Parshat Emor, 5764
255-275, 113-120
UNPACKING THE RABBAH B.
NAHMANI STORY
Readers will recall that
we ended last week with the story of Rabbah b. Nahmani, who was
sitting and learning when he heard the Heavenly Academy arguing
over the impurity of a certain lesion, with everyone other than
God of the opinion that this lesion was impure. They agreed
that Rabbah b. Nahmani was the reigning expert on these kinds of
issues; the Angel of Death was recruited to have him join the
Heavenly Academy, and as Rabbah passed away, he said “Pure!
Pure!”
Ran is bothered by two
aspects of this story. First, he does not understand why the
souls of the departed would spend their time determining the
purity of bodily lesions (since they do not have bodies). Note
Ran’s assumption that the term Heavenly Academy applies to a
group at least primarily composed of departed souls (as opposed
to the angels, for example). This assumption, which to me seems
not to be the simple reading of the term, suggests that Ran
thought that only people and their deceased souls studied Torah,
which would explain why they are the members of the Heavenly
Academy (this fits well with midrashim that portray the angels
as protesting God’s giving the Torah to people, arguing it
should reside with them; Ran apparently understood those texts
as meaning that the angels were left without Torah, not just
that they had to share it with people).
That midrashic view,
then, is stating a more profound truth than just that people
have to struggle with their evil inclination and therefore
deserve Torah; it is saying that the experience of physicality
might be essential to being able to experience Torah as well
(which, in fact, might explain the view of those who believe
that when the dead come back to life, they will no longer be
bound by mitsvot. Having shed their physicality, they
can no longer experience command in the necessary way for Torah
as properly lived).
Second, he wonders how
the debate could continue once God had announced His view of the
purity of the lesions in question.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE
PHYSICAL TO THE SOUL
For the first issue, Ran
offers Ramban’s view of what happens to the soul after death.
Since souls have spent considerable time in the human body, they
have become deeply attached to the physical despite their not
actually being physical. Because of that, for example,
Ran assumes that Gan Eden, where souls stay until they will be
reunited with bodies at the time of the resurrection of the
dead, is an actual physical place on this world.
Although I admit that
that last piece, the earthly existence of a place where deceased
souls wait for resurrection, is difficult to swallow, Ran’s and
Ramban’s view of the deep interconnection between the body and
the soul seems to me very in line with modern brain science.
Those who study victims of particular types of brain damage
(there are numerous interesting books on the topic, including
ones by Howard Gardner, Antonio Damasio, and Oliver Sacks) offer
ample evidence that physical occurrences to the body (at least
to the brain) affect not just the brain’s ability to function,
but the personality of the victim. Unless we argue that there
is no such thing as a soul—as some would like to—the evidence
seems to suggest that bodily injuries affect the very essence of
the person, which would be in line with Ran’s view.
R. Aaron Soloveitchik,
zt”l, once described his post-stroke experience of feeling
alienated from the affected side of his body, as if it was an
appendage to “him,” an example of seeing certain traumas as
sundering or affecting the body/soul connection.
For Ran’s purposes here,
the point of stressing that connection is to say that even once
removed from the body, the soul does not become a purely
spiritual entity (such as the angels, or the pristine soul it
was before its time in the body); it remains deeply affected by
its relationship to the body, and, indeed, maintains that
connection. As an example of that, Ran notes that the Talmud
several times relates stories of people going to gravesites to
ask a deceased person either for information or to intercede
with God on some issue. Ran says that they went to the grave
itself (as opposed to just addressing the deceased person from
home) because the soul is more connected to the gravesite than
any other place in the world (a belief I have long known was a
traditional one, but for which I had not remembered an explicit
source).
Ran’s first answer,
then, is that the souls of the deceased would study laws of
lesions because they could not shed their physical connection.
The second answer—the one I would have thought would come
first—was that souls have to be involved with Torah (since
that’s where true wisdom comes from), an answer that assumes
that the physical aspect of this piece of Torah was coincidental
to the more important underlying aspect of these laws, an aspect
that is equally relevant to nonphysical beings as to physical
ones. I thought this would come first because it seems more
obvious to the Jewish idea of Torah—while it takes the form of
numerous mundane physical things, it is actually about
more fundamental principles, which all intelligent beings might
study.
THE SECOND QUESTION:
ARGUING WITH GOD
As to how the Academy
could argue with God, Ran goes back to his distinction between
the Torah of Truth and the Torah as understood by people.
Although as soon as God registered an opinion, the Heavenly
Academy knew what the “original intent” of the Torah had been,
they could still argue that that was not what the human
intellect would have concluded following its ordinary logical
process. Turning to Rabbah b. Nahmani, they were seeking a
human opinion.
Although Ran doesn’t
phrase it this way, a weakness in his interpretation is that
Rabbah was still only one man, so that if the majority of
rabbis on his court were to disagree with him, the law would
follow them rather than him. If so, in Ran’s reconstruction of
the discussion in the Academy, their turning to one person is a
flawed strategy, since what they really needed was a poll of
scholars to decide the issue.
That problem aside—and
its especially problematic since Rabbah decides that God is
right, uncomfortably similar to R. Eliezer, whose views were
rejected despite his according better with the Torah’s
“original intent”—it leads Ran back to reminding us that had the
majority determined the law differently, Rabbah and others would
be liable to follow that wrong view because of the commandment
of “Lo Tasur,” which has two applications.
THE RABBIS—INTERPRETERS
AND LEGISLATORS
Lo Tasur,
Ran says, involves both accepting the majority interpretation of
Torah in each context (pure/impure, liable/ guiltless, etc.) as
well as—and this is the bigger novelty—their determination as to
what boundaries/additional practices are needed to safeguard the
Torah’s goals and values. In that sense, even if one
transgresses a derabannan prohibition of Shabbat (such as
carrying muktseh items), in this view—and Ran cites
Rambam as holding this view as well—is also transgressing a
Torah prohibition of lo tasur. (Those interested in the
lomdus applications of such ideas can wonder whether Ran
means that a person who carries muktseh has transgressed
Shabbat on a Torah level, or has transgressed the obligation to
listen to the Sages. Rambam, who refused to count Rabbinic
enactments in his 613 mitsvot, seems to have assumed the latter,
so that all Rabbinic commandments have a Torah element to them,
but it is the one large rubric of lo tasur).
As to why we find so
many distinctions drawn between Rabbinic commandments and Torah
commandments—the most famous being that doubts in derabannan
matters are decided le-kula, leniently—Ran says that
that is only because the Rabbis decided to enact them that way.
Ran then questions
himself from a central source on the issue of lo tasur,
the gemara’s discussion of the blessing said over Hanukkah
candles, asher kideshanu be-mitsvotav ve-tsivanu, Who has
sanctified us with His mitsvot and commanded us, etc.
The gemara questions how we can say that about a clearly
Rabbinic enactment, and offers two answers, with R. Avya saying
lo tasur and R. Nahman b. Yitshaq citing a verse in
Deuteronomy, she’al avikha ve-yagedkha, ask your father
and he will tell you. Since that latter verse is not a
commandment—it is in Haazinu as part of the general advice of
Moshe’s final shira/reminder/warning to the Jewish
people—R. Avya would seem to mean lo tasur in a similarly
nonlegal fashion.
ROOTED IN THE TORAH VS.
NON-ROOTED
Ran answers that that
debate only applied to Hanukkah (and similar rabbinic
enactments) because it has no Torah source whatsoever. In
contrast to Rabbinic expansions of Shabbat, for example, where
Hazal’s legislative power is used to expand already existing
Torah law, Hanukkah is an area of law completely created by
Hazal. The former kinds of laws, Ran claims, were always
recognized as falling under the rubric of lo tasur; it is
only the all-new ones that R. Nahman b. Yitshaq debated.
Before we go on with
Ran’s ideas, it’s interesting to contrast his assumption that
expansive laws are more obviously part of lo tasur with
Behag’s apparently reverse assumption. Early in his
introduction to the Sefer haMitsvot, Rambam took Behag to
task for including Rabbinic commandments as mitsvot. If
Rabbinic rules count, Rambam said, all the various Rabbinic
rulings on Shabbat, etc., should count as well, bringing the
number well over the traditional 613. I believe Behag would
have differentiated along Ran’s lines, but the other
way—expansions of other rules become, perhaps by way of lo
tasur, part of the original rule (so, for example, if I eat
hametz on the eighth day of Pesah outside of Israel, I suspect
Behag would have said—and our instinct would be—that I have
violated Pesah, not lo tasur). Hanukkah, hand-washing,
and other Rabbinic legislations, however, can only be grounded
in lo tasur.
THE IMPORTANCE OF
CREATIVITY OUTSIDE OF PREEXISTING HALAKHAH
Getting back to Ran, he
then goes on to explicitly say something that I’ve been working
on for a while now, that the main part of the Torah, and the
central reward, is for where Hazal find areas to expand our
religiosity that were not commanded by God. Although he
is not always clear as to whether he means things like
protective fences around pre-existing prohibitions or completely
novel enactments (or both), he is clear that it is the response
to Hazal’s deciding that something is religiously important that
garners special and particular merit. From his perspective,
then, Hashem gave the Torah as a starting point, expecting and
hoping that Hazal would enrich that legacy in each generation.
(Not, I suspect, simply by prohibiting more actions, but by
defining ever more fully the nature of a well-lived religious
life).
As part of his proof,
Ran notes a Mishnah in Avodah Zarah 29a where R. Yishmael was
questioning R. Yehoshua as to the reason that the Rabbis
prohibited the cheese of non-Jews. After having a few answers
rejected, R. Yehoshua, the Mishnah tells us, changed the topic
of conversation, engaging R. Yehoshua in a discussion about the
correct reading of Shir haShirim 1;2. Although the Mishnah makes
it seem like just a diversionary tactic, Ran thinks he meant to
hint to him the reading of the verse cited later in the gemara
(35a), that the Jewish people were declaring their greater love
for the words of the Rabbis than for the Torah itself.
PRIORITY OF
COMMANDEDNESS?
Ran recognizes that the
famous statement of the gemara that one who is commanded to
perform a certain act is greater than one who is not commanded
seems to contradict his view. If the system prefers
commandedness, following explicit mitsvot should be more
important than obeying Hazal’s decisions as to where and how to
best add to that structure. Ran deals with this by offering
three explanations for the principle of gadol hametsuveh,
greater is the one commanded, each of which accepts the gemara’s
view and yet shows how it is irrelevant to the general religious
question of whether to prefer following explicit Divine commands
or to prefer following humanly articulated ones.
First, he argues that
the gemara’s statement was a reflection of the greater stress a
commanded person will have over the fulfillment of the
commandment (as do Tosafot). In the nature of people, someone
who is required to perform a certain act will worry more about
making sure it gets done than one who does not. For example,
if two people intend to go to a Little League game but are very
busy at work, the one who is a parent of a child playing in the
game has a “command” (the feelings of the child) to get to the
game; the other, just an adult in the community, would like
to get to the game, but if it doesn’t work out, that’s the
way it goes. Their different experience of the need to fulfill
a mitsvah caused the gemara’s statement about reward,
since the Mishnah in Avot tells us that reward is affected by
the level of angst and effort a person invests in their
religious activity.
The second possibility
Ran suggests is that mitsvot might be commanded to
certain people and not others because of some inherent
characteristic in those people. Just like there are mitsvot
that the Torah only saw as relevant in Israel, or at certain
times of the year, there may be mitsvot that only apply
to certain kinds of people. If so, others who perform that
mitsvah are not doing something wrong, but are not getting
as much out of the act as the ones to whom it was directed.
Third, Ran notes that
the performance of mitsvot isn’t important to God—it
doesn’t help or hurt Him—so that the whole structure is one made
for people. When God promises reward, then, it is more like a
gift from Him to the people involved. That gift, however, was
only offered to particular people or groups of people, so that
others who choose to do the same act have no right to expect the
same reward. A parent who asks a child to do something may be
pleased if another child also does it, but there is no reason
for the parent to reward the child to the same extent as the
commanded sibling. While this is similar to the previous
answer—both argue that a mitzvah given to a particular
person applies most to that person—this one focuses on
the fact that reward for mitsvot is a gift from God, and
that God chose to whom to give which opportunities for full
reward.
Ran’s expression of the
matter stresses Hazal’s going beyond the explicit Torah and the
tradition, but he then cites R. Yonah in Gates of Repentance,
who adduces similar sources about the Rabbis’ legislative
function. In R. Yonah’s view, cultivating fear/awe of God and
the mitsvot is a central religious endeavor; since Hazal’s
protective decrees foster that attitude, they become essential
to religious life.
PUNISHMENT FOR IGNORING
RABBINIC DECREES
In addition to seeing
Rabbinic rules as more religiously essential, Ran also cites the
Talmudic statement that one who transgresses such a rule is
liable for death, but then immediately questions it. On its
face, it seems ridiculous to claim that violating a rabbinic
rule deserves more punishment than a specifically commanded
practice of the Torah.
To explain, Ran notes
that the question misunderstands the punishment that accrues for
various sins. While it is true that the Torah sets up certain
punishments for certain sins, that is only where the sin
involves the act itself and nothing else—I give in to my desire
for pig, so I get flogged (Ran seems to be assuming that the
elaborate requirement for witnesses, warning, etc. before
administering that punishment is only a way to verify that the
sin was actually committed; it is possible, though, to see
flogging as the punishment for willful public transgression,
which would alter, but not destroy, his idea here). If there
are other factors to that transgression, such as a level of
denigration for Torah itself, a different, harsher punishment
would be appropriate.
It turns out, then, that
there may be a punishment that can be prescribed for an act
itself, but there will be levels of punishment that will depend
on the person committing the sin, his or her motivation when
committing that sin, and so on. Any person who transgresses a
Rabbinic commandment, in Ran’s view, is not just giving in to
desire but is acting disrespectfully towards the Rabbis and, by
extension, the entire structure of Torah, and therefore deserves
death.
Ran is about to question
the focus on fear/awe that he just accepted from R. Yonah, but
before he does so, I’d like to point out some of the
ramifications of the position he just espoused. In noting that
there is punishment for aspects of a sin that are inherently
personal, Ran not only explained why the gemara would speak of
capital liability for violating Rabbinic commandments, he also
contributed greatly to the vexing question of how we could
envision suffering as punishment for people who seem to be at
least as righteous as everyone else.
Ran’s view of sin and
punishment tells us that, much like families, each person has an
internal life that we cannot see but that God knows and factors
into that person’s punishment and reward. When we see apparent
evildoers prosper and vice verse, then, at least part of the
puzzle is that we do not know their internal experience, and the
acts/motives/intentions for which they are being rewarded or
punished.
IS FEAR OF GOD GOOD OR
BAD?
In the last section of
the derasha that we will mention this week, Ran counterposes
Talmudic statements that favor fear/awe as a very high form of
religious attachment to those that denigrate it as a low form.
While he will continue the discussion in the rest of the derasha,
his basic answer differentiates two types of fear of God. The
first involves fear of punishment, of what God can do to us if
we fail to obey His commands (it is an accurate fear, just not a
particularly elevated form of religious attachment).
The second form, which
Ran sees as of a level rivaling love of God, is more like awe
than fear. It is what happens when a person is fully aware of
God’s greatness, and recoils in fear, not a fear of consequences
but a fear of standing in the presence of such an august being.
Next week, we will see how Ran uses this dichotomy-- these two
types of fear-- to bring this derasha to a conclusion.
Shabbat Shalom.
