Ein Aya – Berakhot 31

All right, we’re at letter 134. Let me first share the Talmudic passage. Okay. “Rav Shimi bar Ukva—or, as some say, Mar Ukva—was frequently before Rabbi Shimon ben Pazi, who used to arrange aggadah.” Rabbi Shimon ben Pazi would study aggadah before Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi. He said to him: “What is the meaning of that which is written, ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name’?” So yes, he asks Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi what the meaning of this is—“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name.” And Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi thinks the question is about the matter of “all that is within me”—why specifically the innards have to bless the Holy One, blessed be He. Later in the Talmud it becomes clear that that’s not what he meant to ask, but let’s just note the fact that the Talmud went to the trouble of bringing the answer here at length, and only afterward it suddenly turns out that this whole business is not correct at all—that’s not what he asked. But this is a classic thing. You can see this even in Jewish law, and in aggadah certainly.

In Jewish law there’s a Maimonides in the Laws of Hiring. There Maimonides discusses the obligation of a guardian when the animal he was guarding caused damage. And Maimonides says that if the guardian can’t pay, or is exempt from paying because he guarded properly, then payment is collected—the injured party goes and collects payment from the owner, from the one who deposited the animal with the guardian. And that goes against the Talmud. The Talmud says that if the guardian guarded properly, then he enters in place of the owner, and if he guarded properly then he is exempt. The owner is certainly exempt—he handed it over to the guardian, and the responsibility is now on the guardian. It goes against the Talmud. And there are whole pilpulim there from the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) about how to explain Maimonides anyway, and force the Talmudic passage, and propose all kinds of explanations.

But what happened? The Kesef Mishneh there, on the side of Maimonides, brings a responsum—a responsum of Maimonides himself, I think, or maybe his son, though I think Maimonides himself—in which Maimonides says that this is simply a scribal error. In other words, the poor copyist got confused there. He meant to say that the owner is exempt. But in the copied text it came out—not even in print, I don’t know if this was already in the age of print, because Maimonides couldn’t have commented on a printed edition—but the manuscript that circulated had it written that the owner has to pay, against the Talmud.

Fine. But the Kesef Mishneh was of course after that, and here we’re talking about Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, who was another four hundred years later, and he too reconciles Maimonides. And he certainly saw the Kesef Mishneh, which is printed in all the editions next to Maimonides. And even though he saw this Kesef Mishneh saying it’s a scribal error, he still reconciled Maimonides. And the Maggid Mishneh too—but with the Maggid Mishneh I don’t know whether he saw that note from Maimonides. But later authorities down to our own time definitely saw it and still continue to reconcile Maimonides.

That’s a very interesting question—how to relate to such a thing. So let’s say, through the eyes of a scholar, it’s obvious that really you should erase the whole issue, because the whole thing is founded on a mistake. In Maimonides there’s some error, and as a result all sorts of people found themselves needing to build all kinds of structures to explain it. So you can erase the whole thing. In the more traditional yeshiva world—I don’t know what to call it—the view is different. They keep learning this Rabbi Chaim and this Maggid Mishneh, and there are readings in Maimonides and explanations, and this approach and that approach, when this whole enterprise is based on a scribal error.

And the point that I think really stands behind this—beyond all the mystical ideas, that the Holy One, blessed be He, arranged this mistake in Maimonides in order to draw all sorts of things out of us—even if you don’t accept these mystical notions, I still think you need to separate it a little so people can see it. Just the fact that the Maggid Mishneh and Rabbi Chaim, or whoever did this, managed to find an interpretation in the Talmud that fits Maimonides, exposed for us another possible interpretation in the Talmud. The fact is that he was willing to stand behind it. True, he wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t needed to reconcile this Maimonides, which turns out to be a mistake. But practically speaking, he proposed an interpretation in the Talmud that we never would have come up with otherwise. And who knows—maybe it’s even a terrific interpretation. We just wouldn’t have thought of it without that. If it’s forced, then fine, you can say it doesn’t really have much traction. But sometimes things like that produce very beautiful ideas, and they just happen to be rooted in an error, and that generated certain Torah insights that we wouldn’t have merited without the basic mistake that created them.

So here too, it’s the same thing. The Talmud brings half the passage—more than half of this passage is devoted to the answer to this mistaken understanding of the question. And then it turns out—this is where it starts, because the second part starts here. Compare them: at least more than half. This is the half he actually meant to ask. And then there’s the answer, which by the way is connected to the answer to the mistaken question, to the mistaken understanding of the question. It’s even some kind of completion. So this structure is very interesting. It’s a nice point for people who study aggadah. But it really is an interesting point—that you start with some mistake, you spin out on it, and you already know it’s a mistake, because the editor knew it was a mistake. So why write all this? Okay, we got it, it’s a mistake—so erase the first part and just bring the second part. Why on earth? The first part has wonderful answers to a difficulty that was never even asked. How could we miss such a thing? So he brings it, then he brings the real answers, and not only that—there’s a connection between them. There’s a connection. I have no idea if that’s the work of the editor or if Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi himself said it, but probably Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi himself. Meaning, he was already in that mode; he heard a different question and basically answered something very similar. So anyway, that’s just an interesting note about the structure here.

Let’s go back to the Talmud itself. Right, so he asks him: what is this business of the innards? Why specifically should the innards bless the Holy One, blessed be He? He said to him: “Come and see that the measure of the Holy One, blessed be He, is not like the measure of flesh and blood. The measure of flesh and blood is that he forms a form on the wall, and he cannot place into it spirit and soul, innards and intestines. But the Holy One, blessed be He, is not so. He forms a form within a form”—the innards inside the person—“and places into it spirit and soul, innards and intestines.”

“Intestines” is something even more internal than the bowels, and spirit and soul are something more internal still inside the inner organs. Spirit and soul aren’t internal organs; they’re the spiritual parts of a person. There’s something here of one thing inside another, form within form within form, some sort of matryoshka doll, and only the Holy One, blessed be He, can do that. That is the measure of the Holy One, blessed be He, and not the measure of flesh and blood. “And this is what Hannah said: ‘There is none holy like the Lord, for there is none besides You, and there is no rock like our God.’” What is the meaning of “there is no rock like our God”? So the commentators explain: what does “there is no rock like our God” mean? There is no rock at all? There is no other god besides the Holy One, blessed be He? The Talmud says: “There is no artist like our God.” Meaning, there is no one who knows how to shape and form like the Holy One, blessed be He. Because “artist” here relates to what was said above, forming a form on the wall. “Artist” in the sense of shaping a form on the wall. And the Holy One, blessed be He, is an artist and sculptor—not just an artist, meaning He makes three-dimensional forms. But not only three-dimensional forms: He also manages to penetrate inside them and place inside them internal organs and soul and something like that, which flesh-and-blood man cannot do.

Then the Talmud asks: “What is the meaning of ‘for there is none besides You’?” Rabbi Yehudah bar Menasya said: “Do not read it as ‘for there is none besides You,’ but ‘there is none to outlast You,’ for the measure of the Holy One, blessed be He, is not like the measure of flesh and blood. The handiwork of flesh and blood outlasts him, but the Holy One, blessed be He, outlasts His handiwork.” “Outlasts him” means it lives on after him. A person who creates something, or gives birth to something, usually what he created lives on after him. The person passes away, and what he created remains. But with the Holy One, blessed be He, He remains longer than everything and everyone He created.

He said to him—now we get to the real part. Until this point, this was all basically some unplanned detour resulting from a mistake. He said to him: “What I really meant was this. I didn’t mean to ask you that at all. I asked you: these five ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul’ passages—to whom did David say them corresponding?” The five “Bless the Lord, O my soul” passages are what we saw in the previous section: “She opens her mouth with wisdom”—corresponding to whom did Solomon say this verse? They said: only corresponding to his father David, who lived in five worlds and said song: he dwelt in his mother’s womb and said song, “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” Then “Bless the Lord, His angels.” “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.” Those five “Bless the Lord, O my soul” passages. So corresponding to whom were they said?

Here you already see the editor’s work: this thing is connected to the previous part of this aggadah. It’s not the same speaker—the speaker is someone else—but the editor decided to place it here because of course it relates to those same “Bless the Lord, O my soul” passages. He said to him—so he asked him, what are these five “Bless the Lord, O my soul” passages? And he answers: “He said them only corresponding to the Holy One, blessed be He, and corresponding to the soul.” What does that mean? This is some sort of comparison between the Holy One, blessed be He, and the soul. There are five aspects in which the Holy One, blessed be He, and the soul are similar. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, fills the whole world, so the soul fills the whole body. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, sees and is not seen, so the soul sees and is not seen. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, sustains the whole world, so the soul sustains—that is, gives life to—the whole body. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, is pure, so the soul is pure. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, sits in innermost chambers, so the soul sits in innermost chambers.

“Let the one who has these five things”—that is the soul—“come and praise the One who has these five things.” Therefore: “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” “My soul” is my soul, which has these five things, and it will bless God, who also has these five things. Therefore: “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” “My soul” is my soul, which has these five things, and it will bless God, who also has these five things. So let the one who has these five things—that is, my soul—come and bless the Holy One, blessed be He, who also has these five things.

But notice: you can’t ignore the connection between the two parts of this aggadah. The first part speaks about the Holy One, blessed be He, placing things inside us—spirit or soul, innards and intestines—and man can only touch the external side, form a form on the face of the wall. The second part speaks about the Holy One, blessed be He, filling the whole world the way the soul fills the whole body, sustaining the whole world, dwelling in innermost chambers. This is really a continuation of the first part. So he asked one question and got one answer, then asked a second question and got the same answer in a somewhat different style, but about the same aspects. It’s talking about the same issue.

Okay, so that’s the aggadah. And now we move into the first part in Rabbi Kook. He says as follows: “The action of flesh and blood, when he acts upon another, is only from the external side of the other.” A person can act on something or someone else—not necessarily another human being, even another inanimate thing—you can act on something only from its external side, for one being has relation and value to another only from the side of their externality. In other words, you can’t create a connection with something internal in a person; you create it with the external part, or at least through the external part. And we’ll still talk about that.

“Therefore they can act upon one another only externally. Therefore flesh and blood—all its actions are only external. He forms a form on the wall and cannot place into it spirit and soul, innards and intestines, for the inwardness of every being is essential to its own essence, and another has no power to send a hand into it.” The word “essential” here, of course, comes from essence—as opposed to accident, essence and attribute. So we’ll still talk about that distinction between essence and attribute and how it relates to this distinction.

“But the Holy One, blessed be He—His relation to all His creatures is an equal relation. As with their externality, so with their inwardness. And He, blessed be He, fills all, and even their inward self-existence is entirely from His abundance and His blessed will. Therefore His action upon them is also in their inwardness, and the main thing is in their inwardness.” Not only can He act inside and not only outside, but the main thing is their inwardness. Because what value do external actions have compared to internal actions—those which are acted only by the hand of God, blessed be He, who acts equally upon their externality and their inwardness, filling all worlds and surrounding all worlds.”

These are the kabbalistic expressions, and in Hasidic thought they make a whole big deal out of the relation between the Infinite Light and the created worlds, the lower worlds. So the Infinite Light relates to the created worlds in two ways. It surrounds all worlds—that is, it is around them, and in the vacant space that it leaves within itself, the whole world we know exists or is created. But it also fills all worlds. In other words, the light also enters and gives life from within to all the beings that live in the space it made vacant. Therefore the Ari begins his Etz Chaim with the withdrawal of the Infinite Light to somewhere, leaving a circular empty space in the middle. But inside that circular space, a line descends—a line of Infinite Light from above. It doesn’t reach all the way down, it doesn’t touch the bottom so that everything won’t be erased, and around this line all the beings in the world are formed—all the universe, all the worlds that were created, one inside another, one around another, one below another. There are all sorts of descriptions of these things.

And what comes out is that the Infinite Light that withdrew, that stands around this circular space, is the one that surrounds all worlds. It surrounds all the worlds created in that space. But it also fills all worlds. This line—the concept of line and contraction—this line is actually present in the inwardness of all created things. So the Holy One, blessed be He, has two relations to reality, what philosophers call transcendent and immanent. Yes, that’s really a translation of surrounding and filling. The surrounding is the transcendent, and the immanent is what is inside, built into it—that is the filling. Therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, can act on us both from outside and from inside: through the Infinite Light of the line from inside, and through the surrounding light from outside.

“Therefore the relation of the human soul to God is also from its own self and inwardness.” The human soul can basically encounter the Holy One, blessed be He, both from within and from without. When it encounters the line, that is to encounter the one who fills, the one within it. And when it looks outward—that’s the existential gaze when you look inward. Looking outward, the philosophical, contemplative gaze when you look outward, then you discover the Holy One, blessed be He, as the one who surrounds all worlds. Therefore philosophers usually see the Holy One, blessed be He, as surrounding, and kabbalists tend more to see Him as filling. Even though they speak of both aspects, the aspect of filling is what distinguishes the kabbalists from the philosophers.

Right, so “the relation of the divine soul to God is also from its own self and inwardness. Therefore: ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul,’ and let it seek God and find Him within itself, in its own intellect and elevated emotions”—not by means of its intellect and emotions, but by looking at intellect and emotion themselves, I see that the one present in them, the one giving them life, is the Holy One, blessed be He. It’s not only that I use intellect and emotion to encounter the Holy One, blessed be He, but intellect and emotion themselves are expressions of the Holy One, blessed be He, present within them.

“And this is the fitting quality by the very essence of its nature, because since we see that the relation of the Creator’s action, blessed be He, to His creatures is most recognizable from His control over their inwardness”—therefore, since His action is stronger upon us in our inwardness than outside, because from outside many causes and people can act on us, but from within it is only the Holy One, blessed be He—then our way of encountering Him or recognizing Him is also more by way of the inside than by way of the outside. Because the contact is more intimate, more intense, deeper, precisely in the inner part and not the external part.

“And behold, the relation and control and hand of God, blessed be He, in non-rational and non-feeling creatures”—the inanimate or the plants—“that relation is found in the natural actions implanted in them necessarily by His blessed will.” In other words, how does the character of a plant or an animal or even an inanimate object arise? It doesn’t decide anything, it simply does what was implanted in it. Meaning that what it does is an expression of the Holy One, blessed be He. The Holy One, blessed be He, is not even hidden here, because that is itself, there isn’t something appearing through it—that is itself. So he says that’s true of the inanimate and plants and so on. “But the soul, which feels and thinks,” meaning it can act with intellect and emotion, “its character and inwardness are feeling and intellect.” Those are the deepest, most foundational things in a person, what distinguishes him from every other creature. “And its perfection is that it recognize the hand of God in it and His abundance upon it and upon its powers, and through knowing itself it will know its Maker according to its power and bless His name with love and exultant joy.”

Again he comes back to this: knowing itself—when the soul and the intellect, which is absurd. How do we, for example, do research in neuroscience? Research in neuroscience is basically making the brain think about how the brain works. That’s what we do. Fine, if we think about how, I don’t know, legs work, okay. But when we think about how the brain works, there’s already some amazing loop here. Meaning, if our brain isn’t working properly, then we also won’t understand that it isn’t working properly, because we’re also using the brain in order to understand how the brain works.

Okay, so basically Rabbi Kook is telling us here that our contemplation, which itself is done with intellect and emotion—at least according to him also with emotion—in intellect and emotion themselves, that is actually the way to know, the deepest and most basic way to know the Holy One, blessed be He. “And through knowing itself it will know its Maker according to its power”—its own powers themselves. Again, not by means of its powers, but when it contemplates its powers it sees the Holy One, blessed be He. Of course the contemplation is also done by means of those powers, but those powers help me contemplate those very powers themselves, myself.

And therefore, in a certain sense, I know the Holy One, blessed be He, when I myself—He is behind me as the observer, and He is also the object of observation. But all this is within me, not outside. Besides that, of course, I also have contemplation outward, and there, the one outside is only Him, that already has nothing to do with me. The observer is me, but the object of observation is Him. In the inner part, something very strange is happening: I am observing. Observing myself, but observing myself is basically encountering the Holy One, blessed be He. And then I encounter myself in two directions: I am the observer, and I am the object I am observing. Meaning, I am on both sides of this equation.

This reminds me now of the nice book by Ron Aharoni, a mathematician from the Technion, called The Cat That Isn’t There. I think it was published by Magnes. And it’s built on a saying of William James, who says that philosophy is comparable, in his eyes, to a blind man searching in a dark room for a black cat that isn’t there. Meaning, some sort of lost search. You’re blind, so you can’t see at all; even if you could see, you’d be searching in the dark for a black cat. And besides that, the cat isn’t even there. So it’s a kind of statement about the futility of philosophical searching.

And his claim in the book—a fascinating book, by the way, fundamentally mistaken in my opinion, but really fascinating—is that all of philosophy is built on one basic error. He claims there is no such field as philosophy. Meaning, all philosophy in all its issues—and he goes through them all, the guy knows his material, he’s not talking nonsense—he goes through all the issues and shows that every one of them rests on one error, and the moment you understand it, the issue dissolves. There is no such thing. What remains is only science. Just observe and know the facts, that’s all. There is no such thing as philosophy on the categorical level. That’s what he claims.

And the error is the confusion between the observer and the object of observation. He claims that every philosophical issue begins from the fact that you don’t distinguish between me as observer and the me that I’m observing. Yes, I’m functioning here in two hats. And he claims that they have to be separated, at least methodologically, and then all the problems and contradictions and philosophical dilemmas disappear. I don’t agree with him, and I wrote about it in two columns, or a few columns, I don’t remember anymore, where I defined what philosophy is.

In any case, this is basically what Rabbi Kook is claiming here: that when you look into yourself, you seem to be looking at yourself, but really you’re also looking at something that is not you. It is the Holy One, blessed be He, within you. And this is the way—he says more than that—this is the deeper way to encounter the Holy One, blessed be He, more than observing, in the scientific-philosophical gaze, what is going on outside, as some subject observing something outside himself, which is more objective, seemingly more grounded, more solid. But no, he says that to truly encounter the Holy One, blessed be He, is specifically to contemplate myself, to enter into this loop of me observing myself. Which is of course a guaranteed recipe for arriving at errors and contradictions and loops and biases. And if my brain isn’t working right, then I also won’t properly discover how my brain works, and therefore I also won’t be able to fix it, and therefore I can never know whether I’m right or not right about this. Because if I’m not right, then my brain is thinking that—so how will I discover that my brain isn’t working correctly if my brain itself isn’t working correctly? By means of what will I discover that?

So there’s something in this way of looking at things that really does remind you of William James, meaning the futility of the search. A kind of lost search. It’s very hard to explain how there’s any justification at all for giving validity to this type of search—what exactly is it doing? So there really are people who say, okay, it’s an intellectual game, there’s nothing there, we don’t discover anything through it. In that series of columns on my site, I argued that philosophy is an empirical science. We do discover things through it—not with the senses, but it’s a different kind of observation.

Okay, but let’s get back to Rabbi Kook. I want to say a bit more about what he said here. You can take it in all sorts of directions. I’ll maybe start with—wait, there’s a beautiful midrash in Leviticus Rabbah, hold on, Leviticus Rabbah on the portion of Emor. So Rabbi Yirmiyah ben Rabbi Elazar said: “In the future a heavenly voice will burst forth on the tops of the mountains and say: Whoever has acted with God, let him come and take his reward.” Yes, whoever did something should come and receive the reward he deserves. “This is what is written: ‘At this time it shall be said to Jacob and to Israel: What has God wrought’” and so on. The Holy Spirit says: “Who has preceded Me, that I should repay him?” In response to that, the Holy Spirit basically comes and protests. What do you mean, you’re giving reward to someone who did good things? “Who has preceded Me, that I should repay him?” The Holy One, blessed be He, Himself protests on His own behalf.

“Who praised Me before I gave him a soul? Who circumcised his son before I gave him a male child? Who made Me a parapet before I gave him a roof? Who made Me a mezuzah before I gave him a house? Who made Me a sukkah before I gave him a place? Who made Me a lulav before I gave him money? Who made Me tzitzit before I gave him a garment? Who separated pe’ah before Me before I gave him a field? Who separated terumah for Me before I gave him a threshing floor? Who separated challah before Me before I gave him dough? Who brought a sacrifice before Me before I gave him an animal?” This is what is written: “an ox, or a sheep, or a goat”—that’s a verse in Leviticus in the portion of Emor.

Basically the claim is that the Holy One, blessed be He, owes nothing to anyone. Because nobody really did anything on his own. All in all, you took something you received from the Holy One, blessed be He, and returned some of it to Him. For that you deserve reward? On the contrary—you didn’t even return everything, just some of it. You gave pe’ah from the field that He gave you. So for that you deserve reward? Why? You already received the field. That’s a much greater reward than what you gave the Holy One, blessed be He. You gave some pe’ah to the poor by His commandment. Therefore, really, no one deserves any kind of reward, because we never begin the chain. That’s what this midrash is saying. We can never do something out of nothing. There’s always someone who started for us, and we can add something further. We can take it and do something positive with it. But we can never produce something from ourselves, from scratch, from the ground up. Wait, where can I find this? I lost the…