The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 24

Table of Contents

• The order of the five senses in Jewish tradition
• Sources that rank sight as the highest faculty
• Sources that rank hearing as the highest faculty
• Clarification versus depth: the precision of sight and the penetration of hearing
• Voice as testimony and voice-recognition in tractate Sanhedrin
• Conflicts between the senses: a mirage, Jacob and Isaac, and touch versus sight
• Hearing and sight as tools of perception: the Greek outlook versus hidden layers
• The passivity of sight and the activity of hearing
• Sefat Emet, the soul-quality of the ear, and spiritual sight
• The Oral Torah, hearing, and speech as tools of cognition
• A heavenly echo, the meaning of events, and a life of listening
• The movement of the article: from Hellenism and ideas to logos and auditory logic
• The Rashbatz in Magen Avot and the limitation of sight to appearances
• Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, Asiyah, and the division between sight and hearing
• “This is My name forever, and this is My remembrance for every generation”: My name/My remembrance, 248/365, and drawing down the divine light

Summary

General Overview

The text presents a broad Jewish tradition regarding the order of the five senses and the question of whether hearing precedes sight or vice versa. It sets up two competing conceptions: one that emphasizes sight as the tool for precise clarification of reality, and one that emphasizes hearing as the tool of depth, address, and the grasping of inwardness. It brings a series of Spanish, Yemenite, and ethical sources that rank the senses differently, and develops the debate into a fundamental disagreement about the tools of perception: is reality limited to what can be visually perceived, or are there layers accessible דווקא through listening? From there it presents hearing as the ability to receive a “heavenly echo” and meaning addressed to a person within everyday events, preparing the ground for a conceptual move in which auditory logic is the way to form a connection with “Atzilut” and with the “logos” behind the ideas. In the end it ties the drawing down of the divine light into the world to the totality of Torah and the commandments through “My name/My remembrance” and 248/365.

The Order of the Five Senses in Jewish Tradition

The text cites sources that place the five senses in an order where hearing comes before sight, including the book Segulat HaNefesh attributed to Maimonides of blessed memory, the book Orot HaNefesh attributed to Rabbeinu Bahya the judge, the book Gan HaMussar by Rabbi Netanel ben Rabbi Fiumi, and the tradition of the sages of Yemen. The text states that all these Jews and all these Jewish books say that the sense of hearing comes before the sense of sight. It also describes a later Spanish tradition that reverses the order and elevates sight above all the other senses, listing Duties of the Hearts, Orot HaNefesh, Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra in his Torah commentary, and Maimonides in his commentary on the Mishnah, where he says that sight is the finest and most elevated of the five senses, followed by hearing.

Sources That Rank Sight as the Highest Faculty

The text brings additional sources in which the sense of sight is the most distinguished and refined of all, followed by hearing, including the book Ruach Chen, the book Shaar HaShamayim by Rabbi Gershon, and Gersonides in his Torah commentary, where he says that the sense of sight is more distinguished and contributes more to the attainment of intellectual truths than the other senses. The text notes that in the Tosefta to the Mishnah, sight appears first. It formulates a line of thought in which sight is identified with clarity, precision, and assistance in attaining intellectual concepts within the revealed realm.

Sources That Rank Hearing as the Highest Faculty

The text presents distinctions made by Jewish sages from the ethical tradition, according to whom hearing is greater than sight, and the power of hearing is more refined and subtle than the power of sight. It quotes the book Shaarei Teshuvah by Rabbi Yonah of Gerona, who says that the eye is a noble object and a very noble organ, but the ear is more honored than it. It also cites Rabbeinu Bahya ben Asher in Kad HaKemach and in his Torah commentary, where he says that the power of hearing is more refined and subtle than the power of sight. The text also brings Rabbi Yosef Yaavetz in his commentary to tractate Avot, who says that the life of the soul depends on the sense of hearing, and the book Orchot Tzaddikim, which places the power of hearing first and the power of sight second.

Clarification Versus Depth: The Precision of Sight and the Penetration of Hearing

The text says that from the standpoint of clarification, sight is better, while from the standpoint of depth, hearing is better. It illustrates that on the level of examination, the eye is more precise than hearing in testimony and in determining what happened. On the other hand, it presents hearing as reaching places that sight cannot reach, such as behind a room or behind a wall. The text develops the possibility of a clash between what hearing yields and what sight yields, where hearing can lead to one conclusion and sight to a completely different one, and raises the practical question: what follows if the products of sight come first, and what follows if the products of hearing come first?

Voice as Testimony and Voice-Recognition in tractate Sanhedrin

The text brings a Talmudic passage in tractate Sanhedrin about hidden places where witnesses would be concealed, and a dispute between Reish Lakish and Rabbi Yohanan over whether one can rely on a voice as testimony when the witnesses only hear. The text says that the Talmud says if there is voice-recognition, then it is acceptable, and cites Rashi, who explains that voice-recognition is an inner clarity of knowledge, similar to visual recognition by which the sages would return a lost object. The text describes a situation in which a voice can become a reliable basis when the identification is completely clear, even though hearing is generally perceived as inferior to sight.

Conflicts Between the Senses: A Mirage, Jacob and Isaac, and Touch Versus Sight

The text illustrates a struggle between the senses through a mirage, in which sight presents an oasis but touch finds nothing, and describes a situation in which touch “defeats” sight. It brings the episode of “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau” as a case in which the voice indicates Jacob and touch indicates Esau, and describes Isaac as having “seen through touch” in a way that leads to the blessing. The text adds the image of virtual reality, where there are sights and sounds but they are not the real reality, and raises the question of the reliability of the senses in light of the possibility of visual deception.

Hearing and Sight as Tools of Perception: The Greek Outlook Versus Hidden Layers

The text formulates the issue as not only a matter of physical senses but of two tools of perception, and presents a Greek outlook of “what I do not see does not exist” as a conception that treats sight as the only tool for grasping reality. The text says that the innovation the Nazirite is talking about is the possibility of recognizing certain layers of the world only through hearing and not through sight, and that within the revealed layers everyone agrees that sight is better. It defines the real debate as whether there are layers that there is no other way to reach except by listening, and places the advocates of sight as those who think there is nothing beyond what is seen, or no way to reach anything beyond it, while the advocates of hearing claim that there is inwardness and that there are things in the world accessible only through hearing.

The Passivity of Sight and the Activity of Hearing

The text cites a commentary on Rashi called Siftei Chachamim in the portion of Pinchas, and develops a distinction according to which hearing and sight are not like the other senses. The text says that hearing requires activity both from the one who hears and from the one who causes the sound to be heard, because sound is the result of an action and the vibration of the air, and the hearer has to act in order to grasp it and bring the sound into the brain or the intellect. The text says that sight is passive both on the side of the seer and on the side of what is seen: the visible thing “is simply there,” and one can go on looking without a parallel active process. The text presents this gap as part of understanding hearing as mutual address rather than mere reception of something fixed.

Sefat Emet, the Soul-Quality of the Ear, and Spiritual Sight

The text brings comments from Sefat Emet in note 54 on “Just as if one makes a person deaf, he must pay his full value,” and asks whether the ear is more of a soul-organ than the eye, linking deafness to a lack of soul and the power of hearing to abundance. The text describes a move in which the sense of sight is “from knowledge in nature,” and cites Sefat Emet in the portion of Vayechi regarding the superiority of sight in drawing things down to the soul in spiritual matters. It explains that the sight being discussed may be spiritual and conceptual sight, not external sensory sight, and connects this to the dispute between Rashba and Tosafot over whether a person thinks verbally or visually. The text distinguishes between visual thought through images and verbal thought through sentences, and argues that ideas are not seen but are expressed in words, and therefore there is content that enters specifically through hearing.

The Oral Torah, Hearing, and Speech as Tools of Cognition

The text says that the life of the soul depends on the sense of hearing, and connects this to Torah study through teacher and student, where hearing is the natural instrument for absorbing ideas. It asks why the Oral Torah is oral, and brings the principle, “Matters transmitted orally you are not permitted to write down,” describing writing as limiting, whereas hearing the rabbi’s words conveys expanses and benefits that are not received through directly seeing a text. The text notes that Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi wrote down the Oral Torah only because there was no choice. It presents the advantage of hearing as lying in the fact that “you cannot see ideas,” whereas through hearing ideas enter the person.

A Heavenly Echo, the Meaning of Events, and a Life of Listening

The text brings a passage in tractate Shabbat about a heavenly echo, and illustrates that Rabbi Yohanan heard schoolchildren saying, “And Shmuel is dead,” understood from this that Shmuel had passed away, and changed his plans, and the Talmud calls this a heavenly echo even though the event itself is banal. The text says that hearing grasps events as something addressing the person and sending a message, whereas sight grasps the world as something that exists without personal address. It describes a Torah life as a state in which a person lives with greater alertness, and everything happening around him is perceived as a message that the Holy One, blessed be He, is sending, so that everything takes on meaning and raises the question, “What does this say to me?” It illustrates this also through thinking about correlations, like the link between smoking and death, and describes an outlook in which this is not just coincidence but “a sign from above,” alongside a distinction between the scientific plane of natural law and the spiritual plane of meaning.

The Movement of the Article: From Hellenism and Ideas to Logos and Auditory Logic

The text summarizes a conceptual path moving from a Greek conception that places sight at the center, through Plato, who adds ideas but still within a visual framework, and on to the Alexandrians and Plotinus, who posit a logos behind the ideas as a further development. It says that the great figures of Jewish philosophy who are drawn after Platonism still elevate the sense of sight, and presents the point that even when they believe in God, they assume there is no way to reach Him except up to the level of the ideas. The text formulates the next stage as creating contact with the “utterance” or the logos behind the ideas, and says this is done through listening, because “one listens to an utterance.” It presents the claim that there are “ideas of hearing” that make possible interaction with what lies beyond the ideas, and not merely the knowledge that it “exists.”

The Rashbatz in Magen Avot and the Limitation of Sight to Appearances

The text brings paragraph 23 according to the Rashbatz in the book Magen Avot, that the sense of sight apprehends perceptible things and “appearances” that inhere in a subject, and does not grasp the thing seen in its true reality, but only by inference from the appearance that is predicated of it. The text adds that sight is an abstract sense, and that God, blessed be He, graciously gave it so that it would guide a person toward attaining Him, and through this sense one can apprehend the wisdom of God, blessed be He, in the coming-into-being of this world. The text formulates the point that sight allows one to see the expressions of divinity in the world and to give thanks for the “delight” of sight, which is “somewhat close to the intellectual,” but it does not provide a way to create direct contact with the divinity behind the world.

Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, Asiyah, and the Division Between Sight and Hearing

The text presents the four worlds: Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, and defines Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah as “separate worlds,” in which there are separate beings that are not divinity. It says that Atzilut is an illumination that gives life to the worlds, and in Atzilut divinity is clothed as a soul within a body, in the expression “He and His attributes are one.” The text says that sight, whether as sensory perception or as visual thought, deals only with Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, whereas the world of Atzilut, which is “the logos behind the ideas,” is accessible only through hearing, and there “auditory logic” operates rather than “visual logic.” It formulates the point that visual logic understands that there is Atzilut only through the operation of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, but does not create contact with it, whereas auditory logic is the way to form a connection with Atzilut itself and to hear the divine utterance behind the revealed forms.

“This Is My Name Forever, and This Is My Remembrance for Every Generation”: My Name/My Remembrance, 248/365, and Drawing Down the Divine Light

The text brings the verse, “This is My name forever, and this is My remembrance for every generation,” and says that “My name” with the letters yod-heh has the numerical value of 365, while “My remembrance” with the letters vav-heh has the numerical value of 248. It explains that the 248 positive commandments are the 248 limbs of the King, and the 365 prohibitions correspond to the 365 sinews. The text says that the totality of Torah and the commandments are what draw down the light of God into the world, that self-nullification is the vessel for the light, and that the commandments are the practical vessels through which the divine light penetrates reality. It concludes that this is the idea of the Messiah: the revelation of the light within the “what,” within self-nullification, which is the perfection of all creation as a whole.

That hearing is placed first and sight after it; and if he arranged them from top to bottom, then hearing is said first and after it sight, taste, and touch; from bottom to top: the sense of hearing, then the sense of sight, the sense of smell, taste, and touch. And likewise in the book The Conceptual Boundaries, The Soul’s Special Quality, attributed to Maimonides of blessed memory, he listed the five senses as hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch. And likewise in the book Lights of the Soul, attributed to Rabbeinu Bahya the judge, he listed the five senses and said—and this is his wording—the five senses are hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch. And likewise in the book Garden of Ethics by Rabbi Netanel ben Rabbi Fayyumi, he listed the five senses: hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch. And all these Jews, and all these Jewish books, say that the sense of hearing precedes the sense of sight. A kind of tradition found in Rabbi Netanel ben Rabbi Fayyumi and also among the other sages of Yemen. And the later additions of Sephardic Judaism reversed the order after them, elevating the sense of sight above all the other senses. As in Duties of the Heart, and in Lights of the Soul, and Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra in his commentary on the Torah; also Maimonides in his commentary on the Mishnah, that the most praiseworthy and exalted of the five senses is the sense of sight, and after it the sense of hearing. And likewise in the book Ruach Chen, the sense of sight is the most honored and refined of them all, and after it the sense of hearing. And likewise in the book Gate of Heaven by Rabbi Gershon, he listed the five senses with sight first and then hearing. And so too the Ralbag in his Torah commentary: the sense of sight is more noble and more helpful for the apprehension of intelligibles than the other senses. And in the Tosefta of the Mishnah, sight comes first. And there are disagreements among the sages of Israel, among the ethical masters, who say that hearing is greater than sight. The power of hearing is more refined and subtle than the power of sight. In Gates of Repentance by Rabbi Yonah Gerondi: the eye is an important faculty and a very honored organ, but the ear is more honored than it. And likewise Rabbeinu Bahya ben Asher in Kad HaKemach and in his Torah commentary: the power of hearing is more refined and subtle than the power of sight. And also Rabbi Yosef Yaavetz in his commentary on tractate Avot, that the life of the soul depends on the sense of hearing. And also in Ways of the Righteous, the first is the power of hearing and the second is the power of sight. So if we come to compare these against each other—and they disagree whether sight comes first or hearing comes first—this whole discussion usually raises thoughts in us about what exactly is going on inside our soul: whether the sense of sight is primary or the sense of hearing is primary, and what exactly the implication is for the measurement of which is more important, and in what sense sight or hearing is more significant. What is the dispute here? It could be, for example, that hearing leads to one conclusion while sight leads to a completely different conclusion. So what would we learn from that if sight comes first? Meaning, if we see the picture as it is, we understand its meaning more than if we only hear about it, and then sight is greater than hearing. Or maybe hearing is greater than sight. And if sight is more correct than hearing. And all this we examine also in the sense of the senses within the world, where people come and say that the sense of hearing is more important than sight because sight sees only externals. Because sight is only of the eyes and does not see the content of things as they are. And then there are those who say that hearing is greater than sight. These people are each pulling in a different direction. There are voices among them by which one can measure the matter against hearing, and there are those who say this voice is really a different form of understanding. We already spoke more than once about the fact that, for example, at the level of examination, the sense of sight is much more precise than hearing. The sense of sight is much more precise than hearing. With sight you can see what really happened there just now. In sight, between two witnesses who see the same event, between two witnesses who tell about the same act, even then seeing is better. On the other hand, we already saw that hearing, for example, can reach places that sight cannot reach—behind a room, or behind a certain wall. There is an interesting expression in the Talmud, in tractate Sanhedrin if I’m not mistaken. It tells there about this matter of hidden witnesses, where they would conceal witnesses and hide them in a transgression and punish them in order to bring them to trial. And the Talmud discusses some dispute there between Reish Lakish and Rabbi Yohanan. And the Talmud says there, regarding the voice of the person who spoke: can you rely on that as testimony? After all, the witnesses who were hiding only hear his voice. The Talmud says: if there is visual recognition of the voice, then it is fine. There Rashi actually explains what “visual recognition of the voice” means. Rashi explains it very correctly. There in the Talmud, the Talmud explains what it is. The dispute between them is over the meaning of the words “visual recognition of the voice.” On the one hand, I said hearing is in fact less good than sight, but in a place where the voice is so clear to me like visual recognition, then it is above everything and I can rely on it. Just as by visual recognition the sages would return a lost object based on visual recognition. So this is a situation where it is completely clear to me that this is the person, not someone else with a similar voice. I know—it’s an inner feeling of knowledge. So if I have that same feeling when I hear someone, that it is clear to me that it’s him, then after all one can also rely on that. And that is visual recognition of the voice. But if we look at it, then in the sense of examinations it seems quite clear that the eye is better. But in the sense of depth, and in the sense of seeing hidden things—things difficult in darkness, or things hidden behind a wall—there hearing is better. And we see here the phrase “the noise and the commandment.” The noise and the commandment. Great noise opposite the commandment. And when you listen to your own noise, then you can see this optics that you see with your eyes—optics. When you hear this noise of the commandment. The commandment concerning this noise. You know, everything is connected to this. Rabbi Kook said that when you listen and let that voice enter you, when you listen to your own noise, you reach the optics of its root. Meaning, when you listen in order to see your own noise, and listen to its noise, in the end you reach the speech of the soul that reaches it, and it is simply amazing. Notes from Sefat Emet here in note 54. There it says: if one deafens someone, he pays his full value. Did you know that the ear is a more soulful organ than the eye? If one deafens someone, he pays his full value—as if it gives him his whole power. And I said correctly that it is written that deafness is a lack in the soul, but the ear gives power and abundance of hearing. In any case, as we said: from the standpoint of clarification, sight is better; from the standpoint of depth, hearing is better. We said that this is a dispute among those medieval authorities (Rishonim). And all this is clear: from the standpoint of clarification, sight is better, and from the standpoint of depth, hearing is better. But why argue here with all those who hold that sight is better, and those who hold that hearing is better? I assume their reasoning—or at least the way we might interpret them—is not only according to the fact that sight and hearing are physical, but as two tools of perception. The people of sight, the people of sensory perception, claim that nothing is grasped better than by sight. And likewise, whatever is not grasped by the eye does not exist. This is the Greek conception we talked about last time. What I do not grasp with the eye does not exist. It’s not that there is no broader sense here. The Greek can also say he does not hear what he does not see when he speaks. Here we are coming to speak about tools of perception, not tools of sensation. And in this conception—that same Greek from the portion of After the Death, who accompanies us all the time—this is the Greek who recognizes nothing his eyes do not see or his intellect does not grasp. And when he says, “What I don’t see doesn’t exist,” he is really saying that sight is primary, since it is the only means I have to grasp reality. Hearing adds nothing that I cannot attain by sight. Whatever can be attained by sight—that’s it. And the whole novelty the Nazir talks about all the time is really the claim that I can recognize certain layers of the world only by hearing and not by sight. And the dispute is not over the question of which is better. If such layers exist, then everyone agrees that to know them you need hearing, because sight does not grasp them. Within the revealed layers, it is obvious that sight is better. The dispute is over whether such layers exist at all—layers for which there is simply no other way to reach them. That is the dispute. Those who claimed that sight is primary are those who understand that really there is nothing beyond what one sees, or that if there is, it simply does not exist, or at least one cannot reach it by any other means, any other means. And those who claimed that hearing is primary argue that not only what is seen exists; there is also an inwardness that cannot be grasped by sight as sensory perception. Rather, they argue that there are additional things in the world that can be reached only by listening and not by seeing. That is the structure of the struggle between the senses. One dispute among the senses, one says this and one says that, like a mirage. In a mirage, I see with my eyes, I see an oasis. I get there and come to touch it, and I feel nothing. This is a confrontation between the sense of sight and the sense of touch, and the sense of touch wins. So it is the same thing: I say it’s a mirage because I cannot touch it. The same thing. What? How would you say it is not a mirage? Since it has not been proven. Fine, but when you do not think it is a mirage, you think the oasis is an oasis. There is an oasis here, a fixed oasis, a fixed oasis. But how do you know it if you have not come close? If you have not come close, it is an oasis. Why? Because you are touching the picture inside the eyes. No, here we entered the psychology wing. The anxious wing of psychology, or the conceptual wing of psychology? In the therapeutic wing you see things that are not really there. That is the part of the brain that handles paranoia. But thought also—here you see the deed of Jacob, Jacob and Isaac. What are you saying? “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are Esau’s hands.” On the one hand, the voice tells him it is Jacob, and the hands tell him it is Esau. And let Esau prevail. No, I do not think the intention here is really some psychiatric ideology. Of course, in the sense of signs here, many times—even though sight is stronger—touch is like actually counting the coins, and there it overcomes. And here Isaac reached that point and saw the blessing—he sees through touch. Why? After all, apparently sight is the clearest thing there is, the most obvious, the clearest. The reality of sight is the clearest. But in a state where there is error, then your thought errs; sight misled him. In thought, where you really do not have that error, sight is the clearest thing. But apparently sight is something tangible that can sometimes mislead, because there are fantasies, one can perceive visions that do not really exist. So once that pattern of error exists there, you say, fine, then touch is more reliable. Here touch is more reliable. There isn’t that mistake of sight being more reliable. Anyway, to me it seems the intention here is not really psychiatric illusions, but touch here, at this point, is less reliable than sight. Here it goes more to the conceptual point, the point of cognition. What, no? The intention here with touch. What? Enjoying the thought and not reality? Yes. But he sees—it’s the clearest thing. Let’s say you have here a virtual reality system, where you put on a headset or a computer or something, and you see all kinds of images, and there are sounds that you receive in the headphones and voices and everything. Are those really sights and sounds that are there? No. It’s video. But it’s not reality. They created them artificially. Touch creates them. These are not real sights. But it’s not that you are imagining. You are not imagining. You are seeing sights that are there. What? They don’t exist in actual reality? So then what is that for? Touch passes through those things that someone made. It’s not really something—it is the handiwork of someone else. It’s not real being. Being from reality. It’s like what is written—that it’s not from… Maybe Isaac saw, looked… No, that’s from the standpoint of his sight, that he saw what he saw. Sight here says what kind of sight—here sight showed him the… sight showed him Esau. Isaac wanted to bless Esau, and therefore his sight… Right, he saw Esau. Fine, that is basically the dispute. Down here he has all kinds of notes; for example note 43, where he adds there that the five senses are five divisions of the soul. Five interesting points, if they are really true. I don’t know. There he claims that these five senses describe five kinds of living creatures. Meaning, this order that appears here: there are living creatures that have touch and taste and do not have the other three. And then it continues like that: touch, taste, and smell, without the other two. But what seems to me is that the claim here makes sense in saying that other combinations cannot appear. Meaning, you cannot have, say, a living creature that has only taste and no touch. Any living creature that has taste is already a second level above touch. And that sounds like a hierarchy of levels; it really sounds evolutionary. That at first there were the most primitive animals, creatures that had only touch, and then another sense of taste was added, and after that smell, and afterward sound and sight, or something like that. That is a very interesting claim, and I do not know whether it is true. Does a dog have this? I just looked at a worm. The question is how the worm—do they have no eyes? Do they have sight or smell? A worm has no sight. Maybe it has taste? I’ll check now. I just searched. Does it have taste? Maybe it has sight? The worm’s taste. Maybe it appears there? Maybe it didn’t have taste. Maybe only taste? Taste of what? A worm with smell. A worm—does it have taste? It has taste; it has a sense of taste. Where is that written? Here, here. It has a sense of taste. So that’s just nice, interesting. Maybe if we search other animals we’ll see—maybe this claim is true. Then there is a certain hierarchy to all these sensations, so that there will not be animals with sight without hearing or hearing without sight. If the hierarchy here is clear, I do not know exactly in what sense this is being said. Where are we here within this series of things through which time can be divided within animals? And then we understand some process here, some kind of development over time, in which if one can see or hear, then from the outset hearing or sight is already later. And the worm’s own capacity, its system changes, and also the environment it is in. Let’s say a species of worm that has different organs attached to the end of each such organ. And what is the system of that thing? What did we say within this circle? Even so, there is an interesting claim here in Siftei Chachamim, in the addition in the commentary of Siftei Chachamim on Rashi in the portion of Pinchas, and he raises there—he says why hearing and sight are not really the same kind of thing. Hearing and sight are different from the other senses. He writes there: “From this you will perceive the superiority of the soul over the world, for the senses are five, and the sense of hearing and the sense of sight—all the senses are not of the same kind.” Hearing and sight, sight is a person who… wait, let’s see. Hearing is not the same thing. Hearing and sight are not the same thing. Hearing is some kind of thing to which time is attuned. When you listen to something, it is true that you hear the voice directed to you, but that is not sight. Sight requires less activity from you. Hearing is active. Hearing is active and you receive the voice. Sight is less active. I think there is a difference between them. A person who sees—the sight does not cease from where he sees, and he can go on looking. You cannot stop the action toward the thing you see. You were passive, and that is what we spoke about when we talked about sight. And if you were passive and saw, then the thing sending you the messages is also passive. The voice—you listen to it, and that source has to perform some action of vibrating the air. Sound is the result of a process. Sound is the result of someone turning to you, saying something. Sight is just there, and you see it. There is something passive here. So sight is passive from both sides—from the side of the seer and from the side of the seen. And therefore the thing does not stop being seen; it does not stop being there. And consequently when you do not act but merely observe, that is called the world of repair. And it is written there that this is not a sense in which you process information but rather receive it. Maybe that is why this Sefat Emet means it—not perhaps because it does not act. I do not know now whether this Sefat Emet is saying that the sense of sight is a less physical sense, and it may be that it is more spiritual because the eye is more spiritual. And because of what I am saying now, I am not sure that is certainly correct, because the sense of sight may indeed be more spiritual, and because it lacks a bit of physicality, maybe it is something in which you do not perform an act, but are above this system of sight and intelligibles. Fine, always—that is certainly true. True, it is certainly true that this speaker here is referring to what we said about Sefat Emet in his Torah commentary, where Sefat Emet says that the sense of sight is more complex and more helpful in the attainment of intelligibles as they are, which means many more intelligibles are grasped when one uses the sense of sight. And we see something like that in Sefat Emet on the portion of Vayechi. I saw there a sentence of Sefat Emet on the portion of Vayechi. He opens with a discussion of the sense of sight. He says: the sense of sight comes from knowledge by nature. Besides that, the love of God within it—as much as we love You more than all that we see, not only what we do but also from among the things to do—I ask that we ignite this action. The sense of sight more than all the senses brings us to know what divine knowledge is; sight brings us to attain the will of God, to attain a very high spiritual, divine apprehension. And there is a note here within the words of Sefat Emet: “How wonderful are the words of Sefat Emet in the portion of Vayechi, that the sense of the eye in its continuation to the soul concerns spiritual matters.” And presumably Sefat Emet too, when he speaks about it, is not necessarily speaking of the physical eye, but of seeing spiritual things and spiritual visions. And we spoke about that—attaining spiritual visions—and the sight discussed here is spiritual sight. And this is what is written, for example, Sefat Emet says here that the sense of sight serves only at the levels of a human being in his physicality, but the sense of sight of a person who uses visions, prophetic visions, and certainly at divine levels—that sight, the attainment of the sense of sight, is an intellectual attainment. And this is an intellectual visual attainment, and there is a difference here between intellectual attainment and visual attainment. And here he means spiritual sight and means conceptual sight, not simple external sensory sight. And this is connected to what we once discussed in Rashba, in the dispute between Rashba and Tosafot about whether a person, when he thinks, thinks verbally or thinks visually. Thinking visually is thinking through images, using the eye through images; that is how a person thinks about things. Verbal thinking is thinking in sentences that state those things. Fine, that is perhaps one of the differences between intellectual thinking and visual thinking. Intellectual thinking is thinking in sentences, not thinking about the things themselves and seeing them, but thinking about the content, about the ideas in them, and not about the things themselves. Fine, that exists only in visual thinking. Ideas cannot be seen, not even in imagination. Ideas can be expressed in words; they cannot be seen. Fine, and even in thought you can think through pictures and you can think through verbal expressions—visual thinking and intellectual thinking. And when it says “the soul in spiritual matters,” there too the meaning is that even when imagination sees them, its thinking operates visually. Fine, in the example in the portion of Vayechi, at the second level of the world of sight, he says in the example he brings that the life of the soul depends on the sense of hearing—for example, Rabbi Yosei de-Avoy was in his father’s teaching. So once again we see here why the life of the soul depends on the sense of hearing. It says below: “One who engages in Torah is the light of a flame,” and it says, “The enlightening of the eyes gladdens the heart; an ear that hears the rebuke of life,” and so on. “And the life of the soul depends on the sense of hearing. The more excellent the sense and the greater the benefit that comes to the body, so too the building of the soul.” And in this matter, the sense of hearing is the best and greatest of the five senses. So once again, he does not mean in terms of a tool for cognition of the world. When you hear the rabbi and he teaches you, that is how you learn Torah. But in the end, through the sense of hearing you gain more than through the sense of sight. In sight you cannot see ideas. Ideas can enter you only through the sense of hearing. As we said earlier. So because of this, the sense of hearing is more praiseworthy than the sense of sight. So again we see that the dispute is not over which tool really is better for knowing the world, because certainly sight is a clearer and more unequivocal thing. The question is, in principle, from the standpoint of cognition, what is more important. And here, really, this is exactly the whole root of the Oral Torah. Why is the Oral Torah oral? Why—why is it that matters transmitted orally you are not permitted to write down? What does the Talmud say about that? Matters transmitted orally you are not permitted to write down. Why? Because it has to pass through the medium of hearing and speech. Through a rabbi, a student listening to the rabbi. When you write it on some pages, you limit it terribly. When you hear the words of your rabbi, as he said here earlier, then you are actually receiving certain expanses that he has—that is my expression that I used earlier. You can derive more than you would derive if you saw the things directly, directly. And indeed the Oral Torah was supposed to be transmitted orally, and Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, with no choice, wanted to write it down. Beyond that, as we saw earlier, a voice is something transmitted by someone doing something, someone turning to me. In sight it is just seeing, just seeing things around me; I see them. I do not need to turn toward them, and they do not need to turn toward me. But hearing is some kind of mutual turning of the one who makes the sound and the one who hears. The hearing side—each one has to act. The one producing the sound has to do something for a sound to emerge. And the hearer has to do something to grasp the sound and bring it into the brain or intellect. In sight, neither the thing showing itself nor the one seeing does any active thing. It is more about grasping an inner thing, grasping what is there. I look at it; it is not something superficial. And this is perhaps the moral of the heavenly echo. The Talmud, when it speaks about a heavenly echo, says that it brings all kinds of cases that we would not call a heavenly echo. There is a sugya in tractate Shabbat. The Talmud there brings what a heavenly echo is, and gives various examples. For example, Rabbi Yohanan once thought of going down to Babylonia to ask Shmuel some questions in Torah. Before deciding to go down to Babylonia, he passed by a study hall where schoolchildren were learning. The children recited the verses they recited, those schoolchildren. And he heard them saying, “And Shmuel died.” He heard, “And Shmuel died,” and then he understood that Shmuel had passed away. And he stopped his plan to go down to Babylonia. And that, for example, the Talmud calls a heavenly echo. Usually we think a heavenly echo is some transcendent thing that comes from heaven and rules according to Jewish law like Beit Hillel and the like, a voice coming out from heaven. But a heavenly echo can be some completely banal event that happens around me. But you know that inside it there is something turning to you. And that is exactly the difference between listening to a heavenly echo and seeing a heavenly echo. Sight is not something that turns to me. Sight is something around me; I see it. Hearing is when someone turns to me and then makes a sound to me, and I hear it. If I know that everything around me actually contains information relevant to me, that everything around me is in fact turning to me, then in everything around me I hear a heavenly echo. And that is why it is called a heavenly echo. All kinds of things happening around me are sending me messages. Sight does not send messages. Sight is not sending messages. Sight is messages that are there; you look, you don’t look—it never sends me anything. Visual perception sees the whole world as something that does not speak to me, but simply exists. I can look at it; I can choose not to look at it. Auditory perception sees those same events that the visual person also sees, but it grasps them as something turning to you, as something sending you a message, as something that is a heavenly echo directed to you. And so you see the most banal events, things anyone would walk past—the wise person is the one who understands that hidden in those events is some message, a heavenly echo, something turning to me. Something I need to listen to and understand what it says about me—not what it says in itself, I look at it in order to grasp it—but it says something to me, it turns to me. This is auditory perception. To grasp a heavenly echo as something turning to me. And here exactly is the ability of change. The more you honor the possibility of change, the more you understand how much the things around you really are conveying messages to you. The more immersed you are in ordinary human existence, then you really relate to all things as if they were fixed by laws of nature that tell you nothing. Therefore, at some level, a Torah life is supposed to lead us to a state in which we are much more alive, and life is much more meaningful to us. Everything happening around us is supposed to be some kind of message sent to me. The Holy One, blessed be He, sends me messages through everything happening around me. He sends you those same messages too, and perhaps others. Every single thing happening around me is, from my standpoint, a message directed to me. And the more alert you are to this, the more meaningful your life becomes. About everything that happens you can say, wow, the Holy One, blessed be He, is speaking to me through this event, through this case. Everything I feel around me receives meaning. What is it saying? Try sometime to think this way in day-to-day life—that many, many things have significance. Sometimes things that seem meaningless to us have significance. There are correlations; this whole world is built on the fact that there are all kinds of certain correlations between two things. So I try to understand why the correlation exists. Everyone who smokes later dies, or many of those who smoke later die—apparently smoking causes death. Someone who does not think scientifically—and I gave a scientific example here—says maybe there is a connection between smoking and death, that there is a higher chance of getting cancer, and so on and so on and so on and so on. He does not think of anything beyond that. He sees here two events that are somehow experientially connected to one another. Whoever smokes dies, or many of those who smoke. Someone who understands that everything has significance understands that this is not accidental. And if everyone who smokes dies—or at least there is a high likelihood that someone who smokes dies—then apparently there is really a sign from above that smoking causes death. So if so, I draw a conclusion; it means something. And these are lives in which everything happening around me I see as a kind of message. What does it mean for me? What does it mean in general? What is the idea behind it? Some process happened here in the world—what, how do I respond to it? And if there are things—everything happening in the world—I need to try to think what it says about me. These are much more alert lives, totally different from a life in which a person simply lives, walks through the world, lives these fatalistic kinds of lives. Whatever happens, happens; we said these are laws of nature. You cannot change those laws; you simply live them, and that is it. There is also that aspect. What has significance for us is what I said before. It brings about a certain way of looking at all the data, but this is still not the scientific plane. The scientific plane goes only to the plane of laws of nature. Someone who really lives the spiritual planes within this world—for him every step, every place he goes, he sees things that help him draw conclusions relevant to his life. Everything happening around us is important and relevant. It is a different kind of life, simply to live it. And it is not just a simplistic form; it is a way of life. Everything that happens around me, I think what it says. What is its meaning for me, and what does it say in general, what is the idea behind it—and that applies to everything. And you can see examples here, all kinds of such things that sometimes, when you look at them in a sugya, behind them stand very interesting things. Like a sugya, by the way. You read a sugya, and you can understand the general idea of the sugya and move on, and you get nothing out of it. But someone who comes with a desire to understand the sugya is often exposed to all sorts of layers, in all sorts of places that at first glance do not seem central. Why does Maimonides use this word and not another word? Just small details. When you are alert to all these details, you can generate all sorts of insights that you would not create otherwise. Someone who understands that all sorts of details in the sugya are all somehow important, all come to convey some message in full. Think here on the page—here too there are all these things, details that do not look central in the sugya. And of course in the end there is no choice—you have to sort, decide what the central things are, point less to the less significant things, and continue on. But still, ideally at least, it would be proper to notice all the details, to notice everything they say, and then form the picture. And when many things that look like small details are joined together, they can lead us to very important things. Up to this point this was basically a description of the power of hearing as opposed to the power of sight. We asked which power is more significant, sight or hearing, and this was essentially a detailed account of the power of hearing. Hearing as the ability to hear a heavenly echo. It is the ability to understand, from the things I see at least externally, what their innerness is saying. What vibration they carry within them that is directed to me. That is auditoryness. Now we are moving to the track of this whole essay, and in fact the track of the whole essay—he once again goes back over it as a kind of summary. The path, to see where we are, what we have been through, and what we are moving toward. So we spoke about the transition from Hellenism, which sees everything through sight, through Plotinus, through Abravanel, to the point that there is—Plato is already a move beyond Aristotle—there are already ideas, but the ideas are still distant. Then the Alexandrians come, and Plotinus, and all those people, and say that there is a logos behind the ideas. That is already progress. After that we grasped it through aesthetics and said, fine, now this is all also connected to the world itself. Now let us see what of this we can grasp. So Aristotle says… Aristotle says only what is seen. Plato says there are ideas here; even though you do not see them, you can grasp them, but the grasp is still visual. Right? That is exactly what he says here: that the great Jewish philosophers drawn after Platonism also still elevate the sense of sight above everything. Platonism too is still Hellenism; we already talked about that several times. Yes, exactly. And that is… this is the second part of the essay, where he basically says: after I understood that there is the world itself, there are the ideas, which are the theoretical forms, and there is the logos behind the ideas—that ends with the Alexandrians. The Alexandrians introduced the logos behind the ideas; that is Plotinus. Fine? Now we begin to look at how all these things are grasped—the thing itself, the ideas, and the logos behind it. Fine? This begins from letter Peh. So the section marked Peh speaks about the theoretical ideas. So the thing itself is not attained by sight—that is obvious. Now what about the ideas? In the next paragraph, Plato claims that even the ideas are still sight. Just a more refined sight—not sight with the eyes of flesh but sight with the eyes of the intellect—but it is still sight. Because for Plato too, the perfect horse is still a kind of image of a perfect horse, not an idea of a perfect horse. So therefore that too is still seen. Then Plotinus and Rabbi Isaac Abravanel came and basically understood that there is something beyond the ideas, but still it is only apprehended as existing. It exists; its realization is already there. But in terms of our ability to grasp it—which is the move of the second part of this essay—our ability to grasp it from that standpoint is still Platonic. Therefore Don Yehuda Abravanel and Plotinus are Neoplatonists; they are still Platonists. They indeed believe that there is a logos behind the ideas, but they believe it only exists. All I can say about it is that it exists; I do not have any kind of connection. Why? Because their mode of perception is still visual. It is still sight. And sight can reach only as far as the ideas. And that is what is written in paragraph 23, where he says: the great Jewish philosophers of Spain who are drawn after Platonism elevate the sense of sight above all the other senses. They believe there is God. Obviously. All the Spanish Jewish philosophers—Maimonides and Rav Saadia Gaon—believed there is God. But they understood that He cannot be seen and cannot be grasped. We have no way to reach all the way to Him. We can reach only the ideas, not Him. What? A kind of prophecy? Right, but prophecy is ideas—you cannot form a connection with that essence beyond the ideas. Why? Because you… up to prophecy you see the ideas; that is prophecy. Up to above, up to the ideas. Up to Platonism, basically. And now this is the stage where he starts talking about how, after all, one creates a connection with that saying, the logos, the saying, yes, that is behind the ideas. So obviously the connection is through listening, right? One listens to a saying, one hears it. And therefore he begins to speak about sight as against hearing, and sharpens this point here as preparation for his next statement, which is really the end of this stage. The conception that there are ideas of hearing. There is a way to pass through the ideas not only to understand that there is something beyond the ideas, but also to grasp it, to create some kind of interaction with it, and that is the capacity of hearing. And here we arrive at paragraph 23. Paragraph 23, according to the Rashbatz in the book Magen Avot: “The sense of sight apprehends sensible objects, namely all appearances that are in a subject. And it does not apprehend the seen thing in truth, except by inference from the appearance in which it is borne.” Just as you said, Meir, and this is clear—that it is basically like looking at a theoretical image. Meaning, we have here a statement that we cannot see the thing itself; we can only see the way it appears to our eyes. And the way it appears to our eyes is some kind of parable for the thing itself. Yes? So that is what he writes here: “The sense of sight apprehends sensible objects, namely all appearances.” It is the appearances that I grasp, not the seen things themselves. “All appearances that are in a subject.” We said: chaos and void. “In it”… the form. Chaos is the thing on which the idea is impressed, the matter itself; that cannot be seen. Only the appearances that are in the subject—“in it,” meaning the form. “And it does not apprehend the seen thing in truth.” I do not truly apprehend the seen thing itself, only the appearances that… And the sense of sight is the most abstract of the senses—this is still Rashba. “The blessed God granted it to man only so that it should guide him toward apprehending Him, and by means of this sense he apprehends the wisdom of the blessed God in the existence of this world. For sight leads one to give thanks to the blessed God who granted us this delight, namely sight, which is close to the intellect and descends to subtle understanding.” And what he is really claiming here is that divinity itself cannot be apprehended, but through sight this allows us to see the world in the fullest possible way. All we can do is see the expressions of divinity in the world. And since sight is the best tool for apprehending the world, it is also the best tool for reaching divinity, as far as one can reach. “The blessed God granted it to man only so that it should guide him toward apprehending Him, and by means of this sense he apprehends the wisdom of the blessed God in the existence of this world.” Sight sees only the world, and through the world you can somehow understand the wisdom of divinity, but there is no way to create a direct connection with the divinity behind the world. This is Rashba’s conception; that was the depth of the discussion. And basically, to translate this into the language he is now about to begin speaking in, in the opening to that essay, he is essentially claiming the following. Let us first anticipate what he is going to say. What he wants to claim is that in Kabbalah there are four central worlds. There are more, but here we will focus on four: Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah are separate worlds. There there are beings that are separate; they are not divinity at all. Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah are called separate worlds. There divinity does not appear within them; the worlds themselves are not divinity. Atzilut is some kind of thing that gives them life, some divine radiance, but that is not God there; God Himself is not there—it is some radiance of divinity. Atzilut, by contrast, while on the one hand it is also a completely distinct concept, is something in which divinity is clothed like a soul in a body. This is the expression “He and His instruments are one.” There, divinity itself is present. Now sight, which is basically sensory perception or visual thought, deals only with BYA—Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. It deals only with the three separate worlds. Only the separate can be seen. The world of Atzilut—that is the world beyond the separate ones, the logos behind the ideas if we use Greek language—that can only be heard. There one cannot see anything, only hear. There auditory logic works, not visual logic. Atzilut. And that is basically the Nazir’s central claim, and it is also an opening to the continuation of the book. But that is essentially what he is doing in this opening of the essay. There he sets out his ideosophic position. We will still see exactly what the definition is and what the difference is between that and sight in BYA, and what the difference is between sight in Atzilut and sight in BYA. That is exactly what is still going to become clear here, and there are very great innovations here. But in any case, that is his purpose here. And his purpose here is really now to translate the whole move he has made up to now, and from here he begins to propose his alternative. And his alternative is that in fact we also have some way of creating a connection with Atzilut, not only with BYA. And that is auditory logic. Visual logic creates a connection only with BYA, and understands that there is an Atzilut through the fact that something activates BYA, but it does not create a connection with Atzilut. Auditory logic is the way to create a connection with Atzilut itself. And that is the whole claim. And in another language, it is basically hearing the logos behind the ideas. Hearing divinity, the divine utterance that appears behind the revealed forms. The ideas are basically the upper part of BYA, as we will discuss later, and the logos behind the ideas is the divine light, this is Atzilut itself, and through that we have a direct way of creating a connection with it. So essentially we have finished letter 25 and given an introduction to what is going to happen from 26 onward. Letter 26. “This is My name forever, and this is My remembrance from generation to generation.” “My name” with yod-heh has the numerical value 365; “My remembrance” with vav-heh has the numerical value 248. For the 248 commandments are the 248 limbs of the King, and the 365 prohibitions correspond to the 365 sinews. The totality of Torah and commandments are what draw the light of God into the world. And as we spoke about the matter of “mah,” that self-nullification is the vessel for the light, so too the commandments are the practical vessels through which the divine light penetrates into our reality. And this is the matter of Messiah: the revelation of the light within the “mah,” within the self-nullification, which is really the completion of all creation.