More quotes from HALAKHIC MAN

The consciousness of homo religiosus is overflowing with questions that will never be resolved. He scans reality and is overcome with wonder, fixes his attention on the world and is astonished. . . . is the ultimate goal and crowning glory of the process of cognition of homo religiosus. p10

Homo religiosus is dissatisfied, unhappy with this world. He searches for an existence that is above empirical reality. This world is a pale image of another world. p13

Cognitive man, on the other hand, is not concerned at all with a reality that extends outside the realm of lawfulness . . . for the law is his goal, and lawfulness is always and only to be found within the context of concreteness. p13

These quotes capture the Rav's desire to focus our attention on the everyday world, on the here and now, on our own struggles and triumphants. He rejects any separation between the sacred and the secular -- all is one world in which we strive every day to understand and live out the will of God.

Quotes from Rabbi Soloveitchik's HALAKHIC MAN

The most important book in my spiritual journey at this time is Halakhic Man by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. Today, I will begin to share a series of quotes from this master work of religious Orthodoxy. I hope these quotes will encourage you to buy this powerful book.

Halakhic man reflects two opposing selves; two disparate images are embodied within his soul and spirit. On the one hand he is as far removed from homo religiosus as east is from west and is identical, in many respects, to prosaic, cognitive man; on the other hand is a man of God, possessor of an ontological approach that is devoted to God and of a world view saturated with the radiance of the Divine Presence. p3

Halakhic man is not some illegitimate, unstable hybrid. On the contrary, out of the contradictions and antinomies there emerges a radiant, holy personality whose soul has been purified in the furnace of struggle and opposition and redeemed in the fires of the torments of spiritual disharmony to a degree unmatched by the universal homo religiosus. p4

Reasons I Study the Talmud

As may be clear from my profile or not -- I am not Jewish. I almost converted many years ago, but that is a long story that I won't get into now.

However, I would like to share some notes I wrote awhile back on why I am drawn to read and study the Talmud.

I find it:

1. a work of unimaginable dedication and commitment to God.
2. a work focused on the particular day-to-day, moment-to-moment elements that make up life (obviously also many moments that don't make up my life -- temple sacrifices, etc.). It truly seems to avoid abstraction and focus on the particular.
3. a work that accepts discord and multi-valent views of the world.
4. a work that is basically INFINITE in its scope and depth and diversity.
5. a work that stimulates intense interest today and has for 1500 years.
6. a work that connects to the past and holds within it the explanations and explorations of God's will that have continued for over 2000 years.
7. a work that can help me focus on and recognize the ever-present nature of God.
8. a work of great creativity and imagination that can help stretch my mind.
9. a work of which the study is a holy possibility and opportunity.
10. a work that screams, shouts, contemplates and argues this basic fact -- "We are commanded!" This is something I deeply believe.
11. a work large enough (a true sea) to welcome even an outsider in, who simply wants to enter and learn out of love

Please share your reasons for studying . . .

The Talmud, modern epic poetry and me.

I have long marvelled at modern epic poems like Charles Olson’s Maximus Poems, William Carlos Williams’ Paterson, Ezra Pound’s Cantos and Louis Zukofsky’s A. These works seem to strive to embrace the entire universe and history in their pages. In fact, they each struggle to create a world into which the reader can step into, if they are willing to and learn about themselves as they interact with this “epic” world. All subjects were possible, nothing was off limits for these writers.

While I enjoyed strolling through the pages of the Maximus Poems, and at times found wisdom and expansive ideas there, I also found much that I could not follow or thought was perhaps meaningless. Even though George Butterick had created a companion volume to Maximus that highlighted the references and connections, I usually thought, “Why am I doing this? Is it really worth the effort? Are there just a few gems in a mountain of dust? Has this work truly affected many lives? Does anyone still care about this work, other than a professor or two?”

My answer was usually that the general effect of Maximus was small and short lived, as I believe is true of the other poems mentioned above. But I really loved the breadth and depth of the work. Recently, I was wondering if other works were currently being written like these and even though I came upon a work, ARK by Ronald Johnson, I had an epiphany, a revelation . . . the Talmud.

For months now I have been regularly reading small snippets of the Talmud, Judaism’s great, seemingly infinite source of wisdom and law. This is truly a work that contains everything it. While I have just begun entering into it, it is clear nothing is off limits: food, birth, death, love, etc. And while the poetic epics where attempts to bring history into the poem, the Talmud is truly a work of history that took hundreds of years to create. In fact, when it is studied today, over a thousand years of commentaries are available for discussion. This work is “alive” and still living and breathing.

When one studies it, one is studying with all the commentators, one spans the centuries. One sits with Rava, Abaye, Akiva, Hillell, Rashi and Rambam and we all struggle together to understand God’s will, to understand the “four amos of the halachah,” to understand the whole world that is contained within. As the Rambam says, “The lone soul in the study hall poring over a Gemara, delving into the halachah, charting his own observance, he is the culmination of Creation.” What I love in this line is that observance isn’t left merely to the experts, the priests, the gurus, the lamas, the rabbis to explain or teach or define. Each person is commanded to study and to chart “his [or her] own observance.”

And so the Talmud is now for me the truly epic poem that is immensely alive and breathing and creating every day. It is studied, discussed and debated constantly by observant Jews, and so, why can I not walk through its pages discovering what I can find out about myself, God’s will and halakhic observance and in doing so begin or continue charting my own observance, which can only take place in the day-to-day world I live within.

A Poem -- New Halakha

finding a home, a place to rest, a place to act

but there is no home for me here

no place to simply rest

the loneliness is intense,

the depressed feelings of why I don’t do more,

why don’t I contribute more

the world cries in pain

and I sit and read the Talmud

and Rav Soloveitchik

deeply felt traditions, but

isolated, limited,

not expansive enough for me

perhaps that is what I desire

is something to hold me in,

to reign in my wild ride of exploration

yet with the understanding

that love of God, love of the infinite IS everything.

but the word “love” does nothing

to change things

what can change

all levels, all lines, all

scales of magnitude?

they are all changing all the time anyway

must we do anything,

or must we do nothing?

I sometimes feel that everything

rests on me, everything waits for me

to create something,

a new religion even . . .

don’t we need something new,

but not simplistic, not utilitarian,

but prayerful, hopeful, wonder-full

yet demanding,

demanding faith, devotion, conviction,

passion

passion of love and acceptance and dedication

not the passion of exclusion, isolation, righteousness

perhaps it is this passion, this devotion, this dedication

that I find within the pages of the Talmud and in

words of the Rav and in the restrictions of halakha

but can we create new halakha

that are not simply our own desires,

our own pleasures

but in some way honor

and demand a total commitment

of love and dedication?

a halakha that

“believes that there is only one world –

not divisible into secular and hallowed sectors –

which can either plunge into ugliness and hatefulness,

or be roused to meaningful, redeeming activity,

gathering up all latent powers into a state of holiness."

A Poem -- Wrestling with God

"Wresting with God"

is one possible definition of the word “Israel”

Jacob’s new name after his match with

a man, a stranger, an angel . . . himself?

what an image

what an obligation . . . wrestling with God!

yet, if we listen carefully enough,

if we live deeply enough,

aren’t we all called to wrestle,

to wrestle to understand, to love,

to eventually surrender,

but not without a struggle

a struggle to grasp, to love,

to embrace . . . God?

* * *

in explaining a particular law of kashrut

the Rabbis tell of how the angel

“embraced” Jacob as they struggled

and so, dislocated his right hip

or

was it the right hip because

the stranger was a Torah scholar

to whose right Jacob first walked to show respect?

or

was he an idol worshipper . . .

we may never know,

but that won’t keep the Rabbis

and their students

from continuing to discuss and debate

* * *

in any case . . .

in our embrace of God

in God’s constant embrace of us

we are often wounded

and a part of us is

dislocated

as we explore ourselves and our limits

* * *

there’s nothing like struggling

with the infinite

to reveal

the revelation that is each of us

as we learn to wrestle with God from Jacob

perhaps we should also learn to ask for a blessing

as he did

a blessing for the life,

the passion,

the possibilities

of the struggle . . .