Modes of Torah-study25
“God created the great sea monsters and all the living creatures of every kind that creep . . .” (Gen 1:21).
The word t’ninim (sea monsters, a plural word) is derived from t’nina, which means “study” and thus indicates that God created different types of study. For there are two ways of study: one is the way of life and of the good, namely study of Torah for its own sake (torah lishmah), while the second is study not for its own purpose (torah shelo lishmah), but for an evil purpose, God forbid. Both types of students can become great in Torah in their own way, though the one engages in Torah for its true, legitimate purpose, to experience the divine sweetness, while the other chooses an evil path, as his motivation derives from his quest for position and material benefit and uses Torah “as a spade with which to dig.”26 “The one no less than the other was God’s doing . . .” (Eccl 7:14).
And this is alluded in what our Sages relayed in their saying that the Creator chilled the male, meaning the one who studies Torah for its own purpose; this is associated with the male and is necessitated to an extent lest one would cease to exist in the face of the enormous delight in his engaging in Torah-study for its own sake, leaving him no possibility of existence. [The sexist overtones typify the attitudes largely prevalent in the preacher’s environment and in much of prior tradition. The male is described here as driven by such an all-powerful love of Torah-study that he could easily die in the course of pursuing that love.] And God killed the female, connoting the person who studies not for the sake of the Torah itself, killing and weakening that person’s strength lest the world be destroyed as a consequence of his mode of study.27 [In the talmudic agada, which refers to the danger of the sea monsters’ mating, as with their boundless appetite their offspring could consume the entire world, the male is castrated and chilled and preserved to serve as a feast for the righteous in the World-to-Come.]
And the text concludes, “and all the living creatures of every kind that creep . . . and all the winged birds of every kind” (Gen 1:21), referring to the young ones—and there are many of them—who only limitedly study Torah for its own sake, each one according to the person’s own aspect and level. For “Torah-learning for its own sake” assumes many faces, just as there are also many varieties of “Torah-learning not for its own sake.” And fortunate is the person who chooses the good, thereby coming to experience the pleasantness of God.
Comment: In a society with few intellectual outlets other than the study of sacred text and the discourse relating to it, the issue at the center of this homily becomes very real. Does one’s mental endeavor, in such a situation, respect the nature of the subject of his study?
While the concepts of torah lishmah and torah shelo lishmah (studying out of sincere motivations or out of self-centered pragmatic motivations such as position, prestige, or reputation) are found already in talmudic literature (conveying that whereas torah shelo lishmah is a death-potion, torah lishmah is a potion for life),28 the contrast between those two modes bore a special and more particular relevance in the polemics between the Hasidim and their opponents (Mitnagdim). Hasidic homilists accused their opposition, specifically those devoted to the intense talmudic study of the academies (y’shivot), of often being driven by very impious, self-centered motivations, while the opponents of Hasidism, in turn, accused the Hasidim both of ignorance in terms of the level of their talmudic knowledge and of disrespectfully denigrating the scholar-class and talmudic learning itself.
Kalonymus Kalman claimed to find an allusion in the rabbinic agada of the two sea monsters to those two modes of study which differed in terms of their motivations. The one monster represents all-too-this-worldly considerations, while the other might be drawn to a life beyond the grave as he prefers death for the sake of a more complete sense of God’s presence.
The reader, however, can hear in his discussion a more conciliatory position according to which both modes, carried to an extreme, represent dangers to the world. The totally unblemished ideal of torah lishmah can remove its practitioners from this world through their total cleaving to the Divine in a way that could evoke a negative attitude toward life. And the blatent examples of torah shelo lishmah endanger the very existence of the world by the falsity masked in their study itself.
Realizing the pitfalls of both modes, the Creator placed both those modes themselves beyond the pale of reality, something the preacher felt to be symbolized in that much earlier agada of the two sea monsters.
The rabbinic agada itself, which would appear to echo ancient myths of a primeval sea monster (such as Tiamat),29 would not interest Kalonymus Kalman in its own terms, but he utilized that agada to engage an issue that acquired special importance in his own time and experience. His more complex reading of this cultural or spiritual conflict into that agada of a mythological character is an expression both of his creativity and of his ongoing struggling with the polarities involved.
The Function of Shabbat30
“And God saw all that He had made and found it very good. . . . On the seventh day God finished the work which He had been doing, and He ceased on the seventh day (from all the work which He had done.” (Gen 1:31—2:2)
Rashi explained that a person of flesh and blood, not knowing his hours and minutes in all their preciseness, must add from the profane (weekday) to the holy [as a precaution, one must begin a holy day, such as the Shabbat, at least somewhat earlier than required lest he might be violating the holy day], whereas the blessed Holy One, knowing His times and minutes, enters into a holy day at the precise split second, with the accuracy of a hair-breadth.31
That, however, still doesn’t suffice to explain, for God nevertheless completed His work on the Sixth Day and not on the Seventh Day. And a rabbinic reading maintains that the demons were created at dusk just before the Shabbat, and though there was need yet to create bodies for them, nevertheless the Creator hallowed the Day and refrained from creating bodies for them.32
. . . For the sake of choice and will, in order that the Israelites who accepted upon themselves the yoke/commitment of His Kingship might receive a reward for their good deeds, God contracted His Divinity in stages, from world to world, and made partitions and a screen separating one world from another. They limit the Light of God’s Divinity and holiness through a series of contractions culminating with the physical world, doing so, however, in a way that nothing exists even in this lower, material world in which the Light of God’s holiness does not glisten, for otherwise this lower world could not even exist. . . . And the person who accepts upon himself the yoke of God’s kingdom and comes to attach himself to one’s Root must remove all the partitions until one can experience the pleasantness of God, the sublime Light, the blessed Infinite One.
And concerning the quality of Malkhut [royalty, reign; the lowest of the s’firot], it is said “Her feet go down to death” (Prov 5:5, in reference to the strange, forbidden woman), meaning that it is the level closest to the realm of the ḥitzonim [demonic agents, the very word signifying “external”] and if, God forbid, the world would become materialized to any greater degree, then due to the thickness of the physicality of things, it would no longer be possible for man to turn to attach himself to the sublime Light. But certainly the merciful God who, desiring mercy, does not wish that anyone be banished (leval yidaḥ mimenu nidaḥ, a composite of words from Mic 7:18 and 2 Sam 14:14).
And accordingly, God said to the
