[Avodah] Did Tziporah say Lashon Hara?

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 08:32:16PM -0400, Yitzhak Grossman wrote:
: I have argued that Rambam strongly implies that God *cannot*
: confer prophecy on the unsuitable individual.
: 
: See my "On Divine Omnipotence and its Limitations", Hakirah Volume 2,
: available from: http://www.hakirah.org/Vol%202%20Grossman.pdf  See page
: 160 (page 10 in the PDF) and on.

Just to clarify the discussion....

There are two species of aggadic discussion:
1- Knowing what various rishonim said, because their opinions are Torah,
and
2- Deciding one's own approach to life.

In this discussion, many/most of us would find the Rambam's position
useful in developing our own derakhim. It depends on two things:

1- The Rambam believes that since Hashem's essence is Emes it is not
curtailing His Omnipotence to say that Hashem can not do the meaningless.
"A stone so heavy even He can't lift it" is simply a meaningless string
of words, like the Rambam's example of a "round square".

This is a topic RYG touches on in his article. Euclidean geometry was
found to be a special case, and not all of its postulates are true
in all possible worlds. (E.g. a triangle drawn on the earth from the
north pole, down to the equator, 1/4 way around the equator and then
back up to the north pole will have angles that total of 270deg, not
180deg. And according to Einstein and well proven by experiment, the
universe is non-euclidean.

Logic is also generalized. Two valued logic, with Aristotle's law of
excluded middle (no middle values) and law of contradiction (nothing can
be both true and false) is also just one special case. Classical logic
doesn't work well in the quantum realm, and they developed a "Quantum
Logic" to address attributes on that small scale.

The Rambam's words, if they are to be accepted, must today be applied
to the larger realm, the set of all possible logics or all possible
geometries. Not to Aristotle's and Euclid's specifically. And so, that
HQBH couldn't make a Euclidian triangle whose angles totaled something
other than 180deg, or one in Lobachevskian space (one which behaves like
the surface of a sphere) of 180deg or less, or.... perhaps stated simply
as one meta-rule. (Which could even be understoof on a Platonic level,
rather than formalism.)

Of course once one sees the need of jumping to the meta-level, I am
curious if there is a need for a meta-meta-level -- im kein ein ladavar
sof -- or, once you break thoguth to discuss systems of systems, you
already covered systems of systems-of-systems (the latter being just
a system of thought just like its members, after all). This brings me
into Bertrand Russell and the oddities of self-referring sets, but if I
had in that direction, truly ein ladavar sof, and people will be bored
well before then.

The Ramchal, FWIW, did not accept the Rambam's limitation of Omnipotence,
and believed that logic was a nivra. That HQBH was therefore not bound
by logic. My only problem with the Ramchal's position is pragmatic. Once
you say logic isn't a useful tool in underandig HQBH and His actions,
all conversation is impossible. Even vehalakhta bidrachav becomes
impossible. And yes, the Ramchal has to be speaking about His actions
if he is rebutting the Rambam's notion of no round squares.

2- That nevu'ah is the ability to see higher realities. This is different
than the Ramban et al's position that nevu'ah is a message granted by
the Almighty. (Look ma, no hyphen!)

(Is that enough chiluqim for a non-Brisker to make in one email?)

On this second topic, see my discussion of the subject in
the first two pages of Mesukim miDevash for parashas Mishpatim
<http://www.aishdas.org/mesukim/5764/mishpatim.pdf>. Also related is the
Rambam vs the Ramban on whether Avraham's nevu'ah consisted of seeing
angels, or if his nevu'ah was interrupted so he could serve the "men"
who arrived. See also http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2004/11/aspaqlaria.shtml
on whether the aspaqlaria of nevu'ah is a lens (to see beyond the self)
or a mirror (to see one's soul as it interacts with higher realities,
as per Yesodei haTorah 2:5).

I would argue that since most of us believe the Ramban's version of
the story in Va'eira and accept his question on the Rambam (rather than
the Abarbanel's answer) that majority implicitly believe the "message"
version of nevu'ah. We'll see if people change their minds as this
discussion makes their decision explicit and conscious.


Regardless of utility in my building my own derekh, I'm not sure RYG's
claim about shitas haRambam is necessarily so. To repeat the top quote:
: I have argued that Rambam strongly implies that God *cannot*
: confer prophecy on the unsuitable individual.


In the article (fn 21, starting on pg 160, 10th pg of PDF) RYG quotes
the Moreh, 2:33. Here are a couple of quotes (Friedlander's translation,
for ease of cut-n-paste):
> For we believe that, even if one has the capacity for prophecy, and
> has duly prepared himself, it may yet happen that he does not actually
> prophesy. It is in that case the will of God [that withholds from him
> the use of the faculty]. According to my opinion, this fact is as
> exceptional as any other miracle, and acts in the same way. For the
> laws of Nature demand that every one should be a prophet, who has a
> proper physical constitution, and has been duly prepared as regards
> education and training. If such a person is not a prophet, he is in
> the same position as a person who, like Jeroboam (1 Kings xiii.), is
> deprived of the use of his hand, or of his eyes, as was the case with
> the army of Syria, in the history of Elisha (2 Kings vi. 18)....
> There are, however, numerous passages in Scripture as well as in the
> writings of our Sages, which support the principle that it depends
> chiefly on the will of God who is to prophesy, and at what time; and
> that He only selects the best and the wisest. We hold that fools and
> ignorant people are unfit for this distinction. It is as impossible for
> any one of these to prophesy as it is for an ass or a frog; for prophecy
> is impossible without study and training; when these have created the
> possibility, then it depends on the will of God whether the possibility
> is to be turned into reality....

This last sentence is a translation of the one upon which RYG bases his
take on the Rambam.

Here's another way to read the Rambam. I'm not saying it's more
convincing, just that it's not enough less valid than RYG's to be
ignorable. I instead look at earlier sentences.

The comparison to Yerav'am. Does the Rambam consider giving sight to the
blind to be meaningless? I would presume that this is among the unnatural,
but logically meaningful. Like his take on yeish mei'ayin. (Which big
bang theory posits may not be unnatural after all.)

Also, the Rambam writes that "depends chiefly on the will of God who
is to prophesy". Not "who among the qualified". That Hashem "*selects*
only the best and the wisest".

I therefore could see that when the Rambam says it is impossible for a
fool or ignorant person to be a navi, he is sasying that it defies teva,
not that it is illogical or meaningless. There is nothing philosohically
meaningless about being handed an ability -- whether it's physical vision
or the chazon of a navi -- that was created yeish mei'ayin.

And so, I could see a paraphrase of the last sentence as: Beteva, man
prepares himself for nevu'ah and gets it. Even if he has the "sight",
HQBH could still withhold the vision from him. And if he doesn't have
the capacity, he can't ("natually" can't) get nevu'ah. Naturally, one
would need to prepare for prophecy, and then HQBH chooses whether he
has a chazon.

But supernaturally, Hashem could in theory select whomever He wished.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The waste of time is the most extravagant
micha at aishdas.org        of all expense.
http://www.aishdas.org                           -Theophrastus
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