Kol Hamevaser the Jewish T Hought M Agazine of the Y Eshiva University Student B Ody
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
KOL HAMEVASER THE JEWISH T HOUGHT M AGAZINE OF THE Y ESHIVA UNIVERSITY STUDENT B ODY DEREKH HA-LIMMUD VOLUME X, I SSUE 1 FEATURING: Talmud Torah and Biblical Scholarship: Challenges and Oppurtunities Miriam Zami Page 6 Of Concepts and Precision: Understanding Torat Brisk Avraham Wein Page 9 Symposium: The Role of Emotions in Mitzva Observance Rabbis Carmy, Saks, and Reichman Pages 21-23 Revisiting Classical Essays: Mindy Schwartz Page 25 people often confuse having an emotion hand. Just because contemporary Western what emotions are appropriate in different with putting it on display. 2 In this we are culture oscillates between these two connections, how to be joyful and how inspired by pop psychologists and by the distortions, setting up false dichotomies to grieve. There are moments of public kind of show business personalities or between emotion and intellect to the H[XEHUDQFH LQ IDPLO\ OLIH DORQJ ZLWK politicians who engage in effusive displays detriment of both, adopting other-directed moments of intimacy, so too there are times of affection to members of their families, behavior as a substitute for the personal and places where the public manifestation acquaintances, and household pets in an encounter with G Rd, does not mean that we of religious emotion is mandated—Hallel is effort to demonstrate their humanity. have to follow suit. Philosophy enables us WR a public recitation; the prayer on fast days is ,0-)".&7"4&3 UHIOHFW PRUH FOHDUO\ RQ WKH QDWXUH DQG a very different kind of public performance 2XUUHOLJLRXVOLIHXQIRUWXQDWHO\LV shadings of emotion and on the cognitive and (see on this Ramban end of Parashat Bo ). RIWHQXQFRQVFLRXVO\LQÀXHQFHGE\SUHYDOHQW constitutive role they play in our lives. As Rabbi Yosef Blau has often remarked, attitudes. The less we develop a critical Literature and music enable us to assess the joy of Purim is very different from the perspective on secular culture, the more we RWKHU SHRSOH¶V HPRWLRQDO H[SHULHQFH DQG WR joy of Yom Kippur and he who meshes the are at the mercy of these attitudes. That is H[SUHVVRXURZQ+LVWRU\VKRZVXVKRZ people two understands neither. one reason for studying the liberal arts, to in other times and places have lived their analyze, assess and resist these tendencies. emotional lives. We have choice. The distortion of the value and place of emotion in religious life is much affected With respect to our spiritual lives Rabbi Shalom Carmy is a professor of by rationalistic behavioristic trends, on the DQG RXU HPRWLRQDO H[SHULHQFH ZH VKRXOG EH Jewish Studies at Yeshiva College and one hand, and by the cheapening of emotion gavras , so to speak and not heftsas. The serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Tradition. in modern therapeutic culture, on the other study of Torah educates us to understand 1 See further my comments in Lomdut, ed. Yosef “Grief and Joy in the Writings of Rabbi 2 See my further discussion in “The Litvak’s Buried Blau (Orthodox Forum) pp. 66ff. The Rav’s most Soloveitchik” (Tradition 43:4; 44:3, and 45:2). On the use Treasure: Further Thoughts on the Dictum “the Holier sustained philosophical essay on emotion is in Out of of family anecdotes in Halakhic Man, see Sztuden, “Why the Feeling, the More Intimate” (Tradition 44:1). the Whirlwind. For a lengthy discussion of the place are There Stories in Halakhic Man?” in Rav Shalom of emotion in the Rav’s thought, see Alex Sztuden, Banayikh, ed. Hayyim Angel and Yitzchak Blau. The Rav Between Halakhic Men and Lachrymose Lubavitchers BY RABBI JEFFREY SAKS Rabbi Soloveitchik’s telling of 38), which implies that halakhic men also viewpoint. When Rav Moshe charges the the well-known anecdote of his father, are sensitive to aesthetic, and presumably lachrymose Lubavitcher: “Do you weep Rav Moshe, and the Lubavitcher ba’al HPRWLRQDOH[SHULHQFHVEXWXOWLPDWHO\ILOWHU when you take the lulav? Why then do tokea plays a curious role in Halakhic them through the prism of the pure halakha. you weep when you sound the shofar? Are Man . (It should be noted that the incident Ultimately the reader is more stunned by not both commandments of God?,” the occurred in the synagogue in Washington the depictions of the Vilna Gaon and R. lengthy citation from the Likkutei Torah Heights, not in old-world Khislavichi , Elijah Pruzna’s encounters with the death ZKLFKIROORZVH[SODLQVSUHFLVHO\ZK\WKH a mistake the reader might be forgiven of loved ones (pp. 77-78). These halakhic ba’al tokea had no idea what the elder for making.) The story itself is a fairly PHQ DUH QRW H[DFWO\ 6SRFNOLNH \HW WKHLU Rabbi Soloveitchik was asking him. To his effective demonstration of halakhic man’s emotions are deeply internalized, private, ears it must have sounded like a nonsense worldview, which sees in the halakha and regulated through strict halakhic question, akin to asking a sobbing child “a dam against the surging, subjective PHFKDQLVPV 2XU UHYHUHQFH IRU WKRVH who has just crashed his bicycle: “Why current coursing through the universal masters aside, few modern readers will do you cry when you scrape your knee? homo religiosus ” (p. 59). It is precisely this fully identify with the depiction of these Do you cry when you get ice cream?” outlook which drove halakhic men to view NDOWHUOLWYDNVPDQ\ZLOOILQGWKHDQHFGRWHV 7KH 5DY H[SODLQV DFFRUGLQJ WR WKH $OWHU the Musar movement, and its perceived downright grotesque. Rebbe how shofar and lulav represent H[WUHPHVRIHPRWLRQDOOLIHZLWKDMDXQGLFHG GLIIHUHQW HPRWLRQDO H[SHULHQFHV LQ EULHI H\H VHH WKH %ULVNHU 5[ IRU FDVWRU RLO S However, I believe that the Shofar heralds how distant we are from the 75). In fact, although the shofar anecdote VLJQLILFDQFHRI WKH VKRIDU VWRU\ LV QRW LQ its Deus Absconditus ; lulav signals the polar might be more well known, it is hardly the telling, but in how the Rav frames it. The RSSRVLWH 7KH KDVLGLF H[FXUVXV IROORZV VKDUSHVWH[DPSOHFLWHG$OWKRXJKWKH5DY anecdote occupies a mere HLJKW lines of WKH immediately on the heels of the misnagdic may have felt compelled to acknowledge WH[W:KDWIROORZVLVWZRDQGDTXDUWHU pages anecdote, without as much as a paragraph in passing (p. 154 n.90) that there is a (in a monograph containing only 132 SDJHV RI break, and the casual reader might not distinction between the halakhic men and WH[W LQ ZKLFK WKH 5DY ODZV RXW the teaching immediately perceive how subversive the Stoics and Epicureans, he does not of R. Shneur Zalman of Lyady regarding LW LV WR WKH H[SRVLWLRQ RI KDODNKLF PDQ¶V elaborate. A good demonstration of this is shofar and lulav. That is: He gives more worldview. Its place and purpose in the the encounter with Yom Kippur’s sunset (p. than equal time to the opposing work is, I believe, to gently communicate 22 www.kolhamevaser.com Volume X Issue 1 that despite his reverence for halakhic of him [Reb Velvel] that he was opposed worldview that he has idealized in Halakhic Derekh Ha-Limmud man (who is after all, no more and no less to the State of Israel. This is not correct. Man (and again in “ Mah Dodekh mi-Dod ”). than a typological distillation of his own 2SSRVLWLRQ WR D 6WDWH HPDQDWHV IURP :KLOHLQWKHHXORJ\KHJRHVRQWRH[SODLQ grandfather, father, and uncle), the Rav adopting a position regarding a political the way that he was able to conceive of the does not fully identify with him, precisely body, which is itself a political act. My modern State of Israel within a halakhic regarding his position on the role of uncle was completely removed from all framework, there can be no doubt that he emotion in life and in the service of God. socio-political thought or response. What was moved by an emotional consideration, His lifelong occupation with the matter of may be said of him is that the State found one which his hero, halakhic man, could Kiyyum she-baLev (although admittedly no place within his halakhic thought system not or would not register. present in earlier Brisker Torah) may nor on his halakhic value scale. He was reveal a desire to introduce an emotional unable to ‘translate’ the idea of a sovereign, We, too, revere halakhic men component into halakha proper. Consider secular State to halakhic properties and (and women). But when we look to role WKLV,IWKH5DYZDVDVHOILGHQWL¿HGFDUG values.” It is not that Reb Velvel was an PRGHOV EH WKH\ RI ÀHVK DQG EORRG RU carrying halakhic man could he also have anti-Zionist, per se, but that, as a halakhic philosophical typologies on a page, we authored The Lonely Man of Faith ? matter the secular State of Israel did not must take care when “cutting and pasting” register on his radar screen. Upon reaching WKHLUH[DPSOHVWRRXURZQOLYHV%\GRLQJ The Rav’s ambivalence toward the hero the disappointing conclusion that there so indiscriminately, we may be importing of Halakhic Man EHFRPHV VLJQL¿FDQW LQ was no way to integrate the State into the a characteristics which are neither effective another area when, in 1959, he revisited priori ideals of the halakha, Reb Velvel was or appropriate for ourselves; eclectic WKHKDODNKLFPDQ¿IWHHQ\HDUVDIWHUKLV¿UVW forced to retreat and ignore (not oppose) modelling if done with integrity is often appearance, by way of eulogizing his uncle, the State. At this point in his presentation, more sound. If we do not fully identify with Reb Velvel, the Brisker Rav of Jerusalem. we must pay close attention to the Rav’s Halakhic Man , and it is possible its author The eulogy, later published as “Mah words: “This disappointment led to my GLGQRWIXOO\GRVRVSHFL¿FDOO\RQWKHUROH Dodekh mi-Dod” (available in Be-Sod Ha- uncle separating himself from the most of emotion in religious life, that need not Yahid ve-haYahad ; an English translation important event in modern Jewish history dampen our commitment to “defend the is a serious desideratum), serves as an [i.e., the establishment of the State].” honor of the halakhah and halakhic men” important supplement to our understanding nor to continue striving to “penetrate into of Halakhic Man in general and the 2QFHDJDLQYHU\VXEWO\WKH5DY the essence of halakhah” (the Rav’s stated question at hand in particular (especially as admits that “after many sleepless nights” goals in composing the work; p.