Dogmatics – Lesson 12

Table of Contents

• [0:00] The sixth principle – prophecy
• [1:35] The connection between prophecy and the levels in the Kuzari
• [3:35] Prophetic potential and intellectual ability
• [5:07] Einstein as an example of intellectual ability
• [18:07] The condition of morality and intellectual perfection
• [22:33] Types of prophecy – perception and realization
• [27:14] Kabbalah and Maimonides’ metaphysics
• [29:29] Is Maimonides a prophet?
• [43:56] Why animals are not prophetic (LOW)
• [??:??] Philosophical intellect as a prophetic asset (NONE)

Summary

General overview

The lecture moves from the fifth principle in Maimonides’ principles of faith to the sixth principle, prophecy, and defines prophecy as a phenomenon that emerges from human perfection: there are people who develop talents and perfection to the point that their soul “receives the form of the intellect” and connects to the “active intellect,” and as a result an overflow is bestowed upon them and they become prophets. Rabbi Michael Abraham also connects this to the Kuzari and the idea of the “fifth level” as the prophet, and emphasizes that belief in prophecy according to Maimonides is belief in the nature of the human being and in human potential to reach prophetic perfection, not just belief that the Holy One, blessed be He, conveys messages. Throughout the discussion, Maimonides’ view becomes sharper: prophecy is bound up with intellectual perfection. The question of the relationship between wisdom and prophecy is examined, and Rashba’s answer is brought in, distinguishing between logical impossibilities and impossibilities “from our side,” in order to explain how a situation could exist in which the entire people reached a prophetic level or something close to it.

The sixth principle in Maimonides: prophecy as intellect and connection to the active intellect

Maimonides defines prophecy as a state in which, within the human species, there are individuals with developed talents and great perfection, such that their soul receives the “form of the intellect” and connects to the “active intellect,” from which an overflow emanates to them—and these are the prophets. Rabbi Michael Abraham explains “the form of the intellect” in Aristotelian terms as the essence of the soul becoming intellectual, and explains that the “active intellect” is a concept Maimonides took from Greek philosophy as a way of describing a connection to a divine dimension from which insights are received. Rabbi Michael Abraham emphasizes that Maimonides speaks about certain individuals within the human species as a whole, without restricting this to Jews, and that it follows that the principle defines something about humanity as a whole and not only about those prophets in actuality.

The Kuzari, the “fifth level,” and defining the human being by prophetic potential

Rabbi Michael Abraham brings the Kuzari on the five levels: inanimate, vegetative, animal, speaking being, and Jew, and points out that there “Jew” is really “prophet,” based on the assumption that the Jew is a kind of human being who can reach prophecy, and therefore his essence is defined by prophetic potential. Rabbi Michael Abraham explains that the fifth level in the Kuzari is not a “prophet in actuality,” but someone who can reach that, and illustrates this by saying that a cat is not a prophet not because it does not receive revelation, but because its soul does not have a structure that allows prophecy. Rabbi Michael Abraham argues that potential defines the human being more than his actual state, just as the human species is also defined by the possibility of reaching intellectual heights like Einstein, even though most human beings will never realize that.

Belief in prophecy as belief in the human being, not a “policy” of revelation

Rabbi Michael Abraham states that belief in prophecy in Maimonides is broader than belief that there are prophets or that there is foreknowledge of the future; it is belief that the human being is capable of reaching such perfection that he can receive revelation. Rabbi Michael Abraham distinguishes between a narrow conception of prophecy as a divine choice to transmit information and Maimonides’ conception, which places at the center human nature and the fitness to receive revelation. So if the human being were not built for that, the Holy One, blessed be He, could not reveal Himself to him prophetically. Rabbi Michael Abraham presents this as the claim that the novelty in the principles is not that the Holy One, blessed be He, can reveal Himself, but that human beings can be capable of receiving revelation, unlike creatures that have no capacity for it.

Intellectual perfection, science, and the status of the sage in relation to the prophet

Rabbi Michael Abraham emphasizes that Maimonides makes prophecy depend on intellectual perfection and not only on righteousness or character traits, although character traits are required as a necessary but insufficient condition. In the discussion with students, the argument comes up that Maimonides places closeness to prophecy among the giants of intellect and philosophy, and Rabbi Michael Abraham notes that for Maimonides Aristotle is “only one level below prophecy,” while distinguishing between accumulated knowledge and innate intellectual abilities. Rabbi Michael Abraham explains that scientific discoveries are a sign of the capacity to engage in intelligible truths, not the cause itself, and that even without modern knowledge intellectual talent can exist; therefore the focus is on ability, not on the historical content of science.

Two types of prophecy: metaphysical perception versus specific messages

Rabbi Michael Abraham proposes a distinction between prophecy as the perception of spiritual dimensions of reality and prophecy as a specific message about what will happen or what needs to be done, and argues that intellectual perfection is required for both kinds. He raises the possibility that according to a certain extreme view, the prophet does not even need an active “turning toward him” from above in order to grasp spiritual insights; rather, he grasps them by virtue of his level itself. He notes that in Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, chapter 7, Maimonides describes that when a person reaches intellectual perfection, the Holy Spirit rests upon him and he becomes a different person. Rabbi Michael Abraham illustrates this with Ezekiel seeing the chariot, and explains that the seeing may be a perception of an existing reality and not necessarily the creation of a vision for the sake of a specific message.

Kabbalah as a metaphor for spiritual perception and the distinction from grasping divinity

In the discussion, an objection is raised that Maimonides distances any grasp of divinity, and therefore it is hard to speak of “perceiving spiritual worlds.” Rabbi Michael Abraham distinguishes between grasping divinity and perceiving spiritual dimensions of created reality. He uses Kabbalah and mysticism as examples of people with developed spiritual intuitions who perceive things others do not notice, and attributes to this approach the possibility of calling it “intellect” in the sense of a theoretical grasp of a spiritual layer, just as scientific intellect grasps a theoretical layer of the material world. Rabbi Michael Abraham refers to Laws of the Foundations of the Torah as describing metaphysics according to Maimonides, even if he himself does not accept the Aristotelian description.

“A sage is preferable to a prophet,” Maharal, and the example of “Mary’s room”

Rabbi Michael Abraham is asked whether “a sage is preferable to a prophet” contradicts Maimonides’ view, and he suggests an understanding according to which the prophet perceives in a “visual” or immediate way, whereas the sage grasps abstract intellectual insights that are not limited to a particular “world.” Rabbi Michael Abraham brings from Maharal, in the introduction to Gevurot Hashem, a direction that helps explain that abstract wisdom is like “two plus three equals five,” which is true on every level of reality, whereas prophetic vision depends on the range of one’s perception. He illustrates this with the example of “Mary’s room” in optics: complete physical knowledge is not the same as the immediate experience of color. Likewise, prophecy can be a direct experience of what the sage knows as a concept.

Why prophecy is a principle, and why it is not limited to Jews

Rabbi Michael Abraham explains that prophecy is a principle because without it there is no Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and there is no meaning to the Torah and the Prophets. He emphasizes that someone who does not accept the concept of prophecy will also not accept the prophecy of Moses our teacher. In response to the claim that a prophecy not restricted to Jews cannot be a principle of the Torah of Israel, Rabbi Michael Abraham compares this to principles such as God’s existence and unity, which are general truths and not “Jewish only,” and yet they are still foundational. He clarifies that the principle is not who receives prophecy, but the very human possibility of receiving prophecy as a condition for the framework of religious obligation.

Rashba’s responsum on the revelation at Mount Sinai: a miracle of being raised to the level, not bypassing the level

Rabbi Michael Abraham brings a responsum of Rashba in which he is asked how it could be that the entire people reached the level of prophecy at the revelation at Mount Sinai, if prophecy requires “the appropriate prerequisites for it,” and the questioner assumes that this is “impossible” even if the Holy One, blessed be He, wants it. Rashba distinguishes between parts of the event that were “sensory apprehension” and parts that were prophetic, and refers to the statement “they heard them from the mouth of the Divine Might” as meaning that the first utterances reached the whole people directly. Rashba proposes that the miracle may have been that God “made known… in a wondrous way” and raised the people to some degree of prophecy by filling them with wisdom and understanding, similar to “And I have filled him with the spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, and with knowledge, and with all manner of workmanship” said about Bezalel, and not that a person on a low level would receive prophecy without any change in his level.

Logical impossibilities and natural impossibilities: a round triangle, miracles, and omnipotence

Rashba divides between “an absolute impossibility in itself,” such as logical contradictions, and things that seem impossible “from our side,” such as the splitting of the sea, the stopping of the sun, and the resurrection of the dead, which are changes in nature and are not impossible for the Creator. Rabbi Michael Abraham explains that the laws of logic are not “laws” enacted the way the laws of physics are, but conceptual necessity. Therefore a “round triangle” is an undefined expression, not a challenge to power, whereas changing the laws of nature is a miracle. Rabbi Michael Abraham applies this also to the paradox of “a stone that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot lift” as an undefined question if one assumes omnipotence, and explains that the answer defends the concept of omnipotence as the ability to do everything that can be defined without contradiction.

A renewed interpretation of the sixth principle: the emphasis is on the human mode of reception

Rabbi Michael Abraham concludes that Rashba’s responsum sharpens the point that the sixth principle is not merely the claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, sends messages, but that prophecy depends on a human possibility of receiving a message in a prophetic way, so that a merely “physical” message in itself is not prophecy. He explains that the emphasis is on the way the message is received and on the intellectual-spiritual infrastructure that makes that possible, and that in this sense the principle is a claim about the human being more than about a “policy” of revelation. At the end, a question is raised about the added value of prophecy if practical instructions can be transmitted by other means, and Rabbi Michael Abraham answers that prophecy includes immediate perception and the insights behind the instruction, which are not conveyed in the same way to someone who is not a prophet, and that perhaps the very existence of a high spiritual level in the world has value even if it cannot be fully transmitted.

Okay, last time we talked—because we’re dealing with Maimonides’ principles of faith—and we discussed the fifth principle, that He is worthy of being worshipped, and so on. We reached the sixth principle. The sixth principle is prophecy. And it is to know that within the human species there are individuals who possess highly developed talents and great perfection, and whose souls are prepared until they receive the form of intellect and become joined—yes, “form” in Aristotelian language, in philosophy—the idea is that his soul essentially becomes some kind of intellect. That is called the form of intellect. In other words, the form of a thing is basically its essence. So there are human beings for whom the form of their soul, the essence of their soul, is in fact intellect. Others are emotion, or I don’t know what, or various other things. But with prophets, the soul receives the form of intellect, and that human intellect joins with the active intellect, and an emanation of abundance flows upon them from it—and these are the prophets. The active intellect is a concept Maimonides took from Greek philosophy. The idea is that somehow one cleaves to the divine intellect, yes, and receives from it information or insights or whatever it may be. And these are the prophets. And this is prophecy, and this is what it is.

By the way, in the Kuzari, when he talks about the five levels—the well-known passage in the Kuzari where he talks about the five levels: inanimate, vegetative, animal, speaking, and Jew—the Jew, the fifth level, is not really “Jew” in the Kuzari but prophet. He isn’t talking about Jew; he’s talking about prophet. But his assumption is that a Jew is basically a certain kind of human being, a kind of person, who can reach the level of prophecy. Therefore their form, their essence, is basically prophet. Meaning prophet and Jew are the same thing. Not because all Jews are prophets, yes? “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets.” So it’s not because all Jews are prophets, but because a Jew in essence is someone who can reach the level of prophecy. There’s Balaam and so on—there are exceptions among the nations too—but broadly speaking, that’s the essence. That’s how the Kuzari sees it. That is the essence of a Jew, and in that sense he is distinct from every other person. That’s what distinguishes him, and therefore it makes him a separate level.

Why did I mention that? Because that’s also what Maimonides is saying here: that one must believe that within the human species there are certain capacities such that our soul can basically become something connected to the active intellect, and become a pure intellectual form, and then you are at the level of prophecy. But this capacity, or this potential, to reach the level of prophecy—to become something whose form is intellect—that is what the Kuzari calls the fifth level: the prophet. A prophet is not an actual prophet, but someone who potentially can reach the level of prophecy. A cat is not a prophet not because it does not receive prophecies from the Holy One, blessed be He, but because it cannot receive prophecy. Its soul simply is not built in such a way that this level is accessible to it.

So in that sense, our potential sometimes defines us better than what we actually are. Because the potential basically says who we are. We haven’t always realized it, but it says who we really are. And in that sense, belief in prophecy—or Maimonides’ principle of faith concerning prophecy—is something much broader than believing that there is such a thing as a prophet. Isn’t that what—who was it, Tchernichovsky? “I believe in man,” right? “For I still believe in you.” How does it go there? I already don’t remember. “Laugh, laugh at dreams… I shall yet believe in man, in his spirit too, a mighty spirit.” Yes, exactly. So he believes in man. Meaning, for Maimonides, to believe in prophecy is to believe in man—to understand that man is not some simple thing, but can reach levels as high as prophecy, where his form becomes an intellectual form, something no other creature in the world can attain.

So that means that even a person who is not at that level, but whose potential is such, what defines him is that he is someone with that potential. Say a human being is someone who has the potential to be Einstein, okay? Not everyone is Einstein. Not everyone even has Einstein’s talent. It’s not at all certain they could have reached relativity even if they had worked hard and studied physics and thought deeply. It is very likely that almost nobody would have managed that. But still, they have intellect. Intellect, or the capacity for thought, of a kind that can also reach relativity. Meaning, it’s not something else. Einstein is not a different type from us. He is simply better.

Now when you try to define a type—yes, smarter—when you try to define the type, often it is correct to define it דווקא by the potential, by how far this type can go, and not by the question of where you are in actuality. And therefore, in Maimonides, when we speak—wait, does everyone hear weakly? Does it sound weak? No, no, they hear well, they hear well, they hear well. Okay, apparently maybe it needs to be turned up; they hear, they hear.

In any case, Maimonides, when he speaks about belief in prophecy, is speaking about belief in man, not in prophecy—that man is basically a different kind of thing. Or in other words, if we go back to the Kuzari’s hierarchy, Maimonides is basically claiming that one has to believe that man is something different from an animal. There is something in man beyond the biological system. There is something else in him, some potential that can reach prophecy. But this potential that can reach prophecy is what defines man—the capacity to get there, not prophecy in actuality. And in that sense I think what Maimonides writes here is really belief in man and not belief that—or not only belief that—you can be a prophet.

So wait, Rabbi, does the Kuzari assume that a gentile can reach prophecy? The Kuzari assumes not. In Maimonides it seems yes. He does not mention any distinction here between Jew and gentile. He says that certain individuals are found within the human species who can attain the form of intellect, and that is prophecy. He doesn’t write that this applies only to Jews. Rather, there are certain individuals. On the other hand, he also says it’s not every person, but that within the human species as a whole there are certain individuals with these talents. So what? That says something about the whole human species, not only about those individuals. Like the example of Einstein. Meaning, it says that this kind of ability is accessible to human beings. Human beings are creatures such that at least some of them can reach this state. And in that sense it defines man; it does not define the prophet.

There are individuals with highly developed talents, but the type of talent—even if I haven’t developed it that far—is also found in me. I’m just not Einstein. But this type of ability is also found in me. I also have intellect. Einstein has more of it, quantitatively. Okay?

But it’s interesting that he also connects prophecy, the potential for prophecy, to intellect. Right. And I’ll comment on that further. So that’s the first point. Meaning, Maimonides is basically speaking here about belief in the nature of the human species. Belief in prophecy is something broader than believing that there are people who know the future.

And what’s the idea? It really connects to your second comment: Maimonides sees the prophet as something that is not arbitrary. It’s not that the Holy One, blessed be He, simply chooses someone and passes information to him—some sort of information, and the person can pass it on or not, it doesn’t matter, but he receives messages from the Holy One, blessed be He. That is belief in the narrow sense, belief in prophecy. Meaning, that the Holy One, blessed be He, sometimes makes human beings prophets. Okay. Maimonides sees something else here. Belief in prophecy is belief in man. Meaning, who is man? You have to understand what man is, okay? And to understand what man is means that if man were not such that he has the potential to reach prophecy, then even if the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to, He could not convey information to him. And that is not belief in the policy of the Holy One, blessed be He—whether He reveals Himself to people and gives them information. His decisions, yes or no. If you read Maimonides simply, then belief in prophecy would be this kind of belief: just know that the Holy One, blessed be He, tends from time to time to reveal Himself to certain human beings and pass information to them. Maimonides does not present it that way. Maimonides presents it as belief in what man is. Since if I did not understand man in this way—if man were not such that he had the potential to reach prophecy—then the Holy One, blessed be He, could not reveal Himself to him at all. It simply would be impossible. Therefore belief in prophecy is bound up with understanding what man is.

So the second comment—that Maimonides says the concept of prophecy is included in some belief that man can reach spiritual perfection, intellectual perfection, whatever you want to call it—connects to my first point. Meaning that… But Rabbi, Maimonides also says that even if a person is fit for it, the Holy One, blessed be He, still has to decide to reveal Himself to him. Obviously. But I’m saying that is not the essence. The essence of belief that prophecy exists is not belief in the policy of the Holy One, blessed be He, that sometimes He decides to reveal Himself to human beings. Obviously that’s also true—if He doesn’t decide to reveal Himself, then He won’t be revealed. In a moment we’ll see that with Moses our teacher perhaps it’s a bit different—but with ordinary prophets. Still, that’s not the essence. The essence is—fine, the Holy One, blessed be He, can reveal Himself to human beings, so what? What’s the problem? If I already know there is a Holy One, blessed be He, and that He gave the Torah and all that, then fine, of course He can reveal Himself to human beings too. The point is that I believe that man can receive such a revelation. Meaning, that there is in man a potential or a capacity or a certain kind of talent such that when it becomes perfected, he is fit to receive the revelation of the Holy One, blessed be He. Therefore in essence this is belief in man. You have to understand what man is. That’s what Maimonides is saying there.

Now true, after you say that I believe in what man is, in this perfection of man, Maimonides says one more thing: that this perfection is intellectual perfection. Not, for example, being righteous, or having good character traits, or things of that sort. Presumably you need that too, but according to Maimonides the essential perfection, what is really required, the core of the perfection that serves as the basis for this belief, is intellectual perfection. That is a view not everyone will agree with—namely, that the prophet is basically some highest level of intellectual apprehension possible. In a certain sense, it may be that if we understand it this way, then it’s a Platonic view, Rabbi, no? What? Is this not based on Plato? Isn’t it Aristotle or something like that? Maybe it’s connected to Platonism; in another moment maybe we’ll come back to that.

The point is, I said earlier that of course the Holy One, blessed be He, has to decide to reveal Himself. But Maimonides places the focus of belief in prophecy on what man is, not on the policy of the Holy One, blessed be He, of revealing Himself and conveying information to human beings. Even though obviously that exists too, that’s not the point. The innovative point—why we need principles of faith that must be believed on the basis of verses, on the basis of the Torah’s revelation—is not the belief that the Holy One, blessed be He, reveals Himself, but that human beings can receive such a revelation. Because “man shall not see Me and live.” Meaning that there are certain revelations that certain creatures cannot receive; they do not have the capacities, they are not able. You have to believe that man has those capacities.

Once—what? Rabbi, I wanted to ask something. I can’t hear. Rabbi, I wanted to ask something. Yes. The Rabbi said that according to Maimonides, the level of prophecy is intellect. And intellect—the Rabbi separated it from emotion and from righteousness and from morality; it’s intellect, knowledge, understanding. Understanding of what? Intellect meaning what? Come on, Rabbi, what? To know the world or to know God? Intelligence—no, both; geometry, physics, and metaphysics. Okay, let’s take physicists. Does the Rabbi think that the physicists the Rabbi admires, geniuses, really are closer to prophecy than—and it doesn’t sound very plausible to think that this is Maimonides’ opinion. First of all, Maimonides himself says exactly that. Aristotle is only one level below prophecy. Fine, but I’m saying, Rabbi, does he say that these geniuses are the ones closest to the level of prophecy? Yes. Since revelation did not happen to him—it did not happen to him—but what logic is there in that, Rabbi? Because they know a few more things about the electron and proton or neutron and all that, does that make them something closer to God and deserving of the name prophecy?

It’s not about the electron and proton. The Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself to prophets before anyone knew about electrons and protons. Nobody knew about electrons and protons back then. When a person reaches the point where he discovers this physical understanding, it means that he has certain intellectual capacities. Now the fact that he did not discover metaphysics does not matter, but you need intellectual capacities in order that faith—why? Why? Where does that come from? What logic? What resemblance is there in that? The fact that you’re a supercomputer and you can analyze—never mind. We all know you are assuming a great deal. You are assuming a great deal. Who said intellect is a supercomputer? There are capacities of intellect—it’s not a supercomputer. You assume intellect functions like a supercomputer, but no. So what is it? So what is it? So what is it? Some kind of grasp of reality, healthy intuition, yes, all sorts of things of that kind.

In the end though—one second. But all those things, as I said before, do not mean that character traits are irrelevant. Character traits are a necessary condition in this matter. Some kind of plastic condition? But Maimonides puts the focus on intellectual perfection. But that intellectual perfection, in the medieval knowledge of the day, was very limited, and the errors ran from beginning to end. We’re returning to the same point: it was not limited. Again you’re going back to the point of knowledge. No, that is not the point of knowledge. If Einstein had been born in the eleventh century, he still would have been Einstein, even if he didn’t discover relativity and wouldn’t have discovered relativity. But his intellectual capacities, his intellectual abilities, existed in the eleventh century too.

But within what frame would that come out? Human knowledge is a vast project, and each stage learns from its predecessors and adds another layer. So our knowledge accumulates over time. But that does not mean our intellectual perfection is greater than that of those in the eleventh century. Suppose I was the one who discovered the law of gravitation, I was Newton. Why would God think I am more worthy of revealing Himself to than another person who didn’t think of that idea with the falling apple and gravitational force? What is the most philosophically sound logic for thinking that? Let’s go back again, let’s go back again. The fact that he discovered Newtonian mechanics is not the point. Discovery of the mechanics is a sign, not a cause. It is an indication that this person is gifted in dealing with intelligibles. And he could have lived in the eleventh century and he would not have discovered gravitation.

Does the Rabbi see that on average one could say—is the Rabbi in a position to evaluate the great scientists of modern times and of the Middle Ages, and ask whether because they are smarter there is some logic to thinking that God revealed Himself to them and not to me, an ignoramus? When I read Maimonides, that is what Maimonides says. But how can he say something so absurd? He says it explicitly. One can ask where he got it from. That he says it—I don’t see what is difficult here, what is the problem? Since the greatest mathematicians in the world—or the greatest mathematicians in the world—it does not necessarily seem that this population, the greatest scientists, even Nazi scientists perhaps, who were very gifted and very intelligent—I already answered that; that is not the point I was addressing. I answered it already. I said it could be, or is even likely, that corrected character traits are a necessary condition. Maimonides says that is a condition. But the fact that your character traits are corrected is not enough. It’s a condition, it’s a basis. Just as the condition for being a prophet is first of all that you be a human being.

Regarding prophets—not of Moses our teacher and not Nathan the prophet—why did the Holy One, blessed be He, reveal Himself only to human beings? Where in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), Rabbi, is there even a small hint that one of our prophets from Moses our teacher onward, northward or southward, had some intellectual capacity in the sense of Newton and Einstein? You are going back to the question of source, and I am talking about the question of logic. The source is a different question; I will comment on it too. The logic is not difficult at all. There is something here—I ask the question: why did the Holy One, blessed be He, not reveal Himself to cats? What’s the cat’s fault, what’s so bad? Because they have no morality at all, no moral commitment; they act by natural instincts, whereas man has a moral drive. Is it their fault that they have no moral commitment? No, but obviously—what does that have to do with it? Therefore they cannot receive it. Very good. So some of the conditions for divine revelation are inborn capacities—not understanding, not your own work. Certainly, and only moral ones, not intellectual ones. Intellectual they don’t have, fine, it’s a byproduct.

So I’ll repeat the answer a fourth time, and with this we’ll finish. The fourth time—no, I just want to add—that morality is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Fine, but it’s the main thing. To receive prophecy you need intellectual perfection. I just want to add that as an audience that would want to hear prophets, I would very much want the prophet to be intelligent, to have logic, to have fertile thought in addition to moral qualities. I would not want to hear a prophet who is very moral but stupid, that’s all. If you heard that Nathan the prophet failed five-unit math and barely passed three units, would you say he is lesser in your eyes because he isn’t smart enough? Yes, I would doubt whether he is a prophet. Yes. I don’t think so. Okay.

Rabbi, in Maimonides’ palace parable in the Guide, he does not speak about character traits at all; he only speaks about intellectual capacities, that whoever contemplates more comes closer to the palace—that is, to the Holy One, blessed be He. More intellectual, no no no, philosophical intellect—he means gentile philosophers more than Torah scholars. Again, I don’t know, I’m not familiar with these things because I don’t deal with the Guide for the Perplexed nor with Maimonides’ philosophical doctrine. But the fact that Maimonides deals with intellectual and philosophical capacities does not mean there is not some initial foundation of character traits. It could be there is such a foundation that is just obvious, so Maimonides doesn’t deal with it. As for the wicked, that’s a different issue, but…

Yes, Maimonides brings it—it’s Nedarim, an explicit Talmud in Nedarim. It’s a dispute between Maimonides and Ran about how to explain what “strong” means there. Ran says literally strong, and Maimonides says only strong in mastering his impulse. Yes, but regarding the wise man too he explains where he got it from. Fine: “Prophecy rests only upon one who is wise, strong, etc.” But the claim I want to make is that even if you are speaking about capacities or… intellect plays a role in the sense that you must be fit to receive this revelation. For that, apparently, you need some intellectual level; without it you cannot receive the divine messages. That is the claim. In a moment I’ll…

But more than that: when I read Isaiah, Jeremiah, all the prophets—a person with no high intellectual capacity cannot convey to me these lofty ideas. The style, the formulation, the understanding, conveying correctly the words of the Holy One, blessed be He—one needs wisdom in order to transmit them. No doubt. And here there is a clear advantage over me. You read Jeremiah and Isaiah. Wisdom in physics, wisdom in mathematics, wisdom in what? Wisdom—it doesn’t matter at the moment; I don’t know how to define it precisely for you.

In short, what I want to say is the following claim: if you really understand that the perfection is intellectual perfection—let’s take it more extremely than what is written here in Maimonides, though I think in a certain sense that is what perhaps he means. Again, I don’t know his full doctrine of prophecy; I haven’t dealt with it, and it interests me less. But I think what is written here is that in a certain sense the Holy One, blessed be He, does not even need to reveal Himself to you. Meaning, if you are that great a sage, then you receive the divine messages simply because you have the ability to grasp them. It’s like scientific insight. There are people who grasp certain insights or certain structures in the physical world, the material world, and the prophet, through his intellectual capacities, grasps metaphysical insights. But still, it is some kind of apprehension such that, if taken to the extreme, perhaps this is entirely the prophet’s initiative; there is no need even for the Holy One, blessed be He, to reveal Himself to him. In the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah he says exactly that. I can’t hear? He says it in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah: he describes that the person, once he reaches that intellectual level and that perfection, immediately has the divine spirit rest upon him and becomes a different person. Yes, and what comes out of that is that prophecy is simply something always there; only someone who lacks these capacities simply does not notice it. That is what emerges in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, chapter 7.

So the point is that one must distinguish between two kinds of prophecies in this context. There is prophecy in the sense of apprehending insights or spiritual worlds. I perceive the world of emanation in some way, and perhaps that perception is prophetic perception: I somehow manage to observe the world of emanation. Okay? That is one possibility. Then there are prophecies that are specific prophecies about something: go tell the children of Israel to do such-and-such, and if not, then such-and-such will happen to them, or won’t happen. Here these are prophecies that speak of things that will happen. One could also say that someone who understands the world well sees what is about to happen too, but that seems to me to go a bit too far.

It may be that the prophet really has two functions. One function is simply apprehension of the spiritual worlds, of the spiritual dimensions of existence; and for that one needs only good apprehension, not that the Holy One, blessed be He, address him at all. Once he is at that level, he sees things others do not see—“sees,” not necessarily with the eyes, of course. And there are prophecies in the sense that a certain specific thing will happen at such-and-such a time, and here the Holy One, blessed be He, has to address him and convey this information to him.

Now, what is this requirement of intellectual perfection? It may be that it is required for both of these types of prophecy. In the first type, without it you simply won’t see those insights or those spiritual dimensions. In the second type, it may be that even when the Holy One, blessed be He, reveals Himself to you, you do not have the tools to receive the messages He is conveying if you lack capacities or abilities of this sort. So perhaps it is a condition for both of these types of prophecy.

And indeed, in very many places we see that prophets are defined as those who see the structure of the spiritual worlds. For example, Ezekiel sees the chariot. So what does it mean that he sees the chariot? Did the Holy One, blessed be He, create a chariot in order to tell him what a chariot is? Or is it rather that the chariot exists in some sense somewhere, and Ezekiel was at a level at which he managed to see that thing existing there? So that is prophetic apprehension, but in a certain sense it is like science. Meaning, if you are a great sage, then you grasp insights that exist in the world. You did not invent them; you received them, while others do not receive them. And that is not necessarily an active revelation of the Holy One, blessed be He. It is not that He turns to you and conveys information, but rather you grasp something spiritual in reality or something in spiritual reality. Okay? In a certain sense that is like scientific apprehension. And then one can certainly understand why… why Maimonides makes it depend on intellectual perfection. At least regarding this kind of prophecy it is much clearer, since there indeed, in a certain sense, it really is almost a scientific ability. There is some ability to grasp the spiritual dimensions of reality.

We once spoke in the series about mysticism and Kabbalah, and I said that I think mystics or kabbalists are basically people with highly developed spiritual intuitions. What does that mean? That they manage to see certain things in the world that are there, while other people fail to notice them because they lack these spiritual eyes or these spiritual capacities. For this view it is certainly justified to call it intellect. Just as scientific intellect is a kind of apprehension of the theoretical dimensions of material reality, here there is a kind of intellect that apprehends the spiritual dimensions that exist in reality.

And in that sense… But Rabbi, the whole message of Maimonides is distancing from idolatry, distancing from any possibility of grasping divinity, even in language and certainly in comprehension. And everything he says about the Account of the Chariot seems very difficult, because after all you cannot grasp anything of God. And indeed all the things you read in Maimonides, from beginning to end, nowhere do you know more about God afterward than you knew before. No, here you’re mixing things. I’m not talking about grasping God. That’s Maimonides with negative attributes, and I don’t agree with him there, but that’s Maimonides with negative attributes. But that’s all of Kabbalah—Kabbalah after all comes to describe to us certain apprehensions of divinity, the sefirot and all the things Maimonides opposed from beginning to end. No, Shmuel, no, these are not apprehensions of divinity; they are apprehensions of the spiritual dimensions of reality. Not apprehensions of the Holy One, blessed be He, but apprehensions of spiritual dimensions existing in reality. The Holy One, blessed be He, made everything—the material and the spiritual. That’s what this is about. These attributes and those attributes, positive attributes. Attributes of negation and not attributes of essence.

So Rabbi, you are speaking about Maimonides in kabbalistic terms, as though he had some dimensions of Kabbalah—how can that even be imagined? No, this is not Maimonides and Kabbalah; don’t get confused. I am bringing Kabbalah here as an example. Maimonides says that physics and metaphysics… metaphysics—when I speak in terms of Maimonides I mean metaphysics. Kabbalah offers a certain picture of metaphysics. And what is that metaphysics? What is Maimonides’ metaphysics, if it is not connected to morality but to some ontological knowledge? Let’s hear, I’m all ears. What, what sort of knowledge? Maimonides can suffice for us… Open the Mishneh Torah; you need eyes, Shmuel. So there you have something in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, where he describes to you what metaphysics is according to Maimonides. In the first four chapters that hold water? Does the Rabbi think they hold water? How many times has the Rabbi spoken sharply against…? I didn’t say what Maimonides thought was correct; I said this is what Maimonides thought, this is metaphysics. I didn’t say I agree with it. I claim that it is Aristotelian physics that is worth nothing. And the Rabbi thinks this was Maimonides—that he didn’t understand that it was the science of his time? To that extent he didn’t understand? Fine, I think—this is what he writes. But come on… To think that that’s all there is and not try to interpret him comes out very badly. I don’t know where you are getting these things. Maimonides says what he means. Now interpret him however you like. He says what he means. Whether I agree with him or not is another question, but I can still take what he says and say: there is some spiritual understanding of reality that is accessible to prophets. What is that understanding? Maimonides thinks it is connected in some way to an Aristotelian picture, and I don’t think so. But that still doesn’t mean there aren’t some spiritual structures that the prophet can apprehend. What did Maimonides teach us about those structures? He taught us nothing. He taught us that they exist. It comes out that he talked about it, built his whole doctrine of prophecy on it, and in the end taught us nothing about it, not even one letter. Shmuel, you insist. He did not build it on that; he built it on the existence of such a thing. The fact that Maimonides did not understand it correctly because Maimonides was not a prophet—what does that have to do with anything? He says there are spiritual dimensions in reality and the prophet apprehends them. When Maimonides describes what those spiritual dimensions are, I may disagree with him—so what? What does that have to do with the point? Because the product is very meager; it comes out that there is no product at all. So what’s meager? What does that have to do with the issue? Maimonides says that someone who enters the palace comes to know metaphysics. What metaphysics? Aristotelianism. Aristotelianism—Maimonides himself says—has no substance. But Aristotelianism is not the metaphysics. He describes the Aristotelian picture; he does not say that this is all of metaphysics, he does not say the prophet has no more than this. So what is it then? What is it then, Shmuel? After he wrote the first four chapters of the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, all the prophets are now redundant? Yes, because we’re done, we already know everything. Is that the result? Is that what Maimonides wrote? No, obviously not. Therefore it cannot be—he describes spiritual patterns, and he claims that prophecy means grasping spiritual structures. The question whether the description in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah is the full description of all spirituality in the universe and therefore we no longer need prophets—the answer is that certainly even according to Maimonides it is not. So what, then, did they pass on to us—the structures that are indeed correct—which those prophets passed to us, those who bring us close to the palace? Shmuel, why is this relevant to the discussion? It cannot be that this is the plain understanding of Maimonides. There is some other gate—I understand this as the plain understanding. I’d be happy to hear other suggestions at the next stage. What Maimonides writes, for me, is the plain understanding of Maimonides. If you think otherwise, fine—we can discuss other suggestions. I see what he writes.

So in short, the point is that at least in the apprehension of spiritual worlds, the human being can be entirely active. It does not even depend on the Holy One, blessed be He, turning to him; rather, he apprehends the spiritual dimensions of reality. By the way, in the teachings of the Ari, for example, he divides up the prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel—and says how far each one reached. Meaning, we see that he thought yes, this one reached emanation, this one reached netzach within hod, this one reached here, this one there, the Throne of Glory, this and that. Meaning, there is some reference from the Vilna Gaon—I no longer remember. Well, never mind. In any case, the claim is that every prophet has some kind of apprehension in the spiritual worlds, and each one according to his level, as far as he reaches. But we see that the conception is that prophecy is some kind of observational physics—or metaphysics. Just as there is observation in physics, there is observation in metaphysics. And in order for you to observe metaphysically in metaphysical worlds, you need certain capacities. And Maimonides calls those capacities intellect. Since just as there is intellect in science, there is intellect here too. Whether these are exactly the same capacities or not exactly the same capacities—I don’t know. But they are similar capacities in that sense. Therefore I think this is what lies behind Maimonides’ view.

Now I want to show you an interesting source. Wait, maybe I have something else here nearby? Rabbi, does the saying of the Sages that “a sage is preferable to a prophet” contradict this Maimonides? No. There is Maharal in the introduction to Gevurot Hashem. I keep quoting all kinds of things I never actually studied. But in Maharal’s introduction to Gevurot Hashem—he has three introductions there—in one of them he speaks about this, I think. As I remember understanding him—I don’t remember exactly what he says and what part is my own understanding—but I think “a sage is preferable to a prophet” means the prophet apprehends spiritual reality the way I apprehend physical reality. He has a kind of spiritual eyes; it is a quasi-visual apprehension. He simply sees spiritual reality before his eyes. The sage understands it in intellectual apprehension.

Now the prophet, as I said before, as the Ari says, every prophet has a level up to which he can see. Like our physical eyes—if you have sharp eyes, you can see two kilometers away. If you have less sharp eyes, you see one kilometer. Sharper eyes—three kilometers. So visual sharpness defines the range up to which you can see. Spiritual visual sharpness also defines up to what height you can reach. But the sage deals in abstract ideas, not in visual apprehension of things. Two plus three equals five. Two plus three equals five also in the world of emanation, also in the world of Adam Kadmon, also in the world of kav and tzimtzum, in all the spiritual and kabbalistic worlds. Two plus three equals five. And in that sense a sage is preferable to a prophet, because the sage’s insights are intellectual insights. And intellectual insights are not limited to one world and not another. If these are intellectual insights, they are true in all worlds. But in each world they appear visually—or, of course, quasi-visually—in a different form. That the sage does not apprehend; that the prophet does. It’s like the example I mentioned of Mary’s room, yes. There’s also a Wikipedia entry for whoever wants to read.

Mary is some genius physicist who deals in optics. She knows all the optics on earth, backward and forward. But the room she lives and works in all the time is a black-and-white room. No colors, nothing. Yet she knows optics, wavelength, interference, diffraction, all there is to optics. Now she goes outside and sees the color red. Did she learn something new? The answer is yes—but not something new in optics. The physics she knew perfectly well even inside the room. She just did not know that an electromagnetic wave of such-and-such a wavelength appears to our eyes as the color red. She had never experienced red. Everything there was black and white. So what did she learn? She apprehended visually something that, on the intellectual level, she had already apprehended inside the room. On the visual level she experienced it only when she went outside.

In that sense, say, the prophet takes the sage’s insights and manages to feel them as an immediate experience. He sees red; he doesn’t see an electromagnetic wave of such-and-such a wavelength. That’s the physicist. He knows mathematics, he knows the structures, he understands those insights perfectly. The prophet does not know what diffraction and interference and all of optics are, but he knows what red is. The physicist can explain to him all the insights and ideas of what is happening there. So that means the prophet has a visual apprehension of those same insights that for the sage are an intellectual apprehension.

The prophet has an advantage in that “hearing is not as great as seeing.” Seeing is the most immediate, the clearest apprehension. But the sage has an advantage because once you conceptualize something and turn it into intellectual insights, it is true in all worlds. There is no limit where you reach only as far as the world of emanation and no further. If it is a true intellectual insight, it is true in all worlds. In every world it appears at a different level of abstraction, but it is true in all worlds. And in that sense a sage is preferable to a prophet. Yes, but Rabbi, the Maharal there, when he discusses this, is attacking Maimonides on this issue, isn’t he? I didn’t understand. The Maharal there attacks Maimonides, no? What? I can’t hear you, you’re fading out. Maimonides there attacks Maimonides on this. The Rabbi says that according to the Maharal this is the understanding, no? What difference does it make? I’m not entering now into whether Maharal is right or whether Maimonides agrees with him. I’m bringing Maharal as an illustration of what I mean when I speak of spiritual apprehension and why it does not contradict “a sage is preferable to a prophet.” Spiritual apprehension is far beyond the sage. A smart person will not apprehend anything in the world of emanation. The prophet apprehends the world of emanation. But a sage’s insights reach all the way to the world of Adam Kadmon, beyond emanation. The prophet does not; he has no apprehension in Adam Kadmon, only in emanation. So there is an advantage.

But according to Maimonides doesn’t the prophet apprehend it the way the sage apprehends it, just at a different level of quality? No, I think not. He apprehends it as an immediate experience. The sage can conceptualize it, the intellectual sage. That too is wisdom, prophetic apprehension. I’m not saying it isn’t wisdom, but it is wisdom of another kind—a kind of immediate, quasi-visual apprehension of the spiritual worlds. And there is intellectual apprehension. You can know all the phenomena of gravitation exactly like Newton, and still not have discovered the law of gravitation that Newton did discover, because he gave it some intellectual conceptualization. Now, he did not understand any better how bodies fall. We all know how bodies fall. We have experience and we understand exactly how bodies behave in every case. But once you conceptualize it, then you have insights, and those insights are true on the moon and on Jupiter too, because the law of gravitation is true there too. Now how exactly it appears there—whether there is this intensity or that intensity, how it looks—I don’t know. Newton didn’t know that either. Someone who lives it there, experiences it there directly, could tell you what it means there. But the insight itself is true everywhere. And that is the advantage of intellectual apprehension over visual or sensory apprehension. The advantage of thought over acquaintance. Okay, maybe that’s one way to put it.

Okay, so the Rabbi says that prophecy is not really thinking but rather acquaintance. I am saying that the advantage of prophecy is not necessarily an advantage in the ordinary intellectual sense we are used to. Rather, the prophet has some kind of immediate apprehension in the spiritual worlds. It may be that this prophet is also a great sage and can also be a scientist and also has the sage’s insights. But wisdom—let’s call it this way—not that a sage is preferable to a prophet, but that wisdom is preferable to prophecy. Now it may be that the prophet also has wisdom, fine, so he also knows how to grasp the insights. It may be that he does not. But these faculties that I am calling prophecy and wisdom are, I think, two different faculties. That is the point.

It’s like Elijah. Yes, as people say regarding “teiku,” the acronym “Elijah the Tishbite will resolve difficulties and problems”—when Elijah comes he’ll tell us what the Jewish law is, he’ll decide all kinds of legal disputes that we don’t know how to decide. So the famous question is: after all, “it is not in heaven,” and a prophet cannot introduce anything new from now on, so how can Elijah resolve disputes in Jewish law or doubts in Jewish law? There are various answers, but one answer is that Elijah acts here as a sage, not as a prophet. He simply decides the legal questions using halakhic tools; he does not tell you this through prophecy. Because Elijah was also a great sage in the Torah sense, not only a great prophet, and perhaps the two go together. So in that case he is functioning in his role as sage and not in his role as prophet.

Therefore the fact that I compare intellectual capacities to epistemic capacities—how do I grasp things—this is not a comparison between types of people; it is a comparison between types of capacities. The fact that a prophet is a prophet does not mean he is not also wise; he may also be wise. But when he is wise, he operates under the heading of sage and not under the heading of prophet. The prophet apprehends things, and the sage analyzes them and examines them intellectually and understands them intellectually. And it may be that intellectual wisdom is a condition for being a prophet; it may be that it comes together with prophecy. I have no idea; I’ve never been a prophet. But I am saying that even when I distinguish between these capacities or abilities, it does not mean each person has only one of them. There may be a person who has both.

Okay, so to our point. By the way, the author of the Tanya in his Iggeret HaKodesh, chapter 19, says exactly the point you just made. There he asks: the Ari in one place defines Moses our teacher’s prophecy as a certain level, and in fact the Ari writes about levels far above it, yet it is written “No prophet arose in Israel like Moses.” Then he explains exactly this point—the difference between sight and comprehension. Yes, okay, fine, nice.

In any case, let’s just finish reading for a moment and then I want to show you one more thing. “And this is prophecy, and this is its nature. And a complete explanation of this principle would be very lengthy, and our purpose is not to detail each principle and explain the paths to its knowledge, for that would encompass all the sciences; rather we mention them only by way of notification. And the verses of the Torah testify to the prophecy of many prophets.” Meaning, the verses of the Torah testify that there is prophecy here; there is no need to bring verses for that, it is obvious. We need to believe that there is prophecy, and prophecy is basically some type of intellectual, perceptual, apprehensive capacity—whatever you want to call it, what he calls intellect in a general sense—and that is the infrastructure that enables prophecy.

I want to bring you an interesting source, namely a responsum of Rashba. Rabbi, we haven’t even touched the question of why this is a principle at all. Right. Moses our teacher’s prophecy is the next principle. The prophecy of prophets—this is a question about all the principles: why indeed is prophecy of prophets some kind of principle in Maimonides’ eyes? It isn’t entirely clear to me. Obviously without it the whole Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) loses its meaning, because the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is prophetic speech. Still, I don’t know what the criteria are for determining what is a principle and what is not. But of course, one who does not believe in prophecy in principle does not believe in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), right? I’m not talking now about Moses our teacher’s prophecy—that’s a separate matter—but one who does not believe in prophecy at all also cannot accept the Torah. So in that sense I can understand why this is a principle: because without it there is no Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), no Torah and no Prophets, nothing. Right, Moses our teacher’s prophecy—but here in prophecy generally he also did not limit it only to Jews. One who does not accept the concept of prophecy also will not accept Moses our teacher’s prophecy. The next principle is not to believe that Moses our teacher was a prophet, but to believe that Moses our teacher was a prophet on a higher level than ordinary prophets. But one who does not accept the concept of prophecy at all will certainly not accept Moses our teacher’s prophecy either; he won’t accept anything. Right, I understand, but what bothers me in this principle is not understanding or not understanding the principle of prophecy, but that he does not limit it only to Jews. In what sense is it a principle to understand that prophecy exists in the world? Balaam was a gentile. How can that be a principle of the Torah of Israel if it relates to all humanity? To believe that there is—tell me, there’s another principle, to believe that the Holy One, blessed be He, is one and exists; gentiles believe that too, don’t they? Some of them do. They ought to believe it too; if they don’t, they are mistaken. That truth is a truth; it is true for gentiles too. So what? Does that mean it isn’t true? So the fact that you believe in prophecy does not mean prophecy must belong only to Jews. You understand that the Holy One, blessed be He, prophesies through human beings, Jews or non-Jews, it does not matter. But this belief is a condition for Jewish belief, for the framework of religious obligation, yes? Basically he gives me a datum here that something exists, right? Yes. Like God exists—that too is a datum. Yes.

Look at Rashba’s responsum. It is a very interesting responsum in many ways; much of it is copied from the Guide for the Perplexed. But he says this: “You further said that it was reported to you in my name what I believe about the exalted event, the revelation at Mount Sinai—that it was entirely prophetic—and this seemed right to you; you agreed that it was wholly prophetic. Yet you found it difficult: how did the whole people, who are not wise like the wise, attain the level of prophecy, since it is already known that it is impossible for one to attain prophecy except one who has acquired the proper prerequisites for it?”

Notice, Rashba—sorry, notice the difficulty that the questioner asks here. He says: even after I accepted the datum that all Israel were at the level of prophecy—“a maidservant at the sea saw what…”—so all were at the level of prophecy at Sinai, at the sea too, but also at Sinai. So they were all at the level of prophecy. He says: but that is impossible. How can that be? It is like telling me of a triangular circle. How can a person who is not at the level of prophecy receive prophecy? In a moment we’ll see Rashba’s answer, but first of all, what is the questioner assuming? The questioner assumes—yes, that’s the point—there is no miracle. This is impossible. It could not be that there was a miracle there. At least the questioner doesn’t accept that answer, and Rashba too does not accept that answer. A miracle is not a solution. There are things that are impossible—not against the laws of physics; in a moment we’ll see.

So notice what he assumes. He assumes that a person’s ability to receive prophecy is simply a logical consequence of his ability—or in Maimonides’ terms, his intellectual capacities. No matter: spiritual or intellectual perfection, call it what you like. Without that, you simply cannot receive prophecy; it is logically impossible. Therefore even if the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to, He cannot do it. That is what lies at the basis of the question. So notice how far this goes. What we inferred earlier from Maimonides, here reaches a real extreme. Maimonides says you cannot receive prophecy unless you are perfected in the intellectual sense. Rashba’s questioner says not only that you cannot, but even if the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to perform a miracle and give you prophecy despite your not being at the proper level, He could not. It is logically impossible. Meaning, he sees this condition as so essential to prophecy that he says even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot depart from it. Such a miracle is impossible.

That’s really strange. How did Balaam prophesy? Excellent question. Therefore Balaam is also difficult for the Kuzari—but yes, correct, a difficult question. But I’m bringing this questioner of Rashba in order to show you how far things go. Because in the simple understanding, I understand prophecy as taking a person and the Holy One, blessed be He, deciding to give him certain information, that’s all. If the Holy One, blessed be He, decides, there is no problem. Maimonides says no: you need some intellectual perfection in order for it to be possible at all. Rashba’s questioner goes one step further: he says not only is this the normal case, but even by miracle the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot give it to you. It is simply a logical impossibility; it cannot be.

Now here in Rashba’s answer, by the way—exactly—it seems to me one can add even more to this question. After all, he bases the question on the fact that Rashba says this was prophecy. Meaning, in his view, if it had not been prophecy, if it had been some physical miracle, then this whole event would be perfectly fine. It is precisely because it is prophecy that he has this difficulty about Mount Sinai. He rejects Rashba’s interpretation that at Mount Sinai everyone was in prophecy. Yes, but if it had been a physical miracle, if Mount Sinai had been a physical miracle, he would have no problem with it. The problem is because it was prophecy. Right, correct.

Now look at what Rashba answers: “Know that in truth, what I believe about that exalted event, about which you said to the sage that I said it was entirely prophetic—it was not entirely so. There was in it something prophetic, and part of it was apprehended through sensory perception: hearing, sight, and the senses.” Yes, that event also had physical dimensions, so the senses perceived it too. “And I will tell you the details—which parts, in my opinion, were sensory perception, and which were prophetic, and what compelled me to this.” So, the people going out from the camp, their standing at the foot of the mountain, the mountain’s boundaries, Moses and Aaron ascending, etc.—all of that is senses. But what interests me is the continuation.

“The absolute certainty that they had of the matter. And so the Rabbi of blessed memory”—that is Maimonides—“said in explanation in these words: ‘They heard them from the mouth of the Almighty.’” He means that it reached them as it reached Moses our teacher. “From the mouth of the Almighty” means they received it the way Moses our teacher received the whole Torah—they received the first two commandments. Meaning, they were in a state of prophecy, because otherwise you could say: the Torah reached them through Moses our teacher. Then they themselves need not be prophets; Moses our teacher needed to be a prophet and he conveyed it to the people. But when you say “they heard them from the mouth of the Almighty,” that means that at least part of it—the first two commandments—the entire people received directly in prophecy.

“And on this I have room for reflection,” says Rashba. For if this is indeed the Rabbi’s opinion, why must this necessarily be through prophecy? Why can’t it simply be that they heard a voice? That is Rashba’s claim. Not that it cannot be, but that is his claim, and the questioner asks him on that basis. “And on this I have room for reflection: if the opinion of the Rabbi of blessed memory is that it is not impossible for the entire people to hear, even without the prerequisites proper to prophecy, in any prophetic matter of this kind…” In other words, the question is: what does Maimonides think? Is the possibility of hearing such things without possessing the full prerequisites for prophecy—without the requisite intellectual perfection—something impossible? If it is impossible, then how could it have happened? So apparently Maimonides thinks that it is not impossible. It is not impossible.

And even someone not fit for prophecy can know as a prophet knows, and likewise anything proven by demonstration… okay, in short, he continues, and then he makes a distinction. And this is what he says: “Or we may say that God informed the whole people miraculously of what they would need by way of learned prerequisites so that they could attain that partial degree of prophecy.” Notice: what would the miracle have to be? The miracle is not that I reveal to you, give you prophecy, even though you are not at the level. The miracle is that I raise you to that level, and then it will be possible to speak with you. Because if I did not raise you to that level, even a miracle would not help. But it may be possible that the Holy One, blessed be He, performed a miracle by raising the people to that prophetic level—all the people, the wise and the unwise, the women as well as the men, and so forth. “And this is something that can be conceived consistently with those thinkers who class as impossible the idea that one should prophesy without having the requisite learned prerequisites and the powers of imagination and intellect.”

Meaning, he says there is a group, “those thinkers,” who say there is no such thing—it is impossible. It is like you cannot make a triangular circle. Just as you cannot make a triangular circle, so you cannot give prophecy to someone who is not at that prophetic level. Even by miracle it is impossible. It is simply absolutely impossible. “And they did not count this among the merely possible, just as they assumed it is impossible for a donkey or a frog to prophesy. And likewise one cannot say that anything at all prophetic reached them beyond what can be attained by human inquiry, except only to the perfected among them, each according to the degree of perfection they had.” You see? It is really deterministic. Meaning, each person, according to his level of perfection, can apprehend that much. And even by miracle you cannot make him apprehend things he cannot apprehend. You cannot perform a miracle that a stupid person grasps relativity. If he is stupid, then he cannot grasp relativity; that won’t help. You can change him so that he is no longer he but someone else—turn him into Einstein—and then he will grasp relativity. But you cannot make a fool grasp relativity, because he lacks the tools to do so. It’s like you cannot make a triangular circle.

Then he says: but that’s not the same, in my opinion. He says there is a group of people who think it is the same; he himself does not say that. Fine. But Rabbi, if so, after understanding this whole definition, what is something like the Talmud’s saying that a bat kol came forth… is a bat kol also a miracle? What do you mean? When a bat kol comes forth in the Talmud, is that also a miracle? There it is not clear that something really happened; it may just be a metaphorical description. Meiri says on the page—how does he put it? “A voice was heard in our study hall,” something like that, in his glosses on Maimonides. “The holy spirit appeared in our study hall and we decided that the Jewish law is such-and-such.” I don’t think he means a metaphysical event. A metaphor—we came to such certainty. So in the Oven of Akhnai, for example, it’s a metaphor? Maybe, I don’t know, but it’s possible.

Now he says—Rabbi. Yes. The fact that a person’s intellect changes does not necessarily mean he changes as a person. I mean, that raises the whole question whether a person whose intellect changes—is that “he,” so to speak? What do you mean? I don’t understand. What is the question? The Rabbi explained that according to them it is impossible, and that even if by miracle you make him wise, then he’s no longer the same person, so in any case it’s not the same individual. But that need not be so. A person who is stupid can become wise and still be the same person. So that group who think it is impossible apparently sees it that way. But it doesn’t sound right either; it doesn’t sound logical. I said Rashba himself does not accept that; in a moment we’ll see. But that is the view he presents in that passage.

Maybe I just remembered something else. There are all kinds of questions—people sometimes envy others who were endowed with greater abilities, greater wisdom, different character traits, or something like that, not through work but innately. Okay? And many times I have thought to myself that this kind of envy or claim stems from misunderstanding. For example: why wasn’t I born Moses our teacher? When Moses our teacher was born, his face radiated light. So clearly there was something innate in him. It wasn’t only his work that brought him to the level he reached; there was something inborn there, he was endowed with it. So why give it to him and not to me? Not fair. Fine, if it’s because of work you did, then you earned it justly; it’s not “bread of shame.” But if you receive it innately, then why wasn’t it given to me?

The answer I give is that if it had been given to me, then I would have been Moses our teacher. You cannot give it to me. If they had given it to me, I would not have been Michael Abraham, I would have been Moses our teacher. There are things that are essentially bound up with the definition of the person. If you change those things, then you are not giving the same person something greater or giving him more. You have turned him into someone else, okay? Therefore, often when I complain—why is he rich, or clever, or handsome, or I don’t know what, righteous? I mean at the innate level, not through work. Yes? It’s not fair, why am I not like that? The answer is: because if I were like that, I would be him and not me. Everyone has some role, so it is not that I got a raw deal because I am poorer than he is. If I were as rich as he is, I would be him, not me. So what help would that be to me? If they turned me into someone richer, it would not be that they gave me something. I wouldn’t have gained anything from that. It would simply mean that I disappeared and someone else was created in my place.

Of course regarding wealth I don’t think that is exactly the right way to say it, but I’m just bringing the principled claim: at the principled level there can be a certain change you make in a person that simply makes him no longer himself but someone else. Then with changes of that kind there is nothing to discuss; they are not possible. They are not possible not because one cannot perform them, but because even if you perform them, you have not really changed this person—you have merely erased him and created another in his place. It is not that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot do that. He can do that, but it would not be called changing this person. It would simply be called eliminating him and producing another person in his place. But to make this same person into something else—no, that is impossible. So say those people, that group Rashba cites. That is impossible because you have turned them into someone else.

Now Rashba himself does not agree, but I brought this mainly for the view of the questioner and of that “group of impossibility” that Rashba cites, so you can see that some people take these ideas we drew from Maimonides in a much more radical direction. They see this as a deterministic constraint that even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot bypass. And to that Rashba says: “Therefore I find no way to combine this with the opinions of the philosophers, who class this among the impossible.” That is, to treat this as though it were impossible. “And why should this be impossible, since the powers of human souls can rise to the prophetic level, as the holy prophets of Israel rose to it? It is not impossible that God should instantly make wise all the people who stood at that exalted event, and that there should be in them the great influx through divine visions, as He said regarding Bezalel, ‘And I filled him with the spirit of God, with wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and every craft,’ though he was very young.”

What do we see? That the Holy One, blessed be He, can fill a person with wisdom and understanding and raise him to higher levels; that is something He can do. He was not previously at that level. So what does that actually mean? It means that Rashba does not accept the assumption of that “group of impossibility,” namely that raising people to a prophetic level is logically impossible—that it changes their essence, as I said before. But as I inferred above, notice: he does not say you can give them the message without raising them to the prophetic level. Maybe let us speak about that miracle. Rashba doesn’t accept that either. Right? What he says is that one can turn them into more elevated people, and then they will receive the prophecy. So let’s perform a simpler miracle: leave them as they are and perform a miracle that they receive prophecy despite their being at that lower level. That apparently is impossible according to Rashba. Meaning, that “group of impossibility” says you cannot change human beings. Rashba says you can change human beings. But on one thing Rashba agrees: it is impossible that a person at a low level receive prophecy. That is impossible. You can perform a miracle and fill him with the spirit of wisdom and understanding. Why? Because as we saw in Maimonides, this type is basically prophet—or man is prophet—why? Because potentially he has the capacities to be a prophet. So even if a given person has not perfected himself and not reached the level of prophecy, clearly potentially he can be there. Therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, can also perform a miracle and bring him there even without his having worked for it, because within his species this belongs. With a cat this is impossible, because within its species this does not exist; the potential is not there.

And that takes us back to Maimonides. Since the human species is the species of prophet—why is it prophet? Not all human beings are prophets, but they have the potential, the fundamental ability, to become prophets. And on that Rashba says: therefore if you take a human being who has not reached the level of prophet and perform a miracle that he becomes at the level of prophet, that is not logically impossible. It is possible. Why is it possible? Because he is not a cat; he is a human being. In principle, potentially, he has those capacities. But there is one thing you cannot do. If he remains down below and I have not raised him up, then there is no miracle in the world that will make him receive prophecy. He cannot receive prophecy; that cannot happen. It is like a cat. Except that man, potentially, is not a cat, and therefore one can raise him to the level of prophecy. But without that he cannot receive prophecy. On that Rashba also agrees.

And Rashba later on—this is what I said, that he copied Maimonides from one of the chapters of the Guide, in the third part, where he speaks there about logical contradictions—he says there as follows: “And the analogy they drew in the impossible, namely that someone should go to sleep without wisdom and arise in the morning a prophet, is not like the impossible that a donkey or frog should prophesy. For in the species of other living creatures there is no speech, and they do not prophesy, whereas the human species prophesies by its nature, and is fit to go from potential to actual.” Remember what I said about the Kuzari and Maimonides? “And the matter written regarding Saul informs us of this,” and so on.

So he says there are two kinds of impossibility. To say that a donkey or frog will prophesy—that is a logical impossibility. Even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot do that, because they do not know how to speak, and if you make them speak then they are no longer donkey and frog, just as we said before. So that is like the—maybe I’ll comment on that in a moment. So that is a logical impossibility, which even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot bypass. But to raise a human being—who is human, and has the potential to be a prophet—to the level of prophecy and then give him prophecy, that is possible. It is not logically impossible. It is a miracle, but that kind of miracle the Holy One, blessed be He, can do. Miracles He can perform. And he says: don’t challenge me from what our Sages of blessed memory said, “Prophecy rests only upon one who is wise, strong, and rich.” He says that is the proper path for prophets generally, and the difficulty is not from one person or many whom God wished to prophesy for temporary need or some special matter. Fine, that is the summary.

Now look—this is his principled view, which is copied from the Guide: “In my view there are two categories of impossible.” Meaning there are two kinds of impossible or contradictory things. I’ll put it in more modern language: there is logical impossibility and physical impossibility. Logical impossibility means something that is simply a contradiction—a triangular circle, or a square whose diagonal is shorter than its side, as is known to whoever remembers. It cannot be. The diagonal is always longer than the side, okay? And similarly in all such cases. What does that actually mean? Things like that even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot do. These are logical miracles, not physical miracles. Why can He not do that? I’ll comment on that in a moment.

By contrast, there is physical impossibility. What is physical impossibility? Things that contradict the laws of nature. The Holy One, blessed be He, who established them can also suspend them. He set the laws of nature, and He can also override them—or suspend them for a moment. “Sun, stand still in Gibeon,” and the splitting of the sea, and all those examples he brings here. Those are miracles. That’s what we call miracles. But with logical impossibilities, there cannot be a miracle, because it is a logical contradiction. You cannot do a miracle by making a triangle circular. You can turn it into a circle, but then it is not a triangular circle—it is simply a circle. Remember exactly what I said above? It simply will not be a triangular circle; it will be a circle. But you cannot make a triangular circle. Even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot do that, because it is a logical impossibility, a logical contradiction.

And this point is copied from Maimonides in the Guide, as I said earlier. And what Rashba basically wants to claim is that the inability to convey prophecy to one who is not at the level of prophecy is an inability of the second type, not the first. It is physical impossibility, not logical impossibility. Therefore here the Holy One, blessed be He, can do it. The questioner is mistaken. The questioner did not distinguish between these two kinds of impossibility. He thought the inability to receive prophecy is itself a logical impossibility. Then he says: so how could they attain prophecy? Rashba says: no, it is physical impossibility. Logical impossibility, indeed not; physical impossibility, yes. And as I inferred above, I said that Rashba also agrees that to give prophecy to a person while he remains at the lower level is logically impossible; that is impossible. All that is possible is to fill him with wisdom and raise him from the lower level to the higher one.

This brings us into a topic I don’t want to go into too much, but since we only have a few minutes left I’ll finish with it: the question whether this is really a limitation on the Holy One, blessed be He. What, He can’t make a triangular circle? Yes, like the stone He cannot lift. How can there be things that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot do? What confuses us here is that we are used to treating the laws of logic as laws in the same sense that the laws of physics are laws. And laws—the lawgiver can also violate them. He legislated them, and he can violate them. But that is equivocation; it is just misleading to call the laws of logic “laws.” Because physical laws are laws that are not necessary. One could imagine a world created with different physical laws. The Holy One, blessed be He, decided on these laws. Therefore that is not logic, that is physics. And if the Holy One, blessed be He, created them this way, He can also freeze them, change them, alter them for a moment, for an hour, and so on.

The laws of logic the Holy One, blessed be He, did not create. There is no other imaginable world in which different laws of logic would apply. No such thing exists. The laws of logic are true by virtue of themselves, not because someone legislated them or created them. A triangle is not circular by virtue of being a triangle—not because the Holy One, blessed be He, decided that the laws of nature say a triangle cannot be circular. It’s not that something prevents it from being circular. By virtue of being a triangle it is not circular, so it is not circular. Even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot change that. And just as the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot make a shell that penetrates every wall and also a wall that withstands every shell. Why? Because if the shell penetrates every wall, then there is no wall that withstands it. So there is no wall that withstands every shell. There simply isn’t.

What is omnipotence? Omnipotence means that you can do everything that can be defined or conceived or imagined. That is what all-powerful means. But something that does not exist at all and cannot exist, because it is contradictory—your inability to do that is not a flaw in your omnipotence. There simply is no such thing. When I ask whether the Holy One, blessed be He, can make a triangular circle, the answer is—the answer is that the question is meaningless, because there is no such thing as a triangular circle. Explain the question to me, and I can answer yes or no. But I do not understand the question. When you ask whether the Holy One, blessed be He, can make a triangular circle, I don’t understand the question, because the expression appearing in the question is simply undefined. Therefore this question is just a misleading question.

And therefore Rashba says that when there is logical impossibility, a logical contradiction, even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot bypass it. Because there is nothing there to bypass. It is not that there is some law stronger than the Holy One, blessed be He. It is not a law at all. It is simply that a triangle is not a circle. That’s all. He can do whatever He wants, the Holy One, blessed be He. He can turn the triangle into a circle, but He cannot turn it into a triangular circle. He can simply eliminate the triangle and turn it into a circle. Okay, exactly as with human beings. The questioner thought that turning a human being into a prophet is like turning a triangle into a circle. If you turned him into a prophet, then it is simply no longer he—it is someone else. Rashba says no, not true. Since in the human species there is potentially the potential for prophecy—that was the point with which I began the lesson—therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, can take someone who has not reached the level of prophecy and temporarily raise him Himself to the level of prophecy, to fill him with the spirit of wisdom and understanding. And that is not logically impossible; it is physically impossible, but it is a miracle the Holy One, blessed be He, can perform.

Yes, this is also the answer to that question about the stone the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot lift. The same mistake is present there. When you ask me whether the Holy One, blessed be He, can create a stone that He cannot lift, the answer is neither yes nor no. The answer is that I don’t understand your question. What is a stone that the All-Powerful cannot lift? I don’t understand the concept. If He is all-powerful then there is no such stone, and if there is such a stone then He is not all-powerful. Explain to me the combination that appears in your question—“a stone that the All-Powerful cannot lift.” Once you explain that, I’ll answer yes or no. You won’t be able to explain it, because no such thing exists. It is exactly like asking whether the Holy One, blessed be He, can make a triangular circle. Therefore this question is just a meaningless logical trick.

And precisely the point—that the reason a triangle is not circular, or the reason there is no stone that the All-Powerful cannot lift—the reason is a logical constraint. It is not a physical difficulty. It is not that it’s too heavy for Him and He can’t lift it. No. It is simply a logical constraint. But a logical constraint is no problem at all; even the Holy One, blessed be He, is bound by logical constraints. He is free of physical constraints, because He created the laws of physics. The laws of logic He did not create; the laws of logic are binding on Him. They are binding on Him not because they are stronger, but because they are what they are. Therefore this is no blow to His omnipotence. It is not that there is something stronger than Him; it is simply that a triangle is not a circle. What can you do.

Okay, so that’s where we’ll stop. Nachman, according to what you said, creation ex nihilo—is that only physically impossible? Yes. The law of conservation of matter or energy was violated. Okay, so what? And if you formulate the question about the Holy One, blessed be He, with the stone, you don’t call Him all-powerful; you just ask: can the Holy One, blessed be He, create a stone that He cannot lift? So then it depends. If I think He is all-powerful, then no. Not that He cannot, but that the question is undefined. And if I think He is not all-powerful, then yes. So now choose. Both answers are possible. But if you believe He is all-powerful, then your answer will be no—but you have no difficulty against yourself. I have not proven that the Holy One, blessed be He, is all-powerful. I have defended the thesis that the Holy One, blessed be He, is all-powerful. Meaning, if someone raises an objection against that thesis, the objection is not an objection. Now you can still say He is not all-powerful if you want, but you have no argument proving it.

By the way, I think Rashba’s responsum changes the way one looks at the sixth principle of the thirteen principles quite a bit. Because usually people look at this sixth principle and understand it to mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, sends a message to human beings—the very fact that there is a message to human beings. According to Rashba’s responsum, it is emphasized very strongly that this is not the point at all. Because in principle the Holy One, blessed be He, could send a message to human beings physically too, so that everyone would physically hear certain messages. They wouldn’t understand, though. What? They wouldn’t understand. Not that there would simply be a voice saying to me, “You shall do such-and-such.” No, “you shall do” is no problem, but prophetic messages apparently involve—no no, yes, that’s the point. And a physical message of that kind that I hear is not prophecy. That is exactly the point, I think, in Rashba’s responsum. It is not prophecy. Such a message could be heard also by a cat or a mouse, but that would not be prophecy. And the emphasis in the sixth principle in Maimonides is exactly on the mode of the message and not on the message itself. Right. No, it’s not only the mode; it’s more than that. It’s not just another way of conveying the same message. It’s a different kind of message. You can tell someone to do something, but with the prophet apparently what is conveyed is not “do something,” but some kind of understanding that obligates doing that thing. The “do something” is a result of the prophecy. Yes, and then the sixth principle is understood differently. Meaning, the sixth principle is not messages from the Holy One, blessed be He, to human beings. That’s what I opened with; that’s why I brought Rashba. I brought Rashba precisely to show what this sixth principle means. What is prophecy? Exactly. In essence it is a claim about man, not at all about the intentions or policy of the Holy One, blessed be He. And it is interesting that precisely this is not presented as a principle—that the Holy One, blessed be He, gives messages to human beings is not brought as some principle or something. נכון, because I think, first of all, it may be obvious. Meaning, if man can receive, then there is not such a huge novelty in the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, also gives him this message. Second, He gave us the Torah, so once we believe there is Torah, then of course in principle we already accept that the Holy One, blessed be He, addresses human beings. The whole novelty is that He can also address them by way of prophecy—but that is a novelty not about Him but about us. Yes.

Okay, that’s interesting. It changes the whole way of looking at the sixth principle. Okay, good. What? Why is this prophecy needed at all? Meaning, why do we need prophecy? If the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to communicate something to human beings, some message, then let Him send it by Telegram or WhatsApp. Telegram or… You won’t understand. If you’re not a prophet, you won’t understand His Telegram. We received the Torah—God revealed Himself and gave the Torah. What added value is there beyond what we received? We got the Five Books of the Torah, we got the books of the prophets. The added value is that a prophet who receives the Torah apparently has behind that some apprehensions that I don’t have when I study Torah. Maybe I have them intellectually, but not the visual immediacy of the matter. But how does that help me? After he received it… I don’t know how it helps. He receives those intellectual apprehensions, and apparently that has spiritual value. I don’t know how it helps. For him, yes—but for us it helps not at all. Why? It helps because he passes it on to us. He passes us what… But the message he conveyed to us could be conveyed by Telegram, we agreed. The message he attained he cannot convey to us, because we are not prophets. No, no, that’s not the problem here. There are also insights behind the practical instruction, intellectual insights, and those too can be conveyed. The immediate apprehension that generates those insights—that exists only for the prophet. And that he cannot convey. Then why can’t the rest be conveyed to us in an ordinary way? Ask the Holy One, blessed be He; I don’t know. No, I’m saying the whole project here looks a bit strange. That’s the difference between seeing and understanding, which was discussed earlier. Exactly. He says, then give me the understanding directly. Why do I care that the prophet sees? Give me the intellectual understanding directly without the prophet as intermediary. I don’t know. It may be that there also need to be prophets in the world because there has to be some higher spiritual standing, even if it does not pass on to everyone else. I don’t know, I have no idea. Okay, Sabbath peace.