Question

Hello Rabbi,
 
I wanted to thank you for the insights you conveyed in your excellent book. I heard you several times in lectures in Ra’anana, and they were an excellent platform for me for understanding the book.
 
If I, the lesser one, may add that the book’s conclusion connected for me to several additional ideas:
1. How can one understand the puzzling midrash that God turns to several nations to accept the Torah and they are unwilling? Would they really not submit to the clear proof that the Creator of the world is revealing Himself to them and giving them commands?
But if we say that the reality of God was difficult for them to accept for a non-rational reason… because in their intuition they do not accept an entity that would command them something unreasonable like not to steal or not to murder or not to commit adultery, then they are simply blind to accepting God’s word.
2. The preachers’ question is well known: why don’t we recite a blessing over the saying of the Haggadah? Several answers have been given. One of them is that the Haggadah depends on understanding of the heart, and since we are not sure the child will understand, we do not recite a blessing. But seemingly, what is the difference between that and the blessings over Torah study, which are recited even though it is not certain that we will understand the Torah?
It seems that the difference is that with the Haggadah we are occupied with transmitting faith / belief; that is, it contains a combination of testimonies / proofs about the Exodus from Egypt together with the experience of the Seder night, but it is not clear that the judge—the child—will accept it. Rather, the matter depends on the trust he places in us, and that is subject to his own judgment. And we are aware that there is also the wicked son, who is not alarmed by the proofs and is not impressed by the tradition of the fathers… We can have in mind the blessing “Truth and Faith” and pray that we succeed in being persuasive on the Seder night.
3. There is a dispute in tractate Berakhot between Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi and Rabbi Yohanan about the obligation to place redemption immediately before prayer in the evening service, and there you see that they bring the same verses, but each has a different reasoning from the same proof, and each is convinced of his own position. Rabbi Sherki wanted to say that here there is a dispute between two tanna’im from different soul-roots—”a son of the World to Come” (Rabbi Yohanan) and one who “has a share in the World to Come” (Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi). And according to the conclusion in your book, one sees that even when there are disagreements between them that stem from a very intuitive place, one can still try to persuade, and one can also issue a halakhic ruling…
4. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s method of hitbodedut and a method invented under the name ‘focusing’ fit together very well in my opinion and complete the connection between intellectual study and recognition…
 
Regarding stringency in commandments, I recommend that you look at the Netziv’s commentary on the wise son’s question in chapter 6, verses 20 through 25, which as I understand it explains what love of a commandment is and what the way is to be exacting in fulfillment of a commandment. My conclusion from his words is that understanding a commandment according to rules of study and inquiry increases merit in the commandment, and not beautifications of the commandment that stem from external concerns, as you wrote in your article on legumes.