Ali Ataie – Judaism in a Nutshell The Basics of World Religions (Part 3)
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AI: Transcript ©
This is our, 3rd class,
covering the
basic
concepts of the world major religions.
So, the 1st week we spoke of our
tradition of Islam
as well as the 2nd week. So today,
Insha'Allah, tonight, Insha'Allah,
we're going to begin
the first part of the religion of Judaism.
So
it's it's difficult to distill a religion down
to, a couple of sessions but,
I'll do my best InshaAllah Ta'ala.
Also at 8 20 or so we'll take
a break
maybe 7 or 8 minutes.
So, we can pray Maghrib
Insha'Allah for those of us on
West Coast time.
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. It means Rabbi
Moshe Bin Maimon.
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 inshallah.
He
he wrote quite extensively.
Probably his 2 greatest,
works
are the, and he wrote them in Arabic.
At least the first one was in Arabic.
Dalalatul 'Irene,
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
cheira?
These are people that cannot reconcile nakal 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 the 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, 13 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 when we say
Tanakh is another acronym.
The the tau comes from
Torah.
There's a Nun in there which is from
Nabiin, means prophets.
And then the Kaf 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 chumash,
which comes from which is related to the
Arabic word, hamza,
like, Pentateuch
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
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
Beresheath which comes from the very first word.
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 aharetz,
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 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
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
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 Nabiim, 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
and Zephaniah,
etc.
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 articulate that inspiration.
And then you have a third class of
revelation,
right, so or degree of revelation in the
Old Testament, which is called the Kitobim,
the Writings, or 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 or 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
would be something like ilham.
Right? Or iha,
which is nonprophetic
revelation.
So not Wahi.
Wahi, according to our scholars like Imam al
Suyuti and Zarqashi and others,
The the term wahi is is prophetic revelation.
So, Musa, alayhis salam, in our tradition,
Ibrahim alayhi salam, Isa alayhi salam, they received
Wahi.
Right? But,
saints or nonprofits, the Quran says that the
the disciples of
Isa
received
iha,
nonprophetic
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 salam, his tafsir, if you will,
of of the Chumash.
So it was written down,
and,
called the Mishnah.
Right?
And then between the second and
7th Centuries of the Common Era,
2nd 7th Centuries, 2nd 8th Centuries,
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 Kitubim, the writings. And then you
have the Talmud, which is made up of
the Mishnah,
the oral law that Moses received that was
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 two 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,
or 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's
articulation of the creed is accepted by
by Jews the world over.
Right?
So,
he called these the sholoshah a'ashar,
Ikkarei 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.
So now continuing
to principle number 1, iqar number 1, as
articulated by Maimonides,
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 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 frames it using the
So he uses
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 it is sort of an
unconscious pull towards God.
God did not create ex nihilo
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.
Ex nihilo.
The universe was created from nothing
by God.
Right? So 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
except God. None
no one can create anything
except for God.
Right? So if you examine the rationalist, the
Muertazila
claim, this controversial
the creation
of that
the rationalists who were highly influenced by Greek
philosophy,
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 that 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,
soundly refuted by Maimonides in his writings.
As well as the theologians of Ahlus Sunnah
wal Jima'al. 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
is the only real creator.
Right? Allahu khalikoo
che. That 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 he
and Isaiah is is speaking the words of
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 so
god, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, for Maimonides,
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 quadra,
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
That Allah
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 rabbis say that
that faith, iman, which they call
it requires yadi'a
or elm, knowledge, or ma'rifah.
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, the
comes first.
The
in in Hebrew is called the,
and it is a necessary condition of of
nakal, and we would concur with this.
Alright? In order for you to be tasked
to believe in the revelation of god, the
nakal,
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 isn't 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
You might have you might have 2 pens.
Right?
So, a plural of numbers. This has nothing
to do with Allah
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
So the rabbis say that begins with a
end. So faith begins
where the intellect stops.
Right? But the sekel leads you to faith.
The akel, the intellect, leads you to faith.
You're not in conflict.
Right? The sekel 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, when 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
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 logos 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 It's a great sign of
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
salam, and 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.
Right? 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 Surah Al An'am,
Ibrahim alayhi salaam
looking at a star, a najam,
This is my lord.
And then it set.
This is not my lord.
Right? And then he saw the moon. This
is my lord
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,
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.
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 their 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
as a child,
he figured this out by listening to his
neshama.
This is a term in Hebrew,
neshama, which is translated as mind.
It's more like fitra.
Right, 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 Mesupt.
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.
You listen to your soul
without any type of worldly,
distractions.
So this is a bit akin to the
maturity position
of Akal Ma'akal, that the Akal,
is
enough evidence for the to arrive at a
creator god.
Right?
But the intellect must be aided with to
know
the Sharia, the sacred law. Although the,
one could argue
that there are ma'ruf.
Right? There are things that are simply known
through the intellect, through thing through innate knowledge
that's still given by Allah
That's given the by the,
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
Remember, Imam
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,
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.
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.
That God is perfect. He doesn't change
because he is perfect,
and you cannot improve on perfection.
So the commentators also 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 64. 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.
Right?
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 echad.
The word the Hebrew word echad is spelled
exactly the same as
ahad.
God is 1.
Right?
And there's some interesting
curious parallels,
to,
Plato.
In the Parmenides, for example,
Plato refers to God
as Tahen,
the one.
Right? Of course, Plotinus,
who wrote Aeneidus, who is the great formulator
of Neo Platonism, which is a 3rd century
religious interpretation of Plato,
where you have this
whole system. He's a system builder of the
hierarchy of being and so on and so
forth, and the the godhead
consisting of the the one that he said,
tachin, then you have the logos,
then you have the psuche, the spirit.
Right? And we'll talk more about that when
we get to Christianity because Christians borrowed from
this idea.
But even if you 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 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
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 wa sallam. 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, you say, ah, I see.
Right?
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,
then 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 Shema's, 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 rabbis 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.
One 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.
Alright?
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 going to follow the 7
Noah Hittic 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 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. 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
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 just be
disrespectful
towards God. 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 hazeh.
This is this world. Right? And then there's
an olam haba, the coming world.
Right? So one 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 3 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 Echad falls down on your shoulders.
Now you have 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
proselyte,
if you wanna convert,
get ready
for a lot of trials and tribulations and
Musi Ba'at 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.