dybmh
ויהי מבדיל בין מים למים
It's too late for flattery.
If only you would apply these words to your "craft".
Goodbye,
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The Holy Shelah and The Divine Phallus.
- Thread starter John D. Brey
- Start date
It's too late for flattery.
If only you would apply these words to your "craft".
Goodbye,
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
What you're calling flattery is a two-edged sword since though nothing is more true than that kabbalists hide the glory of their examinations by means of the way they discuss them (something you noted throughout this thread). Nevertheless, equally true is that they use what most folk consider the opposite of sacred, or spiritual, i.e., sexuality, as a fore skene, so to say, behind which they discuss great, truly great things, which great things are protected from eyes too spiritually adolescent (uncircumcised) to be involved in such things. They do this by means of couching the truths in what the the unspiritual (uncircumcised) consider the opposite of spiritual: sexual symbolism.
Can you think of anyone in this thread who has been completely turned off by sexual symbolism, even claiming it has no place in kabbalistic thought?
Biblical and rabbinic circumcision transforms the penis into a sacred phallus. The male body becomes an ideal image of human reproduction for, as noted, a circumcised penis continuously resembles an uncircumcised erection.
Eric Kline Silverman, The Covenant of Circumcision, (Edited by Elizabeth Wyner Mark), p. 59.
Some of the Rabbis read circumcision as a necessary preparation for seeing God, the summum bonum of late-antique religious life . . . That is, circumcision here is not the sign of something happening in the spirit of the Jew, but it is the very event itself --- and it is, of course, in his body. Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere, for the rabbinic formulation, this seeing of God was not understood as the spiritual vision of a platonic eye of the mind, but as the physical seeing of fleshly eyes at a real moment in history.
Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew, p. 126.
"Living God" is the designation of this Sefirah [Yesod] from a God's eye view, while El Shaddai is its designation from a man's eye view. God thus told Moses," I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai" (Exodus 6:3).
Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, p. 18.
John
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
[We emerge] through the coupling of [Malkhut with] Tif'eret, whose ejaculator is "Zaddiq the foundation of the world." From [this union] the souls fly forth. For the living God is in our midst.
Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz, Shney Luchot Habrit, The Great Gate, p.1, in Miles Krassen's translation of Toldot Adam (brackets are in Miles Krassen's translation).
In his book on Sefer Yetzirah, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan describes the principles upon which a deeper understanding of the Shelah HaKaddosh's statements quoted above are better understood:The Living God: The name is associated with the essential creative forces, represented by the Sefirah of Yesod (Foundation). In man, this force parallels the sexual organ. In Hebrew, this phrase is Elohim Chaim. This Sefirah takes all the forces, collectively referred to as Elohim, and presents them in an active, procreative mode. Life is defined as that which is active and procreates, and hence, this is the connotation of "Living God."
This "Living God" is the self-same God Rabbi Horowitz (the Shelah HaKaddosh) remarks as being, "in our midst" when "the souls fly forth [i.e., are ejaculated]" at such time as Malchut couples with Tif'eret, by means of Yesod: the foundation (Yesod is) of the world. In the picture Horowitz and Kaplan are painting, Yesod is God's holy or divine "phallus," the organ through which he creates holy souls that replace or bond with the mundane, or profane, souls created when the human bride and groom couple with one another in the dead of night rather than in the light of the eighth day:
מילה is not a completion of, or supplement to, physical birth, but the beginning of a higher "octave." It marks the second, higher "birthday,". . . Physical birth belongs to the night . . . but מילה, birth as a Jew, belongs to the daytime. . . Therefore, the physical birth of the child is completed on the seventh day. The eighth day, the octave of birth, as it were, repeats the day of [physical] birth, but as a day of higher, spiritual birth for his Jewish mission and his Jewish destiny.
The Hirsch Chumash, Bereshish, chapter 17.
Rabbi Kaplan continues:
The designation El Shaddai is also related to the procreative force repressented by Yesod (Foundation), and corresponding to the sexual organ in man. We therefore have two designations for Yesod (Foundation), "Living God" (Elohim Chaim), and El Shaddai. "Living God" is the designation of this Sefirah from a God's eye view, while El Shaddai is its designation from a man's eye view. God thus told Moses "I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai" (Exodus 6:3).
All of this makes sense where the seriousness of the various Jewish scriptures claiming Abraham's circumcision is a precursor to the Akedah are taken seriously. All the viewpoints and concepts in the crosshairs of the current examination lend themselve to the quintessential moment at the Akedah when God, mysteriously, mystically, which is to say beneath the narrative of the Akedah, reveals to Abraham the Lamb Abraham has already told Isaac God would indeed Himself provide: Himself.
In other words, at his ritual circumcision, Abraham ritually sacrifices the organ foundational to the conception of Isaac, as the act that makes Isaac's body fit for the sacrifice made at the Akedah. In this way Abraham ritually sacrificing the foundational organ makes sense of the Akedah since according to the Shelah HaKaddosh, the Akedah couldn't occur unless Isaac had been conceived in a holy manner that does away with the "putrid smelling drop" of semen טפה סרוחה which contaminates all other births such that prior to the semen-less conception of Isaac (semen-less because his father has sacrificed the semen-deliverer), no other human was worthy or able to be sacrificed while still alive as Isaac is at the Akedah:
We have stated that Isaac's holiness was due to his being the first human to be circumcised on the eighth day as prescribed by the Torah. At that time his body would become as holy as possible. When G-d asked Abraham to offer such a human being as a total offering, Abraham rejoiced. Isaac also rejoiced seeing he had been found worthy to become a total offering to G-d during his lifetime, a privilege which had not been granted to any other righteous human being until after death . . ..
Shenei Luchot HaBerit, Torah Sheikhtav, Vayera, Torah Ohr, 62.
As briefly covered in the thread, The Akedah: Binding Isaac to "See Jehovah," the Shelah HaKaddosh is tripping over his own exegesis in order not to come right out and say what this examination is attempting to show: Abraham's circumcision, and not the Akedah, symbolizes Isaac being born without the putrid smelling drop of semen Rabbi Horowitz is aware would disallow Isaac's sacrifice.
. . . from that time on Isaac's body resembled that of אדם הראשון, also not the product of a drop of semen.
Shenei Luchot HaBerit, Torah Shebikhtav, Vayera, Torah Ohr, 46 (bold emphasis mine).
Not able to do a direct-connect between Abraham offering his fathering-organ (Abraham's ritual circumcision) and God thus allowing him to offer up the first human not contaminated by the putrid smelling drop of semen טפה סרוחה, the drop of semen that comes through the intact (uncircumcised) semen-deliverer, the Shelah HaKaddosh misses out on the true visionary aspect of the Akedah that's in the crosshairs of the current examination.
John
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
One of the interlocutors in this thread has repeatedly poo pooed the arguments in the thread and implied the examination and examiner is false and fallacious. The statement quoted above proves that to be partly correct since technically speaking the Shelah doesn't actually, explicitly, say Abraham's circumcision eliminates the "putrid smelling drop of semen" in a manner that makes Isaac's conception, and thus his physical body, qualified to be sacrificed to God (since it's without spot or blemish).
Correcting the fact that Rabbi Horowitz doesn't explicitly relate Abraham's circumcision to the elimination of the the "putrid smelling drop of semen" (despite the theatrics of ritually bleeding the fathering-organ), i.e., that he doesn't specifically equate Abraham's circumcision with the reason why Isaac qualifies as a sacrifice without spot or blemish, would likely reveal more about the nature of what's going on beneath the text of the Akedah than anything that could otherwise be said about these things without first examining the holy Shelah's unwillingness to be forthcoming about the theatrics of the founding ritual of the Jewish faith.
John
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
G-d referred to the original seduction practiced by the serpent on Eve in Paradise which is the reason that nowadays the origin of man is the proverbial טפה סרוחה "evil-smelling drop of semen" familiar to us from the saying of Rabbi Akavyah in Avot 3, 1. If Adam and Eve had not allowed themselves to be seduced into sinning, all seed would have been holy seed. The whole subject of the covenant, the ברית מילה, which is performed on the reproductive organ, is designed to reconsecrate it to G-d.
Shney Luchot Habrit, Torah Shebikhtav, Vaera, Torah Ohr, 29.
It seems pointless to deny that in the quotation above, the Shelah is reconsecrating the Catholic concept of "original sin" for the sake of a Jewish audience. He says explicitly that the seduction related to the serpent in the Garden is the reason that nowadays the seed of the fleshly serpent is considered the "evil-smelling drop of semen." He adds that if Adam and Eve had not been seduced by the serpent, all seed would be holy seed. The whole reason the seed of the fathering-organ is nowadays the "evil-smelling drop of semen" is because of the fall in the Garden. A paragraph later the Shelah relates "nakedness" to the shame associated with the act that led to the male seed becoming the "evil-smelling semen."
Ever since the sin, when Adam and Eve became aware that they were naked [had become sexual] and became ashamed on that account, and the whole rite of circumcision became connected to עריה, nakedness and shame, observance of circumcision has become much more crucial.
Ibid. (bracket mine).
The Shelah doesn't seem to want to relate the crucialness of milah מילה (ritual circumcision), in its direct relationship to the first act of sex in the Garden ("nakedness" refers to "sex" many places in the Tanakh), to the undeniable meaning and purpose of milah מילה (ritual circumcision) as the means to "reconsecrating it [reproduction] to G-d."
Without much exegetical sweat, a serious reader of the Shelah's somewhat veiled statements can only for some preconceived purposed deny that interpreted in its explicit sense (so to say) the Shelah has just stated that ritual circumcision is the means of reconstituting the reproductive process away from the act by which the "evil-smelling drop of semen" comes through the un-bled fathering organ as the "evil-smelling drop of semen" that's the source of the spot and blemish marking every conception and birth save Isaac's from being an acceptable sacrifice to God.
As people of deep faith and of great literary and aesthetic sensibility, the kabbalists also found themselves impressed by, and perhaps even attracted to, certain aspects of the Christian story and the religious lives of the large and powerful monastic communities . . . Much that is to be found in the Zohar was intended to serve as a counterweight to the potential attractiveness of Christianity to Jews, and perhaps to the kabbalists themselves.
Professor Arthur Green, Intro to Daniel Matt’s translation of The Zohar, vol. 1, p. LX.
Without going out on a fractured limb, we could say the holy Shelah finds the Catholic concept of "original sin" too attractive not to include it in his own work. This segues into the reason the Shelah stops short of going all the way regarding the attractiveness of the Christian teaching since it would directly implicate the conception of Isaac; it would imply that the reconsecrated nature of Isaac's conception, ala Abraham's ritual bleeding of that organ (his sacrifice of it), would make Isaac a ritual precursor to the idea of a "virgin" conception and birth (since sacrifice always entails death to the sacrificial organ); that is to say a birth whereby the one so conceived is free from the spot and blemish directly related to the "evil-smelling drop of semen" (come from the otherwise uncut fathering-organ).
John
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
Abraham was told about the impending birth of Isaac being itself a sacrifice, since Abraham had already sacrificed himself when he performed circumcision on his own body.
Shenei Luchot HaBerit, Torah Shebikhtav, Vayera, Torah Ohr, 57.
In a round-about way, the Shelah is reiterating in his own words what's stated throughout Jewish thought: Abraham's ritual circumcision ברית מילה is a precursor to Isaac's sacrifice, aka the Akedah. Throughout the scripture, "sacrifice" requires the death of the sacrificial organ. Ergo, Abraham's ritual circumcision ברית מילה, represent the death of the fathering-organ in the crosshairs of the cutting and bleeding. This clearly signifies the death of Abraham's ability to father a firstborn son the old-fashioned way that got Adam and Eve in so much trouble conceiving Cain in that original and sinful way. Since Abraham has ritually sacrificed the conception and birth of Isaac (by sacrificing the organ necessary to affect it), Isaac is born, ritually speaking, already sacrificed (Hebrews 10:5), ala the statement of the Shelah above.
John
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