ספר שמות

‎[Before continuing, it is important for the ‎reader to remember that of all the sensory perceptions ‎at our disposal, the eyes, i.e. “seeing,” are considered ‎by the Torah as the most reliable, and therefore ‎testimony given at court must always be based on what ‎has been witnessed by one’s eyes. Ed.]‎We need to appreciate also that there are two ways ‎of examining what one has seen, i.e. ‎ראיה‎. One is ‎merely a category of visually perceiving the outline and ‎colour of the object “seen,” whereas the other includes ‎the person seeing being able to understand the deeper ‎meaning of what his eyes have “seen.,” examining its ‎essence, something known as ‎ידיעה‎, “knowing”, ‎understanding. This latter category of visual ‎perception is known as ‎בחינת אותיות‎, examining the ‎‎“letters,” i.e. the structure of what the image consists ‎of. When Adam had marital relations with his wife ‎Chavah for the first time, (Genesis 4,25), the Torah ‎describes the experience with the words: ‎וידע אדם את ‏אשתו‎, “Adam gained intimate knowledge of the essence ‎of his wife.” Whereas “seeing” implies that one ‎perceives from the “outside,” ‎ידיעה‎, understanding the ‎essence of something, implies a much more intimate ‎connection to the matter which is the subject of one’s ‎knowledge. This kind of intimate knowledge is possible ‎only in domains that are completely spiritual, ‎disembodied, i.e. beyond the world of the ‎אותיות‎, ‎‎“letters.” True “knowledge” (in the sense of identifying ‎with the essence of the subject or object), presupposes ‎negating any personal, ego-oriented relation to it. This ‎also accounts for prophets appearing to act as if they ‎had taken leave of their senses while they were ‎receiving messages from the transcendental domains. ‎As a result of these transcendental messages these ‎prophets could feel greatly distressed when receiving ‎messages concerning the gentile nations, as these ‎messages originated in a domain that knows only ‎‎“goodness,” (as we explained) so that the prophet ‎would assume that what would be “good” for the ‎gentiles in the long run would also be good for them in ‎the immediate future, and therefore harmful for the ‎people of Israel. This is one of the limitations every ‎prophet labours under, as G’d explained to Moses in ‎Exodus 33,20, ‎כי לא יראני האדם וחי‎, i.e. that as long as the ‎prophet’s soul is still within his mortal body, he cannot ‎‎“see” i.e. completely understand what G’d is doing.‎The difference between these two levels of “seeing,” ‎is also the difference between ‎כלל ופרט‎, “a general ‎principle and its application to a specific situation.” ‎‎[The 13 methods of exegesis of the Torah ‎composed by Rabbi Yishmael, by means of which texts ‎in the written Torah can be understood as ‎‎halachically accepted. Ed.]Our ‎author explains this as the difference between ‎‎“category 10 and not 11,” (Mishnah 4) a term ‎used in the Sefer Yetzirah, the oldest ‎kabbalistic text. ‎