[Avodah] nes niglah

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 10:59:41PM -0400, R Richard Wolpoe wrote:
: Maybe but I am saying that a hologram is a REAL form of communication just
: not a real altering of physical laws.

Actually, creating any phsyical effect would be an altering of physical
laws. Getting the light to be just so for the hologram to be seen by
the navi would require having light and light sources do things that
aren't teva.

For that matter, directly putting things into someone's koach hadimyon may
be the only way possible to communicate with a person without violating
teva. And that's only because there must be some teva support for a
soul that has bechirah, and thus is nondeterministic, but is seated
in a physical brain. Whatever allows that gross-scale non-determinism
(non-determinism is the norm on quantum scales), could allow nevu'ah too.

On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 12:32:37AM -0400, R Richard Wolpoe wrote:
: But Actually the Rambam and his son R. Avraham say pretty much teh same re:
: Aggedita

: If you take Aggadah literally you are a fool - and actaully make TORAH look
: foolish
: But if you are cyncial re: Aggadah, you are also a fool - and maybe a letz.

The Rambam (PhM, haqdamah to pereq Cheileq) writes of three katim (as I
described them in March).
1- Those who assume they are all historical claims, see them as foolish,
   and reject the Torah;
2- Those who assume they are all historical, and therefore reduce the
   Torah and believe such foolishness;

and then in the Vilna Shas 123 amudah 4 (ie 123b 2nd column) "vehakat":
    And the third kat, and they -- as H' "Lives" -- are very few,
    until it isn't proper to call them a "kat" except in the way it's
    said that the sun is a species and it is unique, and they are those
    people for whom the greatness of the Chachamim z"l is clear. And
    they are the best of all of them, WHICH WE FIND IN *ALL THEIR WORDS*
    TEACH ABOUT TOPICS OF GREAT TRUTH.

    They know that they [Chazal] a"h don't speak foolishness (?), and it
    is known as true to them [those in the 3rd kat] that their [Chazal's]
    words have to them a nigleh and a nistar. And they, IN ALL THAT THEY
    SAY OF DIVARIM HANIMNA'IM THEY SPOKE OF THEM IN A WAY OF RIDDLE AND
    PARABLE For this is the way of the great sages. Therefore the greatest
    of sages started his book and said to understand mashal umelitzah,
    derech chachamim vechidusam...

Returning to RRW:
: The point is that Agaddah is out to tech truths but not LIERAL truths

The bits I capitalized last March were to try to convince RZLampel of
my thesis that Chazal quoted stories set in the past with absolutely no
interest in which are historical. And therefore, even caring enough to
raise the question about any particular story is a different attitude
toward these narratives than Chazal had.

: I think the Netziv explained it thusly.  In a 1,000 years the statement:
: "The 2-headed eagle has spread his wings over thousands of miles.." will
: face the same mis-understanding.

That's from R' Dov Katz, Tenu'as haMussar vol 1 (tr. R' Leaonard Oschry),
attributed to RYS:
> See S. Mark, op. cit., pp. 88­90. The author also relates that Prof.
> Hermann Helmholtz, the famous philosopher and scientist, evinced an
> interest in meeting R. Israel, and an animated conversation took place
> between the two of them. Helmholtz seized the opportunity to express
> his surprise that the Talmud, which is built on such solid and logical
> foundations should have given space to such legends which sound like
> fanatical and outlandish fantasies, such as the stories of Rabbah bar
> bar Chana, which tell of a bird standing in the sea, with the water
> reaching up to its feet, and its head to heaven (Baba Batra 73b). R.
> Israel answered by using an analogy: They were living in 1871, after
> Germany had won its great victory over France. The King of Prussia had
> been crowned Kaiser of all Germany. His emblem was an eagle.
> Previously it had been one-headed; now it had become two-headed.
> Hundreds of poets and authors had celebrated the event in diverse
> forms. He himself had read a poem in which the author had given a
> description of the glory of modern Germany in these terms: The great
> German eagle had one head reaching out to Memel and the other to Metz;
> its one wing tip touched Kiel and the other Badensee. They knew the
> reference. The poet had described how far German territory now
> extended in all four directions. Now, the professor could imagine to
> himself that 600 years hence ­ when no one would remember how Germany
> had been fragmentized in principalities and the metaphoric description
> of the rise of the monarchy someone would find a story of a two-headed
> eagle with wings extending some 300 miles in some library. Would he
> not express the same opinion as the professor had on the stories of
> Rabbah bar bar Chana? Obviously, just as they understood the import of
> the two-headed eagle, so did the people of those times understand the
> implications of those stories, which were certainly richer in content
> than the mere description of an eagle. It was because the present was
> so far removed from that epoch that the description seemed so absurd
> to them. Similar approaches had to be adopted towards the other
> Aggadot of the Talmud as well. The reply is characteristic for R.
> Israel, and shows his rationalistic bent.

Speaking of RYS's rationalistic bent... The whole centerpiece of Mussar
is the notion that perfection of the soul is defined in concrete terms
of personality.

...
: Did the Rambam and R. Avraham get this from an even earlier source? I do not
: know.  Perhaps R. Sa'adyah or others have said the same.

RDE listed a long line of such rishonim and acharonim. Check the archives.
I think an insistence on literalism has been firmly proven here (in
annual iterations) to be a new invention.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Life is complex.
micha at aishdas.org                Decisions are complex.
http://www.aishdas.org               The Torah is complex.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                                - R' Binyamin Hecht