[Avodah] Leviticus 11:43 and 20:25

[Jay F. Shachter]

Deuteronomy 2:19 records that when our ancestors were poised to conquer
the land of Israel, they were commanded not to take any `Ammonite
land on the east of the Jordan river. They did, however, in a war of
self-defense, take Emorite land on the east of the Jordan river; and
within the Emorite land that they took, was territory that had formerly
belonged to `Ammon (see Judges 11:13), and that the Emorites had taken
from them. Although it was forbidden to take that territory when it
was in `Ammonite possession, once the Emorites had taken it from the
`Ammonites, it was permitted to take it from the Emorites.

Which brings us, so it seems, to January 6, 2023, when someone ("OP",
the original poster) posted an article to this mailing list, which he
titled "Subjectivity-from the OU", and which appeared in v41n3. ...

On January 9, 2023, a second poster ("SP") responded to the OP's
article, ...

It was permissible for our ancestors to take Emorite land, even though it
was forbidden for them to take the same land when it belonged to `Ammon.

Alternately, it is also possible that the SP knew that the OP had
cross-posted his article, in violation of the rules of this mailing list,
and that the SP responded to the OP's posting anyway. In that case,
one could argue that it is like the rebuilding of Jericho: rebuilding
Jericho was forbidden by royal decree (Joshua 6:26), but once someone
started to rebuild Jericho in violation of the royal decree, it was
permitted for other people to continue the rebuilding. Similarly, even
if it was forbidden for the SP to respond to the OP's article, that the
OP posted here in violation of this mailing list's rules, now that the SP
has done so, it is permitted for me to continue the discussion. No other
comparison between the posting of long articles on this mailing list,
and the rebuilding of cities in Eretz Yisrael, is expressed or implied.

This is what the SP wrote:

> ... Had the Torah said "Don't do disgusting things", then we could
> and probably would say that the issur is on things that are
> objectively disgusting, and it's irrelevant whether they disgust
> you. (And since "objectively disgusting" is a contradiction in
> terms, we would resolve it as things that disgust most people in
> your culture, and then we would discuss how one determines that, and
> what do we mean by "your culture", and we'd get lost in the woods
> and never come out, just as in many other halachos.)

> But the Torah doesn't say that.  It says "don't disgust
> *yourselves*.  Thus it seems to me that the Torah explicitly says
> that your own subjective sensibility is the standard.  If it
> disgusts you, don't force yourself to do it, e.g. on a dare, or
> because you're hungry and there's nothing else, or because everyone
> else is doing it and you don't want to stand out.  But if it doesn't
> disgust you, then the fact that it disgusts everyone else around you
> is irrelevant.  Thus we find the gemara saying that "nefesh hayafa",
> which counterintuitively seems to [be?] the *in*sensitive soul, may
> do things that a person of normal sensitivity may not.

This sounds plausible.  But it is, empirically, untrue.

Before we discuss the reasons why it is untrue, we should try to
understand the words of the verse (actually we don't know what verse
the SP had in mind -- it could have been Leviticus 11:43, which
contains the words "al tshaqqtzu eth nafshotheykhem", or it could have
been Leviticus 20:25, which contains the words "vlo thshaqqtzu eth
nafshotheykhem" -- but it doesn't matter, the two phrases are
identical except for the form of the negative, and the form of the
negative does not figure in the analysis that follows).  We know from,
e.g., Leviticus 11:11, or Leviticus 11:13, that the verb lshaqqetz,
which in Hebrew is an active verb, is best translated into English as
a passive verb: "to be disgusted by".  Leviticus 11:13 does not
command us to disgust non-kosher birds; it commands us to be disgusted
by them (some English translators use the word "abhor", because they
want to translate an active Hebrew verb into an active English verb,
but "abhor" is not the best translation).

When people are experiencing mental or emotional states, it is
actually quite common for different languages to disagree about
whether the people are doing something, actively, or whether something
is being done to them, passively.  Thus, in English one says, "I miss
you", but in French one says, "tu me manques".  On the other hand, in
English one says, "last night, I had a dream", whereas in French one
says, "cette nuit [or, if it is after 12pm, la nuit dernière], j'ai
fait un rêve".  People who speak English believe that a dream is
something that happens to you, something of which you are a passive
recipient.  People who speak French believe that a dream is something
that you create, something that you fashion, actively.

In Hebrew, emotional states are almost always expressed using active
verbs, although that is not always the case when describing mental
states.  Thus, in English, you express the mental state of not knowing
where an object is, by giving an active verb to yourself: "I lost the
key to my house" -- in English, when you lose something, it's your
fault.  In Hebrew, the object whose whereabouts you do not know, gets
the active verb: "avad liy hammafteax" -- in Hebrew, when you don't
know where an object is, it's the object's fault.  This tends to be
the exception, though.

(The word "mafteax" provides us with an occasion to make another
interesting comparison.  In Hebrew, the word means: a utensil that
opens.  In German, the word is Schlüssel, which means: a utensil that
closes.  Apparently the main purpose of a key is different, in the
mind of a Hebrew-speaking person, than in the mind of a German-speaking
person.  But I digress.)

The language of love gives us the clearest illustrations of this
distinction.  In Biblical Hebrew, and in Rabbinic Hebrew, up to but
not including the present day, love is a transitive verb, requiring a
subject and a direct object.  Even though the poet wrote, "ma ta`iru
uma t`or'ru eth ha'ahava `ad shettexpatz", love is, in Hebrew, a thing
that people do.  In the languages of the goyim, the option exists to
speak of love the same way, as a thing that people do, but the option
also exists to speak of love as a thing that happens to people, an
overpowering force that throws them into each other's arms, at the
exchange of a glance; that tosses them about helplessly, di qua, di
là, di giù, di sù li mena.  A person speaking English can say, "I
loved Ophelia"; but he can also say "I was in love with Ophelia", a
sentence in which there is no active verb.  Modern Israeli Hebrew has
developed neologisms that allow people who think of love the way the
goyim do, to communicate: In Israel today, people can say "aniy m'uhav
bah" or "aniy m'uheveth bo", newly-created passive forms that express
what was, until recently, a foreign mode of thought (I learned this
from watching the first episode of the third season of "Shtisel").

The way we speak of love has profound moral implications.  The way we
speak of all our feelings has profound moral implications; love is
just the strongest of our feelings, stronger than death.  The Torah
commands us to have certain feelings (e.g., Exodus 20:14, Leviticus
19:17, Leviticus 19:18, Deuteronomy 6:5), which implies that we are
responsible for our feelings.  People are responsible for things that
they do; people are not responsible for things that happen to them.
The Torah thus teaches us that our feelings are things that we do, not
things that happen to us.  And the only way we can truly understand
that, is to use active verbs when we speak of them.  There is a reason
why the Torah was given in Hebrew.  When we speak the languages of the
goyim, we perforce think like them, and that makes it more difficult
for us to keep the Torah.

In Hebrew, when a person feels disgust, the person who feels disgust
is described with a transitive verb, the object of which is the object
of the person's disgust.  In English, the thing provoking the disgust
gets the transitive verb; the person feeling the disgust is a passive
object: "that thing disgusts me", or "I am disgusted by that thing".
The SP translated "al t'shaqqtzu eth nafshotheykhem" as "don't disgust
yourselves".  This is not incorrect, but only because, in this case,
the subject and the object of the verb are the same, and "don't
disgust yourselves" means the same thing, or almost the same thing, as
"don't be disgusted by yourselves".

Let us now return from this long but necessary digression, to discuss
the SP's assertion:

> ... the Torah explicitly says that your own subjective sensibility
> is the standard.

This sounds plausible, but it is empirically untrue.  I do not deny
that there are some tshuvoth out there that forbid people to violate
their subjective sensibilities.  There are actually very few tshuvoth
that say that, but that is not surprising, because people rarely ask a
poseq whether they are allowed to voluntarily do things that disgust
them.  What is empirically untrue is the SP's implication that
subjective sensibility is the only standard.  If that were true, our
posqim could not say that X is forbidden -- objectively forbidden,
forbidden to everyone, regardless of his or her subjective sensibility
-- pursuant to the verse in Leviticus, for various values of X.  But
that is exactly what our posqim do.  See, for example, Orax Xayyim
240:4, where the Shulxan `Arukh pasqns that X is forbidden, for a
certain value of X, through the operation of, inter alia, the verse in
Leviticus (which it misquotes, or, if you prefer, paraphrases).  I
would think that Exodus 3:2 is a better source for this prohibition,
but the Shulxan `Arukh does not source it from there, the Shulxan
`Arukh sources it from the verse in Leviticus (despite the fact that
the derivation of this prohibition from the verse in Leviticus is not
found anywhere in the Talmud, or, in fact, anywhere else).  Another
example is Orax Xayyim 3:17 (where the derivation from Leviticus is
explicit in Makkoth 16b).

But the true way to understand these questions, which is not available
to people who speak, and therefore think in, the languages of the
goyim, is that the distinction between subjective and objective is, in
this case, a false distinction.  We control our feelings.  When the
Torah does not tell us what to feel, we may feel any way we like, and
we can then describe our feelings as subjective.  When the Torah tells
us what to feel, we must feel as the Torah commands us, and we can
then describe our feelings as objective.

This conforms better to the pshat of the verse: in Leviticus 11:43, we
are commanded not to do disgusting things, and, at the same time, we
are told what we must be disgusted by.  The verse does not end after
its 4th word (although both the OP and the SP seem to be oblivious of
that fact), but goes on for eight more words, telling us exactly under
what circumstances we would be disgusted with ourselves.  In Leviticus
20:25, we are commanded to distinguish between kosher and nonkosher
animals; we are then, ten words into the verse, told not to be
disgusted by ourselves through (the eating of) a slightly larger
category of nonkosher animals.  In both cases, the plain meaning of
the verse contradicts the SP's notion that the word t'shaqqtzu should
be understood purely subjectively.

It is certainly true that midrash halakha sometimes uses a verse in
contradiction to its actual meaning.  Some of the examples I could
give are controversial, but it is indisputable that the meaning of
"axarey rabbim l'hattoth" in Exodus 23:2 is the exact opposite, one
hundred eighty degrees opposite, to the meaning that it is given in
midrash halakha.  Another example is "lo akhaltiy v'oniy" in
Deuteronomy 26:14.  The use of '-w-n in the sense of onnenuth exists
only in Rabbinic Hebrew.  In Biblical Hebrew, '-w-n always and
exclusively means "strength" and is never used in the sense of
onnenuth (with possibly one exception, Genesis 35:18, but we have no
idea what Raxel meant when she said that, because she didn't live long
enough to tell us).  Nevertheless, whenever we have a choice, we
should strive to keep the halakhic meaning of a verse as close as
possible to its true meaning, which means that both Leviticus 11:43
and Leviticus 20:25 should be understood objectively.

               Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter

               When Martin Buber was a schoolboy, it must have been
               no fun at all playing tag with him during recess.