[Avodah] Just One HaShem in Heaven

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 02:26:22PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
> On 10/12/2010 2:04 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
>>                                                  In any case, it still
>> my point that "Hashem is everywhere" was logically enough coined by a
>> chassid, for whom Immanence is given more emphasis than Transcendance
>> in daily avodah.

> I'm not so sure about that.  L chassidus is primarily about transcending
> that gap (and the laws of logic which dictate its existence) and bringing
> the Transcendent (Sovev Kol Almin) into this world where it logically
> can't exist.  That the purpose of the whole creation was to transcend
> this gap, and create for Him (i.e. as He really is) a residence davka
> in the physical world, which is impossible.

The dispute about the nature of tzimtzum is a -- and possibly THE --
philosophical point of departure between the Gra and Chassidus.

L's notion of Immanence is so intense, you take "ein od milvado"
fully literally. In L "Hashem is everywhere" -- literally, that's
what "everywhere" /is/, and the notion that it's a distinct concept
is illusion. No?

> To get topical, this leads into the LR's answer to the BY's famous
> question why Chanukah lasts eight days and not seven: The miracle of
> Chanukah was that the oil was normal physical olive oil, and burned at
> the normal rate for such oil, and no more oil was being created, and yet
> it lasted eight days.  Most miracles break the physical laws of our
> universe, but this one broke the logical law that ought to bind all
> possible universes, Aristotle's Law of Non-Contradiction...

What about makkas dam?

The Maharal makes this kind of paradox an inherent feature of the concept
of neis.

BTW, since QM, Aristo's Kaw of Non-Contradiction went out the
window when dealing with scales where uncertainty is a factor. See
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantlog>. So, it needn't be a
part of all possible universes, it's not really even part of this one,
except that on the visible scale, the logic the beri'ah really uses
degenerates into a bivalent logic.

> But we're really over-analysing this.  The song was written to accompany
> a story for children about how Hashem is always watching us, even if
> nobody else is.  It's there to teach a practical lesson, not high-flying
> concepts of theology.

My point wasn't to analyze the song, but to use the song to analyze the
culture that produced it.

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 12:08:26AM +0000, kennethgmiller at juno.com 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....

: 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

I spelled out what I was referring to "Hashem is everywhere" vs "Hashem
is in Shamayim" (implying: as opposed to here).

:> 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.

What about "ve'of ye'ofeif al ha'aretz, al penei reqia hashamayim" (Ber'
1:20), "vayechusu kol haharim hagevorim asher tachas kol hashamayim" (7:19),
or "ve'ad of hashamayim" (ibid v. 23). Don't those cases mean physical sky?

I lumped together your meanings.

: (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 believe that of the Torah's Hebrew. Rather, words can have a
general meaning that can lead to having two common uses. Not that
HQBH would use a word ambiguously, but a word may be emphasizing a point
that is broader than any one English or Abazi"t (Mod Heb) equivalent.

Thus, yad means the effector organ, which is sometimes the hand,
sometimes the hand with the arm, and later in the mishnah evolves into
also meaning control "yado al hatachtonah".

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When we are no longer able to change a situation
micha at aishdas.org        -- just think of an incurable disease such as
http://www.aishdas.org   inoperable cancer -- we are challenged to change
Fax: (270) 514-1507      ourselves.      - Victor Frankl (MSfM)