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Parashat Shlah
Essays and Articles:
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The Wood-Gatherer: Private Domain Versus Public Domain
Translated from Hebrew by S. NAthan l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai
No one disputes the fact that the public, the community, and all the other appelations of plurality in the Torah, such as: “You shall be a kingdom of priests and a sacred nation to Me”, or “you all shall be sacred” - point to the profound weight that the Torah attributes to the group, to the public domain. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that the Torah would permit a view of the public as being the object and purpose of the commandments – as though Judaism were a sort of involvement with the collective group rather than with the individual. Still, the question remains: Is the public a goal, in the sense of being the test of the result? Is the public a significant space unto itself, deserving to be addressed, though of course not to be given priority over the other aspects of human reality that are granted the more thorough, intensive and serious treatment, such as: Monetary law, dietary law, domestic law, criminal law – all of these being areas where the communal aspect does not play a central role, where the central issue is one’s own individual relationship with oneself and others. Such is Jewish morality: Its central focus is more on the individual, per se`, and less on the individual as a detail of the community. The sages of the Talmud go to extremes in describing the severity of the wood-gatherer’s sin: The moment of redemption, on the brink of being born, was lost – in the wake of the wood-gatherer’s sin, for the Jewish people had managed to keep only one Sabbath. (Referring to the Talmudic statement that all Jewish people keeping two Sabbaths consecutively will bring the Redeemer.) By the second Sabbath, they had already sinned. Is it possible that “one person will sin and You will be wroth against the entire congregation?” How much weight does one individual have in determining the fate of the group, at a particular moment in time, and for future generations? The conventionally accepted method is to divide perceptions dealing with the individual-versus-group question into two main approaches: One approach views the individual as the be-all and end-all, while the public is viewed as the framework, intended only to serve the individual. This approach favors individual rights over the principal of equality. In contrast to this minority approach, the leading approach views society as the natural expression of the human race, while the individual is viewed as a detail, a part – possessing no rights in his own right, and justifying – “receiving” the right to his existence from the fact that he belongs to the group, community, or nation. This perception views equality as the moral guideline, rather than individual rights, which are necessarily incompatible with equality in some cases. This social perception finds it difficult to reconcile one question: If equality is justice, all human beings should have been born with similar characteristics, and with similar living conditions, and with qualities that have similar prospects and similar needs. Such a state of affairs does not coordinate with reality, as we know. Every individual human being possesses a different, uniquely original quality, and every one begins with different conditions even within the bosom of the same family. For some reason, the collective perception has proven neither effective nor just. A comparison between the bloodshed wrought by conflicts between individuals and the bloodshed wrought by conflicts between groups – raises serious doubts as to whether the collective perception can justify its existence. There is the impression that an individual tends to lose characteristically unique qualities when immersed within a mass of fellow creatures. Individual character and personality are blurred, and the collective identity is adopted instead, which leaves one no room to choose and to preserve what is most precious of all: One’s own uniqueness. What causes confusion is a failure to distinguish between uniquely original achievements that, brilliant though they may have been, did not build the achievements of originality and innovation as a multi-story building, storey upon storey, like the dwarf who, riding the giant’s shoulders, stands taller than the giant, but rather remained in the realm of solitary genius. These should not be confused with achievements that continued along the track of time, joining one historical result to another, becoming impressive for their sheer power, if not for their originality and quality. Epistemology deals with this distinction – and proves quite persuasively that it is valid. What is eventually forgotten is the uniquely original genius, whose unique contribution to the multi-story building has been swallowed, devoured by quantity, which devours quality, to the point that one could receive the impression that quantity can stand on its own right. Modern science suppresses qualitative thinking, and raises the banner of research technique, built upon a quantitative accumulation of mechanical details – the more the better – over which statistics rules as undisputed queen. It is true that technical achievements are impressive, but it is difficult to see how much they have advanced the quality of life, or aided in solving the riddle of existence. From here we can see that the contribution of the individual genius – who ruled supreme until the mechanical era – is what has illuminated humanity’s path in the arts, literature, philosophy, and what has exerted a decisive influence even upon the sciences. The truth is that any exploration of the issue of private versus public domain bases itself on the Sabbath prohibition against transporting objects across a minimum distance of four cubits in the public domain, or transporting objects from the private to the public domain. On the surface it appears that if the Torah had not innovated the concept that transporting an object transgresses the prohibition against melacha, creative labor, it would never have occurred to our minds to include this simple act of carrying an object among the categories of creative labor; one’s mind would not naturally tend to agree with such a view. After all, what creative labor is involved in moving an object from one place to another? Has any innovative change been wrought in the body of the object? Delving more deeply into this point, we discover another facet – one that indicates that this prohibition may be far graver than every other Sabbath prohibition. For the object has been transported by a human being with a specific intention, and this testifies to a change in that person’s orientation, and that change was expressed by the object being transported by that person’s own hands – and this means that a change has been innovated in a human being’s condition, and not merely in the condition of an object. It means that a change has taken place from a private orientation to a public orientation (as indicated by transporting from the private domain into the public domain) or that a change has taken place in one’s unique position within society (as indicated by moving an object across a minimum distance of four cubits within the public domain). That it connects the wood-gatherer to Sabbath violation, and that it imposes a death penalty in its wake, testifies to the severity with which the Torah views any tendency to blur the status of the individual versus society, and to the vital need it sees in preserving the individual’s uniqueness within society.
The halachic garments that clothe
this principal are meant to bestow tangible substance
on ideas from the realm of the sublime -- “the
world of creation” – in order to actualize them in the
realm of human action – the “world of creativity”. Freedom and Belonging Formulating ideas as conflicts, and cultivating the gap that separates them, is no different than formulating the different views of the different halachic authorities as disputes. This is an approach that characterizes superficial, routine-governed study. Such conflict-invention causes distortion rather than sharper definition of the differences between the sides. Each side entrenches itself deeper within its own position, ignoring and distorting the opposite side. Such is not the way of Torah. Any study of the laws of Sabbath – which on the Mishna’s testimony, are “mountains hanging on a thread of hair” – is meant to delve deep, to the very roots of the subject – to the very foundation upon which the universe is built, as indicated by the rule: “He looked into the Torah and created the universe.” For after all, it is on the foundations and guiding principles of the Torah that the world was built, and continues to operate. Certain phenomena are able to teach us about the fundamental rules of the creation. For example, that pair of opposites – freedom and belonging – comes to teach us the rule of complementary opposites: The components of creation give the appearance of being opposed; an atmosphere of competitive hostility prevails among them. This is the law of brute force that eliminates the weak. The principle behind the law of brute force is that only the strong survive. Along comes the Torah and reveals the key to reconciling opposites: One can unite the tendency toward belonging with the tendency toward freedom, as the flame is united with the coal - as the content within the container. A collective is formed out of the tendency toward belonging. When belonging is detached from freedom, it entails a threat to the individual, which takes the form of a dictatorship by the collective, by an Orwellian Big Brother – by those forms of regime that grab the crown of idealism for themselves, and claim exclusive rights to absolute truth. They are all one and the same: Fascist, Nationalist or Socialist. A bolshevistic dictatorship hides behind the iron curtain, pulling the strings, just as it hides behind the velvet curtain of romantic liberalism, whether secular or religious, and just as it hides behind all other forms of government power that preen themselves with the feathers of the ideal of humanistic justice. Uniting freedom with belonging promises that individual freedom and individual rights will always remain the central issue: “Why was Adam created singly? In order that he would say: ‘For me the universe was created.” This centrality demands the best that an individual has to offer. It is not only a matter of recognizing the individual’s rights. It is a demand that the individual feel responsibility toward the universe and toward society. Such demands are emptied of realistic content, and lose any serious meaning, mainly as a result of the sense of helplessness an individual experiences when immersed within a social framework. Along comes belonging, as a framework for freedom, and demands, quite simply, that an individual feel responsibility toward another individual – not in the name of the abstract generality of the group, the actualization of which can turn into the most threatening dictatorship. But rather – “love your friend as yourself”. “All of Israel are guarantors for one another.” “You will do what is honest and good.” The individual is commanded – and responsible – to live by the dictum of lifnim mishurat hadin, “well within the line of the law” and to live by “you will do what is honest and good.” One is not commanded to redeem the universe, nor to hasten the messianic vision of the ultimate future. Rather, one is commanded to sanctify one’s own time and one’s own place, and to attach these to the Godly ideal. Here and now. According to one’s own ability. “It is not upon you to complete the task.” This point of encounter creates a trial that tests one’s faith in God. It is one of the branches of existential trial as a whole. It presents a challenge that is threatening and promising at the same time. This challenge follows and attaches to every self-respecting individual. The root of the personal experience of trial is a struggle in principle, taking place on the intellectual plane as well as the emotional plane, on the personal as well as the practical: How is one to coordinate the relationship between belonging and freedom? The thorn embedded in this experience of personal trial, is the tendency to detach and to separate these two opposed existential conditions from each other, in a way that polarizes them against each other, and even makes them appear to threaten each other’s existence: The tendency to be part of a group grants supreme value to the group, and makes of it a goal and a focus, eventually viewing the good of the group as being of higher priority than the good of the individual, who is perceived as being the mere means, whose duty it is to serve the interests of the group. From here to the large-scale sacrifice of great masses of “individuals” on the altar of the group – the way is short, in a way that must arouse genuine concern in the heart of every advocate of the group as a value in itself. From the opposite end, the egotistic individual entrenches himself within his own private good, and views the group as a means, as an instrument placed at his service, even if it be at the expense of all the other “individuals”. Others have no uniqueness in his eyes. They are all absorbed into the mass of the group; this is the excuse he gives himself for ignoring their right to exist, of which he robs them, while living at their expense. The Jewish ideal endows the individual with unique value, and endows the group with a different, specifically unique value – and never ignores the fact that both are mutually connected and mutually dependent. But there are some who are ambitious, and feel the desire for a confrontation with this so very complex problem, and take it on as an entirety, without yielding in the slightest, even a little, in any direction. This ambition is precisely “the opening that calls to the thief”. It places temptation before the individual and before society as well – the temptation to create reverse scales of priority, where one side is favored at the expense of the other. These harsh sounds reverberate through the air, the jarring sounds of the problems such confrontations have created. For example, “using punishment as a deterrent”, a policy that explicitly rejects the law’s obligation to consider the sinner’s personal situation. “The public’s right to know” as opposed to the individual’s right to privacy. Sacrificing the individual’s personal affairs on the altar of the group. All of these issues merit thorough treatment and clarification in the halacha, with no succumbing to vague compromise. The Jewish demands upon the individual, the Jewish expectation that an individual will feel responsibility toward the group, is derived from the individual’s personal ability to bear responsibility – and this cannot be defined by any objective law. Therefore, this sense of responsibility cannot be pushed aside “for the good of the group”, which is the present situation in secular law. The individual’s right to self-defense and to personal freedom can never be encroached upon by any public interest – in principle. Nor does it recoil in the face of that terrifying wall called “the ideal”, be it public, national or social, and no matter how historically significant: It has no right to touch one hair upon the head of the private individual. “Every man who is afraid, or weak-hearted, should go and return to his home.” The public too should not have to suffer because of a deviant individual. “And your camp shall be sacred.” Prohibitions against the prostitute, etc. indicate society’s right to be protected from the deviant individual. What do we expect from eye-witnesses, from "spies," if not a faithful report, clear and untainted by personal interests? The spies gave just such a report, did they not? All done according to the rules, according to the guidelines by which Moses, the great leader himself, had instructed them. What is their sin and what is their crime, that they so broke the spirit of the people? We are not asking what their intention was, but rather what there was in their report, for there is no evidence that they had any bad intention. They were losers rather than wicked men. It is not that they were punished for any particular crime. Rather, they had become entangled in the undergrowth of galut, of Diaspora. They had recoiled from the responsibility of it, from the burden of the duty of bestowing the land as heritage upon a people who have never tasted freedom. How would they lead this new nation in an entirely new form of government? The Talmudic sages attribute selfish intentions to them: They had become privy to the information that they would not be able to sustain their positions as leaders of the nation when that nation became one that dwelt securely on its own land. Better men would rule then, in their stead. The question that needs to be clarified is: What was inadequate about them? “And we seemed in our own eyes as grasshoppers.” This is a seeing from the outside – a seeing through the senses alone, rather than a seeing that bursts forth from the personality, from the unique quality of the seer. When one has a negative self-image, the whole world appears dark and hopeless. “And this is also how we appeared in their eyes.” They way a man measures himself - others will measure him accordingly. What is the weight of a Godly promise in their eyes? “Zero.” Efess. Therefore “the nation that dwells in the land is mighty.” “If only we could have died in the land of Egypt, or in this desert if only we could have died…” Life is a failure. Death is the redeemer that will save from the suffering of living. Better to die now. Better than the present was the past. Why did the measure of our suffering not overflow already in Egypt? Life has no meaning. A nihilistic view of the universe. Despair is the worst of sins. Despair conceals heresy incarnate. A universe without a Creator. “God has abandoned the land,” leaving it in the hands of the vicious. “Better the living dog than the dead lion.” Thus speaks an ego without a self. An enslaving belonging, detached from any freedom, from any of freedom’s meaningful content, from anything related to the Godly quality of the self. “Then Moses and Aaron fell upon their faces,” when they realized they were facing an emptiness that makes nothing of Godly quality, that empties itself – not only of faith, but of any logical reality capable of encompassing reality as a whole - capable only of absorbing what is standing directly before its physical eyes. “If God desires us, he will bring us to this Land. Only do not rebel against God, and you must not fear the people of the land, for they are our bread…and God is with us. Do not fear them! “And now, let God’s power increase.” Who is this? Who is making the power of the Omnipotent One, Creator of the universe – increase? Why, His partner, His ally – a human being strengthening his own faith. By his unlimited Godly power, man can contribute, can change the Divine decree. Everything required of him can be expressed in working to increase his own strength, working to strengthen his own innermost qualitative self.
All the rest, let him entrust to
God’s hands. “Who is strong? Whoever
conquers his urge.” The great war that a man is
commanded to wage is the war of the yetser,
the inner battle. Man’s ability to attach to God allows him to acquire the ability to identify with God, with God’s glory, with God’s Own capability – and to make use of these according to his own free choice. In the absence of such identifying, what is left of man? “Naught, for all is futility.” “For all the people who have seen My glory and My signs that I made in Egypt and in the desert, yet have tried Me these ten times,” and never showed any willingness to identify with My capability, will remain as dead corpses in this desert. The human capacity for judgement, when emptied of values, when emptied of the desire to identify with one’s own Godly origins, “bears evil slander against the Land” and indeed libels the entire human race, cutting off all purpose and all hope. One verdict applies in all such cases: Death in the desert of life. If there is no perpetual bond with one’s own Godly source, one is drawn into and devoured by the yawning abyss, the black hole from which there is no return. This perpetual bond is called awe/fear [of Heaven]. It is the sensation of a continuous need for and dependency upon the Creator of the universe, in moments of lack as in moments of luck. This awe does not deter, but rather creates a tightly solid bond, which ties the experience of existence that is created within the present moment to the Godly cause. Through this bond flows meaning, and it becomes – in the course of internalizing and absorbing – the identifying that is love. Its
structural features follow the onion model: The layer
that is external to the layer within it, nevertheless
has a layer that is external to it, and in relation to
that layer, it itself is innermost. So too the
innermost space of Godly, qualitative humanness, which
becomes an identification with, and an attachment to
the Creator: Awe becomes love. Individual love and group love. Individual love unfolds and grows within the private domain. Here the individual feels he is within his own private domain – it is here that his freedom finds expression, his own uniquely individual personality: This is what loves. This is what belongs to its supreme source. This is what identifies with its God on high. From on high, it comes down, descending to the people who work the fields. From the private domain on high, it descends to the public domain. The prohibitions of the Sabbath! One is forbidden to “uproot” from the private domain into the public domain. Uprooting – severing the roots. Suicide is forbidden; its penalty is death. Love grows out of personal involvement. Involvement’s prime expression is participation – bearing the yoke together. This is responsibility out of choice, out of love. Uprooting the private domain where a man knows his own place in the world, abandoning his place, wandering and roaming from one domain to another as if he were Cain – constitutes a betrayal of the role for the sake of which he was put into this world. And on the Sabbath yet! On the very day when man frees himself from a “Doing” view of things, and returns to the Holy of Holies of his private domain, returning to “Being”, as he examines his deeds and renews the power of his qualitative innermost self. Everything that happens to a person on the Sabbath is taking place in the control tower, in the essence of the essence. It is creating ripples – practical ramifications in the world of real facts, in “the world of doing”. From the world of Being, the message is broadcast and the order comes down, to “the world of doing”, to “the six days of action”. Here we may understand the critical importance of both the “keep” and the “remember” aspects of Shabat. The commandment of Shabat deals with the very roots of existence. From one side – it embraces eternal life. From the other, darker side – one who transgresses the prohibitions of the Sabbath is standing over death’s abyss. “The life force shall be utterly cut off.” “Its violators shall surely die.” Yet “those who love it have merited life.” Group love that does not emanate from the private domain is lacking in the essential ingredient. Group love that comes from uprooting the private domain - is a belonging that enslaves, erasing the personality of the individual; it is an enslavement to the blind, brute-force mechanism of the outside. The ma’apilim, those Jews in the desert who insisted on conquering the Land despite God’s decree that the conquest must now wait, for forty more years, were uprooting from the private domain, out of a mistaken understanding of the essential sin of the spies: The spies had made themselves belong by enslaving themselves to the public domain. Once enslaved, they were blinded by what their senses saw, for their senses had been emptied of inner quality. This error was not corrected by the ma’apilim. It only moved around, wandering and roaming, from one negative plane of brute force – loserism – to another, to a different enslavement to power, to direct brute force – also empty of quality, also empty of personal love for the Godly source. Amalek, with his shrewd tactics, overcame them quite easily once they had been emptied of their inner quality. “He happened upon you, on the road, and attacked your tail, all the weak ones behind you...And did not fear God.” It is not clear from the Scripture who did not fear God - apparently neither he nor you. Belonging without freedom – erases. This mitsva is meant to create a continuous, perpetual bond with the One Who dwells on high – with the supreme authority that unites belonging and freedm through the dimension of height, through authority. “The blue [of the zizit thread] resembles the sea, and the sea resembles the sky, and the sky resembles the Throne of Glory.” The sea – symbol of balance: Waves move from side to side but never deviate from their pattern, from the borders that the Creator has set for them. A force of nature, a symbol of stability, a product of continuous balance that never betrays as does man, who is commanded to protect the balance between inner and outer, between belonging and freedom, between quality and external brute force. Go, man – symbol of betrayal. Go to the sea as Jonah did, and be absorbed by the ocean’s balance, and come out renewed, your balance refreshed, and turn from the fathomless depths to your God, from the depths to the heights, but not to the outside, which surrounds you and closes you in on all sides, leaving you no other route to take than the route to height. To the sky, and from there to the Throne of Glory. From what has been said, it seems that the spies’ distortion was the result of “the main part having been left out of the book.” There was no identifying with the purpose of the mission. This lack of identification is perceived by the world as the “how” pushing aside the “why” and the “wherefore”, pushing aside love with all its values, pushing aside personal involvement. This empty attitude, the world adores, calling it objective, and worthy of scientific research. Yet this attitude would encounter total rejection by the human perceptions of the Torah, which would view it as the mother of all sin, the father of all distortion and hypocrisy, and a form empty of content. This necessarily becomes a distortion of the senses, when these are not organized by the personality, and are necessarily not coordinated with one another, and therefore contradict one another. What one’s eye sees, one’s heart rejects, and what one’s ear hears, deafens one’s sense of hearing. Fear is the father of all distortion, out of an absence of any content, whether positive or negative. Thus a report is presented whose details contradict reality; the Sabbath is violated.
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