Does the Torah Make You Wise?

According to Bryce (1979), the oldest Western wisdom literature came from Egypt and centered around the difficulty of maintaining faith when confronted with the injustices and paradoxes of life. In Greek and Roman philosophy, for example, Aristotle and 62 Plato stressed the intellectual aspects of wisdom whereas Cicero and Seneca considered wisdom a moral rather than an intellectual virtue (see Collins, 1962; Rice, 1958).
In a recent philosophical account of wisdom, Kekes (1983) combined such moral and intellectual aspects by describing wisdom as interpretive knowledge, that is knowledge about good means to good ends. Although Kekes has written according to a philosophical tradition, he used terms that very much resemble the above presented notion of expertise. He, thus, related accurate interpretation to a combination of “breadth” and “depth.” His notion of breadth can be interpreted in terms of a relativistic and contextualistic point of view; and his notion of depth can be described as knowledge about the fundamental themes of human existence (e. g., death, illnesses, emotions) as well as the ability to set priorities of commitment. Kekes claimed that wisdom becomes visible through good judgement in what he called hard cases.
In Eastern philosophy and religion two thousand years ago, Confucius described wisdom as being able to follow what the heart desired, without transgressing what was right (see de Beauvoir, 1972). In this seemingly simple statement one very important feature of wisdom is encoded, that is the integration of emotion, cognition, and moral.
Finally, the theme of worldly wisdom can be found in fairy tales. In an analysis of this topic, Chinen (1987) arrived at two main aspects of worldly wisdom as it is implied in a number of fairy tales. The first aspect referred to insights about human nature, and the second to a transcendence of the self and a generative attitude.
Theoretical Concepts of Wisdom in Psychology
In psychology also, there is at least some history to the interest in wisdom…Consider, for example, Hall’s following description of the wisdom of age. “As the eye dims and the dominance of optical impressions over attention declines, we see ideas clearer and follow the associations of thought rather than those of the external world.” (1922, p. 403)
Translating this statement in the life-span terminology, introduced above, would suggest that old people may select their accumulated experiences and knowledge as a domain of optimization and thus compensate for the reduced capacity of their senses. In fact, the reduced sensory capacity may be a precondition for the optimization of accumulated experiences and knowledge.
Jung (1971), in his writings, talked about the archetype of the old wise person which is part of our collective unconscious and which can be found in fairy tales and folklore. This part of the collective unconscious, according to Jung, dates back to illiterate societies where social continuity was maintained by oral tradition, primarily provided by tribal elders. As part of the collective unconscious, Jung claimed that wisdom is timeless. Jung stressed that old age has a significance of its own. It is not only the “appendage to life mornings” (1971, p. 17)…
Erikson characterized the attainment of wisdom by features such as richness of knowledge, insight, and maturity of judgement. An integrated old person, according to Erikson, acknowledges the historical relativity of life, recognizes younger generations’ need for participation in societal responsibility, and thinks about the paradoxes of life. In his considerations concerning wisdom and the context of knowledge, Meacham (1983) characterized a wise person as someone who knows that he/she does not know (i. e., with increasing knowledge also the insight into all possible knowledge increases). Consequently, a wise person will in situations of decision-making always look for further information and alternative solutions. For Meacham, wisdom implied the ability to recognize and formulate problems… Meacham concluded by stressing that a wise person is able to balance knowledge and doubt. Although it seems as if Meacham is stressing the intellectual dimensions of wisdom, the balancing of knowledge and doubt implies an integration of cognitive and emotional processes.

Summary

This survey of theoretical and empirical approaches to the concept of wisdom is concluded by summarizing its main features. It seems that the integration of cognitive-reflective, emotional, and ethical aspects should be at the heart of a conceptualization of wisdom and distinguish wisdom from, for example, social intelligence or practical intelligence. As pointed out, the theoretical approaches discussed above vary in the emphasis they put on each of these aspects. Wisdom is not only rich knowledge about the human condition, about people, about situations, about oneself. Wisdom also includes an interpretation and evaluation of that knowledge and it finally comprises the awareness and management of the limitations of that knowledge. In most of the theoretical conceptions, presented above, wisdom is related to late adulthood. Wisdom can be acquired with time, with the accumulation of experience. It is questionable, however, whether wisdom can be learned or taught.

R’ Herzog’s style, as seen in the few sentences cited earlier, teaches usthat he tended to specify the desirable halachic outcomes regarding the issues at stake in his appeals to his correspondents. In discussing the Soviet divorces, he went so far as to depict a lenient ruling as rescuing Abraham’s daughters, as a sanctification of the divine name and as bringing greater glory to God. R’ Elyashiv’s response—those we have already studied as well as the vast majority of the halachic responsa written throughout his career—are devoid of such formulations; very rarely does he reveal the essential stance that motivates and informs his examination of accepted halachic sources. Moreover,R’ Elyashiv’s responsa reveal little concerning the context in which the responsum was written. Were it not for the date on some responsa and/or the petitioner’s reference to a specific event, there would be no way for the reader to ascertain whether the responsum was composed prior to the establishment of the State of Israel or thereafter, before or after the Six Day War, during R’ Elyashiv’s tenure at the Chief Rabbinate’s court system or after his retirement from that system in 1973. Similarly, it is extremely rare for him to refer to himself, or to his close family members, even his grandfather, the author of Leshem Shvo ve’Ahlamah, his boyhood mentor. I would suggest that this style points to a matter of substance—namely, R’ Elyashiv’s fundamental conception of Halacha. R’ Elyashiv views Halacha as an independent entity that is not contingent on changing times and transient circumstances. Even personal circumstances, grim as they might be,are not factors that mandate the shaping and bending of Halacha;therefore, depictions that might constitute decisive factors in a lenient halachic ruling are absent from the text of his responsa. The individual—his distress, needs, hardships and desires—is merely an object,completely subordinate to the Halacha and its path, and therefore,it is clear that the needs of the individual and society, no matter how dire, may not influence the autonomous halachic truth.
Notwithstanding a few exceptions to the thousands of paragraphs of halachic deliberation recorded over a sixty year period, these facts evoke the main precepts of R’ Elyashiv’s halachic thought. Halacha, in his conception, constitutes an independent, closed system, invulnerable to the vicissitudes of time and its impact, and lacks any objective other than defining God’s demands as articulated by the accumulated halachic literature of generations. As a result, a halachic decisor such as R’ Elyashiv is impervious to the reality he encounters. An inherently transitory reality, conversely, is the operative basis of a timeless and immutable Halacha that cannot and should not be expected to change.Halacha applies its analytical–theoretical definitions and its practical-halachic determinations on a given portion of reality, determining accordingly what is permitted, commanded or prohibited and distinguishing between kosher and non-kosher, pure and impure.
Sentences that appear in the responsa of R’ Elyashiv’s contemporaries, and in those of previous generations of Jewish sages, such as ‘‘but it is difficult for me to incur financial loss to Jews,’’ or ‘‘but we should not be stringent regarding the other matters of this responsum that exceed the bounds of what is completely compulsory, since our generation is weak,’’ or ‘‘therefore one can rely on it, so as not to cause them to completely forgo the commandment of immersion, since our generation uses any excuse to forgo the commandment of immersion,’’ are exceedingly rare in R’ Elyashiv’s responsa and appear on no more than a handful of occasions.
These sentences, tied to a particular time and place, create a halachic stance that is dependent upon time and circumstances—a highly significant dependence that nonetheless often goes unnoticed even by the rabbinic respondent himself. R’ Elyashiv’s approach, in theory and even more so in practice, does not allow for this possibility; indeed, his writings are marked by the almost complete absence of reasoning that relies on extra-halachic factors.