The wise man and the Prophet

 My Thanks to Reb David Guttman for his help in thinking of the idea behind this post and for posting it on his excellent blog.

A few days ago, I was asked a very good question about Prophecy, by Josh K. I thought we all could benefit from the discussion, as another useful backgrounder to tzelem.Here is the ,slightly edited, discussion.
Josh Asks

1) why is it that Jewish prophecy no longer occurs? If it is (like Rambam tell us) not a miraculous event in which God randomly selects an individual; but rather the individual must be of a sound mind and so on. Surely as the generations continued and people became more aware of their surroundings scientifically and philosophically our minds would develop as such.

I respond

What allows a person to shift from what we call "thinking" to "prophecy" is a matter of completeness of mind. We tend to think of this "completeness" as an ability to delight in the majesty of a unified wisdom expressed in the external world, love of God as seen in Newton and Einstein, Abraham, Moses and Rambam. In reality, this ability to delight in the unified wisdom of the external external world while necessary, is not sufficient to completeness of mind. To attain this completeness, one must also attain objectivity about oneself and ones humble position in the universe as well- awe of God. Note Rambam
What is the way to love and fear God? Whenever one contemplates the great wonders of God's works and creations, and one sees that they are a product of a wisdom that has no bounds or limits, one will immediately love, laud and glorify [God] with an immense passion to know the Great Name, like David has said, "My soul thirsts for God, for the living God". When one thinks about these matters one will feel a great fear and trepidation, and one will know that one is a low and insignificant creation, with hardly an iota of intelligence compared to that of God, like David has said, "When I observe Your heavens, the work of Your fingers...what is man, that You are heedful of him?". Bearing these things in mind, I shall explain important concepts of the Creator's work, as a guide to understanding and loving God. Concerning this love the Sages said that from it will come to know God.

This duality of wisdom- in terms of delight and humility, expresses itself in Rambam's view of the true Philosopher. Such a one must be very wise, as well as humble and well ordered in character. He does not just know things about the external world, this knowledge is the basis of his humble attitude and wise path of action.

Just as a wise person is recognisable in his wisdom and temperaments and is differentiated by them from other people, so also should he be recognisable in his actions: his manner of eating, drinking, copulation, relieving himself, speaking, walking, dressing and the conducting of his affairs with his work and his giving [should all be exemplary]. All of these actions should be as fine and as correct as possible.

This duality,of course, also expresses itself in the prophet

 One of the bases of religion is to know that God visits people in prophetic visions, which come only to exceedingly wise people of outstanding characteristics, whose inclinations never lead them to earthly matters but who always conquer their inclinations, and who are of correct temperaments. A person who fullfils these criteria, and is of perfect health, will, when he studys the foundations of philosophy and is attracted by those elevated issues and is of an appropriate temperament to understand and comprehend them , and sanctifies himself by moving away from the path of the common man, who concerns himself with ephemeral matters, and instead encourages himself not to have any thoughts about useless matters and its contrivances, but rather have his thoughts permanently attuned to above

As such the prophet is, to a very large degree, limited by his ability to perceive his place humbly. If a circumstance arises that a prophet cannot handle, he may become angry- unaccepting of his reality, and his thought or prophecy ceases.

There are some intermediate temperaments which one is forbidden to have, but one should adopt one of the extremities of such temperaments. One of these is the temperament of haughtiness. It is not good [enough] for one to be just modest, but one should be humble, and one's spirits should be low. Therefore, concerning Moses our Teacher it is written, "...very humble", and not just, "humble". Therefore, the Sages commanded that one should be very humble. They said further that anyone who raises his spirits is denying the most essential reality, as it is written, "...then your heart be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God". They also said that all those with haughty airs should be excommunicated, even if they are only slightly haughty. It is the same with anger, which is an extremely bad temperament and from which it is fitting for one to distance oneself as far as its opposite extreme. One should teach oneself not to get angry, even over something about which it would be normal to get angry. If one wanted to instill fear in one's sons or members of one's household, or in the community if one was their leader, and one wants to be angry at them in order that they will return to the good [ways], then one should show them that one is being angry at them just to correct them, and, when displaying such anger, one should bear in mind that one is like a man who is similar to being angry, and that one is not really angry. The original Sages said that if one is angry, it is as if one has worshipped idols. They also said that when a man gets angry, then if he was wise his wisdom leaves him, and if he was a prophet his prophecy leaves him, and that the life of angry people is not [really] a life.

In Jewish exile, it is extraordinarily difficult to not be angry and depressed about the circumstance of man, and one self. Living in a world dominated by ignorant and superstitious people is no picnic, as you well know. What sort of human communities will these people create? As you know well, this superstitious ignorance has enormous impact on every facet of life. In fact, it seems that it was a unique character of Abraham our father to so transcend his circumstance that he could remain focused on thought, despite the devastation all around him. Even Rambam was not so blessed. We look forward to our redemption from ignorance and the restoration of Wisdom and Justice as the basis of our Human community. This time, we are told, will also see the restoration of prophecy.

40  In our times, severe troubles come one after another, and all are in distress; the wisdom of our Torah scholars has disappeared, and the understanding of our discerning men is hidden.  Thus, the commentaries, the responses to questions, and the settled laws that the Geonim wrote, which had once seemed clear, have in our times become hard to understand, so that only a few properly understand them.  And one hardly needs to mention the Talmud itself--the Babylonian Talmud, the Jerusalem Talmud, the Sifra, the Sifre, and the Toseftot--which all require a broad mind, a wise soul, and considerable study, before one can correctly know from them what is forbidden or permitted and the other rules of the Torah.

41  For this reason, I, Moshe son of the Rav Maimon the Sephardi, found that the current situation is unbearable; and so, relying on the help of the Rock blessed be He, I intently studied all these books, for I saw fit to write what can be determined from all of these works in regard to what is forbidden and permitted, and unclean and clean, and the other rules of the Torah:  Everything in clear language and terse style, so that the whole Oral Law would become thoroughly known to all, without bringing problems and solutions or differences of view, but rather clear, convincing, and correct statements in accordance with the legal rules drawn from all of these works and commentaries that have appeared from the time of Our Holy Teacher to the present.

Exploring Tzelem and Toar in dogs

I would like to give an example of tzelem and toar, as I see them in nature. A while back my parents brought a video to my house, "Dogs that changed the world". While there is much to be enjoyed in the movie, what most interested me, was the discussion about the relation of dogs to wolves.

It seems that dogs are genetically almost identical to wolves, they can breed with wolves, though clearly they are very different in terms of their ability to be domesticated and participate in human society. These two properties, DNA and ability to breed on the one hand, and socialization are key toarim of an animal. They are material features that point to the underlying nature or tzelem of a thing.

The ability to breed with another, while clearly a significant result, is not the underlying nature, the life principle, of animality expressed in a dog, cat or fish. It is a material character recognizable to us- a toar or characteristic that points to tzelem, it is not tzelem.

So too socializing. The ability of a creature to pursue its needs, emotional and physical in a herd with another also, while clearly a significant result, is not the underlying nature, the life principle, of animality expressed in a dog, cat or fish. It also is a material character, a toar or characteristic.

These two toars point in two different directions. Is a dog a tzelem of wolf, with the detail of quantitatively heightened tameness as ability of interbreeding points to?

Or is dog a new tzelem, as evidenced by its unique social character?

Reason incarnate in existence

Before summarizing our first approach to the word tzelem, I sense, as I always have, a great tension, that needs to be allowed to dissipate. Let us all take a deep breath, as we gently allow our intuition to to move our souls past their initial starting points.

Thank you commentors for your initial salvo. Perhaps we all can benefit from reminding ourselves of Rambam's advice, in approaching translation. In essence, he notes that translation, must be done in the context of thinking about a subject, a real world area, that the word or piece is about.

Let me premise one canon. Whoever wishes to translate, and purposes to render each word literally, and at the same time to adhere slavishly to the order of the words and sentences in the original, will meet with much difficulty; his rendering will be faulty and untrustworthy. This is not the right method. The translator should first try to grasp the sense of the subject thoroughly, and then state the theme with perfect clearness in the other language. This, however, can not be done without changing the order of the words, putting many words for one word, or vice versâ, and adding or taking away words, so that the subject be perfectly intelligible in the language into which he translates. This method was followed by Honein ben Is'hak with the works of Galen, and his son Is'hak with the works of Aristotle. It is for this reason that all their versions are so peculiarly lucid, and therefore we ought to study them to the exclusion of all other. 

We may not be perfectly aligned in the word we choose as most similar to tzelem. Yehuda and Micha chose "model", Dan -essence I chose "principle" and Hagyan chose the phenomenon which is to be gleaned from craftmanship as in Yirmiyahu.

יח הדבר אשר היה אל-ירמיהו, מאת יהוה לאמר: ² קום וירדת בית היוצר; ושמה אשמיעך את-דברי: ³ וארד בית היוצר; והנהו (והנה-הוא) עשה מלאכה על-האבנים: ⁴ ונשחת הכלי, אשר הוא עשה בחמר ביד היוצר; ושב, ויעשהו כלי אחר, כאשר ישר בעיני היוצר לעשות:    פ
⁵ ויהי דבר-יהוה אלי לאמור: ⁶ הכיוצר הזה לא-אוכל לעשות לכם בית ישראל נאם-יהוה; הנה כחמר ביד היוצר, כן-אתם בידי בית ישראל:    ס    ⁷ רגע אדבר, על-גוי ועל-ממלכה; לנתוש ולנתוץ ולהאביד:

The common thread of meaning here is, I think, that pointed to by Einstein in his phrase- reason incarnate in existence. This phrase, I think, refers to our foundational intuition that there is in fact an expression of idea in the external things we see around us. It is not just Newton who can apprehend a unifying idea actually expressed in the material apples around us- we all can apprehend a reason incarnate in the things around us.

Model
refers to reason incarnate in existence in the sense of an approximation of our minds, due to our limited apprehension of reason incarnate in existence.

Essence and principle
refer to the underlying idea expressing itself via the core properties of a thing such as the ability to speak and act justly, rather than details such as color in a man. This notion is of the external thing, more so than the limitations of our apprehension.

Hagyan's sense of craftsmanship pointed to by  Yirmiyahu similarly refer to this sense of reason incarnate in existence, in the sense that a craftsman imprints an idea or design, upon his material, producing a product, expressive of the idea in its structure.

Useful background material

It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees. On the other hand, I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics!


If it is one of the goals of religion to liberate mankind as far as possible from the bondage of egocentric cravings, desires, and fears, scientific reasoning can aid religion in yet another sense. Although it is true that it is the goal of science to discover rules which permit the association and foretelling of facts, this is not its only aim. It also seeks to reduce the connections discovered to the smallest possible number of mutually independent conceptual elements. It is in this striving after the rational unification of the manifold that it encounters its greatest successes, even though it is precisely this attempt which causes it to run the greatest risk of falling a prey to illusions. But whoever has undergone the intense experience of successful advances made in this domain is moved by profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence. By way of the understanding he achieves a far-reaching emancipation from the shackles of personal hopes and desires, and thereby attains that humble attitude of mind toward the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence, and which, in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man. This attitude, however, appears to me to be religious, in the highest sense of the word. And so it seems to me that science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious spiritualization of our understanding of life.

Tzelem #2

As we attempt to find an adequate translation for, "צלם" we immediately run into enormous difficulty, by the very nature of the loftiness of the notion pointed to by this word. In fact, it is precisely for this point that Rabbenu brings up discussion about this word. It seems that all research rests upon reflection, and insight, into this notion. Rambam says that people have the notion of  "צלם" all wrong, confused with what , in fact should be referred to as  "תאר" but what is Toar? Neither of these terms are exactly common sense ones. Most of us do not usually find contexts in which we speak of either.

צלם ודמות

כבר חשבו

^*בני אדם כי "צלם" בלשון העברי מורה על תבנית ² הדבר ותוארו, ³ והביאם הדבר לידי הגשמה מוחלטת. לפי שנאמר נעשה אדם בצלמנו כדמותנו ⁴, וחשבו ^*1 כי ה' כצורת אדם, כלומר: תבניתו ותארו, וחייבו ⁵ הגשמה מוחלטת והאמינו בכך, ונראה להם שאם יעזבו דעה זו יכחישו את הכתוב, ואף יהיה בכך העדר האלוה אם לא יהיה גוף בעל פנים ויד כמותם בתבנית ובתואר, אלא שהוא יותר גדול ובהיר לפי דמיונם ⁶, וגם החומר שלו אינו דם ובשר ⁷. זהו תכלית מה שנראה להם שהוא רוממות ביחס לה'.

אבל מה שצריך להיאמר בשלילת הגשמות וקביעת האחדות האמיתית, אשר אין לה אמיתות כי אם בהרחקת הגשמות תדע הוכחת כל זה מן המאמר הזה ⁸, ואין ההערה כאן בפרק זה אלא על ביאור עניין צלם ודמות.

Who in fact is it that is preoccupied with such distinctions as between tzelem and tzura, and why?

Stepping out

In response to popular request, it is time to restart our "steps" program. I have suggested that perhaps the best words to use, would be those of Rabbenu, the guide to the perplexed, in his book the Moreh Nevuchim.

The general tenor of the steps, is to guide the soul through its natural progression, from relatively imprecise intuition and picture, to carefully focused abstract meaning, useful in exploring mada, as it manifests itself in creation either through observation or reading of Torah.

In outline, the process begins with "translation" identifying a resonant English word, that can serve a an opening step in the process. The resonance of a translation, lies in its ability to suggest luminous examples, rather than in formal precision.

With this in mind let us all read Rabbenu's first Chapter of MN- on the word צלם. I suggest R. Kapach's translation, the link to which is to be conveniently found in the new "resources" gadget on the side of the blog.

Please offer your resonant translation of the word צלם. A short explanation of your choice an example summary of the chapter and or question on it are all acceptable as well. The one thing I would advise, as anyone who knows this process can attest to, is to keep explanations of methodology and questions about it, to an absolute minimum.

Kon tiki of mind, will have to wait for a while

Kon Tiki of mind was removed for now. It will have to await another time. Sorry about the delay.