Description
Drowning in Pshat: A Deeper Look At The Final Redemption – By Rabbi Pinchas Winston
DROWNING IN PSHAT is a phrase I coined years ago to describe a frustrating intellectual phenomenon. It is a lack of willingness on the part of those who learn Torah to dig deeper and develop a more profound understanding of Jewish history and current events. Preoccupied with mastering “pshat,” they drown in it.
What does this mean?
Pshat, from the word pashut, means obvious. In Torah learning, this usually refers to the most obvious explanation of an idea. But it can also refer to the most profound understanding of a section of Talmud, what it really means on an everyday level after all the commentators have had their say.
But as the Midrash points out, even the simplest of Torah ideas can be understood on many levels and can provide important insights into life in general and history specifically:
There are 70 facets to Torah. Turn it around and around, for everything is in it. (Bamidbar Rabbah 13:15)
To access the 70 facets, one must enter something called Pardes:
There are four levels [of Torah understanding], and the roshei teivos spell pardes—orchard. [They are the first letters of the words] pshat, remez, drush, and sod. A person needs to work hard at all of them to the best of his ability and find a teacher from whom they can learn them. If they lack one of these four levels relative to what he could have known, then they will have to reincarnate [to compensate for what they are missing]. (Sha’ar HaGilgulim, Introduction 11)
The following is an example of a Torah idea learned on all four levels. The first verse of the Torah says:
In the beginning, God made Heaven and Earth. (Bereishis 1:1)
On a Pshat level, the verse seems self-explanatory. However, as the Torah commentator Rashi points out, the first word of the Torah, Bereishis, is grammatically the wrong word in this context. Since Torah is the word of God, it is not a mistake, but a hint—remez to a deeper meaning, as Rashi explains:
This verse is only meant for elucidation, as the rabbis teach: For the sake of Torah, which is called “the beginning—reishis—of His way” (Mishlei 8:22), and for the sake of the Jewish people, who are called “the beginning—reishis—of His increase” (Yirmiyah 2:3), [God made the Heaven and the Earth]…The text does not intend to point out the order of Creation because if the intention were to teach this, it would have written berishonah…since the word reishis in the Torah is in the construct state. (Rashi, Bereishis 1:1)
The usage of the Hebrew word bereishis instead of berishonah hints to a different layer of meaning. It does not mean “in the beginning,” but “for the sake of reishis,” meaning that God made Heaven and Earth for the sake of the Torah that would be learned and the Jewish people who would live it. That is the level of Remez.
From lidrosh—to investigate, Drush is rarely as evident and often requires some kind of tradition to point out the hidden meaning or explain it. In this case, the first word of the Torah is also the focus, but for a different reason:
He began by saying: bara—He created—shis—six, that is, God created the six days. (Tikunei HaZohar 147b)
On the level of Drush, bereishis is two words: bara, which means “He created,” and shis, which is Aramaic for six, as in the six days of Creation. Hence, the Zohar is explaining, when God pronounced the word, Bereishis, He brought into being all the six days of Creation, as Rashi explains:
All aspects of Heaven and Earth were created on the first day, but each was not put into its place until the day it was commanded. (Rashi, Bereishis 1:14)
For example, though the sun, the moon, and the stars were not put into their respective places in the cosmos until the fourth day of Creation, they were created on the first day with everything else. And not only everything from the first six days, but all that was destined to exist over the six thousand years that followed.
Sod like Drush requires some kind of tradition to have credibility, as the following shows:
Bara-shis: [the sefirah of] Binah is over them (the six sefiros of Chesed, Gevurah, Tifferes, Netzach, Hod, and Yesod), which created the six extremities. (Biur HaGR”A, Sifra d’Tzniusa, Ch. 1)
Much of Kabbalah is concerned with understanding the sefiros, the spiritual basis of all Creation through which God maintains the world and implements His will. For Creation to exist, the sefiros were created first. Sod reveals that happened when God said Bereishis.
One word—four levels of explanation.
But it is not only about understanding the Torah better. It is about understanding Creation better, and more importantly, history:
When God made Creation, He looked into the Torah as a blueprint. (Bereishis Rabbah 1:1)
This midrash means that everything that has ever happened, is happening, and will ever happen, is in the Torah. It also means that if we want to understand any of it, we have to go back and study that “blueprint.”
But as any builder knows, a building plan has different levels of details and explanations, all of which are necessary and interdependent. Leave any of the levels out, and you’ll never have the complete picture of the structure.
When it comes to an actual building, it can result in faulty construction. When it comes to Jewish history, it can mean getting stuck on the level of Pshat and missing vital divine signs about the direction of history. Historically, that has proven to be very dangerous for the Jewish people, and will again…if we don’t stop drowning in Pshat.
