Discovering G-d

After years of trying to figure out how to teach the experience of finding G-d (as I have tried to teach the steps of intuitive thinking etc), I have realized one step that works for those who would like to have G-d but are too angry to find such: Forgive people - self and significant others [parent; sibling; spouse; friend] - and at least begin by forgiving humanity in general including oneself and others in general.

Sedgwick's Last Book - on Reading Without Charity

To theorize out of anything but a paranoid, critical stance has come to seem naive, pious, or complaisant. [Unfortunately] A monopolistic strategy of anticipating negative affect can have according to [Jane] Tomkins, the effect of entirely blocking the potential operative goal of seeking positive affect….[;] The monopolistic program of paranoid knowing systematically disallows any recourse to reparative motives…. Reparative motives, once they become explicit are, are inadmissible in paranoid theory… because they are frankly ameliorative (“merely reformist”)….
p.126, 136, 144
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: affect, pedagogy, performativity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

Back from a Long Overdue Break: Another Person's Summary of the Method

His (Your) theory argues that traditional poskim, far from understanding the halakhic system as a static given (a legal system as object) have a (largely unstated) understanding of specific halakhot as the embodiment of attempts to achieve consequences consonant with the overall aims of the Halakha as a consistent and coherent ethical system.

Nechama Hadari

Thank you Nechama!

stories

"it is only with the story, indeed in the form of the story he tells, that man himself is first made aware of the idea which he is not yet in a position to grasp as such"
- David Friedrich Strauss (in Cassirer 1950, 305).
Cassirer, Ernst. 1950. The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science, and History Since Hegel. Translated by William H. Woglom and Charles W. Hendel. New Haven: Yale University Press.

A Comparison With The Approach Advocated by C.R. Jonathan Sacks

There is an approach to the relationship between ethics and Halakhah that is close to this approach. It recognizes that when sages make “halakh[ic] changes” they do so “in order to ensure that Torah does not change… in a… transformed world” (Sacks 1992, 140, 141-142). In other words this approach also recognizes that sages have interpreted the goals of individual halakhot in order to reach decisions about the form their contemporary Halakhah should take. Furthermore, this approach also understands that a sage would reach a Halakhic decision via a broad understanding of the whole relevant corpus - via “Daas Torah… the broad constellation of values, and priorities between them, that emerges from the posek’s lifelong involvement with Torah in its broadest sense,” and that a sage would not “mechanically… extrapolate from a narrow range of precedents to the case at hand” (Sacks 1992, 153). In other words, this approach recognizes that leading sages did not simplistically apply one value at the expense of another.
There is nonetheless a problem with this last approach, in light of the findings that have thus far been reached via this dissertation’s method. That approach still distinguishes between the sage’s formal arguments and the sage’s consideration and balancing of values. Although it argues that “[t]he overarching halakhic issues have not been formal ones”, it nonetheless believes that the value discussions “have not, for the most part, surfaced in the detailed argumentation of responsa, though they can be glimpsed from time to time” (emphasis added). This book, on the other hand, will show that if one reads correctly, one finds that the human issues are expressed very clearly in the argumentation. This book will show that the sages clearly express the human issues at hand and read their sources as also expressing and balancing human issues.
The Significance of the Difference Between Approaches
Unfortunately, Chief-Rabbi Sacks does not apply this theory forcefully. This is exemplified in his reason for favoring R. Nachum Rabinovitch’s ruling that one should recite ha-tov ve-hameitiv on the birth of a daughter: He favors that ruling since Maimonides did not codify the Talmudic position that directs one to recite that blessing only for the birth of a son. This lack of citation allegedly proves that Maimonides thought this Talmudic position to be a mere culturally dependent example of a more general law but not a law in itself. Sacks favors this ruling over the Mishnah Berurah ruling that one should bless she-hehiyanu over the birth of a daughter as one would bless over seeing a friend after thirty days, since the Mishnah Berurah’s ruling is based on a comparison of different areas of law. [Sacks also adds other criticisms.] (pp. 150-152)
Sacks fails to realize that the Talmudic position arose in a culture which viewed the birth of a daughter as a burden for the woman who would have one less son to support her in her old age (and so called for no blessing), the Mishnah Berurah referred to an urban culture in which the birth of a daughter was not a burden but also not as celebrated as the birth of a son (and so called for a mere she-heyiyanu - and not mehayyei meitim, which one recites after not seeing a close friend for 12 months), and Rabinovitch referred to a culture in which both boys and girls are celebrated equally.
In other words, Sacks didn’t realize:
(1) that there is no debate, rather an application of the same values under different conditions,
(2) that direct precedent is not the issue for a sagacious decision “that emerges from the posek’s lifelong involvement with Torah in its broadest sense”,
and that those who “ensure that Torah does not change… in a… transformed world,” do not make distinctions between laws and examples of law.

Fact Skepticism

Fact-skepticism alone does not assure the advancement of justice,… its capacities for application are morally ambivalent, and… in order to serve… high purposes… it requires the extrinsic governance of a sympathetic intelligence and a humane conscience.
P.323
Cahen Edmond Nathaniel. 1966. “Fact-Skepticism: An Unexpected Chapter” in Confronting injustice; the Edmond Cahn reader. Edited by Lenore L. Cahn. Foreword by Hugo L. Black. General introduction and prefatory chapter notes by Norman Redlich. Boston: Little, Brown.

R. Hayyim Hirshenson

To summarize - without the nuances of the book's chapter - the proper role of the rule against change, it is both a rule against disruptiveness and a rule against simplistic changes. The medieval Halakhic rabbis did not merely understand that norms must not be changed ideologically (contra Cohen 1984, 17) – i.e. through simplistic positional bias, they also understood that norms must be changed wisely by maintaining all of the general rule’s original concerns.

They understood the point that all the sages cited in this book have understood, that a change in detail is valid when the change is merely an application of all the original concerns to changed circumstances. In that case, they could say – as did R. Hayyim Hirshenson (Safed - Hoboken NJ, 1857-1935) – that only through a willingness to modify the form of norms appropriately do we in fact maintain the very same Torah:
חיים הירשענזאהן, "חלופי מכתבים", מכתב י"ד (דף כב ע"א)
כי קיום החוק אחרי שינוי המצבים, נקרא שינוי בדת אחרי כי החוק... נחק[ק]... לפי "המצב",
והוא קרוב לכפירה בעיקר התשיעית "שהתורה לא תשתנה"... [כי] השינוי על ידי שינוי המצבים לא יקרא שינוי כלל..

Unfortunately, R. Hirshenson himself merely evaluated whether a change should be valid in his contemporary reality without making sure that he was continuing to address earlier concerns. In other words he correctly understood that if Halakhic norms are anachronistic, then they no longer achieve the original goals and so become violations of the original Halakhah; he failed, however, to follow the medieval sages in evaluating a proposed change of a norm in the context of its larger rule, in suggesting a change that continues to address the rule’s concerns.

Let us, therefore, turn to one of his Halakhic arguments to clarify the difference between these rabbis’ successful defense of changes and his unsuccessful defense of a change found among most of his contemporary American Halakhic and Traditionalist communities.
R. Hirshenson (ibid, 16b-18b) argued to permit safety razors by first dismissing the Hassidic “proscription” against shaving even with scissors as contradicting both the Talmudic ruling that scissors are not included in the injunction against shaving and the accepted Tosaphist ruling that one can even shave with scissors that cut as closely as a razor. He then argued strangely that a safety razor is permitted because the Talmud’s distinction between a forbidden razor and a permitted scissors or tweezers must be based on the fact that a razor is the specific object that was used by idolaters in order to completely shave off their beards. Ergo, contemporary safety razors may be used to shave off beards because they are not the same razors that the idolaters used and are thus similar to permitted tweezers.

Naturally, since both regular and safety razors shave off the beard in exactly the same way and tweezers were not used for shaving, R. Hirshenson’s argument did not resonate. If R. Hirshenson had truly wanted to show that permitting safety razors is consistent with the principle that forbade regular razors in the manner of the sages that we have reviewed in this book, he should have thought through the following:
1. First, he should have explained why the dominant Tannaitic position forbade only razors, which completely shave off the beard, and neither contemporary scissors that left the beard on the face intact nor tweezers that were used only for removing specific hairs - as in tending a wound - but not for shaving (m. Makot 3:5, baraita b. Makot 21a). He could have shown that the Tannaim understood the Biblical proscription against shaving to be both about retaining moral masculinity in not imitating the androgyny of the sexually looser Egyptian-Canaanite society and priesthood or the later alternative pagan Hellenistic-Roman masculinity found in Tannaitic Israel and about not marring one’s body.
2. He could then have presented the medieval, acculturated, Western European Tosaphists’ innovative read that fine scissors could be used to shave off the beard completely (Tosafot Shevuot 2a) in spite of the fact that they realized that scissors had originally been permitted only because scissors did not shave as closely as a razor (Tosafot Nazir 40b) because beards were considered undignified, barbarically Slavic [= slave], male dress in contemporary Western Europe. However, the Tosaphists still required sideburns (Tosafot Shevuot 2a) because sideburns were a sign of manhood among civilized Western men – except for monks and priests who symbolized a different role. Thus he could have shown that the Tosaphists permitted a man to shave his beard but not his sideburns, because they were applying the Biblical rule against shaving to their culture. Simultaneously, he could have pointed out that the Tosaphists maintained textual and mimetic consistency by requiring scissors which cut instead of destructively tearing – as did later generations of European Jews who accepted the Tosaphist position (Sh”A YD 181:10) and even permitted other nuanced forms of complete beard removal (PTT YD 181:5).
3. Third, he should have validated the kabbalist position that forbade shaving a beard even with scissors. This position, raised in Middle Eastern and Slavic countries where men took pride in their untouched beards, appropriately revived the Biblical injunction against shaving in any form. Later, Jews in Slavic countries who opposed the modern Western assimilationist trends also appropriately retained the kabalistic opposition to shaving. He should have validated this position even as he cited the Western European sages who had continued to permit shaving with a scissor in those countries in which being clean-shaven was not religiously problematic.
4. Last, only after explaining that the prohibition has long been connected to masculinity and assimilation should he have presented a two-prong argument. One, shaving is permitted substantively because even Halakhah-observant American Jews were shaving with safety razors due to acculturation and not assimilationist or androgynous tendencies. Two, classic razors and safety razors are formally distinct inasmuch as the latter with its guard against cutting deeply and destruction is more similar to a scissor which can shave but not destroy (cf. the Tosaphist position and Leviticus 19:26-28).

To state this formally, he could have said the following: The Biblical verse forbade shaving as immoral but the Tannaim pointed out that trimming was moral and the Tosaphists permitted even a razor-like shave of a beard with a scissor when it is moral since a scissor is considered an object which shaves as opposed to destroys. Accordingly, a safety razor is permitted in spite of cutting with only one blade since it, too, is not destructive when compared to regular razor. This argument may not resonate with the reader or even with this Orthodox Jewish writer in an age of electric razors, but it would have done so before the 1930s invention of the electric razor.

In short, R. Hirshenson did not justify his innovative read by showing that a safety razor is the type of instrument that the Tannaim and even Cabbalists could have permitted in twentieth century American Western culture in light of their very concerns. Rather he simply unconvincingly argued that one might shave with a safety razor in common with scissors and tweezers because all these instruments are shaped differently than the razors with which the Canaanites shaved. Instead of following the traditional approach of understanding the relevant rule that is expressed via the detail, he unconvincingly argued that a preserved Biblical injunction has never been more than an injunction to not shave with the same tool used by Canaanites even as one shaves just like the Canaanites.

WHY WE ARE ALLOWED TO COMBINE DIFFERENT HALAKHIC POSITIONS

On a more prosaic note, the understanding that the reasons underlying a given halakhah obligate us, and not the form of that halakhah, explains why we are halakhically permitted to combine positions (insights) from different poskim in order to create a new pesak. Thus, although the amoraim Rav and Shmuel each had a different understanding of what constitutes a private alley for Shabbat (in terms of traffic flow and doors), later Jews were permitted to play out each amora’s insights in order to create a new pesak on how to privatize an alley for Shabbat:
תלמוד בבלי מסכת עירובין דף ו עמוד א
1. תנו רבנן: כיצד מערבין דרך רשות הרבים - עושה צורת הפתח מכאן, ולחי וקורה מכאן.
2. חנניה אומר... עושה דלת מכאן, ולחי וקורה מכאן.
תלמוד בבלי מסכת עירובין דף ו עמוד ב - דף ז עמוד א
3. איתמר, רב אמר: הילכתא כתנא קמא, ושמואל אמר: הלכה כחנניה....
4. ההוא מבוי עקום דהוה בנהרדעא, רמי עליה חומריה דרב וחומריה דשמואל, ואצרכוהו דלתות.
5. חומריה דרב - דאמר תורתו כמפולש. ...
6. כשמואל, דאמר: הלכה כחנניה. ...
7. ומי עבדינן כתרי חומרי?
8. אמר רב שיזבי: כי לא עבדינן כחומרי דבי תרי - היכא דסתרי אהדדי...
9. אבל היכא דלא סתרי אהדדי - עבדינן.
The Jews of Nehardea combined Rav and Shmuel’s insights; they both treated a curved alleyway as a thoroughfare (although work related transportation tends to be focused in the shortcut straight alleys) and required a curved alleyway to be framed by doors (instead of relying on slight indicators that it is a residential alleyway and not an alleyway of shops).

Although in this last example, different insights had been combined to create a stricter norm, Rabbi Elijah Mizrachi (Constantinople, ca. 1450 – 1526) pointed out that one that one might also combine insights to create a lenient norm:
שו"ת רבי אליהו מזרחי (הרא"ם) סימן נו
ואין להקשות על מה שלקחנו קולי רבינו משה [הרמב"ם] ז"ל בענין ההוראה הזאת ועזבנו חומרתו שפסק בענין הברזא... ולקחנו קולי רש"י ז"ל דפסק בענין ברזא...
והוה ליה מקולי דמר וקולי דמר
דיש לומר הני מילי היכא דסתרן אהדדי דומיא... דפרקא קמא דערובין אבל היכא דלא סתרן אהדדי לית לן בה

Traditional Halakha versus Dworkin

Dworkin posited two elements involved in a legal interpretation.  The first, fundamental or “threshold requirement” is that an interpretation “fit” the denotation of the legal data, and “even when an interpretation survives the threshold requirement, any infelicities of fit will count against it.”  The second ideal criterion is that the interpreter should provide “the best constructive interpretation,” one that “shows the community’s structure of institutions and decisions—its public standards as a whole—in a better light from the standpoint of political morality.”  (Dworkin 1986, 255-256)  My argument is that as regards traditional Halakha the assumption of constructively interpreting the precedents is simplistic while the assumption that a constructed interpretation has to fit the denotative sense of the data is excessive. 

In pre-modern, non-legalistic, Halakhic methodology all the norms of a society committed to goodness are always going to have (1) a justifiable perspective and principle, (2) a contextual explanation for their being exceptional violations of a contradictory principle, and (3) so their original intent is open to be read charitably as in line (from some perspective) with the all of the community’s principles.  That being the case, there is no need to creatively reread norms with charity and no concern with maintaining fit.  Rather, the socially recognized sages, the contemporaneous definers of law in a wisdom tradition - in a system that does not include distinct agencies of legislation to overturn earlier law and of legal interpretation – (attempt to) read the original value balance of a specific norm and then weigh how best to apply the norm under contemporary conditions.

This traditional method of Halakha has helped protect Judaism from the flaw in the Dworkian and any other classic judicial model.  If a society follows a classic judicial model, even a creative one similar to Dworkin’s, it finds its conservatives and liberals painting the sources to best reflect their ideal principles and attempting to silence the other through the manipulation of the legitimating legal langue.  If a society chooses, on the other hand, to follow the traditional Halakhic philosophic model then its liberals and conservatives do not discount the others’ values since they share those values.  Rather they jointly enumerate all the conflicting underlying values that both sides both share and incorporate even as they simultaneously debate how best to incorporate, or balance, the conflicting values.

This Method as a Paradigm Shift

This Method as a Paradigm Shift

To reiterate, this is a paradigm shift – on the one hand a return to the classic method of pesak and on the other hand a willingness to apply the method to a varied range of Jewish (and other human) groups.  Thus I am aware of Thomas Kuhn’s point that “the transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion process that cannot be forced” and so I have written this book accordingly, that the reader may be drawn into its mindset.  After all, “the transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience.  Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all.”  It does not suffice to point out that a new paradigm may “be ‘neater’, ‘more suitable,’ or ‘simpler’ than the old…  The man who embraces a new paradigm at an early stage must… have faith that the new paradigm will succeed with the many large problems that confront it, knowing only that the older paradigm has failed with a few….  That is one of the reasons why prior crisis proves so important.”   In fact, even “the single most prevalent claim advanced by the proponents of a new paradigm… that they can solve the problems that have led the old one to a crisis… [which] is often the most effective one possible … is… rarely sufficient by itself.”  Thus, I understand that “at the start a new candidate for paradigm may have few supporters….  Nevertheless, if they are competent, they will improve it, explore its possibilities, and show what it would be like to belong to the community guided by it.”[1] 

In other words, the proponents of this paradigm will eventually resolve the modernist’s and even post-modernist’s fear that a turn to traditional wisdom must inherently limit people’s ability to respond to the present or to the oppressed.  They will resolve the traditionalists’ fear that this paradigm will lead to the loss of traditional Halakhic values - the fear that caused traditionalists to champion a legalist paradigm in response to hegemonic Enlightenment.  More importantly, however, the proponents of this paradigm will meet the contemporary challenge of a more individualistic society – not to preserve the Torah as law nor to preserve the independence of human voices that cannot communicate but rather to motivate people to fulfill the classic Torah demand to live responsibly to and with each other.  This paradigm will need to meet both needs in order to be accepted since “interpreters’ efforts to persuade us are successful if we come to see or understand what is at issue as they do” (Stern 2002, 80).   Inasmuch, “as the classical anthropologist Jane Harrison once expressed it, a myth… expresses a need, a longing… [that] is always… weathered by changes in the external conditions” (Rich 1976, 92), this paradigm will need to meet both the human myth of a messianic world of absolute truth via Torah and the myth of a messianic world in which all silenced voices are heard against the grain of dominant ideology since myths do not die. 

---

[1] These are all quotations from Thomas Kuhn’s, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Induction

[W]e must act according to the rule of induction even if we cannot believe in it….  We do not know whether tomorrow the order of the world will not come to an end… or at least our own world may come to an end, because we may close our eyes forever.  Tomorrow is unknown to us but this fact need not make any differences in our considerations determining our actions….

A blind man who has lost his way in the mountains feels a trail with his stick.  He does not know where the path will lead him, or whether it may take him so close to the edge of a precipice that he will be plunged into the abyss.  Yet he follows the path, groping his way step by step; for if there is any possibility of getting out of the wilderness, it is by feeling his way along the path.  As blind men we face the future; but we feel a path.  And we know: if we can find a way through the future it is by feeling our way long this path.

(Reichenbach 1949, 482)
Reichenbach, Hans. 1949. The Theory of Probability: An Inquiry into the Logical and Mathematical Foundations of the Calculus of Probability. Berkeley: University of California.


Regardless of whether there is “an a priori  reason why the conclusion of a standard inductive argument is likely to be true…. [a] chaotic world, though perfectly possible prior to the consideration of empirical evidence, is rendered extremely unlikely… by the occurrence of standard inductive evidence… and… it is an a priori fact that this is so… [since] anything less than this will not really explain why the inductive evidence occurred in the first place” (BonJour 1998, 213-214)
BonJour, Laurence. 1998. In Defense of Pure Reason: a Rationalist Account of A Priori Justification. Cambridge: Cambridge University.

measuring goodness

It is the demand for complete ranking that runs into trouble with the diversity of goodness….  On the other hand, if we stick to the humbler maximizing (i.e., not worse than) sort of Consequentialism, we will still be able to order many states of affairs by their goodness. (Nussbaum 2001,106)

Nussbaum, Martha. 2001. “Comment,” in Judith Jarvis Thomson, Goodness & Advice.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Why we say Ha Lakhma Anya after Karpas

A question often asked is why we invite the poor to eat ("Kol dikhfin... kol ditzrikh...") after eating the appetizer ("Karpas").  Such behavior definitely does not parallel the Paschal lamb to which people could be invited only as long as it had not yet been slaughtered in the late afternoon (m. Zevahim 5:8).  More significantly, it seems to exclude the poor from the first cup of wine and the appetizer.

The simple answer is that the Babylonian Jewish poor - who were by definition not members of the better off households - were invited to enter homes only after the hosts had finished preparing the meal, drunk some diluted wine and consumed some slight food:

מה שנהגו לומר כל דכפין ייתי וייכול, כך היה מנהג אבות, שהיו מגביהין שלחנותיהס ולא היו סוגרים דלתותיהם והיו אומרים ככה כדי שיבאו ישראל העניים שכניהם לאכול , ולקבל שכר היו עושים זה.

ועכשיו... מפרנסין אותם בתחילה כדי שלא יחזרו על הפתחים, ואחר כך מגביהין את השלחן ואומרים כמנהג הראשונים.  (רב מתתיהו גאון – אוצר הגאונים ג, פסחים סי' ד"ש [עמ' 112])

After all, even Rav Huna, who famously invited the poor to eat in his house every single day, did so only when he ate a piece of bread (b. Taanit 20b) - while Rava stated (ibid) that he could not live up to that standard.

Thus on the seder eve the common Babylonian Jews invited the poor guests only after they themselves had drunk and eaten a bit - and were ready to remind themselves of the obligation to the other that is the message of Pesah (??).  They thus began with "this is the bread of oppression" according to some versions - and according to other versions simply began with the invitation.  Although the poor waited, the hosts were also more calm and receptive* - and could then offer the poor the diluted wine and appetizer in which the poor were also obligated (m. Pesahim 10:1).

In fact, even as regards the Paschal lamb, the poor may have been invited only before the slaughtering of the lamb - in the crowds of the Temple Mount and Jerusalem (cf. m. Pesahim 5:5-7 and cf. the views of R. Eliezer, R. Yossi b. R. Yehuda and R. Yossi ha-Glilee in m. Pesahim 9:2 & t. Pesahim 8:1 on the exemption from the Paschal sacrifice of a person who cannot reach the Temple Mount) - but would not necessarily have shown up to wait in the host's Jerusalem house where the lamb was eaten (m. Pesahim 9:3; 7:13; 7:9,12) and where the main group was waiting for the animal to be slaughtered and brought over (m. Pesahim 9:9).

*cf. Although a person is so obligated to act humanely toward her animals that he must feed them before he himself eats (Rav in b. Gittin 62a), she may drink before providing the animals with water.

Zunz

"Zunz possesed that... steadfastness in his convictions which resists all temptations of supposed popularity and the bowing before regnant systems." - Moritz Steinschneider
(English translation by Salo Baron in his essay “Moritz Steinschneider’s Contributions to Jewish History,” in History and Jewish Historians (Philadelphia 1964), pp. 276–321, p. 296.
Cited in Ritter, Martin. 2003. “Scholarship as a Priestly Craft: Harry A. Wolfson on Tradition in a Secular Age,” in Klaus Herrmann, Margaret Schluter and Giuseppe Veltri, eds. Jewish Studies Between the Disciplines. Leiden and Boston: Brill.)