Thank you very much for the quick answer.
I’ll continue here.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but books like The First Existent, for example—aren’t they almost entirely about metaphysics?
Or maybe I don’t properly understand what metaphysics means…
As I understand it, metaphysics means dealing with what exists behind the phenomena visible to empirical examination, with the root essence of reality, with what exists as “being” in itself and not dependent on our perception of it—questions like the existence of God, creation, will and free choice, theological questions like individual providence, and so on.
Again, as I understand it, after Kant it is hard to speak about these subjects, because we recognize that in fact we do not grasp anything that exists “in itself”; rather, we can know things only after they have passed through the structuring imposed by our consciousness…
A nice comparison I saw regarding Kant: in his view, we are essentially like color-blind people; while in the external world there are colors like green, purple, and red, we are capable of seeing only black and white (let’s say), with no ability at all to think about or deal with what exists outside our perception—and that is because it is outside our perception, of course—even though the colors really do exist as beings in reality in itself. (For the sake of the example, I’d ask you to set aside the issue of qualia, spirit, and the subjectivity of color perception, and therefore the possibility that they do not really exist “in themselves”; the example is only meant to convey the analogy.) In such a situation, only God can know colors like green, purple, red, etc., because He is free of the limitations of reason and consciousness that impose our perception on us. So it seems there is no longer any serious reason to engage in metaphysics…
Even if, as you say, we deal only with the phenomena of things and not with the things themselves, then we have already emptied the whole subject of its meaning; we are no longer dealing with what exists in itself, but with how we perceive it, and then we are no different from those color-blind people who claim that all that exists is in black-and-white shades, with no knowledge and no ability at all to know about the reality that exists outside their cognition.
The only escape from this, in my opinion, is to conclude that there is no point at all in positing a world that exists “in itself,” outside the perception of our consciousness, since no one can ever really know it… so why posit it? But it feels to me that in doing so we are already approaching idealism. Am I mistaken?
And what do you mean by spiritual intuition? Like Judah Halevi’s view in the Kuzari? That is, a mystical-sensory perception?

In any case, sorry for the bother and the length of the question, and thank you very much, Rabbi.

There are indeed metaphysical issues that I deal with, but as I wrote, it is in the way we perceive them.
You are conflating metaphysics with noumena. I wrote to you that this is really not the same thing. One can speak about free will and about God as phenomena, that is, about our perception of them. That has nothing to do with noumena.
Regarding Kant, I referred you to the columns on Lev Shestov.
Intuition is a perceptual faculty. There is nothing mystical there. We use it in science too. I wrote books about this, especially Two Carts and Truth and Unstable.