A common way to manage apparently irreconcilable difference is to find the middle ground, but compromise rarely satisfies either position. There is another way.
Imagine the two different positions as offshoots on two branches of a tree. If the tree is large there could be a considerable distance between these two offshoots. Imagine further that all you see is the offshoots, not the rest of the tree. These two offshoots appear to share nothing in common. As soon as you see the context in which these two offshoots live and grow, however, you realize they are part of one tree and share a common trunk. At source they are one.
This is the meaning of R. Yishmael’s braaissa [1] quoted in shachariseach morning:
(One of the thirteen methods by which we research the deeper meaning of the Torah) is that when two principles (appear to) contradict each other, we hold the contradiction until we encounter the third principle that resolves their contradiction.
Note that R. Yishmael refers to the third principle not a third principle. There is undoubtedly a specific third principle that will resolve the contradiction; it just needs to be found. This third principle will not merely reinforce one of the two contradictory principles allowing us to discard the minority one. Doing so would imply that one of the original two principles was wrong – an impossibility in the Torah. R. Yishmael means that the third principle will reveal the unified source, the common trunk from which the other two principles both emerge. With this full context of the divergent branches and the source it will be easy to find the legitimate place for both principles and to resolve the contradiction.
The idea of a unifying source is core to Torah methodology. The Torah is a unified system that includes the written and oral law, the body of midrash and kabala, the laws governing the relationship between man and G-d, and the laws that govern people’s relationships to one another. There are tensions and even paradox within the Torah, but never contradiction. When we see contradiction we usually have yet to discover the common source from which both contradictory ideas emerge, the third principle.
It is not only the Torah that operates as an integrated system emerging from a single unifying source. The entire universe has a common source as does all of humanity. This idea is at the soul of the first phrase of the Shema: Hashem is One. Oneness mysteriously connects disparate people, every atom and every molecule of the Creation and particles separated by millions of miles and thousands of years. No matter how different things or people are, they share a common source. They have differences but need not be in discord.
Discord results from ego not from difference. When different opinions have their sources in individual ego, there is no unifying source and so there cannot be a satisfactory resolution. For ego-based differences there can at best be unsatisfying compromise. Difference that shares a common source, however, can be resolved with R. Yishmael’s third principle. Consider a couple arguing about a course of action for their child. If both parents share a common desire for the child’s good and come from a place of convergent values, their divergent opinions can be resolved at their unifying source. Not so when their argument is a power game about control and dominance driven by ego rather than by common cause.
G-d crafted the model for difference on the first day of Creation when He separated light and darkness. Light and darkness are inherently different and so their separation is natural and positive – it is not discordant. He created the model for discord on the second day when He separated the lower waters from the upper waters (Bereishis Rabba 4:6). The waters were a single element and so their separation was artificially imposed. This separation created the model for discord and is why the term Ki Tov (for it is good) is not applied to the second day of Creation, Monday.
Ideas as divergent as kodesh and chol (the holy and the secular), kosher and non-kosher, Jew and non-Jew all have common source. Nature’s harshness and its tenderness, G-d’s justice and His kindness, His anger and His love all have common source too. When we see apparent contradictions in nature or in G-d’s management of the world we are simply missing the third principle from which all of these divergent manifestations emerge.
With these insights you will find it easy to understand this week’sMidrash (Shemos Rabba 28:4) on the introductory sentence of the Ten Commandments “And G-d spoke all these principles saying…”:
He does everything simultaneously. He causes to die and to give birth simultaneously. He brings illness and healing simultaneously. He hears the prayers of women in labor, of travellers and of prisoners at the same time even if one is in the east another in the west, one in the north and another in the south…He converts water to blood and blood back to water…a staff to a snake and a snake back to a staff…the sea to dry land and the dry land back to sea…
The examples of the water and the staff show that the Midrash is not only referring to simultaneity. Rather the Midrash teaches that all events are one at their source and therefore at their source they occur at the same time. Similarly all things, even very different or opposite things, are one at their source and can therefore easily be converted from one into another.
When Einstein taught the world that energy and matter can be converted from one into the other he showed that as different as they are from one another, matter and energy are one at their source. Energy and matter are different but are not in discord with one another. Einstein took a gigantic step forward toward discovering the underlying source that unifies the universe.
If I have devoted my life to the teaching of any single overarching principle, it is this one. Monotheism is not just a religious idea and the Torah is not just a body of law. Monotheism is a methodology, a way of thinking, and the Torah is is practical technology. It is a way of interpreting reality and experiencing the universe; it is a way of solving problems and resolving contradictions. Articulating the unifying source for divergent ideas underpins the way I have learnt and taught Torah and its interface with modern life. I coach my clients by helping them articulate the unifying source that resolves their life-challenges and hones their strategies for growth and success.
All of my business teaching is premised on the Midrash in ShemosRabbah 52:3. In the same way you can grow spiritual capital from economic wealth, you can also build economic capital from spiritual growth. Like matter and energy, economic and spiritual capital are different but not discordant ideas and they share a common unifying source. Lead By Greatness and my work with clients provide the methodology.
As pure and wonderful as a full time dedication to learning Torah is, there needn’t be conflict or discordance between work and avodasHashem, business and Torah, kodesh and chol, or yisrael and theammim. There will always be difference, havdalah, but not discordor machlokkes – provided you live by the third principle, the unifying Source of it all.
[1] An authoritative text from the Mishnaic period but not included in the Mishnaic cannon.
