Parashat Tzav 5784 — 03/30/2024
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.
Vayikra 6:1-8:36
Rambam promises more obscurity and he delivers! This is why I became a physicist, and why I admire my kids, two of whom went into philosophy, so much!
More obscure than what preceded. Know that the description of Gd, may He be cherished and exalted, by means of negations is the correct description – a description that is not affected by an indulgence in facile language and does not imply any deficiency with respect to Gd in general or in any particular mode. On the other hand, if one describes Him by means of affirmations, one implies, as we have made clear, that He is associated with that which is not He and implies a deficiency in Him. I must make it clear to you in the first place how negations are in a certain respect attributes and how they differ from the affirmative attributes. After that I shall make it clear to you that we have no way of describing Him unless it be through negations and not otherwise.
Rambam is going to explain his whole approach to trying to understand Gd’s nature through negation. Anything positive we might assert about Gd’s nature is, by definition, at attempt to “define” Gd. A definition is something that makes finite, as the root suggests, and that of course does violence to Gd’s infinite nature. In the last chapter, he expressed this in phraseology like “Gd is One, but not through oneness.” In other words, our understanding of “one,” which works for counting items, does not work for Gd, Who is beyond count. In other words, Gd’s Oneness is not in contrast to any other number; as we say in the liturgy, there is nothing that can compare to Gd – there are no axes shared by Gd and anything in Gd’s creation. Gd is transcendent, everything else is bounded, and we need to speak about Gd in a different way than we speak about items in creation.
Rambam now discusses the relationship between negative and positive attributes.
I shall say accordingly that an attribute does not particularize any object of which it is predicated in such a way that it is not associated by virtue of that particular attribute with other things. On the contrary, the attribute is sometimes attributed to the object of which it is predicated in spite of the fact that the latter has it in common with other things and is not particularized through it. For instance, if you would see a man at some distance and if you would ask: What is this thing that is seen ? and were told: This is a living being – this affirmation would indubitably be an attribute predicated of the thing seen though it does not particularize the latter, distinguishing it from everything else. However, a certain particularization is achieved through it; namely, it may be learnt from it that the thing seen is not a body belonging to the species’ of plants or to that of the minerals.
One thing we use attributes for is to specify individual instances of a general type. For example, there are many mammals with 4 legs. There are many possible attributes, such as “has cloven hooves” and “chews the cud.” Those animals that have both these attributes are kosher animals, if either one is missing, the animal is not kosher. These attributes serve to distinguish between kosher and non-kosher animals. Animals are animals, but some animals are kosher and some are not.
Rambam goes on to show that negative attributes can also specify and individuate items:
Similarly if there were a man in this house and you knew that some body is in it without knowing what it is and would ask, saying: What is in this house ? and the one who answered you would say: There is no mineral in it and no body of a plant – a certain particularization would be achieved and you would know that a living being is in the house though you would not know which animal. Thus the attributes of negation have in this respect something in common with the attributes of affirmation, for the former undoubtedly bring about some particularization even if the particularization due to them only exists in the exclusion of what has been negated from the sum total of things that we had thought of as not being negated.
Now there’s a different way that negative attributes specify an object, and that is through the “holes” in the field of all possible things that the object could be. Thus, to continue our example, suppose we consider the negative attribute “does not have cloven hooves.” This “carves out” a set of animals (the ones that do have cloven hooves) from the universe of all animals. The negative attribute does specify a subset of animals (animals that have non-cloven hooves or paws or other kinds of feet) and therefore particularizes the phenomenon we’re dealing with, only it’s somewhat more indirect.
Incidentally, in the early days of quantum mechanics, a solution to Schrödinger’s equation was proposed in which there was a “sea” of negative energy electrons permeating all of space. Every so often one of those negative energy electrons would be ejected or popped out from that sea into a positive energy state. The “hole” that was left would behave exactly like an electron, only with positive charge – that is, a positron. When a positive energy electron falls into the “hole,” we see electron-positron annihilation. Now quantum mechanics has come a long way since then and we have a better understanding of antimatter, but the idea of holes’ acting as something real does bear on Rambam’s negative attributes.
Now there still are differences between positive and negative attributes:
Now as to the respect in which the attributes of negation differ from the attributes of affirmation: The attributes of affirmation, even if they do not particularize, indicate a part of the thing the knowledge of which is sought, that part being either a part of its substance or one of its accidents; whereas the attributes of negation do not give us knowledge in any respect whatever of the essence the knowledge of which is sought, unless this happens by accident as in the example we have given.
I think this means simply that when you have a positive attribute you are talking about the thing itself, whereas with a negative attribute you are talking indirectly about all the other things that the thing could possibly be, as in our example of the animal. Now you can probably see where this is going. We can’t use positive attributes about Gd because that would be defining Gd in terms of something outside of Gd, which we have discussed over the last several weeks and seen to be impossible. We are therefore left with negative attributes, or negative descriptions of Gd, which do not specify anything about Gd, but only indicate what Gd is not. Even then, there is a difference between negative descriptions as applied to Gd and to creations. In the case of the animal that does not have cloven hooves, we can enumerate other possibilities, but in the case of Gd there is no universe of possibilities outside of Gd.
We’ll conclude this approach next week Gd willing.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Tzav
Tzav” means “command.” In the previous parshah, Vayikra, Gd called to Moses to tell Aaron and his sons, the priests, the nature of the offerings they will make. In this parshah, Tzav, Gd commands Moses to tell Aaron and his sons their rights and their responsibilities regarding the offerings and the eternal fire into which the offerings are made.
The symbolism here is very sweet: in order for the fire to be eternal, to not go out, it needs to be fed each morning with fresh wood. The eternal fire symbolizes the relation between Gd and humanity; for it to be eternal it needs to be fed each day with our right actions so we can experience the Full Restoration of our awareness to Oneness with Gd, the Eternal, the One.
Similarly, the fire symbolizes the Fire of our own soul, which guides us to act lovingly so that our actions are good actions, our actions draw us near to Gd and also near to all the expressions, The Total Creation, of Gd : our family, friends, neighbors, strangers, trees, plants, rivers, stones – everyone and everything.
And in order for this fire to be kept burning, for our soul to be kept interacting with Gd and with Gd’s world, we need to make offerings, good actions not only every morning as with wood for the eternal fire in the Tabernacle, but every moment.
Bob Rabinoff shared this sweet link about the Eternal Fire: Emmylou Harris – Pledging My Love – YouTube
The “you” to whom Emmylou pledges for us is, “You,” Gd.
Baruch HaShem