Both Avraham and Noach were pious giants. Both were monotheistic prophets who communicated directly with God. Why is Avraham considered the first Jew, and Noach a gentile?
One early winter's evening in 1968 at a Yeshiva on a settlement in rural Israel, I participated as a guest in a shiur that set the wheels of my mind working at a speed and direction that hasn't slowed or changed since then. I recall the Rav who was teaching - someone who generally encouraged his students to expand their general knowledge - warning them never to read the works of Ayn Rand, which he said were destructive in their essence.
I was surprised that he even mentioned Ayn Rand let alone banned her works. So, after the shiur I acquired and read every one of Ayn Rand's books I could find, to learn what was so destructive about them. Returning to the Rav some weeks later I challenged him: "I read Ayn Rand's books and apart from them being G-dless (which didn't bother me much because they were books on socio-economics not on religion or spirituality) and with the glaring absence of the value of charity in her philosophy, I found her thinking profound and positive." He answered that he saw me in the audience and wanted me to read those works so that we could discuss them later on. He knew the only way to arouse my curiosity enough that I would read them was if he passionately banned them! He also knew that no one else in his audience would read them either way. In that moment I knew I had found someone who not only understood my intellectual mischievousness and unorthodoxy but was as mischievous and unorthodox as I was - if not a whole lot more. I had found a Rav, a Talmid Chacham who would become my intellectual and spiritual soulmate. He was Rav Chaim Lifshitz z"tzl, at the time theMashgiach at Yeshivat Kerem Beyavneh where I was visiting and mentoring some new South African students who had just arrived to learn there.
Our relationship of mentor, Rebbe and intimate friend continued for nearly 45 years until Reb Chaim's passing on Shabbat Chol Hamoed Succos, marring an otherwise wonderful Yomtov I spent with my children and grandchildren in Toronto and Washington. Throughout these 45 years I have been privileged to spend countless hours with Reb Chaim in conversation, learning, exploration, laughter and storytelling. Our last conversation was a year ago almost to the day.
I always knew Reb Chaim would be open to my ideas even when I thought that others might find them too unorthodox. I knew he would always take my ideas much further than I had and to more radical places….at times too radical even for me! He encouraged me to develop my own authentic thinking in ways that were authentic to me and taught me to test it against the immense backdrop of all of Torah. He encouraged me to be intellectually fearless choosing authenticity and faithfulness to my Rabeim's teachings over pandering to intellectual vogues of the day. Among all of my Rabeim, Reb Avrohom Gurwicz shelita, Reb Meir Soleveitchik shelita, Reb Eliyahu Mishkovsky z"tzl and Reb Chaim Shmuelewitz z"tzl, my father z"tzl and Reb Chaim Lifschitz had the biggest influence on the way I think. Even my business and leadership philosophy, Lead By Greatness, has its roots in the frequent and lengthy conversations I had with Reb Chaim over the many years of our precious friendship.
Reb Chaim, a close talmid of the great Rabbi Yechiel Weinberg z"tzl, author of the Seridei Aish, and part of the Soleveitchik and Feinstein families, was one of the most intellectually courageous and honest people I have known. His thinking was way ahead of his time. His opinion, whether hashkaffic or halachik, was never, ever tainted with politics, fear or expedience. He always sacrificed diplomacy for truth, which did not help his popularity among the Torah establishment. However, Torah leaders across the religious and geographical spectrum sought his advice and guidance when they needed objectivity, innovation and access to Reb Chaim's specialized skills.
Reb Chaim was a renowned psychologist (he studied under Piaget, the famous Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher) and was known to be one of the world's greatest graphologists. The greatness of his specialized skill, however, lay in these three areas:
- He integrated his secular education with his Torah without tainting his Torah thinking one iota. Where there was conflict between commonly held assumptions in psychology or philosophy and chazal, he would compellingly articulate the flaws in the secular views in ways that academics could understand and relate to. He introduced Torah into psychology but never psychology into Torah. The sanctity, integrity and truth of the Torah was his core.
- He bridged two worlds - the world of the gedolim who survived WW II and with whom he was intimate, and our current, modern, digital generation which he understood as few other Torah leaders and educators do. He was one of the few Torah personalities today who could bring the authentic, unadulterated messages of the past to the generation of the future in a language they understood.
- His knowledge of people and the human psyche went far beyond academic knowledge. Reb Chaim's intuitive understanding of people and human nature was awesome. Combining his intuition with his Torah, psychology and graphology he was able to diagnose complex human issues with a laser-like accuracy that astounded professionals around the world, and prescribe - often unorthodox - solutions, with miraculous outcomes.
Reb Chaim encouraged me to develop these same skills. He not only taught me graphology, but also his philosophy behind it and how to combine it with sound intuition.
To Reb Chaim intuition was always an important factor in the human creative process, part of the way a person accessed their true "I", their inner essence. Once one of his very little children had opened a bottle of tablets and begun to chew on them. I watched, horrified, as Reb Chaim did nothing to stop the child. "When are you going to intervene?" I asked him. "I'm not," Reb Chaim answered. "Soon the child will get beyond the pill's sugar coating and it will taste bitter. The child will expectorate it and will lose interest in the pills forever. If I intervened I would disrupt the process of the child's development of instinct and in future he would rely too heavily on external intervention to save him from danger." Reb Chaim once urged me to experiment giving extemporaneous shiurim, something that went against the grain of the imperitive to prepare that my father had drummed into us since childhood. Reb Chaim would explain: "You have so much wisdom in your heart that doesn't manifest if you are over-prepared. Trust your inner wisdom, and see what emerges. When you are over-prepared you tend to be thinking linearly and you don't access the soul of a thought, and you don't express your own soul. Be more spontaneous." It took me many years after this conversation before I began to experiment!
Soul, essence, a person's deepest identity; his or her true "I" were all-important to Reb Chaim in all his work and thought. He was a man of deep soul and he used it in his psychological work too as unorthodox as that was at the time. He critiqued some of the work of his master, Piaget, for its disregard of the divine, spiritual component in humans. He found alignment in Viktor Frankl and introduced me to the depths of Frankl's philosophy and psychology at a time when Frankl was hardly known and was shunned by most of the academic world of psychology. He showed me the alignment between Frankl's methodology and Torah and taught me how to use Frankl's method in my own counseling work. Frankl was intuitive and human, and as such Reb Chaim always knew that he would gain recognition among academics in time. He taught me the thinking of his teacher, Rav Weinberg, and how to apply it in learning and pesak. He showed me how intuitive and human Rav Weinberg's thinking and pesak was. Every time I sat in conversation with Reb Chaim, he fueled my innovation. He has a share in every original thought I have ever produced.
Reb Chaim was also extremely real and normal, in touch with every aspect of the world and modernity, knowledgeable in secular wisdom and also a deeply emotional family man. It was his normality that made him accessible. When you met him you were not overwhelmed by his piety but rather charmed by his humanity. He would tease you into a comfort zone, talk to you about your own world, and often entertain you with his impish humor. Above all else, Reb Chaim was human; he was real.
It was Reb Chaim's qualities of unorthodoxy and human realness that made him the quintessential Jew. These are the qualities that distinguished Avraham from Noach.
Both Avraham and Noach were pious giants in their generations. Both were monotheists, spiritual beings, prophets who communicated directly with God. Yet Avraham is counted as the first Jew, and Noach is counted as a gentile. What held Noach back from being considered Jewish?
The opening phrases of the Parsha are pregnant with praise for Noach:
These are the generations of Noach. (Only Noach's children survived into future generations, none of the other generations mentioned inparshas Bereishis did). Noach was a righteous man in his generation (despite the moral corruption of his time, he remained pious). Noach walked with God.
Few characters in Tanach are described so nobly. Yet in this very passage there are also some veiled criticisms of Noach. For exampleChazal tell us that an implication of the verse is that Noach was only righteous relative to the low moral standards of his time but would not have been considered as righteous had he lived in a different age.
The Midrash levels another criticism at Noach (Rabba 30:6 as interpreted by the Seffas Emmes): The term generations applies not only to biological children but also to the students of a talmidchacham. The Torah suggests then, that unlike Avraham who had countless generations of students apart from his own family, Noach produced no followers beyond his own family. The use of the wordeileh rather than ve'eileh suggests that the verse reads, "Only these are the generation of Noach."
The Seffas Emmes explains Noach's leadership shortcoming in not having been able to reach out to his generation and influence people beyond his family to adopt his values and practice monotheism. Noach, explains the Seffas Emmes, was born perfect. This even manifested in the phenomenon of his having been born circumcised. The fact that having known about God and Truth from birth meant he never had to struggle to become pious and great andnever had to challenge orthodoxies. This very purity precluded him from being able to build bridges between his own lofty level and the degenerate lives of the people around him. He could not understand them nor could they understand him.
Avraham on the other hand came from a family of idol worshipers and lived in a society where idolatry was the prevailing orthodoxy. He had to challenge the core beliefs of his society, confront them with the falseness of their philosophies and offer them a compellingly attractive alternative vision. To do this effectively he needed to engage with the people of his time, connect with them, care about them and inspire them. He also needed to constantly challenge them. This is something Noach was too complete within himself and too self-sufficient to do. Noach's very greatness, his natural piety, was the flaw that inhibited him from reaching out to a population rather than just his own family. These are the generations of Noach - only these and no others.
This ability to be vulnerable and engage with the people of one's generation, to connect with them, understand them and at the same time challenge their orthodoxies is what differentiates Avraham, the Jew from Noach the pious non-Jew. Until today many of the pious saints of other religions reach their piety through social and physical disengagement. Not so the Tzaddikim of our generation who are almost always people deeply engaged in the issues of their generation and are often people who have a touch of "the ordinary man" blended with the angelic. Our tzaddikim, like Jacob's ladder, have their heads reaching up to the sky but their feet firmly implanted on the ground.
This was Reb Chaim Lifschitz. A man whose brilliant intellect, penetrating intuition, vast knowledge, sparkling innovations and pious life did not intimidate even the ordinary person with whom he could always deeply connect. Reb Chaim challenged orthodoxies; - not only the orthodoxies of the secular and non-religious worlds - he challenged the orthodoxies of the Jewish and the Torah world as well. He always tried to make the Torah world better, to expose the false assumptions that emerge in any society, to question the ways things are done when there are better ways to do them. He feared no one yet showed dignity to everyone.
Reb Chaim was unorthodox in so many ways, but always authentic. Authentic both to himself and to the Torah he inherited from the giants in his family background and the Gedolim who taught him. We have lost a man who understood our past. We have lost a man who understood our future. We have lost a bridge that connected tomorrow with yesterday. I have lost a dear friend, a valued mentor; an unorthodox Rebbe.
Tehei nafsho tzerura bitzeror hachaim, and may his family be comforted.
