B'reishet Perek Ephes (Purim 5777)

Chava is a Person

Consider Genesis 3:17, when God issues punishments for the incident of the Tree of Knowledge, Good and Bad:

בראשית ג:יז

"וּלְאָדָם אָמַר, כִּי-שָׁמַעְתָּ לְקוֹל אִשְׁתֶּךָ..."

3:17 “And to Adam (the Man or Mankind) [God] said: Because you listened to the voice of your wife…”

Why is the first thing God mentions listening to Adam’s wife? Why is listening to his wife singled out, seemingly as a thing bad unto itself?

To answer this, we must go back to an earlier verse:

בראשית ב:כג

וַיֹּאמֶר, הָאָדָם, זֹאת הַפַּעַם עֶצֶם מֵעֲצָמַי, וּבָשָׂר מִבְּשָׂרִי; לְזֹאת יִקָּרֵא אִשָּׁה, כִּי מֵאִישׁ לֻקְחָה-זֹּאת.

2:23: Said Adam “This time it is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh; therefore [her name is ] to be called Woman [‘man’ (ish) + suffix denoting ‘to’/’towards’/’of’ (ah)], for from man was taken this”.

              This gives us an answer: Initially, Adam does not see his wife as person. Rather, he sees her as from or of his flesh and bones, rather than as an equal aside from himself, like his flesh and bones (and tellingly excluding the just-stated distinguishing characteristic of humanity entirely a mind, a soul, like his own) – he sees her as an extension of himself, with no separate personhood. Adam does not even think of her as a being – he even calls her ‘it’, not ‘her’ ( זאתbut not היא). This is the ultimate cause of the incident with the Tree.

              Since Adam sees his wife as like his own hand or foot – having neither a mind nor a will, he does not even think to truly converse with her. He gives her a command as if he was thinking to himself “Hand – do not touch that!”. When she offers him the fruit of the Tree, he questions her as much as one would question the actions of one’s own leg – not at all. Thus, tragedy occurs.

              This is why God says “the voice of your wife” – you listened to her voice but not to her. God leads off with this as it was the ultimate cause of everything else.

              Finally, after this, we see that Adam learns from his error and mends his ways:

בראשית ג:כ

וַיִּקְרָא הָאָדָם שֵׁם אִשְׁתּוֹ, חַוָּה:  כִּי הִוא הָיְתָה, אֵם כָּל-חָי

Called Adam the name of his wife ‘Chava’, for she was the mother of all living.

              In the end, Adam recognizes her as person (uses pronoun ‘her’ rather than ‘it’), with her own:

·        Mind: Adam does not speak about her as if she is not there, instead we have the standard formula used throughout Tanach when someone is given a name of “Called [namer] [pronoun] name [name], because [reasons]).

·        Soul: Additional word “was” added, when the sentence could have been written without it, which would imply present-tense “is”, with the verse as a whole parsing as “Called Adam the name of his wife ‘Chava, For she is the mother of all living’”, with the present-tense being inside a quote of Adam’s words. Therefore, the additional switch to past tense comes to teach us that in addition to her being ‘mother of all living’ – the only thing Adam had seen her as originally – Chava, and all of us also has the ability to grow into so much more.

Symbolism of the Aron

What is the symbolism of the Aron HaKodesh?

What is the form of the Aron? It is a wooden box encased in pure gold on the inside and the outside, two keruvim statues (generally understood to be some kind of humaniform depiction of an 'angel') facing each other poised atop the cover. Inside it we placed the cubes of stone inscribed with the Ten Utterances, and beside it or on top of it was kept a Torah scroll written by Moshe, a jar of the manna from the desert journey, and the staff of Aharon.

What does the wood represent? The wood represents endless growth and change, just as a tree grows all its life. To stop growing is to die. To change is to live. So too, our relationship with God, our beliefs and our very beings, must always be growing and changing - to be changeless is to die.

What does the pure gold represent? Gold, a noble metal, represents changelessness and perfection, absolute axiomatic truth.

What does the gold coating the wood represent? That neither unconstrained change nor eternal stasis are acceptable. The change is guided by the coat of gold, and the gold, a soft and weak metal, bends and shapes itself to the ever-changing wood inside it.

What do  the keruvim represent? They represent the way past the keruvim that "guard the way to the Tree of Life" with "swords of fire" (Genesis 3:24). The Aron and its accompaniments are the devices by which we, humanity, reenter the Garden and gain eternal life, the keruvim sheathing their swords and forming an archway to bring us in.

Thus, only by changing, bounded by only the axioms of the Torah, can we live. Only by living within the axioms of the Torah are we preserved from decay and death, eternal oblivion.

Exactly when we abide by this - rejecting both the ossification of tradition and the rejection of our axioms, when we hold the covenants with God within us, His Words by our sides - then there is no limit on our potential, then can we claim the Tree of Life.

The Doubled Exile from Gan Eden (Addendum to The Tree, The Naming, and Eyzer k'negdo)

Genesis 3:22-24
22: Said Hashem-Elokim: Behold! Mankind has [become] like One Amongst Us*, knowing good and bad; now lest he send his out hand, and take also from the Tree of [knowledge of eternal] Life, and consume, living forever.
23: Thus, Hashem-Elokim sent them out, from the Garden of Eden; to work the soil from which he was taken from there.
24: He drove out Mankind; and he established, from Eastward to Gan Eden, the Keruvim, and the flaming overturning sword, to guard the way to the Tree of [knowledge of eternal] Life.

Why is the exile of Mankind from Gan Eden stated twice?

A close examination of the wording reveals an answer: The sending out in 3:23 is the sending out of an agent to accomplish a task - to work the soil.
However, we do not see Mankind then going out of the Garden of his own will and doing so!
I conjecture that in the 'original plan', Mankind was to be sent out to work the soil after having eaten of every tree, ending with the Tree of Knowledge, Good and Bad*.
Having jumped the gun, God gives them the option of beginning their mission, to prove themselves capable of not now subverting the mission.
By refusing the great charge, Mankind denies itself the only route to societal growth left available to it.
Thus, God has no choice but to banish Mankind from the Garden, lest he stagnate and 'consume living forever' - in other words, be only a devourer of the world, and not a builder thereof.
We had proven ourselves not able to be trusted with that power.

A primary consequence of the beginning of the success of the ongoing mission of Am Yisrael to be a light unto the nations is that Mankind regains the ability to safely reenter Gan Eden, and eat of its knowledge. This is why the Aron HaBrit is topped by two unarmed Keruvim, their wings arching towards each other - it is symbolic of those guards now granting Mankind entry, through an open gate!

* See The Tree, The Naming, and Eyzer k'negdo (http://toratmatematica.blogspot.com/2016/03/thefollowing-what-was-original-timeline.html)

A meaning of Shmini Atzeret - 22/7

What is symbolized by the juxtaposition of Shmini Atzeret and Succot?

For seven days, we dwell in nature. By night, we gaze upwards at the stars, the grandeur of the Universe that we can see with our own unaided eyes. By day, we see the plants and creatures, the beauty of Nature.

Through these, we gain an awe and closeness to God.

However, relationship predicated merely on blind, unknowing awe is as flimsy and weak as the booth we are dwelling in.

Therefor, on the Eighth Day, the 22nd Day of the 7th Month, the Pi Day of God - symbolizing the exact and perfect truth of Mathematics, the Language with which God wrote the Universe - and the vehicle by which we can see the Face of God.
Thus, we take the flimsy awe of Succot and place within it the structure built of Math, creating a firm and sturdy relationship, not of slave and master, not just of child and parent - but student and teacher.

May all of humanity merit to dwell in the House of the Lord, learning Mathematics and Torah together all of our days.

A Thought on Newton's Source for his Differentiation Notation

Consider Sir Isaac Newton's notation for derivatives[1]:

It occurred to me that Newton might have chosen this notation for the following reason:

Newton was an avid student of biblical studies and mysticism. He was fluent in Hebrew and Aramaic, and seems to have had at least passable knowledge of Arabic, based on that there are manuscripts with portions of the Rambam’s works, translated into Latin, by his own hand[2].

He produced a large body of works, containing his thoughts on a large number of matters, citing many familiar sources, such as Rashi and the ibn Ezra. From the selections discussed in footnote 2, he seems to have been familiar with Moreh Nevuchim, and professed a philosophy for himself very much along those lines.

Newton was therefore almost certainly familiar with the dot notation of the Tanach – that some letters are at some points written with dots over them, indicating that there is a secondary meaning, that word being also parsable with that letter deleted. I suspect that Newton might have found it pleasing to use that ancient notation for his own work.

I think that Newton might have found it particularly pleasing to do so, as in Moreh Nevuchim, the Rambam seems to be… uncomfortable with the mystical concepts that are associated with the planetary spheres in Aristotelian cosmology[3]. The painful need for the Rambam’s intellectual acrobatics around that is eliminated by Newton’s gravity and the consequences thereof[4].

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notation_for_differentiation#Newton.27s_notation

[2] http://moreshetsepharad.org/media/Newton_Mathematics_and_Esoteric_Knowledge.pdf

[3] Maimonides and the book that changed Judaism: secrets of The guide for the perplexed. [Micah Goodman].

[4] Although his largest difficulty would not be eliminated until Hubble and Einstein.

The Covenant of Wonders

A question that has drawn my attention for some time:

שמות לד:י

וַיֹּאמֶר, הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי כֹּרֵת בְּרִית, נֶגֶד כָּל-עַמְּךָ אֶעֱשֶׂה נִפְלָאֹת, אֲשֶׁר לֹא-נִבְרְאוּ בְכָל-הָאָרֶץ וּבְכָל-הַגּוֹיִם; וְרָאָה כָל-הָעָם אֲשֶׁר-אַתָּה בְקִרְבּוֹ אֶת-מַעֲשֵׂה יְהוָה, כִּי-נוֹרָא הוּא, אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי, עֹשֶׂה עִמָּךְ

Sh’mot (Exodus) 34:10

[Translation, initial understanding]:

He [God] said: “Behold, I, enact a covenant: in the presence of your entire nation: I will make wonders that were never created[1] in all the lands, nor in any of the peoples – It will see, the entire nation -  that you [Moshe] are amongst, the makings of God - for He is Incredible – that I do for you.

What bothered me was this: Covenants, both in the world at large as well as those between God and Israel, always have some obligations on each party, or at least a symbolic gesture to ratify the agreement. It is exceedingly odd for there to be a covenant unilateral in both ratification and clause.

I came across some statements of the Rambam in Moreh Nevuchim[2] wherein he comments on the two requests Moshe makes of God earlier on in their discussion[3]:

"Make know to me Your Ways"                                                        אֶת-דְּרָכֶךָ הוֹדִעֵנִי נָא              

"Show me Your Glory"                                                                        הַרְאֵנִי נָא אֶת-כְּבֹדֶךָ

The Rambam states that the former statement is a request to understand Nature, the physical universe (i.e. laws of physics), and the latter is a request to ascend to understand God’s perception and reasoning for the Universe in its entirety, which the Rambam understands to be equivalent to being God (or at least not being a possibility without being Him in the first place).

In response to the latter request, God tells Moshe that he cannot do so – which makes perfect sense to we who understand the vastness of the cosmos – to see in the greatest detail the state of the entire universe, Moshe would need a brain with at least the number of particles in the universe – he literally cannot do this thing and exist in the universe as he is! Given this, an argument could be advanced that the issue with the request of Moshe is not that there is a theological issue, but a practical physical impossibility.

To the former – the Rambam states that God granted his request. But, according to the Rambam: Where does God give over this knowledge? Why does Moshe not teach it? Why did the Industrial Revolution, the age of Science, not start from that moment?

 This can be answered by understanding the Pasuk in a different way:

He [God] said: “Behold, I, enact a covenant: in the presence of your entire nation: I will do wonders that were never created in all the lands, nor in any of the peoples –  all the people[s] will see- that you [The Nation of Israel, singular denoting unity] are amongst, the doings of God - for He is Incredible – that I do with you [The Nation of Israel].

עִמָּךְ is not ‘for you’, it is ‘with you’! That single word changes the entire covenant! This covenant is a promise that God will do these things with us – that we, the Nation of Israel, will have the privilege of being amongst the forefront of humanity as we build the glorious future by the light of our minds, by the skill of our hands – and we will feel the touch of the hand of God on our works. This is a covenant we have merited to see fulfilled for the first time - that we continue to fulfill - in the last centuries!

Thus, this is a promise from God to his beloved Nation of Israel, that whenever they accept upon themselves the Great Mission to delve into the workings of universe, to perceive its beauty, to give names to its components – God will be with them, delighting in the discoveries of His Children[4] – and that by these discoveries, humanity will attain the capacity to create new wonders[5], in full realization of our Tzelem Elokim.

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[1] It is very interesting to note that the root ברא, here translated as ‘create’ always denotes a truly new or unique creation (ex nihilo). A promise of such in the future is a very big deal, especially in light of the first-order understandings of ‘nothing new under the sun’.

[2]Moreh Nevuchim, 1:54, as explained in Maimonides and the Book that Changed Judaism, by Micah Goodman.

[3] Fragments of Sh’mot: 33:13 and 33:18, respectively.

[4] See “The Tree, The Naming, and Eyzer k’negdo”

[5] Including a way around the Big Whimper, I hope.