Because the prayer is seemingly speaking about the city of Jerusalem as a whole, and not only about the place of the Temple. But if, as you write, you understand the expression “city” in the Nachem prayer as a literary expression for the Temple Mount alone, then it does indeed make sense that you would say the standard text.

I didn’t claim that originally they meant the Temple Mount. But today, when that is the situation on the Temple Mount, it can still be said. There is no issue here of “he who speaks falsehood shall not be established.” Beyond that, I don’t see anything special about the Old City. Either the Temple Mount or all of Jerusalem.

With God’s help, 13 Av 5779

To Amir—greetings,

Besides what Rabbi Michael Abraham replied, that the essence of Jerusalem is the site of the Temple, which is still destroyed and “foxes walk through it,” it should be noted that a significant part of the area sanctified with the sanctity of Jerusalem is still not inhabited by Jews (for example, the “City of David,” in most of whose area the Arabs of the village of Silwan live).

A comprehensive collection of the opinions on both sides may be found in Dr. Yael Levin’s article in Techumin 21 (5761) on “The Nachem Prayer in Our Time,” where she brought opinions of sages who updated the wording of the blessing in various ways, and opinions of sages who held that the wording should not be changed.

An intermediate position brought there is that of Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli: in public one should not change the accepted wording, but an individual may update the wording of his own prayer. In the year the article was published in Techumin, Rabbi Yonatan Elran (rabbi of the community of Kokhav HaShahar) was asked about Nachem, and he pointed to Rabbi Yisraeli’s position as cited in the article.

Best regards, S. Tz. Levinger

As far as I understand, “holiness” in Judaism can stem only from a divine source and through the mediation of the Torah.

In light of that, my question is:

What are the arguments of those circles in Judaism who think that Jerusalem and/or the Temple Mount and/or the Temple are really holy?

What is the question? Their holiness stems from a divine source through the mediation of the Torah.

I’m not disputing that, I only asked for arguments/references.
Jerusalem does not appear in the Torah.
Is it because the Ark of the Covenant containing the tablets wandered to the Temple and thus “imported” holiness there?

There is a Mishnah and Tosefta in tractate Kelim that deals with levels of holiness by place. It is not necessarily connected to the tablets of the covenant, which in the Second Temple were not even in the Temple.

Fine, but what are the tannaim’s arguments on the matter?
I’m not asking for a learned lecture, just a general direction.

The sages derived this from verses and from various laws that apply to those places. See a relatively clear summary here:
https://www.yeshiva.org.il/wiki/index.php?title=%D7%A2%D7%A9%D7%A8_%D7%A7%D7%93%D7%95%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA

Thanks for the reference.

I’m not sure it answers my question.

In the end, the Archimedean point of the sages regarding holiness, meaning that which radiates holiness onto the Temple and the whole city, is the Holy of Holies.

But here’s the thing: when I try to understand why that is so, these guys say, “because one may not enter it except the High Priest on Yom Kippur at the time of the service.”

We already agreed that holiness in Judaism stems from God through the mediation of the Torah, and I’m unable to see in this proof-text either Him or it.

(I assume the sages do not mean to claim that the holiness of the place depends on the act of the High Priest entering it on Yom Kippur, and that if he doesn’t enter at that very moment the holiness disappears or something like that.)

That’s why I guessed that the existence of the tablets (= the Torah) in the Temple in an earlier historical period “imported” holiness to the place.

It is said regarding the second tithe: “But before the Lord your God you shall eat it in the place that the Lord your God will choose” (Deuteronomy 12:18). And it is explained explicitly in the Sifrei midrash: “You shall eat it in the place that the Lord will choose”—this is Jerusalem. “You will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of Your inheritance” (Exodus 15:17); Sforno explains: on the Temple Mount, concerning which it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it shall be seen” (Genesis 22:14).

Correction: Genesis 22:14.

Correction: “You will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of Your inheritance.” And later in the verse: “the place, O Lord, which You made for Your dwelling, the sanctuary, O Lord, which Your hands established.”

Correction: “on the mountain of Your inheritance.” Sorry for the mistakes. It wasn’t for nothing that Maimonides wrote that one should always do a lot of proofreading.

M80, thanks for stepping in, but I didn’t understand a word.
Can it be explained to secular riffraff like me in less yeshivish language?

In any case, I still don’t see the connection to God and the Torah.

In tractate Kelim, the expression “because the High Priest enters there only once a year” is not trying to prove the holiness of the place by observations about people’s entry habits there; rather, that is precisely the definition of the holiness (= separation, elevated status) of the place: it is forbidden (and not merely customary not) to enter there! If you ask what the connection to God is—the Jewish law that forbids entering there comes from God.

Doron,

There are commandments dependent on the Land that apply only in the Land of Israel. There is a commandment to separate the second tithe from produce, and the farmers must eat it in the place that the Holy One, blessed be He, chooses (Deuteronomy 12:17–18). The sages explained that this means Jerusalem; that is, Jerusalem is the place that the Holy One, blessed be He, chose as sanctified for eating the second tithe (and sanctified for several other things as well).

The Temple Mount is Mount Moriah, regarding which it says in the book of Genesis (22:14): “On the mountain of the Lord it shall be seen,” meaning that a time will come when the Holy One, blessed be He, will reveal this place as the place to cause His presence to dwell, and that was in the days of David. Maimonides wrote: “The sanctity of Jerusalem and the Temple sanctified them for their time and sanctified them for the future to come, and it was not nullified by the destruction of the Temple, because the sanctity of the Temple and Jerusalem is due to the Divine Presence, and the Divine Presence is never nullified.”

Citizen, exactly right.
The entry prohibitions are an indication of the degree of holiness of those places. Through those laws the Torah teaches us the degree of holiness of each place.

That one enters there only the High Priest on Yom Kippur at the time of the service. The word “there” indicates distance, and from it the word for “heavens” is also derived. There is a connection between holiness and distance. To the extent that a place is holy, so spiritually it is distant, and accordingly entry into it is forbidden.

Doron,
There are two central schools of thought about what holiness is:
Realist: holiness is a quality that exists in reality and that people of a certain spiritual level can identify.
Nominalist: there is no holiness in reality. The concept of holiness comes only to mark for us a certain mode of behavior toward certain sites.
Judah Halevi in the Kuzari presents the first approach. In the comments here, Citizen presents the nominalist approach. Rabbi Michael Abraham here supports Citizen’s approach, but elsewhere he turns out to be quite a realist.

As for me, I think holiness is not a quality existing in reality, nor does it stem only from a demand concerning our mode of relation; rather, it describes an object that God marks within reality. God is indeed not part of reality and does not appear within reality, but there are objects in reality to which His name applies, and therefore they become holy. In the Torah, Jerusalem indeed is not mentioned, but the reference to the Temple site in Deuteronomy is as “the place that the Lord will choose to put His name there.” The mentioning of God’s name upon the place grants it the status of a holy place. In my opinion this is also true regarding other manifestations of God in reality, such as the Torah and Israel, but that is a matter for another discussion.

Y.D., look closely at my words. Citizen argued that the laws are the holiness, which implies nominalism (Leibowitz: and what is its holiness? That first-fruits and the two loaves are brought from it). I sharpened that the laws are an indication of holiness (and not holiness itself). Is this realism or not? See my columns on object and subject.

Citizen + Michi,

I see here the beginning of an answer regarding holiness in general and the holiness of Jerusalem and the Temple specifically.

Still, something here seems a bit forced to me.

True, one can connect the Torah to Jerusalem and the Temple on the basis of the idea—which does appear in the Torah—that God will choose a certain place for Himself. After that, in later historical stages, the religious authorities knew how to identify what that place was. Presumably that’s how it works in many other things in Judaism too, whenever the need arises the accepted authority performs the required identification and linkage.

Even so, my impression is that in Judaism Jerusalem (and the Temple) suffers from an excess of “holiness” compared to other objects offered to us. In other words: my impression is that the identification and linkage between it and the Torah is relatively weak.

(Of course my impression may stem from historical anachronism that I myself suffer from—for example, the all-too-successful Zionist education I received.)

As for the overall philosophical-theological question in the background (the concept of holiness in general): here I can only return to my old position, according to which in Judaism the concept of God (the supposed source of all holiness) derives from the Torah. Exactly the opposite of what common sense requires.
But that’s an old argument…

Doron,
The Torah marks the Master of the Universe in the world, so it is not all that surprising. After all, the Master of the Universe is not part of the existing world. Rabbi Michi can make all sorts of philosophical calculations from which it emerges that there is someone who created the world, but he can’t tell us much beyond that. The Torah is the only way to know the Master of the Universe from within the world (and likewise the Jewish people), and therefore the Zohar interprets the word “I” as “I wrote and gave My very self.” If the Torah had not portrayed for us a personal being who commands and forbids, we would have no hold on God in the world.

With regard to Jerusalem, in fact from the book of Genesis it clearly emerges that the house of God was chosen to be in Bethel (which was formerly called Luz). But in Deuteronomy Moses suddenly removes Bethel and announces that the house of God has still not been chosen and needs to be chosen. He makes the choosing of God’s house depend on reaching “the resting place and the inheritance,” which is interpreted as arrival at the proper political order, realized in the monarchy of the House of David. Only out of the proper political order can the revelation of the Divine Presence in the world appear in its complete form in one place on the globe. Perhaps that is why we await the Messiah son of David, who will restore the proper political order to reality, from which perhaps the Temple will return.

Still, the question of how Moses our teacher decided to disagree with our father Jacob and remove Bethel is a hard question, and I have no clear answer to it.

With God’s help, 15 Av 5779

To Y.D.—greetings,

To your question “what changed from the days of the Patriarchs,” Moses answers in his Torah: “For you have not as yet come to the resting place and to the inheritance that the Lord your God gives you” (Deuteronomy 12:9). But when “you dwell in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and He gives you rest from all your enemies around, and you dwell in safety,” then there will be found “the place that the Lord your God will choose for His name to dwell there.”

The Patriarchs wandered “from nation to nation, and from one kingdom to another people,” and in the places where they passed they called in the name of the Lord and built altars to the Lord. Abraham builds an altar in Shechem, between Bethel and Ai, and by God’s command—on Mount Moriah. Isaac offers to the Lord in Beersheba. Jacob returns to the places in which his fathers chose the Lord, and he builds an altar to the Lord in Shechem, in Bethel, and in Beersheba.

But Mount Moriah is not among the places in which the Patriarchs chose to worship the Lord; rather, it is a place to which Abraham and Isaac went without knowing in advance where they were going. Just as Abraham was commanded, “Go forth from your land… to the land that I will show you,” so too Abraham was commanded in the Binding: “Go, please, to the land of Moriah… on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” And this place does not come from human initiative but from divine guidance: “The Lord will see.”

That is the difference between the service of the individual and the service of the collective. The service of the individual reflects his choice and initiative. The service of the collective is beyond that. After all, a community is not only “righteous people” who arrived at the good by their own choice and understanding. The service of the collective requires divine guidance that will show the way to everyone, even the average and even the distant, who need more than anyone a lighthouse to chart their path.

Jacob summarized the choices of his righteous fathers, and David, founder of the monarchy, reveals “the place that the Lord will choose for His name to dwell there,” the place to which the tribes will ascend to call in the name of the Lord, and to which in the future all the nations will stream so that there the Lord may teach them of His ways.

The place chosen to be the sanctuary of the collective is not a place already identified with one of the tribes, but a place that had been in the hands of the Jebusites and was conquered and purchased by the king “in the name of all Israel,” a place where no one can boast and say “it is mine,” but where all Israel joins together as equals, a place where the inheritances of the sons of Leah and the sons of Rachel meet, and where “they shall become one in your hand” is fulfilled.

Best regards, S. Tz.

Paragraph 2, line 4
… in which his fathers chose to worship the Lord, …

Paragraph 3, line 4
… and this place does not come from human initiative…

Y.D.

Regarding the holiness of Jerusalem and the Temple, it seems that you more or less agree with me that there is something arbitrary in this holiness.

I didn’t really understand S.Tz.L.’s response that came to save the situation. But I got the impression that it was more pilpul than substantive engagement (forgive me, with all due respect to the honorable S.Tz.L.-ness).

Regarding holiness in Judaism:

For the purpose of the discussion, I am not disputing at all your claim that “the Torah marks the Master of the Universe in the world.”

Nor is there any philosophical or theological problem with that.

The problem with the Torah (and of course with Judaism in general) is different: it confuses the order of things. The Pentateuch “marks” first of all itself (instead of God).

In my view, a rational philosophical position must first of all be “synthetic,” and accordingly the guiding norm of all synthetic positions should give precedence to human intuition (as man’s primary source of cognition) over every other source of cognition. That is, it should create a norm that subordinates the text to a higher channel of reference found within the human soul itself.

Therefore, one would expect it at least to instruct its believers first to “follow after their own hearts” (= to activate their intuitions), and only afterwards to follow after it.
If it had done that, it could have saved itself.

To the best of my knowledge, authentic Judaism (Orthodoxy)—not the fake version that secular people like me adopted for themselves—has not yet produced anyone who would dare say this and still be considered faithful to its principled and historical path.

It is arbitrary in the same sense that the choosing of the Jewish people is arbitrary (Maharal), or that the creation of the world is arbitrary (Maimonides). By the way, I think the emphasis on arbitrariness (or picking) does not stop at the boundaries of Judaism. It appears in Christianity in the idea of predestination and in Muslim fatalism (“everything is from Allah”). Even here on the site there appears a homily explaining to us that the Master of the Universe chose one day a year to meet with us (the Ninth of Av), and that this meeting is so important that it is even forbidden to distract from it by studying Torah. In any event, the wording of the verse says explicitly that there will be a renewed choice here.

I think the emphasis on choice and the arbitrary side included in it comes to point to God’s freedom. The Holy One, blessed be He, is not a mechanical cause that gives pre-cut answers, but a free being (and therefore also a moral one).

The Torah does not come to persuade, but to present (to reveal): this is what there is—take it or leave it. Your approach—“first convince me…” —the Talmud presents as the treacherous approach of people who are incapable of real free moral choice (Shabbat 88, and perhaps it is time for the Rabbi to publish a post on this Talmudic passage).

Y.D.,

Regarding the holiness of Jerusalem/the Temple:

I assume that you also agree that not all the truths of Judaism are “arbitrary” to the same degree. Some are more acceptable to your mind and some less so.
My claim was that the matter of Jerusalem’s holiness seems a bit more arbitrary to me because it is harder to connect it to the Torah.
I thought you agreed with me at least on that point, but apparently I was mistaken.

Regarding the holiness of the Torah:

You write that “the Torah does not come to persuade.”

Well, that is really news to me. In fact it is news to most Orthodox Jews in the world, and I suspect even to you.

The Torah itself (= the Pentateuch) tries to persuade us of many truths, and does so with no small success on a number of issues: that there is a God, that He revealed Himself at Sinai, that He gave us the Torah, that He created the world, etc.

Imagine it: even a person with treacherous positions like mine (as, according to you, our holy sages said about people like me) was persuaded that there is a certain logic in the truths of the Torah. All the more so the wholesome believers of Israel, pure and upright like you.

Doron
Here is the story from tractate Shabbat 88a in the original Aramaic:
A certain Sadducee saw Rava while he was deeply studying a Talmudic passage, and Rava had his fingers pressed under his leg and was squeezing them so hard that his fingers were bleeding. He said to him: “You rash people, who put your mouths before your ears—you are still persisting in your rashness! First you should have listened: if you were able to accept it, then accept it; and if not, then do not accept it.” He replied to him: “We, who walk in integrity—about us it is written: ‘The integrity of the upright guides them’ (Proverbs 11, 3); but about those people who walk in crookedness it is written of them: ‘(Proverbs 11, 3) but the perversity of the treacherous destroys them.’:
Or in Hebrew translation:
That Sadducee (or heretic, in the uncensored original) who saw Rava studying a passage and, while studying, pressing his finger under his foot without noticing, until his finger was bleeding. The Sadducee said to Rava: “Hasty people, who put your mouth before your ears” (Rashi: before you heard it—how difficult it was, and whether you could endure it—you accepted upon yourselves to fulfill it), and you still remain in your hastiness. You should have listened first and then decided whether to accept it or not. Rava answered him: We, who walk in wholeheartedness (Rashi: we walked with Him in innocence, in the manner of those who act out of love, and we trusted Him not to burden us with something we could not endure), regarding us it is said: “The integrity of the upright shall guide them.” About you, who come with scheming, it is said: “But the perverseness of the treacherous shall destroy them” (Proverbs 11:3).

When I read your claim that the Jewish approach is against intuition, I was reminded of this Talmudic passage, which I think gives the Jewish answer to your approach. There is also a link here to an article by Yonatan Hirschfeld, which also presents a similar claim regarding Christians (though in a somewhat muddled way), and I think this story answers that as well:

אהבה זה לא מספיק

With God’s help, 20 Av 5779

“The place that the Lord will choose” is not only the place to which the children of Israel will gather three times a year and only there offer sacrifices to the Lord (as explained in the portion of Re’eh), but also the place to which all the nations will gather to worship the Lord, as explained in Moses’ blessing to the tribe of Zebulun: “Peoples shall call to the mountain, there they shall offer sacrifices of righteousness…” (Deuteronomy 33:19).

And so Solomon also says in his prayer at the dedication of the Temple, that the Temple will be the place to which all will turn in prayer—not only the children of Israel, but even the nations of the world: “And also the foreigner, who is not of Your people Israel… and he comes and prays toward this house—You shall hear in heaven Your dwelling place and do according to all that the foreigner calls to You for, so that all the peoples of the earth may know Your name…” (I Kings 8:41–43), as the prophet promises: “For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7).

But the Temple will not only be a “house of prayer for all peoples,” but also a place from which Torah and guidance will go out to all humanity, as in the prophecy of Isaiah and Micah: “And it shall come to pass in the end of days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established on the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills, and all the nations shall flow to it. And many peoples shall go and say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us of His ways and we will walk in His paths; for out of Zion shall go forth Torah, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem… nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:1–4; Micah 4:1–4).

Just as the Jewish people are meant to be “a kingdom of priests” that will bring the word of the Lord to all humanity—so Jerusalem is meant to be the center around which all humanity will unite, and the Torah that will go forth from it will bring peace and unity.

Best regards, S.Tz.

At the end of paragraph 2
… (Isaiah 56:7).

What the sages are offering us here is roughly the same product that Hirschfeld criticizes in his nice article (and, in my opinion, absurd article):

Giving up belief in a transcendent God—who alone can serve as the source of truth and law—and crowning the law itself and the text in His place. Law without a lawgiver, law that is “its own cause.”

In the rabbinic version this is called “wholeheartedness,” meaning a kind of “leap of faith” that requires us to believe in the priority of the law over the lawgiver. In my words: placing the Torah in the place of the God who created it.

By contrast, the Pauline message that speaks of “love” presupposes that there is a primary source for law and truth (the lawgiver himself). True, Paul too preaches a “leap of faith,” but unlike Judaism (and of course unlike the common position of postmodernism and Hirschfeld, whom he attacks), this “leap” is directed toward what stands behind the law (God). What makes that leap possible is, ultimately, the intuitive power in man—that is, something that goes beyond the word and the logic that the Torah so highly exalts.

As I noted earlier, the Pauline conception is ultimately more rational and in that respect less idolatrous (just as the “synthetic” conception is less idolatrous than the “analytic” conception).

Indeed, Paul’s Christianity is very rational: the three who are one and the one who is three and God clothed in flesh etc. etc. 🙂

That is the inevitable result of cancelling commitment to the laws established by God in His Torah. When man appropriates to himself the authority to determine the will of God, the road opens to the most delirious insanities, and the pogroms and the bonfires of the auto-da-fé become the loftiest expression of the “religion of love and mercy.”

That is what happens when divine law becomes “plasticine” 🙂

Best regards, Shatzios Leivingeros

Holy Leivingeros,

Christianity is entitled to a “thin” theology just like Judaism (or any other religion and faith).
Accordingly, my interest in the discussion here (and usually) is not in the official and institutionalized versions of the various religions—usually versions that are far too fleshy—but in a conceptual reconstruction of the foundational conceptions of those religions.

On its face, belief in the Trinity is indeed a non-rational excess that an efficient philosophical reconstruction will be able to reduce or perhaps abolish altogether.

What philosophy will indeed permit us to say in the end is roughly this: the heart of the Christian conception lies first in the idea that the Son of God was sent to earth in human form in order to mediate between us and his “Father,” and second in the example that that “Son” served as a sacrifice and died for man/the world.
Perhaps there are other such “philosophical” principles (say, Christianity’s sweeping universalism). But the Trinity is not one of them (though it is clear to me that most Christian theologians, along with distinguished scholars of Christianity, will try to say that it is).

You did not address the core of my claim (that the Torah prefers the law over the lawgiver), nor its implications for the question that occupied us from the beginning of the discussion (what is holiness?).

There is no basis to your claim that “the Torah prefers the law over the lawgiver.” The law of the Torah is the will of the lawgiver, and it is stable and does not change according to the whims of human beings. Already Balaam imagined that he could “reshape” the will of the Lord and cause Him to reject His chosen people, and he received the clear answer: “God is not a man that He should lie, nor a son of man that He should repent.”

Like Balaam, Christianity too tried to show that the Lord had abandoned His people and chosen for Himself a “new Torah” and a “new people,” and by persecutions, riots, and temptations tried to bring about the elimination of Judaism. That didn’t work for them either. The Jewish people not only did not perish, but awoke to renewed flourishing in their old homeland.

The points of holiness in the world—the holy people, the holy land, the holy times, and the holy Torah—express the eternal connection of the world with its Creator. He made us, and He assigned us our purpose: to bring the world to its repair, and He guides us in His Torah how to realize that purpose.

Best regards, S.Tz.

S.Tz.L.,

I honestly don’t understand what you want from my miserable life.

What do I care about Balaam, what do I care about Judaism’s tribulations, and what do I care about the renewed revival of the Jewish people in its land?

The discussion is first and foremost philosophical in principle. Full stop.

I explained the problem with the Torah—in fact this is a principled problem of every text of this kind—and that is what you need to deal with.

If you have substantive arguments against my outlook, you’re welcome to raise them.

With the blessing of L.P.M. (less pathos, more substance).

And in short:
The Torah, given from the mouth of the Most High, expresses the stable will of its giver. It is eternal and does not stand for “conversion therapies” according to the desires of human beings. The law expresses the will of the lawgiver.

With the blessing “don’t wave around pseudo-philosophical Christian propaganda,” S.Tz. Levinger

A philosophical and substantive answer of the highest order.

If that’s my reward, apparently I really did do something bad to someone.

With God’s help, 21 Av 5779

As I mentioned above, the points of holiness are the points of connection between the world and its Creator.

The point of holiness in man—the Jewish people, a “holy nation,” whose role is to connect humanity to its God;

The point of holiness in place—the Land of Israel, and at its center “the place that the Lord will choose,” to which humanity will lift its eyes to its Creator in prayer, and from which the Torah of peace and unity will go forth to all humanity.

The point of holiness in time—the times of “holy convocations,” the Sabbaths and festivals in which man emerges from the flow of ordinary life and reconnects to his Creator.

The point of holiness in thought—the Torah, in which the human intellect encounters the divine wisdom and will embodied in the Torah, in all its breadth and depth, and through this encounter a person’s character is built.

It seems that the basic meaning of the root meaning “holy” is “to call,” “to invite,” as in “He has consecrated His invited ones as a bridegroom” (Zephaniah 1:7).

Through the points of holiness—in man, in place, in time, and in thought—God calls and invites His creatures to connect to Him.

Best regards, S.Tz. Levinger

Holiness means separation and distinction. “O God, Your way is in holiness” (Psalms 77:14). Malbim explains: Your way, in terms of Yourself, is in holiness (for holiness indicates that He is separate from all, and He proceeds according to universal fixed laws). And this is the meaning of the expression “the Holy One, blessed be He”—that He is removed and separate beyond all comprehension. What can be grasped, through action and study, is the will of the Creator from His creatures, and that is the Torah that Moses received at Sinai.

With God’s help, 21 Av 5779 (101 years since the passing of Rabbi Chaim of Brisk)

To M80—greetings,

The root meaning “holy” has a double meaning—“holy”: separate and distinct; and “sanctifies/consecrates”: invites.

“The Archimedean point” that pulls the world upward must be outside the world in order to pull it upward, and on the other hand it must have a point of connection to the world, and these are the four planes of connection that I mentioned—the holiness in place, in time, in man, and in thought.

And so the Lord says to His people: “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” The complete separateness of the Creator from His creatures is the reason that calls them to aspire to draw near and connect to Him as far as possible. As a man says to his wife: “Behold, you are consecrated to me”—separated from the whole world and designated for me.

Best regards, S.Tz.

In the date
… (101 years since the passing of Rabbi Chaim of Brisk)

M80

Holiness is indeed separation and distinction.

In more philosophical language, the intention is that the holy factor is transcendent to man and to the world.

In order to reach that transcendent plane, man requires unique epistemic equipment—the intuitive faculty. Of course, one who believes his god is made of cardboard or wood can make do with the “natural” epistemic equipment—the senses, analytical reason, that is language, the emotions, and the imagination.

When some text is revealed to us—especially one that claims to derive from a divine source—we must put it to the test: we must examine whether that text gave a central place to our intuitive faculty or not. Without that faculty we will not truly be able to know that transcendent factor (even if only partially).

The problem becomes especially acute when that text not only failed to give a place to that faculty, but also committed another sin, perhaps more severe: it set itself up to serve as the supreme epistemic and moral authority. A text that appointed itself to be the principal mediator between heaven and earth, whereas by definition, at least in my opinion, no text can do that (by definition a text is contingent on its creator).

Accordingly, you will understand that my critique applies equally to fully “secular” texts. It’s just that there the problem is less severe, because their alienation from the transcendent source is not done in the name of that source.

And a text contingent on its transcendent creator is not supposed to subordinate itself to human opinion, and certainly not to bizarre idolatrous notions of “the Son of God clothed in human form, whose death atones for humanity,” blah blah blah…

Whereas Christianity assumes that man cannot break through the limitation of “original sin,” and has no remedy except by the sacrifice of a human being—the Torah gave man righteous laws and ordinances, and commanded him not only to implement them in practice but also to contemplate them intellectually, and to become wise and understand one thing from another, and in that way to cleave to his God also on the intellectual plane.

Best regards, S.Tz.

S.Tz.L.,

First of all, I’m glad you decided to return to the discussion a bit more substantively.

I allow myself to grade you because I truly think that most of your responses—not only to me—aren’t related to the subject (forgive me for the frankness).

In the model I extract from Christianity (as stated, I’m not sure any “official” Christian would endorse my interpretation, but that doesn’t interest me because in my opinion it is philosophically the correct interpretation), the main thing is not the text. Accordingly, your complaint about Christianity’s tendency to load arbitrary biases onto the text is aimed at a straw man.
The core of Christianity is not located in the text. Very simple.

As for original sin: behind this idea (correct in its tendency) stands a sharp dualistic position that distinguishes between the earthly plane and the metaphysical-transcendent plane.
In my view, only a Platonic-Christian-you-name-it dualism can serve as the basis for an authentic rational position (what Michi calls synthetic).

In fact, this dualistic position is forced upon all of us.
All of us, even the declared monists among us, are dualists in practice.
If you like, we are all “hidden believers (= dualists).”
Even the Jews among us.

What I keep claiming over and over (and I still haven’t received a response to this specific point) is that, in general, the Torah is hostile to the dualistic position.
I explained why.

And the moral of the story:

When I said and repeated in Hebrew that “the law expresses the stable will of the lawgiver,” it was “irrelevant.” When I said the same thing in Latin—that “the text is contingent on its transcendent creator”—I won praise for my “substantive response” 🙂

With the blessing of “Et tu, Brute”-style gibberish, Levinger Samson

Doron,

One of the foundations of faith is that the Torah is from Heaven. It is beyond human reason, but does not contradict common sense. If a person does not believe that the Torah is from Heaven, and examines it according to his own understanding as just an ordinary text, that means he lacks the faculty that recognizes its holy source—a faculty called faith.

S.Tz.L.,

You still have no substantive response to the problem I raised:

The Torah sets itself up (that is, the text) as the primary epistemic channel and expects us to derive from that a God (and one who created it, no less).

That is the heart of the difficulty, and that is what you need to confront.

M80

First, I too tend to believe that the Torah is from Heaven. So what? That doesn’t conflict with my view. I explained that in the past and can do so again, but that’s not the point.

Second, the point relevant to the discussion here is your premise (“one of the foundations of faith is that the Torah is from Heaven”). It is precisely the rationality of that premise that I dispute.

I’ve already explained why several times. If I wasn’t understood, I’ll explain again.

Doron,

Faith is where reason is too limited to attain.

Moses received the Torah from Sinai. Rabbi Jacob Moses Charlap wrote: “The ways of the holy Torah given to us from Sinai are such that its entire foundation is reception, and its whole purpose is that we come to be receivers of it; and all the expansion of our talents and the development of our sophistication in it are all in order that we become fit vessels to receive. Thus, in every wisdom reception is a means to sophistication, but in Torah sophistication is a means to reception.”

M80

I didn’t really understand your response or what Rabbi Charlap wrote.

Since I feel I still haven’t received a relevant answer to my question, I have no choice but to do the unthinkable and quote myself from an earlier comment. In that comment I describe the root of the problem:

“When some text is revealed to us—especially one that claims to derive from a divine source—we must put it to the test: we must examine whether that text gave a central place to our intuitive faculty or not. Without that faculty we will not truly be able to know that transcendent factor (even if only partially).

The problem becomes especially acute when that text not only failed to give a place to that faculty, but also committed another sin, perhaps more severe: it set itself up to serve as the supreme epistemic and moral authority. A text that appointed itself to be the principal mediator between heaven and earth, whereas by definition, at least in my opinion, no text can do that (by definition a text is contingent on its creator).”

Elsewhere I described the problematic nature of the Torah roughly like this:

According to the Torah’s own approach, its status is necessary in all possible worlds; that is, God was (and is) logically unable to create a different Torah.
If that formulation is correct (and I think it is), it turns out that God depends on the Torah and that in fact it created Him. Literally.

And according to your view, God hangs on a cross while nails cut into His flesh. Isn’t it nicer to be dependent on the Torah, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb? 🙂

And for the fifth time:
God is not “dependent on the Torah”; God is not dependent on whims, and His will is stable and does not change like socks. He revealed His will to us in His Torah, in its plain meanings and its depths, and thereby gave us the ability to deepen our understanding and elevate our will, and thus draw closer to the divine will.

With the blessing “You open Your hand and satisfy every living thing with favor,” S.Tzon

In paragraph 1, line 2
… sweeter than honey and the honeycomb? 🙂

Levinger, wishing you only health and long life.