Q&A: An Innocent Question
An Innocent Question
Question
First of all, I would like to thank the Rabbi for the articles, lectures, and responsa that are so enlightening and instructive—and even inspire one to learn more.
Second, I enjoy the site מאוד, and the fact that the Rabbi makes time to answer questioners, especially since it is not always at the Rabbi’s level.
There is an issue that has been bothering me for a long time, and today someone sent me a Chabad saying from their Hayom Yom calendar, today’s daily saying, related to the matter:
Between coldness and heresy there is a very thin partition. It is written, “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire”; godliness [=Judaism] is a flame of fire, and one must study and pray with vitality and enthusiasm.
What I mean is this: the Rabbi often emphasizes the matter of study, intellect, understanding, and so on.
On the site, the Rabbi even quotes, in every window, the words of Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook: "The greatest deficiency that exists in the quality of fear of Heaven when it is not properly connected to the light of Torah is that, instead of fear of sin, it is replaced by fear of thought. And once a person begins to fear thinking, he sinks ever deeper into the mire of ignorance, which robs the light of his soul, weakens his strength, and darkens his spirit."
But what about Rabbi Kook’s words in the very next section:
"A person does not live by thought alone, but by his spiritual essence, which he must guard with utmost care. And it is a gift of God, and it is preserved specifically through divine guarding. Keep My commandments and live."
"One must constantly engage with the general matter of fear of Heaven, to understand the content of the idea, and to acquire it in its purity, as the most precious quality of life; and afterward to look in detail at that fear unique to Israel—what it is, and what its essential boundaries are."
I am asking an innocent question, not, Heaven forbid, to provoke. I hope to receive the Rabbi’s answer.
Answer
I did not understand the question. If you want an interpretation of Rabbi Kook’s words, go to the experts in his teachings. I am not among them. In general, even if there is something in this passage that contradicts my approach (as I understand you think), that does not really matter to me. As far as I’m concerned, Rabbi Kook is a source of inspiration, not an authority. I quote this passage from him because it fits what I think.
As for the substance of the matter, I do not really understand what the concepts “spiritual essence” mean, nor what the relation is between that and intellect or emotion, nor what exactly he means by fear of Heaven that must be acquired in purity. These concepts are not clear to me, and I do not have much to say about them.
Discussion on Answer
And then what? Fine, it’s good for us to have a good inclination and it’s worthwhile to cultivate it. Fine. What does that have to do with our discussion?
My intention was to suggest an explanation for Rabbi Kook’s expression “spiritual essence.”
That “spiritual essence” is neither intellect nor emotion (though one can use them in order to encounter it, similar to his remarks about faith / belief, which is neither intellect nor emotion). I suggest that this is a psychological tendency that needs development, and its development is not achieved through an intellectual act but through choosing that pure tendency that is embedded in a person against his will, so what is needed here is not philosophy but choice.
The question here was about the centrality of intellect and decision versus warmth and emotion. I am asking: what do Rabbi Kook’s words about this spiritual essence say with respect to the issue at hand? I do not see what they contribute to the matter.
By the way, the question of whether these are neither intellect nor emotion is just a matter of definition. In my view, faith / belief is intellect in a completely ordinary sense, and inclination (whether bad or good) is emotion in a completely ordinary sense.
I imagine that “spiritual essence” means that part of a person which the Sages called the “good inclination,” that is, a tendency in the soul toward the good. This inclination is a kind of impulse and is not influenced by the thinking part, so rationalism neither adds nor detracts from it.