⛰️ Yitro 5784
Judaism teaches the world that for religion to be effective, it requires a devotion of both mind and body.
This post was heavily influenced by an article by Dr. Eliot Resnick
Greetings friends,
How has your week been?
Since I can hear you asking me about mine, let me be a prototypical heiligin yid and answer this imagined question with another question of my own.
Have you ever been at a party and found yourself looking at your watch and saying to yourself, "I think maybe I've stayed too long at this party"? That's how I've been feeling lately. That feeling usually comes shortly after I read the news. I find myself wishing devoutly that the greatest DJ in existence, the Holy Aibishter, would change the music already. I'm exhausted from the current playlist. Sometimes I fantasize about a world where everything makes sense. Of course then I think that a world where everything made sense would be highly predictable and thus would probably also be very boring. It seems that what we're hoping and praying for is a world where there is just enough unpredictability to make things interesting but enough stability so that we know with fairly good certainty what we should be doing tomorrow. A duality that combines in proper proportion both body and intellect.
Thus we turn to the parsha this week wherein we received the 10 commandments from The Holy One, Blessed Be He, as reported to us by Moshe Rabbeinu, and delivered to us on 2 tablets of stone.
When one looks at the traditional understanding of how the commandments were separated on the two tablets we see an interesting pattern. The first tablet begins with a commandment of the intellect - the acceptance of Hashem as Lord of All Creation - and ends with a commandment of the body - the commandment to honor one's father and mother. The second tablet begins with a commandment of the body - don't murder - and ends with a commandment of the mind - don't covet.
Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch addresses this question in a very beautiful way. He says Judaism teaches the world that for religion to be effective, it requires a devotion of both mind and body. The first tablet teaches us that simply the thought of God, even perhaps the wholehearted acceptance of God as The One God, is worthless if it does not manifest in action. One cannot simply be a Jew in one's heart and fulfill the purpose of creation. So the first tablet starts with the intellectual acceptance of God's uniqueness and ends with the very practical application of that idea.
But, Rav Hirsch, continues, the notion that action alone is sufficient to compel and mediate our behavior towards a meaningful and positive existence is also flawed. So the second tablet begins with action and ends with the intellect to demonstrate that without the "inner loyalty" towards the highest ideal, towards God, "all social virtue is worthless and crumbles at the first test."
There are certainly many Jewish thinkers who would argue the point and say that following the commandments and living a "Torah life" are enough, and they may be right. I actually think on the individual level they are right. But on a societal level, I believe Rav Hirsch is correct. Society as a whole requires an orientation that is aligned towards a common ideal. And how much better if that ideal is literally the highest good that one could possibly imagine! Without that alignment societies crumble and no quantity of individual good deeds is enough to hold it together. Similarly a society that is purely focused on the outward signals of virtue without aligning on a core system of values is doomed.
May we be blessed to find that common ideal of both good thoughts and good deeds which will lead to unity of purpose and ultimately, the final redemption. B'miheira b'yameinu.
Wordman