Q&A: Regarding Studying the Hebrew Bible Nowadays
Regarding Studying the Hebrew Bible Nowadays
Question
Hello, honorable Rabbi Michael Abraham.
I read this article of yours, written many years ago, in which you said that you do not understand what interests people about studying the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and that this stems from the fact that the Hebrew Bible is not being studied properly.
When we study chapters of the Hebrew Bible, we constantly encounter the words of the Talmud and the commentators—Maimonides, the Zohar and the writings of the Ari, Mesillat Yesharim, the various books of the Ben Ish Chai, the great liturgical poets Rabbi Israel Najara, Rabbi Ibn Gabirol, Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, the great Hasidic masters Rabbi Nachman and the Alter Rebbe, and others.
For example, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook is known for a passage in his book Orot HaKodesh, in the section “Love of Israel”: “The love of Israel and the labor of defending the collective and the individuals is not merely emotional work alone, but a great discipline within Torah, and a deep and broad wisdom with many branches, all of which grow and draw nourishment from the dew-filled sap of the luminous Torah of kindness.”
“The great love with which we love our nation does not blind our eyes from criticizing all its defects, but we find its essence, even after the freest criticism, clean of every blemish: ‘You are altogether beautiful, my beloved, and there is no blemish in you.’”
The meaning of these words is learned from the prophet Hosea, who tells Israel that they do not know what love is, and that they want to serve God but love Him with a love that depends on something.
“Come, let us return to the Lord, for He has torn, and He will heal us; He has struck, and He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live before Him. And let us know, let us pursue knowledge of the Lord; His going forth is sure as the dawn, and He will come to us like the rain, like the latter rain that waters the earth” (Hosea 6:1–3). And the prophet complains about their love: “What shall I do with you, Ephraim? What shall I do with you, Judah? Your kindness is like a morning cloud, like the dew that early passes away.” Their love is temporary and quickly fades.
What, then, should love of God really look like, and love in general? “For I desire kindness and not sacrifice, and knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.”
There are three pillars upon which the world stands: Torah, service, and acts of kindness. Israel said: “Let us know, let us pursue knowledge of the Lord” (ibid., v. 3)—through Torah, through service—but where is the main pillar, the pillar of kindness? Kindness is absent.
About this God says: “I desire kindness and not sacrifice, knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (ibid., v. 6).
Knowledge symbolizes connection, love, and the bond between lovers.
True connection to the Holy One, blessed be He, is not only through the Temple and ritual, and not only through Torah, but through being a partner with the Holy One, blessed be He, in repairing His world through the trait of kindness.
It is brought in Avot DeRabbi Natan (4:5): “Once Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai was leaving Jerusalem, and Rabbi Yehoshua was walking after him, and he saw the Temple destroyed.
Rabbi Yehoshua said: Woe to us for this, that it is destroyed—the place where the sins of Israel are atoned for. He said to him: My son, do not be distressed; we have another atonement just like it. And what is it? Acts of kindness, as it is said: ‘For I desire kindness and not sacrifice.’ For so we find with Daniel, the man of preciousness, that he occupied himself with acts of kindness.
And what were the acts of kindness with which Daniel occupied himself?
He would prepare the bride and make her joyful, accompany the dead, give a coin to the poor, and pray three times every day—and his prayer was accepted willingly.” When you love someone, in practice you atone for / cover over all his shortcomings; you overlook them and rise above them.
For example, everyone strokes and kisses a baby, even though he is, to put it mildly, not hygienic. Imagine that same filth on an adult—everyone would recoil from him. But a baby’s shortcomings are “atoned for”; people love the baby and do not dwell on his defects but on the good in him: “Love covers all transgressions” (Proverbs 10).
Love is capable of covering and atoning for all shortcomings.
When a person does kindness to another, he loves him and sees the good side in him.
When an entire society behaves this way, that is atonement for sins, a very great atonement for shortcomings.
Or another example: on most weekdays, in the morning prayer after the Amidah, Psalm 20 is recited. What is special about this psalm is that it is a kind of traveler’s prayer for the continuation of the day, in a regular daily fashion instituted by our Sages.
There is an assurance that this will happen:
“May the Lord answer you on the day of trouble; may the name of the God of Jacob protect you. May He send your help from the sanctuary and support you from Zion.”
What builds certainty in a person in a time of trouble?
“Now I know that the Lord saves…” The answer to this is as written in the liturgical poem Mi She’anah recited in the Ashkenazi Selihot, where at the end of every line it says: “May He answer us.”
We know the saying about the vision of the end of days, “For Torah shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,” and in Psalm 20 King David adds that from Zion shall come salvation and support.
“May He send your help from the sanctuary and support you from Zion.”
And there is not only receiving, but also a desire to give, in order to bring pleasure to our Creator:
“May He remember all your offerings and accept your burnt sacrifice. May He grant you according to your heart, and fulfill all your counsel.”
There is a connection of deed, thought, and feeling that corresponds with salvation.
It is written in Midrash HaGadol, Vayishlach 35:3:
“To the God who answered me in the day of my distress”—this is what Scripture says: “May the Lord answer you on the day of trouble.”
Rabbi Shimon bar Abba said: From the beginning of the book until here there are eighteen psalms, and afterward this psalm, corresponding to the eighteen blessings in prayer.
When a person prays, they say to him: May you be answered in your prayer.
We say eighteen times ‘Blessed’ in prayers and supplications of many kinds, for the individual and for the collective.
Rabbi Nachman, in his famous saying, says: “If you believe that it is possible to damage, believe that it is possible to repair.” Regarding strengthening oneself so that a person should not fall in his own mind because of the many flaws and corruptions he has caused through his actions, he answered and said: “If you believe that it is possible to damage, believe that it is possible to repair.”
The damage heralds the repair, distress comes before relief, sorrow before joy, and in the end the Holy One, blessed be He, will answer you on the day of trouble—may our King answer us on the day we call.
“They have bowed and fallen, but we have risen and been encouraged; we will sing for joy in Your salvation, and in the name of our God we will raise our banner.”
Answer
First, I wonder why you do not respond to the article or to the columns that dealt with this. There is no new question here.
As for your actual remarks, I did not understand how all this length contributes to the discussion. I did not see anything here that contradicts what I said.
Discussion on Answer
I have already written about this so much that even this discussion already fills me with weariness. Everything has been answered in the finest detail.
Stay in your ignorance and heresy
At the beginning of the article you write that for you, as a Talmudist by nature, the Hebrew Bible fills you with desolation and weariness, very far from the sophistication and complexity of a Talmudic passage.
But if we take the very familiar verse from Proverbs, “Its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace,” then the Talmud already directs us to the words of Rabbi Abaye about oleander and the lulav.
We have passages about levirate marriage—the obligation of a dead man’s brother to take the widow as a wife when he had no sons.
But in a case where there was a son at the time of the brother’s death, and he later died, the Talmud rules that there is no obligation of levirate marriage, and there is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) as to why, in such a case, this would not count as “ways of pleasantness.”
What happens if the man performing the levirate marriage is secular or an apostate? That is a halakhic issue.
Maimonides, Laws of Sabbath 2:3, uses the verse “and live by them” together with the principle of “ways of pleasantness.”
Take “Hear, my son, the discipline of your father, and do not forsake the Torah of your mother”—that leads to Berakhot 35a–b.
What does it mean that a person who benefits from this world without a blessing robs not only the Holy One, blessed be He, but also the Jewish people?
What does it mean that he robs the Jewish people, and how?
What does it mean that he benefits from sacred things of Heaven, since “the earth and its fullness belong to the Lord”?
That verse also points to Pirkei Avot 6:7, which includes the first verse I mentioned, “Its ways are ways of pleasantness,” and adds “It is a tree of life to those who hold fast to it,” etc., which will lead you to Eruvin 54a.