God and the World – Lesson 3
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- The purpose of the discussion of tzimtzum and its connection to our world
- Filthy alleyways as the focal point of the dispute
- The difficulty in Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin as against Hasidism
- Critique of legitimizing falsehood and of “living in a lie”
- The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s letter and the duality between truth and practice
- Nefesh HaChaim: tzimtzum as concealment and the kav as our mode of apprehension
- The remaining riddle: if nothing happened, what does concealment mean?
- Rabbi Shem Tov Gefen’s parable of dimensions
- “The whole earth is full of His glory” and hierarchy between dimensions
- Weakness of will, sin, and repentance as a logical tangle
- Repentance, Avinu Malkeinu, and Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya
- Breaking the dichotomy: reshimu and participation that is not identity
- Flatland, miracles, and free choice as crossing an impassable line
- What is the root of the difference between Hasidim and Mitnagdim
Summary
General overview
The text presents the issue of tzimtzum as the basis for fundamental debates about the human relation to the world and about the presence of the Holy One, blessed be He, within material reality, and not as an attempt to clarify “what goes on in the highest heavens.” It describes two central readings of tzimtzum in the Ari, places the dispute between Hasidim and Mitnagdim around the question of divine presence even in “filthy alleyways,” and emphasizes an internal difficulty in the fact that Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin attacks a position that seems very close to what he himself says. It develops a sharp critique of the demand to “live in a lie” and offers an alternative interpretation through the parable of dimensions, which tries to reconcile “from His perspective” and “from our perspective” without turning the world into an illusion. It then goes on to show how that same structure can also explain paradoxes of repentance, free choice, and weakness of will, and finally argues that the practical dispute between Hasidism and Lithuanian Judaism may stem not from different theology but from differences of emphasis and practical consequence.
The purpose of the discussion of tzimtzum and its connection to our world
The discussion of tzimtzum serves as the foundation for debates over the proper way to relate to the world and over the presence of the Holy One, blessed be He, in lowly and material places. The text presents two interpretations of tzimtzum in the Ari: tzimtzum not literally, in which the Holy One, blessed be He, fills the world just as before, and tzimtzum literally, in which the Holy One, blessed be He, “withdrew.” The text ties the difference to the question whether reality operates “without His presence,” independently, or within a full divine presence.
Filthy alleyways as the focal point of the dispute
The issue of “filthy alleyways” in Berakhot is presented as a parable for the question of the presence of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the lowest realms. The text formulates the Hasidic position as the claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, is present even in filthy alleyways, to the point of the image of being “in the bathroom exactly as in the Holy of Holies in the Temple,” and the difference lies in the mode of relating, not in the presence itself. Against this, the Mitnagdim are described as tending to understand tzimtzum literally, and the text presents Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin as warning against a position that could erase distinctions between forbidden and permitted, sacred and profane, and different levels.
The difficulty in Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin as against Hasidism
The text argues that it is not clear how Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin’s alternative differs from the Hasidic conception he attacks, since he himself says that the Holy One, blessed be He, is “still entirely present here,” and only a distinction remains between “from His perspective and from our perspective.” The text describes the result as a strange situation in which the book written against the Hasidic approach “in certain respects repeats it,” and yet still warns against it as dangerous. The text asks where exactly the point of dispute lies, if the Hasidim too accept levels, sacred and profane, and the ten degrees of holiness.
Critique of legitimizing falsehood and of “living in a lie”
The text presents an email from someone close to Chabad claiming that the words of Nefesh HaChaim are “exactly what is written” in Chabad writings, and responds that quotations have no value if there is a legitimization of falsehood as practical guidance. The text uses a story about Rabbi Sholom Schwadron, who quotes in the name of the Chazon Ish the permission “to hang something on a great person,” and ends by saying he will not tell you whether he really heard even that, in order to show that once falsehood is sanctioned, the ability to know when truth is being spoken collapses. The text develops the claim that falsehood makes all speech non-informative, compares this to politicians who are interviewed even though there is no stable connection between what they say and the truth, and emphasizes that the problem becomes worse when one states the truth and then commands people to live as if it were not true. The text argues that a person cannot genuinely lie to himself, and illustrates this with an anecdote about chess training, “playing against myself,” which reveals how hard it is to hide from yourself the plan you already know, though he adds that in practice he “always lied to myself” to a certain extent.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s letter and the duality between truth and practice
The text says that if he had not read the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s letter, he could have claimed that this was only guidance about how to live, but the Rebbe insists that the truth is that “in truth nothing happened,” and that this is “a great principle, that nothing happened.” The text presents the parallel demand to live as though there really are levels and changes, and defines the tension as a problematic demand and as a position that in itself “doesn’t say anything,” because it is unclear who the “I” is from whom this is concealed, and what exactly the analogue is in the parable.
Nefesh HaChaim: tzimtzum as concealment and the kav as our mode of apprehension
The text reads Nefesh HaChaim, section 7, and presents Rabbi Chaim’s argument that “from His blessed side and from our side” is itself the meaning of tzimtzum and the kav in the teachings of the Ari. The text explains that from the side of tzimtzum, “no change, no distinction of place, upper and lower, can apply,” but rather “complete equivalence,” and that all changes, distinctions of place, names, and appellations are said only from the perspective of “the aspect of the kav.” The text interprets the kav as a mechanism that generates hierarchy and multiplicity within the vacated space, so that upper and lower come into being, along with a sequence of levels all the way down to “filthy alleyways.” The text cites Rabbi Chaim’s statement that tzimtzum is not removal but “concealment and covering,” together with the expression “and she concealed her face” and the verse “Indeed, You are a God who hides Himself,” and formulates the point as follows: the unity that fills all worlds is concealed from our apprehension, while our apprehension of the chainlike unfolding of the worlds comes through the kav. The text concludes by noting that Rabbi Chaim says that “certainly even in the place of all the worlds… everything is also filled only with His blessed essence alone, just as before creation,” but this is in the mode of concealment. It adds from the same source the prohibition against investigating the essence of tzimtzum and how “everything is filled only with His simple unity and there is absolutely nothing besides Him from His blessed perspective.”
The remaining riddle: if nothing happened, what does concealment mean?
The text summarizes that reading Rabbi Chaim still leaves a riddle, because he seems to be saying “tzimtzum not literally,” similar to Hasidism, while describing the world as a reality of levels that emerges from concealment and screens. The text returns and asks who exactly this “we” is from whom things are concealed, whether we exist at all, and what the analogue of the parable is if everything is “as though only a parable,” and argues that without clarification the words sound like language that does not connect to concrete content.
Rabbi Shem Tov Gefen’s parable of dimensions
The text presents Rabbi Shem Tov Gefen’s book The Dimensions, Prophecy, and Earthliness, and describes him as a broadly educated man who wrote on mathematics, philosophy, and Kant, and even on Einstein, and who proposed a solution to the question of tzimtzum through the relation between dimensions. The text explains the distinction between “zero volume” and “no volume” by means of a two-dimensional sheet in a three-dimensional world and a point that has no length, and adds the parable of someone blind from birth, who does not “see black” but rather “does not see.” It uses this to argue that the gap between “from His perspective” and “from our perspective” can be a categorical gap like a dimensional gap, in which the lower world does not “exist” in the terms of the higher dimension not because it is tiny, but because the concepts simply do not apply to it. The text thus suggests interpreting Rabbi Chaim as saying that from the perspective of the Holy One, blessed be He, “nothing happened,” because the world does not “take up space” in His dimension, and yet from our perspective the levels and differences are real and are not a constructed lie.
“The whole earth is full of His glory” and hierarchy between dimensions
The text raises the question whether, according to the parable of dimensions, one can still say “the whole earth is full of His glory,” and suggests that “earth” can be interpreted either as multidimensional reality or as our world, depending on the understanding. The text emphasizes that the relation between dimensions is not symmetrical, because “three dimensions are two plus one,” and therefore the higher dimension can in some sense “grasp” and contain the lower one, even if the lower does not occupy volume in the terms of the higher. In that sense, the text argues, one can say that the Holy One, blessed be He, “fills” our world the way three-dimensional space fills a two-dimensional sheet, without canceling the meaning of our existence.
Weakness of will, sin, and repentance as a logical tangle
The text moves to the philosophical problem of weakness of will and defines sin as performing an act that the person himself thinks is not right. It lays out two assumptions: if a person thinks something is right, he wants to do it; and if he wants to do it, then absent external constraints he will do it. From this it concludes that sin appears impossible, unless it is coercion, which is not a transgression. The text rejects explanations like “the evil inclination overcame him” as proof of weak will, and argues that this only means the other desire was stronger, so the person did exactly what he wanted at that moment. The text distinguishes between “becoming religious” in the modern sense of changing one’s identity, and repentance in the Torah sense of a believer who sins and returns to what he himself believes in, and argues that without weakness of will there is no concept of a penitent in that sense.
Repentance, Avinu Malkeinu, and Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya
The text formulates repentance as a process that seems oxymoronic, because changing one’s set of values from X to Y requires that the one doing the changing already hold Y, while the one being changed still holds X, and yet both are the same person. The text reads the aggadic story of Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya in Avodah Zarah 17a as a parable for the search for some external factor that will bring about the change, and emphasizes his conclusion: “The matter depends on no one but me,” as standing face to face with the impossibility of self-change. The text uses the expression “A prisoner cannot free himself from prison” and the parable of Baron Munchausen to describe the absurdity of demanding that a person pull himself out by his own power, and cites “Our Father, our King, bring us back in complete repentance before You” as a request that assumes divine partnership in the process of repentance rather than an isolated human act.
Breaking the dichotomy: reshimu and participation that is not identity
The text suggests that in order to solve the tangle, one must give up the dichotomy of “either He does it or I do it” and look for a connection that is neither identity nor absolute separateness. The text uses the kabbalistic concept of “reshimu” to say that something of the light remains within the vacated space, and therefore there is divine participation within the human being and within things themselves. It describes this as the logical condition that makes repentance and free choice possible, without turning the process into something worthless on the one hand, or impossible on the other.
Flatland, miracles, and free choice as crossing an impassable line
The text brings in Flatland as a parable for two-dimensional creatures who cannot cross a one-dimensional line, and shows that a three-dimensional creature can “lift” a two-dimensional creature and move it to the other side without crossing the line. The text argues that free choice and repentance are, in this sense, a “miracle” that cannot be explained in the terms of the laws of nature of the lower dimension, and therefore all attempts to explain free will in physics get tangled up. It concludes that the involvement of a “higher dimension” allows interventions that seem impossible from within, and strengthens the model of asymmetrical presence between the Holy One, blessed be He, and the world.
What is the root of the difference between Hasidim and Mitnagdim
The text states that in the end, theological disputes express themselves in the practice of serving God and in one’s perception of reality, and it asks how the practical differences are connected to tzimtzum. It suggests that, subject to the “principle of charity,” there may be “only one possible conception” of tzimtzum, and that both sides agree to it, but each side places the emphasis elsewhere: the Hasidim on “nothing happened,” and the Mitnagdim on “something did happen.” The text presents the differences as differences of emphasis that radiate outward into one’s view of providence, free choice, and the relation to “secluding oneself in Lithuanian Noah’s arks” as against the Hasidic conception of spreading out “even into filthy alleyways.” The text concludes by declaring that from this point on, the discussion will move from tzimtzum and Kabbalah to questions of providence, involvement in the world, and the question of evil and good, while insisting that the root lies in the differing emphases within the picture of tzimtzum.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, on the topic of tsimtsum, I said at the beginning, and I’ll repeat it again today, that the purpose of this discussion is not to clarify what happens in the heavenly realms, but rather to provide a kind of foundation for several very basic disputes about what happens in our world, and the proper way to relate to our world. And briefly, what we’ve seen up to now is that there can be two interpretations of this concept of tsimtsum that was introduced by the Ari. One interpretation says that the tsimtsum is not literal. The Holy One, blessed be He, still completely fills the entire world exactly as before; in essence nothing at all was renewed as a result of creation. One second, okay? Just one second. Good. That’s one side, the side generally associated with Hasidism. The side generally associated with the Mitnagdim, the Lithuanians, however you want to call them, is usually the side that takes tsimtsum literally, meaning that the Holy One, blessed be He, really withdrew. We already saw, both in the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s letter and in Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, that at the center of the issue is really the question of filthy alleyways. It’s some local topic in tractate Berakhot, but of course here it serves as a kind of metaphor for ways of understanding how we relate to the presence of the Holy One, blessed be He, in lowly places—not necessarily filthy ones; anything material, relative to Him, is a low place. And so the question is how to relate to that: is the Holy One, blessed be He, also present in the lowest realms, or is the Holy One, blessed be He, somewhere up above, and this whole story down here proceeds without His presence, independently? So the Hasidim argue that He is present even in filthy alleyways. I presented that as meaning that, in effect, He is in the bathroom exactly as He is in the Holy of Holies in the Temple. In principle, there is no difference. The difference is only in the way we are supposed to relate to things. And against that, Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin makes a claim that is not clear, and today we’ll still need to deal with it a bit, but apparently he comes out against that view. He says it is very dangerous; it essentially means there is no reason to be careful about forbidden and permitted, sacred and profane, and so on, because in the end everything is divinity. There are no distinctions, no gradations, no low and high, nothing. And it is against that conception that he argues; in fact, that is what he wrote his book against.
On the other hand, when he presents his own conception, his alternative, it is not really clear how it differs from the Hasidic conception that he attacks. Because he basically says: true, the real view is that the Holy One, blessed be He, is still entirely here and did not withdraw anywhere—but there is “from His perspective” and “from our perspective.” We saw this recurring again and again in Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin’s words, and apparently it sounds exactly like what the Hasidim say. That is precisely what they say. They too basically say that in actual reality, yes, from His perspective, nothing happened. What happened is only from our perspective. We have hester panim, concealment of His face; we do not see His presence. We live in some kind of matrix, but really, behind that matrix, there is some great director running the whole thing. It reminds you of various movies, all of them metaphors for this matter. So it’s very strange, especially when you find this in a book written entirely against that approach. It’s a book written wholly against that approach, and yet in certain respects it repeats it, echoes it—except that he constantly warns: but this is terribly dangerous, so you must not live there. In other words, basically we have to live in falsehood. We do know what the truth is; he does not retract it. Rather, he says: I hesitated a lot whether to deal with this topic at all, whether even to reveal what is above and what is below—these may be things one ought not touch—but since the time demanded it, he decided after all to address it. And then what does he tell us? That essentially the Hasidim are right, only one has to live in falsehood. We have to convince ourselves as though this story is not really true, and as though the Holy One, blessed be He, really did withdraw—but only from our perspective. From the perspective of actual reality, from the perspective of the Holy One, blessed be He, none of this really happened. So what then? Is the dispute only about practice? But on the practical question the Hasidim say the same thing. They too say that one must not live that way, and that one has to understand the different levels, and that there is forbidden and permitted, sacred and profane, and “there are ten degrees of holiness,” yes, the Mishnah in tractate Kelim, and so on and so on. They too accept all that. So where exactly is the point of dispute? What exactly is the difference? It is very hard to put your finger on what the difference actually is.
I got an email yesterday—or I think it was yesterday—from someone, I don’t know whether he himself is Chabad Hasidic, but he is close to Chabad and apparently studied Chabad writings. He said to me: listen, what you are describing in Nefesh HaChaim is exactly what is written in Chabad writings. He said: it’s the same thing. And he said, what do you mean? It’s not that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not really withdraw, and it’s not that He really dwells in the bathroom just as in the Temple, and so on, and he brought me various quotations. Those quotations prove nothing, because once you say that you are willing to say false things so that people will not deteriorate and do all sorts of things, what help are the quotations? The quotation is really describing how I am supposed to live, not what is actually true. Maybe. I have no way of knowing. Once you start giving legitimacy to falsehood, the whole world collapses. You can’t know anything. There’s no way to know. It’s like the famous story about Rabbi Shalom Schwadron. It is told about Rabbi Shalom Schwadron—there is the Magen Avraham who says that one may, it’s in the Talmud, but the Magen Avraham brings it as Jewish law, that one may say things in the name of a great person so that they will be accepted. So that people will accept what I say, I say: Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said it. To attach oneself to a great man. “Whoever wishes to hang himself should hang on a tall tree.” So they tell about Rabbi Shalom Schwadron that once, in some setting—yes, he was that kind of preacher—he said: listen, I heard in the name of the Chazon Ish that one may say things in the name of a great person so that they will be accepted, and I’m not going to tell you whether I actually heard that from the Chazon Ish or not.
Now what that story really says—it may be a joke, but what it really says is something very sad. Because the moment you adopt a mechanism that validates lies—okay, little white lies here and there, not terrible, it’s not the greatest sin to tell a lie here and there, we round off corners a bit, not so bad—there is something destructive about falsehood. And there is something even more destructive about granting legitimacy to falsehood, because from that point on I can no longer receive anything from anyone. I have no way of knowing when the person means what he says to me and when he doesn’t. In most cases he tells the truth—let’s be optimistic, say he tells the truth—but since in 20 percent of the cases he doesn’t, and since he allows himself not to tell the truth, you can never know when it’s this and when it’s that. So none of what he says is informative. There is no point in interviewing him. Everything he says is not informative. I once saw an article—there’s someone I know, David Frenkel; he used to write columns on Walla. The wittiest writer I know. In any case, he once wrote there—I think Ehud Barak was a candidate for prime minister—and he showed that basically he says nothing and lies all the time and so on, so why interview him at all? Basically the question was: why do media outlets report anything at all? Why do they interview politicians? There is no point. There is no connection between what the politician says and the truth. Now what does it mean that there is no connection? In 80 percent of cases maybe he tells the truth—let’s be optimistic—but since in 20 percent he doesn’t, and since he allows himself not to tell the truth, you can never know when it’s this and when it’s that. So again, none of what he says is informative. There is no point in interviewing him. Everything he says is not informative. It is enough that a person allows himself to lie for me to be unable to relate to a single word he says. There is something truly destructive about falsehood; one has to understand that. People see falsehood as, okay, it’s not good to lie, but it’s not murder, right? It’s not some extremely severe transgression, so here and there I tell little white lies. But it is much worse than that little problem of telling white lies now and then. When you live in falsehood, or allow yourself falsehood, you cannot receive anything. Like I told you, I told that fellow who sent me those sources: listen, I have no way to relate to those sources. First, I’m not sure they say what he said they say, but that’s not the point. I have no way to relate to them, because I have no tool for knowing when the Jew who tells me to live in falsehood is contributing to my life of falsehood and when he isn’t. How can I know what his position is? How can I read anything by him and learn anything from it?
So I’m saying: this is outrageous not only in the sense of, okay, you shouldn’t lie. Not only in the sense that one cannot live in falsehood, even if you want to. If I know that this is the truth, then what are you confusing me for? I know this is the truth, so what do you want—that I should live in falsehood? What does it mean to live in falsehood? To hide the truth from myself? But I know that this is the truth. Fine, if you were lying to me—but you’re telling me the truth and commanding me to live in falsehood. So what then? I cannot live in falsehood even if I want to, because I know what the truth is. A person cannot fool himself. I once played chess with a master—there used to be one at the Technion; my father took me to play with him when I was a child, and I went to play. He strongly recommended that I play against myself as practice. To train in chess, to improve in chess, he said, play against yourself. Why? Because when you play against yourself, you always know your own plans for the next moves. So there are no misses. It’s not that the other side can build on your making a mistake. He has to plan something that works deterministically, meaning not because the other side didn’t notice, but such that even if the other side notices, he’ll still be forced to lose, because otherwise it won’t happen. Because each side, when I play against myself, knows exactly what the other says, right? Or in other words, a person cannot lie to himself. You can’t lie to yourself. Close your eyes? But you are the one who planned White’s line, and now you’re thinking as Black—so what, will you erase from memory the plan you made for White? There’s no such thing. A person cannot fool himself. So what is the meaning of this demand—to think that this is the truth but live in falsehood? I simply cannot understand this foolish approach. Really, it is just unbearable. Unbearable and also impossible. By the way, one of the fascinating things is that in the end, what happened was that I always lied to myself. I played as though I were ignoring the plan I had made for the other side. Somehow part of it is laziness, because it’s very hard to stick to it and not keep lying to yourself all the time. Somehow, a person apparently still manages to fool himself in some way. Fine, but that’s really just an anecdote.
So, back to our matter. In short, this whole business is really outrageous. Now, had I not read the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s letter, I would have said: fine, they tell me—they don’t know what they mean, they are only telling me how to live. But the Lubavitcher Rebbe insists that the truth is that in reality nothing happened. Nothing happened because there is nothing—or however that line goes: there won’t be anything because there was nothing. But he insists on this double level, this dual plane: on the true level, really nothing happened, and one must know—this is a great principle—that nothing happened. And on the other hand, he demands that we live as though something did happen, and that there are gradations and distinctions and so on. So I said that first, this demand is itself problematic. Second, that position itself—the truth, even before the tension between truth and falsehood—the truth itself is problematic, because what does it actually say? It says nothing. Who is the person before whom we present the parable, or who is the person from whom things are concealed? Does that person before whom this picture is presented actually exist? The whole story is very strange. And what is the nimshal, the thing represented? Because if this is some kind of parable, say—if one takes it as a parable, as people usually do—but I don’t know. So what is the point of the parable? Something here doesn’t hold water. This whole business is really words that, in my opinion, do not connect to any concrete content.
Now when I read Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, apparently, as I said before, that is how it seems. Let’s continue reading him, and afterward I’ll try to offer a different interpretation: namely, that this move toward Hasidism—I think once these things are taken as a description of reality as it is, you can load anything onto it. But let’s first continue for a moment with Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, and then I’ll offer some kind of interpretation. So we got to section 7. He says: “And these two aspects mentioned above”—I’m reading here from Nefesh HaChaim—“namely, from His blessed perspective and from our perspective, are themselves the very matter of the tsimtsum and the line mentioned in the words of the Ari. And as is explained there, from the side of the tsimtsum no change at all applies to Him, nor any distinction of place, up and down, front and back, but rather a complete and true equality. And all matters of changes and distinctions of places, and all the names and appellations”—which are basically different aspects in divinity, so that too means levels and aspects and divisions, in other words multiplicity, yes, multiplicity in general—“all of them were said only from the aspect of the line, and not from the aspect of the tsimtsum.” Meaning, the claim—I already explained it when we began—is that the line, when it enters into the vacated space, does not descend all the way down, back to the Infinite Light. The Infinite Light withdrew, leaving a spherical vacant space, and then the line descends from above and does not reach all the way down. It does not reach all the way down because the whole purpose of the line is to create the concepts of above and below—to create hierarchies, to create distinctions, to create the multiplicity that exists in the world out of the unity and oneness of the Holy One, blessed be He. That is why the line was needed. And if it went all the way down, there would be no above and below, no difference. You have to create some asymmetry along the line that defines the concepts of above and below, and along that line things are arranged according to their levels. And thus distinctions of places are created, or what we called earlier filthy alleyways. Filthy alleyways are like the lowest rung, but really that is just an expression of the fact that there are gradations: things that are more spiritual, less spiritual, more material, and there is a continuum or a large number of levels from bottom to top. This becomes possible through the line; that is basically what the line does. That’s what he is saying: all matters of changes and distinctions of place, and names, and all the multiplicity here, basically begin with the line.
“And see at the beginning of the book Otzrot Chaim; and it is known that all the words of the Ari, of blessed memory, concerning hidden matters are parable, and the inner meaning of the tsimtsum and the line is these two aspects mentioned above, which are really one aspect and one matter entirely. For the explanation of the measure of tsimtsum here is not an expression of removal and transfer from place to place, to gather and contract Himself into Himself, as it were, so as to create an empty place, Heaven forbid, but rather like what they said in Bereishit Rabbah, ‘And she drew in her face and did not see the king’; and in Eichah, in the words ‘I am the man,’ ‘he went and drew in his face behind the pillar,’ where there it means concealment.” Tsimtsum is concealment, hiding, covering. “And so here, the word tsimtsum means concealment and covering. The intention is that His blessed unity, in the aspect of His essence that fills all worlds, is contracted and hidden from our grasp, in the sense of ‘Indeed, You are a God who hides Himself.’ And our apprehension, what we grasp of the reality of the chaining-down of the worlds, one above another in different aspects, we call by the name line, because it is like a line that descends.” That is what the Ari, of blessed memory, said: “From the side of the tsimtsum”—that is, from the side of His blessed essential unity in the worlds that fills everything, which though from us it is contracted and hidden, nevertheless from the aspect of His essence the matter of above and below does not apply. Above and below are all only from our perspective; in truth there is no above and below. Only from the side of the line, meaning from the side of our apprehension”—that is, the line represents the perception that exists from our perspective. The tsimtsum, or the Infinite Light, represents the perception from His perspective—“that we, from our side, apprehend the order of the worlds by way of a chain-like descent, like a line, and therefore above and below apply from our side,” or filthy alleyways, as he keeps returning to here. Fine, and so on. He continues with all these things, essentially.
And that is basically his claim. He brings verses for it: “And this is the matter of the hollow and the empty place that he, of blessed memory, mentioned, and that the whole matter of the tsimtsum was to reveal the vessels, meaning that His will decreed, for a reason hidden with Him, to conceal the light of the unity of His blessed essence in this place, to the measure of all the worlds and creatures, with immense concealment, and thereby to bring about such a wondrous thing, that the existence of worlds and powers without number should appear and be established by way of gradation and chain-like descent, and to illumine within them the revelation of His blessed light, a thin light in an exceedingly measured and precise way, and through endless screens.” The wisdom of the Holy One, blessed be He, is that He managed to create a situation in which in reality nothing happened, but it appears as though something did happen. Meaning, it appears as though He hides behind screens, and the thicker the screen, the thinner the divine revelation. So this is what creates the gradations. And the farther down one goes along the line, the more hidden the Holy One, blessed be He, is. Yes, it becomes more material. And that is what he said: “That is to say, although certainly also now, in the place of all the worlds and creatures, everything is filled only with His blessed essence alone, just as before creation, nevertheless it is in the aspect of tsimtsum, meaning in the aspect of wondrous concealment alone, hidden from our apprehension, so that through this tsimtsum and concealment all our apprehension of the worlds should be only by way of chain-like descent and extension, the extension of the revelation of His blessed light within them in an ordered gradation alone, like a line by way of analogy,” and so on. Fine, this is the section “Circles and Straightness,” and so forth.
And then just one more sentence, section 8: “Therefore inquiry and contemplation into the essence of the matter of the tsimtsum are forbidden, as the Ari, of blessed memory, said, that we were not permitted to contemplate at all in order to know and grasp the essence of the matter of the Place of the world, how everything is filled only with His simple unity and there is nothing else besides Him at all, completely, from His blessed side. And in truth it belongs to the category of a question and inquiry into what came before, about which who can speak,” as it is written: do not investigate this, and so on. In short, he repeats this again and again. I’ll stop here, because for our purposes the continuation is less important. Basically, the bottom line that remains here is a not-simple riddle. He apparently comes out against Hasidism, yet he presents a conception that is exactly the Hasidic conception—the same thing. He basically says that in truth nothing happened, tsimtsum is not literal. All right? From our perspective, His blessed wisdom so arranged things that we nevertheless live in a world where there are levels, there are differences, not everything is divinity, but rather there are different levels of revelation. But this is some kind of deception, or I don’t know exactly what to call it, some kind of concealment—but that is not actual reality. And I’ll return and ask all the questions I already asked; there’s no point repeating them. So who are “we”? Before whom does He hide? Do we exist or not? What—is this some kind of parable? If he says it is something like a parable, a parable for what? So what, in truth nothing happened—then what is the parable a parable for? And all the questions I asked. In short, apparently nothing has happened here; nothing changed as a result of what Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin writes.
It seems to me—given the force of the difficulty, I would say, though perhaps this is also present in Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, I think it is; I even found hints to it here and there in his language, I don’t know, I won’t get into textual precision here, but maybe—there is a book by Rabbi Shem Tov Gefen, who is indeed one of the ancestors of Yonatan Gefen and Uzi Dayan and the whole Dayan family, who was a very interesting Jew. The book is called Dimensions, Prophecy, and Geology. It was published by Mossad HaRav Kook, and somehow nobody read it, nobody knew it. I understand that a new edition came out again a few years ago. I once found it in some genizah; in Midrashiyat Noam they were throwing out books, and suddenly I found it, and discovered a fascinating man. He had a very broad general education; he wrote a diary there about how he had to hide from his father when he read all those supposedly external books, all that secular wisdom. He knew science, mathematics, philosophy; he talks about Kant, and about—one of the essays, Einstein even. I think one of the essays in the book is an article that was published in a mathematical journal in Russian. And he talks about the essence of the mathematical nature of prophecy. In any case, one of the—there are three essays: dimensions, prophecy, and geology. So when he talks about dimensions, he proposes a solution to this question of whether tsimtsum is literal or not literal, the transcendent and the immanent—I also explained the philosophical implications of these disputes.
So he argues as follows. He basically says that one can illustrate the relation between the picture of literal and non-literal tsimtsum through the relation between different dimensions. Let’s think about this: in a three-dimensional world like ours, when we talk about a two-dimensional sheet in that world, how much volume does it occupy? That sheet? Usually people think it occupies zero volume. But one can somehow define it that way in mathematics, in measure theory maybe, but the simple intuition is that this is not right. It does not occupy zero volume; rather, it has no volume. That is not the same thing. There is a difference between zero volume and having no volume. The concept of volume does not apply to a two-dimensional entity. I wrote about this in response to Rabbi Shilat in a column a few columns ago on the website—he raised some mathematical analogy there, doesn’t matter—so I said that for a point, a zero-dimensional entity, its length is not zero. A point has no length. A line is a one-dimensional entity; length is defined for it. Okay? But a point is not a line of zero length. It is not a line at all. It has no length. Not that its length is zero—length is not defined for a zero-dimensional entity. You need at least one dimension in order to define length. Okay? Therefore it is actually a mistake to think that a point has zero length. And likewise with a two-dimensional surface: it’s not that it has zero volume. It has no volume. This reminds me a bit of someone who has been blind from birth, say. Okay? Does he constantly see black before his eyes, or does he simply not see? Those are not the same thing. When I talk about someone who sees black all the time before his eyes, he is really seeing a black image, very uniform, nothing at all, just a black image, that’s all he sees. But that is called seeing zero things, right? That is the equivalent of zero length. But the question is whether that is the same as saying that he does not see—not that he sees black all the time; he does not see; he lacks that function of vision. If he does not have that function of vision, then it is not correct to describe him as someone who constantly sees black before his eyes, constantly living in darkness. Because darkness too is something—it is zero vision, zero light. But the question is: if someone has no access at all to the concept of light—not that he sees no light because the field intensity around him is zero, but rather he has no such sense at all—then it is not that he constantly sees black, or that he sees nothing, or sees not-anything; rather, he does not see. There is a difference between seeing nothing and not seeing. Okay? I hope I’m making clear what I mean.
And then Rabbi Shem Tov Gefen’s claim is that the world, and we within it, all the objects, the existing beings, can be viewed as beings that exist in a lower dimension than the Holy One, blessed be He. The Holy One, blessed be He, is in a higher dimension—if you want, infinite dimensions, I don’t know how many, 500 dimensions, doesn’t matter. And we live in 499 dimensions and He in 500; a gap of one dimension is enough, okay? So if He lives in four dimensions and we in three, that means that from His perspective we do not exist. Not that our existence is tiny. No—we have no existence; we do not occupy volume according to the concepts of four-dimensional space. It is not that our four-dimensional volume is zero; we have no four-dimensional volume. If that is really the case, then I think one can certainly understand Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin’s analogy this way as well. When Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin says “from His perspective” and “from our perspective,” he means: from His perspective nothing happened; from His perspective we do not exist; there was no tsimtsum; He fills all reality; none of His “volume,” so to speak, is missing anything. But from our perspective there are gradations and filthy alleyways and everything really exists.
And then this means that the difference between “from His perspective” and “from our perspective” is not that there is some deception here, or concealment, or living in falsehood, or anything of that sort. No, no. Our actual life—as three-dimensional creatures—that is the truth. It is not that we have to live in falsehood and fool ourselves. It is only that in the Holy One’s, blessed be He, four-dimensional world—or infinite-dimensional world, however many you like—the three-dimensional creatures occupy no place; they do not exist in those terms. Just as a two-dimensional creature does not exist in my terms as a three-dimensional creature. It doesn’t occupy zero volume, as I said; rather, it has no volume. Volume is simply not a characteristic of it. You cannot describe it in terms of volume. It is not that it has zero volume. So perhaps, at least, Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin’s intention is that when he says “from His perspective” and “from our perspective,” he does not mean actual reality versus the simulated reality we are supposed to live in, the falsehood we are supposed to feed ourselves. Rather, he means it literally. We, as three-dimensional creatures, see reality, and there are dimensions and above and below and differences of level and appellations and names and distinctions and aspects; there is very great multiplicity. This whole story does not exist from the perspective of the Holy One, blessed be He, because in His conceptual world the whole business does not exist—in the four-dimensional world, in our analogy, okay?
So maybe the analogy—again, it is of course a kind of analogy; I do not mean spatial dimensions literally, but I use the relation between dimensions as an analogy for something that is, of course, not necessarily in spatial channels or spatial terms. Rather, in all meanings, in all dimensions of existence you like, nothing is lacking at all. The Holy One, blessed be He, did not really contract Himself. The Holy One, blessed be He, simply created a world of a lower dimension, which did not take away any place. There was no need for a vacated space in the higher world in order to create the lower world. You do not need to clear out any space in terms of the higher world in order to create the lower world, because it does not occupy space there; there is no problem, it does not encroach on it in any way. So I think this analogy can indeed illuminate things in a way that lets us, on the one hand, understand that “the whole earth is filled with His glory,” and that all of that is true, and He did not withdraw, and He is infinite, and all is fine; and on the other hand, understand that we are not being asked to live in falsehood, and that what we say has meaning. He actually is contracted: in the three-dimensional space there exist things that are not divinity. They are not divinity. They are other things. Meaning, He causes His Presence to dwell there, He influences what happens there, but it is not Him. It is not at all—He is not here. This is not a sphere of reality in which it is even relevant to say that this is Him, because that would be to reduce Him to three dimensions; it is simply not relevant.
Okay, so the claim, basically, is that this is the only way out I can think of for this tension between the two conceptions. As I said before, each of them is a short blanket; each solves one problem and creates another. On the one hand, the Holy One, blessed be He, is infinite; nothing can exist without Him; all good. On the other hand, our eyes plainly see that we exist. To say we do not exist is nonsense. To say that tsimtsum is not literal—well, that too is nonsense; it says nothing. So how do I reconcile these two—how do I cover the body with this short blanket? The answer is that these two sides exist in different dimensions. The head and the legs do not need to be covered with the same blanket; they are different blankets. Okay? So this way out, at least, is the only one I can understand or think of that succeeds in reconciling the two sides and leaving us somehow with both of them in a way that does not require us to live in falsehood, and not to speak nonsense, or meaningless words, and that’s it. Maybe… yes? You were saying.
[Speaker B] So according to that, or according to this analogy, it comes out that one can still say that “the whole earth is filled with His glory,” and so on—but then the whole earth, in that sense, is that same contracted space in which, on the other hand, people come and say that He is not there. I’m not really managing to understand how that answers the…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, look, “the whole…” if you assume, if you think that the earth is our reality, it’s not clear that you’re right. It could definitely be that “the whole earth is filled with His glory” really means all of reality in the multi-dimensional sense remains full of divinity just as it was. But—that’s actually the next sentence I was going to say, so I’ll just continue—this will also be an answer to that point, or an attempt to give an answer. There is still some kind of hierarchical relation between two dimensions and three dimensions. Three dimensions is more than two. It’s not just called that arbitrarily. You could have viewed these things as basically two kinds of beings that are transparent to each other, right? One doesn’t feel the other, and one lives its life without sensing the other—like Arabs and Jews in Lod. Meaning, these are two populations that pass through each other and nobody knows the other exists. You go into Arab stores, you buy; they go into Jewish stores, but there’s no real day-to-day connection. It’s transparent. It’s two realities, one of which doesn’t sense the other. But that doesn’t exhaust the description, because there’s something in three dimensions that is more than two dimensions. In some sense, the three dimensions contain the two, plus something else. Now, this is not in the simple sense that the two dimensions occupy zero volume, as I said earlier. No, it doesn’t occupy volume. But still—and this is the problem I’m trying to point to—still, in some sense, the two dimensions are included in the three, in some sense. Meaning, three is two plus one. In two dimensions there is something that doesn’t grasp the three at all, but the three can grasp the two and in some sense contain the two. Therefore, regarding the question that was asked earlier, it could be that when it says “the whole earth is filled with His glory,” it really does mean our earth—not all of reality, as I said earlier, but our earth—and He fills it in somewhat the same sense that three-dimensional space fills a two-dimensional sheet that is located somewhere within its framework. Okay? He fills it not in the sense that it occupies some volume within Him, but it is still included in Him in some way. And in that sense, it may be that you really can understand “the whole earth is filled with His glory” literally, and still preserve the existence of our world as something meaningful—not as a constructive lie or nonsense or something like that. And here I’m saying: I’m leaving this more on the level of intuition, because it’s hard for me to define it better than this. This analogy is the maximum I can do in order to bring it a bit closer to the intellect, even my own. Meaning, it’s hard for me to explain it better than that. Now, as I said earlier, it could absolutely be that this itself could also be the explanation in the Hasidic conception of tzimtzum. Or what is Hasidism? There are surely various approaches. But even in other approaches, in the opposing approaches, maybe one could also explain that this is what they mean. And when they said that nothing happened, the meaning is: from His perspective. And then, basically, reality did not change at all. But they are not saying that the tzimtzum is false from our perspective; rather, the point is that we are in a lower dimension. Again, in the analogy—I’m using this as an analogy. I’m not claiming that this is literally a relation between dimensions; rather, dimensions are some kind of analogy for this matter. If that is really so, then it is definitely possible that in Hasidism too one can explain the same thing. Why give credit only to the Lithuanians, saying they are saying something consistent, and not give credit to the Hasidim? And here I come to maybe the next point, which is that nevertheless there is some kind of dispute here. After all, one writes against the other and they argue. Not only do they argue, but at the end of the day, in the form of serving God and in the way of relating to reality, there really is a difference between Hasidim and Mitnagdim. So the question is: if there is no theological dispute, then how did an ideological dispute arise? Usually people understand that there is some fine point of dispute on the high theological plane, and in practice it expresses itself in cruder distinctions, in more significant disputes, because as it comes down it becomes much clearer—yes, like something at a slight angle which, as you move farther away, opens up into a significant spread. Okay? So in this context too people often use that analogy, that a subtle difference above can come to be expressed very significantly below. But there has to be some subtle difference above; otherwise how do the differences below arise? So here I’ll maybe say one more thing—I’ll bring another analogy. I’m using a lot of analogies here because I have no better way to describe this picture. I’ll bring an analogy from somewhere else, and it will also connect to what we’ll discuss later. I want to talk for a moment about the problem of weakness of will. The problem of weakness of will was raised by various philosophers who basically say that when you think in a systematic logical way, you can’t understand the concept of sin. What is sin? By sin I mean something much broader than a religious transgression. For example, someone who doesn’t follow the diet rules that he himself decided to stick to—that too, for the purposes of this discussion, is called a sin. Sin means performing an action that I myself think is wrong. All right? That’s my definition of sin. And that is what those philosophers call weakness of will, weakness of the will. Okay? Meaning, weakness of will means that after a person sins—whether he sinned against his diet, or committed a religious transgression, or a moral transgression, or a legal offense, or whatever it may be—there are various levels on which this can be expressed—very often the person’s feeling is, “Ugh, I fell.” “I fell” means I did something that is wrong, and wrong even according to my own view. Not that I did something that is wrong according to someone else’s view. That is not called weakness of will; that only means I disagree with him. The feeling of sin always comes from the fact that I too agree that this act is wrong. But if it’s wrong, then why did I do it? Because my will was weak. That’s what is called an act that expresses a weak will—weakness of will. That is what is called sin in philosophical language; they call it weakness of will. And now, when you analyze this a bit, you very quickly arrive at the conclusion that such a situation is actually impossible. There are no actions of weak will. Why not? Let me present to you two assumptions that sound very reasonable. First assumption: if a person thinks that something is the right act—maybe one more introduction first—no, fine, I’ll do that after—if a person thinks that something is the right act, then he also wants to do it. This is an assumption—again, in the absence of other constraints. If he is free and he thinks this is the right act, then he will apparently also do it. I say explicitly: not the good act, not the morally good act, but the right act. Right in terms of his total set of considerations. If his total set of considerations says that this is what ought to be done, then he wants to do it. Right? That’s obvious. If a person wants to perform a certain action—and again, in the absence of limitations that do not depend on him—if everything depends on him and this is what he wants to do, then that is what he will do. Now if you combine these two assumptions, you will discover that what a person thinks is right to do is what he will do—unless, unless there is an external constraint that prevents it. I very much want to be a millionaire, but what can I do? I don’t know how to do that. Fine, so I won’t do it, but not because I don’t want to. I won’t do it because I don’t know how to do it; there are obstacles before me that I don’t know how to overcome. Therefore I won’t do it. But assuming the matter is in my hands, that there are no outside factors holding me back, then what I think is right is what I will do. But then the question arises: so how do actions of weakness of will happen? How do people commit transgressions? A transgression, as I defined it earlier, is to do something that I myself think is not right to do. But I don’t understand—if I myself think it is not right to do, then I wouldn’t do it. What will you say? Fine, there was some external factor that overcame me, or didn’t let me do otherwise, or something like that. So if that’s the case, then I’m coerced, because something external forced me to do something I didn’t want to do. Again, that is not a transgression. Being coerced is not a transgression. So how can a transgression be possible? That is really the question. That is the problem of weakness of will. Yes—how can a transgression be possible? How can an action of weak will be possible? Apparently it cannot. Now there have been, there are all kinds of—you can get pretty tangled up in this. At the end of the day, I don’t know if this question is even solvable. But there are all kinds of suggestions and terms and formulations, and it’s all nonsense. I already have quite a bit of experience with this. For example—I’ll just bring one example to clear it off the table—there are people who say, look, for example, I really wanted to diet, but on the other hand it was really tasty, so my impulse overcame me, or something like that, or the desire for something tasty overcame the desire to diet. I say: fine, then you did what you wanted. That’s no excuse. You simply wanted to eat something tasty more than you wanted to diet. Fine, so you had two desires: one to diet and one to eat something tasty. It turns out that apparently, from your perspective, the desire to eat something tasty overcame the desire to diet. So when I ask whether you wanted what you did—the answer is of course yes. The stronger desire is what I wanted. That doesn’t mean there aren’t aspects from which I don’t want this act. When I say that I want to do this act, I mean after the full range of considerations, from all angles—what’s the bottom line? Do I want to do this act or not? That, for me, is what is called a person who wants to do the act, or who thinks it is right. He thinks it is right in terms of the sum total of considerations. That is called a person who thinks this act is right. It’s not enough, say, that a person sinned—desecrated the Sabbath. Then he says, “Ugh, I’m really not okay. I know I’m supposed to keep the Sabbath; it’s clear to me that I should keep the Sabbath. But what can I do? It was very important to me, I don’t know, to get somewhere quickly, so I drove a car.” So what does that mean? It simply means that it was more important to you to get to that place quickly than to keep the Sabbath. So don’t tell me that you wanted to keep the Sabbath. You didn’t want to keep the Sabbath. You did want to, but you wanted more to get quickly to that place, so at the bottom line you didn’t want enough to keep the Sabbath. So what are you regretting? You’re not regretting anything. You did what you wanted. Are you regretting that you wanted to get there quickly? What does it mean to regret what you wanted? Because now you don’t want it? So now your system of desires is different. But at the stage when you performed the act, you did exactly what your system of desires said. That was not weakness of will; you didn’t do something you didn’t want. You did exactly what you wanted. It’s just that desire can be composed of many aspects—you weigh them all, and the bottom line is what you want. Fine. But still, what you did is exactly what you wanted to do. Don’t kid yourself that you were here and you were there. Rather, what will you say? I was coerced—I had an irresistible urge, some impulse took over and caused me to eat that whipped-cream cake even though I had decided on a diet. I’m deliberately giving the example of diet and not impulse in the religious sense. But it’s the same thing. So what am I saying, really? Whichever way you look at it: if you were coerced, then it’s not a transgression—you were coerced, the impulse pushed you, it was an irresistible urge. Every legal system knows that such a thing is coercion. You are exempt from criminal responsibility if that happened. So what then? It wasn’t coercion, it was just very hard for me. And therefore I’m responsible; I wasn’t coerced. And if I wasn’t coerced, then why did I do it? Because it was hard. Meaning, I wanted convenience more than I wanted to keep the Sabbath. I wanted not to have it be difficult for me; I wanted convenience more than I wanted to keep the Sabbath. So once again—I wanted it. Therefore this explains nothing. Whichever way you look at it: if I was coerced, it’s not a transgression; if I wasn’t coerced, then it’s not weakness of will—I did what I wanted. And even if it was hard, it doesn’t matter—then my desire was for convenience. And the desire for convenience overcame the desire to be thin on the diet or to keep the Sabbath. Fine, those are my two desires. I weighed them, and at the end of the day I did what I want. So how can there be such a thing as sin? How can there be a situation in which I do something I do not want?
[Speaker B] Maybe, if I may, maybe the requirement is that there be some kind of consistency over time. Meaning, in the examples that were just given, it sounds like most of the time, in a clear state of mind, we understand what really is right. And there are those moments when the immediate desire is for something else, and of course in such a case we do what we… what? At that moment, you wanted it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, at that moment, yes yes, at that moment you wanted it.
[Speaker B] Exactly. Right, right, right, understood. I’m saying maybe from a more overall perspective, what is required of us is that behavior over time should align with what characterizes most of the time.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not talking about what is required of us; there are no requirements of us. I’m talking about myself right now. I want to know what the expectation is—
[Speaker B] —that a person has of himself. Meaning, in the case of the diet, the expectation…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? I didn’t hear.
[Speaker B] So according to this suggestion, the inability to project or extend, maybe to persist in the…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does “inability to persist” mean? It’s not inability to persist in the desire—you didn’t want it. Inability always means that something overcame me, it was too strong for me. But no—you didn’t want it. Nothing overcame you.
[Speaker B] Yes, momentarily I completely agree.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but that moment is the moment. Why should I care that now I want something else? What is the relevance of that? So you wanted it.
[Speaker B] Maybe that’s it—maybe that’s how it can be defined. What is weakness of will in this respect? It is the inability to contain the considered desire, the one that, say, ninety-nine percent of the time we understand—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —that this is what is proper or desirable to want, in those moments when… It’s not inability, for heaven’s sake. You keep going back to those moments, you keep returning to the concept of inability, but it’s not inability. At that moment you didn’t want it. Not that you couldn’t want it—you didn’t want it. That’s not the same thing. You didn’t want it, and therefore you didn’t do it. What’s the problem? Weakness of will is not that. That’s exactly why you keep returning to inability, because truly the feeling of weakness of will is a feeling of inability. And that is exactly what I’m asking: how can such a thing as inability exist? It’s not inability; you simply didn’t want it. Now understand—I think I once talked about this. I said that there is a difference between repenting and being a penitent. Do you know what the difference is? Meaning, “to repent,” in today’s language, means to become from secular to religious. In everyday language, yes, on the street, someone who “returned in repentance” is someone who became from secular to religious. In traditional Torah and halakhic jargon, that’s not repentance at all. It’s nonsense. Someone who repents is someone who sinned while he was religious, and then repents in order to go back to doing what he truly believes in, and also believed in then. That is the concept of repentance discussed in all the books. The concept of repentance discussed in all the books means someone who believes in the Holy One, blessed be He, and nevertheless sins. Go back and do what you yourself truly think is right, and what you also thought was right then. It is not changing your beliefs—what today people call “returning in repentance.” What today people call “returning in repentance” is someone who once thought one way and today thinks differently. He is not returning from anything. He never sinned. He didn’t have weakness of will or anything of the sort; he simply once thought one way and afterward thinks differently. Now, what our friend Yitzhak suggested here earlier—basically he is saying that all concepts of weakness of will are really of that type. But that’s not correct, because the concept of repentance we are talking about is not becoming religious in the modern sense, but truly repenting for an act of weakness of will. And about that I’m asking: how can such an act exist at all? If you did it, then that’s what you wanted. So at most you can become religious, not a penitent. You can want something else—fine, if you want, you want; if you don’t want, you don’t want. But—but—but what does it mean to be a penitent, not to become religious? There’s no such thing. If there is no weakness of will, then there is no penitent. I perhaps meant in weakness of will. What?
[Speaker B] What I was trying to suggest is maybe weakness of will can be defined as weakness in persisting in some fixed desire, where in clear thinking perhaps I reached the conclusion—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But it’s the same thing, and I’ll repeat what I answered you there.
[Speaker B] —that this is how I want and…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’ll repeat what I answered you: it’s the same thing you said before. And I’ll now say again what I told you. Weakness in persisting in a desire—that’s weakness. But I’m asking: where does the concept of weakness come from? There is no such thing as weakness. You simply do not want it. It’s not that you are too weak to want it. You do not want it. You want something else. A moment later you want yet something else. Fine. But at that moment, that’s what you wanted. You weren’t weak, and you weren’t unable, and all that—those are just words; it’s not true. It’s word-laundering. You simply didn’t want it.
[Speaker B] I also wanted to ask—what if I want it not only for the moment, but I also want to want it over time?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does it mean to want to want? If you want to want, then want. Fine—but why didn’t you want? Once again I’ll go back and ask that question. For me, the reflection of that question is something I use only as a parable, so let’s move on already. As far as I’m concerned it’s just a parable or an illustration. I’m not going to get into that topic, because I have some attempt at a solution that doesn’t completely solve it, and I’ve been debating for years whether it really is a solution or not. But I want to present another aspect of that same issue. Basically I’m asking the question—now I really am asking the question—in the language you used earlier. Meaning: when the Torah tells us to repent, “and return to the Lord your God,” okay? What does it mean to repent? To repent means to turn back from the bad deeds that I did. Not to become religious, but to become a penitent. Right?
Now I’m saying this: suppose the act I did—say I desecrated the Sabbath. And as I showed earlier, that Sabbath desecration came from a certain set of values that I believed in at that moment. Maybe they changed a minute later and weren’t there a minute before either, but at that moment that was my value system. Okay? And that’s why I did what I did. Now, what does it mean that I am required to repent? If I no longer hold that set of values, but a different set of values, and therefore I now look at the act I did back then as a bad act that needs repentance—then I don’t need to repent, I already did. Because I already think differently. After all, everything I did there was because I thought in a certain way; I had value set X. But now I hold value set Y—which may only be different in emphasis, it doesn’t have to be different values, but never mind, a different scale of values. Okay? So then I don’t need to repent, I’ve already repented. I now want something else; the moment I want something else, I won’t do that. Because what a person always does is what he wants. So what does it mean that I’m required to repent?
Apparently I still hold value set X. But if I hold value set X, then what is required of me? To adopt value set Y. But I believe in X. Unless what? I think Y is correct, and therefore I want to repent and switch from X to Y? But then I don’t need to repent, because if I think Y is correct, then from my perspective I’ve already repented—I already believe in Y. In short: how can the act of repentance be defined as an initiated action of the person? That’s the question.
You know, when the image of the penitent appears in our minds, what I’m basically saying is: the person is supposed to take himself and change his own value system in order to behave properly. But changing one’s own value system is simply an oxymoron. Because if I believe in set X, why would I change it to Y? Unless what? I believe in Y. But if I believe in Y, what do I have to change? I need to change only if I believe in X and need to replace it with Y. But if I already know that Y is the correct one, then I already believe in Y, so there’s nothing to change. How can there be an initiated process of repentance, of replacing one set of values, X, with Y? That is really the question.
Now, you can answer this, as I said, in several ways. I’ll only go into one aspect, because it’s the important one for our purposes here. If I phrase the question differently, then I’m saying this: if I expect this to happen to me on its own—through the Holy One, blessed be He, bringing me back, or circumstances, or the environment, I don’t know, someone doing something to me—that of course is not called repenting. Someone else is reprogramming me differently. Repentance is something I need to do. But I can’t do repentance, as I said earlier.
You see, I’ll give an example, one that always comes to mind in this context. Give an example? Suppose—think of how physicists discuss things: “Let’s think about a point donkey and see what happens to it. Then we’ll grow it a tail and legs and volume and gradually see how a real donkey works.” So let’s take a point donkey in the parable. Let’s take a person who has only one value in his whole world. That’s it, and nothing else. A hypothetical person. What is that value? Maximum reward, minimum punishment. That’s it.
Now this man is a completely righteous saint. Every day he prays at sunrise and says all the sacrificial passages beforehand. He is strict about every clause of the Mishnah Berurah and takes into account every view of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim), doesn’t budge a millimeter from Jewish law. And beyond Jewish law too, pious conduct, everything, everything. Why? Because he wants maximum reward and minimum punishment. That’s why he does it. Okay? Now suppose that’s me. Okay? Now someone comes and wants to persuade me to become one who serves God for its own sake—not for reward and punishment. To serve God for its own sake. What exactly is he supposed to do? What arguments can he present to me in order to persuade me to serve for its own sake?
If you think for half a minute, you’ll immediately see there are no such arguments. He can’t do anything. At most, what he can do is say that if I serve for its own sake, I’ll receive more reward. That’s what he can tell me, right? And then he takes my aspiration for maximum reward and supposedly can motivate me to serve for its own sake—but of course that won’t work, because it’s still service not for its own sake. I’m doing it for the reward. It’s impossible.
Now what is the root of the difficulty? Why doesn’t he succeed? He doesn’t succeed because when he wants to persuade me, he has to persuade me according to the assumptions accepted by me, not according to the assumptions accepted by him. Right? But according to the assumptions accepted by me, I have only one assumption: maximum reward, minimum punishment. That’s it. Speak to me in that language; I don’t know anything else. He has no way of penetrating me.
What can he do? One of two things. Either implant within me another principle or an additional principle, replace my value system. But then of course the one who did the repentance was him, not me. He implanted that thing in me. I didn’t repent here; he simply reprogrammed me, if he managed to do it. So that’s not what we’re talking about.
What can he do? Persuade me on my own terms. But if he succeeds in persuading me that I need to serve for its own sake, that means that from the outset I already thought that one should serve for its own sake, and therefore now I’m changing my outlook from serving not for its own sake to serving for its own sake. But then I’m not changing my outlook, because from the outset I already aspire to be one who serves for its own sake; so from the outset I already believe in serving for its own sake, so there is no need to change—there’s nothing to change, it has already changed.
Therefore, whichever way you look at it: either someone from outside does it, and then it’s worthless; or I myself am required to do it, and then it’s impossible. Conceptually impossible—not that it’s hard and therefore a person fails to live up to it; it is conceptually impossible. You can’t tell a person, “You must change your value set.” What do you mean? But these are the values I believe in. What does it mean that I should change my value set to another set that I don’t believe in? Or to another set that I do believe in—in that case I don’t need to change, I already believe in it. What does it mean that I need to…
Yes, put differently: when I change my value set, then the changer already believes in the new set—that’s why he does it, right? But the one being changed holds the old set, because otherwise there would be nothing to change. But if I am the one changing my own values, then both the changer and the one being changed are me. So which value set do I hold? Understand, we are getting here to things that are just words; they don’t mean anything.
The only way I can think about this—and again, it can be presented in other ways, but it seems to me they somehow connect into one picture. I once talked about this and also wrote it on the site, that this is probably the question of whether I choose to choose. Earlier someone mentioned, “I want to want.” I think there may be some opening there, but I won’t go into that here. I’ll present it from another angle.
Basically my question is whether the Holy One, blessed be He, will do repentance for me, or whether I will do it myself. It seems to me this is the meaning of the Talmudic passage in Avodah Zarah there on page 17, about Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya. Yes—he did not leave a single transgression in the world that he had not committed, and then the fringes slapped him in the face, or he let out a sigh—yes, there are different versions of the story there. And he began turning to heaven: “Mountains, ask for mercy on my behalf; heavens, ask for mercy on my behalf; stars, sun, moon, ask for mercy on my behalf.” Nobody… In the end he says: “The matter depends on no one but me.” He cried and cried and cried until his soul departed.
What is the meaning of this appeal to all the heavenly bodies and the stars and the mountains and the hills? It’s that same feeling I described before: what do you mean that I am supposed to change myself? Someone from outside has to do this to me. A person cannot change himself. It simply does not exist conceptually—not that it’s hard; there is no such thing. So he looked for someone from outside. Of course it’s a parable; he didn’t think the mountains could do anything. Rather, this is aggadic literature that comes to tell us, to convey to us, the feeling I described earlier: that a person cannot change himself. Someone from outside—“A prisoner cannot free himself from prison.” Someone has to make this change in me.
Yes, like Baron Munchausen who fell into a pit and couldn’t get out, so he ran quickly home to bring a ladder so he could climb out of the pit. It’s the same thing. That is exactly the demand made of a person to repent: the demand is to run home to bring a ladder so that you can get out of the pit. It’s exactly the same thing. Only with Munchausen everyone laughs, and with repentance everyone keeps talking about it as though everything is fine and it’s well defined.
This way of presenting it says: whichever way you look at it, either someone from outside does this for me and then it is worthless because I did not repent—someone did it to me—or I myself am required to do it, but that is impossible, logically impossible. So repentance is impossible. Maybe—and as I said, I’m very unsure about these formulations—but maybe one can find an opening to this tangle if I notice that this formulation of the difficulty assumes a certain dichotomous stance of myself over against the Holy One, blessed be He. Then the question is either He does it or I do it, and whichever way you look at it, it doesn’t work. If He does it, it’s worthless; if I do it, it’s impossible. That is what creates the problem.
Now, to solve a problem, usually you have to give up one of the assumptions that created it. Maybe we need to give that up. Maybe we need to give up this dichotomy: is the Holy One, blessed be He, over there and I’m over here? Or am I Him or not Him? Maybe there is some kind of connection that is not identity, but also not total separateness. To break this dichotomy between me and Him. So I’m not identifying us completely; I’m not saying that I am Him and returning again to contraction, and that contraction is not to be taken literally. But on the other hand I am saying that taking contraction literally also does not leave the Holy One, blessed be He, entirely standing opposite me while I am a completely independent being. That is what is called a “trace.” In Kabbalah they talk about some light that after the withdrawal returned, some imprint of the original light returned into the empty space. Because something of divinity still remains even within the beings created in the empty space. It is not such a sharply dichotomous distinction between us and Him.
There is something in repentance in which apparently the Holy One, blessed be He, takes part and somehow does it together with me. It’s not Him alone, because then it’s worthless, and it’s not me alone, because that’s impossible. Rather there is some sort of continuous connection between me and Him, and at some point—I don’t know, I’m really using concepts here that I don’t know how to define completely—but I’m saying that this is at least the logical way that appears as a possible solution to this logical tangle: if I give up this dichotomy between me and Him. That’s it, these are negative attributes. I know what not to say; I don’t know how to describe it positively. Okay? If I give up this dichotomy, the problem may really disappear.
By the way, notice that in Avinu Malkeinu, which we say during the Ten Days of Repentance and on public fast days, there are all kinds of requests we make of the Holy One, blessed be He. One of those requests is very strange: “Our Father, our King, bring us back in full repentance before You.” Now one could explain it this way: accept the repentance that we are doing—that is, rehabilitate us, relate to us again as clean human beings after we have repented. But “bring us back in full repentance before You”—in its plain sense, it seems to me that’s not what it means. It means, “Help us repent,” not “Accept our repentance.” Help us repent. What does that mean? Why should He help you? You have to repent. If He does it, it’s worthless.
The point is that You have to do it with me, like Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, because if You do it, then indeed it is worthless—but I alone, on the logical level, cannot do it. Something in the connection between me and the Holy One, blessed be He, is required so that this whole business can even be defined on the logical level, and maybe even be possible, not only definable. That’s it. I don’t know how to say more than that.
I just want to return to the point where I ended the description of contraction, because this discussion about weakness of will came to complete that. And what I wanted to say, basically, is that the relation between three dimensions and two dimensions is not symmetrical. It’s not just two creatures that don’t interact with one another, that are transparent to one another. There is something in three dimensions that in some sense contains the two dimensions, and the reverse is not true. Meaning, between two dimensions and three dimensions, there is more and less here; there is a hierarchy here. It’s not that these are beings of different types—but not one more and one less, rather simply different types that don’t interact with one another, don’t see one another, don’t collide with one another, are transparent to one another. No. There is some sort of hierarchy here. The three dimensions, in some sense, contain the two.
Therefore it may be that when I say “the whole earth is full of His glory,” as I said earlier, that basically means that the Holy One, blessed be He, is indeed present somewhere—not somewhere, but everywhere in some sense. That doesn’t mean that all of reality is only the Holy One, blessed be He, and nothing happened. To say that is nonsense. But it does mean that in the lower dimensions in which we exist—not in the dimensions in which nothing happened because no part, no volume, was carved out of the higher dimension—but what happened in my dimension? A three-dimensional world was created. That is the empty space, okay? Space literally, three-dimensional. And within this space there exist beings that do not occupy volume in four-dimensional reality, but four-dimensional reality has a trace, it has light that it sends into the empty space. Because basically the three-dimensional reality is indeed in some sense part of the four-dimensional reality. The four-dimensional reality is indeed present within the three-dimensional. There is some sort of dominance or priority of four dimensions over three; it’s not a symmetrical relationship.
And maybe in that sense one can say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is found everywhere. “Found everywhere” does not mean that we are imaginary or illusory beings. We exist. But what is defined as “I”—apparently there is some sort of mixture here, some sort of partnership, I don’t know what to call it—partnership is a loaded word—with divinity. And only because of that do I manage to choose and repent and do all these strange things that usually we don’t know how to explain or describe, because they really do not belong entirely just to our world. Something from some higher world is involved here, because without that it could not happen.
Think about it again as the parable of dimensions. There’s a book translated into Hebrew called Flatland. It’s a fascinating book, about someone writing a book about two-dimensional beings who live in a two-dimensional world. Now what’s nice is that we, the readers, are three-dimensional beings. So we try to enter the world of the two-dimensional beings and try to understand how they look at us.
Now think: we are, after all, three-dimensional beings. So draw a line on a two-dimensional sheet. The line forms a boundary; there is no way to cross it, right? A two-dimensional being cannot cross the line. There is no way around it; the line does not allow passage, and he has no way to bypass it, because to bypass it you need to move through—you need to climb in the third dimension, go up on the Z axis, in order to get around that line somehow. Right? Now in a two-dimensional world there is no way to get around it. Right? A one-dimensional line splits the two-dimensional surface into two parts. The intermediate value theorem: you cannot move from one side to the other without crossing the line. Okay?
Now think about what happens when suddenly a three-dimensional being comes, takes the two-dimensional being, lifts him up, brings him into his own three-dimensional world, and returns him to the other side. The two-dimensional being will not be able to explain to himself how he got across. Because he doesn’t know what three dimensions are; he doesn’t understand. He was probably asleep at that moment; he didn’t grasp what was happening to him. Okay? He will not be able to explain to himself in any way how he managed to get across that line without—he violated the intermediate value theorem. He passed from one side to the other without crossing the line. He didn’t touch the line.
I, as a three-dimensional being, can intervene in his world and do things to him that from his perspective look like miracles. That is the meaning of repenting, and that is the meaning of choosing. From our natural perspective, choosing is a miracle. It is a miracle. There is no way to explain it naturally. All the complications people get into around free will and freedom of choice are because they try to explain this concept, free will, in terms of physics, of the laws of nature that we know. There is no way to explain it in terms of the laws of nature. Because it is a deviation from the laws of nature.
So how does it happen anyway? Something beyond nature intervenes. It intervenes here and helps me do these miraculous actions, transferring me from one side to the other without my crossing the line. In that sense the dimensions parable is very helpful in understanding the relationship between the Holy One, blessed be He, and the world. And that is really the purpose of this series, right? Contraction is only the starting point for the discussion of the relationship between the Holy One, blessed be He, and the world. And the involvement of some being from a higher dimension can generate things that are not intelligible in the lower dimension. Okay? Therefore it is not true that these are merely creatures that don’t interact with one another, that are transparent to one another. It’s not only that. There is something in the three-dimensional, or in the higher dimension, that does have the power to govern and to be present, yes, to exist, in the lower dimension. And that seems to me the only explanation I can give myself that meaningfully explains the concept of contraction without giving up either side of the tension from which we began.
I’ll end with just one sentence, which will be the opening for the next stages. As I said earlier, in the end all these theological arguments come to practical expression: how I look at the world, how I serve God, what my role is here in the world. And there are different conceptions here—a Hasidic conception and a Mitnagdic conception—they have different expressions, they have different conceptions. The expression is filthy alleyways, but that’s only an expression. In the end, there is a different kind of serving God here.
And the question—really two questions—is: what are these two conceptions, and how does this relate to the different conceptions of contraction? Because if in the end I go with the principle of charity, as I said, and preserve both sides—I don’t want to present them as saying nonsense—then according to the principle of charity I need to offer the best possible explanation of everything both sides say. But the best possible explanation of the concept of contraction can only be one. And then that basically means that both sides are saying the same thing. They are saying the same thing, but they place the emphasis on something different. The Hasidic side places the emphasis on the fact that nothing happened, and the Mitnagdic side places the emphasis on the fact that something did happen. Even though the truth itself is some kind of combination—it is not a dichotomy between these two options, it is some kind of combination of the two things, as I described earlier. But there is a difference in emphasis.
And that difference in emphasis is, apparently, not really a theological difference at all. Because in theology, if I’m right, then everyone agrees with the picture I’ve just described. But the role of the emphases is to tell me: okay, now let’s see what is incumbent upon you. How do you perceive the world, how do you behave in the world, how do you see providence, how do you see choice, how do you see shutting oneself inside Lithuanian Noah’s arks versus the Hasidic conception that says one must spread out into all the expanses of the world, even into filthy alleyways. All these things are very large differences in serving God and in one’s worldview, and they begin—their root begins—with different conceptions of contraction, which, as I said earlier, are not really different conceptions at all. It’s only a question of what should be emphasized within the one possible conception there is. It seems to me that only one conception is possible here.
Okay, so from here on, after I deal just a little more with this seam, we’re basically moving on to the questions—we leave contraction and Kabbalah and all those things, and move to questions of providence, of the Holy One, blessed be He, of His involvement in the world, the question of evil and good, all those things that concern the Holy One, blessed be He, and the world. But all of it, all of it, begins with this argument about contraction, or with the different emphases we place within the picture of contraction. Okay, I’ll stop here. Any comments or questions? You can now.
[Speaker B] Yes, a question if I may? So basically you mentioned this, and you also came back to it at the end, that it really may be that the same explanation fits both conceptions. Personally, for a moment, I think absolutely yes. Meaning, I know the Hasidic conception not at all as a claim of illusion—maybe there are some, I’m not claiming to speak for all of them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Clearly there are some. In any case it’s a crude generalization to say “the Hasidic conception”; there are many.
[Speaker B] Okay, right, so I… and indeed you pointed out that if there is nevertheless some difference, then one would expect a key. Now the key is clear—you pointed to it at the end. In the end there are, of course, differences in worldview and in the practical approach; they’re also well known. But I’m not quite able to understand whether those differences really do imply that already at the root conception there is a difference. I’m not quite able to understand that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good, so as I said, that’s our subject. That’s our subject going forward. Here I only put down the declaration. By the way, the declaration that there is a connection appears both in Hasidic literature and in Lithuanian literature; it’s not my invention. We just need to understand what it means.
[Speaker B] No, the connection itself isn’t the question. Is there really a difference in the conceptions? Meaning, it sounds as if precisely the same explanation the Rabbi gave for Rabbi Chaim’s formulations—which, again, personally, fit very well also with the explanations and interpretations of the Tanya, and so on. I think Rabbi Steinsaltz also says that, at least in his view, in the end there is no essential difference between them, that both are describing the same thing in different tools. I didn’t quite manage to understand how one makes this backward projection that infers from the differences in the conceptions that there really is a difference in the root conception. So you are asking the question of the connection.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So you are asking the question of the connection. The connection. How the theological difference…
[Speaker B] No, I understand why there should be a connection.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is the question of the connection.
[Speaker B] Why isn’t it simply perhaps interpretation? Two people can emerge from the same point and each one takes it in a slightly different direction. So it doesn’t have to mean that they started from two different points.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is more or less what I said in my final sentences just now. That in the real picture, if I’m right, they really grasp the same thing. The whole question is only what you put the emphasis on. And the emphasis is not that you have a different conception, but that the implication you draw from the one shared conception is different, and it projects onto practical reality differently. But that really is strange. It really is strange that there is one picture, from which—that same picture—and yet everyone somehow hangs on that picture the root of the practical differences. Even though both sides hold the same picture, if both sides hold the same picture. The principle of charity says they do. The texts don’t say that.
[Speaker B] I would say the weights each one gives to different components in the picture, meaning…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] About that I’ll speak. Those are the questions. I’ll speak about it briefly, but next time. Anyone else? Thank you very much. Goodbye.