The Advantage Of Jewish Thinking – OpEd

Every four years hundreds of people win olympic medals. Every year less than a dozen people win a Nobel prize. Yet more Jews win Nobel medals than gold medals. How come there is such an advantage for Jewish thinking? 

The Midrash tells us that due to the profoundness and multifacetedness of God’s Torah, there are 70 valid ways or perspectives of understanding the Torah.

Credit it to the rabbinic concept of many perspectives and thus many answers to life’s questions. Every verse in the Torah has 70 different facets asserts a 13th century mystical text: the Zohar. 

Anyone who studies the Hebrew Scriptures from a Rabbinic Bible is struck by the number of different commentaries that surround the few lines of the Biblical text on each page. Most religions that have a sacred scripture, have editions that come with a commentary. Occasionally they have an edition with two or three commentaries. The standard Jewish study Bible usually comes with at least 5-10 different commentaries. 

All of this traces back to a verse in the Book of Psalms: “One thing God has spoken; two things have I heard” (Psalms 62:12) and its gloss in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 34a). In other words, multiple interpretations of each verse of Scripture can be correct, and the word of God, even if they contradict one another. 

The term for this concept of pluralistic interpretation is; Shivim Panim LaTorah (each verse of Torah has 70 different facets)

The earliest source for the term Shivim Panim LaTorah is in an early medieval text, Midrash Bamidbar Rabba 13:15-16. The term was used by the rationalist Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra (died 1167) in his introduction to his Torah commentary and, a century later by the mystic Rabbi Nachmanides (died 1270) in his Torah commentary on Gen. 8:4. 

It also appears several times in the Zohar. That this concept was used both by rationalist and mystical Torah commentators indicates how fundamental it is to understanding the meaning of Divine revelation. Indeed, the concept, though not the exact wording, also appears in a post Talmudic midrash Otiot d’Rabbi Akiba as “Torah nilm’dah b’shiv’im panim”- Torah is learned through 70 faces/facets.

Of course, we know of no verse that has 70 different interpretations; yet. After all, if we knew all 70 glosses to a verse we would understand it as well as its author; which is impossible. Also what would be left for future generations of Torah scholars to do. 

But, most verses have at least three or four different glosses. Jewish tradition recognizes four general types of interpretation. P’shat; the plain simple meaning. Remez; the allegorical metaphorical meaning. De’rash; the moral educational meaning. And Sod; the mystical hidden meaning. 

For example: what kind of a tree was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:17 and 3:6). Most people think it was an apple tree. They have no idea why, or what that interpretation is supposed to mean. Our Rabbis offered four different interpretations of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; and each of them provides insights into the meaning of the Torah’s account of what makes humans special; and what it means to be “like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5)

Rabbi Yose said it was a fig tree; for as soon as they ate from it their eyes were open and they covered themselves with fig leaves. (Genesis 3:7) This is the simplest explanation and has the most textual support but it doesn’t tell us why figs represent morality.

Rabbi Judah bar Ilai said they ate from a grapevine i.e. wine (alcohol) represents good and evil because humans have the free choice to use wine to sanctify the Sabbath or to become an alcoholic.

Rabbi Meir said it was a wheat tree i.e. wheat was the first crop to be domesticated and thus is a good metaphor representing the beginning of farming and then urbanization and civilization. Settled life is a great test of social morality because nomads can always split apart if they can’t live together, but settled people must develop an ongoing legal system and abide by it.

Rabbi Abba said it was an etrog tree. An etrog, used for Sukkot-harvest festival, is called a goodly tree and it is good to thank God for the harvest (Leviticus 23:39-42). Gratitude is a spiritual personal value transcending ethics, involving attitude, personality and feeling. 

The etrog, according to the Rabbis, is special because its outside (bark and wood) tastes the same as the inside of the fruit. Thus a good religious person should be the same inside and outside.

These four ways of interpreting a sacred text illustrate the four kinds of Midrash. The first way is the plain meaning of Rabbi Yose. The second way is the moral lesson, pedagogic way of Rabbi Judah bar Ilai who wants to teach people that many things like the grapevine are capable of being used for good or evil purposes. They are not intrinsically good or evil. We can choose how we use them, so we make them good or evil. (Sex, money and meat eating are other examples.)

The third way is the metaphorical way of Rabbi Meir. who was reputed to know dozens of fox fables. He thinks social morality is the primary sign of humanity. Farming brings about relatively dense settlements, property disputes, government and economic hierarchies. All of this calls for a just legal system. Thus wheat is a good metaphor.

The fourth way is the personal insight, mystical psychological way of Rabbi Abba. The etrog is part of the citrus family. Unlike an orange, a lemon or a grapefruit an etrog has no commercial value. Jews give it a high value (each one costs 50-100 times what a lemon costs) for spiritual reasons. So too does religious morality have a spiritual value much greater than simple humanistic ethics.

One of the most famous debates over the meaning of a verse occurs in reference to Noah. The rabbis were not certain how to Understand this verse: “Noah was a righteous man, wholehearted in his generations.” (Genesis 6:9)

Some said that if, in his wicked generations, he could maintain his righteousness, how much more so would he have shone in a better age like that of Abraham. But others argued that only in relation to the low standards of his age was Noah righteous; had he lived in Abraham’s generations he would not have been particularly great.

I think it is much harder to be good at a time and place when society makes it easy to be evil. Take Europe under Nazi occupation. The Nazis rewarded anyone betraying Jews. Anyone who was caught helping or hiding a Jew was severely punished, often with his or her family.

Those who did help, at great risk. were very good; they were righteous and wholehearted for all generations. For example, almost 2,800 (15%) of all Polish priests and monks were killed by the Nazis during the occupation. Of them, 60 (2%) were executed for helping Jews. Of 17,000 nuns, 289 were killed. Of them, 10 (3%) were shot for helping Jews.

Some might say that 70 Polish clergy killed for helping rescue Jews was a small number, but that number is much higher than the number of German or French clergy killed for the same ‘crime’.

The ability to think of several different ways of doing things; helps people find better solutions to many challenges in life; enables people to adapt more quickly to new situations; and also increases people’s creativity in thinking about culture and science. It goes a long way toward explaining the accomplishments of so many Jews in the 19th, 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st centuries.

Because there are Shivim Panim LaTorah–70 different aspects to every verse in the Torah, there is a special blessing that should be said when one sees a crowd of Jews, that must contain within it, a large number of Jews with different ideas and opinions: 

“One who sees a crowd of Jews should say: Blessed is the Sage of Enigmas; for their opinions are not similar one to another, and their faces are not similar one to another.” (Talmud Berakhot 58a) 

Thus, although we are all created in the image of the one God; due to God’s greatness, we all look and think differently from one another.