Twitter Time

Dear Readers,

I am truly sorry that I haven't been able to post or respond to comments as often as I have in the past. Almost all of my time has been devoted to my high school teaching job, and the accompanying graduate school work.

Today I launched an experimental project that you might find of interest. I decided to start using Twitter. What is Twitter and how do you use it? Here's some basic information from the Twitter FAQ page:

What is it?

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. People write short updates, often called "tweets" of 140 characters or fewer. These messages are posted to your profile or your blog, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search.

Do I need anything special to use it?

All you need to use Twitter is an internet connection or a mobile phone. Join us here! Once you're in, type your first update into the web box. To get an idea of what other people are saying or doing on Twitter, check out Twitter search to see what Twitter's all about.

What does it mean to follow someone on Twitter?

Following someone simply means receiving their Twitter updates. When you follow someone, every time they post a new message, it will appear on your Twitter home page. New messages are added to your home page as people post them, so you always get the updates in real time. When you log in, you can see what the latest updates are. Twitter offers other ways to follow people too: you can get updates from certain people on your phone!

I would like to make something very clear at the outset. My Twitter account is not intended to replace or substitute in any way for this blog. In fact, I launched the Twitter project for the sake of the students I teach and the other students at the high school. It isn't even intended for my regular blog audience. Nevertheless, I decided to announce it here, in case you'd like to follow.

Since Twitter posts (a.k.a. "Tweets") can only be 140 characters long, I have decided to confine my posts to quotations from Torah and other thinkers, and my own observations. I will probably only Tweet once or twice a day.

If you would like to follow my Twitter, go to http://twitter.com/RMSchneeweiss and follow the instructions for setting up an account.

I hope to be able to make enough time to resume my blog. I have a post about the philosophy of Ayn Rand in the works. Stay tuned!

- Matt

"To Be or Not to Be?" - a Dispute between Beis Hillel and Beis Shammai (Part 1)

Introduction

The Gemara in Eiruvin 13b states:

תנו רבנן שתי שנים ומחצה נחלקו בית שמאי ובית הלל הללו אומרים נוח לו לאדם שלא נברא יותר משנברא והללו אומרים נוח לו לאדם שנברא יותר משלא נברא נמנו וגמרו נוח לו לאדם שלא נברא יותר משנברא עכשיו שנברא יפשפש במעשיו ואמרי לה ימשמש במעשיו

It was taught in a Braisa: Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel debated [the following issue] for two and a half years: this side said, "It is better for a person to have not been created than to have been created," and the other side said, "It is better for a person to have been created than to not have been created." They took a vote and resolved: it is better for a person to have not been created than to have been created; now that he has been created, yefashfesh b'maasav ("he should analyze his actions"); others say, yemashmesh b'maasav ("he should evaluate his actions").

Since the terms "yefashfesh" and "yemashmesh" are basically synonymous, Rashi explains the difference in the way they are used here:

yefashfesh b'maasav: [he should analyze] the actions he has done in the past; he should examine the transgressions he has done, and he should engage in vidui (confession) and teshuvah (repentance).

yemashmesh b'maasav: for example, if an opportunity for a mitzvah arises, he should evaluate the loss of the mitzvah against its benefit, and he should not refrain from doing it because of the loss; and if an opportunity for a transgression arises, he should evaluate the immediate benefit he will receive by committing it against the future loss he will suffer.

This Gemara is basically self-explanatory, so I'm not going to comment on it.


























Questions

Self-explanatory? Yeah right. To the contrary, this Gemara raises some major problems. Here are the questions we asked:

1. How can they even have such a machlokes (dispute), and how can they arrive at such a conclusion? The Torah says, "And God created man . . . and God saw all that He had created, and behold: it was very good" (Bereishis 1:27,31). Doesn't this settle the question? God created man and deemed his creation good. What more is there to discuss? And what kind of a conclusion is this - are they saying that God was wrong, or that He made a mistake? God forbid!
2. What is the root of the machlokes? Setting aside our first question, we must still ask: what are they really arguing about? What does each side maintain? What arguments or evidence did they present?
3. Why did they take a vote? We have a principle: there is no psak (adjudication) in philosophy. To be more precise, there is no psak in determining the truth. Truth is not decided based on majority opinion. Nevertheless, when it comes to halacha, we must resort to a vote in order to arrive at a conclusion - not for the sake of determining theoretical truth, but because halacha is a uniform system of law, and we must determine how we should act. But when it comes to philosophy, what place is there for a vote? Moreover, I have never seen another philosophical machlokes where a resolution was arrived at by a vote. Why is this machlokes different than the others?
4. Who cares about the duration of the machlokes? The Braisa informs us that Beis Hillel and Beis Shammai debated this issue for two and a half years. Fine . . . but so what? Is it really important for us to know the duration of their machlokes? The Gemara is full of such debates, but it rarely (if ever) tells us how long they lasted.
5. What does the conclusion have to do with the resolution of the machlokes? The Braisa implies that yefashfesh/yemashmesh b'maasav is a nafkah minah (practical ramification) of the machlokes - but is that really true? What if the vote resulted in the other conclusion, that man is better off having been created than having not been created? Wouldn't we still have to analyze our past actions and do teshuvah? Wouldn't we still have to evaluate the mitzvos and transgressions that come our way and make the right decision? In other words, what the Braisa presents as a nafkah minah of the machlokes seems to have nothing to do with the machlokes! No matter which side of the machlokes one maintains, one would still agree with the injunction of yefashfesh/yemashmesh b'maasav. If so, then why does the Braisa present this advice here, after the resolution of the machlokes?

There is also a sixth question, which I might be thinking about simply because of the time of year. We are currently in the middle of Chag ha'Sukkos, which we refer to as zman simchaseinu (the time of our happiness). The Rambam writes in Hilchos Shofar, Sukkah, v'Lulav:

The simchah which man rejoices in through doing the mitzvos and in loving the God Who commanded them is, itself, a great avodah (service). Anyone who prevents himself from this rejoicing is fit to be punished, as it is stated, “Because you did not serve Hashem, your God, with simchah and goodness of heart” (Devarim 28:47).

Simchah seems to be one of the highest states of existence that man can attain. During Yom Tov - and doing Sukkos, in particular - we are urged to achieve this level of simchah to the extent possible. Yet, I can't help but wonder: How can one experience such simchah knowing that it would be better if he were not created? I have similar question based on Sefer Koheles (the Book of Ecclesiastes), which we also read during this time. Koheles paints a dismal outlook on man's existence, which seems to undermine the very possibility for attaining the level of simchah as commanded by the Torah. How can the command to have simchah be reconciled with the conclusion of our Gemara and the ideas in Koheles?

These are the questions we came up with; the first two are clearly the major questions (and might actually be the same question). We worked on this machlokes for the first two days of Sukkos, but didn't come up with any final answers. Nevertheless, we managed to take a few solid steps, which I plan on sharing with you over the next few days. With God's help, we will be able to understand this machlokes, which will give us insight into reality and enable us to apply this insight to our own lives. For now, I wish you a Chag sameach - to the extent possible!

Zechus and Avon (Repost)

Update 9/27/09, at 10:45pm: I decided to repost the idea about zechus and avon that I was able to discover last year, thank God. I haven't had time to thoroughly review and critique this idea in light of my current understanding, but I did tweak a few things as I reread it this time around. I hope that merely bringing up the topic again on Erev Yom ha'Kippurim will spark further thoughts and discussion.

Rambam: Hilchos Teshuvah, Chapter Three

In my opinion, the most cryptic section of the Mishneh Torah is Chapter Three of Hilchos Teshuvah, the subject of which is the shikul zechiyos kneged avonos - the weighing of the zechiyos and avonos (terms which I will not translate at the moment). No matter how many times I read this chapter, it never fails to perplex me. For now, let's just focus on the first four halachos. I've emphasized what I see as the key lines:

3:1 - Each and every person has zechiyos and avonos. A person whose zechciyos are greater than his avonos is righteous (tzadik), and one whose avonos are greater than his zechiyos is evil (rasha). A person whose zechiyos and avonos are half-and-half is a middle-guy (beinoni).

The same is true for the country: if the zechiyos of its inhabitants are more than their avonos, it is righteous, and if its avonos are more, it is evil. The same is true for the entire world.

3:2 - A person whose avonos exceed his zechiyos immediately dies in his wickedness, as it is stated, "Because of the abundance of your avon" (Yirmiyahu 30:14-15). The same is true for a country: if the avonos of its inhabitants are more numerous, it will immediately be destroyed, as it is stated, "And the cry of Sodom and Amorah was great" (Bereishis 18:20). The same is true for the whole world: if their avonos are more numerous, they will be destroyed, as it is stated, "And Hashem saw that the evil of man was great" (ibid. 6:5).

This weighing [of zechiyos and avonos] does not go according to their quantity, but according to their magnitude. There can be a zechus that is equal to many avonos, as it is stated, "Because of the fact that he found something good in him" (Melachim I 14:13), and there can be an avon that is equal to many zechiyos, as it is stated, "One sinner can destroy much good" (Koheles 9:18). This weighing is only done in the "Mind" of the God of Deios; He is the One Who knows how to evaluate the zechiyos against the avonos.

3:3 - Anyone who regrets the mitzvos he has done and gives up hope on the zechiyos and says in his heart, "What benefit did I get from doing them? Maybe I shouldn't have done them" - such a person loses all of them, and no zechus will be mentioned on his behalf, as it is stated, "The righteousness of the tzadik will not save him on the day of his rebellious sin" (Yechezkiel 33:12) - this only applies to someone who regrets his earlier actions.

Just as the avonos and zechiyos of man are weighed at the time of his death, so too on each and every year the avonos of each and every member of mankind is weighed with his zechiyos on the Yom Tov of Rosh Ha'Shanah. One who is found to exist as a tzadik is sealed for life; one who is found to exist as a rasha is sealed for death; and the beinoni hangs [in the balance] until Yom Ha'Kipurim - if he does teshuvah, he is sealed for life; if not, he is sealed for death.

3:4 - Even though the sounding of the shofar on Rosh Ha'Shanah is a Scriptural decree, there is an allusion in it: it is as if it is saying, "Wake up, wake up you sleepers from your sleep, and you slumberers from your deep slumber! Analyze your actions, return in teshuvah, and remember your Creator" - these are the people who forget reality in the vanities of the times, and whose entire year is steeped in vanity and emptiness which neither benefits them nor saves them - "Look into your souls and improve your ways and your actions. Each and every one of you: abandon your evil way and your scheming that is not good!"

Therefore, each and every person must see himself for the entire year as though he is half exonerated and half liable; likewise, the entire world is half exonerated and half liable. If he commits one sin, he tips himself and the entire world to the side of liability and causes destruction for them. If he does one mitzvah, he tips himself and the entire world to the side of exoneration, and causes them salvation and rescue. This is the meaning of that which is stated, "The tzadik is the foundation of the world" (Mishlei 10:25) - this refers to the person who makes himself righteous, thereby tipping the entire world [to the side of exoneration] and saving it.

Because of this, the entire House of Israel is accustomed to increase their charity and their good actions and to involve themselves in mitzvos between Rosh Ha'Shanah and Yom Ha'Kipurim more than the rest of the year. They are also accustomed to get up in the middle of the night during these ten days to pray in the synagogues with words of supplication and subjugation until daybreak.

The Main Question

These halachos raise many difficult questions. In the interest of time and brevity, I am not going to raise all of them right now. Instead, I am going to focus on one, basic question. The correct answer to this question, I believe (and hope), will unlock the entirety of the chapter, and enable us to answer all of the other questions. If I have time, I will post the answers to these questions before Rosh Ha'Shanah.

The terms "zechus" (pl. "zechiyos") and "avon" (pl. "avonos") are usually translated as "merit" and "sin." In past years I would just gloss over the first line and accept it without question. "Yeah, sure. Every person has merits and sins. That makes sense." But this year I was hit by the most basic question one can ask on the chapter: What are zechiyos and avonos?

Think about the first statement: "Each and every person has zechiyos and avonos." What are we talking about here? In what sense does a person have zechiyos and avonos? I understand the concept of a cheit (sin) or a mitzvah, but a cheit or a mitzvah is something you do, not something you have. It is an event that occurs, not a thing that one has in a permanent sort of way.

Moreover, what does the Rambam mean by the statement: Just as a person has zechiyos and avonos, so too a country, and so too the world? Does a country have zechiyos and avonos in the same way that an individual has them? After all, a country is a very different thing than a person.

Etymology of Zechus and Avon

What do the words "zechus" and "avon" mean? Our standard translation ("merit" and "sin") isn't very informative. Moreover, "merit" and "sin" have Christian overtones, which is usually a bad sign. Let's look at the way these terms are used in Tanach.

The Radak (Sefer Ha'Shorashim) the word "avon" comes from the root 'A.V.T. (ע.ו.ת). For example:

• "יֵבשׁוּ זֵדִים כִּי־שֶׁקֶר עִוְּתוּנִי": "for they have maligned me with lies" (Tehilim 119:78)
• "כִּי מִי יוּכַל לְתַקֵּן אֵת אֲשֶׁר עִוְּתוֹ": "for who can straighten what He has twisted?" (Koheles 7:13)
• "וְהִתְעַוְּתוּ אַנְשֵׁי הֶחָיִל": "when the powerful men will stoop" (ibid. 12:3)

From these examples it seems that the root 'A.V.T. (ע.ו.ת) means "distortion." Depending on the subject and context, we use different words for the different types of distortion. To distort a person's reputation through lying is to "malign." A distortion of something that is supposed to be straight is called "twisted." "Stooping" is a distortion of the natural human posture. The common denominator in these three examples is the idea of distortion.

The Radak writes that the word "zechus" comes from the root Z.C.H. (ז.כ.ה) or Z.C.C. (ז.כ.ך), which, according to the Radak, have the same meaning. Examples of this include:

• "וְיִקְחוּ אֵלֶיךָ שֶׁמֶן זַיִת זָךְ": "take for yourselves pure olive oil" (Shemos 27:20)
• "וַהֲזִכּוֹתִי בְּבֹר כַּפָּי": "and I would cleanse my hands with soap" (Iyov 9:30)
• "זַכּוּ נְזִירֶיהָ מִשֶּׁלֶג": "her crowned ones were purer than snow" (Eichah 4:7)

The Radak then adds: "It is for this reason that glass is called zechuchis (זכוכית), because it is clear (זכה)." Thus, the root Z.C.H. (ז.כ.ה) or Z.C.C. (ז.כ.ך) means "absence of adulterants." (I know that "adulterant" is an unusual word, but trust me: it's the best term I can find.) Depending on the subject and context, we use different words for the different types of unadulteration. Unadulteration in oil - and other substances, such as snow - is called "purity." Unadulteration of the hands is called "cleanliness." Unadulteration in glass is called "clarity" or "transparency."

The Meaning of Zechus and Avon

We are now in a position to ask the question about our subject: What is meant by 'A.V.T. (ע.ו.ת) and Z.C.H. (ז.כ.ה) or Z.C.C. (ז.כ.ך) in the context of Hilchos Teshuvah (i.e. zechus and avon)?

I would like to propose the following theory: "avon" refers to that which distorts our view of reality and a "zechus" refers to that which enables us to see reality clearly. Allow me to explain by quoting what, in my opinion, is a proof that this is what the Rambam means by zechus and avon. In Chapter 7 of Shemoneh Perakim, the Rambam writes:

In many places in the midrash and the aggadah, including some passages quoted in the Talmud, it is stated that some prophets "see" (i.e. know) God behind many veils and others who "see" Him behind fewer veils. The difference depends on the extent of their closeness to God and the level of their prophecy. Thus, it is said that Moshe saw God behind one clear and shining - i.e. transparent - veil. This is what is meant by the expression that "he [Moshe] looked through the brilliant looking glass." The term "looking glass" refers to a lens made from a shining material like diamond or crystal.

The intent of this statement is that, as explained in Chapter 2, there are skills (or virtues) of thinking and skills (or virtues) of living. Conversely, there are imperfections (or vices) in thinking (e.g. foolishness, naïveté , difficulty in understanding) and imperfections (or vices) in living (e.g. gluttony, pride, anger, wrath, brashness, the love for money, and the like). Indeed, there are many of these, and we have mentioned the way to distinguish them in Chapter 4. All these imperfections are the veils that separate between man and God. This was alluded to in the prophet’s statement, "It is your avonos that separate between you and your God." "Your avonos" - namely, the aforementioned imperfections (or vices), are the veils that separate between us and Him.

The Rambam explicitly defines avon. Avonos are the intellectual and psychological imperfections and vices that cloud and distort our view of reality. Avonos "separate between us and God" in that they cause us to remain trapped in the dark world of the psyche and prevent us from seeing the light of His wisdom. Likewise, zechiyos are the virtues and skills in thinking and living that enable us to see reality clearly. Zechiyos remove the veils which prevent us from being illuminated by His light.

Middos and Deios

For the sake of clarity, we will now switch to the Ralbag's terminology. The Ralbag uses the term "midos" for the skills (or virtues) of living, and he uses the term "deios" for the skills (or virtues) of thinking. Thus, there are zechiyos and avonos of midos and zechiyos and avonos of deios. Here are three examples:

Example #1: Anger (kaas) is an avon of midos. Anger stems from a distorted view of one's place in reality, namely, the view that "I am the supreme being, and everything should conform to my will." For this reason, Chazal teach: "One who becomes angry is like one who subordinates himself to avodah zarah." This avon is the cause of harmful and destructive decisions which interfere with one's ability to live a good life. The corresponding zechus to the avon of anger is equanimity: the ability to accept reality even when doesn't conform to one's desires, recognizing that reality conforms to the wisdom of the Creator which is inherently Good.

Example #2: Intellectual timidity (bayshanus) is an avon of deios. Chazal teach: "Lo ha'bashan lomeid" (Avos 2:5). A bayshan is someone who is afraid of appearing stupid. Deep down, he cares more about his self-image than knowledge. Thus, even if he doesn't understand something, he won't ask a question about it, since this would jeopardize his self-image as a chacham. This avon is as severe obstacle to the pursuit of knowledge and intellectual development. The corresponding zechus to this avon is what Pirkei Avos calls "wisdom": "Who is wise? One who learns from everybody" (4:1). A chacham is someone who pursues knowledge under any circumstances, even when this pursuit entails shame and embarrassment.

Example #3: Naïveté (pesayus) is an avon of midos and deos. "The naïve person (pesi) believes everything, but the clever person (aroom) clearly understands each step" (Mishlei 14:15). Naïveté leads a person to make bad decisions in life. He will believe that what feels good is good. Moreover, naïveté causes a person to accept ideas uncritically, without evaluating their truth or falsehood and without grasping them clearly. He will believe that what feels true is true. The corresponding zechus to the avon of naïveté is what Mishlei calls "cleverness": knowledge of the deceptive tendencies and tricks of the psyche, and vigilance in guarding oneself from these illusions.

This idea of zechus and avon is beautifully expressed by a pasuk in Mishlei: "b'Chesed v'emes yechapeir avon, u'v'yiras Hashem sur me'ra" (With kindness and truth one atones for avon, and with fear of Hashem one turns from evil") (Mishlei 16:6). What is the meaning of "chesed" and "emes"? Rabbeinu Yonah explains on Mishlei 3:3:

"Chesed" is a general term referring to the many skills (or virtues) of living, and "Emes" is a general term that refers to the skills (or virtues) of thinking.

In other words, the way to achieve kaparah for avon (the imperfections and vices which distort our vision of reality) is by acquiring good middos (chesed) and good deios (emes).

At this point we can correct our Christianized concept of kaparah (atonement). Kaparah doesn't refer to some magical "cleansing." Rather, kaparah (lit. removal) refers to the removal of avonos: the correction of those imperfections which distort our view of reality. Kaparah is a developmental phenomenon.

Chapter Three Reexamined

Now we are in a position to understand the basic ideas of Hilchos Teshuvah, Chapter Three. When the Rambam says, "Each and every person has zechiyos and avonos," we can now understand what he means. Each and every person has certain skills or virtues which enable him to perceive reality clearly, and certain imperfections or vices which distort his vision of reality.

Likewise, each and every country has societal virtues which enable its inhabitants to see reality clearly, as well as societal vices which distort its inhabitants' vision of reality. For example, an avon of America is "redifas ha'mamon" (the obsessive and fantastical pursuit of money). This avon pervades the entire society to such a great extent that it is almost impossible for an American to have a completely realistic and practical attitude towards money. The country of Burma, on the other hand, does not have America's avon of redifas ha'mamon. On the other hand, America has the zechus of recognizing the value of liberal education (although our educational system is ridden with avon), whereas many other countries in the history of the world - such as Communist Russia and Aboriginal Australia - do not have this zechus.

The same is true for the entire world (i.e. all of mankind). Certain avonos plague the entire human race, such as avodah zarah and addiction to immediate pleasure. On the other hand, there are certain zechiyos that mankind has attained throughout its history. For example, there was a time when the vast majority of the world was ignorant of the concept of natural law, and believed that everything was controlled by gods and spirits. This was a severe, worldwide avon of deios. In modern times, however, the vast majority of the civilized world accepts the notion of natural law and science. This is a major zechus of deios of modern man.

What does the Rambam mean by someone whose zechiyos exceed his avonos and vice versa? For this I give credit to an idea I heard from Rav Pesach in his shiur on malchiyos, zichronos, v'shofros (which I can now express in the Rambam's terms). People are multifaceted. We all have zechiyos and avonos. Even nevi'im have avonos, as the Rambam explained. But the question is: How do you define the person? That is where the Rambam's threefold categorization comes in.

To say that one's zechiyos exceed his avonos means that his zechiyos are predominant. He is essentially living a life of clarity. His zechiyos are his essence, and they define his motion in life. He is moving towards clarity and away from distortion. Does he have avonos? Yes, but his avonos are not who he is. His life is organized around those areas in which he sees reality clearly, and his avonos are those areas of distortion which he has not had the time, opportunity, or ability to remove. This is a tzadik - at least, in this context. Note the Rambam's explanation of the term "tzadik" in the middle paragraph of Hilchos Teshuvah 3:4:

This is the meaning of that which is stated, "The tzadik is the foundation of the world" (Mishlei 10:25) - this refers to the person who is tzeedek es atzmo (i.e. aligns himself with tzedek, or justice), thereby tipping the entire world [to the side of exoneration] and saving it.

To say that one's avonos exceed his zechiyos means that his avonos are predominant. He is essentially living a life of distortion. His avonos are his essence, and they define his motion in life. He is "sleeping" and "slumbering" and his "entire year is steeped in vanity and emptiness which neither benefits nor saves." Does he have zechiyos? Yes, but his zechiyos have little or nothing to do with his identity. His life is devoted to avon, in spite of his zechiyos. He is locked in the world of his avonos, and has chosen to organize his life around them. This is a rasha.

And what does it mean to say that one's zechiyos and avonos are "half and half"? This means that he is undefined. His life is partially organized around his zechiyos, and partially organized around his avonos. He is pulled between both worlds. If asked, "Are you essentially in reality, in spite of your remaining areas of distortion, or are you essentially living a life of distortion in spite of your few areas of clarity?" he would not be able to answer. This is a beinoni.

As the Rambam writes in 3:3, we must view ourselves throughout the entire year as though we are beinoni'im. Why? Because of the principle in 3:2: "this weighing is only done in the 'Mind' of the God of Deios; He is the One Who knows how to evaluate the zechiyos against the avonos." Man is incapable of evaluating his zechiyos and avonos. A person can know that he has a certain avon or a certain zechus, but he cannot know to what extent that avon or zechus affects his life in the present nor can he know how it will affect him in the future. And all the more so, one person cannot evaluate the zechiyos and avonos of another person.

For example, anger is clearly an avon, but is a person capable of seeing how deep this avon is in his psyche? Is he capable of knowing to what extent this will affect his decision making and the course of his life? Likewise, "cleverness" (a la Mishlei) is clearly a zechus, but is a person capable of knowing how much of this zechus he has, or how much of an effect it will have on his development?

The answer to these questions is: no. The only Being Who can evaluate these things is the "God of deios" - namely, Hashem, Who has absolute knowledge of all deios (virtues and vices), and Who is the very frame of reference for all deos - the standard by which all deos are measured. "B'chol derachecha daeihu, v'Hu yeyasheir orchosecha," ("In all of your ways know Him, and He will straighten your paths") (Mishlei 3:6). The frame of reference for all zechiyos and avonos - both in the realm of the Ralbag's midos and deios - is knowledge of reality, the objective of which is knowledge of Hashem, as the navi says: "For only with this may one glorify himself: contemplating and knowing Me, for I am Hashem Who does kindness, justice, and righteousness in the land, for in these is My desire" (Yirmiyahu 9:24).

Therefore, we have no choice but to view ourselves as beinoni'im. Not only that, but we must view ourselves as beinoni'im in peril. Since we cannot evaluate the magnitude of our zechiyos and avonos, we must be cautious and assume that one more cheit could tip the scales, and cause us to become defined by our avonos. Likewise, one more mitzvah might result in a zechus which could tip the scales and cause us to become defined by our zechiyos.

This not just a fluffy inspirational message, but a reality. Reflect on your life for a moment. I am sure you can think of one decision you made or one idea which you learned which gave you a little bit more clarity in your perception of reality than you originally had, and that additional clarity ultimately resulted in setting your life in a new direction. Likewise, I'm sure you can think of one bad decision you made or one emotion you gave into which might have permanently set your life in a negative direction. Of course, it is impossible to know how much that decision might have affected you, but you can still see that lost clarity of vision in a way that had a ripple-effect on subsequent decisions.

This is what it means to be a beinoni in peril. This is why it is of the utmost importance to follow through with that one additional good decision or to gain clarity in that one additional idea, not just during the Aseres Ymei Teshuvah, but for the entire year. Only God knows the state of your soul, but only you can make the decisions which determine your fate.

And with that I wish you all a successful Yom ha'Kippurim, in which you achieve the objectives of the day in accordance with your potential: gaining clarity in your perception of reality, doing real teshuvah, and being remembered before Hashem for good.

Richard Mitchell: On Being Human (Repost)

Repost 9/25/09: I recently gave this excerpt to my students for an extra credit assignment, and I realized that I made a huge typo when I posted this on the blog last time (I spliced one paragraph right into the middle of the other AND I messed up the order). Since this post is so relevant to the Aseres Ymei Teshuvah, I decided to repost it now.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I am currently rereading my favorite book on education, "The Gift of Fire," by Richard Mitchell. Unfortunately, most of the book is unexcerptable; by that, I mean that each chapter is built upon ideas from prior chapters, so an excerpt in isolation will not be fully comprehensible. That being said, I'd like excerpt the second half of Chapter 1, entitled, "Who is Socrates, now that we need him?"

I imagine some well-informed and largely wise visitor from another world who comes to Earth to study us. He begins by choosing two people at random, and, since time and place are of no importance to him, but only the single fact of humanity, he chooses Socrates and me, leaving aside for the moment every other human being. He begins with an understanding of the single but tremendous attribute that distinguishes us both from all other creatures of Earth. We are capable of Reason. Capable. We can know ourselves, unlike the foxes and the oaks, and can know that we know ourselves. He knows that while we have appetites and urges just like all the other creatures, we have the astonishing power of seeing them not simply as the necessary attributes of what we are, but as separate from us in a strange way, so that we can hold them at arm's length, turning them this way and that, and make judgment of them, and even put them aside, saying, Yes, that is "me," in a way, but, when I choose, it is just a thing, not truly me, but only mine. He sees, in short, what "human" means in "human beings."

And then he considers the specimens he has chosen, Socrates and me. He measures that degree to which they conform to what "human" means in "human beings." With those superior extraterrestrial powers that imagination grants him, he will easily discover:

That I have notions, certain "sayings" in my mind, that flatly contradict one another; believing, for instance, that I can choose for myself the path of my life while blaming other people for the difficulty of the path. With Socrates, this is not the case.

That my mind is full of ideas that are truly nothing more than words, and that as to the meaning of the words I have no clear and constant idea, behaving today as though "justice" were one thing, and tomorrow as though it were another. That, while wanting to be happy and good, I have no clear ideas by which I might distinguish, or might even want to distinguish, happiness from pleasure, and goodness from social acceptability. With Socrates, this is not the case.

That I usually believe what I believe not because I have tested and found it coherent and consistent, and harmonious with evidence, but because it is also believed by the right people, people like me, and because it pleases me. And that furthermore, I live and act and speak as though my believing were no different from my knowing. With Socrates, this is not the case.

That I put myself forth as one who can direct and govern the minds, the inner lives, of others, that, in fact, I make my living as one who can do that, but that my own actions are governed, more often than not, by desire or whim. With Socrates, this is not the case.

That I seem to have a great need for things, and think myself somehow treated unjustly by an insufficiency of them, and that this insufficiency, which seems strangely to persist even after I get hold of the thing whose necessity I have most recently noted, prevents in me that cheerful and temperate disposition to which I deem myself entitled. With Socrates, this is not the case.

That I seem to know what I want, but that I have no way of figuring out whether I should want what I want, and that, indeed, it does not occur to me that I should be able to figure that out. With Socrates, this is not the case.

And that, in short and in general, my mind, the thing that most makes us human, is not doing the steering of this life, but is usually being hustled along on a wild ride by the disorderly and conflicting commands of whole hosts of notions, appetites, hopes, and fears. With Socrates, this is not the case.

How could the alien enquirer help concluding that there is something "wrong" with me, and that the humanness that is indeed in me has been somehow "broken," which he can clearly see by comparing me with Socrates? Must he not decide that Socrates is the normal human, and I the freak, the distortion of human nature?

When he pronounces me the freak, and Socrates the perfectly ordinary, normal human being, living quite obviously, as perhaps only an "alien" can see, by the power of that which most makes a human a human, shall I defend myself by appeal to the principle of majority rule? Shall I say: Well, after all, Socrates is only one human being, and all the others are more like me. Would I not prove myself all the more the freak by my dependence on such a preposterously irrelevant principle? If that visitor were rude, he might well point out that my ability to see, on the one hand, what is natural to human beings, and to claim, on the other, that its absence is only natural, and thus normal, is just the sort of reasoning that he would expect of a freak, whose very freakishness is seen in his inability to do what is simply natural to his species--that is, to make sense.

But Socrates would defend me. He would say, for this he said very often:

No, my young friend is not truly a freak. All that I can do, he can do; he just doesn't do it. And if he doesn't do it, it is because of something else that is natural to human beings, and just as human as the powers that you rightly find human in me. Before we awaken, we must sleep, and some of us sleep deeper and longer than others. It may be, that unless we are awakened by some help from other human beings, we sleep our lives away, and never come into those powers. But we can be awakened.

In that respect, my friend is not a freak. He might better be thought a sleepwalker, moving about in the world, and getting all sorts of things done, often on time, and sometimes very effectively indeed. But the very power of routine habit by which he can do all that has become the only government that he knows. And the voices of his desires are loud. He is just now not in a condition to give his full attention to any meaning that might be found in all that he does, or to consider carefully how to distinguish between the better and the worse. He might be thought a child, and a perfectly natural child, who lives still in that curious, glorious haze of youth, when only desire seems worthy of obedience, and when the mighty fact of the world that is so very "there" looms immeasurably larger than the fact of the self that is in that world. He might grow up, and it is the "mightness" in him that makes him truly human, however he may look like a freak just now. From time to time, we are all just such freaks, and mindless, for mindlessness is the great background of noise out of which some few certain sounds can be brought forth and harmonized as music.

___________

I am often worried and vexed about the colossal social institution of "schooling," of which I am a paid agent. My quarrels and complaint with schooling are beyond my counting, and also, I must admit, valid but trivial. Looming behind all of the silly things that we do in schools, and pass off as an "education" that would have startled Socrates, there is nothing less than a great, pervading spirit of dullness and tedium, of irksome but necessary labors directed completely toward the consolidation of the mundane through the accumulation of the trivial. In school, there is no solemnity, no reverence, no awe, no wonder. We not only fail to claim, but refuse to claim, and would be ashamed to claim that our proper business was with the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, and that this business can be conducted not through arousing pleasant feelings, but through working the mind. Thus it is that education is exceedingly rare in schooling, and when it breaks out, it is as the result of some happy accident, an accident that might have befallen a prepared mind, or maybe any mind at all, just as readily in the streets as in the schools.

Education makes music out of the noise that fills life. And from the random and incessant background noise of what we suppose the "mind," meaning really the appetites and sentiments, education weighs and considers, draws forth and arranges, unites the distant with the near, the familiar with the strange, and makes, by Reason, the harmonious music that is Reason. If we can know anything at all about How to Live, it is in Reason that we must seek it, for the only other possibility is to seek it outside of Reason, in the disorder of noise. I am convinced that Socrates is right, that anyone can make that search and decide, not what the Meaning and Purpose of Life is, but what the meaning and purpose of the searcher's life should be, and thus to live better.

What My Students Taught Me About Shofar

I apologize to the readers of this blog for not posting more often. As you may or may not know, I now have a job as a high school teacher (or "high school rebbi," depending on where you come from). This semester I am teaching two classes: 11th grade girls Chumash, and 10th grade boys Talmud. My teaching duties absorb almost all of my time, which is why I haven't gotten around to writing for my blog since the end of the summer. (Yesterday's post was an accident: it was only halfway finished, but I accidentally scheduled it to go up on Thursday instead of saving it to my draft folder; by the time I had realized my mistake, people had already started commenting, so I decided to leave it up.)

Since I am not teaching in school today, I decided to share with you some ideas that I learned with my students this week. We spent Wednesday and Thursday discussing the following halacha from the Rambam:

רמב"ם: משנה תורה: הלכות תשובה פרק ג הלכה ד

אע"פ שתקיעת שופר בראש השנה גזירת הכתוב רמז יש בו, כלומר: עורו עורו ישנים משנתכם והקיצו נרדמים מתרדמתכם וחפשו במעשיכם, וחזרו בתשובה, וזכרו בוראכם - אלו השוכחים את האמת בהבלי הזמן ושוגים כל שנתם בהבל וריק אשר לא יועיל ולא יציל - הביטו לנפשותיכם והטיבו דרכיכם ומעלליכם ויעזוב כל אחד מכם דרכו הרעה ומחשבתו אשר לא טובה.

Rambam: Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Teshuvah 3:4

Even though the sounding of the shofar on Rosh ha’Shanah is a Scriptural decree, it contains an allusion. It is as if it is saying, "Wake up! Wake up you slumberers from your slumber! Be aroused you deep sleepers from your deep sleep! Analyze your actions, return in teshuvah (repentance), and remember your Creator!" - these [sleepers and deep slumberers] are the people who forget reality in the nonsense of the times, and spend their entire year immersed in nonsense and emptiness which neither benefits nor saves - "Look to your souls and improve your ways and your actions! Every one of you: abandon your bad path and your planning which is not good."

If we summarize this halacha from the Rambam and boil it down to one sentence, we get something like this: "The Shofar is telling us to wake up from our sleep and do teshuvah."

Already, this yields an important insight: that there are two steps in the process - first you must "wake up" from your "sleep," and only then can you do teshuvah. In class I decided to devote this week to understanding what it means to be "asleep" and to "wake up." We will spend next week trying to understanding teshuvah.

The Rambam is generous in his "decoding" of the metaphor of sleep. He says that the slumberers and deep sleepers are "the people who forget reality in the nonsense of the times, and spend their entire year immersed in nonsense and emptiness which neither benefits nor saves." Nevertheless, I found the Rambam's explanation to be too abstract and remote - at least, too abstract and remote to me, and, I suspect, to many (or all) of my students.

Taking a leaf from Rambam System, I assigned the students a creative homework assignment for Wednesday night. This assignment was based on the premise that by clearly understanding a mashal (metaphor) on its own terms, one will be able to arrive at a clearer and realer understanding of the nimshal (that which the metaphor signifies). According to the Rambam, the shofar is telling us to wake up from our slumber and deep sleep. The reason why we need a mitzvah of shofar is because we have a strong resistance to waking up. Most of us don't even know we're sleeping, and when the shofar alarm goes off, our resistance causes us to hit the snooze button by blocking out the message of the shofar, or preventing us from really applying it to ourselves.

I wanted the students to reflect on their resistance to waking up, and to use that reflection to understand the Rambam's mashal in a manner that is real to them. The assignment was as follows: "Describe, in rich and vivid detail, your thoughts and feelings when it's time to get out of bed and you don't want to wake up." I received some excellent responses, such as Jacqui's:

Soft. Warm. Peaceful.

My cocoon is a safety zone, somewhere I can stay when the world is too much, and I just feel like ignoring the fact that I have three tests in the morning.

Suddenly, a knock on the wall rouses me, but only halfway. I pretend to still be dreaming. "JACQUI! WAKE UP!" It's that bugler again, the one that likes me to call her "Mom". Ugh. Unfortunately, people have no "snooze" buttons. My "alarm clock" is not the type that shuts up when you hit it. It is the type that just keeps yelling louder.

Suddenly, a knock on the wall rouses me, but only halfway. I pretend to still be dreaming. "JACQUI! WAKE UP!" It's that bugler again, the one that likes me to call her "Mom". Ugh. Unfortunately, people have no "snooze" buttons. My "alarm clock" is not the type that shuts up when you hit it. It is the type that just keeps yelling louder.

I can't bring myself to answer, because i know that if i started, i would not stop screaming. Needless to say, i am NOT a morning person.

I consider an opinion of mine that I have thought over many times before: schools forcing us to wake up so early should be considered child abuse. Vaguely, I wonder whether it would actually be possible to sue HAFTR for that. Going to court would be fun. I would miss a bunch of classes, get a nice briefcase, and the judge would be a big purple dragon that would--

"JACQUI! IT'S BEEN TEN MINUTES!"

Apparently, I had gone back to sleep. Great. A little voice in the back of my mind tells me that if I miss too much school, my grades would go down, affecting my future college choice. A louder voice in the front of my mind tells the smaller voice to shut up and go to sleep.

I was just nodding off again, when suddenly, a stream of light pierces through the cocoon wall, battering my closed eyelids. I struggle to open them. "Wha--" I start to say, and then everything goes cold. Finally, I manage to pry my tired eyes open, to find my mother standing over me, holding my blankets. "There," she says. "Your blankets are gone. Now get up."

Reluctantly, I move one leg, and then two, until I find myself standing. I struggle to stay up.

After getting ready, I go downstairs to find my brother fleeing the room. Wise choice. Who knows what I would to do him if he began to speak to me at this hour of the morning.

Finally, I find myself in school, where, still not fully awake, I proceed to let everyone there know that I am definately not here out of my own free will, and that I was rudely forced awake.

After all, it's one thing if a butterfly emerges from its cocoon on its own, but its entirely different if it was forced out before it was even ready.

The next day in class, I helped them to glean insights from their submissions and formulate as principles which can be used as a bridge from the mashal to the nimshal. Here are the principles we came up with, and my brief explanation of each one:

When you first wake up in the morning and do not want to get up . . .

• You have a distorted notion of possible and impossible: You are convinced that getting out of bed is absolutely impossible, but in truth, it's actually quite possible.
  
• You have a distorted notion of good and evil: You are convinced that the alarm clock is the most evil thing in the world - yet, you are the one who set it the night before, and you set it knowing that if it wasn't there to wake you up, you would really regret it.
  
• You are in a state of inner conflict: One part of you tells you that you have no responsibilities and nothing will happen if you just go back to sleep, while the other reminds you how bad of a decision that would really be.
  
• You are not your true self: Whoever you are in waking life is entirely dormant in those moments when you fight the urge to wake up, and you and want nothing but to go back to sleep.
  
• You lose all sense of time: You keep hitting the snooze button over and over and over again, as if you have an infinite amount of time, and as if the day and its responsibilities will wait for you as long as you want.
  
• You convince yourself that there is no reason to wake up: You ask yourself, "Why bother getting up? It's just going to be the same day as it always is: eating breakfast, going to work/school, eating lunch, going back to work/school, going home, eating dinner, watching TV, doing errands/homework, going back to sleep, and then doing the whole thing over again in the morning."
  
• You rationalize your decision to stay in bed, and you believe your rationalizations: You tell yourself, "I really like the song that's playing on the radio; I'll just lie here in bed and finish it; one song won't matter. Ooo! I like the next one too. It won't hurt if I listen to that one as well." Before you know it, there are only 10 minutes left before you have to be in your car on the way to work/school.
  
• You feel as though nothing else matters: Staying in bed has become the highest priority, and everything else in life is absolutely unimportant, and not even worth considering.
  
• You have a desire to not be bound by time: You wish that time could just stop, so that you won't have a limit on your sleep. (Of course, you never stop to think about the fact that there is only One Being is outside of time . . . )
  
• You feel indignation at reality - as if the world is against you: You ask yourself, "How can this BE? How DARE they force me out of bed? Who are THEY to make be do something against my will?"
  
• You are convinced that what feels good is good: The equation is simple: staying in bed feels good, so that must be the right thing to do; getting out of bed feels bad, so it must be wrong.
  
• You feel that sleep is a "safety zone": By going to sleep, you feel that you can escape from all of the harsh realities of life and make them vanish - when in truth, by going back to sleep, you are only increasing your vulnerability to these threats.
  
• You are in a mindless, thoughtless, habitual fog: even when you physically get out of bed, you are mentally asleep and are on unthinking auto-pilot.

These are the observations we came up with about the state of sleep and the resistance to waking up. Many of them can directly be translated into the Rambam's metaphor of sleep and our resistance to waking up. For Thursday's homework, I asked my students what the shofar is saying to us, based on our discussion of sleep. Here is an example from Sabrina, one of my most outstanding students. (I edited the spelling and punctuation, and I also bolded and underlined the phrases I wanted to emphasize):

From what I got out of our learning and previous knowledge of the matter, the shofar being blown is symbolic for waking up to do the mitzvot from our year of sinning and wrongful doings . . . wrong, either becuase they are easier then doing the right thing or just because we have done it a thousand times before, just becuase we are stuck in this cyclical, repetitive agenda that fits what's easiest and most comfortable with us. But when the shofar is blown it's supposed to awaken something inside of you. All year you know everything that you are doing is wrong or right, you just don't care. You always hear that little voice in the back of your mind telling you not to do it because its not the right thing to do, but you ignore it. Once you hear the shofar it doesn't trigger an imaginary pool of information on halachot and Torah and you suddenly know whats right and wrong and what you did was bad. It's supposed to act as a push in the right direction, an epiphany of sorts, saying that its now, you have a moment of clarity that if there is an action on the single purpose that's supposed to make you aware that what you are doing is wrong and that change needs to happen, it should be obvious that it is important enough to actually listen and start the wheels turning. That's all its SUPPOSED to do. The shofar isn't going to magically turn you into a God fearing, Torah obeying perfect Jew. But if all it does is make you start thinking of what needs to be changed then it has done its job. It has "awakened" you from the "slumber" that you were in, unproductive, not of any gain to the world, unchanging, and trying to shelter yourself from you responsibilities. The shofar PULLS you out of your "sheltered bed" - a bubble that protects and shields and freezing everything and anything you are not ready or up for and it pulls you into the world of righteousness and responsibilities, so that now you can see past that fog of morning confusion and grogginess and see Torah and its mitzvot in the clarity that is the shofar.

It is true what Chazal say: you learn more from your students than you do from your peers and teachers. In fact, my students have helped me to change the way I approach Rosh ha'Shanah. In past years I've focused heavily on teshuvah. This year, I will not. To focus on teshuvah would be to skip over a vital step: waking up. God willing, there will be time for teshuvah during the Aseres Ymei Teshuvah (the Ten Days of Repentance). Instead, I am going to devote this Rosh ha'Shanah to realizing how deeply I am asleep, and beginning the difficult task of waking myself up.

And so I wish you all the same thing I wished my students as I dismissed them from class: "This Rosh ha'Shanah, may you wake up, and stay up."

The Human Struggle (a.k.a. "The Marshmallow Experiment")

The following is a description of "The Marshmallow Experiment," from the Wikipedia entry, "Deferred Gratification":

The marshmallow experiment is a famous test of this concept conducted by Walter Mischel at Stanford University and discussed by Daniel Goleman in his
popular work. In the 1960s, a group of four-year olds were given a marshmallow and promised another, only if they could wait 20 minutes before eating the first one. Some children could wait and others could not. The researchers then followed the progress of each child into adolescence, and demonstrated that those with the ability to wait were better adjusted and more dependable (determined via surveys of their parents and teachers), and scored an average of 210 points higher on
the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Here is a humorous (or tragic, depending on how you look at it) video of a marshmallow experiment:



In the original experiment, children were given the marshmallow and a bell. If they rang the bell, the experimenter would come immediately and grant them permission to eat the marshmallow, but they would forfeit the second marshmallow.

The Perfect Piña Colada (Doesn't Exist)

The Experience

We just came back from visiting my grandmother in Hawaii. It was a short trip, but I managed to get in some solid relaxation time on the beach. On one particularly beautiful day I saw people walking around sipping piña coladas from hollowed out pineapple shells, like the one in this picture. It was such a hot and sunny day and those piña coladas looked so cool and refreshing that I decided to buy one for myself.

I went over to the bar and asked how much a piña colada costs. The bartender responded, "$13". My first reaction was "!!!" But then I told myself, "What the heck. I'm on vacation," and placed my order. He handed me my cocktail and I eagerly went back to my beach chair to enjoy it.

It was the perfect piña colada . . . for about 30 seconds. Then reality kicked in.

First of all, the thing was massive. Technically speaking I could hold it in one hand, but it was so big and unwieldy that I was afraid I would drop it, so I held it with both hands instead. This compromised my bodily position, making it difficulty to recline in my beach chair and drink at the same time. I was forced to hunch forward in my chair while holding the pineapple in both hands. So much for the drinking-while-luxuriating.

Shortly thereafter I began to get annoyed by the freezing temperature of the shell. You see, it would be inefficient to hollow out a fresh pineapple on the spot for every customer, so instead, all of the pineapple shells are hollowed out ahead of time and then frozen until an order is placed. When I first got my piña colada, the pineapple shell was actually encrusted with ice. This made my grip even harder to tolerate.

Then the pineapple started to thaw. If I were drinking from an ordinary glass, I would just get a little bit of condensation-water on my hands, which wouldn't be a big deal, but this was not an ordinary glass; it was a natural fruit co-opted for an unnatural purpose. As the shell thawed, the pineapple juice began dripping onto my hands. That alone wouldn't have been so bad, but as it continued to thaw, the juice ran down my arms, reaching my elbows and quickly drying into a sticky residue.

That wasn't the only ill effect of the melting fruit. As I continued to sip the piña colada, I started to detect the taste of old, freezer-burned pineapple. Apparently, these fruits were not frozen that morning, but were prepared days or weeks in advance. I suddenly realized that the thawing pineapple put me on a clock: the slower I drank, the more my piña colada would be polluted by freezer-taste, but the faster I drank, the less I would enjoy it. It was a lose-lose situation.

Then there was the matter of the drinking itself. If I were drinking from an ordinary glass, a straw would have facilitated drinking, but this was not an ordinary glass. The bottom of the hollowed-out pineapple shell was uneven and chunky with shredded pineapple flesh. As I got towards the bottom of my drink, my straw started to get clogged by strands of pineapple, making it necessary for me to periodically cleanse my straw through forceful blowing. This became a task in and of itself: to maximize the liquid intake and minimize the pineapple blockage in each sip. Eventually, I realized that I was so caught up in the tedium of this chore that I wasn't even enjoying my drink anymore; I become so preoccupied with the means of drinking that the end became meaningless.

Finally, after resigning myself to the fact that it wasn't worth it to try to get the rest of the liquid, I decided that I was done. But could I then sit back in my chair and resume my relaxation? No sir. My hands and arms were covered with sticky pineapple juice, remember? I had to go and find water to wash them off. As I got and tossed the emptied shell into the trash, I kept on asking myself, "Was this worth $13?"

The Insight

Later on that day, I remembered the piña colada ordeal and decided to reflect on it to see what I could learn from the experience. I recalled the Rambam's definition of imagination (or "the imaginative faculty") as stated in the first chapter of Shemoneh Perakim:

The imagination encompasses the capacity to retain impressions of sensory experiences when they have vanished from the senses involved, and to combine some and separate others. It is the capacity that enables a person to combine certain experiences he has had along with others he never had nor ever could grasp - for example, to imagine an iron ship sailing [translator's note: sailing, not flying!] in the air, or an individual whose head is in the heavens while his feet are on the ground, or an animal with a thousand eyes, as well as many other such impossible things that are remembered when the imagination combines things and produces a fantasy.

Rabbi Sacks once compared the imaginative faculty to computer imaging software, like Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop allows you to take an image and manipulate it at will. You can turn it this way and that. You can crop the image, blocking out the parts you don't want to see. You can enlarge one part and make the image sharper while diminishing and blurring another part. You can even import other images from your memory and combine those images with this one to produce new creations. But unlike the images edited on Photoshop, which we know to be false, the images produced by our imaginative faculty seem very real - so real, that we often mistake them for reality itself.

My experience with the piña colada - well, I should say, my fantasy of the piña colada prior to the actual experience - is a perfect example of the imaginative faculty in action. Rewind to beginning of the story. There I was, happily relaxing in the sun, when I saw people drinking piña coladas out of pineapple shells. These sense impressions were recorded and preserved in my memory as raw material for my imaginative faculty, which then proceeded to select only those images which I found pleasing, ignoring the unpleasant details. My imagination conjured up a tantalizing fantasy, in which I was the one relaxing and sipping my piña colada - an experience which, in my fantasy-world, only enhanced my relaxation without adding any pain or conflict.

But this fantasy was just that: a fantasy - a nonexistent product of the imagination. Had I subjected this fantasy (or the initial sensory data) to the light of reason, I could have easily detected the inevitable, unpleasant aspects of purchasing the piña colada. I could have foreseen the consequences of the decision, weighed them against the pleasure to be gained, and made an informed, reality-based decision. [I'm not saying that the decision to buy the piña colada was intrinsically bad. I might have even concluded that the piña colada would have been worth it, but I would have at least known what I was getting myself into: that in paying $13 for a tasty drink, I was also buying the experience of cold fingers, sticky hands, a frustrating straw, and a time-limit on my enjoyment.]

d

The Principle

d

What is true of piña coladas is true of all pleasures. Human beings are driven to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. The Kadmonim refer to the source of this drive as the koach ha'misorer ("the emotive faculty) or the koach ha'misaveh ("the appetitive faculty"). If the appetitive faculty only drove us to seek real pleasures, that would be enough to contend with. Unfortunately, most of the pleasures we seek are not really existing experiences, but fantasies - fictitious figments of our imagination. Not only do these fantasies greatly exaggerate the amount of pleasure to be gained, but they gloss over all of the painful details and harmful consequences and present the imagined experience as flawless, as my piña colada fantasy illustrates.

d

At the same time, we mustn't forget that the imaginative faculty is not intrinsically bad, and that without our imagination, perfection would be impossible. The imaginative faculty is what allows us to recall sensory data which we can analyze and gain knowledge. Without the imaginative faculty, it would be impossible to gain knowledge; the rational faculty would have nothing to work with. Without the imaginative faculty I would not have been able to learn anything from the piña colada episode. I would have had the experience and immediately forgotten it. The same imaginative faculty which produced the fantasies that led me away from reality also functioned as a tool used by my mind to gain insight into reality.

d

The Ralbag summarizes all of these points in his introduction to the story of Gan Eden:

It has already been explained in On the Soul (3:7) that the imaginative faculty and the emotive faculty are the causes of motion in animals, be it moving towards an object or away from it. This occurs when the imaginative faculty generates a certain image of a perceptible thing, which causes the appetitive faculty to move the animal towards this image or to flee from it. Since it is in this manner that a person can be drawn after the physical pleasures, which remove him from his proper course of human development, the appetitive faculty is the yetzer ha’ra, and the imaginative faculty is its guide. It is therefore clear that the imaginative faculty can function in two separate frameworks: either as an instrument utilized in man’s development, or as an instrument which removes him from his path of proper development.

Sforno (Bereishis 3:1), citing a pithy allegory of the Sages, explains this idea in reference to the nachash (snake) in Gan Eden:

And the snake: "The Satan, the yetzer ha'ra, [and the malach ha'maves] are one and the same" (Bava Basra 16a). . . . The yetzer ha'ra which causes one to sin is called "nachash," since it resembles a snake, which yields minimal benefit, causes great harm, and is almost completely unseen. The Sages said that Samael rides on top of it (Pirkei de'Rebbi Eliezer 12). [In other words,] the appetitive faculty causes one to sin by means of the imaginative faculty, which incites it with fantasies of physical pleasures, causing one to deviate from the path of perfection intended by God, Blessed is He. The appetitive faculty, along with the fantasies of physical pleasures which incite it, commands the bodily powers and causes them to err from the objective and will of God, Blessed is He, unless the rational faculty stands firm against it and opposes it. Accordingly, the Sages say, "The eyes and the heart are the agents of sin" (Talmud Yerushalmi, Berachos 1:8). Concerning this, the Torah warns us, "And you shall not stray after your hearts and after your eyes" (Bamidbar 15:39).

The Sages refer to the imaginative faculty as "Samael" (sama + El) - that which blinds us to God's reality, or deceives us into believing that God is blind. The snake-like appetitive faculty, or yetzer ha'ra, is allegorically described as "nachash." Samael rides on top of the nachash and steers it in its pleasure-seeking with alluring fantasies. Together, they cause us to sin. The internal forces which moved me to seek out that piña colada are the same forces which cause all sin.

d

So in the end, considering all of the insight I gained, was the piña colada worth the $13? You bet; every cent, and infinitely more.

Feynman: The Universe in a Glass of Wine

What if someone told you that the purpose - or a purpose - of making berachos (blessings) is to enhance the pleasure we experience in our daily lives? Well, that's exactly what the Rabbi told the King of the Khazars in The Kuzari. R' Yehuda ha'Levi writes:

The Rabbi: His pleasure is enhanced . . . by the obligation of saying blessings over everything he enjoys or which happens to him in this world.

The King: How can that be, are not the blessings an additional burden?

The Rabbi: Isn't it proper that a perfected man should find more pleasure in that which he partakes than a child or an animal, even as an animal enjoys it more than does a plant though the latter is continually taking nourishment?

The King: This is so because he is favoured with the consciousness of enjoyment. If a drunken person were given all he desires; he would eat and drink, hear songs, meet his friends, and embrace his beloved - all while he was completely intoxicated. But if told of it when sober, he would regret it and regard it as a loss rather than a gain, since he had all these enjoyments whilst he was unaware of them.

The Rabbi: The preparation for a pleasure and experiencing it, and thinking about its absence beforehand, double the feeling of enjoyment. This is one of the advantages of the blessings for him who says them with concentration and understanding. They produce in his soul a kind of pleasure and gratitude towards the Giver. . . . Thus, you will experience enjoyment for your whole life. If one who does not cling to this path, then his pleasure will not be considered human pleasure, but the pleasure of an animal who does not understand, in the same manner than the drunkard. The righteous one, on the other hand, will bring to mind the ideational content of every blessing and will understand its intent and implications.

Perhaps the most basic function of a berachah is to give us pause and allow us to reflect on the causes - leading up to the ultimate Cause - of the event we have experienced or are about to experience. The physical and psychological pleasure we get from the experience is enhanced by the pleasure of intellectual contemplation and reflective gratitude for being the recipients of good.

I'm not going to pretend that I've analyzed or sufficiently explained this idea the Kuzari. There are questions and problems with this idea, and we can discuss those in the comments if you wish. The reason I posted this was not in order to analyze the idea in the post, but to highlight an example of its application - an example provided by none other than our physicist friend, Richard Feynman. As you watch (i.e. listen to) the following video, imagine Richard Feynman sitting at a Shabbos table to make kiddush, holding a glass of wine and thinking the following thoughts before making the berachah of Borei peri ha'gafen:



In case you can't get the video to work, here is a transcript:

A poet I think it is once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." I don't know, and I don't know if we'll ever know in what sense he meant that, for the poets don't write to be understood. But it is true that if you look in glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. It evaporates, depending on the wind and weather. The glass is a distillation of the earth's rocks, and in its composition, as we've seen, the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of the stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. And there in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nor can you discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, like Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! And if in our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts - physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and all - remember that nature does not know it! So we should put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!

Granted, our recitation of Borei peri ha'gafen will take our minds on a different route than the one described above. We would focus on the limited science of botany rather than the overarching science of physics, but our contemplation would take us beyond physics into metaphysics, culminating in a recognition of Hashem as the source of all natural law and every benefit we receive by means of that natural law.

Nevertheless, Feynman exemplifies the Kuzari's approach to berachos - the intellectual pleasure which could potentially accompany our physical and psychological pleasure, if we would only stop to think before reciting our berachos.

How Would You Respond?

Someone on Facebook just posted the following status:

I don't care about Judaism anymore. At all. It doesn't make me feel better, doesn't help me at all, so why should I care. Hashem doesn't care about me, so I don't care about Him.

If this were a friend of mine, who I knew and could talk to, I would definitely engage the friend in conversation to try to figure out what's going on. Obviously, there is something going on behind the scenes. A person doesn't just wake up one morning and feel this way. This is either a reaction to a particular event, or the culmination of a long process of . . . something.

Unfortunately, I have no relationship with this person, nor do I know anything about this person's life, so I doubt I can offer any real help.

Nevertheless, reading this person's status made me wonder: What philosophical beliefs are contained in this cry for help and how would I respond to them?

In other words, I am aware that this person is not actually making a philosophical statement, and responding to this person with philosophical argumentation would be pointless. Nevertheless, what if this same status were posted by a philosopher as a philosophical statement, and not as an emotional cry for help? What philosophical premises is this statement based on? What would I say to him if I engaged him in conversation? How would he respond?

What do you think?

Reflections on "Have a Successful Tishah b'Av"

Introduction

I am always pleasantly surprised when one of my blog posts triggers an unexpected amount of discussion and learning. This recently happened with a post I wrote on erev Tishah b'Av entitled "Have a Successful Tishah b'Av." Some people agreed with what I had to say, others disagreed, and others really, really disagreed. The objections can be grouped under three headings, which I will sum up as follows:

Objection #1: "What right do you have to judge other people? Worry about yourself and leave judgment to Hashem!"

Objection #2: "How can you claim to be able to read the minds of other people? Do you really think you have absolute knowledge?"

Objection #3: "Statements such as, 'Have an easy fast' are just idioms. It's just silly to analyze them and talk about what they 'really' mean."

First of all, I would like to apologize to anyone who felt offended, hurt, or antagonized by what I wrote. I did not mean to cause pain or harm to anyone, and had I known my post would have caused such a reaction, I would have not written what I wrote in the manner that I wrote it. Please accept my sincere apology, and realize that I meant no harm.

Thought Experiment

Before I address these three objections in specific, I'd like to conduct a little thought experiment together with you. Forget about my post for a moment and consider the following hypothetical scenario:

You were just informed that a family in your neighborhood suffered a horrible loss. Mr. and Mrs. ____ had been married for 25 happy years. They have six children, ranging in ages from seven to 23. This past Monday morning, Mr. ____ was driving home from work when he was hit by a drunk driver and killed instantaneously. His family is devastated and the whole neighborhood has decided to come together to comfort them in their time of need. You don't know this family personally, but you are a neighbor and feel obligated to go.

You enter their home and see a large group of people gathered around the mourners, who are sitting in a row. Aside from Mr. ____ 's wife and six children, Mr. ____'s four siblings, parents, cousins, uncles, aunts, and friends are all gathered there in various states of grieving.

You notice that the other visitors are filing past the row of mourners and offering condolences to the entire group. You line up with them and begin thinking about a very practical question: "What are you going say to them when it's your turn?" There are a number of options, among them are:

• "May God comfort you among the other mourners of Tzion and Yerushalayim,"
• "May you be comforted from heaven,"
• "I'm sorry for your loss,"
• "Let me know if there's anything I can do,"
• "We loved _____ and he will be missed,"
• "My sympathy to you and your family"

These are the options you are faced with. Now, consider the following question: How would you go about making your decision about what to say? Well, you would take several factors into account when considering each statement:

• What does this statement mean? What does the statement, in and of itself, mean?
• What will this statement mean to the people who hear it? If you knew Mr. _____'s family, you would have a better idea of how to gauge the manner in which it will be interpreted. But since you don't know them very well, you will have to ask myself: What do people usually mean when they say this statement? Does it carry any general connotations or implications you should be aware of?
• How do you feel about making this statement? Do you agree with what you am saying? Will you mean what you say or will you just be uttering a socially acceptable platitude, and if so, is that something you are comfortable with?

All of these questions must be considered and weighed. For example, if you use the traditional Ashkenazic condolences, ("May God comfort you etc.") Mr. ______'s frum brother will truly be comforted, and might find your statement conducive to his spiritual growth; his irreligious brother, on the other hand, might feel hostile towards such religious behavior and resent you; his mother, who doesn't speak Hebrew, will feel alienated. If you say, "I'm sorry for your loss," Mrs. ______ will understand, but her ten year old daughter might not, and her rebellious son might become angry over the fact that some phony stranger is pretending to be sad on his account. And so on.

Nevertheless, your turn will come and you will have to make a decision about what to say and how to say it. This decision will be made based on what the statement of condolences means in and of itself, your knowledge of how people typically use and interpret this statement, and how you feel about saying it.

Application to Post

Now, to those who objected to my post I ask, in all honesty: How is the hypothetical evaluation in the thought experiment any different than the evaluation I made in my post? Please hear me out, as I explain what went through my head in writing this post.


The impetus for writing this post was a conversation I had on erev Tishah b'Av. We were discussing how we always find ourselves at a loss for words on a fast day. We want to say something to the other person, but we want what we say to have meaning and to contribute to the experience of the day, both for ourselves and for those with whom we interact.

We began by surveying the typical fast day greetings: "Have an easy fast," "Have a meaningful fast," and "Have a good fast." First we thought about what these statements mean, in and of themselves. We noted that the statements have multiple meanings (as I indicated in my post), some which are good and some which are bad.

I maintain that as human beings I am obligated - as Rabbi Moskowitz was fond of putting it - to "say what you mean and mean what you say." It doesn't matter whether we are having a conversation, making a speech, or using a trite idiom. Words and statements have meanings, and even if people don't usually think about those meanings, I maintain that it is my duty as a ruach memalela - a speaking and thinking being.


After evaluating what the statements mean on their own terms, we started to think about how they are usually used by the people we know. We had no choice but to infer and generalize, based on our knowledge and experience. When you walk into that house of mourning and are expected to offer your condolences to a diverse group of strangers, you have no choice but to ask yourself, "How are these statements of condolence typically used? What do people generally mean when they say these things?" You have no choice but to generalize from your knowledge and experience.

And yes, some of these generalizations will involve inferences about the inner lives of the people to whom you are speaking. When you tell a mourner, "May God comfort you among the other mourners of Tzion and Yerushalayim," you are making certain assumptions about their relationship with God and the Jewish people. What if this person is an atheist? (Who are you to tell them to take comfort in God)? What if this person is religious, but is feeling antagonistic towards God for allowing her loved one to perish? (Who are you to judge this person's relationship with God?) What if this person doesn't identify with the rest of the Jewish people and doesn't want to? (Who are you to judge their sense of Jewish identity?)

Response to Objections

I would like to conclude by directly addressing the objections stated above.

Response to Objection #1: My intent was never to judge other people. My entire post was an expression of a personal evaluation about how to make a personal decision. I even began the post by writing, "Every fast day or eve of a fast day I find myself asking myself, 'What should I say to people at the end of this conversation?'"

Did my analysis involve making inferences about the thoughts and feelings of other people? Yes, but so do all such analyses! Here's another example: When you wish your co-worker a happy 40th birthday, you make certain inferences about how she other person thinks and feels: "Does she feel bad about getting old? Does she not want other people to acknowledge her age? Will my birthday wish make her happy because she feels she is growing older and wiser, or will it make her sad because she feels she is losing her youth and beauty?"

What if someone came to you and said: "What right do you have to judge your co-worker? How dare you be concerned with how attached she is to her youth and beauty. Stop making such negative judgments. Worry about yourself and leave judgment to Hashem!"? Yet, such is the nature of a 40th birthday wish: you must make inferences about certain aspects of another person's inner life, and some of those aspects will touch on that person's level of perfection. But you are not thinking about the other person's inner life in order to make a judgment on that person; rather, you are thinking about that person's inner life in order to gauge how they might interpret the meaning of your words.

Response to Objection #2: This objection, championed by Malkie, surprised me the most. Malkie objected to my post saying:

My second point was less explicit, but yet implied: the simple fact that I do not stand alone in my understanding and meaning of the phrase demonstrates that one cannot say, with complete confidence, “I know what this means and this
is demonstrative of a lack of reflection in the Am”, because enough people share
my view to demonstrate that one simply does not know for an absolute fact what
is truly going on in the minds of everyone else.

Malkie, I ask you: Since when did I claim to have "absolute confidence" in my interpretation of these statements, or say that I "know for an absolute fact" what is "truly going on in the minds of everyone else"? This is a(n unintentional) distortion of what I wrote in my post and comments. I continually emphasized that my inferences were not claiming to be absolute knowledge, but were only based on my impression of what most people mean, for instance:

• When people say, "Have an easy fast," they usually mean, "May your fast not cause you to feel physical or psychological pain."
• Dan, If you look at Malkie's comment, you'll see why I wasn't so quick to demand repeated slapping of those who use the phrase "Have an easy fast." People mean different things. I was just commenting on what I suspect people usually mean.
• In my own experience, the majority of people I know . . . do not use fast days for reflection. . . . Maybe the people you know are different.

So you see, Malkie, I am not claiming to have absolute knowledge and complete confidence. I am generalizing based on my own knowledge and experience, just as you did in your comments, just as Prof K did in her comments, and just as we do in our speech to other people every day.

Response to Objection #3: I believe I addressed this sufficiently in my post. Yes, people mean different things, especially when it comes to idioms. But when I decide to use an idiom for myself, I believe that I am obligated to "say what I mean and mean what I say." Even idioms have meanings. They may have multiple meanings, and they may have different meanings to different people, but they do have meanings, and when I use them, I want to mean what I say.

Don't get me wrong. I definitely appreciate the comments and critiques on my posts! At the same time, I am going to defend what I wrote if I think that the objections were misguided, as was the case here.