[Be-Ahavah
U-B-Emunah – Mishpatim 5773- translated by R. Blumberg]
How
should we approach the Tanach? First you have to approach its author. “But your
eyes shall see your teacher” (Yeshayahu 30:20). The author is the Prophets who
bring us the word of Hashem, for it is G-d who gives prophecy to the prophets,
as Rambam said in Hilchot Yesodei Ha-Torah, chapter 7. There are different
levels to the Tanach. There is the Torah, the prophecy of Moshe, transcending
all other prophecy. There are the Prophets, with their prophecy, and there are
the Writings, whose source is Ruach Ha-Kodesh, divine intuition. All of them
are the word of G-d.
The
idea of the word of G-d reaching man involves a miracle. The King of the Kuzars
had difficulty believing this, and he asked the Jewish wise man to convince him
that it is possible.
We
thus derive that a prophet is an entirely different type of person. An angel
revealed himself to the parents of Shimshon, and they thought he was a prophet,
until he rose to heaven in a flame. Then they understood that it was an angel,
but before that they were incapable of distinguishing between a prophet and an
angel.
Therefore,
when King Shaul met the prophets, he turned into a different person, and since
he was worthy of it, he prophesied. We, too, when we study the Tanach, become different
people. The entire world, with prophets or without prophets, is another world.
When
prophecy ceased in Israel, the entire human race declined. There were three
reactions to this: that of the West, that of the Far East, and that of
ourselves, the Middle East. The Greeks said: prophecy has not ceased, because
it never existed in the first place. There
is human intellect, and nothing more.
The
mysticism of the Far East said: G-d spoke, and He continues to speak, yet He
does not speak except from within man. G-d is not someone, but something that
has been absorbed in man.
We
say: G-d spoke, and then ceased to speak, but we continue to learn the
prophets’ words with absolute steadfastness, as our Sages, the disciples of the
prophets, instruct us to do. The prophets handed down the Torah to the Men of
the Great Assembly. Ezra the Scribe, first of the Great Assembly, is Malachi,
last of the prophets.
We
try a bit to encounter and to understand the words of the prophets, and this
turns us into different people - not in the sense of being cut off from this
world, but of being people who bring G-d's blessing into this world. As Rabbi
Meir said in Avot 6:1: "whoever studies Torah for the sake of Heaven,
merits many things." He merits supreme, ethereal heavenly things which we
lack the human words to define. "Nay more, the whole world is worthwhile for
his sake. He is called friend, beloved.
He loves G-d and he loves mankind. He pleases G-d and he pleases
mankind. The Torah invests him with humility and reverence. It enables him to
become righteous, godly, upright and faithful. It keeps him far from sin, and
draws him near to virtue. Men are benefited by him with counsel and sound
wisdom, understanding and strength, as it says, ‘Mine are counsel and sound
wisdom; Mine are reason and might’ (Mishlei 8:14). It gives him rule, a
commanding personality and judging ability. To him the secrets of the Torah are
revealed. He is made like a fountain that ever gathers force, and like a
never-failing stream. He becomes modest, patient, and forgiving of insults. The
Torah makes him great and raises him above all creatures.” The entire world
takes on a new countenance.
What
the Tanach possesses is something that we cannot find through our own intellect
i.e., through philosophy, but only through prophecy. True, mankind is capable
of achieving a certain degree of contact with the word of G-d, because we
possess a divine soul (see the end of Guide to the Perplexed). For the sake of
that we must pull ourselves upward towards heaven. We must exalt ourselves to
the pinnacle of our spiritual abilities.
We
mustn't lower the words of the Tanach to our own small stature. Rather, we must
recall that it is divine and not human, that these are things that we have
never heard. These things are infinite, and it is puzzling that I am able to
understand even the least bit of it. For the sake of doing so, one must exit
himself, one must burst out of an astrological mindset and one must transcend
one's own limitations. Otherwise, one will never meet the Tanach.
If
someone studies in the modern fashion, distinguishing between what is relevant/understood
and what is old-fashioned/primitive, then he has never studied Torah in all his
life. He has only studied himself, his own personality, fashioned by his
surroundings, by life, the street, the marketplace, the media. He gains mastery
over a text, in a postmodern fashion, when there is nothing absolute, nothing
all-encompassing, nothing eternal. There is only the personal, the
individualistic. That is not the "Torah study for the sake of heaven” that
Rabbi Meir was talking about, but "Torah for my own sake”.
Certainly,
the prophecies were recorded because they were needed for future generations
(Megillah 14). True, they were revealed at a certain time and under certain circumstances,
but their inner essence transcends time and place. Hence they also illuminate other
times and other circumstances.
All
the more so that the Torah itself transcends time and place, that it stands
above and before reality. Therefore, it illuminates all the circumstances of
reality. It illuminates in the State of Israel and the Exile, and it provides
illumination to those who are healthy and those who are ill, to the honest man
and to the thief, to rich and to poor.
The
King of the Kuzars asks, “How did your Torah develop?” After all, he says, it
is the way of religions that they have a founder, and then every generation
adds or subtracts, lengthening or shortening at will. No, answers the Jewish
scholar, our Torah was given all at once in its entirety. There was a bursting
forth from On High, with thunder and lightning, a heavy cloud over the
mountain, a stentorian Shofar blast, and the entire camp trembled with fear.
Indeed, the entire mountain trembled. The Torah was given all at once, in its
entirety, and gradually it is revealed to us.
The
Tanach views the world from a divine perspective, and it trains our eye to see
things in parallel to the eye of G-d. “For they will see eye to eye, as G-d
returns to Zion” (Yeshayahu 52:8). Certainly
we must delve deeply into the Tanach. Certainly we must ask questions and answer
them, and clarify matters all the way. Yet, said Rabbenu Ha-Rav Tzvi Yehuda
Kook in his article, “Emet Bilti Me’ur’eret” [An Unassailable Truth], regarding
the scientific approach to Torah learning, in the book Li-Netivot Yisrael (vol.
2, p. 242), everything depends on one’s starting point – on whether or not we
believe that we have before us a divine truth, a heavenly truth that we accept
with perfect faith.
The
Tanach is divine, superhuman, and it instructs us to elevate ourselves to G-d,
to emulate Him, as a man with a divine image, and not, G-d forbid, to fashion a
G-d in the image of man.
The
Tanach enables us to hear the word of G-d. The prophets are a different world.
They possess a divine fortitude that we lack, as Maran Ha-Rav Avraham Yitzchak
Kook wrote in his book Orot, in the chapters on Warfare, regarding the
spiritual level of the Patriarchs.
Taking
this approach, my learning has an influence on me, intellectually, morally and
in terms of my faith.
A
prophet has an alternate perception. He speaks out of an absolute world, a
different world. He hears the word of G-d which bursts forth into our own
world, and then almost collapses, like a small device that has been struck by
lightning. We, too, learn Torah with fear and dread, with shaking and with
trembling, as at the Sinai Revelation (see Berachot 22a).
If
one does not understand that the Tanach is superhuman, one has not understood a
thing. We are talking about prophecy, not philosophy.
Certainly
there is room for independent thought, but only after I accept with perfect
faith the word of G-d. As we say in our morning prayers, first one must “admit
the truth” – the supreme, absolute, divine truth – and only then can one “speak
truth in his heart”, as is explained in the “Olat Re’eiyah” prayer book of Rav
Kook. Yet if we begin by “speaking truth in our heart”, that constitutes a
post-modern utterance, in which the text is nothing but the interpretive
worldview of the reader, a subjective, human analysis.
Do
not mix up your own thoughts with the absolute divine truth that illuminates
all generations and circumstances.
Prophecy
constitutes a spark from the Upper World, as Ramban explains in his introduction
to the Guide to the Perplexed, in his “Torat Ha-Berakim”. It is not a small flashlight,
but a giant bolt of lightning that bursts forth from heaven to earth and momentarily
illuminates the whole horizon in a manner which you have never seen before.
Likewise,
one who learns Torah for the sake of heaven sometimes merits such a bolt of lightning,
as is mentioned at the beginning of the work, “Tanya”. He merits a true understanding
of the word of G-d.
