Kavanot: Good Information from a Man Who’s Made Mistakes
Thoughts on Tanach and the Davening
This section of פרק ה starts with the apostrophe to בנים, in the plural, alluding back to the start of פרק ד, where the plural was meant to be figurative but not metaphoric: Shlomo is addressing the Jewish people, who are (דברים יד:א) בנים אתם לה׳ אלקיכם, and this is meant to be autobiographical.
He is talking about the “double-edged sword” of the אשה זרה, the חכמה בגוים. How can we learn without being seduced away from Torah?
Here, Shlomo gives us a potential solution: ואל תקרב אל פתח ביתה. He is extending the metaphor: you can talk to her, but don’t go home with her. Rabbi Shalom Carmy used that metaphor, of the wisdom of the Torah and the wisdom of the nations as separate houses, to discuss the study of Tanach. How can we use the insights of academic Bible study, archeology and literature without falling into heresy? Those insights are real and important, and we lose something of our own Torah study if we ignore them. We need to stay in our own house and look into the other one. As his title says, we need A Room With a View, But a Room of Our Own.
He quotes Rav Kook, about building our own “palace of Torah”
But, Shlomo tells us, he didn’t do that. He warns his audience about עצביך בבית נכרי: your toil will end up in a foreign house.
עצב means “sadness” in modern Hebrew, but in תנ״ך it has a subtly different connotation:
Artscroll translates עצבון as “toil”:
It’s a reference to the original curse of Adam:
The word עצבון comes up in the curse of Chava as well:
And עצב can also mean “formed”:
Which is how תהילים uses the word, as “things formed by people, idols”:
Dr. Zornberg says that the two meanings of עצב—misery and formation—are really the same. She notes that both curses of עצבון, of צער גידול בנים and of קוץ ודרדר תצמיח לך, are curses that despite all their toil, the results are completely out of their hands:
עצבון is the עצב, the misery, of toil: when all your effort, all your hard work, comes to nothing.
And עצבון is what G-d feels when His creation fails Him:
So פן…עצביך בבית נכרי here refers to the feeling of frustration, of working incredibly hard and getting nowhere; others will reap the benefit.
And I am claiming that this is autobiographical. It’s not explicit in תנ״ך, but there is a very odd aggadah that is brought in a number of places. We go to Shlomo building the בית המקדש:
And to his description of his wealth in קהלת:
שִׁדָּה וְשִׁדּוֹת is an odd phrase. It’s usually translated as “treasure chests” (JPS uses “coffers”), with the singular and plural as a sort of merism meaning “of all possible kinds”. But the gemara says it refers to שֵּׁדִים, demons.
Even though Shlomo initially says לא קא בעינא מינך מידי, eventually he wants to know מאי רבותייכו מינן: what is the source of your power. That is his downfall. אשמדאי takes his place on the throne, and Shlomo has nothing.
Eventually, the sages figure out that it isn’t Shlomo on the throne but an impostor. They realize this because, instead of being focused on wisdom, he is spending all his time with his many wives:
And Shlomo is restored to his throne but a shadow of his former self.
That’s all really weird. But we have to take aggadot seriously, not literally. We have a story here of Shlomo wanting to build the בית המקדש, inviting demons to help who eventually take over, and then Shlomo isn’t himself, (מלכים א ה:יא) וַיֶּחְכַּם מִכָּל הָאָדָם, but now he is קאתי מלכא למלכוותא. And those foreign wives are what seduced Shlomo away from עבודת ה׳:
And the problem started right at the beginning: Shlomo builds a house for הקב״ה and a house for בת פרעה at the same time.
We already have the אשה זרה as a symbol of foreign wisdom, and the בית as the system of knowledge and the weltanschauung that holds it together. אשמדאי represents the temptation of that foreign wisdom, that Shlomo needed to build the בית for ה׳, but ended up enticing him away: מאי רבותייכו מינן?
And he actually did need foreign know-how to build the בית המקדש:
Rav Kook put the image together:
That, in the metaphor of משלי and of Rav Carmy, is the problem. ובית יעשה לבת פרעה…כאולם הזה.
So that is what Shlomo is telling us now: ואל תקרב אל פתח ביתה…פן ישבעו זרים כחך; ועצביך בבית נכרי.
Shlomo continues with a new metaphor:
The metaphor of water as Torah is a common one; (בבא קמא פב,א) אין מים אלא תורה. Here the emphasis is that you should drink water from your own well; other wells exist, but only this will allow you to thrive. Yirmiyahu uses a similar metaphor:
The midrash adds that it’s not just learning Torah that is important; it’s learning locally.
This is the idea of an LOR: having a Local Orthodox Rabbi. The Torah says:
And we know the interpretation of לא בשמים היא: don’t look to heaven to understand the Torah.
I propose that לא מעבר לים הוא has the same implication: you don’t have to go to far away places to learn Torah (I have not seen anyone else who connects the concept of מרא דאתרא to this pasuk). The local authority has halachic authority.
It is important to שתה מים מבורך, because only from learning face-to-face can you get answers that are relevant to your personal, individual, situation.
And if you do that, then יפוצו מעינותיך חוצה, your Torah can spread, both locally and further out.
and that Torah will be yours, in that others will cite you.
It’s the right way to get high status.
And the perek continues with the flip side of the metaphor of אשה זרה: stay with the two women in your life: your mother and your wife (it seems a little odd to me, to mix those particular images).
The metaphor of דדים, breasts, as the source of life (here, Torah) is prominent in שיר השירים:
The mother is an אילה and the wife is a יעלה.
But I have no idea what they symbolize.
And Shlomo ends the perek with Mishlei’s mussar message number seven: Justice is real. The reason that you should stay in the בית of Torah and not wander to the בתים of foreign women, is that ה׳ is always watching.
Without מוסר, you will be unable to make good decisions.
ה׳ is always watching and judging. נכח עיני ה׳ דרכי איש.
Our generation is clearly even more נסוג אחורה, since now it’s not a metaphor. Everything is watched and recorded.
ספר משלי now turns to some practical advice in פרק ו.