Rosh Hashanah 5774

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, I don’t know. Rather, the intention here is fear of Heaven as a character trait of the soul, not as one of the commandments—the commandment of fearing God—which serves as the root of serving God in general. And still, it’s exactly like I said before: really this is the concept of repentance, fear of Heaven, love of God, repentance. All these things, their essence is not some particular commandment or another among the 613. Everything that appears in Maimonides’ Laws of Repentance is about fundamental powers of the soul, not about one commandment or another. And still, the difficulty remains. After all, just as we find one who serves out of fear, so too we find one who serves out of love. What does he mean? What I said before—that in love of God too there is the same distinction. There is the commandment of loving God, which is one of the 613 commandments, and there is love of God as a trait of the soul, as a foundation of serving God, a form of serving God. So even if we want to attribute choice to that underlying foundation of serving God and not to a particular commandment, we could still do that with love of God and with fear of God. So the difficulty still hasn’t been resolved. Why do the Sages choose to attribute it specifically to fear of God? What, then, is the special connection between the power of choice and specifically the trait of fear? Okay, yes. One of the wonderful points hidden in the language of the Sages here is that there really is a special matter in the relation of the power of choice to the trait of fear, something whose like is not found in the relation of the power of choice to the trait of love. The power of choice appears in relation to love too, just as in relation to fear. But the Sages nevertheless derive it from, or connect it to, the trait of fear. Why? Because there is a great difference between a desire nourished by love and a desire nourished by fear. Right, we want something; there are two ways to want it. You can want it out of love, and you can want it out of fear. What we’d call, in our language, carrot and stick. Okay? Carrot is a way of arousing desire in the mode of love, and stick also arouses desire. Right? “Coerce him until he says, ‘I want to’”—that also arouses desire. All kinds of coercion. In education too, sometimes there is education in a way that causes the child to love something or want to do it, and sometimes you bring him to do it in a way of fear. Sometimes, by the way, even within love itself you can make a real fractal here. Meaning, within love itself you could divide, for example, between love and lust. What is the difference between love and lust?

[Speaker I] It means—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, lust is some kind of desire to pull the thing toward me. Love is some kind of need to contribute to that thing, meaning to act for the sake of that thing. That’s the difference between love and lust, even though those two things are often connected to one another. I think I once spoke about this.

[Speaker D] Yes, exactly, like the fish that loves fish.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or yes: “And they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her,” about Jacob—after all, his love is well known. Usually we’re used to the idea that if someone loves a woman, then if he has to wait one day, it feels to him like years. And with Jacob it went the other way: “And they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.” He worked fourteen years and it was nothing—it was like a few days for him because he loved her so much. The opposite—if he loved her, from his standpoint it should have been an eternity. So people say—I don’t remember, I’ve heard this in the name of several people—that he loved her and not himself.

[Speaker G] Was that Schweid?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, Professor Schweid.

[Speaker G] Where? In one of the articles? I remember he brings it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. In any case, usually why does every day seem like eternity to us? Because we want it for ourselves. We want to take hold of the thing, and we can’t wait until it will be ours. So if we have to wait one day, it seems like eternity. But if we are working for it, not for ourselves—we love it, it’s not lust, it’s love—then there the Torah says: “And they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.” The timeline expands instead of contracting—yes, that’s relativity theory. So that too—within love itself there can really be two directions like that, somewhat similar to the distinction between love and fear. Fine. One of the wonderful points hidden in the language of the Sages here is that there really is a special matter in the relation of the power of choice to the trait of fear, something whose like is not found in the relation of the power of choice to the trait of love. For there is a great difference between a desire nourished by love and a desire nourished by fear. For when a person is drawn after something out of love, then for that loving desire it is enough if he is given the possibility of satisfying the longing of that love. But when a person lives in constant fear because of a danger lurking for him, his peace of mind will not be complete if he is only given the possibility of escaping the danger; rather, in the desire of fear there is a tremendous drive to uproot the very possibility of the danger at its root. Meaning, say I’m afraid of something—not enough for me to escape the danger, because the fear always remains if that thing still exists. So I want to uproot the cause of the fear. In other words, it’s not enough for me to be saved from that factor; I want that factor to disappear, to be wiped out. By contrast, in love all I want is to reach that thing, and there isn’t some goal beyond what pertains to… I don’t want to wipe out the… or whatever, not to wipe out the thing itself. And because of this, when the power of choice becomes refined within the mode of serving out of fear, it creates a contradiction within the very course of that service. Here it’s not really a contradiction but a double movement, or what I would call a tension more than a contradiction. For the desire of the trait of fear of sin strives toward uprooting the possibility of danger. Okay? And in truth, embedded in every fear of sin is an aspiration for the nullification of the existence of sin. Right, fear of sin—fear means fear—not only the desire to be saved from sin, but to uproot the possibility that I might sin. Like fear, what he said before. Okay? There’s something deeper here. But the nullification of the existence of sin is itself also the nullification of the power of choice. For if I could really wipe out not sin itself but the possibility of sinning, there would be something there that drops the world a level. Because then it would come out that I would not sin not by the power of choosing not to sin, but because there is no such option. It’s gone, there is no such thing. So there is something unique in this fear that says: I indeed want not to sin, I fear sin, but at the same time I do not want the possibility of sin, the option of sinning, to be annihilated. I want to preserve it so that this will still be done out of choice.

[Speaker J] We want the choice? We want to do the good.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so he says—his claim is that we also need to want that, because that’s the meaning of repentance that I mentioned earlier. Repentance is not only to want to do good. For example, I’ll give you an example—we talked about this last year too. Suppose I offer you a psychiatric pill, okay? One that will make you not sin. To do only good, period. It’ll arrange your whole nervous system so that you won’t have an evil inclination, no desire to sin. Do you want to take it? Is there any value in taking it? Is it good to take it? I doubt it. Why? If our goal were only consequentialist—meaning, to do good and avoid evil—excellent method, it’s the best there is. But the claim here, and I think this is what he is arguing, is that our goal is not to do the good; our goal is to choose the good. Meaning, someone who would program—we spoke earlier about two forms of education—someone who would succeed in programming his child, hypnotizing his child so that he does good and has no option at all to do evil—that is not an educational success.

[Speaker D] So then why do people always talk about the sin of the first man? According to what you’re saying, he actually elevated us, advanced us, made the world better, because before that there was no choice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, well, the question is whether there was no choice or whether the choice was theoretical. The question is simply that we’d have to get into what exactly the sin of the first man was. But if he sinned, then—

[Speaker D] He lowers the world if we take out—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He lowers the world because he sinned, not because he had the possibility of sinning. He had the possibility of sinning beforehand too; otherwise how did he sin if there was no possibility? The possibility of sinning was there beforehand. So he didn’t introduce the possibility of sinning; he introduced sin, the realization of that possibility. The realization is certainly evil. The fear of sin is exactly this: this tension between—I don’t want not to have the possibility of sinning, I want there to be choice, but I don’t want to sin. Meaning, I don’t want that possibility to be realized. That’s why this is the tension he’s talking about here: fear of sin is a very delicate fear. You have to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Meaning, out of excessive fear of sin, you’ll neutralize the possibility of sinning. By the way, this has lots of implications. Meaning, in serving God there are those who prefer to build a spiritual educational world that does not place people before dangers, in various degrees. We all want that at some level or another, but the question is how much—it’s a matter of dosage. But on the principled level, you need to know that such a thing is problematic. Problematic even though, ostensibly, it leads us to a lower chance of sinning. If you expose yourself, or your child, or your student—doesn’t matter—to fewer possibilities, then of course there is less chance that he will choose them. The question is whether for that reason it is proper not to expose him—one second—not to expose him, not to give him even the potential possibility of choosing in directions that I would not want him to choose, or not. My goal is the opposite: that he should do it out of choice, even though of course that involves risk. No free lunch, as our rabbis said. Okay? Meaning, if you present such possibilities to him, the chance that he will realize them is greater. That’s just the way it is. So you can lock him in, and you can expose him and try to educate him. To educate is not to program. To educate means to persuade him, or bring him to a state where he understands that these are not good options. The price being that maybe he won’t understand it—or maybe I don’t understand, maybe he’s right, I don’t know. But that danger is a danger people are terribly afraid of. And they are not so afraid of the other side, even though it too is a danger, as Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner says here: the danger that a person will do it as a programmed robot, not because he chose it. Here too he loses something—that too is a loss. There is no safe way and unsafe way. Even the safe way contains a kind of loss. Yes.

[Speaker I] And with regard to the safe way too, he also chose, in the same kind of choice. A choice? He chose to go to the desert; he chose, and that also has prices, and so that he won’t choose afterwards. Same thing as a person in the Torah world chose to be religious, and from that moment his choices are already different. They are choices, but… no, and he also loses, because he doesn’t leave for himself every day, as you’re saying, choosing whether he believes or not, even if he’s inside the framework.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Every day he chooses—what do you mean?

[Speaker I] Every day he chooses. No, but with the religious person, ostensibly, it’s not every day that he chooses whether to believe.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean it’s not every day he chooses? In principle, yes. Look, this is Rabbi Dessler’s “window of choice.” Meaning, there are things that are already below the window. Fine, that’s how we’re built.

[Speaker I] I’m saying, the choice of the desert is also a kind of choice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the choice to take a pill so as not to sin is also a kind of choice—so why not take it?

[Speaker I] So why not, but—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that if you asked even halakhic decisors, they would tell you not to take it. The choice to believe is not a choice? I decided that I believe. What kind of thing is that, a choice? It is a choice, yes, but I believe. What does that mean? What do you want? That every morning I should say—should I convince myself that I don’t believe? But I do believe—what can I do?

[Speaker I] No, ostensibly you’re reducing the—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m also reducing it, but I really do believe.

[Speaker I] So I’m reducing it—what can I do? But I believe, what am I supposed to do? No, you say, suppose you believe, but you choose whether to lead a religious lifestyle. But I also believe that this is true, so what do you want me to do—convince myself that it’s not true? Every morning… okay, that’s what I said, the window. To get up every morning and say, wait a second, shall we lead a religious life today or not? No problem—you can say whatever you want—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —but you already think that way, you already have such a stance.

[Speaker I] No, it’s the same kind of… no, I don’t agree. I think the choice of the desert is not a less thoughtful and good choice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, I’m not entering right now into the question of what is more or less thoughtful and good, but I’m saying on the principled level there are things that are not in our hands. If I think I believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, and I think there is an obligation to fulfill His commandments, then that’s what I think. What do you want—that every morning I should do meditation, forget it out of myself, and then decide all over again about the matter? That’s just not serious. That’s where I am—what can I do? Now, Rabbi Dessler says: as you solve the basic problems, you still remain with the somewhat higher ones. That’s the window he describes there. And true, the struggle never ends, and that’s perfectly fine. The Holy One, blessed be He, takes care of us so that apparently this business never ends, even if every morning we don’t really start completely from scratch. But there is still some attitude here that does have practical implications for life. Because there are things we could decide to close off from ourselves because they involve danger—especially things that also involve benefit. About those I’m speaking even more. Because things that have no benefit to them—closing them off from us may be an easier decision. But there are things, there are groups, and people, each one—

[Speaker I] And there’s also a benefit of another sort—say, lust for the sake of the matter—things that are…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, by benefit I meant in the positive sense.

[Speaker I] Right, and I’m saying that in the desert too there are those same losses.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. I said—it is a benefit that comes with a loss, and now you have to see what you take.

[Speaker B] And that pill too—it also doesn’t prevent choice from me, because I move to higher levels of choice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The pill I mentioned—the pill I was talking about is a pill that—

[Speaker B] Yes, and that’s also not important.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because even if the pill raises you to another level—so the pill raised you there, so what difference does it make? That section the pill wiped out definitively. But that other section remains, where it still doesn’t deal with it. So take another pill, and then by induction, when you’re at that stage you’ll need to take the pill appropriate to it, and so on. A kind of bootstrap.

[Speaker I] Fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And since when choice is nullified there is no room at all for service, it turns out that the course of the service of fear of sin is a course that contradicts itself from within. For the longing to be a servant of God includes within it the desire for the existence of choice, and consequently it requires the existence of sin—or at least the possibility of sin, not necessarily its realization, yes? But the longing of fear of sin aspires to remove the existence of sin. Even though there are distinctions between fear of Heaven and fear of sin, in any case they do not touch our issue. Therefore, for the sake of clarity in the matter we are discussing, we are speaking about fear of sin in place of fear of Heaven. That’s just a note—he mixes fear of sin with fear of Heaven here, but it doesn’t matter for our purposes right now. So this combination of service and fear of sin means only this: a fierce and tremendous longing for the existence of sin so that it will be possible to long for its nullification. I always need to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I long very much to be in a situation where things will still depend on me. I also long to choose correctly. One must long—but to choose correctly, not to do correctly. Okay? That’s a different longing. Indeed, anyone who tastes in this contradiction the taste of a difficulty or refutation—someone who thinks this is really a contradiction, meaning something actually wrong that one cannot live with—that is a sign for him that he has not encountered and not touched the service of God of the Laws of Character Traits and Duties of the Heart. In truth, this contradiction is what nourishes the movement of the soul in this service of fear of sin. This is one of the aspects in explaining the matter of “running and returning” in our service. There are opposing movements in our souls, but we are not supposed to aspire that one should overcome the other. We are supposed to aspire that both should be present in us together. The running and the returning. Exactly this tension together. And that’s a very important point, because many people in practice—in practice, many people do not aspire to that. They aspire to the running without the returning. It’s not so accepted in Jewish thought. It seems to me that’s why—the righteous person of the Tanya? What?

[Speaker B] The righteous person of the Tanya really isn’t—really isn’t a goal.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s a description of a type. It’s not a goal. There is no goal to be a righteous person. There is a goal to be a perfect intermediate person. And he describes it there as a deterministic picture. There are those who are righteous and those who are intermediate. And the intermediate person is someone who works to the end and does not sin. I don’t think he—apparently I don’t understand Tanya well enough—but I don’t think he sets it there, in my opinion, as a goal for the intermediate person to become a righteous person.

[Speaker D] But Hutner doesn’t speak like you. He keeps talking about choice all the time. Not like you say—once you choose, afterwards you’re led, leading.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On the contrary, that’s what I’m saying.

[Speaker D] The choice is to be leading—that’s the choice. On the contrary, that’s what I’m saying. So it’s not a matter of being led-leading?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On the contrary, it is a matter of leading. When I choose, I lead myself—what do you mean?

[Speaker D] Yes, but you said the moment you chose, then you’re no longer choosing, you’re either dragged along or you overcome.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And to overcome is not a choice?

[Speaker I] What do you mean? So it is a choice all the time. The question that before, in my opinion, wasn’t clear is whether there is choosing good as opposed to choosing evil, or whether there is choosing good, and if you didn’t happen to choose good that means that—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said: there are two kinds of penitents that I described earlier, and these are exactly those two kinds of choice. One is choosing the correct value system, and the second is the choice to act in accordance with my value system and not surrender to inclinations and the like. Now, maybe I distinguished this too dichotomously between religious and secular, or believers and non-believers, when we should not talk about good and evil but about serving God—because there can be good people in every direction. But, but, but of course in each of us there is some of this and some of that. Fine, I accept that. Okay. So that’s… but still, these two types are different types. These two kinds of choice are different kinds of choice. And that doesn’t mean that someone born religious does not struggle at all with being a penitent in the first sense. He struggles at the points where that exists within him. Okay. In all this, the same does not apply to the relation of the power of choice to the trait of love. And this is one of the points—yes—the power of choice in relation, say, to the trait of fear: he spoke about fear where part of what I want is to annihilate the source of the fear, not only to succeed in escaping it. As distinct from love, where all I want is simply to connect to the object of my love. Okay? Now, choice when it is tied to sin or to fear of sin specifically grapples with this tendency. Because you need to want not to sin and at the same time not want to annihilate the root of sin. Meaning, this choice creates a certain tension in relation to fear of sin. By contrast, choice in relation to love is a simpler choice, without this internal tension. And this is one of the points emphasized in the style of the Sages, that “everything is in the hands of Heaven except fear of Heaven.” And in this way we must also explain to ourselves King David’s request: “Examine me, Lord, and test me; refine my kidneys and my heart.” He asks the Holy One, blessed be He, to put him to the test. Which goes against the accepted notions of “do not bring me into the hands of a test,” right? And here he asks the Holy One, blessed be He, to bring him into a test. Which according to the tradition of the Sages led to him being punished for this request, until afterward he said concerning these words of his, “I resolved that my mouth should not transgress.” In the Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 107, the Gemara says there that the Bathsheba episode came in the wake of this. He asked the Holy One, blessed be He, to put him to the test, so He put him to the test and he failed. So don’t ask to stand in a test—meaning, don’t take this too far. But look, this is a little against what he said above, so what does “and in this way we must explain” mean? Ostensibly this goes against what he said above. Here you’re not supposed to want to stand in a test. So he says as follows: that is, would that this thing had not come out of my mouth. And these are wondrous words. For of necessity the meaning cannot be that there is regret here about the very request of “examine me and test me,” for this request remained for generations among the supplications of the Jewish people. And after all, likewise the request “do not bring me into the hands of a test” is also one of the supplications of the Jewish people. So now go and sustain yourself on this—how can these two supplications both stand? We say this verse too in Psalms, “Examine me and test me,” right? The Talmud, after all, says that “Test Me now in this” was said regarding tithes—that one may test the Holy One, blessed be He, to examine Him. Meaning, there are situations—we also have some such request to be tested, even though on the other hand at the same time we also say… “do not bring me into the hands of a test.” Rather, that is exactly the point. This contradiction between these two supplications is only one of the forms of the general contradiction in the very course of the service of fear of sin. And the explanation is along the lines of what we find: on the one hand there is an emphatic obligation imposed on anyone who has reached the level of rendering decisions in Jewish law to render legal rulings. One who has reached that level must issue rulings; when he is asked, he must answer. He is not allowed to flee or avoid it. And on the other hand, the fundamental condition of a legal decisor is fear of ruling. In order to be a decisor, you need fear of ruling. Meaning, after total flight from issuing rulings, there is then an obligation to run after it. As in the well-known incident with a certain great sage who refused to accept a judicial appointment, saying that he had fear of ruling. And his teacher said to him: Then who will rule for us? Someone who is not afraid? Meaning, if you have fear of ruling, then you are exactly the one who needs to issue rulings. What—someone who has no fear of ruling should issue rulings? In truth—so what is he saying, really? That you need to have fear of ruling, but it must not be realized. Many times a person says, “I fear ruling,” and therefore he indeed does not rule. That is disqualifying. About this the Sages speak and say that one who fears ruling has an obligation to rule. But that does not mean fear of ruling is a bad trait—quite the opposite. Fear of ruling is the condition for your being a legal decisor. Because if you don’t fear ruling, then you won’t be afraid, you won’t weigh things properly. You need this fear, and you need to pray to have fear of ruling, even while you sit in the position… what? And not overcome the trait of fear of ruling. You need to make sure it is not realized. Meaning, not bring it into practice and actually cease issuing rulings—you need to rule. There is something very subtle here, and I think many times halakhic decisors lose this point. Here—this wasn’t here—I gave some… Yossi, you were there in Netzach Shlomo a few weeks ago, I gave them a lecture—

[Speaker J] I don’t remember.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Too bad I wasn’t. There in Netzach Shlomo I spoke about an example from a rabbinical court before which came a woman with some problem regarding the kiddushin, and the court went into checking whether it was possible to annul the kiddushin. And it enters there—he says they open with words like this: “The cry of this unfortunate woman came before us, and we decided to exert ourselves, to delve deeply into the issue, to see whether it is possible to annul her kiddushin.” Then dozens of pages with this source and that source, and it’s pretty clear that their position is presented in a very well-grounded way—that it is possible to annul the kiddushin. Then the head of the court concludes and says: okay, but since this subject is weighty, and I am among those who fear ruling, I will leave it to the great sages of the generation. So what he has done for the woman’s benefit is apparently that now they will be able to read this booklet while he sits at home. I mean, this thing is simply beyond belief. After that his two colleagues join him—three judges remain with the conclusion that they leave it to the great sages of the generation. I don’t know who these great sages of the generation are. Who is supposed to reach them? What legal standing do the great sages of the generation have? State law does not recognize rulings of great sages of the generation, only rulings of a rabbinical court. A rabbinical court sits over the matter—it is obligated to reach a decision. That is an obligation both in Jewish law and in civil law. You must. If you don’t—if you’re of those who fear ruling in that sense—then don’t be there. Fear of ruling in that sense. But you absolutely should be of those who fear ruling in the sense of the feeling, in the sense of the weight of responsibility. That’s perfectly fine, in order to consider matters seriously—that is the positive fear of ruling. But when one realizes fear of ruling, when it also becomes expressed in life, that is negative. This is exactly that fellow who wanted to avoid being a judge because he feared ruling, and so he says to him—this is the story he brings here—what are you talking about? You, who fear ruling, are precisely the one who must rule. You must rule. It’s not that the aspiration to fear ruling is a good aspiration so long as it remains in potential in the soul, but it must not be realized—just like the power to sin. In truth, first the prayer bursts forth: “Do not bring me into the hands of a test,” because a test is nothing other than an encounter with the reality of sin, and within the very service of fear of sin there is included the longing to uproot this reality of sin. But precisely after this flight from the reality of sin there awakens the longing toward the existence of the reality of sin, so that by rejecting it we may reveal the quality of the service of fear of sin. Because if there were no desire to sin, where would this service of fear of sin be revealed? “Examine me, Lord, and test me”—and this is King David’s side. Precisely in proportion to the bitterness of the cry of “do not bring me into the hands of a test,” afterward there comes the quality of longing of “Examine me, Lord, and test me.” Not that—but yes, you should want tests to come before you, that you should have these desires over which you need to overcome. Not to be a complete righteous person in the terms of the Tanya, but to be an intermediate person. Yes, in that language.

[Speaker E] Why—because in fear there is more contradiction and more mess—why because of that is choice only there?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not only there.

[Speaker E] He says—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —that the fundamental service of God is apparently found there. Therefore the Sages attached choice to that, because there you see choice in its fullness. There are partial manifestations of choice in other places too, in love as well, but the full manifestation of the concept of choice is specifically connected to fear. That’s the claim, I think. And in this way there also comes Rabbi Akiva’s statement, that at the time when they were combing his flesh with iron combs he said: “All my days I was waiting—when would this verse come to my hands so that I could fulfill it?” And from this we see that a deep anticipation of a terrible test does not contradict fleeing from the test. Rabbi Akiva did not ask for this test. What—did he pray all his life that he wanted intentionally to enter this test? Certainly not. “Do not bring me into the hands of a test.” But still, within him there was some prayer that he would have tests and be able to stand in them. Even when Rabbi Akiva prayed “do not bring me into the hands of a test,” his soul was full of this anticipation toward a terrible test of flesh being combed with iron combs. But in truth, so is justice and so is the measure. The greatest qualification for issuing rulings is flight from issuing rulings. The only qualification for being fit to anticipate a test is absolute dread before the test. If you are totally terrified of the test, then you truly can stand in it—and need to stand in it. Deep attention to the inwardness of these matters will give us an entryway into understanding the saying of the Sages that it would have been more comfortable for a person not to have been created than to have been created. Everyone was alarmed by this wondrous statement. After all, there is an explicit verse in the Torah after the creation of man: “And behold, it was very good.” It is very good that man was created—so what does it mean that it would have been more comfortable for a person not to have been created than to have been created? And not only that, but the word “very” is unique specifically to the creation of man. So how can it be that it would have been more comfortable for a person not to have been created than to have been created? Rather, that is exactly the point. The main novelty in the creation of man is the power of choice in him. “And He formed” with two yods—a double formation, from the higher realms and from the lower realms. And it has become clear to us that the positive relation to the power of choice passes specifically through the negative relation. The happiness of choice is revealed only after recognition of the disaster of choice. The disaster that choice can bring down upon us, since choice is what also enables us to choose evil, to fail. So ostensibly there is a potential disaster in it. Consequently, on the contrary, that itself is the point: the “very good” in the creation of man is revealed only after the penetrating recognition that it would have been more comfortable for a person not to have been created than to have been created. Meaning, the feeling of this disaster—that when we were created, of course, choice was given to us. Souls, let’s say, are commonly thought not to have choice. When they are planted within a body, that means that now they already have two options: they can sin, they can not sin—that is what creation means. Now this thing, entering a situation where you can choose between good and evil—you are supposed to live that as a kind of disaster on one side, or at least the potential outcomes as a kind of disaster. But the fact that you are in that situation is a positive fact. Once I spoke about the saying that no evil descends from above. There are those who understand that as a result of the saying that no evil descends from above, apparently even when a person does evil, really the Holy One, blessed be He, arranged it somehow through him, because after all everything is from Him. There is no greater mistake than that, of course. Clearly the Holy One, blessed be He, does not want there to be evil, and certainly does not maneuver us into doing evil. That’s completely absurd. So what does it mean that everything is in the hands of Heaven? First of all, it’s except fear of Heaven. But “no evil descends from above” means that the junction within which we stand, in which we choose between good and evil, is in the hands of Heaven. The Holy One, blessed be He, created the world in such a way that we have before us two possibilities, both the good and the evil, and we can also actualize them. But whether we decide to actualize them—that is only us, not Him. He does not want us to actualize the evil. The realization of evil is what we do. It may be by means of a power He gave us, but the decision where to channel that power is our decision. Therefore no evil descends from above. Meaning, evil is our product, not the product of the Holy One, blessed be He. The possibility of doing evil—that is, the fact that we are in a situation where we have the possibility of choosing between good and evil—is from the Holy One, blessed be He. But that is absolute good, because the possibility of doing evil is good, since without it—if we had no possibility of doing evil—then really our good too would not be good, because it would not be the result of choice. Meaning, the possibility of doing evil is what gives content to the choice of good at all. Because without that, fine, we would simply be creatures forced to do good; that would not be good, it would simply be our nature. Right? So the possibility of doing evil is wholly good. And therefore no evil descends from above, even though the possibility of doing evil descended from above. Not evil itself. That is our decision. The possibility of doing evil descended from above.

[Speaker D] But I don’t believe that, because all the great sages of Israel—the greater he is, the less hesitation he has, less choice—and that’s always considered a good thing. Why less?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Whoever is greater than his fellow, his inclination is greater than his”—usually it’s the opposite. They have more inclinations.

[Speaker D] No, but on a low level it’s—you hesitate, I don’t know, whether to recite Grace after Meals or not.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everyone has things about which he no longer hesitates.

[Speaker D] Obviously—far beyond that level.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I also hope that you too don’t hesitate whether to murder or not. Okay? Each of us—yes, right.

[Speaker D] But why is that less choice?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you have choice in the place where you are. And there—over there—the struggle is hard, on the contrary; that’s the meaning of “his inclination is greater than his.” At the points where he struggles, he really has a very significant inclination. Those are points where we don’t struggle so much. So that doesn’t mean he is at those same basic points where an ordinary person struggles. At higher points he has a very difficult struggle. It’s no less difficult to struggle—maybe the consequences are more subtle. Fine.

[Speaker H] You struggle, you hesitate whether to learn fourteen hours or fourteen and a quarter hours. No, there are people for whom that’s their hesitation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. And it’s no less difficult. No, I said—not hesitate. Thirteen, fourteen hours—that’s yes, that’s far below. And furthermore, all the other beings, of whom “very good” was not said in their creation, that is because it cannot be said of them that it would have been more comfortable for them not to have been created than to have been created. Now he returns to Rosh Hashanah. And on Rosh Hashanah, which is the remembrance of the first day, meaning the day of man’s creation—this day is the beginning of Your works, of the statement “Let us make man.” Yes, the first day—Rosh Hashanah is a remembrance of the creation of man, and the very essence of the holiness of the day of Rosh Hashanah is the holiness of the creation of man, and therefore man is also judged on this day. Okay? Because all this is a remembrance of his creation. And since this is the holiness of the day, two flames belonging to the creation of man are kindled in it. There burns in it the flame of “it would have been more comfortable for a person not to have been created than to have been created,” and from this comes groaning and wailing. This is, after all, the saying of the Sages about the shofar—the shevarim-teruah—that it is groaning and wailing, yes, this sadness, this pain, the tearing of the hair over the potential for evil that was born together with man and was also realized in the sin of the first man. And out of this very flame itself, the higher flame is kindled—the flame of “very good.” Many times we live with this kind of dichotomous feeling. After all, it says that it would have been better for a person not to have been created than to have been created, so how can we say that it is “very good” when man was created? What?

[Speaker K] Not the same thing. It’s more comfortable.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not more comfortable, but in that context I think it means good.

[Speaker K] More comfortable means he’s exempt from all the inclinations.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In our language that sounds convenient, but I don’t think that in the language of the Sages “convenient” means what it means in modern language. “Convenient” means that there is a kind of inner assent, a spiritual contentment. In other words, it was more correct to do it this way. But the more complex conception is, yes, like the chocolate example that I’ve mentioned a thousand times already: it’s good to eat chocolate because it tastes good, and it’s not good to eat it because it’s unhealthy. So is that a contradiction? No, those are two different aspects. From the standpoint of taste it’s good; from the standpoint of health it’s not good. A lot of times, when we see some statement of the Sages or in a verse, and there’s an apparently contradictory statement, immediately we say, ah, contradiction—what do we do? But it’s simply different aspects. There is a certain aspect because of which it is not good, and another aspect because of which it is good. Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner makes this into something even subtler: from that very same aspect itself. The potential to do evil is good; the possibility of doing evil in actuality is bad. Yes, so it’s not even exactly two aspects, but two sides of the same coin. And the two flames are burning together, one above the other. “Do not weep”—now he returns to the point with which he opened—“do not weep, for the joy of the Lord is your stronghold.” And it has already become clear to us that it was not said here because there is no place for weeping. On the contrary: before the weeping, there are not enough tears to express the disaster of the creation of man. It would have been more comfortable for him had he not been created than, once created. And if we translate this into the halakhic decisors on Rosh Hashanah—yes, which he brought there at the beginning—whether one is allowed to fast on Rosh Hashanah: those who say that one may fast, that is over the sins that we have committed; we are mourning the fact that the evil in our creation was also actualized. All right? That is the same weeping he is talking about. The reason to weep exists. The halakhic decisors who say not to fast are saying: overcome it. Not that there is no reason, but that one must overcome it. Why? Because the fact that we have the possibility to do evil is itself a good thing. That is not something it is right to cry over. It is right to cry over the fact that it was actualized. Until midday you may fast, but from midday on it is not right to cry over the essence of the day, over the fact that on this day the possibility of sinning was created for us. That is not right. Here you need to understand how to overcome that place about which, truly, there is room to cry. And then he says: “And it has already become clear to us that it was not said here because there is no place for weeping. On the contrary, before the weeping there are not enough tears to express through them the disaster of the creation of man; it would have been more comfortable for him had he not been created than, once created. However, after the weeping, truly there is nothing to cry about. Do not weep and do not be sad, for the joy of the Lord is your stronghold, and God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. Tremble before Him, all the earth; the world also is established, that it cannot be moved.” Regarding worldly matters, this is an open contradiction. Tremble and yet not collapse? If you tremble, then you collapse. What does it mean to tremble and not collapse? So he says: rather, this is the character of the inner worlds on the festival of Rosh Hashanah—the firmness of the stance through trembling and shaking. Yes, “rejoice with trembling,” of course. And in this we return to the opening words: “Happy is the people who know the blast.” And the Sages explained: they know how to entice their Creator with the blast. According to what has become clear to us here, he says, the enticement is specifically connected to the shofar. Why? The meaning is that this is the definition of enticement: the speech differs from the intention—one thing in the mouth and another in the intention. What is enticement? Enticement is to entice someone, basically to say things to him that do not really reflect my true intention. I am trying to lure him, to draw him in with words—one thing in the mouth and another in the heart. That is called enticement. In other words, enticement in this sense is this dichotomy between what is in the heart and what is in the mouth, or between the act and the inclination. What he said earlier: the inclination to do evil is good; the evil act is evil. So the expression of what happens in the heart, this tension or this gap between what happens in the heart and what happens in actuality—that is what, for the Sages, is called enticement. And therefore this category is unique to the shofar, because all the commandments operate in direct proportion to the content of their idea. Whereas shofar is different, in that they make “very good” grow out of groaning and wailing. That is the enticement. And through the fact that they know how to entice their Creator with the blast, “they walk in the light of His countenance.” Meaning that even though all the gifts were given through a shining countenance—“for in the light of Your countenance You gave us, Lord our God, a Torah of life and lovingkindness,” and so on—yes, all the commandments, as he said at the beginning—nevertheless, the plain shining of the countenance is the general shining of the countenance, not for a specific commandment but for the service of God in general, which belongs to the very essence of the creation of man, which is fear of God, which is choice, which is the essence, which is life—and this is also connected to life, yes, “and I have set before you life.” “And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good”; “very” has the same letters as “man.” And this general shining of the countenance, which belongs to the essence of creation, appears through knowing the blast—through our understanding the meaning of the blast. What does “knowing the blast” mean, as distinct from the blast in actuality? To understand the enticement, what is inside, not what happens when we act, but the inner point, which is not always the same thing as what we do. To understand that gap—“knowing the blast” is what brings the shining of the countenance. Because only through the enticement of the wail can one reveal the “very good” that is in the tekiah, of course—yes, that is what is supposed to be. After all, there is tekiah-shevarim-teruah-tekiah here; the groaning and wailing are the shevarim-teruah, and the tekiah is straight, it is a straight sound, not groaning and wailing. So there is some tension here, and that tension is expressed in the sounding of the shofar itself, which is groaning and wailing, and through that we understand the tekiah, the straight thing. “Happy is the people who know the blast; O Lord, they walk in the light of Your countenance.”

One more sentence—exactly enough time to add this. One could learn from here the topic in tractate Rosh Hashanah on 29a, where the Talmud discusses Rosh Hashanah that falls on the Sabbath. Why don’t we sound the shofar? In the Jerusalem Talmud and in the Sifrei there is a derashah: it says “blast” and “remembrance of the blast,” two verses. And then the Talmud says: which is it—blast or remembrance? “Remembrance of the blast” means not to make the blast, but only to remember the blast—a potential blast. All right? So the question is: to sound it, or to remember the blast? What does the verse mean? Two verses. And the Talmud says: on an ordinary festival of Rosh Hashanah, it means to sound it; on Rosh Hashanah that falls on the Sabbath, it means to remember the blast, not to sound it. All right? That is the Jerusalem Talmud and the Sifrei. In the Babylonian Talmud they reject this. They reject it for various reasons—it can’t be, because there is no prohibition involved, so why would they prohibit such a thing? There is no prohibition in sounding the shofar; “it is a skill and not labor,” the Talmud says. It is not labor to sound the shofar on the Sabbath. So what then? So the Babylonian Talmud says: it is a decree lest one carry it four cubits in the public domain in order to learn. Yes, in order to prevent someone from carrying the shofar four cubits in the public domain, they therefore decreed not to sound it. This thing is very puzzling, this decree. An extremely puzzling decree. It is puzzling mainly because this day is called “a day of blast.” The sounding of the shofar is the essence of the day. Everything else we do around it—Day of Judgment and all that—has no hint in the verse, just a hint. Everything the verse says is that the essence of the day is sounding the shofar; the day is called a day of blast. And what do the Sages say? Because of such a technical matter, some concern—put guards in the public domain, make sure of it, teach the laws better—what is the problem with handling it in some other way? And then they uproot the whole day—not some side point, but the very essence of the day—because of a concern lest one carry it four cubits in the public domain. What is this, are they joking? Therefore it is clear, in my humble opinion, that the principle of the Jerusalem Talmud is not there for nothing. It is not for no reason that the Babylonian Talmud brings it at the beginning and then rejects it; it is not really rejected. What is written in the verse is that on Rosh Hashanah there is an aspect of blast and an aspect of remembrance of the blast. Remembrance of the blast is not an after-the-fact substitute because there is a prohibition against sounding it, so we settle for remembrance of the blast. No. There is an idea of remembering on that day. We say remembrances—remembrances, sovereignties, and shofarot. What are remembrances and shofarot? Remembrance of the blast and blast. On this day there is, from the outset, an idea of remembrance of the blast. On the day when we sound it, we perform the remembrance, the psychological matter, the potential, the inner dimension, by means of the act. When Rosh Hashanah falls on the Sabbath, we work in the mode of remembering the blast, not of sounding it. And the decree lest one carry it four cubits in the public domain merely tells us that here we need to work in the mode of remembrance of the blast and not in the mode of actual sounding. And whoever looks in Shibbolei HaLeket will see that he writes there something along these lines; and it also seems from Pnei Yehoshua in the passage that even in the conclusion this is talking about a Torah-level law and not about a mere rabbinic decree in the Babylonian Talmud. The decree lest one carry it four cubits in the public domain is the reason why the Sages chose the mode of remembrance of the blast and not the mode of blast, but the mode of remembrance of the blast is written in the verse. And really, if I return to here—what is “Happy is the people who know the blast”? “And Adam knew Eve his wife”—yes, to know means to connect. “Who know the blast” means that the blast is actualized. When the blast is actualized, that means that what is inside, the remembrance, is actualized as well; it comes to expression in action in the world. When Rosh Hashanah falls on the Sabbath, we only remember—we are those who remember the blast, not those who know the blast. We only remember the blast. Why? Because of the concern lest one carry it four cubits in the public domain, they choose this mode of service, which is no less legitimate. Both are needed. The Sages had to decide when to do this and when to do that. So they used this concern—or because of this concern they said: fine, we have another option anyway, so on Rosh Hashanah that falls on the Sabbath we will do it through that option. But that option is from the outset; even when we sound the shofar, we do not give up the remembrance of the blast, we just do it as accompanying the sounding.

Now look—this is really exactly what he said here. In other words, this relation between what is inside, between the potential and what is actualized, is exactly the meaning of “Happy is the people who know the blast.” That is exactly the shofar, because with the shofar we see that the same thing that you achieve through actually sounding it, you can achieve by merely remembering the sounding, through the desire to sound it or the inclination to sound it. That itself is equivalent, or achieves the same spiritual benefits, the same things that we achieve through the actual sounding. And therefore, even in this halakhic sense, we see here in the sounding of the shofar this whole matter of the relation between potential and actualization, between the inner inclination and the act that expresses it. You do not always have to express it in action; the inner inclination itself is also, in essence—perhaps even more than the act—something subtler, something higher. Many times we need to express it in action in order to live it, but there are situations in which we manage to do it even without that. Rosh Hashanah that falls on the Sabbath is higher than ordinary Rosh Hashanah. There we perform the remembrance of the blast without actualizing it in practice—only this potential, only this inner inclination—and, in the language of this homily, we are trying to return to that state of Adam before the sin, when the inclination to sin existed but had not yet been actualized. In other words, we remain with the inclination without its actual realization, because there is something there that we very much want to preserve, even though the actual realization is not good—because of the decree lest one carry it four cubits in the public domain, the actual realization is not good. But that does not mean we have landed in an after-the-fact situation; this is a state that contains an even higher from-the-outset ideal, the state of the first man before the sin.

[Speaker K] But in the Temple they did sound it, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, in the Temple they did sound it. You have to understand that there—why there they did do it.