Parashat Chayei Sarah 5787 – 11/07/2026
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. The text we are working from is the two-volume translation by Prof. Shlomo Pines, University of Chicago Press, 1963.
Bereshit 23:1-25:18
Continuing the dialog, Rambam asks the same question I asked last week (but 900 years prior to me!):
Thereupon we again put a question to Aristotle, saying to him: Since the mixture of the elements is the cause of the various matters being predisposed to receive the various forms, what is it that prepared this first matter so that a part of it receives the form of fire, and part of it the form of earth and that which is intermediate between these two parts is prepared to receive the forms of water and of air, while at the same time the matter of the universe is on and common to all things?
The question is the same – where did this fundamental differentiation, here into the 4 elements, arise. Aristotle answers:
This has been made necessary by the differences between the various places, for these differences have made it necessary for this one matter to have various dispositions. For the part that is near the encompassing sphere, was endowed by the latter with an impress of subtlety and swiftness of motion and nearness to the nature of the sphere. Consequently it received, in virtue of this disposition, the form of fire. And the more distant matter is from the encompassing sphere in the direction of the center of the earth, the thicker and denser and less luminous it becomes, so that it becomes earth. The same cause obtains with regard to water and air. Thus this is necessary; for it is absurd that the matter in question should not be in a place, or that the encompassing sphere should be the center of the earth, and the center of the earth the encompassing sphere. This has been made necessary by particularization of matter by means of various forms; I mean by this the disposition to receive various forms.
It seems to me that we have just pushed the question one step back. We want to know the root cause of the distinctions in matter, which we take to be all of one type, but we explain it in terms of a prior differentiation in the place in which the matter is found. But what causes that differentiation? Further, if everything in the sublunary world is a combination of these four principal elements (earth, air, fire and water), how is it that they get mixed up throughout the world – how do they get displaced from their “natural” location? Something had to differentiate space into different zones with different properties, and then stir up the fundamental matter so that those properties, carried by that matter, can get thoroughly mixed.
Rambam apparently picks up on this conundrum, and puts forth a possible additional level of differentiation:
Thereupon we put a question to him, saying: Is the matter of the encompassing sphere — I mean to say the heavens — the same as the matter of the elements?
He said: No. That is another matter and those are other forms. And the term “body,” applied to the bodies that are with us and to the heavenly bodies, is equivocal, as has been explained by latter-day thinkers. All this has been demonstrated.
So, according to Aristotle, the heavens and the earth are distinguished not only in the qualities of matter (hot, cold, etc.) but in the nature of the matter itself. Rambam accepts this as true, as Isaiah says (55:9), But as the heavens are high above the earth, So are My ways high above your ways And My plans above your plans. This is absolutely not true according to modern science. We assume that matter on earth and matter in the heavens is one and the same thing, albeit that in the heavens the forces on the matter are either astronomically larger or astronomically smaller, and the conditions are quite different from terrestrial conditions.
In fact, everything we know about astronomy and astrophysics is based on this assumption. Two prominent examples are found in spectroscopy and General Relativity. Spectroscopy identifies substances by the distinct patterns of light those substances emit. The light is of certain frequencies, given by the energy difference in the various quantum states that the electrons in the atoms or molecules of that substance. When chemists looked at the periodic table, they realized that there was an inert gas whose atoms had two positive charges in the nucleus (2 protons – there are also two neutrons but they don’t enter into these calculations) and two electrons outside the nucleus. It is not hard to calculate the spectrum of this element, but it had never been discovered. The first discovery of Helium was in the spectrum of light from the sun (Helios in Greek, hence the name given to the element). This would never have happened if the heavens were made of fundamentally different material, or obeyed different laws of nature.
The second example is General Relativity. When Einstein published General Relativity, his equations were used to solve a number of astronomical problems (precession of the perihelion of Mercury being a prominent one, as well as bending of light by a large body, e.g. the sun). But General Relativity also predicts that time would slow down in a gravitational field, and this prediction was verified right here on earth, using an atomic clock that was placed on the surface, and another in a deep mine shaft. There were small but detectable variations – again terrestrial laws of nature were the same as cosmic laws of nature.
Now to a certain extent we can validate Aristotle’s idea that the place of matter influences its properties. The properties of Helium inside the sun, with its intense heat and pressure differ from that of Helium on earth, which powers birthday balloons and makes your voice sound like a cartoon character. Nonetheless, there is no difference, even in principle, between a Helium atom on earth and one in the sun. So, while there may be differences in behavior under different conditions, there is no difference in essence.
The upshot of this argument is that we still need to provide a mechanism by which Unity differentiates into multiplicity. We’ll continue pursuing this dialog next week Gd willing.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Chayei Sarah
After Sarah passes, with Gd’s Presence in her as it was and is in Abraham, Abraham sends his servant, Eliezer, to look for a spouse for his son, Isaac.
What qualities would we want in a servant who we send to an unfamiliar world to select a spouse for our beloved child?
What strategy would the servant use to select exactly the right spouse?
Abraham sends his trusted servant Eliezer to look for a wife for his son Isaac.
Eliezer’s name means “Help of my Gd”: Eliezer is servant of Gd first, Abraham second.
This is the perfect quality we want in a servant: the servant will act according to Gd’s Will and our will be fulfilled in alignment with Gd’s Will.
Abraham, therefore, trusts not only Eliezer’s loyalty but his competence—his competence of zeroing in on the right bride and his judgment in making sure the bride really is the right bride.
Eliezer’s strategy is not to stay within his limited ability but to ask Gd for guidance. As he approaches a well in the country to which he is sent he prays in his heart that Gd will bring a woman to the well who will offer to give him not only a drink from her pitcher that he asks for but also that she will offer to provide water for his camels also, even without his asking. Eliezer values generosity as a sign of love and appropriateness.
Before he even finishes this prayer, a woman appears who fulfills his request.
This a sign of considerable purity in Eliezer and also in the woman, who is Rebekah and who becomes Isaac’s wife.
Rebekah leads Eliezer to her family and Eliezer explains his mission: to find a bride for his master Abraham’s son, Isaac.
“Will you marry him?” his family asks.
“Yes, I will”, Rebekah replies, a sign not only of generosity but of her own judgment that Eliezer is connecting her with the love that Gd intends for her, a marriage that will enable her to be not only a good and happy wife, but a good servant of Gd.
“Will you leave tomorrow?” Eliezer asks.
“Yes, I will,” Rebekah replies, a sign of trust.
And when Rebekah meets Isaac, they love each other and Isaac is comforted for the loss of his mother, proof that Eliezer was a good and competent servant, one who fulfilled his master’s wishes, one to whom Gd responds even before the wish of his heart is completely stated.
In our lives we do our best “to love Gd with all our heart and soul” and “to love our neighbor as ourself” so that we are good servants of ourselves, our families, our communities and Gd and also we are trusting recipients of Gd’s messengers and servants.
We do our best to be trustworthy, competent, loving, generous and to welcome in the Shekinah, Gd’s bride, not only on Shabbat but every moment and to be Gd’s bride ourselves. And beyond this experience, we seek to restore ourselves and to be restored to the Oneness, within which the duality of Gd and us exists. This is the marriage of the self to the Self and the marriage of the Self to the Self.
Not only the meaning of this parshah helps us in this delightful activity but even more fundamentally, the sound.
Here is Rabbi Michael Slavin, from the Chabad Brooklyn central synagogue, where the Lubavitcher Rebbe presided, reading “Chayei Sarah”: Chayei Sarah Audio Recording