Plato, the Haggadah and the art of reading

It is well known that Plato used to write in the form of dialogues, and it is clear to anyone reading these conversations that his main purpose in doing so was to hide the characteristics of the texts. He worked for years on polishing this literary form. Cicero maintains that Plato actually died at his writing table at the age of 81. “Plato uno et octogesimo anno scribens est mortuus” (Cicero, On Old Age, Section 5).

What bothered Plato was that he believed the written word would fall prey to evil or incompetent readers who would do anything they want with the text, leaving the writer unable to defend or explain himself. He feared the text would take on a life of its own, independent of its author, as is indeed characteristic of the written word.

Years later, Immanuel Kant wrote along similar lines, saying that the “script” wreaked havoc on the “body of memory” (Anthropologie in Pragmatischer Hinsicht, pp. 489-490).

However, according to Plato, this means far more than just losing information, or being deprived of the skill of memorizing. For him, real knowledge was a matter of “intrinsic understanding,” demanding a person’s total presence within what he reads or says. Only that with which I totally identify and which has become united with my Self can be called knowledge and is inscribed in my whole personality. That which I have simply read or learned superficially is not really knowledge. 

Unwittingly, Plato touched on a most fundamental aspect of the Jewish tradition.

We Jews are called “the People of the Book.” But we are not; we are the people of the ear. The Torah is not to be read, but, rather, is to be heard. It was not written in the conventional sense. It was the Divine word spoken at Sinai, which had to be heard and which afterward, out of pure necessity, became frozen in a text, but with the sole intention of being immediately “defrosted” through the art of hearing. This, then, became the great foundation of the Jewish oral tradition.

Reading entails using one’s eyes and, as such, the act remains external. The words are not carved into the very soul of the reader.

Rabbi Yaakov Leiner, son of the famous Ishbitzer rebbe, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner, and one of the keenest minds in the hassidic tradition, speaks about seeing. He makes the valuable observation that sight discloses the external aspect of things, while hearing reveals the internal. (Beis Yaakov: Rosh Hodesh Av).

Still, does the open-endedness of the Torah not present the opportunity for anyone to read his own thoughts into the text and violate its very spirit?

The Jewish tradition responded to this challenge with great profundity. It created an ongoing oral tradition in which unwritten rules of interpretation were handed down, thereby securing the inner meaning of the text while at the same time allowing the student to use all of his creative imagination.

Even after the Oral Torah was written down in the form of the Talmud, it remained unwritten, as any Talmud student can testify. No other text is so succinct and “understaffed” in written words while simultaneously given to such vast interpretation.

The fact that the art of reading the Talmud can be learned only through a teacher-student relationship, and not merely through the written word, proves our point. Only when the student hears his master’s oral interpretation of the text is he able to read it, because the teacher will not only give him explanations but will also convey the inner vibrations that were once heard at the revelation on Mount Sinai. This is the deeper knowledge that the teacher received from his masters, taking him all the way back to the supreme moment at Sinai.

In this way, the student can free himself from a mechanical approach to the text. He will hear new voices in the old text, without deviating from its inner meaning. This will give him the courage to think on his own and rid himself of prejudice. The text, then, is not read but heard.

Jewish law states that even if one is alone on Seder night, one must pronounce the text of the Haggada and not just read it. He must hear himself, explain the text to himself in a verbal way, and be in continuous dialogue with himself so as to understand and feel what happened thousands of years ago.

Plato alluded to this matter without fully realizing why his own teachings never came close to receiving the treatment they perhaps deserved. They are read too much and heard too little.

This may be the difference between the Divine word and the human word. The Divine is a dimension where words have no spiritual space. Human words are too grounded in the text. The Divine word goes beyond these textual limitations and can find its way only through the act of listening, because it is through this particular one of our senses that we are able to hear the “perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore” (A.J.Heschel, Man is Not Alone, A Philosophy of Religion, p. 8).

When we read the text on the Seder night, we should be aware that it provides only the opening words. The real Haggadah has no text. It is not to be read but is rather to be heard. And, just as with the Torah, we have not even begun to understand its full meaning. We are simply perpetual beginners.

The writer is the dean of the David Cardozo Academy in Jerusalem. He is the author of many books, including the bestseller Jewish Law as Rebellion. His thoughts are discussed on many media outlets, and he is also an international lecturer. Find his weekly essays at www.cardozoacademy.org