[Avodah] Fables and Lies

[Rich, Joel]

On Thu, November 22, 2007 1:27 am, Ben Waxman wrote:
: Why not simply get rid of the linkage and use the tragedy itself to
: get people to do tshevua? Instead of linking, the gadol could say
: something like: "Tragedy has struck Am Yisrael. It is the
: responsibility of every Jew, man and woman, to search his actions and
: find ways to do teshuva, in the same way that it is the
: responsibility of every Jew to get rid of bread before Pesach."

Before RYGB corrupted me with exposure to Mussar (and my worldview
revolved around RSRH, the Scholastic rishonim, and RYBS), I probably
would have agreed. One thing he made me realize was that it's not
sufficient to know what's right.

Bi'ur chameitz is a mitzvah ma'asis. It may be harder to perform without
engaging one's heart, but you can intellectually convince yourself to do
so.

Teshuvah inherently requires emotional engagement. The senses, and by
extension mental images, engage emotion. (The koach hadimyon, but in the
original sense of the word "dimyon" -- the ability to have a mental
picture / MP3 / smellograph/ etc...)

That's the role of myth or poetic imagery. It's like RSRH's comments on
the need for mitzvos that are osos, or why nevu'ah is conveyed via a
chazon. His words are (roughly, I can't remember a mar'eh maqom) that
the symbol is at the crossroads of the intellect and the heart.
The mind can grasp more of the topic through use of analogy than it
could by simple description. The heart is moved by the pictures shown,
experienced, or conjured up by the words in ways a description wouldn't
cause.

Also,

Reality is a network of causes and effects. The RBSO, knows them all,
knows every cause -- sufficient or insufficient, necessesary or
unnecessary that would go into an event. Questions of the limits of
hashgachah aside (for another post that will probably have to wait for
another sitting), wouldn't hashgachah therefore reflect EVERY factor?

Thus the rav needn't identify /the/ spiritual cause in order to honestly
claim that some sin was a factor. Every sin ever committed was a factor.
The threshold would only be whether Hashem weighed this factor in favor
of His final decision, or decided what He did .despite/ that factor.

And so,

When a rav identifies a sin to motivate teshuvah, he really has quite a
bit of leeway. His burden of proof is REALLY low. But I would still fail
to see the productivity of identifying aveiros we can do nothing about,
and which willy-nilly will cause us to think less of other Jews.
(Particularly "achikha bemitzvos".)

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha


======================================================================
Here comes a huge chiddush - everyone is different!  You may be quite
right that in the aggregate more good than harm is done by using the
"REALLY low" burden of proof, however others will look at this and say
hogwash, just say - "Tragedy has struck Am Yisrael. It is the
: responsibility of every Jew, man and woman, to search his actions and
: find ways to do teshuva, in the same way that it is the
: responsibility of every Jew to get rid of bread before Pesach." and
don't pretend to know something that no human is truly capable of
knowing because if you do why should I believe anything you say. (I
guess my bias is obvious)

KT
Joel Rich
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