Meditation, action, thought and a maximalist halachic lifestyle

In a recent comment, Gandalin, wrote:

One breath at a time does sound meditative, but meditation is action.

One breath at a time is one hevel at a time, one moment at a time.

I am trying to suggest that the Halakhic approach does not seek to do everything all at once, but examines life in action in bite-sized pieces. Every moment is important and worthy of consideration.

This comment brings many ideas to my mind.

One is that yes, meditation is action, but it is also concentrated thought (such as Tibetan Buddhist analytical meditations) and this makes me think of talmudic study, which is clearly concentrated thought.

And yes, I couldn't agree more that "Every moment is important and worthy of consideration," which is something the halakhah certainly instills in a way that I think is different from the very popular and perhaps effective motto to "be in the now" or "be in the moment."

While these sayings are certainly worthwhile, I think they lend themselves too easily to simple inwardness and attention, if that. While the halakhah asks one to focus on the moment, by asking one to follow the commandments of Hashem, these I see as very different responses to life.

In some ways, the popular mottos could be seen as a "minimalist" view of life -- be attentive to anything that occurs. Which again is in drastic contrast to Rav Rosensweig's insistance of encouraging a "maximalist man of destiny" from his essay "The Spiritual Legacy of Noah and Avraham" or a "maximalist halachic lifestyle" from his essay "Chanukah as a Holiday of Idealism and Maximalism."

One of the things that attracts me to the Modern Orthodox tradition is this emphasis on a maximalist viewpoint, because I believe that Hashem deserves nothing less.

WITT? -- Thinking and Living

In keeping with the Internet world's love of acronyms -- I have decided to create one "WITT?," which stands for "What is the Talmud?" :-)

In a recent comment, Rabbi Gluskin, stated that the “Talmud then is ultimately about helping people to think in order to figure out how to behave.”

The key to me in this sentence is the idea that Talmud is something (the Oral Torah, a conversation, a scripture, etc.) that helps us and teaches us how to think in order to help us understand how to “live.” I would use “live” instead of “behave,” because I think it is a more open and flexible word than “behave,” which to my ear, at least, has a lot of baggage.

What is essential is the connection between thinking and living. Obviously from a traditional Jewish perspective this “living” has to do with keeping the mitzvot, the halachah of the Torah. Yet, if we open ourselves to the overall perspective of dialogue, debate, preservation of differing opinions and love of Hashem within the Talmud, then I would argue one can find within the Talmud universal hints and methods for living a more vibrant and open life. A life that embraces the differences that exist and continually strives to find the best, the most holy way to act in a specific moment, within a specific situation.

What is the Talmud? (3)

As a follow-up to the story of Akiva and Moses, I first want to share some of the traditional commentary that Artscroll includes in its Schottenstein Edition of the Talmud Bavli:

Commentary to tagin:
Rambam writes in the introduction to his commentary on the Torah that all the world's wisdom, physics and metaphysics, science and mysticism, are contained in the words and letters of the Torah, in their standard and anomalous shapes, in their tagin and points, and in their allusions.

Generally speaking, the Talmud and Midrash do not cite expositions of tagin. However, there is a Midrashic work, Midrash R' Akiva ben Yosef (found in Otyar HaMidrashim), that contains many such teachings, of both Aggadic and halachic natures.

Commentary to "[Moses'] strength ebbed"
Moses did not recognize the mode of Torah discussion that was taking place between R' Akiva and his students. Although the premises of the discussion were based on traditions from Moses, as the Gemara makes clear immediately, yet R' Akiva and Moses approached knowledge of the Torah in fundamentally different ways: Moses grasped the Torah through prophecy and an internal comprehension that was a result of cleaving to the Divine, not through an external intellectual analysis, which is the lot of later generations. Any novellae that R' Akiva, and his students arrived at were known to Moses, but they were in a different language of the mind and heart. Hence, they were unintelligible to Moses.

Commentary to "[Moses'] mind was relieved"
Moses was relieved when he realized that what R' Akiva was saying was based on a tradition handed down from him (even though Moses had not, in fact, received this tradition yet. This was not an issue of pride; Moses was the humblest of all men (Numbers 12:3). Rather, he was relieved when he realized that R' Akiva's external mode of Torah study leads back to the same internal understanding of Torah that he had received from God.

[It is clear from R' Akiva's reply that all of the halachos that he was teaching indeed derived from the Torah received by Moses. Those who would deliberately misinterpret the Gemara and attribute Moses' lack of understanding to "innovations" that were supposedly made by R' Akva are not only heretics, but are proven wrong by a careful reading of this very passage.]

Commentary to "meat market"
R' Akiva was tortured to death by having his flesh combed with iron dombs (Rashi) [As a final indignity, the Romans sent the combed flesh to the butcher shops to be sold there.]

Commentary to "This is of My part"
Moses' inability to understand R' Akiva's torah is related to his inablity to understand R' Akva's fate. The Gemara states elsewhere that fifty gates of understanding were created and forty-nine were given to Moses, but the fiftieth gate was not. The decisions to give the Torah through Moses and not through R' Akiva and to ordain this death for R' Akiva were in the realm of the fiftieth gate, in the realm of God's thoughts. ["Thought" in this context refers to ideas that cannot be expressed in mere speech.] God tells Moses, "Quiet!" because a person is not allowed to explore intellectually that which he is constitutionally incapable of understanding (see BT Chagigah 11b-12a, 13a). This boundary varies for each person and a person can broaden his intellectual horizon, but there is always a point beyond which a person will force himself into mental desolation. For Moses, this point was the fiftieth gate, and God reproached him to probed no further.

What is the Talmud? (2)

In reviewing the first entry in on What is the Talmud?, I thought that I might use some more of my own reflections, along with links and citations as needed, to give a sense of what the Talmud is, and what it is to me.

If I try to find one word to describe the Talmud, it would be "conversation" -- an incredibly wide-ranging and timeless conversation in which the Chazal (the Sages from the Talmud), plus the various commentators Rashi, Rashbam, Rambam, the Gra, etc., plus the current melamed (teachers of Talmud) and the students (each of us) all sit together and have an unbelievably lively discusion, debate -- conversation.

The topics for those conversations can be about anything from what time one can say the evening Shema, to how to keep the Sabbath, to what you should do if you find money in a store, to what happens if your property damages another's property, etc. The topics are seemingly infinite and the conversation that has gone on for over 2,000 years will clearly continue without end into the future.

One of the basic distinctions within the Talmud is between halachah (laws) and aggadah (stories). While I clearly find the aggadah, on the surface, more interesting, Rav Soloveitchik has proven there is an enormous reservoir of creative and interesting insights that one can find or create from the halachahs as well.

To end this post, I will share one of the Talmud's most famous and most beloved stories. It is story that does much to prove that the Talmud and the Jewish tradition itself is one rich with creativity!

Rav Yehudah said in the name of Rav: When Moses ascended to the Heavenly Heights, he found the Holy One, Blessed is He, as He was sitting and attaching crowns to some of the letters. That is, although the Torah was completely written, He was still adding tagin to certain letters. [Moses] said to Him, "Master of the Universe, who is holding You back from giving the Torah as it is?" [God] said to him, "There is one man who is destined to exist at the end of many generations, Akiva ben Yosef is his name, and it is he who will expound upon each and every point heaps and heaps of halachos." [Moses] said before [God] , "Master of the Universe, show him to me!" [God] said to him, "Turn around and see what is behind you." He found himself in R' Akiva's class. Moses went and sat at the end of eight rows of students, but as he listened to the give-and-take between R' Akiva and his students, he did not understand what they were saying. Disheartened [Moses'] strength ebbed. However, once they reached a certain matter that required a source. [R' Akiva's] students asked him, "Teacher, from where do you know this?" and [R' Akiva] replied to them, "It is a halachah transmitted orally to Moses at Sinai."

Upon hearing this, [Moses'] mind was relieved. He returned and came before the Holy One, Blessed is He. [Moses] said before Him, "Master of the Universe, You have someone like this and You give the Torah through me?! Give it through R' Akiva!" [God] said to him, "Quiet! Thus has it arisen in the thoughts before Me; this is part of My greater plan to which you are not privy." [Moses] said before Him, "Master of the Universe, You have shown me his Torah, now show me his reward." [God] said to him, "Turn around and see what is behind you." [Moses] turned around and saw that people were weighing the flesh from [R' Akiva's body] in the butcher's meat market in order to sell it. [Moses] said before Him, "Master of the Universe! This is Torah and this is its reward?!" [God] said to him, "Quiet! This is part of My greater plan to which you are not privy."

This translation comes from the Schottenstein Edition of the Talmud Bavli from Artscroll.

What is the Talmud? (1)

What I realize is that I am sure many of you reading this blog know little about the Talmud, so I am going to start a series of entries providing some background and resources to begin to offer a glimpse at the "sea of the Talmud" -- this is a tradition expression of the size and depth of the Talmud.

Below is some text from the introductory lecture of an online class on learning to study the Talmud. The class itself is offered by the Virtual Beit Midrash. This is a wonderful site that provides an enormous amount of in-depth, traditional classes on all topics of Judaism.

The specific text comes from a Introduction to the Study of the Talmud class. All classes are downloadable. I think it provides a helpful place to begin to learn more about the Talmud

Talmud consists of two distinct primary texts, the Mishna and the Gemara. Surrounding these two, there exists a huge literature, spanning 1800 years and thousands of books, of commentaries, summations, and extended discussions, which continues to this day.

When we study Talmud, we are in fact addressing that entire literature, though obviously much of it must wait for advanced levels of learning. But even on the beginning level of this course we are not studying a BOOK, but rather a literature, which in fact precedes the actual Talmud, and of course extends beyond it. From a literary point of view, the Talmud is the basis and core text, most importantly because it is authoritative, and hence is the starting-point for any subsequent discussion.

The Mishna is printed as a distinct work, and often studied separately. In editions of the Talmud, the Mishna is printed together with the Gemara as a unit, and that is the way we shall be studying.

The Mishna is a halakhic code. It presents a set of rulings on all halakhic matters, in all areas of life. True to the nature of the Oral Law, it is not generally written in a monolithic manner, but rather preserves controversies and disagreements, hundreds of them, from the authorities of the Mishnaic period, roughly the first century and a half of the Common Era. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, the head of Palestinian Jewry, compiled the present form of the Mishna and thereby summarized and codified the halakhic rulings of the previous centuries. This was the first code of Jewish law.

The Gemara is the record of two centuries of discussion, argument, elucidation, and controversy surrounding the text of the Mishna, first in the land of Israel, and subsequently in the great Torah centers of Babylonia.

Unlike the Mishna, the Gemara is not a code. It is more like the protocol of a debate, spanning several hundred years and more, where the basic literary form is question and answer, and the most common conveyor of meaning is disagreement.

It is impossible to READ Gemara; you have to join the discussion in order to grasp the meaning of what is going on. In order to understand an answer, you have to understand the question, and that understanding is far more important than summarizing the conclusion. It would be quite accurate to say that Gemara is more about halakhic reasoning than about halakha itself, though obviously the goal is halakha.

In fact, in most cases, the halakhic conclusion is not explicit in the Talmudic text itself, but will be found only in later rabbinic works. It is quite common to find an extensive rabbinic discussion of the "hava amina," the opening and ultimately rejected understanding, for the fact that this position did not survive the scrutiny of the Talmudic discussion does not make it unimportant. It is often correct to state that only by understanding the "hava amina" can we understand the conclusion, the "maskana."

If there are any questions about this text or anything else on this blog, please ask it in a comment.