And Rejoice on Your Festival

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So you say, fine, in Maimonides this is certainly called for, but I think it also makes sense. Meaning, to love the convert means because of what he did, because of the conversion; that is, to appreciate the act that he performed. He left his place because he wanted to join us, he loves the Holy One, blessed be He, he accepted the commandments on his own initiative, all of it on his own initiative. He wasn’t born this way, he wasn’t obligated in it, nothing. That thing is worthy of love. I think that’s the obvious explanation; it’s not hairsplitting. I’m willing to accept that there may also be another explanation of Maimonides, but this is not disconnected hairsplitting. I mean, it makes sense.

[Speaker A] And that also connects to “love your fellow as yourself,” and he isn’t “as yourself.” Meaning, I love my Jewish fellow like myself because we’re both Jews, but I can’t include the convert here because he’s not “like yourself”; he went through a process.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Love your fellow as yourself” also applies to the convert. Aside from loving the convert, certainly “love your fellow as yourself” also applies to the convert. There are two commandments of love regarding a convert. There is love toward every Jew, which should also apply to a convert, and beyond that there is love of the convert. But why do we need both? So that’s what he says. Because the ground for the love is part of the commandment of love. He is not only the addressee whom one must love; that is the very reason. And therefore he says: when you love him because he is a member of Israel, you have not fulfilled the commandment of loving the convert, because you have to love him because he is a convert, not because he is a member of Israel. By the way, the same is true regarding the commandment of love of Israel. Also in the commandment of love of Israel, if you love someone and it happens to turn out that he is Jewish, you have not fulfilled the commandment of love of Israel. The commandment of love of Israel is to love him because he is Jewish. Chauvinism is part of the commandment; it’s not that it’s some deficiency. It’s part of the commandment: you have to love him because he is Jewish. And that is the commandment of love of Israel. That’s his claim. So what comes out is that the commandments of love are actually a bit Lithuanian-style commandments. Meaning, this is not something where you feel an emotion of love and you love the thing you love. No—you have to love; it’s an intellectual love, that is, an intellectualized love. You have to love the idea behind the convert. In a certain sense, yes. Once my grandfather said about someone—and I won’t say who, because that would be slander—that he very much loves the Jewish people in general, he just has a bit of trouble with the particulars. So he’s a Kantian. Right? Exactly. So that sounds like an accusation, but really it’s the essence of the commandment of love as I described it just now. To love them isn’t because they are human beings; human beings are transparent. You love them as Jews, not the concrete people next to you. Okay, of course that takes it too far. I think the formulation—I once wrote about this in one of my books, in In Their Lithuanian Light, I think I wrote about it there—that it doesn’t have to be that way; you can take this and still remain sane. Meaning, you need to love him because he is Jewish, but in the end you need to love a person. It’s obvious that love is not love of an idea. Love of an idea is not love.

[Speaker A] You need to love a person. But still, you do need to love the person because of— not just love the person, period, and he also happens to be a Jewish convert or something else. No. You need to love him because of his conversion, but—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That—

[Speaker A] it has to end in a specific love for a concrete person. Meaning, not in love of the Jewish people as a whole without loving any of the particulars. I don’t think that’s love. The same is true, by the way, also with the commandment of hatred. There is “I hate those who hate You, O Lord,” as it says in Psalms. There are those who write that there is a commandment to hate the wicked. It’s not agreed upon. Or there’s the verse, “If you see the donkey of your enemy crouching under its burden, you shall surely help him.” So Tosafot there asks, in tractate Pesachim 113b, Tosafot there asks: how can he be “your enemy”? It’s forbidden to hate. How can there even be “the donkey of your enemy”? How can the Torah say that you see the donkey of your enemy when it is forbidden to hate? If you failed in this and such a reality exists… Tosafot there asks this question, and because of that various later authorities (Acharonim) discuss whether there are situations in which it is permitted to hate—say, if he is a sinner. So if he is a sinner, it is permitted to hate him, perhaps even a commandment to hate him according to some opinions, but there is no prohibition against hating him, because the prohibitions and commandments apply to “one who is with you in deed.” Someone who is not “with you in deed” does not have interpersonal obligations toward him. So the commandments of love and hatred obviously do not apply. Now there too, there are those who define this as love of an idea—of a person committed to Torah and commandments, who behaves properly, and so on—but again, that’s taking a correct idea one step too far. You need to do it toward that person because of that issue, but in the end it has to be love for the person. Love is for a person, not for an idea. “Let sins cease, not sinners,” as Beruriah expounds there, Rabbi Meir’s wife—that the sins should cease, not the sinners; meaning, their sins should cease, not the sinners. But all of that is because they should cease, so you should address the sins and not the sinners. But the feeling of love or hatred should, I think, be directed toward a person. One of the interesting examples of this appears in Maimonides; maybe we already spoke about this once. In chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance, Maimonides writes there as follows. There are two laws there, one after the other—or almost one after the other—and they seem contradictory. “A person should not say: behold, I will perform the commandments of the Torah and engage in its wisdom so that I will receive the blessings written in the Torah, or so that I will merit life in the World to Come, and I will separate myself from the transgressions against which the Torah warned so that I will be saved from the curses written in the Torah or so that I not be cut off from life in the World to Come.” Yes, that is service not for its own sake. “It is not proper to serve God in this way, for one who serves in this way serves out of fear, and this is not the level of the prophets nor the level of the sages. And one only serves God in this way if he is one of the ignorant masses, women, or children, whom one educates to serve out of fear until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love.” Yes, here too Maimonides is anti-politically correct. Women too won’t eventually increase in knowledge? Yes, at least he’s pessimistic. No, it’s surprising because it seemingly contradicts… At least “one educates them to serve out of fear until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love”—either it works or it doesn’t. No, but there is such an option, apparently. No, once he says “women,” then supposedly it is categorically impossible. No, once he says that women are like this, then supposedly it is categorically impossible. And a woman too, apparently, is supposed to be educated until she ultimately understands—that’s perhaps how Maimonides understands it. Okay. Law 2: “One who serves out of love occupies himself with Torah and commandments and walks in the paths of wisdom not because of anything in the world, not out of fear of evil and not in order to inherit good; rather, he does the truth because it is truth, and the good will ultimately come because of it.” What is he saying? Fear-based service is basically doing it for something. Service out of love means doing Torah and commandments, walking in the paths of wisdom, not because of anything in the world, not out of fear of evil and not in order to inherit good, but rather doing the truth because it is truth. That is called service out of love. To do the truth because it is truth. Strange. Is that a definition of love? What seems like love is that I love the Holy One, blessed be He, and I do it because I love Him. No! To do the truth because it is truth. Really classic Lithuanian love, right? That is what is called love in Maimonides’ definition here. To do the truth because it is truth. It’s a somewhat different use of the concept of love. For example, in the Laws of Idolatry Maimonides writes—and I also spoke about this once—that one who worships idolatry out of love or fear is exempt unless he accepted it as a god. The medieval authorities (Rishonim) explain—the interpretation of the Talmudic text is different from all the others—the medieval authorities (Rishonim) explain, most of them explain, the Raavad and Rashi and others explain, that this means love and fear of a person. If you worship idolatry out of love or fear—what would love in idolatry mean? Some especially scrupulous kind of idolatry? What’s wrong with that? Right, what’s so good about it—meaning, that would be extra-fancy idolatry. So that can’t be. Therefore it is clear that when the Talmud says idolatry out of love or fear, it means because of love of a person or fear of a person, not love and fear of the idol. But Maimonides himself says “out of love or fear.” He doesn’t say “out of love and fear of a person.” That’s what the Raavad comments on, and the Kesef Mishneh comments on, that in Maimonides you can see what he means. He says “out of love or fear” of the god. Yes, it’s not that they’re objecting to him; he says it explicitly. But I already saw someone trying to force a different reading here too, but that’s not right; the plain meaning of the language is not like that. So what is the alternative? What is actual idolatry? It is “accepted it as a god.” I once said that I think my friend is actually the source—Nadav, a PhD in physics—and from him I heard this explanation for the first time: when you do someone’s command, someone’s instruction, because of some reason, that is not religious service. Religious service is acceptance as a god. Acceptance as a god means: whatever he says, I do. That is what a god is. A god is defined as: he says, I do. If you ask, why do I do it? Just because. There is no answer to why, because if there is an answer to why, then I am doing it because of the why, not because the god said so. That is not religious service. If a doctor prescribes medicine for me and I take the medicine, is that idolatry? Idolatry out of fear—I’m afraid that if I don’t take the medicine, I’ll die. No, that’s not idolatry. Huh? It’s not because of the doctor. Maybe because of the disease. That’s even worse, yes, out of fear that… never mind, out of fear that something bad will happen to me, what difference does it make? Yes, you’re worshipping the disease. Fine, okay, but if he is afraid of the idol or wants to receive benefit from the idol, doesn’t that mean he accepted it as a god? That is exactly what a god is. If I’m afraid of it, I accepted it. I’m also afraid of fire burning me; so if I put it out, is that idolatry? The answer is: it will burn me if I don’t do what it tells me. What does “if I don’t do what it tells me” mean? If I don’t move away from it, but instead go into it, it will burn me. That is what it tells me. No, it tells me by implication… No, that’s not… Idolatry has to be toward an entity. Idolatry is toward idols; idols are entities. From the perspective of the person, he thinks that way. So someone who worships fire thinks that too—in fact, he runs away from the fire so it won’t burn him. But he doesn’t think it’s an entity demanding something from him… What does “demanding from him” mean? It will harm him if he doesn’t do this. No, it’s not the same thing, but there is a difference between a disease and an entity. What, does it have cognition? I mean, does it make decisions to harm me? There has to be something intended to appease that cognition. Right. Or to sustain it mechanically. No, that’s something else entirely, that’s not… A lot of idolatries are idolatries where you perceive the whole matter as entirely mechanical. If you do this in such-and-such a way, the idol will do such-and-such for you. If you do it this way, it won’t. Not some… you appease it because it then makes different decisions. It’s its nature. If you perceive it as something entirely mechanical, then in my view it cannot be defined as idolatry. It cannot be defined as idolatry because you have a rationale for why you are doing it. No, and not even idolatry out of love and fear. After all, that too is forbidden. No, it’s not entirely forbidden; that’s what Maimonides says. He says that you are not liable to the death penalty for it, but it is forbidden. Not completely forbidden—what exactly it is, that’s another question; it doesn’t say there. Once you fear a certain entity such that if you don’t obey its voice it will punish you, and similarly if I obey its voice I will get reward—a police officer on the road. Is a police officer an entity? The police officer who knows how to read or the one who doesn’t know how to read? Fine, come on, he is a specific person for this matter; he has authority. Not a specific person—all the laws of the state. All the laws of the state that I now obey because I’m afraid they’ll punish me, and that is an entity that makes decisions to punish me—is that idolatry? No. Right, I agree that that is not idolatry either. Why not? Here too there is an entity. Because what I am obeying is based on a calculation. When I make a cost-benefit calculation and therefore obey. A god is someone for whom the obligation to carry out his words does not arise from some calculation, but rather the very fact that he said it obligates me to do it. That is called acceptance as a god. That sounds right to me; in my opinion that is the plain meaning in Maimonides. And therefore he says that even to worship out of love or fear is not religious service. One can understand it differently; one can understand that a god is one whom you obey fully. And one whom you merely take into account is not a god, just another factor that you… No, here too you are taking him into account. I act out of love and fear and obey him completely, fully. So is that called “accepted it as a god”? Yet he says “out of love or fear, exempt.” He doesn’t say partial. He says one who worships it out of love or fear is exempt. It may be that that is the distinction, though. What? So the distinction is simply that here it comes from calculation. And calculation by its very nature is conditional. When the calculation comes out differently for me, then I won’t worship it. Fine, that is a consequence, but in my view it’s a consequence, not the essence of the definition. The definition is whether you worship based on calculation, or whether you worship because he said so. No, but if I, for example… if a certain person threatens me and therefore I do various things he tells me. Now the distinction is supposedly—I’m suggesting, I don’t know—that as long as I… it’s not just a matter of whether I’m really acting from calculation. Meaning, even assuming that I still—as long as I’m doing it and not just calculating, not only that it stems from my fear of him, but that I do it—in practice I really am making some sort of judgment, and it could be that in some situation I’d stop, then yes. But if it reaches a point where whatever he says I do—and yet, if you ask me why I’m doing it, why, it’s what I said before. I understand, but I’m saying that in a certain sense that is a symptom. The fact that I always do it is a symptom that I’m not doing it because of calculation. And that is the point that separates idolatry from non-idolatry. But why—if I can do it not… I can be… If you do it because of calculation, then I don’t care; I always obey the law, without exception, let’s say, okay? And that is still not idolatry. Why? If you’re willing to obey the law even if the law, say, commands you to kill people? You can say that that is no longer the law, that that’s already a black-flag order and things like that, so that’s no longer the law. But someone who wouldn’t say that, but rather would say that he would be willing to obey the law? And someone who doesn’t say that, but rather says as I say—then what? He always obeys the law. Then he doesn’t obey the law, rather he limits it that way, but that’s… It’s not limiting it; that is the law. In mainstream legal thought today, that is the conception. The conception is that when there are orders of that kind, they are not part of the law. There is no duty to obey them even legally. Unlike conscientious objection, where I refuse because of other values, a black-flag order is not conscientious objection; a black-flag order is an unlawful order. I am not required to obey it at all; I won’t be punished for disobeying it—on the contrary, I’ll be punished if I do obey it. In short, the claim is that if you do it because of calculation, then it is not religious service, and therefore it will not be idolatry. You need to do it out of total submission to the authority of the god, and then you regard it as a god. If it’s an idol, that is idolatry; and if not, then not. Therefore we see that even love and fear, which are seemingly more elevated motives… even if love and fear are more elevated motives, if you do it because of the love and fear, it is still action based on calculation. And since that is so, it is not religious service. That is Maimonides’ claim. Now, this is basically what he is saying here too. Meaning, once you do it out of fear, from one calculation or another, it is not religious service. When is it religious service? When you do the truth because it is truth. You do the truth because it is truth. Only here the terminology shifts a bit, because here he calls that service out of love. There he spoke about love in the sense that love is not religious service, because that is called calculation. Here he seems to present perhaps two levels of love or something like that; meaning, this is love in a more intellectual sense, and that’s why I’m bringing it as an example. Earlier I spoke about all the emotional commandments that can in fact be translated into intellectual commandments—so here is another example. The love that appears here in Maimonides is really something very intellectual: to do the truth because it is truth; that is what it means to serve God out of love. The interesting question is how this relates to Law 3. In Law 3 he says: “And what is the proper love? It is that one should love God with a very great, exceeding, strong love, until his soul is bound up in the love of God, and he is continually preoccupied with it, as if lovesick, whose mind is never free from the love of that woman with whom he is infatuated, at all times, whether sitting or rising, even while eating and drinking. Greater than this should be the love of God in the hearts of those who love Him, continually preoccupied with it, as He commanded us, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And this is what Solomon said metaphorically: for I am lovesick. And the entire Song of Songs is a metaphor for this matter.” Where is the truth? Right? In Law 2 you told me that service out of love is to do the truth because it is truth—something very intellectual, cold in a certain sense. And here in Law 3 he talks about something terribly emotional. But how does he begin? Like the love of a woman. Wait a second—“And what is the proper love? That one should love God with a very great, exceeding, powerful love.” Maybe after you have reached the truth, then, so to speak, you serve the god with great love, and then you can also rise to emotional love. It looks like he is explaining what that love is, the one he spoke of earlier; he isn’t talking about the results of someone who serves out of love. Seemingly this contradicts it. I don’t know—on the plain meaning of his language I think this is a bit difficult, but I say, because of the contradiction between Law 2 and Law 3, I once thought that Law 3 too is speaking about intellectual love. “And the whole Song of Songs is a metaphor for this matter.” Intellectual love needs to accompany you—you are preoccupied with it constantly, day and night, when you lie down and when you rise up and at all times—just as love for a woman accompanies you always and you are constantly occupied with it. Is love for a woman also intellectual? No, rather that is the metaphor for it, but the metaphor… one must always be careful not to take a metaphor too far. So what did he want to compare? He wanted to compare the level of intensity required of you. But the fact that here we are talking about something emotional and here about something intellectual—that is a different issue. It could very well be that in that respect there is no similarity. The metaphor only comes to say how much you need to be occupied with this all the time, to be committed to it all the time, how intense it should be. As if this were the same emotional love we know from relations between a man and a woman. But not that, in the real sense, it is very hard to imagine such love toward the Holy One, blessed be He. It sounds detached, with all due respect. Meaning, I don’t think this is a matter of spiritual level, as people always say—well, you’re not on the proper level; people on the higher levels do feel that way. I don’t think so. In my opinion, it sounds like an unreasonable demand. What? There is similarity? That’s something else; fear and love are different things. I’m talking about love. No, here they’re already talking about awe of exaltedness; that doesn’t necessarily clash. But I’m talking right now about love. Plainly speaking, it’s hard to accept that this refers to emotional love like the love of man and woman. And therefore, for me, that somewhat strengthens—again, the plain meaning of Maimonides’ language does not seem that way in Law 3. He says—look, he says: “And what is the proper love? That one should love God with a very great, exceeding, strong love.” The way I read it, all of this is intellectual. An intellectual love, strong and abundant and exceedingly intense—but all of it intellectual, yes? “Until his soul is bound up in the love of God, and he is continually preoccupied with it.” And all of this speaks about the intellect, not emotion. “As in lovesickness, when their mind is not free”—and here he moves to the emotional metaphor—“and the entire Song of Songs is a metaphor for this matter.” And that way it connects to Law 2. In Law 2 he says to do the truth because it is truth—that is called love. So how in Law 3 does he suddenly move to this emotionality? Rather, it may be that this is only a metaphor. No, he says in terms of the timing—that he is constantly preoccupied with it, as Rabbi Saadya… Oh, so it’s a metaphor for intensity, but not a metaphor saying that this too is how love of the Holy One should look. What? He explains what “truth” means for him. No—the commitment to truth should accompany you all the time, at every moment, just as love for a woman accompanies you at all times, every moment. Even though here it is on the intellectual plane and there on the emotional plane. So the similarity is only… and with a metaphor, of course, one must always be careful not to take it too far. It seems that what Maimonides means is only to compare the level of intensity with which this is supposed to accompany you, but not really that this describes the feeling of love toward the Holy One, blessed be He. And then indeed that is somewhat novel, but it seems to me that from the context of the laws this is what is called for here. And then that means that love of God too joins all the emotional commandments I described earlier: hatred of the wicked, love of the convert, love of one’s fellow. All these things are basically translated intellectually. They are not really dealing with feelings in the emotional dimension; they undergo an intellectual translation. So here too it is like that. And in a consistent way one can show this throughout the… even hatred: “Do not hate your brother in your heart.” Maimonides, when he interprets this—there is an interpretation from Maimonides, simply what the text says—that the prohibition is to hate “in your heart.” Meaning, when you hate him and you do not tell him that you hate him, that is the prohibition. The prohibition is not the hatred itself. “Do not hate your brother in your heart; you shall surely rebuke your fellow and not bear sin because of him,” something like that. And the meaning is: when you hate him, rebuke him. That is, tell him: listen, I hate you because you did such-and-such, and also apparently you need to rebuke him because there is apparently a justified reason why you hate him, and so on, and then it’s okay. There is no prohibition on hatred. There is only a prohibition on keeping it in your heart. Again, the prohibition shifts somewhat from the emotional plane to the behavioral plane. It does not remain on the level of emotion. So the fact that I hate my fellow is not a prohibition. Even apparently if the reason is not justified, although Maimonides does not say that there is a difference based on the reasons. If you do not tell him this… What would you tell him if the reason isn’t justified? Well, “you shall surely rebuke”—that is the continuation of the verse. What does “you shall surely rebuke” mean? I don’t know. But in Maimonides it is not mentioned; there is no mention there of a prohibition to hate. What is mentioned is a prohibition to hate and keep it in your heart. That is the prohibition. Again, consistently we see translations. The same thing exists—now I remember—in the Laws of Mourning, beginning of chapter 14. Maimonides writes there: “The sages commanded to accompany the dead, to bring in the bride, to visit the sick, and all…” all of this is included in “love your fellow as yourself.” “All these are commandments of rabbinic origin, and all this is included in love your fellow as yourself.” Again, from the standpoint of “love your fellow as yourself,” this seems to be an emotional commandment, and the sages—even though here it is only rabbinic—so here one has to know exactly what he means, but its translation is a practical translation. Not love in the heart, but bringing in the bride, accompanying the dead, visiting the sick, and so on. It is supposed to undergo some practical translation and not remain as some love in the heart. There, by the way, I am not completely sure that this is the plain meaning. I am somewhat more inclined to think that the plain meaning there—there are those who explain Maimonides there this way, and then it fits the picture I described here—I’m not completely sure. If you read Maimonides there without hidden assumptions, it seems that he means something else: that these commandments are commandments of rabbinic origin. The Torah-level commandment is on the heart, to love my fellow as myself, and by rabbinic enactment they also require me to translate that into action. Only, of course, if I translate it into action and thereby express the love, then I have also fulfilled the Torah-level commandment of love. But suppose I loved and did not carry out the practical part. I loved my fellow in my heart but did not visit him when he was sick, or did not accompany him when he died, or did not bring her in when she was a bride. Why? I didn’t feel like it, I don’t know. I loved her very much, but I love her theoretically. Because I love them in my heart, I love them deeply, I just grieve inwardly in my heart. I shut myself in the house. Here, it seems to me there is an assumption that maybe that assumption feels this is contradictory. So if you really love him, then you’ll also help him. If it’s contradictory, even better. I’m not fully sure that the identification Maimonides makes there is contradictory, but if it is contradictory, then he is only saying that the commandment of love is to love in the heart, and the sages say to do these things as commandments of action, not duties of the heart. They are really saying this as a derivative of the commandment of heartfelt love, because without it, it is simply a sign that you do not love in your heart. And still, the fulfillment of accompanying the dead or visiting the sick is a commandment of rabbinic origin. Okay? I wanted to argue that even if it’s not contradictory—say, if I love without having done these actions, then I fulfilled the Torah-level commandment and did not fulfill the rabbinic commandments. If I bring in a bride because there is a rabbinic commandment, but I really don’t love her—or I visit the sick, I don’t love him, but I visit him because there is a rabbinic commandment to visit him—then I fulfilled the rabbinic requirement but not the Torah-level one. If I do it because of love, I fulfilled both. Therefore there are two things: there is the rabbinic law and there is the Torah-level law. That is the simpler plain meaning in Maimonides—I don’t know. But even there there is some tension between the emotional dimension of love and its practical translations. One can hairsplit about this further, like Tosafot in tractate Sukkah, who says that if one fulfills the Torah-level commandment not in the way the sages prescribed, then one has not fulfilled even the Torah-level one. There is that story there of the elders of the schools of Shammai and Hillel who went to visit Rabbi Yohanan ben HaHoranit and saw him sitting in a sukkah with his table inside the house. According to the House of Shammai there is a rabbinic prohibition against sitting in such a sukkah when one’s table is in the house. So they said to him: “If this is how you conducted yourself, you never fulfilled the commandment of sukkah in your life.” Tosafot asks: what do you mean, “you never fulfilled the commandment of sukkah in your life”? After all, it is a perfectly valid sukkah on the Torah level; rabbinically it is forbidden to sit in such a sukkah when one’s table is in the house—that is a rabbinic law. So what does it mean, “you never fulfilled the commandment of sukkah in your life”? Tosafot says that if you did not fulfill the rabbinic law, then you also did not fulfill the Torah-level law. If you do not perform the Torah-level commandment in the manner established by the sages—but Maimonides disagrees with this; there is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim). According to that, one could say that if you loved—returning to what you raised earlier—if you loved your fellow but did not visit him when he was sick, then you did not fulfill the rabbinic enactment of how the rabbis said to love your fellow as yourself, and so you also did not fulfill the Torah-level one. Then one could understand, even without a direct contradiction, and still say that you did not fulfill the Torah-level commandment, and therefore all of this is included in “love your fellow as yourself.” Fine, but that of course assumes that Maimonides follows Tosafot’s approach, and that is not written anywhere; it’s good for hairsplitting. If you didn’t fulfill the rabbinic law, did you reveal that you don’t love? No, that’s what he said earlier. Here I wanted to suggest a halakhic principle, not that you really revealed that you don’t love, but that there is a halakhic principle that if the rabbis told you to express the love practically, and you really do love but did not express it practically, then you also did not fulfill the Torah-level law, because you didn’t do it in the way the rabbis said to do it, and therefore you didn’t fulfill the Torah-level law either. But all of that is hairsplitting; it’s not written in Maimonides. Where would one invent that he agrees with Tosafot? It’s all hairsplitting. Fine—turning all loves of the mind into intellectual love is really utterly unreasonable. “I’m a Litvak,” they say to him. I’m a Litvak with ideas. Bring ideas. Apparently the Litvaks still haven’t loved. Yes. What? Of course not—not just them. No. Of course! How do they rejoice on the festival in Brisk? The lulav is under the category of joy, Hallel is under the category of joy, everything is… everything is done under this category of joy and that category of joy except for actually rejoicing. Simply rejoicing. Yes. But they still haven’t noticed that. It’s not… “There is no joy except with meat…” In terms of the definition of the commandment. The definition of the commandment, yes. In the end I think you really do need to arrive at joy in the emotional sense, but the halakhic obligation, the halakhic obligation… Just because it’s fun… No, it is an expression, as you said earlier; it expresses the connection more, I don’t know whether to call it intellectual. If you internalize it in the heart too, then that means it exists in you more. Here—this is its practical expression, of the theoretical fulfillment. Okay. Fine, I don’t know how I’m supposed to manage to get to the two… Read that in my column. But I wanted to talk about time travel. Time travel—I began with the fact that time exists in reality, and “you shall rejoice on your festival,” and not that it is only a synthesis, as Kant conceives it, that time is only a form for describing, for organizing experiences. What does the scientific fact say? What? What does the scientific fact say? There is no scientific fact. It’s a dispute. Regarding time? It’s a dispute below just as it is a dispute above. Fine, what is below and what is above? If science is above and science is below—but the dispute is the same. A dispute among philosophers about how to understand it. Fine, I’ll tell you in one sentence. There’s also a philosophical view that says time is fixed and you merely move along it. Yes, that’s another way of looking at it. Yes, in the theory of relativity, for example, that is the common view. Einstein writes a letter of condolence to his friend Besso, who died—a condolence letter to the family after he died. He writes there: we know that nothing has changed now; let’s say he died in ’52—we know that nothing has changed now; back in 1800 too it was true that in 1952 he died. So what changed? Except that we have already reached the moment at which he died. And the fact that this is the moment in which he died—that too was already true back then. That is really the perspective of relativity theory. He had a great argument about this with Henri Bergson, the Jewish-French philosopher, who held that time is something dynamic, while Einstein held that time is something static. Anyway, we won’t get into that, we won’t get into that. I’ll do one more thing in the previous direction, about Lithuanian emotions. Once I asked—when I was in… once I was in Yeruham, and they invited me during the Ten Days of Repentance to the environmental high school at Midreshet Sde Boker. A good friend of mine was principal of the school there. Folks, this is a school at a very high level, an excellent school. Really high-level students. I have several friends who also studied there, around my age more or less. So he asked me to speak about atonement and remorse and forgiveness, but not in religious contexts—it’s a secular high school. Fine. So I said to them, I described a situation. I said, what do you say about the following situation: I hurt someone, I did something wrong. At some point I came to the conclusion that it was wrong, and I go to appease him, to ask his forgiveness. I feel nothing. No pangs of conscience over what I did to him. Nothing. My amygdala is damaged to the core. That’s the part of the brain responsible for empathy and feelings and so on. The amygdala is damaged. I have no feelings, I feel nothing, I don’t care at all. He doesn’t matter to me in the slightest. But I know that I did something wrong, and I go to appease him because I know that one should ask forgiveness if one does something wrong. And that’s what I do. Then Elijah comes and tells you—this is allowed to say even though it’s not religious—let’s say Elijah comes and tells you that this is the situation, and he reveals to you that I feel nothing. You, the person I hurt—I feel nothing toward you, you don’t interest me at all, and I come and ask your forgiveness. Do you forgive? What do you say? Does the other person forgive? I ask you: I come to you; suppose this is the fact as far as you know—do you forgive me? What? Certainly not. All of them—it was complete consensus there. Of course not. It’s fake. They don’t forgive. Fake, right. I told them that if I had some kind of heart-meter, something that checks what’s in the heart—his stomach hurts because he hurt me and he wants to relieve his guilty conscience, so he comes to ask forgiveness. Is that how one asks forgiveness? As the old comedy troupe says: “You come and ask forgiveness”—he is actually at the center. But, but, but that person really comes because he understands that he was wrong—he understands, not feels—he understands that he was wrong, and he understands that one needs to appease the person one has hurt, and that is what he does. You cannot have a greater apology than that. This is a person who truly does it out of genuine moral judgment, because that really is what should be done. Someone like that I would forgive wholeheartedly. And again, the same point—that many times there is some kind of… I told you once that I once heard Shlomo Nitzan on the radio telling—did you hear this, I think, some time ago? He mentioned Shlomo there, right? Dov Sadan, with this joke that the next revolutionary in the world will be a Jewish orthopedist. Why will the next revolutionary be an orthopedist? Why Jewish is obvious, because all the revolutionaries in the world are Jews, but why an orthopedist? He says because the first Jewish revolutionary in the world was Abraham our Patriarch. He put light in… he saw “Who created these?” He used his head. Guys, there’s a world here, someone created me. Use your heads. The second Jewish revolutionary in the world, that man. We said everything is in the heart, “The Merciful One wants the heart,” right? We started with the head; Moses too belongs there, Chabad—that’s wisdom, understanding, knowledge; never mind, it’s all in the head, we’ll skip. So that man is the second—that’s in the heart, right? Who was the third Jewish revolutionary? Marx. Everything is in the belly, in Capital, interests basically, right? The gut decides. The fourth Jewish revolutionary? Freud. Everything is below the belt. So we started here, in the head, moved to the heart, the belly, below the belt—the next one will probably be an orthopedist; what else is left? Now, behind this joke sits a reality, and that’s what I spoke about with them there at Sde Boker. There is a great despair about reason in our world, in our postmodern world. It somehow seems that reason can do anything, can prove a thing and its opposite. There is great despair of reason. And in a certain sense people see emotion as a substitute. Emotion receives a very dominant status in place of reason. It’s not that people are more stupid; they’re not more stupid, but they are more warm-hearted, more emotional. Whereas once there was a much more respectful attitude toward rational, intellectual, what I called earlier Lithuanian-style conduct, today people see it as hypocrisy, because really the heart is supposed to drive you, the heart is the real thing. The mind is something alienated, something unreal, something detached from life. And therefore today—you hear this—anyone who went to an exhibition or a concert or something like that tells us whether it was moving or not moving. He doesn’t say, look, there were such-and-such conceptions there, it was very interesting because there was some intellectually interesting aspect. Usually you won’t hear that. He says it was very moving, not moving, yes moving. It grabbed me, it didn’t grab me. Everything is measured in emotional terms. And again, it’s not that people are stupid. People have not become more stupid; rather they are more emotional because of this despair of reason. And this is part of that same phenomenon I spoke about earlier, and therefore I am a proud Litvak. Meaning, I still belong to the generation… No, no, it’s not despair of reason; it’s the knowledge that you need to integrate, and that is what is called emotional intelligence. Ah, we spoke about emotional intelligence. In my view that is part of the same process. Emotional intelligence is intelligence for the poor, the intellect of the poor in place of real intelligence. Fine, let’s continue.