Magnets, Kabbalah, Meron, Uman and other superstitions.

A commenter on an earlier post, Gil Kobrin, among other very insightful comments, laid out a very important point that I have been trying to make, very succinctly:

“However, we do not understand the "act" of God's Creating, nor do we truly understand anything about God Himself; therefore, the relation to God via causality is one-way, and we have no way frame of perception by which to gain an iota of understanding of how (if) God "relates back" to us.The Kabbalists attempt to do this with the idea of "emanation" - atzilut - but such a concept is false as it is impossible for human beings to understand anything from God's "perspective" (including how He "created").”

I have been harping about this idea of the unknowability of God, because it is the foundation of Judaism, and any other understanding borders on idolatry. It is a fiction that Avodah Zara does not exist today. The Members of the Great Assembly might have dampened the Yetzer Hara for it, but they certainly have not eliminated it. To really clarify what I am talking about I must spend a little effort explaining where the current Kabbalah comes from.

Ramban in Toras Hashem Temimah and in his commentary on Devarim 18:9, states that magic is a science. As we can see the earth is under the influence of the stars which we can objectively verify when we look at the tides and the influence the moon has on them, how rain is impacted by the heat of the sun and such other natural phenomena which can be traced back to the forces that emanate from them and the stars. Rambam sees that influence as a purely physical thing and does not give them any supernatural powers. Ramban however could not differentiate between the natural and supernatural. To him science was incomprehensible and when he saw natural phenomena that he could not understand he was convinced that some extra-physical force was causing the event. Ramban brings several examples for his position but to illustrate vividly the contrast between the two thinkers I will quote a Rashba responsa regarding a certain type of amulet that was used during his time and whether it is permitted.

זה באמת מה שלא יקבלוהו השכל כי באמת הדברים הפועלים בסגלה אין פעולתם בפלא מהם אלא בטבע מסגל, רצוני לומר בטבע לא ישיגנו עיון החכמים ואפילו החכם שבחכמים לרוב העלם הטבע ההוא מכלל המין האנושי מצד שהוא אדם, כסגלת אבן השואבת שהברזל קופץ עליה ויותר מזה מורגל בירדי הים באניות תוחבין מחט בחתיכת עץ צף על פני המים ומראין לו אבן וישוט על פני המים עד שיפנה אל פני הסדן ושם ינוח - ולא ישיג עיון טבע זה כל חכם שבחכמים אלו של חכמת הטבע. ואם כן אף כל המינין בעלי הסגולות בטבע הם פועלים כסמים והמסעדים ואין בהם משום דרכי האמורי כמו שאין בדברים המפורסמים המועילים לפי העיון הטבעי של אלו החכמים. (תשובת הרשב"א א:תיג, סוף התשובה)

Rashba is saying that nature cannot be grasped even by the smartest of man because he is man (man qua man). No one can explain why a magnet attracts metal, nor can they explain why a needle inserted in a piece of wood when placed in water always turns in one direction ( I am not sure that he refers to a compass but it is the closest I can figure this out. Maybe someone can enlighten me.) That being the case, Rashba concludes, the same applies to amulets and other such magical phenomena. Supernatural forces cause them and they are part of nature. Reading him carefully we see that Rashba is equating science with metaphysics (“man because he is man”). There was no clear demarcation and once that line was crossed, the relationship between man and the supernatural, was changed. Man could influence the supernatural; he could try to understand how God related back to him. It was no different than trying to understand natural phenomena. Ramban therefore developed a very different understanding of man’s relationship with God. God was still transcendent but much more accessible than Rambam’s God. One could try to explain how God created the world through a process of emanation which eventually led to the Zfat Kabbalist’s theory of Tzimtzum and the rest is history. (This process did reduce God’s transcendence and in truth I am not sure they still see Him as such notwithstanding their strident insistence to the contrary).

Rambam in contrast sees the same phenomena, magnetism in a completely different perspective. Discussing his proofs for the existence of a First Cause, Rambam describes how the physical universe operates. We see a system of causation, and there always is some outside impetus for change within an object. There has to be a physical influence even when one is not immediately noticeable. In Moreh 2:12 he states:

“In Physics it has been shown that a body in acting upon another body must either directly be in contact with it, or indirectly through the medium of other bodies. E.g., a body that has been heated has been in contact with fire, or the air that surrounds the body has been heated by the fire, and has communicated the heat to the body; the immediate cause of the heat in this body is the corporeal substance of the heated air. The magnet attracts iron from a distance through a certain force communicated to the air round the iron. The magnet does therefore not act at all distances, just as fire does not act at every distance, but only as long as the air between the fire and the object is affected by the fire. When the air is no longer affected by the fire which is under a piece of wax, the latter does not melt. The same is the case with magnetism. When an object that has previously not been warm has now become warm, the cause of its heat must now have been created: either some fire has been produced, or the distance of the fire from the object has been changed, and the altered relation between the fire and the object is the cause now created. In a similar manner we find the causes of all changes in the Universe to be changes in the combination of the elements that act upon each other when one body approaches another or separates from it.”

I will leave to the reader to decide who understood nature better.

Ramban’s theory for some reason took root much stronger than Rambam’s understanding. It is only in the last century or so, that scientific advances have shown how prescient Rambam was. However Ramban’s theology has been so deeply embedded in our religious thought that anyone who denies that Kabbalah is correct and “Misinai” is considered a heretic while the obvious truth is quite the opposite. Believing in all the magical and supernatural influences is Avodah Zara precisely because it is irrational. Irrational is the definition of Idolatry. The fact that Ramban and his followers believed in it does not mean anything. They thought they were seeing things rationally based on the science of their time. Had they been in our times, these great thinkers would have repudiated and banned all the superstitions we have integrated into our day-to-day religious praxis. It is painful to see the things that we have accepted; magicians in the cloak of Rabbis and Kabbalists who hand out amulets and magical potions, turn Mitzvos into medicine, mezuzahs into spirits, rebbis into Moshiach and God. The sacrilege that Meron and other supposed tombs, kevarim, have become, the fact that thousands travel to the Uman shrine on the Holy Days, when instead of Teshuvah and distancing from Avodah Zara, they go and practice it, all these outrages are the direct and indirect results of this erroneous concept of the world.

I believe that anyone who looks objectively at how different the two views of religion are, the basis for them and the consequences we observe from the adoption of one them, he must conclude that Rambam’s derech is the only one that can stand up in the real world. It is the only one that has relevance to our religious life and can teach us how to view the world from a Jewish perspective. It is therefore important to really absorb Rambam’s great insight and assimilate that there is a limit to our knowledge. We cannot understand God, how He acts, how He thinks, how He knows nor how He does anything. All we can do is infer that He exists and infer from the result of His actions what He wants from us.