With Heart in Mind

Joshua ben Nun, Moses’s chosen attendant, spoke up. “My lord Moses,” he said. “Stop them!” “Are you jealous for my sake?” replied Moses. “I only wish that all of God’s people would have the gift of prophecy!”

JEWS LOVE to argue. Two Jews, three opinions, goes the joke. There is nothing new in this. The prototype is Abraham haggling with God over the number of righteous people needed to save Sodom and Gomorrah from destruction.¹ Moses does his share of arguing with God, as well. The Talmud is a record of rabbis arguing, often over other arguments. Talmud study is basically nonstop arguing, and the debate can be so heated that it is described in military terms, as “the war of Torah.”²

That the text of the Talmud preserves both the winning and the minority opinions in the arguments it records tells us that we are not meant to study it as a source of dogma or even to glean the bottom-line outcome of arguments. Rather, we who would learn from them are meant to enter into and engage in the arguments themselves.

This is an astute approach. We learn more and we learn better when we are not given the solution to a question but rather have to work it out for ourselves, in reflection on the text and its commentaries. Forced to argue and struggle with the various sides of an issue, we come to a personal realization of the conclusion that we can then take possession of as our own. Wisdom that takes such deep root has the power to transform us.

The word pilpul, which names this method, derives from the Hebrew word pilpel, which means “pepper.” We’re talking about peppery arguments, sharp thoughts, and words that awaken the senses and the mind. The Talmud tells us that when we face the final judgment after death, one of the questions we can expect to be asked and held accountable for is pilpalta b’chochma?—Did you explore the pungent details of wisdom?³

How sharp is this debating supposed to be? Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba was quoted in the previous chapter as saying that those who argue start out disputing with each other like enemies, “yet they do not stir from there until they come to love one another.”⁴

An argument begins with sharp and unrelenting debate but needs to end in a spirit of love. “At that stage,” Rabbi Yisrael Salanter writes, “each person nullifies his own opinion in order to follow the majority or the most outstanding sage; or each holds true to his own opinion.”⁵ Why the initial jousting and confrontation, and why the latterly seeking of resolution in a variety of forms? Because the goal is truth. We need to come out swinging on behalf of truth, and we need to surrender (or not!) in light of the truth that emerges from this process.

Of course, not every argument is dedicated to truth. Sometimes people argue simply to win the debate, or to glorify an ego or to claim a prize, hang the truth. Many a criminal has gone free not because they didn’t commit the crime but because the defense attorney argued so effectively. In political debate, undermining the other side is likely to be a much higher priority than truth, which may not factor into anyone’s calculations.

Jewish tradition distinguishes between arguments that are dedicated to truth and those that aren’t. An altruistic argument in pursuit of truth is said to be “for the sake of heaven.” That sort of argument delivers lasting results. In contrast, and no matter how beautiful or effective, arguments that are not for the sake of heaven do not turn up any truth that is destined to endure.⁶

Accessing truth, Rabbi Salanter concludes, means discovering that which coincides with the Divine Will. Failure to align with truth leads to thoughts and actions that go against the Divine Will, with dire results. The truth that reflects the Divine Will is meant to emerge not from heaven itself but from the very human process of collaborative debate, conducted with passion and discipline.

There are famous examples where people engage God in argument, and these instances create the template for our own need to argue in order to discern the Divine Will. When God hears how sinful the people of Sodom and Gomorah had been, God reveals to Abraham that both cities and all their inhabitants will be destroyed (Genesis 18: 16–33). Abraham then challenges God not to “sweep away the innocent with the guilty” and proceeds to negotiate. Will you spare the city if there are fifty innocent people to be found there, Abraham argues? What if you find forty-five? And so on until God agrees that if ten innocent people can be found in the cities, the decree that they be destroyed will be rescinded.

God also engaged in arguments with Moses. When Moses is on Mount Sinai to receive the Torah and the people down below build a golden calf, God threatens to destroy the nation and start over again with Moses. God said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my anger may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And of you I will make a great nation” (Exodus 32:9–14). Moses then raises arguments against this plan, pointing out that if God goes ahead and wipes out the nation, the Egyptians will conclude that God brought the people out of Egypt just to kill them in the wilderness. He reminds God of the promises God had made Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And God heard the arguments and reversed the plan to destroy the people.

Job is another figure from the Bible who does not take his fate sitting down. From Job we learn the fearlessness that is required to step up and argue: “God may well slay me; I may have no hope. Yet I will argue my case before God” (Job 13:15).

These and other examples tell us that it is not only acceptable to argue with God, but that there are times when those arguments are essential to determining the Divine Will itself. Things unfold the way they do because someone stood up to argue. The Torah describes Abraham as fully righteous but of Noah it says only that he was “righteous in his generation.” Abraham is judged more righteous because when God threatened destruction he argued, whereas Noah did not raise his voice and just busied himself building the ark.

If arguing is how we work things out with God, how much more must argument have a vital role in sorting things out within the fallible and uncertain relationships we have with other people?

One question remains. Why is it so important to argue with students, more than with peers or spouse or even one’s teacher? The same emphasis appears in a statement in the Talmud: “Much have I learned from my teachers, more from my peers, but most of all from my students.”⁷ What special benefit to personal transformation comes from arguing with students?

The Maharal of Prague⁸ (Rabbi Yehudah Loew, 1525–1609) points out that someone who reaches a high level of wisdom can be diverted from asking the simple questions that are the basis for true clarity and continued growth. That never happens when interacting with a hungry and inquisitive student. He cites the teaching in the Talmud of Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak, who asked, “Why are the words of Torah compared to a tree?” And he answered, “This is to teach you that just as a small piece of wood ignites a larger one, so it is with scholars: the younger ones sharpen the minds of the older ones.”⁹

We find this point illustrated in the tragic story about Rabbi Yochanan, who was the teacher of Reish Lakish:¹⁰ So much did the teacher value the arguments he had with his student that when Reish Lakish passed away, Rabbi Yochanan was inconsolable. The rabbis sent Elazar ben Pedas to comfort him because, they said, “his scholarship is brilliant.” Every time Rabbi Yochanan raised an argument, Elazar ben Pedas brought him a corroborating proof, until R’ Yochanan eventually expressed exasperation. “With Reish Lakish, whenever I would say something, he would pose twenty-four difficulties and I would give him twenty-four solutions, and as a result the subject became clear. Of what use is your constantly supporting what I say? Don’t I already know that I have said well?” And R’ Yochanan tore his clothes and cried for his late student until his sanity wore away from him.

So much did the late sixteenth-century sage known as the Maharsha¹¹ value give and take with his students that when we turn to see his commentary on a certain page of the Talmud,¹² we find that he had nothing to say on that subject. Why? Because when he studied that page, he had been away at the market in Lublin; and so his ideas had not been refined through a discussion with his students.

PRACTICE

Your practice for this period is to seek opportunities to try to teach something you have learned to someone else and to do so in a “peppery” way. Peppery does not mean rude or mean or untrue or aggressive. It is sharp and pungent. When you teach that lesson, encourage sharp questions.

Watch what happens. It’s quite probable that you will find that you didn’t have the material quite so clear in your mind as you thought. You’ll also likely discover that you yourself learned something else or refined an idea because of the questions you stirred. Your “student” will not be the only one to benefit from the arguments you spark.