Kol ha'Seridim: July 2021

Friday, July 30, 2021

Simone Biles is My Hero

This week's Torah content has been sponsored by Sol and Chummie Azose, in honor of the upcoming 81st birthday of the Rosh ha'Yeshiva, Rabbi Yisroel Chait, and the 91st birthday of Sol's father, Hazzan Isaac Azose. If you're interested in sponsoring a day's or a week's worth of Torah content, you can contact me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail.com.

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Simone Biles is My Hero

On July 28, 2021, Simone Biles – one of the most accomplished gymnasts of our era – withdrew from the Tokyo Olympics. She alluded to her struggles on Instagram by posting: "I truly do feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders at times. I know I brush it off and make it seem like pressure doesn't affect me but damn sometimes it's hard hahaha!" That “hahaha” might make it sound like it was no big deal, but later interviews revealed that there were darker forces afoot. It was soon revealed that she withdrew for mental health reasons. The straw that broke the camels back was her experiencing of "the twisties," a psychological phenomenon which causes a gymnast to lose in-air awareness while performing twisting elements which could prove fatal. Simone’s attitude was humble, yet realistic. “At the end of the day, I have to do what was right for me … It just sucks that it happened at the Olympic Games.” You can’t control when these things happen, but you can always make the decision to pause, no matter what people say.

To my mind, Simone exemplifies true gevurah (courage). Chazal teach: “Who is a gibor (courageous person)? One who conquers their inclination” (Avos 4:1). I’ve read a number of articles about the pressure Biles felt to perform while the spotlight of the world was on her. I don’t know what was actually going on in her mind, but as a fellow Type A personality, I suspect that the popular assessment is off base. Her courage was not expressed in standing up to the world, but in standing up to herself. Those who don’t share this type of personality imagine that the pressure comes from the outside world. I can assure you, it comes from within. And as Anne Lamott says, the task of dealing with this pressure “is an inside job.”

I saw a chilling quotation from another interview with her. "This Olympic Games, I wanted it to be for myself when I came in — and I felt like I was still doing it for other people … So that just, like, hurts my heart because doing what I love has been kind of taken away from me to please other people." When I heard this, it terrified me. I love what I do, day in and day out. I live for teaching. I have always been excited to go work every day. And yet, I have recently come to realize how much pressure I put on myself. This pressure manifests as a need to please others, even if it’s driven by internal forces and inner critics. It terrifies me to think what would happen if I somehow slipped into a mode where I felt the need to teach in order to please other people. Such a life would be no life.

Simone’s withdrawal from the Olympics serves as a wake-up call for all personalities that are driven to go, go, go. She reminds us of a truth I made into a mantra for myself: “You don’t have to do anything, but you can’t do everything.” She reminds us that it doesn’t matter what the stakes are, or how many people are expecting you to perform, or how much you, yourself, are invested in “being the best.” What matters most is you.

I’ve been reading Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown. He writes:

Your obligation is to the highest point of contribution you can make. I think what happens a lot is that people get caught up in the idea that, “Can I do this thing?” They pretend there’s nothing else going on in their life. The request comes in and they go, “Can I do this? Well, yes, I can do this. I know how to do this. I can make this happen.” That’s not life. That’s non-essentialist junk. That’s just rubbish. The question is, “If I do this thing, what doesn’t get done? What else gets pushed out?”

In Simone’s case, what might have gotten pushed out was her life. In other cases, it is the ability to live our lives, which is nearly as important. The moral of the story is: don’t push yourself out of your own life.

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If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/rabbischneeweiss. Alternatively, if you would like to make a direct contribution to the "Rabbi Schneeweiss Torah Content Fund," my Venmo is @Matt-Schneeweiss, and my Zelle and PayPal are mattschneeweiss at gmail.com. Even a small contribution goes a long way to covering the costs of my podcasts, and will provide me with the financial freedom to produce even more Torah content for you.

If you would like to sponsor an article, shiur, or podcast episode, or if you are interested in enlisting my services as a teacher or tutor, you can reach me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail.com. Thank you to my listeners for listening, thank you to my readers for reading, and thank you to my supporters for supporting my efforts to make Torah ideas available and accessible to everyone.

Be sure to check out my YouTube channel and my podcasts: "The Mishlei Podcast", "The Stoic Jew" Podcast, "Rambam Bekius" Podcast, "Machshavah Lab" Podcast, "The Tefilah Podcast" For the full guide to all of my Torah content, click here.

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Help! I've Fallen Into Sufi Poetry and I Have No Idea What I'm Doing!

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a haiku by 12th grade Matt Schneeweiss

Help! I've Fallen Into Sufi Poetry and I Have No Idea What I'm Doing!

Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I hated poetry. I hated reading it, I hated discussing it, I hated writing it. I recently stumbled upon a trove of poetry assignments that I was “forced” to write in high school, and this haiku (or “haiku”) perfectly captures my stubbornly resentful attitude at the time:

“I hate poetry,”

he said. “No, you really don’t.”

“Yes, I really do.”

This attitude remained staunchly in place for many years after high school. Then I discovered Thoreau. This was the first time I encountered a thinker writing in poetry in prose. That blew my mind. I was reading ideas, but they weren’t expressed in the way I thought ideas had to be expressed. At first, I thought this was just Thoreau, but after seeing examples of this in Bruce Lee, Emerson, Rav Soloveitchik, and others, I identified the quality I enjoyed: being immersed in the world of ideas as perceived by the mind of a poet.

Fast forward to May 2021, when I started reading Tara Brach’s books, and June 2021 when I started listening to her lectures and meditations – all of which are interwoven with excerpts of poetry. Of the several poets whose works are quoted more frequently than others, one has stood out to me: Rumi.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Rūmī (1207 – 1273 C.E.) was a Persian Islamic teacher, scholar, and philosopher-poet. He was also a Sufi mystic. What does that mean? I have very little idea, other than what I’ve gleaned from the internet (against my own better judgment). But as the Rambam said, “accept the truth from whoever says it,” and I have found truths in these poems. There’s a lot of other stuff in these poems as well – non-truths, mystical flights of fancy, lexical paroxysms – but it’s the truths which interest me.

I am fascinated by Rumi’s cryptic style. Take, for example, such stanzas as “Be empty of worrying. Think of Who created thought!” “Why do you stay in prison when the door is wide open?” “Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.” “Your old life was a frantic running from silence.” Such lines strike me in an entirely different way than the prose I typically read. They stay with me throughout the day, repeatedly calling back my thoughts. The feeling is akin to what Morpheus said to Neo:

What you know, you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life … You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.

What do I hope to get out of my Rumi reading other than truth? Well, for years I’ve learned and taught Tehilim (Psalms), Kinnos (liturgical lamentations), and Selichos (supplicatory penitential prayers). I’ve become more and more in touch with the poetry of these texts, but I often feel like I’m missing something essential. But when I read Rumi’s poetry, I feel like I’m expanding my intellectual imagination. I’m not entirely sure what I mean by that, but that’s what it feels like. My hope is that reading such poetry not in the context of learning will help me unlock the poetry in learning.

I also sense that by exploring these new and unusual forms of thought-in-language, I am familiarizing myself with the boundaries and limitations of language as a medium of thought. Rumi would conclude his poems with statements like: “Let that musician finish this poem.” David ha’Melech ended Tehilim with a chapter about praising Hashem with musical instruments, alluding to the inadequacy of praising Hashem with words. Language is limited, but perhaps by recognizing and striving to transcend these limitations through poetry, we can catch just a fleeting glimpse of the sublime. "Your boundaries are your quest."

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Tuesday, July 27, 2021

The Principle of Humanity vs. Emunas Chachamim

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Artwork: Compulsive Researchi, by Kristina Collantes

The Principle of Humanity vs. Emunas Chachamim

At the beginning of Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, Jonathan Lear mentions the Principle of Humanity: “that we should try to interpret others as saying something true – guided by our own sense of what is true and of what they could reasonably believe.” The very short Wikipedia article has a different formulation:

[When] interpreting another speaker we must assume that his or her beliefs and desires are connected to each other and to reality in some way, and attribute to him or her “the propositional attitudes one supposes one would have oneself in those circumstances.”

A third formulation, stated in the Wikipedia article on the nearly identical Principle of Charity, includes negatives: “to avoid attributing irrationality, logical fallacies, or falsehoods to the others' statements, when a coherent, rational interpretation of the statements is available.”

Compare all of that to “emunas chachamim,” which the braisa (Avos 6:6) identifies as one of the 48 qualities through which the Torah is acquired. Some might explain "emunas chachamim" to mean “faith in the wisdom of the Sages,” which suggests an uncritical acceptance of the truth of the Sages’ words. According to my understanding, it would be more accurate to render “emunas chachamim” as “faith that the Sages are chachamim.” In Darchei ha’Talmud, the relatively unknown Talmudic methodology manual by R’ Yitzchak Kanpanton (1360 – 1463 C.E.), the author expounds in detail on what emunas chachamim looks like in action:

At the outset of your analysis, you should establish as a premise of your thinking that each of the speakers – the one who asks and the one who answers – that both of them are intelligent, and that all their words [were spoken] with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, without anything twisted or distorted. This is what [the Sages] mean when they [rhetorically] exclaim: "Are we dealing with idiots?!" (Shevuos 48b). Therefore, you must analyze all their statements and see if they are statements with sound reasons, "as strong as a molten mirror" (Iyov 37:18) or whether [they are] weak statements, [like] "bland food without salt" (ibid. 6:6), and whether they are intellectually probable or improbable. One must strive to make their words probable and to adjust their ideational content so that [the statements] will be beautiful and acceptable and intellectually feasible; [one must also strive] not to ascribe to them the guilty iniquity of a tenuous or weak sevara (theory). None of their words should fall to the earth, for they are all "the words of the living God." And if they are "empty," [the "emptiness"] is from you. (Darchei ha’Talmud 1:3)

There are clear similarities between the Principle of Humanity and emunas chachamim. Both prompt the reader to grant the text in question the benefit of the doubt, interpreting it in the best light possible. Both effectively counteract the “strawman” fallacy by encouraging a “steelman” approach.

It is the differences between these two principles which interest me. The Principle of Humanity dictates that our interpretation of the text should be guided by “our own sense of what is true” as the first version has it. The second goes further and says that we must “attribute to him or her the propositional attitudes one supposes one would have oneself in those circumstances.” In other words, we interpret the words in light of our own ideas. In contrast, emunas chachamim prompts us to move outside of our current understanding, recognizing that we are dealing with superior minds who will expand our horizons of understanding.

The limitation, of course, is that whereas the Principle of Humanity can and should be applied to everyone, emunas chachamim applies on a sliding scale based on the extent to which the author is deemed a chacham. This necessitates a prior judgment to be made by the reader – one which, unfortunately, the reader is not always equipped to make. At least the Principle of Humanity can act as a failsafe for when emunas chachamim misfires.

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Monday, July 26, 2021

Taking the Road Less Traveled in Learning

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Artwork: Adventurous Impulse, by Minttu Hynninen

Taking the Road Less Traveled in Learning

Yes, I am well aware of the source of the idiom and the fact that it is regarded as a misquote or a misunderstanding; see https://grammarist.com/idiom/the-road-less-traveled/

The Abravanel’s Lonely Quest

In his introduction to Sefer Shmuel, the Abravanel raises a powerful question about Sefer Divrei ha’Yamim (The Book of Chronicles): What, exactly, was Ezra ha’Sofer’s plan in composing this sefer? He subdivides this question into two “perplexities:” (a) Why did Ezra include some of the events and episodes from David ha’Melech’s life but omit others? (b) Why did Ezra repeat material from Sefer Shmuel and Sefer Melachim, much of it verbatim?

What intrigues me about this passage is not the Abravanel’s question or his answers, but the thoughts and feelings he expresses about his relationship to the question and his quest for answers. Here is the relevant excerpt, which I’ve divided into three paragraphs:

These are the perplexities that have arisen from this powerful question. Regarding the quest for the answer and the resolution [of these doubts] – behold! I remain alone, and no one has worked with me on these [matters]. On this subject I have found nothing – minor or major, good or bad – from our Sages of blessed memory: not from the early Talmudic Sages, nor from the latter authors or commentators. Not even one of them was bestirred by this perplexity at all, nor did any of them pave the way for its answer.

Behold! Hashem has added grief to my pain, for we do not have with us in this land a commentary on Sefer Divrei ha’Yamim, except for the few matters authored by the Radak (of blessed memory) which are nullified in their minuteness (batelim b’miutan), and he didn’t investigate deeply at all. Moreover, this book of Divrei ha’Yamim is not commonplace among the Jews in their midrashim.

Today I will recall my sin (es chata’ai ani mazkir ha’yom), for never in my days had I read it, nor had I investigated its contents for the duration of my existence until now, and nothing has remained for me but the force of my reasoning and my intellectual intuition about the pshat (straightforward meaning) of the pesukim, and the help of God Who has girded me with success and made wholesome my path.

Rarely do we see the classical meforshim (commentators) engage in such metacognitive commentary, reflecting on their own learning experiences and their feelings about them. When I read this, I was moved by my own similar experience – so much so, that I decided to write my own reflections on the three points raised by the Abravanel, as they pertain to my own teaching and learning. I don’t know whether anyone will find these reflections to be enlightening or beneficial, but I felt the need to express them.

Answering Questions that Haven’t Been Asked

The Abravanel begins by voicing his astonishment over the fact that his questions weren’t raised by any of his predecessors. To those who are familiar with the Abravanel and his intellectual fearlessness, it won’t come as a surprise that he wasn’t the least bit daunted by the absence of exegetical precedent.

In my experience, few intellectual thrills in Torah study compare to the discovery of a major question that none of the traditional commentators have asked. (True, the unanimous silence can sometimes make one wonder whether the question is founded on a mistaken premise; but more often than not, the question is so clear and powerful as to be undeniable, and the fact that none of the meforshim has raised it is a question on them – not a cause for self-doubt.) The thrill I experience has nothing to do with being the first to discover something. It’s the thrill of freshly fallen snow, the awakened creative energy felt upon finding a new source of inspiration, the excitement before opening the first pack in a Magic: the Gathering booster draft. It has nothing to do with ego or accomplishment, and everything to do with adventure.

Mishlei has provided me with some excellent practice in this regard. Because the pesukim are so cryptically worded, and because the commentators take such diverse approaches, it’s not uncommon to see a later commentator bothered by a question that earlier commentaries neglected to address. When I teach Mishlei I always require my students to come up with every question they can think of, no matter how minor it seems. When we survey the commentaries we typically find that most of the questions are addressed in some form or another, and if any of them aren’t, I remind my students that before these commentaries were written, then none of the questions were addressed, and that doesn’t make the questions any less real or valuable!

While I don’t go out of my way to look for such unasked questions, I am always delighted to encounter them in my learning. And even if I can’t answer them, my mind is inevitably enriched by their discovery.

Learning Without the Aid of Commentaries

The Abravanel then goes on to bemoan the woeful state of Divrei ha’Yamim commentaries. Thankfully, this isn’t a problem I encounter much in my own learning. Most of the texts I learn on a regular basis have enough commentaries to provide me with the guidance I need.

There are two exceptions, however: midrash aggadah (the homiletical interpretations and non-legalistic teachings of Chazal, as found in the Talmud and in the collections of midrashim) and the nusach ha’tefilah (liturgy), including piyyutim (liturgical poems), selichos (supplicatory penitential prayers) and kinnos (lamentations). It’s true that there are commentaries out there on these genres and subgenres, but unlike the commentaries on the texts of Torah she’bi’Chsav (the Written Torah), Torah she’baal Peh (the Oral Torah), and Talmud, I find that these commentaries often fail to provide me with the answers, elucidations, and direction I’m looking for. This leaves me in a similar situation to the one described by the Abravanel: no commentaries except for a few that don’t investigate on a deep enough level and are batel b’miutan, which forces me to venture out on my own.

Filling the Gaps

The Abravanel concludes by “confessing” his “sin” of never having investigated or even read Sefer Divrei ha’Yamim until the present time in his life. Interestingly enough, this is what led me to start learning Sefer Shmuel in the first place, which led me to the Abravanel’s comments.

I began my formal Jewish education in 11th grade at the alpeh-beis level. I spent the next several years “playing catchup” in an effort to compensate for the years of Jewish education I had missed out on as a child. Although I’m certainly happy with how far I’ve come, there are still major gaps in my learning. One of those gaps is Neviim Rishonim (i.e. Yehoshua, Shoftim, Shmuel, and Melachim – with the exception of the second half of Melachim II, which I taught for a number of years). What makes this gap even more embarrassing is the fact that most of my students learned these seforim at a young age, and tend to be fluent in the basic stories and characters. After years of asking my high school students to summarize famous episodes in the lives of Shmuel, Shaul, and David ha’Melech, and after repeatedly finding myself impeded by my own ignorance in my learning of Sefer Tehilim, I finally decided to “do teshuvah” and start learning Sefer Shmuel.

There is an advantage of learning something like Sefer Shmuel or Sefer Divrei ha’Yamim for the first time at a later-than-normal age – an advantage which is alluded to by the Abravanel, although it wasn’t necessarily his intent to make this point. He writes that his study of Sefer Divrei ha’Yamim would be guided by “[nothing] but the force of my reasoning and my intellectual intuition about the pshat of the pesukim.” Unlike his analysis of the other books of Tanach, which was undertaken at a much earlier age and was likely influenced by many other teachers and other commentaries, the Abravanel’s learning of Divrei ha’Yamim commenced at a more intellectually mature age; as such, it was led by his honed intuition and uninfluenced by external biases (at least, as uninfluenced as any of us can be).

Similarly, although I don’t share with my students and peers the advantage of having been raised with the stories in Sefer Shmuel, I do have an opportunity that they didn’t have: to learn through the text for the first time with the advantage of 20 years of serious learning, teaching, and personal development under my belt. This will allow me to see things that I might not have otherwise seen.

Concluding Thoughts

I have been obsessed with methodology and metacognition for as long as I have been involved in learning. Perhaps, because of this, I find this Abravanel more interesting than most. As a teacher, I strongly feel that students derive tremendous benefits from hearing their teachers speak in this manner about their own learning processes and their relationship to learning. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has, over the course of his learning, wondered, “Do I have to figure this out alone?” The more comfortable teachers feel to discuss their own learning-related doubts, anxieties, and (to use the Abravanel’s phrase) “sins,” the more their students can benefit by learning from their experiences.

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If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/rabbischneeweiss. Alternatively, if you would like to make a direct contribution to the "Rabbi Schneeweiss Torah Content Fund," my Venmo is @Matt-Schneeweiss, and my Zelle and PayPal are mattschneeweiss at gmail.com. Even a small contribution goes a long way to covering the costs of my podcasts, and will provide me with the financial freedom to produce even more Torah content for you.

If you would like to sponsor an article, shiur, or podcast episode, or if you are interested in enlisting my services as a teacher or tutor, you can reach me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail.com. Thank you to my listeners for listening, thank you to my readers for reading, and thank you to my supporters for supporting my efforts to make Torah ideas available and accessible to everyone.

Be sure to check out my YouTube channel and my podcasts: "The Mishlei Podcast", "The Stoic Jew" Podcast, "Rambam Bekius" Podcast, "Machshavah Lab" Podcast, "The Tefilah Podcast" For the full guide to all of my Torah content, click here.

Friday, July 23, 2021

Vaeschanan: Declaring Hashem’s Oneness in Love

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Vaeschanan: Declaring Hashem's Oneness in Love

“Hear, O Israel, Hashem is our God, Hashem is One” (Devarim 6:4). This pasuk is the source of the mitzvah of Yichud Hashem (God’s Oneness). We are commanded to “unify” Hashem in our minds: to know that He is Absolutely One in every sense of the term, and to continually strip away all notions of contingency, multiplicity, physicality, and temporality from our conception of Him (Hilchos Yesodei ha’Torah 1:7-12).

“You shall love Hashem, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your resources” (Devarim 6:5). We are also commanded in the mitzvah of ahavas Hashem (love of God): to contemplate the infinite wisdom in His wondrous creations, which will result in a state of bliss (Sefer ha’Mitzvos: Aseh #3) and fill us with an overpowering desire to seek even more knowledge of Him (Hilchos Yesodei ha’Torah 2:2).

Yichud Hashem is logically prior to Ahavas Hashem. After all, how could a person have “a tremendous desire to know the great Name” (ibid.) without knowledge of who Hashem is (and who He is not)? Indeed, the Rambam explains that ahavas Hashem “is based entirely on knowledge, and the love will be in proportion to the knowledge: if little then little, if a lot then a lot” (Hilchos Teshuvah 10:6).

However, in his commentary on Ahavah Rabbah / Ahavas Olam – the berachah which we say in Shacharis before the Shema – the Abudirham indicates that ahavas Hashem is, in another sense, prior to Yichud Hashem:

You will find that this berachah includes many themes: that Hashem loves us more than all the other nations, that He gave us the Torah, that He instilled within us belief in His Oneness, and that He is the Lord of all – but the berachah concludes with [the theme of] love, not with [the theme of] Oneness, because the declaration of His Oneness is ineffective (lo yo’eel) unless it is from love and from a whole heart.

What does this mean? Presumably, the Abudirham would agree that there is inherent value in knowing Yichud Hashem, both because it is a fundamental truth and because such knowledge is a mitzvah. The Torah’s value system of avodah me’ahavah (serving Hashem out of love) and Torah lishmah (learning Torah for its own sake) is predicated on the idea that knowledge is intrinsically valuable, as the Rambam writes: “the only purpose of truth is to know that it is true” (Intro to Perek Chelek). What, then, is the Abudirham referring to when he speaks of the “efficacy” of our declaration of Yichud Hashem? “Effective” in what sense? And what makes a “loveless” proclamation of His Oneness “ineffective”?

According to the Abudirham, it is our declaration of Yichud Hashem that has a purpose beyond merely reviewing the idea. Ahavas Hashem is the motion of the yearning soul in its quest for knowledge of reality. Yichud Hashem is the (ultimately) unattainable destination of that quest. When we affirm our belief in Yichud Hashem from a place of ahavah, we strengthen our conviction that behind this multifaceted reality is a Unity. In other words, a “wholehearted” Shema will have the beneficial effect of reinforcing the synergistic relationship between Yichud Hashem and ahavas Hashem. But if God’s Oneness is nothing but an abstract theoretical construct which resides in our intellect, disconnected from our passionate truth-seeking, then our declaration of Yichud Hashem is reduced to a dry, ritualistic, “ineffective” catechism.

Now we can understand what we mean at the end of this berachah when we ask Hashem to help us “yachedecha be’ahavah” (lit. “to unify You in love”). We are asking that our conviction in His Oneness not only inform but also enflame our quest for knowledge, and that our seeking of truth be oriented towards the ultimate Truth. The conclusion of the berachah teaches us that Hashem’s love towards us is based on our love towards Him.

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Thursday, July 22, 2021

Musings on the Inadequacy of Internet Research

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Artwork: Mind's Desire, by Minttu Hynninen

Musings on the Inadequacy of Internet Research

A student of mine told me he heard that the Sanskrit greeting “namaste” means “the god in me sees the god in you.” He wondered whether it would be problematic to use this phrase. I did some “Google research” on the translation and encountered a variety of opinions, ranging from the neutral “hello,” “salutations,” and “greetings to you” to the more colorful “my soul recognizes your soul,” “I honor the place in you where the entire universe dwells,” and “I bow to the place in you that is love, light, and joy.”

I remembered that I’m Facebook friends with Rabbi Dr. Alan Brill, scholar of religion and author of A Rabbi on the Ganges: A Jewish-Hindu Encounter. I figured he’d know what “namaste” meant and could weigh in on my student’s question. Here is his response, with my translations and additions added in parentheses:

Namah, the root of namaste, means “I bow to you,” basically meaning, "salutation." All of Asia bows to the other person as a greeting. It is halakhically like “adios” ("God be with you") or “goodbye” (“God be with you”). We pasken (rule) that you can say goodbye and adios. The Nesivos (Rabbi Yaakov Lorberbaum, 1760-1832 C.E.) makes it assur (prohibited) but our poskim (adjudicators), allow you to say “goodbye.” If you Google namaste you will find lots of derashot (homiletics) from Indian religions but they go beyond the peshat (literal meaning).

His response reminded me of how easy it is for concepts from different religions and cultures to get lost in translation [1], and how difficult it is for laypeople to conduct research on the internet. This, in turn, made me realize how difficult it is even for Jews to understand our own religion, and how easy it is for our own concepts to get lost in translation. This is certainly true for the layperson who, upon Googling any question about Judaism, will be confronted with a multiplicity of true and false opinions, and who will have no reliable means by which to independently assess or weigh the results. Sadly, this is also true of those who regard themselves as “intellectuals” but who are just as incapable of conducting responsible research, whether due to the lack of adequate training, or to the distorting influence of their personal biases intermingled with ideas and values from other cultures, or to intellectual hubris, dishonest, and laziness.

And yet, what can we expect people to do? Admit that they aren’t sufficiently qualified? Devote years of learning and training to becoming qualified? Forego the instant gratification of a Google search to engage in serious dialogue with experts? This problem isn’t new. Rambam (Moreh ha’Nevuchim 1:34) described the same phenomenon 800 years ago:

Now if you awaken a man, even though he were the dullest of all people … and if you were to ask him whether he desired at that moment to have knowledge of [the secrets of reality] … he would undoubtedly answer you in the affirmative … but he would wish this desire to be satisfied and the knowledge of all this to be achieved by means of one or two words that you would say to him. If, however, you would lay upon him the obligation to leave his job for a week in order to understand all this, he would not do it, but would be satisfied with deceptive imaginings through which his soul would be set at ease. He would also dislike being told that there is a thing whose knowledge requires many premises and a long time for investigation.

What alarmed me most about my “research” into namaste was how readily I fell into this trap. I would never content myself with such superficial research on a Jewish topic – and yet, with a non-Jewish topic, I was content with a simple search. Google might be trustworthy when it comes to checking simple facts, but true understanding is a different matter. Where does this leave us? How are we to go about researching questions of this nature? I honestly don’t know. We have limited time, and much to learn.

[1] Wolves. Ve’ha’mevin yavin.

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Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Bodily Posture as a Sensory Anchor for Kavanah in Tefilah

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Artwork: Memory Lapse, by Kristina Collantes

Bodily Posture as a Sensory Anchor for Kavanah in Tefilah

In Hilchos Tefilah Chapter 4, Rambam identifies five essential requirements for tefilah (i.e. the Amidah). One of these is kavanas ha’leiv (mental focus): “a person should empty their mind of all thoughts and see themselves as though they are standing before the shechinah (Divine presence)” (Hilchos Tefilah 4:15).

In Hilchos Tefilah Chapter 5, Rambam lists eight additional requirements for tefilah. Although these eight are obligatory, they are not indispensable for discharging one’s obligation. One of these requirements is tikkun ha’guf (preparation of the body):

When he stands in tefilah, he needs to place his feet side by side; he should direct his eyes downwards, as if he is looking at the earth; his heart should be faced upwards, as if he is standing in the sky; he places his hands clasped over his heart, the right on the left; he stands like a servant before his master, in awe, fear, and dread; and he shouldn’t rest his hands on his hips. (Hilchos Tefilah 5:4)

I am aware that there are specific ideas associated with each of these requirements. For example, the Rashba (Chidushei Aggadah Berachos 10b) explains that by placing our feet side by side and clasping our hands together – positions which restrict our movement – we are emulating the malachim (angels), whose movements are bound and determined solely by the will of God. However, I haven’t yet learned all the sources, so I can’t say anything about the general halachic character of tikkun ha’guf.

That being said, I recently discovered a new function of tikkun ha’guf, even if it’s not the actual purpose. In her book, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart, Tara Brach writes:

[The] path to mindfulness begins with concentration – a one-pointed focusing of attention. It’s difficult to be mindful of your experience if your mind is lost in a continuous stream of discursive thought. So first we collect and quiet the mind by directing attention to a sensory anchor. This might mean following the breath, or scanning the body for sensations, or listening to sounds … With practice, whatever anchor you choose can become a reliable home base for your attention; like a good friend, it will help you reconnect with an inner sense of balance and well-being.

I had just read this passage in Tara Brach before davening one day and I realized: “Hey! I wonder whether the bodily postures of tikkun ha’guf could serve as sensory anchors for helping maintain kavanah?”

I decided to try it. When I stood up for my amidah, I paused and focused on my bodily sensations. I felt my two feet next to each other. I felt the weight of my right hand clasped on my left. I felt my left hand resting on my beating heart. I felt my bowed head. I felt my downward eyes. I began to daven … and it worked! In my usual davening, I’ll often “wake up” in the middle of a later berachah, my mind having wandered without realizing it. But after anchoring myself in the somatic sensations of my tefilah posture, whenever my mind started to wander, my focus would snap back to my bodily awareness, and be redirected to my kavanah. It kind of felt like a trampoline safety net: whenever I fell off the kavanah beam, I’d hit the trampoline of bodily awareness, and bounce back onto the beam. This occurred many times throughout my Amidah, and it’s worked for every tefilah in which I’ve consciously implemented it.

To be clear: I’m not saying that this is the purpose of tikkun ha’guf. The purpose undoubtedly lies in the particulars. All I’m saying is that utilizing tikkun ha’guf as a sensory anchor for kavanas ha’leiv has helped me to have better kavanah in my davening, and if you give it a try, maybe it’ll help you too.

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Tuesday, July 20, 2021

My Experience Fasting for 48 Hours on the 9th and 10th of Av

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fast began at 8:30pm on Saturday (7/17) and ended at 9:00pm on Monday (7/19)

My Experience Fasting for 48 Hours on the 9th and 10th of Av

I’ve been doing intermittent fasting all year, for health and for energy. I generally fast between 17-19 hours each weekday. “Fasting” in this context means not consuming any calories. I still drink water, coffee, and tea. I had never fasted longer than the standard 25 hour taanis (fast) on Yom ha’Kippurim and Tishah b’Av, but after learning about the health benefits of fasting for 48 hours, I decided to give it a try this year. My plan was to break my Tishah b’Av fast on water and tea, then continue fasting until at least the next morning, if not longer.

In my mind, this extension of my fast had nothing to do with halacha. I figured that since I was drinking fluids, then this wouldn’t count as a halachic taanis. That is, until I saw this Tur (Orach Chayim 558):

It was taught in a Baraisa: "On the 7th of Av the gentiles entered the Sanctuary. They ate and drank and wreaked havoc on the 8th and the 9th until late in the day. Towards the evening they lit a fire in it, and it burned until sunset of the 10th." R' Yochanan said: "If I were there, I would have established [the commemoration] on the 10th, when the majority of the Sanctuary burned." It says in the Yerushalmi that R’ Avin fasted on the 9th and the 10th, [whereas] R' Levi fasted on the 9th and the night of the 10th because he didn't have the energy to fast for the entire night and day of the 10th. Nowadays, our energy has waned, and even Yom ha'Kippurim, which would be proper to observe out of safek (doubt) for two days, we are unable to do. Nevertheless, it is a proper minhag to not eat meat on the night of the 10th and the day of the 10th, but only what restores the soul, which is partial inui (affliction).

It is clear from the Yerushalmi that fasting on the 10th of Av is an ideal to strive for, since that’s when the majority of the Sanctuary was burned. The Ramban (Moed Katan 28b) explains that these Amoraim extended their fasts as a minhag chasidus (a custom of piety), and that “the more one mourns over Yerushalayim, the more meritorious it is for him.” Even a partial fast would count for something, as we see from R’ Levi’s fast on the night of the 10th.

Less clear, however, is the scope of the “proper minhag” mentioned by the Tur at the end. According to the Taz’s explanation of the Tur, the minhag is to refrain specifically from meat – a food associated with simchah (rejoicing) – but there is no kiyum (halachic fulfillment) whatsoever of abstaining from other types of food. According to the Bach, the Tur’s minhag is to refrain from eating even non-meat food, except for “that which restores the soul,” since this abstention constitutes “partial inui.” Thus, according to the Bach, my extended fast would constitute a kiyum in “fasting on the 10th of Av,” despite my consumption of liquids. If abstaining from non-restorative food is a kiyum because it produces inui, then kal va’chomer abstaining from all food!

But then I asked myself whether my fast really did fulfill the minhag. After all, I was doing this for health reasons, not as an expression of mourning, which – according to the Ramban – is what makes this fasting meritorious. In an effort to “legitimize my fasting,” I spent all morning and afternoon learning through the relevant sources to understand the purpose of what I was doing. I made it my mission to find an idea worthy of writing up as an article. The result? I learned a lot, but I didn’t find anything that I deemed profound enough for even a one-page article.

I was about to give up on the search and the article when I realized that this health-motivated 48-hour fasting experiment fit right into my goal of prolonging reflection on the ideas of Tishah b’Av beyond the demands of halacha. Indeed, my observance of this minhag caused me to spend an extra day learning about Tishah b’Av! What began as a non-halachic health experiment became a she’lo lishmah observance of a real minhag (at least, according to the Bach). This might not have yielded transformative insight this year, but it will certainly pave the way for such insight in the future. This is yet another example of “a person should always learn Torah even she’lo lishmah, because from she’lo lishmah one will come to lishmah” (Midrash Eichah Hakdamah 2). And that is a win in my book.

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Monday, July 19, 2021

The Tenth of Av, Seven Haftaros of Consolation, and Life After the Pain

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Artwork: Gift of Estates, by Alexis and Justin Hernandez

The Tenth of Av, Seven Haftaros of Consolation, and Life After the Pain

Every year, after Tishah b’Av is over, I find myself eager to just put it all behind me and get on with enjoying my summer. (To be honest, I think some of this attitude is residual “halachic resentment” from when my friends and I followed a psak which prohibited almost all social gatherings of more than two people; suffice it to say, that put a dent into my summer vacation.) It’s always a drag to break the fast after Tishah b’Av and still be bound by many of the prohibitions of the Nine Days until midday on the Tenth of Av.

This year, however, I am going to attempt to relate to the Tenth of Av differently. Tara Brach’s book, Radical Compassion, is about the mindfulness practice of RAIN: an acronym for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture. There is a fifth step called “after the RAIN,” which she describes as follows:

The four steps of RAIN involve active ways of directing our attention. In After the RAIN, we shift from doing to being. The invitation is to relax and let go into the heartspace that has emerged. Rest in this awareness and become familiar with it; this is your true home. Now, paying attention to the quality of your presence – the openness, wakefulness, tenderness – ask yourself: “In these moments, what is the sense of my being, of who I am?” “How has this shifted from when I began the meditation?”

There are examples of “after the rain” type practices in halacha as well, most notably in tefilah:

And he should not make his tefilah like one who is carrying a burden who casts it off and goes on his way. Therefore, he must sit for a little while after tefilah, and only then may he depart. The early pious Sages would pause for an hour before tefilah, and an hour after tefilah, and they would extend tefilah for an hour. (Rambam: Hilchos Tefilah 4:16)

What are we supposed to do during this post-tefilah “pause”? Presumably, we engage in a process akin to what Tara describes: to reflect on what transpired during our davening, to allow our thoughts and feelings to integrate the effects of our tefilah, and to prepare to reenter life enlightened by the experience.

We observe mourning practices of the Tenth of Av because the Beis ha’Mikdash continued to burn. On a basic level, turning away from our metaphysical trauma and running back to our normal lives would reflect a callous attitude towards the tragedies of Tishah b’Av and their implications. Imagine someone in the middle of a commemorative ceremony at Auschwitz saying, “Sorry, I gotta go. I have tickets to the new Marvel movie, and it’s starting in an hour.” The extension of mourning protects us from this insensitivity.

However, I would like to suggest that the extension of our mourning into the Tenth of Av can function as an “After the RAIN” pause – a time when we can sit in the aftermath of our painful reflections and our national teshuvah and reflect on how to reenter our lives in light of these transformative three weeks.

This function is also served by the Sheva d’Nechamta – the seven haftaros of consolation we read between Tishah b’Av and Rosh ha’Shanah. I haven’t learned these haftaros in-depth, nor have I learned about why we read them, but I know one thing for certain: if we took the messages of these haftaros to heart, then we would not simply cease thinking about the Three Weeks, the Nine Days, and Tishah b’Av at midday on the Tenth, and then return to our lives. Instead, we would utilize this period of seven weeks to build a bridge from our metaphysical trauma and subsequent teshuvah, through the remaining summer months, until the Moadim of Tishrei. I don’t know exactly what this bridge is supposed to look like, but I’m sure that if it’s done correctly, the experience will be transformative. I’d like to give it my best shot.

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