The title of each installment entrances you, induces you to click or scroll, hooks you into following through to the end. The language floats you from word to word as the ideas infiltrate your being. When each piece ends, you wait impatiently for the next one, anxious for the new vision that will inform and infuse the rest of your life.

I don’t think that’s what I produced. The gap between intention and result weighs on me, but it also provides an opportunity to think about where we are able to access interesting and important Jewish ideas, and where we deny ourselves that access, however interesting or important those ideas may be..

Meeting the Derashot

I was introduced to Derashot haRan by R. Yehuda Parnes, during my first year at YU. He would stop shiur early on Thursdays to examine a short piece of the Derashot. More than any specific content, I remember its whetting my appetite to understand the book as a whole. Enough that, years later, when I had the opportunity to choose a text for sustained study, I chose the Derashot.

By then, I had encountered academic discussions of sections in the course of graduate course work and readings, but no attempt to get at its overall aim, structure, or interests. Or even a discussion of whether those were relevant possibilities; it might have been a random collection of sermons.

That first time through, I prepared and presented it to a weekly shiur, section by section, wrote it up, and emailed each of the pieces. For me, it was striking oil, a source-based worldview that didn’t get caught up in technical philosophy or countering or defending Rambam. Rather, it made its own way to a rational metaphysics, a world in which nature operates meaningfully while leaving room for the real Presence and input of Hashem.

When giving in-person classes, I could see on people’s faces when I hadn’t been clear, could adapt on the fly to hold their attention and clarify what Ran was saying which—to me—was so interesting and which many of us had never seen before.

Not Quite Succeeding

In writing, I lack that educational tool. Converting what I said to writing that first time through, I worked for clarity and consistency. Still, Ran’s many tangents were so enlightening and stimulating, I felt I had to include them.

Readers—bright, intelligent, successful people—told me they had trouble following. The emails were also long, longer than I would dare send now.

I chalked up the misfire to my ineptness, of writing and presentation, leaving a hole I wanted to fill, a failure I wanted to rectify, a sin towards Ran I wanted to atone.  That’s why when R. Gil Student and I were discussing long-term projects for Torah Musings, I jumped at the chance to do Ran better. This time, I told him, I was going to keep each piece short, as close to a thousand words as possible (I don’t think any were over 1200 words), was going to avoid digressions, and frame the discussion to show how the issues Ran raised can shape our perceptions today of ourselves, our world, and Hashem’s role in all of it.

I worked hard, too, going over the material and what I had written several times before submitting. Yet I don’t think I succeeded all that much more than the first time. As I put the book aside until the next time it comes around in my life, I want to mull this repeat failure, where my conscious efforts to do it better had less affect than I’d hoped.

Point the Finger at Yourself First

The first place to look, obviously, is my writing. As I worked on this essay, I started reading a style manual, one of the many books that show people how to become better writers. It reminded me that vigorous prose does more than present ideas clearly and concisely; I have, over time, come to favor being sure that I said what I had to say in ways readers could understand, and do so in as few words as possible, to impose as little as possible on their time.

My sense is that this wasn’t enough to draw people to Ran. No matter how confident I am of the light he sheds on deep questions of how we live our lives, readers wanted or needed more than presentations that were short (although I’ve been told even these thousand words were long), clear, and explicit about relevance.

As a personal matter, that returns Ran to one of my many Great Whites, the projects I thought I could do well but have not yet found the way to do so.

How Good Does Writing Have To Be?

But it also raises a question I think is worth all of our whiles to consider. Growing up, I found many speakers boring. When I began reading serious nonfiction—Torah, academic, or other—much of that was boring as well.

It seemed to me that that was unfortunate and the responsibility of the speaker or writer. It wasn’t enough to have a good idea, to feel you’ve grasped some truth of the world and want to share it. You had to go a step further, present it in a way that didn’t turn off listeners or readers.

I set that as a goal, to learn to do it well enough that it wasn’t hard for people hearing or reading me to access those ideas. I believe I’ve largely gotten there, in my speaking and writing. Readers who made their way through what I’d written didn’t find it a chore.

The rub is in generating the desire to make readers’ way through material, and there there’s a balance I’m not sure we always note.  Some writers and speakers can make the arcane exciting. Good for them (or, more accurately, I’m jealous of them).

But what about ideas not easily or readily transformed into something juicy? Ran is a good example, but by far not the only one. What if he has something to say, is in fact important for Jews to hear and use in their lives, yet expressed himself in a way which, however accessible it might have been in his time, is no longer such in ours?

An extreme answer would be to say that it’s tough on us; if there are important ideas out there, we should, each of us, find them, learn them, and absorb them. My disappointment this time through Ran’s Derashot comes from the dual fact that even going one step closer, rendering ideas in a way that is more accessible to those willing to engage was not yet enough.

The Forbes Magazine View

Coincidentally– if there is such a thing– as I was struggling with how to express myself, I read “A Bold Look at Moore’s Law” by Rich Karlgaard, the publisher at Forbes. He was reviewing Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler (Simon & Schuster), and closes with this quote of Diamandis, explaining when a technology is ready to take off and become essential:  “For me, the most important telltale factor is the development of a simple and elegant user interface–a gateway of effortless interaction that plucks a technology from the hands of the geeks and deposits it with entrepreneurs.”

This time through Ran’s Derashot taught me that, in many areas of Jewish life, we need to find the gateway of effortless interaction. We need a vehicle that plucks Torah from the hands of those willing and able to put in time and effort, and transform it into something effortless and immediately rewarding for wider benefit.

Next time around, God willing.

As Stephen Colbert said in a different context, if this is your first time reading my summaries of Drashot HaRan, I’ve got some terrible news—this is the last one.  On the other hand, doing Colbert one better, if this is the only one you read, you’ve picked a good one. Because here’s where I attempt to bring it all together, in a few hundred words.

Metaphysics, the question of Hashem’s interactions with the world, is a hard subject. One option is to refuse to engage it.  Rambam, for instance, takes a fairly hard rationalistic stance, explaining the world with as little reference to the miraculous or metaphysical as possible (a notable exception, too little noticed, is his list of the miracles at the Sea, in his Commentary to Avot 5;4).

Some find that comforting, freeing us of the need to contemplate or grapple with exactly how Hashem deals with the world. I think Rambam did it for a more technical reason, his belief that we cannot know enough about Hashem to make sense on such issues. For a representative example, he raises the contradiction between freewill and Divine omniscience, and says it’s only a problem because we cannot understand the nature of Hashem’s knowledge.

All well and good, but it doesn’t answer the question.

Some kabbalists go to the other extreme, laying out their understanding of the workings of the divine realms in great detail, confident that tradition or insight have revealed much of metaphysics. We can know exactly which aspect of Hashem is active at particular moments, and how they shape world events, such kabbalists might say.

A Rational Metaphysics

What sets Ran’s Drashot apart—and makes the work appeal to me as a source of repeated insight—is that he takes neither road. Instead, he takes both nature and metaphysics seriously, trying to understand how they interact and intermix. He seeks places where the metaphysical shows itself, and how that affects the life we otherwise see as ordinary and natural.

It’s a remarkable challenge, to accept that life looks natural, largely is natural, and that we are supposed to live naturally, yet to be aware of and alert to the workings of the metaphysical (the Divine) hidden within it. Reviewing a few examples—ones that jumped out at me, with no claim that they are the most important or representative– offers a glimpse of how he did it.

In both the first and ninth Drashot, Ran noted Devarim 4;6’s reference to surrounding nations seeing Jews as a nation that was wise and insightful. While Rambam in the Guide thought the rationality of mitzvot would do that, Ran picked up on the verse’s singling out חקים, mitzvot without an obvious reason, as what led them to see us that way. His explanation is that seeing us succeed with actions that have no obvious reason will prove that we are acting as Hashem told us, a metaphysical avenue to success.

Moshe’s Prophecy, Prophets vs. Scholars

Ran several times stresses the supernatural nature of Moshe’s prophecy. While prophets must have certain natural physical characteristics, like wealth and strength (Rambam thought these were character issues, but Ran takes literally the Gemara that makes these conditions of prophecy), to be able to impress their audiences, Moshe was given a speech defect, to make clear that his prophetic success was not a matter of demagoguery or oratorical skill.

Ran elsewhere sees both priests and Torah scholars as having elements of the prophetic. The reward Aharon received for humbly accepting Moshe’s superseding him was that he was given the חשן משפט, the High Priest’s breastplate, which contained the Urim and Tumim. While prophets had direct prophecy, High Priests had the quasi-prophetic experience of seeing Hashem’s reply to queries posed by kings, with the answer coming from the Urim and Tumim.

Ran thought Torah scholars were also blessed with insight that was close to prophetic, and the Sanhedrin is a body that defines the ultimate form of la, a Divine justice whose value lies not in its practicality, but its showing the way we can bring Hashem into this world.

Not Neglecting the Practical, Natural, or Human

On the other hand. When he spoke of the Black Death as a call from Hashem for Jews to improve, Ran distinguished ordinary illnesses, which do not necessarily teach a lesson, from extraordinary ones, which must be sent from Hashem.

While the Sanhedrin might teach ultimate Torah law, the king’s job was to run a nation that worked in practice. His obligation to have a scroll with him at all times was precisely because he was not completely bound by the Torah—when circumstances called for it, he was to act as necessary, but only if the goal was to advance Hashem’s purposes.

The Sanhedrin itself—and Torah scholars in general—might have an element of the prophetic, but they consciously worked solely with the intellectual. That was why the arguments of R. Eliezer b. Hyrkanos that his understanding of Torah were closer to the truth did not hold water; he might have been closer to how Hashem originally understood the Torah, but once it was given, the question was how human beings understood it.

His reading of another Talmudic story also highlights the value and necessity of ordinary intellect. The story seems to cast Rabbah b. Nahmani as deciding whether Hashem or the Heavenly Court was right. For Ran, the question wasn’t who was objectively right, it was whether Hashem’s view was one that a human being could come to on his own. Because within Torah, what the human intellect can find is what counts.

Even when that intellect leads us wrong. Ran several times says that the Torah required us to follow the conclusions of the Sanhedrin even when they were wrong. Despite that meaning we would not be fulfilling the original Divine Will, we would be fulfilling Hashem’s desire that we follow human intellect where it leads us, and that would be good enough.

It Doesn’t All Come Together

It’s not one coherent presentation, starting with a set of premises and leading to a set of conclusions. It is more case studies, taking up the balance between the natural and supernatural, some of them more obviously connected to concerns of his time and audience (such as the Black Death) than others.

Perhaps that’s because recognizing the need to balance the physical and metaphysical, the natural and supernatural, forces the recognition that we cannot do it completely. It comes in glimpses. A moment arises where we see the metaphysical, spend some time defining where it appears and how far it goes, and that’s as far as we can take it at that moment. Then we move on, alert for the next time it arises.

As I bring this time through the Drashot to a close, it’s with a renewed awareness of our need to see the world in two ways at all times. We have to live in nature and we have to be open to the intrusion of the supernatural, frequently and even regularly.  Being aware of both, discerning which is which and how to react in each circumstance, is the challenge and the goal. A challenge and a goal I hope our review of Ran’s Drashot has furthered for each of us.

Drasha 12, part 3

Ran sees prophecy as the antidote to sorcery, as its replacement. He references here his earlier comments in the fifth Drasha, that Hashem chose Egypt as the site of the slavery so that Moshe’s prophecies would happen in the center of world sorcery. Defeating their sorcerers demonstrated that prophecy is a superior, entirely different phenomenon.

That would imply that Jews are not supposed to utilize sorcery. However, Chullin 95b has Rav judging the propitiousness of travel by how easily he found a river-crossing, which seems like a form of divination. Ran answers that Rav didn’t fully rely on those signs; if the signs were bad, he’d take greater care, seeking ways to avoid the predicted misfortune, but he wouldn’t refrain from travelling. He used it to inform his trip, not determine it.

That answer does not work for two cases, that of Eliezer deciding Rivkah was the right wife for Yitzchak (Bereshit 24:12-18) and Yonatan’s attacking the Plishtim based on their reaction to seeing him (I Shmuel 14:8-10).

Or Psychological Insight?

Ran answers that in both cases, the protagonists set up signs that were sensible, not sorcery. Eliezer knew two facts about his search for a wife for Yitzchak: 1) The Divine Providence of Avraham allowed his slave confidence that Hashem would help him find the right woman, and 2) character was a central qualification for Yitzchak’s wife. He could figure out her character, largely, by her response to his request for water. An ordinarily nice woman might draw for him; volunteering to draw for the camels as well would show her to be kind and caring.

Yonatan, Shaul’s son, was similarly setting up a way to gain psychological insight into his enemies. If the Plishtim were confident and courageous, they would jump to engage him in battle as soon as they saw him. If they were anxious and therefore vulnerable, they would delay the engagement, taunting him to come to them so they could kill him.

Except that Rav held these up as the paradigm of prohibited divination. Ran argues that that meant only that these two fully relied on their conclusions; one who does that with divination would be violating the prohibition. With that, he can bring us back to the question of prophecy which, for Ran, was there to replace all of this.

Ways of the Emorites

Such practices are labeled דרכי האמורי, ways of the Emorites; they don’t involve worship, but finding ways to ascertain or protect the future by consulting with forces other than Hashem. It reminds us that many authorities, including Rambam and Ran, thought alien worship started with our insecurity, our desire to ensure our future. Worship was one way; another was to consult such powers for insight, even when not asking them to change it.

Complicating matters, some ways of finding out the future are permitted. Rambam’s view is that anything which operates according to העיון הטבעי is permissible (in Mishneh Torah, Rambam speaks of that which doctors say works). We might translate that as science, the study of the natural world, but today we’d have to differentiate between science which uses the scientific method to draw evidence-based conclusions and science which speculates beyond what its evidence shows. Those latter might not qualify as having been realized by העיון הטבעי.

We don’t have to get into that, because Ran has a broader definition. He notes that Shabbat 67a allows carrying certain items to avoid certain problems (the details don’t matter), and then reciting a protective verse. The other side of that page allows more such apparently non-scientific and not obviously natural remedies, such as wearing the tooth of a wolf or a nail from a crucifixion.

Discernible, Natural, and Supernatural

Ran’s view is that nature has two modes, the discernible, whose processes we easily see—apply this salve to that wound, and it heals—and nature, whose workings we do not understand. His examples are gravity and magnetism, which were clearly natural but operated in ways and for reasons that were unknown.

When Abbaye and Rava said that anything that is done for medicinal reasons is not considered part of the ways of the Emorites, Ran now concludes, they meant anything which the person involved believes he or she is doing for naturally medicinal reasons. They may think that it works in a way science could not explain, but as long as they think they are working within the natural world, that will not be prohibited.

Ways of the Emorites are those actions where the result comes from contacting supernatural powers, and having them provide information and/or protection from a feared future. If a person believes Hashem made the world such that wearing garlic or an amulet heals or protects from illnesses, they may be in error, but they will not be violating the ways of the Emorites, according to Ran. But if they think they are bringing to bear supernatural powers, that’s the ways of the Emorites and the ways of alien worship.

This is a complicated question and a complicated claim (it allows for all sorts of views, as long as they say that’s “really” how the world works), but Ran doesn’t leave us much room to delve into it. In his view, motive becomes centrally important. As long as one believes one is functioning naturally (even if I came to that conclusion by listening to one or a community of quacks), I am not violating these Torah prohibitions.

Proving Prophets

But his main concern was prophets, whom Hashem sent to obviate the need for those ways of knowing or being confident in the future. Prophets, though, need authentication. As he’s said before, Devarim 18:15’s reference to Hashem establishing prophets כמוני, “like me,” indicates that future prophets will be verified as Moshe was, through signs and wonders.

Yes, Moshe also took them to Sinai, but that was to establish the permanent legislation of the Torah. Later prophets do not have any impact on the Torah’s law, in commands or interpretations. Prophets can only make temporary rules, as did Moshe in Egypt, and his power to do that was based on the signs and wonders he performed. So, for Ran, later prophets who perform miracles are to be believed, unless they’re falsified by having one of their good predictions fail to materialize.

In Lieu of a Conclusion

Ran sort of stops here, ending the Drasha with a bracha to Hashem, but no overall conclusions. Taken together with the last drasha, he’s rounded out his consideration of the three central guides to a Jewish society—king, court, and prophet. Especially in fleshing out the role of the prophet, Ran brought us back to issues of what is natural and what isn’t, which seem to me the central questions for the book as a whole.

We’ll summarize that next time, a quick roundup of this series, a five minute version of Drashot haRan.

Drasha 12, part 2

The Talmudic sage Amemar makes a daring comment in Baba Batra 12a that Ran struggles to explain. Scholars, Amemar states, are greater than prophets. Ran explains that prophets have one power only, to communicate what they were told; we’re obliged to listen, even if that command temporarily contravenes Torah law, other than worshipping powers other than Hashem.

Scholars, on the other hand, use their intellects to understand the Torah, and we follow them even though they might turn out to be wrong. Our obedience to them is broader than to prophets. In that sense, scholars are greater than prophets.

The Comparability of Prophets and Scholars

However, the Gemara launches into proofs that Amemar is right, focused on finding ways to show that Torah scholars are actually also somewhat prophetic. Ran explains that comparisons only work if they use a similar rubric. If scholars use their intellects only, and prophets their prophecy, the different impact of their words doesn’t show that one group is greater or lesser, just different.

For that reason, Abbaye, Rava, and R. Ashi worked to show that there’s an element of the prophetic to Torah scholars as well. Abbaye started with the claim that two scholars’ arriving at the same idea independently (as happens not only in Torah but in science) shows there’s an element of the prophetic to what they’re doing (although the similar occurrence in science serves as a counterargument). Once we know that scholars also work off inspiration, we can say their inspiration goes to greater uses.

Rava rejects the example, saying the two scholars might have the same mazal. He might have meant that literally, that they were born under the same star. Ran modernizes that to say the two scholars might share matter and form (in his time, the antecedents and determiners of behavior); bringing it to our times, we would say they might have shared enough heredity and environment to arrive at the same conclusion. However we say it, he means their shared discovery might result from shared formative influences, not necessarily prophecy.

R. Akiva’s Unapproachable Greatness

Rava instead says that scholars sometimes come up with an idea only to later find out that R. Akiva said it. For Rava, that rules out a shared intellectual source, since (clearly) no one has the same intellectual makeup of R. Akiva (a reminder of the awe in which R. Akiva was held).

R. Ashi says that this doesn’t prove the point, because the later scholar might, in that one area, have found his way to the same place as R. Akiva. Whereas Rava thought R. Akiva’s intellect was so unique that none of his innovative ideas were accessible to other humans’ intellects, R. Ashi suggests it might have been the breadth of his oeuvre that made him who he was, but that on any particular topic, another person could be his equal.

R. Ashi’s answer is that people sometimes come up with ideas that turn out to have been an הלכה למשה מסיני, a law handed down explicitly at Sinai. Those, Ran says, cannot be accessible to the human intellect, because if they were, they would have been given over to the ordinary processes of Torah. Hashem made halachah le-Moshe mi-Sinai, in Ran’s view, for ideas or issues that were not amenable to regular human thought. For a scholar to have come up with it, therefore, shows that an element of prophecy was mixed in, allowing Amemar to correctly say that a scholar is greater than a prophet.

I don’t think Ran has quite clarified the discussion. Rambam, for example, states that all halachot given at Sinai were widely known, making R. Ashi’s idea hard to understand. Leaving those concerns aside, Ran is clear that the Gemara means that Torah scholars are not only more powerful than prophets—in that their decrees last forever and are a function of their freewill, as opposed to the prophet who obediently transmits exactly what told—but they also partake of the prophetic, that some of their ideas and insights bear the mark of inspiration, not simple thought.

Certifying Authorities

One last way they are greater, Ran says, is that Torah scholars are the ones who articulate the standards by which we can judge the validity of prophets, not vice versa. In saying that, he makes the remarkable claim that if a prophet told us not to listen to a particular scholar, we would ignore that prophetic directive.

He quickly moves to a different aspect of the issue, but I think he is saying that just as a prophet cannot uproot a mitzvah, the prophet cannot deny a certified scholar the authority the Torah gives him. Were I able to engage Ran in conversation, I would wonder why the prophet could not, as an hora’at sha’ah, a temporary command, tell us not to listen to a certain scholar (or even tell us, prophetically, that this scholar has personal deficiencies that rule him out from being a source of Torah knowledge).

However Ran would have answered, his bigger point was that the Torah tells us to listen to a prophet and provides rules for identifying a false prophet. But not every false prophet will show themselves that way, so how do we authenticate a prophet? That was left up to Torah scholars, who gave us some rules, such as Nedarim 38a’s saying that a prophet has to be wise, strong, and wealthy (which Ran discussed before, here and here) and guiding principles.

Next time, we’ll see Ran’s view of how we authenticate prophets, and how prophecy relates to other ways of knowing the future. For now, we’ve seen his understanding of scholars as being above prophets, in their right to use their intellect combined with quasi-prophetic ways of arriving at their ideas. And that element, the mixing in of the supernatural with the seemingly natural (coming up with an idea), the blurry line between the intellectual and the prophetic, the natural and the supernatural, will be the focus of next time, the final piece of the Drashot haRan.

Drasha 12, part 1

What gives rabbis, or even the Gemara, authority in halachic issues? In this drasha, Ran reviews the sources of rabbinic authority, whom he had set up as the source of ultimate justice, and his view of why the Gemara isn’t open to later disagreement.

Preventing Divisive Controversy

Ran starts with Devarim 17:8, which tells us to bring any issues that elude us to the central court, the place that Hashem chooses. Ran calls this a foundation of the Torah. Since disagreements naturally arise, new issues need some way to be brought to a consensus. (That, itself, is a significant and nonobvious assumption, that societies need a working consensus on issues facing them.)

For that reason, the Torah set up the Sanhedrin as arbiters, so that—as Sanhedrin 88b reports in a baraita in the name of R. Yose—there were originally no lasting disagreements on matters of Torah. Every town had its court, and Jerusalem had the high court of 71. On any issue that was dividing Torah scholars, the Great Sanhedrin would decide, either by reporting the tradition on the matter or reasoning it out themselves.

Only after the students of the houses of Shammai and Hillel failed to learn well enough from their masters, the baraita reports, did the system break down. Lasting differences multiplied and Torah became like two. The desire to avoid such a situation is, for Ran, the reason the Torah treated a זקן ממרא so seriously, a Torah scholar of rank who refuses to follow the ruling of the Great Sanhedrin.

Ran doesn’t elaborate on what seems an important missing piece, how that breakdown happened. If the Great Sanhedrin was supposed to deliberate and decide all disputes, why didn’t that happen with the students of the houses of Hillel and Shammai? As I said, he doesn’t explain this point.

Ran is more concerned with source verses. While he’s cited this one, the Gemara has two others that seem also to justify rabbinic authority.

A General Source of Rabbinic Authority

The verses he’s used show only the Great Sanhedrin’s role as the court of last resort (and, for capital cases, only when they sit in their proper place near the Temple). Where does other courts’ power of adjudication come from? What about all the Torah scholars throughout history, do we not have to listen to them?

We do, because there are two more verses that deal with the question. The first, Shemot 23b, tells us to follow majority rule, both in courts and when Torah scholars disagree. Avodah Zarah 7a grapples with what happens when two Torah scholars are asked a question and give different answers; one option is that one of those will be greater than the other in wisdom and number. Ran’s reading of “greater in number” is that more of that generation’s scholars agree with him than the first one, and it’s a case of majority rule.

I’m not sure how plausible I find that, since the Gemara seems to be discussing how to decide among two scholars, not when there are opinions arrayed on either side. But it doesn’t really matter, because Ran quickly moves to an even more interesting claim, that this idea of the number of scholars involved is the source for the Gemara’s authority.

Can We Disagree with the Gemara?

He’s not the first to wonder why we follow the Gemara so fully. Later Torah scholars also knew a lot; what happened with the close of that corpus that made clear to those later rabbis that they could not dispute any of its clear conclusions? Ran’s answer, and it’s by far not the only (or even most common) one, is that we have never matched the numbers of scholars who gathered together for the deliberations recorded there.

Ketubbot 106a, for example, writes that when a convocation of rabbis broke up—the exact instance is not known, some think it was Abbaye’s time, some think Rava’s, some think R. Pappa, and more—once there were only two hundred of them left, they thought of themselves as the remnants of the remnants. So if a majority of that large a group had agreed to some idea, we have never had a larger group than that, to reach a different decision.

There are many other answers, but Ran’s passage leaves open the possibility of rethinking those of the Gemara’s conclusions and insights that were not simply a recording of tradition. It’s not that we can’t argue with the Gemara; it’s that they had such larger numbers of scholars involved in their debates that we cannot assume we have reached any kind of equivalent truth.

He may not have conceived of it, but today, in Israel, if all the ramim, roshei yeshiva, and roshei kollel of the various yeshivot were to convene to analyze halachic issues, they’d have more people than the Gemara did. For Ran, it sounds like they could then rule differently from the Gemara.

That’s all theoretical because a) his isn’t the usual explanation for the authority of the Talmud, and b) it’s unlikely that all those Torah scholars will gather for a majority-rules meeting any time soon.

Getting back to Ran, he notes that the Gemara also cites Devarim 17:11, לא תסור, as the source of Rabbinic authority, such as in Berachot 19b. That’s for decrees and ordinances, new legislation by Chazal. So we have the authority of the Sanhedrin or of any majority of Torah scholars when trying to ascertain the Torah’s view of some issue, and then we have this verse for ordinances and decrees. The next step, for Ran, is to compare these powers to those of prophets. Spoiler alert, scholars win.

Drasha 11, part 3

Ran’s view of batei din, halachic courts, turned them into an institution whose work could have been performed by a prophet. Since, in his view, courts articulate ultimate justice, he wonders why Hashem didn’t leave that to prophets, who could tell us Hashem’s will exactly.

They’re Not Steady, They’re Sources of Faith

Primarily, his answer is that we have no guarantee a prophet will always be around when we need one. Some generations have little prophecy, and even bonafide prophets do not prophesy all the time, or on demand. But we will always have scholars to interpret the law to the best of their abilities. As Devarim 31:21 promises, the Torah will never be forgotten from among the Jewish people.

Ran adds an important line, but doesn’t explain it well enough for me to be sure what he means. He says prophets never speak to issues about which there’s no way to doubt them. In context, I believe he means that if a prophet ruled one way or another on Torah law, there’s no way to prove him or her wrong—since God gave the Torah, anything a prophet said would trump what any scholar would say. But a prophet, Ran seems to say, says that which people can reject—Hashem wants us to surrender Jerusalem, or stay in Israel when we want to flee to Egypt, or not worship idols.

But if they’re not to decide Torah law, what are they for?

Mistaking the Causes of the Future

Ran starts with the prohibition of דרכי האמורי, the ways of the Emorites (Devarim 18:9-12). The ways of the Emorites, he says, were how they attempted to predict the future, to be able to prepare and to act accordingly. People—especially kings, who have the fate of the nation in their hands– want to know when to do what. That’s why Shaul went to the בעלת אוב of En-dor.

The mitzvah of תמים תהיה, that we should trust in Hashem and eschew these strategies, is one response. But another part of the response, Ran says, is that we would have prophets to reveal to us all that which other people try to find out through sorcerers.

What the Torah does not explain, for the many authorities who accepted that those practices might have been effective, is why the Torah opposed taking advantage of them?

As I write Ran’s answer, I note that this version of the question applies to any means we have of feeling we can predict the future. He says Jews’ taking advantage of those predictions would lead them to believe the stars (or whatever) in fact shaped the future, and that dealing with them directly was the best, maybe the only, way to have it unfold differently. This forgets that Hashem controls those stars, that they do His bidding, not operate independently.

The contemporary parallel is all those areas of life we see as true regardless of what we think of Hashem. Medicine is the easiest but not only example. While we are allowed, expected, and commanded to consult with doctors, Ran shows us how easily that can easily slip over a line from consulting with them to the extent that their knowledge extends and coming to believe that they are the only hope for responding to our medical conditions.

תמים תהיה as a commandment and the presence of prophets as a way to know the future, Ran is saying, were to remind us that Hashem is the only fully accurate source of knowledge of the future. Turning to Hashem for salvation is the only way to change that future, to avert those parts of that future we fear, fully and meaningfully.

Testing a Prophet

One of the central questions with a prophet is verification. Rambam mentions performing a sign as a first way of demonstrating one’s prophecy, but seems to see the real verification process as making repeat correct predictions, with a hundred percent accuracy. Ran disagrees.

Despite wonders being reproducible by people who aren’t prophets, Ran thinks the Torah tells us to listen to someone who offers such wonders until and unless we have reason to doubt or reject that prophet’s authenticity. Devarim 18:15 says Hashem will establish a prophet כמוני, like me, like Moshe Rabbenu. He first approached the Jews with signs (water turning to blood, his hand becoming leprous, his staff turning into a snake), and the verse tells us they then believed him.

But not fully. It wasn’t until Sinai that Shmot 19:9 tells us Hashem guarantees that now the Jews would believe in Moshe’s prophecy forever. As we’ve seen before, Ran thinks Hashem appeared at Sinai in a way everyone could see (a lesser visitation than Moshe could handle) specifically so that they would have witnessed it themselves. This created belief in Moshe’s prophecy that would never be replicated nor challenged by a later prophet, regardless of what signs or wonders he or she performs.

Faith and Creeping Doubt

But if they believed in Moshe in Egypt, and then again at the Sea (as Shmot 14:31 says), why did they need Sinai? Ran says that events after each of those raised doubts. In Egypt, after they were told they were being taken out, they watched Moshe ask Paroh to go three days’ into the desert, to sacrifice to Hashem.

Hashem had good reason for this chain of events—Ran thinks it was so Paroh would chase after the Jews and ride to his destruction in the Sea. However, it made the people wonder whether Moshe really represented Hashem, Who shouldn’t need to beg Paroh for three days leave. The same happened when Hashem asked the Jews to borrow the Egyptians’ gold and silver, instead of taking it outright. A powerful God would not need that, the Jews would think, and begin to wonder what was going on.

Even Moshe might not have known the reason for all this, Ran says, leading to doubt that could not be assuaged in the short term. Hashem wanted that doubt, such as when He brought a wind the night before the Splitting of the Sea. It was not—according to Ran—strong enough to split the sea, but it was strong enough to let Paroh and the Egyptians fool themselves into attributing it to that. Just like the Egyptians, until Sinai, the Jews found ways to question whether Moshe was doing this at Hashem’s behest.

The upshot is that Moshe did prove his prophecy through signs and wonders, as a model for later prophets. But Moshe also had the advantage of Sinai, which erased all the doubts that signs and wonders can leave.

For other prophets, Ran seems to say, we didn’t and won’t have that same security. We will have signs that are in fact evidence of their being sent by Hashem, but they might be signs others can do as well, and later events might seem to weigh against their prophecy, for reasons that only Hashem might know.

That’s Ran’s view of the courts, the king, and prophets, three fundamental components of a society that melds the natural and supernatural.

Drasha 11, part 2

Kings are there to make society work, according to Ran, because courts aren’t there for that purpose.  Instead of seeing the courts as a competing social institution to the king, Ran saw them as fulfilling a different function entirely. The Jewish king was largely the same as non-Jewish ones, which is why the Torah refers to wanting a king like all the nations.

The Torah seems to see it as an appropriate instinct.

What’s Wrong with Wanting a King?

But if that’s true, Ran wonders, why does Shmuel react negatively, in I Shmuel 8, when the people ask just what the Torah told them to? He answers that they wanted a king to replace the halachic courts, not supplement them. For all that Shmuel’s sons did not achieve his excellence, as the verses testify, tradition tells us they did not pervert justice (see Shabbat 55b-56a). Going to them for adjudication would have yielded all the advantages of rabbinic courts, especially increasing the divine presence among the people. Were they to have wanted a king only to fill in the gaps in the practical justice produced, that would have been fine.

They didn’t. They sought one person to fulfill all the functions of leadership, including being the sole source of justice, like non-Jewish kings. That’s how it worked for the nations they knew, that’s how they insisted it had to work for them. Given Ran’s picture of the lacunae in the courts’ ability to guide society, we can understand their reasoning; for them, finding a workable course for society was the central, maybe the only, issue.

Losing the Metaphysical, the Supernatural—Losing God

But it loses the divine element, and it was problematic for Shmuel that the people were so willing to forego that. That’s why he brought rain, thunder, and lightning during the summer, to show that the Jewish people need not be bounded by the natural. Jews are supposed to be a people for whom the natural and divine mix, in how their justice goes and how their history goes.

This is a live issue in our times, when many observant Jews don’t believe the world can operate outside of nature, particularly in medical issues. (Remember that Ran delivered these drashot in the aftermath of the Black Death, suggesting that his audience also struggled to understand how to react to the plague in a God-aware way ). Faced with a serious illness, many observant Jews are certain that their only options are medical. For such people, the idea of tapping into both natural and divine sources of strength and help is senseless.

To move from the medical to the military (since the direct cause of the people’s request for a king was their fear of Nachash, the king of Ammon), imagine an Israeli army commander today doing what the Scriptural Gidon did, culling 90% of his fighters, to exclude those who had worshipped idols (or, for a contemporary parallel, willingly abandoned observance and faith).

That nonobservant people would be outraged is understandable. Ran reminds us that in Shmuel’s time, in Ran’s time, and in our time, many observant people would be equally certain there was no way it could be reasonable to include the divine in our expectations for how the nation’s future would go.

But the Torah thought it was, according to Ran, which is why it instituted both a king and a Sanhedrin.

Keeping the Torah Close

The king’s broad powers to legislate and punish independent of Torah law explain the commandment that he always have a Torah with him, and read it (or have it read) throughout his days. He could do whatever needed to be done, but had to remember that his goal was to support the construction of as Torah-filled a society as possible.

That’s a model that is also foreign to us, giving power unbridled except by the adjuration to attempt to support and foster the Torah’s overall purposes. In a world where we assume absolute power corrupts absolutely, where we are always aware of the need to watch the watchers (and watch those who watch the watchers), we can find Ran’s view incomprehensible.

He doesn’t address it, I think because our objections weren’t even on his horizons of thought. In his world, power had to be wielded by someone and, he assumes, the more concentrated the power the more effective it is. We have many reasons to worry about that—and I am not claiming that his view of the split between kings and courts is the only way to explain those institutions—but it is still instructive to see Ran’s view. He believed that we must empower a leader even while surrounding him with reminders of what he is supposed to do, what his goals are supposed to be.

Included in that is maintaining his sense of awe before Hashem. He has to be reminded, as often as possible, that his job is to maintain a social and cultural background upon which the service of Hashem could proceed. If he puts a Shabbat violator to death even without the exact evidence a court would have required, it had to be so that people learn better to follow the Torah’s laws, not as an expression of his power.

The extent of that power also carries the danger of arrogance, of the king seeing himself as more important than others, seeing himself as deserving of all that he has. Especially for Ran’s view that the king can do largely as he pleases, arrogance is an ever-present danger. The constant reading from the Torah is aimed at avoiding that as well, לבלתי רום לבבו מאחיו, that his heart not be lifted above his brothers’.

So far, Ran has shown us two communal institutions, one aimed at bringing divine justice and presence to the people, the other focused on making sure our practical needs are met. The last piece of the puzzle, for Ran, is the prophet, who offers both divine and practical help in shaping a healthy Jewish polity.

Drasha 11, part 1

Most of us think the purpose of courts is to adjudicate citizens’ disputes and punish evildoers. Devarim 16:18 tells us to appoint people who will judge משפט צדק, righteous judgment. Ran points out that the next verse prohibits perverting justice, so “righteous judgment” must mean something else. For Rashi, it’s selecting judges capable of doing their job (they can judge well, not just are committed to doing it).

Ran claims that משפט צדק refers to ultimate justice, where every court verdict is the most just, taking all possible human care to avoid wrong verdicts. This ultimate justice is the role of the court system. One flaw in that regime is that society can’t function with judges so cautious, because taking care to never convict anyone wrongfully brings with it the necessary corollary of letting many wrongdoers go free. To make up for that, the Torah established another track, practical justice, which Ran believes was assigned to the king, whom we’ll discuss next time.

Part of what led him to this conclusion is that halachic court procedure doesn’t seem likely to produce effective enforcement, deterrence, or retribution. For example, witnesses have to verify that they warned the perpetrator, who articulated awareness of the warning, then committed the sin within a short time span (Sanhedrin 40b). That ensures no accused is punished without cause, but many criminals would be freed for lack of evidence.

Courts as a Source of the Divine Spirit

Courts, for Ran, serve a different purpose; like sacrifices, they bring God’s Presence to the world. That is why the Great Sanhedrin sat next to the Temple, why Sanhedrin 7a says that any judge who is דן דין לאמתתו, renders a most truthful verdict, brings the Divine spirit and why Shabbat 10a says it is as if that judge became a partner with Hashem in creation. That suggests that those who patronize courts for their disputes might not see the financial result they would have expected, but will get a greater religious one.

One challenge to Ran’s reasoning is that R. Eliezer b. Ya’akov, Sanhedrin 46a, held that courts may administer extrajudicial punishments, which seems aimed at the kind of workable outcomes and viable social order Ran had said was the job of the king. He suggests the courts can do this only if the king authorizes it (in which case, they’d be agents of the king, not Torah courts); when there is no king to fulfill that function; or only in the name of fostering greater observance of mitzvot, not sustain the workings of society.

That explains the Torah’s warning about bribes rendering a judge blind. Rashi said it was to remind us that even if the money is given explicitly for the judge to find the truth, whatever that may be, human nature will convince that judge of the greater strength of the claims of the litigant who paid him.

Ran adds another problem, that the losing party will assume the bribe corrupted the verdict, even if it didn’t. In ideal courts, according to Ran, even losers walk away convinced they have been given משפט צדק, righteous justice.

The Majority’s View, Right or Wrong

Once having established the need for courts, the Torah obligates us to follow their rulings even when they seem incorrect. For example, Rabban Gamliel summoned R. Yehoshua to appear before him on the day he, R. Yehoshua, had calculated to be Yom Kippur, to make the point that R. Yehoshua had to heed the decisions of R. Gamliel and the majority (Rosh HaShanah 25a).

Majority rule is such a necessary principle that it overrides a divine voice or a prophet telling us they are wrong, as in the famous story of R. Eliezer b. Hurkanos arguing with all the Sages about the ritual purity of a certain kind of oven (Bava Metziah 59a). R. Eliezer’s last resort was to summon a divine voice, also rejected, since Torah is not in heaven (Devarim 30:12). In Temurah 16a we are told that when the Jews forgot 300 halachot after Moshe passed away, Yehoshua could not recover them prophetically—post-Sinai, law can only be discovered through learning and debate.

Ran is bothered by that, because to achieve the goals of mitzvot (he notes that we all assume mitzvot have goals), we have to perform the mitzvah correctly. If the courts get a mitzvah wrong, when we follow their ruling, we will not see the desired result (or, worse, we’ll see negative results from our failure to perform the mitzvah as originally commanded).

His first answer is that life involves many instances of following the generally productive path, despite its occasionally leading to a negative. Courts’ overall contribution to leading us closer to God outweighs the cost of those errors that arise.

Then he adds a metaphysical version, that the spiritual advantage we gain from obedience to the Sanhedrin outweighs whatever negatives arise from their mistakes guiding us incorrectly. In the first answer, the overall picture is better because we listen to the Sanhedrin; in this answer, even this outcome is better, since obedience trumps being right.

The Sanhedrin as an Other-Worldly Part of Human Society

Ran’s recognition that the laws of courts are impractical led him to a view fully in line with what we’ve seen in other drashot—that life is filled with the physical and metaphysical, the natural and the supernatural, and each needs its appropriate place. In this instance, Jewish courts offer a superhuman form of justice, manifesting the divine spirit among the Jewish people.

Which is nice, but doesn’t make the trains run on time. For that, we had a king, in many but not all ways like other kings. As we’ll see next time.

Drasha 10 Part 3

Moshe Rabbenu sparked Ran’s interest by referring to fear of Hashem as if it is easy to achieve. Ran’s first step in explaining that is to show that we all have a thoughtful side, which sees the world as it should, recognizes that we should aim to what’s ultimately true, Hashem and His service. It’s the other side, the sensory, that’s the problem.

The Triumph of Old Age

As we get older, our senses dull and our urges recede, letting us see how fleeting the pleasures we too often chase are.  For that reason R. Shimon b. Akashya says, Kinim 3:6, that elderly עמי הארץ, those who allowed their sensory side free reign, become dissatisfied as they age, while the aging elderly who focused on Torah find themselves more and more serene.

He doesn’t say Torah scholars get wiser as they age, Ran notes, because some or many of them get weaker. Their increased serenity comes from life bearing out the validity of their choices.  As the sensory fades with age, their youthful choices, made when their urges were still at full strength, become a source of comfort.

Those who chose less wisely see old age with dismay, watching their bodies break down, their ability to find physical or sensory pleasure more limited.  They come to see, Ran thinks, how unwise it was to seek all those pleasures, how it has left them with little of lasting value.  Even so, they don’t have the tools to turn towards a more thoughtful way of living, since they have not taught themselves the ways of righteousness. They know they are on a hollow path, with little way to find a more satisfying one.

Difficult Times Help Us Turn Away from the Sensory

Part of the reason we are so drawn to the sensory, Ran says, is that that side of us sees and seeks only immediate gratification. A longer time frame requires more thoughtfulness, which our sensory sides reject. Our sensory side sees only what’s in front of it– as long as everything is well, a person in the grip of the sensory will opt to reject the need or value of change.

Times of trouble free such people from that narrowness of perspective. Illness, natural disasters, war, anything which interrupts the ordinary flow of life, wakes us to a broader picture.  As we see that we cannot guarantee our sensory experiences, that our existences are often or always more tenuous than we like to admit, we can, if we let ourselves, be redirected to a fuller view, one that takes both the short and long term into account.

That’s why Moshe Rabbenu stresses that the people with whom he is speaking have seen Hashem’s punishments. Their first-hand witness of the evanescence of pleasure should ease their way to focus more effectively and lastingly on that which matters.

Datan and Aviram as Paradigms of Failure

For Ran, that explains why Moshe spoke of Datan and Aviram instead of Korach, as long as we add one assertion Ran made to his audience. He says people focus on building a secure life for their children, financial and otherwise; that’s the central point of all their efforts. He says that’s true for all people at all times, that their dominant goal is leaving their children secure and comfortable.

Datan and Aviram showed how futile a focus that is, since their misdeeds led to their being wiped out with their families. Korach’s children didn’t die, as Bamidbar 26:11 notes, which is why he wasn’t mentioned here; he doesn’t teach that lesson.  We can work our whole lives for one goal and walk away with nothing.

Remembering that helps us choose our involvements more wisely, Ran believes. It points us in the direction of that which cannot be taken away from us, well-considered actions.

Lessons of the Black Death

Ran’s audience knows this first-hand. While earlier generations lived ordinary lives, thirteen years before his talk (dating this Drasha to 1361), the whole world was overturned (as much as two-thirds of Gerona Jewry died). Had it been an outbreak of an ordinary illness, Ran says, we could have seen it as part of how nature works. Extraordinary illnesses, he argues, are directly from Hashem (another assumption people today, even people of faith, vigorously deny).

That’s why Devarim 6:15 refers to Hashem removing illness and not placing illness upon us. Ills that come in the course of ordinary lives are natural, and need Hashem to remove them from us. Extraordinary ones, like plagues, are from Hashem, and what we need is that Hashem never place them upon us at all.

The Black Death, like the earth that swallowed Datan and Aviram, wiped out whole families. Ran assures his listeners that he’s not saying it was a punishment, just that it happened. And was happening again, in nearby lands (in fact, the Black Death returned periodically for hundreds of years). That should be enough to turn us away from the momentary and sensory and towards that which our more well-considered thought processes guide us, the permanent and lastingly important. Suffering can guide to where we should focus, if we let it.

Rabbinic sources speak of יסורין של אהבה, sufferings of love. This term troubles many, since what kind of love is it that has Hashem send us suffering? His answer is that Chazal were making the same point he was. Difficulties help us find our way to where we are supposed to go, ease our passage from the thrall of our senses to dedication to what Hashem wants.

I pause here for two points.  First, years ago I saw a study that reported that people who had undergone a life-changing event—a serious accident or illness, for example—found, two to five years later, that their lives were better than before the event. We sometimes only get where we need to go with a little push.

Second, Ran is reminding us that the twentieth century was not the first time that Jews have lost half or more of their population in a brief time. His reaction to his disaster is relevant to how we think of our tragedies as well.

Ubiquity and Simplicity of Teshuvah

We might understand Ran to be saying that trouble should lead us to penitence as a way to avoid that trouble, but he denies that.  He reads Moshe as encouraging the Jews to see that difficult times help us see the world more clearly, and from there to focus where we need/ought to. These difficulties bring us to better forms of teshuvah.

That’s why he says it’s “easy.” If we see our and others’ troubles in the right light, we will be able to put our sensory side in its proper place. This will, in fact, make it easy to follow the internal push towards that which is lastingly true, what is fulfilling long after we’ve aged out of the pleasures that can distract us along the way.

The push towards Hashem and His service.

Drasha 10 Part 2

Fear of God, Devarim 10:12 implies, is simple. Forget that we find it hard. Ran adduces verses (such as Bereshit 8:21, כי יצר לב האדם רע מנעוריו, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from its youth) and Talmudic texts (such as Kiddushin 30b, that a person’s baser inclinations renew themselves daily) to show that we gravitate to sin.

Since what is natural is easier and more common, Moshe’s supposedly simple ideal is, by the Torah’s own testimony, actually a rarity. How could he pretend otherwise?

Berachot 33b answers—to Ran’s dissatisfaction—that to someone who has an item, securing it no longer seems like a challenge. Ran rejects the possibility that Moshe could be so blind to his spiritual superiority as to speak to the people as if they were on his level. It would be as if Warren Buffett said, how hard is it to make a billion dollars?

Ran thinks Devarim 11, where Moshe Rabbenu stresses that he is making this covenant with that generation, who saw all of Hashem’s wonders, including the punishments Hashem administered to them, complicates the issue. What was so important about having witnessed wonders and punishments?

Among those punishments, he refers to the deaths of Datan and Aviram, which ignores Korach, who led that rebellion. Why focus on the underlings rather than the leader?

The Right Kind of Fear

We might suggest that Moshe reminds us of punishments as a way to instill fear, except that Ran sees that kind of fear as inferior. He thinks that Moshe here was urging us to achieve the awe that comes from recognizing Hashem’s greatness. That’s an awe not easily achieved. One who has achieved it should rejoice, should know that it’s that kind of fear that leads to walking in Hashem’s ways and loving Him.

The path to that awe, Ran assumes, is by focusing on Hashem’s wonders. Examples include the Giving of the Torah, the pillar of cloud and fire that accompanied the Jews in the desert, the kinds of favors Hashem does that lead us to love Hashem, to want to be closer to Him.

But if the point of the bad times wasn’t to scare us into submission, why mention them?

Well-Considered vs. Sensory

The first part of Ran’s answer is that every human power or ability wants to express itself fully. The sense of taste, for example, wants the tastiest foods in the tastiest possible way. Our more thoughtful or well-considered side, that which separates us from the animals, wants its best expression. (Ran uses the word שכלי, which translates as intellectual, but that’s not quite what he means, as we’ll see, so I’ve chosen a different word to avoid confusion).

Anyone who develops his or her thoughtful side and who takes a well-considered approach to life, will perfect his or her character and all other parts of him or herself as much as possible (careful thought makes clear that bad character hinders our success). Such a person will gravitate towards acquiring as much knowledge of Hashem as possible, want to fulfill His commandments as much as possible, since Hashem is perfect.

Ran’s assumptions contrast starkly with our times, when many of the most intellectual—and, seemingly, thoughtful– among us quickly dismiss religion as primitive or worse. My guess and experience is that this uncovers a flaw in their thought processes, that they mask insecurity in claims of intellectual rigor. Unwilling to confront that which they cannot understand, control, or prove, they deny that any such areas or beings exist, rejecting as impossible anything beyond their ken. Ran is saying, I think, that truly thoughtful people run to fulfill the will of a perfect God, the laws of a perfect Lawgiver.

For Ran, this side we all have makes it easy to achieve fear of Hashem. “All” Hashem asks is for us to follow our internal inclinations, to go where our thoughtful side wants.

The Short-Term and Its Pulls

The fly in the ointment is what Ran calls דמיון, most easily translated as imagination. In this context, I think a better translation is the sensory and ephemeral. I say this because he focuses on our appetites (which are connected to our imaginations) and desires, the way in which we are similar to the animals.

This side of us looks only at what is tangible (an insight into how we fall into sin, that we focus on what’s right there in front of us). Since we have these inclinations from birth (Avot De-Rabbi Natan 16:2 says that a person’s good inclination only comes with adulthood, 12-13 years after the evil inclination, which comes at birth), we have a hard time resisting it.

For Ran, a prime difficulty in giving vent to our well-considered side is that we yield to the encumbrances of our appetites, our enjoyment of the physical. Our strongest human power, our intellect, pushes us in exactly the right direction, if only we let it.

A teacher of mine once defined genius as saying something that none of us would have said on our own, but seems blindingly obvious once it’s said. Ran here has articulated a way to evaluate our choices that seems blindingly obvious, once it’s said. And yet I have found many people who resist or reject it, who demand the right to indulge their sensory sides not because their well-considered side says it’s a good idea (such as buying nice new clothing or having wine or meat to enhance our joy on Yom Tov), but just because.

Next time, we will see Ran’s surprising take on how Hashem helps us let that better side take over.