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Ein Ayah (Gemara Shabbat 32b); Pinkasei haRe’iah (Vol. 1, pg. 170)
A complete religious life engages both the mind and the emotions of the heart. Every mitzvah has a role to play in developing our intellectual and emotional connection with G-d, but not every mitzvah acts in the same way. Certain mitzvot are primarily addressed to the intellect, while others engage mainly with the emotional realm.
The world of nedarim is associated primarily with the emotions. A neder usually comes from an outburst of intense feelings. Perhaps one is swept up in an overpowering sense of awe, fear, or gratitude that inspires a promise of greater dedication to G-d, or a measure of abstinence from the physical world. Or perhaps he takes a vow at a time of intense danger or trouble, pledging to improve himself if G-d sends His deliverance. In Parshat Matot, G-d warns us to be careful to fulfill our pledges – “If a man makes a vow to G-d or makes an oath to prohibit himself, he shall not violate his word; according to whatever came out of his mouth, he shall do” (Bamidbar 30:3). This is more than just a technical commandment about vows, as a surface reading might suggest. It is a warning to take the basis of vows – i.e. the world of emotions – seriously.
After all, G-d bestowed a tremendous gift upon us by making emotional faculties part of human nature. Proper emotional sensitivity bestirs us to rise above conduct that is base and lowly, and maintain our holy dignity. An emotionally attuned person can sense the goodness (or absence thereof) in matters of ethics, and the truth or falsehood in issues of practical conduct. Wherever life’s paths take him, his perception of kedushah assists in in discerning what is beautiful or shameful, and reinforces his intellectual attainments. G-d forbid that a person should suppress his G-d-given emotional sensitivities and serve his creator with intellect only! By admonishing us to fulfill our pledges, G-d is training us to recognize the value of holy feelings. One who belittles his vows and fails to fulfill them rejects the great benefit of this holy gift.
Emotional sensitivity is a particularly important focus of chinuch. The essence of chinuch is to imbue a child with a sensitivity to kedushah and ethical conduct, so that they have a healthy foundation to build on upon reaching intellectual maturity. The most fundamental failure of chinuch is to emphasize only what can be rationally comprehended and grasped by the intellect, without warmth or holy fire, without a sensitivity to the delight of living in Hashem’s presence through refined middot, the sanctity of Torah and avodat Hashem.
Indeed, the greater and more spiritually refined a person is, the more his emotional faculties are intensified. However, harnessing these emotions requires continuous work and refinement. It is because of Israel’s tremendous spiritual potential that G-d obligated us in so many mitzvot. Together, the mitzvot deepen our emotional resonance to ethical values and kedushah. רצה הקב׳ה לזכות את ישראל, לפיכך הרבה להם תורה ומצוות “G-d desired to refine and purify the Jewish people, and therefore gave them an abundance of mitzvot.”
Food for Thought
Relevance: Pirkei Avos for the Twenty-first Century (pg. 235-236): To help another person, one must be able to relate to his emotional needs and desires… A man once came to Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe for advice on what to do about his son’s over-involvement in soccer. The father wanted to know if it was responsible to place a limit on his son’s playing time…[of] half an hour. “Half an hour?!” exclaimed Rabbi Wolbe. “You can’t play anything in half an hour!” Rabbi Wolbe was eighty-six years old at the time and had never played a game of soccer in his life, yet he managed to relate to the boy’s attachment to the sport, sensing his love for the game. He thus understood that half an hour would do nothing to satisfy his need to play. The boy’s father, on the other hand, who was forty years Rabbi Wolbe’s junior…had tried to deal with the issue on a purely intellectual level, ignoring the boy’s passion for the game.
Rav Soloveitchik (The Rav, Vol. 2, pg. 172): As a child I used to feel stimulated, aroused, and deeply inspired. I used to experience a strange peaceful stillness. As a child I used to surrender, using the language of the mystics, to a stream of inflowing joy and ecstasy. In a word, as a young child I felt the presence of kedushah on these nights… Paradoxically, I must say that these emotions and experiences, however naive and childish, have always been the fountainhead of my religious life. My religious life has always been a colorful life. This achievement I derived from my childhood experience and not from my intellectual accomplishments.
Rav Soloveitchik (A Tribute to the Rebbetzin of Talne): What is torat imekha? What kind of a Torah does the mother pass on?… Permit me to draw upon my own experiences… I used to watch [my mother] arranging the house in honor of a holiday. I used to see her recite prayers; I used to watch her recite the sidra every Friday night and I still remember the nostalgic tune. I learned from her very much. Most of all I learned that Judaism expresses itself not only in formal compliance with the law but also in a living experience. She taught me that there is a flavor, a scent and warmth to mitzvot. I learned from her the most important thing in life – to feel the presence of the Almighty and the gentle pressure of His hand resting upon my frail shoulders. Without her teachings, which quite often were transmitted to me in silence, I would have grown up a soulless being, dry and insensitive. The laws of Shabbat, for instance, were passed on to me by my father; they are a part of mussar avikha. The Shabbat as a living entity, as a queen, was revealed to me by my mother… The fathers knew much about the Shabbat; the mothers lived the Shabbat, experienced her presence, and perceived her beauty and splendor. The fathers taught generations how to observe the Shabbat; mothers taught generations how to greet the Shabbat and how to enjoy her twenty-four hour presence.
A Journey Through Nach (Introduction to Melachim): The kings of Yisrael are connected with Yosef (for their first king was Yeravam, who was a descendant of Yosef), while the kings of Yehuda are from the tribe of Yehuda. And since a central trait of Yosef was emotion (regesh; in Bereishis, the Torah gives us three instances of Yosef crying), the kings of Yisrael were also governed by emotion. This trait is also true of Yosef’s sole maternal brother, Binyamin (perhaps this emotion originated from Rachel), which was the root of Shaul’s mistake in his misplaced mercy on the people of Amalek in Shmuel Aleph. In contrast, the kings of Yehuda inherited Yehuda’s trait of putting mind (sechel) over emotion, in the same way that Yehuda rose above the emotions displayed by his brothers, and managed to save Yosef from death in the pit by suggesting that he be sold instead. Thus, Shlomo Hamelech, a descendant of Yehuda, was the epitome of this trait of sechel. It is perhaps for this reason that, in general, the kings of Yehuda were more loyal to Hashem than the kings of Yisrael; for they had greater wisdom, and could recognize Hashem’s ultimate control without being blindly led by emotions. We learn that emotions are important, but they have to be tied down and governed by sechel (intellect).
David Hazony (Human Responsibility in the Thought of R. Eliezer Berkovits): The mistaken belief that man can be made good solely through preparation of the mind is, in [R. Eliezer] Berkovits’ view, the salient tragedy of Western civilization… [B]eginning with Christianity… Western man as represented by European thought has associated the question of morality almost exclusively with the question of what a truncated, spiritualized actor, possessing only reason or faith, ought to do. The question of how, once right action has been determined, one is to overcome inner obstacles to taking the proper action is understood, when it is considered at all, to be a separate issue, relating to other realms such as psychology or education. The result was that despite centuries of moral teaching, Western man was never able to overcome the intrinsic amorality of his material element. The rise of murderous regimes in the heart of the most philosophically developed civilization stood for Berkovits as testimony to the West’s failure to grasp the nature of morality. [As he wrote] “In this respect, there seems to be little difference between ages of greater or lesser enlightenment; except that, in times of greater intellectual advancement, as knowledge increases, man grows in power proportionately and becomes correspondingly more dangerous…. Notwithstanding enlightenment, man seems to remain an essentially unethical being.”
Questions for Discussion
- Rav Kook discusses the dangers of Jewish life without emotional depth. What are some dangers that come with an overemphasis on emotion, at the expense of the intellect?
- How does one know if they’ve struck the right balance between intellect and emotion as an individual? As a community?
- Who can you think of in your life that models a deep, emotional attachment to G-d and Jewish life?
- Rav Soloveitchik seems to write that women have more sensitivity to the emotional texture of Jewish life than men do. Do you agree?
- Do you think our culture emphasizes intellect more than emotion, or vice versa? On what basis?
- Did your upbringing/education put emphasis on intellect or emotion? Or were the two balanced?
- The first time we find a neder in the Torah is by Ya’akov (Bereishit 28:20, after he wakes up from his vision of the ladder. Re-read that parshah in light of Rav Kook’s insights on nedarim. Does it seem like Ya’akov’s neder has an emotional component to it?
