Parashat Ki Tetze 5784 – 09/14/2024
Beginning with Bereishit 5781 (17 October 2020) we embarked on a new format. We will be considering Rambam’s (Maimonides’) great philosophical work Moreh Nevukim (Guide for the Perplexed) in the light of the knowledge of Vedic Science as expounded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The individual essays will therefore not necessarily have anything to do with the weekly Torah portion, although certainly there will be plenty of references to the Torah, the rest of the Bible, and to the Rabbinic literature. For Bereishit we described the project. The next four parshiyyot, Noach through Chayei Sarah, laid out a foundational understanding of Vedic Science, to the degree I am capable of doing so. Beginning with Toledot we started examining Moreh Nevukim.
Devarim 21:10 – 25:18
Rambam now turns his attention to the idea of resting:
As the term to say [‘amirah] is figuratively used for the will in regard to everything that has been created in the six days of the beginning – with reference to which it is said: He said, He said – the term to rest [shebithah] is derivatively used with reference to the Sabbath as there was no creation on that day. It is accordingly said: And He rested on the seventh day [Gen 2:2]. For refraining from speech is likewise called rest. Thus it is said: So these three men ceased [vayish’b’tu] to answer Job [Job 32:1].
Before we talk about resting, I want to make a couple of comments about Gd’s creating by speech. There are two different roots that pertain to speaking. The one Rambam mentions here is aleph-mem-reish, and it’s usually translated as “to say.” This is considered to denote a soft way of speaking. The other one is dalet-bet-reish, and it’s usually translated “to speak.” It is used in a more commanding way, as a somewhat harsher means of communication. I would like to associate the A-M-R root with the Tetragrammaton, which represents the Attribute of Mercy and the D-B-R root with Elokim, which is the Attribute of Strict Justice. However, the first chapter of Genesis goes against this paradigm. The word for Gd used throughout Chapter 1 is Elokim – this makes sense, as Chapter 1 is describing the creation of the natural world, which is associated with the name Elokim. But the word used for “say” is omer – va’yomer Elokim… On the other side, when Gd speaks to Moses to give the various mitzvot to He uses the D-B-R root – vay’daber Hashem el Moshe…This makes sense also, as Gd is giving commandments and uses a more imperative form of speech.
So here are two sets of cases where Hashem is linked with D-B-R and Elokim is linked with A-M-R. I think I could probably reconcile these cases, but Occam’s Razor suggests that my original guess is just incorrect. In any event, whether it’s Hashem or Elokim doing the saying or the speaking, we recognize from our previous discussions that this speech is a sequence of vibrations from within Gd that are the structure of creation, which is actually nothing other than the beautiful and complex tapestry of these vibrations.
Now, back to our main topic, namely, rest:
Similarly the term to repose [nichah] occurs in the sense of refraining from speech. Thus it says: They spoke to Nabal according to all those words in the name of David and reposed [yanuchu] [I Sam 25:9]; the meaning of which in my opinion is: and then refrained from speech until they heard the answer. For in the preceding verses there is no mention of their being tired in any way, so that even if they were tired, the term reposed would be quite extraneous to the story. Scripture merely relates that they brought out that speech with its effort at graciousness and then were silent; that is, they did not add any other uttered notion to that speech, or any act, that would necessitate his reply to them to be such as he gave.
So we have two different roots meaning “to rest,” namely Sh-B-T (from which we get the word “Shabbat”) and N-Ch-H (from which the name Noach is derived). The first root means “to stop or cease.” Of course that is what Gd did on Shabbat – He stopped creating. We will return to this issue in a bit. Rambam translates the other root, N-Ch-H, as “repose.” It is often a transitive verb meaning “to lay down.” The blessing for putting on t’fillin is l’haniach t’fillin / “to lay t’fillin.” The example Rambam gives of King David’s messengers’ saying their piece and then remaining silent shades over into the idea of “stopping,” although it is not the kind of hard stop that Sh-B-T implies.
I want to consider the idea of Gd’s stopping the process of creation. Our own liturgy seems to contradict the idea that Gd stopped creating. We say every day that Gd “renews in His goodness every day the work of creation” (italics mine). In other words, creation is a continuous process. The creation that we have has to be sustained by a constant flow of energy and intelligence from the transcendental field or it would just collapse into nothingness. But there is a deeper issue. The transcendent is beyond time – time itself is a part of creation. So what does it mean that Gd created for 6 days (or periods – there was no sun or moon until day 4, as Clarence Darrow pointed out to William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes Monkey Trial) and then “rested’ on the 7th day?
When Torah says “When Gd began to create heaven and earth … Gd said ‘Let there be light!’ and there was light,” the “when” cannot be a temporal “when,” because there was no time for there to be a before and after. I suspect that the “when” is actually a logical “when” – perhaps it’s an indication of the sequence of the laws of nature that structure creation – light is the most fundamental vibration of the transcendent within itself, then on the second day the different vibrations divided and bifurcated into the fundamental duality of light and darkness, etc. In other words, it’s a logical sequence, not a temporal one. Now the way we look at logic is, I think intuitively linked to our sense of time. Syllogism is an “if…then” statement, and presumably the “if” part comes “before” the “then” part. It’s almost like causation, where the cause has to be temporally before the effect (in all coordinate systems), even if the parts of the syllogism aren’t actually physically objects that have to obey the laws of physics.
So if the entire creation process is taking place on a level that is transcendental to time, what does it actually mean to say the “Gd rested.” Perhaps it is this. The creation is the pattern of vibration of the transcendent. This pattern of vibrations may have its swells and lulls. Perhaps we can say that there is a basic cycle of seven periods that culminates in a period of “rest,” but one in which we’re poised to begin the next cycle. In other words, Gd doesn’t “rest” – Gd doesn’t actually act and certainly doesn’t get tired! As in all the other anthropomorphic expressions, we have to understand that these are just ways for us to try to understand something that doesn’t truly lend itself to our limited intellects.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Ki Teitze
“Ki Tetzei means “when you go out.”
The parshah continues: “to battle against thy enemies and the Lord shall deliver them into thy hands…”
This is a reminder that, literally, in battle, victory goes to those whom Gd supports; symbolically, that in any area of life, to be successful we need to align ourselves with Gd’s will. Battle is never really battle: it is Wholeness restoring a part to its reality as a vibration of Wholeness.
This parshah gives at least 74 mitzvot, ways to align with Gd’s Will, out of the 613 given in Torah (chabad.org) and some unifying themes on the material level are kindness, integrity and purity – all themes which we can strive to live in our lives today in our marriages, business relations, relations with strangers. In the Full sense the theme is always: Wholeness is always expressing itself through us, through all souls, so as to restore Full Awareness to us.
The opening illustration is in the case of the beautiful captive a soldier desires to take to wife.
The captive is to be given time to grieve and then marriage can take place. This is kindness.
If the soldier wishes to divorce the wife, then she shall be set free, not sold for money, not treated as a slave. This is kindness and integrity – she has been the wife, the relationship was entered into honestly (at least by the soldier – the woman’s rights have not been considered) and also honest relations: she not be treated as property, as a business commodity.
What does it mean symbolically? To me, “go out to battle” means, symbolically to extend Wholeness into specific details, desires, that have not yet become directed to Wholeness, absorbed in Wholeness.
A beautiful captive is a desire that is very appealing but doesn’t seem on the face of it to be aligned with our desire for Wholeness, for return to Primordial Oneness. It is a desire that needs to be given some time before we would act on it: perhaps after awhile, we will see that the desire can fit into the routine things we do every day to deepen our experience of Wholeness and to spread it into areas of our life, of life in general that it has not yet reached.
I wish for all of us that we will enjoy the ability to divorce, to let go desires that are not aligned with God, to transform the ones that have possibilities into ones that actually help us align with God, (“take them to wife”) and that we will arrive at a state where we experience that everything is Wholeness; there is no going out, there are no enemies, there is no battle, there are no captives and all the world is experienced as our Self, the Self – Gd.
Baruch HaShem.