Israel and Humanity - The unity of law in Rabbi tradition

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§ 2.

UNITY OF LAW IN RABBIS.

The identity of the man's law with that of the universe is it an authentic Hebrew doctrine? It is superfluous to demonstrate that we find in Kabbalah and everyone knows it is a characteristic of his teachings. But Theosophy is there agreement on this with other sources of Hebrew beliefs? What we will say clearly and this will prove compliance, establish a doctrine once more, we believe, the legitimacy and antiquity of the Kabbalah. It is not in fact accidental match on a particular point, important though it is, the doctrine before us is by itself an eminently and essentially theosophical or by the transcendent idea that it gives us the law and that of the Word or Logos creator who is' involved, or by the role it assigns to the observer of the law as cooperator in the universal order or finally by the importance, not just ethical or social or even religious it accords with the precepts of the Torah, but somehow cosmic and ontological. So if all the monuments of Judaism confirm this doctrine, it is proof that it is itself steeped in theosophy.

Before returning to the Bible, we begin by looking for what we teach on this subject the Rabbis, our arguments will do and more strength. The Torah is not just for their civil and religious law, has a much broader sense: it is the Logos, the intelligible world, the prototype of creation. This theory of the Torah, Word can not be formulated more clearly than did the Beresch Rabba "Just as an architect does not build a building consultant that plans its tables, drawings, and also to create the world, the Holy One, blessed be He, looked at the Torah. " The Rabbis tell us that the Torah is still the instrument of God's art, it is called the principle and that under this principle that the world was created, and finally, that the Torah is one of seven things that preceded the creation of the world

Elsewhere we see them put into the mouth of the snake that word, expression, "God has eaten of the tree of science and that is where he created the world ". Now we know that the tree of life and the knowledge of good and evil are two sides of the Act, the first one of the perfect man and the other that of fallen man as they represent , the philosophical point of view, each ldeal and the other is the Real .

In the Zohar we find the deep thought that the world and man are both created on the model of the Torah. Doubt whether the law of the world and of man are one and the same law, all creatures, or even superior to previous man, are required to observe and that is what the rabbis say. Angels, according to one of their legends, claimed for themselves, it is true that God objected that some things do not apply to them, but it was observed with Because a similar claim would not have been imagined if, in one way or another, the Act was not relevant point. The lower creatures, the Schedim , also submit.

But the Rabbis go further: they claim that God himself observes the Act. We know that this idea was the pretext for a host of protests against the absurdity and blasphemy of the Pharisees; wise critics were content to accuse them, without trying to understand what they meant. While we do not claim that all the Pharisees were able to estimate the value of their own doctrine, to measure the depth and elevation, all in one word possessed a conscience properly. We know too well that all members of a school or a church does not understand the same way the dogmas or theories offered to them. It would not trouble to find these days even the Jews who, in the God who observes the law, do not see anything but a very old rabbi lost in the minute practices of exaggerated devotion, either that piously they accept the idea, or they reject it as nonsense. It is the eternal story described by Maimonides , which he said various degrees of intelligence applies to our time as his, because the scale remains virtually unchanged. We claim only that, to judge correctly of the true value of a doctrine, one must consider that what people think, among his followers, the most enlightened minds. This idea of a God observer of the Act, part of both fact and law to the Kabbalah is found in Talmudic-righteousness, where we see not only the principle is formally stated , "We learn by this that the Holy One, blessed be He observed all the precepts of the Law", but details still likely to shock obviously our modern conceptions, because apart from God performs all the duties of religious morality, it is teffilin or phylacteries, he said, addressing his prayer to himself . But beneath these images puerile philosophical theory of high significance lies only does it not? That this should be sought instead to push all that without review, in form, does not accord with our thinking today.

We must remember here that we called the doctrine of man's cooperation with God. If man cooperates with God, is that the law of one and the other is the same. Titles partner, brothers, fellow rabbis that God gives to man, are related both to the idea of unity of the law than to that of human cooperation. It has been rightly said that the rational being who, with full knowledge, submits freely, the law does in fact his own will and thought is found in the Talmud that says explicitly that the law before being learned by man, belongs to God and called the law of God, but it becomes the law of man, as soon as it is learned by him. The law is, in the philosophical sense, natural to man as it is in the universe which man belongs, and the latter carrying in itself the ideal is not realized in the universe, it is clear, if we make no mistake about the proper interpretation of the rabbinic system, a certain balance must be struck between the law and the man who makes it. Thus we see the rabbis give the human soul, and perhaps the whole man, the name of Sefer Torah book of the law, deciding that the legal requirements must not run when they put human life in danger is the law of , clear evidence that they recognize something superior to the letter. It's probably for the same reason they declare guilty one who does not rise in the presence of an eminent scientist, just as it rises in the presence of the book of the law.

Finally, the unity of law which we speak is an inevitable consequence of the doctrine already reported in the rabbis and that humanity is in relation to our land that is the soul for the body, as also that of after which the spirit of man returns to the spirit of the universe, a doctrine which is found in the dying words of Plotinus and Giordano Bruno that was echoed by saying at the time to expire at the stake "I try to bring what is divine in me that it is divine in the universe. "