The blog didn't handle the first posting accurately. I have reposted, hopefully this posting will avoid technical difficulty.
In private communication with David Guttman, as well as in comments on David Guttman's blog to R. Micha, I made reference to the significance of Rambam's model of the soul in understanding the Mesorah as presented in the MT. I have been thinking about this statement of mine about the soul a lot lately. How do I illustrate what I mean, without resorting to meaningless terminology, or as my dear student RJM puts it so eloquently, heavy jargon?
In private communication with David Guttman, as well as in comments on David Guttman's blog to R. Micha, I made reference to the significance of Rambam's model of the soul in understanding the Mesorah as presented in the MT. I have been thinking about this statement of mine about the soul a lot lately. How do I illustrate what I mean, without resorting to meaningless terminology, or as my dear student RJM puts it so eloquently, heavy jargon?
The answer lies, as it so often does, in allowing Rambam to speak for himself, without getting in the way. In Shemone Perakim, Rambam presents the issue of developing proper Middot in the
soul by means of an important analogy, one which deserves our undivided attention.
ואתה יודע, שתיקון המידות הוא ריפוי הנפש וכוחותיה. וכמו שהרופא, אשר ירפא הגופים, צריך שידע תחילה את הגוף אשר ירפאהו בכלל וחלקיו - מה הם, רצוני לומר: גוף האדם, וצריך שידע אילו דברים יחלוהו וישמר מהם, ואילו דברים יבריאוהו ויכוון אליהם, כן רופא הנפש הרוצה לתקן מידות האדם, צריך שידע הנפש בכללה וחלקיה, ומה יחלה אותה ומה יבריאה
Rambam instructs us to reflect upon our educational relationship to himself as a Baal Ha-Mesorah, as being like that of the therapeutic relationship of a doctor to a patient. In so instructing us,
Rambam is not interested in some feel - good, pretty words. There would be no need for an elaborate technical description of the soul to achieve a feel good experience. Rather, Rambam seems
intent on fostering a certain insight into the Mesorah we otherwise would overlook. But what is this insight?
The answer is obvious in the Rambam, yet somehow mystifying to us. By virtue of telling us that the Doctor of the Soul must come to learn the nature of the soul, it is clear that most of us, do
not have knowledge of our souls. This simple fact, that we need instruction by a Baal Ha-mesorah to identify our souls, implies that we do not know how to identify our very selves.
This notion, that we do not know ourselves, is also implicit in the dictum of the great philosophers of Greece. What could "know thyself" mean, if not that we are currently ignorant of what and who we are? Clearly, wise men generally,and Rambam in particular, intend to awaken a reader who needs to first and foremost be informed that he ,in fact, does not know his own soul, that he is unaware of his very identity as a human being. It is the removal of core ignorance, the inability to identify ourselves, that constitutes the education of Torah and Mitzvot.
But is this not preposterous, to say that we do not know who and what we are? Not if we consider the reality of education, Jewish and Non-Jewish as we experience it today. In fact, ignorance of soul is the elephant in the room that permeates all education. Education is totally preoccupied with the results of soul -problem solving- to the absolute exclusion of considering the soul itself as a phenomenon.We all know that educators limit themselves to politely solving problems proper to the popular fields of study -the various "subjects.” For them, the crowning glory of man lies in the ability to solve official problems about all things, other than ourselves. No wonder then that the focus of modern education lies exclusively in the issue of either which problems to present, or perhaps the proper sequence of such problems. When was the last time we saw the identification of the soul, its whole and parts, as an important issue in school? Such talk would be a disaster, it would waste so much time, we would never cover the subject matter of general and Torah subjects! No wonder we never stop to consider the best way to understand mizvot as the means by which the soul can be given tikkun through the therapy of a Doctor.
This failure on the part of education to isolate a natural “thought ability” underlying the act of the identifying and solving problems of particular subject areas is bizarre. Is not all of modern science founded on the notion that all things have natural principles, open to our research? Why should man, body and soul, be exempt? How does this ignorance of our very selves arise?
4 comments:
Reflection: Once you reposted...it's a trade off.
You only wrote "know thyself, reposted" but not and "thy mesorah"...so...it's unfair: many variables already have changed, just contemplate. I think I would not have reposted if this would've happened to me.
'know yourself' means to know yourself as a soul, not as a body. A shift in perception. If you follow the Rambam's argument in Moreh 1:1-2, the result of the chet was the loss of sichli, Nefesh hasichli, the bit that perceives the Divine, and loss of all perception except that provided by the physical organs. So, in order to find Hashem in this world, you need to find yourself. I find this a most beautiful argument. Unfortunately the English speaking Jewish world universally translates sichli as intellect, which follows the maskilim's reductionism (built on the much earlier Christian abolition of nefesh habehamis), and misses the point that this is a visual experience - you SEE that the world is a Divine emanation. Moreh 1: 3,4 should now make sense, the concept of words used for physical vision that are 'borrowed' for spiritual vision as well. This is also the take of chasidus.
The rofe hanefesh really does heal the nefesh - you would call him a shaman - and this is precisely how the Rambam worked as a doctor. Since the root of illness is in the nefesh, physical healing can follow.
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