him to say. It’s a bit like The Little Prince. There the king commands the stars, each one to follow precisely its orbit, and not one of them departs one hair’s breadth from the king’s command. Of course, the king commands them to do exactly what each star would in any case do by its own nature in its orbit. So that’s basically the same principle.

“And this is very parallel to the need in governance. For from the external side of the human being and his sensual desires, he needs a mighty office, splendid in power—and that is kingship, to which strength and valor belong.” The king is power; the prophet has no power. So a person needs to have over him an all-powerful ruler, a ruler whose voice he obeys—and that is the king. Therefore one must not damage the authority of the king. “Were it not for the fear of the government, people would swallow each other alive.” Therefore it is very important to preserve the fear of kingship intact. “But from the inner side of the person, from the side of his upright intellect and his aspiration for all good and holiness, he must be guided by a government of a gentle staff, which only points the good way”—not with force, but by way, by direction. And as Maimonides explains in the laws of kings, there is an advantage to the king over the prophet in external governance. “But when he sat in his home, it was said of Jehoshaphat king of Judah that when he saw a Torah scholar he would rise from his throne and say to him, ‘My teacher, my teacher; my master, my master.’” All right? Inside the house, the king stands before the Torah scholar. Outside, the Torah scholar stands before the king. In other words, there is a kind of delicate balance here between truth and power. All right? Between peace and truth. In this case, the king represents peace. Because the king—“were it not for fear of the government, people would swallow each other alive”—the king imposes peace. The king prevents quarrels. But truth is represented by the prophet. And this mixture of peace and truth, and of power and truth—the power that imposes peace and prevents war, versus truth—that is basically the mixture between the king and the prophet. Between the king and the prophet, yes. So this mixture is basically the conflict that the Holy One, blessed be He, or the compromise that the Holy One, blessed be He, found between the king and the prophet.

I want us here to pay attention to a few things. Rav Kook is actually making here several contrasts that do not always overlap. On the one hand, present versus future. Right? That’s one dilemma. There is a whole collection of dilemmas that try to weigh the present against the future, the immediate against the long term. Rav Kook moves quite naturally from that contrast to the contrast between matter and spirit. Somehow spirit parallels the future and eternity, and matter parallels the present. But that is not always the case. Those are two contrasts that do not overlap.

Let’s take a few dilemmas of present versus future. Take, for example, the Gilad Shalit dilemma. Okay? The Gilad Shalit dilemma is essentially whether to release terrorists now in order to gain back this poor soldier who is sitting in prison, in Hamas captivity, when in the future anyone with eyes in his head could foresee that those released people might very well go on to harm probably more lives than Gilad Shalit, who was one lone soldier. Okay? So in the present I gain Gilad Shalit’s welfare or Gilad Shalit’s life—probably his life too. But in the future I may lose even more. Should you mortgage the future for the sake of the present? It’s not so simple, by the way. People raised all kinds of arguments there in the debate before Gilad Shalit’s release. At first it was immediately right versus left. Afterward suddenly the whole left also remembered that they too thought it wasn’t so simple to release him—but we didn’t hear them beforehand. At least I didn’t hear them beforehand. We even had an argument in the tent of Gilad Shalit’s parents. We went there with Dafna and—yes, we went to visit them there in the tent, and we had an argument there. It was pretty hard to argue with parents and say to them, listen, it’s not so simple to hand over terrorists in exchange for your son when people will pay for it with their lives in the future.

That’s one side. On the other hand, they said there in the discussion—just parenthetically—they actually said: we understand that consideration, and we’re not necessarily claiming that what we demand is to hand over terrorists. What we demand is to apply pressure levers in order to free him, because the feeling was that the government wasn’t even doing that. There are all kinds of pressure levers you can apply, not only releasing terrorists. But the feeling was one of inaction. Again, I’m not going into the question of what really happened there and what was done behind closed doors. Nobody really knows. But that was the feeling. The feeling was that nothing was being done. Therefore, by the way, the same thing with Goldin’s parents and the current ones as well—they are basically saying the same thing. They themselves, I think, several times I heard them say—and again, I’m not following it very closely—but several times I heard them say: we don’t want terrorists released for Hadar Goldin, whether they think he’s alive or not, and apparently not, but they still probably have some hope that he is. In any case, they say: we are not demanding that the government release terrorists. We are demanding that the government act, apply pressure levers, because again the feeling—at least their feeling—is that this is not being done.

But for our purposes, the point is that there really is another side to the coin here. True, it might cost lives in the future—but how do you know? Maybe we’ll succeed in preventing it, maybe yes, maybe no, maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. Right now you have a soldier whose life is certainly in your hands, whom you can free. It is not at all simple that this quantitative calculation that says we’ll gain one soldier now but lose the lives of people who will be harmed in future attacks—soldiers or civilians—even if we say that this calculation is statistically correct, still you have a certain present versus a doubtful future. Making that decision is very difficult. I would not want to be prime minister for many reasons, but on this decision too I would not want to be the prime minister making that decision. It is not a simple decision. Contrary to what both sides were shouting, it is not a simple decision. There is a real dilemma here of a certain present versus a doubtful future.

The same thing, by the way, with lockdowns during COVID. It’s all the time. There’s almost no dilemma that isn’t like that. To impose a lockdown during COVID—then all the super-smart people who know the whole truth say that you shouldn’t impose a lockdown, because the economic price that we see today really will cost us human lives. An economic cost like that costs human lives, period. There is no doubt about it. An economic cost to a country of millions of citizens will cost human lives, period. That is obvious. I don’t know how to quantify how many and in what way. There are people who made various calculations; I don’t know how correct they are. But there is a cost in human lives to such a thing. Now the question is what to do. To impose a lockdown in the present in order to prevent people from dying now, but to pay with future people who will die—and perhaps even more—and with all the implications of the economic cost, not only in human lives but in all kinds of other ways. I don’t know. It’s a very difficult dilemma. To mortgage the present for the sake of the future—or the slippery slope.

Slippery-slope arguments: I somehow tend, at least as a starting point, to reject slippery-slope arguments. I don’t like slippery-slope arguments. Why? Because a slippery-slope argument basically says: do something wrong now because maybe there will be problems in the future. You mortgage the certain present for the doubtful future. You’re basically saying maybe in the future there will be—let’s say now they tell me not to eat chicken with milk. Why? Because maybe in the future I’ll come to eat meat with milk. Fine? Now what does that mean? You’re basically telling me now not to eat something that is completely permitted, and you are definitely making me now pay the price of refraining from something permitted—you are forbidding me something that is permitted—because maybe in the future there will be problems. Meaning: doubtful future versus certain present. So I think that as a rule of thumb, first of all, that is not correct. And now let’s start thinking. Meaning, my starting point is that if I have a certain present versus a doubtful future, first of all the certain present wins. Now of course it’s not absolute, and sometimes there is room for slippery-slope considerations, but the burden of proof is on the one who wants to make a slippery-slope argument. And many times the feeling is that people raise slippery-slope arguments as some kind of default, as if it were obvious, and whoever wants to say otherwise bears the burden of proof. In my view that is a mistaken conception, a mistaken starting point. It does not mean that a slippery-slope argument is never correct, but the starting point is that whoever wants to use a slippery-slope argument has to prove it.

So often all these things are really a question of present versus future. Is that always matter versus spirit? Absolutely not. It really does not overlap. Rav Kook moves here from present versus future—the king is the present and the prophet is the future, the king is matter and the future is spirit. That really does not always go together. In a slippery-slope argument it’s almost the opposite. I forgo a material present—not to eat chicken with milk. That’s not a sin, not a spiritual problem; I want it, it tastes good to me, why should you forbid it to me? So that is a material matter versus a future that is spiritual, because you’ll come to commit the transgression of eating meat with milk in the future. So here the present is material and the future is spiritual, which fits Rav Kook’s analogy. But in the Shalit deal, absolutely not. The Shalit deal is a human life now versus people who will be harmed in the future. That’s spirit versus spirit or matter versus matter, whichever you want to call it, but the present here is not matter and the future is not spirit. That’s not true.

Sometimes the present is spirit and the future is matter. For example, I can now subordinate something spiritual so that I will have, say, economic well-being in the future. Many times I can do such a thing. All right? For example, Samuel says there—what was it there? They wanted to raise the price of wheat on Passover, I think, so he wanted to permit some leavened food on Passover, I think, so that they wouldn’t raise the price. Or something like that, or some unclean fish—there was something there. He wanted to permit forbidden foods now so that prices wouldn’t rise, so merchants wouldn’t price-gouge. Okay? What is that? That is mortgaging a spiritual present—committing a prohibition in the present—in order to gain an economic benefit in the long term. Here too, for example, this is present versus future, and it is not a dilemma of matter versus spirit. Therefore the automatic connection that somehow seems to emerge from Rav Kook’s words—that the present always goes with matter and the eternal future always goes with spirit—is really not necessary.

When I care for my friend’s this-worldly needs, I help my friend and by that I gain my world-to-come. Yes? So many times I do something in the present for the sake of eternity. The present material thing will actually give me future spirit. But from a non-Haredi perspective—what in the Haredi world they see in this way—the Haredi world sees the other person as a value from which you derive the results in the future, not in the present. You don’t do it so your friend will have it better; you do it so that you’ll earn your world-to-come. But in a non-Haredi outlook, you don’t do it in order to earn your world-to-come; you do it so that your friend will have a better life. And that in itself is a good thing. To say that I do it for my world-to-come is basically to do everything for myself. It is essentially to place myself at the center, and the other person is some kind of—I don’t know what—a doll, a target figure at a shooting range whose whole purpose is just so that I can gain more and more world-to-come through him. And I think that in a certain sense this is a Haredi outlook versus what we might call a Religious Zionist or modern religious outlook: the Haredim often see this world as some kind of corridor whose ultimate purpose is to gain the maximum world-to-come. Maybe I’m generalizing a bit, but broadly I think that’s true. Modern religiosity or Religious Zionism sees this world as a goal. I need to make this world more moral, better. The world-to-come will come when I do the right thing; I’m not doing it for that. My focus is not on the world-to-come, it’s here. But it’s here in spirit, not here in matter. The view is that the value here is a moral value, it has spiritual value. The tomatoes of the Hatam Sofer—yes, agricultural work in the Land of Israel, growing tomatoes, is a spiritual value. That is almost the motto on which Bnei Akiva and Religious Zionism are raised: that making this world a more repaired world is a spiritual value. The present is a spiritual value. I’m not working for the future; I’m working for the present.

True, they tell us many times, “the eternal people are not afraid of a long road.” Again, that is some expression that says I am willing to pay prices in the present because I set the future before my eyes. But it does not always work that way. I don’t know exactly when they say it and when they say it, but this tension of present versus future, of spirit versus matter, is a tension that accompanies us in many dilemmas, and it definitely does not overlap. It is not always the case that the present goes with matter and eternity goes with spirit. Sometimes it is even the opposite. And in a certain sense, my feeling is that working for eternity, for the world-to-come, is something very self-interested and very egoistic. You are not repairing the world so that the world will be repaired; you are repairing the world so that your eternal condition will be wonderful, so that you will merit the world-to-come. So is that a spiritual outlook or a material outlook? In my eyes, material—or not material exactly, but egoistic, because you are really doing it so that your own situation will be better. You care about the world not one bit. The world is a means so that you can reach a better state. So in my view that is an egoistic outlook, not a spiritual one.

So this shift between present versus future and matter versus spirit is a shift one must be careful with, not make too hastily. For example, they tell me to spend all my money in order to avoid committing a transgression—yes, not for performing a commandment but for avoiding a transgression. For performing a commandment I have to spend one-fifth of my assets; for avoiding a transgression I have to spend all my assets. What does that mean? I mortgage my economic future for the sake of a spiritual present. Right now I want to perform a commandment or avoid stumbling into a prohibition, so here the present is the spiritual dimension and the future is the economic dimension, and here I have to mortgage the economic future for the spiritual present. Of course one can see this as some kind of long-term perspective because the spiritual present, the spiritual repair, has some long-term significance. You see how this all somehow coils into itself and is woven into itself, and you really cannot simply set up present versus future or matter versus spirit. These are things that really get mixed together in a very, very complicated way. It is very hard to frame dilemmas as present versus future, matter versus spirit. Almost always I can present the present as eternity and matter as spirit and spirit as matter, and this way of looking is very far from simple.

Maybe I’ll bring one example—maybe one more sentence before I move to that example. The allocation of public resources, for example. The allocation of public resources: many times people have some tendency to think that we first give to the most important thing, and then to the less important thing. That is of course simplistic, and it never works that way. According to that outlook, we would have to increase the health basket to the entirety of the state budget, and everything else only if anything remains. Because first of all human life, then culture, then sports, then I don’t know what, investment in other things that are ostensibly only luxuries or not essential, not life itself. Okay? But that’s not how it is done, at least de facto. People can agree or disagree, but de facto that’s not how it’s done, and it seems to me that most people accept that too. That is, of course we care about human life and that is a very important value, but there will be people who die because there isn’t enough money in the health basket to treat them. Unequivocally. The health basket is cut in places that will cost human lives. It’s not only luxuries or comforts or things like that, or even just illnesses. It’s also death. There are things the health basket does not cover and it leaves people to die. Why? Because we need a budget for sports and culture, for example—doesn’t matter, and many other things. Okay? Is that justified? I think nobody would say that sports and culture are more important than life. Fine, but on the other hand, in budget allocation things do not work in black and white. Even to what is less important, you still give something—maybe less, I don’t know exactly how much. There is some kind of balancing that one reaches, and I don’t know what the algorithm is—there is no algorithm. But it is not correct that first you exhaust the most important thing and only then move to the next stage. It does not work that way.

By the way, on the other side of the coin—for example, in the laws of charity—in several respects you can see that from one’s tithes one may give to public needs. Public needs meaning to build a community center or pave roads. Not Torah study—public needs. There are rulings from Rabbi Ovadia and others. Regarding tax payments, Rabbi Ovadia says that at least some part of taxes can be deducted from our tithe. Now a whole discussion begins about which part of taxes. Is what goes to helping the poor out of tax revenues—National Insurance and things like that, let’s say—that one can more easily understand as counting toward charity. But there are also public needs there that are not necessarily charity. To build a synagogue. Let them build it themselves; let them pray in the street. Why is that called charity? It is called charity because it is a public need. A community center is also charity. In other words, one can show—and I brought this, and I have an article where I brought many examples of this—that public needs, including material needs of the public, are also considered charity, the commandment of charity. You can give from charity funds for public needs. That means that something in the public perspective blurs the distinction between matter and spirit. The material side of the public, in a certain sense, has spiritual status, has value status. Even Jewish law recognizes this. So again I’m saying: these distinctions between matter and spirit and between now and future are distinctions one must be very careful with.

On the other hand, there is “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths.” So they say: let us mortgage the present, desecrate the Sabbath now so that we may gain many Sabbaths in the future. Okay? What is that? But here both the present and the future are spirituality. I desecrate one Sabbath here and gain many Sabbaths. It’s not matter versus spirit. Again, it is present versus future: a present of one thing and a future of many Sabbaths in possibility, but in expected value I will gain many more Sabbaths than the one Sabbath I lost here, and therefore I subordinate the Sabbath of the present for the sake of future Sabbaths. Here is an example of our subordinating the present for the benefit of the future.

Maybe an interesting example that appears in the Talmud, in tractate Kiddushin. The Talmud says there: “The sages taught: If he must study and his son must study, he takes precedence over his son. Rabbi Yehuda says: if his son is diligent and sharp and his learning endures in his hand, then his son takes precedence.” Then they bring some story about Rav Yaakov the son of Rav Acha. Rav Acha sent him to study with Abaye. He came back, and Rav Acha saw that he was not exactly the sharpest pencil in the box, his son. Apparently he didn’t know this before that point, but after he came back from Abaye he suddenly saw it, and then he said: you know what? You stay home, and I will go study with Abaye. What would you say about a father like that? There’s some reservation there, no? A father who doesn’t let his son study. He doesn’t have enough money to teach both his son and himself. So he sends his son to study, he sees that his son is not much of a Torah scholar, not really succeeding. Forget it, you stay home, go work, support me, and I’ll go study. Ostensibly this arouses a kind of revulsion. What do you mean? What about concern for the next generation, concern for children, responsibility?

On the other hand, look at it differently. In the end, when I send my son to study Torah, what do I see before my eyes? I do not see my son; I see the Torah before my eyes. For me the interest is that the Torah continue in the best possible way for future generations. An eternal perspective. Here there is definitely logic in saying that if I am a greater Torah scholar than my son, then it is better that I invest in Torah. Where will Torah gain more from—from my learning or from my son’s learning? So ostensibly it looks really sociopathic, preferring myself at my son’s expense. But it isn’t. When I look at this as a contribution to Torah, as a contribution to eternity, then there is a great deal of sense in preferring myself over my son, because I will contribute more to Torah in that overall perspective.

Once I wrote an article about the role of the rabbi. Today there is some tendency to see—and rightly, of course—the rabbi as a servant of the community. Now when you choose a rabbi as a servant of the community, what are the criteria? The criteria are that he speak nicely, that he have a good understanding of the human psyche, that he know how to go in accordance with the spirit of each individual, as the sages talk about. Right? Not necessarily that he be the most brilliant Torah scholar. So in that article I brought at the beginning a collection of stories about two rabbis who were in the city of Dvinsk—yes? In Dvinsk there were two rabbis. There was the Or Sameach, Meshekh Chokhmah, Rabbi Meir Simcha Cohen, and there was the Rogatchover, who was the rabbi of the Hasidim, while the Meshekh Chokhmah was the rabbi of the Mitnagdim. And contrary to the accepted myth, the Rogatchover was a genuine sociopath, a misanthrope, a hater of people, whose whole desire was simply to learn. I brought all kinds of stories there: he didn’t relate to people, he hurried the cantor so he wouldn’t lengthen the prayer because he needed to get back to learning, he didn’t have time to pray for too long. And the Or Sameach was a warm and gracious person, greeted everyone, took an interest, checked how they were doing, answered responsa in Jewish law. The Rogatchover didn’t answer responsa at all; he sent them to someone else. He had no time; he had to learn. So who is the more ideal rabbi for a community? Ostensibly, obviously the Meshekh Chokhmah. So why did communities take a rabbi like the Rogatchover? Why did they pay the Rogatchover a salary? Why did communities like Iwye—I don’t know—or all kinds of villages somewhere, which I’ve never seen but were probably three shacks on the edge of a muddy swamp—why did they take for themselves some rabbi who was one of the greatest of the generation? There were some real heavyweights in Eishyshok. Why—why does that happen? They also, I think, did not examine them through the service they provided to the community; they examined their level of Torah scholarship.

It seems to me that what stood there was the outlook that the community exists for the rabbi, not the rabbi for the community. The community builds a kollel that will support this rabbi so that he can produce Torah and so that this Torah will remain. They see themselves as serving the Torah, not the rabbi as serving them. That is a very interesting perspective, one that today somehow exists less. People may donate to a kollel, but when they want a rabbi, the rabbi is supposed to provide services to the community. And if he speaks nicely, excellent—but if he is a great Torah scholar, no one cares. But if a community takes upon itself to support a rabbi so that he can allow himself to study and create and contribute something to Torah that will endure long after both the rabbi and the community are gone—that will remain—that is a perspective of eternity. There is some much stronger perspective there than seeing the rabbi as a servant of the community.

Again, of course this depends on your point of view. The rabbi has to serve the community; the rabbi is forbidden to be a sociopath. The community has to be sociopathic for him—yes, it’s always a division of roles. You have to provide service; they pay you a salary; you have to provide service—that’s your job. You can’t say, I don’t serve you, I’m studying. But the community should say to you: don’t serve us, study and create and produce things that will remain forever, long after no one here remembers either us or you; your creations will remain. There is some perspective of eternity here that sometimes turns the picture upside down. Because we see a man like the Rogatchover as some kind of sociopath, not a person one would even keep as a rabbi. And the Or Sameach is the ideal rabbi. And in that article I wanted—this is just the tip of the iceberg—I wanted there to argue also in favor of the rabbi of the second model. The rabbi who does not come to contribute to the community, but rather comes to be supported by the community in order to contribute to eternity. To create something. Like “if he and his son both must study, he takes precedence over his son.” You have a role, you have an obligation toward your son, but both of you together have an obligation toward the Torah. And if in the end your own unique contribution is better for the Torah, then there is a great deal of logic in your studying and not your son—even though it looks terrible, that a person sacrifices himself for his son and works hard so that his son can study, and even though the son struggles he still works hard. We would write truly stirring literature about that, yes? About this man who gives his life for the learning of his son, who is worth nothing because the son understands nothing. And there is room for admiration there, I agree. But if instead he had studied himself, there is no less room for admiration there. Results also matter.

And therefore, again, I’m saying: this too is another angle on eternity versus now, versus the present, and matter versus spirit, which sometimes connects to this and sometimes does not. And in the end, what I’m saying on the bottom line is: of course I have no rules, I don’t know how to say when this is preferable and when that is preferable and what dosage yes and what dosage no. We often have intuitions that tell us sometimes this is preferable and sometimes that. But it is often worthwhile to notice that what seems to us very noble, as against something very low and immediate and material, is not always really so. Sometimes, when you look again, you see that each side also has another side, and the dilemma is more complex than it appears at first glance. And then you have to use—I don’t know—some kind of intuition and make decisions somehow. I certainly have no algorithm.

That’s it up to here. So if anyone wants to ask or comment, this is the opportunity. That’s it? Okay then, goodbye.

[Speaker C] Goodbye, thank you very much. Thank you, good evening.