לזכות רפואת הרב יצחק חיים יחיאל בן אסתר
לזכות רפואת הרב רחמים עצמון בן מרסל
לזכות גילה שושנה בת נעכא גיטל לברכה והצלחה בכל מעשי ידיה
On a simple level we perceive יראה [fear] and דעת [knowledge] as two different paths to be found in two different realms of the soul. But the pasuk says differently:
"יראת ה' ראשית דעת
חכמה ומוסר אולים בזו"
[משלי א' ז']
The fear of Hashem is the beginning of knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
יראה is the beginning of דעת and part of דעת itself. יראה is the root and source of דעת and the Gemara says that "בתר רישא אזיל גופא" - the body follows the head.
The idea of דעת means to perceive reality as it is. שיקול דעת is weighing the different factors and deciding what is more important and what is less important. There are at least two different מהלכים [approaches] to דעת. One is perceiving reality as it is without seeing how this reality is מחייב - obligatory. Afterward, maybe a person himself understands the obligation involved but that comes from the person himself and not directly from his perception of reality as obligatory.
Then there is a deeper דעת which perceives reality as being not only in existence but being completely מחייב. The תפיסה - perception - is a perception of obligation.
This second type of דעת is apparent when the Jews said נעשה ונשמע ["we will do and we will hear"]. Receiving the Torah HAD to be done in the form of נעשה ונשמע. Without נעשה ונשמע, the Torah couldn't be perceived. When נעשה comes AFTER נשמע then it is a regular, standard נעשה and a regular, standard נשמע. But when נעשה precedes נשמע it is a different נעשה and a different נשמע.
We see this in the Gemara [Shabbos 88a]:
Rabbi Simai taught: When Israel accorded precedence to the declaration “We will do” over the declaration “We will hear,” 600,000 ministering angels came and tied two crowns to each and every member of the Jewish people, one corresponding to “We will do” and one corresponding to “We will hear.”
Since we received TWO crowns, it must be that the crowns were not just for getting the order right. That would have mandated one crown. The language of the Gemara teaches that we received one crown for נעשה and the other for נשמע, showing that each has its own independent value. Like we said, when נעשה precedes נשמע, it is a different נעשה and a different נשמע. That is also implicit from the continuation of the Gemara:
And when the people sinned with the Golden Calf, 1,200,000 angels of destruction descended and removed them from the people, as it is stated in the wake of the sin of the Golden Calf: “And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments from Mount Chorev onward”.
וכיון שחטאו ישראל ירדו מאה ועשרים ריבוא מלאכי חבלה ופירקום שנאמר ויתנצלו בני ישראל את עדים מהר חורב
And when the people sinned with the Golden Calf, 1,200,000 angels of destruction descended and removed them from the people, as it is stated in the wake of the sin of the Golden Calf: “And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments from Mount Chorev onward”.
In other words, after the sin, נעשה is no longer before נשמע, so we lost both the נעשה and the נשמע.
["עפ"י "זה השער]
Stay tuned for more בל"נ.
