Federalist Paper Number Six got me thinking about Sefer Shoftim. “Why?” you ask. Well, it’s fairly obvious. Anyone familiar with Nach knows that the overriding theme of the Neviim Rishonim is the evolution from a loose conferederation of shevatim to a united 12-sheivet monarchy. Sefer Shoftim outlines in narrative form the faults of the confederation system, showing why it is insufficient for Klal Yisrael to survive and thrive, militarily and morally, under such a loose framework. The system endured for almost four centuries before it gave way to a national monarchy.
On the other hand, l’havdil, the American experiment in loose confederation effectively lasted for five years. Officially it went from 1776 to 1790, but the u.S.A. was busy fighting a revolution till 1783. And by 1788 they saw it wasn’t going to work out to their satisfaction. Even that system lasted for only seventy years, until the North ended any pretence of federation and established its dominance.
The Fed #6 ends with a fascinating quote:
"NEIGHBORING NATIONS (says he) are naturally enemies of each other unless their common weakness forces them to league in a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC, and their constitution prevents the differences that neighborhood occasions, extinguishing that secret jealousy which disposes all states to aggrandize themselves at the expense of their neighbors.'' This passage, at the same time, points out the EVIL and suggests the REMEDY.”
I have a longer essay on this topic that I have on my computer at work.
A recurring theme in Plutarch's Essays is the relationship and balance between the rich and poor in any given society. That took up a considerable amount of the leaders' time. One quote from "Poplicola and Solon Compared", an essay that compares the lives of two otherwise unspectacular men (to me at least, in comparison with the biographies that preced them in the work):
"The remission of debts was peculiar to Solon; it was his great means for confuirming the citizens' liberty; for a mere law to give all men equal rights is but useless, if the poor must sacrifice those rights to their debts..."
This is the great paradox of any civilization that aims to be fair: On the one hand you want to give everyone a fair chance. On the other hand, as soon as you give people a fair chance, it will only take a generation before some people come out way ahead and others come out way behind. The next generation is then full of people who through no fault of their own are not given a fair chance. But to level the playing field to once again give everyone a fair chance renders meaningless the liberty and equality you gave the previous generation.
Fair-minded people will therefore refrain from leveling the field in each generation. However, the strain will be felt after several generations, especially if a situation has delevoped by which it is nearly impossible for those who have been left behind by generations of being at the rear, and especially when those people left behind comprise a plurality of the population.
So a fair doctrine will consist of a system whereby the leader attempts to guarantee that those extremes are not reached. And when those extremes are on the horizon, to do something "unjust", such as the remission of debts honestly incurred.
A line from "The Good Earth' by Pearl Buck highlights this. When the protagonist is in the big city, he witnesses and then almost inadvertantly participates in a revolt or revolution. In the days before the revolt, someone tells him that there is a time when the rich get too rich and the poor get too poor and that's the time when something drastic occurs. A friend quoted a professor he knows who said that the USA as it stands will not have a revolution anytime soon because its middle class is too large. Same idea.
The Torah initially sets up this "reset button" system through a number of mitzvos. 1-Shmittah Loan Cancellation 2-Yovel return of land to ancestral owners 3-Slavery limit on Eved Ivri to six years, or at most till Yovel 4-Slavery limitations for women 4-Prohibition of lending with interest.
These laws inhibit massive economic expansion, but also had the effect of making sure that even the poorest of the poor, or their families got a second chance in life. Revolution inhibitors. Much of Teddy Roosevelt's presidency was about that as well.
Numa was the successor to Romulus as King of Rome. He was chosen by the Roman Senate and was more of a peacetime spiritual leader than the warrior that Romulus was. He was involved in setting up religious shrines, Temples, appointing priests and the like.
Plutarch also attributes to Numa an iconoclastic streak, in his ban on idols in Temples. He remained polytheistic, but with a more abstract understanding of the forces that he saw governing the world than his generation’s regular-variety paganism.
As High Priest-King of Rome, he was titled Pontiff, or Pontifex Maximus, a title which was taken by the Popes of the Roman Catholic Church hundreds of years later. This fits in with what I have learned about the RCC borrowing elements of the Roman religion into itself in order to have it accepted by the people of the Roman Empire. I had heard of their use of December 25, but not of the pontiff title.
He also fiddled with the Roman Calendar quite a bit. One passage sounds very familiar to Jews. I will quote verbatim:
"Numa, calculating the difference between the lunar and solar year at eleven days, for that the moon completed her anniversary course in three hundred and fifty-four days, and the sun in three hundred and sixty-five, to remedy this incongruity doubled the eleven days, and every other year added an intercalary month, to follow February, consisting of twenty-two days, and called by the Romans the month Mercedinus. This amendment, however, itself, in the course of time, came to need other amendments."
He also had the months of the year begin in January, whereas March had formerly been the first month.
Reading his life reminded me of the David-Solomon succession. There are obviously many differences. The common feature is that of one king who is busy with conquest and expansion followed by a king who takes it easy, devotes himself to quieter pursuits of establishing national forms of worship. That second king’s peaceful reign is unfortunately not followed by succeeding generations of peace and religion, but by divisiveness and strife.
Numa also believed in the basic idea of “Torah she’baal peh”, l’havdil. His books where he had recorded his teachings were for himself, but “had so long inculcated the contents of them into the minds and hearts of priests, that their understandings became fully possessed with the whole spirit and purpose of them; and he therefore bade that they should be buried with his body, as though such holy precepts could not without irreleverence be left to circulate in mere lifeless writings.
“For this very reason, they say, the Pythagoreans bade that their precepts should not be committed to paper, but rather preserved in the living memories of those who were worthy to receive them…”
I wonder if those who ridicule the concept of Torah sheBaal Peh realized that it is an idea with a history that exists beyond the Jewish people, they would be more accepting of it.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention Numa’s wise organization of the city into guilds according to profession, rather than ethnic lines. It is smart, whenever feasible, to try to erase ethnic divisions. In many countries, the ethnic divisions are too pronounced to do anything overt. Each tribe will revolt against the attack on its culture, religion customs etc. Witness the attempt to create a Nusach Achid in Medinat Israel.
As I said, Lycurgus was quite the collectivist. Calling him a Marxist was anachronistic, I know. This desire for absolute equality, enforced by governmental redistribution, of which Marxism is the most recent variation, seems to have much of its background in the Sparta that Lycurgus (LYE-KUR-GUSS) founded. I now know from an early source what is meant by the phrase “Spartan furnishings”.
His idea of sharing wives with consent is obviously at odds with the Torah’s condemnation of such a practice, both in the prohibition of marrying an ex-wife who has since re-married, and in the Midrashic identification of the pre-flood immorality as taking other people’s wives. Collectivism and the doctrine of equality seem to go hand in hand with an aversion to private kinyan of property and wives. (Yes, the Torah mandates the kinyan (kicha) of a wife, which is not translatable into the English word purchase).
His negative attitude towards money is redolent of later systems that downplayed the significance of gold and silver, such as Plato’s dream of making bedpans and such out of gold. Very much at odds with Jewish thought that attributes primary value to kesef. Goods are merely “shaveh kesef”. Rabbinic literature even attributes to Abraham the innovation of coinage. This is an idea I have shared in Yehupitz but not yet committed to blog. Yet Plutarch blames the reintroduction of gold and silver to Sparta as the cause of its downfall.
Plutarch claims that Lycurgus' system of government lasted 500 years. I find that hard to believe. The modern era has shown that Collectivist societies don’t last very long at all.
Lycurgus refused to write his laws down, and the Adler edition of Lives p.38 explains his refusal in a way that is parallel to the arguments Jews used to defend the ancient and now lapsed practice of not putting Torah she’Baal Peh to writing.
Some thoughts on Plutarch’s biography of Romulus:
The legendary founder of Rome did so by raping and marrying the Sabine women, whose tribe later joined the Roman tribe. The story goes that the Sabine men were about to fight the Romans for the injustice done when the one woman came out and said, (I’m paraphrasing) “It’s bad enough Romulus and his men did what they did. Don’t you (the Sabines) now kill our husbands.”
This brings back memories of Shechem raping Dinah. If you look at the way the Romulus rape story is described, it was almost par for the course that the kidnapping and rape of a woman should naturally lead to two tribes forming a single large tribe. It must have been quite the shock for Shechem and his clansmen to discover that they had done something most vile and despicable. Tribal merger by rape or consent were clearly the thing to do in Parshas Vayishlach (Israel-Shechem fell through. But the Edom-Seir merger went through.) We see some clear signs that the Torah’s concept of sexual morality was not high on the Greco-Roman list of priorities. e.g. Kidnap/rape by Romulus, male lovers and open adultery in Lycurgus’ and Numa’s times.
David, I am familiar with Rabbi Heinemann's high regard for the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch. For years, his Motzoei Shabbos shiur at NIRC was based on the KSA. Personally, I do not share that high regard. It qualifies as a great review work for basics, but I find his style dry, harsh and generally unfriendly. I don't mean that it's not user-friendly. It certainly is. But I prefer some ta'am in my halacha learning, even when it's just review.
I also prefer the straight text style of the Aruch Hashulchan to the "footnotes"-style of a Mishna Berurah-style sefer like the Badei Hashulchan, which aggravates my eyes and focus.
In the essay on Theseus, Plutarch tells us that Theseus instituted the practice of giving the victors at the Olympics "palms". This brought to mind the midrash that explains the significance of a Lulav after Yom Kippur: That when two men walk into court and then walk out, you don't know which one was victorious until you see one holding a palm and can then say, "That one was victorious". So too on Yom Kippur etc. I am paraphrasing of course. But I found that to be an interesting piece of information that requires further study.
Lycurgus is quite the Marxist! Thomas More's Utopian island seems to have taken some ideas from him.
Torah Currents, a blog that I hoped would be a kind of higher level Protocols by M.O. Rabbis, has been on an awfully long hiatus.
What's up? Has the niche already been filled single-handedly by Gil? It would seem so.
Continuing the Biography thread: A congregant has recommended Plutarch's Lives. So far, I'm reading the first biography, of this fellow called Theseus.
In other news, I went to visit a congregant today who is having serious health and sholom bayis problems. Quite sad, really. I don't know if I have the tools to help her, but listening seems to help, so I will continue to do that.
I have begun a general chazara of all the Yoreh Deiah semicha topics I learnt years ago. It's been a while. You would be surprised and saddened to learn how irrelevant most of it is to a rabbi's duties, unless he is a mashgiach in a kitchen that has terrible policies. The Aruch Hashulchan is an excellent summary of it all. The Chochmas Adam is even shorter, and has come recommended as an excellent summary. I will let you know how it goes.
All in all, today has been a good day. But there's a Board Meeting tonight. It reminds me of the line that goes something like, "As long as the Legislature is in session, every man's safety is in jeopardy".
Later.
My friends, it has been a long time. Most of you will probably not see this, but I want to make the following book recommendation in case you do see it. The book is called "Plain Speaking - an oral biography of Harry S. Truman" by Merle Miller. It is basically a transcript of a series of interviews of Harry S. Truman and some of his family and friends done in the early sixties.
I am very grateful to the congregant who recommended it because I did have an interest in learning about Truman. I even took a recent biography out of the library, but found it very tedious and drawn out, and therefore unreadable. So I returned it, unread but for the first two chapters and a few pages in the middle.
The interviewer in Plain Speaking, Merle Miller, comes across as an arrogant socialist. A brown-noser too, but that's okay. I read the book to learn about Truman, so soft-ball questions are fine. I think it's silly when I read people criticize Larry King for asking softball questions. sometimes, people just want to hear what leaders or famous people have to say about matters without being asked hard-hitting questions like "When did you stop beating your wife?"
What led this congregant to lend me the book was a quote from Truman, who had his share of detractors, as I do here in Yehupitz. The congregant is very familiar with the anguish they are inflicting upon me. So he typed up the following line: "You've got to fight for everything you do. You've got to be above those calling you names, and you've got to do more work than they do, but it usually comes out all right in the end.", in big letters, put a nice border around it, and gave it to me to hang up on the wall in my office.
(Come to think of it, that's also a healthy attitude to have when dealing with a certain ursine blogger who thrives on mauling others.)
Some congregants I respect have gotten me interested this past year in biographies of accomplished people. I read Morris' books on Theodore Roosevelt, which I bought. "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" was a better read.
Before that I had read Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson and Churchill by Roy Jenkins
One of the things that struck me about Truman was his humility with regard to his attitude towards leadership, something utterly lacking in other world leaders I had read about. The verse "He will then [also] not begin to feel superior to his brethren" from Devarim 17:20 seems applicable.
Other interesting tidbits include Truman's utter contempt for Eisenhower, and his reasons for it, his hatred (his word) for Nixon, rich vs. poor mentality, his occasionally well phrased defence of left-wing policies, and general sense of conviction. I may write about this more in the future. I give it four stars.