Parashat Vayishlach 5785 – 12/14/2024
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.
Bereshit 32:4-36:43
In loving memory of Marie Smallow, whose 10th Yahrzeit is this coming Wednesday, 17 Kislev 5785
In Chapter 71 Rambam spends considerable time on the issue of how knowledge is passed from generation to generation. He begins by laying out the problem:
Know that the many sciences devoted to establishing the truth regarding these matters that have existed in our religious community have perished because of the length of the time that has passed, because of our being dominated by the pagan nations, and because, as we have made clear [chapter 34], it is not permitted to divulge these matters to all people. For the only thing it is permitted to divulge to all people are the texts of the books. You already know that even the legalistic science of law was not put down in writing in the olden times because of the precept, which is widely known in the nation: Words that I have communicated to you orally, you are not allowed to put down in writing.
Let’s look at these factors one by one. Rambam first mentions “the length of time passed.” When a physicist thinks of time, the first thing that comes to mind is entropy. In a closed system, entropy increases. Entropy is a measure of lack of structure, or disorder, in a system. In a dynamic system the state of the system is always changing. Since there are more states, the system can be in that lack structure than there are states that are highly structured, the system will spend more time in the unstructured states than in the structured ones. For example, take Michelangelo’s famous sculpture of David. One could take the same block of marble and break it into 100,000 small chips of marble. These are just two states of the same system, but it’s easy to see that there are vastly more ways you can arrange the marble to be a pile of chips than you can to arrange it into a figure of David. We therefore say that the pile of marble chips is more entropic than the statue of David. It takes energy and intelligence, in this case the energy and intelligence of the artist, to overcome entropy.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in a closed system, entropy will maximize. Marble doesn’t move from one state to another very readily. David is carefully protected from people with chisels coming anywhere near it, so that we can all enjoy the art work. Other systems, which are more fluid, change states more quickly, and the entropy maximizes more rapidly. Consider a container that is divided by a partition, and has a lot of air on one side, and much less air on the other. This is a structured situation – you can distinguish right from left. If we now remove the partition, the air will distribute itself evenly. This is less structured – you can no longer distinguish left from right. The chances of the even distribution moving back to the more structured one are remote. Time becomes one-way when we consider entropy.
In the case of the transmission of knowledge, there is a kind of entropy that works as well. Anyone who has ever taught knows that the teacher must transmit a broad structure of knowledge to the student. The teacher has a multi-dimensional structure of knowledge, but can only transmit it linearly to the student. Step-by-step the teacher delivers one packet of knowledge after the other, stitching together each piece to all the others. This process of course takes time, and in the interim, before the teacher brings the student up to the teacher’s level, the student may make mistakes. If the student never comes up to the teacher’s level, then when that student becomes a teacher, he teaches from a lower level. If this goes on for several generations, only a small fraction of the original knowledge remains, to be replaced with speculation and misunderstanding. As R. Eliezer said, “I have learned perhaps 2% of what my teachers taught, and my students have learned 2% of what I have taught them.” Knowledge decays very quickly at this rate!
This problem becomes particularly acute with the knowledge of meditation. For the mind to transcend, the process must be effortless. The process of transcending involves the mind’s settling down and becoming less active. If we try to transcend, the very act of trying makes the mind more active, not less. Effort vitiates the process of transcending. Now here is the critical point where knowledge can get lost. Even if the technique is taught properly, once we have the experience of transcending and experiencing Pure Consciousness, it is so charming that we want to have that experience again and again. Of course, sometimes we are in the process of release of stress and the experience is not so profound. There is a tendency to try to replicate the experience somehow. Effort creeps in, the innocence of the process is lost, and with the innocence, the effectiveness of the process is lost, and soon enough the practice is abandoned. This is the worst kind of entropy. This is why Maharishi was so insistent on his TM teachers’ maintaining the purity of the teaching. It takes only the slightest deviation for the whole system to go haywire.
Rambam goes on to identify “being dominated by the pagan nations” as an exacerbating factor. It is not clear which nations Rambam is referring to. Muslims are monotheists and would not be considered “pagans,” especially by Jews who lived in Muslim lands as did Rambam. Rambam clearly held the Muslim philosophers who transmitted Greek philosophy and science to the medieval world. It’s also possible that by “pagan” he actually meant “non-Jewish,” and he was being circumspect to avoid offending the host nations of much of the Jewish people. In any event, given what we have just said about keeping the knowledge pure and free of outside influences, we can see how foreign patterns of thought can damage the transmission of knowledge, particularly to an impressionable younger generation. The sad pattern of repeated Jewish assimilation throughout history gives us vivid evidence of this, and our situation in the US (and the West in general) is another chapter in the same story. It appears that every time the foreign influence becomes too severe, Gd must take out the cudgels of antisemitism to stop the bleeding (to mix a metaphor!).
On the other side of the coin, we know that closed systems suffer from maximization of entropy. The creative interaction between cultures can enhance both and prevent ossification. In fact, I was just listening to a lecture on the Book of Samuel, and the lecturer pointed out that King David, and therefore the Mashiach, is descended from the Moabite convert Ruth (see the Book of Ruth for details). Also, Solomon’s wife, Na’amah, mother of Rechav’am, was an Ammonite convert. Why, he asked, did Gd arrange for this foreign blood to get into the veins of Mashiach. He answered that since Mashiach was going to rule over all humanity, he needed to represent all of humanity in his person. And of course, Rambam drew extensively from Aristotle and other Greek and Muslim philosophers. So this cross-seeding is necessary for a culture to remain healthy. Perhaps this is why Rambam emphasizes the foreign domination of the Jewish people, where we were prevented from assimilating that which was useful and compatible with Judaism, and discarding the rest.
Incidentally, Maharishi indicated that foreign domination was the reason for the decline of the Veda in India. Whether he was referring to the British, the Mughals, or an earlier conquest, I don’t know.
We will continue with this topic next week, Gd willing.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Vayishlach
http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/3481593/jewish/Vayishlach-Audio-Recording.htm
I felt great joy in listening to Rabbi Michoel Slavin recite this parshah and I felt he was feeling similar joy.
Joy is a sign to me of teshuvah, return to the One Who is all Joy, all Love, Total Balance, Total Integration.
There are two major events in this parshah, each one showing a type of integration of stillness and activity, of partiality and totality.
First, Jacob wrestles with a man who then seems to be an angel and perhaps is Gd, although many commentators consider the wrestling a wrestling within himself to overcome his fears, his lower human self and to rise to the level where he acts from a higher level of his personality, one that is more heavenly, more divine, more Gdly.
When Jacob wrestles with someone in the night, the Hebrew says: Genesis, 32:25, that it was a man, but in Genesis 32:29, the man says, (Soncino Press, Pentateuch, Rabbi Hertz translation), “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but ‘Israel”; for thou hast striven with Gd and with men, and hast prevailed.” From this, we get the higher sense: the man is in some way a representative of Gd, perhaps Gd Himself.
Personally, I feel the important point here is that we can overcome our inertia, our lower self and rise to Teshuvah, return to Oneness, Totality. However far Jacob rose in this event, commentators differ and we can differ but the event is an expression within Torah and therefore within Gd so reading it can enliven greater ability within us to live and act as Totality, not merely as an impulse of Totality.
Jacob says of this experience “I have seen Gd face-to-face and lived” though there are those who translate as “I have seen an angel of Gd face-to-face and lived.”
Jacob names the place “Peniel”: Face of God. “Pen” means “face” and “El” means “Gd”. So Jacob felt he wrestled with Gd, not just a man, or an angel. “Wrestling” we can interpret as “clinging,” so first Gd clings to Jacob, then Jacob clings to Gd.
This is encouraging, that however lost we feel, Gd may at any time cling to us and draw us to him, and we can cling to Him, to Totality, and go beyond loss, confusion, fear and return to Total Awareness, Love, Joy, Confidence, Nothing left out.
Intriguingly, by clinging to Jacob, Gd causes Jacob, the “quiet man who sits in tents,” to strive, to becomes an active man, “one who strives with Gd and with men,” to become like his brother Esau, a man of the fields – although perhaps at a much higher level of activity since we do not see anything in Torah that speaks about Gd speaking or clinging to Esau.
Second, when Esau and Jacob finally meet, Jacob prostrates before Esau seven times and Esau embraces him and kisses him wholeheartedly: they part on good terms. As with everything in life, and seemingly Torah too, there are those who say Esau’s kiss was not wholehearted but the succeeding conversation in which they speak to each other as loving brothers seems to support the wholehearted view.
In these two events we see integration of the opposites that Jacob and Esau are often treated as representing (although these interpretations avoid the much they have in common, as all humans must):
Jacob, representing silence, in the direction of “Be still and know that I am Gd” (Psalm 46) and Esau symbolizing striving as in a different translation of this phrase: “Cease striving and know that I am God.” Yet the silence bows down to the activity and the activity embraces the silence and we have two brothers, one family.
So can we all do by letting our silence bow to our activity through prayer and other good actions and letting our actions embrace our silence by pausing routinely from action to let our activity settle into silence – and eventually find that the two are one, active silence, silent activity.
Baruch HaShem