Eliyahu in Oz

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

“I am Oz, the great and terrible”. L. Frank Baum presumably drew “great and terrible” from Bible translations of gadol venora. Devarim 1:19 describes the wilderness that we traversed after the Exodus as gadol venora; Devarim 7:21 describes Hashem Elokekha as E-l gadol venora; and Yoel 3:4 and Malakhi 3:23 each describe a future “day of Hashem hagadol vehanora.” (Despite Devarim 7:21, all commentaries I’ve seen understand hagadol vehanora in Yoel and Malakhi as modifying the day rather than modifying Hashem.)

The word “terror” has a deeply negative valence in contemporary society. It’s hard to imagine a contemporary liturgist choosing to praise G-d by describing Him as evoking terror. This may reflect a purely linguistic shift, or we may no longer understand why the capacity to evoke the emotion of terror in others would ever be praiseworthy.

Yoel points strongly to the latter option. The “Day of Hashem” is introduced in 1:15 as the day of a massive locust invasion, causing destruction, famine, and depression. In Chapter 2 the locusts are like heavy smog in the air and a ravenous army on the ground, turning Eden into desolation. In Chapter 3 the spirit of prophecy pours onto the population while the sky fills with bleak omens of blood, fire, and smoke. The sun transforms to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the coming of the day of Hashem, the great and terrible. All these apparently associate the day of Hashem with an emotion we still recognize as terror.

But this picture of Yoel is not complete. 3:5 promises that all who call in the name of Hashem will escape, because in Har Tziyon and Yerushalayim there will be a pleitah = refuge, and in the remnants who call Hashem. Chapter 4 warns the righteous to prepare for war – beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears!–and ends with a vison of Yehudah triumphant and eternal, with its enemies punished and desolated. Assuming this is all part of the Day of Hashem, it turns out that terror is followed by relief and probably joy. More precisely, the terror is of justice, grounded in fear that one deserves punishment.

My question is whether the terror itself is just, and perhaps in some cases obviates the need for other punishments. Those correctly certain of their own rectitude will not experience this terror. That kind of certainty might itself reflect a moral flaw, or not.

The end of Malakhi might suggest another possibility. G-d sends Eliyah the Prophet before the coming of the day of Hashem, the great and terrible . . . lest I come and smite the land cherem. Eliezer of Beaugency implicitly contrasts this vision with Yoel: “Cherem = with no pleitah”. Eliyahu HaNavi is tasked with preventing a nightmare scenario that Yoel never considers. My question is whether Eliyahu’s goal is to transform Malakhi into Yoel, in other words to ensure the survival of a refuge. Or might he have the more ambitious goal of saving the majority, or everyone. In which case there might be no need for terror at all.

I am tempted by a more ambitious version of this thesis. Raavad in his commentary to Mishnah Eduyot reads the verses this way:

Remember the Torah of Mosheh my servant etc.;

if you do – Behold I am sending you Elijah the prophet etc.

but if you don’t – I will come and smite the land utterly.

According to this reading, Eliyahu’s task is to prevent the Day of Hashem from coming. My question then would be whether Eliyahu’s task is enabled by the terror of judgment, or is instead to prevent the terror as well.

To address this question, we must ask: what does Eliyahu actually do?

Textually, the answer is straightforward: veheshiv lev avot al banim, velev banim al avotam. The meaning of that text is a four-way dispute in the last mishnah of Masekhet Eduyot:

1. Rabbi Yehoshua – Eliyahu will undo all genealogical rulings (about eligibility to marry, or to serve as kohanim) that emerged from concessions to force, however long ago.
2. Rabbi Yehudah – Eliyahu will undo only such rulings distorted toward strictness (lerachek ­= to distance) but not those distorted toward leniency (lekarev = to bring closer)
3. Rabbi Shimon – Eliyahu comes lehashvot machlokot = to turn disputes into consensus. (This is not the same as settling disputes by deciding for one side or the other.)
4. The Sages – Eliyahu comes neither lerachek nor lekarev, but rather to make peace in the world (laasot shalom baolam)

Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Yehudah take avot and banim literally and specifically as fathers and sons, whereas the Sages somehow generalize them. (I’m unclear whether Rabbi Shimon’s position is a variant of the first two, on its own axis, or a narrower version of the Sages’.)

The clear advantage of the Sages’ position is that it gives Eliyahu’s task a scope worthy of its massive purpose of preventing total annihilation. Why would clarifying families’ halakhic status serve that purpose?

Keter Hamelekh (Rabbi Catriel Aharon Nathan, 1846-1922, Lithuania) to Mishneh Torah Hilkhot Nezirut 4:11 accidentally provides a possible solution. In the context of a classic technical halakhic conversation about whether traveling from Heaven to Earth on Shabbat can violate the techum, and assuming that the day of Hashem is the day on which the King Messiah is revealed, he notes that the verse makes no commitment as to how much before that day Eliyahu will arrive. He then constructs a dispute within Chazal as to whether it will be the day before, or rather three days before.

Keter HaMelekh explains this dispute as follows: If the Jewish people have achieved righteousness on their own, then Eliyahu need come only one day before. But if we have failed to achieve righteousness on our own, and the clock is running out on the world, or we will otherwise become permanently irredeemable then Eliyahu must come earlier, in order to compel our repentance.

Now Keter HaMelekh contends that the positions in Mishnah Eduyot all relate to Eliyahu’s task on the penultimate day. I suggest instead that Rabbi Yehudah and Rabbi Shimon assume that Eliyahu is coming to a people who already deserve redemption, while the Sages understand Eliyahu’s task as making us worthy of redemption. How could we be worthy of redemption if there is no peace between fathers and sons?  (Note: Raavad and others argue that the Sages have Eliyahu making peace between Jews and

Gentiles. But this seems a very difficult read of the verse in Malakhi.)

If one sees compelled repentance as a reasonable end to history, then perhaps terror of judgment is necessary and justified as a means to that end.

This is the position taken by a key protagonist’s mother in H. G. Wells’ socialist allegory In The Days of the Comet. Before the comet’s passing, the mother had often harangued her son about the tortures of Hell. After the comet transforms the atmosphere, and thereby human behavior, making clear that human sins were a consequence of environment and not of an intrinsic yetzer hora, the son asks how she could ever have felt such tortures were justified. Her defense is that while she had indeed described Hell in loving detail, she had never said that any souls were actually sent there.

In other words, inspiring terror of judgment is justified, even if the terrifying judgement will never happen because a comet or prophet will regardless come in time to prevent us from deserving it.

But maybe the mother was still wrong, because repentance inspired by terror is psychologically compelled. If that is the only hope for repentance, we might as well wait for Eliyahu to compel us, or conversely, G-d might as well send Eliyahu now, since nothing better will ever happen.

I understand that many people focus more on shortening the exile than on how redemption happens. I also understand why the fact that the pains of an unredeemed world have lessened for most Jews in the world – even as we recognize the incredible suffering of our hostages and the absurdly constant genocidal threats faced by all Israelis, and even as we live still in the shadow of the Shoah – make us less tolerant of their continuation.  But I cannot agree.

I am confident that G-d would rather we knocked over His screen and related to Him as much more great than terrible. Moreover, I suspect that all such screens eventually get knocked over, because at some point a situation comes in which we are convinced that a truly terrible G-d would destroy us.

I suspect this is true of human and national relationships as well. Deterrence via threats of extreme consequences is always a delaying strategy at best. That doesn’t mean that it’s a bad strategy, or a short-term strategy – for example, it worked long enough to get us through the Cold War. But I hope and believe that when Eliyahu comes, it will be because we can find ways to bring peace to the world that are not motivated by the constant threat of G-d arriving to annihilate us.

Shabbat shalom!

Coercion in Captivity – a Study in Responsa Chavot Yair

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Why is the redemption of captives given such importance in halakhah? Granting its significance, why does the Torah not specifically mandate it? I’ll take a somewhat circuitous route to answering those questions.

Responsa Chavot Yair #183 illustrates the gap between halakhic abstraction and human experience in several important ways.  

We rule that Jews (may or) must violate most halakhic prohibitions rather than be killed. In the standard abstract case, an idolater presents the Jew with an either/or: “Violate this prohibition or I will kill you!” The ruling is that Jew should violate the prohibition rather than be killed.

But in the real world, the Jew cannot know whether the either/or is real. The idolater may or may not kill them regardless of whether they agree to violate the prohibition. In such a case, do we rule that any risk that the terms of the bargain are honest justifies the violation? Or do we require some evaluation of the degree of risk?

One might argue that the rule safeik nefashot lehachmir means that any possibility that one’s life is in danger justifies violation. But that rule is not absolute; for example, as Noda B’Yehuda argues, it would be unreasonable to allow all potentially lifesaving medical research and training to take place on Shabbat, even if the potential is infinitesimal.

Allowing Jews to submit to a mere threat might have terrible social consequences in an antisemitic cultural context, particularly once the antisemites learn of this ruling. Halakhah tries to account for this by declaring that all prohibitions must be violated rather than submitting to a threat made for the sole purpose of forcing the violation. But motivations are hard to know with certainty.

Chavot Yair’s case is as follows: A nonJew threatened a Jew: “If you don’t drink yayin nesekh (wine dedicated via libation to idolatry) with me, I will cut off your ear!”. The Jew (chose not to embrace his inner Van Gogh and instead) drank the wine. At least some of his fellows reacted with horror and publicly tagged him a libertine. Was drinking the wine justified?

One might argue that since the nonJew plainly derives no physical enjoyment from the Jew drinking the wine, his motivation must plainly be forcing the violation. If he merely wanted the Jews’ social company, he could have ordered kosher wine! But perhaps he is not interested in religion per se, only in demonstrating that he can utterly dominate the Jew. Or perhaps kosher wine was commercially unavailable, or too expensive, or (in those primitive times before flash-pasteurization) of insufficient quality.

Chavot Yair might have evaded the question by asserting that the wine wasn’t truly yayin nesekh but rather stam yaynam, wine touched by a nonJew, which is only Rabbinically prohibited (formally because of concern that it might have become yayin nesekh; actually because the purpose of the Rabbinic prohibition is to prevent uninhibited socializing.) He mentions in passing the standard ruling that “there is no yayin nesekh at all today as is well-known”. But since the rule is that one may submit, there may be no formal difference between Rabbinic and Biblical violations. Or the rule about not drinking nonkosher wine with nonJews may have had great social significance, so that a technical defense would not have rung true with the community.

Chavot Yair’s halakhic bottom line, if I understand him correctly[1], captures the human ambiguity.

. . . אם הוי דיבור בעלמא וגיזום –

לא היה לו למהר לשתות.

ומ”מ, אם באמת ירא לנפשו

פן יחרה אפו ויריק חרבו פתאום ויעשה אשר זמם –

אין לו חטא  . . .

ואם הי’ יכול להציל עצמו בממונו ולא עשה –

חוששני לו מחטאת, וצריך תשובה קלה . . .

If this was mere speech and threat –

he should not have hurried to drink.

Nonetheless, if he was truly afraid for his life

lest the nonJew be enraged, and his sword strike suddenly, and he do as he plotted –

the Jew bears no sin . . .

But if he had been able to save himself by bribery, and did not do so –

I am concerned that he may ‘owe a sin-sacrifice’, and he needs ‘a light penance’.

However, in a later edition of his responsa, Chavot Yair added an aside which sets aside much of this complexity in one kind of case:

[ובקונטרסים הוכחתי

דשבוי שאמר לו אדונו ‘עשה לי מדורה’ בשבת לחמם או לבשל אצלו, אפילו לא גזים כלל –

שרי,

אם לא ישמע לקול תחנוניו ובכיותו,

אפילו לא גזים,

דמידי ספק נפשות לא יצא,

ושבי כלהו איתנהו ביה.]

[In my notebooks I have proven

that a captive whose master told him on Shabbat “Light a hearth for me” to heat or cook,

even if he did not threaten at all –

(the captive is) permitted to obey, if the master refuses to heed his entreaties and tears,

even if he did not threaten,

because this situation has not departed the bounds of risk to life,

and “captivity included all of these within it”]

A captive is always under ultimate threat, even if the captor is too polite to make the threat explicitly[2].

The discussion of captivity ends with a quote from Rabbi Yochanan on Bava Batra 8b, cited by Rabbah bar Mari as the source for the Rabbinic maxim that “Redemption of captives is a great mitzvah”. Rabbi Yochanan asserts that captivity is worse than famine and death-by-the-sword because it includes them all. I suggest that this means that captivity includes the constant awareness that the captor can starve or kill one at will.

Chavot Yair’s extension and insight is that being under constant threat makes one a slave. In such a circumstance there is no halakhic obligation to calibrate how far to resist in any particular case (although it may be psychologically vital to find pockets of resistance). This is what makes redeeming captives such an important mitzvah – it is the equivalent of redeeming slaves from captivity. And the evil of slavery is the fact of power-over-others more than the extent to which masters utilize their power.

Redeeming Jewish slaves from captivity is a stand-alone Biblical commandment. Talmud Kiddushin 20 interprets Vayikra 25:47-49 as establishing an obligation to redeem a Jew even though he has sold himself voluntarily to a nonJew. Kal vachomer one is obligated to redeem Jews who have been enslaved against their will. So redeeming captives is a “great mitzvah”, an intensification of the Biblical commandment to redeem slaves. It is also an act of imitatio dei, of emulating the G-d Who took the Jews out of Mitzrayim.

But – and this is a very important but – I suggest tentatively that Kiddushin 20b interprets Vayikra 25:50-54 as limiting the obligation to redeem slaves to paying market value for them. This is implied by establishing the means for calculating the redemption price for such slaves in a market under Jewish law.  In other words, the Rabbinic decree against redeeming captives above market value is not a suspension of the law, but rather a prohibition against voluntarily going beyond the requirement of the law.[3]

Shabbat shalom!

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[1] I owe this understanding in significant part to Davida Kollmar.

[2] This awareness of situational threat is mutatis mutandum also necessary in contemporary divorce cases: husbands need not mention the possibility of withholding a get for women to correctly feel threatened.

[3] My analysis of the obligation to redeem captives follows Rav Yehudah Herzl Henkin, Responsa Bnei Banim 1:43, rather than Rav Ovadiah Yosef, Responsa Yabia Omer 10:CM:6. For more detail please listen to the series “Redeeming Captives – At Any Price?” on the Taking Responsibility for Torah podcast. The analysis of and argument from the obligation to redeem slaves is my own based on Kiddushin 20. I welcome critiques and challenges.  

Berov Am Hadrat Melekh, Democracy, and Church-State Issues

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

The phrase berov am hadrat melekh, taken from Mishlei 14:28, is probably invoked most often in contemporary Orthodox conversations to oppose “breakaway minyanim”, or to encourage minyan attendance even when the minyan is assured; this argument has the advantage of applying equally to men and women. The assumed meaning is that G-d as king is more hadarified by one large crowd praying than by several smaller crowds, even if the total number of participants remains the same or decreases.

The Talmud (Yoma 70a and Megillah 27b) uses the phrase in this meaning only to explain hava aminas, halakhic roads not taken. We might have banned selling a synagogue building to a smaller congregation, or required onlookers at one part of a ritual to stay throughout rather than moving to a second, but we don’t. Nonetheless, Magen Avraham (90:15) reasonably assumes that the principle survives the rejection of those specific applications.

Magen Avraham’s own application is surprising. He uses it to explain why a person should pray alone at home at the same time as his synagogue’s minyan rather than waiting to pray with a minyan at home. This shifts the “crowd” from the actual to the virtual, and suggests that breakaways should make sure to meet at the same time as the main shul.

In several other contexts (Sukkah 52b, Pesachim 64b; see also Rosh HaShannah 32b), the Talmud used berov am to explain a bias toward increasing ACTIVE participation. The avodah of the Temple was broken into as many pieces as possible so that each kohen had a role to play. This suggests that multiple simultaneous minyanim might be ideal, on the model I’ve seen several synagogues when there are multiple chiyuvim.

However, Berakhot 53a appears to use the phrase to promote an exactly opposite position: that it is better for one person to vicariously fulfill the obligation of a crowd rather than to have each individual fulfill it for themselves.

Oceans of ink have been spilled to reconcile and unify these meanings. But the simplest solution is that the phrase itself has no single halakhic meaning; rather, it is invoked as a mnemonic for a variety of purposes, some of which are in tension with each other.

(Midrash Mishlei additionally cites Rabbi Chanina bar Chama as praising G-d for preferring the praises of am Yisroel over those of the vastly more numerous (rivei revavot) angels. I don’t understand how this interpretation relates to our verse.)

In all the above contexts, the melekh is G-d. However, RaDaK to Yechekel 46:10 applies the verse to a human king. Yechezkel depicts the nasi in a future Temple as using a private entrance and exit most days, but

on festivals he must come with the am where they come, and leave with them where they leave,

because all of Israel who are there came up for the regel,

and it is his honor/kavod and glory/hadar to come with them and leave with them

because Scripture says “berov am hadrat melekh”.

RaDaK imposes an obligation on the human nasi to contribute to his own hadar by joining the crowds. It’s tempting to consider whether there are theological parallels. For example: Is this why the Shekhinah is present at every minyan?

Regardless, RaDaK carries the crucial implication that any halakhic obligation of hadar toward a king is not about the subordination of some humans to another.Indeed, it might be that the berov am obligation is always best understood as a bias toward joining with the crowd when you share its ideals and purposes, rather than focusing on your private experience. This obligation applies equally to king and commoner.

This democratic-tending understanding is strengthened when we consider berov am in tandem with the later Rabbinic-epigram אין מלך בלא עם = there is no king, i.e. there is no meaningful kingship, without an am. Moreover, it seems to me that this sort of interpretation is necessary if we consider the full verse Mishlei 14:28:

בְּרָב־עָ֥ם               הַדְרַת־מֶ֑לֶךְ

וּבְאֶ֥פֶס לְ֝אֹ֗ם          מְחִתַּ֥ת רָזֽוֹן

With a large am          there is glory for the melekh

But in the absence of a leom          there is fear for the razon

The inverse of hadar/glory is not mechitah/fear unless we understand the presence of the people as constitutive of monarchy rather than as a mere aesthetic flourish. Rashi takes this implication on directly, but with the qualifications necessary for a theological context:

ברב עם = כשהצבור זכאים –

הדרת הקדוש ברוך היא:

ובאפס לאום =

כשאינם דבקים בו

מחתת רזון = חסרון רזנותו = הוא כביכול נותן מכבודו לאלהי נכר

ומשליט את האומות על בניו.

With a large am = when the community is worthy –

there is glory for the Holy Blessed One

But in the absence of a leom =

when they are not attached to Him

there is fear for the razon = as if it were possible, He gives some of His honor to alien gods

and puts the other nations in power over His children

One would not need the “as if it were possible” in the context of human monarchy, nor would the transfer of honor be voluntary. RaLBaG makes this clear:

הדר המלך הוא כשיהיה לו רבוי עם, כי בם יתחזק כנגד הקמי’ עליו,

ואולם בהעדר העם ממנו – יש לו מחתה שיהיה לו רזון וכחש בקום עליו אדם להלחם בו:

The glory of a king is when he has a large populace,

because they strengthen him to stand against his enemies

but when the nation absents itself from him

he fears that he will have razon and weakness when a man arises to do battle with him

RaLBaG seems to be translating razon as thinness, perhaps based on Yeshayahu 24:16. Almost everyone else, however, more plausibly understands razon as in parallelism with melekh and referring to some sort of leader. The issue then becomes whether one prefers to interpret parallel structures as synonymous, so that razon=melekh, or to look for significance in every change. Thus Alshikh for example understands razon as a subordinate to a melekh, while Hoil Mosheh understand a melekh to be a just ruler, who therefore has confidence in his populace, while a razon is a ruler-by-force who therefore lives in fear  that the population will abandon him.

But the exemplar of the position that the second half of a parallel structure must always add meaning is Malbim. I find his interpretation of our verse politically creative, utterly fascinating, and very, very difficult to understand.

A collective that has a melekh/king is called an am,

while a collective that as a unique religion/dat is called a leom.

Roznim are advisors/sarei eitzah,

but there is a difference between a rozen and a yoetz:

Yoatzim address political issues (עניני מדינה) and their advice is public,

whereas roznim deal with hidden matters,

and their mandate includes matters of religion and its laws (עניני הדת וחוקיה) . . .

The hadar of a king happens via a large am,

because there is a distinction between hod and hadar:

hadar is external glory, as relevant to any issue,

and therefore the hadar of a king is proportional to the size of his am,

but the razon who has charge over the laws of the dat –

even if there is an am, but no leom,

meaning that there are no baalei daat,

he is in fear, because he will be unable to accomplish anything.

 As best I can make out, Malbim here acknowledges the “Jewish problem”, namely that we are both an am and a leom, a political and a religious collective. But I don’t understand his political solution. Why should the advice given to the king on religious matters be kept secret? Are the roznim and the dat ultimately subordinate to the melekh, or do they have constitutionally independent spheres of influence? What happens when an am contains members of many leoms?  Any and all help you can give me in figuring this out would be greatly appreciated.

Shabbat shalom!