Q&A: The Greek Philosophers
The Greek Philosophers
Question
1) Socrates lived during the period of the First Temple, Plato was a child when the First Temple was destroyed and died a few years after the building of the Second Temple, and Aristotle lived during the period of the Second Temple, according to Wikipedia’s dating. How is it that none of them mentioned in their teachings the Jews and their faith, the miracles that took place in the Temple, God’s governance of the world, the existence of the Creator, prophecy, etc.?
2) Do you believe the description of Alexander the Great’s meeting with Shimon the Righteous as it appears in the Talmudic text—that Alexander bowed before him and told his soldiers that he saw his image fighting and defeating his enemies?
3) What should one have in mind during prayer when saying, “and for Your miracles that are with us every day, and for Your wonders at all times,” if there is no providence? Can one intend by this that He binds the spirit to the body at every moment, similar to what the Rema says about the blessing “Who formed man”?
4) For the future, do you prefer that if there are questions on different topics they be asked separately?
Answer
- Why should they mention it? Did it appear in the New York Times? In those days there were more sorcerers than ordinary people.
- No. Their time periods do not overlap at all. (Though I once saw that there were two figures called Shimon the Righteous.) It is aggadah.
- About the laws of nature that continue to operate by the power of the Holy One, blessed be He. Of course, one can also connect it to the bond between body and soul, although that too is not a miracle in the sense of a deviation from nature. Even if it does not belong to physics, it is still part of the world’s nature.
- At least with questions that require discussion and where substantial follow-up is expected, it is definitely better to split them up.
Discussion on Answer
The aggadah comes to teach that the Jews are something truly unique, and that even a mighty conqueror (and murderous scum) like Alexander recognizes their worth—and really, everything all the nations achieved with all their progress and their “my power and the might of my hand” is all by virtue of the likeness of one Jew who carries the banner of spirituality in our physical world. And for this purpose, of course, it does not matter whether Alexander of Macedon and Shimon the Righteous are representing themselves here or archetypes. What difference would it make to you, what would be added, if instead of Shimon the Righteous it were some other anonymous priest? Except that this is from Megillat Taanit, to explain why a certain day was established as a holiday or a bad day, and that is supposed to be a stronger historical source than aggadot.
In any case, one cannot leave entirely empty-handed, and inspired by this site here—or maybe from other places that wrote something like this—and from Rabbi Moshe Shapira and his circle, one might say that Shimon the Righteous represents a major stage in the assimilation of Greek modes of thought, conceptualization, analysis, and classification into Torah. Shimon was among the last of the Men of the Great Assembly, where there were prophets and the Torah came from above, and he is the first of whom it says, “He would say”—the Torah is his own, meaning that he already innovates in Torah on his own; that is, he analyzes principles and draws conclusions, and from classification and order new insights grow (like Rabbi Akiva in his time, who discovered new rules and from them generated many new details). But one must know that the conquering, attaining analytic power stands only on the legs of the synthetic power, for if there are no premises, where will consequences come from? And the root of that synthetic quality is in the Temple, which Shimon the Righteous went out to defend, because the Temple is the indwelling of the Divine Presence, and faith in the synthetic power depends entirely on faith in the exalted God.
At any rate, that’s what I can contribute from my memories of the literary suggestions that come up in the book Two Carts and a Hot-Air Balloon and in the lectures of Rabbi Moshe Shapira of blessed memory, and if I made a salad out of it, let the spice-masters come and season it.
No salad at all. Sharp, excellent points.
https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%A7%D7%98%D7%92%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%94:%D7%93%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99_%D7%94%D7%99%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9D_%D7%90_%D7%9B%D7%98_%D7%99%D7%93
Thanks. Regarding 2, I’m trying to find some idea or parable for why the Sages included this aggadah דווקא in this form and what it is meant to teach, and I’m not succeeding. It doesn’t seem likely that they just made it up to glorify and exalt Shimon the Righteous. Help me.