By His Light: Character and Values in the Service of God

Three levels of responsibility which can be viewed as concentric circles from the most broad inwards:

1. Universal demands placed on a human being

2. Demands of a Jew

3. Responsibilities of a ben/bat Torah

We begin with the first level.

What is the nature of the two tasks God gave Man when He placed him in the garden--to work and preserve? לעבדה ולשומרה

לשמור connotes guarding the world, protect it from change, from danger

לעבוד is the opposite--to develop, to work, to cultivate, to innovate.

But what is the relationship between Man as cultivator/preserver vs. Man as servant of God?

OWNERSHIP OF ONESELF

I mentioned earlier the prevalent secular conception of one’s “ownership” of himself. One hears this argument in various contexts, especially with regard to the question of abortion: it’s a woman’s right, it’s her own body, she can do what she wants, etc. Years back, I was asked to testify before a subcommittee of the Knesset which dealt with abortions. Among other things, I mentioned that, leaving aside the significant question of whether it is the woman’s body only or whether the fetus has some rights as well, there is a more fundamental problem. Even if we were to accept that indeed it is the woman’s own body, we totally reject the conception that she then can do with it as she pleases. This is a completely anti-halakhic perception. It rests on a secular assumption that, as it were, “My Nile is my own; I made it for myself” (Yechezkel 29:3), as if we are the source of our own existence and therefore the masters of our own being. This is assuredly not the case. In absolute terms, a person does not own himself.

One must guard oneself of course. But what does it mean for one to guard the world? God's world? Does a guard at Buckingham palace really protect the king?

Regarding 'לעבדה'. what work is there to be done? If all God created was 'good', how does man make it better?

1. The system of 'good' included Man's cultivation

2. From 'good' to 'great'!

The evil Turnus Rufus asked Rabbi Akiva, “Which are better, things made by the Almighty or things made by flesh and blood?”

He replied, “Things made by flesh and blood are better!”

Turnus Rufus said to him, “But heaven and earth, can a human being make anything like these?”

Rabbi Akiva said, “Don’t talk to me about things that are above created beings, that can’t be controlled; rather talk to me about things that are to be found amongst man.”

He [Turnus Rufus] said, “Why do you circumcise?”

He replied, “I knew you would ask me about that, which is why I pre-empted and told you that things made by man are better than things made by the Almighty.”

Rabbi Akiva brought him wheat and cakes and said to him, “These are made by the Almighty and these are made by man. Aren’t these [cakes] better than the wheat?”

Turnus Rufus retorted, “If God wanted circumcision, then why doesn’t the baby come out circumcised from his mother’s womb?”

Rabbi Akiva responded, “Because the Almighty didn’t give mitzvos to the Jewish People for any reason but to improve ourselves with them.”

(Midrash Tanchuma, Parashas Tazria, 8)

Historically, this debate has found expression in some very strange contexts. In late seventeenth-century England, there was a vigorous debate about the hills and valleys. Some assumed that in the Newtonian world of mathematical precision, a perfect world presumably would be perfectly shaped. How, then, to explain the indentations of hills and valleys which seem to mar what should be a perfectly round globe? People with a more Romantic perspective said that it’s nicer this way, with some variety; who would want the whole world to be as flat as the New Jersey Turnpike? Others gave a more theological interpretation: really, a perfect world would be a perfect globe without any ups and downs, but God made the mountains and the valleys so that man should have the challenge of flattening everything. To us, this debate seems curious, but the basic notion is clear.

The debate about the role of art similarly reflects these two basic positions about man’s relation to the world. Plato claimed that artists misrepresent reality. He believed that the ultimate reality is the world of ideas, of which our world is just a kind of reflection or image. Now, says Plato, what does the poet or the artist do? He has the image of the image, and is now two steps removed from reality, instead of being one step away. So he banished all of them from his ideal republic. One response was given to this by Plotinus. The best known statement of this response in English is Sir Philip Sidney’s “The Defense of Poesy,” an essay written in the late sixteenth century. Sidney says that Plato’s perception is wrong: the poet does not imitate nature, he goes beyond nature. The natural world, he says, is brass, but the poet’s world is gold.

THE IMPORTANCE OF WORK

There is a third basis as well to the emphasis on work, and this is more specifically religious in nature. A person who works is a partner to God in ma’aseh bereishit (creation). In this respect, he is imitating God. Usually we speak of imitating God by being merciful, or by performing acts of chesed (kindness), but the midrash also tells us:

Rabbi Yehuda ben Rabbi Simon said: [The verse states,] “After the Lord your God you shall walk” (Devarim 13:5) . . . [What does this mandate of imitatio Dei entail?] At the beginning of the world’s creation, the Holy One occupied Himself first with planting, as it says, “And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden” (Bereishit 2:8); so too, when you enter the Land [of Israel], occupy yourselves first with planting—and thus it says (Vayikra 19:23), “When you enter the land and plant all fruitbearing trees. . .” (Vayikra Rabba 25:3)

THE REDEMPTIVE QUALITY OF WORK

The thrust of all this is that there is significance to work, quite apart from the need to pay your bills. There is, if you will, a certain redemptive quality to work, in psychological, social and religious terms. This notion is not uniquely Jewish. When most people hear about the importance of work, they immediately think of the Puritans and the Puritan work ethic. The Puritans, of course, were very much influenced by Judaism. Certainly, however, there are famous propagators of this general view in circles which are neither Jewish nor Puritan.

In Thomas Carlyle’s early work Sartor Resartus, he describes his own spiritual crisis. He speaks first of what he describes as “The Everlasting No,” the voice of cynicism and skepticism, but even beyond that of ennui, of a sense of the lack of purpose, meaning, direction and substance in life. From there he moves on to describe “The Center of Indifference,” which is still a very low key type of existence, and then progresses to “The Everlasting Yea,” that which is assertive and positive in relation to the world and human existence. At the heart of the chapter on “The Everlasting Yea” is the notion of work. For Carlyle, the great prophet of work is the late eighteenth-century, early nineteenth-century German writer Goethe. In a famous line, Carlyle says, “Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe!” Work is central to “The Everlasting Yea” precisely because of its redemptive capacity.

[Explanation:

The phrase "Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe" is a quote from Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish philosopher, writer, and historian. It means that one should stop reading the works of Lord Byron, an English Romantic poet, and instead turn to the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German writer and philosopher.

This quote reflects Carlyle's belief that the Romantics, like Byron, focused too much on personal emotions and individualism, while Goethe's works emphasized a higher moral purpose and the importance of societal well-being.

Carlyle's message can be interpreted as a call to move away from self-indulgent introspection and embrace a more socially conscious and morally driven approach to literature and life.]

In that context, one can view work as part of the collective human responsibility to establish human hegemony and to impose a certain character on nature as a whole. The ennobling conception of work, the sense of challenge, the work ethic (in contrast to a sybaritic, hedonistic existence) can also be found in a secular context. But for us, this is not simply a question of engaging in a great Romantic quest to place the world under human imprint. This is part of what we are doing for God, part of our relationship to Him: we are His guards and we are His laborers. This presents matters in a totally different perspective.

...For us, however, the sense of effort, of striving, above all of working (in Milton’s phrase) “as ever in my great Taskmaster’s eye,” is very central. “Le-ovdah u-leshomrah,” the sense of the importance of work and a work-oriented life, is part of the universal mandate; it is part of what we, as benei-Torah, understand to be central to our being.

GLATT KOSHER HEDONISM

I mention this point particularly to an American audience. In recent years, one observes on the American scene a terribly disturbing phenomenon: the spread of hedonistic values, but with a kind of glatt-kosher packaging. There was a time when the problem of hedonism for religious Jews didn’t often arise, because even if you wanted to have the time of your life, there wasn’t very much that you could do. The country clubs were all barred to Jews, there weren’t many kosher restaurants, there were no kosher nightclubs, etc. In the last decade or two, a whole culture has developed geared towards frum Jews, where the message is enjoy, enjoy, enjoy, and everything has a hekhsher (kosher certification) and a super-hekhsher. The message is that whatever the gentiles have, we have too. They have trips to the Virgin Islands, we have trips to the Virgin Islands. Consequently, there has been a certain debasement of values, in which people have a concern for the minutiae of Halakha (which, of course, one should be concerned about), but with a complete lack of awareness of the extent to which the underlying message is so totally non-halakhic and anti-halakhic.

Don’t misunderstand me—I am not opposed to people enjoying themselves to some extent. I am not arguing for a totally ascetic approach to life; I don’t live that way myself, and what I don’t practice I certainly am not going to preach. In a sense, I don’t practice it because I don’t really think that it is demanded. (There certainly were gedolim [great rabbis] who did advocate it, but others disagreed.) The question is something else entirely. The question is not whether there is room in human life for a person to have a certain measure of pleasure. Rather, the question is what is his basic perspective? How much does he involve himself in this? Does he see himself as basically being born to enjoy or to work?

To some extent, this feeling has permeated our world: a whole culture of enjoyment has begun to take hold. This is something which is recent, and with which anyone who is a ben-Torah, certainly, should in no way identify or associate. That whole culture advocates that man is born for pleasure, but unfortunately has to work if he wants to enjoy. In contrast, we have to know that “Adam le-amal yulad,” Man is born to do labor” (Iyyov 5:7).