Sotah 063

5:
The sages recognized two major motivations for religious behaviour: worship of God out of fear and worship of God out of love. Worship out of fear means that the individual is motivated by a sense of awe at the greatness of the divine presence. This might be an awe that has been caused by an appreciation of the immensity of the universe and everything that is in it. Or it might be a fear of sin, a recognition that wrongdoing is a kicking against the divine traces. Or it might be a fear of punishment, of the just deserts that await him for his behaviour.

6:
Worship out of love means that the individual is filled with an immense yearning for nearness to God. This kind of love has been described by Rambam in his Mishneh Torah [Torah Fundamentals 4:12]:

One aspect of this love of God would be to accept the advice of Rabbi Akiva in the Gemara [Berakhot 60b]:

7:
What seems to underlie the contention of Rabbi Yehoshu'a in our present mishnah is the fear that when a person worships God out of fear, awe, respect – that their worship and obedience may be, even if only subconsciously, conditional: God will reward me if I obey or punish me if I disobey. If the motivation for worshipping God derives from a devotion caused by a sense of love the relationship will not be affected by the actions of the belovèd, as it were. This matter is of great importance for understanding the book of Job. Is Job "kicking against the traces" because he is disappointed that after all his righteous behaviour he is rewarded with suffering, acute loss and degradation? Or is Job still 'in love with God' and simply wants to understand why there is suffering in the world?

8:
Job is described at the outset as being "a steadfast and upright man who feared God and avoided wrongdoing". This would suggest that Job's worship of God was born out of fear and sustained by awe – and this was the contention of Rabban Yoĥanan ben-Zakkai in our mishnah. However, Rabbi Yehoshu'a points out that there are verses in the book which suggest that Job's motivation was completely altruistic. One such verse is "Though He slay me yet will I await Him." The problem with this verse is that it is the subject of a variant text. The Masoretic text, in Hebrew, gives two possible spellings for a key word. The Hebrew word "lo" can be rendered "him" [לו] or it can be rendered "not" [לא]. The Massoretes give both versions. In the text as we have it today the word under discussion is rendered as 'not', with a marginal note that it can also be understood as Rabbi Yehoshu'a would have it. It is very difficult to give a true feeling of this dichotomy in English, so I will permit myself a different form of illustration. Rabbi Yehoshu'a, as it were, claims that the verse is to be punctuated with a period mark:

Though He slay me yet will I await Him.

The sages point out that another reading has also been handed down, that the verse is to be punctuated with a query:

Though He slay me yet will I await Him?

This is why Rabbi Yehoshu'a finds it necessary to bring a second verse to prove his point:

Until my dying day I shall not forego my steadfastness.

9:
We have already explained the phrase "Would that the dust might fall off your eyes", because it was used in connection with Rabbi Akiva in the second mishnah of this chapter.

This brings to a conclusion out study of the 5th chapter of this tractate. We shall continue with Chapter 6 next week.

I wrote: We are … so accustomed to the quaint usages of outdated English when translating biblical texts that sometimes we don't even notice tautologies that caught the eye of the sages and fired their imaginations… why should the Torah need to say both 'and they said' and also 'saying'?…

Jim Feldman writes:

Arguing the fine points of biblical Hebrew with a rabbi is like inviting André Agassi to "hit a few tennis balls," but here goes. The phraseology such as "Moses spoke to the Children of Israel saying …" is not a tautology in biblical or even literary Hebrew. It is the natural flow of the language. It is not the natural flow of English, so it raises our eyebrows and makes us think that there is extra meaning where none was intended. Another common natural repetition in Hebrew that grates upon the ear in English is "die a death."

There have been quite famous translations of Torah which attempt to carry the natural rhythm of Hebrew into German or English. Any worthy translation is a non-trivial task and one that attempts to carry the linguistic coloration across a language barrier is that much harder but some of the results are quite striking.

I would see this small bit of argument as being simply another ploy in the rabbinical game of finding ever more meaning in the wonderful language of Torah. As Stephen Potter so aptly phrased it: "If you are not one up, you are one down."

I respond:

I have brought to you Jim's message because he is just as entitled to his view as were the sages to theirs. I will only comment on his first paragraph: arguing with [so-called] experts is the traditional way of learning in Judaism – and it certainly is and must be in Conservative Judaism!