[Avodah] Fighting for oneself

[Micha Berger]

On Areivim, we're discussing how history remembers or should remember
Rudolf Kasztner. Yad Vashem is trying to rehabilitate his memory. Here
is some of the metzi'us behind the question, from
<http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/239041>:
> Kasztner ... headed the Relief and Rescue Committee, a small Jewish
> group that negotiated with Nazi officials to rescue Hungarian Jews in
> exchange for money, goods and military equipment.

> In June 1944, the "Kasztner Train," with 1,684 Jews, departed Budapest
> for neutral Switzerland. His negotiations also diverted 20,000
> Hungarian Jews to an Austrian labour camp instead of a planned
> transfer to extermination camps, according to Yad Vashem.
...
> But detractors accused Kasztner of colluding with the Nazis to spare
> his well-connected and wealthy Jewish friends, while hundreds of
> thousands of others were shipped to death camps.
...
> The Israeli government sued Grunwald for libel on Kasztner's behalf
> in a trial that lasted two years and riveted the nation. The court
> acquitted Grunwald of libel, concluding that Kasztner "sold his soul
> to the German Satan."

> Kasztner insisted his dealings with top Nazi officials, including
> Kurt Becher, an envoy of SS commander Heinrich Himmler, and Adolf
> Eichmann, who organized the extermination of the Jews, were necessary
> to save lives.

> Kasztner was demonized by the Israeli public. A year after he was
> killed, Israel's Supreme Court overturned the lower court's ruling
> in the libel case, clearing his name.

One last note:
> Kasztner himself didn't board his famous train to freedom, instead
> staying behind and negotiating the further release of Jews, risking
> his own life.

So RK saved his people at the possible expense of others, but it
wasn't self-motivated. To discuss the question in general:

Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel is the "bible" of a school
of psychology called Logotherapy. The majority of the book is his
recollections of life in the camps and his observations of the people
there.

In it he claims that the Holocaust cost us our most idealistic people;
that anyone who survived had to have the ability to place saving
themselves and their own ahead of others.

Lehalakhah, I if the same number of people are going to live either
way, is it appropriate to try to save your own? In the introduction to
Maqdishei H' by R' Tezvi Hirsch Meisels which is even more on topic. A
man came, r"l, because his ben yachid was among 1,400 children on a
train which according to rumor was headed for the crematoria. He had
the opportunity to bribe his son's way out. Should he risk it; is he
permitted to?

RADK refused to pasqen. How can anyone take on a question so great
without yishuv hada'as, without access to his sefarim? The story
continues (as translated by R' Yoel Schwartz). The father replies:
> "Rabbi, I have done my duty as the Torah requires me to do. I brought
> my question before the rabbi. There is no other rabbi here. If His
> Honor, the rabbi, cannot answer that it is permitted for me to redeem
> my child, that is a sign that he is not completely sure that the
> halacha permits [it]. If it were permissible without any doubts,
> certainly you would tell me so. To me this means that according to
> the halacha it is forbidden to me. I accept this with love and joy,
> and I shall not do anything to redeem him, because that is what the
> Torah commanded..."

> All my pleadings to him not to put the responsibility on me were to no
> avail. He only repeated what he had said, with heartrending weeping.
> He fulfilled his words, and did not redeem his son. That whole day,
> Rosh Hashana, he walked and spoke to himself joyfully, saying that he
> merited to sacrifice his only son to God, since even though it was in
> his power to redeem him, he would not, seeing that the Torah did not
> permit him to do such a thing. This would be considered by the Holy
> One, Blessed is He, like the Binding of our Father Isaac, which also
> had taken place on Rosh Hashana.

Lehashkafah, it's certainly the implication of the Shaarei Yosher's
definition of chessed that it would be appropriate to save someone
closer to you at the expense of someone with whom you're less
connected. (The haqdamah in question is available in Hebrew with my
translation to English at
<http://www.aishdas.org/asp/ShaareiYosher.pdf> -- Hebrew starts at the
last page and heads backward, so that the pages turn correctly for
Hebrew. Warning: The English is stilted. I preserved the ability to
make many of the diyuqei halashon I made in the original. Not that
readable, though.)

Chessed is motivated by enlarging one's "Ani" to include ever more
people. Self interest is described by RSS as a positive thing, one to
be leveraged in this way to create chessed, not abnegated. A few
paragraphs, just to motivate reading the whole thing. Note his quote
of R' Aqiva is a halachic one -- chayekha qodemin.

> HOWEVER, what of a person who decides to submerge his nature, to reach
> a high level so that he has no thought or inclination in his soul for
> his own good, only a desire for the good of others? In this way he
> would have his desire reach the sanctity of the Creator, as His Desire
> in all of the creation and management of the world is only for the
> good of the created, and not for Himself at all. At first glance one
> might say that if a person reached this level, he would reach the
> epitome of being whole. But this is why our Sages of blessed memory
> teach us in this Midrash that it is not so. We cannot try to be
> similar to His Holiness in this respect. His Holiness is greater than
> ours. His Holiness is only for the created and not for Himself because
> nothing was ever added to or could ever be added to the Creator
> through the actions He did or does. Therefore all His Desire could
> only be to be good to the created.

> But what He wants from us is not like this. As Rabbi Aqiva taught us,
> "your life comes first."6 [Our sages] left us a hint of it when they
> interpret the scripture "Love your neighbor as yourself" in a negative
> sense, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your peers." In
> terms of obligation, it is fitting for a person to place his own good
> first.

> There are also grounds for asserting that in the very foundation of
> the creation of Adam, the Creator planted in him a very great measure
> of propensity to love himself. The sages of truth7 describe the
> purpose of all the work in this language, "The Infinite wanted to
> bestow complete good, that there wouldn't even be the embarrassment of
> receiving." This discussion reveals how far the power of loving
> oneself goes, that "a person is more content with one qav [a unit of
> measure] of his own making than [he would be of] two qavin that are
> given to him" – even if from the Hand of the Holy One! – if the
> present is unearned.

> From here it should be self-evident that love of oneself is desired by
> the Holy One, even though "the wise shall walk because of it and the
> foolish will stumble over it."8...

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
micha at aishdas.org        your grip on it, it chokes; slacken your grip,
http://www.aishdas.org   and it flies away.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter