B'ezras Hashem, Feldheim will issue a fourth edition this coming spring, in time for Daf Yomi Eruvin. If you have any comments, ideas, suggestions, stories, pictures etc. that would be suitable for inclusion, please share then with me ASAP. Thanks!
Snippets from my seventh siyum of Bavli earlier today. First snippets of the Menahel, Rabbi Berel Leiner שליט"א, then of my close friend from Kindergarten, Reb Aaron Berger נ"י. Then of myself making the siyum, and last but not least, snippets of the dancing. Thank you to Mr. Ian Nagel נ"י and to the entire YBH administration, for the vision and the orchestration of the event, which IYH will be a source of inspiration for the talmidim.
The first answer is simple, and I am sure someone said it before me, but I have never seen it: Were Chanukah to be seven days, its Chanukiyah would have seven candles, and it is either forbidden or severely frowned upon to have a seven-branched candelabrum outside the Beis HaMikdash.
The second answer is more complex. It is based on the teshuvah on Yom Tov Sheni from the Cairo Genizah that we have been exploring for, so far, four sessions. The links to the videos are in recent posts on the blog. The teshuvah itself is at https://drive.google.com/open?id=1I4_f-f5j7o1y0PEYnGT1KVIcZpi0LQ3Y.
The revolutionary idea in the teshuvah is that Yom Tov Sheni's origin is as a Tosefes Simchah to substitute as best as possible for the lacking aliyah la'regel:
הראשון הוא החובה מן התורה והשני הוא אשר הסכימו לקבל אותו עליהם בתמורה לעלייה לרגל ולקרבנות שאינם יכולים לעשות, כמו שנאמר ונשלמה פרים שפתינו, ולשמחה הגדולה בקיום המצווה שנצטוו עליה בדברי הכתוב ושמחת בחגך, המתוארת בדברי הכתוב השיר יהיה לכם כליל התקדש חג ושמחת לבב כהולך בחליל וגו' כדי לבקש בזה את קרבת האל וכדי לשקוד על ההודאה על חסדיו ולבקש את קיום הבטחתו להחזירם אל ארץ ישראל וכדי להיזכר בשמחה הגדולה החסרה, כדי שלא תישכח, כמו שנאמר אם אשכח ירושלם וגו' תדבק לשוני לחיכי וגו'.ג
The teshuvah goes on to say that the introduction of two days of Purim was only possible, and based on, the minhag nevi'im of Yom Tov Sheni!So, although Chanukah was introduced in Eretz Yisroel, Chazal foresaw that this would be the quintessential chag of Galus, and that its hadlakah would be the long-lasting substitute for Hadlokas HaNeiros in the Beis HaMikdash (see the Ramban at the beginning of Beha'aloscha). They therefore added a day for the same reasons that the teshuvah gives for Yom Tov Sheni. ולפי"ד we have an answer to the Chida's question in Birkei Yosef 670:2:
הקשה הרא"ם בתוספותיו אמאי לא מדלקינן ט' ימים מספק וכו'. ע"ש. וכבר עמד על זה בספר העתים והביאו בספר ארחות חיים. ותירץ דהטעם לפי שחנוכה מדבריהם לא החמירו כל כך. וכן תירץ הרב פר"ח ושאר אחרונים. ודבריהם תלמוד ערוך במנחות דף ס"ח ע"ב, דר' פפא ור' הונא בריה דרב יהושע אכלי חדש באורייתא דשיתסר נגהי שיבסר קסברי חדש בח"ל דרבנן ולספיקא לא חיישינן, רבנן דבי רב אשי אכלי בצפרא דשיבסר קסברי חדש בח"ל דאורייתא. הרי מוכח דלכ"ע במידי דרבנן לא חיישינן לספיקא דיומא. ואחר זמן ראיתי למורינו הרב הנז' בבית ועד דאייתי סוגיא הנז'.ז
According to our explanation, there is no ninth day of Chanukah because its Yom Tov Sheni is the eighth day!
As to donuts...
דאנוט in gimatriya is 70=סוד. That is why we must eat a filled donut, because of the nes nistar of the victory of Am Yisroel over the Greeks. But סופגניה in gimatriya is 214=חור. That is why we must also eat a donut with a hole in the middle, and that represents the nes nigleh of the pach shemen. So one must be machmir and eat both types of donuts on Chanukah. The only weak point in this explanation is that stam donut is one with a whole, while stam sufganiyah is one with a filling, so the representations seem reversed, וצע"ג.
ואולי יש ליישב בדוחק שיש כאן רמז לבחינת ונהפוך הוא אשר ישלטו היהודים המה בשונאיהם, ודו"ק.ג
Third in a series (IYH) of shiurim on the teshuvot of Rav Ovadia Yosef zt"l in the new volume of Yechaveh Da'at (vol. 7). A Toras Dovid (former Ohr Somayach) shiur.
As of December 14, 2019 all Yerushalmi audio recordings that have been missing or incorrect were replaced with new recordings done by Rabbi Bechhofer. The updated recording are marked in orange color in database and have their new dates shown. Enjoy.
Yasher koach to Reb Eli Gurevich נ"י on his tremendous efforts to further the learning of Yerushalmi. Dozens of people have contacted me over the years to express their hakoras hatov for being able to learn Yerushalmi through these shiurim. May our collaboration continue to make the Yerushalmi accessible to more and more learners.
A special thank you to my cousin, Reb Aharon Robbins נ"י, who drove me to complete the missing and incorrect shiurim and recorded them with me.
Thanks again to the original מסיימים of Daf Yomi Yerushalmi with me, Reb Joel Zuger ז"ל and יבדלו לחיים טובים וארוכים, Rabbi Meyer Magence and Dr. David Spindel.
Second in a series (IYH) of shiurim on the teshuvot of Rav Ovadia Yosef zt"l in the new volume of Yechaveh Da'at (vol. 7). A Toras Dovid (former Ohr Somayach) shiur.
A talk for Parashas Chayei Sarah given for the Shalhevet Girls High School in Vancouver, CA via Skype.
Synopsis written by the Menaheles, our daughter, Mrs. Meira Federgrun:
Each week at Shalhevet, we are privileged to hear divrei Torah from
a Rabbi or Rebbetzin in our community, a visiting guest speaker, or an
out-of-town speaker. The inspirational words they share with us will be
written in this column to enhance your Shabbos. This week we were privileged to learn with Rabbi Bechhofer, Rabbi in Monsey, NY.
This parsha repeats the episode of Eliezer and Rivka twice. Chazal are bothered by this because there are many parshiyos in the Torah that contain the basic halachos of Judaism, but most of the halachos pertaining to those topics are not written out in the Torah. They are either written in the Torah sheba'al peh, or we have to derive them ourselves from the yud gimmel middos shehaTorah nidreshes bahem. The reason for this is "Yafeh sichasan shel avdei avos yoser miTorasan shel banim - the conversations of the servants of the Avos more than the Torah of the children."
The Gra says in Mishlei: "The primary reason a
person is alive is to break the middah that he hasn't broken until now.
A person has to fortify himself, and if he doesn't, why should he be
alive." The one thing the Gra chooses for us to focus on is fixing our character traits: break the negative ones and develop the positive ones. R' Chaim Vital says the reason we are not forbidden in the Torah from having negative middos is because working on one's middos is a prerequisite for Torah! "Derech eretz kadmah laTorah."
Working on our middos is difficult, because as R' Yisrael Salanter says, "It's easier to learn Shas than to change one middah." This
is because our character is set early on and there are many influences
in our lives that contribute to our personality. But this is the reason
we are alive, to change and develop ourselves.
Therefore Sefer Bereishis is the first book in the Torah because it tells us what our purpose is. We have to strive to emulate the Avos and their maasim. "Chayav adam lomar, masai yagiu ma'asai l'maasei avosai Avraham, Yitzchok v'Yaakov." We don't have to strive for the knowledge of Moshe Rabbeinu, but to perfect ourselves by acting in the ways we learn from the Avos.
From this teaching of Chazal, "Yafeh sichasan shel avdei avos yoser miTorasan shel banim", we see that we also have to learn from Eliezer. Interestingly, Eliezer is not referred to by name at all in this parsha, but rather as "Eved Avraham." This is because Eliezer's personality became bound up in his master: he absorbed his middos and emulated his deeds.
We learn from this parsha how important it is to have teachers and role models from whom we can learn not just knowledge, but who have middos that we can emulate as well. For that is truly what's most important.
A reader submitted the following brief piece, which may or may not be relevant to the ongoing controversy about the derech of R. Shamshon Raphael Hirsch. It is offered here without comment or elaboration, and taken from Halachos of Other People’s Money Chapter 1 Section A note 69
I saw an awesome thing in the Sefer Divrei Yonah (Parshas Toldos s.v. V’yesh L’orer): “I heard from the Gaon and Tzaddik Rabbi Michoel Ber Weissmandl zt”l that he said, explaining that which we saw in the latest Hurban, Lo Aleinu, that even though the source of the tribulation, in our great sins, was in Germany and from there spread to the other countries, despite this in reality our brethren in Germany merited to be saved at a far greater ratio than our brethren in the other countries, and they also merited saving their money and property to a great extent, whereas in the other countries all of their money and possessions came into the hands of their gentile neighbors, Lo Aleinu. And he said that the reason for this was that our brethren in Germany had more honesty in their business dealings with the non-Jews during all the years, without cunning, and therefore the money that they had was more their own and there was no mixture of the share of the gentiles, as opposed to the other countries where the poverty and destitution was horrible, Lo Aleinu, and therefore they allowed themselves to sometimes engage in swindling activities in monetary matters in their business dealings with the gentiles and therefore on the day of retribution Lo Aleinu the property ended up in the hands of the gentiles, in order to return the property to the gentile neighbors, and in Heaven the matter was orchestrated that the money should reach the heirs and the like.”
This is an "outtake" from an article on which I am currently working, which is not yet published. The publication was not interested in including this long quotation in the article:
There is a worrisome trend in our
society to adopt a very disturbing perspective, one that emerges from the
following passages from a widely distributed and respected “Parashah
Sheet.” From Toras Avigdor, Nitzavim-Rosh HaShanah
5779:1
Everyone knows about hashavas aveidah, the mitzvah to
return a lost item to a fellow Jew. The Torah says you have to
bring it back to him; it’s a mitzvah d’oraisah. And it
also says there, You should not avert your eyes from the aveidah;
it’s an aveirah to walk by and ignore it… So
now we can look at the gemara (Sanhedrin 76b) and see
how Chazal describe the sin of this man who is planting poison
seeds in his mind; the one who is “adding the satiated onto the
thirsty.” And the gemara says like this: What did he do? He
was walking, let’s say, past a Korean fruit store and he saw a
fruit lying on the sidewalk. An apple fell off the bin and in another
minute someone will pass by and kick the apple into the gutter. So
this man bends over, picks up the apple and puts it back on the bin.
That’s all he did. He has in his mind hashavas aveidah –
to return a lost article. And what does the Torah say about this good
fellow, this well-mannered citizen? Maybe he should get a special
commendation from the mayor? Could be. But listen to what the Torah
says about him: Hashem will not want to forgive him for what he
did. Not only that He won't forgive him; He won't desire to
forgive him. Hashem won't even desire to forgive him?! What
did this man do wrong already? He picked up the apple and put it back
on the bin – that’s all he did…
All week long the Am Yisroel is busy with mitzvos. A
frum Jew gets up early in the morning to go to shul and
then a few hours later he’s back in shul again. Elderly men,
bochurim and little children are going to shul. Back
and forth, back and forth. Shachris, mincha, ma’ariv – he
davens and he learns a little bit too. He puts a nickel in the
pushka whenever he gets a chance.
Are goyim busy with mitzvos all day long?! Ah
nechtige tug! He sees the Jew walking back and forth to shul a
few times a day; he doesn’t understand wh at’s happening. He goes
to church once a month and the priest says, “All your sins are
forgiven,” and finished. Don’t think that the Catholics or the
Protestants, even the religious ones, are the same as you, only that
the religion is different. Don’t make any mistake about that! There
is a very wide chasm between you and them. Goyim don’t
desire mitzvos; maybe they accept a few commandments of the
Torah, maybe they follow some of the Bible, but they don’t do it
with any sort of cheshek, any desire. Even if they do some
things, they’re zaht – they’re overfed; they’re not
thirsty for mitzvos. I’ll tell you what they’re thirsty
for. You walk in the streets early in the morning in a Catholic
neighborhood, a respectable upper class Catholic neighborhood, and
lying stretched out on the ground is a good Catholic. He’s drunk
and he’s been sleeping on the street all night. I walked in the
Catholic neighborhoods forty years ago and I saw that many times.
Drunk all night, fast asleep in the gutter; and then he gets up in
the morning, staggers home, and tells everybody, “Ooh wah! What a
time I had last night!” He’s proud of himself. And did they expel
him from their homes or from their churches? No! Never! It wasn’t
even considered a chisaron. Many people admired him; they were
jealous of him. It was an exploit! He would tell his friends about
it: “Did I ever tell you about the time that I slept drunk in the
gutter the whole night?!” A goy is satiated with drink! He
wants mitzvos like he wants a hole in his shoe…
And so this man, when he picks up the Korean apple from the sidewalk
and puts it back into the bin, he’s equating the overfed goyim
with the Am Yisroel, the nation that is thirsty toserve
its Creator. He equated the honor of the gentile to that of a
Yisroel. When a person does that out of the generosity of his
heart; when he thinks, “Since it’s a good thing to return a lost
apple that belongs to a Jewish fruit man, I won't be selfish just for
us alone. I’ll be generous hearted, and I’ll return it to the goy
too,” so that man has to know that Hashem won't forgive him.
Hashem won’t even desire to forgive him for that poisonous thought
in his head of equating the honor that belongs to the Jewish nation
with that of the gentiles.
Now, if you tell me that you pick it up because you want to show that
Jews are good people, darkei shalom, all right, maybe.
Everyone knows that if the cashier in the 99 cent store accidentally
gives you more than you deserve to get, so sometimes it pays to say,
“You made a mistake. You gave me too much money.” Could be. If
you have a beard and a black hat, it could be it’s a mitzvah to
say that. So if there are goyim standing around, if a
policeman is standing there, all right, pick up the apple and put it
back on the bin. Be a nice fellow so that the goyim will say,
“You see that; the Jews aren’t so bad after all.” It’s a
mitzvah to raise the honor of the Jewish people in the eyes of
the goyim.
But otherwise pass by. Because what we’re learning here is that
it’s even a bigger mitzvah to raise the honor of the Jewish
people in your own eyes! And what that means is that when you
pass by the fruit on the floor you keep going – and you remind
yourself why you’re doing that. You don’t want to be a man who
harbors poison in his mind, someone who is equating the honor of the
over-satiated with the honor that belongs only to the thirsty nation.
For a Yisroel, achicha, yes, you bend over and pick it
up. The lost object of your brother in mitzvos you’re
michuyav to return. A nation that does mitzvos, so we
do mitzvos for them – it’s an honor they deserve! But the
gentiles? They don’t want to do any mitzvos, so we don’t
honor them with our mitzvos.
Now this I admit; let’s say you found a watch in the street and now
you want to put it in your pocket. It could be you have to give it to
the police. I don’t know; it could be there’s a law like that.
Some places have a law that you have to bring it to the police
station. So if it’s a law of the government, that’s something
else. But you’re not doing it because of a mitzvah though;
you’re only doing it because of the law. But no government has a
law that you have to bend over to pick up the apple. There’s no
such thing that when you pass by a fruit stand, you must pick up the
apple and put it back – no. And so if you lean over and pick up
that Korean’s apple it’s a terrible sin. And you're also doing a
tremendously dangerous thing for yourself. If you pick it up with the
same emotion that you pick up an apple for the Jewish food store, so
the Torah says, Hashem will not want to forgive you. If you do
it because you want to do a good deed – let’s say you’re not
thinking and you have in mind the idea of hashavas aveidah –
so you’ve committed a crime, a very great crime against the
greatness of Am Yisroel. A crime?! Yes, it’s a crime. The
crime is that you don’t understand, you don’t appreciate the
greatness of the Am Yisroel…
“You are My firstborn son,” says Hashem. “You’re My only
son.” And that’s so important that it’s something we’re
expected to internalize every time we pass by the Korean fruit store.
I make it a point to pass by! I wouldn’t pick it up. I make it a
point to keep on walking and I remind myself, “Only for a Yisroel
there’s a mitzvah.” I hope you’ll try that out next
time. Because to do otherwise means that you’re planting poisonous
seeds in your mind.
It is difficult to know where to
begin to critique these passages. They purport to be based on a
gemara in Sanhedrin.
This may or may not be a valid assertion. There are several
legitimate understandings of that gemara that
would not lead us to those assertions. But, much more to the point,
the author of those passages utterly disregards the diametrically
opposite approach that emerges from the words of Rabbi Shimon ben
Shetach in the Yerushalmi, Bava Metzia 8b.
Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach dealt in
linen. His students said to him: “Rebbe, desist from this trade. We
will buy you a donkey [to make an easier living as a donkey driver]
and you will not have to toil so much.” They went and purchased a
donkey from a bandit. The students subsequently found a precious
stone dangling from it. They went back to Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach
and said to him: “From now on you need not exert yourself.” He
asked: “How so?” The students responded: “We purchased a donkey
for you from a bandit and a precious stone was dangling from it.”
Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach asked: “Did the donkey’s seller know
that the stone was there?” They answered: “No.” He then said to
them: “Go return it.” The students remonstrated with Rabbi Shimon
ben Shetach: “Although theft from an idolater is prohibited, is one
not permitted to keep an object that an idolater has lost?” He
responded: “What do you think, that Shimon ben Shetach is a
barbarian? More than all the wealth of the world, Shimon ben Shetach
desires to hear [the non-Jew say]: “Berich Eloko
d’Yehudo’ei” (“Blessed
is the God of the Jews”).
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See my previous post on 6093 and 340. I found that post and this post in the Yalkut Mefarshim to Sanhedrin 97a. The Rashash, Rabbi Shmuel Strashun (pictured above) was well-to-do, so it would be natural that a statement that Moshiach will not come until the perutah will be eliminated from the pocket might cause him some concern! His pshat was very relevant (indeed, even more so today!):
Over Shabbos, I found in the Maharsham on Sanhedrin a hitherto unknown to me Osi'os d'Rabbi Akiva in which it is stated that the world will not end at the year 6000, but at the year 6093!
בתי מדרשות חלק ב - מדרש אותיות רבי עקיבא השלם נוסח א - אות ב
דבר אחר בית מה נשתנה בית מכל האותיות שברא בו הקדוש ברוך הוא כל סדרי בראשית אלא מפני שגלוי וידוע היה לפני הקדוש ברוך הוא ששני פעמים עתיד העולם ליחרב אחד בימי המבול ואחד בסוף ששת אלפים ותשעים ושלש שנים שבי"ת בגימטריא שנים
Tonight I consulted the Google HaDor, which led me to the page copied below, from the Torah Temimah's Tosefesr Brocho. What the Maharsham brings as marei mekomos, the Tosefes Brocho brings as fuller citations - of later sources that reference the 6093 years. As you can see, he also suggest why specifically this number, but I did not do the calculations to verify his suggestion, and I'm dubious about it any event.
Once we're talking chiddushim from the Osi'os d'Rabbi Akiva, here's another:
בתי מדרשות חלק ב - מדרש אותיות רבי עקיבא השלם נוסח א - אות י
דבר אחר שם עולם מלמד ששלש מאות וארבעים עולמים עתיד הקדוש ברוך הוא להנחיל לכל צדיק וצדיק לעולם הבא שכך שם בגימטריא
Not 310, as in the last mishnah in Shas, but 340!
A little before that, the Midrash gives support to The Bechhofer Theoryas to the pshat in that mishnah:
ומהו ושם מלמד שעתיד הקדוש ברוך הוא לגלות שם המפורש לכל צדיק וצדיק לעולם הבא שנבראין בו שמים החדשים וארץ החדשה כדי שיהיו כולם יכולים לבראות את העולם חדש שנאמר (ישעיה נו ה) שם עולם אתן לו אשר לא יכרת ומנין שזה הוא שם המפורש נאמר כאן שם עולם ונאמר להלן (שמות ג טו) זה שמי לעולם מה להלן שם המפורש אף כאן שם המפורש
In honor of Bereshit, here is Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan on reading Genesis as presenting the truths of 20th century science, as discussing a world 2 billion years old with humans as existing for 25,000 years.
Aryeh Kaplan’s Handbook of Jewish Thought has become a classic of synthesizing the classic positions of Jewish thought into an order fashion both an introductory guide and simultaneously a reference book
Below is a pdf of a full chapter of Aryeh Kaplan’s Handbook of Jewish Thought left out of the published work because he presents evolution as part of the basic tenants of Judaism. The already typeset chapter has an editor’s note across the top asking if the chapter is “fixable” and “true kosher”? There is also an editor’s note that dates the chapter to 1968 when Kaplan was leading a Conservative congregation in Dover NJ.
The Handbook of Jewish Thought was published in two volumes, the first, containing 13 chapters, appeared in the author’s lifetime in 1979. The second volume edited by Avraham Sutton, was published posthumously in 1992. This volume has 25 chapters. While the first volume had no introduction from the author, the second volume contains the following statement:
The bulk of the present volume is from the author’s original 1967- 1969 manuscript that consisted of 40 chapters. Thirteen of these chapters were prepared for publication by Rabbi Kaplan himself and published in 1979 as the Handbook of Jewish thought – Volume I. It is clear that the remaining chapters were set aside with the thought of eventually preparing them for publication. Of these remaining chapters, 25 are presented here
Despite the assertion that the first volume was called “volume 1”, no such statement is to be found in the original Handbook of Jewish thought.
Quick arithmetic – 13 (volume 1) and 25 (volume 2) indicates that 2 chapters of the original 40 were suppressed. In the end, they Moznayim – or the Kaplan family concluded to leave these chapters out of the book. Generally, the works published by Moznayim are much more circumspect than the audio recording of his lectures. Here is an extreme case.
Moznayim assigned people to edit Kaplan’s writings or tapes of his lectures who were not there at the lectures or had left for other teachers years before.
I thank Rabbi Ari Kahn for providing access by sending me the pdf of this gem. If someone has the final – 40th chapter – I would love to see it.
Evolution
Kaplan is explicit in his affirmation of evolution in this piece.
In the first three paragraphs, he states that the creation account in Genesis is not literal and not science but narrated to teach the history of Israel. He believes that new concepts in science are always being discovered beyond the limited science known in the Biblical and rabbinical era. We are, according to Kaplan, to continuously interpret the Biblical text according to currently available knowledge.
Even though the explicit text is to narrate Israel’s history, nevertheless Kaplan states that the scientific knowledge is hinted at in the Masoretic text through “subtle variations” In addition, we have traditions that aid in our discovering the scientific truth in the text. Maimonides and other medieval interpreted the text based on Aristotle. Maimonides in his Guide II:29 explains how he would be willing to read texts based on current science, similarly Ramchal in his commentary of the Aggadot.
Kaplan consider the creation of the universe as billions of years ago when there was the initial creation as the creation of matter as well as the initial creation of time/space. The creation at the start of Genesis was billions of years ago according to Kaplan, even if the Torah does not explicitly state it.
Kaplan explicitly rejects the 19th century Gosse theory, a theory that the world only appears to be older because God created it that way. Kaplan writes: “God does not mislead humans by making the world appear older.” Many of the members of the Association of Orthodox Scientists of his era did accept Gosse as did the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
Kaplan defines the creation with the date of 3761 BCE as only the date when Adam (the new being with intelligence) was created. The world itself is billions of years old and varies species of men, including Neanderthals and Homo Erectus, pre-date this created Adam. People generally assume the creation of the world, creation of men, and creation of the intelligent descendants of Adam occurred at the same time, Kaplan differentiates these events.
Neanderthal- Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis
The metaphoric sixth day was only when Adam was created in Divine thought as the plan for creation, not the actual date of his creation- see below on his acknowledging humanoids before Adam. (Berakhot 61b Eruvin 18a)
Kaplan makes a general statement that the “time of creation not essential to our thought.” He proves this from a citation in Yehuda Halevi’s Kuzari,1:60-61”
Al Khazari: Does it not weaken thy belief if thou art told that the Indians have antiquities and buildings which they consider to be millions of years old?” To which the Rabbi in the dialogue answers: “The Rabbi: It would, indeed, weaken my belief had they a fixed form of religion, or a book concerning which a multitude of people held the same opinion, and in which no historical discrepancy could be found. Such a book, however, does not exist.”
Kaplan takes this to mean that Halevi would only be bothered if they had a form of religion accepted by the multitude with discrepancy, but not about the claim concerning civilization and ancient books.
Kaplan states that nature does not change so we accept radioactive dating; the method is valid to establish definitively that the world is billions of years old. In this, he rejects the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s opinion that radioactive dating is not valid because nature changes. Kaplan has certainty that science has works and if the radioactive dating of fossils show that they are millions of years old then they are millions of years old. They are not animals killed in the Biblical flood but creatures who lived billions and millions of years ago.
In footnote number 12, Kaplan states that each of God’s years is 365, 242 of ours yielding a world age of two billion years, which is not the current scientific age of 13.8 billions of years.
In contrast, in his later writings and talks, most notably his 1979 essay on evolution. He comes up with a 15 billion year date for the universe based on Isaac the Blind, a date closer to the scientific view. For more on his later calculation, see Ari Kahn, Explorations: In-depth Analysis of the Weekly Parashah Through the Prism (Brooklyn: Targum press, 2001).
In this early passage in the Handbook and its notes he does not cite Isaac of Acco. At this point, it seems he did not yet have a copy of Isaac of Acco or he might have had a citation but did not have the full sefer or did not fully study it yet. Isaac’s Sefer Meirat Eynayim was not yet published, it was published in 1974. Isaac’s Otzar Hayyim still remains in manuscript. Kaplan write that he obtained the manuscript in the 1970’s circa 1976. If in 1968 he did not have the manuscript yet, and only photocopied it after he started teaching Kabbalah publicly then he might have been relying on an older work of scholarship that cited it. Alternately, he might have been creative enough to develop the Rashi on his own to reach 2 billion. (see footnote 12 below)
Kaplan explains that God did not really verbalize in the creation of the world, rather God speaks means the impression of will upon matter thereby giving it a new property. God speech involves modulating creation to desired results. (There is already a sense here of Kaplan’s later focus on mental acts – meditation). Kaplan in his spiritualizing of the text successfully manages to be deeply Maimonidean and Nahmanidean at the same time. He can cite simultaneously Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed on how locutions such as “God spoke”, “God’s mouth” or “God spoke to Moses” are anthropomorphic and not to be taken literally. Simultaneously, Kaplan appeals to Ramban 1:3 in that Divine will impressed upon the primordial matter of hiyuli, God is not literally speaking but engaged in the coming to be of the lower hypostatic element, which in turn will create the world. Kaplan foreshadows his later thought and treats kabbalah in a non-literal manner.
(In Castilian Kabbalistic language, this would be keter affecting hokhmah. Later Orthodox attempts to harmonize Biblical create and science used Ramban’s concept of primordial matter in a literal manner as an allusion to the Big Bang theory).
Kaplan further spiritualizes the process so the steps of creation did not happen at the stated time, just that the prerequisites for God’s goal was complete even though the actual goal would not manifest until later (15:8)
Kaplan explains the phrase “it was good” to mean the completion of something essential for the evolution of the universe, destruction of prior worlds means evolution to something higher. The world is evolving to higher stages. The destruction of prior world does not mean there were prior worlds just that lower forms of this world. (15:9) (He cites Maharal Beer Hagolah 39b)
Days of Creation
What was the light created on the first day before the creation of planets? For Kaplan the light on the first day is the electromagnetic force in matter responsible for all chemical and physical properties, without the electromagnetic force the world is chaos and void.
What was created on the second day? It was when God set the matter of the first day into Euclidean four-dimensional space-time matrix. (15:12).
On the third day, God created the gravitational force. The “gathering of the waters” is not about swamps and sea but the “warping of matter” and the creation of phenomena that follow non-Euclidian geometry. It was also the physio-chemical properties of matter needed for plant life, (15:13)
On the fourth day, God initiated the process by which matter would condense into galaxies, starts and planets,” which is the completion of inorganic matter.
On the fifth day, God started the process by which organic matter and life came to be.
On the important 6th day of creation, God created the evolutionary potential of higher mammals and primitive man. Nothing was actually created on the 6th day, rather the evolutionary potential of the development of higher mammals from lower mammals was designated. After the 6th day, God allows world to develop by itself – without intelligent design- solely through the natural evolution. Just as the geological evolution of crystals grow naturally over millions of years from natural processes, so too the evolution of animals is the same way. The unfolding properties for mammals and eventually man is in the natural order.
Man, known to paleontologists as later stages of homo sapiens, already had mental and physical capabilities about 25,000 years ago according to Kaplan’s scheme. (In 1979, he extends this to 100,000 years ago).
However, it was only 6000 years that man was given a divine soul. This was a new level of wisdom and inventiveness to allow for cultural evolution through invention, metallurgy, animal husbandry, ship sailing (15:22). Actual paleontologists place this Chalcolithic period, the period of new wisdom, as between 11,000 to 6000 years ago. Kaplan acknowledges that species change and that even man evolves as shown by his vestigial tail.
Hence, the seven days of creation are as follows:
Day 1 Electromagnetic force
Day 2 4-D space/time matrix
Day 3 Warping of matter, beyond Euclidian space
Day 4 Inorganic matter
Day 5 Organic matter and life
Day 6 Evolutionary potential of higher mammals and primitive man.
Kaplan explains his own method of not treating the words literally, rather as allegories for scientific principles. Water, sky, and light are all allegorical terms for the unfolding of the scientific cosmos because the scientific terms were unknown in ancient times. (15:10) As he wrote earlier in the chapter, according to Maimonides the words used as not intrinsic but subject to interpretation and according to Nahmanides, these terms refer to divine unfolding of the cosmos not physical objects.
In many ways, Kaplan approach to science is similar to Nahmanides’ concept of remez, in which scientific concepts are alluded to in the Torah. Both Kaplan and Nahmanides read the allusions in the Torah to science, psychology, and powers of the soul.
Nahmanides in his introduction to the Torah wrote: “God informed Moses first of the manner of the creation of heaven and earth and all their hosts… together with an account of the four forces in the lower world, minerals, vegetation, animal, and the rational soul. With regard to all of these matters Moses our teacher was apprised, and all of it was written in the Torah, explicitly or by implication.” (For more about Nahmanides, see Oded, Yisraeli, The Kabbalistic Remez and Its Status in Naḥmanides’ Commentary on the Torah. The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy. 24. (2016)1-30)
