In "There Are No Living Atheists" I attempted to show the complete absurdity of materialistic philosophy. We want meaning, we yearn for it. We want to ascend to the heavens but we have become "men of matter," our spiritual senses dulled by the onslaught of Western culture and the monotony of daily life. Our first step, then, must be to dig deeper into our own soul and sense the Transcendent One, Blessed is He, from within. Modern culture, in the name of science, has tried to convince the world that we are nothing but genes and neural circuitry (and maybe even memes!). Our first goal is to show that this is not the case mostly through paranormal psychology and the philosophy of the mind.
I. Paranormal psychology
Larry Dossey has pointed out that "these anomalous experiences are commonly called paranormal events. But 'paranormal' is a deceptive word, because in view of their widespread occurrence, there is nothing 'para' about such events...Those who turn away from this area need a wakeup call, a reality check (The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion, pg. x)."
There are two ways to go about proving the reality of the "anomalous" - anecdotal evidence or controlled scientific studies with statistical data. Regarding the former, Rupert Sheldrake has reminded us that "anecdote" comes from the Greek an and ekdotos, meaning "not published." However, once published it becomes a case study, and case studies, a form of observation, is the starting point of science. I think the most intellectually honest approach is the same as the one applied to Chassidic stories: If you deny all of them you are a heretic and if you believe all of them you are a fool. To discount every paranormal experience as a either a lie or a fluke is plainly ridiculous. Strange things happen in the world everyday to ordinary people, and to deny them is to live in a little box. It was quite sad to read Tom Schroder, in "Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence for Past Lives," struggle to deny the convincing stories he intimately experienced.
For the sake of space and time I will recount a few stories and some of the outcomes of the scientific studies in every category of paranormal experience, together with some of the arguments and counterarguments. In this post we will discuss telepathy. After that telekinesis and distant healing, followed by out-of-body and near-death experience, and evidence for reincarnation. Lastly, our discussion of mystical experiences will join the soul and the Divine.
Mario Beauregard, in "The Spiritual Brain," defines Psi as a "stable, low-level, effect, typically a little too high to be chance (pg. 169)." Perhaps the most common form of telepathy is "phone call telepathy." Every one has had the experience of thinking of somebody, not particularly prone to call you, and then very shortly after receiving a call from that very person. For some people this occurs quite frequently.
Another very common form of telepathy is emotional impressions. Ian Stevenson, in "Telepathic Impressions" has carefully recorded twenty-three such impressions. For example, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hughes were traveling to Crewe when Mrs. Hughes got the strong impression that she should continue traveling to Chester where her cousin lived. They changed their plans and when they arrived to find out that her cousin had been praying for her to come; she had lost Mrs. Hughes address and wanted to inform her of her newly discovered illness (pg. 41).
Another such case is recounted in "The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion" (pg. 11): "Melanie...is jogging across a bridge when she's hit by a truck and hurled onto a concrete embankment. Around the same time, her parents are at a meeting on the other side of the continent when her mother jumps up and says to her husband, "Glen, something's just happened to Melanie." She is right - and since the interruption is recorded in the meeting minutes the coincidence is memorialized."
Other times certain images may be picked up. For example, a patient was describing to his therapist his uncle's new girlfriend, when the therapist noticed an image of peaches. The patient then mentioned that the girlfriend had four younger sisters from Georgia and that the girlfriend's father had always called his five daughters "five Georgia peaches (The Sense of Being Stared At, pg. 36)." Another example is that of "dream telepathy" in which a "receiver" will go to sleep, monitored by an EEG, and during REM a "sender" will focus on a picture. Then the reported dream was compared to the picture that the sender focused on. The overall hit rate from all 450 trials was 63 % (The Sense of Being Stared At, pg. 50).
Transference of images have also been studied in the lab. Sensory deprivation experiments, called ganzfeld, have "receivers" in a very relaxed state and a "sender" trying to send the subject one out of four possible images. Meanwhile the subject would speak about his impressions. After the session the subject would be shown the four images and choose which most closely corresponded to his experiences. The expected hit rate by guessing at random was 25 % while the actual hit rate was consistently above 30 % (The Sense of Being Stared At, pg 51). A meta-analysis of all ganzfeld telepathy studies up to 1997 revealed a probability of a million billion to one against chance (The Spiritual Brain, pg. 171).
Now, there are three general categories of explanations for telepathic experiences:
1) The Materialist dismisses it as pseudoscience and anecdotes, or throws up his hands and hopes for the time when materialistic science can accommodate such events.
2) The Quantum Physicist draws attention to entanglement in the micro-world or to multiple dimensions. Or Controversial Biologist, Sheldrake, views the world in terms of morphic fields and extended minds. These approaches do not necesarily deny the existence of a non-material mind.
3) The Spiritualist views this as another argument in favor of a non-material mind. However, the nature of this mind/soul has different interpretations - energy, world souls, mind-bodies, and of course, Dualism. That is for later. One interesting caveat based on Sheldrakes, work. He has argued that animals also show evidence of telepathic impressions. This is not necessarily an issue within Judaism as there are some sources which discuss some form of spirituality or consciousness within animals (and non-living entities). For example, see Shiurei Da'at, I:2 which has a kabbalistic explanation of Perek Shira.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Judaism - Belief in the Jewish Experience - Part II
In a previous post, I showed that the experience of the Kedushat ha'Torah is the perennial experience of the Jewish people. The existential question facing every Jew is: "do I trust that experience and those who have had them?"
For some this will lead to a full acceptance of Torah u'Mitzvot and will give them the strength to keep their faith during difficult times. Ultimately this "prophetic faith" stands above and is rooted deeper than any objection leveled at the Torah. For others it will give reason to have "suspicions" that there really is something to the Torah. Either way, the Torah warrants respect.
There are three reasonable objections that a skeptic could make which takes us into the field of epistemology:
I. Emotion
"How can we base our faith on emotions? Besides the fact that emotions are notorious for fluctuating, different people have contradictory emotions - especially about the holiness of their religion! Furthermore, emotions can be deceptive, as their true origins are mysteriously hidden in one's subconscious. Therefore, the fact that millions of people have felt the spirituality of Torah is not an indication that the Torah indeed has genuine spirituality and certainly not the highest form of spirituality - a revelation of G-d."
The skeptic seeks to undermine the authenticity of emotional experience, thus extricating himself from the conclusion that the Torah should be taken seriously. However, double standards are at work here. First, every person naturally trusts their emotions when they are strong and consistent. Its fluid nature is not much different than that of the intellect (and as we will see may in fact mirror it). Furthermore, the fact that other people do not share this or contradict it is not taken into account. This is the case in politics and ethics, war and love. Relativism (intellectual, political, ethical, or in our case, emotional) tends to be invoked when someone wants to get out of an uncomfortable position.
We are trained to think that the intellect is a surer way to the truth than emotion. R. Shalom Carmy here and Avakesh here have argued that this is a bias left over from the Medieval and Enlightenment times. Emotion is another tool we have in assessing the world, no less than the intellect.
The last objection, though, is the most interesting. Perhaps the tremendous amount of emotion - holiness, depth, joy and life - experienced in the Torah throughout the generations is some kind of placebo. In other words, since they believed in the Torah and its holiness they therefore felt it. This approach would seem to gather support from the Ramchal in Derech Hashem 4:2:2 which states that one who approaches the Torah without the proper mindset and purity will not merit the light therein. Similarly, the Rambam, Hilchot Yesodei ha'Torah 6:8, states that a Torah scroll written by scribe who without believing in the holiness of the names of Hashem has no holiness and must be burnt. In other words, the holiness of Torah has much to do with the consciousness of the one learning or writing the Torah.
This in itself is not surprising. As R. Soloveitchik said: "When you apprehend the Torah as a personality, not just a book, it infiltrates your emotional as well as your intellectual life (On the Love of Torah: Impromtu Remarks at a Siyum)." So if the Torah is like a person then it is not surprising in the least that she treats you as you treat her. As Mishlei 27:19 teaches: "Kamayim ha'Panim la'Panim, Ken Lev Adam la'Adam (As water reflects a face back to a face, so one's heart is reflected back to him by another)."
But the skeptic persists - maybe all of these lofty feelings are just there because you expect them to be there? There are four additional points I would like to make:
a) Not everybody who experiences the kedushat ha'Torah expected it. Whether one is a simple Jew in the suburbs of America or a wandering Israeli in the hills of India, sometimes a soul is inexplicably attracted to Torah.
b) The placebo effect teaches us about the power of the mind. As we will see in later posts, Materialists are uncomfortable with the placebo effect for this very reason. So saying that the Torah is one big placebo effect is in essence saying that the belief in Torah has the potential to bring out the tremendous holiness latent within. This would be a new twist to the ma'amrei Chazal comparing the Torah to a wife. But either way, the Torah works.
c) Some Sages also experienced the spirituality in other wisdoms or traditions. This being the case they could contrast that with the kedushat ha'Torah. And still they proclaimed the Torah as "ikkar" and all other spirituality as "tafel." For example, R. Kook (Orot ha'Torah 6:1; also see 12:6) writes: "That which is learned in holiness...spiritual life spreads through all corners of existence, like blood through the veins to all corners of the body, but all secular learning, from all knowledge [madda] in the world, only enlivens that specific part [of existence] to which it is directed. This is the quantitative difference between the holy and the mundane, besides the infinitely lofty difference qualitatively." Two other modern examples are Shem Tov Geffen and Aryeh Kaplan - two mathematicians who experienced the mystical side to mathematics and were great scholars in Torah.
d) Emotion is not very well understood. A recent book, "The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion" discusses how understanding emotion might be the key to understanding the sixth sense and other paranormal experiences. But for now we can simply say that there are different types of emotion; an inner and an outer heart (see here). Some emotions are so strong and vivid that they become a gateway to Reality. In closing this section, I recount the time I asked one of my teachers this question. He is a man known for his own mystical adventures and academic achievements (a rare combination). He looked me in the eyes and said, "when you experience the depth of holiness in Torah then you can ask those questions."
II. Mystical Experience
The mystic's view of the Torah is often that of light. As Ramchal (Derech Eitz Chayim) insists, the Torah is "ohr mamash," real light. Furthermore, this light is identified with a "higher Torah," or G-d Himself. Another mystical experience might be gaining tremendous insight into the Torah in a supra-intellectual way. Stories of the Vilna Gaon seeing thousands of interpretations for one verse or a Maggid teaching R. Yosef Karo would fall under this category. As Scholem pointed out, the mystics of Judaism are unlike the mystics of any other tradition since much or most of the time they are dealing with mundane legal study and grueling intellectual work. So it is not surprising to find the mystical experiences of our Sages to by different than mainstream mysticism.
Similar to the objections concerning emotion, the skeptic reduces mystical experiences to neurological or psychological explanations. Furthermore, mystical experiences also suffer the same fate of emotions - subjectivity.
Yehuda (Jerome) Gellman has argued that mystical experiences, defined as "an experience in which a person allegedly has a non-sensory perception apparently of a reality (or state of affairs) of a sort that can neither be perceived by sense perception nor known by ordinary introspective self-awareness," should enjoy "initial evidential sufficiency" (assumed to be correct unless proven otherwise). He explores the analogy between a visual perception of a tree and a mystical perception. We will discuss two schools of epitemology. According to one school, Strong Foundationalism, sensory belief is sufficiently justified by the relevant sensory experience. Thus a mystical perception should be no different than viewing a tree.
Weak Foundationalism, however, maintains that sensory belief is justified somewhat by sensory experience but needs the help of a background of perceptions (experiences with trees) to justify the belief. Therefore Gellman argues that in order for mystical experience to maintain initial evidential sufficiency it must provide crosschecks to confirm the perception. He suggests that the quantity of experiences, diversity of population, and sheer vividness may provide enough of a crosscheck. He also considers the effects of these experiences on the person and society. We expect them to be positive, and if they are negative we will likely reject the validity of the experience.
He applies initial evidential sufficiency to the mystical perception of G-d, and I am extending that to the mystical perception of the Torah.
The last objection to the validity of mystical experiences is the offer of alternative explanations. And there are no shortage of them. Most boil down to either an evolutionary or a pathological explanation. In the book The Spiritual Brain many such explanations are discussed and challenged. The main point of the book is that mystical experiences "are neurally instantiated by different brain regions involved in a variety of functions, such as self-consciousness, emotion, body representation, visualk and motor imagery and spiritual perception." In short, the brain acts normally, albeit differently, during mystical experiences. This unique brain activity is, as Gellman points out, expected. As such, mystical experiences should enjoy initial evidential sufficiency just as the perception of a tree.
The last issue we must discuss regarding mystical experiences is their subjectivity. It is known that the mystics of the West generally experience G-d while the mystics of the East have a Pantheistic experience. A Perrenialists would argue that everyone is experiencing the same objective amorphous reality while the differences of interpretation are supplied by conditioning (see the work of John Hick). A Constructivist would argue that each mystic (or school of mysticism) is experiencing a totally different reality constructed by their culture; there is no common substrate. It would seem that Judaism would take a perrenial approach; each person is limited in his perception but they are all getting some part of the puzzle (Eruvin 13b; Maharal, Be'er ha'Golah, pg. 20; Yam Shel Shlomo, Hakdama l'Bava Kamma; Shiure Da'at, Hakdama; also see Ramchal, Derech Hashem 3:4). As R. Kook writes (Pinkas Acharon b'Boisk, #1): "The imagination that perceives Reality in our inner perception is more important to us than the objective truth of it, since we are not able to grasp its objective truth...they are all clothing to Reality..."
Again, even if others have a different mystical experience than our tradition that does not mean we should not trust our own experience, just like if we were looking at a tree and someone said it was an apple. Furthermore, no one, to my knowledge, has every had a mystical experience which revelead to them that the Torah was not the revelation of Hashem!
To be continued...
For some this will lead to a full acceptance of Torah u'Mitzvot and will give them the strength to keep their faith during difficult times. Ultimately this "prophetic faith" stands above and is rooted deeper than any objection leveled at the Torah. For others it will give reason to have "suspicions" that there really is something to the Torah. Either way, the Torah warrants respect.
There are three reasonable objections that a skeptic could make which takes us into the field of epistemology:
I. Emotion
"How can we base our faith on emotions? Besides the fact that emotions are notorious for fluctuating, different people have contradictory emotions - especially about the holiness of their religion! Furthermore, emotions can be deceptive, as their true origins are mysteriously hidden in one's subconscious. Therefore, the fact that millions of people have felt the spirituality of Torah is not an indication that the Torah indeed has genuine spirituality and certainly not the highest form of spirituality - a revelation of G-d."
The skeptic seeks to undermine the authenticity of emotional experience, thus extricating himself from the conclusion that the Torah should be taken seriously. However, double standards are at work here. First, every person naturally trusts their emotions when they are strong and consistent. Its fluid nature is not much different than that of the intellect (and as we will see may in fact mirror it). Furthermore, the fact that other people do not share this or contradict it is not taken into account. This is the case in politics and ethics, war and love. Relativism (intellectual, political, ethical, or in our case, emotional) tends to be invoked when someone wants to get out of an uncomfortable position.
We are trained to think that the intellect is a surer way to the truth than emotion. R. Shalom Carmy here and Avakesh here have argued that this is a bias left over from the Medieval and Enlightenment times. Emotion is another tool we have in assessing the world, no less than the intellect.
The last objection, though, is the most interesting. Perhaps the tremendous amount of emotion - holiness, depth, joy and life - experienced in the Torah throughout the generations is some kind of placebo. In other words, since they believed in the Torah and its holiness they therefore felt it. This approach would seem to gather support from the Ramchal in Derech Hashem 4:2:2 which states that one who approaches the Torah without the proper mindset and purity will not merit the light therein. Similarly, the Rambam, Hilchot Yesodei ha'Torah 6:8, states that a Torah scroll written by scribe who without believing in the holiness of the names of Hashem has no holiness and must be burnt. In other words, the holiness of Torah has much to do with the consciousness of the one learning or writing the Torah.
This in itself is not surprising. As R. Soloveitchik said: "When you apprehend the Torah as a personality, not just a book, it infiltrates your emotional as well as your intellectual life (On the Love of Torah: Impromtu Remarks at a Siyum)." So if the Torah is like a person then it is not surprising in the least that she treats you as you treat her. As Mishlei 27:19 teaches: "Kamayim ha'Panim la'Panim, Ken Lev Adam la'Adam (As water reflects a face back to a face, so one's heart is reflected back to him by another)."
But the skeptic persists - maybe all of these lofty feelings are just there because you expect them to be there? There are four additional points I would like to make:
a) Not everybody who experiences the kedushat ha'Torah expected it. Whether one is a simple Jew in the suburbs of America or a wandering Israeli in the hills of India, sometimes a soul is inexplicably attracted to Torah.
b) The placebo effect teaches us about the power of the mind. As we will see in later posts, Materialists are uncomfortable with the placebo effect for this very reason. So saying that the Torah is one big placebo effect is in essence saying that the belief in Torah has the potential to bring out the tremendous holiness latent within. This would be a new twist to the ma'amrei Chazal comparing the Torah to a wife. But either way, the Torah works.
c) Some Sages also experienced the spirituality in other wisdoms or traditions. This being the case they could contrast that with the kedushat ha'Torah. And still they proclaimed the Torah as "ikkar" and all other spirituality as "tafel." For example, R. Kook (Orot ha'Torah 6:1; also see 12:6) writes: "That which is learned in holiness...spiritual life spreads through all corners of existence, like blood through the veins to all corners of the body, but all secular learning, from all knowledge [madda] in the world, only enlivens that specific part [of existence] to which it is directed. This is the quantitative difference between the holy and the mundane, besides the infinitely lofty difference qualitatively." Two other modern examples are Shem Tov Geffen and Aryeh Kaplan - two mathematicians who experienced the mystical side to mathematics and were great scholars in Torah.
d) Emotion is not very well understood. A recent book, "The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion" discusses how understanding emotion might be the key to understanding the sixth sense and other paranormal experiences. But for now we can simply say that there are different types of emotion; an inner and an outer heart (see here). Some emotions are so strong and vivid that they become a gateway to Reality. In closing this section, I recount the time I asked one of my teachers this question. He is a man known for his own mystical adventures and academic achievements (a rare combination). He looked me in the eyes and said, "when you experience the depth of holiness in Torah then you can ask those questions."
II. Mystical Experience
The mystic's view of the Torah is often that of light. As Ramchal (Derech Eitz Chayim) insists, the Torah is "ohr mamash," real light. Furthermore, this light is identified with a "higher Torah," or G-d Himself. Another mystical experience might be gaining tremendous insight into the Torah in a supra-intellectual way. Stories of the Vilna Gaon seeing thousands of interpretations for one verse or a Maggid teaching R. Yosef Karo would fall under this category. As Scholem pointed out, the mystics of Judaism are unlike the mystics of any other tradition since much or most of the time they are dealing with mundane legal study and grueling intellectual work. So it is not surprising to find the mystical experiences of our Sages to by different than mainstream mysticism.
Similar to the objections concerning emotion, the skeptic reduces mystical experiences to neurological or psychological explanations. Furthermore, mystical experiences also suffer the same fate of emotions - subjectivity.
Yehuda (Jerome) Gellman has argued that mystical experiences, defined as "an experience in which a person allegedly has a non-sensory perception apparently of a reality (or state of affairs) of a sort that can neither be perceived by sense perception nor known by ordinary introspective self-awareness," should enjoy "initial evidential sufficiency" (assumed to be correct unless proven otherwise). He explores the analogy between a visual perception of a tree and a mystical perception. We will discuss two schools of epitemology. According to one school, Strong Foundationalism, sensory belief is sufficiently justified by the relevant sensory experience. Thus a mystical perception should be no different than viewing a tree.
Weak Foundationalism, however, maintains that sensory belief is justified somewhat by sensory experience but needs the help of a background of perceptions (experiences with trees) to justify the belief. Therefore Gellman argues that in order for mystical experience to maintain initial evidential sufficiency it must provide crosschecks to confirm the perception. He suggests that the quantity of experiences, diversity of population, and sheer vividness may provide enough of a crosscheck. He also considers the effects of these experiences on the person and society. We expect them to be positive, and if they are negative we will likely reject the validity of the experience.
He applies initial evidential sufficiency to the mystical perception of G-d, and I am extending that to the mystical perception of the Torah.
The last objection to the validity of mystical experiences is the offer of alternative explanations. And there are no shortage of them. Most boil down to either an evolutionary or a pathological explanation. In the book The Spiritual Brain many such explanations are discussed and challenged. The main point of the book is that mystical experiences "are neurally instantiated by different brain regions involved in a variety of functions, such as self-consciousness, emotion, body representation, visualk and motor imagery and spiritual perception." In short, the brain acts normally, albeit differently, during mystical experiences. This unique brain activity is, as Gellman points out, expected. As such, mystical experiences should enjoy initial evidential sufficiency just as the perception of a tree.
The last issue we must discuss regarding mystical experiences is their subjectivity. It is known that the mystics of the West generally experience G-d while the mystics of the East have a Pantheistic experience. A Perrenialists would argue that everyone is experiencing the same objective amorphous reality while the differences of interpretation are supplied by conditioning (see the work of John Hick). A Constructivist would argue that each mystic (or school of mysticism) is experiencing a totally different reality constructed by their culture; there is no common substrate. It would seem that Judaism would take a perrenial approach; each person is limited in his perception but they are all getting some part of the puzzle (Eruvin 13b; Maharal, Be'er ha'Golah, pg. 20; Yam Shel Shlomo, Hakdama l'Bava Kamma; Shiure Da'at, Hakdama; also see Ramchal, Derech Hashem 3:4). As R. Kook writes (Pinkas Acharon b'Boisk, #1): "The imagination that perceives Reality in our inner perception is more important to us than the objective truth of it, since we are not able to grasp its objective truth...they are all clothing to Reality..."
Again, even if others have a different mystical experience than our tradition that does not mean we should not trust our own experience, just like if we were looking at a tree and someone said it was an apple. Furthermore, no one, to my knowledge, has every had a mystical experience which revelead to them that the Torah was not the revelation of Hashem!
To be continued...
Friday, August 14, 2009
Why Learn Gemara - Part II
Indeed there is a practical need, especially for the posek, to be intimately knwoledgable and constantly involved in halakhic reasoning, but why is gemara the essential spiritual path for the Jew?
In this post we will explore the idea that learning nigleh must proceed learning nistar.
The Rambam (Hilkhot Yesodei ha’Torah, 4:13) writes: These four chapters, with these five mitzvoth [to know that there is a G-d, to not entertain the possibility of the other gods, to designate Him as One, to fear Him, and to love Him], are what the early Sages called “Pardes,” [the garden], as it says “four entered into Pardes.” Even though that [these four] were great men of Israel and great Sages, they were not all able to know and grasp these things properly. I am of the opinion that it is only one who has filled his belly with bread and meat is fit to stroll in the garden; “bread and meat” is the knowledge of the forbidden and permitted, and similar things in all other mitzvot. [This is the case] even though that these things were called by the Sages “a small thing,” as they said, “ma’aseh b’reishit and ma’aseh merkavah are a great thing and the argument of Abaye and Ravva are a small thing.” Nevertheless, it is fitting that these [a small thing] precede these [a great thing],for they settle the mind of man first, and, furthermore, they are a great goodness that the Holy One, blessed is He, gave in order to settle this world (?) in order to inherit the life of the world to come - it is possible for all to know these things; a child or adult, a man or woman, a broad thinker or a limited thinker."
The Rambam first discusses why learning gemara should precede learning philosophy (which is the real goal of Judaism according to the Rambam). It settles the mind. It makes a person grounded in this world before they let their head spin as they contemplate abstract reality. So many spiritualities lead a person to become imbalanced - "al tehi tzadik harbeh!" First live in this world, within the structure of halakha, and then work on understanding the imperceivable.
"Settling the mind" might also mean that this "small thing" trains a person to think abstractly in a clear way. This seems to be what R. Kook writes in Orot ha'Torah 6:9. This would then imply that the three Sages who did not successfully “stroll in the garden” did not train their mind enough, while R. Akiva did. This would be problematic since a) it does not give much hope to people learning gemara (especially today!) that they will successfully train their mind to the extent that they can learn philosophy; b) it does not explain why learning logic (which the Rambam himself wrote a book on) would not be sufficient and replace the need for gemara.
The Rambam’s second point is that learning halakha and gemara (although to a lesser extent) is democratic. Hashem did a tremendous kindness in giving the Torah which allows for all of Israel to inherit a portion in the world to come [this would seem to be a contradiction to Moreh Nevuchim which views philosophy as the way to the world to come, but see Iggrot ha’Rambam, Ma'amar Kiddush Hashem which says that even a simple person who dies al kiddush Hashem merits the world-to-come]. In other words, learning what Hashem wants of us, in all its minute detail, is inherently important, and need not lead to learning philosophy. The greatness of Torah is that it is "down-to-earth" and "not in the heavens." The crown of Torah is available for all.
There is another way to understand the temporal priority of nigleh before nistar. The halakha is also conceptual and can be further and further abstracted into philosophical or spiritual concepts. R. Soloveitchik's line at the end of Halakhic Mind is often quoted: "Out of the sources of Halakha, a new world view awaits formulation." His student R. Wurzburger continued this tradition, calling it "meta-halakhic propositions, which contain the ontological and axiological presumptions which form an integral part of the halakhic system." For example, the halakha can teach us abut the sanctity of human life or of the land of Israel, the nature of time and a heirarchy of values. Also see Jed Lewinsohn's "Philosophy in Halakha: The Case of Intentional Action" in The Torah u-Madda Journal (14/2006-07).
We will return to this idea when discussing the kabbalistic view of the Torah.
In this post we will explore the idea that learning nigleh must proceed learning nistar.
The Rambam (Hilkhot Yesodei ha’Torah, 4:13) writes: These four chapters, with these five mitzvoth [to know that there is a G-d, to not entertain the possibility of the other gods, to designate Him as One, to fear Him, and to love Him], are what the early Sages called “Pardes,” [the garden], as it says “four entered into Pardes.” Even though that [these four] were great men of Israel and great Sages, they were not all able to know and grasp these things properly. I am of the opinion that it is only one who has filled his belly with bread and meat is fit to stroll in the garden; “bread and meat” is the knowledge of the forbidden and permitted, and similar things in all other mitzvot. [This is the case] even though that these things were called by the Sages “a small thing,” as they said, “ma’aseh b’reishit and ma’aseh merkavah are a great thing and the argument of Abaye and Ravva are a small thing.” Nevertheless, it is fitting that these [a small thing] precede these [a great thing],for they settle the mind of man first, and, furthermore, they are a great goodness that the Holy One, blessed is He, gave in order to settle this world (?) in order to inherit the life of the world to come - it is possible for all to know these things; a child or adult, a man or woman, a broad thinker or a limited thinker."
The Rambam first discusses why learning gemara should precede learning philosophy (which is the real goal of Judaism according to the Rambam). It settles the mind. It makes a person grounded in this world before they let their head spin as they contemplate abstract reality. So many spiritualities lead a person to become imbalanced - "al tehi tzadik harbeh!" First live in this world, within the structure of halakha, and then work on understanding the imperceivable.
"Settling the mind" might also mean that this "small thing" trains a person to think abstractly in a clear way. This seems to be what R. Kook writes in Orot ha'Torah 6:9. This would then imply that the three Sages who did not successfully “stroll in the garden” did not train their mind enough, while R. Akiva did. This would be problematic since a) it does not give much hope to people learning gemara (especially today!) that they will successfully train their mind to the extent that they can learn philosophy; b) it does not explain why learning logic (which the Rambam himself wrote a book on) would not be sufficient and replace the need for gemara.
The Rambam’s second point is that learning halakha and gemara (although to a lesser extent) is democratic. Hashem did a tremendous kindness in giving the Torah which allows for all of Israel to inherit a portion in the world to come [this would seem to be a contradiction to Moreh Nevuchim which views philosophy as the way to the world to come, but see Iggrot ha’Rambam, Ma'amar Kiddush Hashem which says that even a simple person who dies al kiddush Hashem merits the world-to-come]. In other words, learning what Hashem wants of us, in all its minute detail, is inherently important, and need not lead to learning philosophy. The greatness of Torah is that it is "down-to-earth" and "not in the heavens." The crown of Torah is available for all.
There is another way to understand the temporal priority of nigleh before nistar. The halakha is also conceptual and can be further and further abstracted into philosophical or spiritual concepts. R. Soloveitchik's line at the end of Halakhic Mind is often quoted: "Out of the sources of Halakha, a new world view awaits formulation." His student R. Wurzburger continued this tradition, calling it "meta-halakhic propositions, which contain the ontological and axiological presumptions which form an integral part of the halakhic system." For example, the halakha can teach us abut the sanctity of human life or of the land of Israel, the nature of time and a heirarchy of values. Also see Jed Lewinsohn's "Philosophy in Halakha: The Case of Intentional Action" in The Torah u-Madda Journal (14/2006-07).
We will return to this idea when discussing the kabbalistic view of the Torah.
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