Imu Shalev: Welcome to Into the Verse, where we share new and unexpected insights about the parsha… diving deep into the verses to uncover the Torah’s own commentary on itself.

Hi, I’m Imu Shalev. 

If I asked you where you would look to discover the meaning of life, what would you say? I’m guessing that if you listen to this podcast regularly, the chances are that you would likely say, “I’d look in the Torah.” But if I pressed harder, and I asked, where in the Torah would you look, what would be some of the first places that come to mind? Well, maybe the creation story, or the Ten Commandments and the epic encounter at Mount Sinai, or maybe even some of the stories with the Patriarchs and the Matriarchs. But I’m pretty sure that what you’d never say to me is: “You know, Imu, the meaning of life very clearly emerges from the Torah in Parshat Shoftim.” To which I’d reply, “Oh, you don’t say? Where in Shoftim?” And you’d reply, “Isn't it obvious? It’s in the Israelites’ pre-battle protocol - you know, those preparations as they go out to war, where these shotrim, these guards, they start exempting various members of the Israelite army from battle and send them home - that’s where the meaning of life is!”  Right? We’d never have that conversation. No one in their right mind would say that to me. And yet, Rabbi Fohrman thinks that actually is where you can find the meaning of life in the Torah.

Just as an aside, this is one of my favorite things about Rabbi Fohrman’s methodology. He helps you show how even in the most seemingly mundane of places, the Torah encodes deep layers of meaning. So, put on your battle gear and get ready for war…or you could just put in your ear buds…either way, I hope you enjoy this episode. Here’s Rabbi Fohrman.

Rabbi David Fohrman: What are the grand, overarching things we can do in life that if we do them successfully can actually give our lives meaning, can answer the question: why was I put here in the world? Or, if not quite that, how do I make my life worthwhile now that I am here? I actually devoted an entire course here at Aleph Beta to such questions, entitled “The Meaning of Life.” But I think that this week's Parsha, actually in just the space of a few sentences, puts out for us a remarkably coherent framework for thinking about these questions of meaning. 

This week's Parsha tells us that, before going out to war, community leaders are meant to address the troops on the eve of battle and to tell four kinds of people to go home and not to fight. Who are those four kinds of people? Well, we're going to go through them, and as we do, let's play one of my favorite games: which one of these things is not like the other? Which of these people stands out as different than the others?

The Four Exemptions 

Here they are. Person number one: מִי-הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר בָּנָה בַיִת-חָדָשׁ - who is the person who has built himself a new home, וְלֹא חֲנָכוֹ - and has not yet lived in it? יֵלֵךְ וְיָשֹׁב לְבֵיתוֹ - let such a man leave the battlefront and return home to live in his house, פֶּן-יָמוּת בַּמִּלְחָמָה - lest he die in war and another man come and take over his house instead of him. וּמִי-הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר-נָטַע כֶּרֶם - who is the man who has planted for himself a vineyard, וְלֹא חִלְּלוֹ - and has not yet tasted the first fruits of that vineyard? יֵלֵךְ וְיָשֹׁב לְבֵיתוֹ - let him go back and return to his house, lest he die in war and another man take over his vineyard. מִי-הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר-אֵרַשׂ אִשָּׁה - and who is the man who is engaged to a woman, וְלֹא לְקָחָהּ - but has not yet married her? Let him go home to her, lest he die in war and another man take her.

Finally, the fourth: מִי-הָאִישׁ הַיָּרֵא - who is the person who is afraid of battle, וְרַךְ הַלֵּבָב - and is of soft heart? יֵלֵךְ וְיָשֹׁב לְבֵיתוֹ - let him go back and return home, וְלֹא יִמַּס אֶת-לְבַב אֶחָיו כִּלְבָבוֹ - and let him not melt the hearts of his brethren as his own heart has been melted in fear.

So, if you just read through these four kinds of people, it's pretty clear that the last one is different from all the others. You see, the last one goes home for the good of the community. Here's this guy - he's cowardly, he's scared, and we don't want the other troops to be just as scared as he is because cowardice is infectious, so go home because it's better for the community that way. That's what the text explicitly says. But, when you look at the other three, there's a private imperative: the reason why they're supposed to go home has nothing to do with the interests of the community. It has to do with the interests of those individual soldiers themselves. The guy who has built himself a house and hasn't yet lived in it should go home. Why? Because it would be a tragedy for him if he were to die in war and not get a chance to live in that house. Same thing for the person who planted a vineyard, same thing for the fellow who is engaged to be married. It's about them, not about the community.

Understanding the Private Imperative

And if it's about them and not about the community, then I have a question to ask you, and it goes like this. I can understand the idea of a community excusing a soldier from battle on the basis of some individual, private need. A good example, albeit fictional, comes from Steven Spielberg's film Saving Private Ryan. In that film a mother loses three of her children in battle on the same day, and when the War Department finds out about it, a high-ranking general makes the decision to send a platoon into Normandy with the express purpose of extracting the final, remaining child of this woman from battle because the last child is also a soldier, and it would be a surpassing tragedy for this woman to lose her only four children - to lose every last one of them - in battle. So, look what you have here: this general is willing to risk the lives of other servicemen in order to do this for that private imperative.

And yet, here there is a kind of logic to this. It really would be a terrible tragedy for this mother to spend the next 40 years in mourning, in anguish, over every last one of her children having died this way. The community needs to have some understanding of individual sacrifice and has to honor that, and sometimes, the interests of the individual come first.

But think about the situation here, the situation as the Torah describes it. You've got a person who has planted himself a vineyard but hasn't gotten a chance to taste the fruits. Let him go home and taste those fruits. Why? In the words of the Torah, “lest he die in battle and someone else take over his vineyard and taste those fruits.” Now, here's my kind of devil's advocate question here, and I hate to put it so bluntly, but if he dies, then he's dead. Once you're dead, so who cares if this vineyard is around that someone else takes? He's dead. He's not even around to see that anymore. So what's the great, private imperative here that is motivating the community as a whole to send these soldiers home? Or I'll put it to you another way: death - that's like the worst thing that can happen to someone, so is it really worse if I died and I didn't get a chance to live in my house yet? It's like if death is infinity bad, so infinity plus five, you know, it's still infinity. Death is death, so how come these soldiers are told to go home?

Evidently the Torah doesn't see it like that. It's not like death is the ultimate, infinite, bad thing. The way the Torah sees it is there are worse things than death. I mean, let's face it, we're all going to die - that's just the way it is. It's not the worst thing in the world. You know what the worst thing in the world is - if you die and you were that close to achieving some sort of end goal that would have given your life meaning, meaning that could transcend death, and you didn't do it in the end because you died first. That would be a terrible tragedy.

A Litmus Test for Finding Meaning in Life

You know, if you think about finding meaning in life, one way to think about it is using death as a kind of litmus test. Is there something you'd be willing to die for? If the answer to that is “yes,” then it means my own life is not just an end in and of itself - which is kind of circular because I'm just living to live, so what does it all mean anyway. No, my life stands for something. I'm willing to die for something, whatever that is - God, country, love - but there's some transcendent thing that's larger than me that I'm willing to die for. So, now, even if I don't die for it, I'm living for it. I have something to live for. Which means you can also think of it this way: what is it that I'm living for, such that were I to die, I could say my life is still meaningful because I lived for that?

So if death is kind of a litmus test for meaning, then let's ask, what are those kinds of things that strike us as so meaningful that we could live for them? I think the Torah has given us three of them here - three emblematic milestones: building a home, planting a vineyard, marrying a woman. Somehow, if you do one of these things and taste the fruits of that success, you could feel like it would be okay to die afterwards. And, therefore, the Torah sends the soldier who is on the cusp of achieving one of these accomplishments home, because when you're so close to having achieved a kind of meaning that would help you transcend death, it would be a tragedy to die and not actually have achieved it.

The Source for These Exemptions

But now let's ask this question: where is the Torah getting these three things from? Is it just picking them out of a hat, or might they come from somewhere? Where does their meaning come from? I want to suggest that the Torah itself talks about these things all the way back at the beginning - the beginning of mankind itself. Back in creation, man is described as created in the image of God. God, the great creator, He creates a world, a universe, and that universe is a home, a home for humanity. God builds a home. The next thing God does is He plants a garden, a wonderful garden. And after that, He places man in the garden because God is there in the garden, and that way God can relate to this man that He's created. They can both be in the garden and share that special place together.

Do you see where I'm going here? God did three things in the same order that the Bible describes them here in Deuteronomy: builds a home - the universe itself, plants a garden - this wonderful vineyard, and places the being that He loves in that garden in order to relate to him there. What are the human analogies to these things? Man is described as created in the image of God. We, too, do these three things just like God. God did these things because they were meaningful to Him; we do them because they're meaningful to us. Here's what we do. Thing number one: God created a world, a home for us; we, too, try to build. And the greatest thing that we can build perhaps is a home. When we achieve that milestone, it feels to us that we've achieved something ultimate, something that is an end in and of itself. We could die at that point, and it would be okay. And the reason that is so is because that's how God created us. God, the ultimate Creator, made us a little creator, and when we create we feel ultimate meaning. It's our destiny.

Ah, but once you have a home - once you have a home, that opens up a possibility, you could have a garden. A garden is a special place. A home is utilitarian: it's somewhere that you need to be because you have to have shelter. But a garden - a garden is wonderful. It's aesthetic; it's beautiful. Once you have a home, you can build a garden, and if you build a garden, you could lie back in your garden and you say, “Ah, this too has ultimate meaning. If life was only for this, it would be meaningful. I could die, and it would be enough somehow.”

But then that, too, opens a door. You say to yourself, “I have this home. I have this garden. I could share it. Relationship can be had there. I can give it as a gift to the one that I love. Who can I bring into this home and garden that I can relate to and love?” God did it for man when He invited us into the garden and asked us to partake of all these wonderful fruits. We do it when we marry and share the bounty of our lives with a spouse, with our family. And if I do this, I've achieved a third great thing in life that seems to give life ultimate meaning: relationship with the one that I love in the place that I built just for them.

Each alone feels meaningful enough to cheat death, but their true meaning lies in the progression of all three. One leads to two, which leads to three. And in three - in these loving relationships, we find ultimate meaning. It's true with people, when we build a home and a garden, and we share with others, our family, a guest. And it's true with God: we here on this earth, we try to build a home for God. We do it collectively through this thing called the Mishkan - the Tabernacle, the Temple. We build that and make a home. Then, we invite God in to inhabit it, so we can be there connected with the One that we love.

These three things really are the grand ends, in and of themselves, through which we human beings find a reason to be alive and a mechanism of cheating death: building, planting, and, above all, relating.

Imu: Hey everyone. I loved, loved, loved this piece so much.

I think it's actually really counterintuitive because what kind of person do we think the Torah would say, “Ah, this person lived a full and complete life”? I would have expected somebody who is able to do at least 300 mitzvahs in their lifetime. They racked up, you know, the requisite amount of mitzvah points. Those of you who have built a yeshiva, those of you who have given great amounts to tzedaka, to charity, you've lived full and complete lives. 

But if we look at what the Torah says are the components of living a full and complete life, it's houses and vineyards and even marriage. Those are relatively attainable. I'm not saying they're mundane in the sense that they're not meaningful, right. It really does resonate with me, and we'll talk about that in a second. But these aren't extraordinary achievements, and they don't feel particularly religious. So what I find kind of counterintuitive here is that the Torah is saying building homes, planting vineyards, getting married - that is meaningful. Our religion says it's meaningful. Our Torah says it's meaningful.

You know, I was thinking about those three things - about building a house, planting a vineyard, getting married - what are the 21st century versions of those three things? Getting married: that makes sense, but building houses and planting vineyards…there aren’t too many people that I know who are planting vineyards. And even now, you know, we buy our homes - very few of us actually build them. So, would it apply nowadays in the 21st century? If we're trying to abstract, where is there meaning in our lives? Is there meaning in buying houses and maybe buying vineyards?

Yeah, I was talking to one of my editors before recording this piece, and we mused on whether the person who went to law school but never got a chance to practice law - would that be the same thing? Didn't feel like it. It didn't feel like at the funeral of the young person who graduated before he was ever able to practice law like people would be weeping graveside and say, “Oh, if he had only showed up in court, what a rich and fulfilled life that would be.” So, what really is the 21st century version of buying the house, planting the vineyard?

So my thought on this is that what the Torah is saying is tragic and what's in common with these cases is - a person who has built a house and hasn't had a chance to live in it, a person who has planted a vineyard and hasn't had a chance to eat from it - they’re people who have done a lot of “doing” and not a lot of “being.”

Think about what the Torah is saying is meaningful. It's not the building of the house - it's the living in the house. It’s not the planting of the vineyard - it's the eating of the vineyard. It's not the work of finding the right match - but of living with your spouse. What the Torah is saying is truly meaningful is actually the “being” parts of our lives, not so much the “doing.” The “doing” is a lot of setup. We're setting ourselves up so that we can have a house, and the house is wonderful, but you know what’s truly wonderful - is living in your home, inviting people into your home. Hopefully, you have a family that gets to be in that home, tasting the fruit, being in the marriage. That's where the life is. Everything else is just set up.

And if that's really where meaning is or happiness is, it really caused me to reflect on the 21st century version of my own life. How much of my day to day is “being” and how much of it is “set up”? I think a lot of the way we spend our hours is set up: setting ourselves up so that we can pay the mortgage so that we can live in that house, setting ourselves up for that one day retirement, setting ourselves up so that our kids can go to school. It makes me appreciate Shabbos a whole lot more - a day of pure being, a day where all the work is done.

You know my editor told me that he'd complain to his wife whenever they're on a long trip going to visit some family. They're in an airplane or they're in the car, a bunch of kids in the background screaming. He gets really stressed out, frustrated, complains to his wife. He hates to travel. And his wife turned to him and said, “You know, what if you could see this travel as part of the trip, as part of the journey? What if you could enjoy these moments in the car together when we play games, we tell stories? What if you didn't see this as a means to an end but as an end in and of itself?” And that reframing really changed how he traveled with his wife and kids. That story really resonated for me.

There's a famous study done by some economists where they would ping people throughout the day and ask them two questions: what are you doing right now and rate your happiness on a scale of one to ten. They asked enough people that they saw some really common trends, and those trends were really interesting in light of this piece. Turns out the things that make people the happiest are those moments when we're in relationship with others - with our spouses, with our friends and family.

But some of the greatest causes of unhappiness…the second to most unhappy thing we do is work because so much of what work is, unfortunately for many of us, is a means to an end. And the greatest cause of unhappiness in this study is commutes. When I'm commuting, when I'm traveling, I'm saying, “I want to be anywhere but here. I was in one place, and I desperately want to be in another place, and all I have between where I am and where I want to be is one big means.” So, of course, when you're 11 hours on a plane, those are 11 hours of torture - 11 hours of anywhere but here. So my editor’s wife, I think, was really wise when she said, “Hey what if you could turn this means into an end?”

I think that taking inventory on our own lives, asking ourselves: are we giving ourselves enough time to be? Are we setting ourselves up for a life well lived, a fulfilling life, a meaningful life? And in the places where we don't have choice, can we find ways to turn our means into ends - to find our work fulfilling, to find our commutes enjoyable? Those are some of the powerful lessons I'm taking away from Parshat Shoftim. Thanks for listening.

Credits

This episode was written and recorded by our lead scholar, Rabbi David Fohrman. 

When this episode originally aired on Aleph Beta, it was edited by Rivky Stern. 

Into the Verse editing was done by Evan Weiner.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman. 

Our editorial director is, me, Imu Shalev. 

Thank you so much for listening.