science of the exile

We've brushed on this topic in the past, but I found an intriguing quote from the Komarna Rebbe in his work Netiv Mitzwotecha which gave me new insight into the matter.

The Rebbe explains (Netiv HaYihud:3rd path:aleph) that there are two major states of existence. There's the outer status and the inner one. The outer is characterized by the initial static state of the universe since creation. In this outer state, all of creation receives exactly in accordance with its needs. The outer state is a meager state of subsistence.

The inner state is entirely the opposite. When the world functions according to the inner, or direct, state then HaShem provides tremendous surplus, astronomically above and beyond the simple needs of creation.

He goes on to explain that this inner state is a function of the work of our hands. We are capable of attracting HaShem's attention so that we receive in great volume, or if we don't live up to the challenge, still creation will continue to subsist, if not so glamorously.

Ok, this seems like a straightforward case of reward and punishment, but to me it highlighted something different.

The Komarna Rebbe explicitly says that while we are in an 'outer' state, then the world operates in accordance with the patterns set out by HaShem since the creation of the world. But, when we reach that inner state, then HaShem directly intervenes and provides abundant new energy that was not part of the original emanation that was creation.

To me this says: the 'outer' state is the ideal closed system that the framework of science so dearly depends on, whereas the 'inner' state breaks the closed system and G-d defies nature.

So, essentially, the development and progression of science had to take place in an exile-style framework. When the system is open, or in an 'inner' state, the ground starts to fall out from under the feet of scientific theory.

Until now I had never been sure whether Judaism held that the system was open or closed. How can that be? Well, the question is half semantics: there's no difference for G-d who is beyond our concept of time, to change something now (supernatural) versus at the time of the universe's creation. (natural) But here the Komarna clarifies it for me: Judaism believes unquestionably that the universe is an open system, yet in times of exile or 'outer' existence, the system functions like a closed system, ie. no new external energy is introduced.

This kind of sort of straightens out the difference of opinion between the Rambam, that there is nature, and the Ramban that nature is a series of repeated miracles, in that the universe is always (at its core) an open system, (read:miraculous) but there are times when it acts like a closed system. (read: nature)

nothing to see here

I was learning the translated edition of R' Morgenstern's comments on Parashath BeShalach:

At the splitting of the sea the verse says, " ותמונת ה' יביט "—“You have
seen the image of Hashem (as it were).”8 Matan Torah was a much higher level,
about which the verse says: " ותמונה אינכם רואים "—“You have seen no image.”9
The splitting of the sea was a manifestation of Binah; exalted as it is, the level of
Binah is considered “diminished” or “immature” when compared with the level
of Chochmah, which was the aspect of Matan Torah.

And, I thought he was going to say something that he didn't say, perhaps he implied it. It happens to me a lot, that the greatest (i'm using this term relative to my own level, obviously) chidushim I have are usually things I thought someone else was about to say, but then never did.

Anyways, I thought R' Morgenstern was going to offer a new insight into the passuk ותמונה אינכם רואים - You have seen no image. The phrasing of this passuk is a little strange and so it can be read/translated with a slight alteration: You saw an image of your nothingness.

In other words, at Har Sinai, it wasn't that we didn't see anything, we actually saw as much as we could see: We saw that we didn't exist at all, we saw that nothing exists--other than HaShem--Even though we still were unable to see HaShem because He is beyond our ability to see. It is like the Rambam (Mishnah Torah:Hilchoth Yesodei HaTorah) explains, we cannot limit HaShem, not in positive (by saying he is all X) or in negative, (by saying he isn't X) all we can do is recognize our inability to quantify Him. By Har Sinai we experienced this limitation, rather than just learning and understanding it.

We saw that we were nothing, we experienced bitul.

reviving the dead

On a note that is semi-related to the previous post, let's look at a chidush of the MaBiT on the Rambam's hilchoth Teshuvah 6:4. The Rambam states that there are certain great sins for which the punishment is that HaShem refuses to allow the sinner to do Teshuvah. He bases it on the passuk about HaShem hardening Pharo's heart. The MaBiT asks how is it that the Rambam can posit a new class of punishment not listed in the Torah? His answer goes like this: Sometimes someone wanders off the path (sins) and becomes somewhat lost from HaShem. The only way back to walking the path is to retrace one's steps. If someone sins many times, meaning he wandered far into the brambles, the path back may be lost to them. In this way, the Rambam isn't describing a new punishment, and HaShem doesn't bring the punishment upon him, rather the person brings the punishment upon himself.

My question here, is that just because the MaBiT explains the mechanics of the situation, it doesn't truly answer the question of why we never heard of this class of punishment until now, something I believe the MaBiT himself acknowledges in recognizing his isn't a complete answer to the original question.

There's actually another question of interest that I came across this Shabbath: Reb Natan in Likkutei Moharan I:112, brings down Masechet Menahoth 29b in which it is explained that a person cannot return through the same opening which he strayed, rather they must open for him a new opening. If this is the case, then the MaBiT's metaphor for Teshuvah seems to contradict our gemara here in Menahoth?

Since this whole post is sort of a side note, I'm compelled to take you on two more related tangents: In discussion of this idea, that someone cannot return through the portal through which they fell, Rebbe Nachman answers Reb Natan's question explaining something unbelievable: When one falls, one can ascend through an opening through which someone else, your friend, fell, because when someone (named A) falls from on high, he is still higher up than someone else. (named B) In this manner B can actually rise through the portal through which A fell. Meaning that when a person falls it is sometimes for the purpose of the aliyah (yeridah l'tzorech aliyah) of someone else.

The final step in this winding post is the Noam Elimelech's explanation in the end of parashath Naso, in which he explains what it means that someone could perform a sin for the sake of heaven: Sometimes a Tzaddik needs to perform what in his eyes would be a grave sin, so that he can reach down to such a level that he can have a connection with even the lowest of people such that he can bring them blessing and shefa. This, he explains, was the problem with Shaul HaMelech who was without sin, he couldn't relate to and bring blessing to the lowest of Bnei Yisrael, even though it is the King's duty to do just that, bring blessing to all of Bnei Yisrael.

To tie everything back to the previous post I must share two more points: Rebbe Nachman explains (in Likkutei Moharan I:112 mentioned above) that the only way to illuminate the darkness when you have fallen is through speaking words of Truth. Truth being the light of HaShem, nothing can hide from Truth, so even the lowest and darkest places are illuminated in the presence of spoken Truth.

Why spoken Truth? This plays off of the Pri Ha'aretz on parashath VaEra, the weekly parshah just passed. Rebbe Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk, the Pri Ha'aretz, reveals that when someone knows and recognizes that all his speech is not really his own but rather emanates from HaShem Himself, then through his speech he can create worlds, just as HaShem's speech did in the creation of the world. From this we can see, taken together with Rebbe Nachman, that when we speak Truth from the deepest places, it becomes clear that we are not speaking at all but instead it is only HaShem who speaks. (Perhaps this is one of the deep secrets of Mechayey HaMeitim, as we know that the Targum of a "living soul" is a "speaking spirit," and a sinner is considered to be dead in his lifetime.)

learning in pairs or groups

A Simple Jew brought up the issue of Chevruta. (learning Torah with a study partner) It's a really difficult issue for me. I know that it is supposed to be the focal point of Jewish learning, at least in the revealed, nigleh, Torah.

I can see how learning in chevruta pertains clearly to Halachah. Halachah is an objective system that boils your subjective world down into step by step instructions for how to serve HaShem through living your daily life. It's easy to gloss over the Halachah and misunderstand how to apply some objective ruling to your subjective world. By learning with a chevrutah, you need to apply the same objective ruling always to at least two subjective worlds, this increases the chances you will correctly understand and internalize the halachah.

When learning the written Torah, or the hidden, nistar, Torah, the goal is very different. The goal of the nistar is to connect to HaShem. The goal is admittedly insurmountable from the outset. HaShem is beyond us in every imaginable way. Still, through our nistar studies we can attain a form of closeness, a relationship with HaShem.

In such an instance, it is very hard to learn with someone else. For a good example, try and explain to someone else how to do something on their computer over the phone.. You are looking at your desktop, and they are looking at theirs and you are telling them what to click and where. (I'm sure most people who can find this blog have had this experience in one instance or another) It is tremendously difficult and requires a lot of patience. The more you use your computer, the more specific and customized it becomes, the more difficult it is to relate to someone else's computer. The more personal your relationship to HaShem through the nistar, the more difficult it becomes for two people to study together.

This is how it always seemed to me anyways. But the more I thought about it the more I realized how much more there really is to it:

When two people come from a very close spiritual connection, from the same soul root, then since their connection with HaShem has many similarities it is easier to learn with them and helping them to connect actually helps you to connect. On an even deeper level all of Bnei Yisrael is connected spiritually and learning with any member of Bnei Yisrael and helping them to connect to HaShem bridges and strengthens and deepens your own connection.

This is a very high level of understanding. But, when we can relate to our fellow Jew as a part of ourselves, carved from the same source, then learning with them can be transformed from a chore to a very high level of relating to HaShem. A level above relating directly, as we learn in the Tanya in chapter 32 (לב) that truly loving HaShem is loving what He loves most, Bnei Yisrael. Giving and sharing with Bnei Yisrael allows us to get even closer to HaShem than trying to pursue HaShem directly.

This is why Gemilat Hesed is tantamount Torah learning, and Teshuvah, and Tefillah. (See Pirkei Avot) Because through the Hesed that we do with Bnei Yisrael we can attain a closeness that isn't possible through relating to HaShem directly. (The goal of Torah, Teshuvah, and Tefillah)

As we know, the highest Gemilut Hesed, the highest Tzedaka enumerated by the Rambam is teaching someone to help themselves. What could be higher than learning with another Jew and helping them to get closer to HaShem directly? That it brings us closer to HaShem shouldn't hurt either.

This understanding of Chevruta and learning for the sake of raising all those learning closer to HaShem is often demonstrated in the Zohar. In the Gemara every learning is about hearing. Come and hear. In the Zohar, there are many descriptions that use words like "over there," "on this side," and "like so." One way to understand what is going on in the Zohar is to understand that when learning and discussing the Zohar they were actually in the midst of a common mystical experience of the heavenly realms and the underlying structure of the world. This way, when they pointed to or gestured at things, it was to illustrate the idea being discussed. Outside of this common mystical experience it is much more difficult to understand the explanations according to all of their implications and manifold possibilities.

Sinat hinam, free hatred of our fellow Jews brought about the destruction of the Beith HaMikdash, without being able to come together and unique in goals of holiness like Torah learning, we can't repair that breach.

B'ezrat HaShem we should all merit to bring ourselves, those around us, and all Klal Yisrael closer to HaShem through Torah learning in chevrutah.

seeing the temple in our days

via HaMikdash:

The Holy Chafetz Chaim writes: "…Presently it is difficult to find Kohanim who know the laws and practices of the fully. How disheartening and embarrassing. It sadly indicates that our prayers for the and the Service are merely lip service, not real or heartfelt. For if we really desired it to come, we would prepare and make ready for it.

He makes a really good point, and I can tell you for myself (though I am not a Kohain) that there is really nothing that makes you feel more connected to the Beit HaMikdash than reading through the descriptions of (especially the daily) rituals that were performed there. The Rambam discusses everything there is to know about the Beit HaMikdash in great detail. (Sefer Avodah (in hebrew) (summary of its topics in english) , Sefer Korbanot (in hebrew) (summary of its topics in english))

Also, in Masechet Midot (daily english translation(its been discontinued but if you root around it looks like it's all still there)) in the mishnayot they discuss a lot about the daily function of the mishkan.

I can't give you all the sources in the talmud, simply because it's all over the place and I don't know where to find them.

B'hatzlacha!

the future of song

In my last post I stated: Prayer begins and ends with words. In the middle there are all kinds of things, but at it's root prayer is about words.

There's one level of prayer, kind of an outside band, that's pure and wordless. This kind of prayer falls outside of the general category of prayer just as teshuvah falls outside of the general category of mitzwoth. (Note: I'm not saying it's not a mitzwah, teshuvah is numbered as one of the 613 mitzwoth according to the Rambam)

This kind of 'sideband' prayer, just as the sideband mitzwah of teshuvah, is unique in that it works regardless of anything else, in fact, it's hard to draw the line (if one exists between teshuvah and this kind of prayer, called za'akah. Za'akah is crying out and it should be no surprise that it was the za'akah of Bnei Yisrael that God heard, it was because of their crying out that they meritted God's attention. (It was because of God's promise that they were redeemed.)

I'd like to ruminate a little on the differences between teshuvah and za'akah even if there may be no (actual) difference between them. Teshuvah is about returning to God. Literally, according to the Kabballistic explanation, the returning of the soul to HaShem. The focus of teshuvah is about where you are going, leaving wherever you have been. Za'akah has a component of being somewhere. Za'akah is the crying out that comes from being under extreme pressure, in dire straights, bein hameitzarim. Za'akah is the bleating cry of the helpless lamb, calling out to it's mother or it's shepherd for salvation, for extrication from it's bitter (and immediate ) circumstances. Za'akah is a result of surroundings whereas teshuvah is the result of one's internal state.

Za'akah might even come from a deeper and more profound place than teshuvah. Teshuvah takes energy, internal will to submit to God's will. Za'akah comes from a place where teshuvah isn't even possible, a desperate place where we have nothing to offer, not even a soul to return to God. Za'akah comes from a childhood place of bitul, of ayin, a total helplessness. Teshuvah requires an enlightened source, some ego to want to return the self, the I, to God. Za'akah is a pure embarrassed unembelished need for God, nothing short of God is enough, nothing short of God even matters.

If nothing stands in the way of teshuvah, how could anything stand in the way of za'akah? Sometimes when we are children, even though it seems impossibly hard we are forced to learn things, because it is to our direct and sole benefit. I don't know about za'akah, but it seems that sometimes it might seem to go unanswered, just as babies sometimes cry out of fear even as they are learning to walk.. HaShem heard our za'akah but our situation got worse before it got better. Za'akah never goes unheard, it brings out tremendous rachamim (divine mercy) as the Maor Eynayim teaches in parashath Beshalach. But I think sometimes we can't tell when our situation has improved.

That is the machloket of whether to celebrate the new year of fruit bearing trues on the aleph shevat, or on tu b'shevat. Whether we celebrate when we know the good is coming, or when we actually start to see and feel the results of the good. If we sang az yashir when Moshe first came to tell us we were going to be redeemed, what would that redemption have been like? Instead we sang it after the sea crushed our former captors, after God delivered on his promise.

Perhaps that is the deeper meaning of אז ישיר - then, we will sing. When moshiah comes, maybe we will sing on news of his arrival -- before everything goes down.

[Note: the term za'akah might cause some confusion, because there are a number of associated words, tza'akah, na'akah etc I'm using za'akah because I think it embodies the others, perhaps tza'akah would have been more appropriate--it is the wording chosen by the Maor Eynayim quoting the Baal Shem Tov.]

torah, body and soul

Just wanted to briefly revisit my last post on Rambam's take on the written Torah.

I met up with Rav Immanuel Levy (mentioned in the former posting) again, and discussed the matter further. It turns out exactly as I posted last time, but actually even more broad.

Halachah as a whole does not learn out anything from the Written Torah directly. It ONLY learns halachah from mesorah, the Oral Torah that each generation receives from the former generation. Even in the Talmud, when they search for a biblical source for a teaching, they are actually searching for a mesorah that we learn a particular idea from a particular passuk. (passage)

In that sense, it is the Oral Torah that invests the Written Torah with the holiness of Halachah. That's an amazingly radical viewpoint that I've never heard nor understood before and it gives me a whole new window through which to view Torah study. When we are learning how a Jew is to act in ANY situation at all, we must connect that back to the Oral Traddition, or else we haven't clarified the matter at all. Halachah is an entirely oral phenomenon, completely rooted in the transmission from Moshe on down to the heads of today's Jewish communities.

The Written Torah is given to us to learn and to connect to God, but not to determine our life decisions. Written Torah is always learned l'shmah. (For it's own sake) This is totally profound.

The Kabbalah, which is actually an extension of the written Torah is likewise something that is totally and completely involved in relating to God directly, but cannot substitute the Halachah of how to perform the proscribed mitzwoth--just as insight into the Written Torah does not (cannot) have a direct effect on our performance of the mitzwoth.

In this sense, the Oral Torah is clearly the body that expresses what is hidden in the soul, the Written Torah. Just as our own bodies clothe and can express the desires and nature of our soul.

This is the Halachic perspective. It's not the perspective from which I was raised, nor is it the perspective upheld by my fathers exactly. (Having derived from Sepharadi and Hassidic origins) But it is an awe-inspiring perspective all the same.

It is interesting to apply the lessons of Tanya and Hassiduth as a whole to this Body and this Soul of Torah. Hassiduth is actually just that, the investing of the body with the soul. (Whether on a personal basis, or on the level of the Torah as a whole.)

Rambam on Torah: What Torah?

I attended a shiur by an absolutely brilliant (many times through shas, knows everything more or less by heart) relatively young (~40) Rav, on Shabbath.

Caught up in the fiery debate on hilchoth Shabbath (קוצר & זורע), I didn't have time to notice the point he mentioned in passing. Rambam doesn't learn anything out solely from the text of the written Torah, because any passuk can always be read another way. That's radical. You know what comes out of that. The only thing we rely on for certain is the mishnah and the gemara.

We don't live by the Written Torah. ONLY the Oral Torah.

From this perspective it seems that the Written Torah's main use is to connect to God through learning and prayer, but as far as connecting to God through mitzwoth, there's only the Oral Torah.

Perhaps I misunderstood his point, I'll have to follow it up. But if I understood correctly, I've never heard something so radical in Torah before, and it makes me understand better why people make such a big deal about the Rambam.

Also makes me wonder if this had anything to do with the Written Torah being misappropriated by the christians.

He definitely wouldn't be down with piskei halachah al pi haKabalah. Heh.

rediscovering: singularity

The Tanya, the Bible and the Rambam are all crystal clear: God is unchanged by creation and all the actions and changes that take place therein.

It doesn't get more profound than that. Kind of puts a different spin on the "Can God create a rock he can't lift?" Creation doesn't affect God.

Which also means that all of our 'scientific study' of God is limited to meaningless thought experiments. If you look back far enough it's an open system, a one-way open system.

(Look at the Rambam's Foundations of Torah for more. The Tanya link above (reproduced here) also reaches the appropriate section of this discussion--coincidentally most of the talk about these topics uses illustrations from this (בא) and next week's (בשלח) parashah. (the plagues and the splitting of the sea))