SHIUR 6

PARSHAT TETSAVEH, 5764 (SHABBAT ZAKHOR)

SUMMARY, 109-end of Third Derasha

Who Makes the Mute?

Ran was in the middle of a discussion of Moshe Rabbenu’s miraculous prophecy when he got sidetracked by God’s rhetorical question to Moshe “Who gives a mouth to man, and who makes one mute?” Since muteness is a lack of ability, Ran is puzzled by God’s referring to it as “making,” as if it were the creation of something.  He notes, therefore, that in most cases of opposites, each one has to be actively put in place—to make a black object white, someone would have to paint it that color, for example.

In the case of lack, however, I don’t “make” it happen, such as “making” the room dark.  As a linguistic matter, however, Ran notes that we tend to say that the person who extinguishes the light, or prevents someone else from lighting it—who is the material cause of there being a lack of light-- has “made” it dark.  Just walking into a room and neglecting to put on a light, however, would not qualify as making it dark.

When it comes to God, though, we would speak of His making something happen even in that last situation, because of an important distinction between people and God.  If a person fails to act in a certain way—turning on a light, in this instance—it may have come from a conscious desire to produce that result, but the person equally may have done so out of an inability to achieve a different result—the light switch was inaccessible or broken—or by not thinking of it for some reason (“Why are you sitting in the dark?” “Oh, you know, I didn’t realize, I was too busy thinking”).

People might produce or contribute to a negative state—the lack of light-- involuntarily or unwittingly, but not God.  Wherever God’s Creation lacks, Ran says, it is directly attributable to God, at least linguistically (since God is never unable or unaware).  In our context, that means that God was reminding Moshe that his linguistic problems were for a reason, not out of happenstance (this is a topic of its own, that we’ll come back to).

AARON’S REWARD

While God emphasized the importance of Moshe’s linguistic difficulties—to prove the miracle of his prophecy, as we saw last week--He also gave him Aharon to speak for him.  As we have seen earlier in this derasha, Ran cites the Talmud’s emphasis on Aaron’s selflessness in serving Moshe without jealousy, and his getting the right to wear the hoshen as reward. 

Now, Ran expands on the nature of that reward.  He starts by positing that rewards from God are middah ke-neged middah, are done in such a way that there is a direct correspondence between the act and the reward.  Here, Aaron’s act was conceding the job of top prophet despite his having reached prophecy first.  Most elements of the priesthood would not serve as reward for that, since priests did Temple service and prophets predicted the future, different ways of serving the Jewish polity. 

Ran, however, notes that the Talmud refers specifically to the hoshen ha-mishpat, the garment that contained the Urim ve-Tumim, as Aaron’s reward.  The Urim ve-Tumim were not an inherent part of the garment, since tradition had it that High Priests in the Second Temple wore the hoshen despite having lost the Urim ve-Tumim.  They were, however, items that somehow allowed the High Priest to predict the future.  In that sense, the priest served as a prophet, too.  In fact, Ran cites Yoma 73b, which says that a prophecy is still changeable, but a prediction of the Urim ve-Tumim is not, meaning that the High Priest has access to a more certain picture of the future than even does a prophet.  That, he says, was Aaron’s reward.

A problem with Ran’s view is that the Talmud mentioned the hoshen, when it should have referred directly to the Urim ve-Tumim.  I suspect, though, that Ran was distinguishing between the hoshen, the priestly garment worn regardless of the presence of the Urim ve-Tumim—and the hoshen ha mishpat, a term that is used for this garment only in the context of having the Urim ve-Tumim woven into it as well.  Perhaps based on that, Ran assumed that it was the predictive function of the hoshen that constituted Aharon’s reward.

BACK TO HAHODESH— FOR THE NATION AND FOR THE COURTS

Of course, the other privilege Aaron received was to be included in the command about this new month, a reward Ran does not explicitly connect to Aaron’s act (as we might have expected from his comments about God acting middah ke-neged middah).  Instead, he points out that God says that Nissan should be the first month for you, emphasizing, in Ran’s reading, that nature does not have a New Year.  Time flows seamlessly from one year to the next, and even though a solar year might reasonably start from Nissan—spring is the beginning of the year in many natural senses—Jews have a lunar calendar, which does not favor Nissan at all.  Hence the stress on “for you,” to recognize that our attachment to Nissan is not a function of nature or spring, but it’s having been the month of redemption and the beginning of our natural life.

That also explains counting the New Year for other matters from Tishrei. Although Ran is of the opinion that Judaism accepts the view that the world was created in Nissan (a dispute between R. Yehoshua and R. Eliezer in Rosh ha Shana 12a), it is judged every Tishrei (when the Flood ended), so that a year later, we can be sure that the world survived in the previous year’s judgment, and needs to do so again.  That means that Ran assumes that Rosh haShanah, as well, is not a natural New Year, but an artificial one, established in recognition of important events occurring around that time.

While that explains the stressed “for you” in the verse, the Rabbis took the word lakhem as telling the courts that they were masters of the calendar, and their decisions on calendrical matters were final.  In a famous example of this, R. Yehoshua once disagreed with R. Gamliel’s calendrical decision; when Rabban Gamliel ordered him to appear before him—wearing and carrying items inappropriate to Yom Kippur-- on the date that R. Yehoshua thought should have been Yom Kippur, R. Yehoshua was distressed.  When he consulted with other rabbis, however, they agreed that the court’s decision on matters of calendar was binding, and that R. Yehoshua was required to heed Rabban Gamliel’s ruling.

FOLLOW THE SAGES, RIGHT OR WRONG

The court’s control over the calendar is one example of an essnetial aspect of Jewish thought that Ran sees embedded in this first mitzvah, which he explains by digressing to discuss Hagigah 3b, where the Talmud analyzes Kohelet 12;11, which says (in an English translation I found online), “The words of the wise are like goads; and like nails well fastened are words from the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd.”  The Gemara first says that just like the goad keeps the cow in the furrow when it is pulling a plow, the words of the Torah turn people’s hearts from the ways of death to the ways of life.  Ran sees that as emphasizing that Torah—not intelligence or sophistication—teaches people the right way to live and think.

Further on, the Gemara takes up the description of the Sages as masters of assemblies, and says that the verse means to refer to the disputes that occur—that the Sages sit in groups, one group ruling one way an the other the opposite way—and to emphasize that all of their words were given from one Shepherd.  The paradox that contradictory opinions as still all seen as coming from one Shepherd, troubles Ran repeatedly in the Derashot, and his answer is one of the most well-known ideas found in the work.

Ran makes two points, and at least here is not fully clear about which he means.  He cites Megillah 19b which asserts that Moshe Rabbenu received the entire Torah, including all later arguments and enactments, at Sinai; that, on its own might mean that all future opinions, even contradictory ones, were somehow part of Torah.  He then says, though, that part of that revelation was the procedural rule that the halakhah should follow the majority of the Sages.   Thus, in the famous story of Tanuro shel Akhnai, when R. Eliezer offered all sorts of supernatural proofs of his correctness, Ran believes that those who disagreed with him recognized that he must be more correct in some objective way, because God and the supernatural ratified his claims.  Nonetheless, since their own understanding had led them to a different conclusion, they felt obligated—and correctly so, in Ran’s view—to follow their intellect in deciding the law. This is obviously a tremendously complex idea, which we will discuss below to some extent, but we will also have to be alert for it in future Derashot.

For Ran’s purposes, that halakhah follows the Rabbis’ best abilities, right or wrong, is reflected clearly in this first mitzvah, since the calendar also follows their determination, again right or wrong.

MIRACLES, PROOF OF THE WORLD TO COME, AND THE FIRST MITSVAH

Another element of this mitzvah, the command to smear the doorposts with blood highlights one more general aspect of mitsvot that Ran sees as having appropriately been embedded in the first commandment to the Jewish people, the miraculous.

Ran notes—returning to a theme we have seen numerous times before—that each time the Jews start receiving commandments, there was an obvious miracle present. Here, we have the miracle of their being saved from the killing of the firstborn, in Marah (where the verse says they were given hoq and mishpat), and at Sinai, commandments came with miracles.  In fact, Ran assumes that miracles were prevalent throughout Jewish history (a contention backed up by the fifth chapter of Avot’s listing of ten regular miracles in the Temple, for example).

For Ran, those miracles are part of proving that there is a World to Come in which people will get their full reward.  Using a medieval distinction among the three kinds of souls—vegetative, which is what plants have, appetitive, the soul that leads animals to move to get the objects of its desire, and intellectual, which is what humans have—Ran notes that the first two are purely physical, which would indicate that they are housed in bodies that only have a physical element to them. 

The intellectual, however, is not (in Ran’s view, of course; many modern thinkers disagree, but that is too complex an issue to discuss here).  Since people’s existence depends on that third soul, it should indicate that people are not limited by the physical.  Rather, those things that are good for the intellectual soul are good for the body as well, and those that are bad for the intellectual soul will be bad for the body.  This seems to be a crucial idea for Ran, and I will elaborate on it below.

For now, though, Ran uses that as a proof of a nonphysical reward and punishment, while at the same time recognizing that the Torah frequently speaks of a physical outcome for our performance of the mitsvot or lack of it.  Since the soul isn’t purely physical, we should expect a non-physical reward as well, but since God wants us to know that the physical is deeply affected by the non-physical, He makes sure that mitzvah performance affects the physical life as well.

And, to start off on the right foot, God embedded that kind of supernatural effect on the physical in the very first mitzvah commanded to the people.  The smearing of blood on a doorpost does not ordinarily prevent plague from entering a house; that it did so here was to stress to the people that mitsvot have an effect beyond that particular act.

GENERAL AND INDIVIDUAL PROVIDENCE

On the other hand, Ran notes that the people were warned to stay in their houses, enriching our understanding of the natural/supernatural balance in two ways.  First, it shows that God does not alter nature freely and willingly, but does so as minimally and as infrequently as possible.  Even here, therefore, He did not simply allow the Jews to walk through the plague unharmed, since that would alter nature excessively.  So, too, God prefers to run the world at a general level, whereas allowing people to roam through Egypt that night would have required individual protection of each. 

That also explains for Ran, although he only mentions it in passing, how people might get a different lot in life than they deserve.  Since Providence tends to deal with the world in general terms, a righteous person stuck in a society that deserves a terrible lot in life may find him or her self living a less blessed life than is really deserved.  While this is an important addition to theodicy—the question of the sufferings of the righteous and prospering of the wicked—Ran only touches on it, and we will do just a bit more below.

Finally, as a sort of coda, Ran points out that we also look for our final redemption in Nissan, since both R. Eliezer and R. Yehoshua—who argued about when the world was created—agreed that redemption would occur in the same month. Since Ran believes that we follow R. Yehoshua, he thinks that the redemption will come in that month as well, a circular view of history worth thinking about a bit more.

SUMMARY

To summarize, then, Ran’s third derasha ostensibly speaks of the commandment to set up Nisan as the first month, although that first mitzvah, in his reading includes all the rules of that first Paschal sacrifice as well.  From Ran’s perspective, this first commandment introduces us to several central issues in Jewish thought.  First, it shows the miraculousness of Moshe’s prophecy, since he was not oratorically gifted enough to ordinarily have served in that role.  At the same time, Aaron’s serving as Moshe’s subordinate shows that Moshe’s resistance to that role led to some moderation of the original plan, and Aaron’s acceptance of that gained him the right to have his role in the world also share in the prophet’s role.

The calendar as a whole, for Ran, was a way of teaching the Jews to impose themselves on Nature rather than just follow it, since a lunar calendar has no natural stopping and ending points, and yet Jews make up two such points (Nisan for some purposes, Tishrei for others; of course, the Mishnah in Rosh haShanah lists two more New Years, but Ran has made his point).  That calendar also stresses the greater importance of proper procedure rather than proper result (so that it is preferable to follow the majority of the Sanhedrin rather than reach the “right” halakhah). 

Finally, the issue of staying indoors reminds the Jews that their actions of mitzvah can and do overcome the physical natural world, both in this instance and in general.  However, it does so on a nation or community-wide basis, not for the individual, which is why they had to stay in their homes. Even this brief summary highlights how many central issues this derasha touches on, and we will try to take up just a few of them briefly here.

THE MIRACULOUS

This derasha has greatly advanced our ability to summarize Ran’s view of how and why miracles affect nature.  If we start with the archetype of human beings, who carry a non-physical soul that allows them to act in non-physical ways (the intellect), we recognize that Ran saw a world that was mostly physical, but whose central species encompassed both the physical and the nonphysical.

That aspect of humans, which reflects a supernatural realm, means that the physical world is actually guided and run by non-physical events.  That is why mitsvot can affect whether Israel gets rain, whether people live long lives and so on.  It is to emphasize that point that God wanted miracles to occur for Jews regularly (and, indeed, in an age of science, the belief that there is a supernatural that can intrude—I didn’t say always does—is one of the hardest to make).  It was that sense of the supernatural that was vital in Moshe’s prophecy, to insure that we would recognize the difference between the Torah and all the rest of the prophets. And, it is that aspect of the world that should help us understand that the health of our souls deeply affects the health of our bodies.

            SLACK TO SHAPE THE WORLD

At the same time, Ran recognizes (although he does not explain) a preference to have the world operate naturally (I personally think that that would be because people are able to see order in a naturally-run world, and that order can, if analyzed correctly, teach them how to partner with God in Creation; a supernatural world leaves no room for humans, who are out of their league instantly once the rules of nature are abrogated.  But that is a topic for a different time). 

That preference led to several of the ideas that came up in the derasha.  First, I think it explains why God would heed Moshe’s resistance and bring Aaron on board, even giving the High Priest a continuing predictive function.  To the extent that God wants people to have input into the running of the world, they must be able to make mistakes as well.  While God would have “preferred” that Moshe do the whole thing (perhaps because it would ensure that the miraculous underpinnings of the Exodus and the Torah would be all that much clearer), He acceded to Moshe’s desire for help.

Similarly, God gives people the right to shape halakhah, as long as they are doing their best to reach the objective truth.  Even where they recognize that someone else got it better, their job is to follow procedure, since that fulfills God’s higher goal, giving people the ability to partner in how the world runs. 

Finally, I think God’s preference for minimal interference explains Ran’s idea of general as opposed to individual providence.  While saving the Jews from the plague because of smears of blood was clearly supernatural, it was less so than saving each individual Jew as he or she walked around outside where plague swirled.  So, too, were providence to extend to each individual exactly as deserved, the world would be somewhat fairer, but less open to laws, regularity, and therefore to human input and understanding.

We now, then, have a much better picture of Ran’s world, of the role of miracles, of the need to balance natural and supernatural, and of the delicate game God plays between reaching objectively good goals and leaving room for people to come as close to those goals as they can, within the limits of their procedures and capabilities. 

If I may stray from the Ran for a second, much of that lesson comes up in the Purim holiday as well, where people managed to enlist God’s aid and to produce salvation for the nation without direct recourse to the miraculous.  Shabbat Shalom and Purim Sameah.