Emunah Peshutah vs Machashavah

A basic problem when approaching Jewish philosophy is the appropriateness of studying it altogether. As Prof. Sholom Carmy wrote on Avodah:

The people who keep insisting that it's necessary to prove things about G-d, including His existence, seem to take it for granted that devising these proofs is identical with knowing G-d.
Now if I know a human being personally the last thing I'd do, except as a purely intellectual exercise, is prove his or her existence.

Focusing on the Philosopher's G-d makes it difficult to see the Personal G-d. On the other hand, without theology, our picture of G-d is blurry, and often wrong.

So the question is, what is the appropriate balance between the two?

I found a variety of opinions:

1- The Rambam seems to belittle emunah peshutah. Yedi'ah is the key to olam haba. The hoi palloi may have to settle for the vague approximation of emunah peshutah, but the philosopher's machshavah amuqah is superior.

2- The Baal haTanya invokes a mystical resolution. The conflict is a function of pursuing machshavah amuqah from a source other than the Yechidah Kelalis. (The one sage each generation who is like "Moshe in his generation".) Through the unity of the national soul's yechidah, a single view of G-d emerges even at both planes of existance.

3- At the other extreme, Rav Nachman miBreslov discouraged the study of theology, placing all value on having a relationship with HaQadosh barukh Hu. The philosopher's G-d, while logically sound, is cold, transcendent and incomprehensible -- very unconducive to this natural parent-child style relationship which is at the center of his definition of "deveiqus" and man's tafqid.

4- The Brisker approach is to avoid the whole subject. As Rav Moshe Feinstein put it, it's a hashkafah of not studying hashkafah. It differs from Rav Nachman's position not so much in that they feel it's wrong, but that it's pointless. The ikkar is learning halakhah and man's duty in this world.

R' YB Soloveitchik puts forth this position in his essary Qol Dodi Dofeiq: The Jewish question [of tragedy] is not "Why?" but "How am I supposed to respond?" Rabbi Soloveitchik simply wasn't curious about theological questions. His philosophy has an existentialist agenda. It doesn't deal with questions of how G-d is or how He runs the world, but rather he presents a detailed analysis of the human condition and the world as we see it. Because our dilemma is part of the human condition, he discusses it as a dialectic. Rabbi Soloveitchik has no problem with the idea that we simultaneously embrace conflicting truths. However, he leaves little record of his own personal confrontation with the tension of this particular dialectic. I believe it's his Brisker heritage.

The problem with positions 3 and 4 is that they do not have the support of either the scholastic rishonim (eg: Rav Saadia Ga'on, the Rambam, R' Albo), the antischolastic rishonim (eg: R' Yehudah haLevi), the kabbalistically inclined (eg: the Ramban), nor the Ramchal, the Besh"t, the Gra, R' Chaim Vilozhiner... Their nature is that only an explicit discussion of our particular problem would turn up antecedents. One can't argue from silence that some rishon agreed with them because perhaps he simply chose to commit his time to publishing in other areas.

5- When thinking about this further I realized that I assumed a different stance when writing AishDas's charter. I think it warrants mention because I believe it's the position of the Mussar Movement. It reflects the approach I see utilized by Rav Dessler in Michtav MeiEliyahu.

R' Lopian defines mussar as dealing with the space of an amah -- getting ideas from the mind to the heart. We often think things that don't reflect how we feel and many of the forces that influence our decision-making. Akin to RYBS's dialectic, we embrace different ideas and motives in different modes of our consciousness.

As for our contradiction, the question is one of finding unity between mind and its ability to understand and explain, to philosophize about G-d and His governance of the universe, and the heart and how we feel and react toward Him.

Emunah, bitachon, ahavas Hashem, yir'as Hashem, etc... are middos. They are not acquired directly through study, but through the tools of tiqun hamidos. (With the observation that constant return to a subject operates on both levels.) There is a reason why the kiruv movement is built on the experience of a Shabbos, and not some ultimate proof of G-d. (Aish haTorah's "Discovery" program, the only counter-example that came to mind, is intended to be a hook, to pique people's interest to get them to that Shabbos, not kiruv itself.)

Rather than seeing this as a dilemma, I saw it as a need. We can embrace both because each involves a very different component of self. And since avodah must be bekhol nafshekha, we actually MUST study both machshavah and mussar. Meaningful avodas Hashem must require involvement of both mind and heart.

Different Approaches to Creation

[Modified Feb 6, 2005: References raised on an Avodah discussion added. -mi]

I know of a number of approaches to evolution vs creation in Jewish thought. As far as I can tell, it seems that an insistance on the Torah giving literal history with it being roughly 5,765 years since ex nihilo, became more popular after the scientific challenges of the past two centuries, not less. As though we dug in our heels in the face of so many rejecting the Torah for a blind acceptance of the zeitgeist and the importance it gives scientific research.


1- Rejection of scientific conculsions. Theories change over time. Rather than worry about a contradiction between current theory and the Torah, one can simply wait without concern as science slowly converges to the Torah's truth.

After all, in the last century theory has gone from Aristotle's eternal universe to acknowledging that it has a beginning. Compared to that, current difference are small.

This is the basic approach taken by R' Avigdor Miller.


2- History as a backdrop. As one opinion in the Gemara has it, Adam was created as a fully mature man of 20, and trees were created fully grown, etc... The Lubavitcher Rebbe zt"l concludes that this opinion would hold that the universe as a whole was formed with a history consistant with a natural, scientific, progression.

One may then ask why Hashem chose to create a world that has an artificial age. Or perhaps not: Can one understand why G-d chooses to do anything?

Personally, I have a problem with this position. How does one ascribe a time to creation? It can't be on the Creator's clock, since He Exists outside of time. Therefor, when we speak of "when" creation happened, we mean the begining of the universe's timeline. So then how could we talk about G-d creating the universe at some point in the middle of the line, allowing history to go in both directions -- past and future -- from that point?


3- Conflict resolution. Invoking relativity or whatnot to show that 15 billion years can be 5758 years in another frame of reference. Perhaps relavitity justifies the differences between frames of reference (as suggested by Rabbi Yaakov "Gerald" Shroeder). The "birds" of day 5 are actually dinosaurs, which are most similar bilogically to birds of any thing living today. Creation of the sun on day 4 is actually about the sky clearing to the point the sun could be seen on earth, etc...

As can be seen from my treatment, I don't consider this opinion fair to either the Torah or the scientific data. Yet, many popular books have come out in the past two years promoting this kind of position. Perhaps someone else can do it justice.

[The next two paragraphs are minor paraphrases of material R' Gil Student wrote for his Hirhurim blog.]

On the other hand, however Bereishis 1 is understood, there is a poetry to the idea. In Collected Writings VII pp 363-264, R' Samson Raphael Hirsch rejects an insistance on literalism, common to both of the previous approaches, and waxes poetic about the greater display of Divine Wisdom a natural unfolding would suggest. Similarly, Rav Kook makes the same point in Orot haQodesh 91.

R. Menahem Kasher, in Torah Shelemah (Bereshis, ch. no. 738), quotes a responsum from the Geonim in which it is stated that Adam was first created as a speechless creature, like an animal, and only later was given speech. This could certainly be interpreted as a precedent for the claim that Adam was descended from humanoids. R. Kasher suggests that this is a matter of dispute between the Ramban and his student R. Bahya ben Asher, with the Ramban on the side of the Gaon's responsum. In his Hibah Yeseirah (Bereshis 1:26, printed in the back of Bnei Banim vol. 2), R. Henkin writes explicitly that Adam's body was taken from creatures that preceded him and it was only his soul that was created ex nihilo. In other words, Adam evolved from lower creatures and became human when God created and implanted in him a human soul.

4- Multiple creation times. This is the approach of the Tif'eres Yisrael. He cites an opinion of the tannaim, a central theme amongst the more kabbalistically inclined rishonim, that Hashem created worlds and destroyed them before this one. Dinosaur bones and starlight are legacies of these earlier worlds. The Tif'eres Yisrael did not say anything about evolution, just that this earlier time explains what the fossils are fossils of. In Techeiles Mordechai, R' Shalom Mordechai Schwadron speaks laudably of the Tif'eres Yisrael's resolution.

In Gen 1:1, G-d creates ex nihilo (matter from nothing). Then, before verse 2, these other worlds (in this opinion, epochs) rose and fell. Then, there was "chaos and emptiness" from which our world emerged. The universe as a whole, even the planet, can therefor be older than 5758 years.

Since current theory is that the world started as a singularity -- IOW, not within the purvey of science, it is all a matter of faith if the ex nihilo was with the intent of the Creator or not.

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan quotes R' Yitzchaq meiAkko (a student of the Ramban) who concludes from the Zohar that the first creation was 15.8 billion years ago -- the age astronomers and physicists seem to be converging on, given multiple ways of measuring the age. It is unclear that this is truly the intent of R' Yitzchaq meiAkko, but that's Rabbi Kaplan's take. The original lecture to AOJS, which is more complete and persuasive than the mention in his NCSY book, is available on line. This is built on an idea discussed by Rabbeinu Bachya and numerous other kabbalistically inclined rishonim, that of our world being one of a cycle of shemittos, so that there is history and time before our universe.


5- Rejection of a literal read of the Torah. This is much easier, halachically, than it sounds, as there is a long tradition, including the Rambam and the Vilna Gaon, teaching that Genesis 1&2 actually convey deeper truths via metaphor. The gemara, after all, limits the number of students (to 2) that one may teach the secrets of the Act of Creation -- so clearly we can't just take the text at face value.

Another commonly sited proof for non-literalness is that the word "day" precedes the creation of the sun. Therefor, it can't be used, at least in this naarative, to mean our 24 hour period.


6-The Maharal (intro to Gevuros Hashem) teaches that creation is so alien to human experience that we don't have a comparison to it. Therefor prophecy, which is transmitted by visions, can not describe it. (The World to Come is similarly explained. This is why it only appears in Tanach as "your days will be prolonged". Continued existance we can understand. The rest of the details, no.)

However, creation is also so alien that we can not understand it by extrapolation, either. In general, the Talmud teaches that "wisdom is greater than prophecy". The Maharal explains that this is because the power of extrapolation and deduction takes you further than just what can be presented metaphorically in visions. In this case, though, creation is beyond wisdom as well -- which is why the Talmud limits the forum where it can be studied.

His conclusion is that the Torah can't provide us with a comprehensible history AND that science must be wrong. (It may be implied from the Maharal that science can get you closer to the history, but not a correct history.)

R' Dessler (vol. II) ascribes a similar opinion to the Ramban, at least with regard to time during creation. That the days of creation were both literal days of seconds, minutes and hours, but also the subsequence six millenia. Not that they represent or parallel the subsequent millenia, but they are literall the millenia themselves. These two perspective appear to contradict, but only because of limitations of how humans perceive time ever since eating from the tree of knowledge.


In the two last opinions, the presumption must be that Gen 1 and 2 teach some deeper truths about reality. Either because that's the only meaning of the text, or because all we can understand from the text are partial truths that don't quite add up to a whole picture. In either case, without having a metaphor, there would be little reason for its inclusion in the Torah.

The Maharal explains some of the symbolism of the number 7 later in Gevuros Hashem. The seventh should be made holy even without the creation story, so it is possible the details of the story are made to describe this point.

One can also see a pattern: light, sky-and-sea, earth; repeated twice. First Hashem created light. On day four, He created the stars, moon and sun -- the sources of light. Second, He seperated sky from the sea. On day 5, He created those who liv e in the sky and the sea -- the birds and the fish. Third, Hashem made the seas converge to show land. On day six, the animals and people inhabited the land.

What is important to us as Jews is not what actually happened, that is, whether G-d used natural or miraculous means to create the universe. Rather, to take the lessons of creation, or the lessons encoded into the story of creation, and live them.

Other Tines on the Fork

The hashkafic fork in the road that I've been referring to repeatedly has two approaches: sheleimus / temimus, the perfection of the self, and deveikus, cleaving to G-d. If you'd like, derekh Hashem as following the path G-d takes, and derekh Hashem as taking the path to G-d.

Within Chassidus, one finds Chabad, acheiving deveikus through wisdom, insight and knowledge, and other forms of chassidus which focus more experientially. As Lubavitch calls them, Gachas chassidim. This is after the next three sefiros after Chabad: gevurah (strength and restraint), chessed (kindness and giving), and tife'eres (the splendor of their harmony.

Within the sheleimus camp there are numerous approaches: Hirsch's synthesis of Torah and derekh eretz, i.e. working within the world and advancing society in Torah ways, being a pefect Mensch-Israel; Mussar's perfection of personality; the Yeshiva world's perfection of mind through knowing G-d's Torah, etc...

Other possibilities exist and similarly could have become movements.

The Ramchal's position is a fusion of the two. In Derekh Hashem he writes that the ultimate reward is G-d Himself, and therefore man's goal is one of deveikus. However, since G-d Himself is a Creator, to experience G-d Himself we need the experience of being creative beings, to earn our reward. Thus, Hashem created two worlds, this one in which we perfect ourselves, temimus, and the world to come in which we experience deveikus.

However, the Ramchal's definition of temimus is entirely shaped by the fact that the point of that temimus is to be a being capable of as much deveikus as possible. Which is why he writes Mesilas Yesharim as structured around R' Pinchas ben Ya'ir's ladder to ru'ach haqodesh. His temimus is about a totally different set of midos than those in Cheshbon haNefesh or Orechos Tzadiqim. It's a path that's fully defined by both tines of the fork.

This might be why the Ramchal's philosophy is so popular today, being most like the "default position" most Orthodox-from-birth Jews pick up in their childhood.


A fourth option is common in some Orthodox academic circles. Note that Hashem doesn't enter into a beris with us as individuals; the covenant is between G-d and the Jewish people. Therefore the role of mitzvos is not personal wholeness or personal closeness to G-d, but our part within the role of the Jewish people in the world.

This approach has the advantage of only requiring that mitzvos make sense as norms, not for each individual to which they apply. Gender differences don't have to fit every man and every woman, but can be explained in terms of the value to the Jewish People of having this standard, given propensities amongst men and women as a whole.


Last, if we look at the second mishnah in Avos, we find three pillars: Torah, Avodah and Gemillus Chassadim. Or, as the Maharal puts it (Derech haChaim ad loc): perfection of one's relationship with oneself within the world that is our minds (Torah), perfection of our relationship with G-d within Shamayim (Avodah), and perfection of our relationship to others who we encounted in the physical world (Chessed).

The deveikus approach seems to say that one can make Avodah primary, and from that everything else will follow. The temimus approach makes Torah (as the Maharal explains it) primary, and a perfect self naturally will be one that serves Hashem and is generous to others. However, what about a chessed centered Judaism? It sounds to be Hillel's message, when he says to the prospective convert that all of the Torah is "that which is disturbing to you, do not do to others -- the rest is commentary."

When I noted the lack of such a movement on Avodah, Rn Chana Luntz suggested that perhaps the Beis Yaakov movement is founded on this principle. It seems so.

Today's Daas Torah

Here's a theory that I developed recently...

The gemara uses the term "da'as Torah" in a sense totally different than today's usage. It appears once, in Chullin 90b, to ask whether a cited opinion on a halachic matter was logincally necessary from the sources, or the tanna's personal opinion as informed by his da'as Torah.

But Orthodoxy requires giving rabbis authority on halachic questions. And it's not overly novel to say that such authority doesn't come from just formal knowledge, but also having a feel for the material and perspective caused by long exposure to Torah. Otherwise, someone with a good CD should be able to out-pasken a learned rav who relies on his own memory.

It is also not overly contravercial to extend this authority to Torah questions that aren't halachic, such as questions of philosophy or identifying appropriate areas for going lifnim mishuras hadin (beyond the letter of the law).

Where da'as Torah as meant by the contemporary usage hits shakier ground is when it's extended in the other direction: pragmatic questions where the unknowns revolve around the facts on the ground rather than the Torah issues. Such as most career or shidduch questions. After all, the gemara advises the rabbinate to leave military questions to the generals. Should we not leave medical ones to the doctors, career questions to career counselors -- or at least people who work in the jobs in question?

The extension of da'as Torah from the Talmudic usage is first found in R' Yisra'el Salanter's Or Yisra'el. In Mussar, it's about the role of Torah in personal development. Yes, his formulation justified approaching the rav on non-halachic issues, by noting that every decision has impact on which life experiences one has, and in turn on one's mussar growth. Someone who chooses to consult a rav who knows their personality and in which ways they're trying to grow, could use the insight.

However, robbed of the connection to Mussar, the original motivation is gone and the term has a totally knew meaning. What's called "da'as Torah" today often involves approaching a gadol who doesn't know the asker well enough to give such mashgi'ach-style help. Or even if one's own rosh yshivah, it could be done even years after their daily contact. Not at all what Rav Yisra'el was describing.

Rav Yisra'el does ascribe importance to the effect of Torah on shaping the thought of the one who learns it. If I may add, the word da'as is not merely zikaron (memory), but knowledge that both comes from chokhmah and binah, but is also at times replaced by the sefirah of keser which is their cause. Knowledge that comes from thought, and shapes thought.

The current notion relies entirely on this notion, which Rav Yisra'el cited as buttress for why one should seek about Mussar advice. Without it being about mussar advice, and fitting in one's plan to shteig, to ascend the ladder, one has a totally new ionvention.

Yes, Da'as Torah should give the rav better ability to analyze questions than the asker, or anyone else whose mind lacks that Torah development. However, does that ability compensate for not having as many of the facts about which to reason -- including the da'as (if I may use my own conceit) of the topic at hand? My personal opinion is, rarely.

(This is to be distinguished from the chassidic belief in the ru'ach haqodesh Hashem grants tzadiqim, so that their decisions even in non-Torah matters is of value. One is about the quality of mind, the other about Divine Aid given people who carry their kehillos' burdens. There it's from Hashem, the rebbe's own knowledge is irrelevent so this objection wouldn't apply. One either believes the help is granted freely, or less so.)

The other issue that is different than R' Yisra'el's original formulation is a shift to an all-or-nothing. Something "the gedolim" have that the rest of us lack. Rather, it ought to be relative. Whomever learned more Torah should be more shaped by it; whomever less, less. This artificial division into have and have-not has returned back to affect the core of Torah questions, halachah. The local shul rav lost most of his authority, both in his mispallelim's eyes and in his own, as he's from the have-not class. Many local rabbanim are merely conduits, forwarding all but the most trivial questions to their rashei yeshiva.

By making such a class, "the gedolim", as opposed to speaking of relative greatness, the community is forced to believe that da'as Torah is monolithic. And with a bit of unconscious circular reasoning, this is made true. The definition of da'as Torah is made to be the conclusion of the gedolim and the definition of who is a gadol is restricted by who agrees with the accepts answer.

This is so well accepted that authors and publishers can not put out histories that disprove such unity of thought. If it's told that the Netziv read the newspaper on Shabbos, or allowed secular studied in Vilozhin, or that fellows in Salbodka argued issues like Communism, Freud, or the other hot topics of their time, the hoi paloi will question the rav's greatness, which raises problems of shemiras halashon. Even when from an unimpeachable source, like the Torah Temimah or R' N Kamenecki. It's not a judgement of fiction, but of inappropriate truth.

Without the core notion of having a mussar plan, one can't transplant the notions that depend upon it. Such drastic redefinition is inevitable.

The Fall of Mimeticism and Forks in the Hashkafic Road

In a famous article in Tradition titled "Rupture and Reconstruction", Dr Haym Soloveitchik describes a change in how we relate to Judaism from pre-war Europe to post-war US and Israel. The rupture in Jewish life caused by the Holocaust forced a reconstruction process. Pre-war religion was largely mimetic, i.e. based upon what people do and how they respond. A transmission of the tradition by culture. In order to reconstruct, we turned to texts, to halachic codes and other formalizations.

This fits with a saying of Chazal. "'Listen, my child, to mussar avicha -- the tradition of your father, and do not neglect toras imekha -- the Torah of your mother.' Do not read 'imekha -- your mother' but 'umasekha -- your nation'." Mandatory formal education is an obligation of the father, mussar avikha. The Torah learned by absorbtion, at the mother's knee, by breathing the culture of our nation, is toras imekha / umasekha.

I find this characterization ironic, given the identity of the author. His greatgrandfather and namesake, R' Chaim Brisker, was famously textualist in his approach to halakhah despite living pre-war. Nor was Brisk the first: the Vilna Gaon often ruled based on theoretical argument in contradiction to mimetic tradition. Chassidus could not have emerged if people weren't looking at the traditions and looking for a new justification for them.

And this isn't simply true pragmatically. Philosophically as well, we started looking for movements to justify our lifestyle. The aforementioned Chassidus, Hisnagdus, Mussar, Hirschian neo-Orthodoxy were all trying to provide a basis rather than relying on Tradition, as Tevya the Milkman would have.

In distinction to Dr Soloveitchik's thesis, I would instead speak of two ruptures. The first was the Haskalah, and with it the fall of mimeticism. However, the response to this in the 19th century was primarily to find new derakhim to give depth and meaning to our lives. (This is even true for Brisk's hashkafah that halachah stands on its own, and hashkafah is to be played down, and the Hungarian approach of banning change. Asserting that structure must come from halakhah, or that one must manually preserve that which was hitherto part of the Jewish preconscious, are themselves textualist, formal changes.)

The Alter of Novorodok, in the first essay of Madreigas haAdam, speaks of various eras in human history. From the tanna'im until the haskalah was the period of the yeshiva. With the haskalah, the ir, the city, went out of sync with the yeshiva. Therefore there was a new need for Mussar, for the conscious inculcation of those values and reactions that until then would have been transmitted unsconsciously. In our terms, toras umasekha no longer tracked mussar avikha. It now had to relayed textually and formally, in the manner of mussar avikha.

It was therefore after the haskalah that the Ashkenazi world faced a fork in the hashkafic road, between sheleimus (self-completion, walking in G-d's image) and deveiqus (cleaving to G-d, walking to Him).

The shift after the Holocaust was, in my opinion, the loss of direction. Rather than trying to fill in the gap with a formal philosophy or a program for tikkun hamidos and/or deveiqus, we're just in a vacuum. We're not just textualists, we're focused almost exclusively on halachic texts. Aggadita is limited to nice truisms that can be repeated at the Shabbos table. And ironically that gives us fewer tools for halachic resolution. How does one decide which pesaq is right amongst those justified by the sources without focusing on a pre-halachic definition of "right"? And so we "play safe" or invoke the rules of doubt. A 19th century Chassid had a priority system by which his poseiq could decide which issues warrant chumrah, which qulah.

Uncoinicidentally, it was after WWII that Rav Dessler said we need to pursue a fusion of the two paths. That our generation is too poor to select Mussar or Chassidus (being the movements that extended sheleimus and deveiqus to their maxima) exclusively, that we need all the tools at our disposal.

Aspaqlaria II

A comment to my previous post made me realize I glossed over a critical element.

In Yaaqov's dream, a ladder ascended from the ground to heaven. In Or Yisrael, R' Yisrael Salanter explains that the ladder was Yaaqov's own soul. As R' Chaim Vilozhiner writes in Nefesh haChaim (1:6 and elsewhere), of all of creation, only man is a combination of all the forces; man alone connects the worlds.

An idea found in Seifer haYetzirah which thereby influences Jewish Thought from R' Saadia Gaon's rationist philosophy (Emunos veDei'os sec.6) to the Zohar is that the self is composed of three elements/aspects/attributes of the soul: nefesh, ru'ach and neshamah. (Another topic that deserves much future treatment.)

As the Vilna Gaon describes them (Peirush al Kamah Agados, Koenigsburg ed. 11a), the nefesh
is man's connection to the world around him, a product of his soul dwelling in a brain, subject to hormonal tides, etc... The ru'ach is man's will, his self-awareness, the ability to live in the world of the mind. The neshamah is man's existance in the spiritual realm, our presence in heaven, higher realities and higher goals.

The hedonist identifies with the pursuit of physical pleasures. His ru'ach is adulterated with habits of the nefesh, so that he only sees himself as a an animal being subject to the rules of nature.

There is no reason why one could not bring the neshamah into conscious awareness. Someone could drop the barrier between what he experiences on a spiritual level and his awareness.

One way of understanding the navi is just that. And this was the model I had in mind when speaking of the aspaqlaria as a mirror. The navi, by being able to see his full self, can see beyond the physical world and the world of his mind, can see the activities of angels.

(Another element of this shift in awareness is a shift from living in a reality dictated by physical law to one dominated by moral law. Rav Dessler uses this idea to explain a notion of the Maharal's about the nature of miracles. See my Machashavah Techilah column for parashas Beshalach.)

Aspaqlaria

I'm sure a reasonable number of readers are wondering just what is an Aspaqlaria anyway, and why would someone choose it as the name of a blog?

The gemara contrasts Moshe's prophecy as being as though he saw through an "aspqalaria hame'irah", while those of other prophets was as through an "aspaqlaria she'einah me'irah". Similarly levels of wisdom between the earlier generations and the later are likened to the "aspqalaria hame'irah" and "aspaqlaria she'einah me'irah". Last, the gemara uses this contrast to describe different levels of experiencing the Divine Presence amongst the deceased in heaven.

The Arukh defines "aspaqlaria" as lapis specularis, a relatively transparent mineral used in ancient times for windows. It's a loan word whose root is the same as the English "spectacles" or "spectator" -- to see.

According to Rashi (Sukkah 45b) the "me'irah" here refers to a mirror. However, that could be a lens that is as clear as a mirror, or a mirror itself.

The rishonim on Keilim 30:2 (the Bartenura, Tif'eres Yisrael and Tosafos Yom Tov) define the aspaqlaria to be a mirror, and "hame'irah" would be "well lit". A translation of "mei'rah" that is appropriate if it means "window" as well. A clear view vs. a murkey view.

The Rambam's understanding of that mishnah could be either; the Tif'eres Yisra'el's understanding is that he says it's a mirror, the Tosafos Yom Tov understands the Rambam to translate "aspaqlaria" as "lens". Rabbi Bulman zt"l documents the linguistic and scientific roots of the disagreement.

The difference in the metaphor is profound. Is the means to prophecy and wisdom a lens to help us see a higher realm, or a mirror that helps us better see ourselves?

This touches on two topics I've written about before: First the hashkafic fork, as R' YG Bechhofer put it, between the chassid's focus on deveikus, on cleaving to G-d, and the misnageid's notion of the primacy of temimus, self perfection. See also my Machshavah Techilah column for Lekh-Likha which finds this dichotomy in Hashem's injuction to Avraham that he "his-haleikh lefanai veheyei samim -- walk himself before Me, and be whole."

Second, there is a debate between the Ramban and the Abarbanel's unserstanding of the Rambam as to the nature of prophecy. According to the Ramban, the prophetic experience is the transmission of a truth to the prophet using a dreamlike metaphor as a medium. The Abarbanel explains the Rambam as saying that the prophet peceives events actually occuring in higher realms, which his mind then clothes in the familiar when trying to make sense of it. This goes to the root of what was the "Man" in the chariot in Yechezqeil's vision. According to the Rambam, it had to be a created thing. According to the Ramban, the Man was a metaphor standing in for Hashem Yisbarakh. Again, this was discussed in a Machshavah Techilah column, this one for Mishpatim.

These topics are only being touched upon. They ought get a more full treatment in their own entries.

Welcome

We recently concluded Mesukim MiDevash, a weekly collection of divrei Torah on the subjects of machshavah, mussar, and the meaning of various teflillos. If you're curious about what I was thinking about before starting this blog, many of the articles there are mine. Before that, mainly around seven years ago, I wrote the Aspaqlaria column you find in this directory. Most of those articles appeared in Yitz Weis's Toras Aish.

My current forum for sharing these kinds of thoughts is through public speaking. However, I wanted to spark a broader dialogue on the fundamental issues of our lives, so I started this blog. Feel free to comment, correct, and challenge the ideas in these "pages". It is important to think about and grapple with these issues, even though many of them resist a full resolution. The intent behind this blog is to start the ball rolling, not to present prepared and simple answers to an inherently complex subjects.

As I see it, the most fundamental things lacking from contemporary expressions of traditional Judaism are the philosophical underpinnings that give that observance context and structure, and the proper focus on tikun hamidos -- realizing that the purpose of mitzvos is to enoble the self, and the goal of enobling oneself is to better one's observance, to become a better eved Hashem.