Friday, March 31, 2006

Tanya -- Ch. 1

... can be found at ...

Sefer Tanya

Thursday, March 30, 2006

"Eight Chapters" (Chapter Three, Part 2)

“Spiritual Excellence” with Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Our Current Text: Moshe Maimonides's (Rambam's) “Eight Chapters”

-- Rabbi Feldman's on going series for Torah.org

**********************************************************

"Eight Chapters"

Chapter Three (Part 2)

We live in a cynical, distrusting age in which everything is suspect and little seems assured. Let anyone in authority say something -- nearly anything -- and he or she is immediately open to question. Yet we're usually quick to see a doctor if we're ill, and while we might ask for a second opinion or challenge particulars, as a rule we succumb to a doctor's advice in the end.

Now, what doctors do, at bottom, is determine just what's wrong, tell us how to treat it, and advise us about changes we might have to make in the future. The doctor might, for example, warn us not to eat this or that or to avoid doing certain things that we'd like to go on with, or to do or ingest things we'd rather not. And while we might cringe or avoid following orders at first, when we do though, we (generally) find ourselves feeling better and are glad we assented.

In much the same way then we're counseled to go to a sage -- a healer of the Spirit -- when our Spirit is unwell and our very being is off-kilter; when as we said above, we "imagine sweet things to be bitter, and bitter things to be sweet", i.e., when we make poor ethical and spiritual choices, and "imagine bad ... to be good, and good ... to be bad".

Along the same lines as the above instance, a sage will then determine just what's wrong in our Spirits, tell us how to treat it, and advise us about changes we'd need to make on whole other levels. And we'd be wise to acquiesce.

But sometimes we just don't know when our Spirit is off, or we refuse to submit to treatment since we'd have to change one way or another, and our inner-inertia gets the best of us. We're warned here though that while we might think at least we wouldn't have affected our health and well-being, in truth spiritual mediocrity can be fatal, too! And that in the end we'll be glad we decided to heed a sage's warning.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*!
You can order it right now from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

R' Ashlag Ch. 53

... can be found at ...

Toras Rav Ashlag

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Ma'amar HaGeulah (Exile, Ch. 10)

Ma'amar HaGeulah

-- "The Great Redemption", a reworking of Ramchal's "Ma'amar HaGeulah"

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman's series on www.torah.org

__________________________________________________

"The Great Redemption"

Exile: Ch. 10

We've depicted our state of exile so far, and projected forward to the great and glorious end when all will be right and in place. We'll soon offer the actual playing out of the redemption itself, but let's first offer Ramchal's stirring words of encouragement extended at the very beginning of "The Great Redemption".

At bottom, his point is simple: Take heart! The Moshiach will come! All will be as had been promised! But let's see how he put it.

Ramchal depicts our people as always having had a motto of sorts throughout the exile, derived from this verse: “Do not rejoice for my sake, my enemy! For though I fell, I arose; when I sit in darkness, G-d (Himself) is my light!” (Micha 7:8). For even though "many mighty and prodigious things will have to transpire and a great deal of preparations will have to be made before the redemption can come about", in the end there will indeed come a time when "everyone will see and know for himself that 'G-d has wrought great miracles for us' (Psalms 126:3)".

Nonetheless, despite this attitude there were admittedly times when we "thought that G-d was hiding His countenance from (us) or had forsaken" us. In truth, we're told though, that "He was actually preparing goodness and blessings for (us)" all along! "For each and every moment" in the long course of the exile, G-d "was preparing immeasurably far-reaching and vast storehouses for (us), and setting priceless, precious, and captivating wealth and kingly treasure troves within those storehouses."

And those vast treasurehouses will "be opened up in the great halcyon days to come, when all sorts of exquisite things will cascade out of them and be handed over to the Jewish Nation in recompense for all the arduous things (we) had to endure in exile".

It's clear, though, that Ramchal isn't referring to any sort of material effulgence pouring down upon us from the heavens, since he then says that what G-d had stored was "all *the light* that didn’t shine upon the Jewish Nation for all the years they were in exile that was to have shone had never vanished". Indeed, that's what "will pour out in one fell swoop once (those occult storehouses) are opened". We'll "experience a degree of joy unlike any other" then, "and the world itself will be rectified (and delight in) a state of tranquility and calm" then, too, "and there’ll be no more sorrow".

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*!
You can order it right now from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"

Monday, March 27, 2006

R' Ashlag Ch. 52

... has been completed and can be found at ...

Toras Rav Ashlag

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Tanya -- Prologue to Part One: Chapters 1- 8

... can be found at ...

Sefer Tanya

Thursday, March 23, 2006

"Eight Chapters" (Chapter Three, Part 1)

“Spiritual Excellence” with Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Our Current Text: Moshe Maimonides's (Rambam's) “Eight Chapters”

-- Rabbi Feldman's on going series for Torah.org

**********************************************************

"Eight Chapters"

Chapter Three (Part 1)

What is "health" exactly? Is it merely the state in which each part of us runs well and is on equal footing with every other part -- or is that simply "well-being"? Is health a sense of robustness, vigor, and might -- or is that only heartiness (since the truth be known we could be harboring some terrible disease and still flourish for the longest time)?

As many know, Rambam himself was a physician, and a rather successful and sought-after one at that. He speaks of medicine a number of times in this work and elsewhere in his writings, and even wrote whole medical texts that were studied up to the modern era. Still in all, as he put it here, "the health or illness of the body is something that the art of medicine delves into", and that isn't our concern here. What we'll be delving into is the health of the Spirit.

So, what in fact does it mean to be healthy in Spirit or to have a sound disposition? "A healthy Spirit", Rambam declares, is one that's "predisposed to doing good, benevolent and comely things" while "an ill Spirit ... is predisposed to doing bad, harmful and disgraceful things." That means to say that good and generous people are healthy, spiritually speaking, while bad and onerous ones are ill.

But a lot could be said about this. For, in truth, one could be partially ill and mostly well, or vice versa; or one could have a dread chronic disease and still manage to function quite well in the world, or suddenly become terribly ill with a simple cold or flu and not be able to function at all. That's to say that we each have faults (illnesses) and virtues (health). And that while some faults are serious and ingrained (chronic), others are lighter and more easily gotten rid of (acute). The wise would want to know the difference and "treat" each accordingly, because both can be debilitating as we pointed out. Rambam will discuss treatment later on, in fact.

There's another important point to consider. It's that when we're ill in Spirit we often think we're healthy and make wrong decisions accordingly. (Some people who are healthy in Spirit think they're ill, on the other hand, and consequently make other sorts of poor judgments. But that's beside our concerns here.)

Rambam then delves into an interesting phenomenon. He points out that "when they’re (physically) ill and their senses are off kilter, people imagine sweet things to be bitter, and bitter things to be sweet". They then "take pleasant things to be unpleasant, and they crave and enjoy things that healthy people would never enjoy". In fact, "they might eat minerals, charcoal, soil, very pungent or sour foods, or other such things that healthy people would find revolting and never want".

In much the same way, he says, "those whose *Spirit* is ill ... likewise imagine bad things to be good, and good things to be bad, and always pursue goals that are actually harmful which they imagine to be good, simply because their Spirit is ill".

So the only way for us to avoid making poor judgments like that is to know the true state of our Spirit and to act accordingly. We'll soon see how we're to do that.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*!
You can order it right now from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

"The Great Redemption" (44)

... can be found at ...

Toras Ramchal

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Ma'amar HaGeulah (Exile, Ch. 9)

Ma'amar HaGeulah

-- "The Great Redemption", a reworking of Ramchal's "Ma'amar HaGeulah"

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman's series on www.torah.org

__________________________________________________

"The Great Redemption"

Exile: Ch. 9

Ramchal then goes on to fill in the final details about what will ultimately happen. There will be a lot to take in, but know that this will all be expanded upon and explained in detail as we go on in the book.

"Note the fact" he says, "that the entire verse under discussion reads, 'And G-d will be as a king over all the earth; *on that day G-d will be one, and His name one*' (Zacharia 14:9)". He then goes on to question the significance of the idea of G-d and His name being one by offering the following.

"Understand," he says, "that the great reparation (involved in the redemption) hinges on the mystery of G-d's 'Yichud'". That's to say that the redemption is grounded in one thing: in the revelation of G-d's sole authority (referred to as His "Yichud" in Kabbalistic terminology, since the word Yichud is a cognate of "echad" which is Hebrew for "one" and it alludes to the fact that G-d is the one and only authority in the world).

That means to say that once the reality of G-d's sole authority becomes manifest as a result of the redemption, then "everything will (come to) be inexorably linked to everything else. All the Supernal Luminaries (that go into sustaining and supporting the world) will conjoin and attach to each other then, and all their offshoots will reattach to their roots and join together to the point where everything will be a single, tightly bound entity."

Let's try to underscore the significance of this statement, since it's a major and recondite one. It means to say that there'll be a point in time when everything will bunch together; when, as Ramchal depicts it in other writings, "The Lower and Upper (worlds) will conjoin", when "all created beings that now exist on various levels will be joined together" as well, and when "everything will ... be one".

The implications of this great adhesion of all the various elements of existence are mind-boggling and revolutionary, and needn't be spelled-out. It would be wise in fact to heed the advice of the ancient Sefer Yetzirah which would warn us to "refrain (our) mouth from speaking and (our) heart from thinking" about this (1:8), since the implications can be very ambiguous.

In any event, as a consequence of all that, Ramchal goes on to say, "light (i.e., illumination) will intensify more and more then", and "every hour will bring its own blessings along with peace and joy".

He then returns to the verse cited above that indicates that "on that day G-d will be one, and His name one" and goes on to explain its Kabbalistic implications. We won't go into great detail about it here, since it touches on quite a number of mysteries beyond our ken, but we'll explain what we can for clarity's sake.

"The truth of the matter" he says, "is that (the verse) is speaking about the sephirot Tipheret and Malchut." Let's explore that.

G-d interacts with the world by means of the ten cosmic building-blocks we spoke of earlier known as the sephirot, including the aforementioned Tipheret and Malchut. It's sufficient for our purposes here to know that Tipheret is the middle sephirah while Malchut is the lowest one of all.

So, when we're told that the phrase "on that day G-d will be one and His name one" under discussion "is speaking about the sephirot Tipheret and Malchut", that alludes to this. While "the higher sephirot (alluded to in our verse by the term "G-d") ... are concealed now, they will amend the lower ones (i.e., Tipheret and Malchut, alluded to in our verse by the term "(G-d's) Name") later on."

And "G-d" and "His name" will be amended and indeed made one.

At this point, though, Ramchal brings out the fact that a problem now exists because those lower sephirot aren't yet amended. It's that "there can be said to be 'other gods' in the world". But, what would allow for such a misperception? The fact that "the lower sephirot willfully and arrogantly act as if they were another source (of rule in the world) apart from G-d Himself". That is, the fact that Tpheret and Malchut now function on their own and seem to be dissociated from G-d allows for that illusion; but that mistaken idea will be undone with the coming of the redemption, too, we're told.

For "once everything is amended, when evil and all husks are undone, goodness will be drawn to holiness as it should", and "everyone will know that there's but one, unique, all-encompassing Source -- G-d. None other". And then, once and for all, we'll be redeemed and "G-d will be one, and His name one" overtly and on all levels.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*!
You can order it right now from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"

Monday, March 20, 2006

R' Ashlag Ch. 51

... has been completed and can be found at ...

Toras Rav Ashlag

Sunday, March 19, 2006

R' Ashlag Ch. 51 (Part 2)

Chapter Fifty-One:

Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag's "Introduction to the Zohar"

-- as translated and commented on by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

__________________________________________________

51.

2.

"As to the (possibility of achieving the) other levels -- Ruach, Neshama, Chaya and Yechida of Asiyah -- you’d need to purify their ratzon l’kabel’s corresponding vegetableness, animalness, and verbalness in order for them to be engarbed in and receive those lights (and thus achieve those other levels). But that purification wouldn’t need to be permanent, (i.e., to the point where) 'He who knows all secrets will testify that (you) won’t fail again'."
-- ... as you had to do to achieve the above level.

"Because the whole world of Asiyah -- alone with its Keter, Chochma, Binah, Tipheret, and Malchut (cluster of) sephirot -- actually only encompasses the realm of Malchut, which is only germane to the purification of mineralness. And its five sephirot are only five subdivisions of Malchut."

"Thus, since you will have already merited purifying the mineral part of the ratzon l’kabel, you’d already (be experiencing an) affinity in form with the entire world of Asiyah."
-- That is, since “everything that exists on a comprehensive level exists on a particular level as well” (Ch. 50), you’re having achieved an affinity in form to the above degree insinuates that you’ll achieve it to succeeding degrees, too. But not permanently, as we’ll soon see.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*!
You can order it right now from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Tanya: Author's Introduction

can be found at Sefer Tanya

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

R' Ashlag Ch. 51 (Part 1)

Chapter Fifty-One:

Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag's "Introduction to the Zohar"

-- as translated and commented on by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

__________________________________________________

51.

1.

"Know that you’re only credited with having repented and purified yourself when your efforts are permanent and when (it’s clear that) you won’t ever lapse. As it’s said, "What is (true) penitence? When He who knows all secrets would testify that (you) won’t ever lapse" (see Hilchot Teshuvah 2:2)."
-- Rambam indicates that true repentance -- true spiritual ascent and expiation after having sinned and lowered one’s stature -- comes down to “no longer committing the sin one once committed, not thinking of committing it anymore, and affixing to his heart the commitment to never do it again” (ibid.), and doing that so distinctly that even He who knows your heart would affirm your effort.
-- Rabbi Ashlag will now make the point that the source of our sinning -- our stark willingness to only take-in -- also calls for penitence.

"Hence it follows that what we'd said ... that if you purify the mineralness of your ratzon l’kabel that you’ll merit a partzuf of the Nephesh of Asiyah, and that you’ll ascend upward and don the sephira of Malchut of Asiyah ... means that you’ll certainly be rewarded when you permanently purify your mineralness to the degree that you’ll never lapse. And that you’ll then be able to ascend to the spiritual world of Asiyah, since you’ll have realized purity and (will have achieved) an utter affinity of form with that world."
-- That means to say that if you repent for your willingness to only take-in on a *mineral*, a most basic level, then you’ll have achieved a degree of purity and penitence that would enable you to draw closer to G-d than you could have before. For you will have attained an “affinity of form with that world” at least, and thus begun the process of attaining an essential affinity with G-d Himself (see 11: 2), which is the greatest act of repentance and of drawing close to Him.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*!
You can order it right now from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"

Monday, March 13, 2006

"The Great Redemption" (43)

... can be found at ...

Toras Ramchal

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Call me crazy, but ...

I've started a new blog -- Sefer Tanya. I'd been working on this material for a while, rejected it, then began anew. We'll present Sefer Tanya little by little, and from an outsider's perspective, as I'm not at all a Chabadnick.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

"Eight Chapters" (Chapter Two, Part 3)

“Spiritual Excellence” with Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Our Current Text: Moshe Maimonides's (Rambam's) “Eight Chapters”

-- Rabbi Feldman's on going series for Torah.org

**********************************************************

"Eight Chapters"

Chapter Two (Part 3)

As everyone knows, the busiest, noisiest, and most complex aspect of our beings is our emotional center. Everything we do, experience, think about, and yearn for passes through it and leaves its mark. Though most are dim and mundane, some of the marks left there are quite stunning and affect us on a very deep, recondite level. The lot of them, though, are the stuff out of which our characters are made.

For as we learned above, our emotions are the one aspect of our Spirit that are most directly related to our ethical and Torah-based choices that touch on character virtues and flaws. (We also learn that our senses, the final aspect of our Spirit, merely feed our emotions, as when we hear something off-putting and either respond angrily or with equanimity, etc.)

Now, there's an overabundance of emotional traits open to us, including but certainly not limited to the ones Rambam will be concentrating on here: temperance, generosity, justice, patience, humility, goodwill, courage, and sensitivity. None is inherently good or bad (though some are better than others), and all can serve either good or bad ends. In any event Rambam's major contention throughout this work is that a character trait is flawed only when it's either overdone or underdone -- when too minimal or exaggerated. We'll delve into this at great length later on.

The underlying point for now, though, is that our free choices are more relevant to our emotions than to any other aspect of our being.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*!
You can order it right now from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

R' Ashlag Ch. 50

... has been completed and can be found at ...

Toras Rav Ashlag

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Ma'amar HaGeulah (Exile, Ch. 8)

Ma'amar HaGeulah

-- "The Great Redemption", a reworking of Ramchal's "Ma'amar HaGeulah"

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman's series on www.torah.org

__________________________________________________

"The Great Redemption"

Exile: Ch. 8

Ramchal then goes back to depicting what's to come about in Jewish and in world history as well with the onset of the redemption. He'll get a little esoteric here and later on, too, but we'll once again try to illustrate his contentions as clearly and concretely as we can.

He reports that "all evil will be removed from the husk in The World to Come, and what's left will return to the service of holiness." Two questions, though: first off, what does The World to Come, which is depicted as the end of history and the ultimate future, have to do with the redemption of the Jewish Nation?

And second, if the husk is the yetzer harah as we'd said it is, and the yetzer harah is manifest evil and unG-dliness, then how can Ramchal say that "evil will be removed from the husk" then and that "*what's left* will *return* to the service of holiness"? After all, if you take the heat out of the fire, then what will be left over to warm things up? And how are we to understand the idea of what's left finally "returning" to the service of holiness?

His point is that, at bottom, the yetzer harah is indeed a servant of G-d, as is absolutely everything else. For while it may seem to go against G-d's wishes, the truth is that nothing ever can; G-d is Almighty and can't be defied. It's just that we don't quite *get* that now, and so a subset of the yetzer harah seems to go against His wishes.

In any event, at a certain point, evil -- which is that subset of the yetzer harah -- will be undone. And the yetzer harah will then be able to return to the service of G-d in its entirety and openly.

The argument is that once the redemption has come about -- once our people are back where we belong and everything else is back in place as well -- then G-d's presence will be manifest, and all wrongdoing will be gone as well, and all will be well in the cosmos as we enter The World to Come.

Thus, the pending conclusion of the exile will not only be an astounding fact of Jewish life -- it will also be an essential aspect of the revelation of G-d's sovereignty on earth.

Our text then continues with the declaration that "everyone will recognize that holiness is the real source and master over all". That means to say that it will then occur to everyone that G-d's will is the sole authority, despite appearances to the contrary.

Ramchal then goes on now to explain the confusing verse we'd cited earlier on. "In fact," he says, "that's why the verse reads, 'And G-d will be *as* king over all the earth'. For (the truth be known), G-d is already king over all the earth and always has been. After all, nothing can do anything without His permission" as we'd cited before, and nothing can thwart His wishes whatsoever.

"It's just that not all His servants *realize* that (as things stand) now. But everyone will realize it, though, in The World to Come" which will be ushered in with the redemption. And everyone "will willfully prostrate him- and herself to G-d then. As it's said, 'For then I will convert the peoples to a clear language so that they may all call upon G-d's name, and serve Him with one accord' (Zephaniah 3:9)".

So it's said that "G-d will be as a king over all the earth" because "everyone will finally realize G-d for who He really is then, and they'll recall His name and ways."

We'll soon delve into even more of the esoterics of the ultimate future, then move on from there to lay out the dynamics of the redemption itself.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*!
You can order it right now from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available from Yashar Books.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"

Monday, March 06, 2006

"The Great Redemption" (42)

... can be found at ...

Toras Ramchal

Sunday, March 05, 2006

R' Ashlag Ch. 49

... has been completed and can be found at ...

Toras Rav Ashlag

Thursday, March 02, 2006

"Eight Chapters" (Chapter Two, Part 2)

“Spiritual Excellence” with Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Our Current Text: Moshe Maimonides's (Rambam's) “Eight Chapters”

-- Rabbi Feldman's on going series for Torah.org

**********************************************************

"Eight Chapters"

Chapter Two (Part 2)

Those of us in search of spiritual excellence would naturally want to acquire virtues and avoid flaws. But we'd need to define just what true spirit-based virtues and flaws encompass rather than material ones. For while being "good" or "bad" at one's job or social interests, for example, certainly matters, it doesn't touch on our quest.

So we're taught that there are two sorts of virtues and flaws germane here: those touching on our ideas (which obviously affect our intellects) and those relevant to our character (which affect our emotions and senses, as we'll learn). Let's concentrate here on the first. Since we don't tend to think of ideas as being "virtuous" per se (though we do speak of "flawed ideas", interestingly), so we'll just label them "lofty".

Rambam contends that it's lofty to learn how to determine the cause-and-effect relationship between things (i.e., knowing which of these two brought the other about and is thus more significant). It's likewise lofty to hone and purify our reasoning processes, and to think adroitly and swiftly. Contrarily, our thinking, and thus we ourselves, would be flawed if we dwelt on incidentals, if we allowed our minds to stagnate, or if our thinking was muddled and sluggish.

Though he doesn't speak of it until much later in the work, Rambam also maintains that lofty thoughts are ones that are in tune with the ultimate truth about our situation in this world and in a relationship to G-d, and it also has to do with understanding certain truisms about Him.

Without spending too much time on it at this juncture, suffice it to say that those with lofty minds come to know that we're expected to try to grasp as much as we can about G-d; that with notable exception, as we'll see, we've each been granted the freedom to act as we see fit based on our own judgment; and that it would behoove us to use that freedom to draw close to G-d. They also know that though G-d is basically unfathomable in His essence, there are certainly things that we can say about Him from our perspective, including the facts that He's Omniscient and Almighty. But this will be explained as we go along.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

********************************
AT LONG LAST! Rabbi Feldman's translation of "The Gates of Repentance" has been reissued at *at a discount*!
You can order it right now from here
Rabbi Yaakov Feldman has also translated and commented upon "The Path of the Just", and "The Duties of the Heart" (Jason Aronson Publishers). His new work on Maimonides' "The Eight Chapters" will soon be available.
Rabbi Feldman also offers two free e-mail classes on www.torah.org entitled
"Spiritual Excellence" and "Ramchal"