Shiur: Rav Shagar – Before Zionism: Haredism, and Zionism as a Revolution

This was the first part of what was supposed to be a much larger exploration of Zionism and Redemption in Rav Shagar’s thought. For scheduling reasons, this ended up being the only class on the topic, and it focuses on how Rav Shagar imagines Judaism existing before Zionism, the way that leads him to frame Zionism as a revolutionary movement within Judaism—articulating from an internal perspective the Haredi critique of Religious Zionism—and his idealized vision of Haredi society in Israel today.

Sources for the entire planned topical exploration can be found below, though the recorded shiur only explores the first few texts.

Exile & Redemption, State & Community

1. Bayom Hahu, 234–235

What was the spiritual situation before Rav Kook’s teachings? What was that “religious Jewishness” that we mentioned? … Rosenzweig taught that Jewishness manifests as commitment and being rooted in the covenant, which are the fundamental acts of Judaism. According to this definition, the Jewish exile is when you create a sheltered, a-historical, family space, without being concerned for surroundings or engaged in the rules of history. The Jews “lack the passionate attachment to the things that constitute the primary… ‘objects’ of other historical peoples and nations, attachments that ultimately constitute their vitality and endurance as peoples and nations: land, territory, and architecture; regional and national languages; laws [=state laws], customs, and institutions.”  Their land exists only as a holy land for which they yearn, and their holy language is not their first language, not the language that they speak in their daily lives. Jewishness is bound up and connected only and entirely in itself… The Jew being connected only in himself, the nation in its very existence, creates a two-fold relationship with the “outside.” Other nations and cultures, either do not exist from the Jew’s perspective, the “outside” does not enter his horizon at all…

2. Panekha Avakesh, 165–166

Zionism was unquestionably a revolutionary, even rebellious, movement. Its revolution was not just political, but also spiritual and cultural. “Rejecting the exile” meant, first and foremost, rejecting the spiritual reality of the exilic Jew… When the Zionists rejected the exile, they rejected the life of the Jewish people in exile. Undeniably, for most secular Zionists this meant rejecting the Torah and the commandments, which they identified with exilic life. When the majority of the Jewish people’s leaders polemicized against Zionism, they did so because of this rejection… What I have said is true beyond secular Zionism as well. Religious Zionism was also a rebellious, revolutionary, movement… Religious Zionism and Zionism writ large are in this sense the same: they rejected exilic life, which means rejecting the life of Torah and commandments as it existed in exile.

3. Luhot U’Shivrei Luhot,  195, 198–199

Haredi suspension of reality is not ideological suspension. It does not deny reality and concrete existence; it consciously and intentionally disconnects from them. This suspension is itself existence, performed not through defensiveness but through estrangement… the construction of a heterotopic all, a realm which external reality does not at all enter. We could describe a traditional Jew as someone who lives in a heterotopic whole without any other, since this whole is the entire whole, and is its own boundary. This suspension alienates the Haredi Jew from reality… Haredi suspension of reality is built on the creation of a heterotopic space which suspends itself from everything around it.

4. Zot Beriti, 158

Religious Zionism is… a faith of hyphens… religion and state, religion and science, traditionalism and modernity. The hyphen plays an essential role in the creation of personal identity… Is the hyphen a “connecting and” that appropriates? An “and” of mixture or combination? Does the hyphen know how to preserve distinction despite its connecting function? Is this a Hegelian dialectic, or the identity of the hated other that becomes, through negations – as Sartre claims about anti-Semitism – my identity? … Personally, I like the “connecting and” of Rosenzweig, which is the crowning stone on which the rest of the framework depends, the keystone that gives structure to the form. This is the Maharal’s middle line, on which the Maharal locates the Jewish people. This is the nothingness (ayin) that lacks any content, and which therefore is infinitely varied. 

5. Luhot, 10

The “connecting and” that is so characteristic of Religious Zionism – yeshivah and military service, yeshivah and academic education, Torah and secular studies, Torah and physical labor – is not an external synthesis… It should be explained the way Franz Rosenzweig explained the “connecting and,” as the keystone which holds up the whole arch and gives it its meaning… 

6. Nahalekh Baregesh, 348–349

We must build Judea, but as a community, not a state… We will see in isolating ourselves (to a degree) in our community an exile in the midst of redemption, exile within the land of Israel… It is an exile that means recognizing the dream that is not yet realized, and that we are not willing to give up on it… we must maintain the boundary between secularism and religiosity. This will not lead to alienation and rejection of the covenant, but will preserve the “not yet.” … We are forbidden to forget the exile… We must internalize the exile into the state itself. There were and are Haredi Israelis, and non-Orthodox thinkers like Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig, who for this reason opposed the very idea of a Jewish state. They claimed that authentic Jewish existence is exilic existence, and that Jewishness is inherently opposed to history and politics. The answer, they claim, must be establishing a state without rejecting the exile. It should be a dialectical—I would even say Hegelian—process that internalizes exile into the state and thus elevates it to the next phase of political existence, a state of justice and mercy… The current solution, fitting to the spirit of the age, is communal. It’s a solution within the framework of what they call the citizen society, which involves suspending the identity between religion and state. This does not mean that we’ll stop being Religious Zionists and loyal patriots… However, alongside this feeling of loyalty we will know that the state cannot now fulfill our dreams.

Living Up to Redemption

7. Panekha Avakesh, 163

What would happen if the state of Israel absorbed “the territories,” conquered the entire promised land of Israel and reigned over it? What if we really achieved political liberty and were politically and economically independent from other nations? Would this be redemption (ge’ulah)? Would all our sufferings really disappear? Certainly not. The basic suffering of the Jews is first and foremost a spiritual, mental, and religious suffering. It is the suffering of our distance from God. This is the suffering described by the terrifying curse, “I will surely hide my face” (Deuteronomy 31:18), when God hides his face. This is the suffering of a person who has no faith, a person drowning in despair, whose life is torn and imperfect, who does not “live in the light of the face of the king” (Proverbs 16:16), the king of kings, the king of life.

All the sages of Israel have agreed that the meaning of redemption, and not just the World to Come, which “eyes other than God’s have not seen” (Isaiah 64:3), which the human mind cannot comprehend, but also the lower redemption, the Messianic Era, cannot be summed up by physical or political redemption.

8. Bayom Hahu, 133–134

The idea that the state is the realization of the hoped-for redemption grates… because of the specific way the dream of the state has come to fruition in practice, in the past and present… An anecdote that emphasizes this grating encounter with the reality of the state came to me this week while I was listening to the radio; it was a report about the sinking of a Tamil rebel ship and the killing of some of its occupants by the Sri Lankan government, with the aid of Israeli weapons… Israel has become a significant weapons supplier… It seems that the will to abandon politics because of how it is bound up with bloodshed, has itself abandoned us.

9. Bayom Hahu, 228–230

The state decreed the Disengagement upon this strip of land, revealing the painful foundation of sovereignty, the violence that underlies its laws… More than anything, the Disengagement signifies the crime of the legislation of the law itself, the violence that it bears within it. It signifies the recognition that, in truth, violating the law is a less serious crime than making the law. The inner decay within the rule of law is expressed by the claim we constantly hear from those who support the Disengagement law: This is the law, and the law is the law! – And therefore, it must be respected. The legislation’s arbitrariness strengthens the law’s tautology. It lacks any “judicial wisdom.” … The law is justified not by ethics or judicial wisdom but by the simple fact that the majority legislated it. The violence required to enact this law, removing people from their land, is not an extraneous remnant from the process of legislation, but the very heart of law: the violent claim that the law is law… The love of the land and the sovereign violence of the state are clashing tragically before our very eyes – law versus love. As Religious Zionists, we experience this clash incredibly harshly. Just as Rav Kook implanted love of the land within Religious Zionism, he similarly implanted it with the understanding and the faith that the state is the greatest manifestation of, and pathway to, redemption… Faced with the Disengagement, it is impossible not to ask: Is the State of Israel really the beginning of redemption? Can it, or any state, really take part in salvation? The threat of exile hangs over the residents of Gush Katif, rooted in the forcefulness of the state, presenting us with the sharp contrast between the “idealistic content” full of light and love from the teachings of Rav Kook, and the opaque and unmoving law of the state. 

Messianism of the Future

10. Bayom Hahu, 241

To truly rebel against force, you must abandon it. The ability to abandon the game of force and violence is truly a messianic option. We do not dream of a time when the right power will win out, but for a time when power and might will not make right at all. We seek pleasure (oneg) and not reality (metsiyut)—this is true messianism.

11. Bayom Hahu, 346

I don’t know how to depict this redemption, but Rebbe Naḥman’s words inspire me to think that, perhaps, if we stand vulnerable before God… this will enable a shift, something transcendent will reveal itself, something that is beyond difference. I am not talking about tolerance, nor about the removal of difference. The Other that I see before me will remain different and inaccessible and, despite this, the Divine Infinite will position me by the Other’s side. Again, how this will manifest in practical or political terms, I do not know. But Yom Yerushalayim will be able to turn from a nationalistic day, one which has turned with time into a tribalistic celebration of Religious Zionism alone, into an international day.

12. Bayom Hahu, 363-367 (derashah-letter from 2007)

We yearn for more than just “natural” redemption, which some of the rishonim, such as Maimonides, thought would be realized in the Messianic Era, differing from this world only in terms of “subservience to the Nations.” Our messianic pathos also contains the melody of the open miracle, what Rebbe Naḥman called the melody of the land of Israel, which stands opposed to the melody of nature. This miraculous redemption means the shattering of nature’s lawfulness. Reality itself will metamorphose. The world will shine differently, as reality’s crude matter will be purified and receive the translucency and illumination of the day that is entirely Shabbat and rest. […] This is redemption as described by the Kabbalists, the Hasidim, and all varieties of mystics, as well as by modern, anarchistic, utopians. The indwelling of the Shekhinah which they are waiting for is real divine presence, which not hidden behind the lawfulness of nature, no matter how pure it is.

Shiur: Rav Shagar – Randomness and Reality

This is a three-part class I gave in the month of Adar focusing on Rav Shagar’s understanding of Divine Providence as both random and as inhering in reality itself, rather than in some transcendent divine plan. The sources are below.

Randomness and Reality

1. Rav Shagar, “Amalek – The Will to Power,” Chance and Providence, 40–42

The Megilla spins its tale between two poles—chance and fate. Amalek-Haman, is the manifestation of chance in the world… The random outcome of the lottery becomes the locked-in fate of Haman. The Megillah tells the tale of the unbearable lightness of chance that turns into the dead weight of fate from which there is no escape. The accidental series of coincidences, lacking any reason, is soon revealed as an elegantly contrived plot. The drunkard Achashverosh, by chance, orders Vashti to show off her beauty. She refuses, Achashverosh gets angry, Mehuman advises, Vashti is gotten rid of, Esther becomes the new queen, etc., etc. Haman trusts his own fate to the roll of the dice, believing that he can force the world to conform to his devices. Soon he gets caught in his own web from which he finds there is no escape. The macabre atmosphere of a “confused” Shushan soon turns festive as all watch his downfall and demise as he attains new “heights” thanks to the helpful hint of Charbona about the gallows that Haman had erected for Mordechai.

2. Rav Shagar, “Nascient Knowledge,” Chance and Providence, 31–36 (Some Modifications)

What are the differences between chance, fate and providence? Chance tells us that things could turn out like this or like that. The essence of chance is possibility. Fate proclaims that things must turn out just so. They could not have been different. Yet fate itself is random. In this way it is similar to chance. There is no discernable reason behind its dictates. So the Hebrew goral has two disparate meanings. It can mean lot, like the tossing of a coin, an expression of pure chance. It can also mean fate—the sealing of a multiplicity of chances into one predetermined outcome. Yet both meanings share in the desperation of the arbitrary. Providence, however, tells us that things have turned out as they should. They are exactly as they should be. The world runs in accord with Divine Justice. God is just.

Chance is the outward appearance of the world. A chain of unconnected events. Fate, though, has its roots in God’s will. Thus God desired, and so, thus it is. We cannot fathom God’s will. We can only understand that it is an expression of the absolute, the essential.

The source of providence, explains the Rambam, lies in God’s intellect. God’s knowledge encompasses all of His creations and it can know them by knowing itself. Megillat Esther, as an expression of Divine Providence, deals with the eternal struggle against Amalek. Amalek attempts to usurp God’s reign by vilifying His nation with no real provocation. His attack on Israel stems from Israel’s status as God’s throne in the world. “So Shlomo sat on God’s throne” (Divrei HaYamim 2, 29:23). This is a metaphysical war. Amalek seeks to prove that the world is meaningless. All is random chance…

The realm of intellect is generally understood as separate from the realm of pure will, which lacks any real sense. However, on a deeper level, the destiny that is God’s will and the providence that is His knowledge and intellect, are one. As the Rambam explains, God’s knowledge and volition are one because neither His intellect nor His will exist outside of Himself. Rather, since both his intellect and will reside within His essence as perfect Unity, they are necessarily united themselves.

From here we reach the realm of un-knowing. This is the level that exists beyond both volition and intellect. The Divine Self is hidden from us and it is not in our power to comprehend its essence and unity. This is because our own intellect, our own will and our own lives are not essential to ourselves, but rather the terminology of Medieval philosophy) accidental. There is a necessary relation between our existence, then, and God’s. In the words of the Rambam, “We cannot understand what God is, but only that He is.” So we realize that the “true object of knowing is not knowing.” The more clearly we can grasp our inability to truly understand God, the closer we get to actually understanding that which we can about the Divine. This un-knowing is no mere ignorance, however. We know that we do not know, and we know why. So, we are quite knowledgeable about our not knowing.

It is in this context that we regard chance. Chance, as we have said, is indifferent, meaningless. Life lived by chance is similar to the life of the drunkard who lives with no cognition of his actions, but rather moves randomly from one thing to another. “One must get drunk enough on Purim until one cannot differentiate….” Paradoxically, it is chance, randomness, that serves to express the Divine on a higher plane—the realm of the ein sof, the Boundless. Chance is rooted in God’s essence mamash—which is known through not knowing. That is, it is connected to that place where our own knowledge is meaningless and “any clarity returns to mere unintelligibility.” There, in the light of the ein sof, the possible itself becomes essential.

Chance is possibility. However, when the possible is understood as having its own independent existence, it becomes essential and capable of uniting will with intellect.

We can explain this differently. You may ask yourself from time to time, why am I what I am and not something else? One answer is: This is what happened to you, what happened to your life. This is the answer of Amalek. There is no preexisting meaningfulness to life; rather randomness is the governing force in the universe. There is no transcendental meaning waiting to be discovered. A second answer is: The entirety of your existence is an exact reflection of your inner being. Nothing that you are is the result of chance. A third answer is: This is your fate. This is the will of God. These three answers, however, seem to leave one out in the cold. Infused as they with indifference, they all leave something important unsaid. They do not satisfy. In the boundless freedom of the divine, nothing is forced for possibility is endless. Everything that may exist, can exist. Explanations can wait.

Freedom from this burdensome query comes only through the loss of the rational; by way of inebriation that erases all difference and brings us to a state of equilibrium—the place where both Haman and Mordechai are the same. This place is where there is no good or evil, no hierarchy of more or less important, no chance and no meaning. Everything reflects upon its Creator in an equal fashion. In this place, the distress of chance and meaninglessness vanishes. Here one can taste his life fully, as it really is – full of the joy of the ein beyond all reason. Acceptance of chance returns us to the very root of the Divine ein sof—fully acknowledged un-knowing. All is what it is, and needs no external justification.

3. Rav Shagar, “Amalek – The Will to Power,” Chance and Providence, 43–45

Fate and chance share much in common—both are capricious. A man’s fate is sealed with no relation to his deeds, without asking his opinion, with no choice on his part. His attempts to escape his destiny are pitifully futile. Chance, too is not resultant of any will or action of the individual. But even with their common grounding in the random, fate and chance are opposites. Chance is the unbearable lightness of being that is resultant of the possible. Things can turn out this way or that. Why did they turn out as they did? As long as possibility exists, so too does chance and with it life’s lack of meaning.

Not so fate. Fate constricts; it decides for us. Fate carries the difficult weight of being. Fate exhibits an existential depth- depth that chance lacks. Unfortunately, this depth is beyond our grasp, for its source lies in the Divine Decree. The Divine Will cannot be fathomed, and so fate too is seen as arbitrary. And herein lies the source of its crushing weight.

The secret of the Megilla is the profound insight that chance is fate. The end is determined by the beginning. The only difference between the two lies in how we look at them. Changing our point of view is, in essence, the path to victory over Amalek—the victory over chance and meaninglessness… Chance turns into fate the moment that one is ready to accept it as such. This choice fixes possibility and changes it into meaning. When one chooses to see the events in his life as free rather than arbitrary, when one accepts himself, accepts life as it is, in all its complicated corporeality—life gains depth and meaning. It becomes a realized life, life as it really is. One can then understand that the circumstances comprising his life are the result of God’s will.

We consistently struggle in self-conflict, refusing to accept ourselves as we are. We live lives defined by the arbitrary. This is a life disconnected from the Real. Accepting ourselves as part of God’s will grants us a unity of spirit. This is the secret of Israel who fights against the disunity—the split personality—of Amalek. This is the secret of battling the schizophrenia of being that which one is not. This acceptance grants us Being, or in the language of the Maharal, reality.

4. Rav Shagar, “On Faith,” She’erit Ha’emunah

I will attempt to examine the significance of providence and faith with the aid of a provocative metaphor of Jacques Lacan: “The letter always reaches its destination.” How do you explain this utter faith, which shocked even Derrida? The answer is that the letter reaches its destination, not because it has a fixed address, as in the traditional-teleological approach to providence, but because the destination reached is always its destination. The letter reaches its destination when the person “‘opens his eyes’ and realizes that the real letter is not the message we are supposed to carry but our being itself.”  The person is not the addressee before the letter is sent; he becomes the addressee the moment the letter reaches him, the second the person confronts the transpiring event (the letter). So too regarding the meaning of the letter; if the letter was not intended for me from the beginning, what message could it convey to me? Its meaning does not exist outside its destination, but the place it arrives at is what gives it its interpretation. That is its meaning, the hermeneutic circle that closes upon itself.

This creates a different type of mindset, one that does not see concrete reality as a projection of a pre-existent rule. For this mindset, [the believer] derives the rule from concrete reality. In context of religion, one can talk about faith in providence, in a divine plan that precedes reality. “A person does not prick his finger below unless it was thus decreed above.”  This mindset leads to the attempt to lay bare the logic of the providence that precedes reality. This logic signifies the divine plan, and thus gives reality meaning. Challenging this is the realization that there is no duality of the signifier and the signified. The signifier is itself the signified, and reality itself expresses the divine will…

Events in our lives do not signify something that precedes them, latent hidden meaning, but rather they are the message (the stain) itself. A person’s life is not something separate from him; there is no duality of events and their meaning. A person’s fate is the person in his entirety; you are what you are, and what you are determines the meaning of what happens to you…

The true interpretation is in the hands of the addressee: the meaning of his life is given to him and him alone. He determines the contents of the letter.

This is not as if there was some pre-existent edict that is finally revealed, for it is history that determines that which was pre-existent: the interpretation determines the inception. However, this is the point: the persuasion – the turning of it into a fact – is illumination, with a sense of self-evidence that ties things together. The letter reaches its destination the very second the illumination ties the threads together, and through this comes the narrative…

An additional Lacanian formulation brings the present investigation to a slightly different resolution: one could speak of faith as an occurrence of “the Real,” “the domain of whatever subsists outside symbolization.” [The Real] is the formless chaos that precedes all symbolization, labeling, and speech, much like an infant’s world prior to all examination and distinction. In the language of faith, an event is how the divine existence reveals itself, for it precedes all of these things. “He alone is He just as He was before the world’s creation, absolutely was He alone […] He is absolutely without any change as it says: ‘For I am the Lord, I do not change’ (Malachi 3:6).” 

In the Real there is not yet duality, whatever happens happens, without it signifying or symbolizing anything. Here is “the life substance in its mucous palpitation,”  before any symbolization and interpretation. The peeling away of all interpretation from reality, “when the words suddenly stay out”  and when what is left is oneself, makes it possible to encounter this reality. A stance like this leads a person to astonishment and wonder in encountering existence, in the existence of existence, in reality revealing its realness. This leads the believer to feel gratitude for the happenstance of existence, for everything that happens to him. Providence is found within this happenstance, since the divine is found wherever the “Real” is! Thus, the letter inevitably reaches its destination, not because of the interpretative work of the addressee (which makes him into the addressee), but because he does not need to give a theological account of the phenomenon – it is enough that the letter reaches his hand…

5. Rav Shagar, Shiurim Al Likkutei Moharan I 13

For Rebbe Naḥman, providence is the reflected light (or haḥozer) of the Torah. The Torah is how God sees the world. When I learn Torah with this in mind, I illuminate the world and make it meaningful, a world with providence. Providence is not a specific plan and we cannot describe in advance how God runs his world. Providence is reflected light, or our reflectivity on reality. As we saw in Walter Benjamin’s discussion of redemption, providence depends on our interpretation of what happened, on constructing a narrative that finds God’s wisdom in the various events. Providence is the ability to see the inner sense and logic of all events, how the things that happen to us come together. The individual details create a story or a work of art. Practically speaking, this is how the Torah is revealed in the world. A person in the rare state of providence merits understanding the meaning of his life, saving him from a sense of happenstance (mikriyut). Sometimes a person with a providence mindset feels a strong religious intensity, a clarity about what happens to him, in advance of the event itself. Rebbe Naḥman calls this “the Torah of the ancient sealed one” (“torah atika setimah”), the Torah of the future yet to come. This state feels like falling in love, when every event feels sharp and clear. Providence is essentially this sharpness.

Shiur: Rav Shagar – Revelation as Revolution

This was a 5-part class, focusing on revelation as a fundamentally disruptive, rather than constructive, event. It was part of my Orayta ’21 Rav Shagar Habura. Below are parts 2–5, interspersed throughout the sources for the class. The first video is the audio from part 2, which began with a recap of part 1.

The Event

1. Rav Shagar, She’erit Ha’emunah, 122–123

Revelation is an event… It is a jolt that shakes up, rather than clarifying, what already exists. What does it mean to receive the Torah? It means suddenly experiencing an explosion of truth – “For my words are like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that shatters rock” (Yirmiyahu 23:29); “Something that happens in situations as something that they and the usual way of behaving in them cannot account for.” …
No specific revealed content stands at the center of revelation. The event of revelation is not an opinion, but rather “the name of the void” that in its nature “cannot be named entirely.” This is where the need for a covenant arises in revelation – “The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Ḥorev” (Devarim 5:2), a covenant that is fulfilled in the declaration “We will do and we will listen.” This covenant is the response to the “name of the void,” the requirement for uncompelled loyalty that creates “a new way of being and acting within the situation,” because “the event was excluded by all the regular laws of the situation.” The heart of revelation is therefore universal, in that it is free of any named content, leaving only singular loyalty to it; creating new laws and approaches, through which a person enables a “way of being” for the new event. This is true for more than just the giving of the Torah: scientific revolutions, like Einstein’s, for example; political revolutions, like the French Revolution; the revolution that is in constantly innovative artistic creation; religious and spiritual revolutions – these are all expressions of constructive loyalty to a revelatory event, the creation of a new language for the “name of the void.” These are illuminations from “the primordial intellect,” a dimension that precedes the intellect and renews it.
According to Badiou, truth appears as the commitment of the subject to the event – the combination of revelation and loyalty to that revelation. The event demands loyalty because it itself appears only as an excess, as a void with no place in language and disconnected from everything. The lightning flashes without context and disappears as if it had never been. It is to this lightning that we must be loyal, and this loyalty constructs the lightning as truth. This is what the Kabbalists and Ḥasidim called raising Malkhut to Keter, an instance of “the crown of sovereignty” (“Keter Malkhut”). Keter is the lightning bolt of reality and Malkhut, which has no independent content, is the loyalty and decisiveness that realize the event.

2. Rambam, Moreh Nevukhim, III:32 (Pines Translation)

…At that time the way of life generally accepted and customary in the whole world and the universal service upon which we were brought up consisted in offering various species of living beings in the temples in which images were set up, in worshipping the latter, and in burning incense before them – the pious ones and the ascetics being at that time, as we have explained, the people who were devoted to the service of the temples consecrated to the stars. His wisdom, may He be exalted, and His gracious ruse, which is manifest in regard to all His creatures, did not require that He give us a Law prescribing the rejection, abandonment, and abolition of all these kinds of worship. For one could not then conceive the acceptance of [such a Law], considering the nature of man, which always likes that to which it is accustomed.

At that time this would have been similar to the appearance of a prophet in these times who, calling upon the people to worship God, would say: “God has given you a Law forbidding you to pray to Him, to fast, to call upon Him for help in misfortune. Your worship should consist solely in meditation without any works at all.” Therefore He, may He be exalted, suffered the above-mentioned kinds of worship to remain, but transferred them from created or imaginary and unreal things to His own name, may He be exalted, commanding us to practice them with regard to Him, may He be exalted. Thus He commanded us to build a temple for Him: And let them make Me a Sanctuary; to have an altar for His name: An altar of earth thou shalt make unto Me; to have the sacrifice offered up to Him: When any man of you bringeth an offering unto the Lord; to bow down in worship before Him; and to burn incense before Him. And He forbade the performance of any of these actions with a view to someone else: He that sacrificeth unto the gods shall be utterly destroyed, and so on; For thou shalt bow down to no other god. And he singled out Priests for the service of the Sanctuary, saying: That they may minister unto Me in the priest’s office. And because of their employment in the temple and the sacrifices in it, it was necessary to fix for them dues that would be sufficient for them; namely, the dues of the Levites and the Priests. Through this divine ruse it came about that the memory of idolatry was effaced and that the grandest and true foundation of our belief – namely, the existence and oneness of the deity – was firmly established, while at the same time the souls had no feeling of repugnance and were not repelled because of the abolition of modes of worship to which they were accustomed and than which no other mode of worship was known at that time.

Covenant vs. Revelation

3. Talmud Bavli, Bava Metsia 59b (Sefaria Translation)

And this is known as the oven of akhnai. The Gemara asks: What is the relevance of akhnai, a snake, in this context? Rav Yehuda said that Shmuel said: It is characterized in that manner due to the fact that the Rabbis surrounded it with their statements like this snake, which often forms a coil when at rest, and deemed it impure. The Sages taught: On that day, when they discussed this matter, Rabbi Eliezer answered all possible answers in the world to support his opinion, but the Rabbis did not accept his explanations from him.

After failing to convince the Rabbis logically, Rabbi Eliezer said to them: If the halakha is in accordance with my opinion, this carob tree will prove it. The carob tree was uprooted from its place one hundred cubits, and some say four hundred cubits. The Rabbis said to him: One does not cite halakhic proof from the carob tree. Rabbi Eliezer then said to them: If the halakha is in accordance with my opinion, the stream will prove it. The water in the stream turned backward and began flowing in the opposite direction. They said to him: One does not cite halakhic proof from a stream.

Rabbi Eliezer then said to them: If the halakha is in accordance with my opinion, the walls of the study hall will prove it. The walls of the study hall leaned inward and began to fall. Rabbi Yehoshua scolded the walls and said to them: If Torah scholars are contending with each other in matters of halakha, what is the nature of your involvement in this dispute? The Gemara relates: The walls did not fall because of the deference due Rabbi Yehoshua, but they did not straighten because of the deference due Rabbi Eliezer, and they still remain leaning.

Rabbi Eliezer then said to them: If the halakha is in accordance with my opinion, Heaven will prove it. A Divine Voice emerged from Heaven and said: Why are you differing with Rabbi Eliezer, as the halakha is in accordance with his opinion in every place that he expresses an opinion?

Rabbi Yehoshua stood on his feet and said: It is written: “It is not in heaven” (Deuteronomy 30:12). The Gemara asks: What is the relevance of the phrase “It is not in heaven” in this context? Rabbi Yirmeya says: Since the Torah was already given at Mount Sinai, we do not regard a Divine Voice, as You already wrote at Mount Sinai, in the Torah: “After a majority to incline” (Exodus 23:2). Since the majority of Rabbis disagreed with Rabbi Eliezer’s opinion, the halakha is not ruled in accordance with his opinion. The Gemara relates: Years after, Rabbi Natan encountered Elijah the prophet and said to him: What did the Holy One, Blessed be He, do at that time, when Rabbi Yehoshua issued his declaration? Elijah said to him: The Holy One, Blessed be He, smiled and said: My children have triumphed over Me; My children have triumphed over Me.

4.  Paul W. Kahn, Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, 142

The sovereign act, like other forms of revelatory experience, only achieves a stable place by transforming itself. To remember God’s presence is not the same as to experience God’s presence; to remember love is not the same as to be in love. At moments of revelation, we stand within the mysterium tremendum. Nothing can be more exhilarating or more threat­ening than to find oneself within a revolution. Sacrifice is the medium of sovereign presence. Permanent revolution is always a terrifying idea for just this reason. To succeed, revolution must transform itself into a regular political form, that is, it must produce a constitution. That constitution binds as long as it is seen as a remnant o f revolution. To see through the constitution to the popular sovereign whose act it records is what makes it literally our constitution, despite the fact that we, as finite individuals, neither wrote it nor approved it. This is not a matter of “implicit consent” but of a social imaginary that grounds faith. The constitution claims us not because it is just—although we want it to be just—but because it is a remnant of a politics of authenticity that we still imagine as our own.

5. Rav Shagar, Luḥot U’shivrei Luḥot, 140–142

I asked him, “Who truly fears heaven. Is it not the person who asks ‘What is God’s will?’? Who asks himself if it is really God’s will that he leave the Arab to die? Do I not need to ask this question, and answer with total sincerity? Some people obey without hesitation, totally self-confident, never once standing before God and asking themselves with respect and sincerity, directly and without intermediary, “What is God’s will?” Do these people really fear heaven?” I concluded, “I am unsure: perhaps they really don’t doubt what God’s will is, or perhaps they don’t actually have faith that he wants something.” … What had I done? Had I taken that boy who asked me about saving a non-Jew on Shabbat and thrown him into a world of uncertainty, chronic doubt, and undecidable misgivings? I had actually hoped that I opened up for him the possibility of faith and real contact with the divine. I quoted for him the statement of a Hasidic rebbe, the Mei Hashiloaḥ, who said that a righteous man (tsaddik) who consciously inserts himself into doubts is greater than one who avoids them.

6. Rav Shagar, She’erit Ha’emunah, 144

Rebbe Naḥman teaches us that a person must be open to experiencing revelation and responding to it, as well as to the price of this response. The reason people don’t experience revelation of truth isn’t that they seek it but don’t find it, it’s that they are never even open to its presence. They are not willing to pay the price of revelation. As Rebbe Naḥman says at the beginning of his sermon: “For in truth, the Torah is constantly proclaiming and shouting and admonishing” … Attaining truth demands a sort of openness, rather than intellectual effort. You have to be willing to set yourself free from all the typical ways of thinking and hear “the call of the proclamation.” You must give sensitive attention to the thunder of the event. This sort of awareness leads to dedicating careful attention to the events through which God speaks to each person. When things resonate with a person, he can discover that they came to awaken and illuminate him in preparation for a new Torah.

Resolutions

7. Rav Shagar, Shiurim Al Likkutei Moharan, vol. 2, 41–43

When Rebbe Nahman expresses the view that it is possible to create God’s will, he is not aiming for a religious “reform” that would enable a person to get rid of Torah and mitsvot for the sake of the individual’s will to do other things. What he is doing is giving the individual the option of holding on with all his strength to the truth in the depths of his soul, to follow it all the way through to the end, because this truth and the will that flows from it are a divine revelation. The idea underlying Rebbe Nahman’s words is that it is impossible to separate the Torah from a person’s inner will. However, it’s important to emphasize that Rebbe Nahman lived with a sense of belonging to Torah… and within it he found his inner truth… 

On the one hand, we are born into the reality of tradition, halakhah and Torah. On the other hand, the Torah itself legitimizes renewal based on inner-truth, which is the only possibility for reaching the service of God. Living between these two poles demands that a person find his spiritual world, locates his level, his faith, and tries to understand what God wants from him, what his unique rectification is, what is his personal truth. According to Rebbe Nahman in this teaching, he doesn’t worry that this personal search will lead a person away from Torah and tradition; the assumption is that someone who learns Torah will find his spiritual world within it and will of course feel a sense of identification and belonging. Obviously, in practice, if a contradiction between a person’s inner world and the Torah were to develop, he must sacrifice his own will. However, this is only a theoretical possibility, for such a contradiction should not manifest.

8. Rav Shagar, Shiurim Al Likkutei Moharan, vol. 2, 28–29

What is the “yetser” in this context? In my opinion, it is a person’s fear of stepping outside the familiar in order to reach a higher space, his fear of the radicalization of the Torah. This the “religious yetser” that desires to stay within the lines of the familiar, “to be acceptable.” However, connecting intimately with God really requires breaching boundaries; you can’t stay within the well-mannered, normative realm, the familiar and the self-evident. Despite the negative way the religious world looks at this sort of rebellious assertiveness, it can in certain contexts require a religious act of submission no less intense than that required by simply obedience to halakhah… This act really is quite difficult, because this sort of overcoming clashes with the Torah’s social aspects. When a person is loyal to his radical faith, he is likely to pay a heavy social price. This is exactly why the act requires overcoming your yetser: you must overcome the yetser for honor (kavod), as well as your self-image, which is part of honor…Rebbe Nahman connects the illumination of the letters and the revelation of the Torah to observing the 613 commandments. The religious way of life provides the sensibility and spiritual inspiration that enable meaningful renewal. Only when you actively live a way of life shaped according to the mitsvot does Jewish religious language have meaning, and only then is it possible to innovate new concepts within that language. Rebbe Nahman’s words point in two directions: The first is to revitalize the halakhah through religious radicalism, and the second is to give the renewed religious structure the halakhic platform on which to rest… Without the halakhic mindset… the most you end up with is a weak sense of freedom.

Shiur: Rav Shagar – Faith & Doubt

The second of a two-part class on faith, doubt, “perhaps,” ideology, and idolatry in the thought of Rav Shagar. Unfortunately, the first part was not recorded. From my 2020–21 Rav Shagar Haburah at Yeshivat Orayta. Sources for both parts can be found below (this part starts with source #2).

1. Rav Shagar, Shiurim al Likkutei Moharan, vol. 1, 269–271

I was recently at a symposium on the relationship between certainty and faith. One of the speakers told of a certain forum where a person raised the possibility that there could be a third destruction, as opposed to Rav Herzog’s famous words, spoken in the earliest days of the state, about how we have God’s promise that there will not be a third destruction. In response, he was thrown out of the forum, because of the “heresy” involved in casting doubt on the continuing redemptive process of the modern state of Israel. The speaker told this story in praise of the certainty of faith, and looked positively on the total unreadiness to hear claims like his. He saw it as a revelation of true faith. I was shook. I saw this as making faith into an idol, expressing an arrogant religion that refuses to accept the other. It comes from the violence laid bare in religious discourse.

To my mind, rejecting the idea of a third destruction comes from patriotism in the negative sense, rather than from a position of deep faith. Absolute certainty is a handhold that lets the speaker feel confident about the righteousness of his path, but faith happens only in the moment when a person gives up on certainty and opens up to the possibilities that exceed the limits of his understanding. In this context, raising doubts is not only not opposed to faith, it itself is the thing that can lead us to real faith. Raising doubts is not an educational goal, and I do not mean that we must encourage doubts, mainly because some people remain in a chronic state of baselessness. The trap of ideological excess can lead to acting like an idolater, coating their opinions with words of faith.

It’s important to remember that an answer like “perhaps” is a real possibility in existence, which can be just as certain as certainty. The very existence of a positive option itself changes the feeling of your life. For example, things in my life don’t have to be good in a simplistic sense in order for me to have faith; it is enough that I have faith that things could be good, that the potential exists, in order to experience the presence of God. Faith is not necessarily certainty, and therefore it’s possible for a faithful answer to the question “Is there a creator of the world?” to be: Perhaps. From this perspective, the presence of faith in the world depends on people, on their readiness to accept the existence of God in the world despite the lack of certainty…

It is specifically doubt that can lead to faith, because language forces us to define every phenomenon, and thus instead of actually encountering the phenomenon we suffice with defining it externally. Doubt opens up a language anew, in order to prevent rigidity and to enable us to once again come into contact with reality. If we say, “Yes, God definitely exists,” this statement can lead us to block off the possibility of revelation. It is specifically the ability to answer “perhaps” in regard to religious life that creates a space where the sudden possibility of revelation could take place.

2. Rav Shagar, Beriti Shalom, 139–140

My impression of some of the long people opposing the Disengagement is that—in contrast to their thoroughly ideological rabbis—they are driven by authentic faith, and this itself is what makes them so dangerous.

What makes the religious terrorist dangerous is that he lacks a lack of faith—he lacks doubt. This lack is what enables him to murder. Paradoxically, lacking faith protects a person from transgression. The faithless ideologue, in contrast, is plagued by a hole that he attempts to overcome through ideology, and that is what makes him dangerous. In general, however, he will not go too far, and will find formulations and justifications (even ideological ones) to prevent himself from transgressing.

We must thus open up to the lack of faith—to the ability to cast doubt—to the ironic, distanced gaze. Is such a gaze opposed to fear of heaven? Not necessarily. In a certain situation, it itself is the fear of heaven, or at least, it enables a powerful possibility for the fear of heaven.

God is not a fact. He exists without existence. This is the secret of the tsimtsum, which is also the source of lack of faith, as Rebbe Nahman teaches. The internal logic is simple: God is not a fact, so how is it possible to believe in him? How can you believe in not-a-fact? How? The answer is that you must conscript the lack of faith in service of the cause. Believe without believe just as God exists without existence. Paradoxically, “not believing” in this sense can only function in tandem with “believing,” without which it would become simple negation—nothingness, simple absence, rather than absence that exists. This is the revelation of the Ayin.

3. Rav Shagar, Nahalekh Baragesh, “Teshuvah and the Disengagement”

We have to understand that in the postmodern world we are incapable of bringing a “winning proof” in this argument. However, this does not mean that our claim has no merit. On the contrary, this is the test of faith; it does not draw its strength from absolute truths but from our choice and our loyalty to our “narrative.” The difference between us and the left is exactly the faith that this is our land, that our right to the land is ancient and immeasurably greater than that of the arabs, that we were exiled from our land because of our sins, but we never abandoned it and we never gave up on it.

4. Rav Shagar, She’erit Ha’emunah, “Appendix: Praying Without Hoping”

Self-sacrifice (mesirut nefesh), suicide, is a condition for prayer because it liberates a person not just from the language, but from its logic as well. Prayer is therefore divine grace (ḥesed) because it is impossible and yet occurs, or at least, perhaps occurs. This “perhaps” is important, because the “perhaps” elevates it to the realm of worldly possibilities; it therefore exists, if only as a possibility. Perhaps someone hears and takes part with me in the prayer? Is this enough to create hope? I pray, but am I certain that I will be answered? No, I am not certain. I am also not certain that I will not, but the prayer does something.

Shiur: Kol Dodi Dofek #1 – Theodicy and Destiny

The first of two lectures about Rav Soloveitchik’s “Kol Dodi Dofek.” In this lecture, we explore Rav Soloveitchik’s rejection of theodicy, of attempting to justify God and find divine meaning in suffering that befalls us. Instead, as we explore in the second half of the lecture, he pivots to human action, and the ability to create human meaning in our lives.

 

Theodicy and Destiny

1. Rav Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek, trans. David Z. Gordon (2006), 21

We too are living in troubled times, in days of anger and distress. We have been afflicted with violent pogroms and have become accustomed to suffering. In the past fifteen years [1941-56] we have undergone tortuous ordeals that are unparalleled in thousands of years of diaspora, degradation, and destruction. This chapter of suffering did not end with the establishment of the State of Israel.

 

Theodicy: Searching for Meaning

2. Rav Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek, 1–2

One of the deepest of mysteries, troubling Judaism from the dawn of its existence, is the problem of suffering… Why and wherefore are hardships visited on man? Why and wherefore do the righteous suffer and evildoers prosper? From that wondrous morning when Moses, the faithful shepherd, communed with the Creator of the Universe and pleaded for the comprehensive solution to this question of questions, throughout the generations, the prophets and sages of Israel have grappled with this conundrum. Habakkuk demanded satisfaction for this affront to justice; Jeremiah, King David in his Psalms, and Solomon in Ecclesiastes all pondered this problem. The Book of Job is totally dedicated to this ancient riddle that still hovers over our world and demands its own resolution: Why does the Holy One, blessed be He, permit evil to have dominion over His creations?

 

3. Rav Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek, 4–5

Judaism, with its realistic approach to man and his status within existence, understood that evil does not lend itself to being obscured and glossed over, and that every attempt to diminish the import of the contrast and cleavage in existence will not bring man to inner peace or to comprehension of the existential secret. Evil is a fact that cannot be denied. There is evil in the world. There are suffering and agony, and death pangs. He who would deceive himself by ignoring the split in existence and by romanticizing life is but a fool and a fabricator of illusions. It is impossible to conquer monstrous evil with philosophical-speculative thought. Thus, Judaism determined that man, submerged in the depths of a frozen fate, will in vain seek the solution to the problem of evil in the context of speculative thought, for he will never find it. Certainly, the testimony of the Torah regarding creation — that “it is very good” (Genesis 1: 12) — is true. However, this is only stated from the unbounded perspective of the Creator. In man’s finite, limited view, the absolute good in creation is not apparent. The contrast is striking and undeniable. There is evil that is not susceptible to explanation and comprehension. Only by comprehending the world in its totality can man gain insight into the essence of suffering. However, as long as man’s perception is limited and fragmented, so that he sees only isolated portions of the cosmic drama and the mighty saga of history, he cannot delve into the recesses of evil and the mystery of suffering. To what might this situation be compared? To a person who views a beautiful tapestry, the work of a fine artisan, which contains, woven into it on its front, a representation dazzling to the eye. To our great sorrow, we see this image [i. e. , the world] from the obverse side. Can such a sight become a sublime esthetic experience? Thus, we are incapable of comprehending the panorama of reality without which one cannot uncover God’s master plan — the essence of the works of the Holy One. 

In short, the “I”of fate asks a speculative/metaphysical question about evil, and this question is not given to solution and has no answer. 

 

4. Rav Shagar, “Muteness and Faith,” Bayom Hahu, 75–76

With the beginning, the concealed and unknown created God. What does that mean? In Ezekiel’s prophecies, we ready about the divine throne: “Above the expanse over their heads was the semblance of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and on top, upon this semblance of a throne, there was the semblance of a human form” (Ezekiel 1:26). In Tanakh, God wears a human face–“ the semblance of a human form”–when revealing himself to humanity and addressing people. Moreover, the human being draws his very humanity from this divine face and address. This divinity is the beginning of the created, human world–the “this palace” of the Zohar–and as such humans can access and know it. The Holocaust revealed something beyond this–the inhuman divine, “the unknown concealed one” who is beyond both the Torah and our human existence, and who therefore cannot be expressed in language–the differend. Perhaps this was what the Lubavitcher Rebbe meant when he said, “We cannot explain or clarify (based on the wisdom of the Torah) at all about the Holocaust. All we know is the fact that ‘thus it arose in thought before me’ and ‘it is a decree from before me.’” Not only can the Holocaust not be explained, but the very language and terminology of Torah also denies any explanation of the Holocaust, as the divine that manifested in the Holocaust is not part of human-divine discourse, a discourse which the Torah itself creates… In regard to God, the Holocaust, revealed the “awe-ful divine” (nora ha’eloki) that is above the “image of man.” It cannot be humanly apprehended, but the human cannot transcend the human in order somehow grasp this meaning that is foreign to him. What does it mean to say that there’s meaning “over there,” other than an acknowledgment of the simple fact, without comprehending its reality? Perhaps this was what the Lubavitcher Rebbe meant when he said, “We cannot explain or clarify (based on the wisdom of the Torah) at all about the Holocaust. All we know is the fact that ‘thus it arose in thought before me’”? Does this meaningless statement function in the same way as “negative attributes”? … “In the differend, something asks to be put into phrases and suffers from the wrong of not being able to be put into phrases right away.” Perhaps a meaningless statement constitutes an encounter with something that asked to be expressed but cannot do so?

I will conclude with the posing of these questions.

 

Destiny: Make Your Own Meaning

5. Rav Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek, 2–3

Posing the question of suffering, claims Judaism, is possible in two separate dimensions: the dimension of fate and the dimension of destiny. Judaism has always distinguished between an “Existence of Fate” and an “Existence of Destiny,” between the “I”which is the progeny of fate and the “I”which is the child of destiny. In this distinction lies hidden the Jewish doctrine of suffering. 

What is an Existence of Fate? It is an existence of duress, in the nature of “against your will do you live”(M. Avot 4: 29). It is a factual existence, simply one line in a [long] chain of mechanical causality, devoid of significance, direction, and purpose, and subordinate to the forces of the environment into whose midst the individual is pushed, unconsulted by Providence. The “I”of fate emerges as an object. As an object, man appears as acted upon and not as actor. He is acted upon through his passive collision with the objective outside, as one object confronting another. The “I” of fate is hurled into a sealed dynamic that is always turned outward. Man’s existence is hollow, lacking inner content, substance, and independence. The “I” of fate denies itself completely, because the sense of selfhood and objectification cannot dwell in tandem. 

 

6. Rav Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek, 5–6

What is an Existence of Destiny? It is an active Existence, when man confronts the environment into which he has been cast with an understanding of his uniqueness and value, freedom and capacity; without compromising his integrity and independence in his struggle with the outside world. The slogan of the “I” of destiny is: “Against your will you are born, and against your will you die”(M. Avot 4: 29), but by your free will do you live. Man is born as an object, dies as an object, but it is within his capability to live as a “subject” — as a creator and innovator who impresses his individual imprimatur on his life and breaks out of a life of instinctive, automatic behavior into one of creative activity. According to Judaism, man’s mission in this world is to turn fate into destiny — an existence that is passive and influenced into an existence that is active and influential; an existence of compulsion, perplexity, and speechlessness into an existence full of will, vision, and initiative. The blessing of the Holy One to his creation fully defines man’s role: “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). Conquer the environment and subjugate it. If you do not rule over it, it will enslave you. Destiny bestows on man a new status in God’s world. It bestows upon man a royal crown, and thus he becomes God’s partner in the work of creation. 

 

7. Rav Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek, 6–9

As stated above, in man’s “Existence of Destiny” arises a new relation to the problem of evil. As long as man vacillates in his fateful existence, his relationship to evil is expressed solely in a philosophical/speculative approach. As a passive creature, it was not within his power to wrestle with evil in order to contain or to exploit it for an exalted purpose. The child of fate is devoid of the ability to determine anything in the realm of his existence. He is nurtured from the outside, and his life bears its imprint. Therefore he relates to evil from an impractical perspective and philosophizes about it from a speculative point of view. He wishes to deny the reality of evil and to create a harmonistic outlook on life. The result of such an experience is bitter disappointment. Evil mocks the prisoner of fate and his fantasy of a reality that is all good and pleasant. 

However, in the realm of destiny man recognizes reality as it is, and does not desire to use harmonizing formulas in order to hide and disregard evil. The “Child of Destiny” is very realistic and does not flinch in anticipation of a face-to-face confrontation with evil. His approach is halakhic and moral, and thus devoid of any metaphysical/speculative nuance. When the “Child of Destiny” suffers, he says in his heart, “There is evil, I do not deny it, and I will not conceal it with fruitless casuistry. I am, however, interested in it from a halakhic point of view; and as a person who wants to know what action to take. I ask a single question: What should the sufferer do to live with his suffering?” In this dimension, the emphasis is removed from causal and teleological considerations (which differ only as to direction) and is directed to the realm of action. The problem is now formulated in the language of a simple halakhah and revolves around a quotidian (i. e. daily) task. The question of questions is: What does suffering obligate man to do? This problem was important to Judaism, which placed it at the center of its Weltanschauung. Halakhah is just as interested in this question, as in issues of issur and heter and hiyyuv and p’tur. We do not wonder about the ineffable ways of the Holy One, but instead ponder the paths man must take when evil leaps up at him. We ask not about the reason for evil and its purpose, but rather about its rectification and uplifting. How should a man react in a time of distress? What should a person do so as not to rot in his affliction?

The halakhic answer to this question is very simple. Suffering comes to elevate man, to purify his spirit and sanctify him, to cleanse his mind and purify it from the chaff of superficiality and the dross of crudeness; to sensitize his soul and expand his horizons. In general, the purpose of suffering is to repair the imperfection in man’s persona. The halakhah teaches us that an afflicted person commits a criminal act if he allows his pain to go for naught and to remain without meaning or purpose. Suffering appears in the world in order to contribute something to man, in order to atone for him, in order to redeem him from moral impurity, from crudeness and lowliness of spirit. The sufferer must arise therefrom, purified, refined, and cleansed… From the midst of suffering itself he will achieve lasting redemption and merit a self-actualization and exaltation that are unequaled in a world devoid of suffering. From negation sprouts affirmation; from antithesis, thesis emerges; and from a denial of existence, a new existence is revealed. The Torah gave witness to man’s mighty spiritual reaction to suffering inflicted upon him when it said,“In your distress when all these horrors shall come upon you, then you shall return to the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 4:30). Suffering requires man to repent and return to God. Distress is designated to arouse us to repentance, and what is repentance if not the renewal and supreme redemption of man?

 

8. Rav Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek, 22–23

If we want to ask a penetrating question at a time beset by terrifying nightmares, it is incumbent upon us to do so in a halakhic mode: What obligation accrues to the sufferer as a result of his suffering? What commanding heavenly voice breaks through from the midst of suffering? As we have said, this question has a solution which is expressed in a simple halakhah. There is no need for metaphysical speculation in order to clarify the rules of rectifying evil. “For it is not in Heaven”(Deuteronomy 30:12). If we succeed in formulating this doctrine without dealing with questions of cause and telos, we will earn a complete salvation, and the scriptural promise will be fulfilled for us, as it is written: “Take counsel together, and it shall come to naught; speak your harshnesses and they shall not come to fruition, for God is with us” (Isaiah 8:10). Then and only then shall we emerge from the depths of the Holocaust with enhanced spiritual stature and augmented historical splendor, as it is written, “And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before” (Job 42:10) — double in quantity and quality.

When the doctrine of the corrective effect of suffering is put into practice, it demands of the sufferer courage and spiritual discipline. He must gird himself with extraordinary strength, make a detached assessment of his world, examine his past and look to his future with complete honesty… And we, too, who are softhearted, weak-willed, bound by fate, and devoid of spiritual strength, are now bidden by Providence to adopt a new attitude; to ascend and raise ourselves to a level where suffering teaches us to demand from ourselves redemption and deliverance. For this purpose we must look at our reflection with spiritual fortitude and pure objectivity. This reflection bursts through to us from both the present and the past.

 

9. Rav Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek, 85–86

Let us return to what we said above. How does destiny differ from fate? In two respects: fate means a compelled existence; destiny is existence by volition. Destiny is created by man himself, who chooses and makes his own way in life. Fate is expressed in a teleological sense, in a denuded existence, whereas destiny embodies purpose and objectives. 

 

10. Rav Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek, 6–9

In short, man must solve, not the question of the causal or teleological reason for suffering with all its speculative complexity, but rather the question of its curative role, in all its halakhic simplicity, by turning fate to destiny and elevating himself from object to subject, from thing to man.

Suffering Without Meaning – Rav Shagar on the Unsayable Trauma of the Holocaust

Below is a translated excerpt from one of Rav Shagar’s derashot for Yom Hashoah, the day Israeli society collectively recalls and remembers the Holocaust. Specifically, it is the introductory section of the derashah, “Muteness and Faith,” which focuses on two ideas:

1. that which exceeds or cannot enter our speech (using Lyotard’s concept of “the differend” and the Zohar’s concept of סתימא דלא אתיידע, “the concealed and unknown”).

2. the Rebbe of Sanz-Klausenburg’s steadfast attachment to his Judaism, beyond reach of any mitsvah–beyond both Hitler and God.

The excerpt below is from the introduction to the derashah, where Rav Shagar meditates on his own relationship to the Holocaust as a child of survivors, as someone for whom the Holocaust was both an “incurable genetic disease” and “a horror on display in the noonday sun.”

When tragedy strikes, believers typically ask, “What does this mean?”[1] The Holocaust denies all possibility of asking such questions, because it represents a total shattering of the world and its cultural construction. It falls outside the constructive world, the world of discourse.

This is how I experienced the “meaning” of the Holocaust in regard to my parents (of blessed memory), if it even makes sense to say such a thing. The Holocaust tore apart their youth, and they carried it with them for the rest of their lives. They almost never spoke about that time. They went on with their daily lives based on a sort of stubborn muteness, concealing the irreparable. They were victims for their entire lives. They could never speak, for the Holocaust had forced them into an incurable muteness. They lived without feeling like they could trust reality or people, rendering them incapable of accepting the other or addressing them with an open heart. They were barred from experiencing the sense of well-being which Tanakh describes as “everyone under his own vine and under his own fig tree” (1 Kings 5:5). In a certain sense, I myself continue to carry this burden.

This idea reminds me of the Kabbalistic and Hasidic commentaries on Passover and the exodus from Egypt which see the word Pesah as breaking down into peh-sah, “the mouth that speaks”–speech itself leaving its exile.[2] Speech generally enables us to turn a harsh, traumatic event into processable human suffering, which is the first step toward redemption from it. The Holocaust, however, is not just suffering. It is suffering that lacks speech, that is mute. There is no conceptual framework that could render it as suffering. In this sense, my parents never left the Holocaust. The Holocaust wasn’t just murder, it was the murder of murder. It is not an injustice or suffering that took place within the normal circle of human existence–it somehow transcends and refutes it. The Holocaust cannot be rendered conceptually into any other thing, so it cannot achieve any sort of conciliation. That is how I explain my parents’ muteness: they lived their lives in the empty space split open by the Holocaust. This is the meaning of the Holocaust, “the differend”–“an unsayable debt”: “Auschwitz was the death of death. In this death, even the possibility of mourning over what was lost is itself dead. The process of mourning cannot take place, so it is impossible to continue forward and move on.”[3]

When I discuss the Holocaust, I do so not from the perspective of someone who experienced it first-hand, but from the perspective of someone who inherited it–this is the incurable genetic disease of the second generation. In a certain sense, members of the second generation are no less victims of the Holocaust than members of the first. They too experience the Holocaust via an absolute lack of security in existence, in reality’s fundamental need for some basis or foundation. They experience a persistent sense of threat in the background of their lives, due to the presence of a “black hole” just waiting to swallow up everything.

For me, the Holocaust is just such a black hole of non-existence that nevertheless exists. It is a horror on display in the noonday sun–a horror that should have reduced annihilated everything, taking place in a world that continues to turn exactly as before–non-existence that nevertheless exists. This is a reality that leads only to being stuck, without any ability to escape or even to disappear.

_________________________________

[1] See Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, Bayom Hahu, 256–259.

[2] See, for example, R. Isaac Luria, Peri Ets Hayyim, Gate of the Holy Scriptures, ch. 4; Rebbe Nahman of Bratslav, Likkutei Moharan II 74. This is how I understanding a famous statement by the Hiddushei Harim of Ger: “’And you shall know that I, the Lord, am your God who freed you from the sufferings of the Egyptians’ (Exodus 6:7) – ‘Sufferings,’ so that they no longer suffer from the practices of Egypt” (quoted in Sefat Emet, vol. 2, Va’era 1878). In Egypt, when speech was in exile, a person simply continued to suffer, unable to free himself from the sufferings imposed on him.

[3] Adi Ophir and Avraham Azulai, “Memale Makom: Be’ikvot Sihah Im Leyotar,” in Jean Paul Leyotard, Hamatsav Hapostmoderni (Jerusalem: Resling Books, 1999), 127–128. Indeed, I have often had trouble believing statements about the Holocaust, not because I thought they were insincere, but because I saw them as foolish attempts to conquer the unconquerable.

Shiur: The Lonely Man of Faith #3 –Translation and the Untranslatable: Religion vs. Faith

This is the third of three classes on The Lonely Man of Faith that I recorded for my Rav Soloveitchik course after it was unceremoniously cut short by the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

This class explores the different religious communities created by”Adam the first” and “Adam the second” respectively, focusing on the true nature of faith and importance both of translating faith into intellectual terms, and of faith being partially untranslatable.

I think I forgot to mention this in the class itself, but the “Adam the first” category of religion and finding pragmatic value in faith/ritual/etc. should definitely include “social orthodoxy” and orthoprax models of Judaism.

 

 

 

Translation and the Untranslatable: Faith vs. Religion

 

From Tension to Resolution and Back Again

1. Rav Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, 75–76

The element of the tragic is not fully eliminated from the destiny of the man of faith even after joining the covenantal community. We said at the very beginning of this essay that the loneliness of the man of faith is an integral part of his destiny from which he can never be completely liberated. The dialectical awareness, the steady oscillating between the majestic natural community and the covenantal faith community renders the act of complete redemption unrealizable. The man of faith, in his continuous movement between the pole of natural majesty and that of covenantal humility, is prevented from totally immersing in the immediate covenantal awareness of the redeeming presence, knowability, and involvement of God in the community of man. From time to time the man of faith is thrown into the majestic community where the colloquy as well as the covenantal consciousness are swept away. He suddenly finds himself revolving around the cosmic center, now and then catching a glimpse of the Creator who hides behind the boundless drama of creation. To be sure, this alternation of cosmic and covenantal involvement is not one of “light and shade,” enhanced activity and fatigue, as the mystics are accustomed to call their alternating experiences, but represents two kinds of creative and spontaneous activity, both willed and sanctioned by God. Let us not forget that the majestic community is willed by God as much as the covenantal faith community.

 

2. Rav Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, 78–79

If one would inquire of me about the teleology of the Halakhah, I would tell him that it manifests itself exactly in the paradoxical yet magnificent dialectic which underlies the Halakhic gesture. When man gives himself to the covenantal community the Halakhah reminds him that he is also wanted and needed in another community, the cosmic-majestic, and when it comes across man while he is involved in the creative enterprise of the majestic community, it does not let him forget that he is a covenantal being who will never find self-fulfillment outside of the covenant and that God awaits his return to the covenantal community. I would also add, in reply to such a question, that many a time I have the distinct impression that the Halakhah considered the steady oscillating of the man of faith between majesty and covenant not as a dialectical but rather as a complementary movement. The majestic gesture of the man of faith, I am inclined to think, is looked upon by the Halakhah not as contradictory to the covenantal encounter but rather as the reflex action which is caused by this encounter when man feels the gentle touch of God’s hand upon his shoulder and the covenantal invitation to join God is extended to him. I am prompted to draw this remarkable inference from the fact that the Halakhah has a monistic approach to reality and has unreservedly rejected any kind of dualism. The Halakhah believes that there is only one world—not divisible into secular and hallowed sector…

 

3. Rav Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, 82–83

Since the dialectical role has been assigned to man by God, it is God who wants the man of faith to oscillate between the faith community and the community of majesty, between being confronted by God in the cosmos and the intimate, immediate apprehension of God through the covenant, and who therefore willed that complete human redemption be unattainable.

Had God placed Adam in the majestic community only, then Adam would, as it was stated before, never be aware of existential loneliness. The sole problem would then be that of aloneness—one that majestic Adam could resolve. Had God, vice versa, thrust Adam into the covenantal community exclusively, then he would be beset by the passional experience of existential loneliness and also provided with the means of finding redemption from this experience through his covenantal relation to God and to his fellow man. However, God, in His inscrutable wisdom, has decreed differently. Man discovers his loneliness in the covenantal community, and before he is given a chance to climb up to the high level of a complete covenantal, revealed existence, dedicated in faith to God and in sympathy to man, man of faith is pushed into a new community where he is told to lead an expanded surface existence rather than a covenantal, concentrated in-depth existence. Because of this onward movement from center to center, man does not feel at home in any community. He is commanded to move on before he manages to strike roots in either of these communities and so the ontological loneliness of man of faith persists.

 

Subversion

4. Rav Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, 86–87

Contemporary Adam the first, extremely successful in his cosmic-majestic enterprise, refuses to pay earnest heed to the duality in man and tries to deny the undeniable, that another Adam exists beside or, rather, in him. By rejecting Adam the second, contemporary man, eo ipso, dismisses the covenantal faith community as something superfluous and obsolete. To clear up any misunderstanding on the part of my audience, I wish to note that I am not concerned in this essay with the vulgar and illiterate atheism professed and propagated in the most ugly fashion by a natural-political community which denies the unique transcendental worth of the human personality. I am referring rather to Western man who is affiliated with organized religion and is a generous supporter of its institutions. He stands today in danger of losing his dialectical awareness and of abandoning completely the metaphysical polarity implanted in man as a member of both the majestic and the covenantal community.

 

5. Rav Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, 88–89

The prime purpose [of the religious community] is the successful furtherance of the interests, not the deepening and enhancing of the commitments, of man who values religion in terms of its usefulness to him and considers the religious act a medium through which he may increase his happiness. This assumption on the part of majestic man about the role of religion is not completely wrong, if only, as I shall explain, he would recognize also the non-pragmatic aspects of religion. Faith is indeed relevant to man not only metaphysically but also practically. It gives his life, even at the secular mundane level, a new existential dimension. Certain aspects of the doctrinal and normative covenantal kerygma of faith are of utmost importance to majestic man and are, in a paradoxical way, translatable into the latter’s vernacular. It is very certain and self-evident that Adam the first cannot succeed completely in his efforts to attain majesty-dignity without having the man of faith contribute his share. The cultural edifice whose great architect Adam the first is would be built on shifting sands if he sought to conceal from himself and from others the fact that he alone cannot implement the mandate of majesty-dignity entrusted to him by God and that he must petition Adam the second for help. To be sure, man can build spaceships capable of reaching other planets without addressing himself to the mystery of faith and without being awakened to an enhanced, inspired life which reflects the covenantal truth. He certainly can triumph to a limited degree over the elemental forces of nature without crossing the frontiers of here-and-now sense-facticity. The Tower of Babel can be built high and mighty without beholding and acknowledging the great verity that Heaven is yet higher. However, the idea of majesty which Adam the first is striving to realize embraces much more than the mere building of machines, no matter how complex and efficacious. Successful man wants to be a sovereign not only in the physical but also in the spiritual world. He is questing not only for material success, but for ideological and axiological achievements as well. He is concerned with a philosophy of nature and man, of matter and mind, of things and ideas.

 

6. Rav Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, 92–93

Since majestic man is in need of a transcendental experience in order to strengthen his cultural edifice, it is the duty of the man of faith to provide him with some component parts of this experience. God would not have implanted the necessity in majestic man for such spiritual perceptions and ideas if He had not at the same time endowed the man of faith with the skill of converting some of his apocalyptic experiences—which are meta-logical and non-hedonic—into a system of values and verities comprehensible to majestic man, the experimenter, aesthete, and, above all, the creative mind.

 

7. Rav Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, 93–5

At this point, however, the crisis in the relations between man of faith and majestic man begins to develop. If the job of translating faith mysteries into cultural aspects could be fully accomplished, then contemporary man of faith could free himself, if not from the ontological awareness which is perennial, then, at least, from the peculiar feeling of psychological loneliness and anguish which is due to his historical confrontation with the man of culture. The man of faith would, if this illusion came true, be at peace with the man of culture so that the latter would fully understand the significance of human dialectics, and a perfect harmonious relationship would prevail between both Adams.

However, this harmony can never be attained since the man of faith is not the compromising type and his covenantal commitment eludes cognitive analysis by the logos and hence does not lend itself completely to the act of cultural translation. There are simply no cognitive categories in which the total commitment of the man of faith could be spelled out. This commitment is rooted not in one dimension, such as the rational one, but in the whole personality of the man of faith. The whole of the human being, the rational as well as the non-rational aspects, is committed to God, Hence, the magnitude of the commitment is beyond the comprehension of the logos and the ethos. The act of faith is aboriginal, exploding with elemental force as an all-consuming and all-pervading eudaemonic-passional experience in which our most secret urges, aspirations, fears, and passions, at times even unsuspected by us, manifest themselves. The commitment of the man of faith is thrown into the mold of the in-depth personality and immediately accepted before the mind is given a chance to investigate the reasonableness of this unqualified commitment. The intellect does not chart the course of the man of faith; its role is an a posteriori one. It attempts, ex post facto, to retrace the footsteps of the man of faith, and even in this modest attempt the intellect is not completely successful. Of course, as long as the path of the man of faith cuts across the territory of the reasonable, the intellect may follow him and identify his footsteps. The very instant, however, the man of faith transcends the frontiers of the reasonable and enters into the realm of the unreasonable, the intellect is left behind and must terminate its search for understanding. The man of faith, animated by his great experience is able to reach the point at which not only his logic of the mind but even his logic of the heart and of the will, everything—even his own “I” awareness—has to give in to an “absurd” commitment. The man of faith is “insanely” committed to and “madly” in love with God.

 

7a. Rav Shagar, Faith Shattered and Restored, 22–23

In effect, according to Rabbi Naḥman, not only is faith not a public language, it is not a language at all. That is why it is so difficult to fully depict one’s faith. Something will always remain unspoken, a mystery and intimacy that cannot and should not be revealed, for baring it would violate the intimacy of faith… The freedom to be private is a prerequisite of faith, and the only thing that can lead, on the next level, to honest, genuine dialogue between believers.

Hence, what I am trying to describe here is not a philosophy or outlook regarding faith. Philosophies and outlooks are, in this context, nothing but rationalizations – apologetics, even – whose sole role is to justify what has already been arrived at, and which must thus be regarded with a certain wariness. They are not the substance of faith but explanations for it; thus, they are ancillary to it and always involve a degree of duality. To paraphrase the opponents of Maimonides and his school, who stated that a God whose existence must be proven is no God at all, I offer the absurd assertion that a believer who requires an intellectual proof for his faith is no believer at all.

There is no proof of faith, and no certainty of faith to be gained with a proof. In any event, proofs do not impact our existence like a gun pointed at one’s temple; they do not touch upon the believer’s inner life. That is why, when it comes to faith, I prefer to use terms such as “occurrence” and “experience.”

 

8. Rav Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, 95–97

The untranslatability of the complete faith experience is due not to the weakness, but to the greatness of the latter. If an all-embracing translation of the great mystery of revelation and its kerygma were possible, then the uniqueness of the faith experience and its commitments would be lost. Only peripheral elements of the act of faith can be projected on a cognitive, pragmatic background. Prayer, for instance, might appeal to majestic man as the most uplifting, integrating, and purifying act, arousing the finest and noblest emotions, yet these characteristics, however essential to Adam the first, are of marginal interest to Adam the second, who experiences prayer as the awesome confrontation of God and man, as the great paradox of man conversing with God as an equal fellow member of the covenantal society, and at the same time being aware that he fully belongs to God and that God demands complete surrender and self-sacrifice…

In a word, the message of translated religion is not the only one which the man of faith must address to majestic man of culture. Besides this message, man of faith must bring to the attention of man of culture the kerygma of original faith in all its singularity and pristine purity, in spite of the incompatibility of this message with the fundamental credo of a utilitarian society. How staggering this incompatibility is! This unique message speaks of defeat instead of success, of accepting a higher will instead of commanding, of giving instead of conquering, of retreating instead of advancing, of acting “irrationally” instead of being always reasonable. Here the tragic event occurs. Contemporary majestic man rejects his dialectical assignment and, with it, the man of faith.

 

9. Rav Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, 103–106

Elisha was a typical representative of the majestic community. He was the son of a prosperous farmer, a man of property, whose interests were centered around this-worldly, material goods such as crops, livestock, and market prices. His objective was economic success, his aspiration—material wealth. The Bible portrays him as efficient, capable, and practical, remindful of a modern business executive… Suddenly the mantle of Elijah was cast upon him. While he was engaged in the most ordinary, everyday activity, in tilling the soil, he encountered God and felt the transforming touch of God’s hand. The strangest metamorphosis occurred. Within seconds, the old Elisha disappeared and a new Elisha emerged. Majestic man was replaced by covenantal man… However, Elisha’s withdrawal from majesty was not final. He followed the dialectical course of all our prophets. Later, when he achieved the pinnacle of faith and arrived at the outer boundaries of human commitment, he came back to society as a participant in state affairs, as an adviser of kings and a teacher of the majestic community. God ordered him to return to the people, to offer them a share in the covenantal drama and to involve them in the great and solemn colloquy. He was God’s messenger carrying, like Moses, two tablets of stone containing the covenantal kerygma.

Shiur: Adar 2020 – Up is Down, Holy is Unholy: From Vayikra to Hasidut to Rav Kook and Rav Shagar

Up is Down, Holy is Unholy:
From Vayikra to Hasidut to Rav Kook to Rav Shagar

 

1. Talmud Bavli, Megillah 15b

 

“On that night the sleep of the king was disturbed” (Esther 6:1). Rabbi Tanḥum said: The sleep of the King of the universe was disturbed.

Kodesh vs. Hol

 

2. Vayikra 10:8–11

 

And the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying: 9 Drink no wine or other intoxicant, you or your sons, when you enter the Tent of Meeting, that you may not die. This is a law for all time throughout the ages, 10 for you must distinguish (lehavdil) between the sacred and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean; 11 and you must teach the Israelites all the laws which the Lord has imparted to them through Moses.

 

3. Vayikra 11:44–47

 

For I the Lord am your God: you shall sanctify yourselves and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not make yourselves unclean through any swarming thing that moves upon the earth. 45 For I the Lord am He who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God: you shall be holy, for I am holy. 46 These are the instructions concerning animals, birds, all living creatures that move in water, and all creatures that swarm on earth, 47 for distinguishing (lehavdil) between the unclean and the clean, between the living things that may be eaten and the living things that may not be eaten.

Hasidut and Its Opponents

 

4. Keter Shem Tov, Bereshit §189

 

“The whole earth is filled with his glory” (Isaiah 6:3). Nothing exists, large or small, that is separate from God. Thus, a perfect (shalem) person can perform divine unifications, even in physical activities like eating, drinking, and sexual relations, like business and mundane conversations between friends.

I have thus received a tradition from a wise man… this is the meaning of the verse, “Know him in all your ways” (Proverbs 3:6), which is like “And the man knew Eve his wife” (Genesis 4:1), meaning unification and coupling.

If this is true about physical matters, all the more so with matters like prayer that stand in the heights of the world. There are many levels, and on each and every level a person can perform unifications, in the mystery of “Thus shall Aaron come to the holy” (Leviticus 16:3). Whatever level a person is on, from there he can include himself within the entirety of the world, which are on these levels. They are all the limbs of the Knesset Yisrael. At this point a person can pray, and it will be that “his God be with him and he ascends” (II Chronicles 36:23).

 

 

5. Rav Ḥayyim of Volozhin, Nefesh Haḥayyim III:5

 

Translation from Eliezer Lipa (Leonard) Moskowitz, The Soul of Life, 304–5

But even considering this, these are His heroic and awesome [works]: that even so, He hid–so to speak–His glory so that it would be possible to actualize the matter of the existence of the worlds, and the powers, and created beings, both newly created and renewed, having different qualities and diverse situations, and distributed in different locations—places that are holy and pure, and the opposite: impure and filthy. And this is our perspective, namely, that our capacity for sense perception is limited to the realities as they appear, and on this perspective is built the system that mandates our behavior, as we were commanded directly by Him (blessed be He), it being immutable law. And from this perspective our sages metaphorized Him (so to speak) per the matter of the soul-Neshama’s relationship to the body. And as is stated in the Zohar that He (blessed be He) is the soul-Neshama of all the worlds, being that in people the senses only perceive a person’s body, and: 

• even though the soul-Neshama permeates the entire body, it is an aspect hidden to eyes of flesh but revealed to the mind’s eyes,
• so too, based on our grasp of what can be perceived, so appears the reality of all the worlds and creations, and that He (blessed be His name) permeates and is hidden (so to speak) within them to enliven them and to sustain them,

as in the matter of the soul-Neshama that permeates and is hidden within all the various parts of the body’s limbs/ organs, to enliven it.

 

6. Rav Ḥayyim of Volozhin, Nefesh Haḥayyim III:6

 

Translation from Eliezer Lipa (Leonard) Moskowitz, The Soul of Life, 307

And so it is that all of the fundamental principles of the holy Torah, every one of the warnings and command­ments, positive and negative, all operate within this context, that from our perspective there absolutely exist differences and variations between places. In clean/pure places we are permitted and also obligated to discuss and to reflect on the Torah’s words. And in filthy places we are prohibited even to reflect on the Torah’s words. And so it is with all the matters and the system of behavioral obligations that we are directly commanded in the holy Torah, and lacking this context of our perspective there wouldn’t be any room for the Torah and commandments at all.

 

7. Rav Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izbica, Mei Hashiloaḥ, vol. 1, Ki Tisa, s.v. Elohei Masekhah Lo Ta’aseh Lekha

 

“Molten gods, you shall not make for yourselves” (Shemot 34:17). “Molten” refers to the general principles. This is the meaning of the verse: In a moment when you have explicit “understanding of the heart” (binat halev), then you should not look to the general principles to guide your actions. Understanding of the heart should be your sole guide as to how to act in each individual instance, as we find by Eliyahu on Har Carmel, and as we explained well in Parashat Ḥukkat.

 

8. Rav Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izbica, Mei Hashiloaḥ, vol. 1, Ḥukkat, s.v. Vayis’u Benei Yisrael Vayiḥanu Be’ovot

 

It is written in the Gemara (Berachot, 54a), it is a time for God to act, for they have made Your Torah void’ (Tehillim, 119). says, “It is a time to do for God, for they have made void your Torah.” This means, since they have made your Torah void, act only in the will of God. At a time when it is perfectly clear that it is a time to solely for Eliyahu on Mount Carmel, then it is necessary to put aside the principles of the holy Torah and act only in the understanding that the blessed God instills in you. Rebbe Natan is saying that at a time when this given under standing is not completely clear to you, you must act according to the principles of the Torah and mitzvot without stepping out of the bounds of the Halacha. Yet Rebbe Natan is also saying that if your heart is drawn after the will of the blessed God, and have removed from yourself any kind of impurity (anything that could bring you down), afterward God may provide you with an opportunity to act in a way that may seem as if, God forbid, you have removed yourself from the bounds of the principles of the Torah. Concerning this Rebbe Natan said that for the one whose heart is drawn after God and has cleansed himself from any affliction, certainly God will not let him fall into a transgression, God forbid. He will surely then know that it is “a time to do for God.”

Kodesh vs. Hol 2.0: Spiritual vs. Unspiritual

 

9. Rav Kook, Mussar Avikha 2:2

 

Translation from R. Ari Ze’ev Schwartz, The Spiritual Revolution of Rav Kook, 55-56)

“In all of your ways, know Him” (Mishlei 3:6). One must search for God in everything one does. When praying, one must search for God by trying to focus on the words of prayer with deep concentration and a dedicated heart. One must not search for God in other matters at that moment. Indeed, while involved in that specific action, it may be said that God can be found within that action and nothing else. When studying Torah, one must realize that God is found in the very act of analyzing and trying to understand each idea. At that moment, God reveals Himself in that specific action and not in anything else. And finally, when involved in gemilut chasadim (acts of kindness), one must search for God by trying to uncover the best possible way to help one’s friend.

This principle is true in all actions that a person does. Do not all matters in the world uncover the Divine? Therefore, everything a person does should be understood as a mitzvah, because one must search for God in every action. We may accurately say that one who dedicates his or her entire mind and strength to performing every action with the greatest level of perfection knows God in all of his ways…

 

10. Rav Shagar, Nahalekh Baragesh, 170

 

Paradoxically, the logic of self-nullification (bitul) leads to a parabolic movement culminating in a return to the world. The righteous person nullifies himself, but in this the lack of nullification–the non-spiritual, worldly life–itself becomes nullification, a vessel for infinite light, an instance of “existing but not in existence.” The divide between creator and creature, between a righteous person and his creator, blurs. 

 

11. Rav Shagar, Shiurim Al Lekutei Moharan I:29, vol. 1, 368

 

Similarly, Rebbe Naḥman’s understanding of tikkun habrit does not depict the berit as identification. Identifying with something still expresses a dualistic consciousness, because a person could identify with something outside of himself. Berit means getting rid of duality, so being overly aware of what we are doing ruins it. For example, we say “Thank God,” and that immediately traps us, as if we are doing something good by saying “Thank you.” We can free ourselves from this trap by saying “Thank you” from a place of linguistic oneness, of simplicity (peshitut). If I pray, and I must identify with the prayer, then this is still a matter of innerness and duality. The highest prayer is simply saying, speaking. This act can create the most delightful prayer.

Shiur: Tevet 2019 – The Thing About Miracles: From Hanukkah to Everyday Life

The Thing About Miracles:
From Hanukkah to Everyday Life

 

What is a Miracle?

 

1. Melakhim Alef 16:1-8

 

Elijah the Tishbite, an inhabitant of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord lives, the God of Israel whom I serve, there will be no dew or rain except at my bidding.” 2 The word of the Lord came to him: 3 “Leave this place; turn eastward and go into hiding by the Wadi Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. 4 You will drink from the wadi, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” 5 He proceeded to do as the Lord had bidden: he went, and he stayed by the Wadi Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. 6 The ravens brought him bread and meat every morning and every evening, and he drank from the wadi. 7 After some time the wadi dried up, because there was no rain in the land. 8 And the word of the Lord came to him: 9 “Go at once to Zarephath of Sidon, and stay there; I have commanded a widow there to feed you.”

 

What Does It Matter?

 

2. Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei Hatorah 8:1-3

 

The Jews did not believe in Moses, our teacher, because of the wonders that he performed. Whenever anyone’s belief is based on wonders, [the commitment of] his heart has shortcomings, because it is possible to perform a wonder through magic or sorcery.

All the wonders performed by Moses in the desert were not intended to serve as proof [of the legitimacy] of his prophecy, but rather were performed for a purpose. It was necessary to drown the Egyptians, so he split the sea and sank them in it. We needed food, so he provided us with manna. We were thirsty, so he split the rock [providing us with water]. Korach’s band mutinied against him, so the earth swallowed them up. The same applies to the other wonders…

What is the source of our belief in him? The [revelation] at Mount Sinai. Our eyes saw, and not a stranger’s. Our ears heard, and not another’s. There was fire, thunder, and lightning. He entered the thick clouds; the Voice spoke to him and we heard, “Moses, Moses, go tell them the following…”

 

3. Rav Shagar, Leha’ir Et Hapetahim, 114

 

Rambam thought that faith that is based on miracles is faith that has flaws. A miracle that is presented as a proof for faith is forced on a believer artificially, from the outside, such that there will always remain a gap between the believer and their faith through which doubt can slip.

Seeing miracles as a proof for faith is a manifestation of a desire to hold onto the absolute. But the absolute cannot be seized, it only reveals itself as an intangible and unmediated presence. The very logic of proofs defeat them, for they introduce a duality into faith that blocks the path to the absolute. When miracles function as proofs, they become a hard fact that externally indicate the existence of God, and in doing so they dissolve the realness of this existence and sustain the persistence of doubt.

 

The King of India

 

4. The Kuzari I:19-22, 25

 

19. The Rabbi: If thou wert told that the King of India was an excellent man, commanding admiration, and deserving his high reputation, one whose actions were reflected in the justice which rules his country and the virtuous ways of his subjects, would this bind thee to revere him?

 

20. Al Khazari: How could this bind me, whilst I am not sure if the justice of the Indian people is natural, and not dependent on their king, or due to the king or both?

 

21. The Rabbi: But if his messenger came to thee bringing presents which thou knowest to be only procurable in India, and in the royal palace, accompanied by a letter in which it is distinctly stated from whom it comes, and to which are added drugs to cure thy diseases, to preserve thy health, poisons for thy enemies, and other means to fight and kill them without battle, would this make thee beholden to him?

 

22. Al Khazari: Certainly. For this would remove my former doubt that the Indians have a king. I should also acknowledge that a proof of his power and dominion has reached me…

 

25. The Rabbi: … In the same strain spoke Moses to Pharaoh, when he told him: ‘The God of the Hebrews sent me to thee,’ viz. the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For Abraham was well known to the nations, who also knew that the divine spirit was in contact with the patriarchs, cared for them, and performed miracles for them. He did not say: ‘The God of heaven and earth,’ nor ‘my Creator and thine sent me.’ In the same way God commenced His speech to the assembled people of Israel: ‘I am the God whom you worship, who has led you out of the land of Egypt,’ but He did not say: ‘I am the Creator of the world and your Creator.’ Now in the same style I spoke to thee, a Prince of the Khazars, when thou didst ask me about my creed. I answered thee as was fitting, and is fitting for the whole of Israel who knew these things, first from personal experience, and afterwards through uninterrupted tradition, which is equal to the former.

 

5. Rav Shagar, Zeman Shel Herut, “This is For You, A Sign,” 78–79

 

The Haver of The Kuzari also gives miracles a central role in the context of faith. However, rather than framing miracles as proof for faith, he says that they create a connection to faith. The Haver chooses to present himself to the Khazar king as “believ[ing] in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, who led the children of Israel out of Egypt with signs and miracles… who sent Moses with His law.”  The king is confused by this confession and asks, “Now shouldst thou, O Jew, not have said that thou believest in the Creator of the world, its Governor and Guide, and in Him who created and keeps thee?” In response to the king’s shock, the Haver emphasizes the miracle of the exodus from Egypt as the basis of faith. The Exodus from Egypt demonstrates God’s direct, personal relation to the Jew that transcends nature. This personal relation creates the Jew’s connection to his God and his Torah.  This great, revealed miracle demonstrates real, divine closeness, and this closeness is itself the primary revelation of faith. As far as The Kuzari is concerned, miracles are not some momentary “hocus pocus,” they are events that carry within them the sensation of direct encounter with the wondrous, the mystical. This is the religious significance of miracles, without which they have no meaning.

 

What is Faith?

 

6. Rav Shagar, “My Faith,” Faith Shattered and Restored, 22-24

 

Philosophies and outlooks are, in this context, nothing but rationalizations – apologetics, even – whose sole role is to justify what has already been arrived at, and which must thus be regarded with a certain wariness. They are not the substance of faith but explanations for it; thus, they are ancillary to it and always involve a degree of duality. To paraphrase the opponents of Maimonides and his school, who stated that a God whose existence must be proven is no God at all, I offer the absurd assertion that a believer who requires an intellectual proof for his faith is no believer at all.

There is no proof of faith, and no certainty of faith to be gained with a proof. In any event, proofs do not impact our existence like a gun pointed at one’s temple; they do not touch upon the believer’s inner life. That is why, when it comes to faith, I prefer to use terms such as “event” and “experience.” God’s presence in my prayers is as tangible to me as the presence of a human interlocutor. That is not a proof but rather an immediate experience. Similarly, I do not assert that the sight of someone standing in front of me is proof of the person’s existence. That would be foolish: After all, I see you.

 

You Did Miracles For Our Forefathers

 

7. Yishai Mevorach, A Theology of Absence, 57

 

“With those who are standing here with us this day before the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here this day” (Devarim 29:14).” These words correctly present the deep meaning of the biblical idea of a covenant (berit), which means being a sign-representation of the past encounter, of the moment of responsibility and obligation towards the other who confronts me. Similarly for the father of the nation, Avraham: “I will maintain My covenant between Me and you, and your offspring who come after you, as an everlasting covenant throughout the ages, to be God to you and to your offspring who come after you. […] As for you, you and your offspring who come after you throughout the ages shall keep My covenant. […] every male among you shall be circumcised. […] and that shall be the sign of the covenant between Me and you. […] Thus shall My covenant be marked in your flesh as an everlasting pact” (Bereshit 17:7-13). If so, maintaining the covenant means being a body that expresses the past, as a past that was, in a present that has nothing of its own. Maintaining the covenant means living without revelation or redemption that happen to me. Instead, I see myself as “offspring who come after,” as a symbol of the event and encounter that was.

 

8. Yishai Mevorach, A Theology of Absence, 63

 

A covenantal life is when two people willingly exist as representations of a moment of revelation, the engagement, that happened in the past. In their past there was a “face to face” moment of revelation-responsibility, and now the couple are a symbol of that time. A life of covenant is not about the Other who reveals himself to me, but the Other who revealed himself to me, and the I, the face, who was the address of that revelation.
Here too, as with prayer and the commandments, secularized Western culture boldly tries to fill a couple with tension and expectations of revelation. This is why couples are always told about workshops, classes, magical getaways with youthful atmospheres, bungalows, taking time away from parenting, analyzing their tension, and so on and so on, ideas without end, all just so that the couple will resume discovering each other and revealing themselves to one another. However, “this is all Christian,” as Rosenzweig would say. Someone who wants to hold onto an Other who is currently revealing himself, without any disruption, is asking to live without a covenant. In a covenant, there is no revelation, only a faithful representation thereof. This forces or coerces a person to carry the covenant onward, toward the children who bear its sign.

Rav Shagar on Shabbat Hanukkah- The Candle and the Sacrifice

My latest Rav Shagar translation, a derashah for Shabbat Hanukkah, with an explanatory introduction by Prof. Alan Brill.

Rav Shagar on Shabbat Hanukkah- The Candle and the Sacrifice

https://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2019/12/22/rav-shagar-on-shabbat-hanukkah-the-candle-and-the-sacrifice/
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