[Avodah] No Image at Choreiv?

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 06:03:44PM -0400, Moshe Y. Gluck wrote:
:> HOWEVER.... while I agree with the Rambam that Hashem has no guf ugevi'ah,
:> how can we say that noone saw a picture of one at Choreiv? Shemos 24:10,
:> speaking of Moshe, Aharon, Nadav, Avihu, and the 70 zeqeinim, "Vayir'u
:> es E-lokei Yisrael, vesachas Raglav kemaaseih livnas hasapir..."

: It was a mental image, presumably, similar to how R' Aryeh Kaplan describes
: visions in his books. So there was no Temunah, but they saw some mental,
: spiritual manifestation of what Elokai Yisroel looks like in a world where
: vision doesn't exist.

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 07:58:48AM +0200, Arie Folger wrote:
: I'd like to suggest, as per Ramban, that they saw the maaseh merqava,
: not G"d. Veyecheyu would then mean they saw the traces of His
: presence, not Himself.

Both of these answers presume that "temunah" means the actual sight of
the entity itself, rather than a picture.

But c.f. "lo saaseh lekha kol pesel vekhol temunah asher bashamayim
mima'al..." A temunah is an image of something else. (I think it's
from min/mwn [kind], and refers to the original and the temunah's
kindredness.) Even if it's mentally constructed in response to the mind
trying to wrap itself around information being received prophetically,
it's stil a temunah, IMHO.

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 09:10:24PM -0400, Yitzchok Zirkind wrote:
: The Rambam deals with this Possuk right in the begining of the next Halacha
: (1:9)

Now, THAT'S embarassing.

The Rambam in Yesodei haTorah 1:9 invokes "diberah Torah kilshon benei
adam", which I would take to mean they didn't even have a prophetic
vision.

HOWEVER...

The Rambam in the Moreh 2:6 writes that they saw bederekh nevu'ah the
kavod nivra, created just for this purpose. This is what I was thinking
was *the* position of the Rambam when I asked the question in my prior
post.

It is also a variation on R' Saadia Gaon's theme (Emunos veDei'os 2:10),
where they saw the kavod nivra -- but through actual normal sight.
The Ramban says they did see the Shechinah, which he says is G-d, and
did so propehtically. Back in vol12 or so, I wove this together with the
Abarbanel's defense of the Rambam against the Ramban in parashas Vayeira,
and honed it to the openining vort in Mesukim MiDevash for Mishpatim
<http://www.aishdas.org/mesukim/5764/mishpatim.pdf>. Teaser: the Ramban
defines nevu'ah as a message from HQBH, and thus one is seeing symbols;
the Rambam defines nevu'ah as experiencing things from higher planes of
reality. That is how the Abarbanel explains that mal'akhim that Avraham
sees in a chazon actually are there to interact with Sodom, Amora,
Lot and his family, etc... It also explains why the Rambam can't say
they actually saw G-d, but the Ramban can. To the Ramban, they saw the
prophetic equivalent of a sheim -- a token that represents the Creator.

Still, I took it for granted that a kavod nivra created to represent
HQBH would be a temunah; since temunah means roughly "something that
looks like the original".

But in the Yad, the Rambam addresses the question by saying they didn't
even really see the kavod nivra???

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It's nice to be smart,
micha at aishdas.org        but it's smarter to be nice.
http://www.aishdas.org                   - R' Lazer Brody
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