The Akeydat Yitzhak to Bereshit I Found

For a long time, I find my way to ideas by taking a corpus of text, review it step by step, then stand back to see what recurred enough to seem important. It was how I drew the distinction central to my Phd thesis—I started our study of Akeydat Yitzhak with a reference to my Phd, so this is some closure, for those like me who enjoy that kind of thing– and was the method behind several of my books (on haftarot, We’re Missing the Point, and my in-press one on what teshuvot share across time and place, tentatively titled Forest From the Trees).

I like how it reveals basic issues and concerns we often overlook because we are too caught up in the specific pieces of the puzzle. For R. Arama’s massive commentary, we again seek now insight into how his many small points, interesting for themselves, build a larger picture.

Choices in Presentation and the Ideas We Fail to Access

Reviewing my summaries, I first found, somewhat ironically, my continuing weakness at reading and handling large blocks of text. As we noted early on, his discursive and digressive writing was a conscious choice, to accommodate an audience who wanted lengthy discourses.  Over the years, I have seen many people quote Akeydat Yitzhak, from all over the work, implying they read through the whole voluminous presentation. I am not able to read that quickly or widely, so we have seen only about a third of it, his discussion of Sefer Bereshit.

But not even all his discussion of Bereshit, because I did not go down all his byways. It speaks to me of the balance between data and information. R. Arama’s audience (and many today, adept at encyclopedic reading) wanted lots and lots of data, had their own tools for how to access it. For example, R. Arama discussed many other parts of Scripture, but someone who wanted to know what he said about Tehillim 12, let’s say, would have a hard time finding it (pre-computer, anyway), unless s/he read the whole book.

So, two start-up lessons of our study: There are choices to be made on how we present ideas, advantages in one context turning into disadvantages in others. For us here, the fact calls us to remember we have developed some picture of R. Arama, but not a complete whole, by far.

Philosophy, Money, and His Audience

On the topic of audience, R. Arama’s asides gave insight into the people he addresseda, basic mistakes he worked to convince them to relinquish. First, philosophy. R. Arama made a point of citing Aristotle and Rambam’s Guide, agreeing with them wherever possible, and his comments on not relying solely on the intellectual (see below) told me he wanted them to see the insufficiency of philosophy, without rejecting it completely.

He made similar comments about money, especially about how impossible it is to guarantee heirs’ economic security, giving me the impression his audience worked harder to earn money than he thought appropriate. Not for their own sustenance, or to support an extravagant lifestyle, it seems; rather, their concern was generational wealth, to insure their children had all the money they could want. At cost to other endeavors they should have included in their schedule.

The exhortatory R. Arama seems to have had a wealthy, sophisticated audience, sure they knew the path to success and security. He was trying to convince them to recalibrate their commitments.

Balance

His sense of their overinvolvement in some activities to the detriment of others fits well with his overall stress on balance. Different from anyone I had seen before, for example, he thought Adam and Hava were allowed to eat of the Tree of Knowledge from the start, the rub coming in Gd telling them to restrict themselves to tasting of the Tree, a matter of perspective, avoiding overemphasis (considering it was the Tree of knowledge of good and evil, this might have been another knock on excessive faith in philosophy).

He similarly made a point of valuing diverse parts to human experience, the physical/ sensual, intellectual part, and awareness of how the metaphysical also affects the natural world (in his system, the motion of the stars). While the physical was to be subordinated to the intellectual, and the intellectual to the metaphysical, they all had a role to play.

The same was true of women, for whom R. Arama insisted on a meaningful role (although perhaps not the kind of role we today would consider satisfying). He objected to Lemekh having one wife for childbearing and another for the rest of the marital relationship because it denied each the full range of womanly experience. In his view, women needed to develop all their roles, just as men did.

Continuing Formation

R. Arama several times inserted a sense of continuing development where I did not expect it, suggesting it mattered to him. He went out of his way to say Gd’s cessation of Creation came where the world was formed enough to allow for its further evolution on its own. The same applied to the Mishkan, whose completion was only the beginning, putting in place the pieces for people to then serve Gd there.

His view of Avraham’s life continues the theme. He assumes Avraham learned ideas we might have thought basic farther down the road than expected—long after he got to Israel, Avraham learned Gd can change the star-determined future, people’s prayer can secure a response, the nature and extent of Gd’s providence, and more.

For R. Arama, change and growth were positives (for the world and people, anyway), a way to show progress.

Shared Management of World, and the Necessity of Freewill

A last idea I wanted to highlight explains why he would have wanted listeners/readers to think of the world and Mishkan as having been given a start by Gd and then left to develop on their own, why he tracked Avraham’s progress throughout his life: R. Arama saw the human partnership with Gd as essential to the project of Creation.

Gd created the world for people to take hold of it, manage it, work it, and improve it (and themselves). True, Gd’s providence oversees all, and can (and does) intervene when necessary; for R. Arama, though, those are almost failed moments, because the goal is for people to act in ways that kind of providential involvement will not be necessary.

It’s the reason he values freewill so highly, because people acting freely is the way the best version of the redemption will come. Sure, Gd could redeem the world by force whenever (as will happen if people never get themselves to where they deserve it). The better version of redemption comes when people use their freewill to advance higher goals than monetary security and/or what their intellect alone values.

When We Don’t Take Care of the Big Issues

I walk away from my toe dip into Akeydat Yitzhak reminded of ideas I am not sure we all work to actualize in our lives: as far as he is concerned (and I do not think him an outlier on these points), we live in a world created by Gd with usual patterns, all susceptible to change at Gd’s Will. That Will generally wants the world to operate in its usual way, for people to consciously choose to limit or balance involvement with physical health, financial security (including for future generations), and the intellectual truths articulated by philosophy, with an awareness and dedication to Gd and Gd’s service.

It is a message close enough to what I thought already that I can easily imagine I took those parts of the commentary that hit home. Nonetheless, I stand by them, think of them as overall values and commitments we would do well to be sure we live by.

The end of this path perhaps provides a moment to reflect on a paradox of my strategy: I spent years and thousands of words on studying/summarizing Akeydat Yitzhak, to walk away with three or four very basic principles. Is that a worthwhile return on investment?

You could reject the question, say that Torah study is always worth it. True as far as it goes, I believe we should always weigh how we spend our time, within our Torah study as well, because waste of time is still waste of time, the ratio between effort and product does matter.

I think it indeed is worth it, because it emphasizes a concern of mine, that we many of us neglect—not willfully or maliciously, just because we fail to notice or remember them– central, fundamental points of a life of service to Gd. I am not bothered that many Orthodox Jews do not know this or that particular claim of the Akeydat Yitzhak or other rishonim, because there’s just a lot out there. But when we see we have lost sight of the kinds of contentions basic to their outlook and worldview, their key, core, and repeated lessons in life, that I think should bring us up short.

So I studied Akeydat Yitzhak to see what he had to say, many of the particular pieces interesting in and of themselves, while also finding him harping on points his audience had not learned, many of which we have not yet internalized, either.

In the hopes the reminder will help us do better.

From here, I turn to another text I think has many basic ideas not well absorbed into current Orthodox society, the last third of the third sha’ar of Sha’arei Teshuvah, a segment of Rabbenu Yonah’s well-known work on repentance that is actually about our general conduct as Jews and as people. See you then.

Akeydat Yitzhak, Sha’ar Thirty-Three, Part Two

Back to Ya’akov and His Sons

Both of the ideas we saw last time, the personal and national aspects of life, were on Ya’akov’s mind when he gathered his sons. He planned and was allowed to tell each son what would happen to him over time, the course of his overall destiny, the characteristics of the tribe he would found. The national messages, of trials and eventual redemption, had to be hidden, for the reasons of freewill we saw last time.

Rather than suspect them of some lack, R. Arama thinks Ya’akov understood what had happened and sought to convince his sons to hew assiduously to Gd’s service, as his father and grandfather had, because Gd had promised them—such as when Gd said to Avraham, walk before me and be whole, Bereshit 17;1—they could avoid the worst of their troubles with determined focus on Gd’s service. Now aware knowledge of the future was unnecessary and even damaging, Ya’akov understood ignorance can sometimes be better than supposed wisdom [I think a knock on philosophy and/or excessive concern with intellectualism, as we see Ya’akov was taught certain kinds of knowledge are damaging rather than helpful.]

The sons—stuck in the “all knowledge is always good” paradigm—thought Ya’akov was changing the subject because he saw some failing in them [as Rambam thought Ya’akov assumed]. They said Shema to tell him they were whole in their faith, were worthy of what he had wanted to tell them; he responded barukh Shem, blessing the honored Name, to make clear it wasn’t about worthiness, that as long as they could stay true to their faith, it would all work out well, even without access to the ideas he originally thought to share.

That’s the end of his thematic comments. Before we turn to those of his verse by verse comments I found most stimulating, I emphasize the message I think he was sending his listeners: redemption will come at an unknown time, but we have the freewill to hasten it, and do not need some great intellectual awakening for that, only a steady and stubborn adherence to Gd’s Will.

Reuven—First in the Wrong Things

R. Arama thinks Ya’akov refers to Reuven askokhi ve-reshit oni, my might and the beginning of my strength, because as first-born Reuven would reasonably have had the best of Ya’akov’s traits, doubled strength to stand against the appetites of humanity (R. Arama just let slip his picture of the story of human history, people of noble character know we all need to resist our baser instincts, seek ways to bring more and more people to live as Gd wants).

Sadly for Reuven, he instead rushed into intemperate activities, sullying Ya’akov’s marital bed. Although tradition denied he literally had an affair with Bilhah, it was clearly a hillul Hashem, an embarrassment to the Name of Gd, R. Arama thinks, and could not be forgiven without significant punishment, Reuven losing his status as firstborn. The same impetuosity showed itself when the Jewish people came to take the Land of Israel, the tribe of Reuven among those to insist on taking their share early, on the east side of the Jordan, not realizing those tribes would eventually go into exile early as well.

His priority in the birth order could have fostered higher character for Reuven, instead meant an impatient jumping at opportunities, rushing instead of elevating.

Shimon and Levi in More Moderation

Shimon and Levi displayed similar impatience in jumping to sell Yosef, but other times made plans for their wrong pursuits, showing patience rather than haste, such as by killing Shekhem, the person and the town. Haste is a problem, but so is evil planning.

Both sides are needed, a bit of the kind of anger that can lead to overhasty decisions—R. Arama points out students learn better when they a bit fear their teacher, as Ketubbot 103b says (a message I fear is lost today, the need for both sides of the educational equation, the love of the teacher that brings the students to desire to learn, as well as the fear that extracts the needed effort.)

To have Shimon and Levi’s excesses benefit the entire people, Ya’akov calls for them to be spread among the nation, to bring the valuable aspects of their qualities to all, diluted by their being spread out, safer than if they had lived all in one spot.

Yehuda’s Judiciousness and Leadership

The next blessing goes to Yehuda, whom Ya’akov identifies as the leader. R. Arama tbinks Yehuda got there through his wisdom and serenity, his readiness to let events proceed as needed rather than rush them. He infers the idea from Ya’akov’s speaking of Yehuda as a gur, a cub, and then an aryeh, a mature adult lion, thinks it shows Yehuda allowed his growth process to take its time, did not have the pahazut, wasteful haste, of his brothers.

It was Yehuda who questioned the original plan to throw Yosef in a pit and kill him, convinced them to sell him instead. Yehuda also has the necessary qualities for the long exile in the Jewish people’s future, the reason Ya’akov says he will kara, ravatz, crouches and lies down, waiting until the tide of history again provides the opportunity for leadership and prominence.

Bil’am also speaks of the Jews as kara, shakhav, crouching and lying, and adds mevarekhekha barukh, those who bless you will be blessed (the reverse for those who curse you). R. Arama thinks Bil’am was saying Gd’s Providence never fully left the Jews, including Yehuda’s kingship, and argues that at all times, there were remnants of Yehuda in positions of power.

He does not mention the Exilarch as an example, a descendant of the House of David to whom the Persians gave rulership rights over the Jews. He does say Benjamin of Tudela (who wrote records of his travels) saw a large Jewish community in Baghdad, where the leader, a scion of the House of David, was treated as secondary royalty to the non-Jews’ ruler.

He suggests it might always be true, whoever acquires leadership in the Jewish people will turn out to be of the Davidic lineage, especially since most of the Jews in the world today are from the tribe of Yehuda. Remarkably, he adds that even if it’s occasionally untrue, the burden of proof is on those who would deny the Davidic lineage of our leaders, where he chooses to rely on Ya’akov Avinu, who said our leaders would always be from Yehuda (meaning: he has taken this as a guarantee, rather than a prescription).

I won’t get into how he derives it from the verses, but the last little piece of his presentation of Yehuda thinks Ya’akov referred to the Mashiah, who would ride on a donkey, as a poor man (as Zekharyah 9;9 portrays him), because humility would earn him his position. While he will have overriding love for fellow Jews, he will also take full (and bloody) vengeance from the non-Jews who have oppressed the Jewish people.

Yissakhar, Choosing Torah Study Over Prestige

Ya’akov describes Yissakhar as a hamor garem, a strong (or bony) donkey, adjectives R. Arama finds particular apt for someone who studies Torah for its own sake. Such a person accepts the obligation of study without resistance, has no arrogance, no concern for personal honor, cares for the honor of the Master.

Bereshit 49;14 also says he is rovetz bein ha-mishpetayim, lies down between the borders (or the sheepfolds or saddlepacks), an idea R. Arama takes as a reference to Avot 6;4, the path of Torah includes sleeping on the ground and living a life of pain. Such a person knows creature comforts have no overall significance, foregoes them for the greater rest and serenity of a life of Torah.

While he said it in the context of Yissakhar, it seems clear to me R. Arama wanted his listeners to think about the values and commitments necessary for true Torah study, the balance between the usual enjoyments and the more ultimately fulfilling ones.

The Meaning of Twelve

In the course of his discussion of Yosef, R. Arama makes a point not original to him I find worth considering every time it comes up. He reads Ya’akov to have given Yosef the double portion taken from Reuven). Nonetheless, the two tribes from Yosef, Menasheh and Efraim, were grouped as one in the current blessings because Levi was mentioned, too, and there can only and always be twelve tribes. (In Moshe’s blessings in Ve-Zot Ha-Berakhah, Shim’on is not mentioned, a reason Ramban thinks Menashe and Efrayim are in fact both mentioned, to count as two).

Details aside, I find the focus on number important. These commentators were sure the Torah saw the Jewish people as made up of twelve component parts; when Levi is included in the group, there could only be one tribe of Yosef. Why it should be twelve is not well defined by the Torah(in an earlier sha’ar, R. Arama thought it was because the Jewish people reflect the twelve-constellation cycle of the stars, parallel to the months of the year), but that it is twelve does.

For rationalists, it’s a challenging idea, perhaps the reason it always catches my eye. A twelve-part structure seems to be essential to the Jewish people.

Then Ya’akov arranges his feet and passes away. R. Arama notes the righteous have the right to choose the moment their time on earth is done.

At that point, the brothers were ready to go back to Israel, R. Arama thinks, and the Egyptians insisted they leave their children and cattle behind, a way of guaranteeing the Jews would be back. They were already leery of the Jews leaving, already saw them as helpful to their economy, the beginning of a path that ended in slavery (another comment to the people of his time about how governments become attached to their Jews, force them to stay or leave their possessions behind).

It is why Yosef already knows the Jews will be there a long time, will “one day” be remembered by Gd and taken out of Egypt, at which time he asks them to take his remains with them.

That ends Bereshit for R. Arama. Next time, I hope to summarize what I have found in the parts of R. Arama’s massive work we have sampled, as we bid him farewell and move to other projects.

Akeydat Yitzhak, Sha’ar Thirty-Two, Second Part

Ya’akov’s Foiled Attempt to Reveal the Messianic Future

This is the last sha’ar of R. Arama’s commentary on Bereshit. He tells us he plans to show there are actions where the bounds of the analytical do not apply, therefore invisible to Aristotle and his ilk, for they had no exposure to Torah. Linked to this, history has two kinds of outcomes, only one of them hidden from Ya’akov when he wished to reveal it to his sons. R. Arama intends to tell us which was which.

The idea builds off the Midrashic (and Talmudic) assumption Ya’akov gathered his sons to lay out for them the course of the future, Bereshit 49;2. He switched to blessing them when Gd removed the Divine Spirit from him, a sign he was not to reveal these matters. In the Tanhuma version R. Arama works with, Ya’akov called his sons together without asking Gd to join, Who took umbrage at being left out (as it were), and denied him the right to reveal the future.

Intellectual Service Is the Key

R. Arama will come back to the incident. As the first step in his digression, he notes some of the Torah’s mitzvot address the intellect, such as knowledge of Gd, the belief in providence, the obligation of fear/awe, and more, all ideas R. Arama thinks people could not find intellectually or analytically.

Once learned, these otherwise inaccessible ideas lead to acting in ways we would not have realized, as Kohelet shows with the last words of his book, the end of all matters is to fear Gd and perform His mitzvot. The best way version of each of us, for Kohelet “kol ha-adam, all of Man,” expresses itself only when we follow a set of commands none of us would have reached by thought alone.

Adherents of Aristotle’s approach—we can think our ways to all aspects of a good life– miss this necessary element, that much of what it means to be good is opaque to the intellect. Worse, Rambam in Guide III;27 seems to side with Aristotle, where he says ultimate human perfection lies in an active intellect, with no actions or character traits.

To R. Arama, it is a moment Rambam‘s philosophical attachments led him astray, led him to ignore all the commandments that in fact demand actions and character traits.  [I believe defenders of Rambam as fully traditional within his philosophical mode would say he saw those traits and actions as means to the end of a perfected intellect, and struggle with whether there was a continuing role for them once they had achieved their goal. Not our current topic.]

R. Arama stresses how belief in Gd leads to performing commandments, as an extension of the intellect. Just like the intellect pushes people to be good citizens, once it accepts the truth of Gd’s existence, it would impel them to fulfill the mitzvot as well. As Kiddushin 40b says, study is great for it leads to action.

Step one of mitzvot for R. Arama, it takes our intellects in a direction we would not have gone on our own, teaching us sets of actions we must fulfill.

The Physical Observance of Mitzvot Shows Us Eternal Life

He does not mean to devalue the intellect, though, because he thinks we must also fulfill all our intellect tells us is worthy. By using our bodies how Gd wants, both as revealed directly and as we infer intellectually, we will secure the rewards the Torah promises, such as Devarim 6;24’s saying it will lead to long or eternal life—the soul reaping the benefits of our physical actions.

It’s a bit of a surprise, because the physical is usually seen as opposite to or at least very different from the spiritual, yet here is the necessary way to earn that spiritual reward. He suggests Gd set it up that way partially to make it more understandable. As physical beings, we have no vocabulary or insight for a purely spiritual reward, so we could never appreciate promises of such reward. By linking them, Gd gave us a path to the goal we could not have found on our own.

Once given the path, our intellects can take it further. Those with proper faith commitments, who know to resist the lures of temporary pleasures and desires, who have developed their intellects as far as possible, will then find themselves able to infer accurate new insights from the Torah, to further the project of serving Gd and earning the World to Come.

The Failure of Belief

In contrast, anyone unwilling to commit to the Torah’s demands and assertions [who finds it hard or impossible to accept the Torah’s claims about Gd and the nature of the world, in other words], puts him/herself in a tough spot, because no words or analogies will work for him/her. Such a person accepts only what s/he can verify, by one of the senses or the clear intellectual propositions. Such people deny divine providence, despite how clearly it is attested in Scripture, and will therefore leave the path of observance for the path of hefker, where they need not follow any rules.

[R. Arama has put his finger on a key aspect of those who lose faith, and the challenge of kiruv, bringing them back. Judaism essentially depends on signing on to claims the human intellect alone does not necessitate. The Jew unable to submit to the Torah’s truth will have to find someone who can convince him/her to do so, who can offer the right arguments or enticements to buy into a whole way of looking at the world. As R. Arama notes, the extent of the person’s inability to accept the Torah’s ideas will match his/her rejection of observance.]

To R. Arama, Tehillim 12 discusses this issue; as is my practice, I will not digress there except for what I find most interesting. For example, Tehillim 12;3 says shav yedaberu ish et re’ehu sefat halakot, they speak futilely to each other, meaning there is no validity to their words, but they do it with sefat halakot, smooth language. He reads the verse to mean they couch their words in attractive presentations, seem to be interested in fear of Gd and Gd’s service, where libam lo nakhon imam, they actually have no interest.

I noted the comment because it reminds us how easily we can be fooled by slick presentations, can think we can tell what’s true and not, convincing and not, yet those who stubbornly focus only on the fleeting world can be just as persuasive as those trying to bring us to the truths of Torah.

The Individualism of Human Achievement

He also says Torah makes us realize we are supposed to operate at two levels, the immediate needs of ourselves and our families, and then also the good of broader society. That should mean there is a shared element to the ultimate reward, since we have shared our lives with others. However, the Midrash says every righteous person has a place of his/her own in the future world, Baba Batra 75a going so far as to say other righteous people would be burned by the residence of his/her fellow.

R. Arama attributes the idea to the individuality of each righteous person. For all they all have manymitzvotin common, they will have done them in their own unique way and will therefore be given unique reward. The greatest Torah scholar/performer of mitzvot/ servant of Gd will still see something in the least of the righteous s/he did not incorporate in his/her own service and will, in that detail, feel singed by failure.

The elements of mitzvah performance involving contributions to the group or community will earn shared reward [I could have imagined R. Arama would say each person contributes to those, too, in a uniquely individual way, but he does not], the reason the Torah promises many group goods, long life for the nation as a whole, security in their land, superiority over other nations, as a response to their joining together as a group to produce a nation of Gd’s service.

It’s always hard to know, but this does feel like an oblique plea to join and remain with the community, a rejection of the possibility of being good as an individual, removed from the community. Especially because R. Arama continues with the claim the loss of connection among Jews has led to a loss of the common good, the Jews now being a downtrodden nation, reliant on Gd’s kindnesses to restore them (with the implication if the Jews take the first step in rejoining the community acting for and with it, Gd will more quickly restore their status as well.)

The Value of Freewill and the Unknown Date of the Messianic Era

The timing of when Gd will fulfill the various Scriptural prophecies through the agency of the Messiah is not known, says R. Arama, because the uncertainty of exile is itself supposed to help the Jewish people put aside their sins, circumcise their hearts to become more adept at striving for true human perfection.

It also had to be hidden to protect the gift of freewill, as R. Arama calls it, to leave it up to the Jews to come to their submission to Gd on their own.

R. Arama here sounds like he wants it both ways, Gd knows when Mashiah will come, but does not let Himself know, as it were, to protect freewill (he writes liba le-puma lo galei, the heart does not reveal to the mouth, a phrase Kohelet Rabbah 12;1 applied to a verse R. Arama quoted (Yeshayahu 63;4) ki yom nakam be-libi, a day of vengeance is in My heart. Gd has the day planned, as it were, but does not Himself know when it is, because the heart hides it from the mouth.)

Aside from the pitfall it would create for those too soft-hearted to bear the troubles of Jewish history until redemption comes, keeping the date hidden protects people’s ability to find their way to Gd’s service freely. [Again, if I’m correct about his audience, he is here trying to make a bug into a feature—they despair of redemption, he tells them it’s opacity is actually a help.]

Some will be tripped up by it, will use the freedom to cast off the yoke of Gd’s service, because the message of our ability to bring the Messiah sooner than contemplated will not penetrate; they will not be able to absorb Tehillim 95;7, hayom im be-kolo tishma’u, today if you hearken to His Voice. Sanhedrin 98b tells a story of Eliyahu reminding us the verse means Mashiah can come today, if Jews would all obey Gd’s commands.

So far, R. Arama wants us to remember we have to use our minds to figure out how to serve Gd, while at the same time remembering our minds cannot alone tell us all we need to know about it. We also need to take Gd’s commands as given, observe them with our physical beings, and bring our whole persons into the yoke of Gd’s service.

Akeydat Yitzhak, Sha’ar Thirty-Two, Second Part

Death Approaches for Ya’akov

Last time, we saw R. Arama urge readers/listeners to put the physical in proper perspective, spoke of the ways our intentions can shape/affect our physical lives. His recognition of the superiority of the immortal soul, and its impact on this-worldly life, brings him to traditions about how some people have conquered death.

Death Isn’t Sad for the Deceased

He wonders why Ta’anit 5b singles out Ya’akov as someone who never died, when Berakhot 18a says, without qualification, the righteous are called alive even after their passing. Two more points about the Gemara bother him: it speaks of Ya’akov instead of Yisrael; and the response in the Gemara wonders how we could say Ya’akov never died, when eulogies were delivered. To R. Arama, it’s an odd complaint, since the Torah itself tells us Yosef and his brothers saw their father had passed. Whatever was meant by “Ya’akov never died,” it already knew there was the appearance of death, so how would eulogies affect it?

I skip a bunch of his ideas about how we earn eternal life and the structure of the soul (in his time, the soul was assumed to have three parts, nefesh, ruah, and neshama, defined variously by various writers). Based on his view of the soul, he thinks Ya’akov Avinu not dying means more than the usual amount of his soul would live on, because he was so righteous. For most people, including the ordinary righteous, the immortal soul captures only one element of the original person, and eulogies mourn the rest.

For Ya’akov, the questioner in Ta’anit understood the Gemara to have said, there was no rest, which should have made eulogies superfluous. They should not have been upset about the cessation of Ya’akov’s physical life if so much of his personality conquered death. R. Arama cites a verse to say they either were incorrect for mourning (as many ignorant people mourn, he says, I think a jab at the people of his time, whom—as we’ve seen—he thinks were too invested in life, therefore mourned death to an inappropriate extent), or that Ya’akov’s family mourned in the sense Moed Katan 25b has it, crying for their loss, not for the person. Ya’akov does refer to himself as about to die, and the verse says his sons saw he had died, because the physical body necessarily dies, even for the righteous, but the rest survived.

The Life Beyond Death

The perspective of death as a loss to the survivors rather than the deceased brings him (eventually) to Sukkah 29a, four sins lead to me’orot lokin, the light-giving heavenly bodies being struck (or dimmed). R. Arama reads it as about reasons a generation will be denied the benefit of the light of their scholars (the ideas of Torah scholars as illuminating the rest of the world builds off of Mishlei 6;23 says, mitzvot are like candles, Torah is light).

He relates the four in Sukkah to four groups identified in Sanhedrin 103a as those who will not merit greeting the Divine Presence, slanderers, liars, letzim and flatterers. Letsim, he says, make hurtful statements, then claim to be joking; like those who raise animals in Israel, the corresponding category in Sukkah, their damage accrues bit by bit, ends up very great.  Flatterers are obsequious to people who should be derided or opposed.

R. Arama thinks the ideas are related, because such people do not deserve to see the “face of the divine,” as Sanhedrin puts it, they also will be denied the light of the me’orot, as Sukkah put it, in his view the illuminating presence of the righteous.

He then points to several Talmudic stories whose plain sense depicts righteous people as living beyond their death. R. Elazar answered questions for eighteen years after his death, says Baba Metzi’a 84b, and Shabbat 152b has an extended story where R. Nahman is taught that those who never had jealousy in their lives are not bound by death.

There are many more such stories, and they—taken literally, as he is doing, a move worth noticing, since he knows how to read allegorically when necessary—support the idea of the limited reach of death, especially regarding the righteous.

Still, the Body Matters

Given how little death seems to affect the righteous, R. Arama needs to explain why Ya’akov would care to extract an oath from Yosef to bury him in Israel, near his ancestors. He clearly cares where his physical remains end up, when we could imagine it would be irrelevant to someone who is not going to die in the usual sense. R. Arama points out the Gemara assumes a continuing connection between the surviving soul and the remnants of the physical host. Shabbat 152b says souls of deceased spend the first year after passing going up and down, from heaven to the grave and back. It’s why Jewish tradition cares about burial, preferably in some kind of a pleasant surroundings. We believe in a soul connected to its body, including after death.

Ya’akov makes Yosef swear to do it immediately, worried any interim interment will linger. He forces Yosef to swear as a bulwark against the king protesting or resisting, a sign Ya’akov thought Par’oh would be bound by an oath, where he might otherwise have refused to let Yosef bury his father where the father asked.

Blessing the Grandsons

The elevation of Ephraim and Menashe to full tribe status assumed the Levi’im would one day be selected, separated from the rest of the nation to serve. [He was not the first to think various prophets were aware of and prepared for futures that had not yet happened; on the other hand, he does not explain how that works with freewill—had the first-born not sinned at the Golden Calf, tradition seems to assume they would have continued as the ones serving in the Mishkan.]

Ya’akov asks to hug his grandsons, the physical closeness a reminder of how much better his life has gone than he had expected—Ya’akov had despaired of seeing Yosef again, and now saw his children. With his father’s good mood, Yosef hoped he would be able to bless the boys (we have seen before how blessing depends on mood), and placed them exactly as he expected the blessing should come, the oldest going towards Ya’akov’s right hand.

Ya’akov “errs,” switching his hands and putting Ephraim’s name first (a good catch by R. Arama, Yosef had reason to know his father had not made a mistake, because he said Ephraim’s name first in the blessing). The blessing addresses three areas, success in service of Gd (the reference to the Gd before Whom his ancestors served), in material matters (the needed support for the first success, referred here as the Gd Who shepherded him throughout his life), and protection from interruptions, illnesses, or other barriers in the way of one’s service of Gd (the angel who redeemed him from all troubles).

Yosef objects because he worried a blessing made in error would not take effect (R. Arama refused to believe Yosef was opposed to Ephraim’s success, as if he favored Menashe), and also cared about protecting Menashe from being unfairly denied what should be his. Ya’akov reassures him he knows what he is doing—so the berakhot will work—and Menasheh isn’t being cheated, Ephraim is being given even more (with a “real” first born, the idea wouldn’t work, because there are defined powers and rights. Where Yosef’s sons are being absorbed into the broader nation, Ephraim is getting a better berakha, yet R. Arama can assume Menashe is getting the full berakha he would have gotten anyway).

For all he spent much of the sha’ar promoting a narrower view of the value of the physical, he ends with an explanation of why the death of the body matters, why the place of burial matters, and how a blessing of physical bounties can be vital to paving the way for a life free to serve Gd to the fullest extent.

Akeydat Yitzhak, Sha’ar Thirty-Two, First Part

Why Food Matters, and How It Leads Us Astray

At the beginning of this, the penultimate sha’ar of Sefer Bereshit (I just like the word penultimate, use it whenever I have the chance to refer to the second to last of a group or list), R. Arama tells us he aims to consider why food is necessary to sustain the intellect in the soul, then to see how it misguides people to warped priorities, to focus on the less important and neglect the truly important.

The problems start at birth, when a person has a physical body and a soul, the part of the person that speaks and is fully human (he says all agree to this dualism, sadly no longer true in our time). The two develop together, leading some to make the mistake linking them in death, thinking the soul dies with the body. Just as the vital part of physical life withers and dies, these people argue the soul does, too, citing Kohelet 6;7, where the verse speaks of a person working only to feed his mouth, then adds “and the soul will not be filled.” To them, the soul will not be filled with the power to live on, is no more immortal than the body.

Such people—we have seen R. Arama address them before—reject the search for eternal life, seek other types of lasting goods. Many of them hit on gathering money to leave for their descendants, a plan R. Arama derides as recognizably weak to anyone who thinks clearly (aside from all else, because we cannot guarantee they will be able to hold onto that money).

No one of good intellect thinks the search for money could possible be humanity’s ultimate purpose; if not, the excessive focus on money clearly detracts from the pursuit of that more significant goal.

Lest We Put the Windpipe Before the Trachea

Ta’anit 5b says Ya’akov did not die; R. Arama thinks the Gemara was telling us he had focused on the true priorities, developed his intellect, and had an immortal soul. The idea was shared by the amora R. Yitzhak at a meal; he had refused to speak earlier, based on R. Yohanan’s rule against talking during a meal, lest one choke—expressed in the Gemara as shema yakdim kaneh le-veshet, lest the person put the trachea before the esophagus. R. Arama reads the Gemara to mean we do not apply the ideas of food to a person’s essence (I am skipping how he fits it into the Gemara; in brief, he reads kaneh, the trachea, as a symbol of true life, including especially the intellectual, where veshet, the esophagus, is about the physical. After the meal, R. Yitzhak repeats the idea in another way, the part of Ya’akov that’s independent of the meal, the intellect, doesn’t die).

He sees it as a continuum, the less refined parts of the body nutriified by the thick, indelicate parts of the food, some parts of the person so refined they can be sustained by ideas alone, and others in the middle, good aromas can do it. The ideals of the Torah keep the soul alive, as Devarim 8;3 says, not by bread alone, but by all the words of Hashem do people live (I think we understand it to mean people live by obeying Hashem’s words; he is saying the soul itself is fully sustained by Hashem’s words, they are like food for the soul).

It’s the Thought That Counts

To clarify food’s effect on the soul, he turns to how Hashem “experiences” sacrifices. The Torah describes them as reah nihoah, a pleasing smell, and Sifrei says the pleasantness wafts from the obedience of the people offering the sacrifice, their submission to the Divine Will (not the physical aroma of the burning meat).

Our physical bodies receive direct nourishment from food, while the intent of the meal shapes what the soul gains from it. At a se’udat mitzvah, the mitzvah underpinnings give the soul a boost. Mishlei 13;25 supports the idea, a righteous person eats le-sova nafsho, to the satiety of his/her soul. [Rambam reads the verse to mean the righteous person weighs his food pleasures carefully, eats only for the goal of keeping him/herself alive.} R. Arama is taking it to mean the person’s reasons for eating themselves affect the soul.

On the last page of Berakhot, R. Avin Ha-Levi says anyone who participates in a meal where a Torah scholar is found is as if s/he is enjoying the shining of the Divine Presence. There, too, R. Arama thinks the Torah scholar represents the developed intellect, having such a person at a meal focuses those present on the right intentions.

I am not going to give all his Scriptural supports for the idea; he takes them to tell us that if we think carefully about what we eat, we will eat only what is permitted, only as much as we need to keep us healthy. In doing so, eating becomes a spiritual experience, where the person enjoys time in the Divine Presence (for R. Arama, shaping our lives as Hashem would want itself leads to time in the Divine Presence).

Wasted Opportunities

People who reject the idea of a soul [he knew of such people in his time!] turn away from the path of personal perfection and success of the soul, substituting the chase for money [this isn’t the first time we have seen him complain about his contemporaries’ focus on money, especially in order to leave an inheritance for their children, as if that were the goal of life.] It reminds all—the rich, who neglect other values because of their money, the poor, who rely on the rich and spend their time trying to be like them—not to let money become essential.

Wealth gave people of his time the certainty they would always be able to secure the food necessary for their health and long life [we today have developed faith in other guarantors of health and long life, such as exercise or various regimens of pills]. R. Arama objects to the physicality, the failure to realize life is about the combination of the physical and the service of Gd, with the former a subordinate help to the latter. Tehillim 49;13 refers to such people as being like animals, because death for them will be more final than it had to be, will be the point they realize they could have developed their non-animalistic side. They miss the intellectual/spiritual side of the human, what sets us apart from the animals, the specific parts of ourselves that are eternal, because the ideas the intellect considers are themselves eternal).

Their eventual recognition of mortality, and longing for immortality, tells R. Arama there is a way to immortality, because people only long for what is possible [a remarkable idea of its own, that if we can want it, it has to be in some way possible!]. If they want to live forever, there has to be a way, the way of the intellect, as it happens.

Next time, we will see how he applied these ideas to the end of Ya’akov’s life, what he sought for himself and to teach his sons and grandsons.

A lifetime ago, in novel coronavirus terms, we were studying the rich Biblical commentary of R. Yitzhak Arama, Akeydat Yitzhak. The last entry was posted on March 10, and then the world changed, as we entered the et Tzarah whose parameters we have not yet fully learned to navigate, whose rules we have not yet accepted the necessity of following, from which Hashem has not yet fully released us.

I turned to discussions related to the coronavirus, then to issues of shul, then nidui, because of my belief this experience has characteristics of being menudim la-shamayim, Gd having placed us in nidui until we learn key lessons.

With the conclusion of the Yamim Noraim, it is time to move on to another project, but before I do, I wanted to bring some kind of closure to my study of Akeydat Yitzhak. I have run out of the energy to continue studying it straight, so I at least wanted to finish Sefer Bereshit, bring some closure to our study of his rich thought. I offer the excuse Bereshit did cover a full third of his overall commentary, so we will have seen a significant piece of it. Then we will bid him a grateful au revoir, until life brings us around to his words again.

Let’s get back in. Where we last left our hero, R. Arama had argued the Jewish people served a purpose on earth similar to the stars in heaven, were the natural way Gd brought blessings to the world.

The Twelve Tribe Structure of the Jewish People

Once we know the Jewish people are constructed to reflect the heavenly hosts, the loss of any piece of their functioning affects the world more than we would have realized. The destruction of the Beit Hamikdash stopped the priests’ service, silenced the Levites’ songs; those losses hurt the world more than just in reducing sacrifice and/or the amount of beautiful singing in the world. As on Heaven so on Earth, and vice verse, the destruction of the Mikdash leaves us in a lesser version of reality as a whole.

[I intend to stay away from relating R. Arama’s ideas to our current reality; this one time, I will allow myself to point out the ramifications of his view for our times: I think he would say we as Jews should feel special responsibility to respond to the pandemic in ways we can hope would lead Gd to relieve us of its troubles, because we are the gateway for Gd’s blessings to the world. Second, he would remind us not to accept a lesser reality as fine. Just as we continually mourn the Temple, long for the return of all its services, know we live in a diminished world until they do return, we need to be sure we remember the strictures needed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus are not a fine new normal, they are reminders we have not been relieved or our troubles to this point.]

We see this particularly regarding the Tribes, who mirror the twelve central constellations of stars. Aharon bore the names of the tribes on the Hoshen, the breastplate through which Gd communicated to kings or other representatives of the nation, to show the number mattered, the tribes were the what connected heaven and earth, a central reason Gd imbued prophecy and Gd’s providence was more tied to the Jewish nation.

For two proofs, he notes Eliyahu’s choice of twelve rocks for the altar he built on Mt. Carmel during his “contest” with the prophets of Ba’al (I Melakhim 18;31), a number the verse says was to symbolize the twelve tribes. After the tragedy of the concubine at Giv’a, Shofetim 21, the Jewish people vowed not to intermarry with Binyamin, but were later horrified by the possibility  of the tribe dying out; their horror tells R. Arama the number of tribes has more importance than we might notice. Their finding a workaround of their oath shows their commitment to all tribes’ survival.

Ta’anit 26b makes the point when it calls the fifteenth of Av one of the great holidays, because it was the day the Tribes came up with a plan to ensure Binyamin’s continuity. [The Gemara offers other reasons, too, but this is the one relevant to his idea.]  In a comment sad for what it says about life in his time (and which might give another element of perspective to our current struggles), R. Arama says only such importance can explain Ya’akov’s extended mourning for Yosef, because rational people would never act as he did, it being too common for someone to die young. Especially a father of eleven other sons would be expected to handle it better. Avraham was willing to kill his only son [at Gd’s direct command], why would Ya’akov indulge such mourning, lose himself the experience of the Divine spirit for all twenty-two years of Yosef’s absence? More, why wouldn’t Gd rebuke him? To R. Arama, the answer lies in the extended consequences, the impact of the loss of a tribe on the whole world.

For Whom Ya’akov Grieved

Tanhuma to Va-Yigash has Ya’akov say he had a tradition that if all his sons survived him, he would know he would not go to Gehinnom, would receive eternal reward and not punishment. The loss of Yosef told Ya’akov he had been found wanting. All the time of Yosef’s absence, he was sad about his own state of lost prophecy, not as a matter of choice to wallow in his mourning, but because he wasn’t able to see himself as someone worthy of direct communication with Gd.

Shabbat 30b tells us sadness prevents prophecy, as we learn from Elisha’s calling for someone to play music, to put him in a mood for prophecy, II Melakhim 3. Hearing Yosef was alive removed Ya’akov’s sadness at two levels, the bare fact of his son being alive and its assuring Ya’akov he was not doomed to perdition.

An Early Painful Investment Pays Off

Other verses envision such wholeness in the future redemption as well. Devarim 30;3 speaks of Hashem restoring shevutekha, your fortunes, Yeshayahu 27;12 speaks of Jews being gathered one by one, Yirmiyahu 3;14 says Hashem will gather us one from a city, two from a family. In that time, instead of some Jews being focused on Hashem, some of the time, occasionally having the Divine Spirit rest upon them, they will all always do what Hashem wants, will infuse their lives with the awareness of Jerusalem as the seat of Gd, to the point of influencing the rest of the nations to turn towards Gd as well, to fulfill Gd’s Will instead of their own.

R. Arama now returns to the idea of Ya’akov being brought down to Egypt by his love for Yosef instead of in chains, because he sees a parallel—Ya’akov’s early pains in the Yosef experience ended up being like pregnancy and labor, bringing a very desired result. The exile, with its eventual complete return, will bring us (the Jewish people) to the fulfillment of all the promises to Avraham. (We now see his stake in saying all Jews will make it back—like Ya’akov’s need of all his sons, unless all Jews are part of the redemption, R. Arama could not as convincingly say the current sufferings are a sort of investment in an eventual completely enjoyable result.)

Yosef’s telling the brothers they didn’t send him to Egypt, Hashem did, supports his idea. In his list of examples of what Gd made happen, R. Arama includes Ya’akov’s giving Yosef the ketonet pasim, the special garment his brothers took as evidence of Ya’akov’s favoritism. For R. Arama, Ya’akov already did not have full freewill early on, because Gd was bringing about the descent to Egypt.

He notes Ya’akov had mostly despaired of seeing Yosef (I’m pretty sure this is also meant to parallel the Jews of his time, a way of encouraging them not to despair). In R. Arama’s reading, when he first heard Yosef was alive, his heart skipped because he did not believe them, and it only renewed his anguish. He only began to believe them as they relayed words of Yosef’s.

Redemption Brings Other Worries

He knew he was headed to Egypt as he absorbed the news, instigating other worries, such as assimilation [a valid one, let’s remember, as tradition thought only 1/5 of the Jews left Egypt; here again, I think R. Arama is speaking about Ya’akov with an eye out towards his time, many of whom also had become so assimilated they did not know when it was time to leave. Historians, e.g., estimate a third of the Jews of Spain converted rather than leave in 1492.]

He also was concerned about his own burial, whether he would be stuck in Egypt. To allay his fears, he went to Be’ersheva, where his father and grandfather had prayed, and that’s why Gd came to him (Ya’akov sought it, in other words, it didn’t just happen.)  Gd promised to take care of the Jews by keeping them separate, as we say in the Haggadah, the Jews became metzuyanim there, they stood as separate, and lived in a separate section [he ignores other Midrashim and traditions the Jews eventually did mix with the Egyptians.] The promise of anokhi a’alekha, I will bring you back up, was the response to the burial issue, Hashem promising Ya’akov would not be buried in Egypt.

I’ve skipped a digression where R. Arama explains how Onkelos refers to Gd without making Gd physical (a concern here because Hashem says He will go down to Egypt with Ya’akov, and Rambam and Ramban struggle with Onkelos). At the conclusion of his answer, R. Arama comments he thinks it deals with the issue without resort to philosophy [whose Jewish proponents often lost contact with true faith] or hidden and sealed matters [mysticism], a reminder of the two poles within which Jewish thinkers have long had to walk, each of which had problems for R. Arama.

There’s more, as always, but those are the main elements of the thirty-first sha’ar I found myself able to communicate, the Jewish people’s vital role in the world, the reason their national structure parallels the universe’s, the reason the survival of all the tribes mattered so much, an idea R. Arama could translate to his contemporaries’ struggle with their exile, could reassure them, implicitly, it gets better.

As we hope in our times, for ourselves, as well.

Akeydat Yitzhak, Sha’ar Thirty-One

Bringing Ya’akov to Egypt

R. Arama starts the sha’ar with Midrash Shokher Tov’s quote of R. Yehuda, Ya’akov should have been brought down to Egypt in chains (for unclarified reasons), the incident with Yosef was a sort of favor by Hashem, a way to get him there more gently [the Midrash bothers me a bit each time I see it, because I’d bet Ya’akov would have preferred the chains to twenty years of fearing Yosef was dead, but that’s for another time]. R. Pinhas in the Midrash compares it to luring a cow to the slaughterhouse by bringing its calf, as Hoshe’a 11;4 has Hashem speak of leading the Jewish people with human chains, chains of love [a verse I first learned because Hazon Ish’s much quoted idea his generation was a time when the better approach to those distant from religion was avotot shel ahavah, chains of love.]

The Jewish People Reflect the Heavens

Moving away from the Midrash temporarily, he says Gd created a world with two controlling principles. First, natural law covers much of what happens, including the stars and their impact (I stress—R. Arama thinks the stars affect the world, allowing for accurate astrological predictions, and counts this as part of the  natural world; the cause and effect may be less clear than ordinary natural events, but they are a part of nature for him, with murkier workings]. Second, there is Providence, where Gd steps in, to reward or punish, depending on people’s actions.

To improve the odds of earning a better future, Gd gave the Chosen People the Torah, to teach ideas and actions necessary to elicit favorable responses from the divine. Jews’ success supports the survival of the rest of the world, R. Arama thinks, as a matter of Gd’s Will [I think he means Gd wants a world where people act in certain ways. While the natural and astrological can seem to operate immune to the spiritual state of people, such an attitude ignores providence, where it matters a great deal. Because most people choose not to engage with the questions or issues, Gd gave the Torah to the Jews, making His Will clear, and the Jews’ attempts to adhere to that are enough to keep the world going.]

Their crucial role in world survival led Hashem to set up the nation parallel to or reflective of the universe, to link the two aspects of the world that keep all the machinery running, as it were. (The heavens run the world at a technical level, so Gd made the Jewish people a sort of parallel heavens, because they make the world run at a providential level.)

His views of astronomy interest me here only in how they shape his picture of the Jewish people. The sun moves east to west, in contrast to other stars and planets [I’m not sure what he means—planets and stars also generally move east to west in the sky, I think], as did Avraham, who moved physically east to west, but intellectually and spiritually moved towards service of and connection to Gd, where the rest of the nations turned their back. (He throws in Midrashic notes that Gd’s appearance in the Temple comes in the West.

From the Sun to the Stars

Obviously, he didn’t think Gd was in the West, Gd is everywhere. Nonetheless, Avraham saw value (as Rambam had said it) in establishing a particular place for prayer, where it will be easier to remove distracting thoughts. For the site of the Temple, the place where Avraham stood before was best, and Yehezkel 8 sees it as a sign of how low the Jews have sunk when they turn their backs on that place to face the sun instead.

Avraham was also sun-like in affecting the movements of many other inhabitants of his realm, as the sun does with the stars. Avraham brought many closer to Gd’s service, some more, some less, but had an impact on all, as does the sun.

Again, the view of astronomy interests me less than how he applies it. He thinks a secondary body in the heavens affects the twelve constellations, from which the many stars then extend. Yitzhak bears Ya’akov, father of the twelve Tribes, from whom the millions of Jews come. Comparable to the seven stars he thought most influential, the Jewish people have Ya’akov, Levi, Kehat, Amram, Moshe, Aharon, and David [a remarkable list, taking for granted the greater importance of Torah, priesthood, and kingship than other aspects of national life]. Moshe sits in the middle of the list, as the sun is the middle of the influential stars, and Baba Batra 75a compares Moshe’s face to the face of the sun, as a metaphor for Moshe being the original source of the light of Torah from Hashem (as the sun is the original source of light from Hashem; he compares Avraham and Moshe both as the sun, because they each in their own era were sun-like in their influence on the world).

Among other examples, Shlomo Ha-Melekh looked to the model of the twelve constellations to build his model of how to finance the upkeep of the Temple, by obligating each tribe to provide a month’s support.  When Hashem tells Avraham his descendants will be as uncountable as the stars, R. Arama focuses on more than uncountability, gives other ways the Jewish people will be like the stars. Midrashim also speak of a Jerusalem of heaven, view the Mishkan and Mikdash as built to reflect the structure of the heavens. Ta’anit 5a makes the point explicitly about Yehezkel’s vision of a future Temple, the Jerusalem of below will be in parallel to the Jerusalem of above.

As in Heaven, So on Earth

The similarity of basic structure explains Yirmiyahu 31;34-35, where the prophet compares the eternity of the Jewish people to the eternity of those bodies—similar structure leads to similar life span. Bereshit Rabbah speaks of the Patriarchs as Gd’s Chariot in this world (a way for Gd to enter or relate to this world, I think is the easiest way to say it), and R. Arama thinks it’s true for those of their descendants who follow their path. Torah scholars, prophets, the righteous, all serve also as wheels of the Chariot, vehicles for Hashem to protect the Jewish people from annihilation, perform miracles on their (and the people’s) behalf, such as the Splitting of the Sea.

It started with Avraham and was solidified with the Giving of the Torah, when the good workings of nature were made dependent on the observance of mitzvot. The first of the Aseret Ha-Dibberot tells us I am Hashem, Who took you out of Egypt—for R. Arama, proof of Hashem’s ability to overcome the stars, make Avraham more vital to the universe than a human should be—and is the reason not to follow any other gods, because Jews are supposed to know Providence now depends solely on adherence to the Torah.

[Much of what he is saying here makes a point not all that controversial to rishonim, yet probably less included in Jewish belief today. He is sure the religious excellence of the Jewish people, or its lack, affects how nature works. Gd chose to link the physical health of the world to the religious health of people, especially Jews.]

Next time, how each Jew’s survival and success matters.

Akedat Yitzhak, Sha’ar Thirty, Part Two

As always for R. Arama, after making the broad points about the righteous always feeling like immigrants in the world, as we saw last time, he turns to the parasha.

Yosef Sets Up and Frames the Interaction

Yosef was the one doling out grain to those who came to Egypt to buy, usually not how the second highest ruler of all Egypt acts. R. Arama says Yosef was on the lookout for his brothers, hoping he would encounter them.

When he did, the verse tells us Yosef recognized them.  R. Arama tweaks it, says Yosef mostly recognized them, wasn’t quite sure; it had been twenty years, after all. He did not realize their bowing to him already fulfilled the first dream, and started a conversation to check who they were. He spoke excessively harshly to distract them, ensure they would not recognize him.

He wanted to know how his father and full brother were, but needed to withhold his own identity until the second dream came true as well. [R. Arama takes for granted the value of working to bring a dream to fruition, where more contemporary scholars of Tanakh, such as R. Yoel Bin-Nun, question the idea, a topic not relevant to our current study.]

The brothers eventually say the youngest is with his father, a phrase R. Arama thinks was not as clear as Yosef wanted, because it could have meant they had both passed away (to prove the word “with” can include the deceased, he reminds us Shemuel tells Shaul he would be “with” him the next day, on the night before Shaul dies in battle), or that only Binyamin was alive, living near his father’s grave.

Yosef had to engineer the conversation and events to give him the knowledge he sought. Were the brothers to protect Binyamin when he was in trouble, Yosef could know they had changed.

Apologizing for Yosef

Twice in the next series of comments, R. Arama takes a position we might have questioned. He has just said Yosef was setting up events to get Binyamin to Egypt as a test for the other brothers. He excuses the distress this would cause Ya’akov by saying Yosef never required all the other brothers to return to Egypt, they could have left some behind to care for Ya’akov. Yosef’s asking after his father’s welfare when the brothers do come back proves his concern for his father, to R. Arama’s satisfaction.

[But not mine, I mean to say. I can accept Yosef thought these issues important enough to justify the cost of his father’s distress. I am less convinced leaving some of the brothers behind while Binyamin went to Egypt would ease Ya’akov’s distress to a noticeable extent.]

As Yosef lays out the plan, he says if you bring Binyamin back, I’ll know you’re telling the truth, but if not, by Par’oh’s life, you are spies. R. Arama surprises me by insisting Yosef would never have sworn falsely using the name of his king as the guarantor of its truth (the oath “by the king’s life” means “the king should die if I’m not telling the truth). I could have imagined Yosef wouldn’t really care, and wonder whether R. Arama was making a point for his time, to reassure anyone within earshot of Jews’ allegiance to their non-Jewish monarchs and commitment to truth-telling.

Yosef seems to have taken a false oath, by Par’oh’s life that they are spies. His first suggestion notes the conditional nature of the oath, his having declared them spies if they failed to bring Binyamin. Confident they would, he was fine. [Another questionable claim—if I am sure a side of my oath will never come true, is it just fine to make false assertions? R. Arama seems to think yes,]

A closer look at the words of the oath also help. Yosef says hei Par’oh, rather than hai Par’oh. The latter would mean an oath by Par’oh’s life, where the way Yosef said it refers to an object Par’oh owns (hai Par’oh means by the life of Par’oh, hei Par’oh means the life belonging to Par’oh). Yosef knew it would sound like an oath, but wasn’t in fact making an oath.

[Either way, of course, Yosef was saying something he knew would be heard other than how he meant it. Considering R. Arama started down this road because he could not believe Yosef would swear a false oath by Par’oh’s life, his solutions seem to me to provide less moral clarity than I’d have hoped. It is, to me, a very good example of how our questions about the conduct of figures in Tanakh too often depend on our own judgments of right and wrong, where what we ought to want to know is the Torah’s judgment.

Here, he thought Yosef wasn’t at fault for Ya’akov’s continuing distress because the brothers could have left someone with Ya’akov, and that the oath wasn’t a problem because it wouldn’t ever have to come true and wasn’t an oath by Par’oh’s life. We who might see it differently would need some other way of reading the Torah.]

The Lessons of an Outsider

Yosef puts them in prison for three days, then offers an out, to leave Shim’on, go back, bring Binyamin, and prove their innocence. R. Arama notes the political wisdom in Yosef’s action, giving the brothers a palatable way forward to a conclusion that would meet all their needs—he, Yosef, would see Binyamin, they would get the food they needed for their homes, at the tolerable cost of Shim’on staying behind.

[In a different life, I read Graham Allison’s celebrated Essence of Decision, about the Cuban Missile Crisis, where one of his key points was Kennedy’s always giving the Russians ways out.]

Perhaps unintendedly, Yosef also brought the brothers to realize how wrong they had been. This stranger’s compassion on them and their physically absent relatives (so he wasn’t led to pity by the visual cue of their suffering), without Ya’akov or Binyamin making any request, contrasted with their hard-heartedness to their pleading brother, who had been right there before them. They admitted their guilt, acknowledged they deserved what was coming to them.

[The brothers do say all this in reaction to Yosef, despite little in what he had said connecting to the original incident. He is offering a reason for them to have come up with their idea now, after hearing Yosef speak.  He interestingly suggests it was only at this moment they were able to see their guilt. While others would say they had known they did wrong all along and brought it up here as they faced a new crisis, R. Arama is saying it was only now they fully comprehended how far wrong they had gone, the lesson in compassion for others they had just been taught. For us, it might be a lesson in denial and how long it can last, for our very greatest.]

As a small side point, he says Yosef put their money back in their sacks to encourage them, to give them a sense some parts of their life were going well. If so, it backfired, because they took it as yet another threat.

Yehuda’s Defense of Binyamin

As with many parashiyyot, R. Arama goes through the story step by step, many of his comments side points. I am therefore skipping to the next large point he makes, when Yehuda steps forward to argue on behalf of releasing Binyamin. R. Arama knows three ways to plead a case: offer proofs of innocence, reasons to treat the defendant more leniently than the letter of the law, or show others were guilty.

Yehuda has none of those available. He cannot demonstrate innocence because he doesn’t know what happened (Yehuda implies Yosef does know, R. Arama says), Yosef has no reason to be more lenient than the law allows, and the evidence is too clear to say it was anyone else.

Because R. Arama thinks judge’s can only be lenient in ways that will not adversely affect others [a reminder that sometimes what seems generous has other consequences for people we have not considered], Yosef’s telling them he did not intend to take all the law would allow—death to Binyamin and slavery for the brothers—opened the door to further claims.

First, punishments should slide on the scale of the defendant, lighter sentences for the very young or old. Makkot 22a has a similar idea, where the Gemara says the person administering lashes for a convicted defendant would adjust the strength he used to fit the person being lashed. Should the criminal lose control of his/her bowels during the process, the embarrassment would substitute for the pain of the lashes, and the punishment would stop thered.

Judges also adjust sentences when others will be implicated (in this case, Ya’akov). To R. Arama, that’s why David left Yoav alive after the murders David would eventually have Shlomo avenge—at the time, Yoav was too important to the Jewish nation (perhaps Shimi b. Gera as well, whom Hazal assume to have been a premier Torah scholar). In an earlier incident, Shaul had held his son liable for death for violating an oath he, the king, had made. As he had that day been the agent of a military victory, a benefit to the whole nation, his punishment had to be adjusted.

Third, some crimes do not come with clear predetermined punishments. The crime of taking the cup was a matter of insult to Yosef, leaving him with leeway about the punishment.

Three reasons, in other words, Yosef could give Binyamin less than he “deserved:” he had reason to know Binyamin mattered greatly to Ya’akov, such as by the brothers’ original resistance, their willingness to go to jail rather than commit to bring him. When they did agree, Yosef had implicitly promised to let Binyamin go because of his special relationship with his father, had claimed he only wanted to see him to verify their story. Once Yosef said he wanted Binyamin to be a slave, instead of killing him for his crime, he showed this was a financial offense rather than a capital one, susceptible to substitution and adjustment, such as letting Yehuda serve the sentence.

Yehuda’s full-throated and well-reasoned plea, with his readiness for self-sacrifice, convince Yosef, and he reveals himself to his brothers.

Par’oh Likes Yosef

We’re almost out of space, so I will skip to note only R. Arama thinks the verse wants us to see how valued Yosef was in Par’oh’s court, based on the pleasure they take in the news Yosef had found his family. They were thrilled he would now be known he had a large and important family (until now, he had done well, they liked him, but now they could all be sure he also deserved his high position, based on his family.)

To emphasize his good feelings towards Yosef, Par’oh empowers him to bring and support his family, furnishing all they need. Yosef, in turn, does some of that already for his brothers, giving them new clothing to make a good impression on Ya’akov, a first sense the family fortunes had turned for the better.

Usually, R. Arama’s readings of the parasha show how his original themes play out in the text. In this case, it was less so, the comments we saw last time, about not being too invested in the wealth of this world, a sort of underlying current of the later discussion, which was more about Yosef and Yehuda’s finding their way to end the long estrangement of the family.

Akeydat Yitzhak, Sha’ar Thirty

The Misdirection of Excessive Comfort

The speaker in Tehillim 119; 19 says he is a ger, a stranger, in the Land, and then begs Hashem not to hide His mitzvot from him. R. Arama explains we generally share secrets and what we care about with those we see as equals. The Psalmist recognized he in no way could be an equal of Hashem, worried he might therefore be closed off from Hashem sharing the mitzvot. He has to ask for it as a special favor.

In a play on words R. Arama does not need me to applaud as pretty, he says less spiritually alert people are termed am ha-aretz, people of the land, because they think the land belongs to them, think of themselves as “people of the land,” rightful residents, fail to notice, are not sophisticated enough to realize all human beings are at best like resident aliens in Gd’s land.

The wise, on the other hand, have absorbed the message of R. Ya’akov in Avot 4;16, this world is like a hallway to the World to Come. The realization leads such people to accept their lives will in some ways imitate the experience of a stranger far from his/her birthplace. Immigrants do not insist on honor, know they will often have to suffer some poverty, work at menial jobs, not be considered marriage material by the upper classes, focus on the more immediate concerns of survival in their new land.

[For all the US has been a land of immigrants, R. Arama’s description matches the hardship stories immigrants tell even about the US—and in recent years, we have seen immigratioin dramas unfold in many places, with those immigrants subject to many degradations. R. Arama’s pitch here seems aimed at an audience who might have been insisting on/striving for a higher standard of living than he found palatable, especially because the standard we decide we “need” affects many other decisions we make.]

A last familiar indignity is the challenge of language, either not speaking it at all or being mocked by native speakers for the immigrant’s accent. Part of the warning in the tokhaha in Devarim 28;49 tells us abandonment of Hashem can lead to invasion and subjugation. The verse adds that the Jews will not know their invaders’ language, telling R. Arama they will have to bear the indignities of having to learn and try to speak a foreign tongue.

The Reason to Immigrate

To choose the hardships of immigration just for money [I assume he means extra money, above the reasonable living the person was making in the first place; many immigrants move looking either for subsistence, a different discussion, or because they prefer the new society as a whole, again not what R. Arama was denigrating] strikes R. Arama as a poor choice, because money is fleeting, can be taken from us at any moment.

Gdly people forego wealth and honor, like immigrants (in the lands of their birth as well, he means; he is taking immigration from literal to metaphor). He singles out R. Eliezer b. Harsom as an example, whom Yoma 35b tells us ignored his vast wealth to be able to study Torah without being distracted by business interests. Torah study is a better reason to be treated like an immigrant because the person is guaranteed to retain the value for him/herself (where money can be stolen), as verses in Tehillim and Mishle stress, our good deeds and wealth in Torah will be ours forever, where money certainly will not (you can’t take it with you, Tehillim 49;17-18 already says).

The Look of “Immigrant Status” in Service of Gd

People who care about Gd’s service and learn these lesssons will not adopt the concerns of most people– wealth, possessions, status– because s/he will know success as judged by people of this world is illusory, with no lasting value [I have met people who honestly seek more money to be able to change the world for the better, ease the burdens of the poor, advance medical research, etc. Similarly, I still believe there are people who seek power primarily to effect positive change. That’s not whom R. Arama is addressing, and even in our times, I think they are the exception.]

Proper awareness of the world and its role should lead to less complaining as well. The Torah tells us Hashem looked at the world and considered it tov me’od, exceedingly good, where many carp about its various slacks. They may be right, but R. Arama believes those of proper attitude would not focus on the flaws, would recognize them as par for the course of a world that’s only a prelude to the truly desired existence. Those overly troubled by the problems of this world, who insist they want a quiet, trouble-free life, misunderstand the nature of this life. [The hallway, I think he means, always forces us to travel a road to get to the Palace, and the road of this world must include challenges and times of trouble.]

How the Righteous See Life

Instead of focusing on what’s wrong, we should concentrate on opportunities we have been given. A person who finds an item, enjoys it for some time and then is forced to relinquish it should be grateful for what s/he had, not complain about the loss. Iyyov showed us this attitude early in his story, when he reacted to losses by blessing Hashem even after much of his bounty had been taken away.

The perspective provides more equanimity, because setbacks are always on a background of this world as a staging area for the next. In a life of no ultimate values, the loss of fleeting pleasures for more long-term profits should be an easy choice of investment.

R. Arama frames Bereshit Rabbah 84 in this light. The Midrash has R. Aha says the righteous (R. Arama thinks it’s only some righteous) seek serenity in this world, and Satan complains about their greed, how they want quiet here in addition to what they will receive in the World to Come. The idea mistakes the hallway for the palace, in R. Arama’s view, is why verses in Yeshayahu speak of death as the time of peace, because only there do the righteous reach their true reward.

To make the point, both for the righteous themselves and for others who stress serenity in this world as vital, Hashem does not let the righteous get too comfortable (the Midrash put the idea at the beginning of Parashat Va-Yeshev, Ya’akov reached a brief moment of peace). As part of their continued growth towards better shares in the World to Come, Hashem brings bumps in the road to work to overcome.

The peaceful life itself doesn’t produce the problem, the attitude does. Ya’akov lost his sensed immigrant status (both literally, in Canaan, and in the broader version of this whole physical life being a temporary migration on the way to the World to Come).

The Language of Human Immigrants

R. Arama previously pointed to language issues as one of the ways immigrants show their uneasy fit in their world. The righteous’ native language focuses on the intellect and what it tells us is good, where ordinary people speak of (and care about) their more animalistic needs and pleasures.

Ordinary people match animals in opting for force, power, and control where language fails them, where the concerns of the righteous are always amenable to speech and thought. True, the Torah required physical punishment for some crimes, lashes or even death, but that is to restore the recipient to his/her overall awareness of the proper balance between the physical and humanly intellectual. Mishle 26 speaks of corporal punishment for a fool as similar to the whip for the horse or goad for a mule, ways to bring a being unable to see the bigger picture back to better compliance with the necessary.

[Although obviously a sensitive subject, I think we can make the mistake of gliding over it too quickly. R. Arama—and Rambam has similar comments in the Moreh—thinks people’s levels of awareness of Gd and the true purpose of the world distinguish them from each other, along a continuum from barely different from the animals to barely different from the angels. The people at the more animalistic end of the spectrum are not quite as fully human as the others, in R. Arama’s mind, and therefore open themselves up to harsher and more physical punishments.]

Next time, we’ll bring the immigrant discussion, the righteous’ sense of being strangers in the world, to the story of Miketz and Va-Yigash, the brothers’ encounters with Yosef.

Akedat Yitzhak, Sha’ar Twenty-Nine, Second Part

Getting Back to Yosef

Yosef’s different interpretation of the butler and baker’s similar dreams shows R. Arama what we saw him say last time, Yosef focused on more than the content of the dream, took account of what he knew of the two men, their position with the king, what had landed them in prison. He gave the baker a negative interpretation because he knew the man, his foul temperament, his bad luck, and how much his sin had angered the king. It’s also why the same person can bring a dream to two interpreters and receive different interpretations—they know him better or worse, and factor in whatever they know.

(Dreams predict the future, R. Arama insists, yet to read them properly requires detailed knowledge of all the dreamer’s circumstances.  The exact same dream by two people might carry starkly different messages.)

As support, he notes Par’oh calls Yosef, tzafenat pa’aneah, revealer of the hidden. Yosef excelled at finding the divine truth in dreams, at knowing the people and the symbolisms well enough to understand the whole of the dream’s message. It was an excavation process, uncovering what was there, not inserting ideas or thoughts.

Inductive or Deductive Reasoning

The skillful interpreter built a picture out of the details of the dream. Extra details can confound the interpreter, who will not know how to incorporate them all into the construct. Prophets work from the big picture down to the specific instance. They hear from Hashem (R. Arama refers both to the “heavenly order,” an idea he does not elaborate but sounds as if he thinks the prophet can look at world events and already have some sense of what would happen, and to Gd’s intent, what Gd chooses to share with the prophet), as Amos 3;7 says, Hashem does not act before revealing the secret to a prophet.

Hard to read details are less of a problem for a prophet, who starts knowing the bigger picture (Gd’s general plan for the universe), the only news is the particular way it will express itself. It’s therefore easier for the prophet to distinguish vital from incidental, the meaningful from the redundant.

In Daniel, Nevukhadnezzar has a disturbing dream he refuses to share with his advisers, instead insisting they tell him both, dream and interpretation; R. Arama thinks Nevukhadnezzar sensed he had been given a proto-prophecy, therefore was willing to hear its meaning only from someone working with the more prophetic model, where the big picture tells him/her what was happening. [It’s a remarkable idea, Daniel was so in touch with how Hashem ran the world, he would be able to guess/intuit what Nevukhadnezzar had dreamed and what it meant. Unless he means Daniel had a literal prophecy telling him what was in the dream.]

Bereshit Rabba offered another idea, kings’ dreams apply to the whole nation or world, as if each individual citizen had had the dream. To build an interpretation from the details would be hopelessly compolicated, I think he means, and the king understood that. His sorcerers, etc. knew he sought a model of reading this dream they could not offer (as did Par’oh in the time of Yosef, R. Arama says a bit later). Daniel made clear he was offering only what Gd had shown him, which convinces Nevukhadnezzar when he heard Daniel’s reconstruction and explanation.

As Yosef always stressed as well, Hashem is behind all correct interpretation.

The Parsha Itself

His main point made, R. Arama turns to the parsha; we will look only at those of his points I found most remarkable. He thinks the repetition of the dream after a brief awakening alerted Par’oh to the special qualities of this dream; thinks Par’oh could not accept any of the interpretations his wise-men offered either because Gd did not let (he says Par’oh’s heart was in Gd’s hands, as in Mishle 23;1, the heart of a king is like waves of water in Gd’s hands, an idea that complicates what Gd means by hardening Par’oh’s heart during the Exodus, as we can consider when we get there) or because Par’oh himself sensed they missed the mark.

The butler tells Par’oh about Yosef’s dream abilities, including his having read two similar dreams as correctly different. He stressed Yosef’s being a Hebrew to assure the king he had no personal stake in Yosef’s success.

Yosef tells Par’oh what he needs to hear, carefully stressing to Par’oh he was not in this case interpreting, he was reflecting the divine message to the king. The dream’s portent of a famine, for example, must be a warning for the populace at large, as kings never suffer personal famines.

The doubling of the dream indicated the imminence of the events because Gd’s plans leave more of a mark on the world as they come closer to fruition. A doubled dream showed the events were close to reality. (R. Arama cited a verse in Yo’el 3, where Yoel predicts a future in which all Jews will have dream-visions, because the future will be so close to reality, it will impact more people than usual.)

Yosef volunteered his thoughts on how to prepare for the coming plenty/famine to show Par’oh he had moved beyond interpretation, had developed the further skill of knowing how to plan for the future signaled by a dream, knew the right advice for a situation, in this case the need for gathering and storage of excess food, as directed by a special royal appointee.

Crowning Yosef

Par’oh knows Yosef is the man for the job, as he tells his court, because Yosef has demonstrated his ruah Elokim, spirit of Hashem, a quality none of them had. He only consults with the rest of the court out of courtesy, in R. Arama’s view, although he then emphasizes to Yosef his power comes from Par’oh, because he was worried the people might take the idea as their own. (R. Arama thus thinks Par’oh was both enough of an absolute monarch to consult with his retinue only out of politeness, yet insecure enough to feel the need to remind Yosef of the source of his power. I like noticing where “absolute” monarchs are not as absolute as we imagine.)

Yosef does not get in touch with his father right away [a fact that led R. Yoel bin Nun to a fascinating idea about Yosef in Megadim 1, summarized here], R. Arama says because he was a) busy and b) knew he would have a chance when the famine hit. He also thinks Yosef waited for the famine to deepen before opening the storehouses, to wait to sell at a higher price [his financial acumen/manipulation will be a topic to see in a coming sha’ar, I believe].

The Three Keys to Our Special Light

In his concluding summary of the sha’ar, R. Arama reminds us of his view the light of prophecy/divine spirit only comes to Jews. As he lays it out, the Greeks of the Maccabees/Hashmonaim’s time sought to deprive the Jews of this by taking away the three underpinnings of Jewish exceptionalism, circumcision, the calendar, and Shabbat. His perspective of each of those differs from the way I have usually seen them described.

Circumcision, he says, is crucial to our belief in Gd (he calls it shoresh ve-ikar, the root and the main part, I think because a people would do this to their infant sons only if they believed they had been told to do so by Gd). The calendar reflects our belief in a Messianic future; we set our time by the moon to reflect our belief we, like the moon, will return to full strength even as we have gone down to almost nothing (he points out the prophets would speak of the Jewish people as being like the moon). Finally, Shabbat hints at the ultimate purpose, the World to Come, a world into which we have few insights (he refers to Berakhot 34b, which says even the prophets did not speak of the World to Come).

When the Greeks banned circumcision, they reduced Jews’ access to Torah, he thinks, because someone uncircumcised does not have the faith to study Torah (I think he means Torah is more special to those who have sacrificed for the faith that underpins it. Without, those who transmit it will not be able to give it the context and commitment it needs. He seems to think that’s true even if the reason for the lack of circumcision was beyond control.)

The miracles of Hanukkah responded to the Greek aggression, in ways we saw on a previous Hanukkah and will therefore not repeat, bringing us to the end of a sha’ar focused on the types of human wisdom, the role of dreams, and the ways to understand dreams as predictions of the future.