Parashat Ki Tetze 5781 — 08/21/2021
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
This week I want to wrap up our consideration of Avicenna’s philosophy and its influence on Rambam. After that we’ll be in the home stretch of our year-long examination of the introduction to the Guide and we will begin to tackle the text itself. The final point that Prof. Pines considers draws on issues that we have already discussed. It has to do with society and its leadership.
Like Avicenna, Maimonides believed on the one hand that man is a social animal in the sense that he cannot live, or at least cannot have a satisfactory life, except within a political community. On the other hand, both of them are of the opinion (which may not have been held by al-Fārābī), that the common run of men, if left to themselves, are unfit by nature to establish such a community. However, the reasons they give for the second thesis are different. According to Avicenna the inability of average men to create by their own unaided efforts a political society that would be viable is due to the fact that people if left to their own devices find it impossible to agree upon a common law valid for all, because everyone thinks that the things that accord with his own interests are right and that the things that are unfavorable to him are wrong. Consequently, men are naturally hostile to one another. Only a prophet, i.e., a man endowed with certain faculties not found in the common run of people, can create a social bond between them and thus preserve them from the calamities and the destruction that wait upon the solitary.
Maimonides’ position is essentially not very different, but he formulates it in another way (II 40). According to him the inability of men to constitute viable society is due to the great differences subsisting between the human individuals with respect to their character and moral qualities; to cite an example, some men are very cruel, while others are averse to hurting even an insect. Only a leader endowed with special gifts can weld people who present such an enormous range of differences (which is greater than any that can be found between the individuals of any other animal species) into one society and make them submit to a law binding on all.
This hearkens back to our earlier discussion of the nature of society – how it evolves and what is the ideal organization of a society. Here, however, Rambam and Avicenna are discussing what kind of leadership is necessary for any society to get organized at all. Avicenna is of the opinion that it is impossible to have a viable society in the face of competing self-interests. Indeed, according to former UK Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, z’l, the whole point of Torah Law is to create an ideal society by training the members of that society to restrain their unbridled individualism in favor of the common good. R. Sacks adds that it is only a law that is recognized as Gd-given and absolute that can ensure compliance in the face of competing self-interest. We see in the West that as knowledge of and adherence to religious tradition has waned, the entire social fabric has become unraveled, to the point where we there is fierce debate over one’s “right” to engage in behaviors that endanger others.
Rambam, on the other hand, sees difference in character, rather than difference in interests, as the main obstacle to forming a viable society. Rambam, of course, lived in a much simpler society where there was not the vast range of competing interests that we see in society today. I’m certain that both character and interests drive people to act the way they do, absent training to the contrary. In addition, it is clear that a mindless adherence to what one thinks is Torah law can lead to rationalization and justification of all kinds of nefarious practices, especially slavery. The Jewish community has not been immune to such distortions, although generally being powerless it has been unable to engage in most of these practices. I will return to this point later to discuss a practical consideration that Vedic Science can add to the discussion.
Both Avicenna and Rambam see the same solution to melding all the different tendencies of the individuals in a society into one harmonious whole that supports and nurtures each individual. That solution is to have a law promulgated by a prophet or one with special abilities to perceive the principles and practices that will work for their society. At this point there is disagreement whether such a leader should be a prophet, one who perceives the structure of reality directly, or should be a philosopher, i.e. one who comes to the truth via reason and investigation. As we have argued, our common understanding of both types of knowers of reality is likely to be quite incomplete. To know reality, i.e. the transcendent, fully, one must have both direct experience of it (prophecy?) and intellectual understanding (philosophy?). The difference, I believe, is mainly one of emphasis. In Vedic Science one who has risen to the level of direct cognition of the ultimate reality of life is called a rishi / seer.
In order to create an ideal society, we really need more than just a seer / prophet / philosopher. Such a person can bring a code of conduct to the people, but, as we see throughout Tanach, just having a code of conduct is not enough to guarantee that the members of the society will be able to conform their behavior to that code. In fact, as time passes and we get further and further from an intuitive understanding of what the strictures of the code really mean (and in some cases, even what the words mean), conforming to the code becomes less and less possible, and commentaries supplying details of how the code is to be applied in specific situations become more and more voluminous, and therefore less and less understandable, let alone applicable in practical life.
What is needed, besides the code of law, is a teaching that will raise the student to the level of the teacher, or even above it. If a sufficient percentage of the population can be brought to the level of intuitive understanding of right action in every context and in all situations, then the behavior of the society as a whole will become more coherent and organized. The technology of consciousness that is provided by Vedic Science is such a procedure. I believe there are hints of such technologies in both Scripture and Rabbinic teaching, but the details have apparently been lost to the great bulk of the population, as we see that societies are far from ideal. How many times do we stand before Gd on Yom Kippur and ask forgiveness for the exact same failings as last year?
There is an old Indian proverb: “Knowledge in the books remains in the books; it’s never there when you need it.” We don’t need more books, no matter how enlightened the authors may be. We need teachers who can bring their students up to their level. Then we will see society make progress in solving problems and creating an environment that is conducive to everyone’s growth and fulfilment.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Ki Tetze
In the Soncino Press Chumash, the one that we use in Beth Shalom, KI Tetzei is translated as “when thou goest out.”
The parshah continues: “to battle against thy enemies and the Lrd 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 ourself 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 to my desire for teshuvah, for return to Primordial Oneness. It is a desire that needs to be given some time before we would act on it: perhaps after a while, we will see that the desire can fit into the routine things we do every day to deepen our experience of Teshuvah 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 Gd, to transform the ones that have possibilities into ones that actually help us align with Gd, (“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.