The gemara in Mo ed Katan addresses the question of whether

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1 Alex Sztuden Alex Sztuden received a B.A. in Philosophy from Yeshiva University, an M.A. in Philosophy from Fordham University, where he served as an Instructor, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. He is also the co-founder of an online education company. GRIEF AND JOY IN THE WRITINGS OF RABBI SOLOVEITCHIK PART I: PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS* The gemara in Mo ed Katan addresses the question of whether mourning is practiced on a festival: A mourner does not observe mourning on a festival, as it is said, And you shall rejoice on your festivals (Deut. 16:14). If mourning began before the start of the festival, then the arrival of the positive commandment for the community [i.e., rejoicing] outweighs the positive commandment for the individual [i.e. mourning] 1 Rabbi Soloveitchik (the Rav ) is perplexed by why mourning is not practiced on a festival: At first glance, this passage needs an explanation: Why should not one fulfill both commandments, that of mourning and that of rejoicing on a festival, at the same time? After all, the mourner is permitted to eat meat and drink wine, and where does it say that it is forbidden on a festival to refrain from bathing, anointing oneself, greeting people and the like? 2 If we just focus on the acts and prohibitions of mourning and those of rejoicing on a festival, there seems to be no incompatibility. It seems that we should be able to practice both the rituals of mourning and the rituals of rejoicing together, side by side on the same day. So why then, does the *Parts II and III will be published in forthcoming issues of Tradition. 1 Mo ed Katan 14b, cited in Joseph B. Soloveitchik, And From There You Shall Seek (trans. Naomi Goldblum; New York: Toras HaRav Foundation, 2008), p And From There You Shall Seek, p TRADITION 43:4 / 2010 Rabbinical Council of America

2 TRADITION gemara assume that the commandments of mourning and rejoicing are incompatible? The Rav s answer invokes his famous distinction between the outer deed, the ma aseh of a mitsva, and its inner fulfillment, its kiyyum: However, this question does not require deep examination. The mutual contradiction between mourning and joy does not involve the behavioral details of mourning and rejoicing. These outward acts do not contradict one another and could easily be accommodated together. The contradiction involves the kiyyum of the commandments of rejoicing and mourning in their very essence and in the way they take effect. The essence of rejoicing is the inner act, the heart s joy; likewise, the essence of mourning is the inner attitude, the heart s grief. 3 Normally, the ma aseh and the kiyyum of the mitsva go together. For instance, the act of eating matsa constitutes the kiyyum, or fulfillment, of the commandment to eat matsa on Passover, irrespective of the subjective, inner state of the person. But here, and in several other instances, the Rav splits the ma aseh from its kiyyum. While we are commanded to perform certain acts of mourning and rejoicing, the real essence and fulfillment of those commandments lie inside the heart, in the inner recesses of the soul. So according to the Rav, the gemara forbids mourning on a festival because contradictory emotional states cannot be joined together. But is it so clear that contradictory emotions cannot co-exist together? How are we to understand the following passage from the Rav? In a word, with the temporal-existential experience, the thesis and the antithesis co-exist. Each joyous emotion reflecting God, the Creator and Sustainer of Being, contains its own contradiction, the painful realization that God negates the very order of creation. 4 Or what about the co-penetration of love and fear of God - which the Rav claims are opposites yet nevertheless co-exist - how do those emotions differ from grief and joy? The Rav s writings are replete with instances where seemingly contradictory emotions exist side by side and, moreover, the Rav has set forth a theory of emotions containing an extended analysis of various emotions and their opposites. So if we are to gain a proper understanding of the Rav s treatment of mourning on a festival, it becomes essential to situate that treatment within the broader context of his overall theory of emotions. 3 Ibid., pp Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Out of the Whirlwind (ed. David Shatz, Joel B. Wolowelsky, and Reuven Ziegler; New York: Toras HaRav Foundation, 2003), p

3 Alex Sztuden Beginning with an analysis of whether contradictory emotions can coexist, this essay is structured around a series of questions regarding the Rav s discussion of the grief of mourning and the joy of festivals. In Part I of this essay, potential problems of psychology and definitions are explored, and some resolutions are proposed. Part II of this essay discusses a significant philosophical problem related to the Rav s stark dualism. More precisely, the problem centers around the Rav s treatment of the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity, which underlies the distinction between ma aseh ha-mitsva and kiyyum ha-mitsva. Throughout his writings, the Rav offered a variety of formulations intended to capture the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity, and it is my contention that the Rav s various formulations substantially differ in meaning and import. When considered closely, some of the formulations may actually undermine the outer/inner distinction that the Rav invokes, and may even force us to radically reconceptualize the ma aseh/kiyyum split along less dualistic lines. Finally, the Rav did not advance his account of mourning on a festival on philosophical grounds alone. In an extended halakhic lecture On the Essential Nature of Mourning, the Rav marshalls an array of halakhic sources and proofs to buttress his claim that the kiyyumim of mourning and rejoicing are inner states. The Rav s halakhic arguments are treated in Part III of this essay and, where possible, an alternative account of the halakhic material is sketched. Some of the Rav s seemingly halakhic arguments will be shown to have philosophic roots, and so a proper consideration of his halakhic essay necessitates some philosophical analysis as well. In a memorable phrase in U-Bikkashtem mi-sham, the Rav writes that halakha is a doctrine of the body. 5 The burden of the philosophical and halakhic sections of this essay is to show that even amidst its focus on emotions, that is, even during the performance of what the Rav terms experiential mitsvot, the halakha nevertheless still remains a doctrine of the body. The body does not serve as the means for the production of inner states, nor are actions merely the external expression of an inner correlate; rather, the mitsva-act, understood holistically, constitutes its own end and realizes the spirit s striving for self-transcendence. 1) Are Grief and Joy Really Incompatible? Joy and sorrow, mingled with endless variety -Samuel Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare 6 5 And From There You Shall Seek, p Samuel Johnson, The Major Works (ed. Donald Greene; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p

4 TRADITION The Rav s analysis of the prohibition of mourning on a festival depends upon his central insight that mourning and rejoicing cannot co-exist because their essence lies in the heart, and the inner grief of mourning is incompatible with the inner rejoicing of festivals. But the Rav s writings are full of accounts where opposite emotions can seemingly co-exist. I want to focus on a few such writings and then show how those accounts, and other ones like it, can be accommodated with his account of grief and joy by recourse to the Rav s overall understanding of emotional states, which he sets forth most fully in his essay A Theory of Emotions. 7 But before examining the Rav s writings, it is worth briefly mentioning a leading psychological account of emotions which seems to undermine the Rav s central claim. Below, then, are three potential problems for the Rav s account of grief and joy. I begin with Freud s concept of ambivalence: 1. Ambivalence: According to Freud, a person can experience conflicting emotions directed at another person. Most famously, Freud claims that we can both love and hate the same person at the same time. The love/ hate complex is a contradictory, yet very real, emotional state. If Freud is right, the Rav s claim that contradictory emotional states cannot co-exist seems to be wrong. 2. Love and Fear: In U-Bikkashtem mi-sham, the Rav briefly treats another emotional complex, that of love and fear: Fear and love are mutually contradictory but awe and love do not negate each other. The son does not fear his kind father and his gentle mother, and the Torah has never commanded us to fear our parents. Its emphasis is on reverence interwoven with enlightened, appropriate love. 8 Up until this point, his account is consistent with grief and joy. That is, love and fear are contradictory and therefore cannot co-exist. In fact, the Rav even claims that fear is not commanded at all with respect to our parents. Yet in a footnote citing a Sifrei, the Rav qualifies his statement. According to the Sifrei: There is no love where there is fear, or fear where there is love, except with relation to God Himself. 9 The Rav s gloss on this passage reveals a tension with his account of grief and joy: 7 Out of the Whirlwind, pp And From There You Shall Seek, pp Sifrei, Deut

5 Alex Sztuden This explanation of the Sifrei, which insists on the antithetical nature of love and fear, refers to the love/fear complex. It is impossible to love someone whom one fears. In relation to God however, even fear can be combined with love [emphasis added] 10 So it would seem that antithetical emotions, such as love and fear, can indeed sometimes co-exist, if they are directed at God Himself. Why then, does the Rav claim that the grief of mourning and the joy of festivals are incompatible and cannot co-exist? How do the antithetical emotions of love and fear differ from those of grief and joy? Prayer: In Out of the Whirlwind, the Rav outlines an account of prayer which arises from a person s surface crisis or existential crisis. 12 We pray as an expression of a deep despair, which is grief coupled with hopelessness. Borne of need and intense grief, the Amidah prayer is divided into three parts: The first part consists of praise, the middle part consists of requests or petitions to God, and the final part concludes with thanksgiving: The petitional, hymnal and thanksgiving aspect of prayer portray three experiential conceptions and spiritual movements: the crisis cry from the depths the majesty of God and the grace of God. Petition flows from an aching heart which finds itself in existential depths; hymn emerges from an enraptured soul gazing at the mysterium magnum of creation, thanksgiving is sung by the person who has attained, by the grace of God, redemption. 13 Surely the thanksgiving component, where the person feels God s grace and His intimacy, is underlaid with a feeling of joy, while the petitionary aspect of prayer, where our distress is made transparent, contains an undeniable feeling of grief. So it seems that the experiential states of grief and joy exist side-by-side in the same prayer. How is it, then, that grief and joy cannot co-exist on a festival, if they surely co-exist in the 10 And From There You Shall Seek, p Note that grief and joy, according to the Rav, are, like love and fear, also emotions directed at God or at His palpable absence. Mourning is a distancing from God and rejoicing is standing in the presence of God, as we shall see later, so the qualification that antithetical emotions can co-exist only if they are directed at God Himself seems to be met here as well. 12 Out of the Whirlwind, pp Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Worship of the Heart: Essays on Jewish Prayer (ed. Shalom Carmy; New York: Toras HaRav Foundation, 2003), p

6 TRADITION complex experiential state underlying the recitation of the Amida, which is born of an intense despair yet nevertheless contains within it the outpouring of an enraptured soul who has attained redemption? A Theory of Emotions In A Theory of Emotions, an essay published in Out of the Whirlwind, the Rav presents a general account of the emotional life, and this overall theory can resolve the questions raised above regarding ambivalence, love and fear, and prayer. In the course of resolving the questions above, I also hope to show how the Rav s theory of emotions can add depth and nuance to his treatment of mourning on a festival. The key insight in the Rav s theory of emotions is that emotions, like actions, are worthy of moral judgment. If someone feels angry and acts in accordance with that anger, we can judge both the act and the emotion. That we can judge the moral legitimacy of the act is obvious, but that we can also judge the moral legitimacy of the emotion is not. How are we to extend our judgment of actions to that of emotions? The underlying reason why we think it legitimate to judge actions is that we believe in the principle of free will. Since a person could have acted otherwise, he is responsible for his actions. According to the Rav, in order to be able to judge an emotion, we must therefore extend the principle of free will from the realm of actions to the realm of emotions. That is, if a person is to be held responsible not just for acting in anger, but for feeling anger, then he must have had the freedom to feel either anger or calm. Underlying the legitimacy of judging emotions is the Rav s belief that we possess the freedom to control and shape our emotions. This leads to the Rav s second insight, which is that if we are to control our emotions, the only way to do so is by standing back from our emotions and critically reflecting on them, and such an act of reflection must then be able to change the emotion. So if I reflect on the anger I am now feeling, and judge it to be unworthy anger, I can then change my internal feeling of anger. This may happen instantaneously, although most of the time this ability to change or control one s emotional states is the result of years of training. What matters though, is that emotions must be the subject of critical reflection. Reason must be able to penetrate and shape the emotion. For the Rav then, freedom depends on reason See Pinchas H. Peli, On Repentance: The Thought and Oral Discourses of Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004), pp , and see also And From There You Shall Seek, p. 156, on how reason infuses emotions with freedom. 42

7 Alex Sztuden Once the Rav has argued that emotions must become reflective emotions, subject to the dictates of reason, he distinguishes between a primordial emotion and a reflective emotional state. Primordial emotions are pre-reflective and pure 15 and cannot contain their opposites. They are the raw emotions that we instinctively feel. But once the emotion has been taken up by the intellect, that process of reflection can lead to an awareness of the emotion s place in the totality of experience. For as we critically reflect on an emotion we are experiencing, we become intimately aware of its temporary, partial, and relative nature. As the Rav writes, commenting on a Talmudic passage where Mar the son of Ravina chastises the Rabbis for their over-exuberance at his son s wedding: However stately the joy should be at the level of the uncritical emotion, when it is raised to the critical plane, the joy cannot endure in isolation from the total life-experience of the person about whom this particular emotion centers. The stream of events is reflected not in one state of mind but in the full spectrum of feelings, and the emotional awareness at a certain instant is a microcosm, mirroring not only the dominant emotional motif - such as joy in the case of a marriage celebration - but the whole range of the emotional cycle In the marriage event, the critical emotional awareness sees the tragedy of human destiny This paradoxical awareness is symbolized by the breaking of the glass under the canopy. 16 Even when we experience joy, we are aware of joy s opposite. It is tempting to suppose that the Rav believed that joy and grief could not co-exist because he thought they were each primordial, or pure emotions, not yet taken up by the critical faculties, and the Rav insists that primordial emotions cannot co-exist with their opposites at the same time. But this interpretation is ruled out by the passage above, which locates in the feeling of joy an awareness of its opposite. The Rav is also clear that the grief of mourning is not a primordial emotion, but a critical-reflective one: Similarly, the Halakha distinguishes between aninut and aveilut. [Aninut is the stage of the primordial emotion] Aveilut denotes the critical stage 15 Although note that pure subjectivity is an ideal abstraction and does not exist; see Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Mind (London: Seth Press, 1986), p. 127: Pure subjectivity is a fiction. So even primordial emotions are, at any point in time, already worked over by concepts. But as there is really no such thing as a pure emotion, the contrast between primordial emotions and reflective emotions should be seen as one of degree, not of kind. 16 Out of the Whirlwind, p

8 TRADITION of mourning, the grief awareness, and at this level, we will notice at once that aveilut contains its own proper negation 17 So how then, can the Rav write that grief and its opposite cannot co-exist, if aveilut contains its own negation? The answer emerges clearly from the Rav s further claim that each reflective-emotional state contains two components: 1) an emotional center, a dominant motif; and 2) a peripheral awareness, an awareness that the emotional center is partial, relative and will gradually transform itself into its opposite: Of course, in each emotional experience there is the center-directed glance and the peripheral look there is the focus and also the surrounding field of mental reaction; and while emphasis is placed upon the central theme of one s experience, the attendant peripheral motifs are nevertheless relevant and meaningful. 18 So when the Rav writes that grief and joy cannot co-exist, what he means is that there can only be one emotional center, one dominant motif to an emotional state - that is what defines such a state. The grief of mourning is possessive, and demands the emotional center, even while its awareness on the periphery senses its own negation. As with grief, so too with joy. The command to rejoice on a festival is a demand for joy to occupy the emotional center of a person s experience, and while the joyous emotion can contain a peripheral awareness of its opposite, its center of gravity is the feeling of joy. Grief and joy are mutually contradictory because they each demand centrality. It follows that the Rav s statement that Aveilut contains its own negation-solace and hope 19 should be understood to mean that the center of the emotion in Aveilut is grief, even while the person s peripheral awareness includes grief s negation. 20 In the Rav s theory then, our emotions are complex, dialectical states containing both an emotional center and peripheral awareness of the totality of experience. 17 Ibid., p Ibid., p Ibid., p Note that the awareness of grief s negation is not of joy, but of solace and hope, which are the initial stages of grief s complete negation. The Rav could have written that the grief of mourning contains within itself, on the periphery, an awareness of its own negation, of joy, but the Rav is careful to state that such grief doesn t contain an awareness of joy, but of solace and hope, and solace and hope are but the bridges to grief s ultimate antithesis: joy. So the peripheral awareness of an emotional state is not properly speaking of its complete antithesis, but of the initial stages of its antithesis. 44

9 Alex Sztuden We asked earlier how grief and joy can co-exist in the experiential states underlying the recitation of the Amida. Following the Rav s theory of emotions, we see that grief and joy together never occupy the emotional center of the prayer. Rather, there is a dialectic, where prayer is born of grief, and such grief occupies its initial center, whose dominant motif then switches to praise and joy, even while the grief awareness remains at the periphery. The experience of prayer then, contains both grief and joy, but each one alternates as center and periphery. 21 Similarly, at the outset we asked how we are to understand the Rav s statement in Out of the Whirlwind that, In a word, with the temporalexistential experience, the thesis and the antithesis co-exist. Each joyous emotion reflecting God, the Creator and Sustainer of Being, contains its own contradiction, the painful realization that God negates the very order of creation. 22 This statement should be understood to mean that joy s antithesis lies at the periphery of the emotional state, as an awareness of joy s negation, but the center of the joyous emotion is no doubt joy itself. A Theory of Emotions also explains the Rav s comments we previously cited with respect to the love and fear of God. The Rav is describing a dialectical experience with respect to love and fear, not a simultaneous one. Fear is generally a negative emotion with respect to parents, so it should not be experienced at all ( the son does not fear the father whom he loves ). But with respect to God, fear should be experienced dialectically, alternating as emotional center and periphery with love. 23 Finally, we suggested at the outset that Freud s concept of ambivalence may undermine the Rav s position. In A Theory of Emotions, the Rav explicitly deals with, and rejects, ambivalence: Let me state here in no uncertain terms that the dialectical emotional experience has nothing in common with the Freudian concept of ambivalence, the interpenetration of love and hate. When Freud speaks of 21 And as will be seen later, the joy of festivals is unlike the joy in God s descent to us in prayer. 22 Out of the Whirlwind, p We may also try to distinguish love/fear from grief/joy by pointing out that love and fear are more than inner emotional states - they are ways of orienting ourselves towards an object. Love is an attraction and a desire to come close to the beloved, while fear is a recoiling and a desire to flee the object of our fear. So maybe these conflicting orientations can co-exist in a way that conflicting emotional states cannot. But note that for the Rav, grief is a distancing from God and joy is a closeness to God, which exactly parallel the love/fear orientations. In other words, grief and joy are also orientations. 45

10 TRADITION ambivalence, he has in mind the immediate, primordial, direct, unanalyzed emotional response to some event In the very essence of the feeling of love, there is hidden resentment and hate, and in his tempestuous emotional outbursts, one loves and hates at the same time. This running to two opposite poles of feeling is unknown to Judaism. The primeval emotion, which comes uninvited and strikes us with its full elemental power, is not antithetic or dialectical. When one is aflame with love, there is no swinging toward hate; neither must joy be marred by its rival feelings, such as grief. Sincerity and honesty in emotional life is a basic principle of the Judaic ethic. Oscillation between two contrasting feelings demonstrates a shallow personality and a lack of truthfulness. 24 A few differences between the Rav s account of emotions and Freud s are worth emphasizing: 1. For Freud, the hostility aroused by the object is repressed, or hidden in the Rav s language. This is to be contrasted with the conscious peripheral awareness of an emotion s opposite in the Rav s theory. There is nothing hidden or repressed in the Rav s account of emotions. 2. The Rav does not reject ambivalence on empirical grounds. In other words, ambivalence may be experienced by people as a matter of fact. 25 Rather, the Rav s rejection is normative while people may in fact experience love/hate, this emotional complex is dishonest, untruthful, and unbefitting of the Judaic ethic. The Rav can reject an emotional response on normative grounds because of his belief that we have the power to shape and control our emotions, and are therefore responsible for the content of our emotional lives. 3. Most importantly and closely related to the first two points the Rav s account is suffused by his insistence on the rationality of our emotional responses to the world, while Freud s concept of ambivalence is a decidedly non-rational response to an object. For the Rav, the peripheral awareness of an emotion s opposite is the result of critical reflection and most assuredly is not a repressed and irrational response to our beloved, as it is in Freud s account. 26 So the Rav rejects Freud s account of ambivalence, even as he provides an alternative theory of complex and contradictory emotional states. The Rav s account of mourning on a festival is enriched when placed in the context of his overall theory of emotions. Strictly speaking, grief and joy can co-exist, as they do in the experience of prayer, not 24 Out of the Whirlwind, p It is possible that the Rav would refuse to use the term love. Maybe a love that includes the love/hate emotion isn t real love. 26 I thank R. Shalom Carmy for highlighting the contrast between the Rav s position and ambivalence. 46

11 Alex Sztuden as interpenetrating emotional centers but as parts of a dialectical process whose center shifts from thesis to antithesis. However, in the Rav s writings on repentance and its relation to grief, we come across a more intractable problem, for in the experience of repentance, there are times when inner grief must occupy the emotional center, even as Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah are considered days of joy. Repentance In his essay Aninut and Aveilut, 27 the Rav distinguishes between two stages of mourning. In the stage of aninut, man mourns in total darkness and confusion, unable to acknowledge his greatness and chosenness. 28 Immediately following death, primordial, raw emotions overtake the mourner, who is thrown into deep despair and grief. But in the second stage, that of aveilut, this inner grief is taken up by the critical faculties, and the terrible grief of aninut is transformed into mourning in an enlightened mood, with an awareness of hope and consolation. The Rav then asks: What is the experiential substance of aveilut in the second phase? 29 He responds: The latter is intrinsically an experience of teshuva, of repentance. The aching heart is a contrite heart, and a contrite heart is, of course, an atoning heart. In fact, the laws concerning the observance of shiv ah, the sevenday period of mourning, express not only a mood of grieving, but also, and perhaps mainly, a mood of repenting Somehow we arrive at a strange equation: the act of mourning equals the act of expiation. 30 Noticing the parallels between the prohibitions of Yom Kippur and of mourning, the Rav elaborates at some length as to how teshuva is an integral part of the mourning experience. The Rav s acute analysis of the relationship between mourning and repentance has the following problematic implications: If the experiential substance of aveilut is that of teshuva, and if, as we have noted earlier, inner grief is also the experiential substance of aveilut, it follows that the experience of teshuva is intimately related to and interpenetrated by the experience of grief. Grief then, must be an essential component of repentance: An aching heart is an atoning heart. 27 Out of the Whirlwind, pp Ibid., Introduction, xviii. 29 Ibid., p Ibid., pp

12 TRADITION This claim however, seems inconsistent with the Rav s position regarding whether mourning is practiced on Yom Kippur. One of the Rav s strongest halakhic proofs that the essence of the commandment to rejoice lies in the heart is that according to many authorities, there is no mourning on Yom Kippur, because Yom Kippur is also considered a day of joy, like the other festivals. But there are no acts of joy on Yom Kippur, so clearly, argues the Rav, joy must be internal. 31 But if Yom Kippur is a day of joy, and repentance includes inner grief as an essential component, as it surely does, how is such inner grief compatible with the joy of Yom Kippur? We cannot approach this question as we did that of prayer, where grief and joy alternate as emotional centers, because on Yom Kippur, joy is to be the emotional center of the entire day - that is why mourning is not allowed. And here, there will be times during the experience of repentance that inner grief will occupy the emotional center, and this dominant inner grief, which the Rav has linked to the mourning experience, is compatible with the joy of Yom Kippur. 32 Put differently, substantial inner grief, when divorced from mourning practices, appears to be compatible with rejoicing on a festival. 33 In his Mishneh Torah, Rambam writes that: But on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Hallel is not recited because they are days of repentance, awe and fear, not days of excessive rejoicing. 34 This ruling seems to indicate that there are two different concepts of joy. On the one hand, there is the excessive joy of the three festivals, while on the other hand, there is the muted joy of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. During days of muted joy, we do not recite Hallel, and such muted joy is compatible with the inner grief of repentance See Out of the Whirlwind, pp Note that Rosh Hashanah is also considered a day of joy, and yet repentance is surely not complete by then and includes substantial grief. 33 To clarify the argument: repentance has many stages and emotions associated with it, one of which is grief, and another of which is joy. While repentance is ultimately joyous because it results in coming closer to God, the process of repentance, as the Rav reminds us, during both Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, includes substantial inner grief (mourning practices parallel Yom Kippur prohibitions: an aching heart is an atoning heart ), and this inner grief is compatible with the joy of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. (Note also that this substantial inner grief is not like the peripheral awareness of grief as we break the glass under the marriage canopy.) So it is not grief per se that is incompatible with rejoicing on a festival. Rather, it is mourning that is incompatible with rejoicing. 34 Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Hanukka 3:6. 35 As we shall see later, another of the Rav s arguments depends upon his claim that there is only one concept of joy, even though the outer, physical techniques for fulfillment of that joy may vary. The techniques may vary, but the concept remains 48

13 Alex Sztuden A survey of the Rav s writings reveals a subtle picture of how contradictory emotions interact and coexist, and the experience of repentance on Yom Kippur and its attendant grief, likened to mourning by the Rav, seem difficult to place within his overall framework. But the Rav did not rely on the incompatibility of a natural or common understanding of grief and joy alone. Rather, the Rav injected religious-metaphysical meaning into the experience of mourning and rejoicing on a festival, and it is that transformed meaning which renders mourning and rejoicing incompatible. The Rav defines mourning as a distancing from God, and joy is defined as standing in the presence of God. This metaphysical account of mourning and joy renders them mutually exclusive. To these definitions we now turn. 2) Is Mourning a Distancing from God and is Joy Standing in the Presence of God? In On the Essential Nature of Mourning, 36 the Rav s halakhic lecture on the nature of the prohibition of mourning on a festival, the Rav writes that: Summing the matter up, to rejoice is to stand before God and to mourn is to be distanced from Him. 37 However, the idea that the grief of mourning is a distancing from God stands in tension with other aspects of the Rav s writings. Consider the following passages: When a torrent of despair is about to quench all the aspirations of the distressed and yearning soul then God reveals Himself. 38 God reveals Himself to man when he is in the grip of a fate as cruel as vultures, bereft of hope or vision. 39 God s revelation at times of crisis, from the depths of despair and distress, is a basic principle of Judaism. Sometimes God does not reveal Himself the same. But as we see here, there is not one concept of joy; there are at least two concepts, and one of those concepts (muted Yom Kippur joy) is incompatible with hallel and is compatible with the significant inner grief of repentance. If there are two concepts of joy, maybe there are many concepts of joy. Sukkot joy differs from Pesah joy, which in turn differs from Shavuot joy and those differences reside in their practices, understood holistically. In other words, there are as many concepts of joy as there are practices of joy. This argument is treated more extensively in Part II of this essay, in the section on how objective acts shape subjective states. 36 Out of the Whirlwind, pp Out of the Whirlwind, p And From There You Shall Seek, p Ibid., p

14 TRADITION to the contented soul He reveals himself to one who grieves for the ruin of His Temple 40 For the Rav, God can reveal Himself in the midst of our despair. 41 The view that God appears to us in the midst of our very grief then, sown throughout the Rav s writings as a basic principle of Judaism, seems inconsistent with the Rav s claim that the grief of mourning is to be defined as the distancing from God. If God reveals Himself in the midst of our most horrible grief, then such grief cannot be incompatible with standing in the presence of the Lord. Further, as we have seen, the Rav defines the joy of festivals as standing in the presence of God. 42 But how exactly is this definition to be distinguished from prayer, which is also a standing before God? Prayer is man s dialogue and encounter with God, and it arises from need and despair. Moreover, its central component, the petitions, are expressions of our innermost needs, our despair and our unfulfilled longings. Are we to conclude then that during prayer, when we are pouring out our souls to God in grief and despair, that during the crisis cry from the depths we are no longer standing in the presence of God since joy and grief cannot coexist? In his lecture On the Honor and Delight of the Sabbath, 43 the Rav resolves the questions above by distinguishing between two different levels of God s presence. According to the Rav, the Sabbath and festivals each provide a different model of relating to God. On festivals, the joy of standing in the presence of God is akin to standing in His Place. We have ascended to Him and are with God at the highest levels possible. But on the Sabbath, we sing Lekha Dodi in order to call out to God, to go out and greet him, precisely because we are not with Him at His Place. Rather, He must descend to us: On a festival, a man stands before God the obligation of standing before God is an obligation for man to enter into the House of the Lord and His Father in Heaven receives him.but on the Sabbath, the situation is completely different. There is no connection between the Sabbath 40 Ibid., p It cannot be maintained that as soon as God reveals Himself, the grief suddenly ends. The point of the above passages isn t that God s revelation evaporates the grief. Rather, God comforts the distressed soul and infuses hope and comfort where there was none before, but He does this in the midst of a man s grief. 42 And From There You Shall Seek, p Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Sh iurim le-zekher Abba Mari, Z L, Vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Mechon Yerushalayim, 1983), pp

15 Alex Sztuden and [standing in] the Temple [Rather, on the Sabbath], God attaches Himself to man s distress [tsa aro], and man is obligated to receive God s face, to go out and call forth his Bride, to call forth the Shekhina. 44 So when the Rav discusses God s revelation to man amidst his grief and distress, this revelation is to be distinguished from the joyous standing in the presence of God reserved for festivals. On the Sabbath and during prayer and times of crisis, God descends to us amidst our very grief. 45 But in festivals of rejoicing, God does not come down to us in our grief; rather; it is we who ascend to God s dwelling place, so to speak, and bask in the glory of His Presence. And on a festival, in God s House, there is no room for grief. The Rav s account of mourning as a distancing from God and joy as standing in the presence of God adds an extra dimension to our understanding of why grief and joy are incompatible. There are different ways in which we can be present with God, and the unique, religious experience referred to as standing in the presence of God reserved for festivals rules out the substantial inner grief that mourning entails. But if grief and joy are really incompatible, as the Rav maintains, and therefore the prohibition of mourning on a festival stems from an inner, emotional contradiction, then another problem arises a psychological-moral problem the Rav s position attributes to the halakha an almost impossible demand: that in the midst of our mourning, we are required to renounce our grief and fill our hearts with joy. Is this sudden transformation even possible? 3) Psychological Implausibility and the Democratic Nature of Halakha According to the Rav, the halakha demands that in the midst of our mourning, if a festival approaches, we must forsake our inner grief and replace it with the inner feeling of joy. The Rav is aware of the heroic nature of this task, as described in a haunting passage in Catharsis, 46 which is worth citing at length: 44 Ibid., pp , my translation. 45 Of course, grief is not a dominant motif of the Sabbath. The Rav does however mention that God comes down to us amidst man s distress [tsa aro] on the Sabbath. See ibid., p Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Catharsis, Tradition, 17:2 (Spring, 1978), pp

16 TRADITION Now let us visualize the following concrete situation. The mourner, who has buried a beloved wife or mother, returns home from the graveyard where he has left part of himself, where he has witnessed the mockery of human existence. He is in a mood to question the validity of our entire axiological universe. The house is empty, dreary, every piece of furniture reminds the mourner of the beloved person he has buried. Every corner is full of memories. Yet the Halacha addresses itself to the lonely mourner, whispering to him: Rise from your mourning; cast the ashes from your head; change your clothes; light the festive candles; recite over a cup of wine the Kiddush extolling the Lord for giving us festivals of gladness and sacred seasons of joy; pronounce the blessing of [Shehechianu]: Blessed art Thou... who has kept us in life and has preserved us and has enabled us to reach this season ; join the jubilating community and celebrate the holiday as if nothing had transpired, as if the beloved person over whose death you grieve were with you. The Halacha, which at times can be very tender, understanding and accommodating, may, on other occasions, act like a disciplinarian demanding obedience. The Halacha suggests to man, broken in body and spirit, carrying the burden of an absurd existence, that he change his mood, that he cast off his grief and choose joy. Let us repeat the question: Is such a metamorphosis of the state of mind of an individual possible? Can one make the leap from utter bleak desolation and hopelessness into joyous trust? Can one replace the experience of monstrosity with the feeling of highest meaningfulness? I have no right to judge. However, I know of people who attempted to perform this greatest of all miracles. 47 Can it really be the case that this greatest of all miracles, this sudden transformation of grief into joy, is what the halakha demands at the level of the basic kiyyum ha-mitsva? Elsewhere, the Rav has written about the exoteric, democratic nature of halakha, which must be accessible to all Jews. No esoteric, hidden intentions or impossibly difficult cognitive tasks are charged to Jews as such. 48 The commandments are accessible to all, young and old, shoemakers and scholars. But here, it seems that the basic kiyyum of a mourner s joy on a festival is addressed to but a handful of elite halakhic men Ibid., See Worship of the Heart, pp See Amaru s question regarding the tension between exotericism and the Rav s account of prayer in Joshua Amaru, Prayer and the Beauty of God: Rav Soloveitchik on Prayer and Aesthetics, The Torah u-madda Journal (13/2005), pp It should be noted that the Rav directly addresses Amaru s concern regarding the general accessibility of existential crises. See Worship of the Heart,

17 Alex Sztuden To be sure, the Rav possesses an indubitable spiritual-aristocratic streak and he is clear that while the commandments are accessible to all, the subjective experiences accompanying those commandments can vary tremendously. The Talmud Torah of the Vilna shoemaker is not the same as the Talmud Torah of the Vilna Gaon. 50 But in our case, the Rav seems to be injecting a demand for intense, almost impossible heroism into the basic structure of the kiyyum ha-mitsva. In his writings on prayer, the Rav had taken issue with kabbalistic desires to add esoteric intentions into the essence of prayer. Such requirements, argued the Rav, are elitist. Prayer, at its most elemental, is accessible to all. 51 But then so should be rejoicing and mourning. At their most elemental, they should also be commandments accessible to all. No doubt, most of the time, mourning proceeds without the interruption of a festival, but there doesn t seem to be a need to read the halakha in such a way as to inject an almost impossible demand into the basic structure of the kiyyum ha-mitsva in cases where festivals do interrupt mourning. This is not a case of some people being able to fulfill the mitsva more fully than others. Rather, following the Rav s logic, mourners who still feel intense inner grief on a festival cannot fulfill the commandment to rejoice even at its most basic level. Is the kiyyum ha-mitsva really a kiyyum, which almost no one can comply with, or does it function more like an ideal? The two are not the same. R. Elijah Pruzna In his lectures on the philosophy of the Rav, R. Ziegler 52 suggests that when the Rav wrote that he knew of such men who have attempted this greatest of miracles, to replace the monstrosity of death with the highest meaningfulness of festival joy, he may have been referring to the Rav s grandfather, R. Elijah Pruzna, whom the Rav introduces to us in Halakhic Man. I believe that the story of R. Elijah, read closely, does not support the Rav s position. This is the passage in Halakhic Man that Ziegler is referring to: When the [Vilna] Gaon s brother died and the Gaon learned of it on the Sabbath [when mourning is forbidden], he did not display any emotion or signs of grief. After the Sabbath, when he concluded the havdalah, he 50 And From There You Shall Seek, p Worship of the Heart, pp See Ronnie Ziegler, Introduction to the Philosophy of Rav Soloveitchik Catharsis of the Emotions, Virtual Beit Midrash (1997), org/archive/rav/rav09.htm. 53

18 TRADITION burst into tears. The beloved daughter of R. Elijah Pruzna [Feinstein] took sick about a month before she was to be married R. Elijah s son entered into the room where R. Elijah, wrapped in talit and tefillin, was praying with the congregation, to tell him that his daughter was in her death throes. R. Elijah went into his daughter s room and asked the doctor how much longer it would be until the end. When he received the doctor s reply, R. Elijah returned to his room, removed his Rashi tefillin, and quickly put on the tefillin prescribed by Rabbenu Tam, for immediately upon his daughter s death he would be an onen After he removed his second pair of tefillin, wrapped them up and put them away, he entered his dying daughter s room, in order to be present at the moment his most beloved daughter of all would return her soul back to its Maker. We have here great strength and presence of mind and faith, strong like flint. 53 With respect to the Vilna Gaon, the Rav writes that he did not display any signs of grief. Surely the point is that while he felt intense grief, he did not express it. This interpretation is supported by the fact that the story took place on the Sabbath, where on the Rav s own account, as opposed to on festivals, the inner grief of mourning is sanctioned, 54 so there is no halakhic reason for the Gaon to have replaced his grief with the honor and delight of the Sabbath. The same considerations apply to R. Elijah, who was under no obligation to forsake his grief. Rather, the remarkable power and haunting beauty of the story derive precisely from the fact that in the midst of his intense grief, R. Elijah nevertheless displayed tremendous presence of mind. It is this complicated mental state that the Rav is conveying: that R. Elijah s devotion to mitsvot pierced through his intense love for his daughter, even as the grief enveloped him. 55 R. Elijah in no way replaced his intense inner grief (why should he have?); he mastered it Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man (trans. Lawrence Kaplan; Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1983), pp See And From There You Shall Seek, pp Compare to the Akedah: Did Abraham forsake his inner suffering? Or is it more likely that in the midst of Abraham s unstated but intense suffering generated by God s command, he nevertheless remained resolute, rose early, saddled his donkey and went with Isaac to do God s bidding with the same presence of mind as R. Elijah? There is a sense in the Rav s position that God wants us to re-live a mini-akedah, sacrificing our inner grief for His sake on a festival. This is why I labeled the problem a psychological-moral one. 56 In his article on the Rav s Halakhic Man, David Hartman discusses Avishai Margalit s comment that this passage is inhuman. See David Hartman, The Halakhic 54

19 Alex Sztuden These accounts of halakhic men who did not abandon, but rather mastered, their emotions, may point us to an alternative understanding of why mourning is prohibited on festivals. As against the Rav s interpretation, the halakha does not require that mourners forsake their grief and transform it into joy. The halakha requires that mourning not be observed on a festival, 57 not that grief not be felt, an almost impossible task. That substantial inner grief is allowed on a day of joy emerged from our discussion of repentance on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But there is a more important reason why the halakha doesn t focus on the grief of a mourner on a festival, unrelated to the psychological plausibility of whether people are really able to suddenly transform their grief into joy. The halakha doesn t focus on grief as the kiyyum of mourning because, as the Rav memorably puts it, the halakha is a doctrine of the body. 58 There may well be a category of experiential commandments, but that in no way removes the ultimate telos of an experiential mitsva as an act of the body. Acts can be done poorly or they can be done well. There are mindless acts, and there are acts done with great feeling. But to prefer the latter over the former in no way implies that the essence of a command is an inner state. The essence is still an act, an act done well, with proper feeling. Acts are not means to the production of an inner state; nor are they just the expressions of an inner correlate. Properly speaking, in the soul s striving for self-realization, they are the end toward which the spirit strives. Accordingly, Part II of this essay takes up the philosophical issues of the relationship between inner state and outer deed, or subjectivity and objectivity, and tries to show that a proper account of such a relationship undermines the identification of inner states with the kiyyumim of mourning and rejoicing on a festival. Hero: Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, Modern Judaism (Vol. 9, Issue 3), pp But it is only inhuman if R. Elijah abandoned his grief to focus on the mitsva of tefillin. If, however, as I read the passage, he put on his tefillin in the midst of his grief, there is nothing inhuman about R. Elijah s actions. There is an unstated premise in the moral critique of the Rav s position, which is this: that if the halakha can be plausibly interpreted in two ways, all other things being equal, we should interpret it in the way which is more consistent with our natural moral intuitions. This claim does not depend on any strong thesis regarding the ultimate relationship between ethics and halakha, as it says nothing about how to resolve cases of real conflict between halakha and ethical intuitions. 57 The gemara s phrasing is revealing: Mourning is not observed on a festival. The word observed indicates a focus on prohibitions, as in the Sabbath. Prohibitions are observed; inner states are not. 58 And From There You Shall Seek, p

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