Q&A: Nonsense
Nonsense
Question
I never understood the brilliant and incomprehensible “answer” of the kabbalists — the sefirot — to the huge, explosive question: how can one pray to Him, may He be blessed?
And as brought by Rabbi Moshe Cordovero:
“For denying the sefirot leads to heresy, for we would compel him by the premises and principles of the Torah: since the simple One cannot be subject to change, how can He supervise changing matters? And likewise, since He is one, how can He supervise different classes and species, for that would entail multiplicity, as is known. Therefore one is forced to believe in the sefirot, and if not, he is, Heaven forbid, a heretic — as many erred in denying particular providence and in these matters, which are not fit to be committed to writing. Thus we are compelled to force him to believe in the sefirot, or else he will be called a heretic. And in the same way, one who says that he has nothing to do with Kabbalah and does not wish to direct his prayer except to the Master of Lights, as many thought, will certainly be called mistaken. For if a person comes to speak of the simple One in terms of His aspect relative to His existence apart from His existence and aspect relative to the sefirot, he ends up removing all His actions entirely. For the Infinite, in terms of His essence, is simple and not subject to changes — to change from judgment to mercy, or to be affected by will and change from one will to another through prayer — except in terms of His relation to His sefirot, which are His providences, and through them there is change in judgment and mercy. And let the reader not press to enter, from these words of ours, beyond the partition to understand the matter of changes and providence, for he will gain harm and not benefit. Rather, we will explain the matter at length in the Gate of Essence and Vessels, God willing. In short, a person is compelled to believe in the sefirot so that the principles of faith and their foundations remain valid, for it is impossible to uphold the foundations of the Torah except through them — that is, by means of them the Emanator brings about changes without any change applying to Him at all, Heaven forbid, as explained at length in that delightful gate. And from God we ask forgiveness.”
And only after I learned on the site the concept of nonsense did I understand why I do not understand this answer. Was I right — I don’t understand it because it is nonsense? (Meaning: by adding the sefirot, what exactly did you solve, if you already decided that He cannot change?) Or is there really an answer here to the “question”?
B — somewhere you wrote about tzimtzum: “It is speaking about a physical contraction, meaning that in the place where we are, He is not. But it is true that in my opinion too there is no necessity for that. The idea is nice.”
What does “there is no necessity for that” mean? So how do you answer the “question” because of which the answer of tzimtzum was invented?
Answer
I think his intention is to say that change in God may be possible if one relates the changes to the sefirot and not to Him Himself. The sefirot are His garments, and that counts as a change in Him but not in His essence. So there is indeed an answer here; I’m just not sure there is a question to begin with. Why can’t there be change in Him?
Exactly the same as I wrote above. Here too there is no question, because there is no necessity that He cannot simply contract Himself, and therefore there is no need to speak about a difference in dimensions.
Discussion on Answer
Indeed, if this is not nonsense, then it is heresy.
The Rivash brought: “The Christians believe in the Trinity, and the kabbalists believe in a tenity — the ten sefirot.”
Indeed, Ari Nohem says:
“And any thoughtful person who wants to fill his mouth with laughter should read what the Gabbai wrote in his Avodah, part 2, chapter 13, when he wished to respond to the Rivash of blessed memory, saying: ‘One must wonder about that rabbi, great in his generation, for he did not proceed here in the manner of one with sound understanding,’ etc. ‘And if his hand was too short to save and attain the truth, he should have restrained his mouth,’ etc. ‘He should have answered the questioner: go to the masters of wisdom and Kabbalah.’ And likewise what he wrote about his saying in the name of Rabbeinu Nissim that Nachmanides involved himself far too much in believing that Kabbalah, etc. You see him wandering and drifting like one floating on the water — and how can one say more or less in believing?’ etc. See there.
I mean what he wrote in the name of Rabbenu Samson of Kinon, of blessed memory, who used to say: ‘I pray according to the understanding of that child’ — meaning, to reject the idea of the kabbalists, who pray sometimes to one sefirah and sometimes to another according to the matter of the Kabbalah, etc. And after he wrote what one kabbalist, Don Yosef ben Shoshan, said to him: ‘One who seeks justice asks the officer; one who asks for bread speaks to the steward of drink; one who asks for wine speaks to the baker,’ etc. He, of blessed memory, said: ‘But who is bringing us into all this? Is it not better for us to pray simply to the Lord, may He be blessed, with intention, and He knows by which path to fulfill the request, as the verse says: Commit your way to the Lord,’ etc.
I will not open my lips now on what could be said and shown about how great and terrible a heresy this is, and in the category of ‘he who sacrifices to any god shall be destroyed,’ etc., for with God’s help I will address this elsewhere. For now, however, these words of the Rivash of blessed memory are enough to answer them. And even if this fantasy of the sefirot had some reality to it at all, why would one not more rightly direct his prayer to the Lord our God, the Lord is one, there is none besides Him, unique and singular in His essence, undivided, unseparated, and not branching out — rather than to think to pray to branches or offshoots from Him? How crazed they became, speaking outside all reason, in the parable of asking justice from the official over the treasuries, or bread from the cupbearer, or wine from the baker. For there is nothing like this in the God of Jeshurun. Heaven forbid that near the throne of the Lord, and all the more so, Heaven forbid, in His very essence, there should be something like a treasurer or judge or cupbearer or baker among His servants. He is one and His name is one; to Him alone we pray, and He will answer us. Thus Moses our teacher said to us: ‘For what great nation is there that has God so near to it…’ Understand his words ‘whenever we call to Him’ — for the idolaters among the nations have many powers called by the name gods: this one appointed over wealth, that one over strength, one over wisdom, another over greatness, one over fire and one over water, and to each of them in their domain they pray.
Far be this from Israel. Not such is the portion of Jacob. Rather, ‘the Lord our God, the Lord is one’ — in all our calling to Him. All our calls, even if they are of different kinds, are directed to Him. Indeed, one should say the opposite of their parable. Precisely from this His greatness, ability, and wisdom are apparent — that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not act like flesh and blood. If four or five people came before a human king, one asking for justice, one for money, one for wine, and one for bread, all at once, he would grow angry at them and throw them away, saying: ‘You are all shouting and I hear nothing. What do you want? You — go to the judge; you — to the officer; you — to the cupbearer; and you — to the baker.’ But the Holy One, blessed be He, is not like that. He answers everyone who calls. ‘The Lord is near to all who call upon Him.’ ‘Who is like the Lord our God, whenever we call to Him?’ To thousands upon myriads of differing requests, He understands, listens, looks, and attends to all their supplications at once, and to each one He does what seems good to Him. And so King David, peace be upon him, throughout his book of prayers and praises, cries in every verse: ‘My King and my God, for to You I pray’; ‘To You, O Lord, I call’; ‘In the name of our God we will make mention’; ‘May the King answer us on the day we call.’ I have not found him saying: ‘I pray to Your wisdom,’ ‘I call to Your understanding,’ or ‘to Your greatness and Your glory.’ Therefore the statement of the rabbi of Kinon is correct: ‘I pray according to the understanding of that child,’ meaning, to reject the idea of the kabbalists, etc. His point is that it is better for him to pray to God than to pray to the sefirot, even if it were true that they exist and even if a person knew about them.
And these are the words of HaMe’ili:
‘And I will write here the words of the letter I wrote some time ago to refute the words of those who speak perversity against the Lord and against the sages who walk in the ways of the perfect Torah and fear God. They are wise in their own eyes, inventing things from their hearts, inclining toward heresy, and imagining they can bring proof for their words from aggadic sayings, which they interpret according to their mistaken views… Now for some time fools and simpletons have come forth and exposed themselves improperly regarding faith in God, may He be blessed, and regarding prayer and the blessings arranged by the masters of tradition — saying things that have no root or branch in the Torah of Moses, nor in the Prophets and Writings, nor in the Talmud transmitted to us by Ravina and Rav Ashi. In short: not from Torah, not from tradition, not from reason, and not even from the outside aggadot — and some of those may in any case be corrupt and unreliable, and one cannot bring proof or raise any challenge from them, as the sages said: any mishnah not taught in the school of Rabbi Chiya and Rabbi Hoshaya is not authoritative, and we do not raise objections from it in the study hall. And those fools said… and anyone who associates the divine name with anything other than the One is uprooted from the world. This is the faith proper for all Jews faithful to the religion to believe. Whoever departs from it is a denier and a heretic. Why should we go on at length about the words of fools, whose entire prayers and blessings are directed to divinities whom they say are created and emanated, having beginning and end… And so we found in one of their books of error, called Bahir — and some of our sages heard this from their own mouths… They too admit that the sefirot have beginning and end, and it is to them that they direct their hearts in blessings and prayers. Surely they should recognize that they have not spoken rightly, but “their eyes are smeared from seeing, their hearts from understanding” [Isaiah 44:18]. In short, all their words are like chaff before the wind and like straw, empty words with no substance, the destruction of Torah and its undoing, words of heresy and denial. How could it enter the heart of any wise person that, if their words were true, one should not bless and pray to the First Name, without beginning or end, the Cause of all causes, the Maker of all — whom they call in their language the Infinite — and that one who does so is, in their eyes, “cutting the saplings” and unworthy to behold the delight of salvations known to those who know and fear God? And how was this not explained in the perfect Torah that God gave us for eternal life, in which it is written: “You have been shown to know that the Lord is God; there is none besides Him”? How are we to know something the Lord did not speak? Where exactly did He show us all this? And how did our holy Rabbi, who arranged the Mishnah, and Ravina and Rav Ashi, who finalized and wrote the Talmud we possess — the essence of the Oral Torah — fail to explain all this to us? How did they leave all Israel mistaken and driven from the World to Come as “cutters of the saplings”? Woe to the eyes that see such things, woe to the ears that hear such things, woe to the generation in whose days such things have arisen. How did those who read the verses of the Lord and wear His awe not gather strength? How did the sages of the generation hold back? You see, wise one, our troubles have multiplied, as have the burden of exile and decrees. Is there in our times, among all the foolish beliefs of the nations, anything more damaging to the unity of God, may He be blessed, than these? And if they say that one who blesses and prays to the blessed Name, the Cause of all causes, the Creator of all, is not cast out from the world and does merit eternal life, and is not called one who “cuts the saplings,” but that they in their foolishness think this is only the faith of the masses while they are among those who know the secret of God and fear Him, and hope to rise to a higher level than others through this belief — these fools leave aside, even by their own lights, what is certain and grasp with their hands at what is doubtful. And in that certainty they are desolate, their souls are desolate, and they descend to the lowest level, the opposite of their hope and intention, which is not sound. In short, anyone with understanding must distance himself from their foolish words… For we fear because of the signatures with which they misled those who signed for them; and we were also told that they forged the signatures of many sages of this land who had not signed them, and so many people in the land may be misled after them. And they boast in false words, saying: in lands of Torah and wisdom we found strength and power — “lest they say, our hand is exalted.” Heaven forbid, heaven forbid, that a righteous person should err after words of heresy; let this not be in Israel. And we have heard that they have already joined to themselves a book called Bahir, which we mentioned above, and in it they saw no light. That book has already reached us, and we found that they attached it to Rabbi Nechunya ben HaKanah. Heaven forbid — it never was and was never created; that righteous man did not stumble in it, and he was not counted among transgressors. The language of that book and all its contents prove that it came from a man who did not know the language of books or elegant speech. And in many places it contains words of heresy and denial. We also heard that they composed for themselves a commentary on Song of Songs, and Sefer Yetzirah and the Hekhalot, and there too wrote things in the way of their heresy, as well as a commentary on Ecclesiastes and other books. Investigate thoroughly, and if they are among you, remove them from the land so that they not become a stumbling block for you. Search them out, for so have we removed those who were among us. And may the Omnipresent in His mercy send us a redeemer and gather the dispersed of Judah and Israel, and remove from among His people their doubts and confusions, and turn the heart of fathers to sons and the heart of sons to fathers. We wrote all this with the agreement of our master, the great rabbi, the light of Israel, our teacher Rabbi Meshullam son of the great Rabbi Moses, may the Merciful preserve him, and the other sages of the land…’
I’m done.
Thanks for finishing reading that — or did you mean you’re finished with me? If so, fine, but please be kind enough not to do that, especially on something so important, because I didn’t understand your words above. There is some misunderstanding there.
And I’ll explain.
You wrote above:
“I think his intention is to say that change in God may be possible if one relates
it to changes in the sefirot and not in Him Himself.
The sefirot are His garments, and that counts
as a change in Him but not in His essence.
So there is indeed an answer here.” End quote.
A — once the word “in Him” in your wording seems to refer to “Him Himself” (in the second line), and another time to the sefirot (in the fourth line)?
B — if you can explain how this solved the “question”:
To whom are we praying, and who answers us, if in the end it is not the Creator Himself — and therefore He changes?
How does the intermediary of the sefirot, in which the change will be, solve the problem of there being no change in the Creator? What here separates us from the Creator and the Creator from us, Heaven forbid? It sounds like a sleight-of-hand trick.
Unless they really disconnect Him entirely — God has abandoned the earth, and the sefirot run the world and change, and we just need to remember that there is some creator who created them and us and then withdrew. That sounds like Aristotle’s god.
(By the way, why don’t they ask whether the will to emanate the sefirot also counts as a change from what was before He emanated them?)
Thanks.
Again, please don’t end things with me like that — this is too important. There isn’t anyone at your level who answers on a logical level. You’re more or less the last refuge for a rational faith.
I meant that I’m done with the discussion. I have no interest in unsupported quotations. I explained my position, and that’s it. We’re wasting time.
Give me the chance to make an argued case.
A — they argue that change of action or will cannot apply to Him, and therefore they invented the sefirot.
But wait — His very emanation of the sefirot, what is that if not a change of action/will? Or is that one time they do allow Him change of will/action?
B — and now to their answer:
Where is the Creator here in the picture — the Infinite, as they call Him, borrowing the term from the philosophers they so despise? Who gives the sefirot their flow at every moment? Does He keep giving constantly and rely on them to know how to judge justly, while being totally disconnected? Not exactly, because they emphasize directing one’s thought to Him, and also that in the end the sefirot raise the prayers up to Him. Or does He hide inside them, as they say, and act through them? So what exactly was bothering them? How is His acting directly without “vessels” any different? Or was the problem simply that actions can be attributed to Him? They are fleeing from Him to Him — what is this linguistic trick?
A — yes, but that’s nonsense, so how did it solve the question? To whom are we praying, and who answers us, if in the end it is not the Creator Himself — and therefore He changes? How does the intermediary of the sefirot, in which the change supposedly occurs, solve the problem of there being no change in the Creator? What here separates us from the Creator and the Creator from us, Heaven forbid? It sounds like a sleight-of-hand trick.
Unless they really disconnect Him entirely — God has abandoned the earth, and the sefirot run the world and change, and we just need to remember that there is some creator who created them and us and then withdrew. That sounds like Aristotle’s god.
B — so I didn’t understand what you meant when you said there is no necessity for tzimtzum. On the contrary, you seem to be saying there is a necessity for tzimtzum, and in the literal sense. Probably just a wording mistake?