"Sof Davar Hakkol NISHMA! In parshas Mishpattim we encounter the singular event when the Children of Israel declared their loyalty to the Torah by declaring in unison: "Na'aseh v'NISHMA" While in Several other passages in the Torah the term Na'aseh is used in isolation.
Commentaries into Parshanut have delved into the implications of the term "Nishma" and the Midrash takes note of the the sequentce - That Israel specifically preceded Na'aseh with Nishma
Avodah's esteemed moderator Micha Berger and I had an exchange of ideas regarding this concept, with particular attention paid to the Philosophy, Hashqafa, and Weltanschauung of Rabbiner Hirsch.
As I termed it Na'aseh is the performance of the a given Mitzva. This can be dry and rote especially in those societies that perform normative Halachah by peer pressure without any internal feeling. Adding the NISHMA dimension can transform performance into a religious experience. FWIW Reform tried to capture the experience and suspend the performance. This high-minded approach was just that, it produced Jews in the Mind only at best. However, given the mindless performance of Jewish practice by Observant Societies, this over-reaction was somewhat understandable. Hirsch actually tried to restore Observant Judaism to its Sinaitic roots by a synthesis of both aspects. The narrow question of how this NISHMA experience is to be defined was the subject of our debate.
Micha:
(Re: Hirsch and "nishma"..) I also wonder how much the response is formal reflection in conscious thought as opposed to experiential.
RRW:
Both. It is aisi both intellectual contemplation like a RYDS [Rav Yosef Dov Soloveichik] might do but also the touchy-feely kind that maybe someone like a R Shlomoh Carlebach might do.Micha
Look how similar TIDE [Torah im Derech Eretz] and Slabodka are in terms of objective. The ideal Herr Rabbiner Doctor is cultured, refined, pays attention to his dress and the impression he creates. An emphasis on human dignity as part of Jewish expression. The Mensch-Israel. Ands what would I have to change of that to describe Slabodka's ideal alumnus? Less value assigned to cultural development -- although they valued personal creativity in poetry and music, secular education was relegated to satifying curiosity on the side. It was expected that you were well read; but nothing like a PhD.
There is a fundamental difference in how they define refinement. R' Hirsch speaks in terms of culture. Slabodka, unsurprisingly, in terms of middos. The overlap is large, but they are far from identical. I think that also underlies their difference in approach to taamei hamitzvos.
RSRH makes it about internalizing messages. And therefore when the message is unclear, he invokes symbology. Symbols do present messages in a manner where they can be better internalized. Thus the power of poetry over prose. (They also provide metaphor, and therefore can convey more than is explicitly stated. A symbol not only allows a message to go from mind to heart, it also allows the heart's message to be more fully grasped by the mind.)
Mussar looks to mitzvos to behaviorally change the person. Mitokh shelo lishmah ba lishmah via hergel. "Smile, and eventually you'll be happier." Therefore one needn't bring everything down to comprehensible terms. The human soul is understandably more complex than human understanding; the mind isn't big enough to contain itself.
This allows for an answer to the value of mitzvos even when you don't have the symbol key. ... I was thinking more of that dichotomy than RSCarlebach as a as a contrast.
KT
RRW
7 comments:
The subject line, spelling it as intellect vs emotion, would be more accurate if I had been contrasting RSRH with RSCarlebach. What I was thinking more was conscious thought vs character change.
Middos aren't really emotions as much as the various propensities to have one or the other. In English, the difference between the emotion of anger and the character trait of having a temper.
Slabodka (as the rest of Mussar, but Slabodka IMHO is closest to TiDE) is speaking of mitzvos in terms of precognitive changes, of being the kind of person more likely to experience religious ecstasy, not necessarily creating that moment of ecstasy itself.
RSRH's symbology system presumes changes through internalization of symbols -- and yet very little Torah existed before his day explicating those symbols. What about all the people who didn't know of them and thus didn't internalize them? Was their observance for naught?
I think this was a primary factor in my own religious evolution. Both the fascination with RSRH that I had at one time and Mussar emphasize interpersonal mitzvos and personal refinement more than other derakhim. But the notion that halakhah is inherently transformative appealed to me. (For the reasons RRW quotes in the post.)
-micha
I, of course, could not pass over this post about Nishma without commenting. What I find particularly interesting about what you both perceive in both the views of RSRH and Slobodka is what I would term a "macro" perspective regarding hashkafa. While RSRH was successful in writing Horeb, we know that he also wanted to write another sefer regarding an overall perspective on Torah phiolosophy. It is truly sad that he did not accomplish his goal but this overall perspective breathes in everything that he wrote. The nature of Torah study causes individuals to often focus on what I would term the "micro" perspectives of Torah. We study the details of the mitzvot and often develop taamei hamitzvot that effectively stand on their own. Often, the cost of this type of study is a lack of investigation or, even concern for, an overall gestalt -- what the message of Torah is in an overall manner? We develop the details and the simply try to put them together to create the overall whole. What I believe existed in Sloboka and also what I believe influenced RSRH was an overall perspective -- what the Torah as a whole is attempting to impart. This perspective of the gestalt is, I believe, what is existent in the term Nishma.
Rabbi Ben Hecht
Micha's point is well-Taken.
Aisi Nishma includes the 'afterglow" of performing a mitzva. The Reflection may be emotional [think of nostalgia!] and of course intellectual when reflecting upon the micro or the minutiae...
Furthermore, the continuity of these reflections and contemplations - whether emotional or intellectual or other - constitute the MACRO of "NISHMA". That the reflective life of living Na'aseh v'Nishma will produce an unending chain of events of performance and in their wake the introspection and/or the romance of it those performances.
Just to add onto R Hecht's comment, the companion to "Horeb", which was to be titled "Moriah" probably would have been the closest thing to a true version of TIDE's Mussar via the concept of "Mensch-Yisrael".
Lichvod R’ Berger, shlit”a,
Is the rav saying, in other words (the eighteenth letter’s), “Is there not contained in this dissonance between the theory of the Mitzvah and its reality a proof that the explanation is not right …?”
I do not understand how it could be possible that Rav Hirsch’s mehalech should not contain some element of changing one’s middos.
We have middos. Where are they, if not here?
Thanks,
S.
Sara,
Thank you, but your heavy-handedness with the respect isn't healthy for my soul.
But to get to the point...
Of course RSRH's path includes refining middos. But it's not defined in those terms. Rather, it's to be a refined, cultured, Mensch-Yisrael. That requires, de facto, that middos work would have to get done. But as it's not directly addressed, he gives no tools for doing so.
In Mussar, middos work is life's primary work. After all, once one eliminates the impediments, actually doing the mitzvos becomes trivial.
And the difference in focus of attention leads to a difference in attitude and in lifestyle.
-micha
Oh, my goodness. I didn't mean it to sound like that. I am absolutely sorry.
Thanks.
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