Ali Ataie – Judaism 101 What Do Jews Believe
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AI: Transcript ©
So,
I thought a good,
thing to look at when it comes to
Judaism
is the famous creed
of, Maimonides.
So Maimonides,
famous rabbi
and philosopher,
he died in the early 13th century.
He was buried in Fostat in Egypt.
Moshe ben Maimon is his name,
and,
Jews refer to him as the Rambam,
that's the sort of acronym, means Rabbi Moshe
ben
Laimon.
He
was an incredible scholar.
He was a great scholastic.
He was a great synthesizer
of,
of,
Jewish thought
as well as,
Aristotelian
ethics.
And we'll talk a little bit
about that as well.
He believed that revelation and reason go hand
in hand.
He was a natural theologian,
meaning that he believed that one could engage
in reason and philosophy
as evidence of God.
He was a champion of what's known as
negative theology
and we'll explain that as well insha'Allah.
He
wrote quite extensively
probably his two greatest
works
are the, and he wrote them in Arabic.
At least the first one was in Arabic.
Dalalatul Hayrin
which is oftentimes
translated as the guide for the perplexed.
It's called the
Moreh Nevuchim
in Hebrew,
3 volumes,
and basically the aim of the guide for
the perplexed.
Who are the perplexed?
Who are these people in the state of
hayra?
These are people that cannot reconcile Naqal with
Aqal.
They can't reconcile the revelation with reason.
So again, that's sort of the job as
it were,
as we said last week
of the dialectic,
theologian
to reconcile the 2.
So that's what he attempts to do in
the famous Guide for Be Perplexed.
His,
second famous text is called the Mishnah Torah
which is a commentary
on,
the Torah,
Jewish
law
and scripture.
And in his Mishnah Torah,
Maimonides articulated
basic creed.
Right?
So his creed is 13
principles.
That's all it is. Thirteen lines.
And it's taken from the Tanakh and the
Talmud. So we sort of have to
get familiar again with our terminology. What are
we talking about We say
Tanakh is another acronym.
The the tau comes from
Torah.
There's a nun in there, which is from
nibim, means prophets.
And then the calf, which is more guttural
in Hebrew.
So Tanakh comes from Kitobim,
the Writings.
So,
it's basically the Hebrew Bible. Right? Tanakh and
Hebrew Bible are synonymous.
Of course, Christians would call this the Old
Testament.
Right? So the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible,
the Tanakh, these are all synonymous. Of course,
the term Old Testament
is Christian terminology.
Jews, at least Orthodox Jews, would find
the term Old Testament to be a bit
offensive
which implies that
the the
covenant that God made with Moses and the
Israelites on Sinai has been
abrogated.
So so that's the Tanakh. Right? So you
have the Torah. So what do we mean
by Torah? What do they mean by Torah?
They mean the 5 books of Moses.
Right?
This is called also called in Hebrew the
Chumash
because the term Torah
is a bit ambiguous.
Right? Sometimes when Jews use the word Torah,
they're talking about the 5
books of Moses. Sometimes they're talking about the
entire Old Testament, the entire Tanakh.
Sometimes they're talking about all of the sacred
literature including the Talmud, and we'll talk about
that.
So the term Torah is a bit ambiguous.
But when we say Humash,
which comes from which is related to the
Arabic word hamza,
like
in Greek,
here we're talking about the first five books
of the Tanakh.
Right?
The books that are traditionally ascribed to to
Musa alayhis salam,
and orthodox Jews believe, in fact,
that Musa alai sallam wrote these 5 books
on Mount Sinai,
some,
35 100 years ago.
He wrote them over 40 nights. He was
in sort of a trance.
He did not sleep. He did not eat.
He did not drink.
He was simply receiving,
these 5 books. What are these 5 books
called?
Well, in Hebrew, the first book is called
Beresheth which comes from the very first word
and that's how they're all called in Hebrew.
It's the first word
or so,
a word in the first verse of the
first chapter of that book. In this case,
Genesis,
right, is called beresheet because the book begins
beresheet bara Elohim et Hashemayim
ve'et 'aretz,
That in the beginning, God created the heavens
and the earth.
Right?
However, it's called Genesis in English,
which is taken from Greek. So the the
titles of the books,
that we know are taken from Latin and
Greek and of course they're they're taken into
the English language.
So Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, Deuteronomy.
These are the 5 books of Moses. This
is the chumash.
Right? This is, the first five books of
the Tanakh, the Old Testament.
The orthodox believe again
that Moses himself, Musa alaihi salam, wrote these
books.
They are equivalent to
our conception of the Quran
as far as the Quran being,
a dictate
from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. So Musa alayhi
salam is not being inspired. These are not
his words. He's not receiving some sort of
inspiration or
and then he's articulating
the wording himself. The love is not his.
Right? Just like with the Quran,
the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam
is receiving the words either through exterior or
interior location
and he's simply repeating those words that he's
hearing from outside of himself or that he's
perceiving
within himself.
So that is the status of the chumash,
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
Right? And then we have the nibim, the
prophets.
Now, so there's another set of books in
the Old Testament
that,
are called after certain prophets. Right? So you
have books like Jeremiah
and Ezekiel and Isaiah and Amos,
Zephaniah,
etcetera,
Micah.
Right?
So
these books are believed by Jews to be
inspired by God. Right? So it's not a
ipsissima
verba, you know, word for word dictate.
It's more like hadith,
if there's something comparable in our tradition,
inspired words of God where a prophet
would receive,
inspiration,
but that prophet would use his own words.
He would
Kitabim,
The Writings are hagiography,
and these are books that are authored by
non prophets.
For example, Proverbs.
So Jews don't believe that David and Solomon
are prophets. This is a difference of opinion
that we have with them.
So the Psalms, for example,
is Kitobim.
So a lower degree of revelation. Still sacred
writings, canonical and sacred
but not as high.
Right? Not not as great
as the writings of Isaiah. And Isaiah is
not as great,
as exalted as the writings of Moses,
which are not even the words of Moses.
They are the words of God spoken by
by Moses.
So Maimonides' creed is taken from the Tanakh,
aka Old Testament, as well as something called
the Talmud.
The word Talmud
is related,
to,
the Arabic Tilmid.
Right?
And Tilmid means like a a pupil.
Right? So the Talmud is sort of the
pupil or the little student of the Torah.
The orthodox believe the Talmud is also sacred
writing.
Right?
So it has a status
that we would, the equivalent in our tradition
will be something like ilham,
right, or iha,
which is non prophetic revelation. So not Wahi.
Wahi, according to our scholars like Imam Suyuti
and Zarqashi and others,
the the term wahi is is prophetic revelation.
So, Musa alayhi salam in our tradition,
Ibrahim alayhi salam, Isa alayhi salam, they received
wahi.
Right? But,
saints or nonprofits, the Quran says that the
Hawariyun,
the disciples of Isa alaihis salam received
iha,
non prophetic revelation, inspiration,
inspired revelation.
Right? So the the Talmud then has 2
parts.
The Talmud
is made up of the Mishnah and Gemara.
Right?
Mishnah and Gemara.
So
the Mishnah,
according to Judaism
is the oral law of Moses that was
finally reduced to writing. So here's something interesting
that a lot of people don't know,
even a lot of secular Jews don't know,
is that
in the Orthodox tradition,
Jews Orthodox Jews believe that Moses received 2
Torahs
on Mount Sinai.
He received the first five books,
which is the very words of God,
but he also received
inspiration,
that,
that he
eventually would articulate
piecemeal
over his life
in his own words.
So essentially a commentary
of the written Torah.
Right? So receive the first five books and
then Musa alayhis salam, Moses, peace be upon
him, according to Judaism, he as as he
would live his life and situations would arise
with the Israelites
in the Sinai,
wilderness,
he would he would comment,
commentate or interpret
what was written in the first five books
with his own words,
and
those words were eventually written down in the
1st century of the common era.
So it's kind of like the hadith of
Musa alayhis
tafsir, if you will, of of the Khumash.
So it was written down
and, called the Mishnah.
Right?
And then between the 2nd
7th centuries of the Common Era,
2nd and 7th century, 2nd and 8th century,
rabbis began to
write commentaries
on the Mishnah.
Right?
And that was called the Gemara. So Gemara
means completion.
So you have the Tanakh,
right, the Old Testament, which is the Torah,
the Chumash in other words,
the Nabiim, the prophets, the Kituvim, the writings,
and then you have the Talmud which is
made up of the Mishnah,
the oral law that Moses received
eventually reduced to writing in the 1st century
because the Temple had been destroyed and now
the religion was in danger, so the rabbis
decided to write it down. And then you
have rabbinical commentaries
written on the Mishnah
that occurred,
primarily in 2 locations at the
rabbinical academy
in Babylon or Iraq and, as well as
the rabbinical academy
in,
in Palestine.
So you really have two versions then of
the Talmud. You have the Babylonian
Talmud
and you have the,
Palestinian,
Talmud.
Okay.
Okay.
So
so Maimonides then
the genius of Maimonides
is that he's able to
take this massive
corpus of literature, I mean, you look at
the
the,
the Tanakh and the Talmud, I mean,
millions of words,
and he's able to distill it
and give us the bare bones of Jewish
theology. And that's what he does here
with his 13 articles of Jewish faith, 13
principles of Jewish faith. And he says very
clearly that if you don't believe in any
one of these, you are a kofer,
right, a cather,
in his opinion. Now there's some difference of
opinion,
amongst Jewish theologians.
Joseph Albo, for example, a 15th century
Spain,
Spanish
rabbi
said that only 3 of the 13 are
essential. Maimonides, he confused,
which is essential with that which is derivative.
But generally,
Maimonides'
articulation of the creed is accepted by
by Jews the world over.
Right?
So,
he called these the sholosha a'ashar,
Ikhkarei emunah, which literally means the 13 principles
of Jewish faith.
So at this point,
we're going to take
maybe a 7 minute break inshallah,
and we're going to pray the Maghrib, and
then we'll come back and we'll begin with
the first
couple of principles
as articulated by Maimonides inshallah.
So now continuing
to principle number 1, iqar number 1, as
articulated by Maimonides.
He says
he says, I believe
with full faith, with perfect faith or sound
faith,
that the Creator, blessed be His name,
and,
the Hebrew here is,
if you know Arabic, you could pick up
Hebrew quite easily.
So
I believe with sound faith
that the
that's the creator
blessed be his name,
he creates, he says, and he guides
all of creation,
and he by himself
did and is doing
and will do
all actions.
And it's very poetic here the way that
he that he frames it using the
So he uses the the perfect tense verb,
then he uses the active participle,
and then he uses the imperfect tense verb.
So basically what he's saying in this principle,
the first principle of the 13,
is that god alone
is the creator
and direct doer of all things.
That God is the primary cause. He's the
efficient
cause of all things
which is contra Aristotle. Right? For Aristotle,
God is not the efficient cause
because Aristotle believed that the universe is,
pre eternal.
Right?
So,
for Aristotle, God,
the unmoved mover, is kind of like a
giant cosmic
magnet,
that,
who draws all things
unto himself. So this sort of an unconscious
pull towards God.
And God did not create
according
to Aristotle's,
metaphysics.
So
god is only the final cause for Aristotle.
But now
in in Judeo Christian Islamic tradition,
God is ultimately the final cause but he's
also the efficient cause,
meaning that there was a sort of conscious
push that he is the beginning of the
ontological origin of all things. The universe is
not pre eternal in the past. The universe
was created from nothing.
The the universe was created from nothing
by God.
Right? God is the efficient cause, the primary
cause.
So
he says that God by himself,
right, he did and is doing
and will do all actions.
Right? So you're gonna think about here no
one does God's actions.
That's God. None,
no one can create anything
except for God.
Right?
So if you examine the the rationalist, the
Muertazila
claim, this contrafultur
the creation of
that the rationalists were highly influenced by Greek
philosophy.
They they said that due to our absolutely
free will,
we create our own actions.
We are the creators of our own actions.
That our actions,
in effect,
inform
God himself.
So God only knows what we decide to
do. So things are not
predetermined.
So you have rationalist elements,
in the Jewish world as well. And it
seems that Maimonides, a lot of these
or you can argue all of the 13
principles has a polemical aspect,
to them. In other words, he is trying
to argue against
a position that he believes to be
heretical.
This idea that God
does not create everything. That we create some
of our actions. That God does not know
everything. He doesn't know particulars.
He only
knows, you know,
essences.
So this is
astoundly refuted by Maimonides in his writings
as well as the theologians of Ahlus Sunnah
wal Jama'l. They also had to deal with
this idea
And our theologians, they would quote from the
Quran. Right?
That God created you and your actions.
Right? Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is the only
real creator.
Right? Allah
is the creator of everything.
So these are some of the proof texts
that our theologians would use. Maimonides would quote
from the book of Isaiah, for example, which
is in the nabiim, the prophets, that middle
section of the chumash.
So Isaiah chapter 45 verse 6 and 7
where God is the speaker.
And Isaiah is is speaking the words of
God although Isaiah is choosing the wording according
again
to, the
to the Jewish
tradition
where he says I make peace
and I,
create evil.
Right? God says I make peace but I
create
evil.
He creates everything even evil.
Notice how he says it. I make peace.
I'm the doer of peace and I create
evil.
Right? So even though God is the creator
of evil and ultimately he is the doer
of every action, the way that it's worded
in scripture
is a way that we should think about
it.
And then he says
that I am the Lord and I do
all of these things.
I do all of these things. So God,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, for my monadis,
God,
the creator,
is the only creator.
He's the only creator and he's a doer
of all actions.
So God's omnipotence
includes the power
to will that which is evil
from our perspective.
Right? So this is an important concept. God's
omnipotence, his qudra,
includes
the power to will that which is evil
at least from our perspective. So the rationalists,
they denied this and they said things like
good and evil have intrinsic,
properties
and that that the intellect knows
and that God is bound to act within.
Right? So good and evil exist outside of
God
as absolute,
things.
They have intrinsic
properties
and so God is bound to be good
according to what is good. So this whole
idea is
is a is a philosophical
argument
that is brought out by Plato,
the the Euthyphro
dilemma.
Right? Are things good because God,
says they're good,
or does God say they're good so therefore
they're good?
This argument ultimately
ultimately,
Allah
is the standard
of good.
Right? Good and evil do not
exist as they don't have any type of
sort
of ontological
existence
up there in the ether somewhere distinct
from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. That Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala is the one who determined
what is good and what is evil.
So this is what he's heading at here.
Just to give some more notes here
from the Orthodox tradition of Judaism,
the rabbi say that
that faith, iman, which they call emunah,
it requires
yadi'a
or alm, knowledge or marifa.
In other words, credulity,
believing in something without evidence is actually blameworthy.
Right?
So you must know
that God exists. You must know that within
yourself,
right? You have to prove it to yourself
that God exists. You have to find evidence
of God's existence.
As the Quran says,
know that there is no God
but
Allah Right? So the
comes first.
The in in Hebrew is called the
and it is a necessary condition of of
and we would concur with this.
Alright. In order for you to be tasked
to believe in the revelation of God, the
Naqal,
you have to have intellect. It's a necessary
condition. It's not a sufficient condition because there
are other conditions,
right, but it certainly is necessary.
So it's necessary for you to be able
to
understand at least,
like what is the difference if if we
say for example God has neither kethra or
adad,
Right? God has no multi no multiplicity whatsoever
with respect to kethra or adad.
Right? To to understand what that means, You
know, like this is one pen.
Right? But this pen is composed of multiple
things.
That's called kethra. So this has nothing to
do with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. You might
have you might have 2 pens.
Right?
So, a plural of numbers. This has nothing
to do with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
You might have 3 similar pens. You might
have 3 pens that in essence they're
they have pen ness,
Right? But one's blue, one is red, and
one is black. So different attributes of one
essence that has nothing to do with Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
So that's important. We'll get back to that
idea as well
when we talk about the rigid
oneness of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
So
the rabbi say that emunah begins with a
sekhil end. So faith begins
where the intellect stops.
Right? But the leads you to faith.
The
the intellect leads you to faith. They are
not in conflict.
Right? The
is not a hindrance to God. It can
be trusted
to a
certain degree. We we use logic. At some
point, logic will break down especially when we
talk about God, we talk about metaphysics.
Allah
God is greater than human logic,
but we still use logic. So it's really
a faith based on evidence.
Right? It's reasonable faith.
Right? Like Richard Dawkins is incorrect
when he says that faith is belief without
evidence.
That's not what it is at all.
Right? You believe because it is reasonable to
believe. It's reasonable to believe in God. Again,
that's the task of the dialectical
theologian.
That's the task of Maimonides in the,
the guide for the perplexed. Why is it
reasonable to believe in God?
Right? How is belief consistent with reason?
This goes all the way back to the
the Presocratics.
Someone like Heraclitus
who just looked at nature. And in the
Quran,
we are,
encouraged to look at nature,
look at what Heraclitus called logos. We talked
about this last week as well. There's there's
there's an ordering principle in nature. Things are
ordered.
Things are predictable in nature.
Right? He called that Lagos or or Logos.
The Quran says
Do they not look at the camels
and how they're created?
Right? Look at the creation of the camel.
It's incredible.
Right?
Look at the heavens, how he raised them
high, how he made the the earth to
appear like a carpet. These are great signs.
Look at nature as evidence of God.
The Alam. Right? That's what the world is
called.
The Alam is is is is related to
the alama. It's a great sign of Allah
So that's
that's important. So Heraclitus, he looked around and
he saw logos. Now later on,
another philosopher that's still pre Socratic,
Anaxagoras,
I believe, he said, look, if there's logos
in nature,
if there's order in nature,
then someone must have ordered it.
Right?
There must be some grand intellect, and he
called it the noose,
the intellect. The noose is the one who
ordered the universe. So that's what his intellect,
that's what his reason,
compelled him to admit
that there's order in the universe and someone
must have put it there. There must be
some
intelligence
that has ordered the universe.
Alright?
So the rabbis, they speak of Ibrahim alaihis
salaam.
They call him Avraham Avinu,
our father Abraham, that he looked at creation
and he came to know
that God exists.
Right?
So Abraham, according to the Jewish tradition, was
a type of evidentialist.
Alright? That you look at evidence to arrive
at faith in God.
And there's something of this in the Quran
as well. We find in Surat Al An'am,
Ibrahim alayhis salaam
looking at a star, a Najm,
this is my lord,
and
then it set.
This is not my lord.
Right? And then he saw the moon. This
is my lord, Hathar Rabbi, and then it
set.
Unless Allah
guides me, I shall be of those who
are lost. Then he saw the Shams,
the sun.
Right?
This is my lord.
And then it set.
Right? So don't get the wrong idea here.
There's no question of Ibrahim, alayhis salaam,
even entertaining the thought of worshiping these celestial
bodies.
Right? This is his argument against his people.
He's trying to demonstrate to them the futility
in the worship of things that are mutable,
things that change.
Something is changing. It's constantly changing
even if it's predictable. If it's changing,
then it's not eternal. If it's not eternal,
then it cannot be worshiped in its right.
It's not a Ma'abu bi haqqihi.
Right?
So this is,
this is the point. This is what we
get from the argumentation.
This is this is and Imam Tabari says
there's a bit of sarcasm here, that this
is the argument he's presenting to his people,
that you're worshiping these celestial bodies.
Right?
He's trying to understand your thought process, explain
it to them, and and and try to
drive home the futility
of of of worship, of of creation.
Right? God cannot change because God is perfect,
and you can't improve on on perfection.
Right? So the the anthropic principle, right, the
teleological
argument, some people call this the argue the
argument,
for intelligent design or fine tuning the great
watchmaker analogy
going back to William Paley.
So the Midrash,
which is the word for tafsir
in Hebrew,
The Midrash,
says that Ibrahim, alayhis salaam, as a child,
he figured this out by listening to his
neshama.
This is a term in Hebrew,
neshama, which is trans it is mind.
It's more like fitra,
and I would say kind of a theological
or moral,
compass,
the level of the soul that sort of
pulls you towards a greater understanding
of the divine.
And this is the purpose of,
the Shabbat. Yom Shabbat, Yom Scept
According,
Judaism,
so when the body is not working
you can listen to your neshama. You can
listen to your moral compass,
if you will. And you reflect upon God
and his greatness,
listen to your soul
without any type of worldly,
distractions.
So this is a bit akin to the
Masjididi position of
that the,
is,
enough evidence for the to arrive at a
creator god.
Right? But the intellect must be aided with
an aql to know
the Sharia, the sacred law. Although the,
one could argue
that there are na'ruf,
right, there are things that are simply known,
through the intellect, through thing through innate knowledge
that's still given by Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
It's given the by the, Al Wahab, the
one who bestows.
That's a
long a long argument
about
whether we have innate knowledge or
whether we don't.
Okay. So that's basically
the first,
the first point here, the first principle. Just
to recap it again, god alone is a
creator.
There's only one creator. He is the direct
doer of all things, the primary cause, the
efficient cause. That's principle number 1. Principle number
2 for Maimonides, he says, the same beginning.
He says, I believe with sound faith that
the creator blessed
be his name.
He says,
And Bert imam at Tahaue's
first statement.
Right?
So here Maimonides says God is
which is that's the cognate.
He is 1, He is uniquely
1,
and and then he continues,
And there is not
a uniqueness or oneness
like Him
in any way, shape, or form.
Right?
Any way, shape, or form. So a lot
of emphasis. He continues to say, and he
by himself is our God who was,
is,
and will be,
or that
that he was our God and is our
God and always will be our God. Again,
very poetic here using the perfect tense and
then immediately,
the active participle,
then the imperfect
tense.
So basically here then, in this with this
principle, God is unique and he's radically 1
and immutable.
Right? He doesn't change.
Right? Malachi chapter 3 verse 6, I am
the Lord and I change not.
Right?
That Allah
is a salaam.
Right? And this is one of the words,
this is one of the names of God
according to the rabbinical tradition as well. It
doesn't mean the peace, it means the perfect.
God is perfect. He doesn't change
because He is perfect,
and you cannot improve on perfection.
So the commentators also go to say here
that God does not incarnate
into human flesh. He doesn't become a human
being.
This would compromise His radical uniqueness
and His immutability.
He is also transcendent of space, time,
and matter.
Right?
So the word for uniqueness or in Arabic,
The Hebrew equivalent is
Right? And the great statement in the Torah,
the great,
monotheistic
statement of the Torah is Deuteronomy 6 4.
So remember Deuteronomy, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
The 5th book of the Chumash,
the 5th book of the 5 books of
Moses
is called Deuteronomy. That's the that's the English
name taken from,
the Latin
or Greek meaning second law.
64 of Deuteronomy,
This is like their Shahada.
Right?
So when one enters into Judaism
and one can convert into Judaism,
there's there's,
there's some sort of misunderstanding,
popular misunderstanding that
Judaism does not allow
proselytes or converts. That's not true at all.
You can convert to Judaism
and when one does convert to Judaism, one
will recite the Shema.
The Shema, Deuteronomy
64. Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God,
the Lord is 1.
Alright?
And,
devout Jews, they try to recite this
as much as they can. They want it
to be the last words on their tongue
before they die.
That God
is
The word the Hebrew word
is spelled
exactly the same as Ahad.
God is 1.
Right?
And there's some interesting
curious parallels,
to,
Plato
and the Parmenides, for example.
Plato refers to God
as Tahen,
the one.
Right? Of course, Plotinus,
who wrote Aeneidus, who's the great formulator of
Neo Platonism, which is a 3rd century
religious interpretation of Plato.
We have this,
whole system. He's a system builder, the hierarchy
of being and so on and so forth
and the the Godhead
consisting of the the one that he said,
Tahen, then you have the logos,
then you have the psuche, the spirit.
Right? We'll talk more about that when we
get to Christianity because Christians borrowed from this
idea.
But even if we go back to Plato
again in the Timaeus,
right, one of his,
dialogues,
he says that god looked around the world
and he said it was good.
Right?
And that is very curious parallel to something
we find in Genesis 1 when God is
creating in stages,
right, on these different,
what is the plural of yom in in
Hebrew?
I think it's yomim. I think it's a
sound plural. We'd say I am in Arabic.
God is when God is creating different things
on these yomim,
after each day he says,
it is good it is good. And this
is
something that Plato says in the Timaeus.
There is this legend. Right? This is sort
of ad hoc.
There's no strong evidence of this but there's
this legend, very interesting that Plato
was captured at Syracuse,
and he was enslaved,
and he was brought to Egypt.
And Egypt at the time of Plato
had a pretty sizable
Jewish population.
I mean, Alexandria in Egypt,
would
be one of the great Jewish capitals of
the world.
The first place where the Torah
was translated
into Greek, into any other language, the first
language was Greek,
was in,
Alexandria, Egypt in 250 before the Common Era.
So there's a there's a sizable population of
Jews living in Egypt
and the legend is that Plato in Egypt
read the books of Moses
and he was highly influenced,
in his metaphysics.
Right? Again, there's no evidence of this as
conjecture, but it's an interesting theory. Of course,
Plato is much more
metaphysical than someone like Aristotle,
even though Aristotle studied under Plato. If you've
ever seen that great painting of Raphael.
Right, it's called the Academy
where you have, all these philosophers and then
right in the middle
on the left side, I believe you have
Plato
who's holding the Timaeus,
right, his most metaphysical work, and he's pointing
up like this.
Because for Plato,
reality
I mean the real essences of things are
found in the celestial realm.
What we have here are just
shadows on the wall if you will.
Right? So here,
the famous
theory of ideal forms
in the celestial realm,
the essences of things. Right?
And of course, the the essence or the
form of the good, Ta'agathan,
is God. He's the form of the good
for Plato.
This idea would be bothered would be borrowed
by middle Platonists
who were religious and they would say all
of these forms
God's mind.
Right?
But Aristotle in that in that painting
is to the right and he's holding his
ethics
and he's got his hand over the earth
like this. He's not pointing up. He's pointing
parallel to the to the earth because Aristotle
is an empiricist,
and a hylomorphist.
He believed that the essences or forms of
things are in matter itself.
Form or essence and matter are not separate
as as Plato taught. So that was a
major difference of opinion that Aristotle had with
his teacher, Plato.
But nonetheless,
whatever happened here? It's an interesting curious parallel
between Genesis
and some of the Platonic
dialogues.
So Shema. Right? So the Shema,
right, their Shehadah
begins with hear.
Hear, o Israel. The Lord our God, the
Lord is 1.
And to hear doesn't just mean to hear,
it means to receive, to accept.
Really, it means to obey.
Right?
So the 5 senses,
the 5 physical senses,
they correlate
to different
spiritual senses, if you will.
Right? There's sort of a correlation
dealing with spirituality.
So in scripture, to give you an example,
hearing something means to obey.
Right?
They said we believe,
we we hear, and we obey. So this
is these are synonymous. This is,
synonymic
juxtaposition
here.
Right? They're synonyms. To hear something means to
obey.
To
see something means to understand.
It's interesting ayah in the Quran.
Where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is speaking to
the Prophet
When you call them to guidance,
right,
they don't hear.
What does it mean they don't hear?
They didn't hear the words of the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam. Of course, they heard him.
They don't obey him.
And you see them looking at you,
but they didn't see.
You see them looking at you, but they
don't see.
Right?
To see something means to understand something, right?
You say that in English. Someone explains something
to you and you say, ah,
I see.
Alright?
And then you have 3 different
degrees of experience,
smell, touch, and taste.
Smell something, right, you don't quite touch it
but you get something of it,
and you touch something
that's a deeper level of experience,
and then you taste it,
that's the deepest,
right?
You take it into your body, you accept
it completely.
It's zok, right? Imam Ghazali talks about this.
Zok, to taste one's faith. There's hadith that
mentioned.
The sweetness of faith, the taste,
right? The sweetness of faith.
So the Shemas, hear, O Israel. The Lord
our God, the Lord is 1. Doesn't just
mean hearer.
It means to obey.
Right? Obey the lord our god, the lord
is 1.
Right? So the rabbi say that
God is 1.
Yes.
It's not enough to just accept the rational
proposition that God is 1
just to give it some ear service. 1
must prove one's faith, they say,
by following the commandments.
The mitzvot,
this is the Hebrew term that's used,
in the Bible. Mitzvot are commandments.
Right? So there are 3 requirements
for the new convert.
Right?
And I think the
the misunderstanding
comes from
the idea that in Orthodox Judaism, as well
as conservative Judaism,
it is not necessary
for one to convert to Judaism in order
to
be successful in both worlds. This is very
interesting.
Right?
So
Jews in the orthodox tradition and the conservative
tradition and other reform as well,
Although, when we get to reform Judaism, many
of them don't even believe in God. So
we'll we'll just talk about the orthodox tradition.
There are 7 laws that they call the
Noahitic laws.
The Noahitic laws, the Noahide laws, they're called
the
the Sheva,
Mitzvotayv
Bani Noach, the seven laws of the children
of Noah
for non Jews.
So if you're born
outside
of the Jewish
faith
or your mother is not Jewish. If your
mother is Jewish, then
you have to follow all 613
of the commandments.
There's no way out of it. You can't
say I converted to Islam,
therefore I'm just gonna follow the 7 Noahidek
laws and I'll be fine. That conversion
is not acceptable.
If your mother is Jewish, you are Jewish.
So in Judaism,
the Jewish faith is passed matrilineally.
The tribe comes from the father,
you know, whatever your tribe, the tribe of
Judah, the tribe of Levi,
Right?
The tribe of of Simeon, of Issachar, whoever
your whoever it might be, the 12 tribes.
But Jewishness is passed through the mother.
Right? But let's just say that you're,
you're an Iranian like me. Right?
My mother is not Jewish.
So
if I believed, if and I kept the
7 Noahitic laws and these 7 Noahitic
laws,
Jews would argue are Maruf. They're known. They're
innate.
They're axiomatic.
Right? Everybody knows them.
They are God is 1 or sometimes they
explain it by saying that
there's
people know innately the futility of worshiping idols,
the futility of worshiping
material things. They know innately that's wrong even
though a lot of people do that.
It goes against the fitra and of course
the fitra can be perfect.
God is one not to steal,
not to commit adultery. Right?
Not to murder.
Right?
Not to
while it's still alive.
Basically, what that means is respect creation,
respect animals, respect all of creation.
Set up courts of justice
is one of them as well.
See if I can
I think I'm missing one here?
Yeah. Oh, don't blaspheme God.
Right? So
it recognizes
a single creator God. That's the first one.
And then not to blaspheme God or curse
God. So if one recognizes
that God is a creator and he's all
powerful and he's and he's the creator of
us, he's the creator of everything,
then one knows not to be disrespectful
towards God. So So those are the 7.
So according to Judaism,
if 1 if a gentile,
that's the word for non Jew or goi
in Hebrew,
If a goi follows these 7 Noahitic laws,
they will be successful
in this life and the next. And the
next life is what takes precedence.
They call it the olam haba, the world
to come. This is the olam haza.
This is this world. Right? And then there's
an olam haba, the coming world.
Right?
So rabbis are trained.
If someone comes to them, if a goy
comes to them and says I want to
convert to Judaism,
the rabbis are trained to turn that person
away three times.
Because for them, there's no need to convert
to Judaism.
If you follow the 7 Noahidek laws, you'll
be successful.
Right?
But they say, if you become a Jew,
then the burden
of spreading the light of El Ikhad
falls down on your shoulders.
Now you have a a great responsibility
to spread
the light of monotheism
to all the nations,
and
you're going to fall short of that.
And oftentimes in Jewish history, you have what's
known as collective punishment.
You have the Jewish nation being punished as
a whole. So the rabbis would tell the
proselytes,
if you wanna convert,
get ready
for a lot of trials and tribulations and
Musibat and so on and so forth. It's
not going to be easy.
Or you can remain
a non Jew, follow the 7 Noahidek laws,
and you'll go to the next life and
you'll be in a good state. So what's
then the incentive for becoming a Jew then?
Why would anyone convert to Judah? Well, if
you convert to Judaism
and you keep all 613
commandments,
right,
and you do them
and you suffer in this world, you will
have the highest of stations
in the next life.
That's the incentive. So there's degrees in the
olam haba, in the world to come.
I'm out of time. We'll continue talking about
these principles next time, InshaAllah Ta'ala.
So last time we ended,
by looking at the first and second,
principles
of Jewish faith as articulated by Maimonides
in his Mishnah Torah.
So just to recap very quickly,
he said the first one is that god
alone is the creator and the direct doer
of all things.
He's a primary cause and
efficient cause,
of all things.
And then number 2,
he said that god is unique
and radically 1 and immutable.
Alright?
So just by way of commentary, we talked
about the Shema
as,
something equivalent
in some respects to our Shehadah.
Deuteronomy 6:4. We
Lord our God, the Lord is 1. The
great test testification
of the oneness of God.
So
the rabbis say that one should say
the Shema with
kavanah.
Kavanah is a very important concept,
in Judaism.
It means something like focus
or humility
or devotion,
kind of, similar to what we would say
is hushur
or echlas.
It's very difficult to translate.
Rabbi Akiva
according to the Gemara
remember Gemara now is the rabbinical commentaries on
the Mishnah, the oral law or the second
half
of the Talmud.
Rabbi Akiva,
he, is famous for reciting the Shema at
his death. He was actually killed,
by the Romans during the
failed Bar Kokhba revolt,
in 135
CE.
He actually endorsed,
this man
Simon Bar Kokhba as being the true Jewish
Messiah.
And, Bar Kokhba actually was able to
defeat the Roman,
legions at Fort Antonia
in Jerusalem was actually able to seize the
temple at some point, but he was killed
thereafter in battle.
But according to the Gemara
Akiva, his final words were the Shema.
According to,
many eyewitnesses,
many of the Jews that were going to
gas chambers during the Holocaust,
they were heard reciting
the Shema.
Again, that's Deuteronomy 64.
So the emunah of El Ahad,
the the faith or the belief in one
god,
this is,
according to Jews, the Jewish contribution,
to the world.
Right?
That
they brought the light of tokid
to all the nations, to the goyim.
So we would have,
issues with a very problematic statement.
We would say, for example, that
I mean,
the the term Judaism as we said, it's
it's it's anachronistic
to use at the time of Abraham or
Noah.
There was no such thing as Judaism at
the time of of Ibrahim alaihis salam.
The term Judaism,
the eponym of Judaism is Judah who's or
Yehuda,
who's one of the, the all the older
sons of Jacob.
Of course, Jacob is the grandson of Ibrahim
of Abraham.
So and the Quran makes this
clear, that Abraham was not a Jew.
It doesn't make sense to call him a
Jew. It's anachronistic.
It's kinda like saying,
George Washington was a fan of the Washington
Nationals.
Right? There was no such thing as Major
League Baseball at the time. It's anachronistic. It's
a bit ridiculous to say that.
Right? So we would say that all of
these prophets, Abraham, Noah, Adam, all of them
were Muslim.
They were submitters,
unto God. But this is Jewish theology, so
the Jews believe that
el echad,
monotheism,
yachiduth,
monotheism,
is the Jewish contribution into the world and
that the Jews were chosen
to bring
the light
of the one God to the world. So
this is the essence.
This is the definition of their chosenness.
Right? We hear this phrase, the chosen people.
Why are they chosen?
They're chosen to bring tokid to the nations,
to the world. Right? This is the nature
of their chosenness. So it's really seen now
as,
a burden
and something that,
that is
a major responsibility.
That's how they actually,
look at it.
Right?
The poet said how odd of God to
choose the Jews.
Right? Just
two lines of poetry.
Quick poetry.
And this is mentioned in the Quran.
Right? Where Allah
speaks in the first person, and I chose
you. Is the context.
And I chose you
above all of the nations.
Right? Why were they chosen? What's the nature
of this chosenness? They were chosen to bring
the light of monotheism,
to the nations. But certainly monotheism
existed
in our conception of sacred history
way before Bani Israel,
way before Musa, alayhis salam, even before Abraham
or Ibrahim, alayhis salam.
So the rabbis go on to say
that
that,
physicality
has nothing to do with God. Physicality implies
limitation.
God is not physical. He's not corporeal.
Right? So there may be one US president,
but he is not unique.
Right? There's one Waheed
US president,
but he's not ahad. He's not unique. So
he's flesh and blood.
Like all other mammals.
He is in space time. So again, getting
to this,
this,
differentiation
between
distinction between wahid and uhad.
And again, many of our theologians say that
they're absolutely synonymous.
But others would say, no. God is, for
example, wahid in his sifat, his attributes, but
ahad in his essence.
We mentioned last time,
probably the Hebrew equivalent to wahid is yachid,
which is a term that's used by Maimonides.
It's from the same exact root, And it
can it can denote this type of eternal
oneness with God, that he's one person,
meaning one consciousness.
That there's no multiplicity in the so called
Godhead, a simple unity. And, of course, by
simple, we don't mean unintelligent.
We mean indivisible,
radically 1.
Right? Whereas, ahad, which the the equivalent is
in Deuteronomy 64 in the Shema, echad,
again, the same exact word, from the same
root,
denotes his external oneness, that he that his
utter uniqueness.
Right? That nothing in creation resembles him whatsoever.
Right? Muthalafatunil
Hawadif.
Utter dissimilarity
to creation.
Now the rabbis go on to say that
it is permissible for Jews to pray in
a mosque
as long as they face
Al Akuts,
Yerushalayim,
Jerusalem.
It is not considered idolatry because Muslims worship.
Muslims worship the one true God.
Right?
So for the most part, our theology is
correct. They have issues with our prophetology.
Right?
And our akida,
with respect to,
sacred texts, and we'll talk about that.
But our theology really,
I would say that the differences are
are are minor.
However, they mentioned that the shilush,
that's the Hebrew term shilush,
Arabic is a
what is the Arabic term?
Tathleef.
Right?
Trinity,
shilush, the trinity, is considered idolatry
according
to almost all the consensus
of at least the classical,
Jewish authorities.
They call this Avuda Zara. Avuda Zara. Avuda
is ibada, zara means false.
Right? So false worship or
idolatry. Because the trinity and we'll talk about
the trinity next week inshallah and and the
week after that. The trinity involves what's known
as hypostatic multiplicity,
this idea that there are multiple persons of
God,
that there are 3 separate and distinct persons
of God, and that all 3 are co
eternal and cosastantial,
co equal.
This is highly problematic
for Maimonides. He doesn't consider this to be
correct theology
by any means.
So all of the major rabbis, they say
that belief in the tethlith or the shilush
is avodah zarah, is is shirk.
The rabbis are famous for saying
tachat Ishmael, tachat Ishmael velot tachat Edom.
We would rather live under,
Ishmael, meaning the Arabs or Muslims,
rather than under Edom or Rome or the
Christians.
If you look throughout Jewish history,
the Jews really flourished under Muslim caliphates,
especially when we look at Muslim Spain, Muslim
North Africa.
Jewish systematic theology was born
in Muslim Spain.
Right?
Maimonides,
Joseph Albo, Judah Halevi,
Saadia Gaion, these are the great Jewish
thinkers and philosophers, systematic theologians.
Most of them actually wrote in Arabic, that
was their primary language. Maimonides wrote the,
the,
the guide for the perplexed, the Dalalatul 'irin,
he wrote it actually in Arabic. It was
translated later into Hebrew,
But if you look at Jewish communities living
in Christendom or Christian Europe, it was very
precarious,
and oftentimes
there were pogroms set against them, that sort
of state sponsored terrorism or persecution.
They were exiled several times, twice from England,
twice from France,
a couple times, I think, also from Austria.
The plague was blamed on them,
because
Jewish communities that that were more that were
actually living in their own cloistered communities at
the time. They did not mix
with the Goyim
until,
much much later. We're talking maybe,
you know, 17th, 18th centuries.
17th or 18th century when they actually started
to intermix and live among
the Gentiles.
But in the Middle Ages,
you have the Christians dying,
you know, something like 40%
of of Christendom was decimated by the Black
Plague, the bubonic plague, but the Jewish community
is relatively unaffected, so of course they were
scapegoated. This is because of you. You're killers
of Christ.
This type of thing. You've cursed us.
And the reason why the Jews weren't dying
from the plague is because there's a seder,
there's a chapter
in the Mishnah,
which is called Tohorot,
which
Babu Tohara.
Right? So the Jews had these ideas of
cleanliness, of hosul, of wudu,
of nejasa.
Right? And that's where the disease you know,
from fleas and from rats and things like
that.
So there's that famous statement, we'd rather live
under Ishmael. Ishmael alaihi salam. Arabs are usually
the Muslims are referred to in rabbinical literature
as, Ishmael Ishmaelites.
Maimonides refers to the prophet as that Ishmaelite,
for example,
in the Mishnah Torah.
The rabbi say something interesting. They say Christianity
is like a pig.
The pig appears to be kosher. So what
is kosher according to you know, we say
kosher or cash root.
What is what is halal for a Jew
to eat? At least for the Orthodox and
Conservative.
Animals that have a cloven hoof
and chew the cud.
Right? So, like, an animal that can eat
food. It's called a ruminant. It can bring
it back up and chew it later like
a cow
or a goat.
A sheep can do that. A giraffe can
do that. Giraffe is actually kosher,
But camels don't. A camel is not kosher.
So they're saying Christianity is like a pig.
You know, the pig has a split hoof
but it does not chew the cud. So
in other words, they're saying Christianity looks great,
it sounds great on the outside.
Right? It looks good on the outside, but
it's deceptive.
Right? Christianity,
you know, if you if you talk to
Christians,
there's a strong emphasis on relationship and love
of God
which is
great, you know. We believe in those things
as well.
But when the Sharia is,
is not emphasized, there's nothing to ground you,
then you start saying deviant things. Right? So
there's that famous statement of Imam Malik ibn
Anas,
the Imam of Medina,
who said that whoever studies,
tasawwuf
and he used that term. Right? We say
Sufism. I don't necessarily like that.
Or tasawuf al ihsan,
almus saluk, right, almatazkiyah.
It has different asthma,
according to the mabadi al ashar.
For the science of of tasawuf.
He said whoever studies
tasawuf but did not engage in fiqh, and
Sharia,
fakat tazandaka.
Right? That he will be he will become
a zindiq,
that he will become a heretic.
That's what the word zindiq means or an
unbeliever.
Right? So it's a very dangerous state. But
whoever studies fiqh sharia
but did not study tasawuf,
tafasaka,
you'll become a fasik, which is not as
bad
as a zindiq. Right? It's better to on
the side of the Sharia.
Right? He says whoever
whoever joins the 2,
will actualize,
the truth.
Right?
So,
the rabbis also mentioned, for example, you shouldn't
walk next to a church.
Right? I mean, it's not an official mitzvah.
Right? The 613
mitzvot are in the Torah,
in the Talmud.
Really in the Torah, they're all there according
to Maimonides'
his,
his,
enumeration
of the 613
Commandments.
But this is a strong recommendation given by
the rabbis
that if you're walking down the street and
you see a church, you should cross the
street
because it's good to keep a safe distance
from all from all idolatry. So it's actually
prohibited
for a Jew to walk into a church,
The Orthodox would even say it's prohibited to
go for for an Orthodox
rabbi or an Orthodox Jew to go into
a Reform
synagogue
because there isn't a total
commitment to all of the mitzvot
in the Reform in the Reform synagogue Reformed
Temple.
Questions about the kippah. The kippah is the
small skull cap
that,
Jewish men tend to wear,
And, this is a mitzvah. It is a
commandment.
It's called a kippah in Hebrew, which means
to cover. It's called a Yarmuka
in Yiddish, which is a sort of,
kind of a dead language, but it was
spoken by Jews in Eastern Europe in the
2nd century.
The the purpose of it is to remind
the Jewish man that there's something above him
at all times, And Jewish women are also
supposed to wear
a something to cover their head,
something like a hijab. Sometimes,
I mean, if you go to a,
an Orthodox community on the East Coast,
the cultural practice is that girls would get
married,
and then they would shave their heads and
wear a wig. Right? So it's kind of
a,
so that the point is not to show
your real hair.
Okay.
So that's the second principle then.
God is unique and radically 1 and immutable.
Before we move on, a couple more things
I wanna say about that,
that's more focused on the theology rather than
the the practice.
We mentioned last week that Maimonides was a
negative theologian.
Right? He was a negative theologian.
And,
many of the great systematic theologians,
of Judaism, Joseph Albo and others, Bahia ibn
Upakuda, they they tended to be
negative theologians,
apophatic
theologians.
Right?
So they would they would engage
the theological
approach of negation,
and this is called the in
Arabic.
And it's generally considered to be a safer
way to theologize.
What does it mean to theologize?
Right? Theos means god. Logos
means many things, word, or reason.
So to speak reasonably,
so to speak about God. It's better to
talk about, in other words, it's better to
talk about
who or what God is not
rather than who or what,
God is.
Right?
So even Hinduism has,
a theological approach that is akin to negative
theology. It's called nirguna Brahminism.
We'll talk about that inshallah when we get
to Hinduism. Adi Shankara calls it neti neti
theology.
He's sort of a champion
of of, what's called transpersonalism
or Nirguna Brahmanism, which means not this, not
this. Nothing in nothing that you see in
the so called creation
is,
and I said so called creation. We'll talk
about what that means in Judaism sorry, in
Hinduism
because everything is ultimately an illusion in Hinduism.
Nothing is actually God
that you see.
Right?
He is utterly transcendent.
So why theologize like this? Again, to,
uphold
God's radical uniqueness.
Right? His yachiduth, his wahdaniyah,
because God's nature is wholly other.
So if you look at the first two
commandments,
right, so we talk about,
you know, the Ten Commandments, a famous movie
made,
in the 19
I guess it was in the late fifties.
Charlton Heston is Moses.
The Ten Commandments. I think they made another.
A couple more Moses movies after that. They
weren't very good.
And that movie's not very good. It's not
very accurate according to the Bible anyway.
But everyone has heard of the Ten Commandments,
but that's only 10 of them. Those are
the sort of the 10 10 main commandments
that, as we said, Jews believe that there
are 613
commandments.
But let's look at the first two commandments.
So we'll find this in the book of
Exodus chapter 20,
right at the beginning of chapter 20. Remember,
x Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the 5
books, the Pentateuch, the Chumash.
Right?
The the the 5 scrolls of Moses. This
is the second book.
Moses is on the mountain,
and god says to him
that I am the lord thy god,
right, who brought you out of,
the house of bondage, out of Egypt, out
of Mitzrayim.
Then he says,
You shall not have any other gods before
me.
Right? This is the first commandment,
that the God that brought the Israelites out
of Egypt, he's the only God.
Right?
And when it says you shall have no
other gods, that doesn't mean that there are
other gods.
Right? What that means is that you shall
have no other so called gods. You shall
not worship anything else other than me because
the God that is bringing you out of
Egypt is the only true God.
Right? So we find that term Aliyah in
the Quran also.
Like the people of Ibrahim
they were devoted to their Aliyah, their gods.
Those aren't really gods. They're so called gods.
Right? So that's the first commandment.
And then
he
says,
So now we're getting into the second commandment.
It's kind of a long one. He says,
God, again, speaking directly to Moses and by
extension so laka'ar, so this is the kafil
khitab, so speaking
second person masculine singular to Moses.
But as we as Imam al Shafi'i says
about the Quran, whenever Allah speaks to the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam in the Quran
directly,
it is also by extension to the umba
unless it's very obvious that it's only speaking
to him. Right? So in this case, the
rabbis would say to Moses and by extension,
the Am Israel
or the Bani Israel.
Right? The the children of Israel.
So he says, you shall not make unto
yourself the likeness of any image
which is in the heavens
above you,
or the likeness or the image of anything
which is in the Earth or on the
Earth below you.
Or the likeness or the image of anything
that is in the water beneath the Earth.
Right?
So that covers
everything.
That covers the universe. Everything above the Earth,
on or in the Earth, and below the
Earth.
Right? There's nothing like God. Those are the
first two commandments of Exodus.
Right? We talked about
Numbers 23/19.
Remember we talked about that lo'ish eil, God
is not a man that he should lie.
And we mentioned that Rabbi Abahu of Caesarea,
who died in 3/20
of the Common Era, who was actually a
a brilliant orator and a defender of of
Jewish faith in the face of the Christians.
He was a sort of anti Christian polemicist
or apologist, Jewish apologist.
He said the meaning of that is
that whoever claims to be God is a
liar.
That's that's what the Hebrew actually means according
to Rabbi Abahu of Caesarea.
Right? We talked about Hosea 119,
indeed, I am god and not a man.
It's a mutually exclusive
god and man.
Right?
Isaiah 558
is a very famous verse of transcendence.
All of Deutero Isaiah. So according
to historians of the Old Testament,
the book of Isaiah actually has 3 authors.
It was authored at
three different times.
So you have Proto Isaiah from chapter 1
to chapter 39,
and then chapters 40 to 66 is called
Deutero Isaiah. And it's really in Deutero Isaiah
where you get,
a strong teaching of god's transcendence.
And then after that, you have Trito, Isaiah
3rd Isaiah until the end of the book.
But in Deuteronomy,
basically,
if you believe that God exists
literally within the 4 elements,
then you're a mushrik.
Then you're an idolater.
God is transcendent.
So 558 of Isaiah is right there. My
thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my
ways your ways.
Right? Or Isaiah 40 chapter 20 sorry, chapter
40 verse 25.
To whom
will you liken me?
Right? It's a rhetorical question. Nothing is like
God. In fact, the name Michael in Arabic,
sorry. The name Michael in Hebrew
it's Hebrew in origin. It's also, you know,
Mikal or Mikael. It's in the Quran,
the name of one of the archangels,
but its origin is Hebrew.
Means man, who
in Arabic, and then is the
Like we say
1.
Right?
So man ka,
eil
Allah
or ila. Who is like God? It's a
rhetorical question. It doesn't mean a man's a
man whose name is Michael
is like God.
It doesn't mean that. It's his name is
a rhetorical question. Who is like God?
Right? Nobody is the answer.
It's already,
understood that you know the answer. That's the
point of our istif ham taqir. You already
know the answer
So according to Maimonides,
right, when referring to God's
nature or essence,
Right? So according to Maimonides, the name of
god's
essence
is the tetragrammaton,
the 4 letter word
or the 4 letters
that you find all throughout the Hebrew bible.
Right? This this sort of
initials of God's
name. Right?
Yod Hey Vav Hey. Right? So you'll see
that. In the Hebrew, you'll see it. Usually
in English, it's just translated as Lord with
a capital l or Lord, all letters
in caps,
but that's actually the four letter name of
God or the initials of God. Now how
do you articulate Yod Vav?
The articulation
is not known for sure.
Once a year on Yom Kippur, the day
of atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish
calendar,
the high priest of the Temple who was
called the HaKohen
HaGadol,
he would go into
the,
the Holy of Holies inside the Temple.
Right? The Beit,
what's called the Beit Mikdash, Beitul Maqdis
in Jerusalem.
He would go into the innermost
chamber
on Yom Kippur
and he would pronounce the holy name of
God, the actual
Ismul
Avam of god.
Right? The initials of which are Yod Hey
Vav Hey,
y h w h.
So the high priest knew the name,
and,
he would,
make a
a tovah on behalf of all of Israel
by calling on God's most sacred name,
teshuvah
or tobah,
repentance.
And then he would pass
knowledge of the name to his successor, and
he would pass it to his successor, and
so on and so forth. But since the
Temple is destroyed
in 70
by the Romans, General Titus,
The priesthood is gone.
No more sacrifices.
Right? The name has become lost,
but according to Maimonides,
the Yod Hey Vav Hey, the Tetragrammaton,
the Shem HaMaforash as it's called in Hebrew,
This is the name of God's essence.
Alright? And generally,
the Orthodox agree with him.
The Kabbalah,
a a text of Jewish mysticism,
it disagrees with this and says that the
actual name of God's essence is Ein Sof,
which means the one who is without limit,
the limitless.
That's the name of God's essence.
Other rabbis, they use the name,
Mahut.
Mahut.
So right in the middle of Mahut, you
have the huwa. The letters in Hebrew, and
or and wow in in, in Arabic.
Also, if you look at that tetragrammatin
again, Yod Vav
Right in the middle again, you have the
Huwa.
Right? So these are the prominent letters
of the sacred,
name of God. And oftentimes in the Hebrew
Bible, the tetragrammaton
is shortened by just who.
Right? For example, the name Elijah.
Elijah
in in Hebrew is Eli yahu.
Eli means my God. Yahoo is yahu.
Right?
Which is again a shortened,
way of of articulating
the yod vav
But how to actually articulate all four letters
is not decisively known, of course, and it's
actually impermissible
and
a mortal sin for Jews to try to
articulate,
that
tetragrammatin.
The Christians, of course, they don't have these
religious scruples.
So you'll find for example Jehovah Witnesses.
Their their claim to fame is that
the Yod Hey Vav Hey is pronounced Jehovah.
Right?
So they'll come to your door and they'll
say, do you know the name of God?
And, you know, they'll come to a Muslim
house, and and the Muslim will say, Allah.
And they say, no. That's not a name.
That's a title.
Of course, we say, no. It's actually a
name, and there's a debate.
But they're trained that, no. Allah is a
title. It's from the God. That's a minority
opinion.
Anyhow,
so we can ask them, how do you
get Jehovah?
And they say, Well, from the tetragrammatin.
Yod Vav
Y H W H.
So we ask them then, Okay, those are
4 consonants.
How do you know how to vowel it?
And a 100% of the time a 100%
of the time,
the Jehovah's Witness will have no answer for
you.
And then you say, okay. Fine. That's how
you vowel it. So
Jehovah.
So Jehova with a j? And they say
yes. But this is a yod in Hebrew.
How do you go from a yod to
a j? And again,
90 90 percent of the time,
they won't have an answer for you. So
it's it's conjecture. They really don't know. Right?
Others will say Yahweh.
Right? You hear that a lot too.
Yahweh.
Right? It just seems to roll off the
tongue, so that might be what it is.
My opinion is it's probably
is
a It's a present tense verb
in perfect tense,
which means
he is.
Right?
It's a verb meaning he is and continues
to be.
Right?
And then the shortened form of it, who
or whoa,
is the third person masculine
pronoun,
which again means he is. But it's a
pronoun this time. It's not an actual verb.
Right? Ibn Arabi,
he says hut
as a possible name of the essence of
God.
So again, that huwa is in the middle.
Imam al Razi suggests that huwa is al
Ismul Adam.
There is no God but huwa. Call huwa
Allahu ahad.
Say huwa is Allah huwa.
That's the Ismul 'adam.
There's difference of opinion.
Nonetheless,
according to Maimonides,
when referring to God's essence or nature,
there are 3 main attributes
existing.
Theologians would agree that the
sifatunafsia,
sort of the,
the core attribute
of god
is existence, and it's not an accident.
The attributes of accidents are different. God doesn't
have accidents. He has an essence of attributes.
Right? The attributes are necessary.
Accidents are not
necessary.
So it was an accident
that
I was born Iranian,
and have a white beard now. That's an
accident.
If I was not born Iranian
and my beard was black, I would still
be me. It's not essential to my nature.
That's an accident.
But the fact that I have an intellect,
that is an attribute of me. If I
did not have intellect, then I wouldn't be
classified
as the rational animal.
Right? As the human being. The homo sapiens.
The homo sapiens means the rational
human being.
Right? So intellect is an attribute of the
human being, whereas skin color, eye color, so
on and so forth, all of these things
are accidents. They're only possible. They're not necessary.
It could have been different.
If I had different color eyes, if I
had no eyes, I would still be a
human being. If I was blind, I'd still
be a human being.
Okay.
So
existence, unity, and eternity.
Three main attributes according to Maimonides.
And even these,
he says, we should understand them negatively.
So it's better to say,
God is not non existent.
It's better to put things negatively.
It's better to say that god that with
god, there is no plurality
or multiplicity,
associated with him whatsoever.
We talked about Ketra and Adad and so
on and so forth. It's better to say
that
god is not bound by time.
Right?
So even these core attributes, as articulated by
by Maimonides,
are better to put them negatively.
However, he says, we may speak of God
positively,
so in other words, cataphatically.
So we have apophatic,
negatively,
kataphatic,
positively for the notetakers.
You you can make
kataphatic expressions,
positive expressions of God, but only in reference
to a divine action in scripture.
So for Maimonides, one
cannot speak positively about God in any way,
shape, or form unless one relates
relates it to an action that was done
in in scripture.
I'll give you an example. So if you
say, for example, God is good in any
language.
So in Hebrew, right, you would say Adonai
Tov
or Tov Elohim.
Right? So in English, God is good. So
God there is the subject, the muktada.
Is is called the copulative verb,
the linking verb, and then good is the
predicate
or the khabar this is a kataphatic expression.
Maimonides would say that expression is shirk.
It is idolatry
to make that statement.
God is good. Period.
Idolatry.
Because we did not relate it to an
action.
And also, you can say Moshe Tov in
Hebrew, Moses
shalom,
shalom alayhis salaam, peace be upon him. Moses
is good.
So good, the predicate good, the word good,
the the,
the noun good
can be predicated of many things.
Right? So how can you possibly use the
same predicate for God and Moses?
Alright. So for Maimonides, that's a big problem
to do from an Akedah standpoint.
You're qualifying God with the same noun that
you're qualifying Moses. You're saying using the same
noun. So that's problematic. So for Maimonides you
have to say something like God is good
or he is all good because
he led the Jews out of Egypt and
defeated the pharaoh or something like that.
So you can make a kataphatic expression.
You can make a positive
statement about God as long as you
use it in sort of the superlative
and then relate it to something that God
actually did
in scripture.
So the divine names for Maimonides
are simply and strictly
descriptions of God's actions.
That's all they are. The divine names of
God in the Tanakh, in the Hebrew Bible,
are simply and strictly descriptions
of God's actions.
So referring to God as king, like melech,
right,
while not referencing an action in scripture is
shirk,
is idolatry
according
to Maimonides
because
king can be predicated
of
many different human beings.
Right?
David HaMelech,
King David.
Shlomo HaMelech,
King Solomon.
Right?
So it's it's God's action
that makes him unique,
not his names.
No one can do God's actions.
Solomon and David, not even Moses, can bring
the,
has the power
intrinsically
to bring anyone out of Egypt and defeat
the pharaoh.
Moses didn't do that. Moses was a vehicle
through which God actually did it. Remember God
is the doer of all actions. He's alfa'l,
free agent, as Maimonides
articulated in this first principle.
Okay.
Maimonides says something interesting. He says if you
praise a king who possesses
millions of gold pieces
for possessing millions of silver pieces,
then you're actually disparaging and insulting the king,
even though your intention is to praise the
king. Look at this king.
He has so many millions of silver pieces
while he actually has gold pieces.
Your intention is to praise him but you're
actually insulting and disparaging him. Aquinas said even
the praise of God is extremely remote
from his reality and praising God actually requires
a repentance.
The praise of God. Forget about the cursing
of God, disbelief in God, so on and
so forth. The praising of God because you're
using language,
and language is created. God is uncreated.
Alright?
So positive attributes may not be assigned to
God
unless these refer to God's actions in Scripture.
God is powerful because he did this. He
saved us from the pharaoh.
Right? So all divine names are derived
from God's actions in scripture according to Maimonides.
In other words, Jews cannot say that these
names
of God and this is Maimonides' opinion.
These names of God had no reality until
after the creation of the world,
according to Maimonides.
So God is king like Melech and Shepherd,
Rori, and Selah. God is the rock.
You know?
The exception to that is the Tetragrammaton,
the Yod Hey Vav Hey because Maimonides
that that actually refers to God's essence
and God's essence was
was existent.
It's a necessary existent, obviously, before creation. But
if you say before creation,
that God
was Melecha Olam,
he's,
the king of, Rabul 'alamin,
Malikul 'alamin, for example,
then that is too speculative
for Maimonides.
It's,
you know, it's true in principle, but Maimonides
just does not want to go there.
It's too conjectural
because
these names are describing god's actions.
That's what they're doing. So we cannot talk
about god's essence
by using these names before he actually the
action. Of course,
Imam Atahawi says something very interesting in his
creed.
He says that God
can be his that
that
that God, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, is,
can be described
by,
all of his attributes
from pre eternality
because
the capacity
to create is always with god, is always
with all.
Right?
So,
so he says
He merits,
he deserves
the name,
the Creator even before creation. He merits the
name Ram even before Marbub.
He merits the name Lord even before
anything to lord over
any creation, he means,
because the divine,
omnipotence,
the potential
the full potential and capacity
is there to create. So I'm sitting right
now this is
just an example to sort of maybe bring
our understandings
I'm sitting right now, but
you can still describe me as Alqa'im,
the standard, because I have an ability to
stand. Now that ability could be taken away
from me.
Right? Because Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, God, is
in control of all things. He can incapacitate
me. Laqaddur Allah.
But the fact that I'm sitting now doesn't
mean that I can't stand, that you can't
describe me as a stander. You can describe
me as a stander because I have that
ability.
So with with God, just because he did
not create, he merits the name Chadek and
nothing can incapacitate him. He makes a decision
out of his
absolute volition within his nature to create. Nothing
can stop his errada.
Right? He is intrinsically,
independent.
Right? So Maimonides would disagree with that and
say that's just too speculative.
Don't talk about God's essence
before creation. That's that's conjecture. Don't go there.
The names of god are describing his actions
and scriptures. Full stop.
Okay.
Now returning now, so that was now we
can go to the the third principle,
where he begins by saying the same way,
I believe with
with complete faith that the creator, blessed be
his name.
He says,
that he's not a body, a
And there is
there is not for him
any likeness whatsoever.
Right?
He's not a
a body. He's not matter
like a jisim muraqab, a compounded
compounded body.
He's not composed of anything.
There's nothing like him whatsoever.
And what's interesting is that this statement was
actually a bit controversial,
in 12th century Judaism because many rabbis
tended to be literalists. They were theahiriya when
it came to the, Tanakh.
Right? They were mujesima.
They were anthropomorphous.
So they actually denied
that the bible has the Hebrew bible had
a majaz meaning. It didn't have a figurative
meaning. Everything was hakikhi. Everything was literal.
This is very problematic.
Moses ben Taku, for example,
was one of the famous
anthropomorphous
rabbis. He died in 12/90,
a few decades after the death of Maimonides,
where he said the Tanakh is hakdikhi. It's
absolutely
literal. Like in Psalm 18, it says God
has ears.
Yeah. He has ears.
And, you know, they're they're
they're they're, you know, physical ears,
and he has,
you know, it says smoke
exuded from the nostrils of God in the
Psalms.
Right?
He says, yeah. That's exactly literally, what happened.
How does how do,
how does Maimonides
deal with with with passages like this? Well,
the Tanakh,
has what we would call muhkamat
and mutashabbihat.
And these terms are Qur'anic.
Right? Or
verses.
So
Right? So an ayamutashabiha
is a verse in the Quran that is
on the face very clearly understood, kind of
one dimensional.
Even in translation, very clearly understood.
Muir Khamat, and, you know,
the name suggests that there's
it's a verse of legal import,
right?
Or what we would say in Jews would
say in Judaism,
it's halakhic. It relates to the halakah,
right? There's a juristic
aspect to that.
And then you have Mutashabi hat,
which are
obscure verses or polyvalent
verses that are not easily grasped.
They require some study. They require,
commentary.
They may be theological. They may be anthropomorphic.
Right?
The yed of God is above their hands.
And yed is usually translated as hands. So
what does it mean? God has a hand?
God's hand is above their hand? What does
that mean? God has a physical hand?
Right? No. It doesn't mean that.
So,
the best examples
the quintessential
example
of of an ayam with the shabiha.
Right? Of a of a pesuk, which is
the word for aya in Hebrew
that is anthropomorphic
in the Torah is Exodus 3323.
Right? The quintessential
anthropomorphic
verse. This is when, this is when Moses
asks to see god's face.
He said, let me see your panim, your
face, and God says, you'll see my ahor.
You'll see my back.
So what does this mean? So Maimonides engages
in
esoteric exegesis
of the
of the Torah's
In other words, he interprets these verses in
light of God's transcendence.
Right? And this is the whole project of
the guide of his magnum opus,
Dalalatul Hayyin.
Right? The Moreh Nevuhim, the guide for the
perplexed.
What is he trying to do? He's trying
to bring together nakal and aqal,
revelation and reason.
Right?
And preserve tanzih,
preserve
transcendence of God.
So
this is what he says. Now before we
get to Maimonides,
there was another
theologian that preceded Maimonides. He died in 10th
century.
His name was Saadia Gaion, and he was
probably the very first,
Jewish systematic theologian.
Very, very famous.
Wrote in Arabic also.
His book is called beliefs and opinions.
Kitabul Aminat well, yeah, Tikadat, I believe, is
the actual title, and then it was later
translated
as Sefer Emunat or something like that. I
don't remember exactly the Hebrew title.
But Sadia Gaion,
he lived in Iraq. He also did an
incredible translation of the entire Hebrew Bible into
Arabic, and Hebrew and Arabic are very close.
It is by far the best translation
of the Hebrew ever done.
So how does Sadia Gaion how does he
deal with this? You know, you'll see you
you won't see my face. You'll see my
back. So he says seeing the back of
God means,
seeing,
it means
seeing a created
light,
right, which which he calls the
which is related to the Arabic Sakina.
The Shekhina represents God's presence on Earth. It's
a symbol of God's presence. It doesn't mean
it's not God's presence literally.
It symbolizes God's presence or tophiel.
Right? This created light
that Moses would see
when he would go into the Mishkan,
the Tabernacle of Meeting, the sort of portable
temple,
the prefigurement
of the actual temple in Jerusalem.
Right? Temple that Moses would go into in
the Sinai Peninsula,
and he would speak with God.
Sadia says when God wanted to speak to
Moses,
he would create a light
in front of Moses, telling Moses,
getting his attention essentially.
Right? And this light is called the Shekhinah.
And this light was so brilliant that Moses
could not look at it.
He can only look at it when the
light was sort of leaving, and he would
sort of see the tail end of it.
And Saadia says that sort of tail end
of the light, that's the
that's the back of God. So he takes
the passage as total majaz.
It's it's, it's a figurative expression.
Seeing the back of God for Moses means
that he saw a created light that God
would manifest in the tabernacle of meaning. And
after some point, it actually says in Exodus
that Moses had to wear a veil over
his face
because the light was beginning to shine off
his own face, and it was a blinding
light, so he would wear a veil.
Alright?
So the Shekhinah act as an intermediary between
God and human beings
during prophetic encounters.
Now Maimonides,
he agrees with Saadia
with respect to the Shekhinah,
but he adds an interesting esoteric
dimension. By the way, the rabbi's quote from
the Talmud
that says,
the sages, meaning the rabbinical sages,
they teach that the Torah speaks in the
language of man.
Right? So this is why there's Mutashabihat
in the Hebrew Bible. This is why there's
anthropomorphic verses in the Bible.
Right? Because it's trying to communicate
something true that you can understand, but it's
not literally true.
It's rhetoric. It's a very effective form of
rhetoric.
Right? God has to, in a sense, condescend,
as it were,
to speak to us,
As one of my teachers said, like a
mother has to sort of condescend to speak
to her
her young child.
If a mother wants a toddler to,
you know, finish
his meal, you know, you can't sit down
and reason with a toddler you have to
eat this because it's nutritious and so on
and so forth. You can't do that. You
have to sort of make a game out
of it or you have to sort of
use different intonations and things like that.
So
so in order for us to understand,
right,
theology and understand the will of god,
God has to use expressions that we can
relate to.
And that's that's the
the purpose of these anthropomorphic
verses, but they have to be
interpreted in the light of transcendence. I'll be
done in 5 minutes,
Insha'Allah.
So then Maimonidesa,
he adds a interesting esoteric dimension.
So he says, yes, the back of the
sheikhina. That's true.
But what is the panay Adonai? What is
the face of Wajhulullah?
What is the face of God?
Maimonides says the face of God refers to
an intense,
clear knowledge
or
a a complete
apprehension
or
comprehension
of God.
So a comprehension
of God is impossible
for any human being.
No one really comp no one really comprehends,
has idraq of
Allah, of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala other than
God himself. So it's impossible.
You know, Moses says, can
I comprehend you as you comprehend yourself?
Right? And of course from an Islamic standpoint,
that's a problematic request
according to many of the theologians. A prophet
would not ask for something that's impossible,
inconceivable,
considered bad ada. But this is the opinion
of Maimonides.
Whereas the back of God, the
is a reference to the knowledge of God
which man can know.
Man's capacity
is to only know the quote back of
God, to have
marifa
of God.
Right? So in other words, Moses seeing the
back of God means that Moses had the
most marifa to Allah, the most,
gnosis,
the most intimate knowledge of God that is
possible for a human being to have.
Right?
Yeah.
So none of the none of the rules
of of physics apply to God,
certainly not Newtonian physics.
He transcends physicality completely,
getting into a little bit of the halakah,
Jewish law.
No iconography of God or even human beings
or even celestial bodies are allowed
in Orthodox halakah.
So even like painting pictures of planets
or human beings.
Animals are okay,
it seems, as long as
there's something sort of left off, like an
eye is left off or there's some deformity
given.
Most rabbis are against taswir,
photography,
even with the dolls, you know, to cut
the nose off or something
or missing finger. No complete image is allowed.
That's the halacha.
So Hashem, the god.
Right?
God is not the 4 elements, fire, water,
earth, and wind.
So the rabbis say you know, it says
in the Psalms, God is an outstretched
arm.
Right? The word
is used. Like, arm
in the Hebrew, zore.
And the meaning of this means that he's
the savior,
not that he's a physical arm.
Right?
He lends a hand as it were. Right?
So the Torah speaks to us in the
language of human beings.
I think that's a good place to stop.
So I'm almost so yeah.
I mean, we're done with Judaism. We have
to move on. There's a lot more to
say, obviously.
That's only the
3rd out of 13 principles. Maybe we can
do a second part of this course later,
but we are going to move. I gave
you the the basics of Jewish theology.