Q&A: Moses Our Teacher and Kant’s Philosophy
Moses Our Teacher and Kant’s Philosophy
Question
Honorable Rabbi Michael Abraham,
By chance I came across your article, “What Does Moses Our Teacher Have to Do with Kant’s Philosophy,” which was published in Bar-Ilan University’s weekly sheet, Ki Tisa, 5776.
With your permission, I would note that I believe that what Moses our Teacher, peace be upon him, saw with his human eyes was indeed the backside of the Creator of the world. Of course, we do not know the content of that vision, but from a physical standpoint, any “body” moving at the speed of light would be seen by the eyes of a stationary person from its back side.
Answer
Although this responsa section here is intended for questions and not comments, I’ll address this as a question.
Your interpretation assumes that this was sensory vision. The problem is that this is not possible with respect to the Holy One, blessed be He. That is what I argued in my article. You can of course disagree with that, but so long as you have not made that claim and explained your position on the matter, I do not understand your comment. I was not dealing with the question of whether they saw the Holy One, blessed be He, from the back or the front. I was dealing with the question of what the nature of that vision was. About that you said nothing. So I do not understand your comment.
As for your claim itself: a body moving at the speed of light, nobody would see it either from the back or from the front. Especially since there is no such body apart from light itself. And I also do not understand why you assume that the Holy One, blessed be He, moves at the speed of light. In short, I do not understand anything at all about this comment of yours.
Discussion on Answer
A small correction regarding motion at the speed of light — any motion, in four-dimensional space-time, proportionally reduces the size of all four dimensions (and not only time).
What could I have written about that vision?
But your statement that “nobody would see it either from the front or from the back” is accurate only in its first half. A body moving toward you at the speed of light cannot be seen because it is moving בתוך its own light. In order to see its light, one must look behind it, in the direction of its motion, and then one can discern only the light emitted from its back side.
Motion at the speed of light drastically shortens the dimension of time in the 4-dimensional universe (length, width, height, time) in which we live. In my opinion, this solves the riddle of the short time spans (days) required for the creation of the universe.