The holiness of the body

What do you think of this declaration?

"Nothing is more important for man than to be continuously aware of the fact that his body, like his spirit, is a creation Divinely consecrated, which is to be mastered and educated by the spirit. And there is nothing that he forgets more easily than this, especially as it is a human characteristic to transform the external appearance of the body according to human liking."

(R' Samson Raphael Hirsch, Horeb paragraph 431)

On studying History: Rav Hirsch and the Netziv

I used the following two sources in a recent class on History and Memory.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, early 19th century Germany, The Relevance of Secular Studies, Collected Writings 7:97 (From an essay available on-line at http://www.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/rsrh/relevance_secular_studies_jewish_education.pdf)

Here, then, we have a people that emerged from the course of world history, that was placed into the midst of the nations to advance the goals of world history, and that was endowed with historical vision. Should not the sons of such a people understand that historical studies of the development of nations are truly not superfluous, but that they are, in fact, virtually indispensable? Will the sons of the Jewish people even begin to understand that ancient vision defining the missions of the three basic national prototypes of mankind if they know nothing about the influence of the Yaphetic-Hellenic spirit on the civilization of other nations, an influence that endures to this day?


And then here is Rabbi Chaim Berlin, late 19th century Russia, writing in the foreword to his father the Netziv's Meromei Sadeh regarding his father's approach to biography (not the same as history, perhaps, but I think close enough for our purposes):

באזני שמעתי מפיו הקדוש, בעת שהגיע לעיניו תולדות רע״א ז״ל... שנדפס בברלין בשנת תרכ״ב, לא רצה להביט עליו אף במעוף קל, ואמר שכל זה בכלל האמור בירושלמי אין עושין נפשות לצדיקים שדבריהם הן זכרונם, ומה מני יהלוך לדעת יום הולדתו או יום פטירתו, או תואר פרצוף תמונתו אם כה היה או כה, והעיקר לשום עין ולב על דברי תורתו

With my own ears I heard from his holy mouth, when the biography of Rabbi Akiva Eiger was brought before his eyes, published for the first time in Berlin in 1862: He did not want to look at it for so much as an instant, saying, "All of this is within the Jerusalem Talmud's statement, 'We do not construct monuments for the righteous; their words are their memorial.' What will come of my knowing the day of his birth or death, or whether his face looked thus or thus? The essence is to put our eye and heart to the words of his teachings."

I think Rav Hirsch (source 1) views the study of world history as important to the fulfillment of the Jew's mission as Jew. But what do you make of the Netziv's view (source 2) - Is it a rejection of the study of history, or is it simply a different derech in studying history? And is it depersonalizing, or more personalizing?

For in truth, no period lives for itself alone

I love reading, and re-reading, Rav Hirsch; he has few peers for both depth and eloquence.

R' Samson Raphael Hirsch, Horeb, paragraph 234:

"Just as the Torah preserves those moments when Israel flourished, and raises as holy above other days in the year those festival days commemorating the creation of the people and its preservation so that Israel should devote itself to the remembrance and the study of the truths they posit, whereby Israel may live and learn to understand itself and dedicate itself to the fulfilment of its allotted tasks, so did our sages institute remembrance days for those moments which Israel experienced when its blossoms were seen to fall, remembrance days which summon Israel to the purification as well as to the sanctification of its life and to the proper fulfilment of its conduct of life.

"For the fathers of our people understood profoundly that the fall of the people was not the pathway to the grave. It but changed the scene for Israel's activity, summoning it to new obligations, or, rather, to another aspect of that same fulfilment of its way of living which was its 'vocation' in times of prosperity.

"They saw that as in happy days Israel received the call to revere Gd humbly and to love Him with gladness, so did Israel receive the call to be the lofty example, steadfastly to keep its faith in Gd as well as its filial piety even in the days of misfortune.

"They saw that the time of its dispersion, whose labour-pangs it experienced, was but a fatherly chastisement to teach Israel, to strip it of pleasure-seeking and self-seeking, both of which undermine Israel's fortune.

"They saw that this period had as its immediate aim a betterment and a renewal of life, with the ultimate goal of furthering the advancement of all mankind.

"They realized how necessary for that upbringing, which was to act as a guide, were warnings and correctings and challenge; and, imbued with the spirit of the Torah, they recognized an excellent means in their subjective retrospect of the past.

"For in truth, no period lives for itself alone. Generations rise and fall so that those who follow may well learn from the glow of their sunrise as well as from that of their sunset; that they may reap the fruits of the rise and the fall of those who went before, avoid their errors and go forward and upward, basing their edifice upon the virtues of their progenitors."

[This week's Haveil Havalim is here.]

A Liberating Swim in the Mikvah (Derashah Shemini 5769)

In the 1920s and 1930s, psychiatrists prescribed hydrotherapy for delirium, excitement and other nervous disorders. Thetreatments involved everything from extended baths to strong sprays of cold water, all based on the observable fact that immersing in water, and thereby shutting out the world, calms people.

Many of those hydrotherapeutic prescriptions have since been discredited, but the core practice remains popular. There are few experiences as soothing, and as liberating from stress and dark emotion, as a good bath – and that, according to Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, is what drives the mikvah mitzvah outlined in our parshah.


The Torah instructs us to immerse after contact with death – whether with a human corpse, or with the carcasses of various animals, or even with the diminished potential associated with the loss of male seed or a woman’s egg. In all of those cases, one goes to a mikvah, dipping entirely into a body of collected rainwater.

As with every other set of laws, Judaism offers a range of interpretations to explain what Gd wants us to learn from this mitzvah. One of my perennial favorites, Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, presents an approach which demonstrates the way that immersion in a mikvah fits into the broader life of the Jew.


As Hirsch explains in his commentary on the Torah, a human being is not, automatically, blessed with free will and capable of making independent decisions. The potential for free will is present from the very start of life; we are free to become righteous, or the opposite! But we travel and interact inside a confining system which dampens that expression, accustoming us to a materialism and an animal existence in which our environment as well as the pressure of our basic needs limit our opportunities and dictate our decisions.

This limitation, this repression of our spiritual freedom, is nowhere stronger than in death, that ultimate expression of our most basic animal aspect and that acknowledgement that our souls lack complete mastery over our world.


Enter immersion in a mikvah, to rescue a human being from this loss of spiritual dominion. As Hirsch writes, “When a man immerses the whole of himself in water of that nature, and completely and in direct contact enters this element, he completely… leaves the stage of Mankind and for the moment returns to the sphere of the world of elements, to begin a new life of Taharah. It is symbolic of a new birth.”

Immersing in a mikvah is our opportunity to shut out the physical world, to silence our more animal natures, and to return to the pristine character of our moment of creation. It applies to men and women alike, a step toward a cure for ailments which cannot be seen with the naked eye, but which are nonetheless real.


And so, the Jews who flee Egypt immerse before they can receive the Torah.
And so, every person who wishes to convert to Judaism immerses.
And so, the Jew who wishes to bring an offering to Gd in the Beit haMikdash immerses.
And so, ancient Jewish homes excavated all over Israel contained private mikvah baths.
And so, the Jews who came to Easton in the end of the 18th century, Jews who lacked kosher restaurants and glatt meat and eruvin, made certain to immerse in Bushkill Creek.
And so, every shochet who wishes to shecht, every mohel who wishes to conduct a bris, immerses beforehand.
And so, a bride and groom immerse before marriage.
And so, many Jewish men immerse on Fridays and before Yom Tov.

And so, Jews of all persuasions – right here at our Mikvah in Allentown - have come to see mikvah as a transformative experience for key moments in their lives, based not on halachic requirement but on an understanding of what this remarkable act of religious hydrotherapy, in the right context, can accomplish.


I am not a practitioner of or proponent of creative ritual in general, but I believe that those groups who have taken on use of the mikvah in addition to its halachic function – not as a replacement for halachah, but as an addition to it – are doing a wonderful thing. They understand the Hirschian message, they are sensitive to their own deeper condition, and they are taking the reins of their spiritual lives through this action.

We could all cite a thousand current articles from magazines and newspapers from across the religious and non-religious spectrum, highlighting the problem of finding spirituality in our daily lives. Our time constraints, our work obligations, our health considerations, our family pressures, our volunteer work, all clamor for our time and our attention, and the resulting noise drowns out the קול דממה דקה, that small voice that says, “Don’t forget about the soul.”

The mikvah is a way to re-connect. Anyone can do it – feel free to speak to my wife Caren, or to me, about ways to take advantage.


For the Haftorah last Shabbos, during Pesach, we read Yechezkel’s message of re-birth, the resurrection of the dry bones and the promise of an ultimate rejuvenation of the Jewish people. Just before that message, in the preceding chapter, Yechezkel pledged to the Jewish people that HaShem would use water to purify us – granting us a לב חדש, a new heart, and a רוח חדשה, a new spirit.

At a time when so many of us are trying to feel something beyond stress and strain, at a time when we need that new heart and that new spirit, we have the opportunity to re-embrace our parshah’s spiritual hydrotherapy, and so merit a לב חדש and a רוח חדשה, as well as Yechezkel’s promised final step, והנחתי אתכם על אדמתכם, a return to our land of Israel.

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Notes:
I have much to say here, but no time right now. Perhaps later, or in the comments...

When Poetry is Useless

Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch wrote beautifully, in the 43rd chapter of Horeb, about the way that a Yom Tov’s national celebration overrides the private mourning of avelut.

I don’t have that text near me at the moment, but I do have Hirsch’s commentary to the chumash (Vayyikra 10:6), where he rhapsodizes on a related issue: the way that the Kohen Gadol (High Priest) is not permitted to mourn normally.

He wrote of the Kohen Gadol who “represents before Gd the ideal Jew, the ideal of the Immortal Nation; for him, the idea of Gd, and the idea of the Nation, is to drive into the background the feelings of his own wounded self. For before Gd, there is no such thing as Death, and the one who has been called away has only changed the scene of his existence; the Nation too knows no Death, אין צבור מת, in it, all past generations live on, and out of it all the coming ones blossom; in it, at all times past and future are present…”

I love reading R’ Hirsch, and this post is in no way meant to knock him. His logic is always impeccable, and his writing is always beautiful. I wish I had time to learn German just to be able to read Hirsch in the original.

But, to be blunt, all of the florid poetry in the world, and all of the sound argumentation, are useless to me at the moment.

We suffered a loss in the community this morning, and someone mentioned the rule that mourning (even if a burial would occur on chol hamoed) is pushed off until after Yom Tov. That called to mind the well-known stories of sages and scholars who overrode their personal grief for the sake of Yom Tov celebrations, Simchas Torah dancing, etc.

I know those stories, and I know the halachah as well as its logic, but it doesn’t change a thing. Grief is hot, burning, and it cannot be cooled by logic and it cannot be soothed by poetry. That certain individuals have managed to overcome it does not diminish the size of the task; just the opposite, the fact that these stories fascinate us testifies to its near-impossibility.

Tonight there is a new widow, and tomorrow (well, today by now) there will be a funeral, and then will come Shabbos and shivah and shloshim. The same scene will be enacted, many times over, elsewhere, today and tomorrow and the next. It’s the most natural thing in the world, and I ought to be used to it by now.

But it still hurts, and the poetry is just that: words on a page, far less real, at the moment, than the person who was breathing just yesterday.