The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 29

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, that’s exactly the point, no. So matter—we said there are two… we defined this in the evening too—that in the sense of matter we’re using it here a bit differently. Maybe in this context it would be more accurate to use the term “the thing in itself,” as opposed to how it appears to my eyes. That’s what we called matter. That’s the Aristotelian meaning, not the Maharal’s meaning of matter. The Maharal really—in the Maharal, matter is the lower thing and form is the abstract thing. Right, matter is understood there like plain wood, and form is the way it becomes functional—it becomes a table; the idea, “tableness,” that is the form. Right? So for the Maharal matter is the lower thing, but for Aristotle matter is the higher thing, the thing in itself, in Kant’s terminology for example. Okay? So that is creation—that’s what I mean, creation. So these are really the worlds, these are really the three worlds, and emanation is the divinity that actually creates these things.

Now there are a few important comments here that you have to pay attention to. First, the fact that form is an existing thing—it is not an abstraction. That’s what we said earlier about wisdom too: the Torah is not wisdom but actual light. And all forms as well—we spoke in the evening about the existence of concepts, right? The existence of concepts is something real. It isn’t a creation that exists only in human thought. It is something real. We spoke, for example, about the concept of the good; we already mentioned it among the examples, if I even remember anymore what I said and what I didn’t. Concepts and forms are something real; they are not human abstractions.

Usually people relate to it as though the only thing that exists is the substance, and we divide it intellectually into matter and form—but those are human abstractions. Here you see no: there are three worlds, three worlds, all of them spiritual, and all three are existing worlds, perhaps even more real than our world. The world of creation exists. The world of formation also exists in itself. And the world of action is a combination of the two. But form is not an abstraction; form is something real. It is simply a higher world, which is basically Plato’s world of ideas. Plato’s world of ideas is a world of forms.

Right? Which we’ve already seen a few times. The Nazir also spoke about this several times—that in Kabbalah, the world of formation is Plato’s world of ideas. And he notes that here too. This is Rabbi Azariah min ha-Adumim’s mistake: he identifies Plato’s world of ideas with the world of emanation, and the Nazir here corrects him—this is not right; it is the world of formation. These are the forms, simply horseness. Where does horseness exist? Right? The abstract forms, before they are clothed in a body—that is in the world of formation, not in the world of emanation. The world of creation is what he earlier perhaps called the logos behind the ideas, what lies beyond. Plato’s world of ideas is the world of formation. What the Alexandrians inserted—a logos behind the world of ideas—that is the world of creation, and emanation and everything above that.

Now beyond that, in the Kabbalistic conception, if you go higher up—and this is just important to know in the same context—the Kabbalistic worlds do not end with emanation. Above emanation there is Primordial Man, and above that there is the world of line and contraction, and after that the world of the Infinite. That’s it. After that there is only His blessed essence, and we do not speak of that. But what is the world of line and contraction? The world of line and contraction is place—the concept of place. It is the place within which, in Kabbalah, for example, what is contraction? It cleared a place. The Infinite Light withdrew, and within that the world was created, and that is the place of the world.

But in Kabbalah, once again, place is not an abstraction, where we think there is such a thing as abstract place even before anything inhabits it. The concept of place in itself. Human thought too, especially since Kant, relates to space and time as abstract concepts, forms of the human way of viewing reality. But there is no space and time in reality itself. In Kabbalah that is not true. Space too is a world that exists in itself. We, of course, know space as something filled with objects, or as a way of arranging objects. But everything we know has a spiritual root that exists in itself. It is not an abstraction.

[Speaker B] It’s not abstract.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not relations between things; these are entities. Place is a thing, a spiritual entity. It is not a relation between one thing and another, that the thing is located in a place. No, place is itself a thing. Not just a way of relating to things—it is a thing in itself. The world of line and contraction is place as it exists, place itself. Okay? I don’t want to expand on this too much; it’s just a continuation of what we just said, that the world of formation means that forms too are not abstractions; they are something real.

If you go higher up, then you see that place—which too is usually considered an abstraction, as we said before, space and time are human forms of perception of the world, not things that really exist in the world—here that is not right. Space is something that exists: place, the concept of abstract place. And from it, of course, in the downward chain of emanation, the lower concepts of place are derived. And therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, is called “the Place.” He is the place within which the world exists. So ostensibly it sounds as though He serves the world, that He is lower than it—but that is not true. The place of a thing—and Leshem discusses this at length—the place of something is a higher thing than the thing itself. Exactly. It is the condition for the thing’s existence.

Right, just as in Kabbalah, even though a vessel contains the light, it is lower than it. A vessel is coarser than the light.

[Speaker B] But it enables—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the light to become individuated, to be something in itself—and yes, that’s true. The light inside the vessel is now something separate. If there were no vessel, then the light would certainly exist, but it would not be individuated as a separate entity. Our soul too—its entering into a body is what turns us into a separate entity, a personality in its own right. The soul, when it is above, is much more elusive to define as a separate entity. Of course even there it is still a separate entity, because there are spiritual vessels. The concept of vessel also keeps ascending and becoming more refined. A sefirah is also a vessel; a sefirah is vessels. In every sefirah there are vessels, and within them there are lights. But only because there are vessels there can we relate to the lights as the lights of one particular sefirah, as distinct from the lights of another sefirah—only because each one is in a different vessel.

So the vessel is always the means by which I create my own entityhood. In our case that is a body. On higher planes these are subtler bodies, but they are still bodies. Wherever one speaks of characteristics, of things, of something—once you begin to describe anything besides the Infinite—everywhere else there are already vessels. Because otherwise you cannot define anything at all. A vessel is always what makes a thing be that thing. If you speak of a sefirah, if you speak of a limb of Primordial Man, if you speak of something—you have thereby said that there is a vessel there. Because if there is no vessel, it is just the simple Infinite Light filling the whole world; you cannot speak of anything, meaning there is no separate entity there. Okay?

Now let’s read note 64 for a moment. Just quickly. “The four worlds were first explained in Masekhet Atzilut, printed…” etc. It is written in Isaiah: “Everyone who is called by My name, and for My glory I created him, I formed him, indeed I made him.” This teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, created four worlds: emanation—and there is His glory. This is the glory of the Holy One, blessed be He. Remember? Not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire—the Lord. That is perhaps one of the… he spoke there about Elijah—it is also these four worlds. “The Lord” is emanation. That is His glorious name.

“I created him”—that is the world of creation; there are the souls of the righteous, and there is the Throne of Glory. “I formed him”—that is the world of formation; there are the ten classes of ministering angels; Sarafiel is appointed over them. Samuel is actually the prince of the world of creation, not of formation. We’ll see that on the next page. “And Metatron reigns over them.” There is a difference between “reigns” and “is appointed over.” What does “Metatron reigns over them” mean? It means the kingship of the world above them. The lowest part of the world above them is the king of the lower world. What? There is overlap between them.

[Speaker B] There is overlap between them, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Ancient of Days of the lower world is connected to the kingship of the upper world. “Indeed I made him”—the world of action. According to Yashar of Delmedigo, fine. Well, let’s read it anyway. According to Yashar Delmedigo, this means the four elements and the things composed of them, including the heavenly spheres and all physical bodies and the forces in them, such as the vegetative soul and the sentient soul. The world of formation includes the souls that govern human bodies, and the souls and movers of the stars, and those appointed over them, who, although they are not material, are occupied with materiality. The world of creation is the world of separate intellects, which the materialist philosophers did not understand.

The materialist philosophers are the philosophers of matter. Shin-samekh often appears that way. “Masa’im” here means with a samekh—mass, what pertains to mass. And the materialist philosophers cannot understand what separate intellects are, because they deal with matter; they do not understand that there is existence that is not matter. As we said before, all forms are understood by them as human abstractions. There is no thing that is not matter and yet truly exists. All the other things are abstractions.

Interesting—what is the root of their confusion? It seems to me that the root of their confusion is exactly the confusion between the two concepts of matter we spoke about earlier. We said there are two concepts of matter: the Maharalian concept and the Aristotelian concept. Right? The Maharal understands matter as the thick, coarse thing, the thing—

[Speaker B] the lowest thing, where the purpose of the form is to raise it upward. The form that makes the material into a table raises it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right? So in that sense matter is indeed a low thing, and that’s how the materialist philosophers understand it. That’s how they understand the concept of matter. But there is another concept of matter. The concept of matter we discussed as the world of creation: the thing in itself, the matter of the thing as distinct from its form. The fact of the thing’s being a thing. So here, already at the level of the matter of the table, it doesn’t need form in order to be a table. The form is just how this thing appears to my eyes. The wood itself—that’s the Maharalian matter; that is something else, that’s—

[Speaker B] part of the form. Hm? Is that part of the form?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s part of the form, the matter of form, let’s call it; it doesn’t matter. It’s a different concept of matter.

[Speaker B] A different concept of matter—that’s the Maharalian concept of matter.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not talking about that right now in this division. But both of these concepts are concepts that stand in contrast to form. That’s why both are called matter. And the materialist philosophers understand matter in the Maharalian sense. And they understand that matter is a low thing. They cannot understand that separate intellects are also matter. The world of creation is the world of separate intellects, which the materialist philosophers did not understand.

What don’t the materialist philosophers understand? Not the world of formation. The world of formation they understand more—still not fully, but more. Plato too understood that the world of formation exists. There is a world of ideas. He understood that. The world of creation nobody understood. Why not? Because the world of creation is the entity that precedes form. That too is a concept of matter—but not low matter, rather high matter. That the philosophers of matter cannot understand.

[Speaker B] It’s just that in the concept of matter, no—but it’s—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but there is something shared between them. Because when you strip form away from the table, the Maharal will say that what remains is just some lowly and stupid log of wood. Aristotle will say that what remains is the table itself, apart from how it appears to my eyes, apart from its relation to me. And both of these concepts of matter are built from abstracting the form out of the thing. And you are left with two things—you really are left with two things. The question is which one you are looking at. The materialist philosophers are looking at the lower thing.

[Speaker B] The table is something that can be a table even without—yes, the table in itself. An abstraction—that also wasn’t, what? Like before the idea? No, obviously.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The idea is the form. The idea of table is its form. That is tableness. I’m talking about this table, not tableness. Tableness is the theoretical form of a table. When you wrap it around some log of wood, a table is created. Okay? That is tableness—that is the world of formation. I’m talking there about this very table itself. This very table itself exists independently of the form of how exactly I see it. Not that it would receive some different form, but that right now I am not relating to its formal aspects, but to it itself. What does it mean to be this specific table—not tableness, but what is this specific table? What is it, its own entity, its own essence. Okay? Not tableness. I’m speaking about a substance, not a concept. Do you understand what I mean? Yes. You can—but it’s hard to grasp.

[Speaker B] There is—look, you—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] can abstract this table in two ways. You can say it has an abstract form of tableness, and when that descends and wraps itself around some log of wood, a table is created, right? And you can say, fine, but now I have a table in front of my eyes, right? Now I ask: this table itself is composed—not even composed—it itself is an entity that exists in itself even if I do not observe it. Even if I were looking in other ways and then perhaps I would see it as red or without color at all, or triangular rather than square. Right? So the table itself precedes its forms. Its forms arise only from the interactions of the table with me. Understand? That is what I’m talking about as matter. Okay? Not tableness. Tableness is an abstract form, something else, shared by all tables. This very table itself is something that makes only this table what it is, not that one. It has something else—its selfhood is something else. Do you understand what I’m saying? Tableness is shared by both of them. The same tabular form applies here to two matters and created from them two concepts. Do you get it?

So the materialist philosophers grasp the concept of matter in the lower sense. The Maharal here—this manifestation is less spiritual, as it were, although with matter he also grasped the other side, but that’s what he called matter; that isn’t what he took as the terminology for the other side. But for the materialist philosophers it’s not just terminology—that is the only thing that exists. Meaning, the other things simply do not exist for them; they are abstractions, just what we talked about before. Place is an abstraction, forms are abstractions, everything—all abstract concepts are abstractions; they do not really exist in the world. That is what the materialist philosophers cannot grasp, and therefore their real problem is with the world of creation, not the world of formation.

That is what he says here: the world of creation is the world of separate intellects, which the materialist philosophers did not understand. Because in the world of creation, as we explained before, this is the world in which the thing exists before its form, in itself. Okay? The world of things in themselves. And that too exists; it is not an abstraction. And it is the most real thing, not just that it also exists.

Here too, in note 65, he brings from Rabbi Azariah min ha-Adumim—what’s the title there? He brings from Rabbi Azariah min ha-Adumim—

[Speaker B] in the book—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Me’or Einayim, who also speaks somewhat about the Kabbalistic worlds. So he said: “Like a skilled craftsman in his imagination”—this is the demiurge, right? Of Philo. “The craftsman” is the demiurge—that’s his title in Greek. “Yedidya Alexandroni” is Philo, right? So Philo often speaks of the Holy One, blessed be He, as a demiurge, as some kind of craftsman who made the world like a work of art.

What he says is: “Like a wise craftsman who first engraves within his soul the image of the whole building and only afterward brings it into being.” Right? First you make some sort of plan in the soul; afterward some theoretical image sits there of what you want to create, and then you create. In its image, in its likeness. Right? You make what you do in the image of what sits in your intellect—you produce it outside the intellect. So too, God, blessed be He, emanated within the essence of His intellect the intellectual world, and from it the perceptible world was founded.

And Rabbi Azariah min ha-Adumim adds: “The intellectual world, in my view, is what the sages of truth call the world of emanation and the sefirot.” That is Rabbi Azariah min ha-Adumim. So that is a mistake. Because this intellectual world, this world of forms, what we called earlier—that is the world of formation, not the world of emanation. That is what he says here: more precisely, one should say the world of formation, the forms, in whose image the world of action is engraved. That is Plato’s world of ideas. That is the world of forms. The world of emanation is not that at all. It’s something else entirely. It is basically the logos behind the ideas, not the world of ideas. The world of ideas is formation. The logos behind the ideas is creation, emanation, and all that is beyond. Right—emanation is another level entirely. Right, emanation is already divinity; it is even the essence of the thing, in the mystery of divinity, the world beyond.

So in fact from the world of creation and upward, a second kind of logic is needed in order to grasp it. That is basically the summary. Up to the world of formation, Plato also reached. The world of formation is what, for Plato, is the world of ideas. And Plato too understood that the world of ideas is not an abstraction; ideas are something real. Meaning, one can already arrive at that even with a Platonic intellect.

[Speaker B] Even here we’ve already spoken many times about the fact that Plato… that it exists is one thing; to see separate intellects is something else.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To see separate intellects you have to be a prophet. I don’t know how one sees, but first of all, to understand that it is not an abstraction but something real—that too is an achievement, because human beings generally do not grasp it that way. Plato did grasp it that way. And in that sense he is often seen as very close to Judaism in many respects. Non-Jews too say that Plato was influenced by Judaism—or that he influenced it, depending on whom you ask and from which direction—but clearly there are Jewish influences in Plato.

[Speaker B] And Pythagoras, etc.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Pythagoras too—Pythagoras was his student, I think, and he created various mystical sects; we already saw that. They even had commandments, right? They also had practical commandments they practiced, and those commandments are very reminiscent of our commandments in the Torah. Maybe some of you weren’t here yet when we spoke about this; I’m saying it approximately.

[Speaker B] So there was the First Temple exile—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right?

[Speaker B] approximately.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I heard someone connect it. What?

[Speaker B] I heard someone connect it. Connect what? The First Temple exile to the appearance of Aristotle and—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, of course, that is the withdrawal of prophecy. The withdrawal of prophecy is exactly the appearance of philosophy. As a teacher to his son. It is well known in history. So Alexander the Great also appears in the Talmud. Alexander? Certainly yes. It says there that he met Shimon HaTzaddik. Shimon HaTzaddik was the first one who began the Oral Torah. Right? The first sage whose saying is quoted in his name in chapter 1 of Pirkei Avot is Shimon HaTzaddik. He was one of the last of the Men of the Great Assembly, where there were still prophets, and he is considered the beginning of the Oral Torah.

Meaning that Alexander the Great, when he studied with Aristotle, spread Greek wisdom in the world, and at exactly that same time prophecy ceased in Israel and the Oral Torah began. And it’s no wonder that when Alexander came to the Land, we spoke about this, right? When Alexander came to the Land, he said to the companions who came with him: when he saw Shimon HaTzaddik, he got down from his horse and bowed to him. Shimon HaTzaddik came out to meet him, as the Talmud says. So Alexander said that the image of this man used to go before me and grant me victory in all my wars.

The Oral Torah was the reason Greek wisdom had to spread throughout the world. Because in the Oral Torah we make use of Greek wisdom. The analytic intellect is Greek wisdom. In the Oral Torah we learn in a way that is, in many respects, Greek wisdom. And therefore the spread of the Oral Torah in the world was necessary in order to pave the way for the Oral Torah.

[Speaker B] What was there before the Oral Torah?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There was an Oral Torah, but not in the sense we know today. It was more—it was all more from the Torah of the Written Torah, because there was still intuitive understanding. It was not all the casuistry and analysis and the investigative, analytical intellect.

[Speaker B] There could have been different things, there were other understandings; maybe once they didn’t wear—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] phylacteries like ours.

[Speaker B] That too could be. And then Maimonides says that this is the Torah—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the same Torah, okay, they understand it. Maimonides himself writes in the Laws of Rebels that if there is a Sanhedrin that derives through the thirteen principles, for example, a completely different Jewish law at the Torah level from the Jewish law derived by an earlier Sanhedrin, then they cancel what the earlier Sanhedrin said—and yes, this is called a changed Torah, and yet it is not, because it is not changed. The Torah is not changed, but what you understand in the Torah—that is the Torah. The Torah is a text. But what you do is the result of what you understand in the Torah. Of course the question is who can do this, who is authorized for this. The Sanhedrin, the Great Court, is authorized to do it, and even if it goes against matters involving karet, against an earlier court—if it understands the opposite, then it acts oppositely. And that is the Torah, and that is a binding Torah-level law—according to how the sages understood it in the Torah, that is Torah-level law, that is how they understood what is written in the Torah. All right, we’re drifting a bit.

The mode of construction from creation upward requires a change. Up to formation, Plato also grasped it. That is the summary. It is interesting to note here that there is a problem—I saw it in Leshem, and I think others also struggled with it—that the world of creation is in a very problematic state from the standpoint of Kabbalistic description. Because usually they describe it as: up to emanation is divinity, and creation, formation, and action—even have a common acronym, BYA. Right? This is considered as though it were one unit, all the separate worlds.

Now, it is known that there is a parallel between worlds and partzufim in Kabbalah. Meaning there are partzufim—Abba, Imma, Ze’ir Anpin, and Nukva, and Arikh; Arikh above Abba and Imma, then Abba and Imma, Ze’ir Anpin and Nukva—five partzufim. Corresponding to this there are five worlds: BYA, emanation, and Primordial Man. Right? And according to this calculation, Primordial Man corresponds to Arikh Anpin, emanation corresponds to Abba, creation corresponds to Imma, formation corresponds to Ze’ir Anpin, and action corresponds to Nukva. Right?

So it comes out that formation and action stand in a relationship of, say, male and female between them, and creation and emanation stand in a relationship of male and female between them, of father and mother. It says in the Zohar that this is even a constant coupling. They are constantly in a relationship of influence, Abba and Imma. Unlike Ze’ir Anpin and Nukva, which depends on our actions. Our actions determine only how much they draw from one another, but Abba and Imma are in constant coupling.

So what comes out here is something very strange, because it turns out that the world of creation is in the closest possible relationship with the world of emanation, not with the worlds of formation and action. This contradicts all the intuitions, for anyone who has studied Kabbalah a bit—it really contradicts all the intuitions. Creation, formation, and action are supposedly one unit of the separate worlds. What does this have to do with it? Emanation is already divinity. How is it that this coupling is created, where creation goes with emanation and formation goes with action?

[Speaker B] Maybe because existence—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] has to come after creation, not before creation. So the point we see here is that in many respects creation is already also divinity. And Leshem himself elaborates there that even, for example, there are five partzufim, five worlds, five parts of the soul: nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, and yechidah. How many parts… are inside the body? Nefesh, ruach, and neshamah. Nefesh in the liver, ruach in the heart, and neshamah in the brain. Leshem says: the neshamah is actually not in the brain; it is outside the brain. It belongs above, to chayah and yechidah; it connects upward. It has some tiny heel, as it were, whose lower end is in the brain.

And exactly the same thing: the world of creation too has some aspect that belongs to the separate worlds, which is why it is paired with formation and action, but in truth most of it, its primary essence, really belongs above. That is exactly what we are seeing here too. It belongs to the audible worlds, the worlds that can be heard. Formation and action are the visual worlds. Therefore the usual division between creation, formation, and action versus everything above is a somewhat superficial division. Exactly like the division between nefesh, ruach, neshamah—NRN—and chayah and yechidah is also a superficial division. The neshamah really belongs above in its essence. The third always also belongs to what is above. Imma clearly belongs to Abba, right? That is the third partzuf. Creation is the third world; ostensibly it belongs below, but no—it belongs above, it belongs to the audible worlds, to emanation. Neshamah is the third among the parts of the soul; it too belongs above, it is not inside the body.

And that is basically the root of what he says here, that this belongs to the audible worlds—the world of creation—as distinct from formation, which is Plato’s grasp. Okay, section 32. What is the world of emanation? He explains here—maybe this too is worth it; we mentioned it once—from the language of “and I will draw from the spirit,” or from the language of “beside the altar.” Why is it called emanation? Because the Infinite Light is beside it, and it is connected with it in the manner of “He and His instruments are one,” not merely that an illumination from Him is within it and gives it life as in the separate worlds. Therefore it is called emanation. Emanation from the word “beside,” from the word “and I will draw from.”

And creation is the becoming of things, right? That is exactly what we said earlier—their becoming being, creation ex nihilo. “Becoming” here does not mean making them happenings, but making them existents. Formation is denser and revealed more—now this is already the placing of form. Form is the way in which it is revealed, right? Action is the greatest density of things. That is already how they exist here, substance as we know it. That is the note here.

[Speaker B] And in the thought that when a person dies, then the soul remains because it is… lacking in matter and form.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ruach and nefesh are actually the spiritual parts of the person, not neshamah.

[Speaker B] In Kabbalistic terms, these are the parts—ruach and nefesh—when a person dies, do they perhaps disappear? Because that is the realization of the body and its idea, but I—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] think they enter into the neshamah, because they become elevated to the level of neshamah. They do not disappear, but become refined. But they no longer exist as ruach and nefesh on the same level they had before. He says, “And there the world of creation”—I’m reading further in the note below, under section 32; this is a note that belongs to the previous section—what was his name, “and there the world of creation is called the Throne of Glory; among the sages of the Zohar, kursaya.” The world of creation is called the Throne of Binah, the chair upon which Binah sits. What is Binah? Binah is Imma in the world of emanation, right? Chokhmah is Abba, we spoke about this; Binah is Imma. That is the female aspect, right? And exactly this too is what we explained before: that the world of creation is the female aspect of the world of emanation, coupled with the world of emanation, and therefore it is called the Throne of Binah.

And after the throne, which is the Throne of Glory, there are ten classes of angels—these are the ten sefirot, right, of the world of creation. Metatron, the angel, prince of the Presence, is appointed over them—and it is called—sorry, the ten classes of angels are the ten sefirot of the world of formation. Metatron, the angel, prince of the Presence, is appointed over them, which is still the kingship of the world above them. And that is called the world of formation, and after it comes action.

And there he afterward discusses the question of what Metatron is. So he says maybe it is with a yod, without a yod, borrowed from Greek, he says here—maybe, okay, that is mentioned above. It is called above, it is more connected to what is above. So let’s begin with section 32. “The world of formation—its prince’s foreign name is Metat, Metatron.” It is a name taken from a foreign language. That is exactly what we just stopped reading. Metatron is taken from Greek; there are some arguments over exactly from what. There are different translations here, and you can see them in the note below. One meaning is a scribe who sits behind the king’s throne to write. That is the Greek meaning of the word Metatron. Right behind the king’s throne, behind the Throne of Binah, the throne of Binah, there sits the scribe, and he brings the king’s words down below, disseminates the king’s words below.

And below he brings still someone else, and some explain that the lamed-yod is from the language of Greece. And some explain from the Greek “metator,” meaning an intermediary, a messenger who goes before the king. And so Nachmanides explained in Exodus 12:12, “I and not by means of an agent,” and Nachmanides explains: it is the angel… and that angel is therefore called Metatron, because the meaning of the word is guide. And so I heard that “messenger” in Greek is “metator.” And some explain from the language of Rome that it means an officer who goes before the army to scout out rest and lodging for them, a quartermaster—or whatever exactly to call it, something like that. That really is the connection.

[Speaker B] It really is the connection between the governance—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] between divinity, the heavenly worlds, and our world. So now let’s return upward. “The world of formation, whose prince is Le’uzi.” Why does it have a prince called Le’uzi? Why is the name of the prince of the world of formation Le’uzi? We said before that Plato too already grasped the world of formation. This is not a world whose root is Jewish, right? It is not capable of the holiness of Israel. It rules only on weekdays or in exile, like the visions of Ezekiel, which were in the world of forms and were in exile. This is the Platonic world, as we discussed earlier.

Above that is the world of creation, the world of novelty, the Throne of Binah. He brings it here: the seat of Binah, which is the source-quarry of the soul of Israel. We spoke earlier that the souls of the righteous are in the world of creation, which is renewed in the holiness of the Sabbath and the Jewish holidays and in the Land of Israel. The world of creation—we’ll come back to this shortly. The world of creation—its prince is Samuel or Shemu’el, “for he is beyond every image and form.” He no longer has form. In the world of creation there are no forms. Formation is forms; creation is matter before form. “For the world of Binah is heard.”

I said this earlier, but he says it only here: that the world of creation belongs to the audible worlds. Ostensibly until this paragraph we explained that from emanation and up is hearing. The logos behind the ideas was emanation, not creation. Here he says: if you sharpen it further, it is the world of creation. This is all that we said earlier—that the neshamah is like this, the world of creation is like this, and hearing, creation and the upper five—what was it? Binah, Imma. “The world of Binah is heard; it is not known by way of higher seeing, but is heard with the ear of the higher Binah, which is designated for prophetic auditory logic. Samuel is designated to the source of Hebrew wisdom.”

So that’s what he says below; he brings it here in the notes—never mind all the notes right now—but in sum what he says here is that the world of formation rules only on weekdays. That’s how he starts here—on weekdays or in exile, like the visions of Ezekiel. Ezekiel was the only prophet who prophesied in exile, by the rivers of Babylon. So essentially that belongs to the world of formation. That is a prophet who draws from the world of formation. The world of creation is the world that rules on the Sabbath, the world in which basically all days are Sabbath.

Why? What is the difference between Sabbath and weekday? Sabbath is, as it were, the soul of Israel, whereas the weekdays in fact also belong to the nations. The nations have no Sabbath, but everyone has weekdays. So in that sense one can understand why weekdays belong to the nations. Now this also has another meaning, for example, in the sense that because these are the days of action? Because these are no longer days of action? Right—it is not days of action. These are abstract things, things like rest, things where you do not see anything before you, everything is at rest, everything is still. It is something that you need to listen in order to understand that there is also something behind it. And therefore it is a world that is overtly Jewish. And this even has Jewish legal implications.

[Speaker B] A non-Jew who keeps the Sabbath is liable to death. And that belongs to the world of creation? Wasn’t Sabbath not ex nihilo?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but this rest, this absence, is itself creation. Beit HaLevi talks about this—Beit HaLevi on the Torah discusses this—that on the Sabbath the state was renewed from which things have been coming to us continually, namely that the world exists as it is. That too is a state that was renewed; the world was renewed on the Sabbath.

[Speaker B] The state was renewed in which the world is not renewed?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, this stasis too is something real, because it expresses certain dynamics taking place in depth. We rest in order to gather strength. So what does it mean to rest in order to gather strength? Something is happening, some primordial potentiality—something is happening when we rest. We gather strength. I spoke about this in a “Friday of the month of Cheshvan” in Meitav—on the new moon of Cheshvan I gave a talk that Cheshvan is a month without holidays, nothing seems to happen in it. In terms of winter, nothing happens in it. Winter has already passed, summer has not yet arrived, there are—

[Speaker B] no holidays in it, no events in it, nothing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Dry. Nothing grows in it, nothing. But everything is hidden beneath the surface. Beneath the surface, the rainwater will irrigate—

[Speaker B] the earth, and things already begin to grow.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s like resting and storing energy. So rest is something that hides a great deal behind it. And one has to know how to silence the activity so that the things behind it can quietly develop. Is everything for the sake of action, or is there—? That is another discussion. There is one aspect like that and another aspect like that. There is an aspect in which one lives the weekdays for the sake of the Sabbath, and there is an aspect in which the Sabbath serves weekday life. Nice. In certain respects that is the dispute between Hillel and Shammai—that is really their dispute; you know Rabbi Zevin’s article.

[Speaker B] Hillel would permit teaching a trade on the Sabbath. He saw that as a kind of—when he saw it as a kind of—when there is a commandment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Shammai, by contrast, every animal he found during the week he would save for the Sabbath. Why? That is exactly the difference. The question is what is primary—the potential or the actual, right? You know Rabbi Zevin’s article. There is a book, Le’or HaHalakhah, by Rabbi Zevin. There is an article there called—fascinating article, worth reading. He analyzes the positions of Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel across many of their disputes, and he shows that the root of the dispute is that Beit Hillel follows the actual, and Beit Shammai the potential. And you see it running through like a thread—wonderful article. I don’t remember whether he brings this example, but it’s a good example of it.

For Beit Shammai, the main thing is the Sabbath. The weekdays are wholly for the purpose of the Sabbath. Sabbath is the potential; on the Sabbath everything rests, only the potential operates. For Beit Hillel, the main thing is the weekdays, as you said. It is permitted to teach a trade on the Sabbath; one rests on the Sabbath for the sake of the weekdays. Also with the festival bulls or with the Hanukkah light, for example—is it descending or ascending? It depends whether you follow what is in potential or what is in actual. And several more of their disputes too. Is it better for a person to have been created or not created? There are many disputes of theirs that basically are stitched onto that same line.

This conception of Sabbaths or festivals—stasis versus dynamism—has several Jewish legal ramifications as well. On the Sabbath there is also a time axis, but it is a different time axis from that of the weekdays.

[Speaker B] Did you speak about this once?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I commented on it several times; I no longer remember where and why and when. So if it sounds familiar, fine. One aspect, for example, is “since it was set aside.” On the Sabbath and on a holiday there is “since it was set aside.” What does that mean? Something that is muktzeh at twilight immediately becomes muktzeh for the whole Sabbath. Why?

[Speaker B] What do you mean—if a thing is visible, visible at twilight, then it isn’t muktzeh?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that follows automatically. Everything is permitted on the Sabbath; only what became—what became prohibited is what was prohibited at twilight.

[Speaker B] So it suddenly becomes one unit?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, because the whole Sabbath is one unit of time. The standard understanding of “since it was set aside” is not like that. Baal HaMaor, and following him all the later authorities, understand “since it was set aside” very simply: since you didn’t prepare—if you didn’t prepare the object by twilight, which is simply the onset of the Sabbath—then if it was not ready by then, it is no longer ready, and so it is prohibited. There is nothing special about twilight; it is simply the moment when the Sabbath began, and one can no longer prepare objects so that they will not be muktzeh.

But there are medieval authorities (Rishonim)—you could say it is a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim)—from whom one can prove that the conception is different. The conception is that once you touched the Sabbath at one moment, you touched all of it. The Sabbath is one unit of time; therefore there is “since it was set aside.”

[Speaker B] A practical difference, for example, whether on the second day of a holiday there is “since it was set aside” because of the day that passed.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is one of the practical differences: whether we say “since it was set aside” because of the day that passed, or not.

[Speaker B] In a case where someone forgot a quorum, etc.?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not with someone who forgot about a quorum. I brought another example about someone who keeps the Sabbath. It says in the midrash: someone who keeps the Sabbath, Scripture considers it as though he kept all the Sabbaths from the creation of the world to its end, from the beginning of the world to its end. Because it is the same Sabbath. Because it is the same Sabbath. We are basically living on a lower time axis, the time axis of the world of action or formation, the Gentile time axis where time flows little by little. What happens on the Sabbath? It is not that suddenly something else now happens. We simply leave the train for one day, and it keeps going. The nations keep living as usual. We, for one day, leave this axis and rise upward to some point where time—

[Speaker B] stands still, maybe therefore to a point that is one unit.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now, one second—then we come back down, keep running for another six days, go up again—but we go up to the same point. Because these are different points on the running axis, on the axis of the world of action, but when we go up above, there we are in the same place. Sabbath is one creation, one spiritual creation. There are not many Sabbaths; there is only one Sabbath. It is just that in our intersection with our normal time axis, once every six days we rise up to it.

[Speaker B] So maybe that’s why the reason can exist that if one kept one Sabbath it is as though he kept many Sabbaths? Because it’s the same thing—you kept this Sabbath.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s also a responsum of Maharam of Rothenburg there in Moed Katan. There’s a question there about what happens if a minor comes of age during the Sabbath. So Maharam of Rothenburg says that he is obligated to observe the rest of the Sabbath. He grew two pubic hairs on Sabbath morning, so he has to keep the Sabbath for the remainder of that same Sabbath. They ask about him there: that’s obvious—why shouldn’t he be obligated? In any case, while discussing the issue of deferral with regard to commandments, he brings proof from there that there is no deferral with regard to commandments. And the Rosh doesn’t understand—he challenges Maharam of Rothenburg, who was his teacher—and the Rosh asks him: what’s the connection at all? What does deferral have to do with this? What, is my obligation to keep the Sabbath on Sabbath afternoon based on what was there earlier? If that were so, then it would make sense to talk about deferral with regard to commandments. But the simple understanding is that at every single moment I’m obligated to keep it. It doesn’t draw from what was before. This moment was never deferred for me; I was deferred at another moment. So what does that have to do with anything? Here there’s a conception that all the moments are one single unit. Maharam of Rothenburg holds that if I was deferred during part of the Sabbath, then I was deferred from it. It’s not that afterward there’s another part of the Sabbath; the whole Sabbath is one unit. This is the time-axis of the world of creation. This is the time-axis over which Samuel rules, from the language of hearing. The world of creation is only heard—this is the Jewish time-axis. In it, time does not really advance, as it were: “and I will grant you passage among those who stand.” Yes, and the angels are considered as standing in the world of creation.

[Speaker B] Meaning, that’s in the world of creation—that’s what he’s saying here, right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So in the world of creation—and this is also true in time—it’s the Sabbath as opposed to weekdays, and in space it’s the Land of Israel as opposed to outside the Land. What he says here is that the world of formation rules only on weekdays or in exile, as Ezekiel says. Above that is the world of creation, the world of renewal, the throne of understanding, which is the source from which the soul of the Jewish people is hewn, renewed in the holiness of Sabbath and Jewish holidays—that’s in terms of time—and in the Land of Israel in terms of space. In terms of space, what belongs to the world of creation is the Land of Israel. In terms of time, it is the Sabbath and Jewish holidays. Yes, also in time, in space—someone who lives in the Land of Israel always lives in the world of creation. But on the time-axis, you only jump there on Sabbaths and Jewish holidays. At one point I had some conceptual inquiry whether this applies on holidays too or only on the Sabbath. I’m a bit undecided about that, though it seems simple that it applies on holidays too. Aggadah is difficult, so it’s certainly true.

[Speaker B] This also applies to people, right? People always say that on Yom Kippur you have the holiest person in the holiest place at the most exalted time.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, the priests on Yom Kippur—I don’t know whether they belong to creation; I’m not familiar with statements about that. But even with a priest it’s clear that there are such dimensions among people as well. Now, a learned Torah scholar who is a mamzer takes precedence over an ignorant high priest, so I don’t know by what that is determined. I don’t know what the relation is between the holiness of wisdom and the innate holiness of the priest. Now he sums up the article: “We thus learn that the light of the visible world in the imagination of prophetic vision and beyond—the imagination that likens itself to the higher world, invisible and unforeseeable, heard from within it”—which by now we already know means the world of creation and emanation and everything above that—“is directed toward the unique human quality of the prophetic, auditory Hebrew logic.” One more note here: here he already ties it together a bit—“the prophetic, auditory Hebrew logic.” There’s some connection here between this prophetic capacity and the auditory Hebrew logic with which each one of us is endowed, even though we are not prophets. This auditory capacity—even though the prophet uses visual means. And we are speaking about an auditory Hebrew logic that every Jew is supposed to use, not only a prophet. It seems that wisdom itself has some root in prophecy, even though these are ostensibly two different disciplines. And people discuss which is preferable and which is not, and so on—but Hebrew wisdom too is not like the wisdom of the nations; it too draws from the root of prophecy. That is the auditory Hebrew logic. Therefore, as we said earlier, when the Greeks arrived in the First Temple period, another kind of wisdom entered the world, right? So prophecy ceased. Because non-Jewish wisdom is not compatible with prophecy. Until that period, wisdom too looked different—not only prophecy. People also studied Torah; they weren’t prophesying all the time. How many prophets were there? Everyone else studied Torah. But their learning was a kind of learning that was prophetic in character. And wisdom too looked different when prophets were walking around in the world.

[Speaker B] But prophecy is the visual mode, isn’t it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that’s exactly what I’m saying. That’s the point he’s innovating here, despite the fact that until now we always separated prophecy from wisdom. Prophecy is seeing; wisdom is perhaps listening, or intellect, or whatever it may be. But even within intellect, after all, we distinguished between two branches: the auditory and the visual. The auditory part of the intellect somehow draws from the prophetic power. I don’t know exactly how to explain that.

[Speaker B] But the auditory side is just one part, so it’s a weakened form of prophecy.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You could say, as we say, that we grasp things—

[Speaker B] And what about the visual side?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not exactly. It’s connected to the prophetic power. The prophetic power is expressed in a visual way, but apparently it is not entirely visual.

[Speaker B] The question is also what is connected to what. Is prophecy connected to the auditory side, or is the auditory side connected to visual wisdom? Within the auditory and the visual, what matters here is that the wisdom of Torah study is connected to the visuality of prophecy, and then prophecy is visual. Prophecy is visual, so then is the auditory side not auditory?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but prophecy, whose whole content is that it is visual, has additional dimensions in it. After the prophet sees the vision, as we said earlier, he also performs an act of interpretation. He equips himself with tools and carries out an act of interpretation. We compared those tools to the thirteen hermeneutic principles, right? In the next article we’ll see that those thirteen principles are the rules of auditory logic. So at some level the prophet too performs an auditory act. True, beyond that, he performs this auditory act on visual data—but he is performing an auditory act here. And therefore, when there is a prophetic atmosphere in the world, wisdom too looks different. Those who study Torah also study it differently from the way other wisdoms are studied, because prophets are walking around in the world. When Greek wisdom took over the world following Alexander the Great—Alexander the Great, after all, was what’s called an enlightened ruler. He was a ruler whose goal was to spread Greek culture, not just to conquer for the sake of honor. And in fact he freed many slaves; he was a man who had aims somewhat like Napoleon in many respects. Napoleon was like that too. Napoleon spread many ideas of freedom and liberation, to the point that many monarchies collapsed and could not recover even after Napoleon was defeated. Because people had suddenly grasped the ideas of equality and liberation and were no longer willing to return to monarchy afterward. Alexander the Great was like that too. He was a kind of ruler whose purpose was to spread culture. And we usually relate to Greek culture as something tyrannical, something intended to oppress.

[Speaker B] But actually, a few minutes are missing from the lesson here. Our apologies.