Yom Kippur: The Book of Yonah and the Mission of Israel

They asked wisdom: the sinner — what is his punishment? How can he truly pay his debt, what should his penalty be? Logic would have him consumed by remorse for his sin, and wisdom answered: “Evil pursues sinners.” So there is no remedy. They put the same question to the prophet, to prophecy: what would be the way of repair for a sinner? And prophecy said: “The soul that sins — it shall die.” That is terribly harsh: there is no other possibility; that is what the logic of the prophets would demand. So they turn to the Torah and ask it: the sinner — what is his way of repair? And it says: let him bring a guilt offering, a sacrifice, let him confess his sin, and he will be atoned. And for the one who cannot afford a sacrifice, there is no remedy. So they turn to HaKadosh Baruch Hu (the Holy One, blessed be He), the last recourse, and HaKadosh Baruch Hu answers: that need be no obstacle — let him do teshuvah (repentance, return); let him decide to return to himself, to return to his sources, to return to his roots, and he will be atoned; his sin will be expiated. And on this subject the verse from Tehillim (Psalms), chapter 25, is indeed applied: “Good and upright is Hashem; therefore He guides sinners on the way” (Psalms 25:8).

That is why He sets sinners on the way. And the question is asked: He is good — why? How is His goodness shown? The answer: by His uprightness. He is upright — how is that shown? Because He is good, because He is upright, and because He always wants to start the sinner on the road of return, since He does not want the sinner condemned to death; on the contrary, He wants at all costs that the sinner turn back into himself and live. This midrash fits the theme of Kippur well, for Kippur is in fact Rosh Hashanah — because, I don’t know whether I have already told you, nowhere is it written that the first of Tishrei is Rosh Hashanah.

In the Torah, in the Nevi’im (Prophets), in the Ketuvim (Writings), you will find no reference to the first of Tishrei as the first day of the year. And we ourselves, when we celebrate Rosh Hashanah, say Yom Teruah, the day of the sound of the shofar, or else Yom HaZikaron — are you following? — the day of remembrance. So Rosh Hashanah is referred to as New Year only in the writings of our Sages, who list it with the four new years we know, by which the calendar counts. But the term “Rosh Hashanah” itself — to what is it applied, to which of the festivals? We find it in Yechezkel, applied to the day of Kippur. Kippur is the day of Rosh Hashanah. Strange? No. Consider that there is a lunar head of the year and a solar head of the year, and that the Jewish festivals are reckoned solely according to the solar seasons — Pesach is Chag HaAviv, the festival of spring; Shavuot, Chag HaKatzir, the festival of the harvest; Sukkot, Chag HaAsif, the festival of the ingathering; and of Sukkot it is said, betzet hashanah, “at the going out of the year,” meaning that the end of the year truly falls at Sukkot and not at Rosh Hashanah. Consider too that there is a one-day margin between the solar and the lunar year, needed for the year to register as solar — there is, if you like, a slippage between the lunar and the solar year. It follows that throughout the Yamim Noraim (the Days of Awe) there is a phase between past and present in which two years overlap, the lunar and the solar — one day before Kippur and one day after Kippur — for we stop reciting the psalm LeDavid Hashem ori veyishi — “Hashem is my light and my salvation”: “my light” on Rosh Hashanah and “my salvation” on Kippur — only at Hoshana Rabbah.

And between the two: up to Kippur we recite selichot, supplications for forgiveness; but from Kippur until Hoshana Rabbah, calls for help — pleas for G-d’s assistance, that we be set back in the right direction of thought. That is what emerges. So Yom Kippur — the day on which, at the close of the Jubilee, we are commanded to set every person free and to restore to the land as well its autonomy, its independence, by returning it to its original owners, since land is never sold in perpetuity but always for forty-nine years of management — Yom Kippur is, in a sense, the day on which the liberation of oneself is truly rethought. For it is not the liberation of others we must think of first. If we ourselves have remained conditioned by ourselves, enslaved to very relative, very subjective ideals, and if we have also remained dependent on our way of life and of thinking, then we have not managed to come out of ourselves entirely and to draw anew from the source.

So we understand that on Yom Kippur the et ratzon, the hour of favor — the moment when the prayer of a person anxious to turn back to himself, to rediscover another language, as we do, to formulate his aspirations differently, is truly accepted — is the hour of Minchah. Yet paradoxically, at Minchah we read a rather disconcerting portion, for it deals with all the forbidden unions. And one wonders: on the day of Kippur, when we are in an almost ascetic day, who is thinking about forbidden unions, who is thinking about these base, perverse instincts? It is to tell us that, in any case, the ideal teshuvah we have in mind, which we imagine reaching at its highest point, is not possible.

Teshuvah involves many stages, because the struggles we will have to endure will not change their nature as if by magic simply because we kept a day of fasting and prayed with fervor, and by some magic eliminated all our sins and will now start afresh. No. The next day, life goes on as if nothing had happened. But teshuvah requires that we make a decision about one very specific weakness we would like to overcome, and say: mastery over this weakness is what we want at all costs, and we will not give in. To hold on firmly to one aspect of life and seek to correct it — that is a promise for the future, for every possible restoration. And that is why the haftarah appointed for the occasion is the prophecy of Yonah. Yonah is a prophet who lives through the torments of his total commitment to G-d. Life with G-d is not without torment; to claim the opposite would be entirely false. A person committed to the path of the spirit goes through hard trials. Our Sages said as much: whoever rises to a higher level of thought and struggle finds his inclination becoming even more aggressive, more obstinate, than the one that afflicts others — in the one who bears responsibility, it is far greater.

And what are these torments? You know, the Rambam says that to attain prophecy one needs an unassailable logic, a reaching toward the absolute, the infinite, the beyond. It is not within everyone’s reach, and one can easily go astray. And when one gets there, one becomes uncompromising. It becomes a return to a very strict morality. He wants no compromise, nothing; his logic forbids it to him. And that is why he declares: “Hanefesh hachote’et hi tamut” — “The soul that sins, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4). Death is the face through which the being will re-create itself — but in another life, in another world, through a child, through a close relative; as for himself, his mission is finished, he has accomplished it, and there is no other opening for him.

And that is what is going to happen; that is what Yonah will explain to us. But if I am to speak of Yonah, I must also connect him to the first appearance of this yonah in the Torah. When the Flood came upon the world, Noah made use of the yonah, the dove. The dove later became the messenger of peace — but that is because there was a first sending, and the dove could find no resting place anywhere, and quickly returned to the ark. The second time it went out, but came back with an olive branch in its beak, which it keeps — that is to say, there is hope. Before, there was death, the Flood.

There was nothing; it was looking for shelter. This time there is hope. The third time, when it leaves the ark, it does not return. It has won its freedom; it no longer seeks to be sheltered, so to speak, under Noah’s paternal wing. You see these three stages? We will find them again in the prophet Yonah, and you will see how wonderfully this is depicted — for the prophet’s sensitivity, or the prophet’s vision, has been embodied in the image of the dove: the prophet in search of truth. What is this prophet’s name? Amitai comes from the word emet, truth. He wants everything to rest on truth, and he would not want — he would refuse — oh, we know very well that it is impossible: truth would demand strict justice, and under strict justice the world could not stand; it would be atrocious, it would be cruel, without chesed (loving-kindness), without goodness. Tzedek veshalom: it takes love for justice and peace, too, to be found embracing in each other’s arms (cf. Psalms 85:11).

Now, we start from the principle — and we have said it before — that each person answers a mission here below. There are those whose mission lasts twenty years, thirty years, forty years, one day, eighty years. But each one, once he has fulfilled his mission, may withdraw. There is nothing that has no place, and there is no person who does not have his moment, who does not answer to a given moment in history. And that is how creation as a whole must be viewed. We may be the challah of the world — but we are only the challah; there is the rest of the dough. Yet it is the challah that consecrates the rest of the dough. We are, if you like, that challah of humanity.

But beware: the blessing is deserved only if we continue to allow that dough to nourish its world. And that is the first lesson of Yonah, who is called to bring his message to Nineveh. Nineveh is not a Jewish city. It is a city with a structure, with a culture that has its own self-respect and its own level — since of others we require only the seven Noahide laws, the seven elements of basic morality, and each develops from those seven moral laws. But the one charged, in fact, first of all with preserving this structure of the seven Noahide laws, and with gradually dosing out the teachings that can be grafted onto it for different inclinations — that is the Jewish people. And the Jewish people is Yonah; it is that dove. Yet however much this dove has been invested with power, it cannot, in a sense, claim the unconditional blessing of its Creator, its King, its Father.

There are rules to follow. The relationship with the rest of humanity must be cared for at all costs, because what affects humanity affects us, and what affects us will end up affecting the rest of humanity — we have said this. The measure of antisemitism in the world is calculated according to how the Jewish people is evolving — upward, or, unfortunately, downward — and we must be attentive to this. There is no point in accusing others of obsessive antisemitism, because to some extent we must admit that we too have induced it in some way. And all the more so if we have let the situation slide, if we have remained indifferent to the evolution of the surrounding society, and have shut ourselves up in our own enclave, in our own household, in our own neighborhood, in our Orthodox, religious town —

and have, in a sense, neglected contact with others. Here too we have sinned. Everything starts from a relationship that is, let us say, corpuscular, tiny, minute, and then it spreads from the microcosm to the macrocosm; to that we must be very attentive. Very attentive, because there is no return to oneself that could disregard these dimensions. So let us explain. We said that this is Yonah, Yonah ben Amitai. We do not know where he comes from. It is supposed that he is of the tribe of Asher and that he bears the gem of his tribe, which is the tarshish — for each one is a pearl in himself. On the breastplate of Aharon the Kohen the tribes were represented by precious stones; there were twelve stones, each with its own intrinsic value, as if to say: take care, this is a jewel. And that is why, when Yonah is sent and told, “Go to Nineveh,” he says: no, I will go to Tarshish. I am sent to the East — I will go to the West, to Tarshish. Why? Because Tarshish is the gem of his tribe. He would like to confine himself to what he is, within the space of his tribe and his people, and he does not want to invest himself.

Why? Because the disappointments would be too great. It is true, it is not easy to play the teacher like that. You know very well how it goes in a classroom with the pupils: the teacher tries to set the whole class on the right path, and the class, on the contrary, reacts by trying to put the teacher in its sights, each trying to outdo the other. Yet one has to find a way to communicate, to hold a dialogue. Unfortunately, the path we always choose is flight: we flee — we flee confrontation, we flee the other, sometimes we flee ourselves; we do not want to face certain obvious truths; we prefer it that way, and imagine ourselves happy. But when Yonah takes this road of flight — why does he take it? Quite simply because the mission is too heavy. The mission is too heavy. It is not that he wants to flee G-d, nor that he wants to flee his conscience; but he would like, at all costs, for the other to follow him unconditionally. That is not possible. “And I am aware that if I have to give a teaching — not according to pure logic, but mixing in some small measure of understanding, of generosity — then things will be somewhat altered. That is how one has to proceed. I am aware of it, and I do not want to go forward, because I am afraid of distorting my own nature.” That is the prophet, and it is the problem one encounters all the time: if one has to stoop to speak the language of others, to want to integrate them, to want to adopt them, then one must amputate oneself of one’s dignity, of one’s work and one’s pride, of one’s demands — full stop.

But the prophet is holy; that is what the prophet is. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu must combat this aspect of prophecy. For when Yonah is later asked why he fled the first divine command, he will simply say: “I knew that G-d is merciful, that He would somewhat regret the evil He had announced, that He would lift the threat. And in the end we would be… I would have carried out a mission for nothing; I would be the one made ridiculous. I would have had demands that even G-d does not have. So why? Why should I go on being a plaything in the hands of G-d? I do not want that.” […] These are thoughts that may well haunt us on the day of Kippur.

It is very good to commit oneself in this world with G-d, taking the path of truth and strewing it with kindness. But sometimes it comes back at us like a cannonball. We suffer ingratitude and become the object of hatred, because the other peoples live in a relative moral and intellectual comfort that we do not know. That is what Yonah goes through. Yonah must at all costs — for in the Book of Yonah, in any case, his entire prophecy comes down to five words: “Od arba’im yom veNinveh nehpachet” — “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overturned” (Jonah 3:4). All the rest is autobiographical narrative: the story of a man confronted with the mission that G-d imposes on him.

So he prefers to flee — to flee into himself, away from before G-d. He does not want to stand face to face with G-d. We do believe, of course — but ours is a faith after the fact. We do not want to confront this faith in G-d in its full measure — its demands on the one hand and its extreme holiness on the other. We are incapable of it. And that is where it ends. But must we give up? Above all, do not yield to despair — that is the first lesson. The first lesson is never to despair. And even if we have advanced only one step of the kilometer we had to cover — it will be that step, and that is enough; someone else will continue. But at least we have begun our path. And we have been warned: lo alecha hamelachah ligmor — “It is not upon you to finish the work” (Avot 2:16).

But if it is not upon you to finish the work, neither are you free to say: no, this is too much for me. That is what the text describes. (Thank you.) So here he is, ready to pay the price of this flight and to take it upon himself — that is what Yonah does. But he forgets that one cannot escape G-d, that one cannot escape the infinite, that one cannot escape what G-d expects. G-d, in creating His world, was aware of all its depravities, of His universe right up to its end. But He invested Himself with the resolve not to let go of His world, because to let go of His world would be to sign His own failure. Can G-d fail?

Man, yes; G-d, no. And yet it is sometimes said, vayinachem Hashem — “and Hashem regretted.” What did He regret? There is a meaning here, a somewhat human language to bring it within our reach — but no. There are methods that do not succeed — in raising a child, for instance. One adopts a path and thinks that it is the best one, that it is the one that must succeed. No! If you realize your failures, that this way of raising a child has not reached its goal, then you must simply apply another method, look for another way. The ways are infinite. It takes a great deal of chochmah, a great deal of wisdom, a great deal of strategy to get there. And flight — that is the easiest solution, but it will not succeed for us. For when a person admits defeat in the face of the freedom he was given to fulfill himself by his own efforts, at that moment that freedom is taken away from him, snatched from him.

And he is compelled. In what way? We take the waves, we take the sea, we take the water. And behold, a storm halts this oniyah, this ship — an oniyah is what drifts at the mercy of the waves and the wind — and “the ship threatened to break apart,” chishvah lehishaver (Jonah 1:4). […] Our searchings lead us nowhere, and the world loses its bearings when it turns out that everything we had planned, everything we had envisaged — here is a little virus that can bring it all crashing down and force us to rethink everything; and not only the Jewish people in question, but the whole of humanity. For Yonah is willing to be with the mallachim, the sailors, with the representatives of all the other peoples — for the sailors numbered seventy, representing the seventy nations, the seventy cultures, is that not so?

But each of them is a conservative, as he is — as the very word melach, “salt,” suggests: when you want to preserve meat, you put it in brine; conservatives are like that, are they not? It means remaining in a quiet, orderly way of life, without movement, without too much upheaval, and above all without storms, without the risk of breaking everything, of smashing everything. But when the threat grows strong, each one implores his own deity, each one puts forward his philosophy, each one puts forward his belief and the validity of the salvation he offers. It is true that the perception of G-d differs on many levels. It differs, from Hashem all the way to Elokim.

Hashem is, if you like, the summit of being, insofar as we are able to conceive it. But Elokim is the way of perceiving Him at our own level — how each person perceives his G-d. And this perception of G-d, which sometimes passes through the cult of the dead, through a piety that is sometimes blind, primitive, that seeks no growth in its way of perceiving G-d — goes so far as to turn into elohim acherim, other gods, other deities. It becomes another form of worship. But that is idolatry; it is no longer G-d. And yet it is indeed a belief, a belief worthy of respect, because at some level it preserves in a person a certain hope, a certain moral demand that we can respect.

It is primitive, if you like, but we are not going to sweep it away. Better that than something else, better than nothing at all. But each has his own instruments. We have our instruments, our mitzvot, the instruments through which we finally make spirituality, holiness; the others too have their practices, their religious practices, their practices of philosophical living — which belong to another, to the other, but which serve them to have a minimum of morality, of dignity, of human pride. […] “Vayiz’aku ish el elohav” (Jonah 1:5) — the text acknowledges it: each cried out to his own deity. But this time they threw all their instruments overboard, because they realize that none of it is of any avail. And what does Yonah do? “VeYonah yarad el yarketei hasefinah” — “and Yonah had gone down into the hold of the ship” (Jonah 1:5). This was the moment to tell the others: you see, in the end, that your philosophies, your beliefs, are of no use to you — the moment to transmit a teaching amid the uncertainty the world is living through. And he prefers to withdraw into the depths of the ship’s hold, to escape the drama and sleep.

Yes — and it is the others who will wake him. Here is a question that recurs throughout history: whether they like it or not, the other peoples keep their eyes turned toward the people — toward the first people, which brought the world this revelation of the absolute. And they acknowledge it, they acknowledge it — at least the great religions, as we know very well. And even those unable to face up to it: they kept Avraham; the children of Avraham’s concubines also carried away with them elements of Avraham’s faith. So the rav hachovel, the captain — the head of those who want to be, in effect, the coordinator of all these beliefs, as Yitro was — says to him: “Mah lecha nirdam?” — “How can you sleep?” (Jonah 1:6). If everyone is in turmoil, everyone is worried, everyone is in a frenzy, and you allow yourself to doze off and sink into a torpor, an anesthesia of thought, as if nothing were happening — “arise, call upon your G-d” (ibid.)!

Call upon your G-d: it is not merely to cry out, it is to proclaim. They set their sights on the Jewish people: perhaps the G-d of the Jews will quickly find the solution to our woes. It is said plainly — ulai, “perhaps”; they are not certain. And that is why they want to stake everything, to see who is truly responsible for this scourge that threatens the world. And each one indeed shifts the blame onto one side or the other — counting this people and that people, this belief and that belief, this trust or that trust — and they cast lots, and ask themselves who is the source, who is the source of this evil. And behold, the lot points — “and the lot fell upon Yonah” (Jonah 1:7) — and one may say it: upon Yonah. He is at the origin, he is at the origin of everything; from the moment it was Yonah who gave this faith to the world, he is the one at its source. And how do they approach us — how do they approach Yonah, in what manner? “Tell us, now, on whose account this evil has come upon us” (Jonah 1:8).

If this evil afflicts us, it is because… “Mah melachtecha?” — “What is your occupation?” (ibid.). Have you done your melachah? It does not say avodah. Avodah is labor; in avodah one is an eved, a slave. In a melachah one is a malach, a messenger. Melachah is a mission; one is the messenger, one bears a message. Mah melachtecha — so, what is your message? By what craft did you come into the world, and what must you teach it? “Ume’ayin tavo?” — “And whence do you come?” “Mah artzecha ve’ei mizeh am atah?” — “What is your land, and of what people are you?” (ibid.). “What is your land” — we have always spoken of the land that preceded the Law: the promise of the land preceded the giving of the Law.

“Lech lecha me’artzecha” — “Go forth from your land” (Genesis 12:1). We have repeated it many times: G-d first destines a land, a place where the people can anchor itself to realize its ideal of life, and it is in this land that the people develops. “Vayomer aleihem: Ivri anochi” — “And he said to them: I am a Hebrew” (Jonah 1:9). Here he answered: Ivri anochi — I am from the other side. That does not mean I am from some particular land. I am from the other bank. It means that I identify myself first of all with my forefather, Avraham: “Be’ever hanahar yashvu avoteichem me’olam” — “Your fathers dwelt of old beyond the river” (Joshua 24:2). Beyond the river, on the other bank, on the other side of the sea, on the other side of the water — is that not so?

Well then? But take note! Ivri also means — it comes also from the verb la’avor, to pass over. I am a carrier. I am the one who conveys ideas, who conveys the profession of faith, who conveys humanity here. I am, in a sense, the ferryman. “Ve’et Hashem Elokei hashamayim ani yarei” — “and I fear Hashem, the G-d of heaven” (ibid.). You, yes — and I am the ferryman of what? I am the ferryman of Hashem, of the Eternal One who is in heaven. That is to say, the one charged with establishing the bond between heaven and earth — the only one. Ani yarei — I fear Him. “Asher asah et hayam ve’et hayabashah” — “who made the sea and the dry land” (ibid.). This definition too, “who made the sea and the dry land,” calls for our attention, because he fears heaven.

“Ve’et Hashem Elokei hashamayim” — the G-d of heaven. And then, the sea and the dry land. There are three elements here, three elements: shamayim, yam and yabashah — heaven, sea and dry land. Let me simply recall that we crossed the sea on yabashah, on dry ground — bayam uvayabashah. So […] it was through the crossing of the Sea of Reeds that HaKadosh Baruch Hu charged the Jewish people with being His spokesman. There is thus, in Yonah’s mouth, a confession, and at once — see — “vayir’u ha’anashim yir’ah gedolah” — “the men feared a great fear” (Jonah 1:10); fear seizes these men. And why? “Ki milifnei Hashem hu vore’ach” — “for he was fleeing from before Hashem” (ibid.): if he defines himself this way, it is because he is in fact fleeing Hashem.

Milifnei Hashem — that is what is written: “to flee to Tarshish from before Hashem” (Jonah 1:3); Yonah flees from before G-d, to Tarshish. And they recognized in his words that […] you are responsible, you are at the origin of this phenomenon. All this is antisemitism of a different kind; but you know, if you reduce it little by little, […] you find crude, vulgar antisemitism. But there is also this antisemitism of great scope — this putting of the Jewish people on trial because it does not fulfil its mission — something found even in the lowest depths of antisemitism. “Mah na’aseh lach veyishtok hayam me’aleinu?” — “What shall we do to you, that the sea may calm down for us?” (Jonah 1:11). Here Yonah himself tells the mallachim, the nations, the death sentence they are to carry out on him: “Pick me up and cast me into the sea” (Jonah 1:12) — throw me into the sea. It is a recasting — it is what Pharaoh wanted: “every son that is born” (Exodus 1:22) — throw him in. Now it is he himself who asks for it. If you like: from that moment you will no longer have, in my person, someone answerable for your woes and your worries; you will manage to find a remedy. But of course they washed their hands of it, the nations. He himself decided that this heavy burden G-d places on his shoulders is one he cannot bear alone, and he prefers — he is not the only one to have said it, but he too — to leave Him in this permanent confrontation, facing the ingratitude of the people in the wilderness, facing the distress of this people.

“I do not want to carry the burden of this people — did I conceive it, did I give birth to it? — rather, take Your people, assume it; take Your humanity, assume it, assume it.” It is true, the Jewish people is tempted to say: but why me? Why should I burden myself with problems? What I have to endure is enough. We sometimes say it in private about our own little problems: we have enough problems of our own, so why should we burden ourselves with other problems? And they wash their hands of it, knowingly. On that, I believe I must finish — because indeed they take him, they throw him into the sea, and they say to G-d: “Ki atah Hashem ka’asher chafatzta asita” — “For You, Hashem, have done as You pleased” (Jonah 1:14) — You willed it, You desired it; this people itself has proved incapable of being Your representative. […] The sea grew calm, and this time, “vayir’u ha’anashim yir’ah gedolah et Hashem” — “the men feared Hashem with a great fear” (Jonah 1:16). What Yonah could not transmit passes through his disappearance.

For “the men feared Hashem with a great fear” — now, the fear they had at the start has become, this time, “they feared… a great fear” at a second stage, at a third stage. No: their fear is now the fear of Hashem. “They feared a great fear of Hashem,” and “they offered a sacrifice to Hashem and made vows” (ibid.) — they make vows of fidelity. What did they promise? We do not know much, but in any case they adopted the G-d of Israel. The G-d of Israel — they appropriated Him, by doing away with Yonah, by believing they had done away with Yonah. That is what the great religions did. But in so doing they ignored the fate of the Jewish people. And the Jewish people, though it knows descents into — how shall I put it — into She’ol, into death, is not dead for all that.

If it is cast into the waters, it will one day or another be able to resurface. That we shall perhaps see in another lecture, on another day. Now, if you have questions to ask, my friends — I believe I have run over time. There could truly be a great many questions. Yves, go ahead, please. — I can start. Actually it is a question that turns back on itself several times: if we say that we have a teaching sensitivity toward non-Jews, how is it that we cannot teach them Torah? Is it not a little paradoxical that the Torah — which is in fact what guides our life, what makes teachers of us —

and, on the other hand, that this very teaching which makes us teachers is something we may not teach? It is a little strange. And if we speak of teaching by example — why should we be in contact with non-Jews, if our role is to serve as an example? I do not quite understand this paradox of being responsible for teaching without being allowed to teach. — Quantum physics you can give and transmit only to people who are voluntarily inclined toward it, who want it, who have the required skills, who have the potential to take on physics studies at a very high level. But that does not mean one should not teach the preliminary elements of physics, does it?

[…] But the physics you will learn in the higher spheres of the university — that one requires a deliberate disposition for it, and that you actually commit to putting it into practice, to doing exercises, to imposing all of it on yourself, because it is not a simple science. It goes through applied exercises. So if you cannot learn the applied exercises, you will never understand anything. Better, then, not to venture into that field — not to transmit this science to people who do not want those applied exercises. You can give them what does not commit them. — But that is my point of view: if I want to follow a seminar, and I want to follow the practice —

he is told that all of it is forbidden. So it is not logical. Because if you tell me it is because the person is not committed, I answer: then let him commit himself — teach the non-Jew, see who wants to commit, and depending on who wants to commit, open the door. But in principle, the door is shut from the outset. So for now, I have not understood it. — Give the answer yourself. From the moment you come in order to practice, to do the applied exercises of Torah, you may study Torah; no one prevents you. But to learn it as a philosophy — […] that is forbidden. — How can one teach the non-Jew when, if we have a role, as you assume, a teaching role…

— That is why I told you: we content ourselves with the seven Noahide laws, and on that basis we begin to embroider. The moral canvas of humanity is the seven Noahide laws; the other laws are embroidery that comes little by little. It is logical, because there is a base about which there is no choice — there is no choice. — For example, you told us in our class that your most assiduous students were […], if I am not mistaken, non-Jews, at the time. — But I did not teach him Torah; I taught him Jewish thought. That is the difference. — What is the difference?

— Jewish thought is not Torah; Jewish thought is Jewish philosophy. But Torah — the Torah that brings you into the inner depths of the subtleties of Torah study — that is not possible without rubbing up against it, is it? If you do not rub up against it, nothing gets through. — All right. Very good, thank you very much. […] Thank you very much. — Another question? — Yes, Rav, I wanted to say something. […] ben Shimon. — Yes. — Can you hear me, Rav? — Yes, yes, I can hear you. — Could you give a lecture just on the Mashiach (Messiah)? Because here in Tiberias, in Israel, everyone […] tells me that with all these fires and floods, these are the plagues that herald the coming of the Mashiach.

— Yes. To that I answer that I am not a prophet, and that the Mashiach belongs to every era; there is the Mashiach of Lubavitch, there is also the Mashiach of the people of Uman, and there is the Mashiach of the Admor… But you know, one must first define and say what messianism is; one must distinguish between messianism and the Mashiach. There are various messianisms, but there is only one Mashiach. And when we speak of the Mashiach, he has various names, various attributes; one day we will take up this question. But do not let it trouble you excessively. Why? Quite simply because if the Mashiach came now, he would not solve anything if you were not ready to help him, to adhere to him, to adopt him, to answer his demands — he would have come for nothing.

It’s a pity. — I understand. — No, not at all, no, not at all. There we are: have a good Kippur, and I look forward to seeing you again. — Thank you very much, Rav Benizri, thank you. — Gaëlle, you made me laugh so much.