[Avodah] Just One HaShem in Heaven

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Micha Berger wrote:

> There are two seeming conflicts that most O Jews are taught in preschool
> and never think about long enough to notice that there is an apparent
> conflict to address. The resolution for each could be found trivially in
> seconds. I'm not saying these are paradoxes - at most they are dialectics.
> (By which I'm trying to say: Two ways of looking at things due to the
> richness and complexity of the human condition.)

When I read this paragraph, I tried to anticipate which two conflicted ideas you'd be referring to. The paradox that I came up with was:

1) HaShem is in heaven
2) HeShem created heaven

> A number of us suggested that from day 1, "shamayim" was a general concept
> that had two existing instances. As I put it, "shamayim" is very plausibly
> translated "there-ness" -- and both the sky / space and the spiritual
> heaven are unreachable "There"s.

I would resolve it by saying that the two meanings of "shamayim" are:

1) The metaphysical world which is unreachable by us, yet still a creation of Hashem's.
2) Everything beyond our physical world, including both the metaphysical world and HaShem Himself.

(Words *can* have these double meanings, such as "yad", which can mean either the arm as a whole or just the hand.)

I don't know if this clarifies anything, or muddies it, or if I've totally misunderstood RMB and taken it in an entirely different direction.

Akiva Miller

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