Kankan Chadash

Feynman: The Difficulty

2009-07-17T18:32:00.000-04:00

Although the title of the following video is "Richard Feynman on Social Sciences," I would like to focus on the point he makes about knowledge, which begins at 1:12.

One of the most important assets I have gained from my seven years in yeshiva is a realistic sense of how much work is necessary to arrive at a good sevara (abstract theory). Admittedly, I do not always heed this sense to the extent that I should, but it is there, and guides my thinking every day.

This video reminded me of a passage from Rabbeinu Yonah's commentary on Mishlei. I know this is not usually my style, but I'm going to simply present the words of Rabbeinu Yonah without commenting on them or explaining them. I'd like to let Rabbeinu Yonah speak for himself. The pasuk on which he is commenting says, "One who is slow to anger is of great understanding, but one who is hasty of spirit elevates folly" (Mishlei 14:29):

"Slowness to anger" refers to someone who controls his anger and doesn't take revenge at the time of his wrath until after he settles his mind and considers the proper course of action. From this trait a person can attain great understanding. It is impossible for a person who is hasty of spirit to succeed in analytical thinking. He will seize the first idea that appeals to him, and he will not be able to dwell on the idea to examine it from all analytical angles in order to determine whether anything might undermine it, until he reaches a theory which is firm and carefully considered. This habit will only be found in a patient person, and one who is slow to anger is a patient person.

Furthermore, when this non-chacham thinks he has found a solution, but his friend points out a difficulty with it, he will have a hard time accepting this. He will brush aside his friend's argument in favor of his own; he will not have the patience to weigh the validity of his friend's argument, nor will he be willing to admit to the truth. We see from here that the same disposition that gives rise to the virtue of slowness to anger also helps a person to attain great understanding.

Furthermore, when an impatient person hears something which, at first glance, appears to be irrational and does not pass the test of a hasty analysis, he will cease thinking about it and will abandon it. One who has great understanding, on the other hand, will listen attentively until he analyzes and understands the words and statements of his friend; sometimes, at the end of the analysis, he will find the matter acceptable to his mind.

Feyman's principle might be easy to understand, but it is difficult to integrate into one's own learning.

I'm thinking about starting a series called "Feyman Fridays" - at least, for the remainder of the summer. Every Friday I'll post a Feynman video, quotation, or anecdote to discuss. How does that sound?

What to Do if Students Cheat

2009-07-13T06:00:00.001-04:00

I am currently enrolled in a class at Azrieli entitled "Educational Tests and Measurements." We were recently asked to respond to the following question:

After administering your well-designed summative assessment, you see two of your students looking at each others test papers. After collecting their papers, you see that each has the same four incorrect answers. You talk to them individually and they each deny the charge of copying. What do you do?

Recalling a prior discussion, I responded as follows:

If this happened in my class, I would be very happy. Why? Because I know that such an event would provide a tremendous learning opportunity for my students and for myself.
Here is what I would do. Shortly after the alleged cheating incident, I would devote an entire class session to a philosophical analysis of cheating. I would initiate the discussion by guiding the students to arrive, on their own, at the fundamental questions of the sugya, such as:
What is the definition of cheating?
How do people cheat? Categorically, how many different types of cheating are there?
Why do people cheat? Categorically, what are the motives for cheating?
What are the possible short-term and long-term natural
consequences of cheating?
What are the causes of the mistakes which lead to a cheater getting caught? How could the cheater have avoided these mistakes?
What is the relationship between cheating and lying, dishonesty, or stealing?
What's wrong with cheating? And for that matter, what's wrong with lying,
dishonesty, or stealing? (If the first five questions have been answered
satisfactorily, then this question will almost answer itself.)
Is cheating ever appropriate or good? Is there a time to cheat?
The discussion would be grounded in real-life examples and cases. My role would be that of a discussion moderator. I would guide the discussion by keeping it anchored in productive questions, and I would help students to clarify their thoughts and to arrive at their own understanding and judgments about cheating. At the end, I would summarize our conclusions.
In my experience, discussions like these are where the real learning is at. They cause students to genuinely think about themselves and their decisions, and they actualize their potential to make real bechirah-decisions. Chances are, a discussion like this would be far more beneficial than the content of the test itself.
Moreover, this is the type of discussion that can take place several times throughout the year. I guarantee you that every time you discuss this with your students, new ideals will be discovered and the old ideas will be clarified in the minds of all.
And if, as a consequence of this discussion, one of my students makes a rational decision to cheat on a future test, then so be it. If I have helped this student to make a bechirah-decision by understanding the definition of cheating, the psychological motivation behind cheating, and the consequences of cheating, then I have succeeded as a teacher.

What do you think about my response? How would you respond to the question?

Check Your Own Pulse

2009-07-10T06:00:00.002-04:00

The following is an article written by my dad, to be submitted for publication.

Check Your Own Pulse - by Dan Schneeweiss, M.D.

I have the mixed blessing of being in a profession that requires me to periodically manage emergencies in the operating room. I am an anesthesiologist, a profession described as “99% boredom and 1% panic”.

More accurately, it is 99.9% routine -- things sometimes happen unexpectedly during an operation, but we’re accustomed to anticipate and respond to such events. Generally, there is no immediate threat to the patient’s safety; we are vigilant and well trained. Generally, the cause is apparent, and the resolution is promptly initiated - “no harm, no foul.”

The remaining 0.1%, however, is “You better NOT panic” ... but more on that later.

In my 19-year anesthesia career, there have been a few cases that have tested my skill and fortitude to the limit. These are situations that deteriorate rapidly and place the patient’s life at risk. Out of the 20,000 patients I have cared, for I have had fewer than a half dozen of these. You never forget the details of such events.

I recently had one of these cases that was rather unique. In this “man-bites-dog” scenario, it was not the patient’s safety that was at risk, but rather my personal safety and the safety of my nursing staff. Briefly, this involved a six foot tall 260-lb. muscular young man who emerged from general anesthesia in an agitated state. Despite massive doses of sedative medications, his agitation rapidly deteriorated into a violent fracas requiring four nurses and myself to restrain a thrashing, punching, kicking, biting behemoth. He snapped his wrist restraints, tried to disconnect three safety belts, and bit through his IV tubing and monitor cables. He threatened to “track me down and f******g kill me” for restraining his arm in a rather painful position so that he would not harm himself or any of us. Eventually - for the first and hopefully the last time in my career - I called 911 for police back-up. I needed a “show of force” that a 62 year-old anesthesiologist and four female nurses (two of them weighing under 110 pounds) could not provide.

I could regale you with the details of this case that might amaze and perhaps even amuse you. But my purpose in writing this is to share with you the following principles as a guide in approaching not only medical emergencies but also emergencies in other settings.

1. “Check your own pulse.”

This quote comes from a book called House Of God written about life as an intern at Massachusetts General Hospital. A list of rules for interns contained the admonition that when approaching a cardiac arrest, the first thing to do was to “check your own pulse.”

Once you realize that you are facing an emergency, you must force yourself to remain calm and not panic. As difficult as this might be, you must not even give the appearance of panicking. Raising your voice beyond what is needed to be heard, using profanity, making harsh, critical comments, expressing fear and hopelessness -- such behavior adversely affects your entire team. Even if you FEEL panic inside, DO NOT let that feeling show. As the old deodorant commercial warned: “Never let them see you sweat.”

2. “Hope was not a plan.”

This is what the CEO of JetBlue Airlines said when asked what he had learned from the disastrous incident several summers ago that left JetBlue’s planes on the tarmac in the blazing heat for over eight hours, passengers stranded inside.

It is natural to avoid facing an unpleasant reality. It is easy to delay going into action in the hope that things will improve. To make matters worse, it is not always easy to recognize when a problematic situation turns into a crisis. This transition may be gradual, with no clear demarcation.

However, once you recognize that the present situation is spiraling out of control, you must immediately change your mindset to deal with the true emergency. You must improvise a plan and act on it. Just hoping it will get better again will only waste time.At the same time, you must avoid over-reacting to minor mishaps. Over-reaction and delayed action are both harmful.

3. “Sometimes wrong, but never in doubt.”

Better known as the Surgeon’s Credo, this means that you must act decisively and never give in to becoming mentally immobilized. This can be VERY difficult. The scenario is: you improvise a plan based on your experience with similar problems. You go through all of the normal prescribed steps but ... IT DOESN’T WORK. Suddenly, there is a danger of becoming psychologically immobilized just as that panicky feeling sets in.

You MUST fight that feeling. You MUST be decisive and act. There is a very important principle here: better a wrong action than no action. Even if that action might turn out to be a mistake, at least a mistake might give you information about what doesn’t work. Decisive action will give your team confidence in your leadership. If you freeze, others start to panic.

4. “Think outside the box.”

You might also need to resort to unorthodox options to resolve the problem. In the emergency I described earlier, I finally called 911 for police back-up. That’s not something one ordinarily expects to do in a medical setting. I also resorted to a rather unusual choice of medications. When the routine sedatives did not work, I asked for the drugs used to tranquilize violent psychotic patients. They were not available at the facility where the problem occurred. I then remembered a medication that has fallen out of favor as a sedative in anesthesia more than twenty years ago. I used it and it worked.

Also know that your leadership is not compromised by listening to suggestions from your team. You may be the person in charge of the situation, but don’t be ashamed to seek advice and help from others who might approach the problem from another perspective based on their own experiences.

Finally, when the emergency is over, debrief with your team. Review your management of the event, and discuss suggestions for improvement. Remember: “Good judgment comes from experience ... And experience comes from bad judgment.” No matter what the outcome, thank your staff for their help. The experience has likely been traumatic for the staff. No matter what the outcome, they tried their best.

To summarize:

Check your own pulse. Stay calm or at least appear calm.
Hope is not a plan. Don’t lose precious moments to inaction in the hope that things will get better.
Sometimes wrong but never in doubt. Don’t freeze. Be decisive. Action is better than inaction.
Think outside the box. Creative solutions may be needed.
Debrief and thank your staff. Graciously acknowledging the efforts of your staff creates a loyal and cohesive team.

Feynman: Chess and the Scientific Method

2009-07-09T07:12:00.003-04:00

I recently started reading the book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" about the physicist (and former fellow resident of Far Rockaway, NY) Richard Feynman. I highly recommend reading this book (which you can access in PDF through the link above), and I have a feeling you'll start seeing occasional "Richard Feynman"-labeled posts on this blog. Here's a video to start things off:

Rabbi Fox: NYHS 2009 Commencement Speech

2009-07-08T07:00:00.000-04:00

You may remember the excerpt I published from Rabbi Fox's 2007 Commencement Speech to the 2007 graduating class of Northwest Yeshiva High School (NYHS). I am now pleased to present Rabbi Fox's Commencement Speech to the 2009 graduating class of NYHS. Enjoy!

It is now my responsibility and honor to address you as a class for a final time. I have chosen a topic which I believe appropriate for a group of unusually intelligent, perceptive, sincere, and motivated young adults.

Your valedictorians have discussed with us the meaning of their NYHS education. I want to also take this opportunity to define the meaning and significance of the education you have received. I would like to identify the one idea that I believe is most fundamental. As time passes and you forget so much of what you have learned, what is the single message I hope you will retain?

Before I begin, I must express a precautionary note. I do not intend these remarks to be judgmental or controversial. I will present a personal perspective and to make myself clear, I must contrast it with alternatives. My purpose is not to critique or dismiss these alternative outlooks. I simply wish to use them for the purpose of contrast.

Also, I will use some labels to identify various movements in Judaism. I acknowledge that these labels are superficial and far from ideal. However, in a brief address expediency sometimes must take precedence over accuracy. So, please indulge me and forgive the inevitable inaccuracy inherent in any set of labels.

Every religion or system of religious thought seems to grapple with its own unique fundamental questions. In recent centuries and perhaps since its earliest days Judaism has struggled with the challenge of confronting the ever-changing scientific perception and secular understanding of our world and universe. Many of the divisions within Judaism reflect varying perspectives on this issue. The various responses to this perceived conflict can be divided into two general groups.

The first group – comprised of Judaism’s more liberal movements – suggests that the Torah includes many profound truths. However, in its details our Torah is an expression of the thinking and worldview that were current at the time of its origin. In order to preserve Torah’s relevancy, it must be adapted and recast in conformity with modern perspectives and notions.

The second group – comprised of the more fundamentalist camp – adopts an opposite approach to confronting modernity. It rejects modern thought and perceptions as at best irrelevant and in all likelihood flawed and misguided. It insulates its adherents from the vanities and false beliefs of the modern world and retreats into a timeless reality of unassailable religious truths.

Although these two responses are apparent opposites, in fact, they share the same premise. Both approaches assume that there is an irreconcilable conflict between Torah and contemporary knowledge. Therefore, this conflict must be resolved though either adapting Torah to the modern world or by rejecting modern perspectives as false and dangerous.

The education that you have received at NYHS reflects a third response to the confrontation of Torah with contemporary science and knowledge. It is based upon the teachings of some of Judaism’s greatest scholars –among them Maimonides. Our response – sometimes referred to as the Modern Orthodox response – differs from the other two responses in two ways:

First, it suggests that authentic Torah Judaism can flourish and thrive in the contemporary world.
Second, it rejects the very logic of the proposition that a schism exist between Torah and so-called secular knowledge.

Maimonides expresses his position in the very first two sentences of his code of Torah Law – His Mishne Torah. He writes:

The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all wisdom is to know that there exists a first cause and this is the cause of all else that exists. All that exists in the heavens and earth and in- between only exists by virtue of the reality of His existence.

In this description of the most fundamental of religious principles, Maimonides suggests that G-d is not merely a religious notion. But G-d’s existence provides the ultimate answer to science’s search for the primordial cause of all existence. Maimonides erases the imaginary line between religion and science. He proposes an integration of all knowledge within the single framework of humanity’s search for meaning and for understanding of the universe.

Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik beautifully described this concept of G-d:

Elokim – G-d – is the legislator of the natural law or of the mathematical equation which rules all cosmic phenomena, all cosmic events… Elokim reveals himself through the totality of the causal axis and through the individual event per se. And what is the natural law about which physics speaks, about which chemistry speaks or biology if not the expression of G-d’s primordial will which has been imbedded in organic and inorganic matter.
And what is the fall of a stone, or the roar of the sea, the flight of a bird, and the circular motion of the insect around an electric bulb on a quiet, still, summer night, the movements of my fingers, my urge for food if not the manifestation of G-d’s penetration into the depths of nature.

The perspective expressed by these two great thinkers leaves no room for a conflict between secular and religious knowledge. More accurately, as my colleague and friend Rabbi Saul Zucker has observed, this perspective denies the very notion of the existence of knowledge that is secular. All knowledge and understanding is an expression of G-d’s wisdom. And although the scientist may be unaware of the religious context and significance of his work, he is actually striving to uncover G-d’s wisdom and will as embedded within His design of our universe.

Does this mean that there are no apparent contradictions between scientific truths and the truths of the Torah? Of course not! But we must respond to these paradoxes just as the scientist responds to the contradictions he discovers within his own field or as the Talmudic scholar or Talmid Chacham responds to the contradictions he encounters in his study of our sacred texts. Each and every question is a hint or key to a deeper or broader insight and understanding. The search for truth always begins with a question. We need not hide from these questions; instead they should excite and thrill us –beckoning us to follow the path on which they lead to more profound and deeper truths.

So, NYHS class of 2009, as you go forward and face your exciting futures, I hope that you will always retain the love of knowledge, the appreciation for the adventure of learning, and the exuberance that you have brought to our school. We are grateful to you for sharing your lives with us. We love you and we will miss each of you.

Is Hashem a "Teacher of Torah"?

2009-07-06T12:40:00.002-04:00

Every morning we recite three berachos over the study of Torah. According to the standard text, the second berachah concludes with the statement: "Baruch atoh Hashem, ha'Melamed Torah le'Amo Yisrael" ("Blessed are You, Hashem, the One Who Teaches Torah to His nation, Israel").

The Rambam disagrees with the standard practice. According to the Rambam in the Laws of Prayer 7:10 (in the critical editions of the Mishneh Torah), the proper conclusion of the second berachah is: "Baruch atoh Hashem, Nosein ha'Torah" ("Blessed are You, Hashem, the Giver of the Torah"). In Responsa 186 (or 97, depending on the edition) the Rambam explains his ruling:

The berachah is meant to conclude, Nosein ha'Torah (Giver of the Torah), for this concept [of its having been given to us] is what obligates us to learn it. This is the concept of its having been given, and this is the intent of the berachah: to request assistance in order to learn it. But one who concludes [the berachah], ha'Melamed Torah errs, for God does not teach it to us, but rather commanded us to learn it and to teach it. This is built on a foundational principle of our religion: that the performance of the commandments - or their neglect - is in our hands, and is not forced upon us from God.

The question I would like to focus on is: What are the implications of the Rambam's position? What does this reflect about his understanding of Hashem's role in our education? What does this show about the Rambam's definition of teaching? What does this say about the place of bechirah (free will) in our learning and development? What about the other Rishonim, such as Rashi and the Hagahos Maimoniyos, who maintain that the phrase "Melamed Torah" is appropriate to use in reference to Hashem? What is the basis of their disagreement?*

The first step we can take is to note the Rambam's premise, which this Calvin and Hobbes cartoon captures in plain language. That premise can be stated as follows: merely presenting the material is not teaching. If the Rambam considered the presentation of the material to be teaching, then Nosein ha'Torah would be synonymous with ha'Melamed Torah, and he would have no objection to the standard practice. I've posted on this point a number of times, most notably Bruner's insight into learning by discovery, Adler's essay on teaching and learning, and Rabbi Fox's 2007 Commencement Speech on the educational philosophy of NYHS.

But this first step is the only step I've successfully taken. I've worked on these questions for around a week, but at this point, I haven't yet arrived at clear and satisfactory answers. That is why I am posing the question to you.

What do you think are the implications of the Rambam's position?

* I think a possible "foothold" for approaching these questions is the fact that the Rambam does not object to the statement in the fourth berachah of the shemoneh esrei, which states, "Atoh chonein l'adam daas, u'Melameid le'enosh binah" ("You graciously give knowledge to man, and You teach understanding to frail man").

Parents Who Drive their Kids to Compete

2009-06-17T17:19:00.002-04:00

I am a big fan of The Onion - the best fake-news association on the Internet, hands down. There is nothing quite like a sharp critique of society conveyed through satire. I just saw an excellent example of this. The following fake-news clip is a biting commentary on parents who drive their kids to compete in sports, academics, and careers. The mitzvah which deals with this is kiddush bechoros. Enjoy!

Spiritual Heliotropism

2009-06-16T22:15:00.000-04:00

One of our family friends, David Klinghoffer, recently published an article on his blog entited, A "God Gene"? Or Spiritual Heliotropism. I commented on it, and a dialogue ensued. I decided to post it here because I think some people might find it interesting. Plus, I'd really like to know what you think. Any critiques on the approach I took in responding? How would you respond?

From here on out, David's words will be in purple, and mine will be in green.

A "God Gene"? Or Spiritual Heliotropism? - by David Klinghoffer

Marvin Olasky spoke at the Discovery Institute yesterday and I had the opportunity to bounce
off him a small heresy I've been cultivating. Olasky is the editor of World Magazine, a conservative Christian biweekly that I admire, and provost of King's College, a Christian college headquartered in New York City's Empire State Building. In his speech he made the case strongly that conservatives and especially conservatively inclined religious folks make a strategic error when they retreat from combat and engagement with the world and seek instead to wall themselves off in monasteries, figuratively speaking -- communities isolated from the sin-tainted world.

But the key point about Olasky that prompted me to share my thought with him is that he's a Jew by birth, a Jewish Christian, from a classic sort of Jewish background. His parents were secular, as was he in his youth, and he grew up to be an atheist and a Communist, becoming a Christian only later on in life. My thesis in a nutshell is that far from there being a "God gene," as some exponents of Darwinian evolution would have it; and in contrast to a strictly traditional view, Jewish or Christian or Muslim, that God is waiting for us all to make the choice of a particular religion that's right for absolutely everyone -- rather than either of these, I wonder if God imprints a certain kind of religious preference, one of numerous possible imprints, on each person.

I'm not giving this as my firm belief. Just something that from experience sure does appear to be true. Each religion, and the variations thereon, seems like it has something almost like a "taste" -- or in Hebrew, a taam, which conveys the point better. Adherents of that religion similarly have a taam in common. Just as there are different religions and different variations within each, there are such "tastes" identifiable among believers. A person has a taste for his religion, but not for others. Is this your experience? Please comment below and let me know.

If true, this would be very hard to reconcile with the God-gene thesis, which simple-mindedly treats religiosity as an on- or off-switch kind of deal. You have the gene or you don't, in the same way you may get the "gene" for homosexuality or not. But apart from the fact that DNA (which codes for protein production) doesn't appear to work at all the way it's popularly conceived, people's religious inclinations are way, way too complex and multifarious to be explained this way. There's no such singular thing as "being religious." It's not generic like that. It's not one size fits all. No "up" or "down" genetic predestination here. Imagine a "gene" for Orthodox Judaism, Nusach Ari, with Hirschean leanings -- my own profile -- which I then presumably received from my Swedish and Welsh forebears. Absurdity upon absurdity!

I'll give you an illustration. We have a dear friend from our shul, our synagogue, who's Chinese-American by birth, from Hawaii -- a less stereotypically Jewish background you couldn't imagine. Yet, a convert to Orthodox Judaism, she's someone whose taam couldn't be more that of a Jewish mother, not even if she came from the longest of long lines of Jewish mothers. There's no mistaking this about her. Something similar is true of many of the converts to Judaism that I know. It's not about physiognomy in a way that would be evident from a passport photo. Mien might be a better word, but even that doesn't nearly do it justice. Let's just call it taam.

Many Jewish converts I know or whose stories I've heard, knew from early on in their lives that they were powerfully drawn to things Jewish. By the same token, among born-Jews, many who migrated from secularism to Orthodox as adults, ba'aalei teshuvah, knew as little kids that they wanted to be Orthodox Jews when they grew up. Isn't this peculiar?

Then again, I've know Jews who left Judaism and earnestly, permanently embraced other faiths. In general, I find these people to have a less pronounced Jewish "taste," or none at all, or quite the opposite, no matter how much affection they express for their ethnic roots. They have the taam of their chosen, or appointed, faith.

Judaism is a useful context for making the point I'm trying to make because so much of its appeal baffles many people. They read a translation of a page of Talmud and say "Whoa! That is boring! It's so dry and legal!" But let someone else listen to a gifted rabbi's Torah lecture on the same page of Talmud -- that is, someone with a Jewish soul -- and he's as likely to say, "Wow! I want to spend the rest of my life delving into this stuff! This is how I'm going to experience God. Give me more!" The latter represents my own experience. Rare, I think, is the non-Jew who would respond similarly. If he did, he would be a likely candidate for conversion.

The same holds true, I'm sure, in relationship to other faiths. I may respect another religion, find it substantive, even if wrong on certain key points -- and remain utterly perplexed by what others find appealing about it.

Heliotropism is the tendency of plants to grown toward the sun. It almost seems like each of us is a plant growing toward its sun, where there are many suns in the sky.

I enjoyed meeting Marvin Olasky and he was kind enough not to render judgment on my suggestion. I know it would not qualify as either Jewish or Christian small-o orthodoxy. It sounds like relativism. Yet anyone who knows my writing knows I'm not a relativist. So can spiritual multi-sun heliotropism be reconciled with any traditional faith?

Possibly so. Over Shabbat I was reading Rav Hirsch on the Noah narrative in Genesis where, as the rabbis understand, God after the Flood seeded the peoples of the earth each with its distinctive affinity for a homeland. Hirsch writes about how the Midrash (on Genesis 9:7) notes the way certain landscapes, unique to different countries, appear hateful to foreigners, yet natives love them intensely and feel displaced in any other geographical context. That sounds like Judaism to me. And like Catholicism, and Evangelical Protestantism, and so on.

Maybe God makes us this way to keep humanity safely divided into discrete peoples and nations. The Tower of Babel story, which comes shortly after, shows the danger of a world state with a world-spanning ideology. We would abuse its power, tyrannizing each other. In politics, federalism is much safer. Though I believe there is indeed a single religious community whose understanding comes closest to the truth about God's wisdom, it's likely that humanity still isn't ready for a truly universal religion, either.

Matt said . . .

David,

Thank you for writing this post, which was a catalyst for my renewed interest in a fundamental principle of Torah, as you’ll soon see. You might be correct to refer to the notion of spiritual heliotropism as a “small heresy,” depending on how far you take the metaphor of heliotropism.

In the Laws of Repentance (Chapter 5), Maimonides writes: “Free choice is granted to every human being: if he desires to incline himself to the good path and to be righteous, the choice is his; and if he desires to incline himself to the bad path and to be evil, the choice is his . . . This principle is the Great Foundational Principle, and it is the pillar of the Torah and the Commandment . . . If God were to decree upon a person to be righteous or evil, or if there were something which drew a person from his essential nature to a certain path, or to a certain idea, or to a certain virtue or vice, or to a certain action . . . then how could He command us through the prophets, ‘Do such and such,’ ‘Do not do such and such,’ ‘Improve your ways,’ ‘Do not follow the ways of your wickedness,’ if this was already decreed upon him from his inception, or he was drawn to that thing by his nature in a manner that is impossible to resist? What place would there be for the entire Torah? With what law or judgment would punishment be exacted from the wicked or reward granted to the righteous? ‘Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?’ (Genesis 18:25).”

On the surface it seems that Maimonides not only rejects the notion of spiritual heliotropism you propose, but that he also denies the existence of predispositions altogether – a position which strikes us as absurd!

Upon closer examination, however, we see that this is not the case. In the Laws of Virtues and Vices, Maimonides writes: “Among the virtues and vices: there are those which a person possesses from the beginning of his inception, due to his physiological constitution; there are other virtues and vices towards which a person is naturally inclined and predisposed to acquire faster than other virtues and vices; and there are other virtues and vices which a person does not have at the beginning of his inception, but which he learns from others.”

Maimonides appears to contradict himself. In the Laws of Repentance he emphatically denies the existence of anything which “draws a person from his essential nature to a certain path, or to a certain idea, or to a certain virtue or vice, or to a certain action,” but in the Laws of Character Traits he says that people are predisposed by nature to acquire certain virtues and vices!

In truth, this contradiction is only apparent, and stems from a superficial reading of Maimonides’ words; the solution lies in a careful reading. In the Laws of Repentance he says, “if there were something which drew a person from his essential nature to a certain path, or to a certain idea, or to a certain virtue or vice, or to a certain action . . . if this was already decreed upon him from his inception, or he was drawn to that thing by his nature in a manner that is impossible to resist.” In the Laws of Character Traits, however, he speaks of “virtues and vices which a person possesses from the beginning of his inception, due to his physiological constitution; there are other virtues and vices towards which a person is naturally inclined and predisposed to acquire faster than other virtues and vices.”

In other words, there is a difference between saying that one was Divinely decreed to embrace a certain path, idea, virtue, or vice, and saying that one is physiologically predisposed to embrace a certain path, idea, virtue, or vice. The latter is consistent with Judaism’s view of the soul, whereas the former constitutes a denial of the “Great Fundamental Principle” which is “the pillar of the Torah and the Commandment.” According to Maimonides, such a denial constitutes a rather large heresy!

Now we are in a position to evaluate your notion of spiritual heliotropism in light of Maimonides’ understanding of the fundamental principles of Torah. If you maintain that a person is naturally inclined or physiologically predisposed towards a certain belief or religion – in the same manner that one is predisposed to be an athlete, to have a hot temper, to like the taste of peanut butter – then spiritual heliotropism is in line with Torah. If, on the other hand, you maintain that a person is Divinely appointed at birth to embrace a certain spiritual path, and that this is his Divinely decreed destiny, then spiritual heliotropism is at odds with Torah.

Thank you again for this thought provoking post.

David said . . .

Matt, thank you for joining our discussion -- I really appreciate your thoughtful and learned response. For myself, I love the Talmud's admonition, “Teach your tongue to say 'I do not know.'" Your reading of Rambam makes sense, but does it settle the matter? I don't know. I was writing less about theology than about experience -- the way things seem to work, based on observation of myself and many other people I've known and read about. In his wonderful essay "The Will to Believe," William James writes about how a given hypothesis, an idea about religion (or other things too), can be for a given individual "live" or "dead." He gives as an example belief in the Mahdi, the Muslim messiah. "The notion makes no electric connection with your nature, -- it refuses to scintillate with any credibility at all. As an hypothesis it is completely dead. To an Arab, however..., the hypothesis is among the mind's possibilities." I'm not citing James because his saying so makes it true. I think sometimes in Jewish life we get too caught up in throwing quotations back and forth at each other, as if that could settle anything. I'm just saying that as belief is actually experienced by real people, it seems as if not all beliefs are "live" for some people. Whether "live" or "dead" ideas are true or not is a different question. And whether how things seem is how they are -- that's also up for debate.

Matt said . . .

David,

I definitely appreciate the distinction between (1) attempting to clarify ideas which resonate with human experience, regardless of whether or not they are true, and (2) merely “throwing quotations back and forth at each other.” Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik begins his book, The Lonely Man of Faith, with the following disclaimer: “Theory is not my concern at the moment . . . whatever I am going to say here has been derived not from philosophical dialectics, abstract speculation, or detached impersonal reflections, but from actual situations and experiences with which I have been confronted.”

When an idea fails to register in one’s mind as a reality – that is, when it doesn’t meet James’s standard of a “live” idea – then that failure should be taken as a symptomatic of a deficiency. Either the individual lacks sufficient clarity of understanding to make the idea real to his mind, or the idea doesn’t register as a reality in his mind because it is false. Unfortunately, people tend to draw conclusions about the truth of an idea on the sole basis of whether it “seems” or “feels” right. According to the Oral Tradition, the verse, “Do not stray after your heart and after your eyes” (Numbers 15:39) is a Biblical commandment prohibiting us from engaging in this type of speculative musing. This type of analysis – if it can even be called analysis – ultimately boils down to the following principle: “What feels true is true, and what feels false is false” (see Maimonides’ Laws of Idolatry 2:3). We need not look far to see how dangerous this type of thinking can be.

It may be that you were “writing less about theology than about experience,” but to me, this was not clear from your article. First you raised the question, “So can spiritual multi-sun heliotropism be reconciled with any traditional faith?” You then took a (hesitant) stance by answering, “Possibly so,” and then proceeded to cite Rav Hirsch, the Midrash Rabbah, and the story of the Tower of Babel to support your point. I inferred from all this that you were discussing theology, and that your endeavor was to demonstrate that your spiritual heliotropism hypothesis can be reconciled with Torah.

Having said that, let’s return to a discussion of whether or not your theory of spiritual heliotropism is true. You said that you don’t know whether Maimonides’ explanation settles the matter. Maimonides, according to my understanding, would argue that this taam of which you speak is nothing more than a psychological or physiological phenomenon. People are predisposed to be drawn to different beliefs, practices, and lifestyles due to their natural dispositions and/or upbringing, not by divine decree or spiritual predilection. According to Maimonides, to say that the non-physical soul – as opposed to the physical body or psyche – is drawn to a certain path would constitute a denial of free will.

What makes you favor your explanation over that of Maimonides?

David said . . .

Hi Matt, so would you compare someone's strong attraction to a religion other than Orthodox Judaism to a condition like alcoholism or homosexuality where he's simply been given a challenge from God to overcome a negative proclivity, and that's it? If it's a proper analogy, then it seems you'd have to admit there's at least one difference in need of explaining. That is the *specificity* of the innumerable spiritual attractions people experience to different faiths. You have many cases of people born into a certain very specific non-Jewish tradition, who never feel entirely at home in it, who then search the world of spirituality until finally they discover some totally unrelated but equally specific non-Jewish faith tradition, foreign to their roots, that makes their heart sing in a way no other faith does. This is not uncommon. But I don't think you have alcoholics who search the world of spirits until, after years of feeling unrooted, they at last discover the particular brand of gin that makes their heart sing as no other inebriating beverage does, and so they realize: "I've come home! I will never consume another brand of alcohol as long as I live." Alcoholism isn't specific that way, nor from all accounts is homosexuality. Ditto other addictive and otherwise negative habitual behaviors. How do you think we can make sense of this difference in the way these attractions are experienced?

Matt said . . .

Hi Matt, so would you compare someone's strong attraction to a religion other than Orthodox Judaism to a condition like alcoholism or homosexuality where he's simply been given a challenge from God to overcome a negative proclivity, and that's it?

On a basic level, I agree with your summary. However, I would like to make two qualifications, which will also address the objection you raised.

(1) “a condition like alcoholism or homosexuality”: If it’s alright with you, I suggest that we dispense with the rhetorically charged examples you mentioned (i.e. alcoholism and homosexuality), unless they are critical to your position. Not only do I find such examples unnecessarily inflammatory – not to me, but to the practitioners of other religions – but their specificity is misleading and lends itself to a misunderstanding of my position.

Instead, let’s stick to more general predispositions which draw people to or away from different religions. Here are a few examples: asceticism and hedonism, subservience and rebelliousness, scientism and mysticism, objectivism and relativism, the need for love, the need for security, love of philosophy, the need to follow a leader, the desire to control one’s own destiny, the desire for self-improvement, and the like. These are the types of predispositions which I maintain are responsible for the attraction to and repulsion from the various religions. These predispositions result from a combination of nature and nurture. In some instances, those who have them are consciously aware of them. More often than not, they operate on an unconscious level.

(2) “If it’s a proper analogy, then it seems you’d have to admit there’s at least one difference in need of explaining”: The answer to the question you pose at the end is that not all natural dispositions or acquired predilections are the same, neither in their intensity nor in their specificity, as you mentioned in your comment. For example, some people are naturally predisposed to be universally athletic. They are gifted with strength, agility, stamina, hand-eye coordination, and many other excellences which are advantageous in a wide range of sports. Other people are naturally predisposed to excel in specific sports. Tiger Woods is a natural golfer, but is probably not too talented in gymnastics, hockey, or bowling. Likewise, there is a wide range within sexual dispositions. Some men have a strong sexual attraction to any and all women; some are exclusively drawn to women who are blond, or thin, or pouty-lipped, but would be turned off by women with other physical characteristics; still other men are only attracted to a specific type of look and personality.

I maintain that the same is true when it comes to religion. "You have many cases of people born into a certain very specific non-Jewish tradition, who never feel entirely at home in it, who then search the world of spirituality until finally they discover some totally unrelated but equally specific non-Jewish faith tradition, foreign to their roots, that makes their heart sing in a way no other faith does." You also have many cases of people who are born into a very specific ethnic group who search for a spouse within their group, until they finally discover someone who belongs to some totally unrelated but equally specific ethnic group, with whom they fall in love. Likewise, there are many cases of people who find that they have a natural knack for specific skills and techniques (carpentry, music, mathematics) to which they were never previously exposed, but which are a perfect match for them.

These dispositions might manifest produce specific results, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t predispositions. The same is true for the examples of religious predispositions I listed above. For example, a person who is predisposed towards the mystical might be equally at home with any mystically inclined religion, or he might be drawn to a specific brand of mysticism. The same is true for the other predispositions. Someone searching for a religion of rituals and restrictions might be equally happy as a religious Jew or a religious Muslim, whereas another person might have a more specific predilection. This specificity can be determined by unconscious factors or shaped by specific causes in one’s upbringing.

To sum it up, my response to your question is that predispositions vary in their specificity and intensity. Some predispositions are very specific, other predispositions are general, and others can be both. The only way to explain the difference – and to thereby fully answer your question – is to investigate the nature and causes of each predisposition. Unfortunately, this investigation is beyond my present knowledge.

The Taste of Folly

2009-06-12T17:41:00.002-04:00

In his Treatise on the Resurrection of the Dead, the Rambam identifies a fundamental difference between the hamon (masses) and the yechidim (select individuals) regarding their interpretation of Torah:

[O]ur endeavor, and the endeavor of select individuals, is in contrast to the endeavor of the masses. For the masses of Torah adherents, that which is beloved to them and tasty to their folly is to place Torah and rational thinking as two opposite extremes, and they will interpret everything exceptional as removed from that which is rational. They will say that it is a miracle, and they will flee from something being in accordance with natural law, whether something recounted from past events, something that is in the present, or something which is said to happen in the future. We, on the other hand, shall endeavor to integrate the Torah with rational thought, leading events according to the natural order wherever possible; only with something that is clarified to be a miracle and cannot be otherwise explained at all will we say that it is a miracle.

The individual described above is a members of the First Group. He is the pesi (philosophically naïve individual) about whom Shlomo ha'Melech says, "A pesi believes everything, but the clever person understands every step" (Mishlei 14:15).

The Rambam provides an excellent example of this in the Guide for the Perplexed (2:6). The Rambam first sets forth the principle that the laws of nature are referred to by the Torah and the Sages as malachim (angels), and that the two are synonymous. For example, the natural forces which form a fetus in the womb can be called "angels." The Rambam then goes on to decry the pesi's reaction to such a concept:

How bad and harmful is the blindness of foolishness! Say to a person who believes himself to be of the Wise Men of Israel that Hashem sends His angel to enter the womb of a woman and to form there the fetus, and he will be satisfied with the account. He will believe it and even find in it a description of the greatness of God's might and wisdom - even though he believes that this angel consists of burning fire and is as big as a third part of the Universe, yet, he considers it possible as a divine miracle. But tell him that God gave the sperm a formative power which produces and shapes the limbs, and that this power is called "angel" . . . and he will turn away from this, because he cannot comprehend the true greatness and power of bringing into existence forces active in a thing that cannot be perceived by the senses.

I am not writing this post for such individuals. As the Rambam writes at the conclusion of his exposition on the three groups: "Now if you, reader, belong to either of the first two groups, pay no attention to my words nor to anything else in this section. You will not like it. On the contrary, it will irritate you, and you will hate it."

Rather, I am writing this as a reminder for myself, and for other members of the Third Group. I can't speak for them, but I'll say about myself that it is very easy to delude myself into thinking that have utterly escaped the fate of the First Group. "After all," I reassure myself, "I know the principle of dibra Torah ki'lshon bnei Adam (the Torah speaks in the language of man), and I know that the Sages frequently speak in metaphors and allegories."

But what I tend forget is that the same psyche which is responsible for the pesi's attraction to the supernatural and his hatred of the rational is present in me as well, and if I am not vigilant, I will fall prey to it, in spite of my effort to approach Torah rationally. Every now and then, I gain an insight which makes me realize that my prior understanding - which I thought was purely rational - was subtly being influenced by covert magical thinking.

I have chosen not to provide examples in this post. If you know what I'm talking about, great. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then I hope you at least take away from this post the following warning: beware of your inner pesi.

Shas Online

2009-06-07T00:01:00.002-04:00

Shas is now available online in its entirety with a clean text which is copy/paste-able, in PDF or text format. Check it out: http://hebrewbooks.org/shas!

Is Self-Analysis Dangerous?

2009-06-05T00:01:00.001-04:00

In a recent thread, an anonymous reader asked the following question:

Should a person analyze every detail of his/her psychological life, or is there a risk of the person going crazy. Perhaps he will uncover things he cannot tolerate, and would have been better off as a functioning human being?

The answer I gave was: no, a person should not analyze every detail of his psychological life. There are several reasons for this, which I may elaborate on in a later post. For now, I would like to address the specific concern expressed by this anonymous reader, namely, that perhaps one will uncover things he cannot tolerate, and his human functioning will be impaired.

Actually, I'm not the one who will address this concern. I'll leave that job to Karen Horney. The following is a lengthy excerpt from her book, Self-Analysis (pp.25-33). Those who share the anonymous reader's concern will find this helpful - at the very least, as food for thought. Those who are not so concerned with the dangers of self-analysis will still find insight into yiras Hashem. והמבין יבין. As usual, the bold is my own.

But here is another question. Granted that within limitations it is possible to analyze oneself, is it desirable? Is not analysis too dangerous a tool to use without the guidance of a competent person? Did not Freud compare analysis with surgery – though adding that people do not die because of a wrong application of analysis as they might from an operation badly handled? . . . In considering the possible dangers of self-analysis the essential problem is whether it involves a risk of definite harm to the individual. By endeavoring on this adventure single handed does he not conjure up hidden forces with which he is unable to cope? If he recognizes a crucial unconscious conflict, without yet seeing a way out, are there not aroused in him such deep feelings of anxiety and helplessness that he might succumb to a depression, or even consider suicide?

We must distinguish in this regard between transitory and lasting impairments. Transitory impairments are bound to occur in every analysis, because any reaching down to repressed material must stir up anxiety previously allayed by defensive measures. Likewise, it must bring to the foreground affects of anger and rage otherwise shut off from awareness. This shock effect is not so strong because the analysis has led to the recognition of some intolerably bad or vicious trend, but because it has shaken an equilibrium which, though precarious, had prevented the individual from feeling lost in the chaos of diverging drives. Since we shall discuss later the nature of these transitory disturbances, it may suffice here to state merely that they occur.

When a patient meets such a disturbance during the analytical process he may simply feel profoundly perturbed or he may have recurrences of old symptoms. Naturally, then, he feels discouraged. These setbacks are usually overcome after a short while. As soon as the new insight is really integrated they vanish and give way to the well-founded feeling of having taken a step ahead. They represent the shocks and pains unavoidably involved in a reorientation of life, and are implicit in any constructive process.

It is at these periods of inner upheaval that the patient would particularly miss the helping hand of an analyst. But we are taking it for granted that the whole process is easier with competent help. Here we are concerned with the possibility that the individual might not be able to overcome these upsets alone and thus be permanently impaired. Or that when he feels his foundations shaken he might do something desperate, such as driving or gambling recklessly, jeopardizing his position, or attempting suicide.

In the cases of self-analysis which I have observed such untoward consequences have never occurred . . . Observation in every analysis shows that patients are well able to protect themselves from insights they are not yet able to receive. If they are given an interpretation that represents too great a threat to their security they may consciously reject it; or they may forget it, or invalidate its relevance for them, or ward it off with arguments, or simply resent it as unfair criticism.

One may safely assume that these self-protective forces would operate also in self-analysis. A person attempting to analyze himself would simply fail to make any self-observations that would lead to insights as yet intolerable. Or he would interpret them in such a way as to miss the essential point. Or he would merely try to correct quickly and superficially an attitude conceived by him as faulty, and thereby close the door to further investigation. Thus in self-analysis the actual danger would be less than in professional analysis, because the patient intuitively knows what to avoid while an analyst, even a sensitive one, may err and present to the patient a premature solution. Again the danger is one of futility through too much evasion of problems rather than of positive damage.

And if a person does work through to some insight deeply disturbing to him, I believe there are several considerations that we can rely upon. One is that hitting upon some truth is not only disturbing but is also, and simultaneously, of a liberating quality. This liberating force inherent in any truth may supersede the disturbing effect from the beginning. If so, a feeling of relief will ensue immediately. But even if the disturbing effect prevails, the discovery of a truth about oneself still implies a dawning recognition of a way out; even if this is not seen clearly it will be felt intuitively and thus will engender strength to proceed further.

A second factor to be considered is that even if a truth is deeply frightening there is something like a wholesome fright. If a person recognizes, for instance, that he has been secretly driving at self-destruction, his clear recognition of that drive is much less dangerous than letting it silently operate. The recognition is frightening, but it is bound to mobilize counteracting self-preserving energies, provided there is any will to live. And if there is no sufficient will to live, a person will go to pieces anyhow, analysis or no analysis. To express a similar thought in a more positive fashion: if a person has had sufficient courage to discover an unpleasant truth about himself, one may safely trust his courage to be strong enough to carry him through. The mere fact that he has gone that far indicates that his will to come to grips with himself is strong enough to prevent him from becoming crushed. But the period between starting to grapple with a problem and solving and integrating it may be prolonged in self-analysis.

Finally, we must not forget that really alarming disturbances in analysis rarely occur only because an interpretation cannot be properly grasped at the time. More frequently the real source of disquieting developments lies in the fact that the interpretation, or the analytical situation as a whole, stirs up hatred that is directed against the analyst. This hatred, if barred from awareness and thereby from expression, can enhance existing self-destructive tendencies. To let oneself go to pieces may then become a means of revenge against the analyst.

If a person is confronted with an upsetting insight quite by himself, there is almost nothing left but to fight it through with himself. Or, to be cautious, the temptation to ward off the insight by making others responsible is lessened. The caution is warranted because, if the tendency to make others responsible for his shortcomings is strong anyhow, it may flare up also in self-analysis as soon as he realizes a shortcoming, if he has not yet accepted the necessity of taking responsibility for himself.

I would like to add that there are certain types of personalities who can become addicted to self-incriminations and fault-finding. For these people especially, it would be a good idea not to engage in excessive self-analysis.

Rabbi Moskowitz mentions the following criteria for when a person should engage in self-analysis: (1) if he finds he has a problem which severely disrupts his life and impairs his ability to function, (2) if he has worked on the problem using a Mishlei-type approach, and after a much time and effort, he still hasn't found success, (3) if he has spoken to a chacham (or several), informed him of all the facts, listened to his advice with an open mind, and honestly tried to live in line with it.

That's what I have to say for now. If anyone disagrees, or has something to add, I'm sure your help would be appreciated.

History of Avodah Zarah

2009-06-04T11:56:00.000-04:00

The following is my translation of the first chapter of the Rambam's Hilchos Avodah Zarah (Mishneh Torah: Sefer ha'Mada).

Laws of Idolatry and the Statutes of the Gentiles

1:1 – In the days of Enosh, the people made a tremendous error, and the counsel of the wise men of the generation became foolish, and Enosh himself was among those who erred. This was their mistake: they said, “Since God created these stars and these celestial spheres to direct the universe and placed them on high and gave them honor, and they are the servants who serve before Him, it is befitting to praise them and to glorify them and to give them honor. And this is the will of God, blessed is He – to exalt and to honor the ones whom He exalts and honors, just as it is the king’s desire to honor his servants and those who stand before him, and this is the king’s honor.

Once this matter arose in their hearts, they began to build temples for the stars, and to offer sacrifices to them, and to praise them and to glorify them with words, and to bow down to them, in order to satisfy the will of the Creator, in their evil minds. This is the ikkar avodah zarah.

This is what was said by its servants who knew its ikkar – not that they said there was no God, except for this star. This is what Jeremiah said, “Who does not fear You, King of the nations? For [kingship] befits You; for among all the wise men of the nations and in all their kingdoms [it is known that] there is none like You. Only in one matter were they foolish and stupid – the illusory vanity for which they are punished: it is wood” (Yirmiyahu 10:7-8), meaning to say: everyone knows that You, alone, are God, but their error and their foolishness is that they imagine that this illusory vanity is His will.

1:2 – After a long time, there arose among men false prophets, and they said that God commanded them and said to them, “Worship such and such a star, or all of the stars, and offer sacrifices to it, and offer such and such libations to it, and build a temple for it, and produce its form so that the entire nation will bow down to it – the women, and the children, and the rest of the masses!” And he would make known to them a form which he had made up in his heart, and he would say that this is the form of the specific star that He had made known to him in his prophecy.

They began on this path to make forms in the temples and under the trees and on the tops of the mountains and the hills. They would congregate and bow to them, and say to the entire nation that this form causes benefit and harm, and that it is fitting to worship it and to fear it. And the priests would say to them, “With this worship you will multiply and succeed” and “do such and such and refrain from doing such and such.”

Other deceivers began to arise and to say that the star itself or the sphere itself or the angel spoke with them and told them, “Worship me with such and such” and informed them of the method of its worship, and “do this and don’t do this.” And this matter spread throughout the entire world – to worship the images with different modes of worship, and to offer sacrifices, and to bow down to them.

After a long period of time had passed, the Glorious and Awesome Name was forgotten from the mouths and the minds of all who arose, and they did not recognize it. And it was that all of the masses, the women, and the children did not know anything but that figure of wood and stone, and the temple of bricks, which they were trained from their childhood to bow down to and to worship and to swear in its name.

And the wise men among them, such as the priests and their like, imagined that there was no God, except for the stars and the spheres for the sake of whom and in whose likeness these forms were made. But the Eternal Rock – there was nobody who recognized Him and nobody who knew Him, save a few individuals in the world, such as Chanoch, Mesushelach, Noach, Sheym, and Eyver. And on this path the world continued to devolve, until the pillar of the world was born: Avraham, our father, may peace be upon him.

1:3 – Once this mighty one was weaned, he began to probe in his mind – and he was but a child – to ponder day and the night. He would wondered, “How is it possible that this celestial sphere should move without a mover?” and “Who causes it to rotate, for it is impossible for it to rotate itself?” And he had neither a teacher nor anyone to provide him with any knowledge, but rather, he was steeped in Ur Kasdim among the foolish servants of avodah zarah.

His father and his mother and the entire nation served avodah zarah, and he would serve with them. But his mind would probe and discern until he perceived the Path of Truth and understood the Line of Justice with his excellent mind. And he knew that there Exists One God, and He is the One Who moves the sphere, and He created everything, and there is no God in all existence besides Him.

And he knew that the entire nation erred and that the thing which caused them to err was that they worshipped the stars and the figures until the truth was lost from their minds. Avraham was forty years old when he recognized his Creator.

Once he recognized and knew, he began to refute the people of Ur Kasdim and to arrange disputations with them, and to say, “This is not the Path of Truth on which you tread!” He broke their idols, and he began to impart knowledge to the nation that it is only proper to worship the God of the universe, and that it is only proper to bow, offer sacrifices, and offer libations to Him, so that all of future created beings would recognize Him, and that it is proper to obliterate and to shatter all of the forms, in order that the entire nation should not err after them, like those who imagined that there was no God but them.

Once he prevailed over them with his proofs, the king sought to kill him. A miracle was done for him and he escaped to Charan. He began to take a stand and to proclaim in a great voice to the entire nation, and to make known to them that there is One God of the entire universe and it is proper to worship Him. He would walk and call and congregate the people from city to city and province to province, until he reached the Land of Canaan, where he called, as it is stated, “And he called there in the Name of Hashem, the God of the Universe” (Bereishis 21:33).

As the nation gathered around him and questioned him about his principles, he would teach every one of them, each one in accordance with his mind, until he returned him to the Path of Truth, until thousands and myriads were gathered unto him; they are “the Men of Avraham’s Household.” He planted in their hearts this Great Ikkar, and he composed many books about it, and he taught it to Yitzchak, his son. He established Yitzchak as a teacher and one who returned [people to the Path of Truth], and Yitzchak taught it to Yaakov and appointed him to teach, and established him as a teacher and one who returned all those who joined him [to the Path of Truth].

Yaakov our Father taught all of his sons, and he set aside Levi and appointed him as a leader, and he settled him in yeshiva to teach the Path of Hashem and to keep the mitzvos of Avraham. [Yaakov] commanded his sons not to allow the chain of appointments to cease, in order that the teaching not become forgotten.

The matter continued to grow stronger with the sons of Yaakov and those who joined them, and there became in the world a nation that knew Hashem. Until much time passed for Israel in Egypt, and they returned to learn the actions [of the Egyptians] and to serve avodah zarah like them – except for the tribe of Levi, who stood by the mitzvos of the fathers; the tribe of Levi never worshipped avodah zarah.

And it was but a small fraction, and the ikkar that Avraham planted was uprooted, and the sons of Yaakov returned to the error of the nations and to their waywardness. But because of Hashem’s love for us, and His adherence to the oath [He made] to Avraham our Father, He made Moshe, our master and the master of all of the prophets, and sent him.

Once Moshe prophesied and Hashem chose Israel as an inheritance, He crowned them with mitzvos and made known to them the manner of His avodah, and what would be the law regarding avodah zarah and all those who err after it.

Laying Up Bread

2009-06-02T13:09:00.000-04:00

The following message has been brought to you by Epictetus (Discourses II:9) [my paragraph breaks]

[P]hilosophers admonish us not to be satisfied with learning only, but also to add study, and then practice. For we have long been accustomed to do contrary things, and we put in practice opinions which are contrary to true opinions. If then we shall not also put in practice right opinions, we shall be nothing more than the expositors of the opinions of others. . . .

Philosopher, where are the things which you were talking about? Whence did you produce and utter them? From the lips, and thence only. Why then do you corrupt the aids provided by others? Why do you treat the weightiest matters as if you were playing a game of dice?

For it is one thing to lay up bread and wine as in a storehouse, and another thing to eat. That which has been eaten, is digested, distributed, and is become sinews, flesh, bones, blood, healthy colour, healthy breath. Whatever is stored up, when you choose you can readily take and show it; but you have no other advantage from it except so far as to appear to possess it.

For what is the difference between explaining these doctrines and those of men who have different opinions? Sit down now and explain according to the rules of art the opinions of Epicurus, and perhaps you will explain his opinions in a more useful manner than Epicurus himself.

Why then do you call yourself a Stoic? Why do you deceive the many? Why do you deceive the many? Why do you act the part of a Jew, when you are a Greek? Do you not see how each is called a Jew, or a Syrian or an Egyptian? and when we see a man inclining to two sides, we are accustomed to say, "This man is not a Jew, but he acts as one." But when he has assumed the affects of one who has been imbued with Jewish doctrine and has adopted that sect, then he is in fact and he is named a Jew.

Thus we too being falsely imbued, are in name Jews, but in fact we are something else. Our affects are inconsistent with our words; we are far from practicing what we say, and that of which we are proud, as if we knew it. Thus being, unable to fulfill even what the character of a man promises, we even add to it the profession of a philosopher, which is as heavy a burden, as if a man who is unable to bear ten pounds should attempt to raise the stone which Ajax lifted.

Nashim Daatan Kalos Aleihen

2009-05-19T17:30:00.001-04:00

UPDATE: 5/20, 12:01pm - see addendum at the end of the post.

Introduction

In a recent post we saw that the term "daas" does not always mean "the intellectual faculty" or "knowledge," but sometimes refers to what we refer to as a person's "state of mind" or "psychological equilibrium." "Yishuv ha'daas", according to the Ran, refers to the peaceful state of mind in which their is little or no conflict between one's intellect and one's internal psychological forces. "Tiruf ha'daas", according to the Ran, means "conflicted state of mind," in which one is caught in a conflict between one's intellect and one's emotions.

In light of the Ran's explanation, I believe we can clear up a widely misunderstood phrase: "nashim daatan kalos aleihen" (lit. "the daas of women is light upon them"). Unfortunately, this phrase is commonly misinterpreted to mean that women are intellectually inferior to men. The term "daas" is understood to refer to the intellectual faculty, and the term "kal" is understood to mean "weak." Thus, the "daas kalah" is interpreted as "weak minded," and "nashim daatan kalos aleihen" is translated as "women are weak minded."

With the Ran's explanation in hand, Let us examine the three instances (according to my Bar-Ilan search) in Talmud Bavli where the phrase "daatan kalos aleihen" is used by Chazal, and we will see if the common interpretation bears out.

Case #1: Kings and Queens - Daatan Kalos Aleihen

The first source (Pesachim 88b) doesn't contain the expression "nashim daatan kalos aleihen." Instead, this source says "melech u'malkah, de'daatan kalos aleihen" ("the queen and king, whose daas is kalah"). Let's read this in context, with Rashi's commentary:

The Mishnah states: "If he slaughtered both a kid and a lamb [for the Pesach offering], the master must eat of the offering that was slaughtered first."
The Gemara asks: But it was taught in a Baraisa: "One cannot be registered for two Pesach offerings at once [i.e. he may not eat of either offering]"? - The Gemara answers: Our Mishnah refers to a king and a queen, [Rashi: who are dependent upon their servants].
A Baraisa is cited that supports this answer: One cannot be registered for two Pesach offerings at once. It once happened that a king and queen instructed their servants: "Go out and slaughter the Pesach offering for us." The servants went out and slaughtered two Pesach offerings, a kid and a lamb, for them. They came and asked the king which offering to prepare. He said to them, "Go and ask the queen" [Rashi: who was knowledgeable and wise]. They came and asked the queen. She said to them: "Go and ask Rabban Gamliel." They came and asked Rabban Gamliel. He said to them. "A king and queen, whose daas are kal [Rashi: they are not particular (שאין מקפידין) whether it is a kid or a lamb], should eat the offering that was slaughtered first, but as for us, we would be permitted to eat neither of the first nor of the second.

One thing is clear from this source: the concept of daatan kalos aleihen has nothing to do with intelligence. To the contrary - we see that the queen in this Baraisa was "a knowledgeable and wise person" (בקיאה וחכמה היתה) and was described as having daas kalah! In other words, daas kalah can coexist with wisdom and expertise, and there is no contradiction between the two. Daas kalah, in this context, cannot mean "weak minded."

What does the Gemara mean when it says that the queen and king have daas kalah? If we understand "daas" in accordance with the Ran's explanation of yishuv ha'daas to refer to one's state of mind, then it makes perfect sense. As Rabban Gamliel explained, ordinary people are makpid (particular or demanding) about whether they have a kid or a lamb for their Pesach sacrifice, whereas a king and queen don't care. Their daas is kal in the sense that they are not easily disturbed; their state of mind is at ease, no matter which animal they receive, unlike ordinary people, who would become upset if they received the wrong animal.

Verdict: the common interpretation of "daas kalah" as "weak minded" does not play out here.

Case #2: Effects of Torture on Kalei Daas

The second source concerns an incident with R' Shimon bar Yochai and his son, R' Elazar. The Roman authorities decreed that Shimon bar Yochai be executed. The Gemara (Shabbos 33b) relates the following incident:

[Upon hearing that a death sentence had been passed upon him,] R' Shimon ben Yochai and his son ran away and hid in a study hall. Every day, R' Shimon's wife would bring them bread and a small pitcher of water, and they would eat. However, when the decree intensified (i.e. the Romans escalated their hunt for the fugitives), R' Shimon said to his son: "Nashim daatan kalos aleihen - perhaps the Romans will torture your mother and she will reveal our hiding place to them." With this consideration in mind, they went and hid themselves in a cave.

Let's put this to the test: Which interpretation of nashim daatan kalos aleihen makes more sense here, "women are weak minded" or "a woman's psychological equilibirum is more easily unsettled"? Clearly, the latter. When R' Shimon applied "nashim daatan kalos aleihen" to his wife, he wasn't commenting on her intelligence at all. Rather, he meant that as a woman, her state of mind would be more easily disturbed by the pain inflicted by torture than that of a man.

Verdict: the interpretation of "daas kalah" as "weak minded" doesn't play out here either.

Case #3: Daatan Kalos and Yielding to Seduction

Needless to say, no practical halakhic rulings may be drawn from the following sources without consulting authoritative sources of halakhic psak.

Kiddushin 80b is probably the most well-known reference to "nashim daatan kalos aleihen" in the Talmud. The Mishnah introduces the prohibition of yichud (seclusion of a man with a woman). The Mishnah states as follows:

A man may not be secluded [even] with two women, but one woman may be secluded with two men. R' Shimon says: Even one man may be secluded with two women when his wife is also with him, and he may sleep in an inn with them, because his wife watches him.

The Gemara explains:

What is the reason [that a man may not be alone with two women, but one woman
may be alone with two men]? - It was taught in the academy of Eliyahu: because
nashim daatan kalos aleihen.

Rashi, on the Mishnah, explains:

[A man may not be secluded] even with two women: This is because nashim daatan kalos aleihen, and both women will easily yield to seduction by the man; neither of them will be inhibited by the other, since each one assumes that the other will duplicate the act.

[but one woman] may be secluded with two men: Because each one will be embarasssed, due to the presence of the other.

Once again, it is clear from the context that daas kalah does not refer to intelligence, but to the ease with which one's state of mind can be affected in certain situations. In this case, the Gemara asserts (according to Rashi) that when faced with a situation of seduction, a woman tends to be put at ease by the presence of another woman, and is therefore more likely to yield, whereas a man in a similar situation tends to be more embarassed by the presence of another man, and will not lapse into the state of psychological security that is necessary to commit the act.

Verdict: here, too, the interpretation of "daas kalah" as "weak minded" does not play out.

Conclusion

In each of these sources, the term "daas kalah" does not mean "weak minded." The term "daas" refers not to one's intellectual capacity, but to one's psychological equilibrium. Daas kalah means that one's psychological equilibrium is more easily affected by internal or external factors, both for better (e.g. king and queen, who are comfortable with whatever their servants bring them to eat) or for worse (e.g. torture and seduction, in which women are more readily unsettled than men).

Addendum: The objective of this post is to show that the statement "nashim daatan kalos aleihen" does not mean that women are intellectually inferior to men. However, it would be a mistake to draw final conclusions about the position of the Torah on this question based on this statement alone. "Nashim daatan kalos aleihen" is merely one piece in the puzzle (or, more accurately, one fact which has been exposed as a false clue). There are other statements in Torah she'baal Peh which indicate that women are intellectually inferior to men in certain respects - just as there are statements which indicate that women are superior to men when it comes to certain types of insight.

My point is that just as one should not jump to conclusions based on an initial reading of a particular statement (as this post has shown), so too, one should not jump to conclusions about a whole area based on an initial understanding of one principle. This warning should be kept in mind for all ideas presented on this blog: nothing should be taken as a final statement of the absolute truth, but rather, as one human's feeble mind struggling to grasp whatever insights into reality that he is capable of understanding.

This is Water

2009-05-17T00:01:00.001-04:00

The following is a transcript from the best commencement speech I've seen. I'm not going to say anything about it, or even reveal the identity of the speaker. Let the speech speak for itself. (Thank you for introducing me to this, Levi S.)

(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.

Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about quote teaching you how to think. If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.

Here's another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."

It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education -- least in my own case -- is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.

As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.

By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.

Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.

But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.

Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.

You get the idea.

If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.

The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.

Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.

Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.

But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

I wish you way more than luck.

Link.

Yishuv ha'Daas (Ran)

2009-05-14T09:23:00.000-04:00

Yishuv ha'Daas and Tiruf ha'Daas

In the tenth derashah of Derashos ha'Ran, the Ran explains the following mishnah in Kinnim 3:6:

Rebbi Shimon ben Akashya says: Elderly unlearned men, as long as they continue to age, their daas become even more agitated* (דעתם מטרפת עליהם), as it is stated: "He removes the speech of the capable and takes away the reasoning of the elderly" (Iyov 12:20). But the elders of Torah are not like that; rather, as long as they continue to age, their daas become even more settled (דעתם מתיישבת עליהם), as it is stated: "In the aged is wisdom and in length of days, understanding" (ibid. 12:12).
* I have translated the phrase "דעתם מטרפת עליהם" in accordance with the Ran's explanation.

There are two major questions on this mishnah:

What is meant by the opposite terms "yishuv ha'daas" and "tiruf ha'daas"? The term "daas" has many meanings - what does it mean here? What are "yishuv" and "tiruf" in relation to daas?
What is the difference between the unlearned elders and the elders of Torah? Why does the daas of an unlearned elder become more agitated as he ages, whereas the daas of a Torah elder becomes more settled?

Ran's Explanation

Here is my translation of the Ran's explanation. The paragraph breaks and the bracketed clarifications are my own:

This does not mean that as long as the elders of Torah continue to age, the more their wisdom increases, for it is possible that this won't happen: since the intellect is dependent upon the physical faculties [e.g. senses, imagination, memory - all of which function through the brain, which is a physical organ], it is possible that when these men become exceedingly old and these faculties become exceedingly weak, the intellect will also become weak . . .

Rather, when the mishnah said, "their daas become even more settled," its meaning is as follows: In their youth, the elders of Torah gave up their addictions to the pleasures of the physical world and chose the path of the Good; therefore, as they continue to age, their daas become more settled. This means that they became more reconciled [with themselves] (שהם מתפייסים יותר) and their daas became at ease (ודעתם נוחה) with the decision of their youth. In other words, even though they decided in their youth to abandon their addictions to the pleasures of the physical world and its excesses, it is impossible that they were not occasionally drawn to them. Even though their intellect opposed this, and prevented them from being seduced by the physical pleasures, it is impossible that they did not desire them to some degree. Therefore, their daas was not completely settled, for they were caught between two opposing forces.

But the more they continue to age, these more these desires weaken. Their imaginative faculty sees that everything it once fantasized about in the matters of the physical world was pointless, transitory, and utterly finite. At that point, it is no longer necessary for their intellect to oppose the imaginative faculty and to dissent. Therefore, their daas is settled, for they clearly see that they had chosen the Good and resolved to follow it, and everything they had forfeited in the matters of the physical world was worthless, and that there is no cause for feeling anxiety over its forfeiture.

The opposite befalls the unlearned elders. In their youth they were seduced by their addictions to the pleasures of the physical world; their daas was at ease and reconciled with this, and they didn't care about their intellect's opposition. But as they continue to age, the physical world withdraws from them and they withdraw from it. They see that everything they once desired and chose in their youth was but nothingness, vanity, and "only falsehood that they inherited" (cf. Yirmiyahu 16:19). Because of this, their daas is not settled with the decision of their youth. Nevertheless, since "they did not learn righteousness" (cf. Yishaya 26:10), and they had become habituated and sunken in their bad habits, their intellect lacks the ability to turn completely away from the path which they have taken until now. Therefore, as they continue to age, they will be caught between two paths, and "The Path will not be theirs" (cf. Iyov 23:10).

This is what the Rabbis of blessed memory intended by the expression "their daas is agitated (mitarefes)," as in the expression, "a ship that is mitarefes" (Taanis 19a). This expression refers to a ship in the middle of the ocean with oppressive waves thrusting the ship from one side to the other, and its sailors are unable to guide it on a single path; instead, the wind pushes, sometimes to one side and sometimes to the opposite. Likewise are those who are seduced by their addictions to the physical pleasures of this world, as they continue to age: for in their youth their daas was settled, but in their old age, their daas is agitated.

Summary of the Ran

According to the Ran, yishuv ha'daas means "peaceful state of mind." Daas, in this context, does not refer to the intellect - which the Ran repeatedly calls "seichel" - but to what we commonly refer to as one's "state of mind." Yishuv ha'daas is a state of mind in which one feels at ease, due to the absence of conflict between one's intellect and one's inner psychological forces. Tiruf ha'daas means "conflicted state of mind." As the Ran explains, the expression "tiruf" refers to a state of being pushed and pulled between two oppositional forces. Tiruf ha'daas is a conflicted state of mind in which one feels agitated, frustrated, and unsettled, due to the clash between one's intellect and one's inner psychological forces.

The meaning of the mishnah is as follows: The elders of Torah, in their youth, decided to trade the life of physical and psychological pleasure for the life of chochmah. However, the draw towards physical and psychological pleasure was still present and continued to generate conflict and anxiety, leaving them in a state of partial tiruf ha'daas. But as they became older, and their instinctual forces weakened, their intellect - which they had nourished since youth - sees that they chose correctly, and that everything they gave up was nothingness and vanity. Thus, in their old age, they will no longer be in a state of conflict. They will have achieved yishuv ha'daas; their minds will be at ease. Thus, they will now be free to invest all of their energies into the pursuit of chochmah, and their wisdom and understanding will increase.

The unlearned elders, on the other hand, chose to embrace their addictions to the life of pleasure in their youth. The Ran states that they were able to achieve a great measure of yishuv ha'daas in their youth by ignoring the oppositional voice of their intellect, but this yishuv ha'daas was destined to be short-lived. As they aged, they too realized that the life of pleasure was vain and futile, and that they should have spent their life in pursuit of something lasting and permanent - but by the time they reach old age, it is too late for them. They will spend the final years in a state of tiruf ha'daas, torn between their insatiable longing for the now unattainable pleasures of their youth, and the opposite longing for something real and lasting (i.e. chochmah), which they are also unable to attain.

Chess and the Brisker Derech

2009-05-10T21:55:00.000-04:00

One of my friends sent me the following allegory. When I first read it, I had no idea who wrote it or what it was about. Nevertheless, I immediately thought of one nimshal: the Brisker Derech. It sounded as though this was written by a Brisker, comparing the derech ha'limud invented by Rav Chaim Soloveitchik to the other darchei ha'limud that are out there.

Subsequently, I learned that this piece was written by Oliver A Ruebenacker - a German convert to Islam. Apparently, the allegory is about the distinctions between different movements within Islam and their relationship with traditional Islamic doctrine. That being the case, let me be very clear: my intention in posting this allegory is to shed some light on the Brisker Derech - not to endorse deviant movements within Judaism. (I know most readers would not make this mistake, but I'm sure that there is someone out there who would call me irresponsible without writing a disclaimer.) Here is the allegory in full, with a few spelling errors corrected:

Progressive Chess

- by Oliver A. Ruebenacker

In the beautiful Town of Chessville, the game of chess has always been central to the life of the citizens. Back in the glorious days, children would learn the rules of chess at an early age, and then continue to learn the secrets of strategy and tactics throughout their entire lives. Games were played everywhere from the casual matches in the coffeehouses to the serious competitions of the professionals. Countless classes were taught and large numbers of books were written on the subject of chess. Naturally, back in the glorious days, Chessville produced a lot of native chess masters, who travelled to other cities to win competitions and became famous throughout the region.

The high regard for chess naturally extended to a high regard for chess masters and their games: Whenever chess masters played against each other, Chessvillians would write down all the moves, so that other chess players could repeat the game, admire the skills of the masters and learn from them. Soon, large collections of masters games emerged, and aspiring chess players would regularly consult these collections.

In the beginning, the collections boosted the careers of young chess players, who uncovered many jewels from these collections and benefited greatly from witnessing the great ideas of the masters. A golden age started in Chessville, where even more and greater chess masters emerged. And that meant even more and larger collections of masters' games.

However, the golden age came finally to its end, and the art of chess stagnated and finally declined in Chessville. This was by no means because the Chessvillians had lost interest in chess - on the contrary, chess was still their life and love. Rather, they focused so much on the glorious past that they lost their vision for the future. And so, the glorious days ended and the time of traditionalism began.

Traditionalism started because Chessvillians started to judge everything by whether they could find it in the games of the old masters. New ideas where rejected on the basis that the old masters had not embraced them. Consequently, memorization of old masters games was the principal activity of the students of chess. This developed to such a degree that at some point, a Chessvillian could be considered a chess master merely for having memorized a lot of games without even knowing the rules, let alone elements of strategy and tactics. Logically, such chess masters could not win any games outside of Chessville, but that did not matter to them, because to them only chess played in Chessville was worth considering.

So when a traditionalist would play a game, he would go through the games he had memorized and search for a position that looked similar to the position at hand, and then tried to make a move that looked similar to the move the master had made in that game. If no game was found that had a similar position, the traditionalist would give up and the opponent had won.

Now the problem was, of course, as every chess player knows, that a move that was good in one position could be quite bad in another position even though it looked similar. In fact, it could even be illegal. But then the traditionalist would argue that some great old master had made "essentially the same move in essentially the same position" - and that silenced critics. Chessvillians would trust some one who memorized many games without knowing the rules more than some one who knew the rules. Eventually, most Chessvillians started to believe that even learning the rules of the game was a task that could only be mastered by chess masters, and that one had to memorize a large number of masters games before one could be so bold and try to actually play a game. Due to this, only very few people played games, but everybody memorized masters games. Many Chessvillians were frustrated about this situation and so liberalism started.

Liberal Chessvillians had realized that playing chess was more than repeating what great old masters had played before them. So the liberals advocated the freedom to make moves in any fashion one liked. A game between liberals would consist of placing pieces on the board in whatever fashion pleased the eye until the board was full. It was never clear who was the winner, and often the players agreed that both had won. When liberals organized a competition, they always announced in the end that every player had won - with the possible exception of a few traditionalists who dared to show up at such events. Traditionalists accused liberals of arbitrariness while liberals accused traditionalists of lack of creativity and openness. So a new group emerged which tried to please both sides: the libero-traditionalists.

Libero-traditionalists tried to bridge the divide between traditionalists and liberals. They tried to argue that one could copy from the old masters, like the traditionalists did, and at the same time arrive at optically pleasing positions, like the liberals did. To show such a thing, they had to make an extremely selective use of old masters games combined with a very bizarre notion of what constituted a similar position or a similar move, or a pleasing position. This, however, did not stop them from becoming very famous, because on the surface, they seemed to please everybody, although there was no substance behind it.

Finally came the progressives. The progressives realized that chess was a game with rules based on reason. They realized that a child could learn the rules and play a game. They realized that some players were stronger than others, and that there were extraordinarily strong players rightfully respected as chess masters, but that these masters still might be unaware of some new ideas. They realized that there were elements of strategy and tactics which a normal person could learn at least in part to improve their skills and better appreciate the games of the masters. Progressives could learn from the masters but still develop their own style.

Society turned out extremely reluctant to accepting the progressives. Many did not understand the difference between progressives and liberals, or between progressives and libero-traditionalists. Many had already used the label 'progressive' to describe liberals or libero-traditionalists and saw nothing new when the progressives came - even many of those who called themselves 'progressive' were in reality liberals or libero-traditionalists. To the traditionalists, the progressives were too liberal and to the liberals, the progressives where too traditionalist. Many preferred libero-traditionalism, because it promised to deliver everything.

But all this did not deter the progressives, because they knew they had rediscovered the true meaning of the game, and they used it to great delight and benefit. They also knew that if ever there was to arise a chess master who would earn fame beyond the town, it would be a progressive.

[The End]

To reiterate my disclaimer: even though the author wrote this allegory to endorse Progressive Islam, I am not posting this allegory on my blog to endorse any deviant movements in Judaism. The way I see it, this mashal is useful for comparing the way that the different darchei ha'limud relate to the words of the Baalei Mesorah. Since the allegory was not written with this intent, you'll have to pardon the fact that the nimshal doesn't precisely accord with the mashal in all of its details. Roughly speaking, the allegory is as follows:

The Ancient Chess Masters are the Baalei Mesorah, from the Tannaim and Amoraim, all the way down through the Geonim and Rishonim. These chachamim understood the chochmas ha'Talmud and the science of halacha. The results of their understanding were preserved in their writings, and studied throughout the ages.

The Traditionalists are the ones I will call "the Scholastic Talmudists," from the post-Rishonic era through the acharonim until the present day. Because I am not intimately familiar with these darchei ha'limud, I will not identify their practitioners by name. Suffice it to say, I've had enough exposure to these darchei ha'limud to know that they are out there. Rather than describing their methods, I'll let the allegory speak for itself, and readers can draw their own conclusions based on their own experience with these darchei la'limud.

The Liberals are the Secular Scholars from the deviant movements within Judaism, ancient (e.g. Karaites, Tzedukim, Baisusim) and modern (e.g. Reform, Conservative, Progressive, Reconstructionist). These so-called scholars are distinguished by their rejection of the authority of the Baalei Mesorah.

The Libero-traditionalists are the Academics, both religioius and irreligious. This members of this category can be tricky to spot because they often appear to be legitimate. Not only that, but a wide variety of darchei ha'limud fall into this category. There are even darchei ha'limud whose practitioners would consider themselves Briskers, to the chagrin of certain other Briskers.
Lastly, the people whom the author of the allegory calls Progressives are, in my adaptation, the Briskers. They would never go by the term "progressive," since their derech is conservative in spirit, nor would they claim to be introducing "new ideas" (though it is ironic how they often entitle their publications "chidushim"). I do not claim that my adaptation of this allegory conveys anything about the specifics of the Brisker Derech. Rather, the point is that the Briskers recognize that the Baalei Mesorah's statements are founded on abstract concepts, and that by training their analytical minds, they will be able to grasp those concepts.

Those are my thoughts on the allegory, as shoddy as they are. Either way, I thought it was interesting, and worth sharing. If you find it beneficial, great; if not, then forget about it. This isn't Mishlei Shlomo, after all.

Education = Production, Growth, or Travelling?

2009-05-06T21:45:00.004-04:00

I am currently writing an essay for my Curriculum Development class. The assignment is to analyze three different metaphors of curriculum design, as expressed by curricularist Herbert Kliebard in W. Pinar's collection, "Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists" (1975).

These three metaphors reflect different philosophies of education, and I am very curious as to what you think about them. Which metaphor resonates most with your own educational experience? Which approach do you prefer to use, and which do you prefer that your teachers use? Which do you think reflects the best approach to education (or do you not think there is a best approach)? Is there another metaphor which you find to be more true than any of these?

The Metaphor of Production

The curriculum is the means of production, and the student is the raw material which will be transformed into a finished and useful product under the control of a highly skilled technician. The outcome of the production process is carefully plotted in advance according to rigorous design specifications, and when certain means of production prove to be wasteful, they are discarded in favor of more efficient ones. Great care is taken so that raw materials of a particular quality or composition are channeled into the proper production systems and that no potentially useful characteristic of the raw material is wasted.

The Metaphor of Growth

The curriculum is the greenhouse where students will grow and develop to their fullest potential under the care of a wise and patient gardener. The plants that grow in the greenhouse are of every variety, but the gardener treats each according to its needs, so that each plant comes to flower. This universal blooming cannot be accomplished by leaving some plans unattended. All plants are nurtured with great solicitude, but no attempt is made to divert the inherent potential of the individual plant from its own metamorphosis or development to the whims and desires of the gardener.

The Metaphor of Travel

The curriculum is a route over which students will travel under the leadership of an experienced guide and companion. Each traveller will be affected differently by the journey since its effect is at least as much a function of the predilections, intelligence, interests, and intent of the traveller as it is of the contours of the route. This variability is not only inevitable, but wondrous and desirable. Therefore, no effort is made to anticipate the exact nature of the effect on the traveller; but a great effort is made to plot the route so that the journey will be as rich, as fascinating, and as memorable as possible.

Misuses of Objects (from Chavlei Shlomo)

2009-04-28T17:36:00.000-04:00

Ordinarily I'd like to keep my blogs separate, but I just wrote about an interesting pasuk on Chavlei Shlomo. As you'll see, the idea is incomplete, and I thought that posting it on Kankan Chadash might generate some productive discussion to further develop the idea, since the readership of this blog is greater. Let me know what you think!

מַעֲדֶה בֶּגֶד בְּיוֹם קָרָה, חֹמֶץ עַל נָתֶר, וְשָׁר בַּשִּׁרִים עַל לֶב רָע

An ornamental garment on a cold day, vinegar on natron, and one who sings songs to a sorrowful heart (Mishlei 25:20)

Explanation of Terms:

Ornamental Garment: We assume this is talking about a garment that is essentially designed for its looks.

Natron: According to Wikipedia, "natron has been used for thousands of years as a cleaning product for both the home and body. Blended with oil, it was an early form of soap. It softens water whilst removing oil and grease." The Meiri explains that both natron and vinegar can be used to remove stains. However, if natron is mixed with vinegar, the basic properties of the former will neutralize the acidic properties of the latter, and the resulting mixture will be too weak to remove any stains.

Sorrowful Heart: We understood this to be referring to someone who is in a state of severe depression: a close relative just passed away, he just lost his job, his girlfriend just dumped him, he has bipolar disorder, etc.

Questions:

What do these three things have in common? What is the subject of the pasuk?
What is Shlomo haMelech trying to tell us? Unlike most other pesukim, this pasuk doesn't seem to be making a statement about anything. It appears to just be a list.

Idea:

The subject of this pasuk is: misusing things. Our pasuk classifies the three ways that things can be misuse: wrong purpose (what the thing is for), wrong implementation (how to use the thing), and wrong application (what to use it on, or under what circumstances to use it). The explanation is as follows:

Wrong Purpose: Ornamental garments are designed for their appearance, not necessarily for their functionality. An article of clothing might look good, but it won't protect you from the elements. The guy in the first clause of this pasuk is using his ornamental garment for the wrong purpose. The consequence of his mistake is that the garment will not function as he wishes, and he'll be cold.

Wrong Implementation: Unlike the guy in the first clause of the pasuk, the second guy is using vinegar and natron for a correct purpose. His mistake is that he doesn't understand how to correctly implement these substances for this purpose. He reasons, "If vinegar removes stains and natron removes stains, then I can mix them together and make an über stain-remover!" If he would have stopped to consider how vinegar and natron remove stains, he would realize that their contrary properties preclude the manner in which he seeks to use them. The consequence of his mistake is that the vinegar and natron will not function as he wishes, and his clothes will remain stained (and he'll have wasted some good vinegar and natron).

Wrong Application: Unlike the first two guys, the guy in the third clause of the pasuk is using music for the right purpose (to uplift spirits) and he is implementing the music in the right way (a happy song, good artists, the right volume, etc.), but he is using music on the wrong type of person. Music uplifts the spirits of those whose spirits are capable of being uplifted - people who are neutral, or are in somewhat of a bad mood, not someone who is in a state of severe depression. His mistake is that he is trying to use music in a case where it will not work. The consequence of his mistake is that the music will not function as he wishes; he will not succeed in cheering up his friend, and he may even upset him.

Examples:

We thought of several examples which might make this clearer. Here are two of them:

Windex: The father of the protagonist in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding believed that Windex could be used for any purpose: treating wounds, curing diseases, fertilizing plants, improving a cooked dish, etc. His mistake was to use Windex for the wrong purpose (first clause). Alternatively, someone might use Windex for the right purpose (i.e. to clean windows), but he might implement it incorrectly (e.g. thinking that you are supposed to spray it and let it dry, or using too much or too little, or diluting it with water). Finally, someone might use it for the right purpose and implement it according to its instructions, but apply it in the wrong case (e.g. using it on a window that is too caked with dirt for the Windex to be effective).

Stamps: A little kid who doesn't know what stamps are for might use them as decorative stickers, or as a band-aid, or as food (i.e. for the wrong purpose). Alternatively, I was once part of a mailing-list assembly line, and the guy who was in charge of stamps was putting them on the wrong side of the envelope; he was using stamps for the correct purpose, but was implementing them in the wrong way. Likewise, someone might use stamps of the incorrect value. Lastly, a person might use stamps on the wrong type of parcel (i.e. I have a hunch that stamps won't work if you want to mail something to North Korea).

Deeper Idea:

These three types of mistakes can be caused by a variety of factors. Sometimes a person is just lacking knowledge, either because he is ignorant or because he is misinformed. Other times, he is under the sway of a powerful emotion which obscures his judgment and blinds his mind.

However, we noticed that there is an underlying egocentricity to the examples in the pasuk. The first guy knows that the stylish but light jacket will not keep him warm, but he nevertheless uses it on a cold day because he feels it will work for the purposes that he desires because he desires it.

The second guy might lack knowledge of the properties of vinegar and natron, but his mistake stems from the fact that he defines these substances based on the way he uses them - not based on an objective investigation of their properties. He thinks, "I use them to clean stains, so that is what they are." The objective chemist, on the other hand, defines these substances based on their actual chemical properties, and that knowledge would dictate his use. A good example of this mistake is vaccines. The layman thinks, "Viruses make me sick, so that is what they are." The scientist views viruses for what they actually are, irrespective of how they affect humans; it is this objective view which allows for the counter-intuitive use of viruses for creating vaccines, which prevent people from getting sick.

Likewise, the third guy might make his mistake because of lack of knowledge (e.g. he might not know how depressed his friend really is). But this mistake often comes from an unrealistic view of one's own ability to effectuate change in the external world. People often try to implement tools for the correct purposes but in the wrong situations, and convince themselves, "Yeah, you think this won't work here, but I can make it work."

But this deeper understanding still needs some refinement.

Dealing with Complainers

2009-04-20T21:11:00.002-04:00

Our family recently returned from a “Pesach hotel” in Miami Beach. On the last day of Yom Tov we were chatting with the director of the program. We noticed that he had a very calm-looking exterior, but we were curious as to what was going on inside. My dad asked him how stressful it was to run a Pesach program like that, and he responded as follows (in more or less these words):

No, it’s not bad at all. On every program like this, at least 5% of the people will always complain. At first, you take it personally, and it makes things very stressful. But eventually you realize that these people aren’t really complaining about the program itself. Yes, these people complain about the service on the program, but they also complained to the staff of the airplane, to the taxi cab driver, to the concierge, to the bellhop, and to the cleaning service. In other words, you see that it’s in their nature to complain, and they’ll always complain, no matter where they go and no matter how good or bad things are. Once you realize this principle, then you don’t take it personally, and everything else is pretty easy.

Not only that, but you start to feel sorry for these people because you realize that they’re making themselves miserable. Are you really going to get upset because the chef is taking an extra ten seconds to make your personal omelet? Are you going to throw a tantrum if your fork is dirty? Come on, just enjoy your vacation! These are the same people who constantly yell at their maids at home and are frustrated with everyone they interact with. They must be constantly unhappy.

Wise words from a practical man.

Mishneh Torah as Paradigm

2009-04-03T18:30:00.002-04:00

Introduction

It is clear from the Rambam's writings that he intended his Mishneh Torah to serve as a complete, conceptually ordered presentation of the Oral Torah. When properly learned together with the Written Torah, the Mishneh Torah provides the student of Torah with knowledge of the entire Torah System. This mission was stated (perhaps) most clearly at the end of the Rambam's Introduction to the Mishneh Torah:

40 - In our times, severe troubles come one after another, and all are in distress; the wisdom of our wise men has disappeared, and the understanding of our discerning men is hidden. Thus, the commentaries, the responses to questions, and the settled laws that the Geonim wrote, which had once seemed clear, have in our times become hard to understand, so that only a few properly understand them. And one hardly needs to mention the Talmud itself -- the Babylonian Talmud, the Jerusalem Talmud, the Sifra, the Sifre, and the Toseftot -- which all require a broad mind, a wise soul, and a long time, before one can correctly know from them the correct path in the principles of what is forbidden or permitted and the other laws of the Torah.

41 - For this reason, I, Moshe son of the Rav Maimon the Sephardi, found that the current situation is unbearable; and so, relying on the help of the Rock, blessed be He, I intently studied all these books, for I saw fit to write what can be determined from all of these works in regard to what is forbidden and permitted, and unclean and clean, and the other rules of the Torah -- everything in clear language and concise style, so that the whole Oral Torah would become thoroughly known to all, without bringing problems and solutions or differences of view, but rather clear, convincing, and correct statements, in accordance with the legal rules drawn from all of these works and commentaries that have appeared from the time of Rabbeinu ha’Kadosh to the present.

42 - This is so that all the laws should be accessible to the small and to the great in the laws of each and every commandment and the laws of the legislations of the Torah scholars and prophets: in short, so that a person should need no other work in the world in any of the laws of Israel; but that this work might collect the entire Oral Torah, including the positive legislations, the customs, and the negative legislations enacted from the time of Moshe Rabbeinu until the writing of the Talmud, as the Geonim interpreted it for us in all of the works of commentary they wrote after the Talmud. Thus, I have called this work the “[Complete] Restatement of the Oral Torah” (Mishneh Torah), for a person reads the Written Torah first and then reads this work, and knows from it the entire Oral Torah, without needing to read any other book between them.

43 - I have seen fit to divide this work into groups of the laws according to topics, and I divide the groups into chapters dealing with one topic; each chapter I divide into paragraphs, so that they may be ordered orally.

My intent in this post is not to examine the Mishneh Torah's specific mission, per se. Rather, I am going to attempt to clarify the type of thing that the Mishneh Torah is, in hopes that this will pave the way for understanding how - and whether we should - use the Mishneh Torah as it was intended to be used.

The Role of Paradigm in Science

In the second paragraph of his Introduction to Torah, the Ralbag writes as follows:

It is vital to keep in mind that it is impossible for us to completely apprehend the wisdom and grace expressed in the nature of the Torah; rather, our knowledge is minute and our ignorance is great. The same is true concerning our knowledge of the wisdom and grace expressed in the nature of all existing things. We apprehend very little of the wisdom of their creation, as is known to those who do real research in the natural sciences, who appreciate the gap between our theoretical models of the laws of the universe and their reality . . . It therefore follows from the fact that the Torah is divine . . . that its nature will also be incompletely understood, although it is true.

The Ralbag is describing what in modern terms would be called a paradigm. This use of the term "paradigm" was coined by the historian of science, Thomas Kuhn, in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Alexander Bird, under the entry "Scientific Revolutions" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2009), explains that Kuhn characterized paradigms in two different ways:

In the first place they are concrete, problem-formulating and solving achievements, sufficiently impressive to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific investigation yet sufficiently open-ended to define further problems or puzzles for the reorganized group of practitioners to resolve. Second is a still more sociological characterization of paradigms. They provide a “shared framework” that accounts for “the ease, fulness [sic], and directness of communication within a scientific community” and “the unanimity of professional agreement” within that community.

Bird then paraphrases Kuhn's "Postscript," which contains the following characterization of paradigm:

In the large sense a paradigm is a “disciplinary matrix” that both defines the bounds of intelligibility of the enterprise and provides specific guidance by virtue of including (a) key symbolic or word generalizations such as Newton's F = ma, (b) metaphysical commitments expressed in terms of preferred analogies or models for parsing or taxonomizing the domain of reality being studied, (c) the methodological values that characterize the ethos of that particular scientific community, and (d) exemplars. Exemplars are the aforementioned concrete individual problem solutions that become the models for future work. They are paradigms in the small sense, which Kuhn identifies as the primary meaning of ‘paradigm’. Exemplars are the positive core, the particularly instructive achievements, upon which future science builds.

As the Ralbag points out, any real scientist knows that scientific progress is impossible without the use of paradigms. The Rav (Joseph B. Soloveitchik) described this phenomenon in Halakhic Man (p.19):

This latter approach is that of mathematics and the mathematical, natural sciences, the crowning achievement of civilization. It is both a priori and ideal - i.e., to know means to construct an ideal, lawful, unified system whose necessity flows from its very nature, a system that does not require, as far as its validity and truth are concerned, precise parallelism with the correlative realm of concrete, qualitative phenomena. On the contrary, all that we have is an approximate accord. The concrete empirical triangle is not exactly identical with the ideal triangle of geometry, and the same holds true for all other mathematical constructs. There exists an ideal world and a concrete one, and between the two only an approximate parallelism prevails.

The humble man of science realizes that it is impossible to grasp chochmas Hashem as it actually exists. The best we can hope for is to glimpse chochmas Hashem through our paradigms.

Mishneh Torah: a Paradigm of Torah

Now we are in a position to understand the type of thing that the Mishneh Torah is. The Mishneh Torah is as a paradigm of Torah. That is why the Rambam wrote it, and that is how he intended the Jewish people to use it. The Mishneh Torah is undoubtedly a "disciplinary matrix," as described by Kuhns, and provides specific guidance in the four ways mentioned above. The Mishneh Torah supplies the student of Torah with:

(a) Formulations of the foundational principles of Torah: the yesodei ha'Torah, which are analogous to the basic formulations of physics, such as F = ma.
(b) Metaphysical commitments expressed as a taxonomy of knowledge: the fourteen thematic books with their divisions and subdivisions, all ordered in a systematic topical hierarchy; this organization not only serves a practical purpose, but serves as the organizing framework through which the student conceptualizes Torah.
(c) Methodological values of the Talmud Torah enterprise: such as Ahavas Hashem, Yiras Hashem, Torah lishmah, kedushah v'taharas ha'nefesh, etc.
(d) Exemplars: the Rambam's formulations of mitzvos and their halachos, which are the frontiers on which the bulk of progress in Torah knowledge is gained.

The value of such a paradigm is evident. It provides the student of Torah with a comprehensive framework for organizing, conceptualizing, and investigating the entirety of Torah. My friend Yehuda recently posted a beautiful account of how the Mishneh Torah paradigm has illuminated his life. Here is the post in its entirety:

"Mishneh Torah Eyes"
I am trying to state briefly the vision of life that the Rambam's Mishneh Torah provides me with. I also want to give a sense of how and why the Mishneh Torah is the main source of this vision.
אָז לֹא-אֵבוֹשׁ--בְּהַבִּיטִי, אֶל-כָּל-מִצְו‍ֹתֶיךָ
The Rambam's Mishneh Torah (not to neglect his other works) is the main source of my vision of life. It is the only source in the Jewish tradition that provides a comprehensive, systematic presentation of the entire corpus of the oral law. The Mishneh Torah, though practical in its purpose, gives the theoretical underpinnings of the entire system and it fundamental objectives. Additionally, it is written with tremendous clarity and precision in a simple Hebrew. It is the ultimate salve to the practice of Judaism as disconnected rote behaviors. The Mishneh Torah is web-like in its efficiency to link from the micro-details of a particular halakha to the macro-structure it is part of. In this way one can never miss the forest for the trees (or as the Rambam would say miss the roots for the branches of the branches). At the core of the Rambam's Mishneh Torah is the centrality of the Written Law. This roots the practice of halakha in the covenantal relationship between B'nei Yisrael and God. In all, the vision afforded by the Mishneh Torah is an organic, interconnected world in which the halakha infuses every aspect of life with wisdom and meaning and facilitates an ongoing ascent in the love of God.

The Rav provides many examples of this world-view in Halakhic Man, for instance:

If a Jew cognizes, for example, the Sabbath laws and the precepts concerning the sanctity of the day in all their particulars, if he comprehends, via a profound study and understanding that penetrates to the very depths, the basic principles of Torah law that take on form and color within the tractat Shabbat, then he will perceive the sunset of a Sabbath even not only as a natural cosmic phenomenon but as an unsurpassably awe-inspiring, sacred, and exalted vision - an eternal sanctity that is reflected in the setting of the sun. I remember once how, on the Day of Atonement, I went outside into the synagogue courtyard with my father [R. Moshe Soloveitchik], just before the Ne'ilah service. It had been a fresh, clcear day, one of the fine, almost delicate days of summer's end, filled with sunshine and light. Evening was fast approaching, and an exquisite autumn sun was sinking in the west, beyond the trees of the cemetery, into a sea of purple and gold. R. Moshe, a halakhic man par excellance, turned to me and said: "This sunset differs from ordinary sunsets for with it forgiveness is bestowed upon us for our sins" (the end of the day atones). The Day of Atonement and the forgiveness of sins merged and blended here with the splendor and beauty of the world and with the hidden lawfulness of the order of creation and the whole was transformed into one living, holy, cosmic phenomenon.

Not only does the Mishneh Torah provide every Jew with all the practical halakhic knowledge he needs to live a halakhic life, but it gives him a theoretical framework which enables him to see the world through Torah eyes. Imagine being able to conceptualize every single aspect of life with its developmental Torah correlative. That is what the Mishneh Torah offers.

The Danger of a Paradigm-based Approach

Nevertheless, there have been many members of the Mesora community throughout the centuries (probably the majority) who strongly object to the very notion of a paradigm-based approach to Torah. Their critiques of the Mishneh Torah mission are multifaceted and subtle, but in this post I would like to focus on only one: namely, that paradigms restrict the freedom of the mind.

This is a strong and valid point. In The Evolution of Physics, Einstein blames "Aristotle's great authority throughout Europe" for delaying scientific progress for two thousand years; even the greatest thinkers became enamored by Aristotle's impressive paradigm and were unable to see the world through non-Aristotelian eyes. The analogy of a "box" in the expression "thinking outside of the box" accurately depicts the constricting nature of paradigms. Kuhn himself acknowledges that the purpose of a paradigm is to "attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific investigation." In other words, a paradigm limits thinking by its very nature.

Ironically, one of the clearest exponents of this problem was the Rambam himself - albeit not in reference to his own work. In his introduction to the Sefer ha'Mitzvos the Rambam laments the mind-numbing influence of the Bahag's (Baal Halachos Gedolos) enumeration of the 613 mitzvos:

Scholars engaged in enumerating the mitzvos, or in writing anything whatsoever on this topic, have all come forward with theories so strange that I could hardly describe their magnitude. This is due to the fact that they were drawn after the Baal Halachos Gedolos, turning aside from his enumeration only minutely, as if opinions became frozen with the work of that man. . . .
Such is the mentality of even the elite of our times, that they do not test the truth of an opinion upon the merit of its ideational content but upon its agreement with the words of some preceding authority, without troubling to examine that preceding source itself. [If this is true of the elite,] how much more so of the populace!

The opponents of the paradigm-based approach of the Mishneh Torah argue as follows: just as people were drawn after the Bahag and locked into his paradigm of Torah, so too, those who adopt the Mishneh Torah as their guide will be locked into the Rambam's paradigm of Torah. They will treat the Rambam's formulations as sacrosanct, and "will not deviate, to the right or to the left." Instead of approaching each and every halacha fresh, allowing their understanding to organically emerge from a comprehensive analysis of all the mainstream Rishonim, they will be blinded by the Rambam's categorization of the halacha within the Mishneh Torah system, and will not be able to engage in objective analysis. Analytical thinking will be reduced to merely plugging things into the system. Even those genuinely who attempt to learn other positions will ultimately be swayed by the authority of the Rambam, and will give his view more weight.

Such is the objection of the opponents of the paradigm-based approach of the Mishneh Torah. To sum it up, they fear that readers of the Rambam will not relate to it as a paradigm (one theoretical model of many viable alternatives), but as a paragon (a perfect, flawless embodiment of an idea). They warn that even the most vigilant thinker has no guarantee of escaping the same fate as the followers of the Bahag. Their objection is strong, and should not be dismissed casually.

Where does this leave us?

We are faced with a major decision. On the one hand we have the Rambam's Mishneh Torah, which offers us a complete Torah-paradigm with everything we need to become "halakhic men." On the other hand, if we embrace the Rambam's paradigm, we run the serious risk forfeiting our ability to think freely and we expose ourselves to the dangers of "plugging in," projecting, and twisting our thinking to conform to the limits set by the Rambam's paradigm.

The two sides can agree on one thing: the Mishneh Torah program is not for everybody. As the Rambam writes in the introduction of the Mishneh Torah:

Thus, the commentaries, the responses to questions, and the settled laws that the Geonim wrote, which had once seemed clear, have in our times become hard to understand, so that only a few properly understand them. And one hardly needs to mention the Talmud itself -- the Babylonian Talmud, the Jerusalem Talmud, the Sifra, the Sifre, and the Toseftot -- which all require a broad mind, a wise soul, and a long time, before one can correctly know from them the correct path in the principles of what is forbidden or permitted and the other laws of the Torah.

The Rambam acknowledges that the Mishneh Torah is not the ideal way to gain knowledge of Torah. If someone has "a broad mind, a wise soul, and a long time" (such as Rashi, Rashba, the Ibn Ezra, etc.) approached the Rambam and asked him what he would learn, the Rambam would probably advise him to learn Torah on his own, and construct his own Mishneh Torah, as the Rambam himself did, and as chachmei Yisrael have done for centuries.

But do we have the "broad mind, wise soul, and long time" needed to form our own comprehensive understanding of Torah? Consider the Ralbag's statement about science. If a fledgling scientist were to sit down and say, "I'm going to start my research afresh, without adopting any scientific paradigm," he would get nowhere. Likewise, if a student of medicine said, "I'll just take isolated elements from all the different approaches: Western medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, yoga, homeopathy, etc. and I'll form my own medical approach," he probably wouldn't succeed in his practice. The chochmas Hashem (manifest wisdom of God) in the universe is simply too vast and too deep for any one man to independently grasp through his own individual efforts. If we accept the Ralbag's comparison of Torah to science, the same argument can be made: it is true that a person can study Torah without a paradigm and gain some measure of knowledge, but the amount of knowledge he can gain with a paradigm is immeasurably greater.

But the argument is not so simple. We can hear the two sides arguing it out, which would go something like this:

Opponent (of the Mishneh Torah approach): The Mishneh Torah is only one man's opinion! How can you restrict yourself to one model!"
Adherent: Chochmas Hashem is infinite, and we will gain more of an appreciation for that chochmah by using a paradigm than trying in vain to piece together our own paradigm from the countless works of Talmudic literature. Take mussar from Shlomo ha'Melech: "The words of the wise are like goads, and the sayings of the masters of collections are like nails well driven, coming from one Shepherd. Beyond these, my son, beware: The making of many books is without limit, and much study is weariness of the flesh" (Koheles 12:11-12).
Opponent: I would rather spend my life slowly arriving at well-established concepts through rigorous, objective, firsthand analysis of the words of all the chachamim, than to accept a single paradigm and force everything to conform to its preestablished parameters. As the Raavad wrote about the Rambam: "I do not know why I should abandon the scholarly tradition in which I stand or the proof that I have mustered, in favor of this author's composition. If the person disagreeing with me is greater than I, well and good, but if I am greater than he, why should I give up my opinion in favor of his?"
Adherent: And I would rather live a life guided by a complete paradigm of Torah. I want to be able to say, as the Rambam writes at the beginning of the Mishneh Torah, "אָז לֹא אֵבוֹשׁ בְּהַבִּיטִי, אֶל כָּל מִצְותֶיךָ" - "Then (after learning the Mishneh Torah) I will not be ashamed when I gaze upon all of your mitzvos" (Tehilim 119:6). I am willing to risk forefeiting a measure of freedom in thinking for a paradigm which will infuse every aspect of life with meaning in the Torah System.

Both sides have strong arguments, and both acknowledge the risk involved in making the wrong decision. As the Rav wrote in Footnote 4, "For the path that eventually will lead to the 'green pastures' and to the 'still waters' is not the royal road, but a narrow, twisting footway that threads its course along the steep mountain slope, as the terrible abyss yawns at the traveler’s feet." May God help us to understand all sides of the issue, the wisdom to choose the correct path to Torah, and to grant us the strength to live in accordance with our decision.

Addendum I

Just to clarify: the Rambam never instructed students to only learn his Mishneh Torah. When Pinchas ha'Dayan of Alexandria made this accusation to the Rambam himself, the Rambam wrote back:

Know therefore that I have never said, Heaven forbid, “Do not preoccupy yourself with the study of the Gemara, of the Halakhos of the Rif, or of any other text.” In point of fact, God Himself is my Witness that for the past year and a half (the students who have come to me) have not studied my own composition with me; quite the contrary, three students came and studied various books; the majority of the students wished to study the Halakhos of the Rif, and I taught it to them in its entirety several times; two others students desired to study the Gemara, and I also taught them the tractates they wished to learn. Have I ever commanded or has it ever occurred to me to burn all the books composed before my time because of my regard for my own work?

Anyone who claims that the Rambam was against learning Gemara and other Talmudic literature - and likewise, anyone who claims to follow the Rambam's program, but does not learn Gemara and other Talmudic literature - is mistaken.

Addendum II (added on 4/5/09 at 4:05pm)

I thank Yehuda for calling my attention to Hilchos Mamrim 1:1:

Beis Din ha'Gadol (i.e. the Sanhedrin) in Jerusalem are the ikkar Torah she'baal Peh (the essence of the Oral Torah), the pillar of horaah (legislative teaching), and from them go forth chok(statute) and mishpat (judgment) to Israel, and concerning them the Torah promises: "according to the Torah which they shall teach you and in accordance with the judgment which they shall tell you, shall you do" (Devarim 17:11) - this is a positive mitzvah. Anyone who believes in Moshe Rabbeinu and his Torah is obligated to rely on them for his religious activity and to rely on them.

In his comments on this post, Yehuda explained as follows: "It is important to think of the Mishne Torah in its galut (exile) context. That is a central theme in the hakdama to the MT. Pre-galut the Sanhedrin set the paradigm. Post-galut there is no paradigm without the Rambam. I believe that one who feels comfortable w/o a paradigm has resigned himself to galut mind set.

Yehuda added: "It is also very important to remember that even Einstein started with a paradigm - if it were not for that paradigm he wouldn't have even had the 'problem' to start his thought experiments. We all must start out as students."

Talmud Torah as Natural Discovery

2009-03-20T17:55:00.000-04:00

I am currently taking an amazing class in my graduate school called "Curriculum Development." I really love the subject of curriculum development. I have found each and every reading and writing assignment has been thought provoking and enlightening. Today I came across a short essay entitled "Structures in Learning" by Jerome S. Bruner, a famous psychologist and educational philosopher. I'd like to share an excerpt from this essay because I believe it contains profound insights into the proper approach to education. If you would like to read the full essay (which isn't much longer than the excerpt I've posted), click here. As usual, the emphases in bold are my own.

Structures in Learning - by Jerome S. Bruner

Every subject has a structure, a rightness, a beauty. It is this structure that provides the underlying simplicity of things, and it is by learning its nature that we come to appreciate the intrinsic meaning of a subject.

Let me illustrate by reference to geography. Children in the fifth grade of a suburban school were about to study the geography of the Central states as part of a social studies unit. Previous units on the Southeastern states, taught by rote, had proved a bore. Could geography be taught as a rational discipline? Determined to find out, the teachers devised a unit in which students would have to figure out not only where things are located, but why they are there. This involves a sense of the structure of geography.

The children were given a map of the Central states in which only rivers, large bodies of water, agricultural products, and natural resources were shown. They were not allowed to consult their books. Their task was to find Chicago, "the largest city in the North Central states."

The argument got under way immediately. One child came up with the idea that Chicago must be on the junction of the three large lakes. No matter that at this point he did not know the names of the lakes - Huron, Superior, and Michigan - his theory was well reasoned. A big city produced a lot of products, and the easiest and most logical way to ship these products is by water.

But a second child rose immediately to the opposition. A big city needed lots of food, and he placed Chicago where there are corn and hogs - right in the middle of Iowa.

A third child saw the issue more broadly - recognizing virtues in both previous arguments. He pointed out that large quantities of food can be grown in river valleys. Whether he had learned this from a previous social studies unit or from raising carrot seeds, we shall never know. If you had a river, he reasoned, you had not only food but transportation. He pointed to a spot on the map not far from St. Louis. "There is where Chicago ought to be." Would that graduate students would always do so well!

Not all the answers were so closely reasoned, though even the wild ones had about them a sense of the necessity involved in a city's location.

One argued, for example, that all American cities have skyscrapers, which require steel, so he placed Chicago in the middle of the Mesabi Range. At least he was thinking on his own, with a sense of the constraints imposed on the location of cities.

After forty-five minutes, the children were told they could pull down the "real" wall map (the one with names) and see where Chicago really is. After the map was down, each of the contending parties pointed out how close they had come to being right. Chicago had not been located. But the location of cities was no longer a matter of unthinking chance for this group of children.

What had the children learned? A way of thinking about geography, a way of dealing with its raw data. They had learned that there is some relationship between the requirements of living and man's habitat. If that is all they got out of their geography lesson, that is plenty. Did they remember which is Lake Huron? Lake Superior? Lake Michigan? Do you?

Teachers have asked me about "the new curricula" as though they are some special magic potion. They are nothing of the sort. The new curricula, like our little exercise in geography, are based on the fact that knowledge has an internal connectedness, a meaningfulness, and that for facts to be appreciated and understood and remembered, they must be fitted into that internal meaningful context.

This approach to education did not originate with Bruner, but with Ha'Kadosh Baruch Hu's method of teaching Adam ha'Rishon in Gan Eden:

"Now, Hashem-Elokim had formed out of the ground every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call each one; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. And the man designated by name all of the cattle and the birds of the sky and every beast of the field" (Bereishis 2:19-20).

The essence of this method is that it is geared towards the Tzelem Elokim - man's natural seeking of insight into the principles of lawfulness underlying the phenomena he observes in his environment. Instead of bombarding children with a barrage of meaningless facts, lifeless formulae, and rote analytical procedures, we must cater to their natural curiosity and intuitive ability to sense order and structure in the phenomena they encounter. Bruner elaborates on this in his explanation of the three virtues of intellectual potency, intrinsic motivation, and techniques of inquiry:

For the child to develop intellectual potency, he must be encouraged to search out and find regularities and relationships in his environment [Matt's note: read as "to discover lawfulness in his environment, like Adam ha'Rishon"]. To do this, he needs to be armed with the expectancy that there is something for him to find and, once aroused by this expectancy, he must devise his own ways of searching and finding.

Emphasis on discovery in learning has the effect upon the learner of leading him to be a constructionist - to organize what he encounters in such a manner that he not only discovers regularity and relatedness, but also avoids the kind of informational drift that fails to keep account of how the information will be used.

In speaking of intrinsic motives for learning (as opposed to extrinsic motives), it must be recognized that much of the problem in leading a child to effective cognitive ability is to free him from the immediate control of environmental punishments and rewards [Matt's note: read "to release his soul and its faculties from the control of the nefesh ha'bahami (animal-psyche)"].

For example, studies show that children who seem to be early over-achievers in school are likely to be seekers after the "right way to do it" and that their capacity for transforming their learning into useful thought structures tends to be less than that of children merely achieving at levels predicted by intelligent tests.

The hypothesis drawn from these studies is that if a child is able to approach learning as a task of discovering something rather than "learning about it" he will tend to find a more personally meaningful reward in his own competency and self-achievement in the subject than he will find in the approval of others.

There are many ways of coming to the techniques of inquiry, or the heuristics of discovery. One of them is by careful study of the formalization of these techniques in logic, statistics, mathematics, and the like. If a child is going to pursue inquiry as an eventual way of life, particularly in the sciences, formal study is essential. Yet, whoever has taught kindergarten and the early primary grades (periods of intense inquiry) knows that an understanding of the formal aspect of inquiry is not sufficient or always possible.

Children appear to have a series of attitudes and activities they associate with inquiry. Rather than a formal approach to the relevance of variables in their search, they depend on their sense of what things among an ensemble of things "smell right" as being of the proper order of magnitude or scope of severity.

It is evident then that if children are to learn the working techniques of discovery, they must be afforded the opportunities of problem solving. The more they practice problem solving, the more likely they are to generalize what they learn into a style of inquiry that serves for any kind of task they encounter. It is doubtful that anyone ever improves in the art and technique of inquiry by any other means than engaging in inquiry, or problem solving.

The question I had when I finished this article is: How can we apply this principle to our own Talmud Torah? I'm not just talking about chinuch for younger children. I'm talking about me and my own learning! I have found, especially in recent times, that my Talmud Torah is severely lacking in the quality present in Adam ha'Rishon's learning. My Talmud Torah has become exceedingly removed from the process of naming phenomena in my real-world environment. The formalistic dimension of Talmud Torah, while absolutely necessary, is supposed to be built upon a solid foundation in real-world naming. Without this foundation, the formal definitions are artificial skeletons which fail to illuminate the life of mitzvos.

This problem needs a solution, but at the moment I do not have one, nor do I fully understand the multifaceted nature of the problem. However, I have complete faith that our Mesora contains such a solution. My two best leads are the Rambam and the Pesach Seder. I will keep you posted as the quest continues, but Shabbos is on its way. Time to return to the seeking of kedushah . . .

Questioning Ends

2009-03-17T19:56:00.001-04:00

Every once in a while I like to play a game I call "Socrates." The rules are simple: choose a stranger, ask yourself, "What would Socrates talk about with this person?" and initiate a conversation. The resulting discussions are usually very eye-opening, although they are usually very short. I thought it might be interesting to share an example with you.

Last night I was in the mood to play Socrates. Yes, I have a Facebook account. Like most Facebook users, I have a large number of "friends" who aren't really friends, but old acquaintances from another life. One of these old acquaintances - a former classmate from 10th grade in Yakima, whom we'll call "Jim" - posted a quotation as his Facebook status. The quotation was from a long-distance runner named Paula Radcliffe, and said, "You just have to keep believing that one day you will win."

I happened to know that Jim is a runner. He was a runner in high school, and from his Facebook profile, it looks as though he would like to make a career out of running. I assumed that this quotation was in reference to one of Jim's running-related goals.

I asked myself, "What would Socrates say to Jim? He clearly thinks highly of this quotation, and I'm sure he'd be willing to discuss it. What should I ask him to get the discussion going?" The answer came to me pretty quickly. I clicked on the "comment" section under Jim's status and typed a single question: "Why is it important to win?"

I chose this question because I really wanted to know. During the Beijing Olympics I often wondered what really drives these people in their minds. If you asked them why winning is important, would they really try to rationally argue for the value of winning? Would they admit that winning isn't objectively important, but that it had always been a childhood dream which they feel compelled to achieve? How many of them would just shrug their shoulders and say, "For the fun of it"? And most of all, I wondered how many of them simply don't think about why they should try to win; they just go for it.

The first response I received was from one of Jim's friends, who wrote:

Winning is how you define it. Too many people say winning is being the 1st place in anything. I say trying your best, having fun, and learning something new have a lot to do with being a winner . . . and I think you do that every day.

A second one of Jim's friends said:

I think what this quote means is that if you keep believing in your dreams and give the best you can day in and day out and train like there's no tomorrow, then you will win. Not in a sense of place necessarily, as [Friend #1] said, but in a sense that you have done everything you could, and in doing so, you achieve your dream (i.e. win).

I noted that neither Friend #1 nor Friend #2 had really understood my question as I had intended it. They thought I was asking about the meaning of the quotation itself, when in truth, I was really asking about the premise of the quotation. I tried to clarify with the following comment:

I definitely agree that it is important to believe in yourself and your dreams and to try your best, and that by doing all of these things, you increase your chances of winning. My question was not about the means, but about the end: Why is winning important?

Is "winning" really "however you define it," as [Friend #1] said? If winning means "trying your best, having fun, and learning something new," then you don't have to believe that one day you will do these things - you can just do them today! And if achieving your dream is winning, then shouldn't you first evaluate whether your dream is a good thing before you strive to achieve it? A person might dream of climbing Mt. Everest, but if he achieves this dream, does that really make him a better person? Will it really make him happy?

That is what I mean by: Why is winning important?

Finally, Jim responded. He said:

The quote really means to get to the heart of not doubting it when it seems a dream is impossible. I'm headed for the 2012 Olympic trials in the 10k. This requires six miles of 4:40 per mile, if not faster. I'm nowhere near that fitness level, and to get there takes TONS: miles, time, focus, exercises, effort, etc. Believing I can banish a past of lukewarm effort with this journey is really hard to believe. So it is that belief in something so preposterous it seems highly unattainable is the belief of which Paula Radcliffe speaks. That is what speaks to me.

I realized then that there was probably no point in going on with the discussion. I didn't want to risk shaking the foundations of Jim's goal in life for no good reason.

Nevertheless, I gained a lot from this brief discussion. Thinking about Jim's state made me feel extremely grateful to the chachamim from whom I've learned, and from the Torah-system which produced them, and from the One who gave us that Torah-system. I am thankful to live a life in which self-reflection and introspection are a part of everyday living, and I am happy to have been granted the knowledge, skills, and the personal disposition which make this self-reflection and introspection possible.

Baruch ha'Makom she'nosan Torah le'amo Yisrael.

Forgetting Torah (Addendum 1)

2009-03-04T13:40:00.001-05:00

I am going to post a few follow-up thoughts on the "Forgetting Torah" series (parts one, two, three, and four).

Recap: Two Types of Forgetting

I would like to reiterate that there are two types of shikechah of divrei Torah. The first is forgetting in the colloquial sense - the type of forgetting that occurs in all areas of knowledge. This shikechah includes the forgetting of facts, concepts, and skills. Chazal refer to this as shikechah machmas oneis (incidental forgetting). The Torah doesn't need to tell us not to have this type of shikechah because (a) if we are responsible for knowing Torah, then it is obvious that we should do everything in our power not to forget what we've learned, and (b) this type of forgetting is, to a large extent, caused by factors outside of our control (as explained by the Rambam in his commentary on Avos 5:11).

The second type of forgetting is what Chazal refer to as shikechah b'meizid (willful forgetting) and "removing Torah principles from one's heart," for which a person is "liable for his soul." This is the type of forgetting referred to by the Rambam in Hilchos Talmud Torah 1:10, which is proscribed by the pasuk: "But beware for yourself and greatly beware for your soul, lest you forget the devarim that your eyes have beheld and lest you remove them from your heart all the days of your life, and make them known to your children and your children's children" (4:9).

According to our explanation, this type of forgetting is a symptom of the nefesh ha'bahami's resistance to yiras Hashem (i.e. the real awareness of the self as a creature subject to the lawfulness in the universe). This type of forgetting stems from the same cause as the eveel's hatred of chochmah and mussar, as Shlomo ha'Melech writes, "Yiras Hashem is the beginning of knowledge, but eveelim hate chochmah and mussar" (Mishlei 1:7). It is not caused by external factors, but by a decision to block out yiras Hashem and to take security in the vision of oneself and reality generated by the nefesh ha'bahami's resistance. The decision to reject yiras Hashem and the ensuing consequences are eloquently depicted by Shlomo ha'Melech in Mishlei 1:20-33:
Wisdom sings out in the street; it gives forth its voice in the squares. It cries out at the head of noisy throngs, at the entrances of the gates, in the city, it speaks it words: How long, O pesaim, will you love the emotional life? Scoffers covet mockery for themselves and ksilim hate knowledge. Return to my reproof! Behold, I will express my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you. Because I have called you and you have refused, because I stretched forth my hand and no one listened, and you rejected my every counsel, and desired not my reproof, I, too, will laugh at your misfortune and mock when your dread arrives. When your fear arrives as sudden darkness, and misfortune comes like a storm; when affliction and oppression come upon you, then they will call me, but I will not answer; they will search for me, but they will not find me. Because they hated knowledge and did not choose fear of Hashem, they did not desire my counsel, they spurned all my reproof. They will eat the fruit of their way and be sated with their own schemes. For the tranquility of the pesaim will kill them, and the contentment of ksilim will destroy them. But he who listens to me will dwell securely, and will be undisturbed by evil.

Both types of forgetting are discussed throughout the teachings of Chazal. It is usually obvious when they are talking about the first type of forgetting, but the second type is harder to spot. I suspect that our tendency to unthinkingly assume that Chazal are referring to the first type stems from resistance to yiras Hashem as well. It is much easier to attribute the causes of our yisurim ("painful occurrences") to external factors, rather than consider the possibility that we have brought this upon ourselves by choosing to live in line with our fantasies and not in line with reality.

Since the second type of shikechah is harder to detect, I thought it would be a good idea to show some examples where Chazal discuss the second type of forgetting.

Example #1: Rashi on Devarim 4:9

If we turn to the source of Hilchos Talmud Torah 1:10 and begin a few pesukim earlier, the Torah states (Devarim 4:5-10):

See, I have taught you decrees (chukim) and ordinances (mishpatim), as Hashem, my God, has commanded me, to do so in the midst of the Land to which you come, to possess it. You shall safeguard and perform them, for it is your wisdom (chochmah) and discernment (binah) in the eyes of the peoples, who shall hear all these decrees and who shall say, "Surely a wise (chacham) and discerning (navon) people is this great nation!" For which is a great nation that has a God Who is close to it, as is Hashem, our God, whenever we call to Him? And which is a great nation that has decrees and ordinances of justice (tzedek), such as this entire Torah that I place before you this day? But beware for yourself and greatly beware for your soul, lest you forget the devarim that your eyes have beheld and lest you remove them from your heart all the days of your life, and make them known to your children and your children's children.

What is the connection between the characterization of the Jewish nation as a "wise and discerning people" and the admonition not to forget divrei Torah? Rashi explains:

But beware for yourself etc. lest your forget the devarim: then, when you do not forget them but do them in accordance with their reality (al amitasam) you will be considered wise and discerning people, but if distort (tisavsu, from from the root 'A.V.T.) them out of shikechah, you will be considered fools.

If we interpet this shikechah as referring to the first type of forgetting (shikechah machmas oneis). According to this simple reading, the pasuk would be referring to forgetting the halachos of the mitzvos, then this statement of Rashi (and consequently, the pshat of the pasuk) becomes exceedingly forced:

First of all, the opposite of shikechah machmas oneis is not "doing the mitzvos al amitasam." Rashi should just say, "when you do the mitzvos ke'hilchasan (in accordance with their halacha"), or something to that effect.
Secondly, the phrase "distort them out of shikechah" is too strong. If Rashi is talking about simple forgetting, then he should just say, "if you forget them" or "if you forget their halachos."
Lastly, how would a forgetting of the halachos cause us to be viewed as "fools" in the eyes of the nations? If a Jew forgets a halacha in mitzvas lulav, or forgets whether a certain action is a melachah on Shabbos, or forgets which berachah to make on a particular food, does that really make or break his status as a chacham and navon in the eyes of a goy? The goy won't even realize that the Jew forgot the halacha since the goy doesn't know the halachos in the first place! If so, then he certainly won't view the Jew as a fool on account of this type of forgetting.

Thus, it is clear that Rashi is referring to shikechah b'meizid, caused by a lack of yiras Hashem in one's observance of mitzvos. First and foremost, this is evident from the fact that Rashi's statement makes reference to the pasuk of Hilchos Talmud Torah 1:10, which the Mishnah in Avos 3:8 explicitly interprets as a reference to shikechah b'meizid. This explanation also resolves the aforementioned difficulties, which we will discuss in reverse order:

The goyim will not be looking at how medakdeik (exacting)we are in keeping halachos, nor will he have any way of determining whether we are doing the mitzvos ke'hilchasan. Rather, the pasuk itself tells us what the goy will see in our observance of the mitzvos which will lead him to conclude that we are wise and discerning: "And which is a great nation that has decrees and ordinances of tzedek, such as this entire Torah that I place before you this day?" The Torah is "a God-given regimen that orders those who practice it properly to true success" (Ralbag, Introduction to Torah). This "ordering of an organism to its true success" is tzedek for human beings, according to the Rambam's definition of tzedek (Guide for the Perplexed 3:54). The goy will see the tzedek in the mitzvos - that these mitzvos are designed as a means of bringing the human being to "true success" - and will conclude, on that basis, that we are a wise and discerning people.
But if our resistance to yiras Hashem causes shikechah, that shikechah will manifest itself in a distortion of the tzedek in the mitzvos. Then, instead of exemplifying the Good human life to the nations of the world, we will appear as primitive fools who are out of touch with reality and what is really good for human beings. If you need examples of this, just look around at the way Jews relate to mitzvos nowadays: either as lifeless cultural customs passed on from generation to generation by rote, or as a backward collection of primitive religious rituals and taboos which aim to please a big daddy in the sky.
"Al amitasam" is a perfect description of the correct manner of mitzvah observance, and is the true opposite shikechah b'meizid, according to our definition. To observe mitzvos "in accordance with their reality" is to relate to mitzvos in accordance with what they are: developmental tools which are part of a regimen of human development from a nefesh ha'bahami into a tzelem Elokim.

In conclusion, this Rashi fits in perfectly with the concept of shikechah b'meizid in Hilchos Talmud Torah 1:10.

Forgetting Torah (4 of 4)

2009-03-03T00:30:00.001-05:00

Note: This is incomplete, but if I don't post it now, it might be months before I post it. Moreover, I fear that until I post this, I won't post anything else. I apologize ahead of time for the deficiencies in this post. I may not succeed in conveying the ideas I intend to convey, but this is where I'll have to leave them for a while. והמבין יבין

Since it's been over a week since the last post in this series, let's quickly summarize the previous three posts before we move on to the fourth:

According to Hilchos Talmud Torah 1:10, the obligation of mitzvas Talmud Torah for "all the days of [one's] life," "until the day of death." The reason for this obligation is the fact that "so long as one is not involved in Torah, he forgets."

This shikechah (forgetting) is described by Chazal as shikechah b'meizid, or "willfully removing devarim (principles) of Torah from one's heart". The main question is: What is the nature of this shikechah?

The source of halacha 1:10 is the pasuk: "But beware for yourself and greatly beware for your soul, lest you forget the devarim that your eyes have beheld and lest you remove them from your heart all the days of your life, and make them known to your children and your children's children" (Devarim 4:9).

The context in which this pasuk appears defines the nature of the Talmud Torah that we are warned not to forget. The Torah is not talking about purely "academic" Talmud Torah. Rather, it is referring to Talmud Torah which brings one to yiras Hashem, as the Torah states, "Gather the people to Me and I shall cause them to understand My devarim, so that they shall learn to fear Me all the days that they live on the earth, and they shall teach their children" (ibid. 4:10).

Forgetting is a psychological defense mechanism designed to protect one's psyche from the discomfort and anxiety associated with a painful memory.

If halacha 1:10 is referring to Talmud Torah which brings one to yiras Hashem, then forgetting divrei Torah is a symptom of resistance to the painful experience of yiras Hashem.

What is Yiras Hashem?

In order to understand the shikechah of Talmud Torah which brings one to yiras Hashem, we need to know what yiras Hashem is. The Rambam defines ahavas Hashem and yiras Hashem in Hilchos Yesodei ha'Torah:

2:1 - It is a mitzvah to love and to fear this Revered and Awesome God, as it is stated, "You shall love Hashem, your God" (Devarim 6:5; 11:1), and it is stated, "Hashem, your God, shall you fear" (ibid. 6:11; 10:20).
2:2 - What is the way of loving and fearing God? When a person gains insight (misbonein) into His great and wondrous works and creations he immediately loves, praises, and extols and is filled with a great desire to know the Great Name, as David said, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalms 42:3).

And when he applies these same principles to himself (mechasheiv), he immediately recoils back with fear and dread and he realizes that he is a small, insignificant, unenlightened creature standing with a frail mind in the presence of Perfect Knowledge, as David said, “[When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and stars that you have set in place, I exclaim,] ‘What is frail man that You should notice him, [and the son of mortal man that You should take note of him?’]” (Psalms 8:4-5).

The Rambam defines ahavas Hashem and yiras Hashem again in 4:12:

When a person gains insight (misbonein) into these principles [of physics and metaphysics], and recognizes all of the creations - from malach, to solar system, to man, etc. - and sees the wisdom of the Kadosh Baruch Hu in all of the forms and creations, his love for ha'Makom will increase, and his soul will thirst and his flesh will yearn to love ha'Makom Baruch Hu. And he will experience fear and dread, due to his smallness, his insignificance, and his frailty when he evaluates himself in comparison to [these creations] . . . and he will find himself to be a vessel filled with shame and disgrace, empty and lacking.

Based on the Rambam's descriptions, it's not too difficult to see why we have a tremendous resistance to the experience of yiras Hashem. The source of this resistance can be summed up in one word: ego. As a contemporary author eloquently put it, "everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence." Yiras Hashem undermines this foundation of foundations - our deeply rooted, egotistical belief in our own supreme value - by forcing us to recognize that we are nothing but small, frail, insignificant creatures in a vast universe in which Malchus Shamayim reigns supreme.

Now we can fully appreciate the conclusion to which we were led by our original analysis: Since Talmud Torah is that which brings one to yiras Hashem, and since yiras Hashem is an ego-crushing experience, our nefesh ha'bahami (animal-psyche) puts up all the resistance it can by causing us to continually forget our Talmud Torah.

Our Talmud Torah

At this point, the reader might raise the following objection: "That's all very nice on a theoretical level - but it's not true! What does Talmud Torah have to do with yiras Hashem? How many people do you know whose Talmud Torah leads them to experience fear and dread? Whose Talmud Torah culminates in an application of Torah principles to their own lives in a manner brings to mind their smallness and insignificance?"

Unfortunately, this is not a problem with our thesis, but with our Talmud Torah. True Talmud Torah leads to yiras Hashem because it is built upon a foundation of yiras Hashem. David ha'Melech states, "Yiras Hashem is the beginning of chochmah" (Tehilim 111:10). This is echoed by his son, Shlomo ha'Melech, "Yiras Hashem is the beginning of knowledge, but eveelim despise chochmah and mussar" (Mishlei 1:7) and "The beginning of chochmah is yiras Hashem" (ibid. 9:10).

Likewise, Chazal teach: "One whose yiras cheit precedes his chochmah, his chochmah will reach its fulfillment, but one whose chochmah precedes his yiras cheit, his chochmah will not reach its fulfillment" (Avos 3:9, which is right after the mishnah about shikechah); "Any person who has Torah but lacks Yiras Shamayim is comparable to a treasurer who has been given the keys to the inner chambers, but he hasn't been given the keys to the outer chambers" (Shabbos 31b); "A person should neither read nor learn if he doesn't have Yiras Shamayim" (Tannah d'Bei Rebbi Eliyahu Rabbah 3).

It is no wonder that the Talmud Torah we are familiar with is devoid of yiras Hashem. How many of us are raised with a solid foundation of yiras Hashem from the mishlei of Shlomo or the tehilim of David? How many people learn Mishlei and Tehilim as part of their Talmud Torah? Without a strong foundation in yiras Hashem, our Talmud Torah will not bring us to yiras Hashem. Without such a foundation in yiras Hashem, we cannot fulfill mitzvas Talmud Torah as we were commanded.

The Navi already prophesied that this would happen (Yishaya 29:13-14):

Hashem said: Inasmuch as this people has drawn close, with its mouth and with its lips it has honored me, yet it has distanced its heart from Me; their fear of Me is like rote learning of human commands. Therefore, behold, I will continue to perform more wonders against this people - wonder upon wonder. The wisdom of its wise men will be lost and the understanding of its sages will become concealed.

The Navi identifies the cause of our inability to engage in proper Talmud Torah: we lack genuine yiras Hashem. Our yiras Hashem is not a reality-based reflective experience of fear, awe, and trembling at our smallness and insignifiance in the face of a lawful universe, as the Rambam describes. To the contrary, our yiras Hashem is entirely external, perpetuated through our empty speech and rote actions. We do not allow yiras Hashem to penetrate into our hearts (i.e. our perception of reality).