Science fiction revels in the “What if” – as in, “What if Lincoln had not gone to Ford’s Theater on the night of his assassination?” “What if Napoleon had not invaded Russia in 1812?” and so on.
The Torah’s key moments are likewise open to an imaginative re-write. From “What if Adam and Chavah had not eaten the fruit,” to “What if Moshe had not struck the rock,” we can ask all sorts of open-ended questions and speculate about the answers.
Our own parshah presents a fascinating “What if” possibility, regarding the עגל הזהב, the Golden Calf: What if Aharon had said No?
As Ibn Ezra explains the story of the עגל, the Jews asked Aharon to create a physical symbol of Gd’s presence. Aharon saw nothing halachically prohibited in this request, and so he cooperated – only to have the project hijacked, the calf turned into an idol.
In our alternative universe, what if Aharon had looked at the proposed Calf not through a Halachic lens, but through a Public Policy lens? Aharon says to himself, “Hmm… where is this going?” And Aharon refuses. The nation is angry; they call him a machmir. They accuse him of being overly suspicious. They decry his “slippery slope” argument.
But, in the end, Moshe comes down from the mountain to find a righteous nation, instead of a nation of idolaters. The Luchos are never broken. There is no need for a central Mishkan, or even a central Beit haMikdash. Every city becomes a Yerushalayim, every home a Beit haMikdash, every table a true altar for Gd. The course of Jewish history, down to today, is forever changed.
Aharon’s Policy decision to permit the Calf changed Jewish history – and similar decisions, by other critical figures, have done likewise.
Dovid haMelech, King David, actually went both ways on matters of Policy:
• Dovid haMelech saw Batsheva, and fell for her. He calculated that Batsheva was Halachically permitted to him, and he had her brought to him, regardless of obvious Policy considerations.The result was Divine wrath and severe punishment, affecting both Dovid and the nation.
• On the other hand, later in his career Dovid haMelech had the opportunity to confiscate property using his royal powers. Halachically, he could have done it - but he declined because it smacked of theft, and he was praised for the decision.
The course of Jewish history has changed, and changed again, because of such Policy choices. Beyond Halachah, good Policy decisions have aided us, and bad Policy decisions have been our ruin.
What is Policy?
We often describe “Halachah” as a system that encompasses all of Jewish life, but it does not cover many situations:
• Within the bounds of Halachah, I could spend all day, every day, surfing the Internet, never working, and living off of tzedakah.
• Within the bounds of Halachah, I could purchase minority shares in companies that sell weapons to terrorists.
• Within the bounds of Halachah, I could, to cite a rabbinic mentor of mine, let my teenage daughter hold a co-ed slumber party.
This is why we need to establish Policy beyond Halachah, studying our values and using our human intuition and predicting the results of our actions, to chart a future course.
• Policy choices can be constructive, recommending that we do certain things.
• And Policy choices can be restrictive, recommending that we not do certain things.
Policy was what told Dovid haMelech not to confiscate property.
Policy would have told Dovid haMelech not to take Batsheva that way.
And Policy would have told Aharon not to create the עגל.
The Torah empowers our Jewish leadership to make these Policy decisions, to think ahead and plan and legislate for the sake of the community.
The Torah commands our sages, “ושמרו את משמרתי, You shall guard My preserve,” and the gemara explains, “עשו משמרת למשמרתי, Make a (rabbinic) preserve beyond My (biblical) preserve.” This is the source for rabbinic law.
The Torah instructs a rabbinical court, “ובערת הרע מקרבך, You shall eradicate evil from your midst,” and a properly certified court may take measures it deems appropriate to protect society.
Chatam Sofer, as we will discuss in the class this afternoon, argued that sages who calculate Policy actually possess רוח הקודש, a prophetic inspiration which guides them in their decisions and guarantees they will not err. Others suggest that Policy-making is a more earthly process, and that sages can, indeed, make mistake, just like anyone else. However we understand it, our rabbinic leadership is charged with the responsibility of trying to create Public Policy.
But the Torah does not stop with sages – it also places responsibility for Personal Policy on the shoulders of every Jew - every individual and every family.
Ramban explains, when the Torah says “קדושים תהיו, You shall be holy,” that is a sacred charge for every Jew: “קדש עצמך במותר לך, Restrain yourself even from that which is technically permitted, in order to sanctify yourself.”
Chatam Sofer put it more positively, writing, “He who would achieve piety before his Creator will be recognized by his deeds – by those practices which he originates for the sake of heaven...”
We make policy for ourselves, both the Ramban’s restrictions and the Chatam Sofer’s positive institutions, in order to sanctify ourselves. This is our responsibility, and this is our privilege.
HaShem did not tell Aharon and Dovid what to do, and HaShem does not tell us what to do, HaShem neither legislates against every possible danger nor institutes every possible piety. Rather, HaShem offers us the leeway to make a reasoned calculation, and to create sanctity for ourselves.
(We are celebrating an Engagement this Shabbat, so here I discussed the couple, and the role of Policy in shaping a Jewish home.)
-
Notes:
1. For Dovid's restraint, see Bava Kama 60b. For the empowerment of courts to make policy decisions, see Moed Katan 5a, Yevamot 90b and Sanhedrin 81b for various examples.
2. Chatam Sofer's remarkable statement about personal originality is part of a great teshuvah, in 1: Orach Chaim 197. His comments on prophetic policy-making are a major theme in his derashot. See the work of Maoz Kahana, Tarbiz 76:3-4 (2007): 519-556. (Hat-tip to Menachem Butler for highlighting this article.)
3. Of course, in that alternative Eigel universe, the nation might simply have killed Aharon as the midrash explains they killed Chur. But you get the point.
4. Also re: the Alternative Eigel universe: The replacement of Mishkan for Eigel is Rashi's stance; Ramban disagrees.
5. Further re: the Alternative Eigel universe: Without a Beit haMikdash Yerushalayim might still have held primacy as the site of the Akeidah, but I wonder what practical role it would have played.
Showing posts with label Tanach: Eigel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tanach: Eigel. Show all posts
Friday, March 13, 2009
Friday, February 22, 2008
Ki Tisa: The Incompatibility of Luchot and Eigel
My Israeli chavrusas in yeshiva had a style all their own. They would scream and yell at me while we were learning together, and then in shiur they would scream and yell at the rabbi teaching the shiur. Of course, they would always preface their remarks with an honorific, “HaRav,” “Master,” but they would go on to declare, “HaRav, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” For their own part, the rebbeim responded in kind; some of them even punched us if the debate got hot enough.
The style left a lasting impression on me, aside from the bruises. It was total absorption in the topic at hand; we forgot everything else.
That total absorption came to mind this week when I read a comment by Rav Naftali Kohler in his sefer חומר לדרוש on our parshah. He noted that when Moshe descended from the mountain with the luchos, he met Yehoshua, and the Torah says, “וישמע יהושע את קול העם ברעה, Yehoshua heard the nation in its celebration. ” Rav Kohler asked: Why didn’t Moshe hear the singing?
He explained: כל מי שיש בידו לוחות העדות והתורה אינו שומע קולות אחרים - One who has the tablets and the Torah in his hands will not hear any other voices. Someone who is truly immersed in Torah is deaf to the world, and hears nothing else.
Why is this the approach of learning Torah? Why isn’t Torah study more sedate, more refined, more classroom and lecturer and sober exchange? Why is Talmud Torah, as it is practiced in yeshivot in America, Europe, the Middle East, Australia and the former Soviet Union, such an all-consuming enterprise?
Part of it is practical, of course; the discipline itself is demanding. And part of it is pure passion. But more than that, the very nature of Talmud Torah, Torah scholarship, demands that we enter a different domain.
• In Talmud Torah, History is not a list of dates and names and accomplishments; rather, we live in the age of our ancestors, experiencing the world and Judaism through their eyes, envisioning ourselves in a dialogue with those scholars as part of the same masorah they inhabit. Rav Soloveitchik famously described himself witnessing the sages entering the room when their names and opinions were invoked - such is the feel of serious Torah study.
• In Talmud Torah, the ladder of honor is structured upon excellence in piety, and our role models are those who have achieved expertise in the texts of the Torah.
• In Talmud Torah, our allegiance is to text and to ancient interpretation and to communal standards of belief as well as behavior. We are expected to work at developing our own logical understanding, but we are also expected to surrender to the collective interpretation and practice.
This is why Torah education requires absorption. If we were to anchor our feet in this world while holding ancient texts open in front of us, if we were to think about dinner or a meeting or a dream we had last night or a song we once heard or a book we once read, we would be as outsiders looking in, like people watching a movie but thinking about the movie theater they’re in, or the babysitter at home, instead of what’s transpiring on the screen or coming from the speakers.
כל מי שיש בידו לוחות העדות והתורה אינו שומע קולות אחרים - One who has the tablets and the Torah in his hands will not hear other voices.
Of course, learning alone is not complete and is not the total goal of our experience; we are taught, “גדול תלמוד המביא לידי מעשה, study is great for it brings about action.” We must still become actors - but transported study is what makes us able to do so. How can a Jew live a powerful Jewish life if he has never left this world and spent time in the pure realm of Torah, with its Masorah and its role models and its allegiance to text and belief and behavior? We need to spend time in that other realm first.
Which brings us back to Moshe, descending with the luchos. Moshe has just acquired these tablets, these representatives of HaShem’s Torah, in forty days on a mountaintop, separated from this world and its concerns on every level. No food, no water, just Moshe and Gd inside a cloud. This is life in the beis medrash, at its fullest. Moshe hears no voices outside that of the Torah.
Moshe was meant to come back to this world and interact here, bringing the lessons of the Divine Beis Medrash to a world empty of Torah - but he couldn’t do it, because what he found in the Golden Calf was not a world simply devoid of Torah, but a world that was the antithesis of Torah.
Where did the Jews get the idea of creating a calf, specifically? Historians note that ancient Egyptians worshipped a bull called Apis - and Apis would have had special significance for the Jews in the desert. Apis, the most important sacred animal in Egypt, symbolized death and re-birth. His breath was supposed to cure disease, and his presence would aid men in virility. Apis, the template for the Golden Calf, provided life in this world for people - where Moshe’s luchos experience was about living outside this world.
The two were incompatible - and so Moshe smashed the luchos.
Realistically, we all have our own distracting Eigel. Even as we sit here in shul, during davening or the Torah reading or a speech, thoughts of family and livelihood and health and entertainment clamor for our attention, drawing us into this world - which is why Judaism summons us to be קובע עתים לתורה, to set up fixed times for learning Torah.
The Gemara says that when we will stand on posthumous trial before HaShem, we will first be asked whether we dealt honestly with others, and we will then be asked whether we established fixed times for Torah study.
We will not be asked, “How much time did you set aside for Torah?” We will not be asked, “Did you complete all of Torah in your studies?” No one will question us, “Did you really understand the classes you attended?” Rather, we will be asked, “Did you set aside fixed times for Torah study?”
“Fixed times” means time that doesn’t change, that isn’t subject to the vicissitudes of vacation or work or appointments - time that is ironclad.
• Time that is like Moshe on the mountain, undisturbed.
• Time that is like the debate in the beis medrash.
• Time in which we hold the luchos, unable to hear the noise coming from the camp.
This is the expectation - that all of us, men and women and aged and young, will set up fixed time, even half an hour per week, and say, “This is my time to become part of the masorah, to accept a new set of role models, to pledge allegiance to an ancient text and to its living interpretations.”
Our embrace of another world is the heart of Torah study, and it is what makes our learning more real, and therefore more effective in shaping our lives.
The NEA Higher Education Journal published an article a few years back on the classic Beis Medrash experience; it was written by a Dr. Henry Abramson. Dr. Abramson observed, “Walk into the beis medresh and you will be confronted with a cacophony—some 300 students sitting opposite each other and arguing passionately, defending their delicately nuanced readings of the Talmudic text that lies before each of them.”
This is learning Torah. This is what Moshe was doing, so that he was unable to hear the noise coming from the camp. And this is a goal toward which we must strive, to transport ourselves to another realm, so that we might return here prepared to live powerful Jewish lives.
Some afterthoughts
1. I'm not sure I organized this derashah well; I keep re-thinking it and wondering if I shouldn't have started with Moshe coming down the mountain, then asked why he had to smash the luchos, then discussed the transport to another realm that is Talmud Torah and developed the opposition to the this-worldly immersion of the Eigel, etc. But it's now two and a half hours to Shabbos, so I think I'll run with this.
2. The idea of transport to another realm in studying Torah may be the idea behind advice I once heard in the name of Rav Mendel Blachman, a rebbe of mine in Yeshivat Kerem b’Yavneh: If you have a big, difficult decision to make, stop and learn a page of gemara before making the decision. I’ve tried this, and it works; studying that page takes you completely out of this world, completely clearing your head of preconceived notions and distractions, allowing you to approach the decision anew.
3. For more on Apis, go here.
4. For Dr. Henry Abramson's great article, go here.
5. I quoted the line קול העם ברעה toward the beginning of the derashah, and translated the last word as "in its celebration." There are several approaches to translating that word; see the standard mefarshim.
The style left a lasting impression on me, aside from the bruises. It was total absorption in the topic at hand; we forgot everything else.
That total absorption came to mind this week when I read a comment by Rav Naftali Kohler in his sefer חומר לדרוש on our parshah. He noted that when Moshe descended from the mountain with the luchos, he met Yehoshua, and the Torah says, “וישמע יהושע את קול העם ברעה, Yehoshua heard the nation in its celebration. ” Rav Kohler asked: Why didn’t Moshe hear the singing?
He explained: כל מי שיש בידו לוחות העדות והתורה אינו שומע קולות אחרים - One who has the tablets and the Torah in his hands will not hear any other voices. Someone who is truly immersed in Torah is deaf to the world, and hears nothing else.
Why is this the approach of learning Torah? Why isn’t Torah study more sedate, more refined, more classroom and lecturer and sober exchange? Why is Talmud Torah, as it is practiced in yeshivot in America, Europe, the Middle East, Australia and the former Soviet Union, such an all-consuming enterprise?
Part of it is practical, of course; the discipline itself is demanding. And part of it is pure passion. But more than that, the very nature of Talmud Torah, Torah scholarship, demands that we enter a different domain.
• In Talmud Torah, History is not a list of dates and names and accomplishments; rather, we live in the age of our ancestors, experiencing the world and Judaism through their eyes, envisioning ourselves in a dialogue with those scholars as part of the same masorah they inhabit. Rav Soloveitchik famously described himself witnessing the sages entering the room when their names and opinions were invoked - such is the feel of serious Torah study.
• In Talmud Torah, the ladder of honor is structured upon excellence in piety, and our role models are those who have achieved expertise in the texts of the Torah.
• In Talmud Torah, our allegiance is to text and to ancient interpretation and to communal standards of belief as well as behavior. We are expected to work at developing our own logical understanding, but we are also expected to surrender to the collective interpretation and practice.
This is why Torah education requires absorption. If we were to anchor our feet in this world while holding ancient texts open in front of us, if we were to think about dinner or a meeting or a dream we had last night or a song we once heard or a book we once read, we would be as outsiders looking in, like people watching a movie but thinking about the movie theater they’re in, or the babysitter at home, instead of what’s transpiring on the screen or coming from the speakers.
כל מי שיש בידו לוחות העדות והתורה אינו שומע קולות אחרים - One who has the tablets and the Torah in his hands will not hear other voices.
Of course, learning alone is not complete and is not the total goal of our experience; we are taught, “גדול תלמוד המביא לידי מעשה, study is great for it brings about action.” We must still become actors - but transported study is what makes us able to do so. How can a Jew live a powerful Jewish life if he has never left this world and spent time in the pure realm of Torah, with its Masorah and its role models and its allegiance to text and belief and behavior? We need to spend time in that other realm first.
Which brings us back to Moshe, descending with the luchos. Moshe has just acquired these tablets, these representatives of HaShem’s Torah, in forty days on a mountaintop, separated from this world and its concerns on every level. No food, no water, just Moshe and Gd inside a cloud. This is life in the beis medrash, at its fullest. Moshe hears no voices outside that of the Torah.
Moshe was meant to come back to this world and interact here, bringing the lessons of the Divine Beis Medrash to a world empty of Torah - but he couldn’t do it, because what he found in the Golden Calf was not a world simply devoid of Torah, but a world that was the antithesis of Torah.
Where did the Jews get the idea of creating a calf, specifically? Historians note that ancient Egyptians worshipped a bull called Apis - and Apis would have had special significance for the Jews in the desert. Apis, the most important sacred animal in Egypt, symbolized death and re-birth. His breath was supposed to cure disease, and his presence would aid men in virility. Apis, the template for the Golden Calf, provided life in this world for people - where Moshe’s luchos experience was about living outside this world.
The two were incompatible - and so Moshe smashed the luchos.
Realistically, we all have our own distracting Eigel. Even as we sit here in shul, during davening or the Torah reading or a speech, thoughts of family and livelihood and health and entertainment clamor for our attention, drawing us into this world - which is why Judaism summons us to be קובע עתים לתורה, to set up fixed times for learning Torah.
The Gemara says that when we will stand on posthumous trial before HaShem, we will first be asked whether we dealt honestly with others, and we will then be asked whether we established fixed times for Torah study.
We will not be asked, “How much time did you set aside for Torah?” We will not be asked, “Did you complete all of Torah in your studies?” No one will question us, “Did you really understand the classes you attended?” Rather, we will be asked, “Did you set aside fixed times for Torah study?”
“Fixed times” means time that doesn’t change, that isn’t subject to the vicissitudes of vacation or work or appointments - time that is ironclad.
• Time that is like Moshe on the mountain, undisturbed.
• Time that is like the debate in the beis medrash.
• Time in which we hold the luchos, unable to hear the noise coming from the camp.
This is the expectation - that all of us, men and women and aged and young, will set up fixed time, even half an hour per week, and say, “This is my time to become part of the masorah, to accept a new set of role models, to pledge allegiance to an ancient text and to its living interpretations.”
Our embrace of another world is the heart of Torah study, and it is what makes our learning more real, and therefore more effective in shaping our lives.
The NEA Higher Education Journal published an article a few years back on the classic Beis Medrash experience; it was written by a Dr. Henry Abramson. Dr. Abramson observed, “Walk into the beis medresh and you will be confronted with a cacophony—some 300 students sitting opposite each other and arguing passionately, defending their delicately nuanced readings of the Talmudic text that lies before each of them.”
This is learning Torah. This is what Moshe was doing, so that he was unable to hear the noise coming from the camp. And this is a goal toward which we must strive, to transport ourselves to another realm, so that we might return here prepared to live powerful Jewish lives.
Some afterthoughts
1. I'm not sure I organized this derashah well; I keep re-thinking it and wondering if I shouldn't have started with Moshe coming down the mountain, then asked why he had to smash the luchos, then discussed the transport to another realm that is Talmud Torah and developed the opposition to the this-worldly immersion of the Eigel, etc. But it's now two and a half hours to Shabbos, so I think I'll run with this.
2. The idea of transport to another realm in studying Torah may be the idea behind advice I once heard in the name of Rav Mendel Blachman, a rebbe of mine in Yeshivat Kerem b’Yavneh: If you have a big, difficult decision to make, stop and learn a page of gemara before making the decision. I’ve tried this, and it works; studying that page takes you completely out of this world, completely clearing your head of preconceived notions and distractions, allowing you to approach the decision anew.
3. For more on Apis, go here.
4. For Dr. Henry Abramson's great article, go here.
5. I quoted the line קול העם ברעה toward the beginning of the derashah, and translated the last word as "in its celebration." There are several approaches to translating that word; see the standard mefarshim.
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