{:style=color:red} 🚧🏗️ Page Still Under Construction {:he .lines} ><b>כ</b> משכיל על דבר ימצא טוב; ובוטח בה׳ אשריו׃ <b>כא</b> לחכם לב יקרא נבון; ומתק שפתים יסיף לקח׃ <b>כב</b> מקור חיים שכל בעליו; ומוסר אולים אולת׃ <b>כג</b> לב חכם ישכיל פיהו; ועל שפתיו יסיף לקח׃ <b>כד</b> צוף דבש אמרי נעם; מתוק לנפש ומרפא לעצם׃ --משלי פרק טז {:he} >השכל הוא הכח שיש לאדם המשכיל לחדור בכל דבר בידיעה פתאומית ולשפוט על דברים שהם נעלמים מכח החכמה והבינה, וגם על דברים שאין לחוש מבוא בהם כמו ידיעת ה' והרוחנים וכדומה מדרושים שאחר הטבע. --מלבי"ם, משלי יג:טו {:he} >שהגם שלא ישיג חקי החכמה בכח הבינה, ישיגם ע"י כח השכל, שהוא כח חד שיש באדם להשכיל אמתיות נעלמות, ולהשכיל גם חקי החכמה וענינים רוחנים נשגבים מבינת האדם, ויש גם שכל טוב שהוא הרוח הקדש אשר יחול על החכם לב, וכמ"ש למעלה (משלי יג:יד) תּוֹרַת חָכָם מְקוֹר חַיִּים (משלי יג:טו) שֵׂכֶל טוֹב יִתֶּן חֵן, שפרשתי שגם השכל טוב הוא מקור חיים והוא יתן חן וחנינה מאת ה' להשכיל נשגבות. --מלבי"ם, משלי טז:כב {:he .lines} ><b>ב</b> ונחה עליו רוח ה׳ רוח חכמה ובינה רוח עצה וגבורה רוח דעת ויראת ה׳׃ <b>ג</b> והריחו ביראת ה׳; ולא למראה עיניו ישפוט ולא למשמע אזניו יוכיח׃ --ישעיהו פרק יא {:.TODO} read הריחו not as רוח, spirit, but as ריח, "smell". {:he} >רבא אמר: דמורח ודאין. --סנהדרין צג,ב >Intuition [is] adjacent to a concept found in the Talmud, Sanhedrin 93b, where characteristics of great leaders and judges centered on making decisions not based on sight or what one hears but rather by “smell” (smell being connected to intuitive divine discernment). --Jessica V. Willis, [_A History of Intuition_](https://intuitionmindset.substack.com/p/a-history-of-intuition) >[I]ntuition makes leaps without the mind’s conscious participation; philosophically and psychologically, intuition exists outside of thinking and analysis; and spiritually, it’s something that can connect our cognition with something bigger and more profound than what we can create on our own...Intuition is a skill set that everyone has, but few choose to develop. Perhaps that’s because we don’t understand its purpose and usefulness. Maybe connecting with wisdom “beyond one’s self” is scary at first. --Jessica V. Willis, [_A History of Intuition_](https://intuitionmindset.substack.com/p/a-history-of-intuition) {:.TODO} intuition comes from experience. >Consider recent research on “intuitions” in naturalistic decision making [citing Gary A. Klein, ,[_Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions_](https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/3647/Sources-of-PowerHow-People-Make-Decisions)]. Such research has shown that agents with sufficient experience in a given domain (e.g., neonatal nursing, fire-fighting, or chess) arrive at judgments and make decisions on the basis of a cognitive process other than conscious considerations of various options and the weighing of evidence and utilities. Such expert “intuitions” that some infant suffers from sepsis, that a fire will take a certain course, or that a certain chess move is a good one, appear immediately in consciousness. {:.TODO} which means that having good intuitions means having good experiences (in the sense of teaching good lessons). That's why מוסר אולים אולת. {:he .lines} ><b>י</b> בני אם יפתוך חטאים אל תבא׃... <b>טו</b> בני אל תלך בדרך אתם; מנע רגלך מנתיבתם׃ <b>טז</b> כי רגליהם לרע ירוצו; וימהרו לשפך דם׃... <b>יט</b> כן ארחות כל בצע בצע; את נפש בעליו יקח׃ --משלי פרק א {:he} > ומפני זה מוסר אולים, כאשר יוכיחון את חבריהם ויתכונו להורות להם הדרך הנכונה, ילמדו אותם לעשות הרע; להתגאות, ולהלוך בדרכי לבם, ולעשוק...וסתמו מקור שכלם הטבעית...עד שיורם שכלם על הרע כי טוב הוא... > והרשעים גם כן דרכם להראות פנים למוסר אולתם, כענין שנאמר (מלאכי ג:טו) וְעַתָּה אֲנַחְנוּ מְאַשְּׁרִים זֵדִים, גַּם נִבְנוּ עֹשֵׂי רִשְׁעָה גַּם בָּחֲנוּ אֱלֹקִים וַיִּמָּלֵטוּ, ויקרא מוסר על דעת האוילים כמו... (ירמיהו י:ח) מוּסַר הֲבָלִים עֵץ הוּא. --רבינו יונה, משלי טז:כב {:.TODO} And בוטח בה׳ אשריו Read the ו החיבור of ובוטח בה׳ as conditional: your intuition will serve you well, ימצא טוב, *if* בוטח בה׳ אשריו, your joy comes from having trust in ה׳. Connected to the other theme of this section: מתוקה. In order for all this learning, חכמה and בינה, to sink in and become automatic, intuitive, it has to be enjoyable. {:he .lines} ><b>ח</b> תורת ה׳ תמימה משיבת נפש; עדות ה׳ נאמנה מחכימת פתי׃... <b>יא</b> הנחמדים מזהב ומפז רב; ומתוקים מדבש ונפת צופים׃ --תהילים פרק יט This distinction between שכל and בינה is the distinction between Haidt's "moral judgment" as opposed to "moral reasoning", and Kahneman's "thinking fast" and "thinking slow". Elsewhere it's called לב and כליות, heart and mind. And לחכם לב יקרא נבון, what connects them is the חכם לב, which has a specific meaning in תנ״ך. {:he} ><b>א</b> וידבר ה׳ אל משה לאמר׃ <b>ב</b> ראה קראתי בשם בצלאל בן אורי בן חור למטה יהודה׃ <b>ג</b> ואמלא אתו רוח אלקים בחכמה ובתבונה ובדעת ובכל מלאכה׃ <b>ד</b> לחשב מחשבת; לעשות בזהב ובכסף ובנחשת׃ <b>ה</b> ובחרשת אבן למלאת ובחרשת עץ; לעשות בכל מלאכה׃ <b>ו</b> ואני הנה נתתי אתו את אהליאב בן אחיסמך למטה דן *ובלב כל חכם לב* נתתי חכמה; ועשו את כל אשר צויתך׃ --שמות פרק לא >While only Bezalel and his assistant Oholiab are mentioned by name, they and all of the anonymous craftsmen that helped construct the /Mishkan/ are described with a very unique phrase—“chacham lev”. From my understanding, this is the only appearance of this descriptor in the entire Torah. Loosely translated as “those who are skilled,” “craftsmen,” or “artisans,” depending on your pick of translation... --Aharon Schrieber, [_On a Torah Perspective of Art_](https://readingjewishhistoryintheparsha.substack.com/p/on-a-torah-perspective-of-art) >To better understand this particular descriptor, let’s explore a troubling and ongoing part of Jewish history—the unending conspiracy theory that Jews run Hollywood... > While the conspiracy theory continues to persist, with several noteworthy examples coming about in just the last few years, there is something to learn from why antisemites fear the motion picture industry is controlled by Jews. After all, if all they wanted was to just make their own movies without Jewish influence, then why not just do it somewhere else? Nobody has to work in Hollywood to make a movie. > I think their fear animates from something more. The antisemite isn’t just jealous that a Jew may be famous, or rich, or gets to walk the glitzy red carpets at Hollywood awards shows. It is not envy of material or even social wealth. It is a recognition of the power of the arts and a particular kind of fear that the Jewish perspective on life will be captured by it and disseminated throughout. --Aharon Schrieber, [_On a Torah Perspective of Art_](https://readingjewishhistoryintheparsha.substack.com/p/on-a-torah-perspective-of-art) {:.TODO} Movies are especially powerful because our minds determine what is "normal" and "right" by what we observe in society. We are social primates; whatever the other primates in our troop are doing must be the thing to do. But our unconscious minds, our intuitions, don't know anything about fiction. Seeing is believing. So our שכל is formed by what we experience, including art, both visual and literary. >Which brings us back to Bezalel and /chacham lev/. This adjective is used to describe the craftsmen of the Mishkan because it is a recognition of the distinct power of what art can do. The creation of art is not as simple as following an instruction manual. If that were the case, then anybody could have put together the Ark or the Cherubim or the Menorah or any other piece of the Mishkan. By noting that Bezalel had wisdom of the heart, the Torah is noting that art requires a particular perspective to channel the divine. Art has the power to move both hearts and minds towards something greater only when it is created through the artist’s heart and mind as well. --Aharon Schrieber, [_On a Torah Perspective of Art_](https://readingjewishhistoryintheparsha.substack.com/p/on-a-torah-perspective-of-art) >[W]hile Bezalel certainly followed what God instructed, there was something extra that only he and his fellow artists could add. To turn a clamp, a plank, a table, or a candelabra from something utilitarian into something that strikes hearts and minds with feelings of some eternal truth. > So maybe it’s a compliment that some fear Jewish participation in the arts. It’s a testament to what a Jew can do with a pen, a paintbrush, a musical instrument, or a camera. And if we let the wisdom of our hearts move us to create, our art can inspire the whole world closer to the divine. --Aharon Schrieber, [_On a Torah Perspective of Art_](https://readingjewishhistoryintheparsha.substack.com/p/on-a-torah-perspective-of-art) The emphasis on מתק שפתים יסיף לקח, sweetness that increases learning is important, and to look at that I would start with someone who did *not* understand this. There is one explicitly religious non-Jewish thinker who gets cited a lot in both Haredi and Modern Orthodox English writings, and that is C. S. Lewis. Lewis is best known to us as the author of <cite>The Chronicles of Narnia</cite>, but he was a serious Anglican thinker. His חכמה for our purposes lies in the fact that he approaches תהילים in his _Reflections on the Psalms_ from a completely different perspective. He asks questions that we never would have thought to ask. His answers may be wrong, but the questions are valuable nonetheless. My התר for reading Lewis comes from Rav Lichtenstein: >Cf. C. S. Lewis, _Reflections on the Psalms_ (London, 1958), ch. 3, “the Cursings.” While written from an explicitly Christian point of view—and hence not wholly palatable for a Jewish reader—the chapter contains some valuable insights. --Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, [_Beyond the Pale? Reflections Regarding Contemporary Relations with Non-Orthodox Jews_](https://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/749581/rabbi-dr-aharon-lichtenstein/beyond-the-pale-reflections-regarding-contemporary-relations-with-non-orthodox-jews/), footnote 22 Lewis looks at psukim like ומתוקים מדבש and is bothered. How can a law text be "sweet"? >In Racine's tragedy of {:fr}/Athalie/ the chorus of Jewish girls sing an ode about the original giving of the Law on Mount Sinai, which has the remarkable refrain {:fr}/ô charmante loi/...How we should translate {:fr}/charmante/ I don't know; ‘enchanting’? ‘delightful’? ‘beautiful’? None of them quite fits. What is, however, certain is that Racine (a mighty poet and steeped in the Bible) is here coming nearer than any modern writer I know to a feeling very characteristic of certain Psalms. And it is a feeling which I found at first utterly bewildering > '...sweeter also than honey and the honey-comb ' (19:10). One can well understand this being said of G-d's mercies, G-d's visitations, His attributes. But what the poet is actually talking about is G-d's law, His commands... > This was to me at first very mysterious. 'Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery'--I can understand that a man can, and must, respect these 'statutes', and try to obey them, and assent to them in his heart. But it is very hard to find how they could be, so to speak, delicious, how they exhilarate...[S]urely it could be more aptly compared to the dentist's forceps or the front line than to anything enjoyable or sweet. > A...great scholar to whom I once put this question said he thought the poets were referring to the satisfaction men felt in knowing they had obeyed the Law; in other words, to the 'pleasures of a good conscience'...The difficulty is that the Psalmists never seem to me to say anything very like this... > We can guess at once that [the Psalmist] felt about the Law somewhat as he felt about his poetry: both involved exact and loving conformity to an intricate pattern...It may be the delight in Order, the pleasure of getting things 'just so'--as in dancing a minuet... > But there is something else in to our purpose in this grave poem [Psalm 119]. On three occasions the poet asserts that the Law is 'true' or 'the truth' (vv. 86, 138, 142)...They mean that in the Law you find the 'real' or 'correct' or stable, well-grounded, directions for living...His laws have /emeth/, 'truth', intrinsic validity, rock-bottom reality, being rooted in His own nature, and are therefore as solid as that Nature which He has created...Their delight in the Law is a delight in having touched firmness; like the pedestrian's delight in feeling the hard road beneath his feet after a false short cut has long entangled him in muddy fields. --C. S. Lewis, [_Reflections on the Psalms_](https://www.amazon.com/Reflections-Psalms-C-S-Lewis/dp/0062565486/), pp. 46-53 {:la}/passim/ But that is too shallow. This is the intellectual approach to Torah, but it doesn't really explain (תהלים קיט:מז)‎ וְאֶשְׁתַּעֲשַׁע בְּמִצְוֺתֶיךָ; Torah gives us *joy*. Meir Soloveitchik cites Lewis, then says that the reason is the identification of Torah with G-d. It is the Jewish expression of Divine incarnation: >How can finite man commune with an infinite G-d? To both Christians and Jews, G-d himself has made that possible by irrupting into the temporal world...To Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant Christians, communion involves partaking of the physical real presence of G-d in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. By contrast, the Torah draws the Jew into engagement with G-d’s infinite mind. Torah learning is the definitive Jewish mode of communion with G-d. Although the Torah contains in potential all that G-d wants to teach us, all the generations of Israel labor together to make this manifest. Because the Torah is infinite and inexhaustible, learning Torah yields new insights—what the rabbis called /hiddushim/, or innovations. That is how the Torah sustains and renews Israel’s love affair with G-d. A love nourished by the Torah may seem obscure to Christians, and perhaps even more obscure to loosely affiliated Jews...But G-d has made Israel his partner in sanctification by giving a Torah that requires the human mind to engage the mind of G-d... > The Jewish rejection of incarnation, though, does not leave G-d at a distance, remote and inaccessible. Judaism approaches G-d through the observance of his commandments, the most important of which, equal to all the others combined, is Torah learning: the intellectual engagement with the divine author of the commandments. The liturgical dictum that the meta-commandment of Torah learning surpasses all other commandments makes clear that Jewish observance is not merely a matter of mechanical submission. Torah learning elicits a divine-human partnership, a continuing relationship of teacher and taught, of lover and beloved. It is not submission but communion, in which the engagement of the intellect is essential to approaching G-d... > That C. S. Lewis, a mind sensitive to religious questions, struggled to explain the psalmist’s delight suggests that the source of Torah’s surpassing sweetness is not intuitively obvious to Christians. Learning Torah proceeds from intense faith, but it is not merely a matter of faith. The encounter with the Divine takes place through lifelong intellectual engagement with God’s infinite mind, which surpasses all praise and, by implication, all belief... > What, then, makes the Torah, as the psalmist says, “sweeter than honeycombs”? The answer lies in the joy of discovering G-d’s mind. > In the world of Torah learning, communion with the mind of G-d is not Aquinas’s beatific vision; it is a practical exercise. Its object is not a transcendent vision of perfection; instead, one seeks the specific shape of G-d’s intent to sanctify our daily lives. The Neoplatonic tradition seeks the mind of God in the transcendent forms of things, of which our quotidian world seems a mere hint or shadow. In communion with the mind of the G-d of Israel, one seeks not the ideal forms but, rather, proper use of the pots and pans in a kosher kitchen, the candles and wine of the Sabbath table, and the laws governing Jewish birth, marriage, and death. Socrates spoke of philosophy as a way of escaping this world by way of a cognitive grasp of the transcendent perfection of the next. In contrast, the rabbis spoke of the afterlife as the “Heavenly Academy,” whose divine Teacher and immortal pupils concern themselves with the here and now. </p> --Meir Soloveitchik, [_Torah and Incarnation_](https://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/10/torah-and-incarnation) And we love Torah because we love ה׳, and it is the only way to connect to the infinitude of ה׳. {:.TODO} also, חכם לב as artist (connected to intuition, above) {:style=color:red} 🚧🏗️ Page Still Under Construction