Just to clarify your view:
Do you see Jewish law and the commandments as a framework for life and not as the content of life itself?
That is, is there time in the day that is “free,” in which I do as I wish (so long as it doesn’t conflict with Jewish law)?

Of course, my question is whether that is proper (= God’s will), not whether it contradicts Jewish law.

I do indeed tend to think that way regarding the commandments. Of course, I have no proof, and I don’t know how one could prove it. One can speak about verses like “In all your ways know Him” and the like, but those can be interpreted in various ways (as with Hebrew Bible verses in general).
Torah, unlike commandments, is indeed a way of life (and this distinction was already noted in Nefesh HaChaim, which devoted a separate section to Torah, among other things). Study and its application in decision-making and in one’s mode of perception do take—and should take—a major and central place in our lives and in our thinking (and also in how we relate to everything happening around us, and in our society). That is called living according to Torah, and I think that definitely has value. But there are people who are not suited to or not interested in living that way, and apparently that too is legitimate (even if it is second-best, at least for someone built for that). These are the householders, which is a legitimate institution in my view (though I wouldn’t want to be one).

Just to sharpen the point. A Jewish society is supposed to be built in circles. At the center are the Torah scholars, who are engaged in Torah as the center of their lives, as I described. Around them, in increasingly wider circles, are the householders, and Jewish society is the combination of all of these. The people out in the fields do not have to live with Torah in their consciousness all day long, but rather conduct their lives as every person does (like those who return from the battle lines in my remarks above). Just as not everyone needs to be priests; rather, the people are composed of all the circles: priest, Levite, and Israelite. In short, the ideal model deals with the form of society as a whole, not with the form of an individual person. And perhaps that is what saves and gives meaning even to the life of an individual, because if he were a householder not within the framework of a Jewish society that includes all the circles and layers, he would be supposed to fill all the meanings and functions by himself and alone (to be both his own Torah scholar and his own householder). That is the advantage of society.

Hi,

I’m trying to understand from your words what the order of priorities is in what you call “Jewish society” (= a society living according to the Torah).
On the one hand, you say that “at the center are the Torah scholars,” which by what you say here is a “way of life.”
On the other hand, there are the “commandments,” intended for everyone, including the “Torah scholars” too, presumably.

Now if I pointed a gun at your head and asked: what comes before what? What, from the standpoint of the Torah (presumably meaning the Five Books themselves), is more important?
What would your answer be?

I already answered that. Even under threat of a gun I won’t change what I wrote. 🙂

Since I’m slow by nature, I’m still asking just to make sure I understood: in your view, does the way of life of the Torah scholars take precedence over the way of life of the householders? Precedence meaning: is it more important? True?

I don’t know how to explain it any better than I already have. Sorry.

All right, then Your Honor will decide that what he understood is that your answer is “yes.” ?
In my next comment I’ll allow myself to challenge you on the basis of that decision.

Well then….
Actually, the topic you’re talking about here is religious-spiritual excellence, and the question is what that is according to Judaism—at least in your interpretation—and which norm is more desirable for achieving that excellence.
Your answer: the scholarly norm (Torah as a way of life), as opposed to the householder norm.
Are you with me so far?

Doron, have you decided to wear me out? I wrote my view above. It’s not as simplistic as you present it.

I didn’t mean to wear you out, of course, but if it happened even unintentionally, I can only thank God for small and enjoyable kindnesses of that sort.
Simplistic, you say? Why simplistic? You present an ideal scholarly norm, and you explicitly write that it is preferable to the householder norm. What did I say that isn’t correct, and what is “simplistic” about it? Your words above are sharp and explicit.

I wrote that on the individual level this is preferable. But there is also a social level, which is naturally divided into circles. One can speak about an ideal model for society and not for an individual person.

My Michael…

Did you respond by spreading me? Is it worth publishing a severe warning to the innocent and helpless sandwiches wandering the streets of your site, exposed to your attacks…? Little sandwiches, uncircumcised by spreads and empty of content, who know nothing of your schemes to cover them with your pastes…

Anyway, I understand that you agree with my analysis regarding the individual level.

In my next comment I’ll address the public level (if I don’t find myself buried under layer upon layer of sticky spreads that block the light of the sun from my blind eyes 🙂

I lost you. Are you making some kind of argument?

Yes indeed. Here it is:
The principle of spiritual excellence in Judaism, as you interpret it, fails logically.
The failure lies, in my view, in the relation between what you call the private plane of “scholarly” excellence and the social plane that includes the general public (householders and scholars).
In fact, the social plane is “not relevant,” as you religious folks say, to excellence at all. The Torah attributes no virtue or “good” or excellence to the norm of commandment observance. According to it, the commandments given by God must be observed, and there is no logical or “moral” reason for this. The entire force of the commandments derives from the fact that they were given by a supreme source.
In fact, you yourself hint at this when you say that the individual householder catches a ride on Jewish society, at whose center stand the scholars, and they are the ones who “lift” him up to the scholarly Torah path. A Jew who merely observes commandments and nothing more (whether he is a householder or even an actual scholar) does not “rise” at all.
To summarize this part of my argument: the social category that “completes” the private scholarly norm is an empty category in the context of this discussion.

So far I’ve only analyzed the reality that, in my opinion, emerges from your words. I haven’t yet pointed to the problem explicitly. I’ll do that in the next comment.

And here is the logical problem in all its severity:

The perplexed Jew (I wanted to write “the perplexed human being,” but a burst of delightful auto-antisemitism pounced on me from within through no fault of my own) who aspires to religious-spiritual growth stands before the following trap:

The commandments from God are supposed to be the ground relative to which he is meant to grow spiritually: to study Torah, interpret it, delve into it, shape his way of life in new ways from within it, etc. But according to what you say, to begin with it is impossible to extract any meaning at all from that ground. That ground is, as it were, indifferent to a person’s spiritual aspirations.
Not for nothing does the perceptive reader ask you whether the commandments are, in your eyes, merely a framework for life and not content, and you answer that you do indeed tend to think so.
On the other hand, we know perfectly well that Jews—like human beings in general—do in fact succeed in growing spiritually (intellectually, culturally, morally, etc.). But since from your words it follows that they do not grow from the householder ground (the commandments), it follows that this spiritual development is not Jewish at all. Everything good and beautiful and rich that grows from the Torah of Israel is not Israelite at all.

(The following remark is entirely in parentheses, because a beast like me knows the soul of the righteous man, and in the opinion of that beast this righteous man will say that he doesn’t understand at all what I’m saying… Therefore I am writing to myself only as a therapeutic act, although I have no doubt that in my case nothing will help me.
There is a deep connection between the analytic position and the logical structure underlying your view here. Analytic thought is based in general on denying separations in reality: our judgments have no separate and independent content in themselves and are therefore empty, meaning they exist as tautologies.
Thus full certainty is supposedly achieved for those judgments as well.
But in many cases analytic theory or ideology sets up pairs of opposites or separations at the beginning in order to return and cancel them later on. A kind of dialectic. In our case the pair of opposites is the social householder plane versus the private scholarly plane.
As I have shown—at least in my opinion—the apparent duality between a householder norm and a “scholarly” norm is false.
Given that this is the case, the theory defeats itself: it is based on a paradoxical principle or idea.

The gullible reader who bothers following my comments on this site knows very well that this argument, which I repeat again and again, recurs in different contexts. The logical structure is always the same structure, only applied in changing contexts. For example, the false duality I always identify in Judaism between the Torah and God. It seems to me one can find this falsehood also in the relations between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, and in other places as well.)

It seems I need to clarify several points in my approach.
I am not claiming that the commandments have no value and no reason. On the contrary, they have a great deal of value and a great deal of reason, but not on the moral plane. Someone who lives according to the commandments is definitely better than others, but not necessarily in the moral sense—rather in the religious sense.
The command is the reason that obligates their observance, but not the reason achieved by their observance. Just as with law, the reason that gives it validity is legislation, but it is not correct to assume that therefore all laws have no value and no reason. Value and reason are not the basis for the obligation to do something; they only point to the benefit in doing it.
The picture of circles that I described, with the Torah scholars as the core and the householders as the periphery, is a social model that tries to achieve those religious values.
It is definitely possible to extract meanings from the world of commandments, but usually not moral meanings. A halakhic and Torah-based perspective affects one’s worldview in general, even if it is not always possible to formulate exactly how.

A. The Rabbi wrote that legislation gives validity to law. And I ask: who gives validity to legislation? The general principle that there need to be laws with reasons. Consequently, when there is a law without a reason, legislation has no validity were it not for the logic anchored in the law that one must obey law even without a reason in order to preserve order and so that each person not judge for himself. It turns out that every law lacking a specific reason has a general reason for obeying it while it is still defined as law. And the same is true of commandments. If the reason for their existence from the side of the Creator is doing good, why should I care from the side of man? If the commandments advance a person morally, why should I care what the reason for observing them is? In practice he is behaving morally. Examining what the motive is for a person’s good deeds is relevant when his motive is part of his deliberation and motivation, and without it he would not perform that same good deed. (Unless the Rabbi says that a good deed without intention is not defined as good.) In religion, by contrast, as the Rabbi emphasized, a person acts because of the command, and not because of the motive. Consequently, the motive is not relevant to his moral positions but only to his actions. The validity of the command is not a player on the field here. It is only the coach.
B. If one starts from the assumption that the commandments are supposed to advance a person somewhere and make him into a better person, then God made them in such a way that they indeed advance a person. Therefore, one who observes them will necessarily become a better person. A child takes medicine because Mommy told him to, not in order to get well. But he necessarily gets well. So simply speaking, there is no such reality in which a person observes commandments properly (one can objectify them and use them as a spade, but that manner is not, according to our Torah, the intended one, and here there is a deviation from the manufacturer’s instructions).
C. What is the Rabbi’s source for the reason for observing the commandments?

You answered yourself. The reason for a legal system is a general reason for preserving the system, not a reason for each law separately. In my third book I distinguished between two kinds of value-principles; see there.
I didn’t understand the question. In my view, the reason for commandments is religious, not moral. And the analogy to morality is complete: there is value in observance if it is done מתוך obligation to the command.
The commandments are meant to advance the person or the world toward religious goals, not necessarily moral ones. Without intention, that goal is not achieved (at least not fully).
See the fifth booklet or the fifth talk in the first book.

Michi,
I don’t see what sense there is at all in this move where you attribute “religious” value to the commandments rather than moral value. Especially against the background of your insistence that they are a framework without content (as you explicitly wrote above). A framework, as you know, is empty, and the fact that you attached the adjective “religious” to it will not suddenly fill it with meaning and content. So then, what have the householders accomplished by their arrangement?

Nor do I find in your words any response to the paradox I pointed out, according to which the scholarly Torah path is a precondition for the commandments but at the same time is also conditioned by them.

Leibowitz before you, who held a position very similar to yours, said something with the same logical form:

“Jewish law is founded on faith, but it is itself also what establishes that faith. In other words, the Jewish religion creates the faith on which it is founded. This is a logical paradox, but not a religious paradox.”

Beautiful words, but in my opinion entirely meaningless… What is a “religious paradox”? What kind of creature is that? If one attaches the adjective “logical” to the word “paradox,” is the paradox supposed to be solved as if by magic? Very strange.

Anyway, I bring Leibowitz because I think that on this point you hold the same failed position.

Correction (what, only the illustrious one is allowed to weary his readers..?):

“If one attaches the adjective ‘religious’ to the word ‘paradox,’ is the paradox supposed to be solved as if by magic?

Doron,
You burst through an open door. I’ve written more than once that I do not accept paradoxes, religious or otherwise. A paradox solves nothing; it only declares that there is no solution. So don’t connect me to Leibowitz, and if he says something foolish, please direct your complaints to him and not to me.
But I truly don’t understand what the problem is. When I say (and not “insist”) that Jewish law is a framework for life, I mean that it is not everything, but only an expression of their religious dimension. The moral dimension and the general value dimension proceed alongside it and do not overlap with it.
Very simple, and as I understand it entirely free of paradox.
I did not understand what paradox it was that I failed to address.

It seems to me that our concepts of doors and opening them are somewhat different.

In your last reply you used the spatial image of parallelism (“proceeds alongside”), whereas in your earlier replies you used a different image (center and periphery). I myself prefer the image of floors stacked one atop another, but never mind.
You can of course protest and claim that I’m nitpicking over metaphors, but in this case your stylistic shift (unconscious?) exposes the essence behind it.

Anyway, your first image reflected, in my humble opinion, much more accurately your view and the failures I find in it here and there. It was not for nothing that I linked you to Leibowitz in this case, despite your protests.

So I allow myself to return to the earlier and more authentic Michi (forgive me, later Michi). If you join me, it will be very easy for you to understand—even if not agree with—my claim that there is a paradox here:

The householder commandment plane serves as a condition and basis for the scholarly plane, but at the same time it relies on it. To me this looks like a classic paradox.

That is the claim you have to grapple with.

[I repeat a more general statement: I am impressed that there are hidden logical territories in the analytic universe that you have not yet explored. And less metaphorically: I, little as I am, dare to claim that you do not see the very strong connection between negative dialectic (a movement that defeats itself) and the analytic position.]

Doron, we have reached the stage where I have completely lost you.

Michi, I’m not buying it. Sorry.

Sellers only.

((Thoughts I wrote down for myself:

First point: at the beginning you made use of the metaphor of periphery and center. That metaphor implies a relation of derivation (or at least conditioning) between the two sides: spiritual growth and the “Torah way” have no meaning if there are no commandments that were given and that one can relate to and supposedly grow out of. The commandments in the periphery supposedly condition the scholarly “Torah way.”
What isn’t clear?
Afterward, in my opinion without noticing it, you slid into a different metaphor, that of “parallelism”: the Torah way in the new version merely runs parallel to the commandments (that is, it no longer conditions them). In the new picture the commandments are not connected to the Torah way at all, but just happen to be adjacent to it.
So far this is just my description of what you did. What is not understood here?

The second point concerns the mode of conditioning, which in my opinion is paradoxical. This paradox arises from the metaphor of center and periphery: in the absence of a substrate of commandments in the periphery, spiritual growth at the center is impossible. The concept of center has no meaning without the concept of margins. On the other hand, the commandments in the periphery have no meaning at all if a person does not relate to them and interpret them. That is, the commandments do not “exist” at all without the Torah way that turns toward them. The center carries the margins on its back.
(As I said, I prefer the metaphor of floors, because it illustrates better the conditioning relation and the paradoxicality that in my opinion lies in the background)).