The Sechel - Part I

This is the beginning of a paper I'm in middle of writing. Tell me what you think.

The Intellect According to the Rambam and Chasidism
Maimonides taught that the highest form of service of God is to know with certainty via rational proofs all that is possible to be known about the divine.(Guide III:51.) People who believe in and practice the Torah merely because of their acceptance of tradition are further away from God. The intellect in itself is what binds man to God. Rambam accepts some of the ideas developed by the Arabic expositors of Aristotle. Firstly that there is one Intellect that brings out from potential to actuality the minds of human beings and also provides the forms for all objects in this world. They named this the active intellect and it is closely identified with God. They also posited the unity of the intellect, the thinking subject and the object of thought. (I 68) Namely, that when one understands a piece of intellect he is in essence becoming one with that intellect, which is entity unto itself. Based on this doctrine we can say that when one thinks of God he is becoming united with Him. This does not however include all types of thinking. The Rambam explains that only a person who arrived to the knowledge of God through rational cognition is considered as knowing God. Someone whose idea of God came to him through the faculty of the imagination is not knowing God rather he knows a fictitious invention of his own heart. (III: 51.)
Although the Rambam is adamant about the rationalistic path it would a mistake to say that the ultimate religious goal is dry logical speculation about God. As David Blumethal pointed out, many passages in the Guide reveal that the rational perception of the Divine is not the end of the road. After one arrived at the truth then he must meditate on the idea and hold it in his mind. As the Rambam writes, “This kind of worship ought to be engaged in after intellectual conception has been achieved............... This love is to be so intense that the awareness of God in the mind and the joy in the heart do not ever cease, even when that person is involved in discussions with other people. Furthermore, the person who practices this type of commmunion for many years will gradually become so overcome with love and pleasure that his soul will leave his body just as it happened to Moses Aaron and Miriam.

Blumenthal names this communion Philosophic Mysticism. He also cites passages from the Guide that show that at this point the mind moves beyond intellectual categories. For example, “Apprehension of him consists in the inability to attain the ultimate apprehension of Him... ‘Silence is praise to You’(Ps. 65:2)...Accordingly, silence is preferable - and limiting oneself to [the modes of] apprehension of the intellects - just as the perfect ones have enjoined and said, ‘commune with with your own heart upon your bed and be still’(Ps.4:5.)” (I:????) Meaning that there is a stage of inner silence and stillness that is more true than that apprehended with cognitive activity.

The mind is what connects people with the Active Intellect, therefore the more one is thinking about divinity the stronger the influence of the Active Intellect and the more he will be protected from the accidents of this world. The Rambam even goes so far as to state that nothing bad can ever befall somebody while his mind is bound to the divine. Any time that the scripture tells of a prophet was harmed in some way, it must be that this prophet’s mind momentarily forgot about God causing the Intellect’s protection to leave him and hence he became susceptible to harm. This doctrine demonstrates how seriously Maimonides took the act of thinking. Thinking is not merely a lonely activity of the brain, it is a act with metaphysical effects. The mind, when its potential becomes realized, binds with the Intellect which consequently protects the thinker.
Acquiring this intellectual, (or supra-intellectual according to Blumanthal,) knowledne of God is the goal of all religious life. All the mitzvot are meant to prepare and enable the person to attain unity with the intellect, and thus be able to survive death. According Maimonides, and in line with Aristotelian thinking, the only part of the person that can possibly survive after death is the intellect, more specifically the ‘acquired intellect’. This is achieved through the communion with the intellects and with God by way of knowing them, and since they are eternal the intellectual part of the soul that joined with them lives on too.

This doctrine has been accepted by later Jewish thinkers like Gersonides, but there is one thinker who explicitly rejected it, that is R. Hasdai Crescas. Crescas argued that the reward in the after life cannot be only for the strictly intellectual part of the personality. The intellect can not feel pleasure it can only understand. This is particularly true if this human intellect loses all of its individual identity and become incorporated into the universal intellect, leaving no person to experience the bliss of immortality. Moreover, says Crescas, immortality is not the exclusive lot of the philosophers rather it is the reward of those who serve God with love even if they have not arrived at the abstract philosophical subtleties.

to be continued.

Drinking Our Way to Oneness

On Purim as opposed to other Yamim Tovim the mitzva is not just to rejoice but to rejoice in the Mishteh- the wine-feast. What is the secret of the Mishteh?
Rav Zadok HaCohen taught us a way to reveal what words in the torah really mean. You have to look at the first time the word appears in in the torah an from that context you will learn the essence of that word-concept.

Where is Mishteh first mentioned?

It is mentioned in the story of Lot and the angels. The angels arrive in Sodom and Lot makes a Mishteh for them. Lot at this time was in a spiritualy low place. He had left Avraham for the evil people of Sodom who were completely against Avraham's way of benevolence. The angels were only able to save him by reawakening in Lot the spark of Avrahamic kindness. And was only through feasting together that they were able to do this. This is the definition of Mishteh the spiritual coming together of people who seemingly can't unite, like the angels and Lot. this is what happens at the Purim feast we unite with each other in ways that we thought we impossible.

A Teaching from the Sfas Emes

The existence of life force in all the things of the world serves as a testimony and as a reminder about the existence of the Creator. The more revelation of liveliness and spirit there is in the world the more God's presence is revealed.

The Jewish People were told that, "You are my witnesses." Meaning that the Jews, merely by living with the Jewish spirit reveal the potent lifeforce hidden with in humanity.

The Mishkan was also called the Mishkan of Testimony. The Midrash teaches that it was only after the Jewish people fell in episode of the golden calf that they need the Mishkan in order to accomplish their mission of testimony. Previously their actual collective being in itself was a manifestation of the Spirit of the Universe. But now they needed the act act of the building of the Mishkan in order to do that.

They made a mistake with their involvement with the golden calf. Now the revelation comes through the gold and the silver and all sorts of physical beauty. In the area where they seemed to have failed they will now reveal the lifeforce.
There are no failures, only opportunities to testify through new mediums.

Inspired by the Sfas Emes parshas Vayakhel.

Business Tripping

Someone once asked Reb Naftali Tzvi of Ropshitz, "how come you daven so much longer than anybody else?"
The Rebbe answered, " You see, most people start praying and begin to imagine themselves doing a business deal. They reach the point where the've handed over the merchandise to the buyer and suddenly they've reaced the end of the shemona esre. I, however, don't finish so fast. I wait to until I've gotten the money, counted it and put it in my pocket, and only then do I finish davening.

Extreme Hitbodedut

A friend of Reb Eliezer Berland told the following story. Many years ago, before Rav Berland became famous, he spent Shabbos at the friend's home. On Shabbos afternoon he disappeared to the forest, without his Talit and Tefilin and with out food, to do Hitbodedut and did not return untill the following Shabbos. He later explained that he survived on berries. As for the lack of Tefilin, I guess that he felt that it was a spiritual emergency to run to fields and talk to God.

Powerful Thoughts

When the spirit falls into smallness,
and the person finds no satisfaction in himself
because of his limited good deeds,
because of his list of wrongdoings
and because of his limited diligence in Torah
he should streghthen himself with "the secret of thought."
He should know that one who understands a thing from within a thing
his thought is considered before the Holy One as more than all the offereings.
Which means that the sacred thoughts - the lofty intelligent conceptions have the qualities of all the offerings
and the qualities of all the practical forms of worship
and it also has the qualities of the bodily aspect of learning Torah
- the saying of the words.
He should be very much fortified with the knowledge that may times the lessening of activity and study is a direct result of his great inclination for " the secret of thought,"
and that it is possible that many of his failures happened because he did not sufficiently respect his power of thought.
Therefore he should strenghthen his inner understanding,
to understand that the fixing of the wole world,
and the healing of all the souls,
is all dependent on "the secret of the thought,"
and he will elevate his thought as much as he can,
and rise up to return from an inner love.

Rav Kook

The Rebbe and the Wolf

One of the chassidim of the Kotzker Rebbe once asked him, "Rebbe, please teach me what it means to fear God."

The Kotzker said, "You are a merchant and you often travel through the polish forests, did you ever meet a wolf in the forest?"

"Yes," he answered.

"Were you frightened?"

"Very much."

"And while being scared were you aware that you were scared?"

"No, I was too scared to think about that," said the chasid.

"That is what it means to fear God," concluded the Holy Kotzker.