[Aspaqlaria] Aspaqlaria

Wed Feb 7 02:24:37 PST 2007

Aspaqlaria

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Midgets on the Shoulders of Giants

Posted: 06 Feb 2007 09:24 PM CST
http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2007/02/midgets-on-the-shoulders-of-giants.shtml

Someone recently asked me about nisqatnu hadoros, the decline over time from one generation to the next. How is this possible, given that we now have universal education, and the masses know more Torah than any other generation in millenia?

I like the metaphor of the rules of grammar that Moshe Koppel uses in his seifer Metahalakha. A native speaker of a language may not know its rules, whereas an immigrant who went to enough ulpan or ESL classes would know how to conjugate past pluperfect irregular verbs. The native speaker, though, knows what sounds right. And thus, with his less knowledge, is capable of knowing acceptable poetic license to make his point more elloquently and poignantly. The immigrant will make precisely grammatically correct sentences. If he learns two grammarians opinions, and he is sufficiently scared of sounding like an idiot, he will often choose a sentence that conforms to both interpretations. The immigrant, because he lacks that feel for the subject, will play safe.

Heres R JB Soloveitchiks way of describing the decline, as written in Pinchas Pelis notes of his pre-Rosh haShanah lectures (Soloveitchik On Repentance, pp 88-89):

Allow me, please, to make a private confession concerning a matter that     has caused me such loss of sleep. I am not so very old, yet I remember a     time when ninety percent of world Jewry were observant and the secularists     were a small minority at the fringes of the camp. I still remember -     it was not so long ago - when Jews were still close to G-d and lived in     an atmosphere perverted with holiness. But, today, what do we see? The     profane and the secular are in control wherever we turn.

Even in those neighborhoods made up predominantly of religious Jews one     can no longer talk of the sanctity of the Sabbath day. True, there are     Jews in America who observe the Sabbath. The label Sabbath observer     has come to be used as a title of honor in our circles, just like Harav     HaGaon - neither really indicates anything and both testify to the lowly     state of our generation. But it is not for the Sabbath that my heart     aches, it is for the eve of the Sabbath. There are Sabbath-observing     Jews in America, but there are not eve-of-the-Sabbath Jews who go out     to greet the Sabbath with beating hearts and pulsating souls. There are     many who observe the precepts with their hands, with their feet and/or     with their mouths - but there are few, indeed, who truly know the meaning     of service of the heart! What is the percentage of religious Jews today     in contrast to the ninety percent only two generations ago? It seems to     me that religious Jewry survives today solely by force of the Name of     G-d who is there after man sins.

Otherwise we should have utterly despaired and given in to the feeling,     with which I am often overcome as I lie awake at night, that we are     building castles of sand, and any moment a wave will come and wipe     out everything. But G-d who is there after man sins does not allow     us to despair. He whispers in our ears the Jerusalem is surrounded     by mountains - one must do much climbing and work hard, grasp every     hand-hold and out-cropping, slide backward and try again to climb the     mountain so as to be able to reach Jerusalem. Who shall climb the     mountain unto the Lord? I do not believe that it is easy to return     and repent. The path of repentance, for the individual, as well as the     community, is arduous and many boulders are strewn about which can be     overcome only with supreme effort. The road is long and tortuous until     one arrives at the stage of: Be cleansed before the Lord, the cleansing     of the Name of G-d who is there before man sins.

This is the notion of midgets standing on the shoulders of giants. Now that we have universal education, we know more more. We are higher. However, in terms of religious passion we are midgets and add far less to the total height. It is this poverty that is seen as now reaching crisis levels.

This same question was asked in the gemara.

R. Papa said to [his teacher] Abayei: What is the difference between those earlier [than us], for whom miracles were common, and us, for whom miracles are not common? If it is because of tenuyei

I want to break off here for a second. Tenuyei is from tani, to repeat, the root means two. It is also the root for masnisin, Mishna. Clearly the word means information memorized and repeated, the chain of masorah, in distinction to ideas that are derived or reasoned from those facts we inherited.

in the years of R. Yehuda, all of tenuyei was in Neziqin, and we are masnisin

which either means learn mishnayos or repeat what we learned. The difference wasnt all that significant in those days. Mishnayos existed as an easily memorizable form for halakhah.

6 orders. And when R. Yehuda delineates in Uqtzin, [the case of] A woman who dries vegetables in a pot, or, some say [the case of] Olives that were dried cut off, [his students] Rav and Shmuels entire existances [were tied up in the resolution] of this issue. Yet we are masnisin Uqtzin in 13 schools [of thought, with 13 different explanations - Rashi].

[Abayei] said to him: The are mosir nefesh [commit their souls] to sanctify The Name, we are not mosir nefesh to sanctify The Name.
- Brachos 20a

The gemara very clearly states that it is possible for one generation to know more than an earlier one. Abayeis conclusion is that the lessoning of the generations is in Mersiras nefesh - commitment, not in knowledge.

If this was all there was to it.

One of the basic differences between Orthodox and Conservative thought is the mutability of decisions made by earlier generations. Orthodoxy breaks history down into eras: tanaim, amoraim, rishonim and achronim (roughly: mishnaic, talmudic, medieval, and late authorities). A rabbi of a later era may not or would not dispute one of an earlier era without having another earlier Rabbi in support. The dictum used to support this system is that no court can overrule another court unless it is greater in chokhmah (to be translated later) and in number. Since we can get arbitrarily large courts today, we seem to assume that later generations have less chokhmah than earlier ones.

Chokhmah, therefore, is some mental process, but if we want our quote from the gemara to stand, it is not required for masnisin. So chokhmah doesnt refer to collecting information.

There is a famous quote, from Mes. Tamid: Who is a chokham? One who sees what will be born. Chokhmah here is a mental skill. But are we saying it is a necesary skill to be able to trace cause to effects (think before you do?); or even, chokhmah is acquired by studying causes to get effects. This seemingly straightforward quote didnt help as much as Id guess it would.

What is chokhmah? Well, I went to my copy of the Tanya, the book describing a Judaism based on Chokhmah Bina vaDaas  Chabad. I figured that R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi must define his terms somewhere. Sure enough, this is what I found in Chapter 3. (Disclaimer: I am not a student of Chabad, my knowledge is very superficial. This is just a quote from an authorized translation by R. Nissan Mindel (1962).)

The intellect of the rational soul, which is the faculty which conceives of any thing, is given the appellation of chokhmah  koach mah  the potentiality of what is. When one brings forth this power from the potential to the actual, that is when [a person] cogitates with his intellect in order to understand a thing truly and profoundly as it evolves from the concept which he has conceived in his intellect, this is called binah.

Chokhmah, then, is the ability to conceive, to imagine, to create new information, which is then developed by binah. Neither refer to just warehousing information spoon-fed by the outside world  the ability most related to the masnisin of M. Brachos. Chokhmah would be the ability to perform thought-experiments. This helps understand our quote from Tamid. A chokham is the one who is ABLE to envision consequences before acting.

(But what about the oft-quoted mishnah of Ben Zoma (Avos 4:1) Who is a chokham? One who learns from all men? I dont see how this works with the either gemara that we quoted, or the Tanyas definition. I considered the same three alternatives as I did for the mishna in Tamid: 1- A chokham is one who is able to learn from any person. This seems to be a statement about middos (personality traits) not intellect. 2- A chokham would know that you ought to learn from anyone. This could be, but so would a navon (one blessed with binah, deductive abilities). 3- Chokhmah is acquired by learning from any person. This is, again, about masnisin  remembering and being able to repeat what you learned.

(Perhaps, and I admit this is a lame reply, chokham is used in Avos in a broad non-technical sense. A chokham could be one who has chokhmah, or one who has any intellectual prowess.)

We can tie these two types of generational descent together by positing a single cause. Clearly, for mesiras nefesh  commiting oneself to G-d, one requires Yiras Hashem  awe of G-d. Similarly, we say upon waking up every morning: reishis chokhmah yiras Hashem  the begining or source of Chokhmah is awe of G-d.

It seems to me from these two phenomena that it is yiras Shamayim that is the primary trait that is diminishing through the years. The gemara in Brachos about mesiras nefesh, and the increasing crystallization of halachic decision are the outward manifestations.

Yiras Shamayim, an awareness of the magnitude and import of the One in Heaven and our relationship to Him is the essence of the Sinai experience. Someone who can feel it and live by it is truly a native speaker of halakhah. We who do not spend erev Shabbos in anticipation of Shabbos must rely on strict adherence to formalized rules.

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