• First Shiur. (The volume is overly loud for the first 3 min or so, which includes most of a rough biography of Rav Shimon Shkop, but not the actual text.)
• Second Shiur.
• Third Shiur.

Here is the description of the course from Project Sinai’s site:

“This is the Torah of the praise-of-peace [offerings]…” (Vayiqra 7:11) This is what is written “Its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace.” (Mishlei 3:17). Everything that is written in the Torah is written for the sake of peace. Even though things about wars are written in the Torah, they were written for the sake of peace.

You find that the Holy One, blessed be He, annulled the decree for the sake of peace. When was this? When the Holy One told Moshe, “When you lay siege on a  city many days…” (Devarim 20:19) and that whole topic, Hashem said that you should destroy them, as it says “When you utterly destroy them” (v. 17)  But Moshe didn’t do this. Rather he said, “Now I will go and attack? I do not know who sinned and who did not sin! Rather, I will come to them in peace.” As it says, “And I will send messengers from the Qedeimos wilderness… words of peace, saying…” (Devarim 2:26) Once he saw that he didn’t come in peace, he attacked him. As it says, “And they struck him and his sons and his whole nation.” The Holy One said to him, “I said ‘If you lay siege…’ and you come to them in peace?! By your life! Just as you said, so shall I do.” As it says, “When you approach a city to wage war on it, you shall call out to it for peace.” (Devarim 20:10).

Therefore it says , “Its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace.”

“וזאת תורת זבח השלמים” (ויקרא ז:יא). זש”ה “דרכיה דרכי נועם וכל נתיבותיה שלום” (משלי ג:יז), כל מה שכתוב בתורה, לשום שלום הוא נכתב. אעפ”י שכתוב בתורה מלחמות, לשם שלום נכתבו. את מוצא שביטל הקב”ה את הגזירה מפני השלום. אימתי? כשאמר הקב”ה למשה, “כי תצור אל עיר ימים רבים” וגו’ (דברים כ:יט), וכל אותו הענין, א”ל הקב”ה שיהא מחרים אותם, שנאמר “כי החרם תחרימם” (דברים כ:יז). ומשה לא עשה כן, אלא אמר עכשיו אני הולך ומכה, איני יודע מי חטא ומי לא חטא, אלא בשלום אבוא עליהם, שנאמר “ואשלח מלאכים ממדבר קדמות וגו’ דברי שלום לאמר” (דברים ב:כו), כיון שראה שלא בא בשלום הכה אותו, שנאמר “ויכו אותו ואת בניו ואת כל עמו” (במדבר כא:לה), אמר לו הקב”ה אני אמרתי “כי החרם תחרימם” וגו’, ואתה באתה עליהם בשלום?! חייך כשם שאמרת כך אני אעשה, שנאמר “כי תקרב אל עיר להלחם עליה וקראת אליה לשלום” (דברים כ:י), לכך נאמר “דרכיה דרכי נועם וכל נתיבותיה שלום.”

Rav Aqiva Eiger (teshuvah #136) divides [the laws of cases of ignorance, how to rule when the realia of a situation isn’t known] into two types:

• ways of applying the halakhah to an uncertain situation and
• resolving what to do when the halakhah is uncertain

In other words, the doubt could be about the reality, and now we need a halakhah, or the halakhah could have once been set, but now we don’t know what it is.

Before looking at each category separately, let’s look at the problem Rabbi Aqiva Eiger was addressing. There is an oft quoted beraisa that contrasts two kinds of halachic uncertainty.

[A city has] nine stores all of which sell shechted meat, and one store that sells neveilah meat (meat killed in other ways). Someone buys from one of them, but he doesn’t know which of them he bought from. His doubt makes the meat prohibited.

But if the meat were just found, one may follow rov (the majority).

-Pesachim 9b, Kesuvos 15a, Chullin 95a, Niddah 18a

The beraisa contrasts two principles. The first is “kol qavu’ah kemechtzah al mechtzah dami” (anything that’s established is like half against half). It is specitically this rule that we There is no playing odds, a doubt is a doubt whether it’s 50:50 or 90:10. For Torahitic laws we would have to assume the stricter possibility, and for Rabbinic ones, the more lenient side.

The other rule is “kol deparish meirubah parish” (anything that leaves the group [can be assumed to have] left the majority). Here we see that majority is a deciding factor. The first case is called “qavu’ah” (established), the second “parish” (separated). How does “qadu’ah” differ from “parish“? When is majority ignored, and when is it a determining factor?

Tosafos (Zivachim 72b, “Ela amar Rava”) write “qavuah only applies to a thing that is known”.  Rabbi Aqiva Eiger explains that the piece of meat bought from the known store had an established halakhah. The buyer knew the state of the meat. We therefore call the halakhah “qavu’ah” — established. However, now it got mixed up, and we don’t know what that halakhah is.  The doubt is in the halakhah.

However, if the meat is simply found, then the uncertainty begins one step earlier. We don’t know the state of the meat. The doubt is in the reality, what part of the set this item was parish – separated from.

The same distinction appears to underly a dispute in the Yerushalmi, Nazir 8:1 (vilna ed 40a). There is a rule that in a safeiq tum’ah birshus harabim, a doubt about whether something in the public domain became tamei, we assume it’s tamei. (And a converse rule that safeiq tum’ah birshus hayachid, where a similar doubt exists about something in a private domain, we assume it’s tahor.)

This rule is tested in two cases. In the first: “נזיר שנטמא בספק רשות היחיד ואינו בפסח ר’ הושעיא רבה אמר הנזיר מגלח ר’ יוחנן אמר אין הנזיר מגלח.” A nazir may or may not have become tamei when he was in a public thoroughfare. The problem is that a nazir who is tamei has to restart his nezirus in a process that includes shaving all his hair. But, if the nazirus is intact because he didn’t become tamei, he is not permitted to cut his hair at all! Thus, neither error is “safe”; neither is simply being stringent.

R’ Hoshea Rabba says the nazir should shave his head.

R’ Yochanan says he does not.

The second case, “יחיד שנטמא בספק רשות היחיד בפסח רבי הושעיה אמר ידחה לפסח שני רבי יוחנן אמר משלחין אותו דרך רחוקה.” In the days when there is a Beis haMiqdash, a person got tamei too shortly before Pesach to being the qorban Pesach with everyone else would bring the qorban a month late on Pesach sheini. Again the Yershalmi poses a doubt in which neither assumption is a pure stringency. If we assume he is tamei and he isn’t, then he both missed the qorban Pesach and on Pesach sheini he brought a non-offering (since he wasn’t obligated) on the altar. If we assume a tamei person isn’t tamei, he would bringing the qorban Pesach in impurity.

R’ Hoshea Rabba says he waits to Pesach sheini.

R’ Yochanan tells him to avoid the problem — he should flee to a place too far from the Beis haMiqdash to be obligated to come for the qorban and thereby eligible for Pesach sheini either way.

(I couldn’t find a parallel in the Bavli. Anyone?)

As the Penei Mosheh and Qorban ha’Eidah (the acharonim on the sides of the daf) both explain, this is the underlying dispute:

R’ Hoshea Rabba holds that safeiq tum’ah bereshus hayachid renders the person tamei as if we were sure. So, the nazir is definitely a nazir tamei and must shear his hair and restart nezirus. And the person definitely is disqualified from his qorban Pesach on Pesach, and eligible for Pesach Sheini.

In contrast, R’ Yochanan considers safeiq tum’ah brh”y to be a rule for how to deal with a doubt. It is insufficient grounds to permit the nazir to cut his hair because he might be tahor and a haircut would be prohibited. So, he outwaits his nezirus, cuts his hair then, and then, in case he was tamei, starts over. Which is why R’ Yochanan also needs a way to circumvent the Pesach sheini issue. In both cases, he tells the potentially tamei person to worry about both possibilities.

I believe this is the same distinction as the one I generalized from R Aqiva Eiger:

R’ Hosheia is saying that safeiq tum’ah brh”h is a rule for dealing with doubt in facts of the ground. The halakhah established in cases of encountering maybe tum’ah, or maybe encoutering definite tum’ah, is that if one is in a public area the halachic state is tamei and in a private area, tahor. A mapping from a doubtful reality to a definite law.

Rav Yochanan holds these are rules in determining the how to act when the halakhah is unknown. We do not establish a definite law, and therefore we need to know what to presume so that we could continue acting — act stringently and assume it’s tamei if the possible contact is in a public area, and leniently when in a private one. But when neither option is more stringent than the other, as in our two cases, Rav Yochanan tells you to be stringent in both ways.

I actually think this drift in how we see individualized Providence shares a lot with the drift in Western Philosophy since Kant to Existentialism and beyond. There is now little focus on trying to figure out the world as it is, and we instead talk about the world as it is experienced. So, when the rishonim talk about hashgachah they’re having a metaphysical discussion about how G-d relates to the universe. A statement of emunah. Moderns have given up, since such a relationship is inherently unknowable. Instead, it becomes a statement of bitachon (trust [in the Almighty]); everything that happens in my life it the result of my partnership with the Eibershter. It’s not even that we’ve shifted position, we’ve changed topic.

Personally, I feel that the Rambam’s position is hard to defend mathematically, and even the majority opinion that HP includes all events in all people’s lives doesn’t exclude that many other events. This is because of the math that emerged from Chaos Theory.

To explain: The law of large numbers is the idea that if the probability of flipping a coin and getting heads is .5, then if you flip enough fair coins, you are likely to get numbers closer to 1/2 of them coming up heads. That only works for the small minority of aggregates where there are no feedback loops, so that each coin toss is independent. In systems that have such loops, Chaotic results — in which a small, even unmeasurable, change in starting conditions could make large differences in outcome. Thus, the proverbial “Butterfly Effect” — the tiny input of whether or not a butterfly flapped its wings in Africa could change whether or not there is a tornado in Missouri impacting thousands of lives.

All events interact and interplay. The vast majority of systems in the messy real world are chaotic, and nearly everything (if not actually everything) involving humans is. If there were anything whose final outcome wasn’t influenced by HQBH, how could there be anything impacting a person who merited hashgachah peratis whose final outcome was?

(Which is also how I can believe that people have free will in terms of what they do, but can have bitachon that everything that occurs to them is hashgachah. A person has the choice to interject one vector into the mix; weaving them into a total package is Hashem’s orchestration.)

So far my thoughts with respect to classical physics, in which the laws of physics produce deterministic results, even if we can’t get enough information to draw conclusions about the future. But from a Quantum Mechanical (QM) point of view, some things are only statistical. Do the molecules in a gas even have a specific location before a person takes measurements and observes them? Oddly enough, the answer is “no”. This is a different angle then the above. Chaos Theory is about unpredictability because you can’t fully know how things began. Quantum theory deals with true randomness. But it’s another interesting wrinkle anyway.

To explain (somewhat):

If you shine light through a narrow slit onto a wall or some film, it makes a broader line than the slit — the wave expands after leaving the slit. And if you shine it through two such slits that are close enough together, the waves interact leaving a pattern of light and dark stripes on the wall.

But — and here is where QM gets really weird — the same thing is true when you shine less light through the slits. Even down to a single particle. Photons shot at the slit one particle of light at a time will hit the wall in a pattern that over time will create those very same stripes. The light acts like a particle in how it moves, but the probability of where it moves acts like a wave. And while you might be able to dismiss this as a feature of energy, the same experiment can be done with electrons or other things we think of as matter!

And, just to make sure you’re totally bewildered, whether the photon or electron does this weirdness can be turned on or off by choosing whether or not you put a measuring device at one of the slits. If you know which slit the particle went through, the whole wave pattern thing disappears. Until a measurement is done, the particle somehow goes through both paths in a “superposition of states”, in all the places it could have been at once and interacting with the other versions of itself.

Erwin Schroedinger emphasized its weirdness with a famous thought experiment generally called Schroedinger’s Cat. Picture some mad scientist takes a tiny bit of radioactive substance and places it in front of a detector, which in turn has a hammer aimed at a vial of poison gas. This set-up is designed so that there is a 50% chance that enough radiation would be emitted in one hour to set off the detector and release the gas. This being a mad scientist, he takes the whole assembly and a cat and puts them into a sealed box.

It is now an hour later. Whether the cat is alive or dead depends on a quantum event, the amount of radiation. So, like the light passing through two slits, the radiation both and didn’t reach that trigger level until measured. And thus, the vial is both smashed and intact and the cat both alive and dead.

Or is it? There are numerous attempts to explain when a system shifts from the statistical realm of QM and the more deterministic world we live in and how. Here’s a thought that crossed my mind:

Perhaps the line is between nature and HP. Nature is quantum and statistical,but human events are mediated by HP which is deterministic. Which is why observation causes collapse of the wave function — and thus the range of probabilities, it introduces a human being and thus (according to Chazal and most rishonim) individual, non-statistical, Providence. Schroeder’s poor cat wouldn’t merit HP, and therefore his state needn’t be determined until a person opens the box and Providence selects a single outcome.

If you find honey, eat just enough; lest you get full and vomit it.

- Mishlei 25:16

(In the days of the geonim and earlier rishonim it was customary to start a derashah with a verse from Mishlei and then use its explanation to conclude with an explanation of something from the parashah. I’m happy to have once found a way to work within that structure.)

Mishlei is a collection of metaphors, as the name of the book itself is “The Parables of [Shelomo ben David, king of Israel.]” (1:1) In this vein, the Vilna Gaon explains our opening verse based on the notion that “devash” here is meant as an acronym of “de’iah, binah, seikhel – theoretical knowledge, reason, applying the knowledge”, to use the translations he gives in the introduction to the work.

Sidenote: This is the same triad found in Nusach Ashkenaz’s version of birkhas Da’as (the fourth berakhah of the Amidah, “Atah chonein…”)  but with a different conjugation: “dei’ah, binah, haskeil.” Perhaps because asking Hashem for help turning what we know into practice would be asking for Him to violate free will, so we instead ask to provide us with more skill at doing so, rather than help in the actual doing.

But intellect and spirituality are good things, so what would it mean to say “if you gain knowledge and the wherewithall to use it, apply just enough; lest you get full and vomit it”?

In Aesop’s “The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs”, he writes (tr. Harvard Classics 1909 ed.):

ONE day a countryman going to the nest of his Goose found there an egg all yellow and glittering. When he took it up it was as heavy as lead and he was going to throw it away, because he thought a trick had been played upon him. But he took it home on second thoughts, and soon found to his delight that it was an egg of pure gold. Every morning the same thing occurred, and he soon became rich by selling his eggs. As he grew rich he grew greedy; and thinking to get at once all the gold the Goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find, —nothing.

“GREED OFT O’ERREACHES ITSELF.”

In “real life” we have to balance our production with our capacity to produce. If we are overly short-sighted in our pursuit of immediate gains and accomplishments, we can kill the goose, and end up accomplishing less in our lives overall.

In the context of religious worship, this is the need to both perform mitzvos, and to develop within our selves the abilities necessary to do future mitzvos (including rest as needed), and the middos to make the right choices when opportunities arrive. As R’ Shimon writes (tr. mine):

וכמובן בכל הקדשות שהוא התיחדות למטרה נכבדה, והנה כשהאדם מישר הליכותיו ושואף שתמיד יהיו דרכי חייו מוקדשים להכלל, אז כל מה שעושה גם לעצמו להבראת גופו ונפשו הוא מתיחס גם כן אל מצות קדושה, שעל ידי זה יטיב גם לרבים, שבטובתו לעצמו הוא מטיב עם הרבים הצריכים לו.

And as understood, all holiness is being set apart for an honorable purpose – which is that a person straightens his path and strives constantly to make his lifestyle dedicated to the community. Then, anything he does even for himself, for the health of his body and soul he also associates to the mitzvah of being holy, for through this he can also do good for the masses. Through the good he does for himself he can do good for the many who rely on him.

And similarly the Gra says that Shelomo haMelekh is warning us not to try to exceed our grasp. That by trying for more da’as, binah and haskeil then one is ready for, one can end up burning out. (Sorry for what will be in retrospect a poor turn of phrase; check back when you get to the end of this post.)

Many of us have encountered the baal teshuvah who tries to take on too much too soon, and after a short while gives up on the whole enterprise. Or have ourselves set overly high expectations during the High Holidays, and all the resolutions unravel in the days (or day) after Yom Kippur — leaving us with no change.

Now to turn to the parashah… When one looks at Chazal and rishonim explaining the magnitude of Nadav and Avihu’s sin, to find why it was so grievous as to warrant their death, one finds numerous different suggestions. As I wrote last 10 Av in the post “No Answers“:

Eight different answers…, each made with the claim that it’s the sole reason for the destruction of Jerusalem.

Rabbi Jack Love, a rebbe-chaveir, would point to this very variety of answers, or of identification of the specific sin committed by Nadav and Avihu to warrant their death, or what Moshe did wrong when he struck the rock. The gemara is making a statement. This kind of question has no final answer. The gemara grapples with the problem, but doesn’t claim to have a final answer.

So then why ask the question, if we know it’s unanswerable?

…

Knowing there is no conclusive answer to finding the cause, and they would never even succeed to find a cause, they still needed to struggle with the question of causes in order to find motivations to change. And by framing the problem in terms of that sin, they inspire their students to repair it.

In that spirit, I would like to take a lesson by combining some of the statements Rashi quotes from the medrash as well as an idea from the Seforno on the sin of Nadav and Avihu.

Let’s assume that the opinion that says that it was Nadav and Avihu about whom Hashem said “biqrovai aqadeish — through those close to Me I will be stanctified” (Vayiqra 10:3) is consistent with the one that says that at Har Sinai Nadav said to Avihu, “When these elders [Moshe and Aharon] die, you and I will lead the generation.” It would mean that they had the purest motives in wanting to lead. Not out of a desire for personal importance, but out of an awareness that they are indeed close to Him and thus — in their opinion — make good leaders.

But they were impatient. And when bringing the qetores they decided how it should be done on their own rather than asking Moshe Rabbeinu. Without explicit permission (which is the point of today’s semichah), it is prohibited for a student to rule on a halachic matter when in the same region — even when the student reaches the same answer.

Another way in which they jumped the gun is the opinion that the qetores was in error because it was the kohein gadol‘s job. Not only did they presume on Moshe Rabbeinu’s role before their apprenticeship under him was complete, they did the same with Aharon’s.

An improper qetores caused the death of many kohanim gedolim during the second Beis haMiqdash. The Yerushalmi (Yuma 1:5, vilna daf 7b) contrasts those who punished with death by omitting one of the ingredients of the qetores with those who die by entering the holy of holies without adding a smoke-generating agent to the qetores or lights it outside. “That is a punishment… and that is a warning.” In the latter case, the death isn’t as much a punishment as the consequence of exposure to Hashem’s Presence without the obscuring cloud. Trying to get more spirituality than one is ready for.

The elders were criticized for drinking and celebrating at Mount Sinai (Shemos 24:11). Nadav and Avihu repeat this mistake now — the gemara suggests that their sin here was in serving while inebriated. The pursuit of true spirituality takes years of development, but using drink and parties to create a shallower but immediate experience is a common shortcut.

The Ramchal writes (Mesilas Yesharim ch. 4):

לשלמי הדעת, תהיה להם ההערה במה שיתברר להם כי רק השלימות הוא הדבר הראוי שיחמד מהם ולא זולת זה, ושאין רע גדול מחסרון השלמות וההרחקה ממנו. כי הנה אחר שיתבאר זה אצלם ויתבאר להם כמו כן היות האמצעים אליו המעשים הטובים והמדות הטובות, ודאי הוא שלא יתרצו מעולם להמעיט מאלה האמצעים או להקל בהם.

To those who are complete in knowledge [or, as per the Gra: abstract knowledge in particular?], will have the insight that will clarify for them that only Wholeness and nothing else is worthy of their desire and that there is no worse evil than the lack of and removal from perfection.

And yet a little later he writes:

וזה כי זה פשוט אצל כל בעל דעת, שאין המדריגות מתחלקות בעולם האמיתי שהוא העולם הבא, אלא לפי המעשים.

And this is simple to anyone with any knowledge that there only distinction in levels in the World of Truth which is the World to Come is according to actions.

Is it in the completion, or in the deed? I believe the reason for the Ramchal’s wording is exactly the lesson that Nadav and Avihu lacked. They were “those closest to Me” not because they were on a higher plane than Moshe and Aharon, but because they were processing the most. And similarly, someone born with a calmer disposition isn’t more whole who has more of a temper if that anger is still less than what he was born with. Wholeness is according to one’s actions, how much one has developed Himself, and not on an absoute standard. Thus a person’s actions, which anyone with intellect could prize, really is the wholeness that the more complete person values.

Nadav and Avihu, like the Boesian kohanim gedolim, exposed themselves to more of G-d than they had prepared themselves for. And so they died as a punishment — they remained biqrovai (those close to Me), but as a consequence.

In a generation slated to spend 40 years in the desert in a process that would get us ready for Eretz Yisrael, they couldn’t have leadership who wanted holiness now, rather than valuing the process. Nadav and Avihu could not be Moshe’s and Aharon’s successors.

The third son, the tam, is usually defined simple in an unsophisticated or ignorant sense, as though his approach is inferior to the wise child’s. But when we find the word “tam” in the Torah, it is a complement. Yaaqov grows up to be an “ish tam yosheiv ohalim — a tam man, who dwelled in tents”. There is a kind of simplicity that is holy, positive — being of one mind, pursuing G-d without conflicting desires or motives.

And if the tam is someone who pursues Hashem on an experiential, desire, level, then the she’eino yode’ah lish’ol, the child who doesn’t even know to ask a question, is his failed counterpart. Just as the rasha is one who tries to encounter Judaism on the chakham‘s cerebral level but rejects what he finds, the she’eino yode’iah lish’ol fails on the experiential level, he finds nothing he can relate to.

And so we continue the Hagadah explaining why the mitzvah of retelling the story of the Exodus is limited to the night of the seder:

יָכוֹל מֵרֹאשׁ חֹדֶשׁ, תַּלְמוּד לוֹמַר בַּיוֹם הַהוּא, אִי בַּיוֹם הַהוּא יָכוֹל מִבְּעוֹד יוֹם, תַּלְמוּד לוֹמַר בַּעֲבוּר זֶה – בַּעֲבוּר זֶה לֹא אָמַרְתִּי אֶלָא בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁיֵשׁ מַצָה וּמָרוֹר מֻנָּחִים לְפָנֶיךָ.

I might have thought [the mitzvah applies] from the beginning of the month. Therefore we learn from what [the Torah] says, “on this day”. If it’s “on that day”, perhaps the mitzvah begins while it’s still daytime. Therefore we learn from what it says, “because of this” [-- "this", indicating something to point to]. “Because of this” I wouldn’t have said except at a time when matzah and maror are set out before you.

The mitzvah of telling the story cannot be cerebral teaching, from a book. It must be accompanied with the mitzvos of matzah and maror. An experiential education, an inculcation. This is the only way to reach the disaffected, the she’eino yode’a lish’ol.

And even the rasha requires this approach.  The thing that gets someone to reconsider their postulates and explore a different philosophy is the experience of (eg) a Shabbos or a Pesach seder. Otherwise, all the “proofs” in the world fall on deaf ears.

I pray that this Pesach brings an end to the exile of the self and a redemption of the person I was created to be.

On which I commented:

First reaction: Beautiful!

Second reaction: Woah, wait a second, how then is Pesach different than Yom Kippur? (not meant rhetorically)

I liked our answers to this question sufficiently to want them recorded here on my turf.

R’ Neil’s suggestion:

Teshuva is a return to the state of who we should be. I think geulah (redemption) is the actualization of the potential. It’s the difference… of wanting to serve Hashem and serving Hashem.

Which is powerful enough to warrant pausing here rather than rushing to my reply. I’ll wait.

Between the time I asked and the time I was able to revisit RNH’s blog, I played with the following:

Tishrei is (in the Zohar’s language) an is’arusa delesata (an awakening from below) — we awaken the qedushah, and Hashem responds. Nissan is an is’aru dele’eilah (from above) — Hashem offers us the qedushah, and it is for us to respond. This is why Tishrei is associated with Din (Divine Justice), as Hashem’s response is in measure to what we earned, whereas Nissan is unearned holiness, an expression of Rachamim (Divine Empathy).

 

Applying this idea…

 

Ge’ulah is being freed from those external challenges that are holding us back. Thus, Hashem can offer it to us without violating our free will. And so it happens in Nissan.

 

Teshuvah is freeing ourselves from our internal flaws. Something we must do for ourselves — a Tishrei awakening from below.

The distinction between mitzvah and tzivui could be understood with a metaphor. Someone goes to a doctor and is advised not to eat red meat. A few days later, the same man is a guest at someone’s home and is offered some steak. He declines, explaining to his host that he is under “Doctor’s orders”. The purpose of refraining from red meat isn’t in order to obey the doctor. Rather, he has trust in his doctor’s greater understanding of medicine, and feels secure that the abstention is in his own best interest. The doctor’s order is therefore akin to a mitzvah, not a tzivui.

The name of the parashah lacks the richness of the word mitzvah. It doesn’t refer to both Doctor’s and General’s orders by including the letter mem to hint at nursing. “Tzav” means to command. King David wrote, “Ani avdekha ben amasekha — I am Your servant, the son of your handmaiden.” The meaning is actually richer than that translation. An eved is someone who is submerged under and lost to his work. Rav Hirsch understands the word as an intensive form of avad, to be lost or destroyed, made by replacing the unvoiced opening alef with a voiced ayin. And an amah is not only a female servant, but also a forearm. So we can also translate the verse, “I am second to Your work, the son of someone who made herself a tool for Your Will.” Or as the Zohar says (and we repeat upon taking out the Torah in shul), “Ana avda deQBH — I am the servant of the Holy One, blessed is He.”

The obedience aspect of avodas Hashem is a tough sell in today’s society. Perhaps the most central value in Western Culture today is autonomy, giving people the ability and opportunity to be able to do what they want — as long as it doesn’t interfere with others. Submission?

And so we find among our non-Orthodox brothers a growing population who self-identify as “Post-Denominational” and who seek a DIY — Do It Yourself — Judaism. The chaburah movement, and so on. But this tendency has reached Orthodoxy as well.

For example, R’ Natan Slifkin wrote an article about how the shiur of a kazayis has evolved over time. We know from archaeological evidence that the olives of Chazal’s day were somewhat smaller than the kezayis advocated by the Rambam, and is used today by many Sepharadim. Must smaller than the range of value generally discussed by Ashkenazim, even R Chaim Naeh’s position based on the custom of Yerushalayim in his day (early 20th cent). An Ashkenazi position in line with this  finding is Rav Chaim Volozhiner’s opinion, that a kezayis is the size of a typical olive of our olives as they are bred and grow in our day and age. But this opinion isn’t considered very often. At least not in print. Memories of our ancestors’ seder tables indicates otherwise.

Facebook and the j-blogosphere has been full lately of people who take this historical analysis and proclaim that they will use it to justify using smaller measures for matzah and maror. Taking halakhah into their own hands, even though the argument they are relying on is primarily historical, not halachic. What happened to following halachic authorities? Finding a poseiq and relying on someone else’s expertise? Isn’t that how pesaq supposed to work? Similarly, someone commented on Rabbi Reuven Spolter’s blog, Chopping Wood:

Many in the thinking MO (Modern Orthodox) community agree with the rationale, underlying assumptions, and thinking set forth by Rav Bigman, and certainly do not agree with Chareidi views of society and the place for women. Why should they adopt the Chareidi psak? If you think that Rav Bigman’s view should not be followed, then in order to make a case that will fall on accepting ears you have to address the issues. For the thinking MO, it is the quality of the argument, not who said it (within reason) or how many said it, that matters. So if you oppose the action, you have to make an argument based on sources and logic, not a list of poskim.

Actually, there are many halachic rules based on who said it. Following Beis Hillel over Beis Shammai. Obeying the majority rule in a Sanhedrin. The Shulchan Arukh, in general, follows the majority of the Rif, the Rambam and the Tur — not the ruling he finds most reasonable. The Rambam, in the introduction to his Mishneh Torah, sources the gemara‘s authority in the fact that its rulings spread across the observant community — not because of the power of its arguments. And similarly of later rabbis, and the local communities they led.

(As a historical point, the actual universal acceptance of the Tamud Bavli as the final word on what Chazal say (when the Bavli actually has an opinion) post-dated the Rambam. Ashkenaz still had a large population from Eretz Yisrael who were loyal to minhagim from that area. In fact, even to this day Ashkenazim do some things that fit the Yerushalmi or the medrashei halakhah better than they conform to the Bavli. But the Bavli didn’t become THE Gemara in Ashkenaz until the Tosafists. Which is why they were the first to show a struggle between the gemara’s content and (locally) accepted halakhah.)

Because the Rambam is thought of as our tradition’s arch-rationalist (a title Rav Saadia Geon or the Ralbag should also be in the running for), I’m going to quote the words of the introduction to reinforce the point that even our rationalists understood that halakhah requires working within its own process, and not an a priori rationality given historical facts. This is from Mechon Mamre’s translation (see there for the Hebrew too; I just figured most people following this discussion wouldn’t bother reading it if I put up the Hebrew):

32 The enacted legislations or enacted customs of the courts that were established in any town after the time of the Talmud for the town’s residents or for several towns’ residents did not gain the acceptance of all Israel….

34 These matters apply to rulings, enactments, and customs that arose after the Talmud was written. But whatever is in the Babylonian Talmud is binding on all of the people of Israel; and every city and town is forced to observe all the customs observed by the Talmud’s sages and to enact their restrictive legislations and to observe their positive legislations.

35 For all those matters in the Talmud received the assent of all of Israel, and those sages who enacted the positive and negative legislations, enacted binding customs, ruled the rulings, and found that a certain understanding of the Law was correct constituted all of Israel’s sages, or most of them, and it was they who received the traditions of the Oral Law concerning the fundamentals of the whole Law in unbroken succession back to Moshe Our Teacher.

Rav JB Soloveitchik applies the Rambam’s reasoning to an instance that post-dates the Rambam’s life — the acceptance of the Shulchan Arukh. The Shulchan Arukh, with the Rama, was so broadly accepted by the Jewish People it became the yardstick from which we measure the novelty of all our rulings, and therefore the need to justify a divergent conclusion. And why the Shulchan Arukh is the central book in the curriculum we use for ordination programs.

Rabbi Spolter’s response to that qol ishah comment begins (minus the author’s name):

…’s comments concretized exactly why Modern Orthodox practice regarding kol isha bothers me so much. Since when has the Shulchan Aruch been appropriated by the Chareidi community? Suddenly, every rav and posek who doesn’t conform to our values is now Chareidi?

One can be leinient in qol ishah because of halachic arguments: perhaps it only applies to live performances, to cases where the woman can be seen, to solos, or that it excludes liturgical or religious music. But to simply refuse to conform because compromising one’s autonomy, doing what makes sense to my own mind, because I share my halachic decision-making with my LOR (Local Orthodox Rabbi, in Jewish Internet-speak)?

So we have two examples of recent phenomenon that point to a trend away from seeing mitzvos in terms of submission to Hashem’s Will (in addition to whatever it is He is trying to provide for us in them), a Western over-emphasis on autonomy. I tried to cite one case, that of the kezayis, where the results could well be correct, but the attitude and process to get there is not. In the case of qol ishah, the same tendency produces a clearly non-halachic result — the assumption that the prohibition is some chareidi chumerah.

There are actually two aspects to the issue I am raising:

First, the need to use halachic methodology to produce halakhah. Halakhah is a legal process, not a fact-finding one. Sometimes the law drifts from history but is binding because it conforms to the legal principles that make interpretations binding. The altar designed by Solomon was unusable in the 2nd Temple, as the new cadre decided to take a more stringent position on how to pour libations than that proven by altars of the past. Similarly, who said we today are supposed to ignore centuries of evolution of the halakhah about how much matzah to eat, and what a “kezayis” measure is in general? Our debate over this issue — the role of historical research on how we decide halakhah — is what distinguished the bulk of Orthodoxy from the Historical School, and why that originally Orthodox movement evolved into Conservative Judaism. The Torah is to be understood from the inside, by subjective study, internalization, and developing a feel for its flow. Not an objective academic study like other topics, that it always can be dovetailed with our conclusions in those disciplines.

There is a question whether one can use archeology — or any external field — to overturn accepted halakhah. When the Radziner Rebbe concluded that the chilazon, the source of the blue tekheiles dye, was the cuttlefish, R’ Chaim Brisker wouldn’t even weigh the quality of his arguments. Rav Chaim would not accept external evidence to reestablish the identity of the chilazon in the face of halachic silence. I found that a chiddush, but I find the overturning of halakhah when it was not silent to be a greater one.

The Torah Temimah (Maqor Barukh 583) repeats a tradition he received from a Rav Eliyahu Goldberg about Rav Chaim Volozhiner. A knife takes on the meatiness (or milkiness) of the food it cut in two cases: if the food is physically hot, or if the food a davar charif, something with a sharp or hot taste. The Shulchan Arukh’s examples are garlic, onion or leek (YD 96:1). Later on (96:5), the Shulchan Arukh discusses turnips among other things.

But when a woman came to Rav Chaim asking about just such a case — she cut meat and turnips with a dairy knife, Rav Chaim didn’t simply tell her the food wasn’t kosher. He instead asked he the color of the turnip. She said it was a white turnip. Rav Chaim allowed her to eat the food. Why? Because while the Shulchan Arukh said that turnips were a davar charif, Rav Chaim didn’t believe this to be true experientially. Still, R’ Chaim wouldn’t overturn an accepted halakhah in the Shulchan Arukh! So, he drew a distinction between the dark skinned turnips the SA’s author would have encountered in the middle east, with the white skinned ones more common in Lithuania, and thereby felt comfortable ruling. In other words, R’ Chaim Volozhiner was willing to give some authority (at least in the case he was undeniably speaking of) to the Shulchan Arukh even when it was based on a reality that ran counter to his senses.

It’s this kind of sensibility to the notion of halachic authority, to building upon generations past, to submission to the law, that I feel is lacking when someone takes it upon himself to reverse the trend of the kezayis of the past hundred and something years on the basis of someone’s booklet about classical-period olives.

Whether it makes sense to us or not, it’s a fact a minimum of R’ Chaim Naeh’s position became the accepted ruling in many communities. Again, overwhelmingly so on the theoretical plane, if a weaker but still reason consensus in practice. Overturning it to produce a result one has a predisposition for requires caution and a feel for how to weigh various considerations.

Second, the consequent need to have a poseiq. Someone whose rabbi gave them a certificate that says “yoreh yoreh — you have permission and thus the duty to do hora’ah“, you know how to interpret law that has no one settled ruling, and how to extrapolate from existing law to new cases. Someone who apprenticed under a rebbe and has a feel for how to “do halakhah“. The alternative is that one is judging the “quality of the arguments” while under the subconscious influence of having a desired outcome, and without the expertise in and practice with the halachic yardstick for measuring quality of argument.

I would think that ideally a person should face a halachic question as follows:

Thus the Oral Torah is a dialog down the ages, from the encounter with G-d at Sinai as explained by Moshe Rabbeinu through Yehoshua and so on down to ourselves. As I wrote in 2009:

Mesorah is a living tradition of a development of ideas. The Oral Torah is oral, a dialog across the generations. If we see a quote in the gemara from Rav Yochanan, we might be curious about the historical intent of Rav Yochanan. But in terms of Torah, important to us than what R’ Yochanan’s original intent is what R’ Ashi thought that intent was, which in turn can only be understood through the eyes of what the Rosh and the Rambam understood R’ Ashi’s meaning to be, which in turn can only be understood through the eyes of the Shaagas Aryeh and R’ Chaim Brisker.  That is the true meaning, in terms of Torah, of Rav Yoachanan’s statement.

By sharing the job one’s halakhah decision-making with a mentor-poseiq one is connecting to something eternal. Fealty to halakhah with all its notions of authority and precedence (or should that be: authority including precedence?) saves one from existential angst. Being part of something eternal means my contributions to the fate of the universe will survive my death. Joining the community, finding a different balance between personal expression and fealty to that community and its laws than the “do your own thing”, “self made man”, idealization of autonomy in American and Western society gives me the leverage to be part of something bigger than I am alone.

Am Yisrael Chai for far more than 120 years.

וַיִּקְרָ^א אֶל מֹשֶׁה וַיְדַבֵּר ה אֵלָיו מֵאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֵאמֹר.

And He called to Moshe, and Hashem spoke to him from the Ohel Moeid, saying.

- Vayiqra 1:1

 

“וַיִּקְרָא אֶל מֹשֶׁה” – (יומא ד’ ת”כ) הקול הולך ומגיע לאזניו וכל ישראל לא שומעין יכול אף להפסקות היתה קריאה ת”ל וידבר לדבור היתה קריאה ולא להפסקות ומה היו הפסקות משמשות ליתן ריוח למשה להתבונן בין פרשה לפרשה ובין ענין לענין ק”ו להדיוט הלומד מן ההדיוט

“And He called to Moshe”: The voice went and reached his ears, and all [the rest] of Israel didn’t hear.

[You] could [have thought] that even for the pauses there was a calling. Therefore it says “vayidaber — spoke”. For speech there was a calling, but not for the pauses.

And what [purpose] did the pauses serve? To give Moshe time to contemplate between parashah [paragraph] and parashah and between topic and topic. All the more so [they are necessary] for a normal person learning from a[nother] normal person.

- Rashi ad loc, quoting Tr. Yuma

Notice that our sages’  default assumption is that the pause between topics, that whitespace between paragraphs of the chumash, would be that G-d would call Moshe when it was time to review, contemplate and work out the material He already taught, just as He did for the teaching itself.

Why?

Rav Reueven Leuchter, opens his series on Concentration (first va’ad) contrasting between using the mind to problem-solve, and using the mind to create and refine an idea. People think of thinking in terms of knowing how to solve problems. But an idiot savant can solve math problems well beyond the reach of normal people. Problem solving isn’t a measure of being an ideal human being. Where the mind is spiritual is in its ability to hold and create intangible entities, ideas.

Picture it as circling the idea, seeing it from every angle. For example (his example), assuming you’re exploring the verse, “Da lifnei Mi atah omeid — Know before Whom you stand.” Turn it around…. “DA lifnei Mi atah omeiad. Da LIFNEI Mi atah omeid… Know before WHOM you stand. Know before Whom YOU stand. Know before Whom you STAND.”

Polish each facet of the idea to a good shine. Make the idea real, massive. (Mass: someone who is contemplating a weighty thought can’t simply be pushed aside by the allure of a shiny object or other distraction around him.) Make it a fine brick in a palace you build in your mind. A piece of a whole world of spirituality.

I would like to suggest that Chazal assumed that the pauses would require Hashem’s calling because this kind of creating has such holiness. But instead the pasuq tells us to dismiss the idea. The beauty of each “stone” of the palace within the soul is very much that it is our creation, not gifted from the Almighty.

And He called to Moshe, and Hashem spoke to him from the Ohel Moeid, saying.

- Vayiqra 1:1

“And He called [vayiqra] to Moshe”: For all the declarations, statements and commandments, calling preceded them — a language of affection. (Yuma 4b; Vayiqra Rabbah). The language that angels use, as it says (Isaiah 6:2, [quoted in Qedushah]), “And they call, this one to that…”

But to the prophets of the nations of the world, He revealed to them in a language of transitoriness and impurity, as it says, “And G-d happened [vayiqar] upon Bil’am…”

- Rashi ad loc

The alef of [the word] “vayiqra” is small. For Moshe was a great person and modest, and only wanted to write “vayiqar“, a term of happenstance [miqreh]. As though HQBH only spoke to him in a dream, as it says of Bil’am, as though Hashem only appeared to him by chance. (Midrash Osios Qetanos).

HQBH told him to write also the alef, and again Moshe told Him, because of his great modesty, that he would only write it smaller than other alef‘s in the Torah. And he wrote it in small.

- Ba’al haTurim ad loc

The book of Vayiqra opens with a contrast between “vayiqra“, being called by G-d, and “vayiqar“, serendipity. The Medrash Osios Qetanos, quoted by the Ba’al haTurim, says that this is the reason for the small alef — Hashem wanted to emphasize His closeness to Moshe, while Moshe had a hard time writing such a thing, and wanted instead to make the verse and the prophecy look more like happenstance than like a special relationship.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks enhances this contrast in a recent mailing, by noting one of the key words in the Tokhachah (chapter of rebuke) near the end of the book of Vayiqra. Hashem writes that if even after feeling the negative consequences of our actions we continue to act with Him in qeri, He will respond to us with qeri. Many translations are offered for the word “qeri“, and as for connotation — the word also denotes impure sexual emissions. But among them, the Rambam ties it to miqra, happenstance, and therefore would translate these lines something like this:

^כא וְאִם-תֵּלְכוּ עִמִּי קֶרִי, וְלֹא תֹאבוּ לִשְׁמֹעַ לִי–וְיָסַפְתִּי עֲלֵיכֶם מַכָּה, שֶׁבַע כְּחַטֹּאתֵיכֶם. … ^כג וְאִם-בְּאֵלֶּה–לֹא תִוָּסְרוּ, לִי; וַהֲלַכְתֶּם עִמִּי, קֶרִי. ^כד וְהָלַכְתִּי אַף-אֲנִי עִמָּכֶם, בְּקֶרִי; וְהִכֵּיתִי אֶתְכֶם גַּם-אָנִי, שֶׁבַע עַל-חַטֹּאתֵיכֶם. … ^כז וְאִם-בְּזֹאת–לֹא תִשְׁמְעוּ, לִי; וַהֲלַכְתֶּם עִמִּי, בְּקֶרִי. ^כח וְהָלַכְתִּי עִמָּכֶם, בַּחֲמַת-קֶרִי; וְיִסַּרְתִּי אֶתְכֶם אַף-אָנִי, שֶׁבַע עַל-חַטֹּאתֵיכֶם. … ^מ וְהִתְוַדּוּ אֶת-עֲו‍ֹנָם וְאֶת-עֲו‍ֹן אֲבֹתָם, בְּמַעֲלָם אֲשֶׁר מָעֲלוּ-בִי, וְאַף, אֲשֶׁר-הָלְכוּ עִמִּי בְּקֶרִי. ^מא אַף-אֲנִי, אֵלֵךְ עִמָּם בְּקֶרִי, וְהֵבֵאתִי אֹתָם, בְּאֶרֶץ אֹיְבֵיהֶם; אוֹ-אָז יִכָּנַע, לְבָבָם הֶעָרֵל, וְאָז, יִרְצוּ אֶת-עֲו‍ֹנָם.

²¹ And if you walk with Me randomly, and do not come to listen to Me, I will add to you seven times more plagues, according to your sin. … ²³ And if with these [plagues] you do not turn to Me, and you walk with Me randomly. ²⁴ I too will walk with you randomly, and I — I too — will punish you sevenfold, according to your sin. … ²⁷ And with this [additional punishment] you do not turn to Me, and you walk with Me randomly. ²⁸ I will walk with you with the fury of randomnss, and I — I too — will give you trials, sevenfold, according to your sin. … ⁴⁰ And they will confess their sin and their fathers’ sin, the embezzlement which they embezzled from Me, and also that they walked with Me randomly. ⁴¹ I too will walk randomly with them and I will bring them into the land of their enemies; only then their calloused hearts will be humbled, and they will have repaired their iniquity.

- Vayiqra 26:21,23-24,27-28,40-41

In retrospect the verses of rebuke clearly describe life in exile. G-d abandoning us to the forces of history. As a tiny nation with no political power, that alone is to guarantee punishment.

And yet, when we look at galus overall, our survival these 1943 years since the fall of the Beis haMiqdash speaks louder of Hashem’s Presence than reading all the narratives of Tanakh! As we will say next week, “Vehi she’amdah — This is what stands for our ancestors and us: that not one alone sought to destroy us. Rather, in every generation they rise up to destroy us. And Hashem saves us” — albeit too often with many many casualties — “from their hands”.

What divides vayiqar from vayiqra? A single letter, an inaudible letter, and yet also the letter that represents the start, and the unity of the Creator. What divides being called from happenstance? Hearing the “small still voice” of G-d within. Whether one chooses to look for Him or unfortunately chooses not to.

This thought from the Chief Rabbi reminded me of Rav Dessler’s approach to the line between nature and miracle. A topic I discussed in Mesukim MiDevash for Beshalach, pp 1-2:

Most of us live within a world in which the laws we call “teva” apply. R’ Chanina ben Dosa, however, lived in a world where the laws of neis applied. In this world, oil and vinegar are equally flammable…. Rav Eliyahu Dessler elaborates on this principle. Mekubalim speak of four olamos, each of a higher level than the previous: asiyah (action), yetzirah (formation), beri’ah (creation) and atzilus (emanation)….

People have two sources of information that they consider absolute. The first is their senses – sight, sound, and so on. The second is their self-awareness. The senses bring us information about the physical world. Self awareness brings us concepts like truth, freedom and oppression. Someone mired in the desires of the senses lives in the physical world. He focuses his attention on it, just as everyone focuses on that which is important to them. “Every tailor notices and looks at the clothing of the people in the street; and similarly every shoemaker, shoes…” The man of the senses therefore perceives it as more objective and more absolute than the world of the self…. This is olam ha’asiyah.

However, one can rise above that to the olam ha’yetzirah. This is not merely another level, but another world with its own laws, laws that do not conflict with free will. Those who focus on this world have no question that free will exists. To them, it is the ideals of this world that are more objective and absolute, and the senses, more subjective. Rav Dessler explains that this is how nissim can impact one person’s senses and not another’s. Yetzirah is the Maharal’s plane of nissim, and as the Maharal noted different people will perceive the miraculous differently, or not at all. And so the sea split in olam hayetzirah, but not in olam ha’asiyah.

According to Rav Dessler, someone who truly sees the world in terms of justice and kindness, freedom or oppression, to the extent that those laws are more objective and more absolute than gravity, conservation of energy, or electromagnetic force, then those laws actually do drive their reality. Such a person would live in a world of miracle rather than nature.

As long as we refuse to see Hashem’s “Hand” in the calamities of our exile, we see the events as random (Purim – Lots), qeri. When one seeks out the small alef, one’s experience is an entirely different reality; rather than being subject to happenstance or called by G-d.