I was really excited by talk of a flat-tax because it would be so much easier to work with than what we have now. Who wants to figure out if it’s better to itemize one’s deductions or not by drawing up both sets of numbers and seeing which results in more money in your pocket? Alright — my dad does because he used to work at the IRS. While his favorite color is blue, his favorite number must be 1099 because he won’t stop talking about it.
But me — I don’t really care for this stuff. Frankly, it bores me. It’s also somewhat complicated, even though Tubo Tax is very good about simplifying it as best as it can. Despite this, taxes in the US are complex to say the least. And if people have trouble with that, it’s not surprising that people have difficulty understanding what it means when the Torah says in this week’s parsha that God will dwell among us in the Mishkan (Tabernacle).
A few weeks ago, I complained that my 6-year-old daughter’s school spends way too much time focused on things that don’t matter nearly as much as other things that, perhaps, matter more. They don’t just do this when learning parsha, but also in other subjects as well. I don’t think they spend any significant time learning science and for math, almost every night’s homework is identical to the one before it. How many times must we review 3+5=8? When no one is looking, I throw in some algebra and teach her how to distinguish between insects and non-insects.
So we’re all raised on whatever it is that the 3rd grade morah can understand about the parsha without getting too complex, because similar to the trend of my daughter’s math homework, the 4th grade morah won’t want to go into understanding what God is and what He does any more than the 3rd grade morah. What is there to say? We have no clue how to talk about these things to adults, let alone children.
As mentioned last week, there’s a lot of talk about where and how God was going to communicate with Moses in the Mishkan and there’s far from consensus about what exactly happened. When narrators become storytellers and exaggeration becomes the norm, it becomes difficult to follow the authoritative stream of information back to the origin. So when God says in this week’s parsha that, “I will dwell among the Children of Israel and I will be their God,” (Exodus 29:45), it’s far from surprising that we can’t seem to figure out exactly what that’s supposed to mean.
Assuming we are to look at this from a completely rational standpoint — because that’s how I sense we are supposed to look at things — we’ll be taking a few things for granted here. Obviously, if there is no God or there is a God but He’s not the God of Moses, we have nothing to discuss. And if the Torah is not approached as an authoritative source, we also have nothing to talk about. We certainly cannot focus on grammar and choice of vocabulary if it would come down to the publisher deciding to use smaller, less sophisticated terminology to avoid having the text run onto another page, increasing the cost of publication.
The Sforno (ad loc.) comments that God was to dwell in our midst “l’kabel avodasam b’ratzon v’lishmo’a es tefilasam” — “to accept our service with favor and listen to our prayers.” This sounds very pleasant and appealing, and with that I don’t mean to be sarcastic, but I don’t think it’s meant to be taken literally. If the Mishkan was built to serve as a functional structure in and around which the sacrificial service was to be performed, it’s somewhat cyclical to suggest that God will dwell in our midst to receive this service — don’t have the service and don’t dwell in our midst to receive the service which is performed to comply with Your desire to receive it in our midst. I’m all for being close to God, but this explanation at face value doesn’t really scratch the surface. And to listen to our prayers, God needn’t be among us. He doesn’t actually listen as one listens to friend talk about his job. God has no ears and will not hear us any better if he sits on the couch next to us rather than standing across the room. What the Sforno says is a very good commentary for a 3rd grader, but for an adult, it’s not really answering the question — or at least it may appear that way initially.
R’ Ishmael rejected all proposals of divine descent. What that means is beyond me (and most likely, beyond you as well), but R’ Ishmael was of the caliber to say with confidence that whatever it means is beyond all of us. I suppose his attitude can be summed up by saying, “let’s not talk about things when we don’t understand what we’re even saying.” To me, that’s pretty rational thing to say.
R’ Shimon bar Yochai, the star talmid (pupil) of R’ Akiva, taught that there were no fewer than 10 descents of the divine presence. Furthermore, there are said to be seven stages of withdrawal and return of the divine presence, paralleling the seven heavens — whatever that means, of course. The seven stages of return are explained as follows:
- Descent to the sixth heaven was due to Abraham’s hospitality
- Descent to the fifth heaven was due to Isaac’s readiness for self-sacrifice
- Descent to the fourth heaven was due to Jacob’s diligence in Torah study
- Descent to the third heaven was in the merit of Levi
- Descent to the second heaven was was in the merit of Kehas (Levi’s son)
- Descent to the first heaven was was in the merit of Amram (Kehas’s son and Moses’ father)
- And finally, Moses led the way out of Egypt, brought down the Torah and built the Mishkan, allowing the divine presence to dwell on earth itself.
What are we to make of this? Well, for starters, it’s all very mystical. I mean, you can’t get more mystical that proposing that there are different levels of an intangible, non-physical place that houses a non-physical God who goes up and down as a result of people’s actions — it’s sort of like a big video game in the sky and we’re all trying to advance God to the next level.
What is more insightful, however, is the difference in perspective between the Akivan mysticism of R’ Shimon bar Yochai and the Ishmaelian rationalism employed by those who countered him. According to the Akivan philosophy, God’s place is on earth with us, and He retreated and returned. The Ishmaelian perspective would consider such a statement as unbefitting the divine glory — God does not, as a rule, dwell among us.
According to the Sforno and others, making a physical structure and performing physical acts merely served as a conduit in our relationship with God, and this is very much in line with how we view our structures and our actions today. We strap tefillin on our arms and welcome the Shabbos Queen with reverence and ecstasy as a sign of our inner spiritual relationship with God. Sure, God’s around all week, but on Shabbos, we turn around at the end of Lecha Dodi and warmly accept the arrival of the day of the Lord in feminine form to be a counterpart to God Himself as the king and we bask in their unified presence. It’s magnificent and lovely, but it’s all a construct of our minds, really. If you didn’t know it was Shabbos, in a sense, it wouldn’t be — the same way how if your appreciation for American history is as profound as my appreciation for American professional basketball, and you easily confuse Lincoln for Kennedy, you could easily walk by Antietam Creek and not consider that hallowed ground upon which you walk.
We have the Mishkan not as a true abode for the divine but for a construct. We allow God to come into our midst as the exception, and when He’s here, it’s meant to convey the closeness of our relationship rather than any sort of reference to our spacial proximity, and when He’s “here,” we can explain His “nearness” in line with the Sforno as leading to greater reception and deeper, more meaningful communication.
{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m mystified.
How so?
I meant that in the literal sense of the word. I am affected by mysticism after reading this.
Ah…I figured it was meant to be taken allegorically.
> And if people have trouble with that, it’s not surprising that people have difficulty understanding what it means when the Torah says in this week’s parsha that God will dwell among us in the Mishkan
Cute. But why assume it’s complicated? Why not simply take the Torah at its word? When it says God will dwell in the Mishkan, that’s what it means.
Is there any reason to try and turn it into a metaphor, merely symbolic of our putting ourselves in the right frame of mind through the rituals to become closer to God? Any reason other than to try and bring it in line with a particular hashkafa?
In the same way that you can’t smell my voice and you can’t hear mint chocolate chip ice cream, an Ishmaelian rationalist would affirm that God cannot dwell.
There’s a book by Sam Harris called The End of Faith in which he very amusingly decries Islamic descriptions of the martyr’s paradise:
My point in quoting this is that finite descriptions of the infinite are merely couched in terms we can consider. The midrashic tale of there being a chest of souls beside the throne of glory, for example, is nothing more than our best attempt at glorifying the Almighty and his immediate environs. If instead of thrones, kings of yesteryear would have laid in bathtubs, the midrash would speak of a “bathtub of glory” positioned adjacent to a “hamper of souls.”
We cannot know how God exists but what we do know is that whatever we say to describe it is patently false — in other words, one of the last things God will ever do is sit on a chair. And because we have historically kept valuables in treasure chests and we want to advance the notion that there is nothing more valuable than a soul, we paint God with a treasure chest of souls. But when speaking to adults about how we are to actually relate to and understand God, there can be nothing more misleading than saying that there is an actual throne floating in the sky somewhere.
God does not dwell because God cannot dwell. He does not dwell in the heavens any more or less than he does not dwell on earth. Moses was on earth and conveniently located in the Mishkan at the time of communication, so we say that God was there as well. But just as we may choose to speak to God when we pray tonight, and we say that our prayers will be heard, we do not mean that God will be at the Young Israel of Passaic-Clifton to hear me or at the Bialystoker Synagogue to hear my father. He will hear us both yet not be in either place, for God cannot be in a place — that is the essence, if you will, of the Ishmaelian philosophy: God is limited by his divine nature. There are many things He cannot do, and one of those things is to make his home between the cherubim and another thing is to limit his presence to any particular room, building or street corner.
As far as manipulating the interpretation of biblical verses to better align with interpretations of other biblical verses, I’ll admit, though, that that’s going to be a given when one intends on proposing a comprehensive worldview of Torah.
> In the same way that you can’t smell my voice and you can’t hear mint chocolate chip ice cream, an Ishmaelian rationalist would affirm that God cannot dwell.
I understand that. My point is that the plain reading of the text shows that the Ishmaelian is wrong. It’s only after you accept that he’s right that you have to reinterpret the text metaphorically.
> But when speaking to adults about how we are to actually relate to and understand God, there can be nothing more misleading than saying that there is an actual throne floating in the sky somewhere.
All well and good, but again, only if you first assume your hashkafa is correct and then work from there. If I remember correctly, the medrash uses Hashem’s throne teleologicaly to explain why the sky is blue. The author of that medrash obviously believed in a literal throne.
> As far as manipulating the interpretation of biblical verses to better align with interpretations of other biblical verses, I’ll admit, though, that that’s going to be a given when one intends on proposing a comprehensive worldview of Torah.
So why not go with the obvious fix, and say that biblical verses (to say nothing of midrashic glosses and later interpretation) don’t align with each other because they were composed by different people at different times?
Your proposal might at first seem very reasonable, but it can be easily rejected by understanding a little bit of the history about the Akivan philosophy.
Basically, when initially proposed, this mystical approach was outright rejected for being contrary to the conventional wisdom of the time. In other words, R’ Akiva and his interpretive methods were novel, stark and quite the oddity. Things he sought to interpret literally had for many generations prior been interpreted figuratively and it was only with the changing of the times that R’ Akiva’s position became mainstream.
It is just that I propose another changing of the times, or more specifically, a changing of the focus to register with an already existent changing of the times. We no longer live in the age of belief, so let’s quit believing in the irrational extensions based on the loosely interpreted biblical text of the Akivan perspective.
Surely there is more to it than your take on the “rational” explanation. You imply that everything G-d does or tells us to do is for our sake and not His, and of course this is true, but if it’s really all in our heads, who’s to say that what we do brings us any closer to G-d than what someone else does? The Conservative movement has decided that it is better to drive to Shul on Shabbos than to not have the opportunity to daven at a Shul. That sounds pretty reasonable, doesn’t it? After all, if they feel it brings them closer to G-d, more power to them.
So why are we prescribed to do things a certain way? Why can’t we drive on Shabbos? Why do we built the Mishkan in such an intricate way to such detailed specifications? Why do we need to know these specifications today? After all, we’ll never be building another Mishkan (and why not? If it worked then, why can’t it work now?). There must be a reason, and you can’t explain it (or at least I can’t) in a purely rational way.
The Akivan school of thought readily proclaims that God needs us; the Ishmaelian one finds that thoroughly objectionable, instead focusing on our needs as His nation.
There are certain parameters within which we must operate as Torah-observant Jews. If one’s wife is suffering an exceedingly difficult labor, one ought to think deeply about the fetus one is about to abort in order to save the mother, but in the end, that’s the rule — the mother’s life takes precedence assuming a list of criteria are met. Simply speaking, though, one the baby’s head emerges, its life is no less valuable than the mother’s and neither may be sacrificed to save the other (of course, speak to your LOR for practical questions or concerns).
My point is that one can make any number of rationalizations, but one must always operate within the realm of halacha when doing so. Conservative Judaism made concessions that went beyond the pale, exceedingly the parameters and thus reaching a conclusion which could not be agreed upon by anyone who takes halacha seriously.
We don’t need to know how wide the menorah was any more than we need to know why the schach needs to be X inches from the succah wall. If you’d like to be informed, you learn it. If not, you can just hire someone to build your succah or find out what to do without knowing why. Since we don’t have a Temple, it’s largely academic, but if you consider yourself a learned member of the Talmudically-inclined Jewish faith, the fact is that the length of the hyssop bundle used for blood application in Egypt is related to the minimum length of a shofar, and we blow shofar these days, so it’s really all one big unified thing.
My point was that obviously there are reasons for divine commandments even if we don’t understand them. If you say that there is no reason except to make us feel more connected to Hashem, then that’s a slippery slope.
What exactly do you mean by designating such a method as being a slippery slope? Everything can be a slippery slope — in fact, the slippery slope argument can itself a slippery slope.
You should read this about the slippery slope, because the argument fails when flat, middle ground (literally + figuratively) can be achieved.
There may very well be reasons for divine commandments and at the same time certain things could have been arbitrary or specifically tailored for our well being. This gets into the mimietic/didactic split which doesn’t really have a neat and tidy conclusion — but to answer your question, my response is that I cannot answer your question. We’ll might never know why things are the way they are and that’s just the way the divine-mortal relationship is going to be, we being infinitely ill-equipped to fully comprehend something that originates in a dimension bereft of time and space.
Growing up I always thought it strange that we try to get closer to G-d but when G-d is very close to us we can not enter and be with him. When G-d was in the Kodesh Kidushim we were not allowed to enter. The only person allowed to enter was the Kohan Godel and he was only allowed to go in once a year. I never saw anything where the Kohan Godel describes what he saw or if there was a conversation etc. The joke is if you could talk to G-d face to face what would you say. But we see when we had that opportunity we were not allowed to take advantage of it.
+1
To reserve the boundary between the infinite and the finite — God and man — we could not enter.
A gentile dental colleague called me today to ask me if what that thing is when we swing chickens over our heads. In responding to him, I noted that prayer and charity are very common things in the Jewish person’s life (not to contrast that to the gentile’s life, though) and irrespective of the controversy surrounding possible translocation of pagan ritual into Judaism, I thought it was a very stirring thing to do kaparos with a chicken because it’s so jarring and so stark — we don’t have sacrificial offerings without a Temple and since we never do this but once a year, it makes it that much more meaningful, seeing how easy it is to forget oneself during prayer because we do it so very often.
Related is the concept of disparity that the sages instituted into nearly everything we do. I am particular to recite Al Naharos Bavel (“By the rivers of Baylon,” Psalms 137) prior to bentching during the week to contrast sharply with my Shir Hama’alos (Psalms 126) on Shabbos, Yom Tov and Rosh Chodesh. The reason given by the Shulchan Aruch for reciting Shir Hama’alos on the aforementioned days is to avoid crying over the destruction of the Temple on happy days because of the evocative nature of Psalm 137. But without reciting 137 on a frequent basis, that contrast is lost. Most people think that Shir Hama’alos is a happy song — but it’s not; it’s really the Shabbos analog to the weekday prayer meant to stir up emotions of do’eg u’meitzar (sorrow and pain) but because we’re not meant to cry on Shabbos, we recite this muted version rather than Psalm 137. Most people miss out on the entire construct, though, because they omit Psalm 137 during the week and don’t really think about the words of Psalm 126 they say on Shabbos and holidays.
So too, it’s as though God was in the Holy of Holies. R’ Ishmael would not agree that He was in there, but that’s where the tablets and Torah were kept. We are finite and they represent the infinite — so we’re so close, yet so far. I think that sense of stark contrast is helpful in understanding the rationale of such a practice.
My favorite number, if I had one, according to your logic would be 1040, or 1120. or 401K not 1099.
It might have just been a joke.
Whatever R’ Akiva or anyone else ascribes to the dwelling, it’s clear from the language the chumash uses that the Jews actually thought he was coming down. Why does Hasehm say “I will dwell amongst you” if he doesn’t really mean it? You can kvetch a Dibra torah kelashon bnei adam in there. But there was a clear reason, and definitely a need to be filled by a physical presence, judging from the egel hazahav.
It is so richly and ornately detailed because people need that physical/emotional connection to somehting greater. Look at cathedrals, the vatican, the dome of the rock, huge shuls, and even the bais hamikdash. Same idea runs through it all.
It doesn’t matter whether people actually see miracles (although that runs along the same vein, a physical connection to God), the fact that God said I’m gonna live there if you build me a God-house was enough. People back then, (especially former idolaters worshiping physical Gods), ate it up. I admit it this explanation does make into a bit of a liar though since nothing changed in him, only in them. Except no, just thinking about the pasuk, he says “veasu li midash veshachanti besochum.” Not besoscho, besochum, interesting.
I don’t see why that’s a kvetch.
When you tell your wife that she is your “everything,” you don’t actually mean it — it’s allegorical. But you really mean it in the sense of the emotional connections, even though you don’t mean it to be taken literally. So too here. The Torah is the best poetry, and we take it seriously, even if not literally sometimes.
And they were just at Sinai, and R’ Akiva says that God came down there as well, and that Moses went to heaven, while R’ Ishmael tempers both of those claims. Miracles occurring doesn’t mean that we need to pretend as though everything is miraculous.
On that point, it’s possible to fit rationality or mysticim into the torah, but i doubt that r akiva or r yishmael, living 1000 years later, explained the torah the way the jews felt it at the time it was given to them. More likely, they each gravitated towards one type of worldview and fit it into the torah. We do the same thing today. You like rationality, for example, and you like to see the rationality in Judaism. Other people like mysticism, and interpret it that way. You have the rambam, on one hand, and the ramban on the other. Ramban’s clearly following a kabbalistic approach, even though he’s very rational on stuff with non-kabbalistic possibility.
Personally, I think they’re both later creations.
R’ Akiva is definitely a later creation because it’s documented that his position on things was seen as exquisite, eclectic and way out there. The sages were initially deeply put off by his approach, and why they turned around is an entire discussion unto itself.
R’ Ishmael is most certainly potentially consistent with the historically accurate way in which things happened. Was Mount Sinai lifted from its base? That’s one way of reading the biblical text, but it’s really more consistent with a normative manner of reading the text to say that the text is written in a poetic fashion and when it says, “b’tachtis hahar” (Exodus 19:17) it meant at the foot, base, etc. Only in the most phantasmagoric manner of interpretation does it even enter one’s mind to suggest that this was written to convey such a mystical thing as the mountain having been held in the sky over the heads of the nation.
Granted, there are verses much more illustrative of wondrous and fantastic things, such as those describing the events of the 10 plagues, the splitting of the sea and the event at Sinai — and it’s nearly necessary to invoke a miracle. In those instances, R’ Ishmael merely accepts the inevitable, while R’ Akiva takes the opportunity to expand and somehow explain a multitude of extra miracles (for example, the debate in the Passover haggadah regarding how many plagues and miracles occurred in Egypt and at the sea).
“The sages were initially deeply put off by his approach, and why they turned around is an entire discussion unto itself.”
Can you write some pieces on this?
It’s difficult to fit it into a particular parsha but I’ll do my best to work it in sometime in the near future.
It’s like giving a drasha- You need to have skillz to fit your opinions into the parsha
I dont think it is “rational” at all to suggest that the Torah cannot be understood. The Torah was given from G-d to man. We are commanded to know G-d – and the textbook is the Torah. So everything in it *can be understood*.
Specifically, you question understanding the idea of G-d dwelling among the Jews. Since our neshamas are linked to HKBH, why can you not simply understand it as G-d dwelling *within us*? After all, we are His representatives on this planet – the only “proof” (if there is any at all) that He exists. People judge G-d by the Jews.
So let’s take the “metaphorical” throne, made of “sapir”. It has 4 legs of blue – the Gemara links the blue to the colour of techeiles. And tzitzis are 4 corners of techeiles. And each corner of the Mishkan similarly has techeiles. Seems like a simple and rational answer to me: our daled amos are enclosed the same as the mishkan and G-d’s throne. And that is why G-d dwells *within us*.
Of course I mean this in a spiritual and not a physical sense. My body and soul house a spark of the divine. That is the source of the “still, small voice” that we can hear when davenning. It is the source of inspiration and our creativity.
Taking a rational approach, the Torah can be understood. Taking a literal approach is where the Torah becomes mystifying beyond the limits of human comprehension.
Unlike you, I do not take it for granted that our “neshamas are linked to Hashem” because that doesn’t even really mean anything, or at least it doesn’t really mean anything to me. It’s like the sign outside the church that says: “Join us in Christ.” These words certainly possess definitions, but when strung together in an attempt to form a coherent idea, they fail to accomplish their goal. Along the Maimonidean path, I’d say that the soul is the mind, and by that, I mean to actually equate it with the thing we all refer to when we actually say the word “mind.” You may disagree, and you probably will.
While some appear to make it their goal to speak of a spiritual realm so elusive that words barely capture the essence of what they intend to convey, I see all the advantage of a rationalist approach in all aspects of explanation other than what necessarily belongs to the supernatural. I can’t understand what the benefit is of talking in such lofty terms as saying “our souls are linked to God” when, clearly, there’s no meaningful way to even begin to understand what that might entail and what it would not entail — in other words, what are the parameters of such a claim? We can’t really say, can we? The Akivan relishes speaking in such terms, forever adding a further coat of mysticism to what already has enough layers that whatever it is one began discussing becomes nearly incomprehensible and we end up with the Jewish equivalent of “joining in Christ.”
In The Matrix, people judged Morpheus by whether or not Neo was the chosen one, yet this construct doesn’t make Morpheus a God and if we would remove the fairly obvious spiritual overtones of the film, it doesn’t make Neo out to be necessarily divine either. For a more real world example, an entire family of children go out into the world and their parents are judged by how their kids act — this doesn’t necessarily devolve into the mystical. God can remain incorporeal and elevated and we can speak of his being in our midst without the need to succumb to what was initially seen as the pseudo-heretical position of the Akivan school of thought that God can take up residence in a building.
What appears simple to you is indeed very simple: 4 = 4. Anyone can match up similarly numbered items from the infinite things that exist in the universe — and apparently even for things that don’t exist, such as thrones of glory that don’t exist but yet still possess four blue legs, as you say — but it doesn’t reveal a connection between A and B nearly as much as it reveals our desire to connect A to B. And this is totally fine — we as Jews and Americans and humans have signs and symbols and emblems and they become tremendously meaningful because they are infused with such utter importance, but let’s not forget that we made them that way. The throne of glory only has four legs because our chairs have four legs, which has nothing to do with tzitzis. Had stools been the craze back then, I suppose we would we have had to relate the throne of glory to the patriarchs.
So far, I had been responding to you point by point and I only now reach the end of your post, in which you back off and admit that nothing you said thus far was meant to be taken literally. Ah, well than in what fashion have you countered my position? Being mystical is fine as long as you don’t forget that that’s what you’re doing and you don’t remain there — you’ve got to come back down to earth.
But this chelek elokah mima’al (“portion of the heavenly from above” that exists in all of us) is also just something we say to bring meaning to our mission. This idea entered Judaism very late in the game and was certainly not from Sinai any more than yiddish was.
Oh, this is just silly. Of *course* this idea is not reliant on some new-fangled idea inspired by Xianity. Indeed, if you truly believe, as did R’ Ishmael, in taking the Torah at its word, then you would have no trouble with this either.
The source for the idea that G-d is IN US is not far away. It is right there, in Genesis II, 7: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”, and I: “And God said, Let us make man in our image.”
G-d provided us with our souls, our spark of the infinite. So what I wrote was of course literal – because the spiritual is also real.
And the connection of techeiles from the tzitzis to the mishkan to the throne of G-d is NOT reliant on just the number 4 – it is reliant on the *color itself*. In Chullin 89a, Rabbi Meir linked the techeiles color to the Throne of the Almighty. All I do is add the Mishkan (which also had visible techeiles at its corners) to the comparison.
It’s hardly a sound argument to claim that we know that God is in us because a verse in the Torah clearly states that God breathed into our nostrils. All of that is very reliable when we’re having a mystical discussion and one is allowed to submit any authoritative source to bolster one’s argument, but that’s not the debate here. I’m arguing for rationalism, you’re arguing for mysticism and while we can agree to disagree on our chief outlooks, we surely can’t argue a rational matter with you bringing mystical sources.
According to Wikipedia, dust consists of particles from various sources such as soil, volcanic eruptions and pollution. In more inhabited areas, dust will necessarily also consist of pollen, human and animal hairs, textile fibers, paper fibers and a whole bunch of similar biological, mineralogical and botanical remnants. Seeing how, at the literally proposed time of initial human creation at approximately 2PM on Friday afternoon, about half of that stuff either didn’t exist or had existed for long enough to really be thoroughly incorporated into the homogenous entity known as dust, and we haven’t been informed of any volcanic eruptions, I’m unsure exactly what you mean by dust when you say that word. The verse (Genesis 2:7) specifically mentions afar min ha’adama (“dust of the earth/ground”), and that may come to exclude cosmic particles and/or volcanic ash, but we don’t have any commentators who harp on this restriction of the verse as a source for Adam’s dust not including discarded animal epithelial cells because cells weren’t discovered until 1665 by Robert Hook and that’s well after the Mikra’os Gedolos was first arranged in 1517 by Daniel Bomberg/Felix Pratensis and the commentaries were written some decades to centuries before that, but let’s go on.
Breathing is, again, according to Wikipedia, defined as the moving of air in and our of the lungs. One might disagree, but I contend that God possesses neither lungs nor respiratory orifice and therefor cannot breath. Yes, God is limited not only by certain types of rock-lifting, but also a whole bunch of physiologic and anatomic barriers, with not possessing a body being chief among them. And even if you complain about the very limiting translation of vayipach as “breathe,” I don’t think you’ll get any closer with a translation of “respire,” which doesn’t necessarily require lungs.
Furthermore, breathing into another’s nostrils does not induce life. It also doesn’t allow life to resume once it has ceased.
My point in all of this is that it’s completely ridiculous to bring to me a verse as proof of God being in us when neither you nor anyone can make heads of tails of nearly every single noun and verb in the verse you’d like to quote as a source. You come full force with some absolutely unintelligible idea that God exists within us and try to use as proof something that must absolutely not be understood in any way truly related to how it would be necessary to understand it for it to serve as a valid proof.
It’s very mystical indeed to say thinks like, “our souls are sparks of the infinite,” but neither you nor anyone else really knows what that means. It can be very inspiring in a mystical sort of way if you’re able to draw parallels and create connections (which people do all the time), but we’re not having a discussion of the mystical meanings of the universe and the Torah — rather, we are speaking about the rational understanding of how God can dwell among us. Just as he didn’t actually dwell (because he cannot dwell) despite the verse claiming that he does, I’d say he didn’t actually breathe life into Adam (because he cannot breathe) despite you bringing me a verse that claims that he did. Your entire goal of bringing me textual evidence provides no greater evidence than what we were already discussing and I’m going to allegorize that verse as I’m doing to this verse and I’d have thought you would have seen that coming.
To conclude, R’ Meir was a passionate disciple of R’ Akiva and, thus, his comments are just as curious and suspect.
Like the quintessential hammer, to you every opinion must either be rational (good) or mystical (crazy).
Where is G-d after the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash? The Gemara (not sure who) says it is “in the daled amos”. Some understand this to be the daled amos of halacha or Torah. Others (like Gelernter) understand it as the daled amos of EACH JEW.
I have no problem understanding or accepting this. When I have ideas, I don’t know if they are from “me” or from HKBH – again, the “still, small voice.”
I don’t think we are actually capable of sustaining even this conversation, because you continue to hang on the belief that G-d CANNOT do the things the Torah *says* he does! Your entire argument depends on G-d NOT being able to breathe, or dwell, or have any corporeal existence. But the Torah says He does – and I accept the Torah as the word of G-d.
G-d is not definable by the finite – I accept that. It is a core Haschel principle that to define the infinite as finite is to deny the existence of G-d. But just because G-d is not finite does NOT mean that He cannot effect tzimtzum (self-limitation) to coexist in a Mishkan or human soul.
To me, this is common sense. To you it is apparently crazy mysticism. But then again, to me, “dust” means “dust” – while you seem to want to say that dust didn’t really exist when Adam was created because there were no paper fibers.
Which one of us is being mystical?
Your very question shatters the rationalist. One cannot expect a reasonable answer to the question of “where is God?” — not because we don’t encourage questions, and not because you ought not to receive a response, but because there is no answer. The Ishmaelian response would not provide you with the location (because there is no location) but, rather, with a direction-turning, “He remains the same as before,” because the earthly abode was not for him. “God doesn’t need us” is the Ishmaelian mantra, while the Akivan school of thought maintains that He does need us, that He is injured by the absence of the Temple in Jerusalem and that He enthusiastically awaits the time when He can return to our midst.
The concept of 4 squared amos – that there is a significance to that dimension — is one that exists in halacha. To have rules — and we have many of them — there must be parameters, and in regard to things being next to or away from other things, we need an established dimension by which to describe proximity vs. distance. For instance, if someone is praying and we want to describe the distance at which to stay away from him so as not to disturb him, how close may we approach before Jewish law and custom decides that we are too close? And if a man wants to give his wife a legal document of divorce (a get) but cannot comply with what’s perhaps considered the best manner of giving it over to her (i.e. into her hand), to what degree might we allow the man to put the get into her property? If I toss it to her in the public thoroughfare and it lands 30 yards away, that’s too far from her to be considered close enough for her to enact any sort of possession. But if it lands at her feet, perhaps that’s good. Now assuming for a moment that 30 yards away is too far and at her feet is close enough, where do we draw the line? Perhaps we’d draw it at 4 amos away because that’s assumed to be, for better or worse, the dimension at which one’s “zone of presence” extends.
In cute fashion, this has been translated into aggadah. Even the distance around one during prayer is somewhat aggadic in nature because the codes of Jewish law speak of God’s presence within a certain distance of the one praying and that get very mystical very quickly. There is no real zone of 4 amos around each person until we make it so with halacha, in the same way as there is no Shabbos until we make it so. It is, as we might say, eino nikar (unrecognizable in the physical sense — i.e. an abstract, halachic reality).
I also accept the Torah as the word of God. But in the same way that God says that He is an eish ochla — “consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24), and yet did not mean to say that He is a natural phenomenon but rather may be thought of as one in whatever sort of spiritual, mystical sense it may have meaning, God also said that he dwells among the nation. He did not mean to say that when taxes go up, he’ll pay his fair share and not complain because he is, just like we are, members of the taxable public, and he will not be affected the a tornado that rips through the county because His house is adjacent to mine and similarly suffers when winds upwards of 99 mph rip through His strawberry patch planted in the front yard.
R’ Ishmael and his ilk would disagree with your statement that God can limit himself. You may be an Akivan mystic who disagrees with my Ishmaelian perspective, and that’s fine. But I’m not here on FrumSatire to promote the Akivan worldview because I feel it runs counter to people’s tolerances. If you’re an ardent fan of the Akivan mystical approach, you can probably find divrei Torah that suit your tastes to a much greater degree on Chabad.org and other websites. They’ll talk about how the gold alter (Exodus 31:1-7) was introduced in the verses separate and distinct from the rest of the vessels of the Mishkan (Exodus 25:10-27:19) to show how the sense of smell (in relation to the burning of the incense upon the golden alter) represents the only sense that was not perverted by Adam and Eve at the time of the first sin; they saw the fruit, they touched the fruit, they tasted the fruit and they heard the voice in the garden and yet responded with incredulity, and the meaning behind the copper alter being separate is that it’s the only vessel that’s not necessary but is utilized with a sense of taking the last remaining physically perceptive trait bestowed to us by God that remains with no restrictions in Jewish law — for we have limitations on what we can touch, look at, consume and listen to — and use it to serve the almighty…and so on and so forth. I think it’s a very nice dvar Torah, but something that I cannot stomach in its entirety because I sense that Adam and Eve didn’t really exist and to dig deeper and deeper into the narrative, revealing more and more details about a non-historical event to bring out meaning in later events is somewhat flawed, and I think the readers here would be inclined to quit reading what I have to write, for they’ve heard it all already and that’s what’s gotten them to their current state. I’ve also been deeply affected by this type of talk and I’ve come to compartmentalize it — it’s nice, we can learn lessons from it, but it’s not the related to the fundamental core of Judaism. When I see that some people make it their fundamental core, I distance myself from them philosophically.
I didn’t mean to say that Adam’s dust is incomparable to our dust because Adam’s dust necessarily did not contain paper fibers, and I apologize if that’s how it came across. What I meant to say is that there’s a fallacy of terms going on here when you take real world terms that were used allegorically and attempt to maintain their utter equivalency to the things they represent when we use these terms today in everyday language. God didn’t breathe because God can’t breathe. So when it says that he breathed, it means something poetic, something metaphorical. You can’t then use that verse to claim that God is inside of us because it says that he breathed into us and, ergo, he is inside of us. Even if that’s how you take it, you now need a verse that states that God remained in us — how else can you support your statement that he is “in us” — maybe he left right after entering? I extended my analysis to the dust just to show how far reaching we must be when evaluating this.
My 6-year-old daughter is currently learning the opening of Genesis. I’d much rather they start her off in another part — maybe they could teach her about Shabbos or Moses’ life using the biblical verses as the primary text. She recites “…tohu v’vohu, and it was desolate and empty…” even though she’s mumbling because she is completely unfamiliar with the word desolate and doesn’t know the difference between desolate and empty and doesn’t even understand what she’s reading enough to ask the morah questions and the morah doesn’t understand it enough to answer the questions even if my daughter would ask them. So in a way, it all works out quite well, except for the fact that my daughter leaves first grade with a confused understanding of what it is she’s supposed to understand, but the school will take care of that next year when the 2nd grade morah does a good job of similarly holding out so that she doesn’t have to explain anything better before my daughter leaves her for 3rd grade.
I can be mystical, but that doesn’t interfere with my rational perspective. It’s like a dream — it’s fine to dream as long as you know you’re dreaming. I think there’s a show on TV now about a guy who doesn’t know if he’s dreaming or not — that’s a very interesting premise for a show, but I’d not want to live his life. Too many Jewish people walk around not knowing when they are being mystical and when they’re actually talking about things that actually happened and actually relate to other things. It’s nice to talk about bread being embarrassed, but it’s not possible for bread to be embarrassed because bread is no more able to be embarrassed than God is able to be embarrassed (although for two different reasons). So when we say that, I think it’s a poetic Hebrew way in which we discuss the parameters of rabbinic extension into the way we live our lives — they made rules of progression as to which foods we eat first given that all other things are equal, and if we are ready to eat a sandwich and drink some orange soda, we are supposed to eat the sandwich first and then take a drink from the soda. Why they made such a rule, that’s an entirely different question, but the fact that they did does not mean to say that bread is embarrassed because the rule only exists because the sages decided to institute it. It doesn’t exist in and of itself, so you’d be forced to say that the bread is not only able to be embarrassed but able to pick up on the fact that it’s supposed to be embarrassed as a result of the rule.
Mysticism is fine, but not when it interferes with rationalism. I’m proposing a separation of the two because I find that those who do not are either off the deep end or were off the deep end until they came back but then, in a sense, went off the shallow end.
I am sure you would agree that this is an odd discussion. For my part, it is odd because you keep assigning thoughts and philosophies to me that I do not hold. I am NOT a fundamentalist in the sense of thinking midrashim are meant to be understood literally. I do NOT think that miracles are a default state – I am willing to go with your premise that miracles only happened when the Torah explicitly says they did.
We have a relatonship with a woman when we welcome her in, fully embrace a life together. We have a relationship with G-d in precisely the same way. I hardly think this is obscure.
Above all, I am with Haschel (and not with R Ishamel) in saying that G-D NEEDS US. That is why we exist! What we do MATTERS. And the Torah tells us why.
As far as I am concerned, this is, by far, a more complete and satisfying meal than a bunch of “we are rational, so we admit that we don’t/can’t know any good answers”. And I would hope that people who are questioning Judaism would also like good answers to their very good questions.
I want my life to make sense. I want the Torah to make sense. I believe the two dovetail beautifully, and I can (and do) give my life meaning by rejecting ALL THE NONSENSE that most Jews on this site hate. What nonsense? The “you cannot ask that question” nonsense. The “there is no answer” nonsense. And, worst of all, “people are not meant to know” nonsense.
The Torah is HERE. It is UNDERSTANDABLE by people. It was written to make sense to us. And I reject all the weird beliefs that we somehow are not fit or able or wise enough to learn from the first chapter in Genesis, or that the Torah really does not matter until it starts giving us Halachos. For my part, the Torah makes no sense WITHOUT Genesis.
God needs us is an Akivan construct. R’ Ishmael disagreed.
R’ Akiva explains that God needs us like Obama needs us. If Obama was going skydiving while on a trip to, I don’t know, Russia, and just a few moments after he jumped from the plane the pilot lost control and the plane went down in a magnificent explosion, and thinking that the explosion was really a deviously planned attack on Russian soil, the Russians immediately launched a full-scale nuclear attack on the ENTIRE (I see you like all caps) United States, and by that I mean to narrate a tale of zero survivors, Obama might be welcomed upon landing with some respect for his previously held office, but all in all, without a United States, there is nothing too special about a President of the United States.
Such would not be the case with God, says R’ Ishmael. God may, in whatever mystical manner He described in the text of the Torah, “desire” certain things: obedience, loyalty, peace, unity, recognition and even rei’ach nichoach (the pleasant aroma of the sacrificial offerings), but we don’t really know what it means when he claims these desires. If I go to Abigael’s on Broadway (my favorite restaurant) and order the fajita steak salad and they’re somehow out of it, I’m going to be upset, but I’ll probably order the brisket eggroll instead. If it turns out that they have neither, I’ll be really upset, and I might, just might, go straight to the main and order the Argentinian smoked short ribs. When the waiter gives me a ‘tsk, tsk’ and tells me that they’re out of that as well, I’ll begin to shift in my seat and ask him to just give me the skirt steak San Pedro. If they didn’t have that either, I’d be utterly dejected and I might just have to leave.
The world, according to R’ Ishmael, is decidedly not like Abigael’s is for me. Despite what claims may be made by the Torah, God is not excited nor does he anticipate the holiday of, let’s say, Succos, because of all the wonderful mitzvos that he knows are coming to him. And when He gets to Succos and it turns out that it rains all night and no one’s able to sit in the succah, but people run in and run out and get soaked but still manage to ramble through kiddush just in time to not have the kiddish wine completely displaced by rainwater, God is not moved. That’s what it means to be the unmoved mover — that Aristotle guy made a good analogy.
Yet the Torah proclaims events that caused God happiness, joy, sadness, worry and all sorts of other human emotions. The Torah was written in a manner for us to understand. What it means that God likes to smell roasting lamb I do not know, and neither do you. But that’s irrelevant. What matters is that these are our obligations, and we meet them or our proverbial doom (to some extent or another) by casting them off. We are rewarded and our merits and demerits count for and against us, respectively. As R’ Mordechai Becher likes to say, “I’m in marketing, not management.” As a rabbinical scholar (and unlike a Talmudic sage), he doesn’t decide what Judaism is, but he tries to sell it nonetheless.
R’ Akiva, on the other hand, does not hesitate to say that God needs us.
I’d tell you to choose your own path, but it seems that you already have.
Have a wonderful Purim — to you and to all!
My path is neither. Unlike Akiva and Rashi, I believe, for example, that evey chok has a rational explanation. To you, that makes me a mystic. Somehow.
To you, labeling seems to be very important. As you are a hammer, so you will label this particular screw “a nail.”