Parshat Aharei Mot- Kedoshim 5764

135-End of Derasha 6 (104-09 in the old Ran)

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INTERNAL

The last point Ran had been making was that the internal experience of an act determines its meaning.  That came up in terms of being careful about judging a righteous person’s ordinary acts (which may seem to be the same as the not-so-righteous masses); since, however, the righteous person is doing it for the sake of God, the act is completely different (an example: two people involved in high finance, making millions of dollars buying and selling corporations, might both seem to be consumed by the pursuit of money.  In reality, though, one of those people is doing it to give money to charity, to build institutions in Israel, to improve the lot of the world, etc.  Ran is pointing out that their differing internal intent will not only lead to different later actions, but actually affects the evaluation of their business endeavors themselves).

The same is true of sins, Ran says, which leads him to a different interpretation from the ordinary for a gemara that notes that thoughts of sin are worse than the sin itself.  At first blush, the statement appears nonsensical, since sins are actual acts whereas thoughts are just, well, thoughts.  Ran notes approvingly Rambam’s view that thoughts of sin sully our intellects, and our intellects are the part of us that make us human.  In sinning with that part of ourselves, therefore, we are committing a worse act than the sins themselves, since those only hurt whatever bodily part is involved with the sin.  Any part of the body, for Rambam, is less important than our minds, so acts of sin must cause less damage than thoughts.

Ran adds that his own understanding of the statement sees it as noting that sins can only occur if the person’s mind is willing to allow it to happen.  Those who sin regularly without repenting must have developed one of three false views, the denial of God, of His paying attention to the world, or of His reward and punishment (this triad of heresy, by the way, goes back to at least Ramban who mentions it in several places in the commentary on the Torah).  Sin, in other words, involves a discrete act, but thoughts of sin (meaning the underlying views that allow for those sins to occur) reject foundations of the faith. [Note: Ran’s reading of the gemara doesn’t quite work as well as Rambam’s, because the gemara says that thoughts of sin, which presumably means in general, are worse than sin itself; in Ran’s reading, it is only the underlying false beliefs that allow for regular sin that are worse than the sin itself.]

FAITH AND THE AKEDAH

Having concluded that two acts can be worlds apart depending on the motivation of the actor(with differing reward accruing for those acts as well), Ran cites a verse in Yeshaya that predicts that in the future the Jews will not rely on those who strike them but will in truth rely on God.  To define relying “in truth” on God, Ran says that the person who does a more unnatural act (commanded by God, so that it is a way of becoming close to Him) shows himself to be more profoundly reliant upon God.

The most unnatural such act, Ran points out, was Avraham’s in the Akedah, a claim he supports in a remarkably original way.  We all recognize the inherent difficulty of the act, but Ran assumes that Avraham also had the option to refuse! Not only to refuse, but to argue with God, to point out to Him that He had promised to give Avraham descendants through Yitshak.  Ran thinks the Jerusalem Talmud supports that view, since it portrays Avraham as saying to God that just as he, Avraham, conquered his inclination and submitted to God’s Will rather than arguing with Him, so should God do for the descendants of Yitshak.  [It is at least arguable, however, that the Yerushalmi only meant that Avraham had conquered his human weakness, which would have tended to accept that argument, not that he would have had the right to refuse God’s command.] 

This reading of the incident runs counter to the modern tendency to wonder how God could have issued such an “immoral” command, and, to a certain extent, how Avraham could have obeyed.  Ran takes it in the exact opposite direction, celebrating Avraham’s free choice to listen to God’s command to do a most strange and unnatural act, despite having had the full right to refuse without any threat of punishment.  Modern philosophy since the time of Kant assumes that autonomous acts, ones we do out of our own intellectual understanding of their value, are the more meritorious; Ran is saying that the more clear it is that we are submitting to God, the better the act.

Although the question of how Judaism deals with Kant’s ideas has been analyzed repeatedly, we should pause for a moment to consider the difference in emphases.  Kant sees personal insight and intellectual understanding as the center of one’s decision process; Ran sees God—in fact, the more clear that one’s own insight are not involved, the more clear that the person is acting in submission to God.  This submission (whenever I speak about this in a Jewish context, I am reminded that Islam and Muslim mean submission) involves recognizing the existence of a Greater Being, whose views of proper and improper are certain to be more insightful than one’s own. It may be worthwhile coming to understand the act and God’s reasons for commanding it—which lends a certain flavor of autonomy to a commanded act—but the fundamental basis of action is God’s command.

Avraham’s act at the Akedah, Ran notes, helped establish several central Jewish beliefs—how far the love of God can inspire someone, the certainty on the part of the prophets that God has spoken to them (since no sane father would prepare to sacrifice his son unless he was absolutely sure that God had commanded him to do so), and the belief in the afterlife (ditto).  It is this kind of reliance on God to which the verse in Yeshaya refers, a level that I find hard to imagine for any broad base of Jews.

TURNING TO GOD, NOT MORE PROXIMATE CAUSES

To illustrate, consider that true turning to God, in that verse, is contrasted to turning to those who are striking the Jews.  To explain, Ran notes that dealing with the most proximate cause of a negative situation is generally not as effective as dealing with the more general underlying cause. His example is of someone being whipped—the whip itself has no power to change what is going on.  Even the person wielding the whip, if he is an employee of the king, has little control over the whipping.  To change one’s situation, then, would require going to the person who was the underlying cause of the whipping and appeal to him. (A more modern example might be to note that aspirin and cold remedies tend to deal with symptoms, not causes; to truly change one’s situation for the better involves identifying and combating the underlying cause).

Which brings him back to medical situations.  When people are ill, they tend to look for purely medical cures for their problems, exactly what Tanakh castigates in Assa, a king of Judah. So, too, someone afraid of germs in the air who tries simply to filter them out, to wear a protective mask, or whatever, is dealing with the symptoms rather than the causes.  Those who truly understand the world, Ran says, will regret their evil acts, achieving healing of soul and body.

TESHUVAH WORKS FULLY, EVEN WHEN UNDERTAKEN UNDER PRESSURE

My surmise that Ran is talking to a community afraid of the Black Death, and urging them to focus on their spiritual flaws as well (I have no reason to believe that he was against their also following medical advice; it was their neglect of the spiritual aspect of it, I believe, that bothered him) is supported by his comment that it is perfectly acceptable to repent because of misfortunes that are befalling a person or that are afflicting others.  Such repentance provides absolution and renewed spiritual health just as much as repentance arrived at for purer reasons.

That claim, however, runs afoul of the gemara’s defining complete teshuva as being that repentance where the person comes across the exact same sin, with the same strength and desire for that sin, and refrains.  The gemara’s formulation implies that an old man who has lost the taste for meat, but ate a great deal of prohibited meat in his youth, could not fully repent of the sin.  Ran argues that that fails to note two components to teshuva: the component of absolution and the component of merit.

In terms of achieving absolution for past sins, the simple internal process of regretting past sins, confessing them, and determining not to repeat them suffices completely.  All people who repent that way—regardless of station in life, even on one’s deathbed—will secure absolution and forgiveness from God.

For Ran, however, teshuva can also be a meritorious act that accrues positive religious reward.  It is that teshuva that best fulfills the Torah’s commandment that the gemara says involves being faced with the sin in the exact same situation.  The other kind of sinner, of course, has to put effort into his repentance as well.  Thus, David haMelekh comments in Psalms that his sin was before his eyes always, despite the gemara’s assertion that David did not actually sin. 

Ran argues that David’s words stress the importance of working hard at teshuva for all sinners, since even David worked constantly at teshuva despite not having really sinned.  In addition, it shows that the level of a sin depends on the person who commits it, since Scripture consciously exaggerated David’s sin, to show that for him the sin was as serious as how Tanakh portrays it.  All of which brings Ran to his conclusion of this derasha, emphasizing the importance of significant repentance (since David worked so hard at teshuva when he hadn’t really done much) and of relying on God, a reliance that can circumvent what seem to be the laws of nature.

A DERASHA ABOUT TESHUVA?

In coming to the end of this relatively short derasha, I think the central question is whether it is truly about repentance, which is the label given it by the editor.  While certainly there is a great deal about teshuva, I think our understanding of the setting of the derasha suggests that Ran was trying to convince his audience that teshuva was a reasonable response to the events at hand, a more subtle and difficult point to make.

Imagine, to put the issue in modern terms, suggesting to someone with a dread disease, which kills two thirds of those who contract it, that one of the central weapons in fighting this disease would be to repent. That claim-- which is, I believe, the central one that Ran is making—depends on a whole underlying worldview, in which God is intimately involved in the world (or, at the very least, in which spiritual actions have a direct impact on the physical workings of the world). 

For those who have been keeping up with these shiurim, there is nothing particularly new, as Ran has made his view of these issues clear.  Seeing it in practice, and thinking of how it might apply in our times, is a different matter altogether.  From personal experience, I can guarantee that many, if not most, people bristle at the suggestion that repentance be a part of their battle with a physical illness (or a deteriorating political situation, for that matter), for at least two reasons.

First, the suggestion implies that they have sinned.  That itself might not be offensive, since in normal circumstances we all recognize that we all sin.  What makes it worse in times of distress (such as when there’s a Black Death abroad) is that it implies that those who contract the illness are in some way worse than those who did not, in some way deserved the punishment more than the others. 

That is not, however, what Ran says.  What he says is that spiritual health is an important factor in determining physical health.  Just as the workings of physical health are not the same for all people (so that two people who exercise to the same exact extent will not achieve the same results, for example), the workings of spiritual health and its affect on physical health will  not be the same for all people either.  Thus, two people with exactly the same sin at hand might not meet the same fate or illness, for reasons we do not know.  That does not change the fact, however, that, for each person, repentance will improve both spiritual health and physical circumstances. 

That point can be applied to other issues as well, where I believe Ran would take the same stance despite its being at odds with modern thought.  To take an easy example, it seems clear to me that Ran would argue that military success for Jews depends on the spiritual health of the people to at least some extent (a point I have not been successful at making even to fully Orthodox and practicing Jews).  Even those who agree that teshuva is always a good idea often do not actually believe that it is their prior actions that have led them to this particular situation.  Ran thinks it all plays a role.

SEVENTH DERASHA

New Ran, 247-55, Old Ran, 110-112

Ran starts this derasha with a story from the Gemara rather than with a particular verse (although the story involves the exegesis of a verse, as we’ll see).  In the story, R. Yohanan b. Baroka and R. Eliezer b. Hisma go to greet R. Yehoshua, who asks them what novelty was expounded in the Bet Midrash that day.  They respond by saying, “We are your students, and drink of your waters.” 

He persisted, and they told him that R. Elazar b. Azaryah had expounded the verse describing the mitzvah of Hakhel, the obligation to gather the entire Jewish people—specifically referring to men, women, and children-- on the Sukkot after every Shemittah.  R. Elazar b. Azaryah noted that the men and women would come to either study or hear the Torah being studied, but questioned why the children would be brought, and answered that it would be to give reward to those who brought them.  The story concludes with R. Yehoshua reacting by saying that they had almost withheld from him this wonderful pearl.

TELLING NOVELTIES TO A TORAH SCHOLAR

Ran opens his discussion by asserting that the two younger rabbis’ original reply to R. Yehoshua was simply a way of asking permission to speak before him, but then he is puzzled by the gemara’s later questioning their response—wouldn’t the gemara have sympathized with their need to ask his permission to speak before spouting their knowledge in front of him? 

Ran answers that the gemara assumed that there was no need to ask permission since a) he had asked, and b) they were not sharing their own ideas (which might smack of arrogance), but were just reporting someone else’s.  When the gemara answers that they asked permission because of another case where the senior rabbi had taken offense at a younger one’s sharing a novel idea with him, Ran understands that to mean that even when quoting others in response to a direct request, a younger scholar should ask permission before sharing the new idea with the older one.

This is a mini-topic worth pausing briefly over.  Ran is perfectly comfortable with the possibility of great men being offended by people sharing other great men’s ideas with them.  He does not recommend that the great man overcome that tendency, he simply notes the gemara’s acceptance of that fact and the requirement for younger (or lesser) people to ask permission before sharing the idea. 

In modern terms, that would mean that if R. Moshe zt”l had ever asked a student of the Rov’s what the Rov said that day in shiur, the proper response would first be to ask permission to actually share the idea.  It is almost as if great men have a fully worked out world of their own, and it is almost disrespectful to, in their presence, recognize that there are other thinkers out there who might also have good ideas.  I can’t express this better right now, except to say that the truly great are different than we are, and that part of that greatness justifies their sense of competitiveness over ideas.

R. ELAZAR B. AZARYAH’S OTHER NOVELLAE

In the continuation of the story, the two students mention two more of REB”A (R. Elazar b. Azaryah)’s exegeses.  The second builds off a verse in Devarim that refers to the Jews’ having bound themselves to God that day and God having “bound” Himself to them.  In explaining, REBA says that God was saying that since the Jews made Him One in the world, He would make them one in the world.  The Jews’ side of that was their recitation of Shema, a statement that bothers Ran because it is a mitzvah, and if God is going to credit us for that mitzvah, He should credit us for many others as well.

Ran’s answer points to a topic close to my heart, the balance between Jews’ simply responding to commands and initiating worship of God on their own.  Ran points to the gemara’s tale of Yaakov’s deathbed (a story, by the way, which Rambam includes in the Mishneh Torah, suggesting that he, too, saw it as more than just a nice tale).  In the story, Yaakov Avinu planned to reveal a detailed vision of the future to his sons but was prevented by Heaven from doing so.  Worried, he questioned whether some of them might have lost faith—which was why he was not allowed to show them their future-- and they responded by saying Shema, Yisrael, etc.  It is that Shema, according to Ran that REBA meant as having led to God’s “binding” us to Him.

What Ran doesn’t point out is that the story of Yaakov’s deathbed assumes that the Jews  (or at least the brothers who formed the Tribes, the shivtei Kah) came to the central formulation of our faith before God told it to Moshe in the Torah.  Our mitzvah to recite Shema morning and evening, then, does two things—it responds to a specific Divine Command to do so, and it continues our family tradition of having recognized this truth before God ever imposed it on us.  That balance between intuiting what God wants and responding to God’s specific telling of what He wants is one that requires a much longer discussion, but is a seed worth planting here.

THE GUIDANCE OF THE WORDS OF TORAH

The third exegesis worked off Kohelet 12;11, a verse that refers to the words of the Sages (which Ran takes to mean the words of Torah generally) as a well-fastened ox-goad, the way in which farmers would keep the oxen pulling a plow on a straight path.  The metaphor means that Torah, as well, insures that people will stay on the proper path (Ran provides more proofs of this idea that we need not review); like with farming, this path will lead to life and livelihood.

The end of that verse refers to ba`alei asufot, which could be read as a description of the nails and the goad, but which the gemara takes as a further reference to Sages, who sit in groups and study Torah, with various views cropping up.  Since that might lead one to despair of achieving any firm Torah knowledge, the verse notes that they were all given from one Shepherd, so that each view can have value and validity.

That verse, which Ran has referred to before, brings up yet again the question of how the system can tolerate dispute so well.  Ran answers that God cared more about the Sages using their intellect to understand the tradition than about their achieving the right answer.  In the most extreme example, he assumes that R. Eliezer b. Hyrkanos was right in his debate with the Sages about the Oven of Akhnai.  Even so, R. Yehoshua was right that the Torah intended for Sages to use their own abilities to come to the best truth they could, and that God preferred the wrong conclusion to the wrong process. 

Ran thinks a similar issue underlay the story of the demise of Rabbah b. Nahmani, where the gemara portrays him as ruling on a debate in the Heavenly Court as to whether a certain lesion was pure or impure, but we will discuss that next week. 

Shabbat Shalom.