Playing with Torah (Updated for 2015)

I repost this every few years - mostly because I need the reminder. Each time I post it, it's for a slightly different reason, which I write about at the end.

Aug 10, 2015

Feynman: Playing with Physics

I've been reading a lot of Richard Feynman stories lately. For those of you who aren't familiar, Feynman (1918-1988) was the fun-loving, Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist who grew up in Far Rockaway, NY. The many anecdotes about him are chronicled in various books: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985), What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988), No Ordinary Genius (1994), "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999), and elsewhere. Not only are these stories insightful, but they are SO much fun to read! I recommend them to everyone - but only after watching some Feynman videos on YouTube to get a feel for the way he talks.

Anyway, there's one story I'd like to talk about today. It's rather long, but it is one of my absolute favorites. The story takes place in 1945, shortly after World War II. Now that Feynman was no longer needed for his work on the Manhattan Project, he accepted a professorship at Cornell. Feynman tells the story best, so I'll let him take over now. The story can be found in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" on p.171-174 in the paperback edition, and p.66-67 in the PDF version. The italics are his, but the bold is mine:

At Cornell, I'd work on preparing my courses, and I'd go over to the library a lot and read through the Arabian Nights and ogle the girls that would go by. But when it came time to do some research, I couldn't get to work. I was a little tired; I was not interested; I couldn't do research! This went on for what I felt was a few years, but when I go back and calculate the timing, it couldn't have been that long. Perhaps nowadays I wouldn't think it was such a long time, but then, it seemed to go on for a very long time. I simply couldn't get started on any problem: I remember writing one or two sentences about some problem in gamma rays and then I couldn't go any further. I was convinced that from the war and everything else (the death of my wife) I had simply burned myself out ...

During this period I would get offers from different places -- universities and industry -- with salaries higher than my own. And each time I got something like that I would get a little more depressed. I would say to myself, "Look, they're giving me these wonderful offers, but they don't realize that I'm burned out! Of course I can't accept them. They expect me to accomplish something, and I can't accomplish anything! I have no ideas ..."

Finally there came in the mail an invitation from the Institute for Advanced Study: Einstein ... von Neumann ... Wyl ... all these great minds! They write to me, and invite me to be a professor there! And not just a regular professor. Somehow they knew my feelings about the Institute: how it's too theoretical; how there's not enough real activity and challenge. So they write, "We appreciate that you have a considerable interest in experiments and in teaching, so we have made arrangements to create a special type of professorship, if you wish: half professor at Princeton University, and half at the Institute."

Institute for Advanced Study! Special exception! A position better than Einstein, even! It was ideal; it was perfect; it was absurd!

It was absurd. The other offers had made me feel worse, up to a point. They were expecting me to accomplish something. But this offer was so ridiculous, so impossible for me ever to live up to, so ridiculously out of proportion. The other ones were just mistakes; this was an absurdity! I laughed at it while I was shaving, thinking about it.

And then I thought to myself, "You know, what they think of you is so fantastic, it's impossible to live up to it. You have no responsibility to live up to it!"

It was a brilliant idea: You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing.

It wasn't a failure on my part that the Institute for Advanced Study expected me to be that good; it was impossible. It was clearly a mistake-and the moment I appreciated the possibility that they might be wrong, I realized that it was also true of all the other places, including my own university. I am what I am, and if they expected me to be good and they're offering me some money for it, it's their hard luck.

Then, within the day, by some strange miracle -- perhaps he overheard me talking about it, or maybe he just understood me -- Bob Wilson, who was head of the laboratory there at Cornell, called me in to see him. He said, in a serious tone, "Feynman, you're teaching your classes well; you're doing a good job, and we're very satisfied. Any other expectations we might have are a matter of luck. When we hire a professor, we're taking all the risks. If it comes out good, all right. If it doesn't, too bad. But you shouldn't worry about what you're doing or not doing." He said it much better than that, and it released me from the feeling of guilt.

Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing -- it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn't have to do it; it wasn't important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn't make any difference: I'd invent things and play with things for my own entertainment.

So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.

I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate -- two to one. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, "Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it's two to one?"

I don't remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass particles is, and how all the accelerations balance to make it come out two to one.

I still remember going to Hans Bethe and saying, "Hey, Hans! I noticed something interesting. Here the plate goes around so, and the reason it's two to one is …" and I showed him the accelerations.

He says, "Feynman, that's pretty interesting, but what's the importance of it? Why are you doing it?"

"Hah!" I say. "There's no importance whatsoever. I'm just doing it for the fun of it." His reaction didn't discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked.

I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there's the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was "playing" --working, really -- with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things.

It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.

This isn't the only time that Feynman spoke of the importance of "playing." In No Ordinary Genius, pp.17-18, Feynman was asked by the author whether he ever wonders about where his great thinking ability came from. Feynman answers, "No." The author persists, saying, "Perhaps you just don't find it interesting, but when a mathematical prodigy like, say, Ramanujan turns up out of nowhere, surely one does wonder how he could have got hold of such extraordinary mathematical abilities?" Feynman answers:

I find in the world very many interesting questions such as this one, but I have no way to know the answer to it, and no way to find out. It's not that I am not interested, I simply don't know anything about it, and I don't like to speculate about things I don't know very much about. It's much more interesting for me (unless I'm working on it) to leave a mystery a mystery, rather than to make believe I know an answer to it. So I can't tell you where Ramanujan got his mathematical desires - I should call them desires, because that's what you really require first. Not so much the ability, but the desire to play around, and to notice. That's what he had to do - to find out funny things about numbers and to explore some more, play with the numbers until he had played enough to discover things that nobody else knew. He was playing, that's all. He had to have the desire to play, and I don't know where that came from.
I've always played around. It's hard to explain it very well. When I was a kid I had a laboratory. Although I'm now in theoretical work, I originally played experimentally. It's a bad term - I mean that I fooled about. I never did experiments in a scientific sense, to find out something. I would make radios, or try to make a photocell work. I had a spark plug from an old Ford car that I would set up and use to burn holes in paper, or see what would happen when I tried to put a spark through a vacuum tube. But I never kept a notebook of things I did every day, or made careful measurements. I wasn't that kind of "scientist," so to speak. I was just playing, like a child playing, but with different toys.

So much for the anecdotes about the importance of "play" in knowledge.

The Moral of the Story (and Support from Mesorah)

In my opinion, the moral of the story is pretty much what Feynman said: when it comes to learning, you should forget about all goals, objectives, and accomplishments; forget about distinctions of "important" and "not important"; forget about how much of a contribution you're making to your field, and whether you are going to justify your work to your peers; forget about all expectations and totally disregard the expectations of others; forget about achievement, forget about mastery, forget about what everyone else is doing or not doing, and just enjoy learning. Learn what you love to learn, be realistic and intellectually honest, and follow your mind wherever it takes you.

The irony is that the best way to achieve your goals is to not worry about achieving them! If you follow the path described by Feynman, you'll likely to be way more successful than you would have been any other way! Perhaps this is what the Rambam means in Hilchos Teshuvah 10:2 when he writes:

One who serves [God] out of love occupies himself with Torah and mitzvos and follows the paths of wisdom not because of anything in this world, neither out of fear of the bad nor in order to inherit the good. Rather, he does what is true because it is true - and ultimately, the good will come on its own.

Not surprisingly, Chazal preempted Feynman's realization by centuries. People usually quote Rava's formulation of the principle: "Le'olam YILMAD adam Torah b'makom she'libo chafetz - a person should always learn Torah where his heart desires" (Avodah Zarah 19a), which is a PRESCRIPTIVE statement. Personally, I prefer R' Yehudah ha'Nasi's formulation: "EIN adam lomeid Torah ELA mi'makom she'libo chafetz - a person does NOT learn Torah EXCERPT from where his heart desires" (ibid.), which is a DESCRIPTIVE statement. In other words, this isn't just a rule that a person should follow in his learning, but rather, it is a description of reality. If your heart isn't into it then you won't really learn it, but if your heart is into it then you'll REALLY learn!

A few days after I reading this story, I realized that we ask Hashem to enable us to reach Feynman's level each and every morning. We say:

Please, Hashem, our God, sweeten the words of Your Torah in our mouth and in the mouth of Your people, the family of Israel. May we and our offspring and the offspring of Your people, the House of Israel - all of us - know Your Name and learn Your Torah lishmah (for its own sake). Blessed are You, Hashem, Who teaches Torah to His people Israel.

We beseech Hashem to make our learning of Torah sweet and enjoyable, and to facilitate yedias Hashem (knowledge of God) and Torah lishmah (learning Torah for its own sake). To learn Torah lishmah means to learn it as an end in and of itself - not in order to accomplish, to achieve, or as a means toward some objective. This is exactly the type of learning that Feynman was describing. His mind was drawn to unraveling the mystery of the wobbling plate. He allowed himself to be totally guided by his natural curiosity and didn't feel any need to justify it or explain the importance of what he was doing. He was seeking knowledge of reality lishmah, and it was sweet.

There is even support in the Mesorah for Feynman's choice of the verb "play" to describe his involvement in physics. I don't think I need to define what he means by "playing." Everyone knows what it means to play. What I realized was that this is actually encouraged in Torah! Tehilim 119 is filled with references to David ha'Melech "playing with Torah" and regarding Torah as "a plaything" - at least, according to the translation of the root שעשע by Radak and Metzudos. Check it out:

"I play with Your statutes, I will not forget Your word" (Tehilim 119:16); "Indeed, Your testimonies are my plaything and my counselors" (ibid. 24); "I will play with Your mitzvos that I love" (ibid. 47); "Their heart grew thick as fat; but as for me, Your Torah is my plaything" (ibid. 70); "May Your mercies come upon me so that I may live, for Your Torah is my plaything" (ibid. 77); "Had Your Torah not been my plaything, then I would have perished in my affliction" (ibid. 92); "Distress and anguish have overtaken me, Your mitzvos are my plaything" (ibid. 143); "I crave Your salvation, O Hashem, and Your Torah is my plaything" (ibid. 174)

Shlomo ha'Melech utilizes this metaphor in Mishlei to depict the relationship between Hashem and chochmah:

Hashem made me [chochmah] as the beginning of His way, before His deeds of yore … I was then His nursling, I was then His delightful plaything every day, playing before Him at all times, playing in the inhabited areas of His earth, delightfully playing with the sons of man (Mishlei 8:22, 30-31).

I can't say that I experience this every time I learn, but thank God, I DO have this experience on a consistent basis in one area of learning: Mishlei. I'd say that 95% of the times I sit down to learn Mishlei with my students, my friends, and my teachers, I experience the sweetness of Torah lishmah. I actually used the metaphor of "plaything" to describe my learning of Mishlei before I was aware of the pesukim in Tehilim. When I learn Mishlei, I see each pasuk as a puzzle that I get to work out. The experience is fun, challenging, and rewarding - AND I get the benefit of learning useful techniques for living an enjoyable life! What could be better?

Relevance to the Blog: as of 2010

I founded my first blog in April of 2007. Over the next five months I wrote 96 blog posts. Over the course of the following academic year I wrote 77 posts, and in the next academic year I wrote 81. This year, however, [editor's note: 2010] I've only written ten posts, and only three of these contained any original content. The question is: What happened? Why the dip in prolificacy?

The simplest explanation is that this was my first year "outside" of yeshiva. For a period of seven wonderful years, from September '02 until June '09, I was blessed with the privilege of learning in yeshiva full-time, or part-time while going to college (which was practically full-time). But in September '09 I got my first teaching job, and since then, I've devoted a great deal of time to my students. Time that was once spent writing blog posts was now spent preparing lessons and responding to students' questions via email and text messaging.

This explanation, while true, is not the whole truth. After reading the story of the wobbling plate I realized that my relationship to my blog has changed over the years. When I first started blogging, I did it for my own enjoyment. I love writing! Actually, that's not entirely accurate. I love thinking through writing. By that I mean formulating and organizing my ideas in writing, and discussing them with others in writing. My blog was originally conceived of as a venue for me to do what I love, for essentially selfish reasons.

But over time, as more and more people started reading my blog, I started to feel obligated to write. This had several negative effects:

I felt increasingly restricted in the writing topics I chose. Instead of writing what I wanted to write about, I felt like I had to write about what OTHERS would be interested in. And when someone asked me to take up a certain topic or answer a certain question, I felt responsible for following through on the request.
My perfectionist tendencies were horrendously exacerbated. In the good ole' days I felt comfortable posting whatever I was thinking about: musings, questions, observations, insights, partial ideas, ideas in development, my feelings about certain ideas, my feelings toward learning in general, and the like. But as time went on, I felt the need to only post "publishable" material - the type of stuff that I would feel comfortable submitting to a newsletter or online publication. That cut out a lot of potentially "post-worthy" posts.
Likewise, I started to spend a longer and longer time tweaking, editing, and rewriting posts - many of which have never seen the light of day because they haven't met my unrealistic perfectionist standards. (Fun fact: Did you know that I have 106 drafts in my draft folder? That's 106 blog posts in various stages of completion, which I have "put on hold" because my perfectionist tendencies prevented me from finishing them. Sickening, isn't it?) [Editor's note: Since 2010, this number has increased twofold - or perhaps even threefold.]
For the same reason, I began to feel pressured to write "comprehensive" treatments of whatever topic I chose to write about. This was another unrealistic obstacle which compounded all of the other problems.
I felt increasing pressure to be prolific. If I didn't post a certain number of posts per week, I'd feel guilty or remiss in my duty as a writer. And when I didn't meet that self-imposed quota, I would start to ignore the blog altogether. It was a vicious cycle.
I used to write as a LEARNER, but I somehow allowed myself to get into the mode of trying to TEACH through my blog. In retrospect, this was a mistake. There is a place for teaching and a place for learning, and for me, this blog is the latter. All of my feelings of obligation and responsibility are built on the premise that I am writing in the capacity of teacher. But if I'm just a guy thinking out loud and talking ideas with other people, then why should I have any responsibilities towards others? "If you have become wise, you have become wise for yourself, and if you have scoffed, then you alone will bear responsibility" (Mishlei 9:12).

There may have been more, but that's all I can think of right now. The point is that I stopped enjoying writing on my blog, and consequently, I stopped trying. Whenever I did try, I didn't get anywhere. I'd either become frustrated, or obsessed with "getting it perfect," or disinterested. It just wasn't fun anymore.

And so, freshly inspired by Feynman's example, I'm going to set one more goal for myself: NOT to be goal-oriented in writing for my blog. I want to rekindle the original spirit of the blog. Starting this week, I'm going to go back to writing for my OWN benefit and my OWN enjoyment. I'm going to (try to) forget about my own expectations and the expectations of others and just have fun thinking in writing.

If I succeed, then this will be good for me and for the blog. If I fail, then things will remain as they have been. Either way, I've got nothing to lose. Wish me luck!

Relevance to the Blog: as of 2015

I began this blog last summer. My goal then was the same goal I had during the previous summer: to publish one blog post each weekday of the summer. This summer was slightly different: instead of prioritizing new blog posts, I made it my goal to edit and republish posts from the old blog. Thankfully, it appears that this has been a success.

This week I will begin preparing for the classes I will be teaching during the upcoming school year. Last year at this time, I decided it would be prudent to stop writing new posts for the blog. During the school year, I barely wrote anything. I had consciously decided - for a number of reasons - to invest all of my learning/teaching energy into the classes I was teaching. In retrospect, I believe this was a mistake. Rereading these Feynman anecdotes helped me to understand why this is the case. In short: I need an outlet for "playing" with Torah, and this blog is that outlet.

As much as I incorporate the "playing" attitude into the way I teach my students, and in my chavrusa learning, neither of these activities can substitute for my OWN need to play with Torah. I need a venue in which I can freely play with ideas, without the responsibility of "teaching" or of being viewed as authority or even of "being a good chavrusa." I need the freedom to think out loud and explore questions and ideas which interest me, and I need to do this by writing in a public format.

Why can I only satisfy this need in this manner? Who knows! I only know that it is true, and that I must do it. During this past school year, my teaching AND my learning suffered because I wasn't playing with Torah through writing. I see now how critical it is for me to continue playing with Torah even during the school year.

And so I am pleased to announce on the record that although my daily blogging will discontinue for the summer, I definitely plan to continue writing and posting for the remainder of the month, and - God willing - for the remainder of the year. I hope and pray that I will be successful in this endeavor, and that my efforts will not be thwarted by forces from within or from without. Thank you for your support!

Have you gotten into a rut like this in your profession, hobby, or passion? Have you gotten out of such a rut by finding a way to rediscover your sense of play? I’d love to hear about it!

The Rabbi Schneeweiss Substack

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