Tishah b’Av 5781: An Approach to the Blasphemy in Eichah and Kinnos

This week's Torah content is sponsored by the Reznik family in dedication to the loving memory of Silvia Tanzer (Sora Hesha bas Chaim Moshe) and Irving Tanzer (Yisroel ben Yechezkel).

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Tishah b'Av 5781: An Approach to the Blasphemy in Eichah and Kinnos

“[Hashem] has drawn back His right hand from before the enemy” (Eichah 2:3) “[Hashem] has bent His bow like an enemy, with His right hand set like a tormentor” (ibid. 2:4) “My Lord was like an enemy” (ibid. 2:5)

First Hashem is described as withdrawing His protective right hand, allowing the enemy to attack. Then He is depicted as taking up arms and joining our enemy in its assault. Finally, Hashem, Himself, is identified as our enemy. What insight do these pesukim offer? What is the significance of this progression?

The answer is that this is actually a regression. The first pasuk is the accurate perspective: when we turn away from Hashem, He withdraws His protection, leaving us vulnerable to our enemies. The second pasuk reflects a warped view of Hashem, in which He is characterized as committing treason against His own people. The third pasuk is the worst distortion of them all, in which Hashem is the enemy of the Jews.

Why would Eichah cater to distorted portrayals of Hashem? The same may be asked about the kinnos (liturgical lamentations), which are replete with harsh, inappropriate, even blasphemous statements of this nature. How are we to make sense of such statements? What are we to think when reciting them?

When we suffer a horrific catastrophe – whether the destruction of the Beis ha’Mikdash, or the Holocaust, or even a personal tragedy – there are parts of us which feel that Hashem is like a malicious enemy. This is false, “for He does not afflict maliciously, nor cause the hearts of men to suffer” (ibid. 3:33). It is tempting to think that knowledge alone is the solution – that we can simply supplant falsehood with truth. This approach will not succeed. If we neglect to address these misguided parts of ourselves on their own terms, we will succeed only in driving them underground, where they will continue to affect our minds and hearts in an even more insidious manner. Instead, we must acknowledge that we have these parts of ourselves. We must give expression to them, allowing them to say what they think and feel what they feel. Only when they feel seen and heard will they be receptive to truth. Only then can the healing begin.

Anthony de Mello’s analogy in Awareness: the Perils and Opportunities of Reality illustrates this point:

This reminds me of this fellow in London after the war. He’s sitting with a parcel wrapped in brown paper in his lap; it’s a big, heavy object. The bus conductor comes up to him and says, “What do you have on your lap there?” And the man says, “This is an unexploded bomb. We dug it out of the garden and I’m taking it to the police station.” The conductor says, “You don’t want to carry that on your lap. Put it under the seat.”

The distorted conceptions of Hashem carried by our inner parts are like bombs we carry on our laps. To uncritically embrace these false views as true would be to detonate the bombs. We must seek knowledge of Hashem, led by our tzelem Elokim (intellect) and guided by Torah. But that is not enough. If we dismiss, deny, or “exile” the parts of ourselves that harbor these false views of Hashem, all we’re doing is taking the unexploded bombs and putting them under our seats. This is worse than keeping them on our laps, insofar as we convince ourselves that we’ve eliminated the threat when all we’ve done is hidden it. All it takes is for the bus to be jostled in the wrong way, and these hidden bombs will explode.

There is a third option: to acknowledge the bombs we are carrying, to accept our precarious state, and from that place of awareness, apply our knowledge to diffuse them. This is the intent of Eichah and kinnos: to make us aware of and feel the distorted perspectives we harbor, to accept and feel the precarious metaphysical danger we are in, and from that place of visceral intellectual recognition, to help us “unburden” these misguided parts of ourselves through knowledge and teshuvah and the light of truth.

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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/Chase QuickPay 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. 

Hunting for Treasure vs. Panning for Gold on the Beaches of Nome

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Hunting for Treasure vs. Panning for Gold on the Beaches of Nome

According to Mishlei (Proverbs), you will achieve success in your quest for chochmah (wisdom) and tevunah (understanding) if you search for it “like you search for hidden treasures” (2:4). Rabbeinu Yonah explains:

[This means] that the wisdom is sweet to his soul, and working for it will not be a toil for him, due to the abundant love, in the manner of: “it was like a few days in his eyes, due to his love of her” (Bereishis 29:29). It will be like one who searches for hidden treasures, who is told that there is a treasure in this house or in this valley: the quest for the hidden treasure will not be a toil for him, due to [the prospect in] his mind of finding great wealth in one location and becoming instantly rich.

In other words, if you learn with the mentality of a treasure hunter who hopes to hit the mother lode, then learning will not be a toil for you, since it will be fueled by excitement and the hope of being rewarded with instant wealth. But unlike the treasure hunter, whose hope will likely prove to be a fantasy, the seeker of chochmah and tevunah really can strike it rich!

Thank God, the more I learn, the more this treasure hunting mentality has come to characterize my own learning. However, this same mentality has occasionally proven to be an impediment when it comes to teaching. When I was a high school teacher, I had no problem teaching “basic ideas,” since my students were all new to learning. Once I started teaching in yeshiva in the Fall of 2020, I felt a tremendous pressure to come up with major chidushim (new insights) in everything I taught. I’d feel this way in many of my daily shiurim and especially when I’d give a shiur to the whole community. But this wasn’t the first time I’ve experienced this type of pressure. I’ve gone through phases in which my writing suffers from the same problem. I end up feeling like I shouldn’t write an article unless it contains some groundbreaking chidush that will be seen as valuable to all, laypeople and chachamim alike, and this leads to writer’s block.

I am pleased to report that my “Summer 2021 Experiment” of writing one-page articles has counteracted this pressure. I am reminded of another Mishleic mashal (metaphor) for chochmah, stated in the previous chapter: “Chochmah calls out in the streets, in the public squares she gives forth her voice, at the heads of noisy [streets], at the entrances of gates, she gives forth her words” (1:20-21). In contrast to the treasure hunting mashal of Chapter 2, which depicts the scarcity and hidden nature of chochmah, the mashal of Chapter 1 emphasizes its ubiquity and vociferousness: chochmah is on every street corner, wherever you look, and it’s constantly shouting and clamoring to get your attention! In my case, now that I’m looking for “one-page ideas” to write about, I’m noticing them everywhere, which is fantastic!

If I were to create a highly specific mashal which combines these two mashalim, I’d borrow from Shlomo ha’Melech’s comparison of chochmah to gold (see 8:10,18 and 16:16) and I would liken my Summer 2021 experience to panning for gold on the golden beaches of Nome. According to Wikipedia:

The Nome Gold Rush was a gold rush in Nome, Alaska, approximately 1899–1909. It is separated from other gold rushes by the ease with which gold could be obtained. Much of the gold was lying in the beach sand of the landing place and could be recovered without any need for a claim. Total production of gold from the area is estimated to be 112 metric tons.

Chochmah is like Nome’s gold: it’s there in the sand, ready for the taking, and there’s plenty to share.

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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/Chase QuickPay 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. 

The Necessity of Metaphysical Trauma for National Teshuvah

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Artwork: Tainted Pact, by Benjamin Ee

The Necessity of Metaphysical Trauma for National Teshuvah 

In The Induction of Metaphysical Trauma I argued that the national teshuvah of Tishah b’Av can only take place from a state of metaphysical trauma – from “abiding sentiments of grief, the resulting sense of void, and the hopeless feelings of groping in the dark,” to borrow the words of Rav Soloveitchik. The question is: Why is this state of “metaphysical trauma” necessary for national teshuvah?

Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, by Jonathan Lear, is a philosophical-anthropological analysis of how Plenty Coups, the last chief of the Crow Nation, led his people when their world – that is, their rituals, traditions, and ways of living – came to an abrupt end. Lear’s thesis is that the Crow Nation did not merely lose the particulars of their way of life when they were forced to move onto the reservations; rather, they lost the world of concepts which made that life conceivable, thereby rendering it impossible to live. Lear provides the following “very rough analogy” for this phenomenon:

Imagine that pieces of a chess game had inner lives. And imagine that each took itself to be a center of agency. I am a knight! I see myself in tribal terms: I am a black knight! I am proud to a black knight! We shall fight a glorious battle and capture the white king! I think strategically in terms of my possible moves: two up and one to the right, two up and one to the left. Perhaps I should wait here quietly for several moves, and if that white rook comes my way ... I understand all the other members of my tribe in terms of the roles they play: and I understand that we are all aspiring to excellence in the sense that we are trying to win. Unbeknownst to me, my world exists because it is protected by a group of humans. These are the guardians of the chess world, who insist that the only acceptable moves are moves that are allowable within the game of chess. From my point of view as a thoughtful knight, the humans are as unknowable as the transcendent gods. But suppose these chess-guardians were one day just to give it up: as a historical phenomenon, humans got bored with playing this game, and the game of chess goes out of existence. My problem is not simply that my way of life has come to an end. I no longer have the concepts with which to understand myself or the world. I understood the other pieces in terms of their roles, but there are no longer any such roles. Perhaps I am found attractive by humans as a physical object. I am put on a bookshelf as a curiosity, an objet d'art. I might sit for generations on a series of bookshelves – get traded as what humans call an antique – and all this while I am in utter confusion. I have no idea what is going on. This isn’t primarily a psychological problem. The concepts with which I would otherwise have understood myself – indeed, the concepts with which I would otherwise have shaped my identity – have gone out of existence.

Bessel van der Kolk, in The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, says of his work with trauma victims: “I have to help them reconstruct [their] inner map of the world.” Unlike personal teshuvah, national teshuvah requires a reconstruction of the world of concepts in which we live. It is impossible to radically reconstruct our world unless we have recognized and felt its utter destruction, intellectually and viscerally. This is why metaphysical trauma is necessary for national teshuvah. Only when we “hit rock bottom” and suffer the consequences of the false concepts and corrupt values that we, as a society, have embraced – only then can we begin to rebuild. The core experiences of national trauma were generated by the instances of “divine wrath” throughout Jewish history. The communal fast days are designed to preserve and reawaken this trauma on a recurring basis to “open the paths of teshuvah.”

Perhaps this is the meaning of Moshe’s prophecy about the national teshuvah that will occur at the end of days: “When you are in distress and all these things have befallen you, at the end of days, you will return to Hashem, your God, and hearken to His voice” (Devarim 4:30). Like the Crow, the Jewish people may endure the total destruction of our world. But we, unlike they, have access to teshuvah: the ability to return to “Melech ha’Olam” – the King of the world of concepts and values in which we ought to live.

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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/Chase QuickPay 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. 

The Sin of Refusing to Look at Oneself

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Artwork: Agonizing Remorse, by Robbie Trevino

The Sin of Refusing to Look at Oneself

The first of the Neviim Acharonim (Later Prophets) to prophesy about the destruction of Bayis Rishon (the First Temple) and Galus Bavel (the Babylonian exile) was Yeshayahu, in the first prophecy he received:

[Hashem] said: Go and say to this people, "You surely listen, but you do not understand; you surely see, but you do not know. The heart of this people has become fat, its ears have become heavy, its eyes have become covered over – lest it see with its eyes and hear with its ears and understand with its heart, and it return (i.e. engage in teshuvah) and be healed.” (Yeshayahu 6:9-10)

Radak explains:

You listen with your ears to the words of the neviim who rebuke you, but you do not understand; you see the wonders of the Creator but you do not know. In other words, you do not apply your mind, and you do not pay attention to Me. You intentionally fatten your heart and make your ears heavy and cover over your eyes so that you do not hear, and do not see, and do not understand, and do not know, for you desire neither teshuvah nor "healing," which is the forgiveness after teshuvah.

Yeshayahu does not focus on the people’s sinfulness per se. Rather, he rebukes them for their refusal to look at themselves with a critical mind, since doing so would prompt them to do teshuvah.

There are two ways to understand the intent of this message. The first is to assume that the navi is primarily concerned with the sinfulness of the people, and he is simply pointing out that their impediment to doing teshuvah and being “healed” is their refusal to look, listen, and know themselves. The second reading is that the navi is primarily concerned with the people’s resistance to the type of self-knowledge which leads to teshuvah, and the oblique reference to their sinfulness is merely the backdrop of this focus.

I believe that the second understanding is correct. The strongest evidence for this reading is that no sin is explicitly identified other than the refusal to look, listen, and know themselves. This sin is expanded upon by Anthony de Mello in Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality:

The first thing I want you to understand, if you really want to wake up, is that you don't want to wake up. The first step to waking up is to be honest enough to admit to yourself that you don't like it … We don't want to look, because if we do, we may change. We don't want to look. If you look, you lose control of the life that you are so precariously holding together. And so in order to wake up, the one thing you need the most is not energy, or strength, or youthfulness, or even great intelligence. The one thing you need most of all is the readiness to learn something new. The chances that you will wake up are in direct proportion to the amount of truth you can take without running away. How much are you ready to take? How much of everything you've held dear are you ready to have shattered, without running away? How ready are you to think of something unfamiliar?

We often resist doing teshuvah because we are attached to a particular behavior and don’t want to stop. But there is another reason why we may resist doing teshuvah: because we are terrified of seeing who we are in the present, or of who we may become in the future if we allow ourselves to let go of the life and the narrative about ourselves that we so desperately and precariously cling to.

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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/Chase QuickPay 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. 

The Induction of Metaphysical Trauma

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The Induction of Metaphysical Trauma

This morning I read the following idea from Rav Soloveitchik about the uniquely Jewish phenomenon of aveilus yeshanah (mourning a past tragedy), as opposed to aveilus chadashah (mourning a present loss):

A Jew lives with a unique time consciousness. He experiences time not in the standard tripartite division of past, present, and future; rather, all three dimensions converge into a single integrated existence. This unique orientation toward time enables a Jew to pre-experience events of the distant future and to relive occurrences of the ostensibly dead past … A Jew has the unique capacity to relive past tragedies and to experience them anew as if the wounds were still fresh. As a result, the abiding sentiments of grief, the resulting sense of void, and the hopeless feelings of groping in the dark are felt just as powerfully when mourning for past events.

I am in the middle of reading The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. One of the key characteristics of trauma is the reexperiencing of past events as though they are happening in the present. Van der Kolk writes: “Long after the actual event has passed, the brain may keep sending signals to the body to escape a threat that no longer exists.”

In this sense, aveilus yeshanah is metaphysical trauma. It is “trauma” in that it is a reexperiencing of a painful event from the remote past as though it were happening in the present. It is “metaphysical” in that its aim is the perfection of the soul, as opposed to psychological or neurological functions. This aim is reflected in the Rambam’s statement about the purpose of all national fast days in Hilchos Taaniyos 5:1:

There are days on which all of Israel fasts because of the catastrophes that occurred on them, in order to awaken the hearts [of the people] and to open the paths of teshuvah (repentance). This will be a remembrance of our corrupt actions and the corrupt actions of our fathers that were like our actions today, which ultimately reached the point that [these corrupt actions] caused these catastrophes for them and for us. Through the remembrance of these matters we will return to do good, as it stated: “they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers” (Vayikra 26:40).

This Rambam underscores a key point: the metaphysical trauma of aveilus yeshanah must be artificially induced. In aveilus chadashah, which is triggered by the death of a close relative, grief is a natural reaction which is then harnessed and directed within the framework of the laws of mourning. In aveilus yeshanah, the natural reaction of grief is no longer extant; the catastrophic events we mourn happened so long ago that they have faded from our national consciousness. Instead, the mourning customs and laws we observe during The Three Weeks, The Nine Days, and Tishah b’Av are designed to awaken, generate, and cultivate a sense of tragic loss. It is from those “abiding sentiments of grief, the resulting sense of void, and the hopeless feelings of groping in the dark” that the real work of national teshuvah can begin.

This is another feature which makes aveilus yeshanah a uniquely Jewish phenomenon. The world views trauma in an entirely negative light. Trauma is something to be avoided or gotten rid of at any cost. Who in their right mind would seek out trauma? Ironically, the answer is: one who seeks to be in their right mind. Only the Jew, who lives not for the body but for the soul, will artificially induce a painful state of trauma each year for the sake of teshuvah. Only the Jew sees teshuvah as essential for the life of mind.

[1] excerpted from the Reshimot of Rabbi Menachem Genack in the appendix of The Koren Mesorat HaRav Kinot

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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/Chase QuickPay 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. 

Haftarah of Mattos / Masei: Divine Love as the Foundation of Rebuke

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Haftarah of Mattos / Masei: Divine Love as the Foundation of Rebuke

Sefer Yirmiyahu is filled with messages of rebuke, catastrophe, and tragedy. Yet, the very first prophecy Yirmiyahu is sent to deliver has a markedly different character from the rest of the book:

Go and call out in the ears of Yerushalayim, saying: “Thus said Hashem: I recalled for you the kindness of your youth, the love of your wedding [ceremony], your following after Me in the Wilderness, into an unsown land. Israel is holy to Hashem, the first of His crop; all who consume it will be held guilty; harm shall befall them - the word of Hashem” (Yirmiyahu 2:2-3).

Rav Hirsch (Commentary on Haftaroth) notes this thematic discrepancy:

The first Word which the young prophet has to bring to his people in the name of God, as the beginning of his mission, is no stern rebuke, no prophecy of the impending disaster, but a message of love, of encouragement, a Word that looks beyond all the precipices, pierces through all the dark clouds of the gloomy fate, to the bright outlook on the ultimate sun-bathed goal of the undying People at the zenith of their destiny intimately united with their God. No more intimate or more glorious Word has ever flowed from the lips of any prophet. A Word which embraces the most distant past with the most distant future, and thereby demonstrates the wonderful continuity of the Thought of God which comes to be developed in Jewish history.

Why does Yirmiyahu preface his prophecies of rebuke with this message of love? I would like to suggest an answer based on the words of the Rambam (Moreh ha’Nevuchim 3:28) and a quotation cited by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. in The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2015).

The Rambam maintains that the doctrines taught by the Torah fall into two categories. The first is “beliefs through which the ultimate perfection may be attained,” including “the belief in Hashem’s Existence (exalted is He), His Oneness, His Omniscience, His Omnipotence, His Will, and His Eternality.” The second category is comprised of “beliefs which are necessary for the sake of societal welfare, such as our belief that He (may He be exalted) is violently angry with those who disobey Him and that it is therefore necessary to fear Him and to dread Him and to take care not to disobey.” The belief in Hashem’s enduring love for the Jewish people belongs to this second category, since Hashem has no actual emotions and “love” is only ascribed to Him by way of metaphor.  

Van der Kolk begins the section of his book “on the minds of children” with the words of Diana Fosha, PhD, known for her work on the psychotherapy of adults suffering the effects of childhood attachment trauma and abuse: “The roots of resilience ... are to be found in the sense of being understood by and existing in the mind and heart of a loving, attuned, and self-possessed other.”

Perhaps Yirmiyahu opened his rebuke with a message of Divine love for this reason. He knew that in order for the Jews to endure their impending destruction and exile with the type of resilience that leads to teshuvah, they needed to feel seen and loved by Hashem. It is known that a baal teshuvah is “cherished and beloved” by Hashem (Hilchos Teshuvah 7:6), but that knowledge is not enough for the sinner. The sinner must also know that “the one whom Hashem loves, He rebukes” (Mishlei 3:12) – that the rebuke, itself, is from love, and reflects a confidence in the intrinsic worth of the sinner, despite their sins.

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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/Chase QuickPay 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. 

Sameach b'Chelko as Unconditional Happiness

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Artwork: Weather the Storm, by Justin and Alexis Hernandez

Sameach b'Chelko as Unconditional Happiness

Ben Zoma (Avos 4:1) taught: “Who is wealthy? One who is sameach b’chelko (happy with his portion).” This is the type of idea that can easily become cliché if it is not reexamined, refreshed, and revised from time to time. The latest update came to me this morning. I just started reading Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality (1990), by Anthony de Mello. The author makes the seemingly outlandish claim: “You don’t want to be happy.” He clarifies his meaning a few pages later:

I was saying that we don’t want to be happy. We want other things. Or let’s put it more accurately: We don’t want to be unconditionally happy. I’m ready to be happy provided I have this and that and the other thing. But this is really to say to our friend or to our God or to anyone, “You are my happiness. If I don’t get you, I refuse to be happy.” It’s so important to understand that. We cannot imagine being happy without those conditions. That’s pretty accurate. We cannot conceive of being happy without them. We’ve been taught to place our happiness in them.

In other words, to be sameach b’chelko means to be unconditionally happy. Stated differently, so long as your idea of happiness includes particulars which you regard as indispensable, then you cannot be sameach b’chelko. Your chelek (portion) is determined by Hashem, not by your idea of what your chelek should be. It is He Who sets the conditions, not you. The only condition is His will.

After writing the first half of this article, I decided this would be a good time to skim the meforshim (commentators) on Ben Zoma’s statement in light of this new insight. To my surprise, I didn’t find a single one who explained sameach b’chelko along these lines. The Meiri’s commentary is representative of the approach that most (if not all) of them took. He writes: “the definition of wealth is to be content and not lust after excesses; anyone who has what he needs and doesn’t seek excess is truly wealthy.” Rabbeinu Yonah takes the same approach but expands on what is implied by “needs:”

Who is wealthy? One who is sameach b’chelko – [namely,] a person who says, “My chelek is sufficient for me, since I am able to support myself and my household and be involved in Torah. Why should I concern myself with someone else’s money, so long as I have what I need in order to uphold the word of Hashem?” For one who is not sameach b’chelko and not satisfied with what Hashem gave him is poor … Thus, it is an exceedingly good trait to be sameach b’chelko, and he is called “wealthy” because Hashem gave him what he needs to sustain himself and be involved in Torah and in mitzvos. For what profit is there for man in all his toil, but to fulfill Torah and mitzvos?

These meforshim do not explain sameach b’chelko as “being content with one’s portion, no matter what that portion is” but rather “being content with one’s portion, on the condition that one’s needs are sufficiently met to be involved in Torah and mitzvos.” Their sameach b’chelko is conditional.

This leaves me in a quandary. On the one hand, de Mello’s explanation rings true to me as a philosophical ideal. On the other hand, the meforshim on Ben Zoma’s statement are consistent with my understanding of Torah values. The simple answer is that they’re talking about different things: de Mello is talking about happiness and Ben Zoma is talking about wealth. And yet, the definition of wealthy as “sameach b’chelko” is predicated on a definition of simchah (happiness), which leaves me wondering what the relationship is between that simchah and de Mello’s. Tzarich iyun (this question needs further analysis).

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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/Chase QuickPay 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. 

Feynman: On Definitional Neurosis

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Feynman: On Definitional Neurosis

I came across the following (unsourced) quotation from Richard Feynman on the internet:

We cannot define ANYTHING precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, “You don't know what you are talking about!” The second one says, “What do you mean by KNOW? What do you mean by TALKING? What do you mean by YOU?"

As a student of Torah, I was “born and bred” in the tradition of Brisk. The derech ha’limud (learning methodology) of my yeshiva is the Brisker Derech, pioneered by Rav Chaim Soloveitchik and developed by his offspring, most notably Rav Yosef Dov ha’Levi Soloveitchik. This methodology focuses heavily on sevara (conceptual definition). My rebbi wrote a profound essay, entitled On Scientific and Halachic Thought, in which he compares the Brisker Derech to the methodology of science. Although there are key differences, the common denominator is the quest for precise, elegant, conceptual definitions.

Few people in the last century understood and appreciated science like Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist and innovator who also happened to be a highly gifted teacher and lover of knowledge. What, then, are we to make of his statement cited above, in which he appears to denigrate the search for definitions? Surely he can’t actually mean that “we cannot define ANYTHING precisely”!

Karen Horney, in Self-Analysis, identifies two distinguishing features of neuroses:

The outstanding characteristic of neurotic trends is their compulsive nature, a quality that shows itself in two main ways. First, their objectives are pursued indiscriminately … [The second] is the reaction of anxiety that ensues from their frustration.

What Feynman calls “that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers” I call “definitional neurosis.” The hallmarks of definitional neurosis are (1) the indiscriminate demand for precise definitions, and (2) the reaction of anxiety in their absence. It is true that conceptual definitions are the golden standard of knowledge. However, the nuanced thinker who “says to wisdom, ‘you are my sister,’ and calls understanding a good friend” (cf. Mishlei 7:4) will recognize that the insistence on precise definition can often be an impediment to understanding. This is what Feynman means by “paralysis of thought.”

Ironically, it is often the most highly intelligent people who fall prey to definitional neurosis, obstinately refusing to proceed until every term is precisely defined. Such individuals may fancy themselves the (superior) Socrates and their partners in conversation the (inferior) Athenian youths. In truth, Socrates was sensitive to the minds of his students and used questions to move the discussion forward. In contrast, the definitional neurotics fail to notice when their insistence on definition obstructs the pursuit of knowledge. Worse yet is when pseudo-Socratic tactics are used as a psychological defense mechanism – as a means of stifling or evading a particular line of inquiry.

There is a time to define and a time to refrain from defining. How does one know when to press for definitions and when to follow the flow of the inquiry or discussion? What are the precise criteria for making such a determination? The precise answer to that question is …

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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/Chase QuickPay 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. 

Bruce Lee’s Oak and the Success of Evil

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Bruce Lee's Oak and the Success of Evil 

Bruce Lee taught: “The oak tree is mighty, yet it will be destroyed by a mighty wind because it resists the elements; the bamboo bends with the wind, and by bending, survives.” This is the foundation of Jeet Kune Do, Bruce Lee’s approach to martial arts and to life, the motto of which is: “Using no way as way; having no limitation as limitation.” Instead of clinging to a fixed set of techniques and rules, naively believing they will guarantee success in every situation, the true martial artist is fluid “like water,” constantly adapting and responding to the dynamism of combat without any rigidity or imposition of systems.

This afternoon I was thinking about a number of people – people I’ve met, as well as famous figures I haven’t met – who were both rigid and highly successful, and were successful precisely because of their single-minded rigidity! I’m talking about people like Steve Jobs, Douglas MacArthur, Robert Moses, etc.

This led me to notice a nuance in this particular version of Bruce Lee’s statement: “The oak tree is mighty, yet it will be destroyed by a mighty wind because it resists the elements; the bamboo bends with the wind, and by bending, survives.” The oak tree is described as “mighty,” but the bamboo is not. The quality that makes the oak tree mighty is the same quality that guarantees its destruction; the quality that precludes “might” in the bamboo is what guarantees its long life.

This, in turn, led me to an epiphany about tzadikim (righteous people) and resha’im (wicked people). There are many pesukim (verses) in Sefer Tehilim (The Book of Psalms) and Sefer Mishlei (The Book of Proverbs) which compare the short-term success of resha’im with the long-term flourishing of tzadikim. For example: “when the wicked bloom like grass, and all the doers of iniquity blossom, it is to destroy them forever and ever” (Tehilim 92:8) is contrasted with: “A righteous person will flourish like a date palm, and like a cedar in the Lebanon he will grow tall. Planted in the house of Hashem, in the courtyards of our God they will flourish. They will still be fruitful in old age, vigorous and fresh they will be” (ibid. 92:13-15).

The rasha (wicked person) seeks to forcibly impose an artificial, ambitious, self-serving system onto reality with the goal of attaining absolute power and greatness at any cost. A basic tenet of Mishlei and Tehilim is that such an individual is destined to fail for the same reasons that Bruce Lee stated: the more tenaciously the rasha clings to his self-aggrandizing schemes, the more inevitable and more catastrophic will be his downfall. It’s only a matter of time before his plans clash with reality, and reality always wins.

My insight into Bruce Lee’s quotation added a new dimension to my understanding of this phenomenon. I had previously focused on the fact that the "oak tree"-like rasha “will be destroyed by a mighty wind because he resists the elements,” but the “oak tree”-rasha “is mighty.” In other words, the rasha will attain great success and strength because of his wickedness. Look no further than Hitler, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, and the other great resha’im throughout history. It is true that reality eventually caught up with them and destroyed them, but see how mighty they became up until their downfall! Thus, when we see resha’im enjoying great success, not only should we view this as a sign of their impending collapse, but we must also recognize that they have purchased a superlative level of success by paying the price of ultimate self-destruction.

This also sheds a new light on the type of success we can expect to see from tzadikim. The tzadik will not be mighty like the rasha. Rather, his success will be his steady flourishing and bamboo-like endurance.

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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/Chase QuickPay 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. 

The One-Page Article: a Summer 2021 Experiment

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Artwork: Revitalize, by Justin and Alexis Hernandez

The One-Page Article: a Summer 2021 Experiment

In his discussion of silence and the ideal of minimizing speech, the Rambam (Hilchos Deios 2:4) writes:

Likewise, in matters of Torah and matters of wisdom, the words of a chacham (wise man) should be few, but their ideational content abundant. This is what the Sages commanded, saying: a person should always teach his student in a concise manner. But if the words are many and the ideational content is sparse, this is foolishness. Regarding this it is stated: "for a dream comes in an abundance of concern, and the voice of a fool in an abundance of words" (Koheles 5:2).

This summer I intend to conduct an experiment in short-form writing. Specifically, I am going to see what happens if I limit each article to a single page. There are four reasons for this experiment:

(1) Mental Health: Those who have followed me on social media are aware that last year was fulfilling but stressful. Although my usual practice has been to publish one blog post every weekday during the summer, I no longer think this is a realistic plan. I need to scale back my prolificacy during the summer so that I can return to my demanding teaching job rejuvenated and healthy in the fall. At the same time, I do want to write. One of the reasons why I stuck to the “one article each day” format in previous summers was because it prompted me to produce but also set up a cut-off mechanism. No matter what happened, I knew I had to finish a blog post by day’s end. My theory is that the one-page format will set up a similar cut-off. I will be impelled to produce a daily page of Torah, but without the pressure generated by the potential for “infinite” writing.

(2) Sustainability: This past year I taught an average of 30 shiurim each week. This left zero time for writing. This coming year my teaching schedule has been reduced by a third. Theoretically, this will give me time to write (unless I need to use that time for tutoring to pay the bills – a factor which remains to be seen). If I can afford to write this year, the one-page format is likely to be far more sustainable than the “write as long of an article as necessary until it’s perfect” format.

(3) To See What Happens: Mark Rosewater, the head designer of Magic: the Gathering, is fond of saying: “Restrictions breed creativity!” Believe it or not, I’ve rejected many ideas for blog posts in past years because I feel like they’re too minimal to warrant an entire article. This experiment will reverse the trend, forcing me to write about ideas which would NOT fill an entire article.

(4) To Practice Brevity: The last and least important reason is what the Rambam wrote above. I’ve honed my writing craft mostly through practice, but occasionally I’ll try to consciously work on a specific quality, and in this case, it’s brevity. I’ve been told that my writing is clear. The question is: Can I achieve the same level of clarity, but in fewer words? It’s time to attempt to practice what Bruce Lee taught: “It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential!”

To those who fear that my “feature-length” articles will become a thing of the past – fear not! I do intend to allow myself to write my normal-length articles when the content or the mood dictates, and when time allows, but I’d like to make these short-form articles the bread and butter of my blog for the summer. I’ve already written a few of these, just to see how it went, and I loved how they turned out! I’m excited to see where this summer's writing leads. Here’s to the adventure of experimentation!

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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/Chase QuickPay 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.