Q&A: The Spirit of the Torah
The Spirit of the Torah.
Question
Hello to the honored Rabbi.
When I was Haredi, they constantly told me that everything was forbidden, even though it was halakhically permitted, because of “the spirit of the Torah,” “the spirit of the sages,” and so on. Today I understand that most of what they forbade me was nonsense and really just expressed their own spirit. But over time I also understood that the Torah doesn’t want you to play dumb and constantly look for leniencies and loopholes either, even if sometimes it is permitted to be stringent, and so on. So the question is: where does the line pass? When is getting into stringencies just nonsense, and when does it really seem that the spirit of the Torah wants me to be stringent about a particular matter?
Answer
This is too general a question. I’d appreciate it if you could give an example or explain and narrow it down. It’s hard for me to answer it as is.
The question is who you are. If you’re someone who wants to grow in faith and in the way of God, then go in the path of the pious. And if you want to stay where you are, then stay on the middle path. And if you’re neither this nor that, then keep things like most people do, which is a path that is, as is known, less than middle-of-the-road.
For example, the zealotry of Pinchas is something exceptional; he crossed the line, but received a great blessing accordingly.
Daniel and his companions were careful to eat only kosher and vegetarian food, and they were rewarded for that. They didn’t eat from ordinary kashrut standards; they ate only grains that they themselves checked for pests and worms, neither dried nor fresh…
These are examples, broadly speaking, so that you understand that for everything there is reward accordingly.