Q&A: Faith and the Laws of the Sabbath
Faith and the Laws of the Sabbath
Question
Have a good week, Rabbi. I have two questions, with your permission.
1. Is removing eye discharge on the Sabbath permitted? Or is it prohibited משום as shearing?
2. I often feel a bit disconnected from Jewish law, as if it isn’t really what I want, and as if I’d prefer to live my life for myself. Does the Rabbi think this is arrogance? I’m drawn to ideas of self-actualization, or like Nietzsche for example, when he talks about a person who truly lives, as who he really is, a life rich in creativity and aesthetics. Now of course, thoughts are duty-free (a German proverb), and since on the whole I have an intuition that God exists and the Torah is true, I observe (or try to), but this is still a thought that has been in my head for several months and draws me in, and it causes my service of God to be colder (“Why does He need this? Why can’t I live for myself?”), and of course that is not whole, since one should serve Him, may He be blessed, with joy. I would very much like to explore this issue, and perhaps give room to this direction in life (it also shows, in my opinion, that secular life too can be rich and meaningful), but I keep thinking that this is arrogance toward God, may He be blessed, and an attempt to escape the commandments, and that I am a small, lowly, dark creature who needs to live according to Jewish law, although it’s clear that if rationally I’m with religion then I’ll continue with religion. What does the Rabbi think? Is casting doubt on my basic assumptions (the revelation at Mount Sinai) in order to examine this direction, which is very appealing to me from a values standpoint, justified? Or is it arrogance/an attempt to escape?
Answer
1. The eye discharge is not really attached to the body (and of course it does not draw nourishment from it), so clearly this is not shearing.
2. See my columns on meaning. Meaning has significance only if it is determined by an external factor. Doing whatever you feel like is not meaningful. A person does not determine moral rules for himself, and therefore it also should not bother you that Jewish law is determined for us from the outside. We have the freedom to interpret it and to choose what to focus on and in what way to fulfill it. That is far more meaningful than someone acting in a vacuum. See the series on freedom and liberty.
Discussion on Answer
Read again what I wrote. Values are always forced on you like a mountain held over your head—morality and Jewish law alike.
It’s not doing whatever you feel like… I mean, yes, it is living according to your own desires, but of course there is morality, and it’s not an unrestrained slide into hedonism. I’m talking about self-overcoming, about constantly progressing and living according to the values that matter to you—just that you yourself believe in them and choose them, and they weren’t forced on you like a mountain held over your head. Why do you think that isn’t possible, Rabbi?
2. If that’s really so, how does the Rabbi suggest dealing with the difficulty of the burden of the commandments and with the very fact that a person is “a small, lowly, dark creature”?