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February 9, 1988

Good and Very Good: Moderation and Extremism in the Scheme of Creation - lecture draft (1988)

Bereishit Passionate Moderation
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Extremism; Moderation (1989)

One of the most brilliant and underestimated rabbinic figures of the pre-World War II East European generation, Rabbi Joseph Engel, once said the following, in commenting on the well – known Midrash that וירא אלקים את כל אשר עשה והנה טוב מאוד – "טוב מאוד" זה המות – that this is a general principle of Torah: כי ענין המיתה הוא במאודיות – extremes, all "veryism," is deadly! (See his Otzrot Yosef, derush 8, p. 45.)He mentions two exceptions, both related to the term מאוד: humility and gratitude. The first is based on the dictum in Avot that מאוד מאוד הוי שפל רוח, and accords with one of the two exceptions cited by Maimonides (the other being גאוה). The second, gratitude, is based on the dictum: בכל מאודך, בכל מדה ומדה שהוא מודד לך הוי מודה לו.
Bereishit Passionate Moderation

Article

Good and Very Good: Moderation and Extremism in the Scheme of Creation (1992)

The meaning of טוב (tov, good) in the early chapters of Genesis – where at the end of every segment of the Creation we read, “And God saw כי טוב (ki tov), that it was good” – is tantalizingly obscure. What does goodness, a term usually associated with moral acts or psychological, even hedonic, satisfaction, have to do with the natural order? If, as some maintain (Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed 2:30, 3:13), tov here denotes the production of an item whose existence conforms to its purpose, or the successful execution of the divine will, then why, on the final day of the Six Days of Creation – with the emergence of man (Gen. 1:31) – does God declare that the creation is טוב מאוד (tov me'od), very good? Is it at all relevant to speak of greater and lesser success in the implementation of the divine decision to create?The question becomes more acute when we turn to the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Paradise). Before the creation of Eve, we read that Adam's condition was not good: lo tov heyot ha-adam levado, "it is not good that man should be alone" (2:18). If tov is a moral or psychological quality, the verse is understandable; but then the ki tov repeated in the creation narrative in chapter 1 presents apparently insurmountable difficulties. And if the tov of the first chapter refers to the full execution of the divine will, then the phrase lo tov heyot ha-adam levado is problematical, although not insuperably so.The question becomes more acute, however, when we turn to the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil," etz ha-daat tov ve'ra. Man is warned not to eat of this tree, for "on the day that you eat thereof you will surely die" (2:17). After the creation of Eve, the serpent ensnares her and persuades her to violate the divine command. But the serpent persists, and informs Eve that "for God knows that on the day you eat thereof your eyes will be opened and you will be like the powerful ones who knowWhile one can dismiss the question by asserting t…
Bereishit Passionate Moderation

Speech

The Theme of Moderation in Modern Orthodoxy (1989)

I begin on two contradictory notes, one apologetic, the other not only not apologetic but anti-apologetic. The apologetic note concerns my uneasiness in using the term Centrist Orthodoxy, but it is a term which I prefer principally for one reason, which I shall elaborate presently. Critics of the term assume that Centrist indicates that we locate ourselves at some midpoint between orthodoxy and assimilationism, and claim that territory as our religious home. But that is nonsense. Only slightly less absurd is the idea that centrist orthodoxy is the mid-point between Satmar and the few intellectuals who occupy the ground called the Orthodox Left. That is also inaccurate. It is no compliment to our intelligence to imagine that we who declare ourselves Centrist walk around the religious terrain with a yardstick, calipers and a calculator measuring the exact distance between Neturei Karta and Humanistic Judaism - so called - in order to locate the exact middle or centre. We are not, and do not aspire to be ideological geographers or spiritual statisticians who search out the exact centre between right and wrong, religious and non-religioua, mitzva and avera, and settle upon that as our religious goal. It may be wrong, but I submit that our centrism is not really that simple minded and religiously asinine.What of the title we have been called all along, Modern Orthodoxy? I am uncomfortable with that label because it is a combination of two highly infelicitous words. One is arrogant, modern: I'm modern, that makes me better than anyone else in the past. The other is inaccurate because orthodoxy implies ideological blindness and constricted thought, and that is not correct.Of course there are those who say that we should do away with all adjectives and simply identify ourselves as orthodox jews, period. It does away with the whole problem of labels, or it seems to. In fact if we did that that would leave 90 percent of this audience and all those who have come to the Sympos…
Passionate Moderation