moderntoraleadership

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Every ritual recollection of the Beit Hamikdash navigates between a Scylla and a Charybdis. Make the imitation too perfect, and one violates the halakhot protecting its uniqueness; make it too different, and the point is lost. 

The name Chanukah, literally inauguration, points to the Temple. The miracle of the oil also draws our attention there. A perfect ritual recollection of the Maccabean reinauguration of the Temple would involve lighting an exact replica of the Temple menorah.  

Yet the Temple Menorah has only seven lights, whereas Chanukah has eight nights. Here a beloved chestnut could have created a match: If there was enough oil for one night, then only seven nights were miraculous! Shu”T Shoeil uMeishiv 1:3:71 suggests that Chanukah was made eight nights long to avoid that match. Perhaps this is also why halakhah does not mandate that chanukah lamps be physically connected to each other at all. 

The tension remains. Bottom-line law, one light is enough – yet the mehadrin and mehadrin min hamehadrin push us toward multiple lights. And once one chooses to put all the lights on a single structure, some sort of similarity to the Temple is unavoidable, especially if one insists that the lights be on a single line. 

The question then becomes: what sorts of similarities are halakhically problematic, and/or what sorts of dissimilarities, if any, are sufficient to resolve all problems? 

In a learned, informative, and creative article on TheLehrhaus.com, Rabbi Yosie Levine of The Jewish Center in New York analyzes the approaches of Mahari Colon #267 and Chakham Tzvi #60 to these questions. He contends that Mahari Colon understood the prohibition as audience-centered, meaning that anything viewers perceive as identical is prohibited, while anything they perceive as differentiated in permitted. By contrast:

The halakhah, (Chakham Tzvi) insisted, cannot be given to such subjective measures. Whether or not a craftsman is in violation of the halakhah is not determined by the audience, but by the craftsman. It is the creation of an exact menorah replica that represents an affront to the Almighty and His Temple. Anything short of duplication is thus permissible. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but fealty to the halakhic system is in the hands of the artist. 

Rabbi Levine’s thesis is fascinating and beautiful in the eye of this beholder, but I am not convinced that it is a perfect representation of the halakhic positions at issue. 

My first demurrer is that an audience-centered prohibition is not subjective when defined by the average rather than the individual viewer. But that is probably a challenge to Chakham Tzvi rather than to Rabbi Levine. 

My second is that I don’t read Chakham Tzvi as allowing anything short of duplication. Indeed, I suggest that the term “duplication” may be a red herring distracting us from the true nature of this prohibition and its relationship to art. 

The textual fulcrum for this conversation is a Tosafot on Menachot 28b. The Talmud there cites a beraita:

A person may not construct a building in the tavnit of the Sanctuary,

nor an akhsadrah corresponding to the Entrance Hall . . .

Tosafot protest that an akhsadrah by definition cannot correspond to the tavnit of the Sanctuary, because an akhsadrah has only three walls, while the Sanctuary had four. Tosafot respond:

Nonetheless, because the doorway to the Entrance Hall was very wide and tall and had no doors –

it was similar to an akhsadrah, because it appeared open on one side.

Maharik understands Tosafot to be arguing for a prohibition against constructing three-walled spaces corresponding to the Sanctuary. 

You see explicitly

that even though the sanctuary had mechitzot on four sides,

since it appeared as if there were only three –

it is forbidden to make a three-mechitzah akhsadrah in the tavnit of the Sanctuary.

Chakham Tzvi convincingly argues that Maharik misinterpreted Tosafot. Tosafot were not claiming that a three-walled akhsadrah was prohibited. Rather, they were claiming that the category akhsadrah includes spaces with a visually ignorable fourth wall. Thus the Sanctuary could be called akhsadrah, and similarly, the prohibition against building an akhsadrah corresponding to the Sanctuary applied to such a four-walled space.

Maharik derives a halakhic principle from his reading of Tosafot:

So I see that the matter depends on visual appearance,

even though one had not made it literally on the model of the Temple. 

He then applies that principle to the specific case before him, which relates to a menorah generally modelled after the Temple Menorah but not having the same dimensions:

All the more so here, as it is obvious that since it has seven branches with buttons and flowers – 

it is similar to that of the Temple.

Maharik’s apparent principle is that an object “corresponds” to the Temple if it looks like the original, even if it is not an exact duplicate. Examples include a three-walled space resembling the four-walled Sanctuary, and a shorter or taller candelabra otherwise resembling the Temple menorah.

Chakham Tzvi objects:

According to my impoverished intellect

the Tosafot never considered saying 

that even though it is not exactly on the model of the Entrance Hall –

it is forbidden because it appears to be on that model,

because if that were so, what measure could we use to permit?! 

Who could tell us how far a person can err via their visual imagination?!

The case before Chakham Tzvi was of a menorah with seven branches leading to eight lights, which sounds to me like an attempt to undo the gap between a chanukiah and the Temple Menorah. He was aware that Maharik had prohibited a menorah regardless of size, and sought to distinguish the precedent. Step one, as we have seen, denied that visual similarity was sufficient ground for prohibition. 

However, Chakham Tzvi knew that Talmud Menachot 28b cites positions that a menorah may be prohibited even if it is made of metals other than gold, or according to one position even if made of wood. The underlying rationale is that the prohibition is not against duplicating the Temple Menorah, but rather against instantiating its abstract legal description in a nonTemple context. One may not make a menorah that could be used in the Temple, even if no menorah like it has ever been used in the Temple.

It follows that visual resemblance, or duplication, cannot be a sufficient halakhic description of the prohibition. How can an existing object visually resemble an abstraction?

Chakham Tzvi also knew that Rashi explicitly states that a building can be forbidden for resembling the Temple even if its dimensions are different, and he argues compellingly that the same is true all-the-more-so regarding a candelabra, because while a Temple Menorah is ideally 18 handsbreadths tall, it can be valid regardless of size.  

The question facing him then was: If a Temple Menorah can be made of any metal, and any size, how can we decide whether a candelabra “corresponds”? His answer is that we must rely on formal, structural criteria. A candelabra is forbidden only if it could be validly used in the Temple. In practice, he contends that while the beraita on Menachot 28b explicitly permits only an eight-branched candelabra, the permission extends to a candelabra with eight lamps on seven branches.

However, it must be understood that Chakham Tzvi also prohibits any candelabra that could serve as a valid Temple Menorah, even if it is not in any way a “duplicate”.  Or in his formulation: Everything that would be valid within is its literal instantiation (and therefore forbidden).

Maharik of course also knew that the Talmud bans candelabras that looked nothing like the Temple menorah. In fact, the candelabra he forbade had ornamentation different from that prescribed for the Temple Menorah, and one basis for his strict ruling was that lack of ornamentation does not invalidate a Temple Menorah so long as it is not made of gold. So in what way can his position differ from that of Chakham Tzvi?

Chakham Tzvi understands Maharik as saying that the prohibition of making a building in the tavnit of the sanctuary uniquely has two elements: it is forbidden either to build to the exact dimensions of the Sanctuary or to build something that visually resembles the Sanctuary. All other Temple-correspondence prohibitions are defined exclusively by halakhic rather than visual resemblance. He therefore contends that Maharik would have agreed that the seven-branch-eight-lamp candelabra was permitted. But he concedes that this understanding makes Maharik’s position untenable.

So I suggest the following instead. 

Maharik states that it is obvious that “Anything that is valid for use within the Temple, it is forbidden to make outside the Temple”. He also states that “a building is different, because if it is not made literally on the model of the Temple – it would not be so recognizable that it is made in the tavnit of the Temple, as there are many tall and long houses. But one cannot say this about the Temple Menorah”. How can this claim that the prohibition regarding a building is more tightly bounded to exact correspondence be reconciled with his position that a three-walled space can be prohibited?

I suggest that the three-walled space is in fact precisely the dimensions of the Sanctuary. It is an incomplete rather than an imprecise instantiation. Incomplete instantiations are forbidden when they can be visually mistaken for their model. Here’s a test case to consider. An artist installs a partial menorah – four branches – so that it appears as if three and only three other branches and lamps exist just out of view. Is it forbidden?

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Yosef’s brothers could not “speak to peace with him”. Rashi, citing Chazal, praises the brothers for avoiding hypocrisy. Does that imply that they were silent? Or rather that they explicitly rebuked him? In halakhic terms, they refused to violate Do not hate your brother in your heart, but did they fulfill You must surely rebuke your fellow, and not bear sin because of him?

Even if they rebuked him – does the Torah mean to say that all interactions with a sinner must involve rebuke? Is it hypocrisy to carry on normal social intercourse and rebuke only when the issue comes up? That seems overly harsh. Seforno accordingly offers a less positive evaluation of the brothers’ behavior:

Even though they had to speak with him regarding household management and shepherding,

seeing as he was the one in charge by his father’s command,

they were unable to speak with him to peace and companionship in the manner of brothers.

In contrast to Rashi, Seforno evaluates the brothers’ inability to engage in normal social conversation with Yosef as a weakness and failure.

Presumably the brothers held like Rashi. The story as it develops suggests that we should not see them as role models on this issue.

But one should not evaluate behavior in a relationship from the perspective of only one side. While the Torah does not tell us explicitly whether Yosef was aware of, or reciprocated, his brothers’ hatred and incivility. Midrash Tanchuma holds strongly that he did not:

He (Yosef) would come ask-about-their-shalom, but they would not respond to him.

Why? Because that was his practice, to ask-about-their-shalom.

You have people who, before they enter into authority, ask-about-the-shalom of people,

but once they enter into authority, they become arrogant and aren’t concerned to ask-about-the-shalom of the populace,

but Yosef was not like that – even after he entered into authority, his practice was to ask-about-the-shalom of his brothers,

         as the Torah says: He asked-them-about-their-shalom. (Bereishis 43:27)

The Holy Blessed One said to him: Yosef, you would initiate asking-about-the-shalom of your brothers in This World, while they hated you,

but ultimately – I will reconcile you and remove the hatred from amongst you and settle you in tranquility and make peace among you,

as David Hamelekh said: Behold how good and how pleasant brothers dwelling in togetherness. (Tehillim 133:1)

I’m not convinced. Yosef asks about his brothers’ shalom only when they come to Egypt the second time, bringing Binyamin. The first time, he speaks harshly to them, and the Torah records no speech on either side when he is kidnapped.

I’m also not convinced that the Tanchuma’s evaluation is morally or practically correct. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and Netziv both suggest that Yosef predictably made things worse by trying to speak shalom to them. Malbim adds a vital psychological nuance:

Ordinary hatred cools when the enemy speaks words of peace and reconciliation . . .

but hatred arising out of jealousy, and all the more so if one sees the enemy as lying in ambush against your life and dignity, and that he deserves death – increases when the enemy speaks about peace . . .

Why is jealousy different? Deborah suggested that the brothers’ anger was displaced onto Yosef from Yaakov. We can develop this by saying that they needed to hate Yosef in order to avoid hating their father. Any sense that Yosef was a decent person was therefore profoundly threatening to them emotionally. Therefore they could not tolerate civility.

If Malbim is correct, we can use reactions to civility as a way of diagnosing the causes of hatred, and therefore determine whether seeking civil dialogue is a viable counter-hate strategy.

My life was enriched this week by learning the phrase “adversarial civility” from a Facebook comment.  A Google search confirmed that this apparent oxymoron captures a beau ideal of American legal practice. I immediately considered how it differingly paralleled the quintessential Rabbinic description of chavruta study on Kiddushin 30b:

Said Rav Chiyya bar Aba: Even a father and his son, even a rav and his disciple, when they engage in Torah in the same gate – they become mutual אויבים/oyvim/enemies of each other, but they don’t depart from there until they become mutual אוהבים/ohavim.

Rav Chiyya bar Abba apparently cobbled this statement together by reinterpreting two otherwise disjoint Biblical units. He derives that Torah interlocutors become oyvim from the end of Psalms 127: Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth (Rashi: the Torah students one stands up in one’s youth); they will not be shamed when they speak with enemies in the gate.  He derives that they become ohavim in the end from Bamidbar 21:14: Therefore it is said in the Book of the Wars of Hashem: את והב בסופה/et vahav b’sufah, readingthe last phrase something like etahav b’sofah to mean that love comes at the end.

This is an awkward structure. I am very attracted to the persistent textual variant that inserts “Said Rava” at the fulcrum. In that version, Rav Chiyya bar Aba states only that Torah interlocutors become oyvim, on the basis of Psalms 127. Rava is disturbed by this and provides the happy ending via Bamidbar 21:14.

But emending on the basis of attraction is a slippery slope. Wouldn’t it be even neater if Rava were a student of the author of the original statement? He isn’t a student of Rav Chiyya bar ABA, but the Talmud in four places cites him saying “I and the lion of the group” in reference to Rav Chiyya bar ABIN, and at least one ms. of Kiddushin 30b has AB’ rather than ABA. Or if Rava were the son of the original author? Several rishonim bring allegedly Talmudic quotes that cite Rava the son of Rav Chiyya bar Aba, although he is absent from the Vilna edition, and may be a scribal phantom.

Let’s therefore accept that no one in Rabbinic tradition was ever comfortable with the idea that impassioned Torah conversation could lead to permanent estrangement. Rather, every Torah oyev becomes a Torah ohev.

Ahavah is love or friendship. Civility is not the same thing as love, or even friendship, and not all adversaries are enemies. Civility is a tactic, not a relationship. The Rabbinic version seems much more emotionally charged than the American.

The American phrase rests on the notion that to be a civil adversary is no contradiction; the challenge arises only when one seeks to be civil and adversarial. Does the rabbinic phrase contend that one can be oyev and ohev sequentially but not simultaneously? Or is the transition in the end only from enemy to frenemy?

Note also that while the American phrase makes no mention of any prior relationship among the disputants, we could read the Rabbinic phrase like this: “Even people who love each other become enemies in the course of Torah argument. But people who love each other before the argument begins, such as parents and children – will not leave until they love each other again”. That would leave open the possibility that some Torah arguments become personal in ways that do not resolve. The converse is of course also true – love and friendship can bloom in the course of Torah argument.

In the all-male yeshivot where I studied, many of us assumed that Rav Chiyya bar Abba’s statement exempted us from adversarial civility. On the contrary – the Torah road to love and deep friendship necessarily passed through a sort of enmity. One had to raise the emotional temperature for anything to cook.

Deborah (and others) tell me that women’s batei midrash are not the same. My experience is that coed programs, and for that matter of programs that stretch beyond Orthodoxy, are also not the same. Deborah sees this as progress; actually, she uses terms of moral opprobrium in regard to some of my best chavruta experiences; but I’m never certain whether yatza sekharam behefseidam, that is to say: making civility a norm of discourse can make the ruptures caused by incivility much harder to heal. On the other hand, the Talmud has many stories, headlined by the terrible end of Resh Lakish and Rabbi Yochanan’s relationship, which make clear that incivility always risks causing unhealable ruptures, and pretending that there aren’t red lines doesn’t make it so. (This is aside from the questions of how an openly competitive atmosphere affects educational achievement and character development, and about the extent to which educational environment strategies must respond to the expectations that students bring with them.)

Our discussion resembles the ongoing American discussion about how colleges can maintain or restore their position as incubators of passionate debate. Do we need to (mostly) reinstitute well-defined norms of civility (recognizing that such norms can only become really effective when they are assumed rather than defined), or (mostly) develop thicker skins? (This is aside from questions about the extent to which the market of ideas should be regulated, by whom, and by what means.)

In the context of the Torah’s narrative of Yosef and his brothers, the crucial question may therefore be whether the brothers’ anger was already murderous, so that they could not speak with him, or rather became murderous because they would not speak with him. Perhaps issues of civility are red herrings, and the real question is how to exclude substantive positions that are inherently threatening, evil, and discourse-poisoning, without excluding (too) many positions that aren’t.

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

My mother a”h included selections from the Chofetz Chayyim in the Survey of World Literature courses she taught at various colleges. Her nonJewish students were always positively amazed that Hilkhot Lashon Hora existed.  But what blew their minds were the “dust of lashon hora” prohibitions, especially the conclusion of Sefer Chofetz Chayyim 9:1:

There are things forbidden as “dust of lashon hora”, such as saying “who would have said X would turn out the way he is now?”, or “Be silent about X – I don’t want to say what happened and what will be”, and suchlike. Also speaking in praise of another in the presence of those who hate that other person – that also is included in “dust of lashon hora”, because it causes others to speak in his denigration. Speaking excessively in praise of another, even not in the presence of those who hate that person – is forbidden, because it regularly causes you to in the end speak in his denigration, saying “except for this bad characteristic he possesses”, or (because) listeners will respond: “Why are you praising him excessively? Doesn’t he possess such-and-such a (negative) characteristic?”

Growing up, it was important for me to know that nonJews found these laws beautiful. I lived in an Orthodox community replete with “Drive Lashon Hora Away” bumper stickers. My prize – two years in a row – for winning my summer camp’s mishnayot memorization contest was a Kitzur Hilkhot Lashon Hora, and it was a Sefer Chofetz Chayyim the third year. And yet all this spiritual effort seemed an obvious failure. Lashon Hora was everywhere, including about other people who, I was told, constantly spoke lashon hora and should therefore be avoided.

In retrospect, I had no way of comparing the extent of scandalmongering in my community to any other, and no concept of partial success. Very likely the campaigns succeeded to an extent. I had not learned Lon Fuller’s concept of the “aspirational ethic”, nor Professor Benny Brown’s critique of the legal formalization of Jewish speech ethics. I was naturally hypersensitive to the appearance of hypocrisy, or at least to other people’s apparent hypocrisy.

Moreover – I ran a semester-long seminar on Hilkhot Lashon Hora at a pluralistic Jewish high school around a decade ago. The students agreed on the first day to make it a lab; we would all try to practice what we learned and see what happened. It was hard, they reported, especially to walk away from gossip-infused conversations without seeming or being arrogant. But they felt better about themselves overall.

Toward the end of the semester, a natural experiment fell into our laps. The school publicly suspended several students. Everyone needed to process this traumatic event, and so I proposed that we do so in our seminar, and see whether Hilkhot Lashon Hora made a difference. Afterward, the students overwhelmingly said that it had made a large difference – and I couldn’t tell what the difference had been.   

The bottom line is that I’m probably really bad at knowing how well these halakhot work to improve character. I know that I find them beautiful and powerful and aspire to live up to the ideals they express.

They can be wielded as powerful weapons for evil. Charismatic individuals and powerful institutions regularly try to use them to shield everything from major criminal acts to minor cruelties. I say this from extensive personal experience. I have publicly stated and written many, many times – and do so here again – that effective investigative journalism is an indispensable component of moral community, and that Orthodoxy suffers from not having enough of it. And I strongly suspect that halakhic qualms inhibit me from speaking out as often or as clearly or as soon as I should.

Some items I read recently send me straight into lashon-hora paradox mode. They praised a person in ways that immediately set me to thinking of that person’s flaws. I also thought of the people who had been harmed by those flaws – surely it would be a mitzvah to speak out and show them they were not alone.    

In the end, I didn’t write my thoughts as public comments. I didn’t even give into the temptation to write “See Chofetz Chayyim 9:1”. Instead, I tried to sublimate the urge by researching and analyzing the halakhic detail that so impressed my mother’s students.

Let me begin with this: The Chofetz Chayyim bans speaking a person’s praise in front of people who hate that person because of the risk that those people will respond with lashon hora. But he recognizes – even if his emphasis is almost always the other way – that speaking negatively of someone is a mitzvah when it prevents future abuse. Many great scholars have subsequently shifted the emphasis. What I haven’t seen is a halakhic analysis that examines whether/when speaking negatively of someone is necessary precisely because someone else has praised them excessively.

In other words: The Chofetz Chayyim speaks of “people who hate” the object of negative speech, without distinguishing among grounds for hatred, or among true and false grounds. Standard halakhah distinguished legitimate true grounds that create a risk of future harm. I think there’s a growing sense that praising someone in the presence of their victims is a form of direct harm to their victims. My question is whether halakhah justifies or mandates mitigating that harm by publicly contradicting or contrapointing the praise, without requiring a claim that this is needed to prevent future harm.

Any such justification would require weighing the harm caused against the harm prevented. The morally complicating feature of this case is that the praisee would have done nothing new to deserve having their flaws discussed.

The primary source for this halakhah is found on Talmud Bava Batra 164b:

A folded-and-sewn contract came before Rebbe. Rebbe said: Is this contract undated?

Rabbi Shimon his son said to him: Perhaps the date is buried in the folds?

He opened it and found it.

He then found Rebbe eyeing him suspiciously, so he said: I didn’t write it; R Yehuda Hayyata wrote it.

Rebbe said to him: Stay away from such lashon hora!

Some time later, he was sitting before Rebbe, who was reciting from a Book of Psalms.

Rebbe said: This is so beautifully scribed!

Rabbi Shimon said to him: I didn’t write it; Yehudah the Tailor wrote it.

Rebbe said to him: Stay away from such lashon hora!

(The Talmud asks:) It’s clear what the lashon hora was in the first case, but what is the lashon hora in the second case?

(The Talmud answers that the lashon hora in the second case) emerges from a beraita taught by Rav Dimi the brother of Rav Safra:

“A person must not tell the good of his fellow, as out of the good he will come to (tell) his bad.

 CHIDA and others argue convincingly that the stories must be read together; because Rabbi Shimon attributed the problematic contract to the other scribe, all future praise becomes risky, because it recalls the criticism.

The obvious problem is that the alternative is to leave Rebbe knowing only the negatives about that scribe. I have not seen any answer to that problem. 

Rashbam and many other rishonim limit Rav Dimi’s beraita to cases of excessive praise. That seems hard to read into the sugya, where it is cited to criticize Rabbi Shimon simply for identifying the person who he really thought was deserving of praise. It’s also hard to read the condition “in front of those who hate him” into the story. Rather, these conditions seem to be common-sense extensions or limitations of a rule taught in relation to an unusual case.

Rabbeinu Yonah (Shaarei Teshuvah 3:226) shifts the burden of proof dramatically:

One must not speak good about a person . . . in public unless one knows that there is no one present who hates or is jealous of the person.

This would certainly forbid all praise on social media. Yet won’t the result be that the negative dominates? Surely it must be okay to speak good of someone in response to lashon hora, and wouldn’t it be reasonable to allow preemption as well, so that the inevitable negatives are not immediately accepted as fact? Put differently: The observance of lashon hora cannot reasonably be based on the presumption that everyone else fully observes the rules of lashon hora.

Maharshal (cited from commentary on SMAG) contends that Rav Dimi does not apply to students speaking about their teachers, because “everyone knows that a student is obligated to speak the good of their teacher, and so there is no jealousy”.  However, CHIDA (Ruach Chayyim Derush 15) is unable to find a source for this obligation, and cannot understand why it would justify praising teachers in front of those who hate them. 

I suggest that Maharshal is speaking of a psychological rather than a halakhic obligation, and that he very carefully limits his limitation to the aspect of jealousy. Students feel compelled to praise their teachers to justify their own educational choices, and also to express gratitude; other scholars, and students of other scholars, understand that and ought to be able to restrain themselves from tearing down the competition. But this has no application to cases of actual enmity or victimhood, where CHIDA is compelling. 

Others claim that the rule doesn’t apply to tzaddikim, whom no one would speak ill of. This approach seems to me irredeemably circular and therefore flat-out dangerous.  In the end, I think it is vital for students and disciples to understand that the urge to praise one’s teacher to others always involves an element of self-praise, and comes bound together with a preference to deny the existence and experience of victims. That can’t mean that it is always forbidden to praise one’s teachers on the internet; rather, like all the rules of lashon hora, it means that a responsible moral person seeks to understand all consequences before speaking.

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

If every option at every fork in every road in life leads to Rome, then energy spent on deciding or thinking is wasted. If history inevitably ends in Redemption, then one can mark every moment of history as leading to redemption. But this makes the whole concept of “leading to redemption” meaningless, useless, and even silly.

Free will entails the possibility that human choices will delay Redemption, and therefore that some events are not Redemptive in any meaningful sense. They may distance Redemption rather than bringing it nearer, or – and this may be the most painful to confront – they may have massive individual or national repercussions, positive or negative, and yet be neutral on the axis of Redemption.

For example: The State of Israel might fight chas veshalom a long and bloody war of attrition that has no Redemptive consequences. Individuals would be killed or wounded; the economy might radically shift, expand, or contract; and the political discourse might change radically. But the prospects for Redemption, or chas veshalom Churban, might be exactly the same at the end of the war as at its beginning.  

There are many good reasons to avoid getting into such a war. But there are no theological reasons that it can’t happen.

It is therefore essential to affirm explicitly that from an authentic Jewish perspective, meaningfulness and Redemptiveness are distinct categories. Actions can be profoundly and positively meaningful and yet have no effect on Redemption, perhaps even make it less likely.

We must also acknowledge that terrible actions might make early Redemption more likely. Yeshiva students often point to the midrash about G-d needing to take us out of Egypt before we fell into the irredeemable “fiftieth level of tum’ah”, and the position that Moshiach will come in the time of a completely evil generation, and so forth, and wonder whether a Frankist strategy of sinning extravagantly isn’t more likely to succeed at bringing Redemption than a strategy of trying to deserve it. So we need to make a second point explicitly: An action that would otherwise be wrong cannot be justified on the ground that it will bring Redemption nearer.

I am agnostic about the existence and value of actions that are ethically or morally neutral but bring the Messianic Era closer. In other words, it is not clear to me that Redemption is a religious value independent of building a society worthy of being redeemed, or that human beings can strategize about the coming of Redemption in any other way.

Let’s consider the relationship of these reflections for Religious Zionism, with the spoiler that I identify as a religious Zionist.

Much of traditional Jewry believed for many years, along with the Catholic Church, that since Exile was a Divine punishment for Jewish sins, human beings could not reverse it by direct action, only via repentance. To be clear, no one thought that Jews could not successfully live in the Land, and some or most thought that living in the land fulfilled a mitzvah and was as obligatory as any other positive commandment. However, they thought that achieving Jewish sovereignty in the land would happen only at G-d’s direct, i.e. prophetic, instigation.

In principle, this position could not account for Rabbinic support for the Bar Kochba rebellion, before he was declared a False Messiah, whether that conclusion was reached before or after his defeat. The usual solution was to make the category “prophetic” a little elastic.

A simpler solution was available. The Bar Kochba rebellion deserved support if it had a chance of succeeding, even if it was not Messianic or Redemptive. Bar Kochba failed not because Jewish sovereignty could be achieved only by a true Messiah, but rather because he claimed falsely to be a Messiah and/or because his rebellion had no plausible chance of succeeding without open miraculous Divine intervention, which was not deserved.

One might argue that by the 19^th century, Orthodox Jewry was in a different religious position relative to Jewish sovereignty in Israel than the Rabbis of Bar Kochba’s time. So far as I can see, the only basis for such a claim is the famous sugya of “The Three Oaths”. Let’s assume that one of the many, many approaches to sidelining that sugya is correct.  Regardless, we are now in the position of evaluating a successful Bar Kochba revolt that at least as yet has not led to a Messianic or Redemptive Era.

The last sentence itself is not obvious. We might argue that Jewish sovereignty is per se Redemptive according to Maimonides, certainly if the sovereign Jewish state allows many thousands of men to do nothing at all but study Torah.

Nonetheless, to my knowledge this position has little or no support in the Orthodox community, even or especially amongst those whom the sovereign Jewish state allows to do nothing at all but study Torah. Adopting this position would require a whole new religious vocabulary aimed at improvement within Redemption. Perhaps something like shippur hageulah?

Religious Zionism assumes instead that Redemption requires a Temple (certainly) and an individual Messiah (probably). Occasionally there is also discussion of whether Redemption requires genuine freedom of action in both domestic and foreign affairs, unencumbered by entangling alliances with powerful empires and the like.

Today there is no Temple, no declared Messiah, and for good or ill, Israel’s actions are  significantly constrained by its alliance with the United States among others. We are therefore not Redeemed, even if we live in Israel. So what sort of time do we live in?

One common answer is that we live in an atchalta d’geulah, a preliminary stage of Redemption, a proto-Geulah. Years ago on Yom HaAtzmaut, Rav Yehuda Parnes shlita offered to debate the term with self-identifying Religious Zionists in his shiur at YU, but kedarko bakodesh as a Brisker, only if they could first define it to his satisfaction. They could not. I don’t remember the details, except that I had no useful contribution to make.

Issues that deserve formulated answers include: Does atchalta d’geulah guarantee that some or all of the possible symptoms of geulah, such as sovereignty in a portion of the land, settlement in a somewhat different portion, and the increased fertility of much of the land, cannot be reversed? Does it guarantee that a further state of Redemption, or the final stage of Redemption, will occur before a specific date? Should strategic or tactical military, political, and economic decisions be made differently than they would be in a non-atchalta d’geulah era?

One possible response is to say that atchalta d’geulah is a recognition of the goods of the present rather than any claim about the future. Some of the things we hope for in Redemption exist to some extent in some unredeemed times. Marking them as Redemptive encourages us to fulfillour thanksgiving obligation, to express gratitude for them, and to value their achievement and preservation. But nothing guarantees their preservation, any more than the rediscovery of tkheilet (if one accepts that it has been rediscovered) guarantees that a particular mollusk will thrive regardless of climate change. We should however give that mollusk some priority in conservation efforts.

Anyone who reads Tanakh through the eyes of Chazal knows that we have approached Redemption several times in the past, only to be pushed back to what seems the very beginning. Every reader of the narratives of Tanakh also knows that we don’t know how G-d keeps score, and whether our specific triumphs or tribulations are owed to present or rather past acts of virtue or vice. And that’s with the assistance of prophecy! For example, the wicked may prosper because of a righteous grandparent, and vice versa.

What makes this difficult for us to accept as applicable to our own experience is a sense or conviction that the State of Israel’s existence and flourishing are astoundingly unlikely, to the point of being miraculous, Maybe add in a feeling that rational calculation would have pulled the plug on the Zionist project many times before it succeeded, and therefore rational calculation continues to be out of place after its success. (Perhaps include as well a conviction that no theodicy could possibly justify the Shoah on the axis of justice, and therefore a vague and endlessly self-contradictory feeling that on balance we are owed some undeserved Redemption.) It goes without saying that these are the sort of calculations that lead people to gamble away their jackpot winnings, even if their initial decision to gamble was rationally defensible. I don’t think the halakhic obligation not to rely on miracles ceases to apply after the first miracle. I also don’t think that the obligation to be grateful for miracles and to value their beneficial outcome applies only to the self-perpetuating kind.

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

אחר and אחרי are synonyms that can be translated into English as “after”. But they are not necessarily interchangeable. Synonyms may differ in nuance and connotation. Nuances and connotations may also differ from place to place and time to time. Synonyms may therefore be identical twins in one text and have a bare familial resemblance in another.

Rabbinic tradition records that Rabbi Yose ben Zimra held that אחר and אחרי have different nuances, respectively “soon after” and “long after”. But the tradition failed to keep track of which means which.

This difference in nuance may correspond to a difference in connotation. Achar and acharey don’t actually measure clock-time. Objectively identical durations can be marked as אחר in one context and as אחרי in another. Rather, “A happened soon after B” conveys that A was facilitated or caused by B, while “A happened long after B” conveys that A was prevented or inhibited by B.

I cannot recover Rabbi Yose ben Zimra’s original position. However, it seems to me that if the Torah separately describes A1 and A2 as אחרי the same B, then A1 and A2 must share the same causal relationship to B.

However, I have found only one example of this in Sefer Bereishis[1].  

Bereishis 25:11 reads:

וַיְהִ֗י אַחֲרֵי֙ מ֣וֹת אַבְרָהָ֔ם

וַיְבָ֥רֶךְ אֱ-לֹהִ֖ים אֶת־יִצְחָ֣ק בְּנ֑וֹ

וַיֵּ֣שֶׁב יִצְחָ֔ק עִם־בְּאֵ֥ר לַחַ֖י רֹאִֽי:

It happened acharey the death of Avraham

Elokim blessed Yitzchak his son

Yitzchak settled with B’er Lachay Ro’y.

Bereishis 26:15-18 reads:

וְכָל־הַבְּאֵרֹ֗ת

אֲשֶׁ֤ר חָֽפְרוּ֙ עַבְדֵ֣י אָבִ֔יו

בִּימֵ֖י אַבְרָהָ֣ם אָבִ֑יו סִתְּמ֣וּם פְּלִשְׁתִּ֔ים וַיְמַלְא֖וּם עָפָֽר . . .             

וַיָּ֨שָׁב יִצְחָ֜ק

וַיַּחְפֹּ֣ר׀ אֶת־בְּאֵרֹ֣ת הַמַּ֗יִם

אֲשֶׁ֤ר חָֽפְרוּ֙ בִּימֵי֙ אַבְרָהָ֣ם אָבִ֔יו

וַיְסַתְּמ֣וּם פְּלִשְׁתִּ֔ים

אַחֲרֵ֖י מ֣וֹת אַבְרָהָ֑ם

וַיִּקְרָ֤א לָהֶן֙ שֵׁמ֔וֹת

כַּשֵּׁמֹ֕ת אֲשֶׁר־קָרָ֥א לָהֶ֖ן אָבִֽיו:

All the wells

that his father’s servants had dug

in the days of Avraham his father;

they had been sealed off by the Plishtim

and they filled them with dust. . .

Yitzchak returned

He dug the wells of water

that they had dug in the days of Avraham his father

but the Plishtim had sealed them off

acharey the death of Avraham

He called them names

like the names that his father had called them.

It follows that Avraham’s death either facilitated or inhibited both G-d’s blessing of Yitzchak and the Plishtim sealing off the wells. Which seems more likely? And is there any connection between the two consequences of Avraham’s death?

I don’t think the wells provide compelling evidence for the meaning of אחרי. Maybe the Plishtim were barely inhibited by Avraham in his lifetime, and acted immediately after his death, or else they were so inhibited by Avraham that they were unwilling to act until long after his death. The point either way is that Yitzchak did not initially inspire the same fear or reverence.

How long after Avraham’s death did Yitzchak settle near/with B’er Lachai Ro’y? B’er Lachay Ro’y was named by Hagar when an angel opened her eyes to its presence and thereby rescued her and Yishmael. It represents Yitzchak’s psychological discomfort with their expulsion from Avraham’s house at the insistence of his mother Sarah[2]. This unresolved issue prevents him from finding consolation after his mother’s death. Yitzchak is בא מבא באר לחי ראי = coming from coming to/from B’er Lachay Ro’I when he first meets Rivkah and finds consolation, perhaps because he recognizes that he ought sometimes to follow her intuition over his own.

Yitzchak’s new peace of mind enables him to reunite Hagar and Avraham; alternatively, coming to terms with Avraham’s need for Hagar makes his own marriage possible. (These possibilities assume the midrashic identification of K’turah with Hagar). Bringing Avraham and Hagar back together facilitates Yitzchak’s own reconciliation with Yishmael at Avraham’s funeral. That reconciliation, and his father’s death, allow Yitzchak to make a final internal reckoning with the role that Hagar and Yishmael’s expulsion played  in his own life.[3]

On that reading, אחרי much mean “soon after”. However, I am open to the argument that Yitzchak is unable to settle near/with B’er Lachay Ro’y until after Elokim blesses him. On that argument, the question of how long after Avraham’s death Elokim blesses Yitzchak.

Talmud Sotah 14a identifies Elokim’s blessing with “the blessing of mourners”, so that Divine behavior becomes the model for the human mitzvah of nichum aveilim. Presumably that would situate the blessing during shiva = “soon after”.

However, I am inclined to see this reading as motivated by the desire to provide a Divine example for the mitzvah, especially as we have no record of G-d blessing Yitzchak after Sarah’s death.

Various midrashim read Elokim’s blessing as emphasizing by contrast that while Avraham gives Yitzchak כל אשר לו = everything that is his, he never blesses his son. They suggest two motivations.

Rashi cites a version in which Avraham cannot see how to bless Yitzchak without blessing Esav. It seems to me that in this reading Elokim’s blessing of Yitzchak is most likely a posthumous rebuke, although one might argue that the use of Elokim implies a Divine power of discrimination that humans don’t have. 

Midrash Aggada cites a version in which Avraham cannot bring himself to bless Yitzchak without blessing Yishmael, or alternatively, cannot bear to incite Yishmael’s jealousy of Yitzchak, and therefore leaves the matter to G-d. This seems to me backformed from what happens when Yitzchak blesses his twins rather than a direct reading of our unit.

The simplest explanation, but at the same time the most poignant and perhaps disturbing, is cited by Chatam Sofer at least three times from his Rebbe and quasi-father (he began in his yeshiva at age nine) Rabbi Nosson Adler. Here is his fullest exposition, from Torat Mosheh to Devarim 29:9. It is probably not coincidental that this citation is apparently posthumous, whereas the others were apparently written in Rabbi Adler’s lifetime.

You are standing today, all of you, before Hashem your G-d –

The Torah wrote in Devarim 5:5:

I was standing between Hashem and you at that time to tell you the word of Hashem, because you were afraid of the fire, and you did not ascend the mountain

This can be explained on the basis of what I received from my teacher the most pious of kohanim the gaon Rabbi Nosson Adler zt”l:

that all the days of the teacher’s life –

the student does not merit experiencing the ultimate pleasant position he deserves,

just as Yehoshua did not merit shining like the moon until after Mosheh Rabbeinu a”h’s passing,

and there is no mention of the Divine Presence resting on Yitzchak until it was after the death of Avraham, and Elokim blessed Yitzchak,

and Yaakov the whole time he was in his father’s house – we know of no speech G-d had with him, until he left B’er Sheva, and then he dreamed . . . and behold G-d was standing over him.

So I say the same:

Mosheh Rabbeinu a”h told them then: “At Mount Sinai I was an obstacle preventing you from coming close”, but today, the day of his passing, ‘there is no domination on the day of death’, so they came very close. That is what is meant when Mosheh said at Sinai I was standing between Hashem and you, like a barrier, and you did not ascend the mountain = you did not ascend the mountain at the same level that you will eventually ascend to the mountain before Hashem,

but you are standing today on the day that my days and years are done – you are standing, all of you, before Hashem your G-d literally with no barrier.

Rabbi Adler, as reported by his greatest student, felt that the teacher-student relationship eventually but inevitably inhibits the greatest students to some extent. Teachers are essential for students to achieve greatness; but there will always be one step beyond that can only be achieved in their absence. This seems tragic and almost Oedipal.

I suggest instead that it depends on the student, and perhaps on the teacher. Yehoshua here is represented by the moon, meaning that all his light was derived from Mosheh. Yitzchak redug his father’s wells. Students whose strengths are reflections of their teacher’s strengths will of course be dimmed by the presence of the original, “like a candle in the noonday sun”.

Sometimes students do not find their own capacities until their teacher passes, even though those capacities are not mere reflections. This is a loss for both teacher and student, parent and child. Surely Avraham wanted nothing more than to see his child experience G-d’s blessing! So the goal must be for these relationships – dare I say all relationships? – to develop in a way that removes “domination” long before the day of death, so that we are never chas veshalom a barrier to the full spiritual development and achievements of those we love.

---

[1] Perhaps this is  the only such case in Chumash or even Tanakh – I have not checked thoroughly, Note that achar hamabul=post-Flood) occurs four times, once with a specific duration of two years. I don’t have a worked-out interpretation of this; perhaps next year for Parshat Noach.)

[2] My interpretation here derives from a superb dvar Torah given by (now Dr.) Joshua Berman at Yeshivat Har Etzion 34 years ago. Any errors are my responsibility.

[3] Possibly coming to terms with their suffering enables him to come to terms with the Akeidah.

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Imagine the Akeidah with a twist: Avraham brings Yitzchak to a kohen for the Akeidah. But only Avraham hears the angel cry out “Do not send your hand forth toward the lad, and do not wound him!”

Wilfred Owen famously used an Akeidah counter-history to comment on World War I:

When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Owen apparently believed that the war was volitional for all sides; what prevented a permanent armistice was each side’s willingness to allow their children’s death before their own real or imagined dishonor. 

Anti-war activists tend to believe that Owen’s point is true of all sides in all wars. I disagree. Some wars are fought for much better reasons, for example to preserve human life against genocide, or to preserve human freedom against tyrants.

Owen’s metaphor is not even true of all false or unjustified wars. They may be fought for reasons other than pride, for example greed or power. Using pride as a catch-all motivation for unjustified violence is not more compelling than saying that money is the root of all evil.

Crucially, the same war can be fought for different reasons by different parties: some for pride, some for better motivations, some for worse. Moreover, parties with the same motivation may be on opposite sides, and parties with opposite motivations may be on the same side. Being on the side of truth and justice does not guarantee being on the side of the saints nor even the angels. For example, I think it was morally correct for the US to supply trucks for the defense of Stalingrad even though Stalin was a monster with no compunctions about killing millions for the sake of personal or national pride.

Sending one’s children to war against even the worst of causes is a kind of akeidah, and worse: your choices can no longer affect whether they live or die, no matter how clearly you perceive that G-d wants them to live. The worst of causes include the desire to kill some, many or all Jews because they are Jews; to deny by force the reality of Jewish history, which necessarily includes the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel; and to deny the Jewish people self-government and the means of self-defense against those who wish to kill them. Jews in the Diaspora with no children in the IDF owe impossibly large debts of gratitude to the incredible Yitzchaks fighting our battles against these worst of causes, and to their families.

Yet Owens’ challenge cannot be ignored in any war, even if one is fully confident that the other side’s cause is profoundly evil. I want to offer two pieces of Tanakhic evidence for this proposition.

The first is the story of the Concubine of Giv’ah in Chapters 19-21 of Sefer Shoftim. In that narrative, it is more than clear that the side of Binyamin is wrong. They are protecting the perpetrators of a horrific gang rape and murder. So before the first battle of the war, the alliance of tribes attacking Binyamin asks G-d: “Who shall go up first for us to war with the children of Binyamin?” G-d answers: “Yehudah shall go first”.  The attack resulted in Binyamin killing twelve thousand soldiers. Other than that, there was no military effect.

The tribes cry, and they ask G-d: “Shall I continue to approach war with the sons of Binyamin my brother?” G-d replies: “Go up toward him”. The second attack results in Binyamin killing 18,000 more, leading to a shortage of combat soldiers.

This time the tribes fast in addition to crying, and they bring animal sacrifices. It’s not clear what mechanism they used to ask G-d before, but their agent is now Pinchas ben Elazar ben Aharon HaKohen, the famed zealot who personally killed Zimri and Kozbi. He stands before the Ark throughout the fast, asking: “Shall I continue to go out to war with the children of Binyamin my brother, or shall I refrain?” G-d replies: “Go up, for tomorrow I will give him into your hands”. Someone – perhaps Pinchas – devises a strategy with a costly gambit that takes advantage of Binyamin’s growing overconfidence. The city of Giv’ah is utterly destroyed, and the tribe of Binyamin is nearly wiped out.

My question has always been: Why did Binyamin triumph in the first two battles, if their cause was evil? Why does G-d encourage the other tribes to go to their deaths in battle?

Rashi gives the obvious answer:

אבל לא בחנו לשאול אם לנצח אם לינצח,

ובאחרונה שבחנו, אמר:

“עלו, כי מחר אתננו בידך”

(The first time), they did not examine and ask whether they would triumph or not;

the last time, when they examined, He said:

“Go up, for tomorrow I shall give him into your hands.”

The difference between the first and third questions is stark. But Rashi does not address the second question.

Also: Rashi frames the initial flaw as failure to ask whether or not they will triumph. But they don’t ask that explicitly even the third time! Mahari Kara’s formulation seems more precise: “Because they assumed they would win, they did not ask whether to go to war with the sons of Binyamin or whether to refrain”. The fundamental error was assuming that G-d would grant them victory simply because the opposing cause was evil.

Mahari Kara’s formulation lets us recognize that the second question reflected a vast improvement. They fasted, thus at least gesturing toward self-examination. They asked ‘whether’ rather than ‘how’. The only difference between the second and third question is the “or not”. They couldn’t yet bring themselves to articulate the negative.  

But it is vitally important in the midst of a war, even in the midst of a war obvious evil, to be able to religiously articulate the question of whether there are alternatives. It is equally important to recognize that the answer may be that there are no viable alternatives, even though winning may be costly. (The absence of alternatives may itself deserve reflection, but demonstrating that requires a more extensive analysis of the story than fits here.)

My second piece of Tanakhic evidence is the threefold repetition of G-d’s horror at child sacrifice in Yirmiyahu. Here are the instances:

Yirmiyahu 7:31:

וּבָנ֞וּ בָּמ֣וֹת הַתֹּ֗פֶת אֲשֶׁר֙ בְּגֵ֣יא בֶן־הִנֹּ֔ם לִשְׂרֹ֛ף אֶת־בְּנֵיהֶ֥ם וְאֶת־בְּנֹתֵיהֶ֖ם בָּאֵ֑שׁ אֲשֶׁר֙ לֹ֣א צִוִּ֔יתִי וְלֹ֥א עָלְתָ֖ה עַל־לִבִּֽי:

They built the shrines of the Tophet that are in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in fire

something I never commanded and never arose in My heart.

Yirmiyahu 19:5:

וּבָנ֞וּ אֶת־בָּמ֣וֹת הַבַּ֗עַל לִשְׂרֹ֧ף אֶת־בְּנֵיהֶ֛ם בָּאֵ֖שׁ עֹל֣וֹת לַבָּ֑עַל אֲשֶׁ֤ר לֹֽא־צִוִּ֙יתִי֙ וְלֹ֣א דִבַּ֔רְתִּי וְלֹ֥א עָלְתָ֖ה עַל־לִבִּֽי:

They built the shrines of the Baal to burn their sons in fire as wholly-burnt offerings to the Baal

something I never commanded and never spoke of and never arose in My heart.

Yirmiyahu 32:35:

וַיִּבְנוּ֩ אֶת־בָּמ֨וֹת הַבַּ֜עַל אֲשֶׁ֣ר׀ בְּגֵ֣יא בֶן־הִנֹּ֗ם לְ֠הַעֲבִיר אֶת־בְּנֵיהֶ֣ם וְאֶת־בְּנוֹתֵיהֶם֘ לַמֹּלֶךְ֒

אֲשֶׁ֣ר לֹֽא־צִוִּיתִ֗ים וְלֹ֤א עָֽלְתָה֙ עַל־לִבִּ֔י לַעֲשׂ֖וֹת הַתּוֹעֵבָ֣ה הַזֹּ֑את . . .

They built the shines of the Baal that are in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to pass-through their sons and daughters to the Molekh

something I never commanded them and never arose in My heart, to do this abomination . . .

On Taanit 4a, Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmeni in the name of Rabbi Yonatan identifies “never arose in my heart” as a reference to Akeidat Yitzchak. (Sifri Shoftim 148 more powerfully cites this from R. Yosay quoting his son Eliezer.)

Why is it necessary for Yirmiyahu to emphasize again and again that we must not learn from the Akeidah that G-d ever, even for a moment, intended Yitzchak to be sacrificed? I suggest that he must be countering a powerful yetzer hora, the whisper that if G-d loves sacrifices, He must love greater sacrifices more. (Deborah Klapper suggests that Yirmiyahu’s contemporaries may have rooted this argument in the Akeidah.) In Owens’ terms: because sacrificing for G-d is a legitimate source of pride, we may find it shameful to consider alternatives that seemingly require less of us.

This is our correct and devastating critique of Hamas, and perhaps of Palestinian nationalism more generally; that they choose to sacrifice their own children rather than acknowledging realities that conflict with their pride. But Yirmiyahu teaches that Jews, like all human beings, have a yetzer hora that draws us to Molekh-worship. Davka in the midst of war it is essential that we listen carefully just in case there is a prophet, or an angel, pointing to another choice. Davka in the midst of war it is essential that we tolerate advocates for other choices just in case they turn out to be prophets or angels. Yet as responsible human beings we must also recognize that the alleged alternative is often a mirage.

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Orthodox Judaism relates to the Torah as a source of authority with no actual power.

Human beings today can acquire meaning from the Torah only through the process of interpretation. Our minds and souls have no direct access to the Author’s intent; we can access it only through the medium of language.

Human interpreters seek to claim the authority of Torah for their interpretations. A successful claim of authority may give the interpretations power. But that power belongs to the interpreter, not to the interpreted text.

I wrote “may” give the interpretations power because one more step is needed. An interpretation has power in a given circumstance only once it has been applied to that circumstance. So it’s really more correct to say that power belongs exclusively to appliers but derives from authority which inheres primarily in the Torah and secondarily in interpreters.

For example: Reuven tells Shimon that he must have a string dyed blue from a murex trunculus as part of his tzitzit because the Torah says “petil tchelet”. Shimon acknowledges the authority of the verse, but denies that the murex trunculus is a source of genuine tchelet. Shimon has no reason to obey Reuven unless he is convinced by Reuven’s application of the verse to murex trunculus dye, or unless he believes that the proper interpretation of a different verse in the Torah requires him to defer to Reuven’s application of this verse.

So it is always either a mistake or a more-or-less misleading shorthand when someone claims that we must do something because of a prophecy in the Torah, or to match a model in the Torah. They can mean only that they believe the correct interpretation and application of the prophecy or model is X. We must act as they suggest only if we are convinced of the truth of their interpretation and application.

With that introduction, I want to briefly sketch and consider several models-for-behavior that might be derived from Avraham’s relationship with Lot. Specifically, I want to examine one model that criticizes Avraham for giving Lot a share in the Land, when the Land as a whole was (at that point) more than large enough to contain the both of them. The catalyzing question is:  Was Lot supposed to come with Avram the first time he goes to Canaan? What about on the return to Egypt?

Paaneiach Raza argues that G-d’s initial command “go forth from your land, your homeland, and your father’s house” specifically excluded bringing along any member of Avram’ biological family, including his nephew Lot. However, once Lot chose to come along out of genuine admiration for and identification with Avraham’s values, Avraham could not send him away from under the sheltering wings of the Divine Presence, even at the cost of diminishing his own religious experience. (Deborah Klapper always notes that Sarai is also a blood-relative, and that the first land Avraham acquires in Canaan is her grave.)

That is how many commentaries explain Lot’s presence. I suggest as an alternative that according to the midrash, Lot’s father died as a result of Avraham choosing to confront Nimrod’s intolerance of monotheism, and that Avraham as a result felt responsible for the orphan and unable to turn him away.

We’ve thus seen two ways in which Avraham might have allowed the reality of human experience to block the application of even a clear Divine decree. He might have allowed another person’s religious growth to inhibit his own obedience; or he might have allowed his interpersonal responsibilities to take precedence over his obligations bein adam laMakom.

How does G-d react to the presence of Lot? Bereishit Rabbah 41:8 records a dispute. Rabbi Yudah held that G-d was k’b’yakhol angry when Lot separated from Avraham: “He cleaves to everyone, but he can’t cleave to his brother’s son?” But Rabbi Nechemyah held that G-d was k’b’yakhol angry when Lot went with Avraham: “I have said to him ‘I have given this land to your descendants’, yet he brings Lot his brother’s son with him as his heir?! Let him take two random foundlings from the marketplace and make them his heirs!”

It seems clear that Rabbi Yudah would have objected to separating from Lot at any earlier point as well. Rabbi Nechemyah may object only to Avraham bringing Lot along as a presumptive heir. However, so long as Avraham had no children, how could Lot not be the presumptive heir? Perhaps Rabbi Yudah holds that Lot being the presumptive heir is trivial so long as he would reliably accept a biological child replacing him.

Meshekh Chokhmah brilliantly grounds the dispute between Rabbis Yudah and Nechemyah in a broader exegetical dispute found in Bereishit Rabbah 44:5.

Rabbi Yudan and Rabbi Huna, each in the name of Rabbi Yosay ben Zimra:

Rabbi Yudan said:

Everywhere that the Torah says

achar means ‘soon after’;

acharay means ‘long after’;

but R. Huna said:

Everywhere that the Torah says

acharay means ‘soon after’;

achar means ‘long after’.

Meshekh Chokhmah applies these positions to Bereishis 13:14, in which G-d appears to Avraham “acharay”Lot separates from him, and gives more specific dimensions and contours to the land that Avraham’s descendants will inherit. If G-d appears soon after Lot’s separation, that suggests that Lot’s presence was inhibiting G-d’s relationship with Avraham. But if G-d appears only long after, perhaps He was conveying His displeasure at the separation via His absence.

Netziv, however, suggests that Lot was deteriorating spiritually (as evidenced by allowing his shepherds to fight with Avram’s) and growing excessively familiar with Avraham (he is described as vayelekh ito on the initial journey, but as vaya’al imo on the return from Egypt; Netziv contends that “imo” is more familiar). One line of commentary suggests that Avraham nevertheless was compelled to take Lot with him after Egypt in gratitude for not exposing the sister-wife ruse; I wonder whether covering for Avraham may have diminished Lot’s awe of Avraham and contributed to his spiritual decline. The bottom line according to Netziv is that everyone agrees that Avraham had to separate from Lot when he did; they disagree only about whether he should have done so earlier.

However, even if Netziv is correct, we can still criticize the manner of separation. Thus Paaneiach Raza contends that Avraham should not have given Lot the Land around Sodom and Gomorrah, because eventually his biological descendants would need it all. G-d’s promise to Avraham that “Your seed will be as the dust of the land” thus contains an implicit criticism.

But one might respond as follows: G-d’s initial revelation to Avram was also intended to exclude Lot, and yet Lot came along, and perhaps Avram was right to take him along. We do not live in a world that reconciles all lekhatchilah choices. If Avram was justified in taking Lot along, even though it meant postponing or even undermining his fulfillment of lekh lekha, perhaps he would also be justified in giving Lot a share of the Land, at least until G-d redistributed it directly.

We can reasonably interpret acharay, lekh lekah, imo/itto and other words and phrases in multiple ways. We can be comfortable or uncomfortable with the idea of Avraham postponing fulfillment of a direct command because of concern for another’s spiritual wellbeing, or his own need to take responsibility for a tragic miscalculation, or express gratitude, and so forth. We can argue that Lot was an incomparably better influence, or worse influence, than any current inhabitants of the Land Formerly Known As Canaan, and in that and many other ways reject the application of his story to our situation.

What we mustn’t do, I humbly submit, is allow the conflation of text, interpretation and application. So long as we understand that we are wrestling for the authority of Torah, and therefore for our own power, the possibility of genuine conversation among truth seekers remains possible.

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

G-d destroys the world via the Flood, then promises never to do so again. Why? What has changed?

Let’s assume that G-d’s promise is a meaningful commitment not to destroy the world by any means, despite the warning in midrash and spiritual that “it’s the fire next time”.  Let’s bracket the question of whether this promise entails a commitment to prevent the destruction of the world by human beings or space aliens. Let’s however be open to the midrashic suggestion that G-d destroyed many worlds before making this promise to ours.

The late scholar Byron Sherwin captured one approach to this problem in his essay “Portrait of G-d as a Young Artist”. An immature artist destroys their work in anger when it fails to achieve the ideal they are working toward. The idea is that G-d k’b’yakhol matures and comes to recognize that the existence of imperfect beings has value, even though He – and we – should continue striving toward perfection. This approach can be framed in terms of G-d realizing the need for His Attribute of Mercy to partner with His Attribute of Justice in Creation for anything durable to emerge.

Rabbi David Forhman, in an Aleph Beta dialogue with SBM alum Rivky Stern (h/t Ron Truxton), suggests a different organizing metaphor. He frames the Sotah ritual as an inversion of the Flood; G-d permits/mandates the dishonor of having His Name dissolved in water rather than dissolving the world in water for the honor of His Name. The idea is that G-d at the Flood played the part of a jealous husband triggering a round of tit-for-tat escalations ending inevitably in tragedy; now He provides such husbands with a way to salvage their marital relationship. If He had only k’b’yakhol learned of this possibility before the Flood!

Both these approaches require saying “k’b’yakhol” = “as if it were possible” to avoid attributing change to G-d.   

The simplest alternative is to say that Noach was the first human being to “find chein” in the eyes of G-d. If we define chein as some form of grace, then it seems oxymoronic to say that Noach was the first person to deserve it; but simply translating chein as “favor” rather than “grace” largely solves that problem.

Or we might suggest that one or more previous worlds also contained one person who found chein in G-d’s eyes, but ours was the first in which that person emerged from the ark alive and sane, with their family likewise. (Granting that even Noach went on a drunk soon after. The point is that G-d would only make the promise to a competent and worthy audience.)

Another framework may emerge from the postscript to the Oven of Akhnai story on Bava Metzia 59b. After the Sages rule against Rabbi Eliezer despite the miracles and Heavenly Voice apparently supporting his halakhic position,

אשכחיה רבי נתן לאליהו, אמר ליה:

מאי עביד קודשא בריך הוא בההיא שעתא?

אמר ליה:

קא חייך ואמר:

“נצחוני בני, נצחוני בני”.

Rabbi Natan found Eliyahu. He said to him:

“What was The Holy Blessed One doing at that time?”

He said to him:

(The Holy Blessed One) was smiling and saying:

“My sons have defeated Me, My sons have defeated me!”

Rabbeinu Chananel cited by Shitah Mekubetzet cross-references Pesachim 119a:

אמר רב כהנא משום רבי ישמעאל ברבי יוסי:

מאי דכתיב למנצח מזמור לדוד.

זמרו למי שנוצחין אותו ושמח.

בא וראה שלא כמדת הקדוש ברוך הוא מדת בשר ודם.

בשר ודם מנצחין אותו – ועצב.

אבל הקדוש ברוך הוא – נוצחין אותו ושמח

שנאמר:

ויאמר להשמידם לולי משה בחירו עמד בפרץ לפניו.

Said Rav Kehana in the name of Rabbi Yishmael beRabbi Yosay:

What is the meaning of lamnatzeiach mizmor l’David?

Sing to the One whom they defeat =menatzchin oto and He rejoices.

Come see that the characteristic of The Holy Blessed One is not like that of flesh-and-blood.

Flesh-and-blood – they defeat him, and he is saddened,

But The Holy Blessed One – they defeat Him and He rejoices,

as Scripture says:

He spoke to destroy them

had it not been for Mosheh His chosen standing in the breach before Him.

The moral of that aggadic statement is made more explicit in Yalkut Shimoni Tehillim 627:

למנצח

למי שהוא מבקש להנצח,

אמר הקדוש ברוך הוא

כשאני נוצח – אני מפסיד,

נצחתי בדור המבול בדור הפלגה בסדומיים – ואבדתי,

משה נצחו – ונשתכר כל אותם אוכלוסין:

“Lamnatzeiach” –

To the One who seeks to be defeated,

Said the Holy Blessed One:

When I triumph/notzeiach – I lose out;

I triumphed at the Flood Generation, the Split Generation, and the Sodomites – and I lost:

Mosheh defeated Him – and He gained all those citizens.

(It is not clear to me which chapter(s) of Tehillim opening with למנצח this derashah is based on. Cf. also Pesikta Rabbati 9, which grounds this idea in Isaiah 57:16: כי לא לנצח אריב  = I will not quarrel for netzach, with netzach translated as “victory” rather than “eternity”)

Thus understood, Pesachim 119a suggests that our world survived because human beings stood in the breach before G-d and prevented Him from destroying it, and that He rejoiced at the development of just that sort of restraint on His destructive capacity. (This may be an interpretation of the Rabbinic dictum that “G-d desires the prayers of the righteous”.)

Rabbeinu Chananel may cross-reference Pesachim 119a simply as another instance in which G-d accepts defeat with a smile. But it would be neater if his implicit claim is that the fate of the world was in the balance when the Sages overruled Rabbi Eliezer, and that ruling against him allowed G-d’s Attribute of Mercy to remain a partner in Creation.

Why would that be? In the Oven of Akhnai story, the Sages overrule Rabbi Eliezer on the basis of the principle that “majority rules”. If the majority does not rule, then power can only be legitimated by force.  A world that cannot get past this stage will at some point destroy itself.

Yet the Talmud does not fetishize majority rule. The Akhnai sugya recognizes that tyranny of the majority is an evil. When the Sages go on to excommunicate Rabbi Eliezer, G-d devastates the world so that for example a third of the wheat crop is blasted. That’s terrible, although not yet a universal Flood.  

The political perspective of the Founding Fathers was that human greed could be channeled into socially constructive channels, so that we benefit together as a human society from our individual drives for success. One can read this as an explanation of why G-d promises not to destroy our world despite realizing that “the inclination of humanity is evil from its youth”.

Here again, it is vital to understand that Chazal are not advocating for greed as an individual moral virtue, nor do they think that a society of human beings driven exclusively by greed will long survive. Nor did the Founding Fathers. But they all acknowledge that self-interest is ineluctably a factor in human decisionmaking, so that a wise politics must find ways for it to be expressed-in-action constructively.

Here I must admit that I cannot find a way to make Noach a per se symbol of democracy, or even of republicanism. Nothing about his actions before or after the Flood relate to politics, and reducing human society to a single nuclear family can be understood as a method of preventing politics from developing.  

On the other hand, G-d intervenes in the Tower of Babel story (as understood by Netziv) in order to prevent a human monoculture. Perhaps His intended point was that democracy must begin from a shared identity.  A core challenge of politics is to prevent that shared identity from becoming an oppressive force that stifles individuality and subgroup identities.

I think Torah drives us to acknowledge that G-d’s approach failed. Human societies devolved into tyrannies of minorities and majorities. So He starts over again with Avraham. Yet it is vital that while Avraham is in a sense on an ark – “Avraham was on one side, and everyone else on the other” – his story differs from Noach’s radically in that G-d does not destroy everyone else. Choosing Avraham was/is instead an effort to redeem and actualize the value inherent in every tzelem Elokim, even if in the moment many human beings and human societies seem bent on recreating the worst of all past sins.