VaEtchanan 5716
Alef.
רשב"ם דברים פרק ו
(ה) ובכל נפשך - לפי פשוטו אפילו נוטלין את נפשך, שהרי כבר אמר בכל לבבך:
- The difference appears to lie in what is immediately causing you to lose your life, i.e., the individual who is attempting to get you to compromise your religious principles, vs. the basis for why you are resisting and not giving in to the pressure, HaShem, Whom you love and therefore do not wish to transgress His Commandments. RaShI by using the third person singular, is focusing on HaShem, rather than the individual who is forcing you to sin.
- Beit.
- 1. If the individual in question is non-materialistic, then his willingness to sacrifice his possessions is no particular sign of love of God on his part. Consequently, since the manifestation of love for God is very individualistic and can vary from person to person in terms of their priorities, RaShI adds in connection to “בכל מאדך” that this applies only to a certain type of person.
- 2. א) When a single commentator, in this case RaShI, give multiple interpretations for the same textual curiosity, it is an indication that there are weaknesses with each one (otherwise, he would offer only a single explanation indicating his singular preference).
- The weakness with the first answer is perhaps based upon when there is a series, in this case three words describing how one should love God,"לבבך" "נפשך" "מאדך", one could think that they are either in ascending or descending order. But then one is faced with the quandary of how they are to compare with one another. If מאדך is the least significant, then is לבבך more important than נפשך? And if one assumes that נפשך is more important than לבבך, one is forced to conclude that מאדך is the highest manifestation of love? But if מאדך means something entirely different, i.e., this is not a matter of how one loves God, but rather when one is called upon to love God, I no longer have to see ascension or descension with regard to the first two elements that were mentioned.
- The weakness with the second explanation is that מאדך does not even remotely seem to be linked etymologically to the word מדה and therefore the interpretation is clearly more a matter of דרש than פשט, an approach that Nechama feels RaShI pursues when the דרש sheds light on פשט which does not appear to be the case in this instance.
- ב) The idea underlying "בכל נפשך appears to be the literal manner in which you must love God, i.e., even if it requires the sacrifice of your life. The second interpretation of RaShI is focusing upon the emotion of love—under what circumstances are you required to feel love for God? In every circumstance, even when it appears that God is not treating you in a comparable manner. One must love God not only because things are good, but in spite of things being bad.
- ג)
תהלים פרק קטז
(יג) כּוֹס יְשׁוּעוֹת אֶשָּׂא וּבְשֵׁם יְקֹוָק אֶקְרָא:
- I will lift up the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the LORD.
תהלים פרק קטז
(ג) אֲפָפוּנִי חֶבְלֵי מָוֶת וּמְצָרֵי שְׁאוֹל מְצָאוּנִי צָרָה וְיָגוֹן אֶמְצָא:
- The cords of death compassed me, and the straits of the nether-world got hold upon me; I found trouble and sorrow.
- RaShI uses the combination of these two verses to derive the idea, that despite the fact that the Psalmist states earlier (v. 3) that he has been beset with trouble and sorrow, nevertheless (v. 16) he will acknowledge how God is the Source of his Salvation. (The normal tendency would be to do so only when things were going extremely well.)
- Gimel.
- 1. The difference between the Sifrei and RaShI on the one hand and RaMBaM on the other is the manner in which one can achieve love of God. It is always problematic to Command someone to feel a certain way. Consequently, there per force have to be strategies by which to achieve the desired emotional stance. Sifrei and RaShI suggest that Tora study is the manner by which one can come to love God. RaMBaM recommends the contemplation of God’s Creation, the natural world, as the portal to such a sensibility. Perhaps RaMBaM understands the verses in Devarim 6 as Commanding two separate Commandments, i.e., loving God and studying/teaching Tora, rather than assuming that the latter is the means for achieving the former.
- (It is notable that RaMBaM in his Sefer HaMitzvot appears to mention extremely briefly both strategies:
ספר המצוות לרמב"ם מצות עשה ג
והמצוה השלישית היא שצונו לאהבו יתעלה וזה שנתבונן ונשכיל 1) מצותיו 2) ופעולותיו עד שנשיגהו ונתענג בהשגתו תכלית התענוג וזאת היא האהבה המחוייבת. ולשון סיפרי (פ' שמע) לפי שנאמר ואהבת את ה' אלקיך איני יודע כיצד אוהב את המקום תלמוד לומר והיו הדברים האלה אשר אנכי מצוך היום על לבבך שמתוך כך אתה מכיר את מי שאמר והיה העולם. הנה כבר בארו לך כי בהשתכלות תתאמת לך ההשגה ויגיע התענוג ותבא האהבה בהכרח. וכבר אמרו שמצוה זו כוללת גם כן שנדרוש ונקרא האנשים כולם לעבודתו יתעלה ולהאמין בו. וזה כי כשתאהב אדם תשים לבך עליו ותשבחהו ותבקש האנשים לאהוב אותו. וזה על צד המשל כן כשתאהב האל באמת כמה שהגיעה לך מהשגת אמיתתו הנה אתה בלא ספק תדרוש ותקרא הכופרים והסכלים לידיעת האמת אשר ידעת אותה. ולשון סיפרי (שם) ואהבת את ה' וכו' אהבהו על הבריות כאברהם אביך שנאמר ואת הנפש אשר עשו בחרן. ר"ל כמו שאברהם בעבור שהיה אוהב השם כמו שהעיד הכתוב (ישעי' מא) אברהם אוהבי שהיה גם כן לגודל השגתו דרש האנשים אל האמונה מחוזק אהבתו כן אתה אהוב אותו עד שתדרוש האנשים אליו:)
- 2. RaShI understands v. 6 as explaining how to come to fulfill v. 5. How does one come to love God? By studying Tora.
- RaMBaM sees them as separate Commandments, with Love of God as a “Meta-Mitzva” that provides a framework for so many other Mitzvot, i.e., You should study Tora. Why? Because it is a manifestation of your love for God.
Posts
In Beit 1., I thought Rashi was answering the question of why the pasuk included the word meodecha at all if it means "with your money", since if you love Hashem to the extent that you are willing to sacrifice your life for him, then presumably (by kal vachomer) you would sacrifice your money for your love of Hashem. Rashi therefor explains that because there are people for whom the kal vachomer would not apply (i.e., because they value their money over their life) the Torah needed to add the term meodecha.
ReplyDeleteHello Anonymous!
ReplyDeleteI don't see the difference between your answer and the answer that I suggested. It's all about the fact that not everyone has the same priorities, and it's only when someone has to sacrifice what is truly dear to him that he is demonstrating his deep devotion to his love object. Tangentially, I think that this is true regarding Mitzvot in general. Everyone relates to Mitzvot differently. There will be some Mitzvot to which a person is attracted, while others are very difficult for a person to carry out. It seems to me that the true religious expression takes place when one pushes himself to carry out even those things that do not attract him or towards which he feels deep antipathy. An exception to this rule is apparently Limud Tora where the rule "חנך לנער על פי דרכו" suggests that one should Davka study that which is appealing as opposed to subject matter in which he is not interested. Perhaps this is because the Mitzva of Talmud Tora is fulfilled regardless of the subject matter that comprises it.
Best wishes,
Yaakov Bieler
Thanks so much for responding. I stumbled on this blog by accident and now look for the posts each week as a check on my own review of the gilayon (or admittedly, sometimes as a cheat sheet).
ReplyDeleteI agree that our answers have much in common - I was trying to take your answer and focus it to directly answer the question as worded in the gilayon (i.e., why Rashi felt the need to add the explanation after explaining what Meodecha means). Not sure I succeeded but I thought I'd give it a shot. As a teenager I was in Nechama's class for a year and if one of our answers wasn't tailored to exactly to the question, it would not be accepted and we would wait (often in silence for uncomfortably long periods) until someone answered the question the way she asked it.
Thanks again for your posts and Shabbat Shalom.
Dear anonymous,
ReplyDeleteI too was in Nechama's Shiur while a Jerusalem Fellow in 1985-6, and 11 of us went to her apartment each week. At that time, I filled out a Gilayon weekly and she would mark it. You are right that she only valued the answer that she had formulated and I got plenty of "ל.נ." 's (לא נכון) . And there certainly is something to insisting on a rigorous specific formulation. However, I disagree in principle, and feel that a single question can have several "right" answers. Just as Howard Gardner has talked about Multiple Intelligences, so too there are multiple ways "up the mountain", all culminating at a point on the top. Thanks for looking at the posts and communicating. One wonders sometimes if there is anyone who is taking notice.