The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 3

Table of Contents

• Acquiring Hebrew Wisdom: “We Will Do and We Will Hear”
• The Torah as Wisdom: Commandments as Derived from Reality
• Development versus Meaning: Academia and the Beit Midrash
• Causal Mechanism versus Meaning: A Computer, Newton, and Providence
• Criteria for Public Tradition
• The Active Reader and the Need for Mediation
• Jewish Religious Philosophy as an Intermediate Mediating Stage
• Maimonides and the Purpose of Writing as a Bridge
• Constructing Jewish Philosophy: Hebrew Thought in Greek Form
• Universal and National Wisdom: Form and Pattern
• Mutual Influence: Ranak, Spain, and the Renaissance
• Wisdom among the Nations and Torah among the Nations: Sparks, Mysticism, and Gathering What Is Missing
• Torah as a Non-Arbitrary Pattern: the Divine Name, Being, and the Four Cubits of Jewish law

Summary

General Overview

The speaker tries to formulate a picture of “Jewish religious philosophy” as an intermediate creature between Western literature/philosophy and “Hebrew wisdom,” and proposes that the wisdom in the Torah is not just guidance for life but an investigation of reality with an objective foundation. He describes two common mistakes: modern opinion-makers who look for “wisdom” in ancient Hebrew literature and do not find it, and naïve believers who find faith and life in the Torah but not science/wisdom—whereas, in his view, the Torah is “the supreme wisdom,” and the connection between understanding and behavior is internal. From there he distinguishes between questions of causal-historical development and questions of meaning, and argues that they do not exclude one another. Finally, he formulates Jewish philosophy as a “composite” of Hebrew thought/pattern within a Greek/foreign form, speaks about mutual influence between Jewish religious philosophy and general philosophy, and develops a distinction between universal wisdom and national form, to the point of identifying the Torah with a non-arbitrary language/pattern that reaches the very body of wisdom itself.

Acquiring Hebrew Wisdom: “We Will Do and We Will Hear”

The speaker opens with “We will do and we will hear” as an emphasis that wisdom comes by way of speech and hearing, and notes that the phrase “We will do and we will hear” is not said at the revelation at Mount Sinai in the Pentateuch itself but in the portion of Mishpatim, even though in the midrashim it does appear at Mount Sinai. He presents the claim that Hebrew wisdom is acquired in a special way, different from the ways of modern literatures. He mentions two types of people who miss the point: modern intellectuals who seek wisdom and knowledge in ancient Hebrew literature and do not find it, and people who innocently believe in the holy Torah and think they can find faith and life in the sacred writings but not science/wisdom. But, he says, the Torah is wisdom itself, “the supreme wisdom graciously given by the One who gives knowledge to man,” and he quotes: “Uncover my eyes, that I may behold wonders from Your Torah.”

The Torah as Wisdom: Commandments as Derived from Reality

The speaker argues that the Torah is not just a system of agreed-upon laws or detached values for managing life, but that the commands and commandments rest on reality and on the structure of spiritual reality. He defines wisdom as the study of reality, and on that basis states that the Torah contains wisdom, not merely instructions for living. He adds that there is a close connection between the dimension of behavior and the dimension of understanding, to the point of suggesting that this is the content of the Torah: an intimate connection between “life” and “wisdom.”

Development versus Meaning: Academia and the Beit Midrash

The speaker describes two ways of looking: an “academic” perspective that seeks to understand the historical-sociological development of customs, legal rulings, and holidays; and, opposite it, the perspective of the Beit Midrash or the classic yeshiva world, which seeks to understand the thing as it is and what it means, without dealing with development, and at times even denying the very notion of the development of Jewish law. He argues that these two perspectives should not be seen as “either-or,” but as two different questions that do not exclude each other. He illustrates this through claims about Lag BaOmer and customs that entered from external sources, and agrees that things are absorbed from outside and that there is a certain evolution of Jewish law, but argues that the conclusion that a custom has no meaning because of its historical development is incorrect.

Causal Mechanism versus Meaning: A Computer, Newton, and Providence

The speaker gives the example of a computer in order to distinguish between causal-scientific description and understanding meaning: even someone who knows every electron and every field does not necessarily understand “what the computer does.” He also illustrates this with Newton’s apple—that a gravitational explanation does not negate a religious meaning such as punishment, because meaning is not derived from the causal mechanism. He applies this to Lag BaOmer and argues that one can investigate how a custom entered from a sociological standpoint, but the question of meaning is a different question. And within a worldview of providence, he states that if “there is providence over a blade of grass,” then certainly there is providence over the way the Jewish people serve God, and therefore the very appearance of a custom among a public that serves God is not accidental, even if the mechanism by which it appeared is “evolutionary.”

Criteria for Public Tradition

The speaker responds to the claim that meaningless customs could not possibly take root, and suggests that there is a long discussion and criteria such as the distinction between short term and long term, and whether something “became widespread among all Israel or did not become widespread among all Israel.” He narrows the assertion to what “became widespread among all Israel who want to serve God,” and determines that what became widespread among all Israel cannot be a mistake in that sense.

The Active Reader and the Need for Mediation

The speaker states that Hebrew wisdom “requires an active reader,” meaning an active rather than passive reader, “wise and understanding from his own knowledge,” and describes this as an intuitive and highly developed capacity for hearing, supported by a teacher-student tradition. He adds that when this capacity weakens in generations that live within a Western or external conceptual world, a need arises for mediation in order to return to Hebrew wisdom.

Jewish Religious Philosophy as an Intermediate Mediating Stage

The speaker points to a central hint in the text: there is a need for “education in Jewish religious philosophy that mediates between Western literature and Hebrew wisdom.” He explains that Jewish religious philosophy is not Hebrew wisdom itself, but an intermediate stage whose role is to mediate between external forms of wisdom and the wisdom of the Torah, by writing and presenting Jewish content in philosophical patterns. He gives an example from medieval literature and mentions Fons Vitae by Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Gabirol, which, in his words, was written in such a general philosophical form that people thought it was by a Muslim philosopher, and he places this within the idea that mediation is both historical and functional.

Maimonides and the Purpose of Writing as a Bridge

The speaker describes The Guide for the Perplexed as a response to Jews who had occupied themselves with philosophy and became perplexed by the questions, and describes Maimonides’ writing as an attempt to return them to the source through a language and patterns familiar to them. He distinguishes between the historical, after-the-fact development of the need for mediation and the possibility of meaning from the outset, and argues that even if the process arose out of cultural decline, it may still express a real need of the generation. He presents a critique of the view that philosophy is the main content of the Torah, and notes that Maimonides identifies the Account of Creation and the Account of the Chariot with physics and metaphysics, and raises the demand to see how these contents emerge from the Torah itself and not merely that they do not conflict with it.

Constructing Jewish Philosophy: Hebrew Thought in Greek Form

The speaker brings a definition: “Jewish philosophy means a composite. A composite of Hebrew thought in Greek form,” either directly or through nations from which philosophy received its form. He explains that the language of Jewish philosophy is usually foreign, or marked by artificial foreign terminology, and that the very name “philosophy” is Greek and testifies to a Greek cradle. He warns against being seduced by the Greek form of argumentation and confusing it with the Jewish content that he seeks to identify as “Hebrew thought.”

Universal and National Wisdom: Form and Pattern

The speaker introduces a sentence from later in the text: “Wisdom is universal in its content and national in its form and pattern,” and explains that wisdom as a collection of facts is universal and is not “Jewish” or “non-Jewish,” whereas the national mode of apprehension, the method, and the conceptual world differ from people to people. He tries to reconcile the phrase “Hebrew thought in Greek form” with this distinction, and suggests that there is a layer of Hebrew pattern as a necessary mode of access to the body of wisdom, and another layer of “form of form,” Greek, which clothes the Hebrew pattern in order to mediate it to an audience living in a Greek-Western world. He sketches a picture in which wisdom itself is objective and true for every person, but access to it passes through a unique pattern, and Jewish religious philosophy serves as a bridge between an external conceptual world and Semitic/Hebrew logic.

Mutual Influence: Ranak, Spain, and the Renaissance

The speaker quotes in the name of “the great father of the history of Jewish religious philosophy, Ranak,” and brings a passage speaking about the need to expound and investigate opinions and moral teachings that arose within the nation over time due to historical events, writings, and interaction with others, “more than any other nation and language,” even if only to a limited degree. He interprets this as a justification for engaging with mutual influences: how we were affected and changed by the ideas of the nations, and how we affected them; and within that, as an opening to the possibility of finding among others things that were forgotten among us. He adds the claim that medieval Spanish Jewish religious philosophy had considerable influence on general medieval philosophy, and that the Renaissance was influenced by Kabbalah, and he mentions Pico della Mirandola and Leibniz and Delmedigo, and the phenomenon of connections between Jewish and Christian sages, while personally expressing reservations about the extent of the continuing influence.

Wisdom among the Nations and Torah among the Nations: Sparks, Mysticism, and Gathering What Is Missing

The speaker distinguishes between wisdom and Torah and argues that one can find among non-Jews points of truth or “sparks” that can complete what is lacking, but the Torah itself is not there. He tells a story about Rabbi Shabtai Donnolo, who searched for understanding in Kabbalah until he met a non-Jewish mystic who explained it to him, and suggests that similar structures in different mystical traditions indicate an objective dimension and not just cultural relativism. He describes an encounter with a psychologist who studied an Indian tribe in Bolivia, and recounts shared visionary experiences and even similarities to “visions of the Chariot,” in order to reinforce the distinction that a real experience points to reality and not merely to a cultural framework. He returns to the distinction that wisdom is universal, and that one can learn from outside points that have a root in the Torah, though not as a substitute for systematic Torah study.

Torah as a Non-Arbitrary Pattern: the Divine Name, Being, and the Four Cubits of Jewish law

The speaker develops the idea that the Torah is “the Hebrew language” in the sense of a non-arbitrary pattern, similar to the Divine Name, which is not a random label but a reference to the thing itself. He argues that a law such as “the laws of the four bailees” is not merely a means of arriving at lofty philosophies but “the very body of wisdom” itself, and that the four cubits of Torah are contact with the objective dimension of the Torah and not just a system of manners. He presents the Torah as the unique way to reach the depth of wisdom in an essential manner, and concludes with the statement: “The Torah is the Hebrew language.”

What is this creature, anyway? And as I said, I haven’t really managed to formulate the picture that emerges here, of how he relates to this whole matter of Jewish religious philosophy. It’s a kind of hybrid creature: on the one hand it’s philosophy, but on the other hand it’s something Jewish. So it’s not Jewish thought; it’s something somehow in between. The truth is that here I noticed just now, before looking at this before the lesson, that there are a few hints in that direction. Maybe that’ll help us a bit. Let’s start with “the acquisition of Hebrew wisdom.” Let’s start with “We will do and we will hear.” Today we’re also a bit in preparations for Shavuot, and I want that to come up later as well. The quote above is simply from Proverbs; it starts with “We will do and we will hear.” So here there’s basically an emphasis that wisdom comes in the form of speech and hearing. Fine. “The acquisition of Hebrew wisdom.” Hebrew wisdom. Now, “We will do and we will hear” wasn’t actually said at Mount Sinai in the Pentateuch at all. It’s said in the portion of Mishpatim. Suddenly today I looked and saw something very strange. There’s this thing so deeply ingrained—once you said “we will do,” I thought maybe in Va’etchanan there’s a “we will hear,” like “remember” and “keep” in one utterance. Yes, fine, but really it looks like it refers to some particular passage, not to the entire Sinai revelation. Fine. In the midrashim it does appear in connection with Mount Sinai. In the midrashim, on the verse about “we will do,” it appears that the Jewish people answered “We will do and we will hear,” and in various contexts. Fine. “Hebrew wisdom is acquired in its own unique way.” There are modern opinion-makers who seek wisdom and knowledge in ancient Hebrew literature, and according to them they do not find what they seek. And there are those who believe with simple faith in the holy Torah, who think they find in the sacred writings faith and life—but not science. Or really, wisdom. What does “science” mean here? Not in today’s narrow sense, but what they seek in the newer literatures. At the very moment when the Torah is itself wisdom, the supreme wisdom graciously given by the One who grants knowledge to man. “Open my eyes, that I may behold wonders from Your Torah.” So the claim here is basically that the Torah is not just some kind of way of life—that is, it’s not just a form, not just a description of how one ought to live. Rather, how one ought to live is connected to reality. Usually, legal systems—and I think we already spoke about this—legal systems are generally conventions meant to manage life more properly, but they are not derived from determinations about reality; they have no connection to reality. They are values. Values by which a society should be built or by which a person should conduct himself. The commandments in the Torah, the mitzvot, are things grounded in reality. These are not detached values like other legal systems; they are things derived from the actual structure of spiritual reality. And wisdom is basically the investigation of reality—that’s wisdom. What is wisdom? Wisdom is the investigation of reality—maybe human reality, maybe the reality of the world, the reality of the spiritual dimension of the world—but wisdom means understanding the world. That’s called wisdom, in its various branches. So his claim is that the Torah is not just a detached collection of commands; wisdom is also embedded in the Torah. And more than that, as will be clarified later, there is of course a close connection between these two dimensions. The dimension of behavior is intimately connected to the dimension of understanding. Maybe that’s the whole content of the Torah: the connection between these two things. We’ll see that later. At the outset, he speaks of two ways of looking, both of which actually miss this point. That’s exactly what I just thought of now. Rabbi Avi—I spoke to him before we traveled to Jerusalem, and we talked a bit—he’s writing an article for Shavuot. Maybe I’m revealing secrets here, but never mind, I assume you’ll read it anyway. He discusses the question of why investigations are always presented in the form of either this or that. Either this determines it or that determines it; either this is the understanding or that is the understanding. Why not both together? Broadly speaking—I won’t go into the details—but here too, each of the two sides he presents is looking for something else in the Torah. One is looking for life: how to live properly, how to live as one should live. Faith means life—but not wisdom. And that perhaps he does find, although actually I think many times we have more difficulty with precisely that: finding the life in it. Wisdom maybe one can find, but life seems more lacking, I think—also from how I sense what I hear, not only in myself. And the first camp are those who seek wisdom in the Torah—these are the “modern opinion-makers,” as he calls them—those who seek wisdom but do not find it. But on the level—first of all, regarding what they seek—these two camps are each looking for something different. Looking. Yes. They don’t find the same thing. What? Both of them don’t find the same thing. One doesn’t find this and the other doesn’t find that. Yes, נכון, but let’s pause for a moment on the second point. No, no, both are looking for different things, but they find the same thing. And they’re looking for different things. One seeks wisdom and the other seeks life. Now, life—it seems to me that the camp he’s referring to does find that, but wisdom—the modern opinion-makers who seek wisdom—do not find it. Hm? More correct life, more authentic life—not in the intellectual sense, but in the sense of finding yourself, I don’t know, feeling that you’re living correctly. Wisdom is something more intellectual; it seems detached, not connected to life, but rather: what is the structure of the world, to understand, simply. All right? That’s a detached layer. And the layer of life is simply to live properly, to feel that you’re living according to the way one should live. Now, the first camp seeks wisdom and doesn’t find it; the second camp does find. But first of all, regarding the search itself, there’s basically here—maybe this is partly the question, though not entirely—I think these two camps he describes also contain these two sides. There are two ways of looking at the Torah, really at things in general, but especially at the Torah, and also at historical processes, and actually at many things, but in the Torah this is very strongly felt. The academic way of looking—of the modern opinion-makers—is a way that ultimately investigates the development of things. In other words, when people look at how a certain custom was formed, or how a law was formed, or how a festival was formed, they investigate the historical, sociological—I don’t know what to call it—development of how the thing came into being. Who influenced whom, what the influences were, what the background to those influences was. Those who seek the thing—on the other hand, there is the classic yeshiva world. The classic yeshiva world is not interested at all in development; it usually even denies the concept, saying that Jewish law basically does not develop. So it looks at it as it is, and I want to understand what it says to me. Not how it developed. And usually it even claims that it didn’t develop, to one degree or another—there are of course different nuances. Here too this relates somewhat to these two camps, though not entirely, because it’s not exactly the same, since the two camps I’m talking about are both, ostensibly, on the intellectual plane, but it’s not exactly so, as we’ll see later. And here too, just as with the two camps he refers to, the truth of course is with both of them. In other words, one must not treat these two perspectives as an either-or investigation—either this is true or that is true. What is true is precisely the two together. That is what is true. Maybe I’ll illustrate better what I mean. Some time ago I was speaking with a group, and there were all sorts of claims there: how did we suddenly start celebrating Lag BaOmer? Soon there’ll be something drawn from various Indian sources, strange customs with no root to be found, and they argued that in a few years there’ll be a Shulchan Arukh on barbecue—how exactly one should fan the coals and what should be done—and a Mishnah Berurah, and “blessed are the stringent.” In other words, everything at some stage starts with some strange deviation and gets into the Shulchan Arukh and becomes something that supposedly obligates us. What does that mean? Things drawn from Islam, I don’t know from where, all sorts of odd and bizarre things. Some of the claims were simply incorrect, but even if I assume for the moment that they weren’t. What I argued, basically, was that they are right, but their conclusion is not correct. That is, I agree with the premise but not with the conclusion. It’s obviously true that various things are drawn from outside; anyone who thinks there is no evolution of Jewish law is burying his head in the sand. So the defensive move always raised against this—what, Lag BaOmer descended from Sinai? And obviously everything descended from Sinai; nothing has moved in the last four thousand years—nonsense, of course. But the question is whether that’s the only way to defend. In fact, I don’t even know whether one needs to defend, but the question is whether that really is the only possible way to present a different position. And I think clearly not. I elaborate on this elsewhere; I’ll just say briefly: it’s entirely clear that the way things develop is simply the causal scientific mechanism of how the thing came into being. And now when you ask what things mean, that is not necessarily connected to the question of how they developed. For example, if I look at a computer—maybe I used this example before, I think maybe I did with the computer, I don’t know, part of this is right and part isn’t—if I look at a computer, you see there lots of electrons, atoms, and all sorts of strange things. Suppose there’s someone with virtuosic physical ability, infinite memory, unlimited computational power, all right? He knows exactly where every electron is, what electromagnetic field surrounds it; he knows the computer inside out, every tiny chip. He knows exactly where every electron will go over the next twenty years, meaning he can also calculate forward all the fields, how they will affect things, and all of that. The question is whether he understands what the computer does. Clearly not. He doesn’t have the faintest notion what a computer is, how it works, and what its meaning is. A matter of order—the same thing, right? Or at least very similar, right? In other words, he does understand correctly—it’s not that his understanding is wrong—he just doesn’t understand the right thing. That is, the electrons really do move from place to place, but that is the scientific causal description of how the thing actually happens in what we might call scientific reality. But the question of meaning, the question of interpretation, is not derived from the causal mechanism. We spoke about Newton and the apple, right, that fell on his head—and why wasn’t he satisfied with the answer that it fell on his head as punishment for some sin he committed? Why did he go looking for forces of gravity? So he was satisfied with that answer too—but that is an answer of meaning. The question is, what is the answer in the causal-scientific sense? That is an entirely different question. In other words, if you understand the causal and scientific dimension, that doesn’t mean you understand the meaning, the significance. You understand that an apple falls on my head because the earth pulls it—so does that mean it’s not punishment for some sin I committed yesterday? It’s unrelated. The Holy One, blessed be He, uses that mechanism to punish me for what I did yesterday. So one can understand the mechanism—and that’s the scientific understanding—and one can understand the meaning, and meaning is in principle unrelated to the mechanism. The same applies if, say, we go back to Lag BaOmer. Lag BaOmer entered in some strange and different way through all sorts of sociological, psychological, and other mechanisms—it doesn’t matter at all. It entered somehow, and maybe someone finds it interesting to investigate, so let him investigate. Personally it doesn’t interest me all that much. But in the end, the question of what Lag BaOmer means is an entirely different question. In other words, the question why such a strange custom entered into a public that seeks the service of God is presumably not accidental, regardless of the sociological causality. It is not accidental. If there is providence over a blade of grass, then certainly there is providence over how the Jewish people serve God. Therefore, the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, arranged it through all sorts of evolutionary processes has nothing to do with the question of what the significance of this thing is. These are the two modes of perspective I meant when I spoke about the two modes of perspective I had presented. In other words, there is a scientific perspective that asks how this developed, a causal mode—that is, what caused what, how the chain unfolded. And there is the mode that asks: wait a second, what is here? An ahistorical perspective. Now, for this you don’t need to say that there was no historical development—that’s the point. There was historical development, but the question I’m asking is detached from it. In other words, historical development is not what determines the meaning, all right? Therefore, if we define it broadly: academia is a world interested in science, in scientific development. If we call sociology science, it doesn’t matter; at least it’s similar to science. So the development of Lag BaOmer is a sociological question that asks what the influences were, what the causes were, what the factors were, what the environment was, how it entered. But the study hall doesn’t ask those questions, and it also doesn’t need to ask those questions. Torah study in the study hall asks what Lag BaOmer means. The assumption is that if it entered, it has meaning. And the question is: what is its meaning? That question is, in principle, completely detached from the historical development. It may be that someone will come and say that there is also a connection between the two things, but that would already be an additional claim; it is not necessary. These are basically the two camps: one relates to it in a kind of scientific way, and the other relates to it in an essential way, let’s call it that. Now, this is not exactly “life” as I described earlier, because it too is really some sort of intellectual development, but it is a living perspective, one that is more vital. That is, it’s not detached intellectuality. When I seek the meaning of Lag BaOmer, I’m seeking what it says to me. Now, what it says to me is unrelated to how it developed, so this is a search for life. The scientific perspective supposedly seeks the development, how it happened, so that is not exactly the first camp he describes. I’m only saying that the same relation exists between these two camps as well. In other words, two people are seeking different things on the assumption that one exists and the other does not, or that one rules out the other. In other words, if this is true, then the other is not true. If the development was like this, then clearly it has no meaning, because if it has meaning, then clearly the development wasn’t like that. But that is not true. These are two questions that address different layers; they do not rule each other out. Here too I’m saying roughly the same thing. In other words, when you ask what wisdom there is in the Torah, you can say there is no wisdom at all, only life. That’s the claim of the second camp. It seeks life, not wisdom. For them the Torah is not a source of wisdom but a source of life. They seek science in the new libraries. But the Nazir argues that there is such a layer. The fact that you’re not looking for it—fine—but there is such a layer. And not only that there is; it is apparently also connected to the layer of life. In other words, the seemingly detached intellect—in the Torah this is an intellect that really is supposed to be connected to life. And therefore those who seek life and find it—even if they found what they were seeking, they do not know that one can seek other things besides that. They think that if it’s life then it isn’t wisdom, and if it’s wisdom then it isn’t life. But the Torah is the wisdom of life, meaning something meant to connect life and wisdom. Yes. There’s a feeling that the reason they don’t seek wisdom is because they’re aware that the way of life—or life—is the first thing. I also think so. We’ll get to that in a moment. And I think the Nazir says this too. Yes. I just wanted to say that when something develops—for example, development can affect meaning, shed light on meaning, and separate in a way… No, I said that on the principled level I separate them completely, and I said that it is certainly possible there is a connection between development and meaning, but that is already an additional statement. It may be true; I didn’t say it isn’t true. I’m only saying that it’s an additional assumption you don’t have to accept. In principle these are really two completely separate questions. Now, you can believe that there is meaning also to the development. Could there be meaning that isn’t connected to a particular development? In other words, I didn’t understand. The question why I should observe Lag BaOmer today is unrelated, in principle, to the question whether Lag BaOmer entered through the Muslims in the fifteenth century or through the Greeks in the seventeenth century. Now, you can come and say: look, examine the ways of providence, how Lag BaOmer entered; maybe you’ll learn something from that that is relevant for today as well. Fine, certainly possible. But I’m saying that’s already another story, and certainly you don’t have to assume it and arrive at a situation where either this is true or that is true—either meaning or development. I think one can definitely hold that there is also a connection between them, but that’s already another level. For example, from the perspective that these two aspects are not unrelated—it can’t be. Right. Then the assumption is that something like this can’t enter if… if it wasn’t supposed to enter. For example, things that aren’t important, aren’t meaningful—like the evil eye, black cats—it can’t be. Yes. There is providence in the world, and it cannot be that something like this entered here and became rooted—no, no, no. Therefore here we’d really have to go into a long discussion about it. In my opinion there are even criteria in this matter. But that really involves short term and long term—the question whether it became rooted, whether it spread through all Israel or did not spread through all Israel, and that’s another discussion. What spread through all Israel cannot be a mistake—by “all Israel” I mean all those in Israel who want to serve God. Fine. “This small booklet is opened before seekers of Hebrew wisdom, from right and from left”—there are two kinds of seekers of Hebrew wisdom, from right and from left—“coming from its own special pattern or way, different from the ways of the newer literatures.” And this disconnect—the people who don’t manage to grasp the aspect of wisdom in the Torah—from both sides they lose. One doesn’t seek, and one seeks and doesn’t find. But he doesn’t—both of them don’t. One doesn’t think it exists, the other doesn’t find it, because they’re not aware that this isn’t wisdom like all other wisdoms. And the way to acquire it is also not the same way. “It therefore requires an active reader.” What does “an active reader” mean? An active reader, not a passive one. Other kinds of wisdom are usually learned passively. That is, you try to understand what is here; you’re passive. You try to let the information enter you. In Torah wisdom, you need an active reader. Meaning, this isn’t just some kind of reading. This is one of the ways in which this wisdom differs from other wisdoms. You need to be active in order to grasp this wisdom. It isn’t something that exists only outside you and you’re trying to bring inward. It’s something that in some sense you must also draw out from within yourself. “An active reader, wise and understanding on his own,” or “an education in Jewish religious philosophy that mediates between Western literature and Hebrew wisdom.” Here’s the hint I spoke about earlier. Notice: the title of the article is “The Pattern of Jewish Religious Philosophy.” The title of section A is “The Acquisition of Hebrew Wisdom.” Ostensibly it sounds like the same concept—Hebrew wisdom and Jewish religious philosophy—but it isn’t. These are two concepts, and in this paragraph it’s explained in his words. You need an education in Jewish religious philosophy in order to arrive at Hebrew wisdom, which is something else. Jewish religious philosophy is the mediator between Western literature and Hebrew wisdom. All right? So first of all, there are clear definitions here—which I didn’t really manage to understand from last time. There are clear definitions. Jewish religious philosophy is an intermediate stage. It is not Hebrew wisdom; it is an intermediate stage. It is an intermediate stage whose role is to mediate between Western literature—or not necessarily Western literature; in this case Western, perhaps not by chance—but it is a mediation between external wisdoms and Torah wisdom, basically. What do they do? They write Jewish philosophy in a philosophical style and form—that is, in the form of external wisdom. Yes, all the books of the Jewish sages of the Middle Ages, most of them though not all, are basically books written in many ways like other philosophical books. We may see later a bit of the book Fons Vitae by Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Gabirol—yes, Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Gabirol—which until the nineteenth century no one imagined was a book by a Jewish philosopher. They were certain it was by a Muslim philosopher, and only toward the end of the nineteenth century did they suddenly discover it was a book by Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Gabirol. Fons Vitae—he mentions it later. It really is a special book. He himself notes that this book is special compared to the other philosophical books of the Middle Ages, because he writes completely like a gentile—in terms of form. In any case, Jewish religious philosophy is not Hebrew wisdom. It is an intermediate stage that ties external wisdom to Hebrew wisdom. Later it will become clearer what it means to say this is something else. Is it two forms of dealing with the same thing, or really two different contents? Two different things? Does it deal with different subjects? Yes. Is it like today, where someone writes something in one form in a book and then in another way in order to reach Hebrew wisdom—that’s the mediation? I think—I hadn’t really noticed this—but I think it’s either in the simple sense, or this or that. Why? Because historically, for example, how did they arrive at Hebrew wisdom in the days of the tannaim? Did they arrive through Jewish religious philosophy? It didn’t exist yet. Jewish religious philosophy is a creation that began at the start of the Middle Ages or something like that. Because they encountered the Western literature that existed among the Greeks, and then other things were created. Exactly. Exactly. That is, if you have “an active reader, wise and understanding on his own”—incidentally, that’s a nice comment, I hadn’t noticed—an active reader, wise and understanding on his own, in parentheses: someone with auditory capacity, someone who knows how to understand actively, someone with sound intuition. Out of what? Out of tradition, from reception, teacher from teacher. Yes, until at some stage that was lost among us. We need mediation for that. That’s exactly the point written here. Maybe you didn’t notice it, but I think that’s exactly what’s written here. In other words, someone “wise and understanding on his own” is someone whose intuition is still built properly. Someone who has a developed capacity for hearing. Right. Exactly. And we—or really already earlier generations—who began living within the conceptual world of the West, or the external universal world, in some place that came at the expense of Torah intuition. And about that, of course, we’ve elaborated on it a lot; we won’t go back to it again. But our way of returning to Hebrew wisdom is through mediation. That’s why the pattern of Jewish religious philosophy was created. That’s why Jewish religious philosophy was created: it’s a kind of hybrid creature. On the one hand it’s philosophy, and on the other hand it’s Jewish. And it was created precisely in order to connect. In truth, historically that’s simply how it happened. It’s not just metaphysical spiritual processes. Historically it happened that way. Maimonides writes that he wrote his book because he saw various Jews engaging in philosophy and becoming perplexed by all the difficulties. So he wrote them a book in order to bring them back to the source. Now, how much he really brought them back to the source—that’s another question—but that was the goal. The goal was precisely to connect people who live in a broad external world back to Hebrew wisdom. So there’s no choice; you have to speak to them in their own language, or at least use the patterns or forms they know and bring them to the right contents. That is Jewish religious philosophy. What? Yes, it sounds like a historical, temporary need—not in order to create paths for Judaism. No, no, that’s not what I mean now. I left Maimonides in the last sentences. I’m only saying it clearly arose that way historically. Now again, we’re talking about development versus meaning. The development really was this, and the fact that Maimonides thought it was important. The meaning is that such a bridge had to be created. Even if Maimonides wasn’t aware of that, it doesn’t matter, because such a bridge had to come into being. Yes. Why do we need the mediation of Western philosophy? Meaning, do we need to study Western philosophy for this? That’s somewhat related to what Matani just pointed out. That’s a question he doesn’t address at the moment. You’re asking his opinion—I mean my opinion—but what? And can’t you learn everything from the Torah too? Why do we need foreign philosophies and all that? I didn’t say you need to learn everything from the Torah. He said the Torah is wisdom itself; he didn’t say you have to learn everything from the Torah. What, can’t you go through external wisdoms in order to learn Torah? Of course that can help you. But he says they turn Western theories into contents. Who said they turn them? Did he say they import contents inside? Meaning that it’s only a means. What? That the contents of Jewish philosophy are only a means? No, right. Right. The wisdom itself, he says, is found in the Torah—the supreme wisdom. But that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t read various other wisdoms. He says these are very important paths. I’m not even sure whether it’s only in the sense of “perfumers and cooks.” Maimonides does write that, as though Maimonides—with a very open approach to these things—writes that it is only perfumers and cooks. I’m not sure it’s even just that. It may be even more than that. But in the end, these things are tools for bringing the wisdom itself out of the Torah. So are the tools of Jewish philosophy Hebrew tools? And the tools that convey it—those are Western tools? Broadly, yes. Yes. In other words, it’s not just a tool, but a personal point: if we don’t have the framework of Western philosophy, we won’t approach Torah seriously. That’s because we are built the way we are built today. I don’t think that, for example—it doesn’t seem to me that the tannaim troubled themselves to learn all the Greek philosophy that existed in their time. Certainly not all of them. Yehoshua ben Chananiah, or a certain type, perhaps did engage with it, but what? Yes, there are various indications that some sages did deal with it. But I don’t think it is necessary that every tanna, in order to acquire stable knowledge or grasp of Torah, had to pass through external wisdoms. I think in some sense—again, historically—it is a situation that is after the fact. In terms of meaning, it may be that it is ideal, as I said earlier. In other words, today it’s simply a fact that we live in a Western conceptual world. A general conceptual world. We are not detached from it; we think that way in many respects. And in order to connect to Torah we need some kind of mediation—nothing will help. We need mediation. Whether that is a healthy state or an unhealthy state is another question. This state came about through historical development in some sense after the fact. Now again, here too I separate development from meaning. The development is after the fact. The meaning may be that this is how it ought to be done. In other words, it happened because this is how it ought to be done. In other words, because this really is how it ought to be done. The fact that historical processes happen through battles, retreats, and concessions, and that we are constantly retreating and sinking more and more into Western culture, and there are even those who constantly fight against this process—that is the historical process. But its meaning is, again, another question. Yes. Maimonides did not give the answer on that plane. In other words, from his perspective, when he wrote the book, it wasn’t in order to teach someone who knows the laws of the four bailees and sukkah and tzitzit and lulav, but in order to teach the true wisdom of Torah, which is philosophy, and to show that it doesn’t clash with the Torah. Meaning that one can extract it, in principle, from the Torah itself without philosophy. And someone who can’t manage that—he comes to show him that it does fit. What’s the claim? The claim is that the whole Torah—really, Torah that isn’t philosophy is, for him, not the main thing. Yes, Ma’aseh Bereishit and Ma’aseh Merkavah—that’s the great thing. Ma’aseh Bereishit and Ma’aseh Merkavah, he says, are physics and metaphysics. But metaphysics is basically the Torah. He only wants to show how it doesn’t clash with the Torah. Yes, obviously. The question is not only how it doesn’t clash; the question is how it emerges from the Torah. Beyond that—if this is the highest part of the Torah, then it ought to emerge from the Torah. Maimonides believed this is what is called Ma’aseh Bereishit and Ma’aseh Merkavah, so it’s supposed to be some layer that is really the heart of the Torah itself. So you need to show how it emerges from the Torah, not only how it doesn’t clash with the Torah. Ostensibly, according to that approach, you shouldn’t have to learn it from Aristotle and then merely verify that it doesn’t clash. In principle you can also bring it out from the Torah itself. Someone wise and understanding on his own could have drawn it from the Torah. Maybe there are some who can’t, and then Aristotle helps them with that. Then of course you need to see that it doesn’t clash, but it is really there; it’s not something separate from the Torah. How this is connected to the laws of the four bailees and so on—that’s another question. I don’t know if there’s some answer to that in Maimonides’ words; I’m not familiar with one. His whole method is strange, of course, so I don’t think it’s correct, and therefore I’m not really engaging with it. He says that the laws of the four bailees and things like that somehow develop out of much deeper things. Yes, but he never shows anywhere how. In other words, from what I know—I told you, maybe someone found an introduction to this. But the fact is that when he brings the philosophical ideas, he doesn’t bring them from the laws of the four bailees. No, but he does indicate in principle that it exists. Yes, yes, okay, that’s what I said earlier. Fine, at last maybe today someone said there’s something beyond that. Right, but one really has to search how it comes out from there. That’s one of the things I’m always trying to preach: one has to really try and search how it emerges from there—not through excuses. We look for excuses. Aristotle was a genius, and let’s see that Rabbi Akiva also wasn’t a complete idiot. You understand? That’s basically what we’re doing. But the opposite: we need to see what comes out of Rabbi Akiva, and only afterward examine whether Aristotle understood something as well or not. I think that’s a more reasonable approach, at least in my view. Fine. “The composition of Jewish philosophy.” “Jewish philosophy means composition. A composition of Hebrew thought in Greek form.” Here he defines that intermediate stage he spoke about earlier, this mediation. So he defines it. It is basically a composition: a composition of Hebrew thought in Greek form. In other words, his claim is: don’t be seduced into following the form of the argument. The form of the argument really is philosophical, Greek, external. But the contents—the thought—are Jewish. Now, fine, let’s just finish reading: “either directly or through the nations to which philosophy adapted itself and from which it received its form.” Why is that so? Simply historically, because philosophy developed in Greece and not in Israel. “For the language of Jewish philosophy is for the most part foreign, or its technical terms are foreign, and ‘philosophy’ is a Greek name that testifies to Greek wisdom as the cradle of its rise and ferment.” Later we’ll get—I hope soon enough—he says in section D, look on the next page. He says there: “Wisdom is universal in its content and national in its form and pattern.” I’ll read the first sentence at the beginning of section D: “Form and pattern. Wisdom is universal in its content and national in its form and pattern.” Just that sentence; I won’t read the whole passage—we’ll get to it in a bit. But we need to understand what’s going on here. After all, wisdom is wisdom, as we said before. Wisdom is knowing how the world is structured—spiritually, materially, all of it. Now, how the world is structured—those are facts, not ideas. Facts are universal. There is no such thing as Jewish wisdom and non-Jewish wisdom. That’s a very important point that people don’t always notice. If we return to what we said before: the form is how we view those same facts. And that really does depend on the observer. That is already national in its pattern, because as we said, form is ultimately shaped within the consciousness of the observer. The thing itself exists in the world. Wisdom is facts, and facts are universal. The form can change from nation to nation—and so it is national in its form—because every nation has a different cultural world, a different conceptual world, and it looks at this set of facts in a different way, describes them in a different form. Let’s now go back to section B. He says this is a composition of Hebrew thought in Greek form. What is “Hebrew thought”? There’s no such thing as Hebrew thought. Thought is universal, right? Only the form is Hebrew. So what are you saying—the form is Greek or Hebrew? Hebrew thought in Greek form. So then it’s not Hebrew thought; it’s simply thought. Fine, but thought is universal; it’s not Hebrew. It’s the Hebrew form of thought meeting thought. Ah—so here I think this is probably what needs to be understood. Hebrew thought too is still within the domain of form, or more precisely within the domain of pattern, as we’ll see in section D when we get to it. Form and pattern are not the same thing. And Greek form is form-of-form. That is already a second-order form. Hebrew thought—that is the Hebrew form of wisdom. Wisdom is objective; it is facts. There is a Hebrew form of looking at them, or a Hebrew pattern—that is called Hebrew thought. Do you mean Semitic facts, so that because it is in Semitic form, that itself is Hebrew thought? Yes. In other words, it’s connected; it’s not only the form, it also defines the type of facts. Right, but that is still—we’ll come exactly to that later—right, but the Semitic thought somehow encounters the material, not the form. It encounters it with a special form. In other words, it encounters the Semitic material, because the way to encounter it is only Semitic. Right, and therefore that defines the facts. But facts are objective. Yes. So what is Hebrew thought? That these facts can be encountered only through Hebrew thought. Ah, so Hebrew thought is a mode of access to the facts. All right? Still—okay—but it is a mode of access. Therefore I say that really one has to know that there are two layers of form here. In other words, there is the material—just one second—the set of facts, wisdom itself, the body of wisdom itself. There is the national form, perhaps different, for approaching it—the method, or how the method works, I don’t know, you can translate it however you want. He translates it as form and pattern, as we’ll see in the next section or the one after. But there is a Hebrew form for approaching wisdom. It may be that it has no alternative, but overall, if it has no alternative then it too is in principle universal. That is, then that is simply the form; there isn’t something else. It’s only from the side of Torah, therefore it’s called Hebrew. That’s because of the vantage point of the… fine. Yes, but that’s a technical problem. In other words, it’s still something universal. It may be that others have a technical problem encountering it, but it’s not something intrinsic to… exactly, yes. And Greek form is form-of-form. In other words, one can place the Hebrew form or Hebrew pattern for encountering wisdom into Greek patterns of thought. That is basically Jewish philosophy. Just one second. Now maybe we’re also beginning to understand the process of mediation he spoke about in the previous section. In other words, there is wisdom—what’s called Greek wisdom. There too, of course, there’s no such thing as Greek wisdom; it is a Greek form of approaching wisdom. That is the conceptual world in which we live. Now there is an original Hebrew form. That is what one must arrive at. Now notice: it’s Hebrew wisdom only because perhaps within the Torah there are the tools to use it in order to arrive at the bodies of wisdom, but really it is objective. What is true here is true for the whole world, not only for the Jew. And the Greek form for Hebrew thought is the intermediate mediating stage he spoke about before: Jewish religious philosophy. Guide for the Perplexed, Saadia Gaon, all those kinds of books are basically books of Jewish religious philosophy. Machshevet Yisrael—what we once discussed regarding the difference between Jewish thought and Jewish philosophy. Jewish thought—the Maharal, for example, Rabbi Tzadok—that isn’t philosophy. It doesn’t resemble philosophy at all. It’s another way of approaching things. That is called Hebrew thought. Jewish thought, Hebrew thought. Philosophy is mediation—so goes his claim. That is his claim, and later we’ll see how—truthfully, I’m really not sure I identify with that statement—but we’ll try later to understand a bit better how this actually works. In any case, I’m trying to sketch the picture he presents. The picture he presents is a process of mediation. In other words, we live in a world of thought that is supposedly Greek, an external Greek conceptual world. The ultimate mode of thought, the only one by which to reach the facts themselves, is what is called Hebrew thought or Semitic logic. Jewish religious philosophy is giving a Greek form to Hebrew thought—in other words, trying to mediate. To give it a form that will be understandable to people who live in another world. What? Mediation isn’t enlightenment? Enlightenment is compromise? No, rather wisdom is approached through the Hebrew pattern—that is Semitic logic. And to reach the Hebrew pattern we need mediation; we don’t understand how Semitic logic works. And that mediation is called form. We’ll simply see this in section D. I’m dwelling on it because it’s complicated; you have to understand what’s going on here. Fine, section C. “Jewish religious philosophy was influenced by general philosophy and influences it.” In the words of the giant father of the history of Jewish religious philosophy, RNaK. “Giant” means Rabbi Nachman Krochmal, who wrote a book called Moreh Nevukhei HaZeman, and he was a kind of maskil—an enlightened thinker—about whom I haven’t yet had time to check the details: what was his level of mitzvah observance, that is, how much he was a religious Jew in the usual sense. But he was an enlightened thinker closer to the conventional religious world than others. It may even be that he really was; I simply don’t know, due to lack of knowledge. I think there’s a pamphlet that explains various things, and it says that Rabbi Kook agreed with Mendelssohn and not with RNaK. And that shows that from that statement you can learn nothing about RNaK, of course. Fine. “The father of the history of philosophy…” People really haven’t heard of him, and that’s a shame, because it’s an important book. I saw it—I spent quite a lot of time with it, actually, in Gush. One of the main things I did there was this book. I read it in the library there, when there was still a little room. And anyone who reads RNaK sees that there I do agree with him, with the Nazir’s determination, that it really is some kind of mediator between philosophy and Jewish thought. What? Also modern philosophy. In other words, RNaK lived about two hundred years ago or something like that, even less. So he was already aware of modern philosophy and was even knowledgeable in it. And there you really see a bridge between the philosophical world and the world of Jewish thought—something I find harder to see in the Guide for the Perplexed and in Saadia Gaon, though maybe that’s because I’m somewhat distant from their world. But no—with their philosophy I do see the connection, with the philosophy they knew, although I’m not so interested in those philosophies. I don’t see the connection to Jewish thought—or to philosophy. Really, it seems to me in many parts at least—I’m generalizing somewhat—there are parts where you do see the connection, but the philosophical parts, the parts that are really philosophical in the Guide for the Perplexed, there they’re simply philosophers, that’s all. In other words, with no—I didn’t find there some essential linkage, some real mediation. I don’t know; maybe I just haven’t gone deeply enough into the book, because I really haven’t dealt with it much. Fine. “A great and honored principle, one that is necessary and fitting for us, is that we should increasingly expound and investigate the ideas and morals that arose among our nation over the course of time through the events that passed over us, and through the connections and minglings in which we joined with others more than any other people and tongue, though only to a limited extent and no more.” In other words, on the one hand, the Jewish people were dispersed in all places and formed contact—or contacts—with all sorts of strange cultures, so that we can find hints to things that may have been lost to us over the years in all sorts of odd places. I once told you about Rabbi Shabbethai Donnolo, right? The writer and physician who composed a commentary on Sefer Yetzirah. So he writes in the introduction to his commentary on Sefer Yetzirah that he didn’t understand all the Kabbalah—they told him various things and he simply didn’t understand what people wanted from him. Not that they told him; he read it in books, sorry. He looked for someone to teach him and didn’t find anyone, until he reached some Persian—or Indian, I don’t remember exactly—which gentile it was. He met him somewhere, some ancient mystic, and he explained everything to him. Then everything fell into place, and he wrote the commentary on Sefer Yetzirah and other things too; he has a few interesting writings. So there really is some possibility of grasping various things that were lost among us through various foreign sources. I think it’s very obvious that many forms of mysticism draw from a very similar conceptual world. In other words, there are many things that recur in all sorts of mystical traditions, seemingly in worlds on entirely different sides of the globe—the male and female, right and left—there are various conceptual structures of that sort that recur in one form or another in many mystical systems. So it’s not plausible that they didn’t have some common source. Now, of course, that source doesn’t have to be historical. In other words, someone with a strong mystical intuition, some strong mystical capacity, grasps things that way; he doesn’t necessarily have to learn it from a rabbi. We perhaps don’t have that ability, so we need to learn it from a rabbi, if at all—I don’t know whether there is really such a thing today. But there are people who apparently do manage to grasp such things. The Ari, and also in Jewish history there were Jews who didn’t learn this from any rabbi—they grasped these things. You can call it a revelation of Elijah or call it something else, but they grasped, they grasped these things through some kind of spiritual intuition. They had some capacity to grasp it. So someone who grasps the facts—as we said earlier, facts are universal—whether it’s Persian mysticism, Indian mysticism, Bukharan mysticism, or Jewish mysticism. If it’s genuine mysticism, then today somehow there’s this enormous relativism, as if everything is relative, everyone with his own truth and his own cultural world and everything. And I don’t think that’s really true, even on the factual level. In other words, you really do see quite deep connections between different kinds of mysticism. And if they’re not from a single source, then the claim is even stronger. If they’re not from a single source, then it’s even stranger how everyone arrives at similar things, or at least somewhat similar things. So it seems that there really is something real here. Apparently it’s not just a random collection of hallucinations. I once told you that I met a psychologist—it doesn’t matter whether I told you or not, I’m tired of saying it already—a psychologist at the Hebrew University, whom a friend of mine, a mutual friend of ours, a well-known painter in the forests of Bolivia, connected to some Indian tribe where no white person had set foot. There had been only some German in the nineteenth century, and that was the last one who had gone there. My friend was the second—I mean, apparently it’s recorded somehow, I don’t know how he knows that—and this psychologist was the third. He was there later, I think last year—not before, three years ago, something like that. He was there for about half a year and did a very comprehensive psychological study of their lives, with a very intensive part on their mystical experiences. An interesting question—I didn’t have time to interview him. I spoke with him a bit, no, it was at a funeral. I couldn’t talk with him too much. But we decided we should meet sometime, though I didn’t manage to interview him enough. Yes, exactly. Not joyfully—at whose funeral? But you misunderstood me. I mean, there’s a celebration day for Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. I didn’t mean a funeral where I’m happy someone died. I mean, there it really wasn’t that. But in any case, he told… he told that he was there, and he’s accustomed to studying Kabbalah in Jerusalem in some group. He’s a secular fellow—not religious in any sense really. And he studied Kabbalah for his own enjoyment. When he arrived there, they have some herb that they eat or something like that, which for them is their hobby every few hours or something; everyone sinks into upper worlds. And it turns out they all see the same visions. All those people afterward report what they saw, and they all see exactly the same visions. Now, fine, you’ll say it’s their cultural world and their conceptual world—they grew up in the same place. But then, to his amazement, this Jew who had only just arrived there, who hadn’t spoken—apparently he didn’t even know the language, yes, because then they didn’t communicate—even on the very first day, when he took that thing and ate it, he saw exactly the same visions they did. In other words, they all see the same thing. And not only did he see the same visions; he saw chariot visions—very similar to what he had studied in Jerusalem in all sorts of groups that perhaps aren’t accepted by the leading rabbis, but still deal with that conceptual world. So regardless now—I don’t mean this as some kind of Arachim seminar, of course—but I do mean to point out that if you see similar experiences in different conceptual worlds, that indicates that there really is something objective here. There is some grasp of something real. Wisdom is universal, not national. In other words, if you grasp something real, then you grasp the same thing I grasp. Maybe in different forms, maybe I don’t know exactly, but it’s the same thing. Fine. Therefore one can learn from all sorts of places. If we don’t have that herb here in the land, I considered asking him to bring some—but really, one can also learn from all sorts of other places things that will help us within Torah. I don’t think that’s such a heretical idea. Even if one doesn’t accept the version of historical development, which sometimes sounds a bit apologetic—there are those who say in Seder HaDorot and in other books like it that Jeremiah taught Aristotle—I don’t remember, or Plato, I no longer remember which one he says—and at the end of their days they all repented, of course—all the Greek philosophers and Maimonides repented at the end of his life. By repented I mean turned toward Kabbalah. And by the way, this appears in somewhat more authoritative places too. Don Isaac Abarbanel writes that he saw a letter of Maimonides—in Maimonides’ own handwriting, I think he says he saw a letter—that at the end of his life Maimonides said that some old man came to him and revealed all sorts of things, and if he had known them he would not have written many of the things he wrote, but now he no longer had the energy. And this is the part that most amuses me in the whole letter. I mean, if you really disagree with many things you wrote, a little responsibility! I mean, what does it mean that you don’t have the energy? Write it down and have your son publish it instead of you—but I’ll leave that aside. Yes, I’m skeptical about that letter too, but “believe that there is wisdom among the nations”… What? And the lofty things we mentioned, the psychedelics—again, wisdom—no, here I’m saying an even stronger sentence: Torah among the nations. Here I’m saying something even stronger. I’m saying that among the nations one can find not only—in certain senses—Torah, but this doesn’t even have to come through a historical chain of development. In other words, exactly that: you don’t have to assume that Jeremiah taught Aristotle, perhaps Aristotle yes, but really, I don’t know, in order to assume that from Aristotle one can derive some true things. Now how does that fit with “believe that there is wisdom among the nations; do not believe that there is Torah among the nations”? I don’t know how universal that statement is and how far one should take it. Broadly, the wisdom of the nations is not Torah. And whether one cannot find some inward point of insight among the nations—I don’t know. But the same difficulty would apply to Maimonides, exactly as to me, so one should ask him how he reconciled it. He found in Aristotle the highest parts of Torah—Ma’aseh Bereishit and Ma’aseh Merkavah. So regardless of whether he was right or not, how did he reconcile for himself that statement: “believe that there is wisdom among the nations; do not believe that there is Torah among the nations”? So I don’t know. Fine, I don’t know. But I think these events are thought-provoking. No, no, I expanded a bit. What he says is actually that he probably does go according to the historical-development angle. You wanted to expand it further. In other words, he says that since various things rolled into various places, and often they were lost specifically from us while in those places they were preserved, then sometimes we can even learn Torah—not only wisdom among the nations—because of the associations. “Foreign influences on the wisdom of Israel”—there’s how we were influenced and how we influenced, right? So our being influenced by gentiles is exactly how we are influenced: we restore to ourselves parts that are missing for us, that are with them because they were influenced earlier. All right? I think that’s what he’s saying. “It is necessary and fitting for us that we increasingly expound and investigate the ideas and morals that arose among our nation over the course of time through the events that passed over us, and through the connections and associations through which we joined with others more than any other people and tongue, though only to a limited degree and no more. How we were influenced and changed by the ideas and morals of the nations, and how we influenced…” What? I think so, otherwise why the introduction that we influenced them so much first? I think that’s the justification for why it is permitted for us to learn from other places, because in other places there are things that have already been forgotten among us. That’s how I understand it. Earlier he said the opposite—how we influenced others from generation to generation. Both, both: “and we were influenced and changed.” Come on, “we were changed” because things are missing from us that were lost. That’s how I understand it. “And how we influenced them and others from generation to generation”—that’s part of it. No, I don’t think so, because that’s again the historical thesis. In other words, why can I learn from Aristotle? In order to do that I need to learn Seder HaDorot to explain to me that Aristotle learned from Jeremiah. So it’s important to learn that Aristotle learned from Jeremiah in order to know that what I learned from Aristotle is relevant. That’s what we said in the first part: Seder HaDorot is needed for our benefit, because we will increasingly investigate, and so on. Right, and that surely returns to the phrase “and how we influenced others from generation to generation.” Now we need to learn how we were influenced and changed, and in order to understand the meaning of that influence and change we need to understand that it has a root in the influence we had on others in the past. Therefore we need to study it. In short, a return once again—it’s not the same material twice. In any event, in any event it’s twice over: how we were influenced and how we influenced. The question is: why study how we were influenced and how we influenced? What is the reason? No, the reason appears earlier. The reason appears earlier: know that Jewish religious philosophy was influenced by general philosophy and influences it. All right? It was influenced and it influences. Meaning: it was influenced, it was influenced. Right, those are the facts. Now why is that an introduction to this section? Because now he wants to explain to me that this is also how it should be. In other words, we also need to learn from these modes. Why? So I assume—I’m filling in between the lines, because he doesn’t actually write it—he also doesn’t write why, anywhere. I understand his intention to be that the opening sentence is the reason for what follows. In other words, he says: since there is mutual influence, many things we can learn outside are things that were lost to us. Why not in chronological order? If you’re convinced of this, if you’ve seen absorption of things even if they weren’t from us and lost, if you see that they were absorbed, maybe that itself is proof that there is truth in them. And if you’re convinced the source is true, then there’s also a reason. What I claimed earlier goes beyond that. No, but the question is: why do I need to learn how we influenced them? Why does that interest me? Fine, that’s for the first bonus—how we influenced them. But if that’s important, then the rest isn’t important, because from my point of view it doesn’t interest me how we influenced Aristotle. That changes nothing for me. If I find something true in him and that thing took root, then for me it’s true. What difference does it make to me whether he was influenced or not? It doesn’t interest me. Even if he wasn’t influenced. So there’s no point in learning how Aristotle was influenced by us, or how Pico della Mirandola was influenced by Delmedigo—those are the examples he brings shortly, well-known examples from the Renaissance period. Fine, I don’t know. It’s a bit obscure here. He doesn’t explain why it’s important to study these matters, but that’s how I understood it when I read it. “The influence of Spanish Jewish religious philosophy is great in the general philosophy of the Middle Ages.” By the way, I’m not so sure of that. “And the beginning of modern philosophy in the Renaissance period was greatly influenced by Kabbalah.” I’m also not so sure of that. There were strong interactions there, and that’s well known. Even Ramchal in a later period is known to have been in contact with Christian scholars, and long before him in Italy this was a very well-known phenomenon. “Prince Pico della Mirandola”—that’s what I mentioned before. He dealt a great deal with Kabbalah. He was an Italian sage who dealt a lot with Kabbalah. And Leibniz too—rumor says he dealt with it a great deal. Not rumor; I think those are facts. He dealt with it a great deal. And they maintained ties with Italian Jewish sages. Delmedigo, for example, was one of them—the one who wrote Bechinat HaDat, if you know it. It came out not long ago, a few years back, at Tel Aviv University. And there were close ties between the sages—mainly in Italy, I think—between the Jewish sages and the Christian sages. The Christians studied a lot of Kabbalah in that period, in the Renaissance, and even somewhat later. But to say that there was great influence—what remains of it? I wonder whether anything remained. It may be that in many respects it influenced Leibniz and also Pico della Mirandola, but the question is what remained of it—I don’t know exactly. I don’t know. As far as I know, at least, I don’t feel there really was such extensive influence. There were certain periods of not-insignificant interaction, let’s put it that way. But influence also means something that endures over time, that shaped patterns over time—not that it influenced this or that person locally and then passed out of the world. About that I don’t know; I’m not sure. At any rate I don’t really find it, don’t really feel it. “Which includes the words of the Rabbi about Jewish philosophy and world literature bringing the hearts of the nations nearer in the recognition of one supreme Name.” Fine. “Form and pattern.” So, is that it—the copies are over? No. What time is it now? Ten. Fine, all right, we’ll stop here. What do the nations really say about what he did? Why study it? The Hebrew expression of wisdom. What? He said there “to a limited degree,” meaning that I think broadly there is no Torah there; that’s true. Here and there, learning points that may be missing for you can fill things in for you. But sitting in some gentile academy of one kind or another and learning this or that content—I don’t think that’s a substitute for systematic Torah study. It can help you at a point that you’re missing, in personal wisdom. Why can’t we simply learn real wisdom from the nations? Because it isn’t found there. Because it isn’t found there. There are sparks, points. Even when we spoke about the resemblance between mystical traditions, that only goes so far—whether from one source or not—but there’s also a lot that isn’t. Now the question how to sort it out is not at all simple. If you learn Kabbalah and then suddenly find some point there, and then you study—I don’t know—Indian or Buddhist mysticism, and suddenly you grasp some point there that had been missing for you, then you completed the point that was missing. You brought that wisdom into Torah. What does that mean? You took some point that has a root in Torah, so it completed Torah for you. But you can’t now just sit there and simply learn the whole Torah. The Torah isn’t there; the Torah is here. So there are sparks scattered among the nations, as in the kabbalistic view. There are sparks scattered among the nations, and you gather sparks, you collect what is lacking. As I said, the influence existed, but in a very limited way. Something major, like going there to study—no. There are points. “Do not believe there is Torah among the nations; believe there is wisdom among the nations.” The big question is how you set the proportions. You cannot learn Torah from the nations, and you cannot learn Torah from this or that philosopher. What about wisdom among the nations? Why not simply learn real wisdom from them? Torah is not wisdom. Torah is not wisdom. Torah is a unique expression—we’ll see exactly the passage that deals with this—a unique expression of the depth of the set of facts. What? No. It is Hebrew, and that dimension of the Jewish people that encounters it—that is Torah. So only there. Of what? What emerges from it as true is true for everyone. It is true for the Englishman, true for the Frenchman, true for the German. True for everyone. But the forms here are individual. Here it’s simply—here it simply isn’t like that every time. But that content is not open to everyone. Here there is no longer a mixture of forms. This is the essential dimension. In the forms there are all sorts of things, each person according to how he sees them—that’s that person’s Torah. Each one and the form in which he sees things. So that changes. But there are certain patterns that are the side—we’ll get to them. A pattern is a form. The pattern apparently is only one. And the pattern is not the body of wisdom, but the form by which to reach the body of wisdom. There cannot be only one form of reaching wisdom. If it’s a general pattern, the question is whether he can do it, whether he can do such a thing. The question is: that form—can he? So the question is form. That is the only form by which to reach the body of the question, whether he can or cannot. Yes. But what is true there is also true here. The question is whether this can, and that can—that it is true both there and here. That is already a kind of something else, a different kind of pattern. Let’s talk for a moment about that pattern. But what is true is true. Form is form, and that form too must be a pattern. Pattern is the first form, and that form is form-of-form. And the pattern is also a form, but it is one form; there is no other. We talked about this on Sabbath afternoon when we discussed the names of God—were you in the lesson? We discussed the form of the Tetragrammaton, the concept of being within the name of being, and maybe that is the great pattern. His name is unique. His name looks like a proper name, but it isn’t exactly that, because in the end the dimension of the name simply appears. A name is, in some sense, somewhat arbitrary, right? Names are description; they are a description of its essence, a description of the essence of the form. A name, right, you can give it that name, but you can also give it whatever name you want. A name is somewhat arbitrary. The Name of God, from the side of the fitting form of the name, is no longer arbitrary. It becomes something else, no longer arbitrary. The name is something else—it is a name—but it is not arbitrary. What does it mean for a name not to be arbitrary? A non-arbitrary name basically means that the only way you have to reach, to refer to the thing itself—not through forms and subjective things—is only through that non-arbitrary thing. Torah is exactly like that name. In other words, the Torah relates to the body of wisdom in a non-arbitrary way, in an essential way. It is not a description. It is like a name. And when you study the four cubits, it’s not just etiquette and all sorts of ideas that you can derive. The four cubits are the body of wisdom. We spoke about this in Nefesh HaChaim. The Rabbi spoke there about whether study is greater or action is greater, in the evening lesson one time. That’s the Gemara there in Nefesh HaChaim, no? It’s the objective dimension of Torah, reaching all those levels. The Torah itself is that level. The four cubits are the body of wisdom—not that from them you reach lofty philosophies. This itself is the body of wisdom. This is the core of wisdom. True, there are implications and lofty philosophies, but it is also something in itself; it too is the body of wisdom. And that is exactly what I mean. It is a name that is not arbitrary. You could not have reached it otherwise. If the Torah and the four cubits were only a way of reaching, and the end was to arrive at philosophical thoughts and forms, then there could have been several kinds of paths. But the four cubits are not only the paths; the four cubits are the thing itself, and there too one can arrive. Right. The Torah is the Hebrew language. Right, right. The Torah is the Hebrew language.