Mesiras Nefesh vs. Chochmas Yavan

Mesiras Nefesh vs. Chochmas Yavan

Why does the Torah reject literature?

There is no conflict between two people unless they are both after the same thing. The struggle between the Torah and Yavan (Greece) is rooted in how to understand and relate to the human being. This is why Rashi comments “Homer” when the Chazal say Chochmas Yivanis (Greek wisdom) because Chochmas Yivanis refers to Greek mythology. This concept is different from our usual understanding. We often associate Chochmas Yivanis with the sciences, but its true strength lies in its influence through literature. Indeed, literature wields a tremendous impact on society. For example, in America, Uncle Tom’s Cabin played a pivotal role in changing public attitudes toward slavery. In Germany, a book called Suicide contributed to a wave of suicides across the country.

So, we must ask: why is there no literature in the Torah tradition? Why aren’t there engaging stories from the Talmidei chachamim (Torah scholars), like there are in Greek culture? 

Novel vs. Film

When we read a novel, we engage our imagination to fill in the gaps and visualize the narrative. In contrast, a film presents the story to us in a manner which leaves no room for our imagination to contribute to the process.

This chasm between Greek wisdom and Torah wisdom is at least as large as the divide between the novel and the film. Greek literature is designed to influence and shape the reader’s worldview, providing all the details and emotions directly to us. On the other hand, the Torah’s goal is to build the individual. As such, the Torah is written intentionally brief and to the point, leaving space for us to “tell” the story ourselves.

Building a person is like planting a seed

The Rishonim say that personal growth parallels the process of a seed being planted in the ground. Before it can sprout, the seed must first rot away. For us, this “rotting” represents the courage to let go of our attachments to old habits, assumptions, and ways of thinking in avodas Hashem. Once the seed sheds its old form, it cannot grow in isolation such as hanging in the air. Rather, it must be planted in the ground to receive nourishment from external sources. So first we tear down our old walls and then we take in from the outside.

Mesiras Nefesh

In order to truly build ourselves, we need mesiras nefesh (self-sacrifice), but to be influenced we do not need mesiras nefesh, we just get influenced to expand where we already are! This is the difference between Chochmas Yivanis and Chochmas HaTorah. 

The first critical element to growth is that we first need to get rotten. As we go to enter avoda, we encounter this crisis “are we ready to tear down our old walls?” “Are we ready to leave where we are?” 

I always saw R’ Shlomo Wolbe was ready to leave the place he was in. In our generation I see this is a huge challenge for people. Many people can admit they could be “better,” but they resist the idea that they could be “different.”

The second critical element to growth is having a connection to others. We will discuss this later.

An example of being rotten from the Mashgiach

In the Mashgiach, Rav Shlomo Wolbe, I saw a man who was ever ready to tear down his working assumptions and approaches for the sake of growth. For example, when I was initially with him, he focused on seeing emunah in nature and the world around us, particularly in biological processes, which he saw as revealing Hashem’s hand. He once mentioned a famous German book from a Norwegian biologist published in 1927, describing it as filled with illustrations of emunah. I read the book as he suggested, and indeed, it contained many living illustrations for emunah.

Twenty years later, when Rav Shlomo was 85 years old, I visited him and saw the same book on his table. He asked me if I had seen it, and when I said that I had, he remarked, “What a strange book, to speak about the world without mentioning Hashem? It makes no sense…”

This was a perfect illustration of a man who had constructed strong “walls” to support his personal growth, walls that were built on solid understanding. Yet, here he was demonstrating his ability to dismantle old assumptions for the sake of fresh growth. Rav Shlomo Wolbe was ever primed to tear down his walls and be available for a new and different person to emerge. Not because the old place was wrong, but rather in order to develop further! Being a seed is not “wrong” but rather it is a good thing, but for the seed to grow into a tree it needs to tear down its walls!

We need courage

The Mashgiach instilled in me this courage to embrace thinking differently than I used to. For example I wrote an elucidation of the book Nefesh Hachayyim authored by R’ Chaim Volozhiner and I also say a shiur on the same book and that which I say in the shiur has no overlap with what I printed in the book because after 15 years I see the book from a different angle! Of course I, like the seed, need the outside influence – the rebbe – otherwise I would come to crooked conclusions.

So we need to be prepared to:

1. lose our tzura (mold)

And

1. to take in nutrition from outside.

We need influence from the outside

We need the influence from the outside, a sefer will not work as a good influence from the outside because people simply do not take their assumptions/walls down when learning a sefer. 

Here is an example from this week’s parsha, Vayeshev, which shows that the average person does not shed their immature assumptions when learning Chazal:

In Bereishis 38, Pasuk 16:

וַיִּרְאֶ֣הָ יְהוּדָ֔ה וַֽיַּחְשְׁבֶ֖הָ לְזוֹנָ֑ה כִּ֥י כִסְּתָ֖ה פָּנֶֽיהָ׃

When Judah saw her, he took her for a harlot; for she had covered her face.

And Rashi says:

כי כסתה פניה. וְלֹא יָכוֹל לִרְאוֹתָהּ וּלְהַכִּירָהּ. וּמִדְרַשׁ רַבּוֹתֵינוּ כי כסתה פניה, כְּשֶׁהָיְתָה בְּבֵית חָמִיהָ הָיְתָה צְנוּעָה, לְפִיכָךְ לֹא חֲשָׁדָהּ:

FOR SHE HAD COVERED HER FACE — so that he could not see her face and thus recognize her. Also, a Midrashic explanation of our Rabbis is that כי כסתה פניה means BECAUSE SHE ALWAYS COVERED HER FACE: when she had stayed in her father-in-law’s house she was modest, and therefore he did not suspect her (of being the woman who was sitting there for that evil purpose) (Sotah 10b).

So Rashi is bringing the midrash and teaching us that Yehuda did not recognize her because she was “tznua b’beis chamiha” so he never saw her because she covered her face. That is a superficial reading and interpretation of the text.

When we look deeper into Rashi it says “tznua b’beis chamiha – lefichach lo chashada” meaning Yehuda simply could not fathom that Tamar could be a prostitute because she behaved so tzniusly at home. Most people never realize the depth of this Rashi and that is because they are simply feeding their old assumptions of what “extra tznius” looks like and saying that it means covering more of your body. We are not prepared to let our assumptions be challenged by the Chazal or sefer we are studying! 

Our two critical elements to growth were summed up succinctly by the Chazon Ish when he said that by halacha we do not need a rebbi because we can learn the halacha from the sefer itself. However to get yiras shomayim, we cannot get it from the seforim alone, we need a rebbi!

Another example is when Rabbeinu Yona says that sin is “evil and bitter” most readers of his sefer just accept this statement. However, I must share with you that this Rabbenu Yona comes to life for me and speaks to me because it is problematic for me because by me sin is sweet!! What does he mean it is bitter!? This is something to work on! This is what learning mussar looks like, taking down the walls of how we previously thought.

We are afraid to enter an unknown world

We are afraid to leave that which we received from our rebbeim because then we enter an unknown world. Yet we need to, because the whole point of avodas Hashem and mussar is to work from a new side! This is what the Mashgiach meant when he said that by mussar “we are always at the beginning.”

At the shloshim (end of the thirty day period of mourning) of the Mashgiach, Rav Shlomo Wolbe, I said that in mussar there is no “anash” (literally “anshei shlomeinu” which means a tight knit group unified by a common tradition usually from a rebbe) and I used the Mashgiach’s own words, stating that he told me that in mussar “we are always in the beginning”, so obviously there is no anash. The reactions I got to my speech were harsh. One person went so far as to call me an idiot. In other words, people want to have the clarity of a pure mehalech as a transmission from Rav Shlomo Wolbe or whoever their rebbe is. These are people who don’t want to tear down their foundations and be open to real growth which occurs from the beginning.

An example from R’ Chaim Volozhin

In R’ Chaim Volozhin’s elucidation of Pirkei Avos he shares a popular adage “ask advice and then follow your own wisdom.” he explains that the adage makes sense even though it at first appears self-contradictory, because the reason we need to ask advice first and not just follow our own wisdom is because we cannot see the whole story ourselves, but once we do ask advice, we then need to follow our own wisdom because the person whom we are asking advice from cannot fully know what is going on with us. 

So we see we cannot just blindly accept the advice from our rebbe.

In another place, R’ Chaim Volozhin says it is forbidden to accept the ruling of our rebbi if we still have questions on it, because perhaps we are right! In other words, the conversation is not closed just because the rebbi issues a ruling to us in the conversation.

Of course, the mesorah (Torah tradition) and direction from our rebbi is needed to develop us. This external input is a critical component of growth which pushes for development into a new world. This input from the rebbi provides that sense of truth which has us discern a good question from a bad question and a proper way to read Chazal from an improper way.