“The Rambams/Maimonides view of the Torah/Bible is that the Torah/Bible is an esoteric work, it’s a hidden work. The Torah/Bible itself is written in code. What does it mean for something to be written in code? What it means is that the Torah/Bible is interested in hiding it’s true message. Why, one has to raise the question, why must Torah/Bible hide it’s essential true message. Answer is that the average person or masses cannot understand, appreciate, or even tolerate what the Torah/Bible really wants to teach about the essential, necessary truths of life itself. The masses, as opposed to the philosophical elite need a different set of “truth”. They cannot deal with ultimate absolute truth. They can deal with watered down version of what truth is all about.” (0:10-1:12)
“As we go along, you will see all the examples that the Rambam/Maimonides and others give to explain and express that particular notion. An average person in the street, your average business man, does not want to deal with G-d the abstraction, can’t deal with it. And yet, the Torah/Bible needs the average person in the street. The masses have to be part and parcel of the program. Torah/Bible would have failed if it did not attract, mesmerize, hypnotize, include the masses. Torah/Bible was not meant to be an exclusive religion only for the philosophical elite, only for the Moshe Rabbenu’s/Moses’s. Rather, for the Torah/Bible to achieve it’s ultimate goal, which is to spread the teachings of spirituality and ethics to the entire world, you need to have a critical mass. A critical mass means numbers, numbers mean the masses, masses means we must have everybody included. But how do I do that, how do I include the masses, and yet on the other hand not exclude the philosophical elite, because if you only simply tell a third grade message, you are going to exclude anybody that who is way beyond that third grade level. That’s a difficult question.” (1:13- 2:33)
“A mass person, an average person in the street, needs to keep the basic religious ritualistic life with very simple ideas. Ideas they can work with. They cannot work with some ideas. So the average mass person does not want anything that takes a lot of thought, a lot of energy, a lot of mental energy, that’s not what the average person needs. That average person cannot fully appreciate the depth of ideas that the Torah/Bible wants to speak about. More so that person is threatened by those ideas, if he has a basic world view, every idea that you express as the leader of that congregation let’s say or Jewish people has to fit very neatly into the right place in his world view. If theres an idea that’s so difficult, so out of that framework, he finds that idea as threatening, challenging, and he’s intolerant of that new idea.” (2:34-3:51)
“Give me a classic example of someone with a new philosophical idea that was so challenging to the harmonious structure that this man was persecuted by that new idea. Now in the sciences, you find that all the time. Galileo of course. But, a philosophical, religious idea, the most famous is Spinoza. Spinoza comes along with a new idea of G-d, completely new idea of G-d, and one which shut the lights on everybody at that period of time. Which is astounding, which is exactly what happened. It’s amazing how that actually took place. Spinoza comes along, with a very spiritual idea about G-d. An idea of G-d that’s so radical, that he is known as the G-d intoxicated philosopher. It’s all about G-d, everything is about G-d. Now, admittedly one has to analyze to what degree Spinoza was off base. What degree? Spinoza two great works, one that was about the idea about G-d, where G-d is infinite extension, which means that G-d is everything and therefore that’s why he is called a pantheist.” (3:52-5:13)
“And the other hand, his other great work was on ethics, how to live the right kind of life, how to do everything that’s ethical. And his whole entire second work is all about ethics, all about structuring ethics on a mathematical model so you are able to determine very clearly very simply what’s the ethically right thing to do. Often we are perplexed by the right decision one should make. Ethics is not a clear science. I give a class on Tuesday nights on ethical dilemmas, where it’s a lose lose, where you cannot win ethically. And often you are going to find those ethical dilemmas, ethics you have to choose based on personality, based on a mood, based on how you evaluate, and based on a lot of different issues. Ethics is a very difficult area in order to decide what to do. Spinoza wanted to decide exactly, I want to put ethics on a geometric basis, mathematical model to be clear. In this case you do x and this case you do y, we need to have a very clear structure.” (5:14-6:16)
“Spinoza for all his ethics, for all his G-d intoxication, is deemed to be a heretic and he’s thrown out of the ballpark. It’s interesting because rather than throw him out of the ballpark and brand him into an atheist, as he was called by some strangely enough, and a heretic by others. Why not just, leave him in the ballpark, leave him in the community and deal with his ideas? Deal with the ideas, reject them, say they are wrong, argue about them. Why do you have to make him into a heretic. It was a frightening scene, in 17th century Holland, when he was branded a heretic, not only was he physically thrown out of the community, he has to lay down at the entrance way of the synagogue and everybody has to walk over him and trample him. You think it’s easy to be a heretic, ask those who know about it. So there was an entire ‘rite’, which had to be done in order to brand someone a heretic. He lays down, face down, everybody would step on him to humiliate him.” (6:17-7:22)
*As always, please listen to the class in full to understand the context and depth of the quotes above. In addition, you may want to take notes and get used to using the pause button to capture the details and references he uses. And a dictionary for any word he uses that you may not be familiar with. The above is only 7:22 minutes of his 45 minute class.
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