Q&A: Obligations That Precede the Torah
Obligations That Precede the Torah
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi,
I heard the Rabbi’s lecture on the two laws regarding Torah study (“the commandment” of Torah study and Torah study itself, on YouTube), and I enjoyed it מאוד much (it was the first lecture by the Rabbi that I listened to seriously… I imagine I’d enjoy the others too).
The general principle that was introduced there, and for which you brought support, is that there are obligations that come before the commandments in the Torah (such as character traits, and likewise the law of repentance according to Maimonides—unless we say like the Meshekh Chokhmah, that there is a commandment-act and a commandment-fulfillment).
In that context I wanted to bring up a few other similar things.
Rabbi Moshe Feinstein tries, in a certain responsum (I don’t remember right now where), to find the source for the prohibition against drug use. I remember that he finds five sources for the prohibition (somehow he compared one of them to the rebellious son, and others—I don’t remember). When I read it, I didn’t agree even with one of them, but I did agree that drug use is wrong, and I also thought, as above, that the problem is not connected to Torah law as such, but comes before one reaches Torah obligations.
Also, Rabbi Elchanan is known and famous in his Explanations of Aggadah in the plain-sense approach, where he argues that heresy comes only from the desires of the heart, and that in essence faith is something very simple (I imagine you tore those pages out of the volume, or something like that, but in yeshiva-analytic terms it’s very nice… and so I wanted to discuss it with you…). One of the things he gains there is an explanation of why it says, “Do not stray after your hearts,” and not “after your minds,” or something like that—after all, faith depends on the intellect, so necessarily faith is influenced only by the heart, and about that the Torah commanded us not to stray. And based on this he also explained why a Noahide is likewise held accountable for faith, since if he did not believe, that must have been only because of the desires of his heart. And I wondered: even so, why is he held accountable for that? A Noahide, within the seven commandments, has no command not to stray after the heart. And I thought to say that this too is included in the above category of obligations before Torah law—but I immediately rejected that, because if it really is included in that category, then with regard to Jews too it should not be included there; instead, it is counted among the Torah’s commands. I wanted to know what the Rabbi thinks about this?
P.S. In that lecture the Rabbi also connected this to the Ran there in Nedarim. I don’t understand how that can be said in the Ran, since he holds that the intensive obligation of Torah study comes from an exposition?
Answer
Hello Reuven.
If you want to expand a bit on this matter, see Rabbi Asher Weiss’s opening lecture (Minchat Asher) to Bava Kamma. Also see my article on sevarot here on the site:
Discussion on Answer
I didn’t say that in the Ran. On the contrary, I said it in the Rosh, but I noted that even according to the Ran, the additional obligations are not from the ordinary Torah-level commandment itself, but from an exposition.
Ah, I didn’t understand you that way. Fine—thank you very much, and happy holiday.
It seems to me that Rabbi Elchanan argues that faith is such a simple piece of reasoning that everyone surely thought about it at some point, and if he still does not believe then necessarily he is driven by desires—unlike geometry, where it makes no practical difference whether he thought about it. (I thought the Rabbi would disagree at the point where Rabbi Elchanan says it is something so simple, with no complexity at all.)
I thought about the idea that “something that follows from reasoning” was nevertheless written explicitly in the verse, but here that seems hard to say, since the very nature of the obligation is that it goes without saying that one must keep it. (And in the same way I also find this difficult regarding Rabbi Chaim Vital, since the Sages did in fact expound, “Just as He is merciful, so too you should be merciful,” etc. And from “You shall not murder” I have no difficulty, because we do not punish unless there was a prior warning, and the Torah wanted to impose punishment for this. And one could also force such an explanation for honoring parents—that the Torah wrote it for the sake of the laws that emerge from it regarding cursing one’s parents.)
Also, even if I agree that this is how the Ran can be explained (and for now I don’t agree, since if we say there is an external obligation, why did the Sages need to derive it that way—similar to what is difficult for me regarding Rabbi Chaim Vital), I still have difficulty with the way the Rabbi presented the matter. The Rabbi presented the passage in Nedarim, and immediately opened with the question: if so, where do all the Torah-study obligations familiar to us come from? And the Rabbi applied this question to the Ran as well. That I don’t understand, because according to the Ran the obligations came by virtue of the exposition?