Ein Aya – Lesson 25

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So we’re in the topic of Hezekiah and Isaiah. The topic concludes—sorry—with Hezekiah dismissing Isaiah and telling him that even if a sharp sword is resting on a person’s neck, he should not hold himself back from mercy. It was also stated: Rabbi Yochanan and Rabbi Elazar both said, even if a sharp sword is resting on a person’s neck, he should not hold himself back from mercy, as it says, “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him.” Now look, I’m moving to the next page. Rabbi Hanan said: even if a dream interpreter tells a person, “Tomorrow he will die,” he should not hold himself back from mercy, and so on. And the whole story now shifts to this question of not despairing. But the Bach—I’m going back to the previous page—the Bach at the bottom of this page, in the Bach’s glosses here on the side, adds an ending to the Talmud. Look here where my cursor is, letter bet there: “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him”—in the end he gave him his daughter. Right, none of this appears in the Talmudic text. This is in the Bach’s glosses, and this addition also appears in Ein Yaakov. “In the end he gave him his daughter,” meaning that in the end Isaiah really did give him his daughter. “From him came forth Manasseh and Ravshakeh.” This is very interesting. It’s a terrible confusion, this thing, because in the midrash here it suddenly appears that Hezekiah had another son named Ravshakeh—not Ravshakeh the Babylonian, but Ravshakeh the son of Isaiah—the son of Hezekiah, sorry, the brother of Manasseh. He had two sons, Manasseh and Ravshakeh. “One day he placed them on his shoulders to bring them to the study hall.” So one day he put both of them on his shoulders to bring them to the study hall; Hezekiah took his two children. “One of them said”—and by the way it doesn’t say which of the two—so he says: “Look at father’s head, it’s good for roasting fish on.” And one said: “Look at father’s head, to offer on it a sacrifice to an idol.” “He struck them to the ground”—so he lowered them to the ground; seemingly he banged them onto the ground, really hard, though it’s not clear that that’s really the intention. “Manasseh lived and Ravshakeh died.” So Manasseh remained alive, but Ravshakeh died. “He said about himself”—so Hezekiah said about himself: “The miser and his devices,” right, there it’s written with a chet, but the meaning is miser, stingy, “and evil”—that’s from Isaiah. And then it continues: Rabbi Hanan said, even if the master of mercy and so on—that already belongs to the next page. So this story really concludes the dialogue between Isaiah and Hezekiah, and apparently it has some connection here—that is, what actually came out of this whole story? So out came Manasseh and Ravshakeh: one of them roasts fish, the other offers idolatrous sacrifices on his father’s head, he knocks them to the ground, Manasseh remains alive and Ravshakeh dies. And that’s interesting, because it’s supposed to be connected somehow, obviously, to their two attitudes earlier—that one of them deserves to die and the other remains alive. Who deserves to die? I would say the one who says to offer idolatrous sacrifices, right? A more severe transgression than roasting fish on father’s head. Meaning, he seems to be in a worse state. So Ravshakeh, who died, was apparently the one who said that father’s head is good for offering sacrifices to idolatry. And Manasseh is maybe the one who said to roast fish on it, whatever the exact issue is. But in any case, that’s what appears in the Bach as a completion to the Talmud. Now I’m moving to Rabbi Kook. Right, so Rabbi Kook brings this version here above; he even notes that it’s a different version. In the Talmudic text before us this whole story doesn’t appear, but you need to know why the work is called Ein Ayah. The work is called Ein Ayah because it revolves around the work Ein Yaakov. Ein Yaakov is a collection of the aggadic sections of the Talmud, in page order, but only the aggadah. They remove the—leave only the wasting of Torah study, meaning they remove all the substantial parts and leave the wasting of Torah study, and that’s what’s called Ein Ayah. It’s good for householders between Minchah and Ma’ariv, and we know, that’s—

[Speaker B] There were Shas groups and Ein—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ayah groups; that’s how they used to learn in all the wagon-driver towns. In any case, around this work Ein Yaakov, Rabbi Kook writes Ein Ayah. Meaning, it’s really a commentary on Ein Yaakov, and therefore when he brings this version of the story here, he’s simply bringing it because that’s the version in Ein Yaakov, the version that appears in Ein Yaakov. For us, it’s the Bach’s version. Fine. In any event, let’s see what Rabbi Kook writes about this matter. After all, there was at least one wagon driver worth seeing what he wrote. “As he was concerned about his inner traits, that when they would come to his sons they would turn to evil.” Right—Hezekiah was actually worried about his own inner traits, that when they would come to his sons they would become evil. What does that mean? When Hezekiah saw that a son would come from him—right—not exactly a great one, not some great righteous person, Rabbi Kook adds here that he was actually worried about his own inner traits. Meaning, how did he know his children would turn out like that? Why should they turn out like that? Apparently something in him was flawed. So Hezekiah looked at his inner traits, and that’s what led him to worry that when those traits came to his sons they would become evil. And that’s apparently what this divine inspiration revealed to him—he saw that this is what would come out of his sons. After he saw that, he apparently examined himself, and he understood that there were problematic points within him, and those problematic points would be actualized through his sons, and that’s what would make them evil. So he began examining himself, especially after Isaiah told him that he has no right to refrain from procreation and that he does need to have children. Fine. If he already has to have children, especially if Isaiah has already given him his daughter too, then we saw that the assumption is that the merit of both of them might perhaps improve this—change this fate and change his children, maybe they would indeed be righteous. So Hezekiah starts examining himself; he starts checking inside himself what exactly the problem is within him that causes the children and turns them evil. In other words, the assumption is that there’s something flawed in him, and that’s why the children come out evil. It’s not random. “When he recognized through divine inspiration—behold, wickedness can take…” right, wickedness can take two forms, Rabbi Kook says. “Either by going to an extreme in seeking only concern for the present alone, in a low and disgusting way.” Right, one form of wickedness is living in the moment. Living in the moment, only the present, in the lowest possible way—this is a kind of hedonism, maximum desires and impulses and pleasures, and only the present, without thinking about eternity, without thinking about the future. I remind you of the background in the earlier passages—not last week but the week before—where we saw that this was basically the tension between Hezekiah the king and Isaiah the prophet. The king is supposed to look at the present, and the prophet is supposed to look at the eternal. And we spoke there about the question whether the present is always connected to matter and eternity to spirit; I argued that this connection is not correct, or at least not necessarily correct, even though people often make it. And I remind you that last week, when we spoke about prayer as temporal life, there too the tension was between temporal life and eternal life. Between looking at the moment and looking at eternity. So this runs through all the passages Rabbi Kook writes about this dialogue between Isaiah and Hezekiah. It’s always this tension between eternity and the present. This passage too deals with that. This passage too is talking about the same issue, and he says there are two types of wickedness. The first type is “going to an extreme in seeking concern only for the present alone, in…” right, I’m reading here, “in a low and disgusting way.” That’s the first type of wickedness. In other words, living in the moment, just pleasures, leave me alone, I’m not interested in eternity, not interested in spirit, not interested in the future. Or another kind of wickedness—that’s the second type—“or to seek the enduring existence and spiritual establishment of the nation in an evil and crooked way.” Meaning, there is a wickedness that actually lies on the spiritual plane, not the material plane, and once again we return to the fact that for Rabbi Kook, eternity is connected to spirit and the present is connected to matter. And I already spoke about that somewhat critically two weeks ago. I said that this connection really… In any case, here Rabbi Kook continues with this correlation he makes, and the first wickedness is the present alone, in a low and disgusting way—impulses and pleasures, living in the moment. And the second wickedness does indeed speak about the future, about the spiritual, but notice: it’s wickedness. Why? Because it wants eternal spirituality, but in an evil and crooked way—bad spirituality. Right, that’s of course the idolatry described here in the aggadah; in a moment we’ll see. “Therefore he said”—that is, when Hezekiah basically searched within himself, because he saw that divine inspiration had apparently shown him that he would have sons who would turn out wicked. From that he concluded that apparently there was something problematic inside him, because otherwise why would his sons turn out wicked? Now he tries to think: what kind of wickedness is this? Is it the first kind, the kind of relating to the moment, living in the moment, the impulses? Or the wickedness of crooked spirituality? Right—whether this is basically pleasures or wicked conceptions, maybe that’s how you could put it. Is it pleasures, surrender to impulses, abandoning spirituality, or going toward spirituality but a crooked spirituality? A bit in this context, in the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot it says: what is the difference between the disciples of Abraham our father and the disciples of Balaam the wicked? I once heard someone—seems to me it was Rabbi Moshe Shapira, I’m no longer sure, not certain—who said: what does it mean, the disciples of Balaam the wicked? Usually we’re used to the idea that in order to be righteous, to know Torah, you need a rabbi, you need to study under someone. So Abraham taught Torah—right—to the women and the men, Abraham and Sarah—so there’s something to learn there. But what is there to learn from a rabbi in order to be wicked? If you want to be wicked, just follow your impulses and be wicked. What, is there a Torah of wickedness? So he argued that yes—Balaam had a Torah of wickedness, and he had disciples. Just as one can learn the good, one can also learn the evil. There is a spiritual teaching with wicked values, with crooked spirituality. Right, that’s basically what he wants to say here, and it’s very interesting because Balaam really was a prophet, the greatest of the prophets of the nations of the world. They said his level was like Moses’, right? Meaning that the prophet—who for Rabbi Kook represents looking at spirit, at eternity, at the future—that’s also true of Balaam, only Balaam looks at spirit and eternity and the future in a crooked way. And that’s exactly what he says here: this is the second type of wickedness—not material wickedness but spiritual wickedness, not lust but ideology, wicked ideology. “Therefore Hezekiah said”—so I continue reading—“perhaps the merit caused by me and by you,” meaning that your merit, Isaiah, and mine, “will help, so that good sons will come forth.” That perhaps what is ready to act when it comes forth into actuality for evil is only the psychic force concerned with the present, but if the force concerned with eternity is gathered together with it, its condition will improve. What does that mean? After all, Isaiah is a prophet; a prophet is occupied with spirit, with eternity. And I’m a king; I deal with the present, temporal life. Okay? My evil is probably the first kind of evil, local, temporary, momentary evil. Okay? If your merit comes, Isaiah, maybe you’ll manage to repair my evil. Why? Because perhaps you will nonetheless engender some spiritual, eternal, long-term perspective, and even if the son comes out with some potential for temporary evil, in the eternal perspective your merit will ultimately help him correct his ways. Right? “But when the force concerned with eternity is also gathered with it”—that’s what I just read—“its condition will improve to the point that it may be possible for the sons, in their combination, to have good traits fit for kingship—for kingship in justice.” Right? In the end, if we wait long enough and the long range arrives, then the partnership with Isaiah’s merit will be able to correct the momentary potential for evil. Then Rabbi Kook says this: “However, the two forces acted upon the sons, and from him came forth Manasseh and Ravshakeh, the sons possessing bad traits, each according to his own particular nature.” A very strange thing happened here, like—you know Bernard Shaw and Brigitte Bardot, that Brigitte Bardot said to Bernard Shaw: let’s get married, the children will come out beautiful like me and smart like you. So he said, yes, I’m only worried they’ll come out beautiful like me and smart like you. So what’s happening here, basically, is that Hezekiah wanted to combine forces with Isaiah: he would provide the vision, right, the long-term vision, the spiritual outlook, and Hezekiah—who had corruption within him, at least something within him was corrupt, but a momentary corruption—then the long term would correct the momentary corruption. What came out? Two wicked sons: one a local wicked man and one an eternal wicked man. Right, one spiritually wicked and one materially wicked—really Bernard Shaw’s dream. So he says, “the sons possessed bad traits, each according to his own particular nature.” “He exerted himself greatly to prepare them, to teach them Torah and ethics and the way of understanding with all his might.” Right, so he took them to the study hall because he wanted nevertheless to correct them. “As the Sages said in Kings I”—where exactly?—“and elsewhere apparently, or in an aggadic midrash, I don’t know where this is—‘Did Hezekiah teach Torah to the whole world, and to his son Manasseh he did not teach?’” After all, Hezekiah taught Torah to the whole world, so to his own son he didn’t teach? So Rabbi Kook says, of course he taught him. Here he was carrying his two sons on his shoulder in order to take them to learn Torah. “And this is understood from ‘he placed them on his shoulders to the study hall,’ that he placed both of them on his shoulders to the study hall.” But their bad traits overpowered all benefit of study and guidance. “But they diverged”—right, so he tried to correct them, but their bad traits still prevailed. “But they diverged, and one said”—in parentheses Rabbi Kook adds—“apparently this was Ravshakeh.” The opposite of what I said in the Talmud. In the Talmud it doesn’t say who said what. But I said: Manasseh remained alive and Ravshakeh died. I asked which of them is worse—the one who wants to worship idols or the one who wants to roast fish on his father’s head? I would say the one offering sacrifices to idolatry. Therefore the one who died should have been the one who said to offer sacrifices to idolatry. And yet Rabbi Kook says Ravshakeh, apparently, is the one who spoke about roasting fish, specifically not the sacrifices to idolatry. Meaning—he explains—because the worth of his father, who strove to lead the people in the way of understanding, to enlighten them in Torah and good character traits, all of that was considered by this rebellious son to be nothing at all. All the good qualities and virtues and wisdom and righteousness of his father were worth nothing in his eyes. “And he said that kingship is fit only for obtaining temporary sensual pleasures in the basest and most contemptible way in the eyes of every person of spirit.” So he is basically saying: what is my father’s head good for? The head, of course, means my father’s wisdom, my father’s good traits and virtues. What is it good for? To roast fish on. In other words, he wants immediate pleasure, to eat something tasty now, and for that you need kingship; nothing else matters to him at all. “It is understood that he himself made for himself a path”—but what happened with Ravshakeh?—“to cast off from himself the yoke of morality, fear of God, and proper conduct, and he turned to negation and every vile desire.” Right, meaning that he basically began to run wild with his impulses and became thoroughly wicked. That’s Ravshakeh up to this point, who according to Rabbi Kook’s suspicion was the one speaking about roasting fish. The Talmud doesn’t say. Why? Because he thinks Ravshakeh was the one who lived in the moment—the first kind of wickedness. “And one said”—which is apparently Manasseh—“Look at father’s head, to offer on it a sacrifice to idolatry.” Right, look at father’s head, it’s good for offering on it a sacrifice to idolatry. “He recognized that the people also need a moral mission.” Meaning, he doesn’t disdain morality. He understands that you need some vision, some values, some kind of spiritual outlook. “But not the mission for which Hezekiah toiled, namely the Torah of God that raises man upward on high, but rather to devote himself to the spirituality of idolatry, which does not demand from a person great spiritual virtues and goes together with all desires.” So Manasseh basically became wicked in the second sense. He’s an ideological wicked person; in other words, he adopts a spiritual worldview, not a material one like Ravshakeh, but a crooked spirituality—meaning spirituality directed toward idolatry instead of the spirituality of Hezekiah. So in fact two wicked sons came out of him, of the two types he described above. “He struck them to the ground”—I continue reading—and then he struck them to the ground. Rabbi Kook says this: “Seeing that his guidance of them was of no use”—meaning he sees it’s not helping and they’re becoming wicked—“and that by adding knowledge they would add evil and corruption. ‘The righteous walk in them’—the ways of God are upright, the righteous walk in them and transgressors stumble in them.” Meaning, you add knowledge, you take them to learn Torah, and this simply develops in them the two types of wickedness that were rooted in them at their source. “He left them to their own nature to conduct themselves according to their choice.” So Hezekiah decided to leave them alone, not teach them Torah, and let them do whatever they understood—there was no point investing in them, they were lost cases. By the way, that’s Rabbi Kook’s interpretation of “he struck them to the ground,” as I described when I read the Talmud. In the simple sense it means “he struck them to the ground,” meaning he took them off his shoulders and threw them onto the ground. Manasseh remained alive and Ravshakeh died. Rabbi Kook says no—he didn’t kill them because of that. He left them alive. “He struck them to the ground” means he took them off his shoulders and did not take them to study. That’s what “he struck them to the ground” means. In other words, he took them off his shoulders because he no longer wanted to take them to learn. Then what happened? Why did one live and one die? He continues explaining on that level. He says: “Manasseh lived, because after all there was in him some moral idea, and although it was corrupted, nevertheless, since there was some intellectual light, he was fit to endure, because at least he would not utterly destroy the body through his unrestrained desires. For he recognized that, at the very least, for the body’s continued existence some degree of spiritual conduct is required. And furthermore, since at the very least he had some purpose and some place for intellectual thought, a day would come when his intellect would mature and he would recognize that he had lost the way and return, as indeed happened with Manasseh.” We know that Manasseh repented at the end of his life. So why? Rabbi Kook says this: even though Manasseh was apparently worse—he was the one speaking about idolatry—but idolatry is a spiritual evil. He has values, he has religion, he has ideology, he has spirituality—just going in a crooked direction. Unlike Ravshakeh, who is just roasting fish, living in the moment; he’s not interested in the Holy One blessed be He, not in idolatry, not in spirituality at all. So even though apparently Manasseh’s transgression is more severe, Ravshakeh’s condition is better—sorry, Manasseh’s condition is better. Why? Because there is still spirit in him, even if it’s a spirit going in a crooked direction. That is better than someone who just lives in the moment and in impulses and material or bodily pleasures. And if you have spiritual concerns and you look to the long term, there’s a chance that you will also reach conclusions, activate your intellect, think more, and maybe in the future, in the long term, be able to correct your path. At the moment you’re corrupted, but someone who lives for the long term still has more opportunities to correct his ways and return. And indeed that’s what happened with Manasseh. “But Ravshakeh, whose trait was entirely material, without any moral component, died.” By the way, often in Rabbi Kook “moral” means spiritual. Suddenly now I’m thinking—now the penny just dropped for me. Maybe even in places when I talk about Rabbi Kook’s ethics, it’s really an interesting point to discuss, that “moral” there may simply mean “spiritual.” I’m not sure he means morality in the sense of morality or ethics. Fine, just a side note—some little light bulb went on for me now, I need to think about it more. “For his bodily powers weakened and were destroyed by the flood of his evil desires without restraint. And in Ravshakeh there was the domination of the power of the present in a starkly evil way.” And that’s the point—therefore Ravshakeh died, not because of being struck to the ground, because according to Rabbi Kook there was no violent striking to the ground. He simply took them off and didn’t take them to learn Torah, and left them to do what they thought best. What happened to Ravshakeh? Nothing remained of him. He was thoroughly wicked; he died right away. He has no future, no hope. “And the domination of the power of eternity,” Rabbi Kook says, “acted upon Manasseh so that, at the very least, he joined some feeling and intellectual idea to his debauchery. And that caused him”—and that’s what caused him—“to endure in kingship, and from him came a shoot and a ruling seed, and he himself also returned to God.” In the end, he himself returned to the Holy One blessed be He. Right—without ideology you can’t be a king. If you just live in the moment, nothing will remain of you. A wicked king can be a king if his wickedness is of the second type, the ideological type. Right? That’s ideological wickedness, not the wickedness of reckless indulgence. It would actually be interesting to check all the wicked kings in the Hebrew Bible—there’s a sort of thesis here saying they could not have survived if it weren’t spiritual evil, but only hedonistic, material, low evil. “And that caused him to endure in kingship, and from him came a shoot and a ruling seed, and he himself also returned to God.” In the end, when you teach your children that spirituality is important, it may be that they accept the claim that spirituality is important but do not accept the kind of spirituality you are trying to transmit to them—they take the crooked spirituality—and still something good can come out of them. But if you don’t transmit spirituality at all, just living in the moment, then nothing good can come out of that. Therefore from Manasseh there could come a shoot and a ruling seed, and even he himself ultimately returned to God, because over time he also has time to correct himself. “And it was God’s plan”—that’s what happened, up to here the story of what happened there. Okay? “And it was God’s plan to blend the power of prophecy with the power of kingship,” what we saw earlier. “And this is the wisdom of the Holy One blessed be He”—by the way, in the end Isaiah, according to the Bach, gave his daughter to Hezekiah. Rabbi Kook claims that all of this was God’s scheme from the outset. He sends Isaiah to speak with Hezekiah, already knowing that in the end it will develop so that he gives him his daughter, and everything will be repaired and everything will be fine. And that was God’s plan from the outset: to blend the power of prophecy with the power of kingship. I remind you: prophecy is looking to the distant future, spirituality. Kingship is temporal life, looking at the moment and at materiality. “And this is the wisdom of the Holy One blessed be He, about which it is rightly said in wonder, ‘Who is wise, and who knows the interpretation of a matter?’” That’s how the passage in the Talmud begins, I remind you. The topic in the Talmud begins with this sentence, that the Holy One blessed be He was wise, and somehow arranged for Isaiah to rebuke Hezekiah, and in that way managed somehow to repair the matter. “And concerning Ravshakeh he rightly called out, ‘The miser and his devices are evil’; the miser recognizes none but himself.” Right, the miser, the stingy one, recognizes only himself. The verse “the miser and his devices are evil” is a verse in Isaiah—maybe if you want to look at it for a moment. So it’s like this—Isaiah chapter 32. It says: “For the fool will speak folly, and his heart will work iniquity, to practice hypocrisy and to utter error against the Lord, to empty the soul of the hungry, and to cause the thirsty to lack drink.” Right—the scoundrel there is basically the miser. He does not give charity, does not give drink to the thirsty, does not give food to the hungry, commits iniquity and hypocrisy, and so on. “And the miser and his devices are evil.” So it moves on to speak about the miser. “Miser” means a stingy person, and that’s the same scoundrel from before. “He devises schemes to destroy the poor”—or the humble, right—“with words of falsehood, even when the needy speaks justly. But the nobleman devises noble things, and by noble things he shall stand.” So there’s a contrast here between the miser and the nobleman. For our purposes, what matters is that the miser does not give to the other. Why? Because he loves only himself, he sees only the moment and his own pleasure, he does not see the one around him. Right, he doesn’t take into account at all that there are people around him who are in need. “And the nobleman devises noble things, and by noble things he shall stand.” The nobleman, by contrast, basically sees the reality around him. Meaning, the root of the difference between the miser and the nobleman is actually very similar to the two types of wickedness we spoke about in the Talmud. Because the miser is that same person who lives in the moment, the pleasure of the moment, and that basically means he lives only himself. Because what exists in the moment and in pleasure is only me myself. The ability to see the other or to feel the other, empathy—that is something more connected to intellect, to spirituality; it does not come through desire. And that’s the nobleman. The nobleman is the one who looks at what is happening around him. True, that’s a necessary condition but not a sufficient one—but it is still necessary. There can be someone who sees his surroundings and still decides not to give to them, and that is exactly someone with bad spirituality. He is spiritual in the sense that he works with intellect, he understands his surroundings, but he does it—he takes it in an evil direction; he chooses bad ideals, bad values. The miser is not even that. The miser is just someone living in the moment. Okay. So the nobleman is a third type, someone who is both spiritual and positive. But there are two kinds of wicked people: there’s the miser, who is the wickedness of the moment, and then there’s someone who stands between the miser and the nobleman. The nobleman—but the nobleman factually, not ideologically. Meaning, he sees the environment, he is spiritual, he is intellectual, he understands there are people around him, he understands what the people around him think and feel—but he is crooked, he is wicked, and still does not take them into consideration. Okay, that’s what comes out here from these verses. Let’s go back now to Rabbi Kook; we’ll be able to understand him better. I’m returning to the marked passage in Rabbi Kook.

[Speaker B] So from here it follows that there’s no such thing as a miser toward himself.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?

[Speaker B] Like, if he’s stingy only toward himself, but he does give to others, then according to this he wouldn’t be defined as stingy or as a miser for this purpose.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah—you mean someone who is stingy about spending on himself?

[Speaker B] On himself, but he does give to others—so he wouldn’t count as a miser in this context.