Q&A: The Maggid of the Beit Yosef
The Maggid of the Beit Yosef
Question
Good evening!
The Beit Yosef writes that an angel appeared to him several times and revealed secrets of Torah to him, and he writes some of the simpler part of them in his book. Also, Rabbi Alkabetz (or Rabbi Najara) write that on the night of Shavuot they saw with their own eyes that the Beit Yosef spoke words of Torah in a way that made it seem as though someone else was speaking through him, and afterward the rabbi himself confirmed it.
Seemingly, that is crushing proof that the phenomenon exists, no?
After all, as far as I know, there is not a single person who would say that the Beit Yosef was a liar (for even if one can lie for the sake of some higher value… obviously that is not the case here). And likewise, one cannot say he was delusional, since we are talking about someone who wrote the most refined Shulchan Arukh, and likewise the rabbis around him testified to it, and likewise he revealed some of those secrets.
So I would be glad to hear how a sincere and honest heretic would deal with this.
Thank you very much!
Answer
People have various delusions, including people who wrote important books. And others around them can certainly become convinced and then see signs of it in what he says. But maybe it really was revealed to him.
Discussion on Answer
Suppose we are talking about someone like the Vilna Gaon, who is famous for his truthfulness and integrity, who never said a word casually (and the sources that transmitted this are people like Beit Brisk, whose precision everyone knows, unlike people of a different mentality…). And he said that an angel wanted to reveal secrets of Torah to him and he did not want to.
That they had a waking vision or imagined something. And maybe they really did meet him.
The Chazon Ish: ‘The maggid of the Beit Yosef is also a Beit Yosef’ — brought in Benjamin Brown’s book, The Chazon Ish, p. 191.
The question is what exactly he meant by that. Simply speaking, it seems he is claiming that one should treat it seriously as though the words were said by the Beit Yosef himself. I don’t think he meant to say that there was no maggid and that these were the Beit Yosef’s delusions.
In my estimation, this is part of his rationalist approach. For example, as quoted on p. 190 in Brown’s book: ‘In this generation the hiding of God’s face is so great that a pregnant woman can deliberately step on fingernails and nothing at all will happen to her.’
Here too one can wonder whether he means that it works, but in our time there is hester panim, or whether this is a polite way of saying that it doesn’t work and the Sages were mistaken. It reminds me that I once wrote in the name of Rabbi Neria Gutel that “changes in nature” is a polite way of saying that the Sages were mistaken. He called me to protest, since that does not appear in his book. True, in an earlier article of his this comes up as a possibility, but he himself does not adopt such a position. In my opinion, it is certainly possible.
The Chazon Ish never said that no maggid appeared to the Beit Yosef! His intention is that the halakhic rulings the maggid told him have no special significance, because whatever the case may be—if he has the status of an angel, then “it is not in heaven,” and if he has the status of a human being, then he has no more authority than the Beit Yosef himself.
So what could one say about great rabbis who testified about themselves that Elijah the Prophet appeared to them while they were awake? Here you can’t claim it was a delusion (since this wasn’t drunkenness, etc., but while fully awake).