an unexpected conversation

[cellio]

Many years ago, when I was starting to become religious, I asked Micha Berger (who would later become a rabbi) how one made sense of the mitzvot -- why were we doing these particular things, how should we understand the purpose of individual mitzvot? He said something to the effect that understanding is over-rated and that if you do something

Comments

[browngirl]

I read this three times. It resonated with me in ways I can't quite yet articulate.

[cahwyguy]

Micha is out there. He's on FB (look on my friends list -- feel free to friend me if you're not there), and he has a blog syndicated to LJ: aspaqlaria.

[cellio]

I'm not on FB (and am pretty delinquent on G+), but thanks for the RSS link! That I can do. :-)

Riffing on "enough"

[ext_729277]

There's a great deal to think about here, but let me riff on the insight at the center of this vignette

Re: Riffing on "enough"

[cellio]

Thank you for pointing out the parallel with Dayeinu. That makes a great deal of sense -- the parallel itself and also that we need to take things in stages to properly appreciate them. Lots to think about there.

By the way, can you recommend a commentary on prophets (or, to focus it a little more, Isaiah) for the, well, maybe not beginner, but not very advanced? It's sad, but I have yet to make the kind of study of prophets that I've made of the torah. I should fix that, and I can start by just reading them through (not just the haftarah excerpts) but I should probably have something on hand to review in parallel. (Err, should I be asking this elsewhere? :-) )

Reading the Torah isn't enough for one person to prepare - you also have to write a speech?

We do not read the entire parsha. That's pre-existing culture, long before I joined the congregation, but I also note that if we did then we wouldn't have been able to cultivate lay readers as easily. (I suppose we could have by having a lay reader do, say, one aliyah while the

Re: Riffing on "enough"

[chaos_wrangler]

By the way, can you recommend a commentary on prophets (or, to focus it a little more, Isaiah) for the, well, maybe not beginner, but not very advanced?

You might like The Living Nach. It's in the style of The Living Torah by R. Aryeh Kaplan, in English, and pulls from a bunch of standard commentaries so while you don't get the full text of any of them, you also aren't stuck with just one commentary when things get interesting.

Re: Riffing on "enough"

[cellio]

This (vol 1, Aryeh Kaplan) and this (vol 2, Yaakov Elman)? Thanks for the suggestion!

[dvarin]

He said something to the effect that understanding is over-rated and that if you do something enough, you may come to understand -- but it doesn't work so well the other way around.

This may be true, but the major problem I have with it is that lack of understanding + lack of observable results = zero motivation to actually do it. At least for me.
So it gets into a chicken-and-egg problem. Without direct inspiration (if you're lucky) or social pressure (traditional, but sigh) I'm not sure what what does about that.

[cellio]

In our original discussion we were talking about things like prayer and kashrut, which did (for me) produce observable results once I stopped asking "but why?" and just did it. That makes me more willing to try other things that don't seem like they would make a difference -- hey, worked before, might work again, y'know? I'll admit that extending this to contemplation of messianic times is a bigger stretch.

[meiravberale]

I'm curious as to what kind of observable results you mean - what results did you observe when you just did it?

(I'm ok with the idea of doing stuff without understanding why, as long as I'm certain that God has told me to do it - obedience to God is a concept I'm totally ok with. But I don't expect any results apart from the good feeling of knowing I'm doing what he tells me.)