Rabbi Daniel Landes is Director and Rosh HaYeshivah of Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.
Our Postmodern culture views Commitment as a device for exerting power over a group by internalizing obedience and ethically dead quietism. Postmodernism advocates resistance to commitment and replaces it with skepticism. Advocates of Tradition which demands many commitments – “coercive expectations” – are in a difficult position.
Our commitment to discourse sounds obtuse. Our term for commitment is mesirut nefesh – “to hand over your life.” This Sacrificial Discourse is ironic, given that Tractate Sanhedrin’s discussion is how to mediate Tradition within a murderous environment. Three prohibitions are paramount (murder, idolatry and sexual offense). All other mitzvot are dispensable. But subsequently, the Rabbis state that when an empire desires to stamp out Judaism, or in publicly defined situations, one must hand over one’s life even for an obscure custom. This codicil has become dominant. In a leveling of practices and actions, students are urged towards mesirut nefesh, usually metaphorically, but the frequency is loud and self-convincing. I once heard a Centrist Orthodox Rosh HaYeshiva instruct that mixed swimming was to be classified as yehareg ve’al ya’avor (=those prohibitions for which one must give their life rather than violate). When I asked him what ruling did he then reserve for bowing to Ba’al, he replied, “It is all the same.” But I am not sure that our students are fully convinced by this consistently one-tone, decibel roar. The “pitch” produces recoil.
Connected is the Talmudic maxim, “Greater is one who is commanded and performs over one who is not commanded and performs,” as understood that only from the former can we expect Commitment. Combined with the regnant notion of spirituality as specified attainment and hierarchy – one becomes a ben/bat Torah, through a heated religiosity of humrah (stricture) in the ritual/social arena – the result is a self-contained perfectionist system which generates obedience, or passive aggression, or eventual defection.
An alternative theological-education model is necessary, “Participatory Discourse.” Mesirut nefesh would be toned down and employed only for what it was designed – crisis. Instead, commitment would be understood by its modern Hebrew term, hit-hayvut, placing oneself into an obligation. Utilized by the Hatam Sofer to refer to a self-imposed debt, it works well theologically. Franz Rosenzweig, the first postmodern ba’al teshuvah, maintained that one cannot be legislated to obey – he must hear the command as the person he is. Rosenzweig’s ethic is that one needs to bring oneself to this commitment, a true hit-hayvut.
A crucial contribution to Participatory/ Hit-hayvut Discourse is the insight of the Eish Kadosh. The theological context is the radical Hasidic doctrine that even one’s deed is actually not one’s own, for it was ultimately inspired by God’s command. Rabbi Shapira contrasts this with the paradigm of the Biblical Miriam as “a woman who has become a righteous person and learns Torah and fulfills the commandments – all of these actions are her own deeds, since she “is not obligated but nonetheless performs … the source of her service is within her and stems from her …” The Eish Kadosh, writing within the Warsaw Ghetto’s darkness, understands one who cannot automatically see herself as commanded. He offers us a model of bringing oneself to commitment within the framework of self-obligation.
The third building block of this discourse is the nekudat ha-behirah of R. Eliyahu Dessler. Rav Dessler did not understand spirituality as attainment, but rather as constant process, a series of one decision point after the other. Parallel to Rosenzweig, he emphasized the need for the person to engage oneself where one is. His analogy is to a battlefront. If you “engage the enemy” behind your own lines, you accomplish nothing, for he is not there. Conversely, if you engage way beyond the enemy’s lines, you will meet with certain defeat. The place of engagement and choice – nekudat ha-behirah – is that point upon which you stand. That point shifts as you proceed or retreat.
The final building block of Participatory Discourse is the Talmudic notion of lifnim mishurat ha-din, going beyond the letter of the law, giving up your own legal right and power for a better situation, for the other, to emerge. It is a powerful self-corrective for legal decision-making, and more so for a personal ethic. It introduces a sophisticated critique and reworking of halakhah, beyond rights and entitlement, and introduces an experience of sacrifice not directed to ritualistic society.