HEAD AND HEART
Succot, 5704—October, 1943
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SUCCOT is called “the season of our joy”. It used to be a happy time of rejoicing. The hard work of a whole year done, the harvest brought in, the rich blessings of nature well garnered, man could relax. He could thank God with a contented and satisfied mind. But what is the season of our joy to-day? Where are the great harvests that used to make people happy? There is little “Simchah” left in a world in which Death has become the richest harvester. We have forgotten the meaning of joy. It is, however, important to realise that it is not only this war, with its small and great tragedies or the overpowering martyrdom of Israel in its wake, that has caused us to forget the meaning of joy. Long before its outbreak, true joy had left our hearts. Joy, happiness, harmony, contentment and peace left this world long before the present catastrophe. The generation of those born not many years before 1914 has never really known of these blessings of life. During the two decades between the two wars the world was in a fever. Many people worked, others were workless. Many fought for things which they could never achieve; for many there was success—in a sense. But the place of “Simchah” was vacant in the world. Where joy should be in the life of men there was emptiness, disillusionment and boredom. When people were not working and not busy chasing the mirages of their ambitions, they were not at peace, not happy, but bored. Mere entertainment took the place of joy, entertainment that one buys for money and that is an efficient means of killing time and making a man forget the void within him. A whole entertainment industry had to be produced in a world that, not knowing genuine joy, was bored.
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How was it that joy vanished from the earth long before the present war?
**Yalkut Shimoni, Proverbs, I.A passage in the Midrash may give us the clue to this problem. Commenting on the words in the Book of Job “Where is wisdom to be found?” Rabbi Elizer answered: The head is the seat of wisdom; Rabbi Joshua answered, the heart. The Midrash supports Rabbi Joshua’s view by quoting the verse: “Thou gavest my heart joy”, adding the gloss that joy is wisdom, as it is said: “Be wise, my son, and my heart will also rejoice.”
If this is so, then the lack of joy in our world points to a lack of wisdom. How strange this is. We have been accustomed to thinking that we have been the most enlightened generation in the whole history of the human species. From the height of modern achievements we used to look down superciliously upon past generations. Be this as it may, about “Simchah” they knew much more than we do. In spite of all our “cleverness” we have banned joy from the earth.
This is very strange indeed. When this modern period of great scientific advances opened, people were looking forward to the Golden Age of mankind, which seemed to be approaching. When the steam-engine, electricity, the Diesel motor were first discovered, they held out enchanting promises. The commodities of life would be easily, cheaply and plentifully produced. Man would no longer have to toil and to drudge from early morn till late in the evening for his piece of bread. The Machine would become his great help-mate. With its assistance the needs of all would easily be satisfied. A world of plenty was at hand. Bread for all, leisure for all, peace and contentment for all were within the grasp of man.
Such was the promise, and quite a reasonable one too. But what has become of it?
Those very creations of the human mind that could have become the sources of man’s happiness produced the curse under which humanity has been groaning in modern times. The Machine, instead of becoming a help-mate, turned into an enemy. Instead of securing leisure for millions, it made them workless and miserable; instead of creating a world of plenty, it has produced slums in a world of artificially manufactured scarcity. To crown all, in the present war the ingenuity of the human mind, the great achievements of science and progress, have had to be devoted to producing weapons of destruction. We are living in a world of the most stupid and the most tragic contradictions: man’s ingenuity has destroyed man’s happiness.
Looking at an aeroplane, for instance, and examining its construction, one cannot but admire the faculties of the human mind; but taking account of the uses to which this ingenious machine is put, one is dumbfounded by human idiocy and stupidity. And this is the strangest thing of all: that at one and the same time man seems to be both very clever and very stupid.
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The Midrash quoted above seems to provide the explanation of these contradictions. According to Rabbi Eliezer the source of wisdom is the head, according to Rabbi Joshua it is the heart. Both are right in a sense. There are two kinds of wisdom: that of the head and that of the heart. And this is the difference between the two: with our head or intellect we create the practical means of living, with the heart we conceive the values of life.
Goodness, Beauty, Love, Ethics and Morals and Religion cannot be proved by mathematics or any other activity of the intellect, they must be experienced by the wisdom of the heart. Of the values of life we know with our heart, and if the heart does not know of them, our intellect is never able to create them for us. On the other hand, the practical means of living are devised by the wisdom that has its source in the head. When man first produced a piece of bread, he did it with his brains and not with his heart. When the first machine was invented, man consulted his intellect and not the wisdom of his heart. But if man wants to know what to do with the bread, so intelligently produced, whether he should eat it himself or offer a piece of it to a fellow-man who is hungry, he must ask his heart. Once one has the machine, devised by human ingenuity, and wishes to know the purpose for which to use it, one has always to turn to the heart. We use the machine for a purpose that we desire, that we wish to see achieved in life, and we desire and wish and aspire with our hearts.
Thus, a man may be very clever and very stupid at the same time. He may possess wisdom of the head but no wisdom of the heart, or vice-versa, he may be a “fool” but with a heart filled with wisdom to overflowing.
Modern man has been such a clever-stupid type. He has brains but hardly any wisdom of the heart. He is rich in means but miserably poor in values. He possesses enough brain to run a factory but has no heart to “run” life. The wisdom of his head has supplanted the wisdom of the heart. He has been most ingenious in creating the means that could have secured mankind a blessed life, but he has not known how to use them well. He has been stupid at heart. This has turned the promise of the “Golden Age” into a curse.
A powerful human intellect combined with the stupidity of the heart has become the deadliest weapon of devastation the world has ever seen; it has created the most tragically idiotic caricature of man: the mechanised super-beast.
The grin of that beast has banished joy from the life. of men.
A new and better world must mean new and better hearts. Mankind must learn to live by the rehabilitated wisdom of the human heart. Then alone will “Simchah” re-enter the life of men.
Joy comes of the heart that is wise.