There is a mushal (parable) my father recounted to me about Jewish priorities. In it, there are three brothers: one a pious scholar, scrupulous in his observance of mitzvot and constantly engaged in study; the next moved to a kibbutz at a young age and became a war hero in the IDF; the third was a socialist, tirelessly crusading for the rights of the poor and oppressed and pursuing a utopian vision. These seem to me to represent the personal, national, and universal aspirations of the Jews, respectively, a set that we also find in the holiday of Sukkot. Sukkot is the culmination and intersection of two triads of holidays: the shalosh regalim (pilgrimage festivals), retelling the narrative of national redemption, and the holidays of Tishrei (seventh month of the calendar), through which we seek personal redemption. The sacrificial service of Sukkot is dominated by the seventy bulls brought up over the course of the week, traditionally corresponding to the seventy nations of the world and connecting to universal redemption. Further on that point, there are prophecies that Sukkot is the holiday on which the nations will gather in the messianic era to bring their offerings to the Beit HaMikdash (Temple). I would argue that Sukkot is the primary holiday of redemption and salvation, at least until Yuval (the jubilee year) is reestablished. So, what can we learn about Jewish attitudes toward these themes from the rites of the festival?
On the one hand, there seems to be a surprising degree of passivity. One of the main lessons of the sukkah is related to the pasuk (verse) from the 127th perek of Tehillim (Psalm 127) "If Hashem does not build a house, its builders toil in vain". We work to protect ourselves from danger and deprivation, and rightly so, but in truth our protection comes from Hashem. In the midbar (wilderness), this grace took the form of an open miracle, with ananei hakavod (clouds of glory) surrounding us, munn (manna) precipitating for our food, and a miraculous well following us around for water. Today, the miracle is hidden, but is it not somewhat miraculous that we have secure houses, and access to plentiful food and clean water? Thus, in remembrance of the miracles of the midbar and recognition that we are just as reliant on God today as then, we remove ourselves from the security that we imagine we have created, and trust in God to make flimsy shchach into a shelter. This message is reinforced by the reading of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), where Shlomo hamelech (King Solomon) teaches that all the works of man are as insubstantial as a breath, soon to pass into nothingness and be forgotten. If we are so impotent and our deeds so worthless, surely redemption is just a matter of being grateful to God for what we have, and having bitachon and emunah (trust and faith) that he will provide in the future, right?
But then there is the other hand, as there always is. The lulav is the only mitzvah with the requirement that it be hadar (beautiful). We are commanded to have festive meals, and there is a strong tradition to have guests. Some other names of the holiday are chag ha'asif (the holiday of gathering) and zman simchateinu (time of our joy). We seem to have a hearty harvest festival, celebrating the very things that Kohelet decries as havel havalim (nothingness, sort of). What does this have to do with salvation, and how can we reconcile these messages?
We make an okimta (qualification) on Kohelet. Shlomo does not, in the end, conclude that sensual pleasure, hard work, personal relationships, and wise erudition are havel havalim in all cases. He only condemns them for their own sake, as purely human endeavors. There is nothing new under the sun, so the only way to bring about true change is to invite involvement from elsewhere. We are capable of being partners with God, and only when we do so do our actions have any point. The contrapositive of our pasuk from Tehillim says, "If the workers do not toil in vain, then Hashem builds the house". One interpretation of the arba minim (four species of the lulav) is that they represent the four letters of the tetragrammaton, and we are commanded to gather them together and raise them up. Thus, through our own agency we can take letters that are meaningless on their own (not strictly true, symbolism of individual letters some other time), and we use them to reveal and elevate Shem HaShem (the name of God) in the world.
Heard an interesting anecdote about the Rosh Yeshiva. One purim, when he was deep in his cups, a very drunk bochur asked why he had founded Shapell's. The answer given: "to make you guys normal". Not sure what to make of it. Anyway, Sukkot in the yeshiva is fun. We had our first rain of the year yesterday, soaking my mattress, which was not ideal, but the rain itself was lovely and quite pleasant. It was rather odd keeping two days in Israel. Even in our foreigner bubble of yeshiva bochurim, enough were gone for the holiday or definitely making aliyah or relying on lenient opinions that we only had six of us. Had to go to a hotel for minyan, which was a little weird, but we made some nice, intimate seudot (meals) and sang zemirot until the sukkah started filling up with people who wanted to sleep. I made sure to have some of each of the five fruits at both meals, in honor of the harvest festival aspect. Shabbat was very eventful. Friday night, my dinner-buddy and I got lost looking for our host's shul in Har Nof (try asking someone in Har Nof for the shul at the top of the stairs...) and ended up being invited to eat with a family of Bobover chassidim. Very friendly bunch. I am fairly certain that some of the dvars they shared must have been at least partly meant in jest (Jewish souls have trouble claiming before the heavenly court that they were tricked by the yetzer hara, because everyone knows that Jews are shrewd businessmen and wouldn't be taken in, but then Sukkot comes and we get outrageously ripped off paying for lulav and etrog, so the court accepts our plea; the mishna says that anger is like idolatry because the righteous tannaim were jealous that sinners could get such merit from teshuva, but they realized that they could just draw equivalences between the lesser sins that they did commit and the greater sins that they did not, and thus get to do equally meritorious teshuva). Saturday, our host took us to another family's for dessert, and that family was hosting seminary girls, so I actually got to have a conversation. It felt a little uncomfortable, and at first I was worried that the yeshiva was succeeding at breaking me of the habit, but then I realized that it was the same discomfort I always feel when making conversation with people that I know I will not have enough interaction with to make friends. Today we had the yeshiva's shimchat beit hashoeva (chol hamoed (intermediate days) celebration remembering the nisuch hamayim (water libation)), with a solid hour, hour-and-a-half of intense dancing, half the time with rabbis' small children on my shoulders. Good times. Have to go out to one of the public ones tomorrow, last day to see what it is like. The yeshiva recommends Belz, Toldos Aharon, and Karlin-Stolin. Any advice?
My goodness, look at all those words. I suppose that'll do for now.
23 September 2013
15 September 2013
Why do I believe?
Writing my last post left me thinking over Yom Kippur about how I relate to God, so I thought I would share a little about that.
When I started to become ba'al teshuva, I did not believe in God. I was open to the possibility, and that exploration was part of my motivation, but I was primarily driven by a desire to have a stronger and richer relationship to Jewish culture and history. In order to understand it on its own terms, I made three decisions: approach with an attitude of suspended disbelief, rather than criticism; take on some degree of observance, to understand experientially as well as intellectually; treat it as a living tradition and find teachers rather than relying solely on texts and internet that could easily be misinterpreted. These ended up being decisive. Initially, there was a steep learning curve, and everything felt uncomfortable. After that, I found that, every now and then, if I could really suspend my disbelief and put some kavana into what I was doing, I would have an experience that seemed to transcend the mundane. Could there be a materialistic explanation for these experiences? Yes, but I prefer to take them seriously in the absence of any reason not to.
There is another reason, as well. I have a strong intuition that there is such a thing as moral truth. The experience of learning that I was mistaken about a moral question seems distinct from the experience of changing my opinion. Moral truth makes much more sense, in my opinion, if God exists. Could I have these intuitions and be mistaken, and in fact all morality is subjective? Indeed, and that is what I believed for many years, but again, with no proof either way, I prefer the position that best reconciles my beliefs about the world to my intuitive experience of it. That seems to be the best way to judge postulates that I can see.
Anyone willing to share why you do or do not believe in God?
Yom Kippur was awesome, in the archaic sense of the word. I was worried that my regular fasting might diminish the impact of the day, and I didn't feel like I had used the aseret y'mei teshuva very well in preparation (slept through selichot almost every day, didn't ask mechila from most of my classmates and teachers), but in the end it was incredibly powerful. If it had had much more impact, I may well have passed out during Ne'ila. Pretty much did nothing but daven and sleep all day, except a few games of chess after ma'ariv on Friday. Kind of a surreal experience to sing and dance "l'shana haba birushalayim habnuya" in Jerusalem, but the argument could be made that it isn't mamash Jerusalem without the Mikdash, especially as relates to Yom Kippur. Had a rather weird hour after a quick snack, but before the break fast meal was ready. Does anyone have a customary way to spend that time, other than the cooks?
When I started to become ba'al teshuva, I did not believe in God. I was open to the possibility, and that exploration was part of my motivation, but I was primarily driven by a desire to have a stronger and richer relationship to Jewish culture and history. In order to understand it on its own terms, I made three decisions: approach with an attitude of suspended disbelief, rather than criticism; take on some degree of observance, to understand experientially as well as intellectually; treat it as a living tradition and find teachers rather than relying solely on texts and internet that could easily be misinterpreted. These ended up being decisive. Initially, there was a steep learning curve, and everything felt uncomfortable. After that, I found that, every now and then, if I could really suspend my disbelief and put some kavana into what I was doing, I would have an experience that seemed to transcend the mundane. Could there be a materialistic explanation for these experiences? Yes, but I prefer to take them seriously in the absence of any reason not to.
There is another reason, as well. I have a strong intuition that there is such a thing as moral truth. The experience of learning that I was mistaken about a moral question seems distinct from the experience of changing my opinion. Moral truth makes much more sense, in my opinion, if God exists. Could I have these intuitions and be mistaken, and in fact all morality is subjective? Indeed, and that is what I believed for many years, but again, with no proof either way, I prefer the position that best reconciles my beliefs about the world to my intuitive experience of it. That seems to be the best way to judge postulates that I can see.
Anyone willing to share why you do or do not believe in God?
Yom Kippur was awesome, in the archaic sense of the word. I was worried that my regular fasting might diminish the impact of the day, and I didn't feel like I had used the aseret y'mei teshuva very well in preparation (slept through selichot almost every day, didn't ask mechila from most of my classmates and teachers), but in the end it was incredibly powerful. If it had had much more impact, I may well have passed out during Ne'ila. Pretty much did nothing but daven and sleep all day, except a few games of chess after ma'ariv on Friday. Kind of a surreal experience to sing and dance "l'shana haba birushalayim habnuya" in Jerusalem, but the argument could be made that it isn't mamash Jerusalem without the Mikdash, especially as relates to Yom Kippur. Had a rather weird hour after a quick snack, but before the break fast meal was ready. Does anyone have a customary way to spend that time, other than the cooks?
09 September 2013
Teshuva, me'yirah and me'ahava
Ahava and yirah are the two fundamental ways that we relate to God. Each can lead one to teshuva, but they are not equivalent. In several lectures, the rabbis here have mentioned the teaching that teshuva me'yirah transforms intentional sins into unintentional sins in some spiritual sense, whereas teshuva me'ahava even transforms intentional sins into merits. Initially, this caused me great difficulty. It seems that the Talmud is establishing a clear hierarchy between two things that I had always considered to be opposite sides of a dialectic. If that were the case, I might be forced to reevaluate my general strategy for understanding Jewish hashkafa. There was one obvious way out, which seemed to be the one that the rabbeim here were taking, which is to say that this is not true, proper yirah, but a simple, infantile fear of punishment. Presumably, any higher motivation would then be me'ahava, making it a terribly vague category while resolving the problem of having one superior to the other. I am willing to accept that this surface level reading is in some sense correct, and comes to teach that even poorly motivated teshuva is worthwhile, but it is too facile to be satisfying and I think I can do better. Full disclaimer: I don't have a source that explicitly supports this reading.
Rather than seeing teshuva me'yirah as based on a desire to avoid the consequences of sin and teshuva me-ahava as done for its own sake, I would reverse the two.
Let us take yirah as a more mature emotion of awe -- the way of relating to God that we find when we stand on a mountain and watch the sunrise, or feel the power of a crowd of people acting together, or find beauty and precision in the study of math or physics. God as the distant, eternal, impersonal melekh, such that we are made aware of our own insignificance, yet can still be elevated by that very awareness. What would it mean to do teshuva motivated by this relationship? I would say that it would be a recognition of the moral truth in the universe that God represents. To know that there is right and there is wrong, and you have done wrong, and thus to feel remorse. Your remorse is a demonstration of one of two things: either you were overcome by your yetzer hara, or you were not as cognizant of the immorality of your act at the time as you are now. This brings me to several relevant halakhic points. First, one's true will is considered to be that of the higher parts of the soul, which has legal ramifications (if a man refuses to give his wife a get, the court is authorized to beat the yetzer hara out of him until his true will can act). Second, one who sins in ignorance is not considered to have deliberately sinned. Third, accidental sins can be atoned for through human action, particularly sacrifice. Thus, the sinner can make a legal case before God that his sin ought to be counted as unintentional, and ask that God take the lenient position and give him the chance to rectify it himself. He is asking for justice to be done in a merciful way.
The one who comes to teshuva through ahava, on the other hand, circumvents justice entirely. Ahava is the relation to God as the loving, intimate, personal av that we find in private prayer, or when we see the divine in a close friend or family member, or feel moved by an act of chesed. How do I see this moving one to teshuva? He realizes that sin creates a separation between the self and God, and is pained by that fact. He is moved to approach God, not as a defendant before the judge of the world, but as a child, a friend, or a spouse; admits his fault; apologizes; and asks for help in repairing the relationship.
In both cases, God, in his infinite mercy, grants exactly what is sincerely asked of him. The one seeks to correct his mistake in awe of the truth and majesty of the moral system, and asks for the means to do so within the bounds of justice, and God accepts his case as just. The other seeks to remove a barrier out of longing for connection and relationship, and finds it turned into a bridge. In this reading, neither is so superior as to make the other superfluous. The balance and dialectic of avinu malkeinu is preserved.
Some updates on yeshiva life:
Rosh Hashana was intense. It is easy to forget over a year what a trial of stamina it is. I slept in the beit midrash to ensure that I would wake up on time, and started praying as soon as I woke up as the first people entered. That meant that I was praying roughly 6:00-1:30, with a short kiddush break around 10:00, two days in a row, and then more in the afternoons and evenings. Still, I somehow managed to maintain decent kavanah through most of it, and it was a powerfully moving experience. Lots of good food, too, although the fish heads were rather dodgy. Shabbat the next day, morning services began at eight and ran less than three hours. Practically a day off!
Tzom Gedalia, we had the afternoon off, so I went to go take a nap in the neighborhood park. On my way, I thought, "I have plenty of time, why not get a bit of a walk and go to Gan Sacher for the nap?" Walked a couple blocks in that direction, then thought, "Screw napping, I'm going to take a proper walk; follow the sun into the Judean hills, then chase my shadow home!" Obviously, I was missing the ache in my legs from standing all day on Rosh Hashanah. Should probably have gone back and changed out of my sandals at that point. So it goes. The hills, by the way, are breathtakingly beautiful. Also, I got back into the city just as the the sunlight was starting to change the Jerusalem stone into glowing, rosy-hued blocks of magic. Good times. I haven't traveled as much as I would like, but I have seen enough cities that it is not entirely trivial to say that Jerusalem at sunset is the most lovely. I also happened to walk by Rabinowiz park on my way back. The slide there is my earliest memory of Israel. I was almost surprised to find that it is still really cool and visually interesting twenty years older.
Well, that was long. Still need to work on that. You wouldn't believe how much I didn't say about yirah and ahava!
Shana tova u'metuka!
Shalom,
-Ethan
Rather than seeing teshuva me'yirah as based on a desire to avoid the consequences of sin and teshuva me-ahava as done for its own sake, I would reverse the two.
Let us take yirah as a more mature emotion of awe -- the way of relating to God that we find when we stand on a mountain and watch the sunrise, or feel the power of a crowd of people acting together, or find beauty and precision in the study of math or physics. God as the distant, eternal, impersonal melekh, such that we are made aware of our own insignificance, yet can still be elevated by that very awareness. What would it mean to do teshuva motivated by this relationship? I would say that it would be a recognition of the moral truth in the universe that God represents. To know that there is right and there is wrong, and you have done wrong, and thus to feel remorse. Your remorse is a demonstration of one of two things: either you were overcome by your yetzer hara, or you were not as cognizant of the immorality of your act at the time as you are now. This brings me to several relevant halakhic points. First, one's true will is considered to be that of the higher parts of the soul, which has legal ramifications (if a man refuses to give his wife a get, the court is authorized to beat the yetzer hara out of him until his true will can act). Second, one who sins in ignorance is not considered to have deliberately sinned. Third, accidental sins can be atoned for through human action, particularly sacrifice. Thus, the sinner can make a legal case before God that his sin ought to be counted as unintentional, and ask that God take the lenient position and give him the chance to rectify it himself. He is asking for justice to be done in a merciful way.
The one who comes to teshuva through ahava, on the other hand, circumvents justice entirely. Ahava is the relation to God as the loving, intimate, personal av that we find in private prayer, or when we see the divine in a close friend or family member, or feel moved by an act of chesed. How do I see this moving one to teshuva? He realizes that sin creates a separation between the self and God, and is pained by that fact. He is moved to approach God, not as a defendant before the judge of the world, but as a child, a friend, or a spouse; admits his fault; apologizes; and asks for help in repairing the relationship.
In both cases, God, in his infinite mercy, grants exactly what is sincerely asked of him. The one seeks to correct his mistake in awe of the truth and majesty of the moral system, and asks for the means to do so within the bounds of justice, and God accepts his case as just. The other seeks to remove a barrier out of longing for connection and relationship, and finds it turned into a bridge. In this reading, neither is so superior as to make the other superfluous. The balance and dialectic of avinu malkeinu is preserved.
Some updates on yeshiva life:
Rosh Hashana was intense. It is easy to forget over a year what a trial of stamina it is. I slept in the beit midrash to ensure that I would wake up on time, and started praying as soon as I woke up as the first people entered. That meant that I was praying roughly 6:00-1:30, with a short kiddush break around 10:00, two days in a row, and then more in the afternoons and evenings. Still, I somehow managed to maintain decent kavanah through most of it, and it was a powerfully moving experience. Lots of good food, too, although the fish heads were rather dodgy. Shabbat the next day, morning services began at eight and ran less than three hours. Practically a day off!
Tzom Gedalia, we had the afternoon off, so I went to go take a nap in the neighborhood park. On my way, I thought, "I have plenty of time, why not get a bit of a walk and go to Gan Sacher for the nap?" Walked a couple blocks in that direction, then thought, "Screw napping, I'm going to take a proper walk; follow the sun into the Judean hills, then chase my shadow home!" Obviously, I was missing the ache in my legs from standing all day on Rosh Hashanah. Should probably have gone back and changed out of my sandals at that point. So it goes. The hills, by the way, are breathtakingly beautiful. Also, I got back into the city just as the the sunlight was starting to change the Jerusalem stone into glowing, rosy-hued blocks of magic. Good times. I haven't traveled as much as I would like, but I have seen enough cities that it is not entirely trivial to say that Jerusalem at sunset is the most lovely. I also happened to walk by Rabinowiz park on my way back. The slide there is my earliest memory of Israel. I was almost surprised to find that it is still really cool and visually interesting twenty years older.
Well, that was long. Still need to work on that. You wouldn't believe how much I didn't say about yirah and ahava!
Shana tova u'metuka!
Shalom,
-Ethan
08 September 2013
Repost from Facebook
To all those I have wronged, please forgive me. If I have done some harm and not sought to redress it, please let me know, even if it should be obvious to me, and help me learn what I can do to ameliorate it. If I have made an effort, but not done enough, let me know that, too.
In particular, a few things that I know I am guilty of several times over: For when I spoke over you or assumed that my thoughts were more important than yours, please forgive me. For when I failed to notice when you needed help, or saw and didn't bother, please forgive me. For when I judged you unfavorably before making an effort to understand or find another explanation, please forgive me. For when I spoke poorly of you, or stood by while others did so, please forgive me. For when I was ungrateful for your help or unappreciative of your friendship, please forgive me. For when I have been unclear or misleading, please forgive me.
To those who have wronged me, I bear no grudge and wish you well. For those things I know about, I forgive wholeheartedly and renounce any claim to redress. For those things I am ignorant of, I will do my best to forgive as soon as I find out.
In particular, a few things that I know I am guilty of several times over: For when I spoke over you or assumed that my thoughts were more important than yours, please forgive me. For when I failed to notice when you needed help, or saw and didn't bother, please forgive me. For when I judged you unfavorably before making an effort to understand or find another explanation, please forgive me. For when I spoke poorly of you, or stood by while others did so, please forgive me. For when I was ungrateful for your help or unappreciative of your friendship, please forgive me. For when I have been unclear or misleading, please forgive me.
To those who have wronged me, I bear no grudge and wish you well. For those things I know about, I forgive wholeheartedly and renounce any claim to redress. For those things I am ignorant of, I will do my best to forgive as soon as I find out.
01 September 2013
Teshuva and its relation to the material world
We have been doing a lot of studying on the theme of teshuva, as one might expect at this time of year. We have looked at a huge range of sources, and to try to dump all that information on you at once would be a clear violation of my late resolution. As such, I will try to get out a couple of short posts before Yom Kippur on particular sub-topics.
First, the relation to the material world. As is the case with many facets of Judaism, there is a spectrum of opinion that I prefer to structure either as thesis-antithesis-synthesis, or as a search for the mean between extremes if a true synthesis proves elusive.
On the one hand, we have the Breslover Rebbe being very nearly Gnostic in his description of the material world as an illusion that obscures our view of Torah and Hashem. He brings a mushal from the Besht of a man who has his little finger immediately in front of his eye, and therefore cannot see things of vastly greater scale and import that are right in front of him, although in his retelling Rabbi Nachman replaces the finger with a small coin for obvious symbolic reasons. Naturally, the solution is that we must remove this impediment that blinds us to the truth.
On the other, Rav Kook argues that the first step is a healthy diet, proper sleep, moderate exercise, breaking chemical addictions, etc etc, and that intellectual and spiritual teshuva is ineffective or impossible on its own. The fact that he follows with more mainstream intellectual and spiritual processes does prevent him from constituting a proper antithesis, but we haven't covered anyone who roots teshuva more deeply in the physical. Perhaps the more extreme antinomian early Hassidim, but they are rarely looked to as anything but a cautionary tale.
As I consider further, I realize that what I have framed as a single continuum is in fact the intersection of two broader spectra: the extent to which teshuva is a turn inward vs outward, or alternatively and with a dramatically different meaning, a return to yourself as you are meant to be vs a return to God from whom you have been separated; and the spiritual value of the physical world and involvement therein. Looked at that way, what I saw as diametric poles are in fact only two of four potential extreme positions. Rabbi Nachman comes across very strongly on the side of rejection of the material and on the side of a denial of the ego as you return to God. Rav Kook is at the opposite end of both spectra. Let us examine what the missing corners would look like and see if we can match them to any tradition.
The inward turned anti-materialist -- probably something along the lines of Yisroel Salanter, with a strong focus on character perfection through study and taking small steps to undermine the yetzer hara.
The outward turned materialist -- the Maharal cites a gemara that lists four or five ways to avert harsh judgment: give tzedaka, cry out in supplication, change your name, change your behavior, and according to some opinions change your place of residence. Some of those are outward oriented material behaviors, but I am quite reluctant to place the Maharal as a proponent of deep involvement with such matters, relative to other opinions. Perhaps we would be better off with a more kabbalistic approach, questing for sparks of holiness hidden in the mundane world, although that is usually put in terms of tikkun olam rather than teshuva.
Anyway, this has become rather long despite my intentions. Failure number one as I try to find a topic within Judaism that is narrow and self-contained enough to write about concisely without abandoning content. Thus, rather than trying to find my place in this newly described spectrum, I will leave it at that and move on to yeshiva life tidbits.
Main fact of life the past few days has been exhaustion. I realized that some significant portion of my success to date is attributable to performance enhancing drugs, in that whatever absurd number of cups of tea per day have been more than enough to quickly develop a serious caffeine addiction, which I am determined to quit cold turkey. Thus, my accumulated sleep debt from weeks of five hour nights has not just caught up with me, but chased me into a dark alley and hit me in the face with a shovel. But at least we have slichot now, so that should help me catch up, right? Right?!
First, the relation to the material world. As is the case with many facets of Judaism, there is a spectrum of opinion that I prefer to structure either as thesis-antithesis-synthesis, or as a search for the mean between extremes if a true synthesis proves elusive.
On the one hand, we have the Breslover Rebbe being very nearly Gnostic in his description of the material world as an illusion that obscures our view of Torah and Hashem. He brings a mushal from the Besht of a man who has his little finger immediately in front of his eye, and therefore cannot see things of vastly greater scale and import that are right in front of him, although in his retelling Rabbi Nachman replaces the finger with a small coin for obvious symbolic reasons. Naturally, the solution is that we must remove this impediment that blinds us to the truth.
On the other, Rav Kook argues that the first step is a healthy diet, proper sleep, moderate exercise, breaking chemical addictions, etc etc, and that intellectual and spiritual teshuva is ineffective or impossible on its own. The fact that he follows with more mainstream intellectual and spiritual processes does prevent him from constituting a proper antithesis, but we haven't covered anyone who roots teshuva more deeply in the physical. Perhaps the more extreme antinomian early Hassidim, but they are rarely looked to as anything but a cautionary tale.
As I consider further, I realize that what I have framed as a single continuum is in fact the intersection of two broader spectra: the extent to which teshuva is a turn inward vs outward, or alternatively and with a dramatically different meaning, a return to yourself as you are meant to be vs a return to God from whom you have been separated; and the spiritual value of the physical world and involvement therein. Looked at that way, what I saw as diametric poles are in fact only two of four potential extreme positions. Rabbi Nachman comes across very strongly on the side of rejection of the material and on the side of a denial of the ego as you return to God. Rav Kook is at the opposite end of both spectra. Let us examine what the missing corners would look like and see if we can match them to any tradition.
The inward turned anti-materialist -- probably something along the lines of Yisroel Salanter, with a strong focus on character perfection through study and taking small steps to undermine the yetzer hara.
The outward turned materialist -- the Maharal cites a gemara that lists four or five ways to avert harsh judgment: give tzedaka, cry out in supplication, change your name, change your behavior, and according to some opinions change your place of residence. Some of those are outward oriented material behaviors, but I am quite reluctant to place the Maharal as a proponent of deep involvement with such matters, relative to other opinions. Perhaps we would be better off with a more kabbalistic approach, questing for sparks of holiness hidden in the mundane world, although that is usually put in terms of tikkun olam rather than teshuva.
Anyway, this has become rather long despite my intentions. Failure number one as I try to find a topic within Judaism that is narrow and self-contained enough to write about concisely without abandoning content. Thus, rather than trying to find my place in this newly described spectrum, I will leave it at that and move on to yeshiva life tidbits.
Main fact of life the past few days has been exhaustion. I realized that some significant portion of my success to date is attributable to performance enhancing drugs, in that whatever absurd number of cups of tea per day have been more than enough to quickly develop a serious caffeine addiction, which I am determined to quit cold turkey. Thus, my accumulated sleep debt from weeks of five hour nights has not just caught up with me, but chased me into a dark alley and hit me in the face with a shovel. But at least we have slichot now, so that should help me catch up, right? Right?!
Other than that, our class had its weekly shiur with the rosh yeshiva, and it was awesome. He very subtly and devastatingly critiqued the tzniut police. We were learning the gemara relating to blowing terua, shevarim, and shevarim-terua. Turns out, the former two are both supported by a tannaitic sources, and the latter is brought by the amora who says to do all three. What is an amora doing making a new side in a tannaitic machloket? Well might you ask. Comes Hai Gaon to say, there was actually no machloket. There were different regional minhagim that were universally acknowledged as equally valid ways to fulfill the mitzva, but our amora was concerned that the ignorant might be confused and believe that their way was correct, so he institutionalized the whole range. Comes along our rosh yeshiva and slips in there, "These ignoramuses might end up throwing stones, or putting up posters, and he wanted to avoid that. We don't have many issues like that today, where there is no machloket, just different minhagim that are universally held to be equally valid by those in the know." And that was it. Just enough to be clear if you were listening. Not enough to stir controversy. Brilliant man.
Shalom,
-Ethan
Shalom,
-Ethan
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