[Avodah] Rav SR Hirsch and the Raavad on Anthropomorphism

[h Lampel]

On Areivim, R. Chesky Salomon noted:
> In ''Psalm 8 as an Educational Text'' (Collected Writings VII p. 385) he [RSRH] writes about
> a misguided approach to education:
>
> "They act as if the most mature philosopher knows much more about the
> nature of G-d than the innocent soul of any child, or as if it were
> even necessary for us to know (and we were therefore in a position to
> know) about the essence of G-d in order to conduct ourselves with
> decency and morality in His world! [...] As if any endeavor that
> presumes to delve, by philosophical doctrine or dialectics, into the
> essence of G-d -- whether He exists and what He is like -- were not
> founded mostly on baseless and meaningless fallacies, on a
> misinterpretation of the subject studied and of the means to attain
> the desired knowledge!"

RSRH writes similarly in his Chumash commentary on Breishis, end of 6:6 
(I'm using the new Haberman edition translation, except for the second 
sentence, where I maintain the more delicious translation in the older 
Isaac Levy edition):

''Let us here make a general remark about anthropomorphic expressions
in Scripture.For so long people have philosophized all round these 
expressions to remove the danger of the slightest thought of any 
materiality or corporeality of G-d that, at the end, one runs very 
nearly into the danger of losing all idea of the personality of 
G-d....This is also the view of the /Ra'avad/, the distinctively Jewish
thinker: Belief in the Personality of G-d is more important than the
speculations of those who reject the attribution of material features to
G-d.''

The view RSRH attributed to the Raavad has also been described as the 
real point the rishon R' Moshe Taku meant to make (as opposed to an 
actual belief in Hashem's corporeality, attributed to him by some).

Question: We know the Raavad questioned the Rambam's labeling a min one 
misled by Midrashim and pesukim to attribute physicality to Hashem. But 
where does the Raavad make the point RSRH attributes to him: that belief 
in the Personality of G-d is more important than ''the speculations of 
those'' who preach his incorporeality?

Zvi Lampel


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