[Avodah] Cave or desert island

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, January 25, 2008 6:41 am, R Michael Makovi wrote:
: Very true. If you live in Sodom, leave ASAP. But this is not
: l'hatchila. The ideal is that you live in a society and participate in
: it. Rambam elsewhere says that a man who cuts himself off from the
: community, even if he still does mitzvot, has no Olam haBa.

This is a change in topic.

This thread started as a spawn off a discussion about the value of the
mitzvos specific to Jews to the individual.

I suggested that a Jew stranded on an island, who couldn't participate
in Kelal Yisrael, still gained by doing those mitzvos. The island
wasn't instead of Sodom, but instead of having the opportunity to
contribute to the Jewish nation as a whole.

The fact that he has fewer challenges, and thus fewer sins, living
alone on an island, wasn't really that relevant to the original
discussion. Asking whether the equation changes depending upon whether
he started out in Sodom or R' Aqiva's Benei Beraq is even further from
the original quesiton.

I'm not saying we can't discuss the new topic. I just don't want to
lose the old one.

40 min later, at 7:23 am, he wrote:
: Of course. This is my point. There is more to being a tzadik than
: simply not sinning. Being a tzadik means:
: 1) Not sinning WHEN you have the opportunity. In seclusion, you have
: no opportunity, and no influence from your yetzer hara.
: 2) Doing chesed. In seclusion, you have only bein adam l'makom.

: This is why the Torah wants us to live in society. Because the Torah
: does not want to create the ideal sinless individual, but rather the
: sinless and mitzvah-full society....

A mitzvah-full person, as a goal in himself, would also need a
society. So that nequdah isn't proven one way or the other.

Also, what justification do you give for the island dweller to do
mitzvos bein adam laMaqom?

To which RMM suggests:
: The Sifra says this on the Tochacha (I think) - when you go into
: galut, keep doing mitzvot, AS A REMINDER. Our doing mitzvot in chutz
: la'aretz is only a reminder so that we remember how to keep them in
: haAretz. It is davka in haAretz where we will be a mamlechet kohanim
: v'goy kodash, and thus an ohr lagoyim.

And the Radaq, and the Ramban. However, this simply can't be peshat,
as then Hillel and Shammai had no justification for staying in Bavel
while their rebbe was alive. In Bavel, you would argue, they have no
real mitzvah of talmud Torah. It would be assur to die al qiddush
Hashem in chu"l, since suicide is 7 mitzvos, and qiddush Hashem is
not.

And what about the person lost in the Negev a little north of Qadeish
Barnei'a? He lives in EY, thus he would be chayav to wear tefillin no
less than someone living in the Rova in Y-m. But does nothing toward
advancing the rest of Kelal Yisrael, or even a minyan of us. How is he
helping the nation fulfill a covenant?

And what about the Rav Saadia, Ramchal or Nefesh haChaim, who speak of
mitzvos in terms of sheleimus ha'adam? The Rambam writing about an
individual's yedi'as haBorei? Or Chassidishe sefarim who speak of the
individual achieving deveiqus? Aren't the overwhelming majority of
hashkafic sources written from the assumption that mitzvos exist for
the purpose of ennobling the self? RMM cites RSRH quite often -- the
whole notion of TIDE is that both are necessary to ennoble *the self*!

R' Berkovitz's position is an outlier, and one that doesn't fit the
general thrust of too many baalei mesorah for me to take it seriously
as a personal philosophy. (As ideas to play with -- yes; he's
brilliant and makes good arguments.)

I stick to the theory that both berisim exist -- between HQBH and BY
and between HQBH and each ben Yisrael. Thus, on a national level, it
only serves as practice. But on a personal level, there is still a
tachlis to being more than a ben Noach.

...
: Any individual can be a tzadik. For example, I've never robbed in my
: life. But does anyone look at me and say, "Wow! Mikha'el Makovi's
: never robbed!". But what if the entire country of Israel didn't have a
: single robber? Imagine what the world would say! Individually, a
: tzadik can fade into the background. But as a collective, the whole is
: more than the sum of its individuals.

A tzadiq, REED tells us, is someone whose nequdas habechirah is moving
in the right direction.

Since I'm not denying the role of a goy qadosh in addition to we as
individuals being kohanim, I do not object to the conclusion. However,
REED's goal is non-trivial, and is about as challenging regardless of
how Hashem made the individual, or what situations he was placed in.

Similarly, citing Aleinu is irrelevent, because proving a national
beris doesn't disprove a personal one.

It is true that each Jew is part of Kelal Yisrael. The Rambam is very
careful in seifer hamitzvos to describe mitzvos BALC as being between
parts of a whole. But it is also true the Kelal Yisrael is the sum of
individual Jews.

...
: AL KEN n'kaveh...AL KEN. The reason He chose us, the ENTIRE reason,
: the entire reason for the entire first paragraph of Aleinu, is for us
: to bring the whole world to worship Him....

Where is "entire reason"?

In fact, it's not reason, "al kein" spells purpose. Why assume there
is only one purpose?

...
: I'd agree with this, as above. A Jew in galut logically ought to
: become a Noachide.

You just disproved your case. Ravina and Rav Ashi concluded otherwise.

: So why create a nation? This brings us right back to our starting
: point. If one understands Ramchal this way, we have an enormous
: kashya.

Just as your proving a national beris doesn't disprove a personal one,
my asserting a personal beris doesn't mean I'm excluding the national
notion.

...
: Likewise, we don't serve for Olam Haba. See Rav Hirsch towards the end
: of Bereshit perek tet. There, Rav Hirsch says that Judaism exists for
: this world, and that is why the Torah doesn't speak of olam haba -
: because it's really not very important. In fact, I'd say that Olam
: haBa is almost meaningless, because after all, we're just going to be
: resurrected and live on the physical world again....

Tangent: Machloqes:
Rambam, Ikkarim -- eternity is spent in Olam haBa, after techiyas
hameisim and a second death

Ramban -- eternity is spent on some perfected physical plane after
techiyas hameisim -- but that plane is Olam haBa (not the post-death
non-physical existence)

R' Kook -- a fusion of the two: The wall between this world and the
non-physical one a person enters after death is an illusion. At some
point, the world will reach a level where the illusion is broken, and
people will thus be both in a post-death reality and in a refined
version of our physical world.

End-tangent.

The Ramchal says we do serve Hashem so that we can give Him the
opportunity to share his Ultimate Tov with us in olam haba. The
ultimar Tov must include tzelem E-lokim, and thus must have an element
of being self-made. You can't just dismiss this part of the Rambam's
thought as being an Aristotilianism, as that doesn't describe the
Ramchal.

Second, for sechar va'onesh to have any meaning, I would think it's
correlated to the meaningfulness of the action. And thus, even just
diagnostically -- the individual must be doing something qua
individual if the reward is qua individual.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             One who kills his inclination is as though he
micha at aishdas.org        brought an offering. But to bring an offering,
http://www.aishdas.org   you must know where to slaughter and what
Fax: (270) 514-1507      parts to offer.        - R' Simcha Zissel Ziv