Ein Ayah – Berakhot 132

Table of Contents

• The Talmudic text: artist, wearing out, and the Creator’s relation to created beings
• Ein Ayah, section 132: the teaching toward fear and love, and the analogy of form and drawing
• The true view versus the false view: creation of the world versus the eternity of matter
• Holiness, “there is none besides You,” and “none to outlast You” as a claim of all-inclusive reality
• Encompassing and filling: an equal relation to inwardness and outwardness, and the indwelling of the Divine Presence in the heart
• Philosophical and kabbalistic sources: Kant and Schopenhauer, Aristotle and Plato, worlds and sefirot
• Maimonides versus Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer and Nachmanides: “creation” from nothing versus from something
• Concluding questions: connection between human beings and “thought cannot grasp Him at all”

Summary

General Overview

The passage presents the rabbinic exposition on “Bless the Lord, O my soul” as a framework for Rabbi Kook’s explanation in Ein Ayah, section 132, of God’s relation to created beings, by distinguishing between the external action of flesh and blood and the Holy One blessed be He’s inward penetration. The discussion is based on Hannah’s exposition, “There is none holy like the Lord… and there is no rock like our God,” read as “there is no artist like our God,” and on the exposition “do not read ‘besides You’ but ‘to outlast You.’” From this, Rabbi Kook presents the “true view” of the world’s origination as the basis for fear and love, in contrast to the “false view” of the eternity of matter, which weakens the possibility of an inward relation to the Creator. The lecture connects Rabbi Kook’s remarks to philosophical distinctions in Kant and Schopenhauer regarding the thing-in-itself, to Aristotle and Plato on matter and form, to Maimonides’ dispute with Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, and also to Nachmanides, to the kabbalistic worlds of Beriah–Yetzirah–Asiyah, and to the discussion of “hidden sefirot” in Leshem. In the end, questions are raised about inward relations between human beings as opposed to the distinction between cognition and connection, and about “the Holy One blessed be He, thought cannot grasp Him at all,” with the answer focusing on the fact that every grasp is from our side and not from His, blessed be He.

The Talmudic text: artist, wearing out, and the Creator’s relation to created beings

Rav Shimi bar Ukva asks about “Bless the Lord, O my soul,” and from there it is said, “Come and see that the measure of the Holy One blessed be He is not like the measure of flesh and blood.” Flesh and blood “draws a form on the wall and cannot place into it spirit and soul, innards and intestines,” whereas the Holy One blessed be He “forms a form within a form and places into it spirit and soul, innards and intestines.” The Talmudic text brings proof from Hannah: “There is none holy like the Lord… and there is no rock like our God,” and interprets “there is no rock like our God” as “there is no artist like our God.” The Talmudic text interprets “for there is none besides You” as “there is none to outlast You,” and sets up a contrast in which “the measure of flesh and blood is that the work of his hands wears him out, but the Holy One blessed be He outlasts His works,” in a way that emphasizes divine eternity as opposed to the finitude of man and his creations.

Ein Ayah, section 132: the teaching toward fear and love, and the analogy of form and drawing

Rabbi Kook states that “the truest teaching, most needed in order to raise the banner of the fear of God and love of Him and His pleasantness,” is to show “the inward relation that exists between the Lord, blessed be He, and His creatures.” From the recognition that His relation to the soul is “from the side of its inwardness,” a person makes the effort “to know God and cleave to Him” and to pursue “the ways of uprightness.” Rabbi Kook defines the true relation between the Creator and created beings as “like the relation of form to a drawing,” because the essential reality of the form exists in the mind of the artist and in his inner conception, and from that inwardness the impression extends into actual reality. Rabbi Kook says that since created beings were made by their Maker from nothing, it necessarily follows that “their image and true form” preceded them “in the power of the Lord, blessed be He,” and only afterward did the impression extend into actual existence.

The true view versus the false view: creation of the world versus the eternity of matter

Rabbi Kook says that according to the “true view,” there is no faithful example for the relation of the Lord, blessed be He, to created beings from the side of His power other than the relation of the artist to the form. Rabbi Kook sets against this a “false view” of the eternity of matter, in which one can speak only of “the relation of an agent to what he produces,” but then the material substrate exists “outside Him” and is “the inward basis of the existence of created beings,” and therefore no inward relation to the Creator exists. Rabbi Kook concludes that one who errs in this view “is like one who has no God,” because he cannot elevate his soul to recognize his Maker “from the truth of His existence and its inward grounding.”

Holiness, “there is none besides You,” and “none to outlast You” as a claim of all-inclusive reality

Rabbi Kook defines that “the root idea of holiness is separateness and exaltedness,” and that the holiness of the Lord, blessed be He, can be understood only according to the true view, because “relative to Him there is no reality at all,” and He is “the Holy One, of whom there is none holy like Him.” Rabbi Kook interprets “for there is none besides You” as the claim that apart from the Lord, blessed be He, “there is no reality whatsoever,” “neither form nor matter,” and therefore “all of reality, even the material,” is necessitated by His power, blessed be He, “as the reality of form follows from the truth of the forming power.” Rabbi Kook ties this to “there is no rock like our God” in the sense of “there is no artist like our God,” and stresses that “there is none besides You” does not mean only that there is no god like Him, but that there is nothing “besides You at all in reality.” Rabbi Kook explains that “there is none to outlast You” means that it is inapplicable to the Lord, blessed be He, that the work of His hands should wear Him out, because according to the truth, “they perish, but You endure… for they do not endure essentially, but only by His will, blessed be He,” and therefore “He outlasts His works.”

Encompassing and filling: an equal relation to inwardness and outwardness, and the indwelling of the Divine Presence in the heart

Rabbi Kook states that since He, blessed be He, is holy, “His relation is equal to the externality of created beings and to their inwardness,” and he adds that upon deeper reflection, “the category of an external relation to created beings does not apply to Him at all, blessed be He, but only an inward relation,” from the side of what is conceived and felt from His flow and His will. Rabbi Kook says that a person’s relation to His name, blessed be He, ought to be an inward relation, and he cites “And I will dwell among the children of Israel,” together with the interpretation of the early authorities, “in the heart of each and every one,” and he also cites, “My soul longs for You at night; even my spirit within me seeks You early.” Rabbi Kook concludes that what is said about His relation, blessed be He, to created beings is “all from our side,” whereas “from His side, blessed be He, no relation applies at all, since there is nothing besides Him according to the truth of reality,” and he cites Maimonides in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah on “And the Lord God is truth; there is no true existence besides Him, and He is all; therefore He knows all.”

Philosophical and kabbalistic sources: Kant and Schopenhauer, Aristotle and Plato, worlds and sefirot

The lecture presents the idea of encompassing and filling as close to the philosophical distinction between the transcendent and the immanent, and connects this to Schopenhauer’s explanation that the Kantian distinction between the thing-in-itself and the way it is perceived breaks down when a person reflects on himself from within. The lecture uses Aristotelian language about substance and accident and about the question of whether matter and form can be separated, and presents Plato as believing in the existence of Ideas as entities in an abstract world. The lecture connects this to the worlds of Beriah–Yetzirah–Asiyah, in which Asiyah is the adhesion of matter and form, Yetzirah is forms, and Beriah is substance, and it presents a dispute as to whether these worlds are conceptual abstractions or actually existing worlds, while stating that “Kabbalah in its essence tends more toward Platonism” and “philosophy tends toward Aristotle.”

Maimonides versus Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer and Nachmanides: “creation” from nothing versus from something

The lecture quotes Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed, part 2, chapter 26, who cites Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer: “From what place were the heavens created?… from the light of His garment,” and “the earth… from the snow beneath the Throne of Glory.” Maimonides wonders what the author of the midrash believed—if he held that it is impossible for something to exist “not from something,” then one must also ask from where the light of the garment and the snow were created. Maimonides concludes that this points to the eternity of the world “according to Plato’s view.” The lecture brings a passage attributed to Nachmanides in Chavel’s writings, which explains that this is “the view of Rabbi Eliezer the Great,” and that he is “following Plato’s view,” namely that there is some existing matter, as it were, “like material for a craftsman or like iron for a blacksmith.” It adds there the claim that creation from nothing is among the “impossibilities,” similar to “a square whose diagonal equals its side,” and to the joining of opposites. The lecture notes doubts regarding the attribution of this passage to Nachmanides in light of Nachmanides’ comments on Genesis 1:8, and suggests that even within the language of the passage itself there is room to say that the prime matter itself is “originated,” and that what we have here is a description of an earlier stage, not an eternal independent matter standing opposite the Lord, blessed be He.

Concluding questions: connection between human beings and “thought cannot grasp Him at all”

A participant asks that since human beings do form inward bonds with one another, this does not fit with the distinction that a human being acts only externally. The response answers that the midrashim about “there are three partners in a person” and “if a man and woman merit it, the Divine Presence is between them” present the Divine Presence as a mediating factor that makes inwardness possible. The response adds a distinction between connection and cognition: one can have a connection to the person himself, but every formulation and conceptualization rests on properties and forms. Another question about “the Holy One blessed be He, thought cannot grasp Him at all” is answered by noting that Rabbi Kook himself writes that the grasp is “from our side” and not from His, blessed be He, and that what is meant is an apprehension of what turns toward us, not a grasp of His separateness itself.

We’re in Ein Ayah, section 132. Maybe we’ll start with the Talmudic passage just to refresh. And last time we saw the Gemara that begins here: Rav Shimi bar Ukva—or as some say, Mar Ukva—used to be frequently before Rabbi Shimon ben Pazi, and he would arrange aggadic teachings before Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi. He asked him, what does “Bless the Lord, O my soul” mean? At first he didn’t understand the question. In the next segment, where it’s no longer highlighted, he explains the question to him, and then they move on to do something else, to interpret something else—something I said has some connection to this interpretation too, which somehow emerged out of misunderstanding the question.

In any case, here at the beginning he says: come and see that the measure of the Holy One, blessed be He, is not like the measure of flesh and blood. Flesh and blood forms a shape on the wall, but cannot put into it spirit and soul, innards and intestines. But the Holy One, blessed be He, is not so: He forms a shape within a shape, and puts into it spirit and soul, innards and intestines. Up to this point, that’s basically what we dealt with in the previous passage of Rabbi Kook, where he spoke about the surrounding and the filling—about the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, can penetrate into us, or into creatures בכלל, whereas other beings can affect another only on his external side. The Holy One, blessed be He, fills it both from outside and from inside, and that is the meaning of “innards and intestines.” Whereas flesh and blood merely forms a shape on the wall—that is, deals with things through their external dimension, their outer side.

And then Rabbi Kook spoke about the fact that our ability to know the Holy One, blessed be He, is really through inward contemplation, because the Holy One, blessed be He, is also filling and not only surrounding—or in philosophical language, also immanent and not only transcendent. And therefore, as I mentioned, Schopenhauer explains that the Kantian distinction between the thing-in-itself and the thing as we perceive it breaks down when we contemplate ourselves. When we contemplate ourselves, we’re really looking at things from within and not from without, and therefore we can grasp our very essence, not only the way we appear outwardly. And of course that differs from our perception of anything else, where we are outside it and looking at it from without, and even if we influence it, we can only influence it from the outside. And the Holy One, blessed be He, grasps everything both from within and from without, because He Himself is both inside things and outside things—that’s the surrounding and the filling.

Now we want to move to the second part of the highlighted passage. “And this is what Hannah said”—yes, they bring for this very thing some source or proof. “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’? There is no artist like our God.” Remember, above it said that flesh and blood forms a shape on the wall, so the Holy One, blessed be He, is the supreme artist even in this domain of forming shapes from outside—there too He is greater than anyone else. “What is the meaning of ‘for there is none besides You’?” Rav Yehuda 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. Flesh and blood are outlasted by the works of their hands, but the Holy One, blessed be He, outlasts His works.

In the simple sense, they explain here that the Holy One, blessed be He, is eternal—always was, always will be. Therefore, unlike any other creator—and by the way, whether a creator of physical or artistic creations, and of course children too, whom we create, and usually that’s the way of the world, they remain after us—they outlast us. With the Holy One, blessed be He, everyone He creates does not outlast Him, because the Holy One, blessed be He, will always remain after them, because of His eternity. And that’s what it says: flesh and blood are outlasted by the works of their hands, but the Holy One, blessed be He, outlasts His works. So that is really support for the exposition brought above. That’s why we also have to see the current section against that background, and also what Rabbi Kook will write about it.

I’m now going to share… I’m moving to Ein Ayah; I opened Wikitext here. Above appears the quotation of the second part we just read now, about the proof from Hannah. Rabbi Kook says as follows: “The truest teaching, the one most necessary to raise high the banner of fear of God, love of Him, and delight in Him, is to show the inner relation between the blessed Name and His creatures.” I remind you, this comes in the context of the previous section. In the background is the previous section, where Rabbi Kook explained—the Gemara and Rabbi Kook explained—that the Holy One, blessed be He, is both within us and outside us. And therefore, unlike every other being, who can interact only with another’s outer side, the Holy One, blessed be He, can interact with us both from within and from without.

And therefore we too can become aware of Him, or know Him, encounter Him, by looking inward. So he starts saying here—this is really a continuation of that same idea—“The truest teaching”: what do we need to teach in order to raise high the banner of fear of God, love of Him, and delight in Him? It is “to show,” that is, to see, “the inner relation between the blessed Name and His creatures.” When we look inward, we are really grasping the Holy One, blessed be He, as He appears within us.

“Therefore, when a person understands that His relation to his soul is from the side of its inwardness, he will always strive…” Yes, with regard to the Holy One, blessed be He, we really need to look inward, not as we look at anything else from the outside. “He will always strive to know the Lord and cleave to Him and pursue the ways of uprightness, which are the exalted ways of the blessed Lord.” “And behold, the true instruction regarding the relation of the Creator to the created beings is like the relation of form to a figure.” Again—“there is no artist like our God.” So the relation between the Creator and us—which, I remind you, we see when we look inward—is like the relation of form to the figure. “For the form, by necessity, has its essential existence in the mind of the artist, in his soul and his inner conception.”

That is, the figure—here it doesn’t necessarily mean an artistic painting, but anything that has form, any thing in the world that has form. So the “figure” is the object that has the form. And what is the relation between the object and the form that is its form? The Platonic idea, so to speak—the form that characterizes this object. So he says: “For the form, by necessity, has its essential existence in the mind of the artist, in his soul and his inner conception.” If we want to isolate the form of the painting, or of the object, what we need to do is look at the one who created that object. What was inside the mind of that creator—that was the form detached from the object, from the figure.

When an artist plans a painting—let’s talk now about an actual painting—I don’t know, maybe sometimes he does it without planning, I have no idea. But when it’s done in a planned way, then he basically holds the picture of the painting in his head. What is the difference between the image of the painting and the concrete painting after it is created? The concrete painting is an object whose form is that same form that had existed in isolation in the painter’s mind. In the painter’s mind there exists a form without the matter that carries it. The painting itself, after we have brought that plan from potential to actuality, is of course composed of matter upon which that form that existed in the painter’s mind is clothed.

Okay? Now in the world itself—as I talked about Aristotle’s substance and accident—in the world itself we don’t know substance without accident, or accident without substance. Every property is a property of something. We cannot see properties in themselves. Those are Platonic ideas; maybe if Plato is right, they exist in the world of ideas. But in our world there are objects that have the object itself—the substance—and the form that clothes it. You can’t detach form from object, or object from form, or matter without form and form without matter. In the painter’s mind, the form sits detached from matter. What he does when he creates is place that form onto matter, and that is how he creates the object he creates. And as I said before, this is true not only of a painting or a sculpture or a work of art, but of anything we do. Anything we do, we basically take some raw material—some kind of matter or some substance—and shape it, impose a form on it. The form exists in isolation in our mind, detached from matter, and we bring it from potential to actuality by imprinting it on matter.

“For if it had not first existed in the inwardness of his soul”—that is, of the creator—“it would not have been possible for its impression to appear on the page.” Meaning, when he draws the form onto the page, apparently he had that form in his head in detached fashion. And once the form becomes concrete, then it is no longer just form, but rather a substance whose form this is. Like Plato speaks of the relation between the idea of horseness and the form of the horse. The form of the horse is not an object. The form of the horse is a property, or a set of properties, that characterizes a horse. By contrast, horseness is that set of properties detached from the object—a set of properties that is itself an object, according to Plato.

Yes, Plato believes in the existence of ideas, so from his standpoint an idea is an object. Unlike Aristotle, for example, who sees these not as ideas but as categories. Categories are basically abstractions; they are not things that really exist. Rather, we make an abstraction after we see many horses, and then we can imagine the idea of horseness. But Aristotle does not claim the existence of such an idea; it is some kind of abstraction. Plato—surprisingly enough, he was a Platonist, Plato—saw forms, ideas, as kinds of entities that have existence in their own right. Meaning, in our world this is an abstraction, the form of concrete things, but there is some abstract world, the world of ideas, in which those forms appear, and they themselves are the objects present in that world. What here is considered a form, there is an object. Therefore that world is more abstract.

Okay? By the way, this is what many commentators connect to the world that in kabbalistic terminology is called the world of formation. There is the world of creation, the world of formation, and the world of action. Formation is from the word form. Creation—I think I once spoke about this—means the emergence of being from nothing. Among the Sages, creation is being from nothing. That is really the coming into being of the substance. Then there is the world of formation: we give the substance a form. And then there is the world of action. In the world of action, substances are always bound together with forms and forms with substances, and you cannot see substance without form or form without substance. That’s in the world of action. But in the worlds of formation and creation, you can see substance without form—that is the world of creation, where it comes into being from nothing—and the world of formation is forms detached from substance. When they join, that is the world of action, and that is the world we know here.

By the way, among the commentators on Kabbalah there is the same dispute as between Aristotle and Plato, on the question whether those worlds above the world of action—sorry, above the world of action—are abstractions, or whether there really are such worlds. Whether this is only abstraction, a conceptual system we use in order to analyze our world, but it has no metaphysical meaning, it doesn’t really exist, and we just use those abstractions to explain our world. The accepted kabbalistic view, in any case, is that those worlds really do exist, and then it really is Platonist. Kabbalah in its essence tends more toward Platonism than Aristotelianism. Philosophy tends toward Aristotle. Okay, again, of course these are all generalizations, but I think the generalizations aren’t far from the truth.

If so, I continue reading. “If so, the true form is truly bound to the artist, and by its power its likeness was placed on the page”—I think he means “placed”; here it says something odd, maybe it’s a typo, or maybe that was Rabbi Kook’s wording, I don’t know, I didn’t check the original printing; this is a transcription in Wikitext. “Like all created beings, did not their Creator fashion them from nothing? If so, their conception and true form must necessarily have preceded in potential in the power of the blessed Lord”—potential in the sense of potential as opposed to actual. Meaning, it exists potentially with the Holy One, blessed be He, and there the form is not an object but only a plan for an object. And when the Holy One, blessed be He, creates the figure—which in this case means all of us, not painting in the artistic sense but in the sense of creating something, a formed thing—then He forms for us the shape that existed potentially with Him. And He brought it from potential into actuality, and that is us.

“And from that primary inward form, the impression extends into reality.” This is really parallel to the relation between the Platonic idea and its realization in the world. The idea of horseness and the form of the concrete horse. So the idea of horseness existed potentially with the Holy One, blessed be He, and when He created horses, He basically took an object, a substance, and formed it with a shape that existed in His mind—in His mind, so to speak, however you want to put it—in some abstract way within Him.

“And behold, according to the true opinion…” Now Rabbi Kook moves into a distinction between two opinions. The “true opinion” is the opinion that the world was created, renewed. The “false opinion,” which he’ll get to later, is the opinion that holds the eternity of the world. Okay? So: “And behold, according to the true opinion, we find no faithful example that can teach us somewhat of the relation of the blessed Lord, from the side of His power, to the created beings, except the relation of the artist to the form.” Meaning, if we look at the world as created, the only way for us to learn about the Holy One, blessed be He, and understand the relation between Him and us is by this analogy of the relation between the artist and the form. We existed potentially within Him, and He actualized that by attaching us to a certain form.

“For according to the false opinion, that there is primordial matter”—that’s Aristotelianism, which speaks of an eternal world—“we could speak of the relation of an agent to his product. But according to this, it would not be possible for the created beings also to have an inner relation to their Creator, blessed be He, for according to that error the material foundation exists apart from Him, and it is the basis of the inward existence of created beings.” In other words, according to the view that the world is eternal, that view assumes there cannot be creation of something from nothing. A basically Platonic conception. Therefore there was some prime matter that always existed, and the creation of the world consists in attaching forms to prime matter.

Now according to that conception, there is some kind of thing or things that exist independently of the Holy One, blessed be He. It is eternal; it was not created by the Holy One, blessed be He. It has basically existed alongside Him all the time and was not created by Him. That is the meaning of saying the world is eternal. And if it was not created by Him, then there is something that has a kind of existence detached from the Holy One, blessed be He. And that thing cannot know the Holy One, blessed be He, because the only way truly to know Him, to encounter Him, is to look inward and meet Him in the place where He is within us.

He created us by means of the form He imprinted upon matter and thus created us, so that form He imprinted in us really comes from Him. So if we look inward, at our form, we can through it know the Holy One, blessed be He, as we saw in the previous section. But one who thinks that things themselves already existed detached from the Holy One, blessed be He, and that at most He gave them form or did something to them, but did not create them themselves—then when you look inward into yourself, you look at your essence, the thing-in-itself, not the phenomenon, not the way it appears outwardly. You’re trying to grasp the thing itself, as Schopenhauer said that we can grasp ourselves in ourselves. Meaning, only ourselves can we truly grasp as the thing itself and not merely its external appearance. But for those who hold that false opinion, they don’t have that option, because they understand that the thing itself exists detached from the Holy One, blessed be He. When I look inward, I will not really encounter the Holy One, blessed be He, because He is not actually the basis of my existence. I have some independent existence. So I have no way to encounter the Holy One, blessed be He, except externally—only through the form He imprinted in me. Again, the phenomenon and not the noumenon, not the thing-in-itself. And therefore, according to that conception, there is some limitation in our ability to know or encounter the Holy One, blessed be He.

“It follows that one who errs with this corrupt opinion is like one who has no God.” That’s what he says: he is like one who has no God, because he has no way to grasp the Holy One, blessed be He. He can believe in the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He, but he has no way to know Him, encounter Him, I don’t know, do something unmediated. “For he cannot elevate his soul to know his Maker”—that is, the Holy One, blessed be He—“from the truth of his existence and inward reality.” He cannot, through inward contemplation, encounter the Holy One, blessed be He, because if he looks all the way inward, whom will he discover? Himself. Not the Holy One, blessed be He. Because he has some existence independent of the Holy One, blessed be He. He has always existed—or not he, but prime matter has always existed.

“And behold, the foundation of holiness is separation and exaltation.” Meaning really—“you shall be holy,” “you shall be separate.” Rashi says at the beginning of Parashat Kedoshim—that famous dispute of Nachmanides with Rashi there. But holiness is basically separateness; it is setting one thing apart from another, distinction. So that’s what he says: separation and exaltation. “Therefore, in truth, no relation or comparison pertains to a holy thing.” Nothing connects to a holy thing. A holy thing is set apart from everything outside it. “Therefore the holiness of the blessed Lord is understood only according to the true view.” Because the false opinion he mentioned before is external to the Holy One, blessed be He—it is something else. And if you are something else, then you have no way to encounter the Holy One, blessed be He, who is holy and separate. But according to the true opinion, as he said before—that deep within us the Holy One, blessed be He, is present—then we have some possibility of grasping Him despite His holiness. Because He is not really separate from us. If we look inward, we can encounter Him Himself.

“And compared to Him there is no existence at all. If so, He is the Holy One than whom there is none holy.” “And the explanation of the phrase ‘for there is none besides You’”—yes, this is Hannah, we’ve returned to Hannah’s interpretation—“for besides You there is no existence at all.” Neither form nor matter. As opposed to the false view, which says: only form comes from You, but matter exists besides You. Matter always existed. “If so, all of reality, even the material”—that is, including matter—“owes its existence only to His inward power, like the existence of form from the truth of the artist’s power. Therefore this is what Hannah says: ‘there is no rock like our God,’ meaning there is no artist like our God, who is as form to all existence.”

Rock here is from the language of form. Interesting, because usually the understanding is exactly the opposite. What is “rock”? Literally, a rock. And a rock, I would say, is almost the first thing that comes to mind when we try to think of raw material without form—some utterly raw thing without form, untouched by human hand. That is raw matter, right? That’s a rock, something most basic, most fundamental, most primordial—I don’t even know what to call it. It seems to belong not to form at all, and that’s what is called a rock. So he says that this very phrase “there is no rock like our God,” which I would have thought belongs to raw substance, no—it speaks about form.

But of course that’s not accidental, because according to the true conception, as he described earlier, even the substance itself is really a result of the form that the Holy One, blessed be He, imprinted in us. Because even the substance or matter did not always exist; it too was created by the Holy One, blessed be He. And anything anyone creates—how does he create it? He impresses into it something that exists with him as a plan. Right? So with us, not only our form comes from the Holy One, blessed be He, but also our matter comes from the Holy One, blessed be He. Therefore even the rock, the most basic thing, the raw material, is itself a result of a form that the Holy One, blessed be He, formed in us. Okay?

As opposed to the false conception, where there is a very clear distinction. There is matter, raw material, that exists independently. It does not come from the Holy One, blessed be He. It has always been here; it has no connection to the Holy One, blessed be He. What the Holy One, blessed be He, did was only attach a form to it. Then according to that conception, you can know the Holy One, blessed be He, only externally—only through your form. But your matter, the thing itself, is not connected to the Holy One, blessed be He. And therefore, yes, such a person is like one who has no God.

“And this is ‘for there is none besides You’—meaning not only that there is none besides You in divinity”—that there is no other god like You—“but rather there is none besides You at all in existence.” Nothing at all. There is nothing in the world detached from the Holy One, blessed be He. It does not mean “there is none besides You” as a comparison between different gods, as when we say “You are greater than all gods.” Rather, it means in existence itself there is nothing detached from the Holy One, blessed be He. “And this is ‘none to outlast You’—meaning that this does not apply to You in relation to Your handiwork.” For according to those who hold the eternity of matter—the false opinion he brought above—it does not make sense to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, outlasts His works, because matter, just as it is eternal, will also remain forever. Matter cannot be touched—conservation of matter. What the Holy One, blessed be He, can do is only form shapes in it.

So according to the false conception, it is not true that the Holy One, blessed be He, outlasts His works. According to the true conception, the Holy One, blessed be He, outlasts His works, because matter, just as it was created, can also cease to exist. Only the Holy One, blessed be He, remains forever. And this is what Hannah says: that there is none besides You, so that flesh and blood are outlasted by their works, but the Holy One, blessed be He, outlasts His works. This comes out against that false conception which says that the Holy One, blessed be He, is like His creatures—in that His works outlast Him, or at least He does not outlast them. “For according to them the basis of the deed is matter, and according to their view it does not wear out at all. If so, this praise is not uniquely applicable to the Creator according to their mistaken view.”

“But since according to the truth there is none besides You at all in existence”—there is the true opinion—“therefore they perish but You remain, and all of them wear out like a garment; You change them like clothing and they pass away. For they do not endure by their own essence, but only by His will and power”—including matter, not only form. “Therefore He outlasts His works. And since He, blessed be He, is holy, His relation is equal to the exterior of created beings and to their interior.” Remember, this is the previous section we learned last class: the Holy One, blessed be He, belongs not only to our outer form, as in the false conception where He merely imprinted form in us, but also to our inner side, our very substance. Why? Because He also created our matter. It is not true that our matter is primordial; our matter too was created by Him. Therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, is present in us both from within and from without—both filling and surrounding, or immanent and transcendent.

“And if we reflect further, no external relation to the created beings applies to Him at all, only an inner relation from the side of what is conceived by them and sensed by them from His abundance and will.” Think about it: if we are speaking about the matter and form of created beings, then in the matter we grasp the Holy One, blessed be He, from within, because He is really the basis of the matter. But also in the form it is from within, because He too created the form within us. Therefore if we look at the depth of form—that is, at the idea—there too we encounter the Holy One, blessed be He. So the Holy One, blessed be He, created both our matter and our form. And since He created them, He basically imprinted them from within, not only from without—both the matter and the form. It is not that matter is the inner part and form the outer part; rather, at the basis of matter there is the Holy One, blessed be He, and at the basis of form there is the Holy One, blessed be He. So through both we can grasp the Holy One, blessed be He.

“Therefore it is fitting that a person’s relation to His blessed Name be an inward relation, as it is written, ‘And I shall dwell among the children of Israel,’ and our early sages explained: in the heart of each and every one”—yes, “within my heart I will build a sanctuary.” “And as the prophet said, ‘My soul desired You at night; indeed, with my spirit within me I seek You.’” “And from this you will understand that what we said, that His relation to created beings, is all from our side. But with regard to Him, blessed be He, no relation at all applies, since there is nothing besides Him according to the truth of reality.”

Yes, we cannot say what goes on inside the Holy One, blessed be He. What is His relation to created beings from His own side—that we cannot speak about. We speak from our side. From our side, when we look inward, we find the Holy One, blessed be He. Maybe one could say the outer side of the Holy One, blessed be He. This is of course somewhat influenced by Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin’s distinction between “from His side” and “from our side,” but I won’t get into that here. “Since there is nothing besides Him according to the truth of reality.” “And as Maimonides wrote in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, this is what is meant by the verse ‘And the Lord God is truth’—there is no true being besides Him, and He is all; therefore He knows all.” We exist conditionally; we exist only by the power of the Holy One, blessed be He. And a “true being,” a being that does not depend on any other existence besides itself—that is only the Holy One, blessed be He. And I’m not going to get into all the pantheistic and panentheistic dialectics and all those things now, so as not to violate the prohibition against wasting air.

All right, I actually want to talk a bit about what’s written here. Maybe I’ll start again by sharing from the Guide of the Perplexed, part 2, chapter 26. Maimonides starts with a midrash from Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, and he says he’s never seen anything stranger than this midrash. “I have seen from Rabbi Eliezer the Great things in the famous chapters known as Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer—I have never seen among the words of human beings following the Torah of Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, things stranger than these.” Meaning, among sources of people committed to Torah, he has never seen such a strange midrash as this one. This is Rabbi Eliezer the Great who wrote it—or at least it is attributed to him.

And this is what he said—listen to its wording. Now Maimonides quotes: “From where were the heavens created? He took from the light of His garment and stretched it out like a cloth, and they kept stretching onward, as it is said: ‘He wraps Himself in light as a garment, He stretches out the heavens like a curtain.’” That is where the heavens were created from. “And from where was the earth created? He took from the snow under the Throne of Glory and cast it, as it is said: ‘For to the snow He says: become earth.’” That is the text of the statement said there. Up to here is the quotation from Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer.

“And I wonder,” says Maimonides, “what did this sage—Rabbi Eliezer the Great—believe? What belief underlies this midrash?” What troubles Maimonides about this midrash? That this midrash describes the creation of heaven and earth as creation from something, not from nothing. “From where were the heavens created? From where was the earth created?” Meaning, there is some kind of creation from something here. The snow beneath His Throne of Glory is basically prime matter, and the Holy One, blessed be He, takes the snow beneath His Throne of Glory, forms it, and that’s how the world is created. A straightforward Platonic view of primordial matter. That is really what troubles Maimonides. Remember, Maimonides is of course Aristotelian, not Platonic. Therefore this is very disturbing to him. He says: it is inconceivable that such a midrash from the Tanna Rabbi Eliezer the Great should describe creation as from something rather than from nothing.

So “if he believed it false that a thing could be found without a thing”—that is, impossible for something to emerge without matter from which it emerges. There are such conceptions among philosophers. “And for this reason he sought to know from where heaven and earth were created, because surely they could not have been created from nothing—then what answer did he achieve by this response? For one would then be compelled to ask him: and from where was the light of His garment created, and from where was the snow under the Throne of Glory created?” Infinite regress. Maimonides says: if you tell me that the earth was created from the snow under the Throne of Glory, and the heavens from the light of His garment—fine, then now continue and ask: where was the snow created from? Where was the light of His garment created from?

It really reminds one of the eternal arguments between atheists and believers when believers bring them the physico-theological proof—or really the cosmological one. You say, the world was created, so from where? Apparently there is someone who created it. What does the atheist immediately answer? You assume that everything needs a creator who created it? So then that one who created the world—who created him? You enter an infinite regress. Exactly the argument Maimonides is having here with Rabbi Eliezer the Great.

“And this would also be very far-fetched, and would moreover indicate the eternity of the world, though in accordance with the opinion of Plato.” Meaning, the world is eternal, but there was prime matter, and the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world as we know it today by forming prime matter. What is hyle? Hyle means without form—matter without form. And when the Holy One, blessed be He, attached form to it, thereby He created the world. But that is not something from nothing; it is something from something. Therefore that is formation and not creation.

By the way, Maimonides, in his philosophical approach, cannot read this midrash the way the kabbalists read it. The kabbalists read it—I think I spoke about this once—the Throne of Glory in the kabbalistic map is located at the bottom of the world of emanation or the upper part of the world of creation. Therefore “the snow under the Throne of Glory” is really the beginning of the created worlds, and from there we take the snow and form the earth or the world as we know it. And that does not mean creation from something, because the snow itself was also emanated by the Holy One, blessed be He, through worlds of emanation, primordial man, and so on—which Maimonides of course does not recognize. Therefore, in his view, what is written here is prime matter that always existed. The kabbalists would say: not at all. This is simply the previous phase from which our world was created—the world of emanation. Okay, but Maimonides does not acknowledge worlds beyond the created worlds, because he is a philosopher, not a kabbalist. Therefore he says: this is a puzzling midrash. It’s creation from something and not from nothing, according to Plato, as he says here.

All right, that’s enough for our purposes at the moment. Now I want to show you an interesting but less well-known source I once found—I don’t even remember how I got to it—in the writings of Nachmanides edited by Chavel. There is a passage there, that is, a composition that is a commentary. And again, it is attributed to Nachmanides—there are some doubts about that, so it’s not clear whether this is really Nachmanides or not—but it is some composition in the style of Nachmanides, Neo-Platonic. And this is what it says. Look—you see where I marked? “And so too was the view of Rabbi Eliezer the Great.” What happened here? These software things… “And so too was the view of Rabbi Eliezer the Great.” You see the bottom line of the text itself above the notes. I can’t mark in this text.

“And so too was the view of Rabbi Eliezer the Great, who said: From where were the heavens created? He took from the light of His garment and wrapped Himself like a cloth, and they kept stretching onward, as it is said: ‘He wraps Himself in light as a garment; He stretches out the heavens like a curtain.’ From where was the earth…” and so on. “And this is according to the opinion of Plato, who says it is false that the Creator should bring forth a thing from no thing, for there is matter that exists”—this is the prime matter that always was; it was not created. It is impossible to create something from nothing. That is the assumption of Nachmanides—or of Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer according to Nachmanides. “And by way of analogy, it is like clay for the potter or iron for the blacksmith, from which he shapes whatever he wishes.” The blessed Creator shapes from matter heaven and earth, and at another time shapes from it something else. “And there is no deficiency in the law of the blessed Creator if He does not create something from nothing.”

You might say: what do you mean? The Holy One, blessed be He, is omnipotent, so why are you applying to Him the argument that creation from nothing is impossible? He says: no. Things that are logical contradictions—even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot do them. And if creation from nothing is a logical contradiction, then even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot do it. Therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, created one thing from another, not something from nothing. “Just as there is no deficiency in His ability when He does not bring into being impossibilities, such as creating a square whose diagonal equals its side, or joining two opposites in a single instant—just as that is no deficiency in His ability, so too there is no deficiency if He does not emanate something from nothing, but rather from something, for this belongs to the class of impossibilities.”

“And concerning this Solomon said in his wisdom…” This is a commentary on Song of Songs, and he brings all this as an interpretation of a verse there. “Concerning this Solomon said in his wisdom, with correct thought and by the holy spirit”—notice, he attributes this also to King Solomon and Rabbi Eliezer the Great—a Neo-Platonic interpretation that creation is from something. “Concerning this Solomon said: ‘From the trees of Lebanon’—from there was the emanation of all and all becoming.” Fine. “And becoming and emanation are renewed.” “And this is what the Sages said: ‘Let there be light, and there was light’—it does not say ‘and it became’ but ‘and there was light’; it had already been, for it had already been emanated from the supernal light that existed. It had already been in the supernal power.”

At the end here there are some reservations. If we remember that Nachmanides was a kabbalist, or at least aware of the kabbalistic world, there are statements here at the end that may be understood somewhat differently from how he sounds at first glance. Chavel notes this down below, because there is a problem with Nachmanides here: he seems to say that creation is from something. But Nachmanides in his commentary on Genesis 1:1 says that creation is from nothing, not like the Platonists. So the question is whether this composition really belongs to Nachmanides or not. I said there is debate about this. But notice that even in his own words here he says: “and from there was the emanation of all, and becoming and emanation are renewed.” Meaning, the prime matter itself, from which the world was created—where did the prime matter come from? It too is renewed.

I think Nachmanides here means what the kabbalists say: there is creation from nothing, only it takes place through prime matter. That is, prime matter was created, and from prime matter form was shaped, and the world was created. So it seems to me that even Nachmanides does not ultimately go for creation from something, but for creation from nothing altogether. That’s Nachmanides.

What is strange here is that Nachmanides grounds this in the inability to create something from nothing. Therefore he says: if you can’t create something from nothing, then apparently there was primordial matter—let’s say, if I’m not right in my note about the end of his words. The plain sense of his language is that there was primordial matter. And it is no surprise that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot make something from nothing, because that is impossible. So the Holy One, blessed be He, formed it with a shape. The problem is: where did the shape come from? Was the shape itself created from nothing? If nothing can be created from nothing, as Rabbi Kook described before, then form too is not created from nothing. It is created from some plan that exists in the mind—or with the creator—and by means of that the form is created. So the form too is really created from something and not from nothing. There is some sort of prime matter of form, or formless form, and there is prime matter, and the Holy One, blessed be He, somehow brings both from potential to actuality and creates substances from them.

And I think that is what Rabbi Kook is talking about when he says that the figure itself too is created from some form that exists in the mind of the creator. The figure too is not created from nothing. But of course this is “from nothing” in the sense that the initial phase from which it is created is within the Holy One, blessed be He. It is not some other thing existing parallel to the Holy One, blessed be He, as Plato understands it, where something has eternal existence independent of the Holy One, blessed be He.

With Nachmanides and also with Rabbi Kook, who are of course connected to Kabbalah, there is some reality from which our world is created, but that reality itself apparently comes from the Holy One, blessed be He; it does not have some independent existence detached from Him. And that really brings me to think of all kinds of issues. Those who hold the eternity of the world are basically people who refuse to accept the possibility of creation from nothing. But why doesn’t the coming-to-be of form from nothing bother them? Why doesn’t form need a source? Why is it only matter whose origin poses a problem? Form too, especially in the Platonic conception, is some kind of thing. So where did it come from? Maybe Plato would say it too is primordial, that the ideas are primordial, and only the attachment of the idea to the thing is done by the Holy One, blessed be He.

But I’m not talking now about Plato—say Aristotle. Then where does the form come from? If matter has to be primordial because it can’t come from anywhere else, then where does form come from? I don’t know—maybe from the Holy One, blessed be He. I don’t know exactly the nature of Aristotle’s belief; I’m not an expert in Aristotle. In any case, it’s a very interesting question, because it reminds me of many confusions that concern philosophy even nowadays.

If you think, for example, about Descartes’ cogito principle. Descartes raised the philosophical argument that if I think, then I exist—cogito ergo sum. So what does “I think, therefore I am” mean? The argument basically says that even in order to think that I do not exist, I have to think. And who is the one thinking that thought? I myself. Therefore, even if I reached the conclusion that I do not exist, I do exist—because otherwise there would be no one thinking that very thought. Okay? It’s a kind of philosophical pilpul that tries to generate a claim about reality out of philosophical analysis alone, without observation. That was really Descartes’ true goal. One has to understand that he wasn’t trying to prove that he exists. Descartes’ project was an attempt to ground a rationalist conception in philosophy—that is, a conception that says I can make claims about the world without observation, just out of pure thought. That was really the cornerstone of his rationalist move.

But the interesting point here is this: notice, what does Descartes prove in this way? He does not prove the existence of the body. He proves the existence of thought, right? Of the thinking subject. Therefore, if you ask someone on the street today what is more certainly existent—the body or the soul? Obviously the body. About the soul there is debate: if you’re a materialist or not. The body definitely exists, everyone agrees. The question is whether the soul exists, right? There are debates whether you are a dualist or a materialist. But from Descartes’ perspective it is exactly the opposite. What certainly exists is thought. Why? Because how do I know that the body exists? By the fact that my thought grasps that the body exists, right? So thought actually precedes the body. It is more certain that thought exists than that the body exists.

Now I can ask whether I believe what thought tells me. Thought tells me that the body also exists, that there is matter too and not only spirit. Fine. If I believe my spirit, then I can also accept that matter exists. But in fact the existence of spirit is far more fundamental than the existence of the body. By the way, this part I do accept. The cogito of Descartes can be undermined; I don’t think it ultimately holds up. But this insight that comes out of it, I think, is correct. All those who think the body is the certain thing, and the soul is what we need to discuss whether it exists or not—they have it backwards. Exactly backwards.

This ties in, by the way, with the humanities and physics. It seems to me that spirit is a much more solid thing than matter. Whether it is “scientific,” the domain that deals with spirit, is another question. But spirit really is, in my view, much more solid than body, than matter. If I do not accept spirit, then matter too does not exist. After all, everything I know about the existence of matter is because spirit grasps that matter exists—my thought, my intellect. So how can one say that matter exists but I don’t believe there is spirit? That sounds very strange to me.

So there is something here—I’m returning to Aristotle and Plato. Aristotle supposedly said that prime matter must be eternal, because how could it be created from nothing? Somehow he has a conception that matter is the really basic thing, and as for form and spirit and other things, you can argue about them. I think that if you say that about matter, I would say the same thing about form. Then basically—to use the Talmudic phrase—from the very place you came. The same argument you, Aristotle, are making is actually an argument that would topple your own method and bring us to Platonism, to the conception that forms, spiritual ideas, have some kind of eternal existence even before they descend and give quality—literally, “make qualitative”—to the raw material and turn it into a horse. There has to be some form called horseness, and it has to exist somehow, because the form of the horse too cannot come into being from nothing—not only the horse’s matter.

And that is exactly Plato. Plato says there is a world of ideas in which horseness exists, and that is presumably primordial if I understand correctly. Again, I’m only a very small expert in Plato and Aristotle, but according to that pattern of thought, it ought to be primordial exactly as matter is primordial, because there is some idea underlying the matter.

And Rabbi Kook basically—now I’m returning to Rabbi Kook—Rabbi Kook is really telling us that both of these come from the Holy One, blessed be He. Neither of them is primordial. But there still has to be some basis from which the whole business begins—both the business of form and the business of matter, that is, of essence. Both substance comes from the Holy One, blessed be He, and form comes from the Holy One, blessed be He. In that sense he is a Platonist. But he is a Platonist with the qualification of the Nachmanides we saw before on Song of Songs at the end: that both form and the root from which matter is created have their basis in the Holy One, blessed be He. There is nothing that has independent existence parallel to the Holy One, blessed be He, eternally parallel to Him. But there are roots that really begin from the Holy One, blessed be He.

And in a certain sense that brings us back to the previous section we learned, where when we look within ourselves—in the previous section of Rabbi Kook—when we look within ourselves, we really encounter the Holy One, blessed be He. How do we encounter Him? Through that point from which our own essence begins, the thing-in-itself, and those points from which our forms begin. We know not only our essence but also our properties—but from within, not from without. That is, not the way someone else knows me and can say I’m kindhearted or cruelhearted through my behavior. I know from within whether I’m kindhearted or cruelhearted. Okay? So also my form, my characteristics—I too can look at them from the outside as I see other people, or from the inside as they appear in me. And even my essence—not only my properties and attributes but my very essence—I can look at. There I can only look from within, not from without. That’s what we talked about last time: the Kantian limitation that one cannot grasp the thing-in-itself. But in my own case, when I look at myself, I can grasp also the thing-in-itself.

And maybe one more interesting remark. I once saw in Leshem—Leshem takes this argument much further. He wants to claim—yes, this is Rabbi Elyashiv’s grandfather, the author of Leshem Shevo Ve-Achlama, a very central Ashkenazic kabbalist, a major figure among Ashkenazic kabbalists of at least the early twentieth century, late nineteenth. He writes there that he proves from the Ari—he always has these textual deductions—that even within the Infinite Light, meaning the sefirot, which are supposedly the spiritual part of the world, they too are not created from nothing.

His claim is that within the Infinite Light, which is supposedly utterly without form, and therefore is called infinite—after all, an end is always what gives shape to a thing. When you look at a thing and say it has the shape of a square, what does that mean? That its edge is shaped as a square. Right? The shape of the thing is its boundaries. Okay, that’s what stops it. That is how far it goes and from where it is no longer present. That is the shape of the thing. So when there is something infinite, that means it has no shape, right?

The sefirot are the beginning of the appearance of form in the world. There was Infinite Light—so, formless light, basically the parallel of prime matter. Then form is created—the sefirot. Then distinctions appear, suddenly there are differences: kindness, strength, beauty, victory, splendor, foundation. There are distinctions already, because forms distinguish one thing from another. This is shaped one way, that another way. Form here of course means not only geometrical shape but also qualities. There are such qualities and other qualities.

But Leshem claims that even the forms were not created from nothing. Within the Infinite Light—he infers this also from the language of the Ari—there are what he calls hidden sefirot. What are hidden sefirot? That is exactly parallel to what Rabbi Kook is speaking about here. And by the way, Rabbi Kook was very closely connected to Leshem. He eulogized him after his death; they had a very close relationship. The hidden sefirot are really the plan of the sefirot before they passed from potential into actuality—so to speak, in the “mind” of the Holy One, blessed be He. That is called the hidden sefirot. They were hidden within the Infinite Light. They were not actual sefirot; they were the plan of the sefirot, which came out into actuality when the Holy One, blessed be He, created the sefirot themselves.

So on the one hand, the Infinite Light has no form. But on the other hand, form is not created from nothing. It comes out of the plan that exists with the artist, as Rabbi Kook writes here. That continues what I said earlier—not only in the domain of matter do we need to ask where it comes from, but also form: where does it come from? Leshem takes it all the way up to the Infinite Light, which almost—other kabbalists would see this as heresy. Because he is basically saying there is form in the Infinite Light, that there is in some sense an image of the Holy One, blessed be He. To say such a thing is practically putting an idol in the sanctuary. But he says no: these are hidden sefirot, because the plan of what is going to emerge outward was present in the Holy One, blessed be He.

Also in the Raavad’s commentary to Sefer Yetzirah, in the introduction to that commentary, he writes something very similar. He claims that Keter, the highest sefirah, is not a regular sefirah, because the sefirot are revelations of the Holy One, blessed be He, whereas Keter is the will to be revealed. It is not yet something revealed. The plan that we will see once the sefirot come out—the will, when they are revealed, the plan of what is about to be revealed—that is Keter. That’s what all those mantras always refer to: “Does the nothingness exist? Does the nothingness not exist?” Keter is the nothingness. “Wisdom emerges from nothingness.” Chokhmah is the first sefirah, and Keter is the sefirah above it. So “wisdom emerges from nothingness” means that Chokhmah comes from Keter. Keter is the “nothingness.” But this is not nothingness in the sense of something that doesn’t exist, but in the sense of something that has not yet come from potential into actuality. It is in potential. It is the will to be revealed. And all those dialectics about whether the nothingness exists or not—that is really some kind of entity, but a potential entity, not an entity existing in actuality, not a concrete entity.

In any case, Rabbi Kook’s claim in this section is that the relation between the world and the Holy One, blessed be He, is like the relation between the artwork and the artist, or the “rock”—that is really form. This stems from applying Aristotelian logic to the domain of form and not only to the domain of matter, which in fact leads us to Platonism, to the existence of ideas. But for Rabbi Kook, the existence of ideas is not in the world of ideas but within the Holy One, blessed be He. Meaning, that plan of what He is going to do is really those hidden sefirot, the form within the Holy One, blessed be He, which we know through looking inward.

All right, I went a bit far afield today. So if anyone wants to comment or ask?

I have a question that’s been bothering me since last week. If it’s okay with you, maybe put Rabbi Kook’s text back up, because this is something that bothered me.

From last week? It’s the same text?

No, today you brought up last week’s.

Yes. Today I brought up this week’s—sorry, last week’s came before. Maybe it’s… maybe it’s from… anyway. The same principle. Could be from last week, but it’s connected to “rock” and “artist,” where Rabbi Kook says that a person basically cannot create a person. A person can’t really create anything, because in the end only the Holy One, blessed be He, can, since a person can create only the external form, but the inner content—that’s only the Holy One, blessed be He. A human being has no creation from nothing; it’s all from something.

Right.

But what bothers me about this is what happens between two human beings? I saw here an image of a painting on the wall. What a person can do is paint a painting. The one who can fill it with inner content—soulful, living, creative—and then that content can form relationships with it, because from within it discovers its creator, and so on and so on, that’s the Holy One, blessed be He. But what happens in a world of two human beings? There you can’t say you only see some object, some external form. There are bonds between people—family, friendship, all kinds of things—where there is a relation between the inner parts of the person, not only between external forms. True, we can’t create human beings, but we can touch the soul of our friend. It seems to me there are two remarks that arise in this connection.

One remark is what the Sages say, that there are three partners in a person, or “if man and woman are worthy, the Divine Presence is between them,” with the yod and heh—all those midrashim basically say that even a connection between two human beings cannot happen except through the Holy One, blessed be He. Then that is really the answer to your question. It means that I look inward into myself, see the Holy One, blessed be He, and through that I can reach the inwardness of someone else, because the Holy One, blessed be He, is there too. Therefore there always has to be a triadic mediation. A pair—a husband and wife, or a connection between people, even friendship—cannot be complete unless it is mediated through the Holy One, blessed be He. That, I think, is the claim in many midrashim of the Sages.

That connects me a bit to Buber, to subject and object, to “I and Thou.”

I’m less familiar. I don’t know the existentialists well, so I don’t know. But a second remark that came to me in connection with your question is this: maybe—I talked about this one of the previous times—the question of what I can say about the object in itself and what I can say about its qualities. And I said there are things I can say about the object itself—for example, that it exists, or that it is not the second object. We talked about the principle of the identity of indiscernibles. And I once mentioned that someone once said to me that a relationship of love, for example, is also a relationship with the thing itself and not with its properties. “Love that depends on something—when the thing is gone, the love is gone.” Meaning, if I love someone because of some quality he has, those qualities can change. A person suddenly gets some kind of blow to the brain, I don’t know exactly. Does that necessarily cancel the love? Maybe sometimes yes, but not necessarily, it seems to me. It may be that the love remains even though the person changes, and that means it really is a love not dependent on a thing. It’s some kind of connection with the person himself, not with his qualities.

The question is how such a connection is formed, and that’s what you were asking earlier. The question is whether one can separate the person himself from his qualities. There does seem to be something there, and we feel it—that there is some “something” behind it all. Even if the qualities change, maybe my connection to him still remains, which means it isn’t conditioned by the qualities. Somehow through the qualities I managed to penetrate and form a connection with the person himself. But it may be that this is really a connection, not knowledge. I can’t know the person himself. Somehow a connection is formed—I don’t know how to describe it in words. Whenever I speak in words, concepts, formulations, they always touch the outer side of the one standing before me. But a connection can somehow truly be formed with him himself, not only with his external appearances, not only with his qualities.

Therefore I’m not sure this contradicts what Rabbi Kook says here, because he’s talking about the question of how I can grasp a thing. To grasp it, I can only do so through the external side. That external grasp somehow continues, and through the externality I create a connection with the thing itself. And maybe to tie this to what I said earlier…

Yes, but that was my claim—that it’s not only a connection through… there are human connections that are inward, not only through the external.

I agree—connections, yes, but not knowledge. You cannot conceptualize what you feel in that connection. When you try to conceptualize it, you will always need qualities. It’s because he is such-and-such and such-and-such. The conceptualizations always refer to forms. The connection somehow comes into being—a metaphysical connection, spiritual, I don’t know what to call it—that truly can be a connection, an affinity, to the thing itself, not to its external appearance, not to its qualities. But it’s a connection, not knowledge. To know the thing—I have no way to formulate things that touch not its qualities but the thing itself. So a connection, I agree, does exist with the thing itself, but knowledge—Rabbi Kook may still be right about that.

Anyone else?

Rabbi?

When they say that of the Holy One, blessed be He, “no thought can grasp Him at all”—if we are saying that when I look at myself I do in fact grasp something of the Holy One, blessed be He, then how do you reconcile that?

Rabbi Kook himself writes it—we read it. Rabbi Kook himself says that all of this is from our side and not from His side. I mentioned that it’s like Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, who says that we do grasp the Holy One, blessed be He, but obviously we do not grasp Him in His separateness. He says holiness always means set apart. From our side we can grasp, so to speak, His outer side, that which turns toward us, that which is within us and from which we emerge. But that is not a way of grasping Him in Himself. Presumably that’s what is meant by “no thought can grasp Him at all,” if I connect it to what Rabbi Kook says here.

That’s it? Okay then, good night and see you. Thank you very much, good night.