Essence vs. External Stimulants

In this week’s parsha, Shemini, the Netziv (Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin) comments to Leviticus 10:9 and states

יין ושכר וגו׳. באשר דאונן פסול לעבודה משום דשרוי בצער אינו יכול להיות באהבת ה׳ ודביקות הבאה אך מתוך שמחה של מצוה. ומש״ה אכילת קדשים לבעלים ג״כ אסור לאונן. ע׳ פרש״י יומא די״ד א׳ ד״ה מי לא מטריד. ואך כה״ג רשאי להקריב אונן משום שלפי ערך גדולתו אפשר להתגבר על צערו ולעמוד לפני ה׳ בשמחה וכך היתה מדתו של אהרן. אמנם היא עבודה קשה שבמקדש ונצרך דבר לסייע לזה. והייתי אומר לשתות יין ושכר וכמו שכתוב תנו שכר לאובד ויין למרי נפש ישתה וישכח רישו. מש״ה הזהיר הקב״ה לאהרן ובניו באותה שעה. שהמה לא ישתמשו בעצה זו בבואם אל אוהל מועד להשיג אהבה:

(The below English translation is my own and may be in need of correction; feel free to help me with it.)

Wine and aged wine. When one is an onen they are not permitted to perform the Avodah [service in the Tabernacle] because of the principle that one who is immersed in pain is unable to be full of the love for God and desire to cling to Him that only comes about through the joy of performing a mitzvah [good deed/ commandment]. And when it references eating kodshim [holy foods], this is also forbidden for an onen. […] But the High Priest is permitted to come close/ serve even as an onen because due to his high stature/ nature he is able to overcome his feelings of pain and distress and to stand before God with joy, and this was the trait of Aharon. However, it is difficult work in the Temple and he [might have] needed something to help with this. And I [Netziv] said “to drink wine and aged wine like it is written in Proverbs 31:6-7 “Give strong drink to the one who is perishing and wine to those in bitter distress/ let them drink and forget their poverty.” And it was regarding this idea that God warned Aharon and his sons at this moment. That they should not follow this advice when they came to the Tent of Meeting in order to achieve feelings of love [and closeness to God.]

The Netziv did not agree with the Marmeladov’s assessment in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

“Such is my fate! Do you know, sir, do you know, I have sold her very stockings for drink? Not her shoes—that would be more or less in the order of things, but her stockings, her stockings I have sold for drink! Her mohair shawl I sold for drink, a present to her long ago, her own property, not mine; and we live in a cold room and she caught cold this winter and has begun coughing and spitting blood too. We have three little children and Katerina Ivanovna is at work from morning till night; she is scrubbing and cleaning and washing the children, for she’s been used to cleanliness from a child. But her chest is weak and she has a tendency to consumption and I feel it! Do you suppose I don’t feel it? And the more I drink the more I feel it. That’s why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink.… I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!” And as though in despair he laid his head down on the table.

~Part 1, Chapter 2

Rather, Netziv believes that drink causes feelings of joy and love. However, God does not want the priests to resort to using drink in order to feel bonded to Him. Instead, God offers alternate methods. Netziv expounds upon them by parsing verses 10 and 11 carefully.

וּֽלְהַבְדִּ֔יל בֵּ֥ין הַקֹּ֖דֶשׁ וּבֵ֣ין הַחֹ֑ל וּבֵ֥ין הַטָּמֵ֖א וּבֵ֥ין הַטָּהֽוֹר׃ for you must distinguish between the sacred and the profane, and between the impure and the pure;

וּלְהוֹרֹ֖ת אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל אֵ֚ת כׇּל־הַ֣חֻקִּ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֨ר דִּבֶּ֧ר יְהֹוָ֛ה אֲלֵיהֶ֖ם בְּיַד־מֹשֶֽׁה׃ {פ}
and you must teach the Israelites all the laws which יהוה has imparted to them through Moses.

The way Netziv’s explanation is summed up in the Torah: The Five Books of Moses by Rabbi Chaim Miller, page 646, is as follows

Wine. You need to worship God with happiness. Therefore a priest is not allowed to serve in the Temple when he has an unburied relative.

The Torah warns us against using external stimulants, like wine, to achieve happiness. The way to reach a state of bliss is if you “distinguish between the holy and the profane” and “instruct the children of Israel” (10:10-11). It is through studying and teaching the Torah that you gain lasting happiness (Rabbi Naphtali Tzevi Judah Berlin, 19th century.)

The warning against using external stimulants as a means to achieve happiness reminded me of a poignant and powerful scene in Shulem Deen’s beautifully written memoir All Who Go Do Not Return. (If you haven’t read it, it is the absolute best OTD memoir out there. In case you are unfamiliar with what OTD stands for, it means off the derech, which literally translates to off the way. Colloquially, it is a way of referring to Orthodox Jews who are no longer observant.)

Here’s the scene:

Soon I would lose my faith entirely- not only in Hasidic teachings but in the concept of the divine or the sacred, or even the idea that we, as humans, can intuit anything beyond the empirical. Still, the memories of the tischen lingered, and as I transitioned to the life of a secular New Yorker who didn’t observe the Sabbath, didn’t keep kosher, didn’t attend synagogue or pray or perform any of the religious rituals that had, in my earlier years, been so meaningful, I couldn’t help but wonder: Where did secular folks go to experience what I once felt at the tisch?

At one point, I wondered if a rock concert might do it. My mother would eventually tell me of her experiences as a teenager listening to Bob Dylan and the Beatles, of being at Woodstock, and the intensity of those experiences, to which she would later credit her religious awakening. I’d heard from Grateful dead fans who described their experiences as being similar to what they would later feel at a tisch. But when I sought out such events, they evoked nothing at all.

At Rainbow, however, the energy was palpable, and I wondered if, finally, I had found it.

Hai yana, ho yana, hai ya na, the crowd sang as a small group sat on the ground and banged on their bongo drums. The steady rhythm of percussion instruments of various shapes and sizes attracted a growing crowd, until the group of three or four turned into several dozen. Across an enormous meadow, several thousand people in circles like this one waved their hands and shimmied their hips to the cacophonous symphony of drums, rattles, tambourines, and every other conceivable noisemaking device, conventional or improvised.

Hai yana, ho yana, hai ya na, the crowd kept repeating, and after every repetition, they chanted a line or a verse about the elements of nature, the trees, the mountains, the rivers, the sun, the moon, and the sky. A barefoot young woman, olive-skinned with delicate features, wearing a flowing white sleeveless dress, led the chanting:

The rivers are our sisters, we must flow with them,

The trees are our brothers, we must grow with them

And the crowd swung back to the refrain: Hai yana, ho yana, hai ya na! Hai yana, ho yana, hai ya na! It was a mantra both incomprehensible and mesmerizing, and I stared at those around me, each of them smiling at no one in particular, some closing their eyes and shaking their heads to the rhythm, waving their hands in the air, back and forth, back and forth. One man sat on the ground in the circle’s centerr, swaying like a Hasid in prayer. Most others were standing, shifting their feet in a shuffle dance. Suddenly, all I wanted was to join this circle and be part of it, to dance with these people, to feel what they were feeling.

We are one with the infinite sun, forever and ever and ever.

Hai yana, ho yana…

But I was no longer thirteen, no longer able to embrace such experiences without feeling cynical or detached. Though I wanted to join them, I kept wondering: “We are one with the infinite sun?” “The rivers are our sisters?”

[…]

I wondered about the circle of hippies and my odd attraction to them, and I realized, after a time, what it really was: what I longed for was not the tisch of my past but a return to a time and place when ideas moved me even if they didn’t make perfect sense, a time when I allowed myself to be fired up with passion for something, anything, because it held a “truth” that had made itself evident during a moment of inspired consciousness.

-pages 297-299

This is hard to read because Shulem is searching for that feeling of ecstasy and transcendent joy somewhere, somehow…and he cannot find it. He’s willing to try the external stimulants, the rock concerts, the hippie communes…and it’s still out of reach. He’s become distanced against his will.

In our parsha, in contrast, Netziv explains that we find true joy through studying and teaching God’s word. I’ll bring one example from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s response to a presentation in his honor at the Yarhei Kallah in Boston on August 25, 1981. It’s brought down in The World of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik by Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff, Volume 2.

Quite often, when I prepare the shiur, I cannot find the right approach. I sit with the gemora, but it is a difficult sugya [subject for study]. The basic halakhic foundations upon which the sugya rests are hard to deal with. Sometimes, at night, I am completely in despair. When I come into the classroom and sit down with my students, I slowly begin to analyze the sugya. Suddenly a light goes on, like a light from some mysterious source, and I begin to comprehend exactly what the secret of the sugya is. I begin to understand why it was so difficult for me to prepare the shiur the night before. Somehow, my students always inspire me.

[…]

Today, when I come into the classroom, I am sometimes in pain. I open up the gemora and ask a student to start reading the text. I am very depressed and dejected. This lasts no more than five or ten minutes. Little by little, the clouds rise. Suddenly, I begin to believe that I am just as young as my students, even though two generations separate us.

Such is the joy of learning and teaching Torah. There is a fellowship and camaraderie that spans generations, whether it occurs when the voices of the text come to life, embodied, or whether it is due to the presence of the students themselves. This kind of joy, this kind of transcendence, is not one that can be replaced by a rock concert, a hippie commune or an illicit substance, powerful as all of those experiences may be. Because this kind of joy is internal, brought about by something you have made a part of your essence-the Torah that you study, teach and live.