Rabbi Haim Lifshitz

Home

Essays

Glossary

 
Go to Hebrew site

 

 

 

 

 

 



Vayehi
                                                l'ilui nishmat Esther bat Mrdechai


Our Relationship to Sin 
(Why Raban Gamliel Wept)

Tractate Sanhedrin 81A: “If the court condemns a man to death on two counts, is he executed according to the more severe one?  It is written (Ezekiel 18): ‘He has fathered a ruthless son – who spills blood, has eaten at the mountains, defiled his friend’s wife, and raised his eyes to the idols.’  Spilled blood – [the verdict is] by the sword.  Defiled his friend’s wife refers to a married woman – [the verdict is] by hanging.  Raised his eyes to the idols is idolatry – [the verdict is] by stoning… 

“Rav Nahman bar Yitzhak disputes this:  Should we not teach it all as stoning? ‘He fathered a ruthless son who spills blood.’  This refers to the wayward and rebellious son, put to death by stoning.  ‘He defiled his friend’s wife.’  This refers to a betrothed girl, punishable by stoning.  ‘He has raised his eyes to the idols.’  This is the worship of the stars, punishable by stoning.  If so, why does Ezekiel say all this?  Is the Torah perhaps reviewing things it has already said before?  If so, review is unnecessary, because Moses already reviewed all the laws [in Deuteronomy].

“Rav Aha, son of Hanina, taught thus: What is the meaning of ‘someone who has not eaten at the mountains?’  It means he has not eaten into his parents’ merit.  ‘He did not raise his eyes to the idols of Israel?’  This means he did not walk with a haughty gait.  ‘He did not defile his friend’s wife?’  This means he did not descend to [plagiarize] his friend’s art.  ‘He was not intimate with an impure woman?’  This means he did not use charity monies for his own benefit.  Of such a person it is written: ‘He is righteous; he shall surely live.’

“When Raban Gamliel would reach this part of the text, he would weep…”

Raban Gamliel tended toward objective interpretation.  Let us recall his dispute with Rabbi Eliezer at the beginning of Tractate Brachot regarding the “Eighteen Blessings.”  Raban Gamliel maintained that the prayer of the eighteen blessings had been instituted to correspond to the sacrifices of the temple.  Rabbi Eliezer believed that one could not freeze prayer, which is the heart’s worship, into the formal framework of the eighteen blessings, and therefore one must pray as an expression of the heart’s bond, in any way that one sees fit.

Here as well, Raban Gamliel finds that the gravest sins in the Torah are attached to death penalties at the hands of the court.  Suddenly, according to Rav Aha bar Hanina, the entire interpretation veers to the mildest possible extreme: “‘He did not raise his eyes to the idols?’  This means he did not walk with a haughty gait.”  A relative perception is being forced upon Raban Gamliel here.  Such relativity, Raban Gamliel felt, might blur one’s relationship to the severity of the sins.  Sin would be removed from its rigid framework, and the law would be turned into an entity lacking formal definition.  Therefore, Raban Gamliel wept…

The Talmud lists a range of severe biblical prohibitions, the punishment for which is death at human hands.  Some are punishable by stoning, some, by hanging or burning, according to this Talmudic discussion that divides sin into categories – sins in which the perpetrator is put to death, in one way or another. 

The Talmud brings the list of these sins from Ezekiel, but then rejects the evidence from Ezekiel, and presents another opinion instead, which is radical in its leniency.  This new opinion describes sins that are not even the shadow of a shadow of the severe sins originally described,

Nevertheless, these mild sins are classified in the same category as the severe sins. When Raban Gamliel saw that these sins, which were only “the dust of a sin,” were attached to the same category as the sins entailing severe death penalties, he wept – so much so that Rabbi Akiva was required to comfort him and offer him an alternative method for classifying sin.

The question is most puzzling: What point was it exactly that brought the prince of Israel and the head of the Septuagint – Raban Gamliel – to the point of weeping?

It seems to me that Raban Gamliel was relating to grave sin in the same way that Rabbi Yisrael Salanter would relate to the gravity of sin centuries later.  When someone allowed himself to chat during the weekly Torah reading, Rabbi Salanter commented: “On the Sabbath, in Kovno, a city filled with Torah, the city of the splendid Yeshiva of Slabodka – if someone dares to speak during the Torah reading in Kovno, it is comparable to someone desecrating the Sabbath in Paris.

The popular understanding of the rabbi’s words has taken it to mean that whoever would take a relatively light mitzvah lightly, in the Torah-imbued city of Kovno, would be causing a grave desecration of the Sabbath in the Torah-impoverished city of Paris of that time.

It appears to me that Rabbi Salanter did not mean that a light sin in Kovno would cause a grave sin in Paris, but rather that the light sin in Kovno was as grave as the sin of desecrating the Sabbath, despite the fact that chatting during the reading does not officially or in any objective manner constitute a desecration of the Sabbath in any way.  Rabbi Salanter wished to say that sins are not determined by some objective code.  Rather, they are determined by the individual. 

The implication is that someone who is a giant in terms of mitzvot and awe of heaven, such as the leader of his generation, Raban Gamliel, could commit a sin that would be nothing more than “the dust of a sin,” yet it would be considered a grave sin that entailed being put to death by human hands, just as though he were a common violator.  In contrast, according to that same relative measure, a common violator, even if should he commit a grave sin, would be considered nothing more than a “child taken captive among the nations,” whose education was remote from Jewish concepts, and who committed a grave sin unknowingly.  His actions would not be considered of a gravely serious nature and they would not entail punishment at the hands of a court of law.  His verdict would not even be as severe as the most lenient verdict, because he had had no prior warning, neither in relation to the prohibition nor in relation to the punishment attached to the prohibition according to law. (See tractate Sanhedrin 81A, 81B.)

This was the custom in our family.  My father was a close student of the Hafetz Haim’s for many years. Our family does not follow the stringency of wearing the fringed garment on the outside, draping down over the pants, because of the Hafetz Haim’s own admonition to all his students to refrain from this practice.  He explained that although it was true that this flaunting of the tzitzit was “beautifying,” as he indeed writes in his book, Mishneh Brurah – that a man should not be intimidated by those who mock him, but should instead beautify himself with this mitzvah, and that it should be seen by others – nevertheless he added to his own students that such adornment would obligate other adornments as well.  Who would dare adorn himself thus, without fearing to desecrate God’s name?  If someone thus adorned should fall into sin, God forbid, people would view him as an important person who had fallen into sin.  Far better that he should not adorn himself, and be considered an ordinary person, and not cause a desecration of God’s name, God forbid.

These things have bearing on our understanding of Jacob’s blessings: Jacob sought to reveal the future to his sons.  He wished to tell them of the ultimate redemption and of the end of days, when suddenly his prophecy was blocked.  Instead, he spoke to each one of his sons – from each of whom a tribe in Israel would descend – about his own personal affairs.  This means that Jacob focused on the details of the process rather than on the ultimate result, conferring with every one of his sons about his individual spiritual journey, which would evolve into the journey of one of the tribes of Israel.

The reason for focusing on the process and on the journey is the same as the reason for the relative relationship between ourselves and sin, or between ourselves and mitzvah.  How can Jacob focus on the ultimate result without knowing each son’s spiritual level along the way, at every stage of the race, passing through each way station on the journey of the process?

By blocking his prophecy, heaven is informing Jacob that it is only inside one’s individual relationship to the sin or to the mitzvah that the continuous process of redemption lies hidden, and it is there that the ultimate result lies hidden as well.

It is true of course that the ultimate result has already been determined by heaven as the end of the exile, but the Holy One does not decree in an arbitrary manner, without allowing His partner, God’s servant of flesh and blood, to actively participate in the final result.

Many of the great leaders of Israel used exactly this consideration.  They had delved into the hidden mysteries of the Torah and had managed to calculate the end of days down to the minutest details and the most precise considerations, so it seemed.  Yet the redemption was postponed, not because the end-calculators erred, but rather because “the generation was not fit.”  This means that the time of the end was clear.  However, the generation in whose days the end was supposed to have occurred was not sufficiently prepared and worthy.  Thus instead of the end envisioned in the prophecy, the bitter end came, hidden in suffering, of which it was said: “Let it come, but let me not see it, so filled with suffering will it be.”

As Maimonides explains at the end of his “Thirteen Principles,” “I will wait for [the Messiah] every day,” is the main mitzvah.  This means that the process, the anticipation of redemption defines the appropriate attitude, and it is anticipation of redemption that is the proper way to bring the actual redemption.  To such an extent does the path, the process, determine matters, that when a mortal stands before the heavenly court, one of the main questions posed to him is: “Did you spend your days anticipating the redemption?  This teaches us how much the process determines the ultimate result.

This has implications for those who “force the end” by ignoring the need to focus on the process, and behaving as if they were already in the final stage of redemption; they spend the better part of their time and resources building our holy temple.  We can only pray that their fate will not be like the fate of the ma’apilim, who insisted on fighting Amalek though the time was not ripe, believing they could “force the end.”

The conclusion we must draw is to focus on the present as the exclusive point of relating.  A qualitative present is not merely a transition point from past to future, passing like the blink of an eye.  Rather it is an exclusive existential condition: The higher its quality, the more of the meaningful content of the past it can contain and encompass.  Enriched with this meaningful content, it can also anticipate and plan the future.  Such a qualitative present time is created by people who spend the better part of their time and resources investing in the existential situation unfolding in the present moment exclusively.

The present is the only existential human condition in the world.  Every other condition – whether of time or of space, not belonging to the here and now, including even “objective” situations – is unnatural.  It is forced upon one, like a stranger invading a private home.  Only a condition of positive existential reality, in the present, can constitute a handhold, a point of contact, between the Creator and the one created in His image. 

Any other reality is considered an alien and invasive condition, an attempt to introduce conflict into the ideal bond – whether this condition is born of the urge to evil or born of human arrogance, which attempts to escape the limitations set for it by the Creator.

However, things are not as simple as they seem.  The source of the problem is the human mind.  It contains a power of abstraction that tends to diverge from reality.  It contains imagination, which builds unreal conditions for itself.  It is also permeated with emotions that overflow beyond reality to the vast spaces of God’s creation, in the effort to expand its own existence and to resemble  – in its great arrogance – its own Creator.

As a means for moderating this tendency, an opposite tendency exists as well in human beings.  This opposite tendency creates the sensation of an objective dimension.  It is as if one were situated simultaneously within two worlds, one subjective and one objective.  It is as if one were both inside of oneself and outside of oneself.

The only real possibility for resolution is to be a partner to and a part of the Divinity.  One’s sensitivity to spirituality and to the intellect originates in the “Godly part from on high” that exists within one.  Emotion, suffering, and the ability to identify with what does not exist within one's own experience – these originate in one’s qualitative self.

The same is true of one’s relationship to God’s Torah and to halacha, the Torah’s legal/practical application.  In substance, Torah is perfect with the objective dimension.  “If one desires Torah and peruses it day and night,” then one expands one’s own dimension of objectivity and strengthens one’s own tendency toward the objectivity inherent in the Torah and in one’s own self.

Yet even so, something remains of their subjective tendencies, including that part of subjectivity that the halacha addresses, and herein lies the relative dimension of the halacha.

This is the dilemma with which human beings are constantly and incessantly struggling – as long as there is breath in their bodies: Should they fit themselves to the Godly reality?  Or might it perhaps lend itself to fit them?  “This is the whole human being.”

Proverbs (30:8): “Two things do I ask of You: …Power and wealth do not give me.  Rather, tear off a daily piece of bread for me, that I might not grow satiated, and deny, and say ‘Who is God?’ yet neither grow too poor, and steal…”