Q&A: Novel Insights
Novel Insights
Question
What, in your opinion, is a “novel Torah insight”? Does the novelty have to be in the content—coming up with a new halakhic ruling? Or can it even be in the form / presentation of the ideas? Can it be in the organization of the approaches? Is it a new line of reasoning, or is it enough to apply a known line of reasoning to a particular case?
Should a person keep in the back of his mind while learning that he needs to come up with some novel insight, or if an insight comes then great, and if not that’s fine too?
Answer
All of these are novel insights. In addition, it is not always possible to distinguish between the different kinds.
When learning, one should not be trying to produce novel insights. That is foolishness. Learning should aim at the truth. If a novel insight emerges, then it emerges. And if not, then not. Striving for novelty is problematic, because it causes you to prefer what is shiny and new over what is true.
I am reminded of a story I heard about Rabbi Lichtenstein of blessed memory. At a gathering of yeshiva lecturers and heads of hesder yeshivot, someone commented that today’s generation is dry and lacks flavor in learning. He nostalgically described how in his day every study partnership was stormy. Everything I said, my study partner would immediately refute, and there was “the fervor of Torah,” and so on. Rabbi Lichtenstein got angry and said that if people refute everything, that is not a striving for truth but merely for arguments. There is no value in refuting everything. There is certainly value in examining everything and checking the alternatives, but not in order to fight and argue—rather, in order to arrive at the truth.
Discussion on Answer
I have to know which yeshiva head from Bnei Brak learned Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein’s lectures.
Maybe the Rabbi can send it to me by email if he doesn’t want others to know.
This is also somewhat connected to the tradition of the Brisk school (which he was of course part of, as Rabbi Soloveitchik’s son-in-law and student). It is told that the Beit HaLevi argued against his son, Rabbi Chaim, that his lectures dried things out. With the Beit HaLevi, you have a collection of difficulties and one brilliant answer resolves them all, whereas with Rabbi Chaim they present a conceptual analysis and no difficulties arise in the first place. And indeed, Rabbi Lichtenstein too would spread out the whole map of the Talmudic passage, and then most of the difficulties simply would not arise. This is not only a didactic and methodological difference, but also a substantive one. He had a serious attitude toward the passage, and did not treat it as mere intellectual entertainment. He wanted to exhaust the passage and understand it, not to produce flashes of brilliance.
And I personally had such an experience: one of the well-known yeshiva heads in Bnei Brak once spoke with me about Rabbi Lichtenstein and claimed that he had read his novel insights and lectures and they were really mediocre. Any reasonably capable kollel fellow in the Ponevezh or Chazon Ish kollels says more brilliant things. So I told him that he was talking like a child (not in those words, of course). When you learn one of Rabbi Lichtenstein’s lectures, all the difficulties those kollel fellows raise simply do not arise at all.