[Avodah] Bereishit

[Zvi Lampel]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 12:01 PM Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> wrote:

>
> RMB:
> :> the Ramban famously says there is no "it" to nature.
>
> ZL:  Famously, but phantomly. Ramban (see, for example, on Shmos 25:24) no
> less
> : than Rambam, holds that olom kiminhago noheig. Ramban repeats a number of
> : times that each "Va-yehi  khein" in Breishis means that Hashem made that
> : minhag permanent.
>
> ...
> The Ramban talks about nature being a pattern in events, but those events
> are /directly/ caused by HQBH.


Where does Ramban say this? As I wrote, he repeats a number of times that
each "Va-yehi  khein" in Breishis means that Hashem made that minhag
permanent at maaseh breishis. See, for example, on Shmos 6:6. ''The posuk
says 'Vay-hiH khein'' because that is the teva that was instilled in them
forever...and they will remain with the first teva that was instilled in
them at the time of their formation (Vayamdual haTeva haRishon asher hussam
bahem bEis yetsirasam). And on Vayikra 26:11, in the passage about refuah,
he uses the phrase, VaHashem Heeneecham lemikrei haTivee-im, Hashem leaves
them to the natural mikrreim. How is this insisting that, contra Rambam,
''those events are /directly/ caused by HQBH''?

Regardless of the mechanics of seichel haPoel, etc, I see no basis to
create a machlokess between the Rambam and Raman on this point. Especially
since he /says/ he is in agreement with the Rambam.

RMB: [According to RambaM:] A homo sapien who lacks da'as is less of a
> person, and thus to that
> extent is less subject to hashgachah peratis. Instead, he is left to teva
> (Moreh 3:18). Not that he is left to minhago shel olam, but that HQBH
> delegates his fate.
>

 ZL: You are making a distinction that you attribute to RambaM, between
teva and minhago shel olam.
Teva is something that a daas-lacking person is left to. Through it, Hashem
delegates his fate.

Minhag shel olam is something else.

I don't follow. Where is such a distinction made?

And I thought you maintained that contra RambaN, RambaM does /not/ hold
that HQBH delegates the fate of lesser people. Only ''the RambaN talks
about nature being a pattern in events... /directly/ caused by HQBH. Is
there also a distinction between ''directly causing'' and ''delegating''?
Do you mean RambaM holds Hashem HAD delegated their fate (by setting up the
mechanisms at Creation)?

RMB:
> I tried to semi-explain by talking about the Ramban's lack of "'it' to
> nature". ... no metaphysical "object" to pin nature on... there is no such
> "thing" as nature. It's not a
>
hypostatis.

ZL: Where do you see what you are trying to explain in Ramban?

Regarding  the shiur by Rav Bednarshom, and the point that

1- According to the Rambam, hashgachah is Divine Assistance; according
to the Ramban it includes oneshim.

2- According to the Rambam, there is a mechanism that causes the
relationship between the person's da'as and their recieving HP or not.
The Rambam describes it more directly as Divine Response.


The last sentence should be about RambaN, right? And here's something to
ponder: As I wrote previously, the Rambam writes that the greatest miracle
of all, is nature's responding to man's behavior, favoring good behavior
and punishing bad behavior. Granted, favoring good behavior is miraculous.
But l-fi Rambam's shittah, what is miraculous about leaving the
practitioner of bad behavior to the wiles of nature?

Also, regarding:

> It was often understood that the Ramban stands in fierce opposition to

> the stance of the Rambam. In two places (commentary on Shemot 13:16 and
> his Torat Hashem Temima sermon), the Ramban writes that a believing
> Jew must believe that everything that happens is a miracle. The only
> rule of causation is that if we do mitzvot, we can expect a reward,
> and if we transgress the Torah we can expect to be punished by God.


Obviously, this is just the hava amina. The Ramban did not write that
''everything that happens'' is a miracle. His wording is that the whole
[teaching of the] Torah [about reard and punishment] is a miracle. Meaning,
as the maskana is, that the Torah's system of award and punishment is
miraculous.

Secondly, the Ramban does not say that everything is a miracle,without
causation, except reward and punishment. The causation between behavior and
reward and punishment is an explanation of, not in contrast to, his
statement that the whole teaching of the Torah is that there are miracules.

>
>
> :ZL:  His point in all his famous and repeated declarations is that it is a
> : central Torah fact that man's deeds are rewarded or punished by the
> forces
> : of nature, and that this is miraculous. No different from the Rambam. He,
> : just as Rambam, is not saying that outside of this area there is no
> minhago
> : shel olom, no "it" to nature.
>
> : Which doesn't mean that creation happened by miracles we could understand
> : either. It justifies the Michtav meiEliyahu's position that creation is
> : incomprehensible by any means. And instead we pick which simplified
> model,
> : which perspective, we choose to explain the unknowable from.
>
> : Except that the Rambam speaking for himself declares,
>
> : MN 2:17 (see http://press.tau.ac.il/perplexed/chapters/chap_2_17.htm,
> note
> : 6, for a ‎compilation of translations of this passage.)‎
>
> : For we, the community following in the footsteps of Moshe Rabbeynu and
> : Avraham ‎Avinu, aleihem hashalom, believe that the world came into being
> in
> : such-and-such a ‎form, and became such-and-such from such-and-such (haya
> : kach mi-kach), and such ‎was created after such.‎
>
> :>See pereq 30. There was no time, no 6 days. Just 6 steps in logic.
>
> : The interpretation that when the Torah says days it means levels is given
> : by the Ralbag, based upon, and compelled by, his take of Chazal who say
> : that Hashem created everything full bloom instantly and simultaneously.
> But
> : that's (just one of the possibilities) offered by Ralbag, not Rambam...
>
> It's the Ralbag's PESHAT in the Rambam, not his own shitah.


It is not his peshat in the Rambam. He does not mention Rambam, much less
attribute to him, the ''levels'' peshat, neither in his Torah commentary
nor in his Milchamos Hashem. If you can find such a passage, please locate
it for me.

On the contrary, here is how he addresses the question of  how there could
be days before the fourth day when the sun materialized. He gives two
possibilities. And he gives the ''levels'' approach  as an /alternative/
explanation to the answer that the sphere, by which time and days are
produced, was in operation from the moment of creation.They are two
/different/ ways of answering how there could be days one through three
before the existence of the stars, although both answers are predicated on
the Chazal-based view that everything in the universe and earth was
instantly and simultaneously created in its complete form (besides
vegetation and Adam and Chava).

And if the virtually identical verbiage to that of the Rambam is an
indication that Ralbag was intending to give peshat in the Rambam, note
that he is explicitly using that verbiage in the answer granting that
''days'' are units of time, in /contrast/ to the notion of ''days'' meaning
''levels''.

And also remember, as I have noted before, that Ralbag explicitly says
(Torah commentary, on VaYchulu) V-im nim-tsi-u rechokim meod mei-hakavana
asher matzanu kahn, kmo shetireh mimah shebier bazeh haRav HaMoreh besifro
hanichbad Moreh HaNevuchim, ViHachcham R. Avraham Ibn Ezra.... that his new
approach is /very far/ from that of the Rambam. And he repeats this in
Sefer Milchemes Hashem, Presentation VI, ‎Part II, Chapter 8, Conclusion.

Abravanel and The Aqeidas Yitzchaq (shaar 3) on Bereishis. This is how
> the Rambam was understood by other rishonim. Even by a non-Aristotilian
> like R' Yitzchaq Arama.
>

But you see, you have to resort to secondary sources to support the claims
about what Rambam and Ralbag held, whereas we have the first-hand sources
in front of us. The fact is that the Ralbag does not attribute the
''levels''approach to the Rambam, and in fact considers the ''levels''
approach as an alternative to what the Rambam wrote..

Abarbanel is known to repeat ideas of his contemporary, R. Y. Arama. He is
also known to have a very eclectic style. You are of course correct that in
his 9th shayla he attributes the ''levels'' approach to the Rambam. But
look how he does it, and explain to me how it makes sense:


> The 9th shayla concerns what is mentioned in the Moreh Nevuchim. Rambam
> notes that time ‎cannot exist without the movement of the celestial
> spheres, the sun and moon. However, this raises ‎the question as to how
> there could be time before the fourth day on which the celestial spheres
> and sun were ‎created. The Rambam answered this question by asserting that
> in fact the spheres and the sun were ‎created on the first day. Thus time
> existed for the first 3 days in the same manner as it existed on the
> ‎subsequent days. He explained that in fact everything — both the Heavens
> and the Earth — were created ‎on the first day.


Stop here. Do you not see the Abarbanel explaining Rambam as holding that
the days of Breishis were units of time, and not ''levels''? Let's continue:

The Rambam cited Chazal that the word “es” indicated that the creation on
> the first day ‎included everything associated with the Heavens as well as
> everything associated with the Earth. He also ‎cited the gemora (Chulin
> 60a) that everything that was created was created in its final form. He
> also cited ‎another statement of Chazal that the Heavens and Earth were
> created simultaneously. Thus the Rambam ‎believed that the work of Creation
> happened all on one day and was not divided amongst six days. He ‎claimed
> that in a single moment of creation everything came into existence.


And of course, the Rambam continues (and Ralbag includes it) that whereas
all was created ex nihilo from the first instant of creation, following
that was a process of separating the components of the universe, forming
things, as he says elsewhere in the Moreh, kach mikach.

How then does the Abarbanel say in the next breath:


>  He explained that the reason ‎for the Torah stating that there were six
> days of Creation was to indicate the different levels of created ‎beings
> according to their natural hierarchy. Thus the Rambam does not understand
> the word day to be a ‎temporal day and he doesn’t read Bereishis to be
> describing the chronological sequence of creation….


Kasha reisha al sefa!

And note that in shayla 5 as well Abarbanel had written:

That which the Torah mentioned of the creation of the stars on the fourth
day, made HaRav haMoreh answer, as it seems from his words, in that chapter
30 of Part Three, that on the first day the sphere was created with the
stars and light. But their actions had affect on the fourth day upon the
vegetation.Such is apparent from the words of the Rav...Perhaps RambaN too
meant this, since he mentions this approach in the name of yeish meforshim.


And if one is to treat this as Abarbanel changing his mind, well then
consider another about-face over 80 pages later (p. 85 in our editions)

Behold you see that the opinion of the Rav was ...that all that is
mentioned regarding the activity of the six days, ‎from the creation of the
heavens and the earth, and all of the phenomena, and the creation of Adam
and ‎his wife, up until “vayechulu” have no allegory whatsoever, for
everything was ‎literal to him [the Rambam]. Therefore you will see that in
this very chapter, no. 30 in the second section, ‎in all which the Rav has
explicated regarding the activity of the six days, he did not make an
allegory or a ‎hint at all. Rather, he did the exact opposite, for he made
a concerted effort to support the doctrine of ‎creation ex nihilo and
accepted all of the verses literally…‎

Obviously, Abarbanel was not consistent as to whether the Rambam understood
the creation days to be ''levels'' rather than units of time. So he should
not be cited with such certainty that he held so.

‎I would also caution against uncritically accepting A’s description of B’s
opinion if A goes on to ‎lambaste it, as the Abarbanel did with his
original reading of the Moreh Nevuchim.

‎(The question presents itself, then, how did the Abarbanel’s contemporary,
the Akeidas Yitzcahk, ‎and the commentary of the ShemTov–who is not
regarded as a rishon—as opposed to the ‎commentary by Crescas), and the
Abarbanel himself in his second take, get from (a) the Rambam’s ‎classical
rendition of a six-day meta-natural development of potential created on day
one, to (b) ‎seeing the Rambam as promulgating that “the six days are a
metaphor for six levels in the hierarchy ‎of natural objects:
light/darkness, water, minerals, flora, fauna, man”?‎

My theory is that the earlier commentators of the Moreh, such as Narboni,
greatly influenced by ‎the Aristotelian academia of the time, anxiously
imposed their radical views on the Rambam. (We ‎see that in the Rambam’s
own time, he complained of people radicalizing his views—including those
‎who as accused him of (or “complimented” him for) denying techiass
ha-meisim). They hijacked the ‎Moreh so efficiently that it became popular
to think the Rambam thought like Narboni. This ‎became the starting point
from which later commentaries saw the Moreh (similar to, l’havdil, Rashi’s
‎commentary being one’s first impression of what the Chumash says, and
one’s natural thinking that ‎what Rashi says is necessarily what the
Chumash undoubtedly means.)‎


> In any case, the Rambam's problem with time is because in his world (again,
> following Aristo) time is a property of a process. Until the spheres spin,
> there are no processes, no time. The notion of time as a dimension in which
> processes occur evolves into being through Galieleo and Newton. When the
> Rambam analyzes "zeman", he isn't talking about time the way we think of
> time.
>

Not my  issue.

>
> His problem is with zeman as a whole without spheres, not yom before
> the sun.
>

*In the words of Ralbag the **problem is with zeman before the sun. His
answer is that the sphere, even without the sun, produces zeman. *

The problem that bothered the early ones, with what were day one, day two
and day three measured? Behold, the light-bearers were not in existence
until day four! [The answer is that even though the light-bearers did not
appear until day four], the heavenly sphere was in existence on day one,
and each revolution of it formed approximately one day.

Abarbanel puts it that the problem is zeman before the sphere, sun and
stars. The answer is that they all existed and formed zeman from the first
act of creation.

רלב"ג (הקדמה, חלק א)

(בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ (א, א-ה)

...ונֹאמר, שכבר ביארנו בששי מספר מלחמות ה׳ (חלק א פרק כ), שהוית העולם מה׳
יתעלה ראוי שתהיה בזולת זמן, וכן ביארו רבותינו ז״ל שהשמים והארץ נבראו יחדיו;
אמרו בפרק אין דורשין (חגיגה יב, א):... ׳וחכמים אומרים: זה וזה כאחד נבראו,
שנאמר: ׳אף ידי יָסְדָה ארץ וימיני טִפְּחָה שמים, קֹרֵא אני אליהם יעמדו
יחדו׳ (ישעיהו מח, יג). וזה יתבאר עוד אצלנו ממה שאמר בתורה: ׳אלה תולדות
השמים והארץ בהִבָּרְאָם ביום עשות ה׳ אלהים ארץ ושמים׳ (ב, ד) —* למדנו מזה
כי השמים והארץ ותולדותיהם נבראו ביום אחד.* והנה המשילו החכמים הִגָּלוֹת
ההויה בקצת הדברים קודם קצת במעשה בראשית,למי   שזרע זרעים חֲלוּקים יחד בארץ,
ויצמח קצתם קודם קצת

*.וכן נֹאמר שהיה הענין בהוית העולם, שהכל נתהוה יחד מה׳ יתעלה ונגלה קצתו
קודם קצת .*

*או* נאמר

שכבר נתיחסה ההויה לקצת הדברים קודם קצת, להעיר על היותם קודמים *בעצם ובסיבה*,
כי כוונת התורה להעמידנו על חכמת הנמצאות בזה הסיפור הנפלא, כמו שקדם

ואיך שהיה הענין, הנה יסור מזה המקום *הספק אשר סופק לקודמים באיזה דבר שוער
יום ראשון ויום שני ויום שלישי והנה לא היו המאורות נמצאים עד יום רביעי*;

וזה מבואר

*לפי ההנחה הראשונה,* כי [אע"פ שלא היה הכוכבים נמצאים עד היום הרביעי, מ"מ]
*ה**גרם השמימי היה נמצא ביום ראשון, והסיבוב האחד ממנו הוא יום אחד בקירוב *—
היה שנשער בו אנחנו או שלא נשער בו. ואיננו זר אם נאמר שהיה ידוע אצל ה׳ שיעור
הזמן בזולת שמש וכוכבים, וזה מבואר בנפשו.

*ולפי ההנחה השנית *הוא יותר מבואר, כי היו המאורות גם כן נמצאים ביום ראשון.
ואל זה כִּוְּנוּ רבותינו ז״ל באומרם: ׳מאורות הן הן שנבראו ביום ראשון ולא
תלאן עד יום רביעי׳ (חגיגה יב, א), רוצה לומר שלא תלה התהוותם בזמן קודם ליום
רביעי. והנה תתבאר הסיבה בזה במה שיבוא (חלק ד באה״פ הספק השני), רצוני: למה
לא נתיחסה ההויה בהם קודם זה. ואי אפשר שנבין ממאמרם שיהיו נבראים ביום הראשון
נפרדים ותלאן ביום הרביעי ברקיע, כי אינם תלויים בו, אבל הם בעומק הרקיע
קבועים וקיימים, וזה מבואר מאד למעיין בזה הספר


>
> But the bottom line,to which we both agree, is that traditional Judaism
holds that Creation, regardless of our issue about zeman, was not a natural
process.

Zvi Lampel
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20181122/c93c7100/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: ???? ???? ??????.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 162531 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20181122/c93c7100/attachment-0001.pdf>