Bread and Holiness

I was asked to take a short discussion by Rabbi Fohrman and Immanuel Shalev of AlephBeta for an interview for a position there. It was a discussion of Parshat Emor, and they asked for me to take the material and turn some or all of it into a transcript of something they would have for a video. This is the result. The first one is the final one I sent in, the next is the draft I worked harder on but realized it was more my own ideas than theirs. They were specifically looking for a faithful transcript to the material, not someone with their own ideas.

I want to explore a concept that seems hard to understand, even though we have been learning about it throughout the entire book of Vayikra. And that is the concept of holiness. What does it mean to be holy? How does one attain holiness? Does it just happen, an automatic process, or can I make something holy? This question permeates almost every section of Sefer Vayikra, yet it can still seem fuzzy to us even as we read about it. The way I want to go about answering this question is to look at bread. That’s right, bread. Because bread appears at least three times in this week’s parsha, Emor, in completely different contexts, and somehow, it is always in the context of holiness. Maybe this will lend us a clue as to what holiness really means.

Let’s start in the very beginning of Emor, where the Torah discusses the rules of the Kohanim, how they should act. Vayikra 21:6 says, “Kedoshim yehiyu le’lokehem,” “They should be holy to their God,” “velo yechalelu shem elokehem,” “and they shall not desecrate their God's Name.” Why is this so? “Ki et ishei hashem lechem elokehem hem makrivim,” “Because” and pay attention here, “they bring the offerings to God, the bread of God,” “veyahu kodesh,” and they will be holy.”

Look at this altogether strange application of the word “lechem”, bread. What does it mean for an animal sacrifice to be the “bread of God?” And what does it mean when it’s applied to God? Does God need bread?

And the bread of God is mentioned as the reason for why the Kohanim are holy, with the all-important word, “ki”, because. They are holy and can’t profane God’s name, why? Because they offer the lechem. What kind of cause and effect is happening here between holiness and bread? We start getting the message that bread has a spiritual meaning, but we still don’t know what it is.

This relationship between bread and holiness comes up again and again with the Kohanim. Just two pesukim later, in Vayikra 21:8, there is another command toward the holiness of the Kohanim. “Vekidashto”, “You shall consider him holy,” we are told. Why is that? “Ki et lechem elokecha hu makriv,” “because he offers the bread of God.”

And the converse is also mentioned. What about a Kohen who is not considered part of Temple holiness because of some major blemish? The Torah emphasizes this in 21:17, “Daber el-Aharon lemor” “Speak to Aaron saying,” “Ish mizar'acha ledorotam asher yihyeh vo mum,” “A man of your lineage for generations, if he has a blemish,” “lo yikrav lehakriv lechem Elohav,” he shall not offer the bread of God.” It’s almost as if the Torah goes out of its way to describe the complete picture of holiness with bread. If you serve in the Temple, the Bet Hamikdash, you are holy because you offer the “bread of God.” If you don’t serve, you aren’t holy, and therefore the consequence of that is that you can’t offer the bread of God.

So again, we have to ask, what is the meaning of bread when we look at it in this context? How does it apply to holiness, and how does it apply to God?

As we mentioned, there are at least three different contexts in Emor referring to bread. We saw one, but another one that it comes up is regarding the Moadim, the holidays of Judaism. So, we see bread where you might expect it, that on Pesach you shall eat matzah instead of leavened bread. Vayikra 23:6 says, “UvaChamisha asar yom la Chodesh haze,” “And on the 15th day of this month,” “Chag ha Matzot laHashem,” “shall be a festival of Matzah to God”, “Shivat yamim Matzot tochelu,” “seven day you shall eat matzah.” So you are forbidden from regular bread, and this is emphasized by a few pesukim later, when we are told we cannot eat bread again until the Omer is brought, “Velechem vekali vecharmel lo tochlu,” “And bread and parched grain and fresh grain,” “ad-etsem hayom hazeh ad havi'achem et-korban Elokechem,” “ until this very day, until you bring your God's sacrifice.” And then about 50 days later, on Shavuot, we are told to bring bread as a literal sacrifice - “Mimoshvoteychem tavi'u lechem,” “From your dwelling places you shall bring bread…” Lastly, though not specifically about bread, we are told about Yom Kippur and fasting on that day, keeping from eating anything at all - “Shabbat shabbaton hu lachem,” “It should be a day of rest for you,” “ve’anitem et nafshotechem,” “and your shall afflict yourselves” and not eat on Yom Kippur.

Let’s also focus on the way these holidays are all introduced. Vayikra 23:2, “Speak to the children of Israel and say to them: God’s holidays that you shall designate as holy occasions. These are My holidays.” “Mikraei kodesh,” these holidays are to be designated as holy. Why do we keep seeing holiness and bread so intertwined in this picture?

The last place of these three contexts of bread is the Showbread, which appears in Parshat Emor in the context of the Shulchan, the table in the Bet Hamikdash which would this bread. There, in Vayikra 24:5-6, we are told, “Velakachta solet ve'afita otah shteym esreh chalot,” “And you shall take fine flour and bake it [into] twelve loaves.” “Vesamta otam shtayim ma'arachot shesh hama'arachet al hashulchan hatahor lifney Hashem,” You shall place them in two stacks, six in each stack, upon the pure table, before God.” In verse 8, we are told, “Beyom haShabat beyom haShabat ya'archenu lifney Hashem tamid me'et beney-Yisra'el berit olam,” “Each and every Sabbath day, he shall set it up before God tamid, continuously, from the children of Israel an eternal covenant.”

As I’m sure you are catching, once again there is bread, and there is holiness, and the two seem to be integral to each other.

Let’s start explaining this by categorizing these three contexts of bread. The first is where the Kohanim are made holy, somehow through bread. The second is where days are made holy, and bread is central to that process as well. And lastly, the Showbread is presented, and this is holy as well, “for it is the holy of holies to him.” In short, we have the holiness of people, the holiness of time, and the holiness of place, in this parsha. And all of it, mysteriously, is centered around bread.

So let’s think about bread in these contexts. In all these places, who is the bread maker, and who is the bread consumer? At the beginning of the parsha, with the kohanim, who is the maker of the “bread”, so to speak? If you think about it, it’s God, ultimately, who made the animals, who is the Creator of heaven and earth. And at the end of the process, who consumes them? It’s the lechem hashem because God is described as the consumer of that bread. But something happens in the middle. The kohanim are creators, too. They breed the animals, they feed them, nurture them, prepare them as sacrifices. Ultimately, they take raw materials from God, domesticate them and form them, and then turn them back to God. In a certain sense, they transform regular animals, living beings, into God-centered beings of holiness.

This is the same for actual bread, with the Showbread and the Table in the Bet Hamikdash. Who makes the bread? Again, ultimately, the grain comes from God. But who grinds the flour? Who adds the water? Who bakes it? That’s people, the kohanim. And then it is placed “lifnei hashem”, before God. The bread of God is still presented to God, but is transformed through the process of humans. Now it is not just domestication of animals, but domestication of crops, of land, of place.

Can you see where I’m going with this? When we look at the Moadim, we find this paradigm of creation and domestication, but not with people and animals, not with agriculture and land, but with time. The holiness of time. Who is the time creator? Obviously that is God. How do we spend the time of Shabbat and the Moadim? God-focused. But in what way is that done? We domesticate it. We control it. We “call it holy,” we decide what to do at certain times and days. Some people say time is money, but the Torah tells us that time is bread. Like bread, time is a creation that we are allowed to control, and through this we make holy days toward God. This is what holiness is all about. The mundane, the recreation of the not holy, and making it holy.

There is a partnership between God and man. God says, here is the raw material, here is the animal, the  land, the day. What will you do with it? Will you see Me in the everyday creation? How will you domesticate and transmute it toward holiness?

This is the beauty of the blessing we make on bread, “hamotzi lechem min haaretz,” “who brings forth bread from the ground.” Did God really bring bread from the ground? Wheat is what came from the ground! God might have been the one who made wheat grow, but aren’t we the ones who took the wheat, cut it down, ground it up, and on and on the processes of making bread, and eventually baked and eaten? The beautiful lesson of this blessing is that before we eat bread, we always remember that it is truly God who made the bread. We might have been the middleman, but it was all really God.

Bread, therefore, is the ultimate euphemism for the taking of raw creation and processing it toward God. People can be holy because they have a recognition of their true place as the processors of God’s creation. Places can be holy because of the recognition that they are used for that purpose. And time can be holy because of the recognition we have on those days of our status as transmuters of the divine creation.

Why bread, in particular? If you think about it, bread is the ultimate symbol of us being creative. Consider this: it is really hard to imagine how bread was invented. Who thought to take an inedible stalk, grind it up, add water, mix, cook it with fire, and then eat it? It’s an incredibly complex creation, and man is the only one to make this creation. Yet, the Torah is telling us to attribute it to God on an ultimate level. And you know what that is? That is true holiness. Holiness is a recognition and transformation of the mundane to the divine. Holiness is a mindset that has us act in a way of recognition to God.

This is what it means for a sacrifice to be the “bread of God.” God of course doesn’t eat bread. But what God wants from us is to recognize how we are the middlemen to His creation. That our own food, our own bread, is really “the bread of God.” Our creative task is to make the bread, but keeping to the realization that making is not the same as ultimately creating. Kohanim are holy because they are those closest to recognizing this, every day. They serve in the Bet Hamikdash, they are tuned into God all the time, and they are tasked with doing the transformation of raw to refined, from bred to bread.

We don’t often think of holiness in a practical way. The Torah is holy, the Temple is holy, but how can we be holy? The answer we find, from bread in this week’s parsha, is within a mindset of holiness that all creation can be transformed - by us - to God-created and God-consumed.

Interestingly, if we take this bread concept a step further, we find that there is a deeper meaning to the holidays. The holidays ask us to eat bread or not eat (in the case of Yom Kippur), but not to prepare bread - on those days, we step back from the process. The creative act, melacha, which is forbidden on holidays and Shabbat, is put on pause, so that we can look and say, that is God’s creation, not my own. And thus, we find in the parsha of the Moadim several references to sacrificing to God before we can eat lechem, bread. The way we can think of this is that if we are meant to recognize the fact that food is not what we create on our own, but in partnership with God, what is the thing you do with a partner? You split the proceeds. So if I recognize that God provides for me to eat, maybe the holidays are a way for me to provide for God to eat, in a manner of speaking, by offering sacrifices, which only reinforces the concept that we are partners with God in creation.

So when we look at Emor, at face value, you have a parsha that talks about Kohanim and how they’re holy, a parsha that talks about holidays, a parsha about the Lechem Hapanim. But underneath all of this, there is an underlying theme of a partnership between God and man that, at least in this parsha, centers around food. Food is what man brings to bear, but turns toward God, in a sense sharing a meal with God. After all, if you think about it, there’s nothing worse than two partners in a project, that when they finish the product, one of them thinks they did it all by themselves. There is nothing worse for a relationship than that. So we partner with God in a way, we take the created raw aspects of the world, and process them. That is our duty to be holy.

What an empowering concept! We are tasked by God to find holiness in the world, and in ourselves. We can become holy. Everything around us can become holy. Time itself is a holy matter. And it happens through us - through how we think about the world, and how we act in it. We are the bread-bakers of a created world, and that realization and recognition is true holiness.

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Many Jews around the world sing special songs on Shabbat, called zemirot. Written by many of our great rabbis, they are full to bursting with allusions to Torah texts and concepts, and it is so rewarding to pay attention to them. One particular zemer has always mystified me, as it puts together two important Torah ideas that we don’t normally associate with each other.

What if I were to ask you, why shouldn’t a Jew fast on Shabbat (or on Yom Tov, a holiday)? Halacha doesn’t like when Jews fast on Shabbat, it so rarely is allowed, but why should this be so? How I would think to answer this question is that Shabbat is for us to enjoy - it is to be holy and enjoyable, and it’s pretty hard to accomplish that when we fast. So central are enjoyment and relaxation to Shabbat that we are forbidden from preventing ourselves from them. We have to feast, we have to eat, that is the Jewish way of resting and celebrating, and so we can’t fast.

But one Zemer seems to say that this is not the reason. The Zemer is called, “Ki Eshmera Shabbat,” written by Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra in the 1100’s, and it is all about the importance of Shabbat. One stanza states:

“Resham bedat hakel, chok el seganav” - “It is written in divine law (the Torah), a decree to His appointed ones (the priests),”

“Bo laaroch lechem panim befanav” - “That on it (Shabbat) they should have the showbread set before Him”

“Al Ken lehitanot bo al pi nevonav” - “Therefore, to fast on it because of what the wise men say [i.e. a rabbinic fast]”

“Assur, lvad myom kippur avoni” - “It is forbidden to do so, except on the day my sins are atoned, Yom Kippur.”

So there you have it, the reason one cannot fast on Shabbat normally, even when there are ordained fasts by the rabbis that fall out on Shabbat, is, somehow, because of the Lechem Hapanim, the Showbread. What did Rabbi Ibn Ezra mean by this?

This pushes us to understand, what in fact is the Showbread? And once we understand that, what is its connection with Shabbat and not fasting on it? And, while we’re at it, why is Yom Kippur an exception to this rule?

So let’s start with the Showbread. The Showbread appears in Parshat Emor in the context of the Shulchan, the table in the Bet Hamikdash which would this bread. There, in Vayikra 24:5-6, we are told, “And you shall take fine flour and bake it [into] twelve loaves… You shall place them in two stacks, six in each stack, upon the pure table, before God.” In pasuk chet, we are told, “Each and every Sabbath day, he shall set it up before God tamid, continuously, from the children of Israel an eternal covenant.” Apparently, this would not even go to God. Pasuk tet tells us, the Priests, the Kohanim, would eat it, “And it shall belong to Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place.”

We can see clearly that Shabbat and the Showbread are connected, that the Showbread has to be set “tamid” on Shabbat. And we are starting to get a picture of eating and the Showbread, since the Kohanim got to eat the Showbread after it was replaced. But all this remains a mystery. What is the meaning of these connections?

What I want to do to answer these questions is to look at other contexts of bread in Emor. Maybe they can tell us more about what bread is, why it’s important to us. Interestingly, there are actually at least two more contexts in which bread appears, all in Emor. They seem to be very different topics, yet I think we will see they are in fact quite related to each other.

Let’s start by looking at the topic right before the description of the Showbread, and that is the Moadim, the holidays. Bread shows up where we might expect it - on Pesach we are commanded to only eat Matzah, so regular bread is forbidden there. Vayikra 23:5-6 states, “In the first month, on the fourteenth of the month, in the afternoon, [you shall sacrifice] the Passover offering to God. And on the fifteenth day of that month is the Festival of Matzah to God; you shall eat matzah for a seven day period.” So too, in the context of Shavuot, we are told to bring a literal bread sacrifice, Vayikra 23:17 “From your dwelling places you shall bring bread…” Lastly, though not specifically about bread, we are told about Yom Kippur and fasting on that day. And, important for us, is the way these holidays are all introduced. Vayikra 23:2, “Speak to the children of Israel and say to them: God’s holidays that you shall designate as holy occasions. These are My holidays.” “Mikraei kodesh,” these holidays are to be designated as holy. But we have to ask ourselves, if we are being commanded to declare certain days holy, how do we do that? How do you declare days holy things? I get an object, the Torah, that’s holy, that’s divine. But how does time become holy? Do I just declare to the sky, make this day holy, and boom, it’s holy? And why is bread seemingly so important to this picture?

And then we find bread way at the beginning of the Parsha, in a place where we might not expect it. The Parsha begins by describing all sorts of purity laws for the Priests, the Kohanim, and several times it tells us a reason why they have to observe these laws. For instance, Vayikra 21:6 says, “They shall be holy to their God, and they shall not desecrate their God's Name,” - why is this so? It continues, “because they are the ones who offer up the sacrifices of God, which is the lechem, the bread, of God, so they shall be holy.”

So it seems that the offerings to God are called, “the bread of God.” And this is very interesting. This is emphasized over and over. Two pesukim later, it says, “You shall make him holy, because he offers up the lechem of God.” In Vayikra 21:21, we find the converse, that a kohen with a blemish, who cannot perform in the Bet Hamikdash, cannot offer “God’s lechem.”

It seems as if every time the word “holy” is used, you have to have bread involved. The kohanim are holy, and therefore offer “God’s bread.” The Shabbat is holy, it must have the Showbread. Holidays are holy, and therefore there is some interaction with bread and sometimes food in general.

Let’s think about this a different way. It almost seems as if there is this yin and yang with respect to bread in this week’s parsha, mirror images. If you think about it, there are two main processes in bread. There’s the creation of it, and there is the eating of it. So look at the Showbread. Who makes the bread? Who grinds the flour? Who adds the water? Who bakes it? That’s people, the kohanim. And you know what? Who eats the bread? The kohanim. So it’s almost as if bread, both processes, are emphasized as coming from people. Yet it is done in the Bet Hamikdash, which emphasizes God. It is done on Shabbat, presented, “lifnei hashem”, before God. So its purpose is for God, yet its of completely human making and eating?

And we have the converse of this. When we look at the first mentioning of bread in the Parsha, regarding the Kohanim being holy, who makes the bread then? Well, it’s the “bread of God” - it refers to an animal sacrifice, yet is called bread. So let’s ask the same questions we had for bread. Who made these animals? God did, that’s all of creation. Who eats the animal? It becomes a sacrifice to God, so God, so to speak, partakes in this food. Who raised the animal, fed the animal, prepared it for the offering? Well, that’s the kohen.

It’s an inverse relationship occurring here, if you think about it. For the Showbread, it is the kohanim who produce it, who eat it, yet the middle stage, its

Cause for Argument in the Thought of Maimonides

The third division are the laws that they extrapolated by the ways of reasoning and a disagreement about them occurred, as we have mentioned – and the law was decided in them according to the majority. And this happens, when the investigation is given to divergence. And because of this, they say (Yevamot 76b), "If it is a [transmitted] law, we will accept it; but if it is a law [that is deduced], there is a rebuttal." 

2 Rather the disagreement and the investigation occurred about something that a [transmitted] law was not heard. And you will find in all of the Talmud that they are examining the basis of the reasoning that causes the disagreement between the disputants; and [so] they say, "About what do they differ," or "What is the basis of Rabbi x," or "What is [the difference] between them?" 

3 And they bring it about this matter in most places; and they mention the basis that causes the disagreement – for example, that they will say, "Rabbi x holds from claim z, and y holds from claim a," and similar to it. 

4 But one who would think that the laws about which they disagree are likewise transmitted from the mouth of Moshe and they think that a disagreement occurred by way of a mistake in the laws or because one of them received the true transmission and the other made a mistake in his transmission or he forgot or he did not hear from his teacher everything he was supposed to hear – and bring [as] a proof about this, that which they said (Sanhedrin 88b), "From when the students of Shammai and Hillel – who did not serve all that was required of them – multiplied, disagreement grew in Israel and the Torah was made to be like two Torahs"; this thing is very repugnant. 

5 And these are the words of one who has no intellect and does not have the fundamental principles in his hand and who disfigures the people from which the commandments were transmitted; and all of this is emptiness and naught. And what brought him to believe this faulty belief is his lack of cognition of the words of the sages that are found in the Talmud. As they found that all of the explanation that is transmitted from the mouth of Moshe is true, but they did not [take cognizance] of the difference between the transmitted fundamentals and the topical extensions that [the sages] extrapolated by investigation. 

6 But [as for] you, a doubt should not enter your heart [about] the disagreement of the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel; when they said (Berakhot 51b Chapter 8), "We clean the room, and afterward rinse the hands" or "we rinse the hands, and afterward clean the room" – [that] you think that [the cause of this argument is that] one of these two things was not transmitted from the mouth of Moshe from Sinai. 

7 But [rather] the basis that causes them to disagree is what is mentioned in the Talmud (Berakhot 52b); that one of them forbids being served by an ignorant person and the other permits [it]. And so [too, with] all that is similar to these disagreements, that are the elaborations of elaborations. 

8 Rather, the matter of that which they said, "From when the students of Shammai and Hillel – who did not serve all that was required of them – multiplied, disagreement grew in Israel," is evident; in that when two people are of equal intellect and investigation and knowledge of the fundamentals from which reasonings extrapolate, no disagreement will occur in their reasonings in any way. And if it does occur, it will be minimal; as it is only found that Shammai and Hillel disagreed about isolated laws. 

9 And that is because the thoughts of the two of them were very close – one to the other – in everything that they extrapolated by way of reasoning. And, likewise, the fundamentals that were given to this one, were like the fundamentals given to that one. 

10 But when the diligence of the students towards wisdom slackened and their reasoning weakened – in comparison to the reasoning of Hillel and Shammai – disagreement occurred among them in the investigation of many things; as the reasoning of each and every one of them was according to his intellect and to what he had in hand of the fundamentals. 

11 And nonetheless, there is nothing to be ashamed about; as we cannot force two sages that debate in investigation, to debate according to the intellect of Yehoshua and Pinchas. And, likewise, we have no doubt about that which they debated [just] because they are not like Shammai and Hillel or like those before them; as the Holy One, blessed be He, did not command His service in this manner. 

12 But [rather] He commanded us to listen to the sages of the generation, as it is stated (Deuteronomy 17:9), "to the judge that will be in those days." 

13 And it is through these ways that disagreement occurred; not because they erred in the laws, and one is saying truth and the other is saying falsehood. And how evident is this matter to all that give cognizance to it! And how precious and great is this fundamental principle about the commandments!

Toward the beginning of Maimonides' introduction to the Mishnah, he vehemently protests the idea that machloket Chazal are caused by one or both of the sides forgetting the original teaching. If one believes this, Maimonides states, one necessarily believes one side is absolutely right and the other is absolutely wrong. He says this is a terrible insult to Chazal, not only that they couldn't maintain the tradition accurately, but that one side in those machloket were wrong about the halacha (both of which would impact us in a negative way in our understanding of the integrity and authority of the halachic system).

Part of the reason he believes this to be inaccurate is that the machloket is never about fundamental aspects of halacha, but things stemming from various minutiae of halacha. If so, they successfully maintained the main points, and the rest was left for them to decide in each generation.

This is important to Maimonides, that Chazal maintained the fundamental principles of the halachic system. But what does Maimonides believe is the real reason machloket arose? He says, they weren't as good at logical deduction as their ancestors. He says that if everyone had the same principles, and the same ability at logic, no machloket would ever arrive, since they would conclude the exact same thing. Maimonides seems to believe there would be no differences of opinion, there would just be right and wrong. That may remind us of what Maimonides believes the sin of Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden. We will copy Pines' translation of Chapter 2 of the Guide:

Years ago a learned man propounded as a challenge to me a curious objection. It behooves us now to consider this objection and our reply invalidating it. However, before mentioning this objection and its invalidation, I shall make the following statement. Every Hebrew knew that the term Elohim is equivocal, designating the deity, the angels, and the rulers governing the cities. Onqelos the Proselyte, peace be on him, has made it clear, and I his clarification is correct, that in the dictum of Scripture, And ye shall be as Elohim, knowing good and evil, the last sense is intended. For he has translated: And ye shall be as rulers. 

After thus having set forth the equivocality of this term, we shall begin to expound the objection. This is what the objector said: It is manifest from the clear sense of the biblical text that the primary purpose with regard to man was that he should be, as the other animals are, devoid of intellect, of thought, and of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil. However, when he disobeyed, his disobedience procured him as its necessary consequence the great perfection peculiar to man, namely, his being endowed with the capacity that exists in us to make this distinction. Now this capacity is the noblest of the characteristics existing in us; it is in virtue of it that we are constituted as substances. Now it is a thing to be wondered at that man's punishment for his disobedience should consist in his being granted a perfection that he did not possess before, namely, the intellect. This is like the story told by somebody that a certain man from among the people disobeyed and committed great crimes, and in consequence was made to undergo a metamorphosis, becoming a star in heaven. This was the intent and the meaning of the objection, though it was not textually as we have put it. 

Hear now the intent of our reply. We said: O you who engage in theoretical speculation using the first notions that may occur to you and come to your mind and who consider withal that you understand a book that is the guide of the first and the last men while glancing through it as you would glance through a historical work or a piece of poetry-when, in some of your hours of leisure, you leave off drinking and copulating: collect yourself and reflect, for things are not as you thought following the first notion that occurred to you, but rather as is made clear through reflection upon the following speech. For the intellect that God made overflow unto man and that is the latter's ultimate perfection, was that which Adam had been provided with before he disobeyed. It was because of this that it was said of him that he was created in the image of God and in His likeness. It was likewise on account of it that he was addressed by God and given commandments, as it says: And the Lord I God commanded, and so on. For commandments are not given to beasts and beings devoid of intellect. 

Through the intellect one distinguishes between truth and falsehood, and that was found in [Adam] in its perfection and integrity. Fine and bad, on the other hand, belong to the things generally accepted as known, not to those cognized by the intellect. 

For one does not say: it is fine that heaven is spherical, and it is bad that the earth is flat; rather one says true and false with regard to these assertions. Similarly one expresses in our language the notions of truth and falsehood by means of the terms emeth and sheqer, and those of fine and bad by means of the terms tov and ra. 

Now man in virtue of his intellect knows truth from falsehood; and this holds good for all intelligible things. Accordingly when man was in his most perfect and excellent state, in accordance with his inborn disposition and possessed of his intellectual cognitions - because of which it is said of him: Thou hast made him but little lower than Elohim - he had no faculty that was engaged in any way in the consideration of generally accepted things, and he did not apprehend them. So among these generally accepted things even that which is most manifestly bad, namely, uncovering the genitals, was not bad according to him, and he did not apprehend that it was bad. However, when he disobeyed and inclined toward his desires of the imagination and the pleasures of his corporeal senses - inasmuch as it is said: that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes - he was punished by being deprived of that intellectual apprehension. He therefore disobeyed the commandment that was imposed upon him on account of his intellect and, becoming endowed with the faculty of apprehending generally accepted things, he became absorbed in judging things to be bad or fine. Then he knew how great his loss was, what he had been deprived of, and upon what a state he had entered. Hence it is said: And ye shall be like Elohim knowing good and evil; and not: knowing the false and the true, or apprehending the false and the true. With regard to what is of necessity, there is no good and evil at all, but only the false and the true. 

Reflect on the dictum: And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. It is not said: And the eyes of them both were opened, and they saw. For what was seen previously was exactly that which was seen afterwards. There had been no membrane over the eye that was now removed, but rather he entered upon another state in which he considered as bad things that he had not seen in that light before. Know moreover that this expression, I mean, to open, refers only to uncovering mental vision and in no respect is applied to the circumstance that the sense of sight has been newly acquired. Thus: And God opened her eyes; Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened; Opening the ears, he heareth not; a verse that is analogous to its dictum, That have eyes to see and see not. 

Now concerning its dictum with regard to Adam - He changes his face and Thou sendest him forth - the interpretation and explanation of the verse are as follows. When the direction toward which man tended changed, he was driven forth. For panim is a term deriving from the verb panoh [to turn], since man turns his face toward the thing he wishes to take as his objective. The verse states accordingly that when man changed the direction toward which he tended and took as his objective the very thing a previous commandment had bidden him not to aim at, he was driven out of the Garden Eden. This was the punishment corresponding to his disobedience; it was measure for measure. He had been given license to eat good things and to enjoy ease and tranquility. When, however, as we have said, he became greedy, followed his pleasures and his imaginings, and ate what he had been forbidden to eat, he was deprived of everything and had to eat the meanest kinds of food, which he had not used as aliment before - and this only after toil and labor. As it says: Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and so on; In the sweat of thy brow, and so on. And it explains and says: And the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground. And God reduced him, with respect to his food and most of his circumstances, to the level of the beast. It says accordingly: And thou shalt eat the grass of the field. And it also says in explanation of this story: Adam, unable to dwell in dignity, is like the beasts that speak not. Praise be to the Master of the will whose aims and wisdom cannot be apprehended! 

According to this change in man, previous what is true and false were known to man. Now, with the sin, he became aware of "good" and "bad", which are accepted norms, but nothing to do with the intellect.

Is this the same as what Maimonides meant in his Introduction to the Mishnah? It would seem to be a bit different. Machloket Chazal were not caused by mixing in norms and pleasures, but because their ability to do logic differed from person to person, and wasn't as perfect as it used to be. But the cause for that could certainly be this...

The point of this is that Maimonides' assumption in the Introduction to the Mishnah seems to be that logic can only land in one direction - there are no other axioms or paradigms that would allow two different people from arriving in two directions using the same intellectual capacity.

Also, the Mishneh Torah Mamrim 1:3-4:

There can never be any difference of opinion with regard to matters received through the Oral Tradition. Whenever there arises a difference of opinion with regard to a matter that shows that it was not received in the tradition from Moses our teacher.

The following principles apply with regard to matters derived through logical analysis. If the entire body of the Supreme Sanhedrin agrees with regard to them, their consent is binding. If there is a difference of opinion, we follow the majority and decide the matter according to the majority. Similarly, with regard to the decrees, edicts, and customs, if a portion of the judges perceived that it was necessary to issue a decree, institute an edict, or establish a custom for the people, and a portion perceived that it is not appropriate to issue this decree, institute this edict, or establish this custom, the judges should debate the matter back and forth. Afterwards, a vote is called, and we follow the majority and execute the matter according to the decision of the majority.

When the Supreme Sanhedrin was in session, there was never any prolonged differences of opinion among the Jewish people. Instead, if a doubt arose in a Jew's mind over any law, he would inquire of the court in his city. If not, the questioner and that court - or its agents - ascend to Jerusalem and ask the court which holds sessions on the Temple Mount. If they know, they will reply to him, if they do not know, everyone comes to the court that holds sessions at the entrance to the Temple Courtyard. If they know, they will reply to him, if they do not know, everyone comes to the Chamber of Hewn Stone, to the Supreme Sanhedrin, and presents the question. If the matter that was unresolved by all the others was known to the Supreme Sanhedrin - either as part of the Oral Tradition or because of its derivation through the principles of exegesis - they relate the decision immediately. If, however, the decision was unclear to the Supreme Sanhedrin, they deliberate about the matter at that time and debate it back and forth until they reach a uniform decision, or until a vote is taken. In such a situation, they follow the majority and then tell all the questioners: "This is the halachah." The questioners then all depart.

After the Supreme Sanhedrin was nullified, differences of opinion multiplied among the Jewish people. One would rule an article is impure and support his ruling with a rationale and another would rule that it is pure and support his ruling with a rationale. This one would rule an article is forbidden and this would rule that it is permitted.

However, in the Guide, this seems to be different. Let us quote Maimonides directly on this, in his Guide for the Perplexed, 1:31:

Alexander of Aphrodisias says that there are three causes of disagreement about things. 

One of them is love of domination and love of strife, both of which turn man aside from the apprehension of truth as it is. 

The second cause is the subtlety and the obscurity of the object of apprehension in itself and the difficulty of apprehending it. 

And the third cause is the ignorance of him who apprehends and his inability to grasp things that it is possible to apprehend. That is what Alexander mentioned. 

However, in our times there is a fourth cause that he did not mention because it did not exist among them. It is habit and upbringing. For man has in his nature a love of, and an inclination for, that to which he is habituated. 

Thus you can see that the people of the desert - notwithstanding the disorderliness of their life, the lack of pleasures, and the scarcity of food - dislike the towns, do not hanker after their pleasures, and prefer the bad circumstances to which they are accustomed to good ones to which they are not accustomed. Their souls accordingly would find no repose in living in palaces, in wearing silk clothes, and in the enjoyment of baths, ointments, and perfumes. 

In a similar way, man has love for, and the wish to defend, opinions to which he is habituated and in which he has been brought up and has a feeling of repulsion for opinions other than those. For this reason also man is blind to the apprehension of the true realities and inclines toward the things to which he is habituated. This happened to the multitude with regard to the belief in His corporeality and many other metaphysical subjects as we shall make clear. All this is due to people being habituated to, and brought up on, texts that it is an established usage to think highly of and to regard as true and whose external meaning is indicative of the corporeality of God and of other imaginings with no truth in them, for these have been set forth as parables and riddles. This is so for reasons I that I shall mention further on. 

Do not think that what we have said with regard to the insufficiency of the human intellect and its having a limit at which it stops is a statement made in order to conform to Law. For it is something that has already been said and truly grasped by the philosophers without their having concern for a particular doctrine or opinion. And it is a true thing that cannot be doubted except by an individual ignorant of what has already been demonstrated.

He states here his intention is not to express that people should follow the law because of his explanation for how machloket started. Specifically, that it is insufficiency of the human intellect. Why? Because that is not his motivation, as others have come up with this without trying to defend Judaism or any other religious system. His point, at least at this point, is to show why people believe in incorrect beliefs and refuse to believe the truth. I bet Maimonides was getting, "If that's true, why doesn't anybody agree with you in the Jewish community?" And I bet he was answering, because they're stupid and stuck in their own ways.

Narboni on this passage suggests that Maamad Har Sinai, and God's placing a gevul, is a metaphor for the limits of the intellect, and that certain things are truly beyond one's intellect. More interestingly for us, he thinks that these four causes for Machloket are represented by the four who went to Pardes. The only one he explains really (although he mentions that he explains this fully elsewhere, maybe the introduction?) is Elisha ben Avuya, who he says (quoting the gemara) that "He did not have mercy on his Creator," meaning that he did not recognize his intellectual limits.

Shem Tov says the same thing, but breaks it up differently. Elisha is the first cause, love for power. Akiva is represented by the second cause, since he understood the limits of the human mind to perceive certain things by the nature of the thing, which is why he entered and exited peacefully. The third cause, inability of the person himself, is represented by "the one" who glanced and died, alluding to Ben Azzai (without saying it outright). He doesn't say explicitly who is represented by the last one, Maimonides' own, probably for two reasons. Firstly, it makes no sense, since Maimonides is referring to a new problem in his own time, which presumably didn't apply to Chazal's time. Secondly, because the fourth problem is that people are used to what they're used to, and therefore people are used to corporeality when it comes to God, and that's why they refuse to listen to reason. And to say that about Ben Zoma, and why he went insane, is difficult to say out loud. But, I do think it is funny to reach this metaphor's conclusion, that those who believe the corporeality of God, and other mistakes, are considered insane according to this.

The Derech Emunah on the Haggadah tries to line it up with the Four Sons of the Haggadah - the Rasha wants power, the Chacham understands what can't be understood easily, the Tam doesn't have the ability to understand, and the She'eino yodea lish'ol is stuck in his background and can't leave it.

A Close Reading of Pirkei Avot 5:7

The text goes:

שבעה דברים בגולם ושבעה בחכם.

חכם אינו מדבר בפני מי שהוא גדול ממנו בחכמה ובמנין, ואינו נכנס לתוך דברי חברו, ואינו נבהל להשיב, שואל כענין ומשיב כהלכה, ואומר על ראשון ראשון ועל אחרון אחרון, ועל מה שלא שמע, אומר 'לא שמעתי', ומודה על האמת.

וחלופיהן בגולם.

There are seven things of a Golem, and seven of a wise man. 

A wise man does not speak before one who is greater than him in wisdom or age. He does not interrupt his fellow's words. He does not hasten to answer. His questions are on the subject and his answers to the point. He responds to first things first and to latter things later. Concerning what he did not hear, he says "I did not hear." He concedes to the truth. 

Of the Golem, the reverse of them is so.

If I were to break up the things here, I would do it as two groups of three, and the last one as a capstone to them all. I also detect a hierarchy of knowledge that becomes important.

1. A wise man does not speak before one who is greater than him in wisdom or age. 

                           2. He does not interrupt his fellow's words. 

                                                 3. He does not hasten to answer. 

                                                 

                                                 4. He asks on topic and he answers accurately.

                           5. He responds to first things first and to latter things later. 

6. Concerning what he did not hear, he says "I did not hear." 

                                                   

                                               7. He concedes to the truth. 

There is a reverse hierarchy of knowledge present here. The lesson is that one can be a wise person, whether they have specific knowledge or not, by the way they act in learning.

When a person knows little, when there are people who know more than him, he should listen and learn, and not speak. Further, even if he is among equal-level colleagues, he should not interrupt so that he can learn from friends. And lastly, even if he knows a lot, and can answer questions, he should pause and consider what he would be teaching the person who asked, and how best to answer. He might learn something through his own process, since the person's very question might sharpen his knowledge.

So: 1 is when he is lesser, he must do what he can to learn from higher ups. 2 is when he is equal, he must do what he can to learn from his fellow. And 3 is when he is the higher up, and he should do what he can to even learn from that situation where someone is subservient to him in knowledge.

All three of these are to be silent, for as Pirkei Avot repeats again and again, silence causes wisdom. One can only learn if they listen first. Even when answering a question, one should refrain from speaking before the right time.

The next three criteria start with a person being higher up, and this still requires this process of patient understanding. When he knows everything, he should ask and answer accurately. If he doesn't know everything, but wants have a wise conversation with an equal, he should put them in the appropriate order. And if he doesn't know it, he should say he doesn't know instead of trying to pretend he does.

So now we have the reverse order hierarchy. 4 is when he is high up, he must do what he can to teach others and learn things well. 5 is when he is equal level, he must speak in the right order to understand the discussion at hand. 6 is when he is lesser, and doesn't know, he should say he hasn't heard, and make himself open to hearing.

Again, all three of these are not of silence, but of what to say. How to speak so as to result in wisdom. The listening, and the speaking, mirror each other.

All of this is in the service of admitting the truth when others say it. Whether they are higher up, equal level, or lesser level to you, admit the truth, no matter the source. Artscroll's siddur commentary says that this is when one makes an error, he should admit his mistake. But I see it as the truth coming from others.

Indeed, this is the extended version of Avot 4:1's "בן זומא אומר:איזהו חכם? הלומד מכל אדם".

On The Akeda

Rav Hutner, in Maamarei Sukkot, wonders why the description of what Avraham did at the akedah is in the form of a "shev v'al taaseh" - "lo chaschta bincha," you did not hold back your son from me.

This sounds like he allowed someone else to take his son, but not that he did it himself. Why not place it in Avraham's active involvement? He goes on to build a maamar out of this. I can take it in a different direction.

The ultimate description, indeed the divine description, is not on Avraham actually taking his son to be sacrificed. The description of lo chasachta actually tells us that Avraham knew that he would not have to sacrifice Yitzchak. Everything in his being told him so, not only morally (as he was someone with great moral character, helping strangers be at home in his house), or from the perspective of justice (hashofet kol haaretz lo yaaseh mishpat), but indeed he knew God, had a relationship with Him, and was aware it would be impossible to ask this of him. Rather, he took his son on a seemingly pointless hike, because he knew something would be the point of this. This is why he is so able to go with the flow when he sees the ram. How did he know this was meant to be the replacement? Indeed, why did he listen when the angel of God told him to stop? It was because he was prepared all along for this eventuality. And thats why God describes it as, you did not withhold your son from me. Not that you were actively willing to sacrifice your son, but that you came here anyway despite the knowledge that there would be no human sacrifice today on this mountain. You didn't hold back from doing so.

Shadal on Ibn Ezra and "The Canaanites Were Then In The Land"

The verse in Genesis 12:6 states that "The Canaanites were then in the land."

It would seem that there are two possible reasons for this declaration of when the Canaanites were in the land then.

1. Then, as opposed to now, when this text is being presented (which could only be after the Jewish people conquered the land from the Canaanites). This sounds problematic, as will be discussed.

2. The Canaanites had taken over the land from someone else just now, and that had only just occurred when Abraham was passing through the land. (Rashi says this)

In fact, Ibn Ezra submits both these two possibilities:

והכנעני אז בארץ” – יתכן שארץ כנען תפשה כנען מיד אחר. ואם איננו כן יש לו סוד. והמשכיל ידום:

“The Canaanites were then in the land” – possibly that the Land of Canaan had been seized by Canaan from the hands of another.  But if this is not so, it has a secret, and the enlightened will be silent.

The problem with the "secret" is that it really sounds like Ibn Ezra agrees certain verses are post-Mosaic. He references this later, in Deuteronomy 1:2 among other verses:

ואם תבין סוד (השרים) [צ"ל: השנים] עשר, גם ויכתוב משה (דברים לא, כב), והכנעני אז בארץ (ברא’ יב, ו), בהר ד’ יראה (שם כב, יד), והנה ערשו ערש ברזל, (דברים ג, יא) תכיר האמת.

If you understand the secret of the twelve—as well as “and Moses wrote” (Deut. 31:9), “and the Canaanites were then in the land” (Gen. 12:6), “on the mountain God will appear”  (Gen. 22:14), “here is his iron bed” (Deut. 3:11) –  you will recognize the truth.

Much has been spoken about the secret of the twelve. Spinoza popularized the notion that Ibn Ezra believed the latter, and that this was so about the whole of the Torah.

We can understand why the Ibn Ezra would have wanted to keep this consideration - that there could be post-Mosaic verses - a secret.

Shadal has unending admiration for Rashi, and endless criticism for Ibn Ezra (although he does cite him when he agrees with him).

We know that Shadal was very aware of Spinoza's interpretation of Ibn Ezra's "secrets", as he writes in his commentary to Deuteronomy 1:1:

Now that Spinoza's books have already been disseminated in the world… I am forced to state that Spinoza wrote a complete lie… when he said that Ibn Ezra had hintingly written that it was not Moses who wrote the Book of the Torah. It is true that Ibn Ezra alluded, via the hidden wisdom, that there exist in the Torah a few additional verses from after Moses's time, but nowhere in all his words and all his allusions is there any room to regard him as not believing that Moses wrote his book… Spinoza, aside from having made some errors in his studies, also unquestionably spoke duplicitously, and in several places misled his readers, with cunning and guile.

He explains there that Ibn Ezra simply allowed for the possibility, but always gave alternatives because he didn't really accept it fully.

So it is natural that when Shadal is looking at a verse, he will avoid the interpretation that points toward post-Mosaic authorship. How does he interpret our verse under discussion? He writes on Genesis 12:6 (translation Dan Klein):

Because God was about to say, "To your descendants will I give this land," He first let Israel know that even in Abraham's time, that land was in the hands of Canaan, so that they should not think that perhaps in those days it was possessed by some other evil and sinful people, and that God dispossessed that people and gave its land to the Canaanites. If the Israelites believed this, they would have been reluctant to take the land from them, thinking that God had given it to Canaan as an inheritance. Therefore He let them know early on that when He promised the inheritance of the land to Abraham, it was already in the hands of the Canaanites.

In this way, Shadal solves not only the implication of the verse (that instead of them taking it over, or being taken over later, it means they had always been there), but also its purpose here, which seems to me to be the bigger problem. Meaning, Ibn Ezra suggests it means they had taken over the land, but then what is its purpose here in this context? Thus, we have a third option:

3. Not that they weren't in the land before, but that they were always in the land and that God hadn't granted it to them.

Obviously, Scripture does want to inform the Israelites of proper beliefs before entering the land. But that they would be afraid to take over Israel because God may have given it to the Canaanites? This is indeed a strange belief to hold.

I saw an interesting approach in R. Meyuchas ben Eliyahu, 12th century, who says it simply means that the Canaanites were very strong then in the land, implying that by the time Moses was writing the Torah, either they were no longer very strong, or they were just as strong then, but not whether they were there or not. This would be approach number 4:

4. Not that there is any statement about their placement, but how mighty of an army they represented. They used to be mighty, now (at the time of the Torah being presented to the Israelites) not so much.

5. Only the Canaanites were in the land, not all the other nations that would later come.

In 2015, a 5-volume set of Shadal was published by Yonatan Bassi that incorporates manuscripts from students, and early copies before the first publication of Shadal's work. From it, we can see different strata of the development of Shadal's commentary, how his students added and took away for the final copy, and what Shadal perhaps was willing to teach students but not what he was willing to include for a wider audience.

There are a great many difference noted there, for many verses of the Torah. Indeed here, there is a completely different (and much longer commentary) to this verse. The following is a loose translation:

This is one of the verses which the Ibn Ezra thought was not written by Moses, and was instead inserted into the Torah generations later. This is because "az", then, could mean "then and not now", which would indicate the time it is written was when Canaanites were no longer in the land, and thus that would have to be after Moses' death. And if "az" means "then and not before," then you would have to say that the Canaanites took it from another peoples, and this is Rashi's explanation.

(The bolded part was added by one of his students) One can quibble: Even though the Israelites knew that the Canaanites were in the land of Israel, they had to know that even 500 years prior, they were there. But why would Moshe need to tell them this? I say it's because the intent is to tell you that only the Canaanites were in the land at that point, and it wasn't too constricted for Abraham and Lot and their cattle. After some time, the Prizzites also came there and made it more constricted.

Therefore, this verse is only setting up an introduction for what it would write later, (Genesis 13:7) "And the Canaanites and Prizzites were then in the land. 

6. They were there then, but they are there now too

I think this is what Neofiti had in mind. The Targum writes:

 וכנעניא עד כען הוון שריין בארעא 

And the Canaanites til now were living in the land. 

On the other hand, it could be translated:

And the Canaanites until that time were living in the land

Which is to say, they were not anymore once Abraham came in. That can only mean that when Abraham came, he was considered the real owner, and they were not "living in the land" anymore. That would be an interesting take, but I'm not certain it can be backed up.