The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 30
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Table of Contents
- The structure of the book and the uniqueness of the fourth essay
- A name as a sign, and the connection between name and description
- Abstract concepts, letters, and the holy tongue
- Historical processes, custom, and providence
- Faith, mental image, and “I have set the Lord before me always”
- Maimonides, negative attributes, and the worlds of Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah
- Hearing, inner image, and the Shema as an active deed
- Prayer without intention, Leibowitz, and the meaning of the act
- The example of the bill of divorce: writing for its own sake and the name as essence
- The trap of speaking about divinity and the question of attributes
- The question of whether and the question of what
Summary
General Overview
The text presents the structure of the book, which contains four essays, and places the fourth essay at the center: it opens with the Divine Name and the doctrine of attributes, moves to the thirteen hermeneutical principles by which the Torah is interpreted and their relation to ordinary logic, defines at a logical level what auditory logic is, and compares it to Kantian philosophy, all the way to the practical implications of encountering the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world, against a background of pantheism, Hasidism and anti-Hasidism, “surrounds all worlds,” “fills all worlds,” and whether contraction is to be taken literally. It then begins a study from the text itself about the essence of the name as a sign and the need for a “mental image” in faith, raising a difficulty: when speaking about divinity, the words seem hollow without some image, and this creates the need for a doctrine of attributes and for clarifying the relationship between speech, intention, and hearing.
The structure of the book and the uniqueness of the fourth essay
The book contains four essays. The first serves as a historical introduction and a summary of Jewish religious philosophy, emphasizing that there is still something shared between Jewish philosophers and those we call Jewish thought. The second essay is the auditory essay, and it defines the difference between hearing and sight as two senses and the implications they carry as tools of spiritual, not sensory, cognition. The third essay deals with the structure of the worlds in light of that distinction and with the question of Plato’s world of ideas and whether there is something above it. The fourth essay, which is where the study begins, opens with the Divine Name and then the doctrine of attributes, moves to the thirteen hermeneutical principles by which the Torah is interpreted and their relation to ordinary logic, and reaches a logical definition of auditory reasoning and a comparison to Kantian philosophy, leading to practical conclusions about applying auditory reasoning in the world as a mode of encounter with the Holy One, blessed be He, while also serving as the bridge to the second book, which deals with inner wisdom.
A name as a sign, and the connection between name and description
The name is defined as a letter and a sign, and every name is generally connected to a tangible, visible image of the thing it signifies. When there is no tangible image because the name is abstract, the image of the written letters stands before inner sight and takes the place of the abstract thing. A distinction is drawn between pointing by means of description and pointing by means of a name: a name is an arbitrary designation not essentially tied to the object, whereas a description is derived from the character of the thing and is not subject to conventional decision.
Abstract concepts, letters, and the holy tongue
The text presents the claim that in abstract matters there is no sensory access that generates description, yet one can still refer to them by name, and the question becomes what sort of image is appropriate to an abstract name. In the holy tongue, the image of the letters is understood as a substitute for the form of the abstract essence, to the point that divinity as it is reflected in this world receives the visual form of yod-heh-vav-heh. The letters are not presented merely as arbitrary signs or building blocks of language, but as the actual building blocks of the world itself, in a way similar to the Pythagorean idea that the world is built from numbers, except that here the letter itself is the component and not merely a graphic notation.
Historical processes, custom, and providence
It is argued that there is a difference between historical development and meaning, and that historical criticism regarding foreign sources of customs does not settle their validity. The text states that when something enters and takes root in the spiritual atmosphere and in Jewish law, there is something real behind it, even if its external source came from idolatry, because there is providence over the form of divine service and over what is absorbed. The process of absorption is described as evolutionary: an enactment or custom that did not spread throughout all Israel is cut off, whereas what is absorbed over time gains validity, and this is explained as the basis of the power of custom.
Faith, mental image, and “I have set the Lord before me always”
It is said that “there is no faith except after mental imaging,” in the language of the Guide for the Perplexed, and a demand is made not to be satisfied with speech alone but to attach an image, even when dealing with abstract matters. The difficulty is sharpened through the question of “I have set the Lord before me always”: to set is not merely to think, but to place something before oneself, and when there is no figure or picture, the image is described as the image of the letters. It is noted that the divine form does not relate to the divine essence the way the form of a table relates to a table, but is itself something created, and the discussion points ahead to what follows.
Maimonides, negative attributes, and the worlds of Atzilut, Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah
The text distinguishes between philosophers, who deal with Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, and kabbalists, who deal with Atzilut, and states that all the positive attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He, are found in the world of Atzilut, whereas in Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah there are only negative attributes. From this comes the claim that the philosophers say there are only negative attributes because they are dealing with Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, while the kabbalists say there are positive attributes because they are dealing with the higher worlds, and both are right, each within the domain of his world. Within this framework it is argued that Maimonides uses a different language about mental imaging, and that his statements are being used here in borrowed senses beyond his original intention.
Hearing, inner image, and the Shema as an active deed
A passage is brought from Duties of the Heart saying that one who thinks the matter of divine unity is completed merely by saying it does not sense that his heart is empty of its truth, and this creates a tension between defining the commandment as “hearing” and the demand that it “be pictured in his heart.” The author of Ma’amar HaSekhel on “I am the Lord” is quoted as challenging the SeMaG: repeated verbal declaration of faith is of no use if it is not pictured in the heart, and hearing cannot be reduced to a technical act. Alongside this, an interpretation is offered according to which speech itself performs a spiritual action, and the declaration “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one” is understood as creative speech, not merely descriptive speech, while intention and inner imaging are described as conditions for the action rather than replacing the saying itself as the main goal.
Prayer without intention, Leibowitz, and the meaning of the act
It is said that prayer without intention is not ideal, but it is still better than not praying, in the formulation that “prayer without intention is like a body without a soul,” together with the assertion that a body without a soul is better than neither body nor soul. Yeshayahu Leibowitz is cited in an extreme description of a public mumbling prayers without intention, and it is stated that there is some truth in that from the standpoint of the obligation to say the words, though it is incomplete and must be accompanied by intention. The general claim is that even in mass practice that looks distorted, there is a genuine point, because something that has no place at all does not survive and does not become absorbed.
The example of the bill of divorce: writing for its own sake and the name as essence
A correspondence is cited concerning a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim) over what counts as writing for its own sake in a bill of divorce, and the explanation of the SeMa in Sefer HaTerumot is brought: changing his name or her name invalidates it at the Torah level because “it was not written for her sake” but for another name, even if the intention was that same woman. Rashba is cited as explaining the invalidation on the grounds that “this is not a narrative of severance,” because the bill of divorce is not self-evident from within itself, but the other view stresses that the name relates to the essence, and therefore writing a different name is tantamount to referring to another woman. The example serves to sharpen the point that the name and the letters are not merely representation but touch the essence of the thing more than the image does, since the image relates to form.
The trap of speaking about divinity and the question of attributes
Passages are brought according to which the Holy One, blessed be He, “is not seen, is unknown, neither knowledge nor thought grasps Him at all,” and the question is raised how something unknown can be “the foundation of the Torah” and a “root” of knowledge. Sefer HaIkkarim is quoted asking how one can lay down as a root of a divine Torah something whose apprehension is hidden from every being other than God, and the problem is formulated as a situation in which speaking about the Divine Name seems hollow if there is no image, while silence leads to denial and heresy. The formulation centers on the statement from Magen HaSekhalim by Rabbi Netanel al-Fayyumi: “if you speak, you corporealize; if you are silent, you deny and commit heresy,” and the chapter is defined as an introduction that carries philosophy to a stopping point that requires dealing with the doctrine of attributes.
The question of whether and the question of what
It is said that according to “the divine investigators” it is not proper to ask of Him what He is or how He is, but rather whether He is, yet a difficulty is raised: “How can I ask whether about something I do not know what it is?” Formulations are quoted from Shir HaYichud: “What shall I set in order, when I do not know what?” and “How shall I set in order concerning that which I do not know?” and it is determined that “not the question of whether, but the question of what is the main thing for the believing investigator,” in the words of Philo the Jew. From here a sharp conclusion is drawn: if there is no grasp of the “what,” then only the prophet of the generation or an outstanding philosopher can truly worship God, while other human beings may actually be found worshiping something else, and in this context Sha’ar HaShamayim, attributed to Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra, and Shadal are quoted: “Anyone who does not know his Creator and does not grasp Him according to the grasp of human intellect is, without doubt, engaged in idolatry.”
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Chapter Five in the revealed realm. And auditory logic in religious philosophy in Israel. This book has four essays. The first essay is some kind of introduction, partly historical, but already with hints toward what comes later. It’s a summary of Jewish religious philosophy, that’s the first essay, to show that there is nevertheless something shared by the Jewish philosophers and the people we called Jewish thought. The second essay is the auditory essay, where he tries more to define the difference between hearing and sight as two senses, and some of their implications as tools of spiritual cognition, not sensory cognition. The third essay deals more with the structure of the worlds in light of these things, the Platonic world of ideas, and whether there is something above it or not. And the fourth essay, which is where we’re starting now, is really the main essay. There are a lot of interesting things here, it seems to me. And it begins with the Divine Name, then the doctrine of attributes, and moves to the thirteen hermeneutical principles by which the Torah is interpreted, also a bit about the relation between that and ordinary logic, the theory of reasoning, what they share and what differs between them. He gets a bit into definitions on the logical level, of what auditory logic is. Until now we dealt with it only descriptively, as an analogy to sensory sight and hearing. Now he points to it on the logical level. We’ve already had some hints of this, but in the book he gets there here, and compares it to Kantian philosophy—where it’s mistaken and where it’s right—and in the end he reaches the implication of applying auditory logic, or the results of operating auditory logic on the world, which is basically a way of relating to how to encounter the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world. He relates to pantheism, Hasidism and anti-Hasidism, “surrounds all worlds,” “fills all worlds,” contraction taken literally, and so on. It seems to me he doesn’t use that terminology here, but that’s really the topic. And of course this is immediately the introduction, which is the connecting link to the second book that deals with inner wisdom. But we’ll begin the fourth essay. A name without an image. The name is a letter, a sign. At first every name is a sign for a tangible, visible image attached to it. When it has no tangible image, because it is an abstract name, then the image of the letters of the writing attaches to it, standing before inner sight, taking the place of the abstract. First of all, he starts with a definition of what a name is, as we already mentioned before—I just don’t remember in what context and when; the groups change and the faces change, so I’ll briefly repeat in places where I use earlier points. There are two ways to point to things: you can point to them through a description, and you can point to them through designation, through a name. A name is basically an arbitrary pointing, while a description is essential pointing. Meaning, for example, the example we used with Ben-Gurion: David Ben-Gurion is the name of a certain person, pointing to some person, and a description of him could be “the first prime minister of the State of Israel.” What’s the difference between these two references, which are references to the same person? A name, apparently as people usually say, has no essential connection to the object signified by it, and in the concept—
[Speaker B] The name is just the concept of the description.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In other languages that’s certainly so. It has no essential connection to the thing indicated by it. It’s some conventional decision: we decide, I decide to call this thing A, B, C, and from now on that’s its name. A description is not something in my hands. The description derives from the character of the thing. If he had not been the first prime minister of the State of Israel, I couldn’t have referred to David Ben-Gurion by the description “the first prime minister of the State of Israel.” It’s not arbitrary, it’s not something under my control. So that’s a description. So there are two ways to refer to an entity through… that’s what he says at the beginning. The name is a letter, a sign. A name signifies something. It is not a created thing with content that describes something; it signifies it, it does not describe it, yes. Usually it is a sign for a tangible, visible description. Meaning, when you signify an ordinary entity with this name, then the signified entity is something tangible that can be seen. When it has no tangible description because it is an abstract name, the image of the letters of the writing attaches to it. What happens when we call by name an entity that is not tangible? Now, there are many kinds of entities that are not tangible. There is a concept, for example, a concept in language, “table,” say. “Table” is not entirely tangible. This specific table is something tangible, but the concept of table itself—the name “table” doesn’t indicate this, right? This is this table, but the word “table” doesn’t indicate this; it indicates the abstract concept of table. Okay? Some abstract concept. There can also be even more abstract concepts, say, a fairy. That too is a name, right? Fairy, a concept. Maybe we won’t call it a name, we’ll call it a concept, but in this sense it’s not a description; as far as I’m concerned, a name or sign is the same thing. It’s not a description of the concept, it’s its name. Its word. Really every word in a language is in some sense a name. It’s the name of what it represents. There is no essential relation between it and the thing; it indicates what it indicates. Okay? A somewhat naive conception, but let’s say that’s so. There’s an assumption of a one-to-one relation between signifier and signified in language, and of course that’s not true. To the extent that we change meanings of the same word in poetic usage, you can obviously go wild entirely and still call that a poem. Meaning, there isn’t exactly a one-to-one match between thing and thing, but roughly speaking. So an abstract concept like a fairy, for example, you can’t see it. You can imagine it with wings and so on after watching enough Walt Disney, but it’s not something I can perceive in my imagination, see some actual picture of. Okay? So that’s an abstract thing. And it too has a name, the abstract thing. I don’t think that’s what he means here. So that really does indicate an abstract entity. An abstract entity also exists in principle; the concept exists as a concept, not as an entity, not as something existing in the form of actual fairies, but the concept of fairy is something that exists, not like concrete fairies going around in the world—
[Speaker B] It’s a concept, and it’s a thing in the world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the concept of fairy exists. All concepts are things that exist; we already talked about that a bit in the evening lectures. Here I assume he is speaking—or at least as a continuation of that, it’s fairly clear—about abstract concepts in the sense of spiritual worlds and divinity, of course first and foremost. These abstract concepts, these abstract entities, let’s call them, not concepts—these abstract entities are entities without form. But they still have a name, and the name relates to them exactly as it relates to tangible entities. The difference between these entities and tangible ones is that these have no form and those do have form. But both can be referred to by a name. The question is whether both can also be referred to by a description. We said there are two ways of referring to an entity: through a name and through a description. Right? When I take a concrete entity and refer to it, I can… a table… and I can call it, say, Moshe. Now this table’s name is Moshe; it has a name. Fine? Now I can also refer to some description of it—color and shape and height and so on. So I have a mode of reference by description and a mode of reference by name. But for an abstract entity, apparently reference by description is more problematic, because my senses have no access to that entity. So even if there is some description, that description cannot be generated by ordinary means of cognition, by sensory cognition. My senses cannot observe the thing and create a description of it. By contrast, the thing can have a name. So what image nevertheless belongs to such a thing? There’s a concept here of image, isn’t there? The Nazir says: yes. When it has no tangible description because it is an abstract name, the image of the letters of the writing attaches to it, standing before inner sight, taking the place of the abstract. There is a place that is abstract, empty of concrete form, yes, as if a void. And what occupies that void, where there is absence of form, is the image of the letters of the writing. In the holy tongue, the letters are not just arbitrary signifiers. They are also names in certain senses, right? In other senses yes, and at one point we expanded on that a bit in the lessons on Sefer Yetzirah. The letters with which you write the name of a certain entity, or of a certain abstract entity, the letters themselves basically represent the tangible form of the thing. Yes, divinity, for example—the form it has as reflected in this world, its visual form, is yod-heh-vav-heh. That is the form of divinity. And therefore the letters serve as a substitute for the form of the concrete entity. In abstract entities, the letters are their form. And really the concept here is something that is not merely description, ah—visual form? Yes, but even form, a visual description, not just any description. A visual description. Meaning this is the form of the abstract entity, the way it is written.
[Speaker B] And that’s yod-heh-vav-heh, for example. Meaning if there’s an abstract name for… say for love, let’s say, which now has no form and no… we can’t… so therefore we…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. I don’t know exactly how angels think about this matter. I know how human beings think. In the human world, the letters are the form of the thing. Angels also have letters, but I don’t know whether their concept of letters looks like ours, that yod is like this and heh is like that and so on. Maybe for them it takes more abstract forms.
[Speaker B] As I read the booklet, the Holy One, blessed be He, was an abstract concept. Now I can… not so much as a force, to imagine Him when you—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When you do “I have set the Lord before me always,” whom are you setting there?
[Speaker B] His providence?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] His being among us? It’s motivation, say, motivation for the prayer of the prayer leader, not—
[Speaker B] As an image.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, not as an image. It’s the name that you set before you. That is His form. Now, we’ve already talked quite a bit about the fact that the form of divinity does not relate to the divine essence the way the form of a table relates to the entity that is the table. The divine form is something created. He’ll talk about that later. At the end of the previous chapter he… so we talked about it before as well. So in the holy tongue at least, I think that’s what he means here: the letters serve as the form of abstract entities. The letters themselves are abstract entities. Not only that—they are themselves building blocks not of language, that’s the conception here. The letters are not building blocks of language; the letters are building blocks of the world. In Sefer Yetzirah too it is described how the world itself is made of letters, in the same sense, say, in a similar sense to what the Pythagoreans say, that the world is built from numbers. They don’t mean that the world is described by mathematics; everyone knows that. They mean physically that those are the physical building blocks of the world. Here too, in this conception—I don’t know whether the Pythagoreans are right or not, and in what sense they are right—but in this context what he means is that the letters are literally the building blocks of the world. From that it follows that language is derived from this too. Because every concept is composed of these abstract entities signified by yod, dalet, lamed, I don’t know, each thing according to the letters composing it. And therefore the word that signifies it is also built according to the order of those letters. And that is why they said that in the holy tongue there is an essential connection to the entity and not an accidental connection to it.
[Speaker B] Like we said before, that names are generally—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An arbitrary thing, the relation between them and what they signify. In the holy tongue it’s not entirely arbitrary; there’s an essential connection here.
[Speaker B] So what you’re saying is that the letters are basically like if someone represents a thing in nature, he writes its chemical formula—so is it exactly the same thing? That it’s always like that… these are the formulas that represent the meaning in the thing they represent?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s true in a certain sense, but it seems to me it’s even deeper. Meaning, you write H for hydrogen, but H is still an arbitrary designation for hydrogen. And H2O signifies two hydrogens and oxygen in water, right? But that’s an arbitrary notation for the fact that there are two hydrogens and oxygen there that truly compose the water. But the relation between the H and the hydrogen is arbitrary. Here, though, the letter itself is itself the component. It itself is the component. The letter yod is one of the components from which the world is built. No, no, no, not a graphic symbol. A graphic symbol is something completely different. That’s like threads of… A graphic symbol is whatever you like. They say they photograph by means of it—that over time, like I saw in the newspaper, there are two physicists or whatever who claim they can photograph you while you speak and see in the air the letters, physically, that you’re saying. Because they photograph the shape of the air created when you speak and show you that when you say aleph, an aleph is formed. Which sounds like science fiction, but they claim they photographed it. I don’t know what software there was in the computer to translate the image there into letters, but it’s a method that I think is a bit too surreal. But—what? Not serious, not serious.
[Speaker B] So there you go, science proved that the rabbi was right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but then again the question is whether you’re translating. If you translate, you can do anything. If I decide that this shape will be translated by the software into A, then you’ll photograph an A every time you say aleph.
[Speaker B] Is that what they meant?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If that’s what they meant, then what did they do? I can do that in any language.
[Speaker B] Every time you say a word I’ll define—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Software that photographs the crazy image that comes out of that word and writes B. So what did you do? Nothing. That’s not what they claim they did, but what they actually did, I don’t know—
[Speaker B] If more serious information comes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The letter is a component of the world. It itself is a component; it doesn’t symbolize anything, it’s a component. The letter yod—there is such a thing; one of the building blocks of the world is the letter yod. It’s a bit abstract, so you don’t expect me to tell you what it looks like and what its nature is. That’s exactly the discussion here, whether it’s a description—
[Speaker B] Of it, or whether it represents something spiritual.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not that it represents; it itself is itself. It’s not something that represents.
[Speaker B] What is the relation between the graphic symbol of the alphabet letters and the letters themselves?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s also a symbol—
[Speaker B] There’s also a relation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The letters… yes, and in the Talmud it even appears in a few places: the letter heh is open from below and… there are several medieval authorities (Rishonim) who go in that direction.
[Speaker B] Is that a historical perspective? From the perspective of historians. Various scholars talked about it, it seems to me—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Historical processes can be looked at like a historian looks at them, and they can be looked at like human beings look at them. When you look at them like historians, you lose the important core of the historical process. There are all sorts of historical developments. Today, for instance, there’s often criticism of certain customs, where suddenly people say they were drawn from all kinds of non-Jewish sources—celebrations at gravesites and pilgrimages to graves allegedly—and I don’t think that’s true, but there’s a lot of criticism that celebrations and going up to graves and various things like that, there are all kinds of claims of foreign influences in these areas. First, I don’t think it’s true, certainly not at the level it’s presented. Maybe there’s something to it. But even if it’s true, it doesn’t trouble me in the least. Because the validity of such a thing is not because of its source, but because it entered. And once there is providence over everything in the world, and in particular there is providence over the form of serving God of that community that wants to serve God—right?—then certainly over such a thing there will be providence, if there’s providence over every blade of grass. So if that’s the case, then there’s no doubt that if something enters and takes root and is grasped as something binding and enters the spiritual atmosphere, clearly, or something like that, there is something true behind it even if its source came from idolatry. That is meaningless. There is a difference between the development and the meaning. Historians always latch onto the development. If it came from Buddhism then clearly it doesn’t belong אצלנו—what do you mean, of course not, why adopt it here or there? What do the postmodernists do? They think everything is just here and there. But that’s not correct. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter where it came from. What matters is that in Jewish law this is a kind of evolutionary process. And such evolutionary processes are built in such a way that something starts to develop and at some point it is not absorbed—what the Talmud calls “it did not spread throughout all Israel,” for example, regarding enactments or customs or things like that. If it did not spread throughout all Israel, then as far as I’m concerned it is no longer binding; in that case the enactment is void. That’s really an evolutionary process, a mutation, let’s call it. It developed a little and then was cut off, not absorbed, did not survive in the evolutionary process. The evolutionary process always receives something real only after you have retrospective perspective. When you look back and see that this thing has entered, and entered the canonical texts, into Jewish law, into the authoritative legal works, and so on, or at least is practiced by the whole public or something like that, then you understand that this thing you can no longer ignore. It has a continuing form. This is a kind of giving of the Torah; that’s also how Torah is given. And that’s the entire power of custom. The power of custom is exactly this. The power of custom isn’t just to confuse us and prevent us from laughing at our ancestors who did foolish things. The power of custom lies in the fact that if it entered, then apparently there is something true and something deeper behind it. Even if those who invented it did it for other reasons, reasons they themselves didn’t recognize. That doesn’t matter.
[Speaker B] If some custom took hold, or a Torah custom that spread for hundreds of years, some segulah until later generations or something, then there’s no doubt that it…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If it entered, if it entered, took root, and became fixed, there’s no doubt that it comes from somewhere real.
[Speaker B] It’s like the Maharal writes about the statutes. He writes that even if, say, these really were laws, and there were some laws given in ancient literature, and that’s how—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The laws of the Torah were received, because those who uphold the Torah received them—laws received by those who uphold the Torah. And you said also that it’s not clear what the direction of influence was? First of all, a well-known historical assumption: what was the direction of influence, from Hammurabi to us or from us to Hammurabi?
[Speaker B] Hammurabi is found in the period of Abraham our forefather.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The patriarchs observed the Torah. We don’t know who influenced whom. Fine, there are all kinds of interesting historical assumptions; their scientific meaning isn’t entirely clear. In any case, with the letters too, the fact that the letters entered means that apparently this is what needs to be here. And the fact that it originated elsewhere and was adopted in some form—maybe yes, maybe no; historically the issue isn’t entirely clear to me.
[Speaker B] There’s Assyrian script from Ezra the scribe, right—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The well-known sources, but there are also other sources saying it existed even before that. Ezra just restored it in some historically indirect way. But beyond that question, even if not—if it entered, then apparently that is what ultimately should be. And the Holy One, blessed be He, chose to do it through all sorts of foreign influences, so that’s how He chose to do it—so what? The Holy One, blessed be He, created man through an evolutionary process. That doesn’t mean He didn’t create man. He created him from the ape. Historians say man came from the ape, and human beings say man was created by the Holy One, blessed be He. How does that fit together?
[Speaker B] The Holy One, blessed be He, created man from the ape.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s simply two modes of description, and whoever thinks one excludes the other, it seems to me he doesn’t understand what either of those two modes is talking about. Fine.
[Speaker B] The visual image of a particular letter is a very successful ideography for a spiritual essence, because the lamed rises upward and signifies something? Also, also.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s beyond that, but it’s also a very successful graphic description, and it’s also beyond that. When you say—I’ll get to that in a moment, I’ll talk about it in a moment. When you say the letter yod, you create something that is a yod in the world. I don’t mean at the previous materialistic level, if you find sides here or find sides there. But you create… we’ll get there in a moment. From this, that was the first paragraph. From this comes the depth of the doubtful question for the believer who begins to reflect and examine in his mind, when he accepts upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of heaven: what? What is he to believe in his heart that his mouth says? As if our intention and our search are how to say, not how to believe. And there is no faith except after mental imaging, in the words of the Guide for the Perplexed. And that’s the sentence they brought here: there is no faith except after mental imaging. So the Nazir here is saying that even with abstract things, it is not enough to say them in order to believe in them. The utterance has to be accompanied by an image. But with abstract things there is no image, as we said before. So what is the image? He said before: the image of the letters of the writing. Right? “I have set the Lord before me always.” How does one set the Name before oneself always? I can say, “Lord, You are before me always,” but what does that mean? One has to actually set Him there, right? How do you do that? After all, He has no image or likeness. Visually.
[Speaker B] So he takes the image of the letters, which is like bringing it down to—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The whole essence of Judaism is bringing down. Bringing abstract concepts down into this world, into concepts we can grasp with our tools.
[Speaker B] And this isn’t imagination; we said it’s a kind of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not called setting before oneself. No, imagination also not—you can’t imagine anything; you can think about Him. But to imagine is to create a visual picture, even if only in imagination and not in the world, that has no source—that’s called imagination. Like a picture, like a picture of a table, it doesn’t matter. When it has no source in the world, that’s called imagination. But the Holy One, blessed be He, has no image, neither of that sort nor any other.
[Speaker B] I can think of the Holy One, blessed be He, before me always, and I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t have to do it specifically in imagination. But that’s setting, not thinking. Setting is something different from thinking. Setting means that He Himself stands before you. How do you do that with an abstract thing? That’s what is written: “I have set the Lord before me always.” That’s the source. Let’s deepen it a bit more, but yes, first of all because that’s what it says.
[Speaker B] And what does the sentence mean, that faith goes after the image and not after the believer?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not after the believer. How shall I say it—what to say, what words to say, but what to say? All faith comes only after mental imaging. That’s the point.
[Speaker B] Yes. But for Maimonides there is no such image; in any case that’s not what Maimonides meant.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, Maimonides certainly didn’t mean this. Maimonides said the holy tongue is a conventional language. Now, Maimonides did not mean my first paragraph. No, it works out—he says that Maimonides says that faith comes after—
[Speaker B] The image, but he uses Maimonides, I think, in borrowed terms.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He doesn’t think Maimonides meant what he says. We already once saw, in some very long passage he brought from the Guide for the Perplexed, things that Maimonides himself clearly did not mean in the interpretation he gives them.
[Speaker B] But people do that a lot with Maimonides.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t mean what they do in the Talmud; I mean in the field of thought. There’s a widespread belief regarding Maimonides’ words and the interpretation of Maimonides’ words that he reached the truth even though he did not know the kabbalistic layers of the matter, and therefore one can draw conclusions as if this sentence also has meaning on the kabbalistic plane, even though when Maimonides wrote it he obviously—apparently, at least—was not aware of that. But if he had a healthy mind, then on the revealed level he reached the right conclusion. No, it’s not the right conclusion; it can be right as in other places—
[Speaker B] Like in this case, it can be correct when Maimonides spoke about ten spheres and so on—that really he didn’t know and thought other things, but it is also true on other kabbalistic levels. But in this case he perhaps meant the opposite of what we heard.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He meant an image; he didn’t know that there is a real image. If he had known there is a real image, then certainly that would also have been his intention.
[Speaker B] A real image meaning to see yod-heh-vav-heh, the image of the letters.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, I don’t have to hold the letters yod-heh-vav-heh physically in front of me in the world. I can imagine in my mind, but imagine the letters in my mind—not just think in general about the Holy One, blessed be He, intellectually.
[Speaker B] We talked about the imaginative faculty. One must study a great deal so that we won’t just say—that is, so that we won’t only say in our hearts and with our mouths what we were commanded to say, but—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll also learn it in thought,
[Speaker B] But rather internalize the concept, meaning thought and imprinting on the soul. Obviously, because Maimonides certainly did not—because you don’t need to study so much to understand that you need to imagine yod-heh-vav-heh.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, obviously Maimonides didn’t mean that. He takes the sentence that faith goes after the image in the sense of image as he understands image. Maimonides said there is no image, so what can he do? So there’s nothing to do except understand the processes. We are exactly at this point, and we’ll touch on it a little further on. We talked about this in the previous essay: the philosophers deal with the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. And the kabbalists, and perhaps also some of the thinkers of Jewish thought, deal with Atzilut. Now, all the positive attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He, are found in the world of Atzilut. That’s why, from the perspective of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, there are only negative attributes. There are no positive attributes, because that is not complete divinity; only Atzilut is complete divinity. So those are, as it were, the positive attributes of divinity. Therefore all the philosophers always say there are only negative attributes, because they deal only with Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. And therefore the kabbalists always say there are positive attributes. And both are right. In the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah there are only negative attributes, and in the higher worlds there are positive attributes. But Maimonides was aware only of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, so he said: fine, there is no image, so this is probably only philosophy—which is exactly the form of apprehension of the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah: philosophy. That is image, as it appears; the image in the world of Atzilut appears in Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah in philosophical thought. But those who know that there is also a world above that… And in Duties of the Heart, Sefer Chovot HaLevavot: they think that the matter of unity is complete for them once its word is complete, and they do not sense that their hearts are empty of its truth and their inner selves are bare of its meaning. Meaning, someone who only says it and does not think alongside that saying—it is worth nothing. Therefore in Sefer Ma’amar HaSekhel, attributed to Ravan—and this is not that Ravan, as we already saw above, but another Ravan—he wants to support Duties of the Heart.
[Speaker B] Duties of the Heart is a bit extreme, I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not yet one hundred percent sure here. In a moment we’ll see. I think he wants to say something similar to Duties of the Heart, but also not identical.
[Speaker B] That it’s not just the word,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, not just the statement—the image, the image. But the question is: what is that image? And for Chovot HaLevavot and Maimonides and all those philosophers of negative attributes, for them the image is always just—well, there is no image. So he wants to argue that there is an actual image. And in fact the whole book argues this; the entire second part really deals with image, in the second book, Inner Wisdom. This is exactly the introduction to the second book. Down here, in section 3, he brings the book Ma’amar HaSekhel there, these historical notes. And there in Ma’amar HaSekhel, I quote—he continues in the note below—and there in Ma’amar HaSekhel, in the discussion on “I am,” on the verse “I am the Lord your God,” page 13b, on unity—”Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one”—here he actually brings a quotation from Ma’amar HaSekhel. Rabbi of Coucy wrote—the intention is the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol, Rabbi Moshe of Coucy, that’s the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol—this is a quotation from the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol: “For this positive commandment, to believe and to hear, is acceptance.” What does “acceptance” mean? It means accepting the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven. “And I do not see that his proof is the intention of the verse”—that is already a comment by the author of Ma’amar HaSekhel. Up to here it was a quotation from the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol. Now the author of Ma’amar HaSekhel asks about him: “And I do not see that his proof is the intention of the verse, for if a person says all day long, ‘I believe that the Lord is one and is not corporeal and is eternal,’ what good does it do him if it is not formed in his heart?” Why do you say that hearing itself is acceptance of the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven? That’s not true. The image in the soul—that is the acceptance of the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven, not the hearing. That’s his question against him. And doesn’t hearing mean acceptance? But he says hearing is what defines it—not the intention that accompanies hearing. When he tries to define what the core of the commandment is, the core of the commandment is to hear. What does that mean, to hear? Why in the world to hear? Hearing is only internalizing—you need to understand, to form it in the soul, not just to hear. That’s the point the author of Ma’amar HaSekhel is making. “And about him the verse says: ‘With his lips he honored Me, but his heart was far from Me.'” Right—”with his lips,” you speak, but in your heart, in the image in the soul, you have nothing. And it says, “You are near in their mouths and far from their inward being.” But I think that “hear” here means the establishment of the matter in the thought of the heart and its being formed in the intellect. It’s basically the same idea, but it seems that the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol—first of all, your comment—someone who reads the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol inside, he
[Speaker B] in commandment two—”Hear O Israel,” the second commandment concerning Hear O Israel, right—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] he explains what “hear” means. Hear in the full sense of hearing, meaning: hear and form the image.
[Speaker B] You can’t just put words like that into his mouth.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He understood that you can’t. We’ll actually see in a moment. “A positive commandment to believe and to hear—that is acceptance, accepting the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven.” The hearing is the acceptance, the accepting of the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven. “To believe” is to believe—that is in the heart; apparently that’s how he explains him. “A positive commandment to believe”—to believe is in the heart—and to accept the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven, that is the hearing: that He is one in heaven and on earth and in the four directions of the world, as it says, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.” Hear as in accept, and likewise, “And may You hear from heaven,” and so on. And he continues: “And one must prolong the dalet of echad until he completes in his thought this thought that we explained.” You see that thought is required; simple hearing is not enough. But apparently that fellow understood “hear” to mean that the definition of the commandment is in hearing. True, there is also a condition—it is not called hearing if you do not understand what you hear, or do not think what you hear—but the definition of the commandment is hearing, not understanding. Whereas all the philosophers he brings here—
[Speaker B] Maimonides, Duties of the Heart—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Duties of the Heart and so on—they understood the reverse: that hearing is only the practical means for creating the image in the soul. But the definition of the commandment is the image in the soul, not the hearing. Here it is presented differently. Here it is presented that the definition is hearing. True, there is some condition that you also need… Let’s try for a moment to understand. I just want to finish this section. Basically section forty is Hear O Israel and the blessing that appear there. So it seems to me that what is written here in this book—and that also seems to me to be everything that Duties of the Heart says—”that the matter of unity was finished for them once the word was finished, and they did not feel that their hearts were empty of its truth.” It sounds like this is speaking about the masses, which is basically what is common today—
[Speaker B] that people say Hear O Israel almost like—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a hum. They don’t think about the words, about their meaning, they don’t form an image in the soul in parallel. And in every custom there is something true. And that follows from what I told you before about language. Anything that enters and becomes widespread—know that there is something true in it, even if there is distortion in it. If people say Hear O Israel without thinking about it, that means there is something in the saying itself. This is not something that happens only in order to fulfill one’s obligation with no understanding at all. But clearly, the saying is not an empty thing. There is something in the saying. And it seems to me that this is the book’s intention, at least as the Avnei Nezer reads it. He is right in reading it that way—because that’s what is written there. What is written is that first of all one has to hear. True, there is also a condition that you have to intend and form an image in the soul and so on, but not that the hearing is only the practical means so that there be an image in the soul. No. And therefore you need to let your ears hear what your mouth is saying and so on—that is a condition in the recitation of the Shema. Speech really is the main thing. In other words, the masses, who do not interrupt the speech with thought, are not completely mistaken. True, they miss a halakhic detail, but it’s not that they are doing nonsense. Meaning, it is not that they are doing something devoid of all value. So what is there here after all? It seems to me that this is connected to what we spoke about earlier, and I told you we would come back to it afterward. The saying of these words, when you are relating to abstract entities—the saying of the words is relating to… Suppose I say “the Lord our God”—that is relating to His essence, not to His form as we perceive it. What is the image in the soul? Whether something concrete or abstract, it doesn’t matter—the image in the soul is always a relation to its characteristics, to its form. Right? But His name—saying His name—that is simply relating to Him Himself.
[Speaker B] As Rabbi Samson Hirsch would say: it’s a proper name, the name of the essence, His own name.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So when I say “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,” I am performing an act here. I am not making an image; this is not speech in the usual sense. This speech is productive speech, not descriptive speech or something like that. Speech that is an inner act. This is productive speech—like the angels that are created from the commandment, or things like that. It is apparently something that creates something in the world. And when I say it—that is the goal of the commandment. The goal of the commandment is to speak the unity, not to sketch it in the soul. Speech is not just the practical means for sketching it in the soul. If I sketch it in the soul without speaking, I have not fulfilled my obligation. Why? Because speech is not just the practical means for sketching it in the soul. True, you also have to sketch it in the image in the soul, but speech is a goal in itself. And when you say the letters, the letters are the thing itself—they are not an image of it. Therefore there is significance in the very saying, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,” not only in terms of what it says to me in the soul or the intellect or the imagination. Saying it itself is a spiritual act.
[Speaker B] What does it create?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. Something that creates the unity of God below—meaning, you somehow try to effect something in the world, something that introduces more unity into it. It’s a little hard for me to describe exactly what this is, but—
[Speaker B] I only know—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know how to convey it to you—
[Speaker B] I don’t know exactly how to explain it, okay?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But it is an act that does something, like every other commandment, like every commandment. Even someone who says—even someone who says—the image in the soul is necessary; it is necessary in order for the speech to work. In the end it is the speech that works. Mere speech doesn’t work; you need the image in the soul in order for it to work. But if in truth it is the speech that works, then who said at all that you need the image for that? The claim is that the image is also a necessary condition, but one has to notice that the goal is the act that this thing performs. The goal is not that the speech prepared an image in the soul. If I sit and believe with perfect faith, with all the diagrams and after all the sophistication, I have not fulfilled the commandment. I have fulfilled the commandment of God’s unity, but not the commandment of Hear O Israel, the recitation of the Shema. And certainly not according to Maimonides. Maimonides counts belief in unity and Hear O Israel as two commandments. Therefore in every popular thing there is something—
[Speaker B] that’s a rule—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that should guide you in every mistake. Everything people always laugh at—always look for the truest point there. That doesn’t mean people aren’t mistaken, but there is something true in it. If it catches on, there is something there. Something that is simply irrelevant, nothing at all, with no grip on reality—it won’t just survive. The fact is that everyone does it. You treat it as song, right? Just as some kind of melody people do it, right? The whole meaning of prayer, after all—why? In all the prayers, after all, people don’t have intention, most of the congregation, right? I, the humble one, am part of that majority; I’m not speaking down to you in this context. But that’s exactly the point, because all prayers are like this. And it is not true that the purpose of prayer is inward—or not only that. Yeshayahu Leibowitz formulated it very extremely, as usual, yes? I don’t think any of the cobblers around him in synagogue invested a lot of intention there. But this is what he writes: the simple fellows and the not-so-simple fellows—
[Speaker B] all come to the synagogue and mumble the same words. No one intends either to ask the Holy One, blessed be He, or to thank Him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? There is a commandment of prayer; you have to say the words. There is something very true in that. And it is not the whole picture.
[Speaker B] There is no obligation in that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, certainly—there is obligation in that, as a positive obligation. That’s how one should do it and not otherwise.
[Speaker B] Fine, okay. He said I should answer, but—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s a sharpening of a correct point. It isn’t complete—that, it seems to me, is where he errs: that it isn’t complete. It has to be accompanied, as here, it has to be accompanied by intention, but it isn’t true that that’s all. This is how it should be done. Just one last comment. In the Torah Letters of the Rogatchover—you know it? There is something delightful there, an exchange of letters between the Rogatchover and Rabbi Mordechai Kalina. Those who know them probably know them only from that book, but when you read that book there are things worth knowing there. There is correspondence with the Rogatchover, and the Rogatchover keeps corresponding with him for almost three hundred letters, and I don’t know if that’s all of them. Believe me, it’s worth the blow. What do you mean—the Rogatchover wouldn’t devote time to more than a line? So there they discuss—look at the beginning of letter 193. There is a discussion from 192 to 194; that discussion continues. At the beginning of 193 it is sharpened. He brings a dispute among the medieval authorities: what is called writing a bill of divorce for its own sake. Writing a bill of divorce for its own sake—does it mean for the sake of the image of the woman? Is it that the image of the woman has to be before my mind? Or for the sake of her name?
[Speaker B] Her name. Rivka.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He says here: it is written that if he changed his name or her name, it is invalid by Torah law. The bill of divorce is invalid if he changed his name or her name. The Sema explains in Sefer HaTerumot: because it was not written for her sake. That’s what the Sema says. Because it was not written for her sake, but for another name. What does “for another name” mean? After all, I was thinking of this concrete woman, the wife of that man, Rivka, and then I wrote another name for her. I was thinking of his wife; maybe I even know her; I saw her picture before my eyes. No—it is for another name. What does “for another name” mean? I made a mistake in the name, I called her Leah instead of Rivka, so that is for another name. And the Rashba, he brings later, writes—the Rashba in tractate Gittin on page 80 says this is invalid only because this is not a narrative of severance. There is no severance in the bill of divorce; the bill doesn’t make clear whom you are divorcing; it isn’t clear from the document itself, so it is invalid. And that is the simple approach: it is for her sake, only the bill itself doesn’t make clear whom you are divorcing—that is the invalidating factor. But Terumat HaDeshen and several others, and the Sema and Sefer HaTerumot and others write that it is because this is for another name. What does “for another name” mean? That when you write the word of her name as a different word, then you related to another woman. Why? After all, you saw her image in your mind—that woman, not some other one. In the mind, the image—that’s speech. The image too is not the woman herself. After all, the image too, the way she appears to the eyes, is also only a representation of the woman herself. It is not her any more than the name is. There are two ways of relating to her: one through her picture, and one through her name. Right? So the image too is not her herself; these are just two modes of relation. So if you wrote a different name, then you are actually addressing another woman. That’s what he says here. Because the name is she herself; it’s not something—do you understand? The name relates to the essence. And if you wrote another name, then it doesn’t matter that you saw the same image. So you saw that image, but you thought about another woman. This is a very extreme expression of this position, but look, this is in practical Jewish law. The letters and the name and all that have an essential connection—they are the thing itself, not some representation. And on the other hand, appearance, the picture—that too is not the thing itself. It is a representation.
[Speaker B] And the name is the thing itself?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The name is more the thing itself than the picture, because the name relates to the matter of the thing, while the picture relates to its form. And therefore, if with regard to the name you were mistaken but with regard to the picture you were right, that is called writing another name. Maybe let’s bring the opposite example.
[Speaker B] If for a certain woman—if in a bill of divorce for a certain woman you thought of a certain woman and wrote the correct name—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] then is it valid?
[Speaker B] After all, the name is more so. And also in a bill of divorce, it seems to me in Jewish law, if there are two women who share the same name—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but the question is whether we’re talking about a picture or about—
[Speaker B] if it is the same name, then what do you mean? Other women?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So how can you intend another woman when writing the same name? Maybe by seeing her picture in your head. The question is exactly what is meant there; I don’t know.
[Speaker B] There are two women with the same name.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So there is some abstract intention like that—then how do you distinguish them if they have the same name? What is the difference between them?
[Speaker B] Didn’t we say eight-thirty?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Eight-thirty is late. What time is it now?
[Speaker B] Quarter past seven. Also, the Maharal can’t say that a name is only a representation and not the thing itself. I saw that a name too is the thing itself, but when thinking about a specific woman then you see her name, so that is only a representation and not the thing itself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In what sense are you thinking about a specific woman? You see her picture? But her picture too is a representation of her.
[Speaker B] Yes, so the picture helps you think about the woman herself—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] not through the name, but one thinks about the woman herself. And one makes a mistake in the name. Maybe. So this is really an extreme halakhic expression of this view, as though the name or the letters are the essence of the thing itself, and not merely some indexical connection to it. And that is the same thing we said about Hear O Israel. Saying the words Hear O Israel—even if I don’t see the picture of “the Lord our God,” so to speak, before my eyes—that is not something devoid of all value and expression. True, one does not thereby fulfill the obligation of intention, but it is something; apparently there is something in it. It is not something completely empty, not at all. B. Now here there are several passages from A to E. We can go through them quickly. He starts with negative attributes and so on. “The supreme Name, blessed be He, the ruler and commander, the goal of worship and the root of all upper and lower acts, is not seen; He is unknowable; no knowledge and no thought grasps Him at all.” Fine, here there are several quotations. Let’s not get into it too much. “Yet the supreme Name, blessed be He, is the essence of the Torah, the beginning of wisdom, law and knowledge.” How can what is unknowable be the root of knowledge? An unknowable thing is not the root of knowledge. How does one know that of which there is no knowledge? Or in the words of the author of Sefer HaIkkarim: how can the root of a divine Torah be something whose apprehension is hidden from every being other than God? What does “other than God” mean? He and His name. Hidden from everyone’s apprehension except for His name. And all we know about Him is only His name—what we call the Holy One, blessed be He. And all we know about Him is only His name. So basically we don’t know anything about Him, as he said before. After all, it is only saying the word without anything accompanying it by way of an image. So basically we’re just mumbling when we say “the Holy One, blessed be He,” right? So how can it be that the root of everything we’re discussing here is actually something we don’t understand at all? We understand nothing. So this is really another facet of the question that arose in section A. Maybe we didn’t focus it after all the comments. A basic point: when we intend an abstract essence, we have no ability to form an image of it. And then what follows? It follows that we can only speak about it, but that speech is empty speech, idle speech, because it is not accompanied by an image. So what is it worth? That’s his question. So he says: when one takes upon himself—as one who examines in his mind, when he takes upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven, I return to section A—what does he come to believe in his heart while his mouth speaks? As though our intention and our desire are—how shall I put it? Not how to believe. What, is the whole point merely to say it? Surely one has to believe along with the saying. Think about what I said. I said—I made a sort of antithesis here. What he said was that all the sources say the speech cannot be hollow speech. It has to be accompanied by some understanding, by some image. After all, I asked: then why do so many people still do it, and why is it not entirely without basis? And perhaps Moshe of Coucy himself really means this. End of section A.
[Speaker B] What? Not that one cannot pray.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not that one cannot pray with intention, but praying without intention is preferable to not praying at all. That is different from what people usually think. After all, it still does something. In the end he says, it—
[Speaker B] acts, it says something. Prayer—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] without intention is like a body without a soul. But a body without a soul is better than neither body nor soul.
[Speaker B] Do you identify with his problem? That he can’t really speak about the Holy One, blessed be He, without picturing something corporeal?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not something corporeal—not corporeal. What can you picture about Him?
[Speaker B] There is nothing to picture about Him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But then what? You say “the Holy One, blessed be He,” but that saying has no meaning. What do you mean when you say that? After all, everything has some meaning. I say someone’s name, so I know who he is. Some abstract entity.
[Speaker B] Not that that is the category of the Holy One, blessed be He.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Those are only attributes. Fine, that’s stage two. And that is exactly the point.
[Speaker B] So he is talking—there is something here—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] without saying all the external attributes of it. I think in the end that is the point, but here he is posing the question. He says: wait, I don’t understand. After all, this word has no content. And any content we give it is basically an image, but it has no image. So wait—what is happening here? Am I basically just mumbling?
[Speaker B] So that’s what was in section A, and now in section B it’s the same thing. I don’t understand the light itself, but I understand its expression.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, here I have an image—
[Speaker B] of it. That’s exactly what he said. The thing itself, here too, I can say all sorts of expressions of what are supposedly among the attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He. Fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But now this is an introduction to the question of attributes. After all, the quotations from Sefer HaIkkarim and from the Guide for the Perplexed are introductions before they begin dealing with attributes. So come on, we’re now at the introductory stage. Clearly afterward they start talking about attributes, but one needs to understand what they mean. At the moment he is only presenting the question. So really what there is in section B is a description, from a slightly different angle, of the problem that existed in section A. In section A he says: how can it be that a person accepts upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven when the words have no meaning when he says them? He is really not intending anything, because there is nothing to intend—there is no image. Concrete things—those have image. Abstract things—there is no image. So what, is he just mumbling? It has no meaning. And here he says it not in the sense of accepting the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven, but in the metaphysical sense. Meaning, how can it be that the root of all the things known to us is itself nothing, has no thingness at all—so how can it be the root of things that are graspable? C. The question of what, the question of what. According to the divine investigators, it is not fitting to ask concerning Him, what is He, nor how is He, but whether He is. But how can he ask whether, about something of which I do not know what? What’s the formulation? What does “whether He is” mean? Does He exist? Yes. We mentioned this a little before last time: one of the only things you can say about the matter of a thing and not about its form is that it exists. When you say it is round, that says something about its form. To say it is sad or happy, red, triangular, heavy—all those are descriptions of the form. But to say it exists—that is a description of it itself, speech about it itself, not about its form. We spoke about the ontological proof—this is how they reject it. Didn’t we? I think so. The ontological proof of Anselm the Christian, Saint Anselm—that he brought a proof from the fact that an existing thing is greater than a thing… We spoke about that, right? No, maybe in… The ontological proof for divine existence. Anselm began it and then Descartes improved it a bit, and there are two or three versions of it; there is also one by Spinoza and Leibniz. A lot of ink has been spilled over it.
[Speaker B] He says there that one of the formulations—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Holy One, blessed be He, is the being possessing all realities, all perfections, all perfections. One of the perfections is to exist, and a being that exists is more perfect than a being that does not—
[Speaker B] exist. And therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, exists. It compels that, right? And that is what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the Proslogion. The Holy One, blessed be He, is the being possessing all perfections, right? One of the perfections is to exist. And an existing thing is obviously more perfect than a thing that is only potential or non-existent, and therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, exists. He is moving here from the realm of concept to the realm of being, to the real world. How is it built, in a bit more detail? If I understand the concept “the Holy One, blessed be He,” the divine—the concept—I have not yet assumed He exists. The concept: what does the concept say? The concept is clear. The concept is clear. What does this concept say? A being possessing all perfections. Right now that is only a concept. I don’t know whether it exists or not, but that concept is clear to me. Meaning, there is such a concept; as a concept it exists—not the being, the concept exists. But what is that concept? All perfections. But one of the perfections is to exist, so automatically He also exists. There is a move here from relating to the concept to relating to the being.
[Speaker B] You can say that He is not—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If there is such a concept, then that is the claim, then there is also such a being. You cannot say there is no such concept; after all, we use it and all of us understand it. What, are you going to say there is no such concept? Why not? What’s the problem? There was a huge amount of discussion about this statement. It passed through many, many years, and along the way all kinds of objections developed, most of which revolve around one point. We spoke about this also in the evening: most objections basically revolved around the point that existence is not a kind of perfection; existence is not an attribute. He is infinitely good, infinitely strong—but “exists” is not the same kind of thing as good and strong. That’s how people usually say it one way or another. But I don’t know a definition of why not, exactly. The best definition that at least I can offer for this is what we are saying now. Good, round, red, heavy—all these are descriptions of the being; they speak about its form. But the fact that it exists—that does not speak about its form, it speaks about its matter. Right? The fact that it exists or does not exist is not a description of it as existing. It is a statement about it itself; it is not a statement about how it is perceived. It is not perceived as existing. Either it exists or it does not; yes or no—that is not a matter of whether it is perceived as existing. It is perceived as triangular, it is perceived as red; it is not perceived as existing. Existing is a statement about it itself, not about how it is perceived, and therefore it is a statement about matter, not about form. That is the definition of why existence is not one of the attributes, one of the perfections. Right now the ontological proof itself doesn’t interest me, only as a sharpening of this point—that to say a certain thing exists is to say something about the thing itself and not about its form. Therefore, if we return to what we read now, he says: according to the investigators it is not fitting to ask of Him what or how, but whether He is. How would I explain this? Very simply. You cannot say anything about the form of the Holy One, blessed be He. What He is and how He is—those are all descriptions. How He is, what He is, and so on—those are all concepts of description. He has no description. But to say that He exists—that, yes, you can say about Him. Why? Because here we are not relating to how He looks—He has no picture, He is not… We are relating to Him Himself, to the fact that He exists, to the fact that He is, what you described earlier. We know that He is, and that is what we know about Him. Why? Because truly to say of Him that He is is to speak about His essence, not about His form. About His matter.
[Speaker B] What does that mean—have we not related to the Holy One, blessed be He, in Himself?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is already a philosophical concept. The Holy One, blessed be He, in Himself—not as He is perceived.
[Speaker B] What is that—isn’t that also speaking—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. What is it? If you say He is whatever—has such a form, has such traits—that is already concepts of form, of characteristics. What He is and how He is—those are the characteristics. He is tall, He is short, He is round, He is such-and-such—that’s the what, the characteristics. But to say He is—that is speaking about Him Himself, not about His forms. And therefore now he says: but how can I ask whether, about that of which I do not know what it is? Of course I have already anticipated the answer.
[Speaker B] Is there meaning?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I have already anticipated the answer. I already explained why it is not meaningless. But he asks the question. He says: after all, it is meaningless! What, you say the Holy One, blessed be He, exists. Fine—who is the Holy One, blessed be He? It’s only a word. Who is the Holy One, blessed be He? You cannot say anything about Him except that He exists. But saying—I’ll tell you now, listen: X exists. The sentence I just said now: X exists. Is that a sentence with content? All I know about X is only that it exists. So when I say X exists, I have said nothing, right? I need to know something about X for the sentence X exists to have any content. Otherwise what content does it have? Do you understand what I’m saying? The sentence has no content. Now if this X is called God or the Holy One, blessed be He, so what? It is exactly the same thing. We’ve just advanced a little, that’s all. So it is the same thing. You say a certain being that we call God—it doesn’t matter what we call it at the moment—but all we can say about that being is that it exists. But that sentence has no meaning if that is all we can say about that thing. That there is a being—that is basically what we are saying. It’s a kind of Spinozistic statement like that. Those are the first lines in the Ethics. Therefore he says: but how can I ask whether, about something of which I do not know what it is? What shall be asked? Here: X exists. Fine, I now come to you with a new question. Tell me: does X exist or not? Let us investigate this question, whether X exists or not. But I don’t tell you anything about this X. Do you understand? It’s hard to grasp the question if we speak about the Holy One, blessed be He. But leave that aside; “the Holy One, blessed be He” is just a name. Let’s say X. It’s the same thing. We don’t know anything about it except that it exists, right? So now I ask you an inquiry: I want to deepen or investigate the question whether X exists or not. It is simply a joke. What does it mean? You know nothing about it other than the very question of whether it exists, which is what you are discussing. It has no meaning, yes? So how can I ask whether, about something of which I do not know what it is? What am I formulating? And likewise in Shir HaYichud, day one, two, three: “What shall I set in order, when I do not know what? Can I speak, while He is what? The discerning and wise did not know, and how shall I set in order concerning what I do not know?” That is his interpretation, basically, of those lines in Shir HaYichud. “Not the question whether, but the question what is primary for the inquiring believer,” in the words of Philo the Jew. And now he continues here to what, for me, is the next stage in faith, which I think we will also see later. Yes, it is a kind of view that we do not have the thing itself; we have only the collection of its descriptions. So if you do not know the descriptions, you know nothing. Therefore he says again, as he said before—this is a continuation, the presentation of the question in a third way. Exactly the same question as in A and B, now also in C. A third way of presenting the same question, yes? Now he says that basically you are uttering words that have no coverage, no meaning. Only the word functions. There is no meaning here. You are saying nothing. And that cannot be, of course. Therefore he says: it cannot be—not the question whether, but the question what is primary for the believer, not like the divine investigators he mentions above, yes? Who say that we can only ask whether and not what. Which is absurd to say such a thing. How can one say only whether and not what? If you don’t say the what, you can’t say the whether either. It has no meaning. When you say that someone exists, you have to tell me something about that someone. Shakespeare wrote all those Hebrew works? No—it wasn’t Shakespeare, it was his cousin, who also wasn’t called Shakespeare. What does that even mean? It wasn’t Shakespeare who wrote all those Hebrew works, but his cousin, who also wasn’t called Shakespeare. All we know about this Jew called Shakespeare is that he wrote all those works, right? If I say no, it wasn’t him, it was his cousin, who also wasn’t called Shakespeare, and he also wrote all those works—then it’s the same thing, exactly the same thing as what we’re saying here. Do you understand? “The Holy One, blessed be He, exists” is exactly the same thing, only here for some reason we don’t laugh. It’s the same thing. In the spirit of the philosophers, Philo is basically arguing against the investigators. That indeed we cannot suffice with only the question whether He is. We must also ask what He is and how He is and who He is. It cannot be otherwise. What is this whether? In the spirit of the philosophers, we knew this—Philo and the Alexandrians introduced logos behind the ideas, right? We saw that, when they introduce some sort of something beyond the abstract ideas. In the spirit of the philosophers, only the prophet of the generation by nature, or the outstanding philosopher by what he acquired from wisdom, can worship the divine service. But anyone else worships something else. And if so, it comes out that only the prophet of the generation—only one person can attain some sketch or image of the Holy One, blessed be He—only he can worship Him. And all the rest are just mumbling words. And anyone else—meaning, whoever is not such a great philosopher or such a great prophet, really only a prophet—why are the philosophers less important? Fine, “the prophet of the generation” here probably does not mean prophet in the sense of prophecy; whoever wrote this probably had some other sort of thing in mind, maybe the prophet. But anyone else, if anyone else who is not in that category of great philosopher—then what? Then he is basically an idol worshiper? Meaning, he worships something else, or he worships nothing, he just mumbles words. It’s all play. How can they investigate whether, if they don’t have the how and the what? How can one investigate whether? Not because it is meaningless—
[Speaker B] How can one investigate it at all? And that’s exactly what he says—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that’s exactly what he says. All the sentences in this context are meaningless.
[Speaker B] No, because they say it is not fitting to ask what and how, but whether—that one can ask. But even that one cannot ask, because how can one—how can one investigate? Philosophers don’t investigate—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the God above; they investigate a God that is within the world. Whether He exists or not—
[Speaker B] But how can one investigate at all? They say one can investigate whether. How can one investigate whether if one has no what and no how? How can one? It’s not that it’s meaningless—that’s the question he asks against them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is the question he asks against them, that Saadia Gaon asks against them.
[Speaker B] He understood that Saadia Gaon was attacking them on X, but you can’t—you can’t ask whether X exists or doesn’t exist without understanding what X is. It’s meaningless.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But what does it mean—you can’t ask this question? It means that if the question is meaningless, you cannot ask it. What is the concept of the Holy One, blessed be He? In the end behind everything there stands some description, on one theoretical level or another, or else the sentence truly has no meaning. That’s the point Saadia Gaon wants to make. Therefore the philosophers conclude that anyone who does not have some kind of descriptive form for the Holy One, blessed be He, is really worshiping someone else, or worshiping nothing at all—just mumbling words. This whole introduction is really—here, in the introduction to the book Sha’ar HaShamayim attributed to Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra, and there by Shadal—that anyone who does not know his Creator and does not apprehend Him according to the apprehension of the human intellect is found, without doubt, worshiping idolatry. And in Gan HaSekhalim by Rabbi Nethanel al-Fayyumi, edition of Rabbi Kapach, “If you speak, you corporealize; if you are silent, you deny and reject.” And you find yourself in a trap with no way out. If you speak, you corporealize, because there is no description. But on the other hand, without description, then you have simply denied and rejected—you are speaking about nothing. This matter is a trap with no exit. So what is happening? His whole purpose is to lead philosophy up to the point where it stops. Meaning, where there is no way out anymore—finished. And that is really the introduction to the doctrine of divine attributes. Do you understand? This whole business is meant to serve as an introduction to why we need attributes of the divine. Because without attributes of the divine, then if you speak, you corporealize, and if you do not speak, you deny and reject.
[Speaker B] Wait, can’t you at least say that there is meaning to saying He is, He exists? Can’t you say yes, we’re talking about Him as something that exists; beyond that I know nothing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Beyond the fact that He exists you know nothing, so you have not said that He exists. Maybe you are talking about X existing. Or about a fairy—Tinker Bell, Peter Pan. What, who said that—
[Speaker B] Theoretically it could be. I mean, I don’t know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In what sense are you speaking about Him?
[Speaker B] Are we speaking about Him at all? Is He the one who created the world?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, then you already know something about Him. No—you already know a great deal about Him. If there is some X—then X created the world. Wait, wait, one cow at a time. We are now going to get to the whole issue of attributes. We will examine those attributes in light of the questions posed here. This is only an introduction to the essay; we have not said everything now. But he wants to present as sharply as possible the point that we are actually in a kind of trap here. The author of Sefer HaIkkarim also writes this, as I recall, in the introduction: what are we going to say about God?
[Speaker B] Here, in the poverty of the essay on this also here… Why do the philosophers say people do not worship the Holy One, blessed be He? You said He created the world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who is “He”? If He created the world—so you said. What’s the difference between that and saying X exists? Between that and X exists? Who is “created the world”? The entity sitting there banging with a hammer? Creator of the world, creator of the world. Of course the creator of the world in the world—thank you very much. The creator of the world created the world, thank you very much. But you are telling me something about someone you know nothing about. So again it’s like X exists. You haven’t really said anything. No, here we’ve already advanced. How have we advanced? From X, we said X created the world. We said the creator of the world exists—thank you very much. The world exists, so of course its creator exists. The question is: who is the creator?
[Speaker B] But saying that there is a creator is something else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is a statement about the world. It is a statement about the world that the world was created by someone. But I ask: who is the creator? It isn’t enough to say there is a creator. You want to say something about Him, not about the world. When you say there is a creator, that is a statement about the world, not about the creator. Always. The question is: if I say that He is good, then the question will be: who is that one who is good? Quite right. That one who has wings—who is that one who has wings and created the world? No, that’s not right, that’s not right.
[Speaker B] Because the moment you already have two things, you’ve already said something. Of course. Yes. You say that the one who is infinitely good is also the one who created the world. That is already a meaningful sentence, so you’ve already said something about Him. No, that’s clear. What do you mean? That’s already a sentence that contains information. The one who is infinitely good is also the one who created the world. So that’s a sentence with a lot of information. But to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world is a meaningless sentence. Why? Someone created the world. Why? What’s wrong with that? There are already several things included. I am referring to the same one who also created the world. And what are you saying? He created the world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The same one who exists and who created the world.
[Speaker B] He created the world because He exists.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, He doesn’t exist?
[Speaker B] He created the world without existing? I can say five hundred things in one word. No, that’s not five hundred things; you’re saying one thing in fifteen words, not five hundred things in one word.