Monthly Archives: June 2012

And finally, our discussion of Ma’amar HaVichuach also helps us to understand another puzzle about Klach — why it’s very first Petach begins with the statement that “The Infinite One’s Yichud” implies that — only His will functions fully and that no other will functions other than through it…., as if we were wondering what God’s Yichud, His supreme sovereignty, means. But, who raised the issue in the first place, and what does it have to do with the Kabbalistic system? The issue in fact carries a lot of weight, as we’ve seen and will continue to, but we’re still baffled by the idea that the book seems to start in the middle of an argument that we readers seem not to a party to.

The mystery is only solved when one reads Klach in the context of Ma’amar HaVichuach. For the latter contains the following statement made by the Kabbalist there: “the fundamental axiom of this science (i.e., Kabbalah) is God’s Yichud — (i.e., in the belief in the fact) that He is one in all senses of the term” (p. 45); in the statement that “God is the Lord in the heavens above and on the earth below, there is no other” such being whose reign is that thorough (Deuteronomy 4:39); and in the idea that “He oversees and governs absolutely everything celestial and mundane” (pp. 77-79), all of which implies that God’s reign is supreme and exclusive. Thus, the idea of God’s Yichud is central to Kabbalah in Ramchal’s understanding as well as to Klach Pitchei Chochma, which only becomes clear when Klach is seen in context.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

We’re about to return to a discussion we began here about “The Breaking of the Vessels” which centers on the curious fact that the concept isn’t discussed at any length in Klach, which lead to our discussion of Ma’amar HaVichuach which is its backdrop (which continued here). We’ll now continue that discussion.

As we’d said, Ramchal sees his task in Ma’amar HaVichuach as providing the reader with the Kabbalistic concepts while explaining what they’re all about.

In any event, the philosopher then raises theological issues rooted in the Kabbalistic system that have always vexed him — about the nature of Sephirot, for example; as to whether they’re extensions of God’s being or wholly other, created phenomena. And he then raises other issues, such as how material things can emanate from spiritual ones, how wrong can derive from God’s all-good being (which is one of the problems raised in this section of Klach, as we’ll see); about the makeup of reward and punishment, the import of Divine will and omnipotence, the nature of prophecy; and more (pp. 44-61).

At bottom, declares the Kabbalist, the point of it all is to “catch sight” of God’s governance in the world, if you will, and beyond it.

For, as he puts it, “If you could truly grasp the mystical nature of God’s counsel in regard to the creation of the universe and how He governs it … (to the point where) you can understand how all the consequences (down below) derive from a celestial source, and that all those consequences derive from that source, and that everything is (ultimately) appropriate and (is already) repaired — then what we’d term that (being privy to true) wisdom”. Know all that, in fact, “and you’re no longer (merely) relating details from a ‘closed book’” but you’re in fact reading and understanding a truth (p. 62).

The Kabbalist then explains the layout of Ma’amar HaVichuach, which is structured on the fact that “you first need to know the Kabbalistic concepts we’ve been granted in general terms… Then you have to review them and to know the solution” to the puzzles that all of that presents. We’re thus provided with Klallot HaIlan, and with Klach to be able to do that (p. 63).

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

Yes, I’m taking a summer break, though I’m not going anywhere. Will get back to this in a couple of weeks or so.

Ma’amar HaVichuach is written in the form of a discussion of the merits of Kabbalah-study between a Kabbalist and a philosopher. Not surprisingly given that Ramchal is the book’s author, the Kabbalist wins the argument and offers several cogent justifications for studying it in the process.

His rationale is that we need to study it in order to see the truth of things. For, “people … think that the world merely follows the laws of nature”, he posits, “which they can discern with their own eyes” (p. 30) or with the appropriate tools. But that’s not so, as at Mount Sinai “God showed people all of existence” in a great burst of revelation, and He let them know “what existence is (actually) based on” — the fact “that He alone reigns, and that no one (and nothing) else does” (Ibid.).

The Kabbalist goes on to expand on the revelation that occurred there and which continued in the course of our travels in the desert on the way to The Land of Israel, and he then contrasts that with the progressive lessening of revelation and insight since in the course of our long exile. He then offers that we can capture a large part of that series of revelation by studying Kabbalah, which offers insights into the truth of things about God and the world that other studies simply do not. And he ties that in with his vision of humankind’s role in this world, which is to better things and “to rectify himself and his environment”, which is to say, the entire universe along the way (p. 35). In other words, by studying Kabbalah we regain the primal wisdom we’d once enjoyed, and we can apply that knowledge to our charge in life.

He then makes the argument that this vision of things has been lost to us, though, and that the study of Kabbalah, which was to have been a solution to all things vital and existential, has proven to be a roadblock. But that’s not because of any fault in the subject itself so much as because those few who do study it only enjoy an “awareness of the names of concepts we’d need to remember” if we’re to study it seriously, and because their rote studies are “like an index to (various) books (one would need to know)… that isn’t (rooted in) knowledge so much as … (in the) recitation of texts” (p. 36), arcane terms, and vague notions of Divinity.

Ramchal’s sees his task in Ma’amar HaVichuach then as providing the reader with those same concepts while explaining what they’re all about, which is the whole point.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

It becomes clear early on in the work that Klach Pitchei Chochma isn’t a Kabbalistic text per se. Unlike those works, it doesn’t present the major Kabbalistic themes that the Zohar and most especially Ar”i dwell on (like Tzimtzum, Sh’virat HaKeilim, etc.) in chronological and thematic order, and it doesn’t offer very many of the insights of their major explicators. Instead, Klach Pitchei Chochma offers Ramchal’s insights into the significance of those ideas, while citing enough of their details to help us understand his points.

In fact, Ramchal never claimed that Klach would be a work of Kabbalah per se: it’s just that it has long been published as an independent work and treated as an out-and-out Kabbalistic text because it discusses so many Kabbalistic notions. But that’s a fault of the scholars who published as an independent work and commented on it as such, not Ramchal’s. As we’d said, he originally presented it as a large chunk of a long work known as Ma’amar HaVichuach (‘A Discourse [that serves as] An Argument’)”.

The latter is an extended argument for the study of Kabbalah in which he “determined to lay out what’s important about the study of Kabbalah for those already well-grounded in other areas of Torah-study”. And he offered two full and independent works within Ma’amar HaVichuach to explain the Kabbalistic system: the terse and succinct laying-out of the key Kabbalistic principles in ten short chapters termed Klallot HaIlan HaKodesh (“Principles of The Holy Tree”), and Klach itself which is comprised of two parts: 138 essential principles of Kabbalah set out straight, and a full explanation of those principles which Ramchal himself provided.

We’ll explore the essence of Ma’amar HaVichuach next.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.

We’re about to touch upon one of the most esoteric subjects in all of Kabbalah — Sh’virat HaKeilim, “The Breaking of the Vessels”. It sets out to explain how it is that all the wrong, evil, and injustice we experience in this world somehow managed to derive from God’s presence even though they are seemingly its antithesis. (We’ll also explore the subsequent rectifying, correcting, and repairing of all that, as well as humankind’s role in it, but that isn’t the subject at hand now, though there’s no denying the fact that simply knowing that all wrong, evil and injustice can and will be rectified goes far to assuage our discomfort with their existence, and simply understanding that we ourselves will play a part in that bolsters our sense of our own importance.)

Yet, despite the fact that it’s vitally important for us to know all of that in order to shore up our faith in God’s ways in this world, the actual process of Sh’virat HaKeilim isn’t actually described in Klach Pitchei Chochma, just as the essential concept of Tzimtzum wasn’t actually described in the body of Klach either as we’d seen before. But, why weren’t they?

Well, as we’ll see, knowing what that’s so helps us to understand the actual makeup of Klach. And it would do us well to explore that next.

(c) 2012 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

———————————————————-

AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman’s translation of Maimonides’ “Eight Chapters” is available here at a discount.

You can still purchase a copy of Rabbi Feldman’s translation of “The Gates of Repentance” here at a discount as well.

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon “The Path of the Just” and “The Duties of the Heart” (Jason Aronson Publishers).

Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled “Spiritual Excellence” and “Ramchal”.