The thinkers and the doers. You belong to the former or to the latter – rarely to both. Such is the conventional wisdom. According to Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, though, the menorah of the Beis Hamikdash teaches us that neither thought nor action should ever exist in isolation. Action must always accompany thought, and thought must always accompany action. He argues that the menorah’s central stem represents Hashem’s spirit (see Zechariah 4:1-6), and this spirit – as evidenced by the usage of “ruach” in Tanach – “is not a spirit of mere theoretical knowledge and understanding, but is the means of both understanding and action” (emphasis added). That’s why each set of branches on the menorah – one side symbolizing thought, the other, action – emerged from the very same point on the stem. For both are “in their origin and in their actuality so inseparably one that each, of necessity, presupposes the other.” Rav Hirsch explains: “The truly moral – i.e., the doing of good deeds… – presupposes the mental activity; otherwise, it would be an unconscious act in the realm of instinct rather than morality. But equally so, the mere act of perceiving – of recognizing the good – presupposes the will to translate it into action, for it demands that the powers of the human free will be directed towards the object which it recognizes as good.” The difference between thought and action “lies in the result, not in the source.” Both stem from the same root and both seek the same goal, which is why the flames sitting atop both the right three and left three branches of the menorah pointed toward its central stem. Naturally, some people spend more time contemplating while others spend more time doing, but thinking may never be wholly divorced from acting and acting may never be wholly divorced from thinking. Judaism doesn’t sanction mindless activity or “pure” philosophy. It demands a “spirit in which perception of the highest truths pairs with the doing of the greatest good.” Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) – head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, Germany for over 35 years – was a prolific writer whose ideas, passion, and brilliance helped save German Jewry from the onslaught of modernity. Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the host of “The Elliot Resnick Show” and the editor of an upcoming work on etymological explanations in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Chumash. ...
