Was Jewish mysticism revealed at Mount Sinai?

Mysticism is an area of Judaism that never fails to capture the popular imagination and generate thoughtful discussion. Like most things Jewish, it is also the source of passionate debate and deeply held opposing views, with disagreement over the very nature of what Jewish mysticism consists of and where it comes from.

A short but fascinating passage towards the end of yesterday’s Torah reading – which is too frequently overlooked – may contain an important insight:

And Moses and Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel ascended, and they perceived the God of Israel, and beneath His feet was like the forming of a sapphire brick and like the appearance of the heavens for clarity. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel He did not lay His hand, and they perceived God, and they ate and drank.

(Shemot 24:9-11)

What is the meaning of these cryptic verses and their strange perception of the divine? Can they be constitute some form of revelation of the esoteric mysteries of the Torah at Sinai alongside its revealed laws?

One thing that the commentators appear to agree on is that this passage relates to Jewish mysticism. Both Ibn Ezra and Ramban find strong textual and thematic links between this revelation at Sinai and the Merkava vision which opens the book of Ezekiel. Rambam, meanwhile, analyses the term “livnat hasapir”, interpreting it to refer to a nebulous and shapeless glow or energy which represents the first matter created by God. According to this, Rambam understands that this Sinaitic insight involved a profound understanding of the process of the world’s creation and the interplay that this involved between the divine and the physical.

Rambam and Ramban, however, held sharply differing theories about what Jewish mysticism involves. Rambam focuses much of his first section of Moreh on the idea that human language and thought cannot accurately convey divine concepts or truths about God. While we can (and indeed must) attempt to train our minds to relate to God in a manner unsullied by associations with the physical world – associations which our imagination naturally draw us towards – ultimately we are told that “greatest praise for Him is silence”.

Real Jewish mysticism, according to Rambam is a personal journey of sublime intellectual meditation upon concepts which transcend human language. This understanding is traced by Rambam through Talmudic passages concerning mysticism, from which he shows that such esoteric insights, by their very nature, can never be comprehensively conveyed (only “chapter headings”) or contained within any form of writing or “secret mystical book”.

For Ramban and students of kabbalah, by contrast, mysticism is focused far more upon the written (and spoken) word. He describes in the introduction to his commentary on the Torah how the whole Torah is fashioned from mystical arrangements of God’s names – names which kabbalah understands to possess certain supernatural powers and energies.

Judaism Reclaimed also discusses this divergence between Rambam and kabbalists as it plays out in their disagreements regarding amulets and recitation of special “holy” words. From the point of view of the kabbalists, the very letters of the Torah contain the contraction of God’s will and therefore bear power in their own right. Certain kabbalistic practitioners claim to be able to harness the power of God’s name in order to manipulate aspects of the physical world – even today I see books being advertised about how to utilise such supernatural forces to enhance aspects of our life.

Rambam and Geonim such as Rav Hai are strongly critical of this approach, calling the use of amulets a “foolishness…not worthy for any perfect person to hear, let alone believe in”. Rather, the names are understood to indicate profound philosophical and theological truths regarding God and His creation of the world. In support of this position, Rambam quotes Talmudic statements which impose severe restrictions on the teaching of God’s names and their meanings, restrictions and qualifications which bear broad similarities to those placed upon students seeking access to the esoteric areas of Ma’aseh Bereishit and Merkavah.

While Rambam understands the names to symbolise profound truths, it is a fundamental error to attribute power and divinity to the words and letters which are the mere containers and symbols for such truths. At the start of Hilchot Avoda Zara, Rambam attributes a similar mistake to early generations of idolators, who had initially revered stars as symbols of genuine divinity before proceeding to worship and attribute power to these symbols themselves.

Returning to Sinai, Rambam understands that the whole nation was granted some form of mystical perception in order to participate in and witness Moshe’s prophecy (Shemot 19:9). Nadav and Avihu, however, are criticised in a Midrash for “staring at God” – an irreverence which is compounded by their “eating and drinking” that Rambam takes to mean an illicit and corrupting input of physicality into their mystical experience.

This core mistake bears a strong resemblance to Rambam’s understanding of Elisha ben Avuyah’s mistake – failing to respect the limits of his own intellectual and mystical capacity in his infamous Pardes failure. It is to be contrasted with the conduct of our greatest prophet Moshe who initially, recognising his own limitations, “hid his face” at the Burning Bush because he was afraid to look. Tellingly, when Moshe eventually scales the heights of prophetic potential and receives the loftiest and most accurate of all prophetic insights at Sinai he repeatedly emphasises (in contrast to Nadav and Avihu) that for those 40 days “bread I did not eat and water I did not drink”. His unrivalled comprehension of God in receiving the Torah was uncorrupted by any physicality or input of the imaginative faculty.

First posted to Facebook 30 January 2020, here.

Slavery and the Civil Law

Parashat Mishpatim introduces the Torah’s civil law with an initial focus on laws of slavery, a subject which represents a source of great discomfort for many modern readers. Judaism Reclaimed discusses the Torah’s view of slavery as part of its analysis of Rambam’s axiom that the Torah presented its teachings in a manner which even its earliest students could relate to, while at the same time guiding them gently towards the ideal path.

It can be claimed, in accordance with Rambam’s approach, that slavery – like animal sacrifice - was so deeply ingrained within the popular Jewish psyche that it could not have been prohibited outright. A comparison between the Torah’s laws on slavery and those which existed in the surrounding Ancient Near Eastern societies, however, can provide a strong indication of the Torah’s overall view of the institution of slavery.

The Code of Hammurabi, for example, provided slaves with absolutely no rights, regarding them essentially as property. Viewed in this context, the Torah introduces severe limitations: it sets slaves free if they are abused by their masters, legislates a death penalty for their murder, and requires their inclusion in the Shabbat day of rest “so that your slave and maidservant shall rest just like you”. Blinding of slaves, a frequently performed means of controlling or punishing slaves in ancient times, results in a slave going free under Torah law. Rambam explains that the prohibition against returning a fleeing slave to his master displays empathy with the oppressed slave and sends out a powerful message to his master that his power over a slave should not be cruelly abused. This conforms with Rambam’s emphatic statement at the end of Hilchot Avadim that, while the letter of the law allows for slaves to be worked in difficult conditions, this is neither the way of the Sages, nor does it reflect the character traits that the Torah demands of the nation of Avraham, a nation that is exhorted to exhibit “Godly” kindness and compassion.

In his discussion of slavery in the Torah, Rabbi S. R. Hirsch writes that Jewish law does not allow a person to be transformed into a slave against his or her will. The only way individuals could become Jewish slaves was by willingly selling themselves unless, under the generally accepted rules of international law, they already had the status of slaves. Citing the “saddening experiences of our own times” in America and Jamaica, R’ Hirsch adds that transferal into the property of a Jew was the only form of salvation for a person previously stamped as a slave: “A Jewish home was a haven to a slave. There, he was protected by law against mishandling… He became a member of the household, like his master’s children, and like them he participated in the Pesach offering, on which God’s people was founded.”

Staying with R’ Hirsch, his commentary at the start of this parashah takes note of how the Torah’s civil law code commences with a detailed recitation of specific laws governing slaves. This beginning, he argues, would be inconceivable if the Written Torah was the primary source of Jewish law. It follows that a mass of laws and legal principles must have already been established and clarified before these exceptional cases could even have been considered. It is presumably upon the basis of the mass of laws and principles that Moshe had already received and transmitted orally that he had previously been “judging the people…from morning until evening…making known to them the decrees of God and His teachings,” (see Rashbam to Shemot 18). This forms the basis of R' Hirsch's analysis of the relationship between the Written Torah and the Oral Tradition (see chapter 11 of Judaism Reclaimed, summarised below in the Chaye Sarah post).

First posted to Facebook 15 February 2020, here.