The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 25
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Aesthetics and sight versus hearing
- Philosophers, kabbalists, and the four worlds
- Sight and hearing as the structure of the difference between philosophy and Kabbalah
- The view of Kabbalah as idolatry or as metaphor, and the criticism of the Leshem
- “From my flesh I behold God” and the direction of the metaphor from below to above
- A quotation about sight as intellectual apprehension and hearing as the unique mode of Torah
- Visual thinking, auditory thinking, and reading a book as hearing
- Negative attributes, positive attributes, and the meaning of “you shall see My back”
- Idolatry, the sin of the Golden Calf, and the need for visual concretization
- Primitiveness, spiritual senses, demons, and modern culture
- Science as a negative mode of apprehension, rules versus direct perception, and technology
- Torah study as training auditory logic and Torah intuition
- The Patriarchs, the state of the ancient world, and Kabbalah as tools that also appear outside Judaism
Summary
General Overview
The text draws a distinction between visual perception and auditory perception as modes of thought and cognition, and connects it to the difference between philosophy, which deals with created worlds, and Kabbalah, which introduces the world of Atzilut as an intermediary in which divinity is clothed in a way that allows positive attributes to be ascribed to it. It explains that philosophers arrive at negative attributes because sight, even when it means intellectual apprehension, works through comparison and form and cannot produce direct interaction with divinity, whereas hearing allows a kind of apprehension that is not image-based and therefore can bear unity and positive content. It goes on to argue that philosophical approaches to Kabbalah tend to see it either as idolatry or as mere metaphor, and it cites the Leshem as someone who sharply rejects this approach and presents Kabbalah as a real engagement with the upper worlds. From there it broadens into a cultural critique of the modern and scientific world as operating through negation and rules rather than direct perception, and describes how the loss of prophecy and the dulling of spiritual senses lead to attraction to charlatanism and to the search for “ancient wisdoms.”
Aesthetics and sight versus hearing
The text opens with an aesthetic description in which determining beauty can mean comparing a thing to its abstract idea through sight, or a non-comparative looking at the thing itself, which ultimately leads to the conclusion of listening rather than seeing. It states that sight is always thinking through images and comparisons, while hearing is thinking not through images. It presents hearing as a method that does not depend on an external picture but on a different kind of grasp of content.
Philosophers, kabbalists, and the four worlds
The text defines the philosophical worldview as one in which there is a created world and God, about whom one cannot speak except perhaps through negative attributes, as something separate and very far removed from the world. It defines the kabbalistic worldview as one in which there are intermediaries in that gap between the created world and divinity in the form of spiritual worlds. It arranges the worlds as four: Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, and states that Atzilut is a world in which the Infinite Light is clothed in the form of “He and His vessels are one,” like a soul within a body, and is therefore treated as actual divinity. It states that Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah are separate worlds that are not divinity, even though divinity animates them, and that the world of Atzilut fills the space between the created worlds and divinity, even if there are further levels such as Adam Kadmon, the line, and the contraction.
Sight and hearing as the structure of the difference between philosophy and Kabbalah
The text attributes to the Nazir the description that philosophers deal with Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, and therefore their mode of apprehension is visual, whereas Kabbalah also deals with Atzilut and therefore belongs to the method of hearing. It states that with respect to what lies beyond Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah there is no concept of sight, and such things are grasped through hearing. It interprets the saying that “where philosophy ends, Kabbalah begins” as meaning that philosophy ends with Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, and Kabbalah begins with the world of Atzilut, whose existence philosophy does not recognize.
The view of Kabbalah as idolatry or as metaphor, and the criticism of the Leshem
The text argues that when Kabbalah is approached with philosophical tools, it is understood either as idolatry, because it describes prayer through names that are sefirot in the world of Atzilut, or as mere metaphor, in which the world of Atzilut does not really exist but only serves to explain the governance of the lower world. It says that most kabbalists do not understand it that way, and notes that the Leshem elaborates in several places against that view, attacks Rabbi Hirtz / Rabbi Yonatan Hirtz of Jaffa quite sharply, and says that this is not Kabbalah but the study of thought. It states that according to the Leshem, Kabbalah means engaging with that world, not this one, even though there is a seal-and-imprint relationship and consequences from the upper to the lower.
“From my flesh I behold God” and the direction of the metaphor from below to above
The text states that the use of concepts from this world such as birth, union, and limbs is meant to help us understand what happens in the upper worlds, not because the upper worlds are a metaphor for the lower ones, but the opposite: the lower ones are a metaphor that helps us understand the upper ones. It identifies this with “from my flesh I behold God” among the kabbalists. It sharpens the point that the world of Atzilut is not a “thing about which” we say positive attributes, but is itself the collection of the positive things said about the Holy One, blessed be He—that is, His modes of governance and His positive descriptions.
A quotation about sight as intellectual apprehension and hearing as the unique mode of Torah
The text quotes that “seeing apprehends only a body in its appearance and form,” and that every seeing of man attributed in Scripture to the separate intellects, and all the more so to God, is not physical sight but intellectual apprehension, as Yonatan and Onkelos translated, followed by the Gaon Rabbeinu Saadia of blessed memory, and as Maimonides elaborated at the beginning of the Guide. It adds that the language used for Torah matters and divine unity is hearing: “Hear, O Israel.” It remarks that the idea of “spiritual colors” for the soul clarifies that the concept of sight also applies in spirituality as sight with the eyes of the spirit.
Visual thinking, auditory thinking, and reading a book as hearing
The text explains the distinction between thinking through mental images and thinking through words, and connects it to disputes cited from Rashba and Tosafot over whether thought is verbal. It argues that reading a book is hearing even though it is done with the eyes, because the book transmits words and consciousness produces the images from within, unlike watching a movie where the images are supplied from outside and taken in. It presents hearing as receiving words and understanding them, which may end in an internal image but does not begin as sight.
Negative attributes, positive attributes, and the meaning of “you shall see My back”
The text connects intellectual sight to the way philosophers arrive only at negative attributes regarding divinity, and interprets “you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen” as the limit at which sight can reach only what divinity is not. It adds that later, regarding Elijah, it is said that God, whose essence is hidden and not described by attributes of perfection except through negation, is in the still, small voice, and from this it follows that the hidden supreme being is not seen but rather heard by the prophetic auditory intellect. It explains that sight deals with form and image and therefore cannot claim direct interaction with divinity, which is why the visual method gets stuck in negation, whereas hearing allows a kind of apprehension from which positive content becomes possible through the world of Atzilut.
Idolatry, the sin of the Golden Calf, and the need for visual concretization
The text presents the root of idolatry as an attempt to concretize divinity in order to “see” it, and describes the sin of the Golden Calf as an attempt to materialize divinity out of the difficulty of sustaining a direct, subtle, non-visual connection. It argues that the philosopher recognizes divinity but does not recognize an auditory mode of access, so his means of access remain visual. It explains why kabbalistic language about hand, visage, light, beard, and names appears from the outside as idolatry, whereas in Kabbalah these are terms of discourse that do not generate a picture and are not literal limbs.
Primitiveness, spiritual senses, demons, and modern culture
The text argues that in “primitive” worlds in the positive sense, phenomena such as demons, spirits, harmful forces, and possessions are part of the fabric of life, and that dismissing them as hallucinations is sometimes the result of living in a lower world in which spiritual senses have become dull. It states that Western culture has erased spiritual capacities and therefore also opened the door to charlatans, because people no longer have the ability to test and discern. It presents modernity as a different kind of primitiveness, with technological achievements but a decline in the capacity to perceive spiritual dimensions of reality, and links this to the disappearance of prophecy as a factor with broad implications.
Science as a negative mode of apprehension, rules versus direct perception, and technology
The text compares science to negative attributes in that science refutes theses rather than positively “proving” them, illustrating this with the example that all ravens are black and that one can only disprove it through a white raven. It presents scientific understanding as law and form that replace direct perception of “the thing itself,” and explains that the ability to formulate rules allows their application in artificial realities such as airplanes, missiles, and computers. It presents the world in which one grasps the thing itself as one that does not require rules, using the image of knowing a natural language versus learning grammatical rules, and argues that rules are approximations that have exceptions.
Torah study as training auditory logic and Torah intuition
The text defines hearing as an intuitive grasp of a correct line of reasoning that does not depend only on analysis and on constructing frameworks tested by negation. It presents Torah study as a central tool for developing auditory logic, and argues that someone who develops correct reasoning in Torah carries weight in other fields too, because Torah deals with the phenomena of the world and establishes an understanding of their essence. It contrasts this with the study of law as an engagement with rules that extracts the “soul” from things.
The Patriarchs, the state of the ancient world, and Kabbalah as tools that also appear outside Judaism
The text argues that at the beginning of the world there was a stage in which spiritual reality was more accessible and therefore Torah, in its later sense, was not yet necessary, and it describes the Patriarchs as people who discovered Torah within the world out of clarity. It notes that other cultures, too, have tools for understanding kabbalistic texts, and cites the story of Rabbi Shabbetai Donnolo the physician, who in the introduction to his commentary on Sefer Yetzirah tells of meeting a Persian or Indian non-Jewish sage who taught him tools that make it possible to understand such books. It concludes that the Western world is “trapped in conceptions” that identify wisdom with reading and erase other capacities, and ends with the definition: “not Western—Euro-America, colonial.”
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And through the aesthetic description, that’s really how we got here. Through the aesthetic description that says the question is: if there is some thing, how do we determine the beauty of a thing? Through sight, which is comparing the thing to its abstract idea—to the ideal horse, right? Or is determining an aesthetic value really a non-comparative looking, looking at the thing itself—or really, in the final conclusion, some kind of listening rather than seeing. Seeing is always a comparison of forms, right, and hearing is thinking not through forms. Basically, the principle that I think is beginning to emerge from here—and I think that’s where we ended last time—was that the philosophers deal with the created world. And the philosophical picture of the world is a picture in which there is a created world and God, about whom one cannot speak, right, except perhaps in terms of negative attributes, but He is some kind of thing separate from the world and located very, very, very far from everything happening down here. That is the philosophical picture of the world. The kabbalists’ picture of the world is a picture in which there are also intermediaries within that gap, between the created world and divinity—some kind of projections or representations of divinity in the form of spiritual worlds. And if we divide the kabbalistic worlds, then basically—and this article goes on for another few pages, but for our purposes—it’s Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. Atzilut is a world in which the Infinite Light, which is the highest representation of divinity, the Infinite Light is clothed in it in the form of “He and His vessels are one,” like a soul within a body, and therefore Atzilut is treated as though it were actual divinity. And Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah are three worlds that represent the separate worlds. These worlds are not divinity at all. Of course, divinity gives them, let’s call it metaphorically, their energy, animates them—but they themselves are not that. They themselves are separate things that could not live or exist without the, let’s call it metaphorically, energy of divinity, but they themselves are not divinity. That is the picture of the worlds according to the kabbalists, where the gap that the kabbalists fill in—the gap between the created worlds and divinity—that filling of the gap is basically the world of Atzilut. There is more—there is Adam Kadmon, and the world of the line and the contraction, and so on—but for us all of that is represented here by the world of Atzilut. We are dealing here with four worlds, so Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah are the created worlds, which philosophers also refer to. The innovation of the kabbalists is that there is also a world called the world of Atzilut. And in the world of Atzilut, divinity is clothed in the form of “He and His vessels are one,” and this is, as it were, a world that stands above created things, even though it is not literally divinity itself, right? It is only something through which one can already relate to divinity, right? It is something already considered a representation of divinity or a form of divinity—basically, positive attributes. These are the positive attributes of Kabbalah. And therefore the philosophers do not recognize positive attributes; they say there are only negative attributes because they do not recognize the existence of such an intermediary. For them, there is either a created world, or some abstract, distant essence that cannot be seen and cannot be spoken of, which is the Creator. There are no representations of the Creator that are part of Him in this world, right? He has no form, in our language. Now here—what? Yes. Here the Nazir is really trying to describe exactly this structure and the different relation of the philosophers and the kabbalists, and this is what he calls sight as opposed to hearing. In simple terms, in kabbalistic terminology, the philosophers deal with Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah—what is called BYA. Acronym, right? Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. The philosophers deal with that, because philosophers essentially deal with the created worlds. And Kabbalah introduces the idea that there is also Atzilut. All right? So therefore the philosophers have a kind of visual perception, a kind of visual perception. Visual perception is relevant to the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. Everything beyond Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah is considered, as we said before, actual divinity—Atzilut. And regarding such things, the term sight does not apply, meaning you cannot use the term “see” with respect to them. Therefore, that is what the Nazir calls hearing—those things are grasped by the method that the Nazir calls hearing. So that’s the distinction, in terms of the world: what in the world is grasped by sight and what in the world is grasped by hearing. And maybe the common saying people always repeat—that where philosophy ends, Kabbalah begins. A lot of times people recite that, and okay, it sounds very impressive and nice, but what exactly does that sentence mean? I assume that for someone who actually understands what he is saying, it means that philosophy ends at the end of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. And where it ends, it simply ends technically—the place where it ends is where Kabbalah begins. Kabbalah deals with the world of Atzilut, a world whose very existence philosophy does not recognize at all. So in these passages we are trying a little to clarify that point. And perhaps one final point: very often the attitude toward Kabbalah is that even when philosophers relate to Kabbalah, they understand Kabbalah either as idolatry, as we said—how can one pray to divinity through various intermediaries, right? As we talked about once, right? In one of the previous lectures. That praying to divinity through intermediaries is idolatry.
[Speaker C] Doesn’t Maimonides say that? What? Doesn’t Maimonides say that? What exactly? That if there are intermediaries or things like that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s in the Talmud. It’s in the Talmud, Maimonides says it, everybody says it. But when you read Kabbalah—after all, in Kabbalah the whole practice is to pray to divinity as it is revealed in various names, where the names are sefirot in the world of Atzilut. So ostensibly that means praying to divinity through intermediaries. Therefore when people approach Kabbalah with philosophical tools, they say one of two things: either it’s idolatry—and that’s simply not true—or it’s only a metaphor. And in fact there is no such thing as the world of Atzilut and things like that; it is not a world that exists in the same sense that the separate worlds exist. Rather, it is some kind of world of ideas, let’s call it, like Plato’s, where we merely define the concepts or the modes of governance. But really “governance” means the mode in which the lower world operates—that is what governance means. We project it up there and speak of it as though it exists somewhere above, but it’s only a metaphor. In practice, the goal of studying the world of Atzilut is only to understand better how our world operates. We create for ourselves some imaginary world called the world of Atzilut and so on, and it is just imagination—in other words, these things don’t really exist. And the kabbalists themselves—most of them at least—do not understand things that way. The Leshem goes on at length about this in several places, saying that this is a completely mistaken conception of what Kabbalah is. Sometimes you see something like this in Ramchal too, although I don’t think Ramchal actually understood things this way; there are expressions there that sometimes do sound a bit like such an approach. Someone known for this approach—that all the higher worlds are just a metaphor—was a certain kabbalist named Rabbi Hirtz, Rabbi Yonatan Hirtz something-or-other from Jaffa. He was known for that approach, and the Leshem attacks him sharply and says this is not called Kabbalah; it is called the study of thought. To study how this world is run—you give things names, but really the goal is to understand how this world operates. He argues that Kabbalah means engaging with that world, not this world. True, that world has consequences for this world—it is like a seal and its imprint, right? Every force that exists above comes to expression as some form of governance below. But there is also an upper force, meaning it is also a thing, something that exists. It is somewhat like the dispute between Plato and Aristotle regarding the ideas. So Kabbalah treats Atzilut as something real, although again, the dispute between Plato and Aristotle concerns the world of Beriah and Yetzirah, not Atzilut—whether there are worlds beyond the world of Asiyah at all, even on the plane of separate intellects. All right, we are talking about the logos within the world of ideas, basically about the world of Atzilut, what the Alexandrians added within the world of ideas, as he writes here. Precisely the world of Atzilut. And even about this the dispute continues: is this thing actually an essence that exists, or just a series of abstractions that help us relate to what happens in this world? And even one who says that it is an independently existing essence obviously understands that these things are also roots of what happens in this world—but not only that. They also stand on their own, and one needs to study how that world operates, how the upper worlds operate. So that is, in broad strokes, basically the kabbalistic outlook as opposed to philosophical outlooks on what lies between creation and its Creator, on that gap, on what fills that gap. And the relation to our world, to the structure of our world, is as a kind of “from my flesh I behold” structure. The structure of divinity—again, I am not talking about the abstract philosophical God of whom nothing positive can be said, but about Atzilut, which is an expression of divinity and about which one can indeed say positive things. All right? So when I look at forms in which I see things happening in this world—I see birth in this world, I see coupling in this world, I see all kinds of concepts of this world in order to understand things that happen in the upper worlds—this is not because in the upper worlds those things are merely a metaphor, and really it is just another way of speaking about what happens here. On the contrary: what happens here is in some sense a metaphor for what happens above. It helps us understand what happens above. That is “from my flesh I behold God” among the kabbalists. The question—
[Speaker B] About what we said, that one can say positive things, and about the world of Atzilut.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The world of Atzilut is not something about which one can say positive things. The world of Atzilut is those very positive things that are said about God. All the positive things said about God—that He is such-and-such and such-and-such and such-and-such—these are modes of governance of the Holy One, blessed be He, and they really are positive descriptions of Him, and that is what is called the world of Atzilut. It’s not that we say positive things about the world of Atzilut; rather, the totality of the positive things we say about the Holy One, blessed be He, is basically the world of Atzilut.
[Speaker C] What one can say about Him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll still get into this more precisely—what exactly this means, as much as can be understood. But let’s leave it there for now; this is just a scheme to describe in broad terms what is going to happen here next. We move to another passage. “Seeing apprehends only a body in its appearance and form; but every seeing of man found in the Scriptures regarding the separate intellects, and all the more so regarding God, is not bodily sight but intellectual apprehension, as Yonatan and Onkelos translated, followed by the Gaon Rabbeinu Saadia, of blessed memory. And Maimonides already elaborated on this in the Guide at the beginning of the book. However, the term used for words of Torah and divine unity is hearing: ‘Hear, O Israel.’” So first of all, just one remark: we actually saw on the previous page, down in the notes, that the soul has spiritual colors. We saw there in the lower notes that the soul has spiritual colors, and we explained there that this means the concept of sight applies also to spiritual worlds, not only to physical objects that I see. And that is what he means by spiritual colors—shades or things that are seen, but seen with the eyes of the spirit. So that is really also what he means here. And it seems to me that this is also connected to what we discussed about visual thinking and auditory thinking. We discussed, after all, what really is the difference between visual thinking and auditory thinking—not literal seeing and hearing through the senses, but as modes of thought. So we brought Rashba and Tosafot—you remember?—regarding verbal thinking, whether all thought is verbal thought.
[Speaker B] You remember?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s a question there whether when a person thinks, it happens in a non-verbal way—meaning he simply sees images, sees imagined pictures—or whether when he thinks, he also thinks in words, like speaking only silently. So that may be the difference, or part of the difference, between visual thinking and auditory thinking. Visual thinking is indeed thinking that happens like seeing. True, not with the eyes—but when I think about the thing, I simply see the thing in my mind’s eye. And that is how I think about it. When I think about the idea, I think the idea, not about the idea. The idea itself stands, as it were, before my eyes—before the eyes of my imagination, before the eyes of my awareness, not just my physical eyes. All right? That is called visual thinking. Auditory thinking means to think about the idea, not about the thing. Ideas cannot be seen—not even in imagination can you see them. So this apparently finds expression in verbal thinking, meaning that I think about it through words, although I don’t necessarily have to—there may be some other raw form for it.
[Speaker B] And what is chokhmah and what is binah? That the idea in the intellect within…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I don’t know which is which. That is, if visual thinking is binah—
[Speaker C] If—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] if there is a similarity between these two things—and thinking about the thing itself is chokhmah.
[Speaker C] How did you divide visual thinking and verbal thinking, or auditory thinking?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Verbal thinking, I’m saying, is some mode of auditory thinking. So to hear, to hear, is to hear someone speaking to me. I can hear—I can hear from the teacher, as we’ll see here in section 27. And then, as we already said, reading a book is really hearing, not seeing. Because true, we use our eyes, but the contents do not reach us in the form of pictures. The contents are the decoding of words written in the book. In other words, the book transmits the pictures to my consciousness not by having the pictures in the book and my simply seeing them and that’s how they pass into consciousness. What is in the book is words. The pictures, the brain invents—the consciousness. It doesn’t absorb them from the book. All right? So every book is only a verbal description of the pictures or of the things. Therefore reading a book, although it is done with the eyes, is hearing. It’s the same as verbal thinking.
[Speaker C] The brain invents the picture, not… not from a picture… like if I just think in pictures?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, exactly not like that.
[Speaker C] I see it and imagine pictures in my head?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Even if I imagine pictures—even if I imagine pictures as a result of what I read in a book, that’s still not the same thing as actual seeing, like watching a movie. Watching a movie means that the pictures were created for me—not that I create them—and I absorb them inward.
[Speaker C] That’s complete visuality, complete visual thinking.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, that’s complete visuality. Now reading a book is basically a kind of auditory apprehension, and how it ends is not clear. It may end in the form of a picture that I create for myself in my imagination or my consciousness, in my thought, in my intellect, all right? And then it ends in a visual form. But again, that isn’t sight; it’s visual thinking. Because I didn’t draw the picture from outside. I create the picture from within. What my eyes did here was function as ears. They heard words—only instead of hearing the words with my ear, I read the words. Do you understand? So the whole difference between eye and ear is that the ear hears the words and through that tries… like radio and television, right? Radio tries to describe verbally what happened, but the picture of what happened is something my brain creates ex nihilo—or from speech—not from an image. So that is a process of hearing. All right? A process of seeing on television means that the picture itself passes into my awareness; I do not invent it. It is projected onto me from outside, and through my eyes I bring it inward. That is the difference between actual sight and hearing. All right? In this division, reading a book is hearing. All right? When I read a book, I read words—I do not see the picture here. I read words; it’s like hearing words. What difference does it make whether I hear them or see them with my eyes? I see words. Therefore hearing is basically receiving words—that is hearing. If you want, you can call it with the ears or with the eyes, but hearing is receiving words, which in the end may be translated in my intellect into a picture, at which point I shift to visual thinking. But the source of that thinking is hearing. All right? Now, in thought itself too, there is the same division. It could be that in consciousness it does not become a picture but remains in some raw, hylomorphic way—not through its form, but the thing itself. I continue to consider it in a verbal way, let’s say. Or not—there are those who say that no, I continue, and in fact I see pictures there. That is the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad and all the Tosafot we discussed. This apprehension, this intellectual apprehension of separate contents, is still called sight, even though it does not happen in the eye. And the antithesis of that is hearing words of Torah and divine unity through hearing, which is what one does in “Hear, O Israel.” We saw this once. What is the difference between intellectual apprehension and hearing? What is the difference—
[Speaker B] between intellectual apprehension and hearing?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Intellectual apprehension is sight. Where did we see this? In “Hear, O Israel,” we saw it here, no? “Hear, O Israel”—that unity is through hearing? Or was that earlier? Ah, here, in section 10—the unity, in section 20 of the first essay, if I remember correctly: “Therefore the absolute truth for Israel is not grasped through higher contemplation but through inner hearing, as it is said: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.’” This is the upper unity that is done through hearing; we already talked about this a bit once. What exactly does he mean here by this division—that hearing words of Torah is through hearing, and intellectual apprehension is not sight of the eye, but notice: that is still not hearing. It is sight, right? It’s not a translation. The last line is not the conclusion of the first line; it is its antithesis. And what he wants to do here is transfer the distinction between sight and hearing into the plane of thought. Even when Scripture speaks of sight, that is intellectual apprehension—but intellectual apprehension in the form of sight. And the upper unity is done in the form of hearing. What does that mean? That cleaving is a mode of prophecy, which is an eye? Yes, maybe one can say that. We’ll see later; we’ll talk about it in another moment. This is probably the distinction between positive attributes and negative attributes. When we look by intellectual sight, that is the way philosophers look at the world. And when philosophers look at the world, then when they supposedly look at divinity with the intellect, they manage to arrive only at negative attributes. And this is the sight spoken of in the Torah: “You shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.” You will see—if you want to see and not hear—then you will see only the back. What does that mean? You can see what I am not—that is, My back, so to speak, what I am not. You cannot see what I am. And that is really all that sight can ever reach: a description of divinity through negative attributes. And there cannot be positive attributes, because positive attributes mean that we have seen divinity. “Man shall not see Me and live.” One cannot see divinity.
[Speaker B] That’s not sight with the eye; it’s intellectual apprehension.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not sight with the eye—it is intellectual apprehension,
[Speaker B] but no picture is being drawn?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, we’ll have to get to what prophecy is, but seemingly yes—some kind of picture is drawn in the intellect.
[Speaker B] When one hears something positive, it’s a kind of picture in the intellect.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The prophets really turned this into a picture. For us it’s grasped as some abstract thing, but it’s still a kind of seeing, that form. Later we’ll talk about the prophets, and there there are some somewhat finer distinctions. We’ll see further on, the separate intellects. Later on it wasn’t completely clear to me what exactly the separate intellects are; we’ll see that here he talks about it in the notes to section 27. Either he means angels or he means sefirot; it seems to me he means angels. It’s easier for me to say this about angels, because angels belong to the worlds of Beri’ah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah; you can in some sense see them. If you’re talking about sefirot, sefirot can’t be seen, not even in visual thinking. Sefirot belong to the world of Atzilut; sefirot are the world of Atzilut. But we’ll see later on—I’m a bit torn there, it’s not entirely clear to me what he means. So now, intellectual apprehension of divinity: the only thing you can arrive at is negative attributes, not positive attributes. Look ahead at section 28, where there’s a place where it’s more unequivocal, because I want to convince you that we have to bring into the discussion this issue of positive and negative attributes, which is what guides the discussion here even though it’s hardly mentioned. And there’s some place where it’s more explicit. Here, in section 28, he says: “And likewise Elijah in the vision, in which the matter of the three worlds of coming-to-be and passing-away is hinted at”—you see this in the middle of the paragraph? “Not in the noise, nor in the wind,” and so on. “God, whose essence is hidden, such that nothing can be understood of Him, nor any of the attributes of perfection, except by negation, which is in the still small voice.” Here he is plainly talking about negative attributes. “For the hidden supreme existent is not seen and not observed, rather His content is heard by prophetic auditory reason.” Meaning, here he defines more clearly that hearing is basically an attempt to turn negative perception into something positive. That is, seeing—everything it can do, כביכול, in the world of Atzilut—it has no recognition in the world of Atzilut; all it can grasp in divinity is only in terms of what He is not, in a negative way. Hearing is trying to produce from those insights something positive, and that can be done only through hearing. Why is it really that in seeing, in visual thought, one comes to the conclusion that there are no positive attributes? Because the form of a thing—seeing something means seeing its form, right? We’ve already talked about this a lot. It means seeing its form. I create within myself some image in consciousness. Right? Now if we understood that one could see characteristics of divinity—in effect, see divinity—then that would mean that divinity is some kind of object standing before the eyes, or before the mind’s eye, it doesn’t matter. And when I look at it, some image is formed within me. Then the image that is formed within me is a representation of divinity itself. But that cannot be. In that sense—and we talked about this too already once or twice—when people speak about descriptions of divinity, the relation between the descriptions and divinity itself is not like the relation between form and matter in any other object. And we’ll come back to this in a moment. When we see divinity, we don’t… When you see a table, the appearance that is formed exists in my consciousness, but I see the table itself. Meaning, the interaction I create is an interaction with the table itself. The result of the interaction is an image that exists in my consciousness. There cannot be such a thing with respect to divinity. I have no direct contact at all with divinity itself, and even if I understand that the image of divinity formed in my consciousness is an image in my own terms—even that cannot be true with respect to divinity. Because if that were so, then divinity and ordinary objects would be grasped in the same way, right? We once discussed the fact that even with objects themselves, we don’t actually grasp the thing itself, only how it appears to our eyes. So what is the difference between grasping a table and grasping divinity? And with divinity too, we said, yes, there as well, no matter what, one cannot grasp the thing itself, only how it appears to our eyes—so what is the difference? Why do people always say that God cannot be grasped? Apparently because when one grasps a table, true, the image that exists in my consciousness—its form, its color, and all that—is an image in my own terms, an image that exists only in my consciousness, but that image is the result of an interaction with the table itself. When I look with my eyes at the table itself, what is produced in my consciousness is its color, its shape, the whole image of the table as I know it. With divinity, even if I produce some image, it cannot be something that is the result of an interaction with divinity itself. I have no access whatsoever to divinity itself directly. Okay? So therefore those who hold the visual approach come to the conclusion that divinity has no form. Because there cannot be—I cannot create direct interaction with divinity itself. Even if I accept that the image is always in my language, my concepts, my conceptual world—but that is true of a table too. So if that were the case, divinity and a table would be the same thing; there would be no difference in their level of existence or in my ability to grasp them. If I say there is a difference in my ability to grasp them, I am basically saying that no image can be produced from divinity. So when the person of visual reason approaches divinity, what comes out? Nothing comes out. Meaning, no positive form—form means characterization, right? No divine characteristics are positive characteristics, because otherwise it would come out that he sees divinity, that he is interacting with divinity itself. All he can say is what divinity is not, by means of various other considerations. It’s not that he sees what divinity is not, okay? Obviously he doesn’t see what it is not. Rather, visual perception, perception by sight, all it can reach as a conclusion is a conclusion about what God is not, since it sees nothing—not that it sees what God is not. Is what I’m saying clear? If not, tell me and I’ll… My claim is that those of visual perception, meaning the philosophers, when I say that the result of visual perception is negative attributes or negative descriptions, I am not saying that those with the visual approach see that God is not cruel. They don’t see that He is merciful and see that He is not cruel—they do not see that. They arrive at that as an intellectual conclusion, even with visual intellect they arrive at that conclusion. The point is that it is nevertheless the result of visual thinking. Since someone who works, someone who thinks that all perception is visual perception, would expect that with divinity too, if I can grasp it, I can grasp it visually—to look at God Himself, and then in my consciousness there would be formed an image in the terms of my language, but as the result of interaction with divinity itself. That is the mechanism of sight. So the mechanism of intellectual sight also works in the same way that the mechanism of sight with the eyes works. The intellect creates an interaction with the thing itself and processes it in the terms of its own language. Okay? But of course that can’t be, and everyone agrees, that I can’t grasp divinity the way I grasp a table. Therefore the result of visual thinking is an approach of negative attributes. Not that the negative attributes themselves are grasped visually. Someone who thinks that things can only be grasped visually, who is not familiar with the auditory mode of perception—all he can arrive at in relation to divinity is negative attributes. By contrast, the person of auditory perception says that I can. He helps me uncover the logos that lies behind it. And through it I listen to what stands behind it, and in that sense it is possible to grasp divinity, at least some representation of it—the world of Atzilut. And then I say: in that sense I can. True, no picture of it is formed, because “no human can see Me and live,” right? No picture is formed; nobody can form a picture. But—but that still does not mean that divinity cannot be grasped. Those of the visual approach say: fine, if divinity cannot be grasped—if you can’t form a picture—then there is no way to grasp divinity. That’s where Plotinus gets stuck, right? We talked about visual aesthetics. So where did Plotinus get stuck? Plotinus understood that there is something beyond the ideas, or Don Yehuda Abravanel. But he said: fine, but that thing is inaccessible and there’s nothing we can do with it. Why? On the theological level he understood—he was a philosopher—on the theological level he understood that there is some Creator beyond all the images we see. But he still did not arrive at the auditory conception of the monk, in the sense that he says: fine, if so, then there is no direct access to Him. Because he did not recognize the auditory mode of access. For him that mode simply does not exist. That is the philosopher. The philosopher does not recognize the auditory mode of access. Even if he recognizes that there is divinity, he does not recognize a way of approaching it. Meaning that all his means of access are always visual means of access. He has to see Him—either with the eyes, yes? That is the whole root of idolatry. What is idolatry? The attempt to concretize divinity so that it can be seen. What is the sin of the golden calf? The sin of the golden calf is the attempt to materialize divinity, to make it into something that can be seen. Why? Because people lose faith that there is another form of interaction with things. One can also listen. That too is a kind of interaction with the thing itself. And they begin to feel that, wait—if I can’t, even if He exists, if I cannot create some visual interaction with Him, then there is no way at all to create interaction with Him. So as far as I’m concerned, He doesn’t exist. What I don’t see doesn’t exist. Or in a deeper sense: I can theoretically, philosophically believe that there is divinity, but that doesn’t really get me anywhere; I have no way to grasp it. At best only through negative attributes. Then Kabbalah comes and says: no, I have a positive way to grasp it, divinity. There is a positive way. True, it is not a way of pictures; it is a way of hearing. And therefore the world of Atzilut, which is, so to speak, the pictures of divinity or the attributes of divinity, is something that in Kabbalah cannot be described by forms or by seeing. It is not appearance, the world of Atzilut. It is some kind of auditory perception, but through it we arrive at some positive description of divinity, not a negative description. Okay? And therefore in Kabbalah there are positive attributes. Because in Kabbalah the meaning of the concept “attributes” is not the same as in the context of visual philosophy. Kabbalah too agrees that attributes in the philosophical sense—divinity does not have positive attributes. The only thing on which it disagrees with philosophy is that there is another mode of perception. There is another mode of interaction with things that is not through visual perception. And therefore I can describe things positively, not by seeing them but by speaking about them. When I study Kabbalah, I speak about various things. About such-and-such a world, such-and-such a partzuf, such-and-such a light, a dikna, all kinds of things—they even speak there about human limbs. But everyone understands that this represents no picture whatsoever; these are simply terms that serve me in speech. They are not things that represent actual limbs, limbs the way I see them in a person. So that is exactly the content of Kabbalah, which in some sense is perceived as idolatry by those who are outside that world. Because they understand: what do you mean? If you talk about a hand, then you mean a hand, something that… It can’t be; that’s idolatry. All Kabbalah claims is that there is another way to describe things. That when I speak about attributes of something, these are not necessarily visual attributes. It is not necessarily an image formed in me. Sometimes it is the result of some other kind of perception. Like a metaphor? No, it’s not a metaphor. It’s a perception that… It’s a kind of metaphor. A kind of metaphor, but not a metaphor proper. It’s not exactly a metaphor. We already talked about this when we discussed section 3 here, at the beginning of this essay. There we talked about how the form of the table is sort of a metaphor for the table itself, right? I have no way at all to get to the table itself. The form, the color, and all of it are really the metaphor through which I grasp the table itself. In that sense the world of Atzilut is not a metaphor. True, it is somewhat like a metaphor. On the one hand it is less direct than the relation between form and matter in ordinary objects, but on the other hand there is more connection than in a mere metaphor. A metaphor can be accidental. There is some similarity in the story to the principle I want to teach you, but it is really something else entirely; sometimes the principle itself doesn’t even appear there—it just reminds you of it, presents it well—but there is no essential connection between the metaphor and what it stands for. Atzilut—divinity clothes itself within it in the form of “He and His vessels are one.” Meaning, this is not a metaphor in the disconnecting sense. True, it is a metaphor in the sense that I cannot deal with divinity itself. But it is not a metaphor in the disconnecting sense, in the sense that says: fine, let’s deal with things that are kind of like divinity but really aren’t. No, we are dealing with things that are truly divinity. And they have some connection to divinity, a connection like body to soul.
[Speaker B] Maybe at Sinai there was more of a tangible connection? It’s also a bit there at the revelation at Mount Sinai. They both saw the sounds and heard the voice.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, that depends how you interpret the events that happened there. Usually the accepted interpretation is that there really was—maybe it was some kind of vision, maybe something spiritual—but right now we’re trying to understand this connection with God. Meaning, what was not tangible? What exactly was there? Maybe there we were in a state of some sort of unfolding—I don’t know how to describe it—where they grasped that state. Maybe you could say, in the plain sense just going through the text, you might say: “Here is your God, O Israel”—no, the calf now is not God. It isn’t even perceived under the title of divinity, because that is already too materialized, or too materialized a description of what happened there. They apparently wanted something more that the eyes could grasp, something more tangible, clearer, of divinity. They were unable to hold out in direct relationship with divinity. Direct relationship is something very subtle; it’s very hard to live with.
[Speaker B] What do you mean, the perception of idol worshippers?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know if we’ll find the exact formulation, but it seems to me that idol worshippers arrive at a capacity for perception maybe even higher than ours in some respects. They want to see, but they understand that there is something to see. We don’t worship stones because we think a stone is just a stone; what we see is just a stone. Idol worshippers understand that behind the stone too there is nefesh, ruach, neshamah. Behind the stone too there are spiritual worlds. In that sense they have a much deeper spiritual intuition than we do; they grasp the spiritual dimension more strongly, more tangibly, and therefore they worship the stone. Because they understand that even in the stone this is really a representation of spiritual worlds. So here, in some sense, there is a stronger spiritual perception. It seems to me that’s very clear. There are worlds that many people today call primitive—we spoke about this a bit in the context of a hammer—where demons and all these mystical phenomena are part of the fabric of life. Meaning, there are demons and spirits and harmful forces, male and female harmful beings, and dybbuks and all kinds of such things, and it’s part of life. People talk to you about it the way I’d talk about meeting my neighbor, and they saw him, or he did something, or he had this kind of harmful spirit, or whatever. Usually we tend to dismiss this as some kind of psychological hallucination. It seems to me that a large part of these things is not exactly that. A large part of them is the result of the fact that we really live in too low a world. We live in a world in which, for us, these things don’t exist; we don’t succeed in sensing their existence. Our senses, our spiritual senses, have already become dull; we can’t perceive it. And in places where primitivity rules—let’s call it primitivity in the positive sense—there those senses remain, spiritual senses of perception that still exist. They have not yet been dulled by all the sophisticated scientific mechanisms, by all this modern outlook that in some sense has erased human spiritual capacity. Therefore all the spiritual searching that exists today is the result of the fact that we feel we cannot create contact with the spiritual dimensions of existence. So all sorts of charlatans can do whatever they want, invent all kinds of spirit-channeling and all kinds of nonsense, and everyone goes after them because—or many of them at least, I assume, are charlatans—because today we have no way of knowing. It’s not from our world. We don’t understand that there is such a thing and we try to find a connection to it. So every magician who wraps his head up and makes himself look holy and starts handing out holy water—immediately everyone lines up before him. And this is true generally in the Western world, not only among us. Because somehow Western culture has erased the spiritual senses; you simply have no access to these things. Once you have no access, you also can’t distinguish between charlatans and non-charlatans. In the old world it was clearer who was a charlatan and who wasn’t, because people themselves also had some grasp of these things, so you couldn’t completely sell them nonsense. There were always—
[Speaker C] Tests. What were the tests? Can you actually bring and do tests?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not that there were no charlatans. I’m saying there was more of a way to test them. Of course—not that there were no tests to know whether it was real or he was a charlatan. But these concepts still belong to… The disappearance of prophecy from among us is a process with much broader consequences than just the fact that there is no prophecy. Today we are not at all capable of grasping spiritual things, and in that respect we have declined into the dust. Understand: we are not more modern, we are much more primitive. The primitive people have abilities that we do not. All kinds of people, all kinds of ancient wisdoms, that today they discover in various places—maybe not, maybe yes; I think some of it is real, simply in some cases it may indeed be mere charlatanism. And some of it is some capacity that was preserved to grasp spiritual things, which has not yet had time to be ruined by the modern outlook, the scientific outlook that says, fine, all demons and all that—it’s just entropy.
[Speaker C] But how—how do you explain it? All the intelligent people say the same thing. Meaning, intelligent people—this doesn’t happen to them, it’s…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Unintelligent people.
[Speaker C] Like, if you really look, someone who really does—I don’t know…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The person you decide is intelligent according to your Western standards—then yes, that “intelligent” person indeed sees nothing, because he is intelligent in the Western sense. And that is exactly the point. The question is whether that is really the criterion for intelligence, or the only criterion for intelligence. There is a certain kind of wisdom, but it seems to me that there is another kind of wisdom that keeps on diminishing.
[Speaker C] He wouldn’t know how to count to ten, but what post-doc has he done? Because this specifically happens to people who can’t count to ten.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Very often these are two kinds of wisdom that cancel each other out. Once you have this, you automatically become weak in that. And when you have that, you become weak in this. Therefore in a world where spiritual phenomena are strong, where they are part of the world, the capacity for modern, scientific, Western thinking is weak in those areas. They don’t have scientific achievements, technological achievements, because these are two types of thought that cancel one another out. If you grasp the thing itself, you don’t deal with its attributes; you know what it is. Someone who does not grasp the thing itself tries to describe it through all kinds of rules. Right, like language learning. In language learning, when you sit in an ulpan, you learn all kinds of rules for how the language works. Someone born here doesn’t need rules; he knows the language exactly, he understands it, the language itself. Right? So who is wiser? In your eyes, the wiser one is the person who knows grammar with all the rules to the very end. In my eyes, the wiser one is the one who knows the thing itself and doesn’t need rules.
[Speaker C] No, because there are—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He has rules, but he’s not aware of them. What? He has rules but he’s not aware of them. Not at all. No rules. Rules are an approximation attempt. The proof is that every rule has exceptions; nobody has yet found rules without exceptions.
[Speaker C] The rules are forms of approximation. He doesn’t work with rules at all; it’s a completely different mode of operation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He doesn’t work with rules at all; he understands the thing itself. So is the thing prior to the rules? No, the thing is not produced by the rules.
[Speaker C] The thing is not produced by the rules; the rules are produced from the thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The rules are the form of the thing, and the thing is the thing itself that has the form. Can I establish laws of language? You can’t establish them—you see laws of language. You don’t see, you hear laws of language. But laws of language not in the sense of binding laws—dagesh, patach, and all those things. You understand what the right sound is here; you have some clear intuition. That intuition is not a collection of rules that you just don’t know how to formulate. It’s not a collection of rules at all, not merely that you can’t formulate them. Anyone who tries to formulate rules—the proof is that he misses, the proof is that there are always exceptions. Because rules are always an approximation to the language, not the language itself. Explain why there are exceptions. Huh? Explain why they are exceptions, because there are other rules. No, no, it won’t explain why they are exceptions; a large part of it is just the case. There are exceptions. Same thing here: when I look at natural phenomena, I can grasp—fine, this is shiya veketia. There’s some demon in this house because of which this house is slowly crumbling when nobody lives in it. Bava Kamma? The chapter there in Bava Kamma. So this is shiya veketia; there’s some demon crumbling the house. Someone who doesn’t see that starts looking for the operational rules of processes of decay. And then he arrives at very sophisticated physical rules, and he really does become wiser in the formal sense, in the sense of grasping the thing from outside—but all that only because he is less wise in the inner sense. So he is forced, like a blind person, to develop his sense of hearing well in order to compensate for the lack of visual ability.
[Speaker C] But someone who knows the thing itself doesn’t need all the laws of physics; he knows what’s going on. We can’t say that because we supposedly know, say, that this exists and we’re not learning from outside, we can’t say that it’s really true. We can’t say it’s true because we aren’t in that world at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So science really advances, and science says: fine, let’s test this on other phenomena. There’s no indication by which to know whether the electron really is like this or like that. I’ll do such-and-such an experiment and try to rule things out. So I arrived at negative attributes, right? What does science do? Science rules out various theses; it cannot prove theses, it can only rule them out, right? If there’s a theory that all ravens are black, you can’t prove it. You can only bring one white raven and refute it. Why? Because the scientific mode is always a negative mode of operation. You can’t know what the thing is; you can know what it is not. Every scientific theory is a description of what the world is not, not what the world is, in the true sense. When you say that the world operates according to such-and-such a law, that is really shorthand for saying that the world does not operate according to various laws different from that one. But that law itself I never saw; only through ruling out various other laws did I eliminate all the other options, and so far this one has survived all the tests. So it’s not that I saw that there is such-and-such a law; rather, it survived all the tests, meaning it has not yet been ruled out. Do you understand? That is exactly the visual mode of operation that arrives at negative attributes. It is exactly the same thing. Therefore the entire scientific outlook is a visual outlook of negative attributes. In the artificial world, in building airplanes, they are better. Why? Because they never saw an airplane in their lives, so how would they know how to build one? They understand much better than we do how the world is built as it really is. But in order to achieve technological achievements, you need to take what happens in the world, understand the law—not the thing itself—formulate a law and apply it to a reality that does not occur in the world, like an airplane. They never saw an airplane; they don’t know what it is. So the one who has these rules and is good at rule-thinking, scientific thinking, can also realize those rules in realities that don’t yet exist—to create other realities. So he builds airplanes, missiles, bombs, computers, and lasers, and so on. And someone who doesn’t, deals with what exists; he doesn’t try to build other things. What exists, he understands directly; he understands it very well.
[Speaker C] If he wants to bring down rain, then he—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Brings down rain, and he can do… The point is not that he brings down rain artificially, but that he understands much better than you do why rain falls when he sees rain.
[Speaker C] And now he says, fine, now rain will come, and they dance and dance and no rain comes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he’s not just—I’m not talking about those dancers. I’m talking—
[Speaker C] About those who really understand, not—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not those who think they understand. Because we were talking about the primitive world. No, I didn’t say every primitive person is a genius. I said that in the primitive world there is a certain type of genius that we do not have, or a more correct perception that we do not have. And that perception negates scientific perception. It is no accident that they were not advanced in the scientific-technological sense. And with us the opposite is true—why is it that among us everyone goes off to the steppes of Kazakhstan to find all sorts of mystical sages?
[Speaker B] Do they find them? Huh?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Do they find them? Yes. Why? Or it doesn’t matter—you can also go to the Jerusalem hills, there are all kinds there too. Why do people go to places like that? Because in those places the Western outlook has still not developed to the point of erasing those abilities. And there they remain, that’s all. And someone living in the Western world feels that he has no access whatsoever to things themselves. He knows how to describe them all externally in marvelous fashion and he knows how to build airplanes, but he doesn’t understand what is going on here. Why does a bird fly? Why do things happen? He has no access at all to the thing itself; he has all sorts of theories that have ruled out other possibilities. He worked in the form of negative attributes. But he does not—what is happening? I don’t understand the thing itself positively. I want to understand it—not to understand what it is not, but what it is. Huh? It can’t—
[Speaker B] Can it reverse—do people try to move over to a primitive world?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think so. Overall there is within us some primitive capacity, it’s just covered over. And therefore when we encounter such primitive capacities, we can acquire them. A person can somehow uncover these abilities within himself; it’s just that modern Western thinking blocks them, it doesn’t let them come to expression. In Jewish law too it’s like this; when we study Torah, we also learn like this. Why didn’t the medieval authorities (Rishonim) enter into all those Rabbi Chaim-style analytical, sophisticated definitions? Because they saw exactly what was going on—what did they need Rabbi Chaim for? They knew exactly what was going on here. What do you mean? Since this is so, therefore the Jewish law is so, period.
[Speaker B] What’s the problem?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everything is clear. It’s only we who live in a fog; we don’t manage to grasp the thing itself. So we start operating like scientists. We start arranging theoretical constructions and testing them negatively. Meaning, let’s build a theory. Let’s say that seizure is forbidden because “the burden of proof is on the one who seeks to extract from another” is a definitive ruling. Ah, so now we have a theory. Now let’s test it, let’s see. So let’s look at situations where that ruling is not definitive—there too, is seizure impossible, or maybe possible? So sometimes we disqualify a theory because we found an example that isn’t like that. Do you understand? All our possible ways of relating are always negative. The theory that remains is not a theory that was affirmed, but one that was not disqualified—do you understand the difference? The theory that remains is a theory that was not disqualified, not a theory that was affirmed. The way to affirm a theory is direct, auditory—to know what it says, not to test it against all sorts of things and try to refute it.
[Speaker B] So it’s like you have to switch off the intellect and activate the emotions more?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right—from emotion toward the auditory. Yes. What is the definition of this positive theory of the medieval authorities (Rishonim)? I haven’t seen, so to speak, a positive description in our sense. What do you mean? Not in our sense of a pictorial description—
[Speaker B] But a positive description.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When you read Kabbalistic literature, there’s a dikna there, and it brings down flow to this one, and it goes here and it goes there.
[Speaker B] But in Kabbalah isn’t that something positive?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Huh? You make use of visual imagery, but it is clear that this is not meant to describe the concrete here-and-now. You make use of it because you need some stretcher to carry the idea—you are limited, you have no choice, and so those languages are used. But in truth you are speaking about other things.
[Speaker B] And you can’t say exactly what you are speaking about? About…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that is exactly the question—in what sense, what am I speaking about? To point at it is once again visual seeing, and there is no such thing. So what does “positive” mean? It’s a completely different kind of insight. I think someone who has learned these things a bit knows; to me at least it is clear that this is so. It’s simply another kind of insight. You feel that you understand it even so, even without speaking in pictures. One of the great wonders—when I started dealing with these things a little, one of the great wonders was that I was sure it would be some sort of mathematics; it wouldn’t say anything to me. I would memorize concepts and I’d know that this must be connected to that and that must be connected to this, and I’d learn all kinds of techniques for how exactly you inflate this, how you dismantle, how you raise difficulties and do manipulations, and I’d find some world that was totally beyond me but as internally complete as possible. But no, that’s not how it is. Suddenly you start feeling that these concepts are saying something to you, and that you actually understand something through them. And that is very hard to describe, but it’s quite clear why it’s hard to describe. It’s hard to describe because every description will be in visual terms. But the fact is that people who deal with these things do arrive at some insight even though they have no picture before their eyes. The picture sometimes helps—dikna, you sometimes think of a beard here—but—
[Speaker C] And also who said that this world is really real? Maybe it’s really an invention.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Kabbalah says that. If you don’t accept it, then maybe not. I accept it, that’s fine.
[Speaker C] Already with Nachmanides something in him was awakened that this is so—well, not awakened, I don’t know, a little—but who says he was right? Fine, and the Ramak says it too. Who says this itself—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the Ramak said it from himself. It depends which stage of Kabbalah we are referring to, and come—I think it’s worth leaving that for later. It depends on which stage: there is Kabbalah already attributed to Adam, Abraham our forefather, or Rabbi Nechunya ben HaKanah, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, and the Ari is only one more layer in that chain. The Ari you can very quickly see why he is right, because he explains various things that before him nobody understood. So it’s completely clear that this is really the true intention of the Book of Zohar and the Book of Bahir and the Hekhalot and all the other things. Because without him, the proof is that people didn’t understand it, so you see that there is some true explanation there of those things. So that is the confirmation that the Ari is right. Now why are they right? That you believe; that is something you have to believe. Right? Yes, they too are right.
[Speaker B] Okay, hearing here is something very… Hearing is the purely intellectual process, as if activating non-visual reason, but…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not reason. “Reason” is a word that doesn’t seem entirely suitable here. “Reason” is a name for the analyzing intellect; I don’t think that’s what is being discussed here. Intuition? Yes, exactly—some other way of attaining insights, not through scientific analysis but by feeling. I don’t think this should sound terribly mystical to you. When you hear a correct sevara, every one of you feels: this sevara is correct. Not because it fits this baraita and this difficulty and the resolutions there—you feel that this sevara is correct. That feeling is auditory reason. Does that make sense?
[Speaker B] And that’s it—how do you develop it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You develop it through Torah study. Torah study is the central tool for developing auditory reason. Right. But of course for that purpose—and this is what we’re talking about…
[Speaker B] The correct auditory reason of Torah, not…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, if you believe this Torah was given by the Creator of the world, then I assume that this is also the correct auditory reason.
[Speaker B] If you don’t believe that, then not.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is the correct auditory reason of Torah study, in the sense that I’ll know how to arrive at a correct sevara? No, no, no—explicitly not. Explicitly not. If you develop correct auditory reason, then it is correct everywhere. These are tools. When you correctly grasp Torah and have correct sevarot about Torah, you also have correct sevarot about all other things. That is the basis of what people often call da’at Torah. Someone who says correct sevarot in Torah—his words have significant weight in other fields as well. Fine, how much weight and so on, those are other discussions, but there is weight there, without a doubt. That weight derives precisely from the fact that when you build the tools correctly, those tools are applicable also to fields outside Torah. And Torah itself—what is Torah? Torah deals with the world. If someone harms someone else, the legal result is such-and-such. There is some understanding here of the essence of damage, and what damage is. Damage is an action between people; damage is an action that happens in the world. So you learn to see it more correctly. And it’s not just indirect—it happens directly. Torah ultimately deals with phenomena that happen in the world; it does not deal with disconnected phenomena.
[Speaker C] In law this won’t happen? What? In law this won’t happen? Someone who deals with law—won’t it happen to him?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Law is exactly taking the soul out of things and dealing with rules. And that is the point. There is no correct insight in law. Correct insight into what? You don’t—
[Speaker B] Those primitive people had that? What? Those primitive people had that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Why was Torah given only after two thousand years? Because there were stages when it wasn’t needed. The patriarchs discovered Torah in the world, because it was clear to them. Look at the world and see—that’s all. Why did you need to give them Torah?
[Speaker B] The patriarchs… what? And today too, primitive people?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the whole situation was different. What do you mean, the patriarchs? The patriarchs brought it to realization, but all those nice interpretations that Abraham argues with Avimelech in the dispute of Rabbi Akiva Eiger and the Ketzot—you can take that more seriously or less seriously. But there are also statements of the Sages like this, and these statements come to express that Pharaoh too grasped the spiritual reality—he chose evil. Meaning, the whole world was in some state where spiritual reality was more accessible to it. For us today, our way of approaching it is through Torah study. In the first two thousand years of the world, this was not needed. That is what is called the world of chaos.
[Speaker B] Even today it’s through Torah study?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?
[Speaker B] I mean, not in India.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn’t say they arrive at full perception. I said there are things there that we do not attain. We as the Western world do not attain them. That still doesn’t mean they keep Sabbath and wear tzitzit. I’m saying they arrive at some understanding of the world? Absolutely yes. There is—did I tell you about Rabbi Shabbetai Donnolo the physician? Right? I mentioned it once. In his commentary on Sefer Yetzirah—called Sefer Takhkamoni, it’s printed, in every edition of Sefer Yetzirah this commentary is printed—so in the introduction to that book he says that once he did not understand what was going on with all these books, the books of Kabbalah. And he met some Persian or Indian non-Jewish sage who taught him all these things, and from then on he understood. And he returned and began writing a commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, and now he is a kabbalist. And his understandings came from that Persian non-Jewish sage. Now, I don’t think that all the information he conveys came from that Persian non-Jewish sage; that sage gave him the tools to grasp these texts correctly—Sefer Yetzirah, Raziel the Angel, and all the books they had, books that we have no access to grasp. So the tools to grasp these things can also be found elsewhere, and in all those primitive places one can find the tools to grasp them. For us today this is damaged; we are captive to Western conceptions that think a wise person is someone who knows how to read.
[Speaker C] And does that really happen, say, in India? Are there really people there who are actually like that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think there are very real things there. I’m sure there are very real things there. There are things that—I think there are many—we have… I would gladly travel there, if I weren’t—
[Speaker C] Bound by all kinds of…
[Speaker B] No—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Really. There are things missing from our world. We’re not—our world is damaged. We live in too Western a world. Okay. I went to bring that bone.
[Speaker B] Not Western—Euro-American, colonial.