Parashat Nitzavim 5785 – 09/20/2025
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 29:9-30:20
This is my last post! of 5785. L’Shanah Tovah to all and may 5786 bring us all the blessings of heaven and earth.
A calendrical note: This year we read Parshiyyot Nitzavim and Vayelech separately. When there is a Shabbat between Yom Kippur and Sukkot, we need to split the two apart so that Vayelech will be read on Shabbat Shuvah (the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) and Ha’Azinu on that “extra” Shabbat. This year, Rosh haShanah (1 Tishri), and therefore Sukkot (15 Tishri) and Shemini Atzeret (22 Tishri) are all on Tuesday. If we didn’t split Nitzavim and Vayelech it would pull Ha’Azinu back to Shabbat Shuvah and there would be no parashah for the Shabbat between Yom Kippur and Sukkot.
Rosh haShanah can only fall out on Shabbat, Monday, Tuesday or Thursday for various reasons. (The calendar is adjusted in Cheshvan and Kislev if necessary to make it so. Those months can have 29 or 30 days, so there is some flexibility there; all the other months are fixed at either 29 or 30 days every year.) You can get a calendar and convince yourself that if Rosh haShanah is on Shabbat or Thursday the two Parshiyyot are read together, while Monday and Tuesday Rosh haShanah means they are split up. I have tried to find a percentage of years that they are together/apart, but the only statement I was able to find is that “most years they are read together” (torahmates.org), meaning that Monday or Tuesday Rosh haShanahs are rather more rare than Shabbat or Thursday. I’d have to be more of a mathematician than I am to figure out why. I may pose it to my son, who is a real mathematician. Now, back to Rambam!
Before we go on to Rambam I want to share an insight that came to me this evening as I was explaining last week’s drash to a friend. I have written on this before, but to set the scene, so to speak, I’ll repeat here. Maharishi was once giving a talk on Sama Veda and he commented on a verse Satyam, satyam, satyam (Truth, truth, truth), which in the Sama rendition became satyam, satyam, satyooovaaaaaa, with the last syllable drawn way out long, to indicate experientially the infinite expansion of wholeness as Unity Consciousness matures. In a similar way, when we recite Sh’ma, we are instructed to draw out the last syllable of Echad / One – which I take as experientially recreating this same expansion of wholeness. Now there’s a bit of a fly in this ointment, because the last syllable of Echad ends with a dalet / D, which is a stop, so there’s a limitation to this expansion. Against this problem, we note that the dalet at the end of Echad does not have a dagesh / dot in it, and that probably was originally pronounced like the th in “the” or “there.” In other words, Echad should really be pronounced Echath where the final “th” is voiced. This sound is not a stop, but a fricative, and therefore it doesn’t “stop” the expansion. (We see the same thing in the case of the tav / T – without a dagesh it’s now pronounced “S” [in Ashkenazic pronunciation] but was originally an unvoiced “th” as in “Ruth.” With a dagesh it’s a T in both Ashkenazic and Sephardic pronunciation. The Arabic cognate letters are still pronounced with the “th” as far as I know.)
As I was explaining the thrust of last week’s essay to my friend I referred to Maharishi’s analysis of the first word of Rg Veda: agni. The creation begins with fullness – A – which collapses to a point – G – and it is the tension between infinite and finite that breaks down into the various modes of vibration that we observe as creation. It struck me that this is another way to understand the end of Echad – it is, in fact, a stop at the end, and rather than being like the Sama Veda verse, perhaps it’s more like agni as Maharishi describes it – unboundedness collapsing to a point, a stop. Which is it? I don’t know. Perhaps both, perhaps neither and I’m completely off base with this thing.
Now Rambam is a rationalist, and it is to be expected that he will favor intellect over imagination. We are not disappointed, as he demonstrates that there are assertions that the intellect can prove are true, but that the imagination cannot imagine:
Hear what the mathematical sciences have taught us and how capital are the premises we have obtained from them. Know that there are things that a man, if he considers them with his imagination, is unable to represent to himself in any respect, but finds that it is as impossible to imagine them as it is impossible for two contraries to agree; and that afterwards the existence of the thing that is impossible to imagine is established by demonstration as true, and existence manifests it as real. Thus if you imagine a big sphere of any size you like, even if it be the size of the encompassing heaven; imagine further a diameter passing through the center of the sphere, and thereupon imagine the two human individuals standing upon the two extremities of the diameter so that their feet are put in a straight line with respect to the diameter, so that their feet and the diameter form one and the same straight line – then one of two possibilities must be true: either the diameter is parallel to the horizon or it is not. Now if it is parallel, both individuals should fall, if it is not parallel, one of them – namely the lower one – should fall, while the other is firmly placed. It is in that way that imagination would apprehend the matter. Now it has been demonstrated that the earth is spherical in form and that portions of the inhabited part of it lie at both extremities of its diameter. Thus the head of every individual from among the inhabitants of the two extremities is near heaven while his feet are near the feet of another individual who is opposite him. It is thus impossible in every way that either of them would fall. This cannot even be represented to oneself; for one of them is not placed above and the other below, but each of them is both above and below in relation to the other.
Remember that Sir Isaac Newton lived 500 years after Rambam, so it is not surprising that Rambam, and all the philosophers and scientists of his time, didn’t understand how the ground stays stable under our feet. Lest we get too haughty about this, try to imagine curved space-time, or even “flat” space-time, or quantum tunneling (where a constrained particle can be found outside its boundaries). These things are very difficult to picture, yet they are absolutely real as verified by very precise measurements. It is possible that Rambam was thinking in terms of a flat earth, although the Greeks knew for 1500 years prior that the earth was round. (If the earth were flat, cats would already have pushed everything off the edge.)
Rambam continues to give an example of two lines that approach one another asymptotically, but do not actually meet (in any finite distance). That such situations exist can be proven mathematically (Rambam refers to the work of the Greek geometers in a volume entitled “Conic Sections”). Nowadays, where we are more comfortable speaking about infinity (in the mathematical sense) it is actually easier to imagine some of these situations, but the point remains – there are mathematical results that are certainly true (often they are useful in physics and therefore amenable to objective verification) but that are totally counterintuitive. So it seems that, as we might expect from Rambam, that intellect trumps imagination.
There is, however, another subsequent development that casts doubt on this conclusion. Gödel’s famous theorem shows that in any sufficiently rich logical system there are true statements that cannot be proven. The system is inherently incomplete. It also cannot be completed by adding the statement under question to the set of axioms of the system, as doing that only expands the system and creates new possibilities for other true statements to exist in the expanded system that cannot be proven. The field of ignorance expands faster than the field of knowledge.
It is perhaps not surprising that the intellect appears to have inherent limitations, since it deals with the world of differences, the world of partial values – and the world of partial values can never be self-sufficient, as Rambam himself has demonstrated. So if there are true things that we cannot imagine, there are also true things we cannot prove. Perhaps neither imagination nor intellect holds any advantage over the other in terms of leading us to true knowledge?
The solution, if we want complete, true and pure knowledge, is to recognize that such knowledge can be found within ourselves, on the level of our own Pure Consciousness. Consciousness, as we have discussed many times, is the ultimate reality and the “stuff” of creation. Creation, in its infinite variety, is the expression of Pure Consciousness vibrating virtually within itself, and those vibrations can be cognized in our own consciousness. This requires some serious purification of course, but the result is a perfect intellect and an imagination that can encompass anything.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Nitzavim
In Parashat Nitzavim,“standing,” Moses tells us that we stand before Gd as a nation, not a mere collection of people. It is love of Gd and love of one’s neighbor that binds us together and it is this same love that binds together the different aspects of our personality: our thoughts, our feelings, our body, our routines, our career, family, friends….
So, love and Love, Universal Love, are vital for us to live our life in unity, wholeness, not as a mere collection of fragments.
Moses tells our ancestors (and us) that Torah is not far from us, it is near, in our hearts to do. It is the Universal Love that allows us to live in Wholeness.
Moses also warns our ancestors (and us) of the desolation that we will occur if we turn from Torah, but comforts us that we will turn back and Gd will gather us together into the Promised Land.
This means that though we may sometimes close our heart and turn away from Torah, yet at any time, we can open our heart and Torah will be seen there as It Always Is (Torah is the Word of Gd, the Liveliness of Gd, never separate, always there).
When we open our heart, we are new people, descendants of the old people that we no longer are, new people, people in whom Torah and Gd are alive in our hearts, our words, our actions and in the response of Gd to us.
Moses tells us we are free to choose: the blessing of Torah, or the desolation of turning from it and he says, “You shall choose life.” I am confident that our congregation is honoring Gd’s Words spoken through Moses and is choosing Life.
As Rosh HaShanah nears, this is a reminder that the New Year is not only a New Year in calendar time but an opportunity for a new year in our hearts, souls, thoughts, speech, action and in the response Gd gives us – a time when we open even more to Gd and we become more aware that Gd is always open to us so no part of Gd’s Face is hidden and we remember and live the Oneness which we always Are (though we may have hidden from it), and not only remember and live but enjoy everywhere, all around us, Gd/Torah singing to us, dancing to us, within us, within the sky, earth, pebbles, streams and leaves—everywhere.
Today and every day is an opportunity for the celebration of Newness – and Rosh Hashanah is especially so – New Year, New Us, New World.
A great time!
Baruch HaShem