Parashat Tzav 5786 – 03/28/2026
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.
Vayikra 6:1-8:36
This week I’ll try to wrap up Rambam’s current discussion of angels. He will return to the issue further on in his tractate.
In all these texts the intention is not, as is thought by the ignorant, to assert that there is speech on the part of [Gd], may He be exalted, or deliberation or sight or consultation and recourse for help to the opinion of someone else. For how could the Creator seek help from that which He has created? Rather do all these texts state plainly that all this – including the various parts of that which exists and even the creation of the limbs of animals as they are – has been brought about through the intermediation of angels. For all forces are angels.
The main point here is that the angels are “forces” – or perhaps in more modern terminology, laws of nature. But Rambam goes on to argue against the position that any of Gd’s creations, and certainly not the angels, or the “hosts of heavens,” are separate from Gd. Gd does not speak to them, nor does he consult with them, nor is any aspect of the creative process outside of Gd, so that Gd would speak or consult in any way in the way that humans contact and communicate with the outside world. We, after all, are finite, and there is existence outside our boundaries. Gd is infinite and all-inclusive, so any process must take place within Gd’s own nature.
That said, we do perceive that there are processes in nature, and these processes appear to us to be driven by various forces, or laws of nature. We identify these laws of nature as angels, and sometimes personify them (Gavriel, Michael, Rafael – all names of angels). Angels appear to human beings at times (e.g. the three angels who appear to Avraham, or the angel that confronts Bil’am) and are sometimes even invoked in prayers (e.g. the prayer for rain on Shemini Atzeret). They are sometimes even described in physical terms in the Rabbinic literature. Nonetheless, Rambam will assert that these anthropomorphic descriptions are just an imaginative way of describing an essentially spiritual phenomenon. We will return to this idea shortly.
Rambam continues:
How great is the blindness of ignorance and how harmful! If you told a man who is one of those who deem themselves the Sages of Israel that the deity sends an angel, who enters the womb of a woman and forms the fetus there, he would be pleased with this assertion and would accept it and would regard it as a manifestation of greatness and power on the part of the deity, and also of His wisdom, may He be exalted. Nevertheless he would also believe at the same time that the angel is a body formed of burning fire and that his size is equal to that of a third part of the Whole world. He would regard all this as possible with respect to Gd. But if you tell him that Gd has placed in the sperm a formative force shaping the limbs and giving them their configuration and that this force is the angel, or that all the forms derive from the act of the Active Intellect and that the latter is the angel and the prince of the world constantly mentioned by the Sages, the man would shrink from this opinion. For he does not understand the notion of the true greatness and power that consists in the bringing into existence of forces active in a thing, forces that cannot be apprehended by any sense.
This brings up an issue that I have argued with anti-evolution people. People who take the Biblical creation story hyper literally assert that Gd’s power and glory are best displayed by the creation of all the different species de novo, without any intrinsic or organic relationship to one another, despite evidence, for example, of similarities in DNA structure between related species. What I argue is that it is much more creative, intelligent and powerful to start with a few, simple elements and one or two basic principles, such as the ubiquity of random fluctuations, and positive feedback loops for useful mutations, and from that create all the spectacular diversity that we see in nature. It seems clear that Rambam agrees with the latter position. It is the basic forces, or laws of nature, which act together to create diversity out of unity. And I believe that positing a few basic elements and a few laws of nature is a much more elegant solution, which applies not only throughout organic evolution but also the evolution of the stars and planets, the path of a lightning strike through the air, and perhaps, in some way, the evolution of consciousness.
Rambam was a physician and was quite conversant with the science of his time. That of course did not include non-equilibrium thermodynamics or Darwinian evolution, but his basic orientation is the same. Creation is on the basis of laws of nature and those laws of nature are identified with angels. The specific laws that he identifies are different than what we identify, but he is trying to answer the same basic conundrum: given that Gd has created the universe, what is the specific mechanism that He used. This idea that Gd uses a mechanism to create, rather than just saying, “Let there be… and there was” is a profoundly scientific approach, rather than a literalist approach to Scripture.
I would like to consider one more aspect of the phenomenon of angels. Many cultures, ours included, tend to personify angels, even giving them forms, generally that of a human being, perhaps with wings, but sometimes very strange forms, such as Yechezkel’s ophanim (“wheels”) and chayot (non-domestic animals, literally, living things). Of course Vedic literature and iconography has many human-like representations as well. Why is this? We don’t think of gravity as a form of any kind – it’s simply what draws massive objects together (although in General Relativity gravity is described as the form of curved space-time). What are these figures then? There are physical laws of nature, but, just as there are levels of existence that are subtler than the physical, so there are laws of nature that must be subtler than the physical laws of nature. Those laws of nature are ultimately very subtle vibrations, and just as they can be experienced as the sounds of human speech, perhaps they can also be experienced as the form of the human physiology. We know that there is a linkage between the two, as Dr. Tony Nader has shown in his “Ramayan in Human Physiology.” This is pure speculation on my part, and doesn’t come from Rambam at all, so take it for what it’s worth. In fact, Rambam contends that whenever a form (human or otherwise) is ascribed to an angel, it is only through a prophetic vision – in other words it is an image that the prophet sees in his or her consciousness. This doesn’t explain why the images are consistent, as they would be if they had an objective reality.
Next week is Pesach and we will take a bit of a break from Rambam, but will return to angels the week after, Parashat Shemini, Gd willing.
Chag Kasher v’same’ach!
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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: 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 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: