Shiur 11

Parshat Tazria Metsora 5764

Sixth Derasha, Pages 215-235 (in the old Ran, 94-104; note that we skipped the “second version” of the fifth derasha, because the new Ran puts it in the back as a separate derasha, which we’l get to, be”H, towards the end of the summer).

SUMMARY

GUARANTEEING ONESELF THE WORLD TO COME

Ran opens the derasha with the words from Michah that ask what a person can do for God and conclude that all that God wants is for us to do justice, kindness, and hatsnea lekhet, walk humbly before Him.  To work his way into discussing that quote, Ran notes Rambam’s famous view that any Jew who performs one mitzvah without any ulterior motives is guaranteed a place in the World to Come.  Rambam says this to explain a Mishnah at the end of Makkot—the one we recite often before saying a derabannan kaddish—which says that God wanted to give us merit, so He made a lot of Torah and mitsvot.  While we might think that means that there are more opportunities to amass reward, Rambam understands it to mean that it presents a variety of opportunities to reach that one proper performance of a mitzvah. 

Ran likes Rambam’s thought, but thinks it’s not true for all mitsvot.  Some mitsvot, true, are sufficient to guarantee a place in the World to Come; others are not.  In Ran’s view, God wanted to encourage the development of the best person possible, which would involve the range of mitsvot.   To avoid people focusing only on the “important” ones, those that earn the greatest reward, God did not reveal the reward (an idea Ran probably took from Rabbenu Yonah’s commentary on Avot).  In that reading, the Mishnah in Makkot was celebrating God’s helping us achieve a broad-based perfection, not just the World to Come. (The idea that there might be values other than achieving the World to Come is worth discussing further, as we will below).

His belief that some mitsvot in fact carry greater weight than others (although we do not necessarily know which), leads Ran to an interesting interpretation of a well-known discussion at the end of Makkot (23b-24a), the source of the tradition that there are 613 mitsvot in the Torah. 

Following that assertion, the gemara reports that a series of Jewish leaders reduced that number, King David taking it down to 11, Isaiah to six, Michah to 3, and Habakuk to 1.  I think the ordinary way to read that text is to see it as finding verses in Scripture that more briefly encapsulate the essence of the religion, without any intention to limit observance (akin to  Hillel’s saying that following the Golden Rule was the  essence of the Torah), but Ran sees it differently.  In his reading, each of these later writers was addressing readers unable or unwilling to even work at fulfilling the broad sweep of mitsvot.  Each one therefore identified those mitsvot that would most directly lead to the World to Come while, obviously, sacrificing many important values.  Thus, David offered eleven mitsvot worth focusing on (and Ran implies that David was making his peace with people neglecting the others, since he had come to realize that they would not do them anyway), and so on. 

While this is a rich reading of the text—offering at least two ideas worth discussing below, whether there are core values that can be fulfilled in isolation from the rest of the religion and how and when we make our peace with a lack of observance and how we react to it—it is also a homiletical way of bringing Ran back to the verse with which he started this derasha, Michah 6;6-8.  That verse is the one in which Michah encapsulates the Torah in 3 mitsvot, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking modestly with God.

Ran reviews the Talmud’s definition of each of the three, justice meaning laws and judges, kindness meaning acts of kindness, and modesty meaning performing even those acts normally done in public and with great fanfare (weddings and funerals) in a private fashion which Ran interprets as meaning with lesser publicity.  He even goes so far as to say that the wedding derashah, which was a full discourse offered in honor of the wedding should happen in the wedding hall (as opposed to in a public place), as a form of modesty.  The reason for that kind of modesty, as well, is worth considering.

UNFATHOMABLE KINDNESS OF GOD

Having brought us to Michah, Ran undertakes a reading of the verses, which record the dilemma of a person trying to give a gift to God.  Such a person—the navi writes in the first person--thinks to give God sacrifices, or his first born, or his other children.  Ran notes, by way of introduction, that we all tend to take for granted that which is given to us on a regular basis, but that in reality our very existence is a huge and undeserved kindness from God.  Within that general kindness, a nontrivial element of it is the ease of performing mitsvot (as the Vilna Gaon famously noted on his deathbed, he was leaving a world where pennies—or dollars—bought mitsvot, for a world where there were no mitsvot to be performed), especially repentance, which Ran sees as the topic of the verse.

The person thinking about what to give to God is trying to figure out how to make up for his sins.  Citing Rabbenu Yonah, Ran agrees that the verse distinguishes between peshaim (willful sins) and hataim (sins of giving in to temptation); for the former, the sinner thinks he might have to give his firstborn, while the latter might only require one of his other children.  It is the thought of the sinner that highlights the kindness in the mitzvah of teshuvah, because all that God requires of us is sincere regret over the past and intent not to repeat the sin in the future (and confession).

That is the meaning of the continuation of the verse in Michah, which says that all that God wants from us is that we improve our ways.  Had God wanted us to sacrifice our children (which Ran seems to think would theoretically have been reasonable, given our debt to Him), the difficulty of doing so would at least have explained why evildoers fail to repent.  Given its simplicity, however, evildoers are even more to blame for not taking advantage of God’s kindness.

TAKING HEED

A similar view of the issue is found in Hoshea, in the haftarah we read on Shabbat Shuvah (indeed, it is worth speculating as to why Ran did not start with that haftarah).   There, too, the prophet refers to the lack of any need for sacrifices, says that words will be enough to return to God’s full happiness with us.  The continuation of Hoshea, that God has given us laws that the righteous benefit from and the wicked stumble in, echoes the idea that the evildoers’ failure to repent is itself a reason for them to be punished.

Having shown the need for repentance and its ease, Ran adds that world events should also stimulate repentance (another idea he would have seen in earlier sources, such as Rabbenu Yonah).  When a faraway nation is visited by some disaster, that is supposed to lead to soul searching by all human beings.  All the more so, Ran says, in his times when people are faced with a plague (perhaps the Black Death which ravaged Europe in 1348 and returned on a regular basis for the next four hundred years), that they should look to the healing of their souls even before the healing of their bodies. 

To defend the priority of soul-healing, Ran points out that if a person was ill in two parts of his body, three factors would determine how to triage care:  1) Which body part is in greater danger, 2) which body part causes the other to be sick, and 3) which body part’s healing had to happen before the other one could be healed.  All three conditions favor dealing with the soul before the body, since all are true of the soul as well.  The soul is certainly in greater danger, because the body eventually dies no matter what while the soul is immortal, illnesses of the soul are the reason for physical ills, and the health of the soul is a necessary condition for the health of the body.

To defend that view, Ran cites the story of R. Hanina b. Dosa killing a serpent by letting it bite him; the serpent then died, leading R. Hanina to comment that it is not venom that kills, it is sin that kills.  Adding to that, Ran notes that generally healthy people are more resistant to illness (an insight that doctors rediscover repeatedly in our times); the same is true of those whose souls are healthy.  This whole line of reasoning is worth pursuing below.

I AM GOD, YOUR HEALER

The role of mitsvot and soul-health in preventing disease (apparently an issue of significant importance to Ran’s listeners) brings Ran to another verse, the one in which God promises that if we follow His laws, He will not bring upon us any of the plagues with which He afflicted the Egyptians, for I (God speaking) am God, Your Healer.

Ran notes that others have been puzzled by the verse, as it seems to promise that if we keep all of God’s laws, He won’t smite us with terrible plagues, a fairly minor reward.  Ran says, though, that it means that we will be protected “naturally” from the various ills of the world if our souls are in order.  It is not that God won’t bring these things upon us, it is that those misfortunes will not be able to happen to us even if Nature would have determined that they should.

This, too, explains the reference to God being our Healer, an odd term for a situation where we will never become ill to begin with.  Ran explains, though, that we refer to doctors as healers for taking away illness that has already occurred, but preventing the illness is all that much greater a healing; by giving us the mechanism for fortifying our spiritual health (which, for Ran, fortifies physical health as well), God is providing an even greater level of Healing.

Another example of this phenomenon, for Ran, is the Biblical story of the Jews’ being bitten by snakes for complaining about the man.  The punishment fit the crime, in his view, because the Jews’ were complaining for nothing and telling lashon hara (note, although I don’t intend to discuss, that Ran is comfortable with the idea that telling lashon hara deserves the punishment of being bitten fatally by a snake).  In Ran’s view of medicine, having the Jews look at snakes should have increased their suffering; that it healed them made the point that healing comes from God and depends on spiritual, not physical, matters.  Returning to R. Hanina b. Dosa, Ran finds the same point in that story, and more so, since R. Hanina actually proved immune to snake venom by virtue of his great spiritual health.

THE VITAL COMPONENT OF SPIRITUAL HEALTH

Some people think that to achieve such spiritual health requires great wisdom.  Indeed, wisdom and the study of Torah are central Jewish values, Ran says, but they are not what is required for this issue.  Instead, intent and devotion (not just action, either, but a sincere commitment to serve God) determine spiritual health. 

It is the importance of intent that people neglect when they see great men involving themselves in the ordinary matters of this world.  When Yaakov Avinu, for example, makes sure that even the small articles make it over the Yabok with the family, people might think he was just ordinarily interested in his possessions, and then allow themselves to chase after such possessions as well.  Their error, Ran says, lies in not recognizing the internal process of those great people, who are concerned with the mundane only to the extent that it helps with their larger goal, serving God and spreading knowledge of Him throughout the world.  Ran continues along this line, and we will continue next week.  For now, we will stop here to make several further points about Ran’s ideas.

VALUES OTHER THAN ACHIEVING THE WORLD TO COME

One of Ran’s first points was that some mitsvot are not themselves sufficient to achieve a share in the afterlife, no matter how well the person performs them, while others are.  In his view, apparently, mitsvot  aren’t only about getting to that World, since then God could have only commanded those that achieve the World to Come (if all prices were in dollars, for example, there would be no need for coins; true, coins could be added up to dollars, but why bother with them if only whole dollars matter?). 

Clearly, Ran believed that there were mitsvot that improved a person spiritually and were therefore inherently valuable.  Performing such mitsvot would benefit a person, increase their share in the World to Come, but were commanded primarily because of the spiritual benefit they provided to the person.  That underlying idea, that gaining the reward is not the point of the mitzvah, is one worth remembering, as it is a common view among medieval Jews—Torah and mitsvot are valuable for their effect on the person, not the reward they gain her.

CORE VALUES AND HANDLING DETERMINED NONOBSERVANCE

Ran’s idea that David haMelekh and others were trying to give a shortened list of mitsvot to help their contemporaries salvage at least some of their observance implies several interesting points.  First, it suggests (perhaps not a novelty to some, but not inherently obvious) that the Torah can be fulfilled partially and still achieve much of its desired goal (whereas a canvas that is only partially painted, with spots of paint here and there, could not be seen as a work of art).  Indeed, the idea that some mitsvot are sufficient in and of themselves to achieve the World to Come means that Torah is not one unified whole, with each part having to work together in order to have any value (such as a car), but that it is a series of requirements, each having independent value, although they certainly work best in combination.

That explains Ran’s equanimity with the possibility that David haMelekh and those who came after were picking the central mitsvot to stress to their generation.  The temptation, for those who are serious about their service of God, is to reject anything other than an attempt to live up to the highest standards of Torah observance.  Ran’s reading of the gemara assumes that that is a complete error, that the responsibility of the leader of a generation is to meet his contemporaries at a place where they are ready to start building, and to find the way to move them from where they are to wherever the next step in their service of God should be.

(Parenthetically, that also means that we cannot always assume that rabbis of a previous generation condoned behavior that they did not protest.  In some cases, the issue may have been one where the rabbi had no effective way to produce change, and felt that maintaining an overall relationship was more important than this particular issue.  The question of how and when to tolerate what is wrong for the sake of being able to have impact on other areas is one that I have yet to fully understand, and certainly could not discuss intelligently).

MODESTY

The gemara itself makes the central point, that modesty is not directly about clothing, it is about a general sense of the value of privacy, of avoiding showiness.  The examples given, weddings and funerals, are interesting precisely because there is a desire for those to be events that happen with many people there (there is a positive obligation to attend both events, to give proper honor to the dead and help in maximizing the happiness of the bride and groom).  The gemara apparently assumes that it is possible to handle a large event in a quiet, modest manner.  Although the gemara doesn’t specify, Ran seems to assume that a central component of that privacy involves the event taking place away from public scrutiny.  He thus extends the need for privacy even to the derasha given at the wedding.

Neither the gemara nor Ran explain why this should be so, but we should think about it for a moment; what is the value in having a funeral with thousands of people, but keeping it out of the public eye as much as possible?  I suspect the answer is that the Jewish sense of modesty seeks to reveal what is private only to those who are involved in whatever event leads to that privacy.  In the case of marital relations, for example, modesty means that the elements of that act—including, of course, the body parts that are essentially used in that act—be revealed only to those participating in it.

The same applies, on a broader scale, to many other activities.  Modesty does not mean the activities should not happen, nor that they should happen with only a few people.  It means that they should be what they are, and not a spectacle for bystanders to gawk at.  (As I write those words, I think of weddings that happen in hotels, where, as the hattan and kallah are being danced to the yihud room, various hotel guests are standing by and watching the quaint Jewish wedding).  This is even true of Torah, where one might have argued that the more people who see it, the more likely that one of them may be drawn in.  Nonetheless, modesty means that important activities take place away from the prying eyes of casual curiousity.  (This explains, to some extent, the practice of charging people to enter the yeshiva to learn, a practice that led to the famous story of Hillel listening in at the skylight and nearly being frozen to death by a snowstorm.  It also explains why Rabban Gamliel placed a watchman at the door to make sure that entrants were worthy—the goal was to insure that those who saw the proceedings were there to gain from them, not just to watch and enjoy the entertainment.)

TAKING GOD FOR GRANTED, DESERVING

Ran’s stress on God’s kindness provides an interesting contrast to what I have encountered on numerous occasions in several different communities.  Ran sees life as a gift far beyond anything that humans deserve, and is comfortable with the idea that even sacrificing one’s children (which God does not want) would have been a reasonable request for God to make.  That was true for Ran even in the absence of sin; especially for those among us who may have sinned from time to time, it would be even more so.

Theoretically, that should mean that when people face times of adversity, they not even think of challenging God on the basis of it.  While the suffering of the righteous and the prosperity of the wicked is an age-old problem in Judaism, the casual assumption by most people that they are among the righteous whose suffering should be puzzling is remarkable.  Ran, I think, makes clear that while there are people whose suffering would be inexplicable, the vast majority of us do not deserve what we have and therefore would have no right to complain if it were taken away.

Not a theory that can fly in a world where everyone is sure of their righteousness, but an interesting one nonetheless.

SPIRITUAL HEALTH AFFECTING PHYSICAL

The last point of Ran’s that we have covered in this week’s shiur is perhaps the most provocative.  Ran clearly and simply assumes that one’s spiritual state affects one’s physical state, a claim I feel confident most 21^st century readers will reject.  After all, medicine is built upon the ability to predict the course of diseases based on previous experience and our understanding of the physical processes of the disease, to administer therapies whose efficacy depends on purely physical factors, and so on.  Science in general has accomplished its many advances by leaving spirituality out of it, and has not seemed to suffer for it (there is no body of literature showing that righteous people’s cancers proceed differently from unrighteous ones).  Science seems to trump Ran.

In response, I would just quote what R. Meir Twersky once said to me, “Statistics is just a way to hide hashgahah.”  What I understood him to mean, and wholeheartedly agree, is that people assume that because behavior in the aggregate can be predictable, that the whole thing is random as well.  (For another example, some economists have shown that the behavior of the stock market as a whole is random, that you have as much chance of predicting the market as a whole by figuring it out as by throwing darts at a stock table and picking those stocks to go up.  Yet it should be clear that the behavior of each company on the Exchange is far from random; it is just that the complexity created when thousands of companies interact in an economy means that we cannot have enough information to predict what is going to occur.)  It is possible, however, that Ran is correct (I believe he is) and that there are few enough righteous people (and that they stay healthy, or get sick for other reasons, in a way that doesn’t skew the statistics) so that the various studies can work and arrive at useful conclusions.

All that is, of course, speculative and will have to remain so until we find a way to evaluate spiritual health (something only God can do) and then correlate it with other kinds of health.  It does, however, put us back in the realm of Ran studying the interaction between the physical and the spiritual, so far a better description of this derasha than seeing it as being about repentance.

SUMMARY

Up to this point, then, Ran has registered his view of mitsvot, with some offering immediate access to the World to Come and others improving a person in more subtle ways; has suggested that various prophets offered scaled down versions of mitsvot for Jews who would not keep more, has reviewed Michah’s 3 mitsvot, particularly modest, and then spoke about the requirement of gratitude created by God in making the world.  Next week, be”H, we will finish the derasha.  Shabbat Shalom.