Unity of Torah 2

Ralbags solution:
Ralbag's approach is that the Torah's presentation is intended for a very specific audience - the Geulei Mitzraim. According to Ralbag the Geulei Mitzraim suffered from Egyptian beliefs of materialism. In this belief system all things can be explained in terms of combinations of material parts-much like atomic theory today. This belief, by definition, excludes the possibility of Tzura, a reality of universal ideas underlying the observable material structures. Accordingly, Ralbag says, it was necessary to establish the true principle that, in fact, there are real universal ideas beyond material structure.

Ralbag’s approach seems to only add to our difficulties however. It does not seem to show a resolution to the problem of understanding the Torah's unity. Ralbag instead adds to our problem by suggesting that the Torah is meant to be read out of order, with the story of Yetzias Mitzraim before that of Creation. If Geulas Mitzraim is the precondition to recognizing the unity of Torah then why not make Geulas Mitzraim, rather than Creation, the first story?

Upon further reflection we see that Ralbag cannot possibly mean that we should read the Geulas Mitzraim story first. The story of Creation is obviously the first story in the book and must, therefore, be read first. What Ralbag means is that there is an experience of being a Yotzei Mitzraim that must occur prior to being qualified to recognize the unity of Torah at all.

The original Yotzei Mitzraim did not experience the momentous events of Geula through reading a text - they lived through the events and had them explained by Moshe Rabbenu and the Elders. The intent was for Jewish civilization to be built on this story, to be relived, generation after generation through a tradition of storytelling father to son. “Zechor es hayom hazeh. Limaan tizkor es yom tzescha mieretz mitzraim kol yimei chayyecha. Vihigadita libincha bayom hahu laymor.” The whole concept of a reading and formal education began at Sinai and the written Torah, which were actually relatively late events in Jewish development.

No child begins his intellectual development from reading, per se. Reading and formal education always presuppose a prior vision of the world and man's mission in it that is established in earliest youth through informal education – through modeling and sharing the civilization's stories with one's parents. The child who enters school is already deeply imbued with his civilization's vision of the world that the educator must contend with and build upon in the readings of school. So too in Jewish education - the reading of Torah presupposes the view of the world and human mission that arise from “vihigadita livincha.”

How does this experiencing of Geula, which Ralbag points out as the qualification to begin reading the Torah, help us overcome the difficulty of the two contradictory themes of B'reishis? How does being a member of the Geulei Mitzrayim civilization enable us to understand how to use these stories as the introduction to the unity of Torah?