Trembling and the Table
In chapter 34 of Moby Dick, Herman Melville describes two dining rooms aboard Captain Ahab’s whaling ship, the Pequod. At Ahab’s table, the officers sit in near-paralyzed silence:
“They were as little children before Ahab… their intent eyes all fastened upon the old man’s knife… I do not suppose that for the world they would have profaned that moment with the slightest observation, even upon so neutral a topic as the weather.”
Starbuck, the usually bold first mate, “received his meat as though receiving alms; and cut it tenderly; and a little started if, perchance, the knife grazed against the plate.” Down the corridor, in the harpooners’ mess, the scene is completely different: “They dined like lords; they filled their bellies like Indian ships all day loading with spices.”
Most of us would rather eat with the harpooners. But Melville’s point is that the stern atmosphere of Ahab’s table forces a kind of focus and attention that the harpooners never quite achieve.
For me, this passage has stayed with me more than any other because when I first read it, it uncannily described the feeling of sitting at my Rosh Yeshiva’s Shabbos table. The many seudos I joined there made an indelible impression — not because they were comfortable, but because the gravity of that atmosphere demanded you rise to it. The harpooners have more fun. But they don’t grow the same way.
A rebbe of mine used to tell people: “You should learn from someone that you feel is delivering Torah directly from Har Sinai.” He meant that awe is not a side effect of learning — it is the condition that makes real learning possible. At Sinai itself, the Torah was given amid thunder and lightning, a thick cloud, and a shofar blast so loud that all the people in the camp trembled (Shemos 19:16). God could have made it pleasant. He did not. Awe, properly understood, does more work than encouragement alone. “I’ve heard educators say that we shouldn’t criticize students or shouldn’t give bad marks,” reported one author, “but giving both reward and punishment—both praise and criticism—is best… If you have to pick just one, the negative feedback stimulates learning faster than the positive.”[1]
We might rather avoid reading the frightful harshness of the Tochacha in Parshas Ki Savo, and, given that the destruction of the Holocaust and more recent horrors are still in our rearview mirror, that is understandable. While we can relate to loud voices that portray and market Torah as purely positive and encouraging, perhaps some have gone too far. Looking at the world, in our communities and beyond, our generation has been overcorrected. The instinct to remove all harshness from education — religious and secular — is understandable and often right. Love is essential. But something gets lost when every table looks like the harpooners’. We need some Ahab in our Yiddishkeit: genuine gravity in the way we approach Torah, in the way we stand before Hakadosh Baruch Hu, in the way we raise the next generation.
Nowhere is the need to strike a balance between love and fear clearer than when discussing the upcoming Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe, which, despite the implications of this title, have two competing themes. The Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Machzorim evoke the beauty of Creation, the sublimity of Am Yisrael, and a vision of an incredible future. Meanwhile, some of the dreadful and threatening passages, like Unsaneh Tokef, that stress the Day of Judgment can bring morbid possibilities to mind that we would prefer not to dwell on. But without the anxiety that these days induce, their meaning would be compromised. Just as the trembling camp of Har Sinai made that experience unforgettable, the trembling that we feel (or try to feel) on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the threat of a harsh judgment, and the real possibility of tragedy in the upcoming year empower these days to make the deep impression on us that they do.
In a few weeks, we should expect little difficulty enjoying, like the Harpooners, the foods and celebration of the Yom Tov table. It does not come quite as easily to appreciate that uncomfortable as it might be, the pressure of Ahab’s table is the refining crucible. Why not learn to appreciate, no less, the moments we stand in front of the open Aron Kodesh, our Machzorim open before us, the Chazzan recreating the ancient tunes, and realize that we are sitting at the right table?
[1] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_overcome_your_brains_fixation_on_bad_things