The Role of Episodic Memory in the Three Weeks and Tishah b'Av

The Torah content for these two weeks has been sponsored by Judah and Naomi Dardik in loving memory of Rabbi Moskowitz zt''l, who taught his students to pursue truth by asking questions, who modeled love of Torah and learning, and who exemplified living a life of the mind.

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Artwork: Memory Leak, by Karl Kopinski

The Role of Episodic Memory in the Three Weeks and Tishah b'Av

Although this is technically 1-page long, I reference a bunch of other articles I’ve written. Ordinarily I wouldn’t rely on the reader’s familiarity with my previous content, nor would I expect them to read it. However, the goal of this article is to capture where my mind is at going into the Three Weeks. Since I find myself picking up where I left off, I have no choice but to reference these past ideas.

We have commenced the three weeks of mourning during which we reflect on the national flaws that led to the destruction of the two Temples and our present exile. Last summer I wrote a 1-page article about how the Three Weeks, the Nine Days, and Tishah b’Av are designed to induce “metaphysical trauma” on a national level. I wrote another 1-page article about how such trauma is necessary for national teshuvah. I wrote a third 1-page article explaining how the Tishah b’Av liturgy is designed to facilitate this type of teshuvah-from-trauma. I concluded by stressing the importance of allowing ourselves to really feel the unpleasant emotions awakened by our reading of Eichah and the kinnos in order to tap into the trauma which will “awaken our hearts and open the paths of teshuvah” (Rambam, Laws of Fasts 5:1).

This year I believe I have found a new way to induce the aforementioned trauma. This past week I wrote an overview of EFT (Episodic Future Thinking) and a follow-up article on how this technique can be integrated with halacha. Towards the end of Chapter 2 of Imaginable (pp.37-38), McGonigal introduces the following thought-experiment:

I want you to try one more time travel experiment with me. Imagination works both ways in time. So let’s take a ten-year trip in the opposite direction … I want you to picture in your mind’s eye a day more or less ten years ago today. Where would you have been on a typical day? What would you have been doing? Can you picture what you might have been wearing? Who were you with? What were you excited about ten years ago? What were you worried about? What life goal were you working toward, or what life problem were you trying to solve?

It might not be easy to recall all these details at first. Keep working at it. Like episodic future thinking, episodic memory also requires you to stretch your imagination – if only because you’re retrieving memories and reactivating thought patterns you haven’t used in a while … At the Institute for the Future, we call this technique “looking back to look forward.” It’s another excellent strategy for unsticking your mind. As the historian and activist Rebecca Solnit has written, “When you don’t know how much things have changed, you don’t see that they are changing or that they can change.”

As is true of all McGonigal’s exercises, the goal here is not to achieve factual accuracy, but to “learn to control your imagination” (p.33). By practicing episodic memory with your actual past, using your imagination to recall those lived experiences in rich detail, you will become proficient in simulating future experiences with a higher degree of realism.

Halacha obligates us to practice episodic memory on at least one occasion: Pesach night. “In each and every generation a person is obligated to see themselves as though they, themselves, left Egypt” (Hagadah). As a source for this injunction, Rambam (Laws of Chametz and Matzah 7:6) cites: “you shall remember that you were a slave” (Devarim 5:14). In other words, we are commanded to remember events that didn’t actually happen to us as if we lived through them. The intellectual objectives of the Pesach seder cannot be achieved without this use of the imagination.

Likewise, the vividly horrific descriptions of the tragic events depicted in Eichah and the kinnos are also designed to facilitate episodic memory – provided we are willing to take that extra step. For instance, instead of merely reading Kinnah #17 and reacting to the depiction of Jewish women being forced to cannibalize their own children, we should use our imagination to simulate what it might be like for us to live through a time of such starvation and desperation that we are forced to engage in the unthinkable. Will this exercise be traumatic? Yes. And that is precisely the point.

The final chapter of Eichah begins with a plea: “Remember, Hashem, what happened to us; look and see our disgrace” (Eichah 5:1). We know that Hashem sees everything and never forgets anything. Thus, when we beseech Him to remember and see, He expects us to do the same. And unless we do so on a visceral level, then we will not be moved to national teshuvah.

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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 a day's or a week's worth of content, 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"  Email me if you'd like to be added to my WhatsApp group where I share all of my content and public shiur info. 

Judaism and the Benefits of EFT (Episodic Future Thinking)

The Torah content for these two weeks has been sponsored by Judah and Naomi Dardik in loving memory of Rabbi Moskowitz zt''l, who taught his students to pursue truth by asking questions, who modeled love of Torah and learning, and who exemplified living a life of the mind.

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Artwork: Witness the Future, by Anato Finnstark

Judaism and the Benefits of EFT (Episodic Future Thinking)

Note: This is a sequel to yesterday’s introductory article on EFT. If you haven’t read that, then this will be difficult to follow.

Soon after I began reading McGonigal’s book, I realized that as an Orthodox Jew, I pass by countless opportunities to engage in EFT as part of my day-to-day halachic observance. Every time I daven, I express my yearning for a future in which our nation has returned to Israel, the judges have been restored, our enemies have been destroyed, Jerusalem rebuilt, the Davidic monarchy reestablished, the shechinah returned to the Mikdash, and the world filled with peace. Every time I say mussaf, I ask Hashem to bring back our korbanos. So many of the pesukim I recite on a regular basis are about the Messianic era, the climax of world history. Shabbos, Pesach, Sukkos, Tishah b’Av, Purim, and Chanukah all have future-looking themes. Judaism certainly focuses on the past, but it is a remarkably future-oriented religion.

If you noticed, I said that “I pass by countless opportunities to engage in EFT as part of my day-to-day halachic observance.” I haven’t truly seized these opportunities by imagining these future scenarios in vivid detail, as EFT requires. I haven’t taken the time to really apply my full imagination to these phenomena, asking specific questions such as: Where exactly am I in this future? Who else is here? What is around me? What is true in this version of reality that isn’t true today? What do I really want in this future moment? How will I get it? How do I feel, now that I’m here?

What would happen if I did these things? Not only would the future become more real to me, but it would trigger a shift in my entire perspective which would lead to other psychological and intellectual perfections. McGonigal explains:

When you take a mental time trip ten years into the future, your brain starts to think with a different point of view. This isn’t a metaphor – it’s a literal fact. Scientists describe this as switching your imagination from first-person to third-person perspective … When you’re thinking in first person, you’re totally immersed in your own thoughts and feelings. When you’re thinking in third person, you escape your own ego and get a more objective and expansive experience.

(She goes on to support this assertion from the scientific literature, which I can’t summarize in a 1-page article; let me know if you’d like the citations.) Afterwards, she enumerates some of the benefits of this shift in perspective:

a major benefit of switching from first person to third person is that it’s a huge empathy booster. In scientific language, we “reduce our egocentric biases” and become “less ego-identified” – which means we get out of our own heads and can start to see things the way someone else might. We’re better able to consider that others might have different wants, needs, values, or ideas than we do. We also become more open-minded – and this is particularly important when it comes to thinking about how the future might be different, or how we ourselves might change. Studies show that when we zoom out in time and perspective, we become much more likely to take in new information that runs counter to our existing beliefs. This is a kind of mental superpower.

I can’t help but wonder whether Jews tap into these benefits on a minimal level simply by thinking about the future so often, even if we don’t practice EFT. Thinking about the ingathering of exiles three times a day must, on some level, chip away at the feeling of permanence we have about our current home. Yearning for the judges to “remove sorrow and sighing” must, on some level, give us hope that our emotional turmoil is not everlasting, and that there is hope for a cure. Verbalizing our conviction in a future of peace with our neighbors must, on some level, rewire our minds and emotions to believe in peace as a real possibility; this, in turn, will make us more likely to do something about peace in our lifetimes.

It seems to me that it would be a worthwhile investment of time and energy to practice EFT on the future scenarios we talk about in davening, whether through journaling, simulations (like this cool video of a modernized Chamber of Hewn Stones in the Third Mikdash), reading fiction, writing fiction, fleshing out these scenarios when we encounter them in our learning and teaching, or even by taking a few moments just to visualize what we’re saying when we daven.

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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 a day's or a week's worth of content, 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"  Email me if you'd like to be added to my WhatsApp group where I share all of my content and public shiur info. 

Sitting Bull’s Ghost Dance and Moshiach

Today’s Torah content is sponsored by Naomi Mann, in honor of Yeshiva Bnei Torah's 50th year. May Hashem grant YBT continued success!

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Sitting Bull (1831-1890)

Sitting Bull's Ghost Dance and Moshiach

The final section of Jonathan Lear’s Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation examines how Plenty Coups, the last chief of the Crow Nation, saved his people by adapting to the new world after the devastation of the world of the Crow. Although his leadership decisions were influenced by dream-visions, Lear argues that Plenty Coups possessed “imaginative excellence” which allowed him to “facilitate a creative and appropriate response to the world’s challenges” in a pragmatic, non-mystical manner.

Lear contrasts Plenty Coups’s success in this regard with the failure of Sitting Bull, chief of the Sioux. In 1889, rumors arose of a messianic figure who would arise and save the Sioux. It was claimed “he would wipe out all whites in a catastrophe, bring back their ancestors from the dead, restore all the buffalo.”

The messiah was teaching that the current task of the Indian was to perform a Ghost Dance, which would help usher in the apocalypse. The dance spread like wildfire across the reservation, but nowhere did it take greater hold than at Sitting Bull's camp at Standing Rock. The dance was ecstatic: participants would dance into a frenzy and continue until they dropped of exhaustion; they wore ghost shirts that would protect them from bullets; they abandoned all other activities in order to bring about this cataclysm … The dance continued through October and November and into December, when it was forcibly ended. As is well documented, U.S. authorities were greatly disturbed by the Ghost Dance – they were concerned it might lead to an uprising or, at least, the breakdown of civil order – and they sought to suppress it.

Lear writes: “There is no evidence that Sitting Bull actually participated in the Ghost Dance, but he did support it.” The following is Lear’s analysis of Sitting Bull’s fatal error:

Sitting Bull used a dream-vision to short-circuit reality rather than to engage with it … It is a hallmark of the wishful that the world will be magically transformed – into conformity with how one would like it to be – without having to take any realistic practical steps to bring it about. The only activity in which one is enjoined to partake in is a ritual, in this case a dance. But when the ritual comes to take over one’s entire life, as it did for the Sioux of Standing Rock in the fall of 1890, this is a case of what Freud called “turning away from reality.” Symbolic rituals take over life – whether in an individual’s private life or in the group activity of a culture – and they become a way of avoiding the real-life demands that confront one in the every day. And it led to a disaster for the Sioux.

The Rambam, in his Letter on Astrology, blames the destruction of the Second Temple on such a mistake:

This is why our kingdom was lost and our Temple was destroyed and why we were brought to this, for our fathers sinned and are no more because they found many books dealing with the matters of the star gazers, which are the root of idolatry ... they erred and were drawn after them, imagining them to be glorious science and to be of great utility. They did not busy themselves with the art of war or with the conquest of lands, but imagined that those studies would help them. Therefore, the prophets called them "foolish children" (Yirmiyahu 4:22) – and truly fools they were, for "they followed after that which does not benefit" (ibid. 2:8).

We, too, believe in the coming of a moshiach (messiah). However, our messianic era will involve no changes in the natural order (see Hilchos Tehsuvah 9:2, and Hilchos Melachim u’Milchamos 12:1). The process of bringing about the messianic era is eminently practical and political, and neither supernatural nor miraculous (ibid. Ch11). What remains to be seen is whether the “imaginative excellence” of the Jewish nation and its leaders at the critical junctures in the future will follow the model of Plenty Coups, enabling us to courageously engage with reality, or whether we will follow the model of Sitting Bull, to our peril.

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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. 

Parashas Shelach: What is Kareis?

This week I'd like to give a special shout-out to the Abravanel, who did all of the research for me and enabled me to write this dvar Torah on the plane with only his commentary on hand!

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Artwork: Scour from Existence, by Clint Cearley

Parashas Shelach: What is Kareis?

In Parashas Shelach, in the section detailing the various sin-offerings, the Torah mentions the onesh (punishment) commonly referred to as “kareis”: 

But the soul that acts with a high hand, whether the native or the convert – he has blasphemed Hashem; and that soul shall be cut off from among its people. For he has despised the word of Hashem, and has violated His commandment; that soul shall be utterly cut off; his iniquity is upon him (Bamidbar 15:30-31).

The question is: What is kareis? The root of the word kareis (כ.ר.ת.) literally means “to cut” or “to cut off.” This verb is easy to understand if you’re talking about a carrot or a tree branch, but what does it mean for a nefesh (soul) to be “cut off from among its people” or “utterly cut off”? 

Thankfully, the Abravanel does us a tremendous favor by summarizing and critiquing the views of all his predecessors on the matter, and concludes by presenting his own theory [1] Although my usual practice on this blog is to present translations of the meforshim (commentaries) rather than summaries, the Abravanel’s comments here are far too lengthy. For this reason, I will provide my own summary of the Abravanel’s summaries, but I will try to stick to his words as closely as possible. 

For the sake of brevity, I will NOT include the questions and difficulties that the Abravanel raises on each of the views, nor will I include my own analysis. I will leave it to you, the reader, to conduct further research, and to arrive at your own conclusions. 

(1) Saadia Gaon [2] and Ibn Ezra [3]

Both Saadia Gaon and the Ibn Ezra learn that the term nefesh in the context of kareis refers to a person’s physiological vitality, rather than the intellect, or the spiritual part of man. Therefore, they interpret kareis as premature death – the “cutting short” of a person’s life. According to this view, there is no difference between kareis and the other divinely enacted punishment of misah b’ydei shamayim (death by the hands of heaven). 

(2) Rashi [4]

Rashi holds that kareis refers to the premature death of the sinner AND the premature death of his or her children. This latter feature is what differentiates kareis from misah b’ydei shamayim. However, according to Rashi, there is no difference between kareis and the divinely enacted punishment of ariri (childlessness), which is incurred by certain arayos (prohibited sexual relations). [5]

(3) Tosafos [6]

Like Saadia Gaon and the Ibn Ezra, the Baalei Tosafos maintain that kareis refers to premature death. They differentiate between kareis and misah b’ydei shamayim on the basis of when the sinner dies. They hold that someone who is liable for kareis will die before reaching the age of 50, whereas a person who is liable for misah b’ydei shamayim will die before reaching the age of 60.

(4) Tosafos [7]

The Baalei Tosafos offer a second explanation of kareis: that a person will die from an illness, on the third day of that illness. According to this explanation, misah b’ydei shamayim affects the length of a person’s lifespan, whereas kareis affects the duration of (what will turn out to be) a person’s terminal illness. 

(5) Rambam [8]

Unlike the four Rishonim mentioned above, who maintain that kareis affects a person’s physical existence in Olam ha’Zeh (This World), the Rambam maintains that kareis affects a person’s non-physical soul in the purely spiritual Olam ha’Ba (The World to Come). According to the Rambam, kareis refers to the excision and annihilation of the soul after death. The existence of the sinner who incurred kareis will come to an end with his physical demise, just like an animal. Thus, he will be deprived of the everlasting spiritual bliss of Olam ha’Ba, which is the ultimate reward. In contrast, a person who is liable for misah b’ydei shamayim will die prematurely, but his death will provide kaparah (atonement) for him, and his soul will merit existence in Olam ha’Ba. 

(6) Ramban [9]

The Ramban’s view is the most complex of them all. Whereas all of the Rishonim mentioned thus far hold that all instances of kareis are uniform (i.e. the same in every case, no matter who the sinner and no matter what the sin), the Ramban maintains that there are three levels of kareis:

• If a person’s merits outweigh his iniquities, then he will receive a physical kareis in the form of a premature death; his soul, however, will remain untouched in the purely spiritual Gan Eden and in the Messianic Era of Olam ha’Ba after Techiyas ha’Meisim (Resurrection of the Dead). [10] This form of kareis is practically identical with kareis as understood by Saadia Gaon and the Ibn Ezra.
• If a person’s iniquities outweigh his merits, then he will receive a spiritual kareis in the form of his soul being cut off from eternal life in Gan Eden and Olam ha’Ba. This type of kareis is similar to kareis as explained by the Rambam, but whereas the Rambam maintains that the afterlife is purely spiritual, the Ramban maintains that it is a combination of the physical and the spiritual. 
• The most severe form of kareis is reserved for those who worship avodah zarah (idolatry) and for those who commit the transgression of blasphemy; these individuals die prematurely in this world AND their souls are cut off from existence in Gan Eden and Olam ha’Ba.

(7) Abravanel

The Abravanel holds that kareis affects the sinner in Olam ha’Zeh AND in Olam ha’Ba: in Olam ha’Zeh his life is cut short, and in Olam ha’Ba, his soul is “distanced from the radiance of the shechinah (divine presence),” which is its source of spiritual pleasure and reward. The Abravanel maintains that kareis is subject to degrees, based on the severity of the sin. Unlike the Rambam, the Abravanel holds that the soul is never fully cut off from Olam ha’Ba, since it is a “spiritual essence” which, by its very nature, does not deteriorate. The Abravanel holds that kareis causes spiritual “pain” to the soul, but after it receives its punishment, it will be restored to a state of pleasure and reward. 

There you have it: a seven-way machlokess (disagreement) on what kareis is. And these are just the opinions of the Rishonim cited by the Abravanel. I would not be surprised if there are other views to be found in other meforshim.

To my mind, this multiplicity of views raises another question: Why is the Torah’s presentation of kareis so vague? 

Perhaps you will dismiss this question. After all, there are many subjects in Torah on which there is a lot of machlokess, and one might ask the same question in each of these cases. Why ask this question here as opposed to any of those cases?

The reason I believe this question is justified here is based on my understanding of why the Torah mandates onshim (punishments) altogether, which I wrote about in another post. There are seven levels of onshim. In order, from most severe to least severe, they are: skilah (stoning), sreifah (burning), hereg (decapitation), chenek (strangulation), kareis, misah b’ydei shamayim, and malkos (lashes). According to the Rambam, these onshim are designed to indicate the severity of the transgression and to deter the would-be sinner from sinning. When it comes to skilah, sreifah, hereg, chenek, and malkos, we know exactly what each onesh entails. The same goes for misah b’ydei shamayim; although there might be some machlokess on the particulars, everyone agrees that this refers to premature death. And yet, when it comes to the onesh of kareis, there is no consensus on what the Torah means. This is an anomaly among onshim, and poses a problem if one maintains that the purpose of onshim is to serve as a deterrent. How can one be deterred by kareis if the meaning of kareis is so unclear? 

The way I see it, we are forced draw one of two conclusions: either (1) there was once a clear and unanimous understanding of kareis which was lost over time, which eventually gave rise to wide-ranging machlokess, or (2) the Torah’s formulation of kareis was intentionally left vague, and that is why there is an inordinate degree of machlokess. 

If the former is true, this would be comparable to the machlokess on the teruah-blast of the shofar: the Torah was clear about it, but the mesorah (transmission of teaching) was lost over time, and machlokess developed as a result. If the latter is true, this would be comparable to the machlokess on how the messianic era will come to be, about which the Rambam [11] writes: 

All of these matters and those that are like them … even the Sages did not have a tradition in these things, but rather, [they theorized] based on the implications of the pesukim, and that is why there is machlokess.

If the answer is (1), then there is nothing more to say. Somehow, sometime, the understanding of kareis was lost, and machlokess developed, just as it has in other areas of Torah. But if the answer is (2), then we are left with our question: Why did the Torah intentionally present kareis in such a vague manner?

The most I can offer at this point is a speculative answer – one which only works for those who hold that kareis affects the soul (i.e. Rambam, Ramban, Abravanel) and not just the body (i.e. Saadia Gaon, Ibn Ezra, Rashi, Tosafos). The Rambam [12] at the end of Hilchos Teshuvah writes:

A person should not say, “I will do the mitzvos of the Torah and involve myself in its chochmah in order to receive all of the blessings that are written in it,” or “in order that I will merit life in the World to Come,” “and I will distance myself from the transgressions about which the Torah warns us, in order to escape from the curses written in the Torah” or “so that I will not be cut off from the World to Come.” 

It is not proper to serve Hashem in this manner, for one who serves Hashem in this manner is called “oveid mi’yirah” (“one who serves out of fear”). This is neither a virtue of the prophets nor of the chachamim. The only ones who should serve Hashem in this manner are ignorant men, women, and children, whom we train to serve out of fear until their minds develop and they serve out of love. 

Hashem does not want us to serve Him out of yirah (fear). Although it is necessary to begin by serving Him that way, and we encourage people to do so in the initial stages of their learning, this is not an ideal state. The Rambam even goes so far as to say about the various yirah-based motives, “All of this is despicable; however, it is necessary for us, due to the deficiency of the human mind/psyche.” The goal is to gradually wean ourselves from serving God out of yirah and develop the ability to serve Him out of ahavah. This is a slow and delicate process which must progress in step with each person's development, as the Rambam writes:

Therefore, when we teach the children, women, and general populace of laymen, we should only teach them to serve out of yirah and in order to receive reward, until their minds mature and they gain additional wisdom; we should reveal this secret to them bit by bit, and accustom them to this concept with pleasantness, until they apprehend it and know it and serve out of ahavah. 

The onshim of the Torah clearly belong to the framework of yirah. All of the other onshim (skilah, sreifah, hereg, chenek, malkos) are things which happen in this world. Fear of them is rooted in observation and experience. Kareis, on the other hand, is not – at least, not according to the Rambam, the Ramban, or the Abravanel. To understand kareis requires knowledge of deep, abstract concepts, such as the nature of the soul, how the soul exists after death, what Olam ha'Ba is, how it relates to techiyas ha'meisim, how we are rewarded and punished after death, etc. These concepts take decades of learning to be able to begin to understand, since they are metaphysical phenomena that are out of this world. Not only that, the imagination is quick to latch onto its own "counterfeit" versions of these ideas, which are rooted in psychological fears and insecurities, and not reality.

Thus, the Torah in a bind. On the one hand, kareis is a reality which has relevance in the halachic system; as such, it must be mentioned explicitly in the Torah. On the other hand, kareis is an exceedingly lofty concept, and any attempt to explain it would only provide the imagination with more fuel for its fantasy-based fear, and threaten to lock a person in yirah-mode.

How did the Torah solve this dilemma? By intentionally speaking about kareis in vague terms. On its most basic level, "to be cut off" is intuitively bad-sounding, even if one doesn't know exactly what that means. Those who are prone to filling in the gaps with their imagination will do so anyway, but at least the Torah will not be lending credence to these detrimental chimerical notions. And since the Torah's formulation of kareis is so vague, it will remain open to reexamination and reevaluation as the individual learns and develops.

I can't say I find this answer to be 100% satisfactory, but I do think it is a fruitful approach. At the very least, I hope you gained from the Abravanel's overview of kareis, and that I've left you with a nice question to think about!

[1] Don Yitzchak Abravanel, Commentary on Sefer Bamidbar 15:31 

[2] Rabbeinu Saadia Gaon, Emunos v’Deos 6 

[3] Rabbeinu Avraham ben Ezra (Ibn Ezra), Commentary on Sefer Bamidbar 15:31 

[4] Rabbeinu Shlomo ben YiTzchak (Rashi), Commentary on Sefer Bereishis 17:14; Vayikra 17:9 

[5] Vayikra 20:20-21 

[6] Baalei Tosafos, Yevamos 2a; Shabbos 25a 

[7] The Abravanel seems to say that Tosafos says this on Yevamos 2a, but I can’t seem to find it. If you can track it down, please let me know. 

[8] Rabbeinu Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides / Rambam), Commentary on the Mishnah – Sanhedrin 8:6; Introduction to Perek Chelek; Mishneh Torah: Sefer ha’Mada, Hilchos Teshuvah 3:5-6; 8:1 

[9] Rabbeinu Moshe ben Nachman (Nachmanides / Ramban), Commentary on Sefer Vayikra 18:29; Shaar ha’Gemul [currently do not have access to a precise citation] 

[10] This is neither the time nor the place to go into the Ramban’s view of reward and punishment and the afterlife. If you are interested in this topic, I recommend reading the Shaar ha’Gemul, which is available here in Hebrew, and was translated into English by Chavel. 

[11] Rabbeinu Moshe ben Maimon (Rambam / Maimonides), Mishneh Torah: Sefer Shoftim, Hilchos Melachim u’Milchamos 12:2 

[12] ibid. Mishneh Torah: Sefer ha’Mada, Hilchos Teshuvah 10:2

Footnote 4

The following is a large excerpt the famous "Footnote 4" from Halakhic Man, by the Rav (a.k.a. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik). It stands out in my mind as one of the most impactful footnotes I've read. The language and references are obscure, but there is still what to be gained, even if not all of it is comprehensible upon the first reading (or two, or ten). 

This excerpt deals with the nature of the religious experience and the religious journey. I present it here without further commentary, for you to take it in on its own terms.

Footnote 4

[T]he antinomic structure of religious experience, which was revised and refined by Rudolf Otto in his book, The Idea of the Holy, give[s] the lie to the position that is prevalent nowadays in religious circles, whether in Protestant groups or in American Reform and Conservative Judaism, that the religious experience is of a very simple nature – that is, devoid of the spiritual tortuousness present in the secular cultural consciousness, of psychic upheavals, and of the pangs and torments that are inextricably connected with the development and refinement of man’s spiritual personality. This popular ideology contends that the religious experience is tranquil and neatly ordered, tender and delicate; it is an enchanted stream for embittered souls and still waters for troubled spirits. The person “who comes in from the field, weary” (Gen. 25:29), from the battlefield and campaigns of life, from the secular domain which is filled with doubts and fears, contradictions and refutations, clings to religion as does a baby to its mother and finds in her lap “a shelter for his head, the nest of his forsaken prayers” [H.N. Bialik, “Hakhnisini tahat kenafekh”] and there is comforted for his disappointments and tribulations. This ideology is partially embedded in the most ancient strata of Christianity, partially rooted in modern pragmatic philosophy; but mainly it stems from practical-utilitarian considerations. The advocates of religion wish to exploit the rebellious impulse against knowledge which surges from time to time in the soul of the man of culture, the yearning to be freed from the bonds of culture, that daughter of knowledge, which weighs heavy on man with its questions, doubts, and problems, and the desire to escape from the turbulence of life to a magical, still, and quiet island and there to devote oneself to the ideal of naturalness and vitality. This Rousseauean ideology left its stamp on the entire Romantic movement from the beginning of its growth until its final (tragic!) manifestations in the consciousness of contemporary man. Therefore, the representatives of religious communities are inclined to portray religion, in a wealth of colors that dazzle the eye, as a poetic Arcadia, a realm of simplicity, wholeness, and tranquility. Most of the sermons of revivalists are divided in equal measure between depicting the terrors of hellfire and describing the utopian tranquility that religion can bestow upon man. And that which appears in the sermons of these preachers in a primitive, garbled form, at times interwoven with a childish naïveté and superficial belief, is refined and purified in the furnace of popular “philosophy” and “theology” and becomes transformed into a universal religious ideology which proclaims: If you wish to acquire tranquility without paying the price of spiritual agonies, turn unto religion! If you wish to achieve a fine psychic equilibrium without having to first undergo a slow, gradual personal development, turn unto religion. And if you wish to achieve an instant spiritual wholeness and simplicity that need not be forged out of the struggles and torments of consciousness, turn unto religion! “Get thee out of thy country,” which is filled with anxiety, anguish, and tension, “and from thy birthplace,” which is so frenzied, raging, and stormy, “to the land” that is enveloped by the stillness of peace and tranquility, to the Arcadia wherein religion reigns supreme. The leap from the secular world to the religious world could not be simpler and easier. There is no need for a process of transition with all its torments and upheavals. A person can acquire spiritual tranquility in a single moment. Typical of this attitude is the Christian Science movement.

It would appear to me that there is no need to explain the self-evident falsity of this ideology. First, the entire Romantic aspiration to escape from the domain of knowledge, the rebellion against the authority of objective, scientific cognition which has found its expression in the biologistic philosophies of Bergson, Nietzsche, Spengler, Klages, and their followers and in the phenomenological, existential, and antiscientific school of Heidegger and his coterie, and from the midst of which there arose in various forms the sanctification of vitality and intuition, the veneration of instinct, the desire for power, the glorification of the emotional-affective life and the flowing, surging stream of subjectivity, the lavishing of extravagant praise on the faustian type and the Dionysian personality, etc., etc., have brought complete chaos and human depravity to the world. And let the events of the present era be proof! The individual who frees himself from the rational principle and who casts off the yoke of objective thought will in the end turn destructive and lay waste the entire created order. Therefore, it is preferable that religion should ally itself with the forces of clear, logical cognition, as uniquely exemplified in the scientific method, even though at times the two might clash with one another, rather than pledge its troth to beclouded, mysterious ideologies that grope in the dark corners of existence, unaided by the shining light of objective knowledge, and believe that they have penetrated to the secret core of the world.

And, second, this ideology is intrinsically false and deceptive. That religious consciousness in man’s experience which is most profound and most elevated, which penetrates to the very depths and ascends to the very heights, is not that simple and comfortable. On the contrary, it is exceptionally complex, rigorous, and tortuous. Where you find its complexity, there you find its greatness. The religious experience, from beginning to end, is antinomic and antithetic. The consciousness of homo religiosis flings bitter accusations against itself and immediately is filled with regret, judges its desires and yearnings with excessive severity, and at the same time steeps itself in them, casts derogatory aspersions on its own attributes, flails away at them, but also subjugates itself to them. It is in a condition of spiritual crisis, of psychic ascent and descent, of contradiction arising from affirmation and negation, self-abnegation and self-appreciation. The ideas of temporality and eternity, knowledge and choice (necessity and freedom), love and fear (the yearning for God and the flight from His glorious splendor), incredible, overbold daring, and an extreme sense of humility, transcendence and God’s closeness, the profane and the holy, etc., etc., struggle within his religious consciousness, wrestle and grapple with each other. This one ascends and this one descends, this falls and this rises.

Religion is not, at the outset, a refuge of grace and mercy for the despondent and desperate, an enchanted stream for crushed spirits, but a raging clamorous torrent of man’s consciousness with all its crises, pangs, and torments. Yes, it is true that during the third Sabbath meal at dusk, as the day of rest declines and man’s soul yearns for its Creator and is afraid to depart from that realm of holiness whose name is Sabbath, into the dark and frightening, secular workaday week, we sing the psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters” (Ps. 23), etc., etc., and we believe with our entire hearts in the ultimate destination of homo religiosis, not the path leading to that destination. For the path that eventually will lead to the “green pastures” and to the “still waters” is not the royal road, but a narrow, twisting footway that threads its course along the steep mountain slope, as the terrible abyss yawns at the traveler’s feet. Many see “the Lord passing by; and a great and strong wind rending mountains and shattering rocks . . . and after the wind an earthquake . . . and after the earthquake a fire” but only a few prove worthy of hearing “the still small voice” (1 Kings 19:11-12). Out of the straits of inner oppositions and incongruities, spiritual doubts and uncertainties, out of the depths of a psyche rent with antinomies and contradictions, out of the bottomless pit of a soul that struggles with its own torments I have called, I have called unto Thee, O Lord.

And when the Torah testified that Israel, in the end, would repent out of anguish and agony [cf. Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 7:5], “In your distress when all these things are come upon you . . . and you will return unto the Lord your God” (Deut. 4:30), it had in mind not only physical pain but also spiritual suffering. The pangs of searching and groping, the tortures of spiritual crises and exhausting treks of the soul purify and sanctify man, cleanse his thoughts, and purge them of the husks of superficiality and the dross of vulgarity. Out of these torments there emerges a new understanding of the world, a powerful spiritual enthusiasm that shakes the very foundations of man’s existence. He arises from the agonies, purged and refined, possessed of a pure heart and new spirit. “It is a time of agony unto Jacob, but out of it he shall be saved” (Jer. 30:7) – i.e., from out of the very midst of the agony itself he will attain eternal salvation and redemption. The spiritual stature and countenance of the man of God are chiseled and formed by the pangs of redemption themselves.

The Perfect Piña Colada (Doesn't Exist)

Originally posted in September 2009

The Experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Insight

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

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

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

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

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

The Principle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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