The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 26

Table of Contents

• [0:19] Introduction to section 25 and the topic of hearing
• [2:18] Kabbalah and auditory logic versus visual logic
• [7:48] The sense of sight versus hearing in section 28
• [14:20] The uniqueness of hearing and the letters in the Shema
• [17:24] Negative and positive attributes of the Divine Name
• [24:26] Positive attributes in Kabbalah through hearing
• [28:27] A divine image in consciousness and not in reality
• [31:16] The prophets and the visual capacity of Atzilut
• [33:27] Divine unity in hearing according to the philosophers
• [36:43] Light as a positive characterization of Atzilut
• [40:20] Rabbi Yosef Albo: connecting philosophy and Kabbalah
• [44:14] Kabbalah and philosophy: descriptions of the worlds
• [46:41] The separate intellects and their connection to the sefirot
• [50:23] Metatron – the active intellect and the connection between worlds

Summary

General Overview

The text argues that from section 25 onward, the article moves from describing the power of sight to clarifying “auditory-ness” as an additional level of cognition, especially as a way of moving beyond Plotinus and discussing Judah Abravanel. It presents a kabbalistic division of the worlds into Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, and claims that the philosophers’ visual method deals mainly with the separate worlds, whereas Kabbalah deals with Atzilut, where “there is no sight, only hearing.” It adds in the name of the Leshem that the worlds are not merely different descriptive languages for the same content, but different and parallel realities, like seal and imprint. From that, the saying becomes understandable that where philosophy ends, Kabbalah begins. The text then presents a connection between sight and positive attributes, and between hearing and unity and another kind of divine attributes, and it builds a framework that connects the philosophers’ language about separate intellects with the kabbalists’ language about sefirot through the figure of Metatron and the active intellect.

The shift from section 25: sight versus hearing in the kabbalistic worlds

The text explains that in the kabbalistic worlds, Atzilut is considered actual divinity in the sense that the Infinite is clothed within it in the form of “He and His attributes are one,” whereas Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah are separate worlds beneath Atzilut that contain only an emanation of the divine light that sustains them. It states that the philosophers, whose method is visual, deal with the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, while Kabbalah deals with the world of Atzilut. It formulates a general claim in the name of the Nazir that in Atzilut there is no sight but only hearing, and therefore that is where auditory logic, Torah, or Kabbalah operates, whereas the philosophers not only did not deal with this, they even claimed that no such thing exists and that there are no mediating intermediate levels between the separate beings and divinity.

The saying about the end of philosophy and the beginning of Kabbalah

The text interprets the saying “where philosophy ends, Kabbalah begins” in a straightforward way as a division between fields of inquiry: philosophy deals with Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, and Kabbalah with Atzilut. It adds that at the end of the article there will appear a classification according to which even the world of Beriah belongs to the worlds that “hear and do not see,” according to the Nazir, and not only Atzilut.

The position of the Leshem: the worlds as realities and not as translations

The text presents a common view among theorists according to which Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah are a lower translation or descriptive levels of what happens above, and it describes this as a conception that effectively denies higher worlds and leaves only the created being facing the Holy One, blessed be He, with different languages for describing the same process. In the name of the Leshem it brings a sharp opposition to this view and argues that “all the worlds exist,” and each world exists in its own right, even though there is a one-to-one correspondence among them. It compares this to “seal and imprint,” which appears in the Arizal, and emphasizes that we are dealing with two different particulars, not with two ways of relating to the same thing.

Section 25: sight grasps appearances and not the thing in its truth

The text reads the Rashbatz in Magen Avot, according to whom the sense of sight grasps perceptible things and the appearances that are in the subject, and does not grasp the thing seen in its truth, but only in relation to the appearance that it bears. In a footnote it adds a comparison to Critique of Pure Reason about subjective cognition, which does not know the thing in itself but only as it appears before us, and it corrects an internal reference: “There it should be corrected; this is not chapter 14, it is chapter 30.”

Section 26: physical sight, intellectual sight, and divine unity in hearing

The text states that the sense of sight grasps only body in its appearances and form, and explains that every “seeing of man” in Scripture regarding the separate intellects and God is not sight of the eye but intellectual apprehension, as Yonatan and Onkelos translated, followed by Rabbeinu Saadia, and Maimonides elaborated on this in the Guide. It highlights the contrast that “divine unity is in hearing” and takes as the foundational verse: “Hear, O Israel.” It also connects this to an earlier statement in the article about the distortion involved in imagining divinity as light, and argues that “there is nothing in reality that can be imagined without its being a body,” and therefore even light belongs, in this sense, to the domain of the physical.

Three levels of thought and the definition of auditory-ness

The text suggests three forms of thought: imaging in pictures, verbal thinking, and direct thinking in the meaning represented by words without conscious verbal mediation. It places auditory-ness as a third layer connected to meaning itself, not to image or words, and raises the question whether this division exactly overlaps with the Nazir’s distinction between visual and auditory logic. It illustrates the tension through “horseness,” and suggests the possibility that visuality is the image of “the perfect horse,” whereas auditory-ness is the grasp of the abstract concept of “horseness” itself.

Footnote 50 on sound, letters, vowels, and the Shema

The text quotes in footnote 50 that “speech belongs to the sense of hearing,” and that the quality of sound is connected to melody, letters, vowels, and cantillation. It brings from the Jerusalem Talmud that “the letters are like bodies and the vowels are like souls,” and states that the great commandment of unity called the yoke of the kingdom of heaven was given in the language of hearing: “Hear, O Israel.” It explains that pronouncing the letters with the mouth reveals the “soul” of the vowels, and connects this to the halakhic discussion of “he read but did not make it audible to his own ear,” and to the idea that unity is not performed through sight but through hearing.

Negative attributes, visual philosophy, and the limit of apprehension

The text raises the concept of negative attributes as a central background point, and explains that the philosophers reject positive attributes with regard to divinity because God is beyond grasp and because their method is visual. It links an attribute to the form produced in consciousness through contemplation, and argues that sight creates attributes, and therefore positive attributes belong only in the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, where visual apprehension exists. It presents the philosophers’ position according to which beyond the separate beings there is only one divine entity without intermediate levels, and from this it follows that divinity is inaccessible to sight or sense and can therefore be spoken of only in negative terms.

Kabbalah and auditory-ness: another kind of positive attributes and sefirot

The text argues that Kabbalah assumes a mediating realm of many upper worlds in which “sight does not rule,” yet an auditory kind of perception exists. It explains that unlike Abravanel, who posited a logos beyond the ideas but regarded it as inaccessible, the kabbalists claim that there is access to the logos behind the ideas by means of auditory logic. It states that the sefirot and the names of God are positive attributes of divinity in an auditory rather than visual sense, and therefore the language of the sefirot appears to philosophers as anthropomorphism or heresy, but it is actually a different kind of description, not one taken from the philosophers’ visual mechanism.

The names of God as existing mediators and not merely as labels

The text distinguishes between an ordinary linguistic attribute and a kabbalistic entity, and argues that in Kabbalah “the names of God are entities.” They are representations created in order to serve as divine attributes for created beings. It explains that the hearer does not create an attribute out of direct interaction with the divine essence, but rather approaches mediating levels of governance and names, and through listening to them positive cognition is formed. It adds that the prophets are capable of “seeing” a visual translation of Atzilut as “the likeness of the glory of the Lord,” whereas of the glory itself “there is no appearance,” and it notes that section 28 will open up this distinction.

Light as an analogy for Atzilut and its positive role

The text returns to section 21 and presents Averroes as saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, should be called “light” in order to rescue the masses from anthropomorphism. It suggests that the term “light” also carries a positive aspect, because light is something that exists and not merely a property of something else, unlike “wind,” which describes the movement of air. It explains that in Kabbalah, when people speak of light they mean Atzilut and the upper created worlds, not the essence itself, and from that it follows that light is suited to Atzilut because it is not a “form” of the essence but an existing mediating reality whose role is divine representation.

Section 27 and footnote 52: combining philosophy and Kabbalah through intellects and sefirot

The text quotes Rabbi Yosef Albo in Sefer Ha-Ikkarim and the Rashbatz as figures who combine philosophy and Kabbalah, where the concept of separate intellects, the spheres, and the active intellect are integrated with the ten sefirot, and the first three are called “light that cannot be grasped.” In footnote 52 it brings a description of the emanation of ten intellects in ten spheres, where the tenth is the active intellect according to Avicenna and Maimonides, and in the words of the Sages it is “the prince of the world.” It also brings the description that the kabbalists attributed the days of creation to the last seven intellects and called the effects “sefirot.” It also quotes that “the masters of the sefirot say that the tenth sefirah, called Atarah, is Metatron, and the philosophers say that it is the active intellect,” and concludes that although one might think such a synthesis turns the movers of the spheres into sefirot, still “the separate intellects are not sefirot.”

Defining the domains of sight and hearing, and the boundary of Metatron

The text explains that the separate intellects and the angels belong to the separate worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, and therefore they are the domain of visual philosophy, whereas the sefirot belong to Atzilut and are therefore the domain of auditory logic. It places Metatron, or the active intellect, as the upper seam of the world of Beriah and as the boundary where “philosophy ends” and from which “Kabbalah begins,” so that the active intellect is the peak of philosophical discourse but a low level relative to the language of the sefirot. It emphasizes that cleaving to the active intellect in Maimonides is not identity with divinity itself, but belongs to a model of created perfection, and it goes on to anticipate a description of the hierarchy of the worlds through the end of the article.

Okay, so we’re at section 25, and maybe before we continue we’ll just briefly get back into the topic. Up to this point, basically, we’ve described the power of hearing, and from section 25 onward, more or less until the end of the article, we’re trying to see how we move beyond Plotinus and Don Yehuda Abrabanel. Meaning: how the role of auditory thinking as opposed to visual thinking begins to be explained here. What is this auditory mode? It’s really the additional level. So I think we already spoke about this: within the framework of the kabbalistic worlds there are Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. There are also realms above Atzilut, but for our purposes this is more or less the picture, where Atzilut is commonly said to be actual divinity. Of course, “actual divinity” doesn’t mean the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, but rather that the Infinite is clothed within it in such a way that “He and His vessels are one.” And Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah are three worlds beneath the world of Atzilut, and those are what are called the separate worlds. Meaning, they are not divinity—though of course there is also within them some kind of illumination from the divine light, not the divine light itself but some radiance from it, and that is what sustains these worlds—but they themselves are something else. And basically, in general, one could say that the philosophers, whose method can be called a visual method, deal with the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, while Kabbalah deals with the world of Atzilut. And the Nazir’s general claim here, I think in the remaining passage, is that in Atzilut there is no sight, only hearing. And therefore what operates there is auditory logic, or Torah, or Kabbalah. The philosophers did not deal with it—not only did they not deal with it, they claimed that it doesn’t exist, meaning there is no such thing. We already discussed this: that between the separate beings and divinity there are no intermediate mediating levels at all, and this is also connected to the issue of negative attributes, which we’ll come back to in a moment. And that’s more or less, I think, the picture. I said Beriah, Yetzirah, Asiyah, although at the end of the article we’ll see that Beriah actually still belongs to the worlds that are heard and not seen, in the Nazir’s classification—not only Atzilut but also the world of Beriah. But we’ll get there. In any case, this, we said, is simply the plain meaning of that common saying—I just don’t know its source—that “where philosophy ends, Kabbalah begins.” That’s basically all it is. I think that’s what has to be understood there. Since I don’t know the source, I can’t say what the original speaker meant, but I think this is how it should be understood: philosophy simply deals with the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, and Kabbalah deals with the worlds of Atzilut. Where philosophy ends, Kabbalah begins, very simply in this picture. Many theoreticians think that what exists in the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah is ultimately just some kind of translation into lower terms of what happens above—just levels of description. But the claim, which I think we’ve already discussed more than once in the name of the Leshem, who argues forcefully against this view, is that each of these worlds exists in its own right. It’s not a collection of parallel terminologies all dealing with the same thing. You can describe the powers of the human soul in one kind of language, and you can describe them in a more elevated language. You can describe what happens in the world in one language and in a higher language. That is the view that basically says there are no higher worlds. There is man, or a created being, or separate beings, opposite the Holy One, blessed be He; there are just different languages for describing what happens in man or in the world. The Leshem’s claim is—and this is the view of most kabbalists—that this is not true. In other words, all the worlds exist. One world exists beneath another world, and it is true that there is a one-to-one correspondence between them. It’s like seal and imprint, as it appears in the Ari, that each world is as though stamped with the seal of another. But these are two different particulars, not two ways of relating to the same thing. Fine. So that is, overall, I think the picture. That’s more or less what he is going to say here, with different emphases. This is just the big picture so we can see the trajectory, and now let’s begin seeing it inside the text. So maybe let’s quickly read section 25. I’m almost sure we already read it, though I’m not one hundred percent sure—maybe we only gave an introduction before section 25. What? Only what Rabbi said just now. Yes, yes, right, I remember we said that. So I don’t remember whether we also read section 25, so let’s read it quickly. According to the Rashbatz in the book Magen Avot, the sense of sight apprehends sensibles, namely all visible things that are in a subject, and it does not apprehend the thing seen in its truth, but only in relation to the appearance in which it inheres. And in the note below he says: behold, this is like in the Critique of Pure Reason, regarding subjective knowledge that does not know the thing in itself but only as it appears before us, as it is in a subject and not the thing in truth. See below, “the thing in itself and its appearances”; there it should be corrected—not chapter 14 but chapter 30. So the sense of sight basically deals with the thing as it appears to our eyes. And we have already spoken about this more than once, about this Kantian picture of matter and form, and the thing that appears to our eyes we see, while the matter that we see—the connection to the matter itself, how it appears to us—that we do through auditoryness, through hearing. The sense of sight is the noblest of the senses; God, blessed be He, gave it to man only so that it should guide him to apprehend Him, blessed be He, for through this sense one apprehends the wisdom of God, blessed be He, in the existence of this world, and in general one ought to thank God, blessed be He, for granting us this delight, namely sight, which is bodily yet close to the intellectual because of its great subtlety. In other words, with it we can see, grasp, all kinds of things happening around us through the sense of sight, and for that of course we have to thank the Holy One, blessed be He. But this is only the first stage of cognition, and it is the visual stage. And here in the next section he moves to the auditory level. So he says as follows: The sense of sight apprehends only body, in its appearance and form. Right—from the first section we would have thought that this is the summit of cognition, the sense of sight, but that was only an opening to the next section, meaning section 26. So section 26 says: The sense of sight apprehends only body, in its appearance and form, but every “seeing” of man that is found in Scripture regarding separate intellects, and all the more so regarding God, is not seeing with the eye but intellectual apprehension, as Yonatan and Onkelos translated, and following them the Gaon Rabbeinu Saadia of blessed memory; and Maimonides elaborated on this in the Guide. However, hearing regarding the words of Torah and the divine unity is through hearing—the divine unity is through hearing: “Hear, O Israel.” So we saw this once, when he spoke about light in section 17. He says there: great kabbalists, cautious and greatly illumined, thought to liken God to light; they think that the Holy One, blessed be He, is light, and his view is that this matter is not body, and this is the height of confusion, for there is no image in reality that can be imagined that is not body. Even light, basically, is body. Here when he says the sense of sight apprehends only body in its appearance and form, that means that the sense of sight, like light itself, deals with bodily things and apprehends only bodily things. Now the philosophers—Maimonides and Rabbeinu Saadia Gaon—say that even in seeing there is an aspect of thought. But still, I think he doesn’t mean to say that this is what he himself calls hearing. Rather, even within thought there is a visual form of thought and an auditory form of thought, and when Scripture speaks of seeing, it really means the visual form of thought. However, hearing regarding the words of Torah and the divine unity is through hearing—“Hear, O Israel.” And that is done through hearing; it goes beyond that seeing spoken of there, even beyond intellectual seeing. What is intellectual seeing? So I think we already discussed this. I think we discussed it maybe even more than once—we mentioned Tosafot and the Rashba, right? About thinking in images as opposed to verbal thinking: that one can think about things by imagining them, and that is basically visual thinking, and one can think about them verbally, think about the ideas contained in them. And that is perhaps closer to what can be called auditory thinking—or maybe even something deeper than verbal, something abstract, what the words represent. Not the words themselves, but thinking what the words represent without an image. Okay? There are three levels of thinking that one can try to define. There is seeing the situation, or the thing, or whatever one is thinking about—seeing it in imagination, of course, not with the eyes, but still what we have in our head is an image, right? What we imagine in our head, when we have a picture in our head, has to be a bodily object, right? You can’t see in your mind something that isn’t bodily. If something non-bodily has no form, then you can’t see it with the eyes either. I cannot see “horseness” in my head, right? You can’t see that in your head. This doesn’t really fully cover visual cognition when I say imagining in pictures, but it’s an example of visual cognition. Fine? After that, of course, one can think verbally, and that is already thinking not about the thing as it appears but about ideas. The ideas are expressed in words, but maybe there is a deeper root here, namely thinking about the things represented by the words, not about the words themselves—thinking the raw thing itself. Yes, when I hear a sentence, when I hear a sentence, I hear the words, but they generate meanings for me, right? It may be that in thinking there is such a mode of thought, or such a cognitive layer, in which I arrive directly at the thing itself and do not pass through the verbal mediator. Fine? I think the meaning directly, not the words and then extracting the meaning from them. So I’m saying one could define three forms of thinking. Maybe this happens under different circumstances, or maybe all three happen all the time in parallel. I don’t know exactly—I’d have to think about it more, and maybe even examine things, things that are not only speculation. I think there are things here that can be checked. But it’s clear that in principle there are these three layers, right? I can imagine the picture, I can think in words about an abstract thing that has no image, and I can think the abstract thing itself—the thing the words told me. When you say words to me, clearly there is a stage beyond the words, right? When I decipher something you say to me, it doesn’t end with my just taking your words and storing words in memory. Those words represent meaning for me, right? And that meaning is what I insert into memory or into my understanding, right? So there are always three levels: there is the image, there are the words that describe it, and there is the meaning of the words. And that is… auditoryness is the third stage. That’s what I think. Auditoryness is supposed to be connected to some kind of third stage—I think so. I’m not sure this is exactly one-to-one, because as I already said, visual seeing in the mind does not cover everything the Nazir calls visual logic. Because it’s perfectly clear that “horseness”—not the perfect horse, but horseness itself—cannot be seen, right? The perfect horse you can imagine, but the concept of horseness you cannot even imagine visually. It’s not something seen; it’s a collection of ideas. It’s not a thing, right? So even in imagination I cannot bring it up in the form of an image. And still, for him, this is called visuality—according to the Nazir, I mean. I think. I’m not one hundred percent sure about that, and I think we already hesitated about this once, because it may be that when he talks about horseness he means the perfect horse, really. When I imagine it in my head, I simply imagine the perfect horse—that is my way of thinking about horseness, and that really is a visual way of thinking. And the auditory way is to think about horseness itself, not the perfect horse in which horseness is embodied, but to think about the concept of horseness, an abstract concept. Maybe that is the division. I’m not one hundred percent sure; I didn’t fully succeed in understanding whether that is his distinction. In any case, here I think a few important things need to be noted. Maybe before that—in the note at the end, under letter nun, he says as follows: Speech belongs to the sense of hearing. Right—when he says “Hear, O Israel” regarding the divine unity being through hearing, he says: speech is in the sense of hearing. The quality of sound—what is it? Regarding melody, the letters, vowels and cantillation marks. For they already said in the Jerusalem Talmud that the letters are like bodies and the vowels are like souls. Right—their pronunciation is the soul. And there, in that same Jerusalem Talmud, the great commandment of unity, called the yoke of the kingdom of heaven, was given to us in the language of hearing: “Hear, O Israel.” So basically what he is saying is that the letters are bodies and the vowels are their souls. Meaning, the shape of the letter is a body; behind it there is a soul. When one pronounces the letter there is movement. Maybe one should make it audible to one’s own ears when reciting Shema. So if one recited it but did not make it audible to one’s ears, there is a discussion whether he fulfilled the obligation or not. But clearly if he did not say it at all, but read it like a book—not that he read it without making it audible to his ears, but that he actually read it like a book, silently, in his heart, not with his mouth—then he certainly did not fulfill the obligation. One has to say it. It’s just not certain whether one has to make it audible to one’s ears. Why? Because the soul of these letters at least comes to expression in their pronunciation. The letters themselves are bodies, but the divine unity is in hearing. You have to bring the soul out from the bodies and say the letters. That is how you pronounce them, that is how you actualize the vowels. Vowels cannot be read. Vowels are made to be spoken, right? Not read. One has to speak the letter, and then I bring into actuality the soul behind it. Fine? Therefore the divine unity is through hearing. In the recitation of Shema, if you merely read it and do not say it, then you are not effecting the unity through hearing but through seeing. Unity is not effected through seeing; it is effected through hearing. Therefore at the very least you have to speak it, perhaps even make it audible to your own ears. And apparently there is some meaning here that speech itself actually acts in the world. It is not only in the experiential or educational sense for myself, but there is power in the letters themselves; you bring some force into the world. It does something in the world, this speech. And therefore you have to do it—it is to bring that soul from potential into actuality, the soul of those letters. That is the way to act with those letters. But I think that is the connection between the unity—what he says, that the divine unity is through hearing—and this Jewish law of one who recited but did not make it audible to his own ears. Fine, but that is just a side note. Now let’s go back to the main point. Here, I think, is the place to start discussing something that he really only hints at, but in my opinion it lies in the background the whole time. He hints at it in section 28. You don’t have 28 yet? You do, right, you have 28. There he says—there he says “and so too Elijah in appearance,” we’ll come back to this more—but he describes three worlds here, and he says the fourth world is the Name, the essence—toward the end of the paragraph before last—“the Name whose essence is hidden, such that nothing can be understood of Him, nor through attributes of perfection, except by negations, which are in a still small voice.” Here he introduces the concept of negative attributes, and I think this is in the background all along. So I think we should bring it out into the open here. The philosophers claim that there are no positive attributes of divinity—most philosophers claim that. And the meaning and reason for this is, as we said above, because God Himself is something ungraspable. Everyone agrees on that. And since philosophy deals only with Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah—only with Creation, Formation, and Action, abbreviated as BYA—then regarding the separate beings that I can see, they have attributes, right? What are a thing’s attributes? Its form. When I contemplate it, a form is generated in me; that is how I grasp the thing, and those are the thing’s attributes. What can one contemplate? Only Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. Philosophy, as we prefaced, deals only with the three lower worlds. Therefore, from the perspective of philosophy, everything above these three worlds—which actually is not much, only the Holy One, blessed be He, because they do not have all the intermediary worlds that exist in Kabbalah—for the philosophers, everything beyond the separate beings is simply one abstract entity with the absolute unity of divinity. Fine? And regarding that, of course, there can be no positive attributes. Why? Because philosophers grasp everything in terms of sight, and seeing God is certainly impossible. So all we can say about God is only negative attributes. There is no form by which we can look at God as we look at everything else, right? He is not something accessible to gazes or senses, not even to the sensing intellect. Meaning, this is not something one can… He is not accessible to us, and it is not something within our experience. So naturally there can be no positive attributes in Him, because the view is that positive attributes belong only to BYA, because only sight creates attributes. And that is why he prefaced here what he said in the previous section: that sight does not apprehend the thing seen, but only in relation to the appearance in which it is clothed. This is the Kantian mechanism of how sight creates attributes. And this is to explain to us where Kabbalah, or auditory logic, differs from visual logic. The philosophers, who deal in a visual method, deal only with the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah—with worlds. One can see them, in principle see them. Of course the worlds of Beriah and Yetzirah are more abstract things, but visual cognition is accessible to such things. And therefore there one can generate positive images, positive attributes. I look at the table and positive attributes arise in me: green—not that it is “not not-green,” but it is green; I see that. Everything accessible to my sight gives rise to images in me, and therefore it has positive attributes. So say the philosophers. There are things that are not accessible to me—actually one thing—and that is divinity. Divinity is not accessible to me because it is above the separate worlds. There sight does not apply. And whoever takes sight as all-encompassing says: fine, then divinity has no attributes. There are only negative attributes. Meaning, I can say what He is not, but I cannot say, as a result of seeing, what He is. There is no form for divinity. One cannot say what He is. So maybe that really is not the result of contemplation but of information passed on to us, or something of that sort. It is not the result of contemplation. So can that information also be given in positive attributes? No, because even if they give you the information in positive attributes, you will not be able—it does not represent this essence, because you grasp the information as visual information. So even if you did not receive it by observing the essence itself, it still is not true that He is green; it is not merely that I cannot see that He is green. Even if they tell me verbally that He is green, it is untrue. The concept of greenness does not describe divinity. Positive attributes cannot describe an essence of that kind. And negative ones? Negative ones yes. If I say He is not lowly, I say He is exalted—meaning He is not lowly, something like that. Yes, apparently that is something that applies even to divinity. But everything else is truly blocked off from the philosophers. Now Kabbalah—we said that where philosophy ends, Kabbalah begins. Meaning, Kabbalah assumes the existence of many more worlds from the separate beings up to the Holy One, blessed be He, and what distinguishes them is how direct their connection is to the Infinite that is clothed within them. Fine? And that is what defines how low or high they are: from the Infinite, through line and contraction, Adam Kadmon, Atzilut—earlier we called all these worlds Atzilut—and then Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah are the three lower worlds. Fine? Let’s call all the upper worlds, for the purposes of this discussion, Atzilut. Fine? Now in those worlds, sight truly does not rule. But that still does not mean that we cannot have cognition there. Remember what we said about Plotinus? Plotinus said: true, there is a world of ideas, there is some abstract world, and there is also Logos beyond the world of ideas, right? Like the Alexandrians. But I only know that it exists. Beyond that I cannot say anything about it. They do not have Logos—not that there is no Logos, but they have no access to the Logos. Plato said there is no Logos; there is the world of ideas and that’s it. There are forms. The Alexandrians inserted Logos behind the ideas, and Don Yehuda Abrabanel followed them—not Plotinus, Don Yehuda Abrabanel followed them and said that there is Logos beyond the ideas, but he also said that it is inaccessible to us. Why? Because he was a Neoplatonist, meaning he believed in visual methods, so from his perspective we have no access. True, there is a soul behind these things, behind these abstract ideas, but we have no way to get to it. Meaning, he did not recognize auditoryness. He only understood that there is such a concept with respect to which auditoryness might be a sign, but he did not recognize this auditory method itself, and therefore from his perspective it was unattainable. It’s not something about which I can say anything except that it exists. It reminds you a bit of what we may have discussed in the evening, for those who were here in the evening: when one speaks about matter, the only thing one can say about it is that it exists—not describe it. It is basically the same idea. What he claims here is that the kabbalists say we have access even to the Logos behind the ideas. True, that access is not through the visual philosophical modes. That access is through what is called the auditory mode. And we can create images—or positive attributes—through hearing. True, they are a different kind of attribute; we won’t say that He is green or yellow. Therefore all the attributes we form there are seemingly invented attributes. There is Netzach, Hod, Yesod, all this language of the sefirot—it is as though these are attributes of divinity. But they are attributes that are in some sense invented, attributes not drawn from the philosophers’ world. But they truly are positive attributes of divinity. In Kabbalah there are positive attributes of divinity. Only they are really the result not of looking at divinity, but of listening to divinity. And when I speak about divinity, I mean Atzilut for the moment, not the essence itself; about that one never speaks. But I am speaking there about Atzilut, what for the philosophers lies outside the field altogether. Therefore Kabbalah also recognizes positive attributes. It recognizes positive attributes because its concept of attributes is different from the philosophers’ concept of attributes. Even something that is the product of hearing, of listening, is also an attribute. But something like that can already be received from Atzilut as well. Therefore there are positive attributes in Kabbalah. And therefore the divine unity is effected through hearing. When you want to grasp divinity itself, the divine unity is only through hearing, not through seeing. The philosophers indeed do not do that, so all they can say is what it is not. They do not know how to say what it is. They say what it is not. To say that God has a beard and all kinds of things like that—dikna and so on, limbs and movements and countenances and all kinds of structures that Kabbalah describes—this of course appears to the philosophers as heresy or corporealization or things like that. No—you must not speak that way about divinity. All you can say is that perhaps He is not lacking a beard, but not that He has a beard. At most—even that, I think, already sounds totally crude to philosophers. But dikna is a concept very common in Kabbalah, like every other limb. And of course one must understand that these are not descriptions from the world of philosophical descriptions. It is true that in the senses in which philosophers define attributes, the kabbalists also agree that there one has only negative attributes. But they claim that we have another route to attributes, one that also produces another kind of attribute—auditory attributes. The names of God are His attributes. The sefirot are His attributes. It really sounds like a language not from our world—the kabbalistic language is a different language. But these really are attributes of divinity. And therefore in our language, everything we are now saying is only about negative attributes. The philosophers are right. But they are right only regarding the part of the picture they are talking about. The kabbalists simply add another part to the picture and say: we also have the ability to grasp Atzilut, not only Yetzirah and Asiyah, because we also have auditory ability. And here positive attributes of divinity arise. Now it’s worth continuing a little more and understanding what exactly this means. These attributes of divinity—Atzilut, the sefirot and all that exists in the world of Atzilut—are not attributes as we said before in the same sense that greenness is an attribute of this table. They are not attributes in the same sense that objects have attributes. We already said: these are attributes of another kind, and they are reached in a different way as well. But one must understand that these attributes, although they are attributes of divinity, are beings that stand on their own. An attribute, in our language, is not a being, right? An attribute in our language is something that characterizes a being. We look at a being and, in our consciousness, its attribute is formed, right? But the attribute itself is not an entity standing on its own. It is some characteristic of the being as I contemplate it; that is what arises in my cognition. With divinity it does not work that way. Why does it not work that way? Because in truth we have no direct way to create interaction with divinity. Even hearing does not reach God Himself. You cannot—there is no way for you to reach God Himself. He is not in your world, neither through hearing nor through sight. What happens, though—and we already mentioned this once at the beginning of the article in sections 2, 3, 4—is that God created in the world things that function as His attributes. But notice: He created things. They are beings. They are not attached to Him. They are not things such that when I contemplate Him, images or form or characteristics of God are generated in me. It doesn’t work that way; I cannot contemplate Him. The Holy One, blessed be He, as it were created representatives of Himself in the world. And when I contemplate them—or listen to them, I cannot contemplate them, I can listen to them—then in me some kind of image is generated. Not an image—again, that’s also not accurate. Some kind of form of divinity is generated in me, okay? Let’s put it that way. But that form is not generated in the same sense that form is generated from a being. Form generated from a being is not something that stands on its own. I look at the being and a form arises in my consciousness. The divine form that arises from hearing—I cannot hear divinity itself, I cannot create contact with divinity itself. He creates intermediaries to which I do have access—namely all His names, all His modes of governance in the world, okay? And when I approach them through my auditory logic or my auditory cognition, then I can generate within myself some positive characteristics of divinity. But those characteristics truly do not come from interaction with divinity itself. In that, the philosophers are right. But the philosophers did not acknowledge their existence. Yes, Maimonides, as is known, did not acknowledge the existence of demons and all sorts of things—let’s call them spiritual, or mystical things. Why? Because from his perspective visuality determined everything. Kabbalah claims that there are additional entities in the world. True, these are not entities with the kind of existence we know in our world. These are entities that the Holy One, blessed be He, created, whose function is to be divine attributes. That is their function. That is what is called the names of God. The names of God are beings in Kabbalah. For the philosophers, the names of God are ways of referring to the Holy One, blessed be He, like my name and everyone else’s name. That is how one refers to Him; that is simply my way of referring to Him. I have no other way to refer to Him. In Kabbalah, the names of God are beings—not nouns, but beings. The names themselves are beings. The names and the sefirot are synonymous terms, yes? The names of God or the sefirot are the same thing for me at the moment. So there is here, in effect, a different kind of relation between the essence and its attributes. The attributes do not relate to the Holy One, blessed be He, as the attributes of this table relate to this table, but their purpose is still to constitute positive attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He. And the way to access them is through listening. The philosophers grasp the names? What? The philosophers grasp the names. Very similarly to our names—meaning, it is a way, yes, some sort of way, to refer to the Holy One, blessed be He. But they are not beings. The name of God is not a noun that exists in the world. For the kabbalists, the name of God is a noun in the sense of an actual being; there is such an entity called Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh. Does it also have a form? Yes, yes, certainly. It is a non-visual form; it has an auditory form. The divine unity—to say “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One”—is to give expression to that Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh. Even the letters themselves have meaning; in a certain sense that is even a form of the visual form of Atzilut. The letters themselves also have significance in some respect, and I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about what the letters represent. The prophets manage to see these things; that is their advantage over us. We hear these things. The prophets manage to see these things—to create, as it were, a visual form out of Atzilut, which for us is out of the question. Even from the kabbalists’ perspective it is out of the question, not only from the philosophers’ perspective. Fine? The prophets are in a different state of consciousness. For them visuality operates differently, so that they can translate what happens in abstract worlds into a visual image. That is the difference between a prophet and a kabbalist, let’s say—or between a prophet and a sage. Fine? Is that not something essential—that one cannot see these things in a form? No, no. Now he—we’ll see in section 28, he distinguishes between “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God” and “the appearance of the glory itself.” The glory itself has no appearance. “The glory of God” is Atzilut, in our translation. The glory of God itself has no appearance. What the prophets see is a likeness of the glory of God. Meaning, there is one further translation by which it can be turned into sight, and we cannot even see that. To which world does that belong there? I don’t know exactly. It’s some kind of thing attached, I think, to Atzilut itself—a way of relating to Atzilut. I don’t think it is a world defined as a separate world. I don’t know exactly how to relate to it, really. It’s a concept I simply don’t know from anywhere else—just what is written here, I don’t know. I don’t think he means a concrete kabbalistic world when he speaks about a likeness of the glory of God. He means some way of accessing the world of Atzilut visually. That is an ability prophets have. We do not have that ability. We can think about it, listen to it; we cannot see it. But even they, when they see, do not see that—not Atzilut itself—because that has no appearance at all. It’s not that I lack the ability to see it; that thing simply has no appearance. It’s not that I cannot see it. Rather, prophets have some ability to receive a good visual translation of that thing called the likeness of the glory of God. That’s what he calls it in section 28. So we’ll get to that later. Fine. So this is what he means when he says the divine unity is through hearing—“Hear, O Israel.” Yes, when you talk about divinity itself, when you want to grasp the unity, then the unity, from the philosophers’ perspective, can be described only by negative attributes. One cannot relate to unity in any positive way. Unity—what is unity? It is something with no structure, no content; it is perfect oneness. Every structure is some sort of form, right? Some content, some characteristic. It negates all characteristics—that is what philosophers call unity. Fine? What is a characteristic? A characteristic is always form. Form is always something composite. A composite thing has form, has a boundary, has “this and not that,” and then—there—you’ve grasped something. And if everything looks the same, you cannot grasp anything there, meaning there is no characteristic there at all. Infinity is the negation of all finite things; that is what is called infinite. Fine? And the Infinite is simple. It is not a positive expression; even in mathematics, by the way, it isn’t. Infinity is simply the negation of all finite things—something that is not any finite thing. That is what is called infinite. Fine? It is not a positive expression. It comes to mark for us everything that it is not. Fine. Now again, I introduced all this because, I think, one has to understand what he is driving at. Now we’ll see the things inside. Some of them will just repeat what I said, but what I said is drawn from there. So in section 27 he begins a description. One more remark before section 27. We said that the divine attributes—Atzilut—is something that is not an attribute related to an essence the way it is in a physical object; rather it is a being that exists on its own. If you remember, we said something similar in section 21, where he says: However, the sage Ibn Rushd said it is fitting that we choose the noblest of what apprehends body and say that He, blessed be He, is light, because in this way we rescue the masses from belief in corporealization. Why call the Holy One, blessed be He, light? To rescue the masses from belief in corporealization. And so He will, in their eyes, be existent and the noblest of existents. Fine, up to that point it sounds as though this is just a straw-man move, with nothing truly real in saying that He is light. The Holy One, blessed be He, is not light, because light is something bodily. Now he continues: if by this we rescue the masses from some belief that the Holy One, blessed be He, is a bodily object, then that is why we call Him light. This is exactly the method of negative attributes, right? What are negative attributes? Not to tell you why I call the Holy One, blessed be He, light in order to say that He is light, but in order to say that He is not any non-light bodily thing, so as to rescue the masses from belief in corporeality. And therefore he goes on to say: and that, too, is just. But there is another negative thing here, and also something positive. And we explained that light—as opposed, say, to wind, right? Wind is only a phenomenon that itself is not a thing. It characterizes air. When air moves, I call that wind. But wind itself is not a thing; it is an attribute of the air. When the air moves, it has such an attribute, a description that it is moving, that it has velocity—I call that phenomenon wind. But wind is not an existing thing. In contrast, light—as we already discussed—exists even in a vacuum, right? Light is a thing. Light is not an attribute of something else. It is true that it is something abstract, but it is a thing. Fine? In that sense, we said, there really is some justice in calling the Holy One, blessed be He, light. Because although the Holy One, blessed be He, is abstract, do not think that this is a fiction, like people once thought—“In the beginning man created God,” all those modern sayings. He is abstract, but He is something that truly exists. And in that sense, light truly represents divinity positively as well, not only negatively. This reminds us a bit of what we just said: that Atzilut, although it is something without an image, not a bodily thing, is nevertheless something one can grasp. And not merely that one can grasp it—but it is not a mode of grasping. It is not a form of the Holy One, blessed be He. It is itself—well, not itself, sorry—it is a being in itself. We just said that Atzilut is not an attribute such that when I contemplate the Holy One, blessed be He, I see it. Rather, it is a creation in its own right, whose purpose is to serve as a representation of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the eyes of created beings. Fine? But it itself is a thing. It is not just a representation of the Holy One, blessed be He. Now you understand why Atzilut is called light. The light, when we speak of light in Kabbalah, means Atzilut, of course—not the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself. Of the Holy One, blessed be He, no one speaks. We speak of all of Atzilut, or Adam Kadmon, or all the created worlds—they are called light. The sefirot are called light. Fine? Why? Because that is exactly the same as what we now understand. Atzilut is not a form of the Holy One, blessed be He, the way greenishness is a form of the table. Atzilut consists of beings whose purpose is to serve as something like attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He—but it is not an attribute, it is a being. That is exactly like light, as opposed to wind or sound. Light is indeed the thing by which we see, right? It is the means by which we see. That is also how he explains it in section 21. But beyond that, it is also a thing in itself. It is not only a means of seeing. It is not only something characterizing something else. It is not like wind, which merely characterizes the air, while the real thing is the air and not the wind. With light, light itself is the thing; it does not characterize something else. Light is a thing, not just a characteristic. Therefore you can understand that the term light, which is used to describe Atzilut, is exact. In other words, that is why they chose the term light. It is not only a negative attribute of Atzilut; it is also a positive attribute of Atzilut. Meaning, it is not only to tell you: don’t think Atzilut is body, therefore it is called light. No—Atzilut also has certain positive senses in common with light. Light is also a positive description of Atzilut, not only a negative description—from the side that it exists. For example, he brings examples here. There are more examples; when one studies the details of Atzilut one learns more examples. But here I’m showing you an example written here in the text. We see, for example, that there is some use of it as a positive description and not only as a negative one. Fine, so light and Atzilut—light is a good expression for describing the nature of Atzilut. Fine. Now let’s move on to section 27. From here begins the description of the hierarchy through the end of the article—another six or seven pages, I think. Here he begins describing the worlds, basically translating these abstract principles, some of which I’ve already given you, into the language of worlds: where one deals in sight, where one deals in hearing, what all this means. So here he begins to speak about the structure of the worlds, okay, the spiritual worlds. So he says as follows: Rabbi Yosef Albo in Sefer Ha-Ikkarim, who, like his older contemporary the Rashbatz Duran, combines philosophy and Kabbalah—they really were almost of the same generation, we’ll see that below—combines philosophy and Kabbalah by combining the matter of the separate intellects of the spheres and the active intellect with the ten sefirot, the first three of which are called imperceptible light, and thereby he came to clarify the status of light and all the rest. And this “came to clarify” is simply the continuation: by combining the matter of the separate intellects, he came to clarify the status of light and all the rest—that’s the structure of the sentence, yes. Man longs more for the senses of sight and hearing than for the senses of smell and taste. He desires sight and hearing more than smell and taste. Does this remind you of something we read in section 16, how Aristotle’s Metaphysics opens? Remember? We read it in section 16. It says here that he relies on the book of books of Greek Jewish philosophy, Metaphysics, which opens with the excellence of the sense of sight. That is how Aristotle’s Metaphysics opens: all human beings by nature desire to know; a sign of this is the love of the senses, which even apart from any need we love, and more than all the others, the eyes. This is exactly the sentence here, right? “Man longs more for the senses of sight and hearing”—the same sentence, though not quoted from Aristotle—“than for the senses of smell and taste, because nature placed his desire for these more strongly, since through them one acquires intellectual things, on which human perfection depends. And therefore it also says: ‘A hearing ear and a seeing eye, the Lord made both of them.’” What does that mean? As if the ear and eye—what they see and hear—those are things God made, as though what the eye and ear perceive are divine things, while smell and taste relate more to bodily things. And he explained in another verse that hearing has an advantage over sight. So now, within sight itself—between sight and hearing too—there is a hierarchy. So first he established that sight and hearing together are higher than smell and taste. Yes, sight and hearing are means of acquiring information. Human beings—there is some difference among the senses, but we usually treat them as one unit, the five senses. Sight and hearing are means of acquiring information, different kinds of information. Taste and smell are not exactly the same thing. Today in the modern world too they are called means of acquiring information, but you understand that this is a completely different meaning of information. If I want to know what something smells like or tastes like, that does not teach me anything about anything. Sight and hearing are means much closer to the intellectual dimension of the human being. In other words, through sight and hearing I gather data that passes directly into the intellectual part, while the data I gather from smell and taste we do not associate with the intellectual part of the human being, okay? So that is the first hierarchy. Now within that he says hearing has an advantage over sight: “A hearing ear that receives the reproof of life will abide among the wise.” Each of them is beautiful, but the sound through which we apprehend intelligibles from the teacher is exceedingly pleasant: “for your voice is sweet, and your appearance is comely.” Now here he suddenly introduced that sound is the thing through which we apprehend intelligibles from the teacher. Here he brings in the issue of the Oral Torah. We already mentioned this once, that the Oral Torah is transmitted by voice, unlike the Written Torah, which is transmitted silently, through sight, right? The Oral Torah is transmitted through hearing. That is what is called “we apprehend intelligibles from the teacher,” and this is “for your voice is sweet, and your appearance is comely.” Now here he is basically trying—I’ll read a little of the notes, and then we’ll understand better what he is trying to do here. The notes pertain more to the first part. The second part is basically things we have already discussed. But in the first part, this is where the question of this section begins—here he really starts to describe the worlds, the structure of the worlds. So he says there are kabbalistic descriptions and philosophical descriptions. Right? We know the world of the spheres, the world of the angels, the separate intellects, various things. Philosophers also speak of worlds, right? But kabbalists also speak of worlds. Here he is trying to define the matter: how exactly to connect these two pictures of the worlds to one another. So he says: Rabbi Yosef Albo did not have, in his time, the Kabbalah of the Ari. The Kabbalah of the Ari certainly did not yet exist—he lived before the Ari—but the Zohar and such things, Kabbalah existed. I don’t know to what extent Rabbi Yosef Albo was aware of it; he claims here that he was. I truly don’t know. I don’t know whether Rabbi Yosef Albo was versed in Kabbalah. He claims they combine philosophy and Kabbalah. And the Chida—I don’t know—they asked him about it, and his answer is not so clear. The Chida was his rabbi? Well, but it could be that, first, maybe even his rabbi didn’t know. Or maybe he knew from another source. And second, maybe the Chida did not want to answer even though he did know. We’ve already encountered this more than once. There are Jews who refuse to talk about these things even today. I know such people. You ask a person a question, and they put on a face as if they understand nothing. And I know they do understand, because other people who learn with them—I know they understand. In short, I don’t know, it’s very hard. As a positive force. Huh? His attitude was a positive compromise. Fine, what difference does it make? I really don’t know. I’m not sufficiently familiar to comment. I’m only saying I’m not sure one can infer from the style of the answer what is really there. Fine. In any case, that is his claim. I won’t address the historical claim right now because I really don’t know—I don’t know these Jews well enough to know to what extent they… the fact that I know of them doesn’t help. Fine. The Ari writes who was a kabbalist and who wasn’t, a detailed chain. From before him, I mean? Yes. Who was a kabbalist, who wasn’t, who can be relied on and who cannot be relied on. There are Jews who are important wise men, but one cannot rely on what they say in Kabbalah, because they speak from their own reasoning—they did not receive it—and there are sometimes even errors there. Fine. In any case, the relation between the two hierarchies of worlds is made here more in the note. So let’s read note 52 for a moment. “How can multiplicity among beings come from the first simple cause, the one simple cause?”—this is a quotation from Sefer Ha-Ikkarim—“except through the emanation of ten intellects in ten spheres, and the tenth, in the sphere of the moon, is called the active intellect, according to Ibn Sina and Maimonides of blessed memory, and in the language of the Sages, ‘the prince of the world.’” The prince of the world is Metatron, yes? “And the sages of Kabbalah attributed each day of the days of Creation to one resultant from the seven lower intellects, and they called the resultants sefirot, and said that the first three are a spiritual thing, and they called them imperceptible light.” I’ll keep reading to the end and then… “And so too in Magen Avot, part 2.” Magen Avot is by the Rashbatz, yes? A commentary on tractate Avot. “The existence of the separate intellects—they are the angels, and they are the intermediaries that move the spheres, and the last one”—meaning the last separate intellect or the last angel—“is the active intellect, and in the language of the Sages, the prince of the world, Metatron.” Earlier I said the full name—I think people do not generally pronounce his full name. “Those who speak of the sefirot say that the tenth sefirah, called Atarah, is Metatron, and the philosophers say that he is the active intellect. If we combine these sayings”—let us combine the two statements, of the philosophers and of the kabbalists—“then the movers of the spheres would be these sefirot. But he adds: there is room for inquiry here; in any case, the separate intellects are not sefirot.” That is the conclusion. So what is going on here? The picture I managed to form from all this, I think, is as follows. I think this is basically what he means here. The separate intellects are the angels, and they are separate created beings, belonging to the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, which are the separate worlds. And they are not sefirot. The sefirot are in the world of Atzilut—we already prefaced that, it is clear. The sefirot belong to the world of Atzilut. Now why are they not sefirot? That is exactly the distinction we made earlier. The world of Atzilut is the world discussed by Kabbalah, and that is the sefirot. The worlds discussed by the philosophers when they speak about separate intellects and spheres and angels and such things are the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, the lower worlds. Therefore the combination of these two things is not a description of the same thing in two languages, as people often think. That is what I already prefaced in the introduction. Rather, it is a description of the whole complex, in which the lower part is described by the philosophers, and the upper part is described by the kabbalists. And that is his conclusion when he combines the two. Look: “Those who speak of the sefirot say that the tenth sefirah, called Atarah”—Atarah is Malkhut, the last sefirah—“is Metatron. And the philosophers say that he is the active intellect.” Now the active intellect is the highest of the separate intellects. Meaning, the highest of the separate intellects, which is Metatron, which is the highest part of the world of Beriah, is the lowest sefirah. The same thing? Not exactly the same thing, but for the purposes of discussion let’s say that this is the boundary between them. In Kabbalah, the transition from an upper world to a lower world always includes some stage where you cannot tell to which world it belongs. It is a stage somehow mixed between the two worlds. A phase… I can’t tell you exactly an authoritative interpretation. I have various conjectures, but I don’t know. In any case, it is clear that such a thing exists. It is always called Atik. The Atik of each world really belongs to the world above it, not to the world below it. In any case, his conclusion here is precisely how to stitch together the kabbalists and the philosophers. Everything the philosophers spoke about reaches up to Metatron. Metatron is the upper limit of the philosophers, the edge of the world of separate intellects or angels or separate beings or whatever you want to call them. These are the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, which the kabbalists also say are the separate worlds. But they call them separate intellects in the opposite sense, of course—separate from the Holy One, blessed be He. The philosophers, when they speak of separate intellects, mean separated from body, an intellect standing on its own without a body. Right, so “separate” is not in the same sense, but never mind. Objectively it is the same thing. Fine? So angels are separate creatures; there is no divinity in them at all. They are exactly creatures like us—meaning completely separate creatures. They are not like sefirot; angels are not sefirot. Fine? And they belong to the separate worlds below. Fine? And those are what the philosophers spoke about. Philosophers speak of the lower separate worlds, which are seen through sight. The kabbalists speak of the worlds above, of the sefirot, which truly are worlds heard and not seen. The seam between them is Metatron, the highest part of the world of Beriah, the chamber of the Holy of Holies—we mentioned this once, I think—the highest chamber in the world of Beriah. That is basically Metatron in another language, or the active intellect, again in another language. All of these are really names for that seam between the end-point of the philosophers—because for the philosophers the active intellect is the summit of aspiration, right? It is always the highest goal, the highest point philosophy can speak about. And this is the point the kabbalists did not reach because it is too low. Meaning, it is the lowest point for them. So when they reach the active intellect they do not reach the Holy One, blessed be He? No, no, of course not. He himself says that this is the prince of the world, Metatron. Maimonides always says to cleave to the active intellect. Yes, that is what he wants. Cleaving to the active intellect, as far as I understand—ask Rabbi Uriel, he understands this better than I do—is some ideal model of the human being. It is not divinity. It is a kind of perfect human, without body, without anything, just intellect. But still it is human, not God Himself. When he says “cleave,” he does not mean to become God; he means to… to strive to be like that, I understand. There is some cleaving there, like cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He, that is mentioned, apparently… It is the same sort of thing, very similar things. We already talked about the fact that to know and to connect are the same thing. “And Adam knew Eve his wife”—these concepts are the same concept. So down here he basically creates the picture I spoke about earlier, the one I gave you in the introduction. Here he marks out these domains, and therefore the philosophers, who speak about the lower worlds, speak in visual concepts, and there there are positive attributes and there there is everything. Everything beyond that is divinity, and there there are only negative attributes—there is nothing to say about it, above Metatron, above the active intellect. There is nothing there; no one speaks above the active intellect. The kabbalists begin there. That is their lowest point. It is really the sefirah of Malkhut, or Atarah. That is the lowest point from which upward the kabbalists begin to speak, and there the second logic begins. Now within the ten sefirot themselves—and that is another point, I’m now returning to the main text above. Fine, so we’ll come back to this section above later.