[Avodah] Cohen Gadol, Pubescent Girl & Rav Kook

[Yaacov Shulman]

Hello!

My thanks to everyone who has responded to my posting on the cohen gadol and
the pubescent girl. Please forgive me if I don't respond in turn to specific
points that different individuals made.

In regard to the idea of "sensitivity" and the like, I want to quote a
passage from Rav Kook. There he is speaking about a different topic—Jews and
non-Jews. But his proposed methodology of thought is, I think apropos.
Basically, he states that many morally-problematical teachings that appear
in the Torah are "stumblingblocks," and that it is our role to interpret
them, even against the simple meaning that they present.

There, Rav Kook is saying that a person should have a "love for humanity"
that comes from his inner "well of kindness." I am positing in this case
that a person should have a discomfort with the idea of a 12 year old girl
marrying an adult.

I'm not arguing, by the way, that darkei noam always has the last word. I am
wondering why, here, it doesn't seem to have any word.

At any rate, here is the quote of Rav Kook:

The Liberated Light

>From the well of kindness, your love for humanity must burst forth—not as an
unreasoned commandment, for then it would lose the most clear aspect of its
brilliance, but as a powerful movement of the spirit within you.

This love must withstand very difficult challenges.  It must overcome many
contradictions, which are scattered like boulders upon which you may
stumble.  These are found in isolated Torah statements, in the superficial
aspect of some Torah laws, and in a multitude of points of view that stem
from the constriction within the revealed aspect of the Torah and the
national ethical sense.

It is clear that when the love of humanity grows remote from its divine
source, its blossom withers.

And the divine source expresses its light through the conduits of Torah and
mitzvah, and through the definition of the Jewish nation as unique.

All this requires the effort of a great spirit: how to maintain these
conduits where they stand, and yet draw the waters of kindness in their
original purity and breadth.

Again and again, we must descend to the depths of darkness in order to
excavate--precisely from there--the most liberated light, the greatest and
most elevated.
Orot Hakodesh III, p. 318

-- 
Yaacov David Shulman
Translator; Editor; Ghostwriter
Specializing in Torah and literary texts
freewebs.com/jewish-spiritual-and-beautiful
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