Pemikiran Yahudi Keluaran 19:12: Akeidat Yitzchak

G'd has endowed man with an intellect, enabling him to measure and calculate his activities to avoid falling victim to pitfalls found in nature. Though nature may offer all the ingredients and raw materials necessary for life on this planet, it does not offer these raw materials ready for immediate use. Either the usable has not been separated from the unusable, i.e. ores containing a variety of metals that need to be refined, or there is an overabundance of certain materials which when used in the condition they are found in, may be very harmful, but which, if used in carefully measured quantities may be extremely beneficial. Man too, possesses a wealth of characteristics which, if allowed to express themselves in an unrestrained, unregulated manner, would bring about his destruction rather than his progress in this world. In short, man's advantage consists in his ability to discriminate in areas where nature has been quite indiscriminate. Since the guide to successful application of human intelligence is Torah, it has become the ladder by means of which man ascends toward Heaven on the one hand, and the Divine spirit descends earthward towards him. In the words of our sages, this ladder is called "Sinai," its Hebrew numerical value being the same as the Hebrew word for ladder, i.e sulam. (compare chapter 25) Also the word for "azure blue," techeylet, is spelled the same as tachlit, our ultimate purpose. He who performs the mitzvah of tzitzit, fringes, is equal to one who has achieved his tachlit, i.e. proximity to the Divine. The immediate mitzvah which represents this "ladder," or "intermediary" concept is that of tzitzit, fringes. The word itself, as in meytzitz min hacharakim, means to view. (Song of Songs, 2,9) We are commanded to wear tzitzit in order to help us remember the rest of the Torah. The techeylet, azure blue wool thread, more than anything, helps to remind us of our task to be both physical and spiritual beings, not abstract intellects such as angels, nor merely earthbound creatures like the animals. Just as blue is a colour halfway between the all absorbing black, and the all reflecting white, so Torah is an intermediary between us and G'd;as our sages put it-, yam, the ocean, rakiyah, the sky, kisseh hakavod, the throne of His glory, represent the progression and act as the catalyst to bring about the fusing of the material and the spiritual world. Whereas Aristotele considers a behaviour pattern which is based on the golden rule as the highest achievement man is capable of, Judaism considers any form of perception based on purely human criteria as deceptive and leading to faulty conclusions. Rather, our golden rule is the application of our intellect, reinforced by the revealed law of G'd. The function of the tzitzit legislation is to remind us of this moral imperative. At the same time, tzitzit teaches us to refrain from extremism in the application of all human characteristics. In Proverbs 4,27, we are exhorted "do not incline to the right or to the left; then your feet will avoid evil." When a person sees both black and white, then the presence of some blue can remind him of what blue represents relative to either black or white. If, however, a person wears a totally blue garment, looking at it will hardly remind him of either the ocean, the sky or the throne of G'd and what these represent. If Korach had claimed that totally blue garments should be exempt from tzitzit, he had failed to understand that no golden mean can be achieved without the presence of extreme right and extreme left. Striving for a golden mean does not mean desiring a world in which everything is equal, the same. The fact that there is to be only a single blue thread in our tzitzit, emphasizes the concept that there is only one proper way among the many choices man appears to have. For this reason, our sages in Menachot 43, state that whosoever observes the mitzvah of tzitzit is as if he had observed the entire Torah. Converesly, anyone who has failed to observe this mitzvah is as if he had failed to observe any of the other mitzvot. To teach the validity of this approach, the Torah itself proclaims "looking at the azure blue thread will prevent you from pursuing the desires of your hearts and eyes that you are prone to pursue. Sifri equates heart with heresy, eyes with immorality, quoting scripture to support that view. Tzitzit then are a form of insurance against seduction by our evil instincts, commonly referred to as the yetzer hara. The main activity of said impulse is to disrupt any progress man has made on the ladder linking earth with the Divine. Since observance of all the commandments will make man come close to the Creator, the Torah says "you will then become holy to the Lord." The word vee-heyitem should be translated as "you will remain," meaning that our state of holiness will then become our natural state of being. The conclusion of the paragraph recalling our liberation from Egypt, is to remind us of where the absolute truth of G'ds overlordship had been demonstrated beyond all doubt. Just as we have to follow the golden rule in our physical lives, avoiding excesses in food, drink, sex etc., so also our mental state. Excesses have to be shunned. Extremes of sorrow or exultation are not proper. Anything that is overemphasized can only be such at the expense of having underemphasized its counterpart. All pursuits that are indulged in to excess, are outgrowths of the yetzer hara. .(see chapter 12 about the families of Noach) Our life is composed of three major areas of concern. 1) Things that appear useful to us. 2) Things that seem to ensure our comfort. 3) Pursuits of the mind, intellect.

Our future is assured if we carry out the commandments called mishpatim. When our sages say that Jerusalem was destroyed only because they practiced "true justice," the meaning is that they applied the justice principle without making allowance for circumstances. Such allowances are incorporated in the mishpatim, as we know from Talmud Baba Metzia 30.