In Va-Era we learn (hopefully)...
It seems like just last week that we read about “Aaron spoke... and the people believed...” And what now; “Moses spoke but the people would not listen to him because of the pressure of their hard labor...”
Rashi says that it is one of (10) examples of an ‘a fortiori’ argument*.
Let’s not go there. Instead let’s consider Aaron’s staff turning into a serpent - as do the staffs of the Ministers of Pharaoh... AND Pharaoh and his staff did not believe the miracle before their eyes even after Aaron’s serpent ate up the others. You think, maybe, that this is a natural, every-day occurrence?
It has been argued that this episode shows us the roots of Avodah Zarah (idol worship!). How is that? It is the unwillingness of man(kind) to pursue a matter to its logical conclusion. The search for truth takes effort and will. And man will only dig as deep as is convenient. The search for the truth (whole truth and nothing but...) is not a search the most are willing to undertake. It requires a passion. It has an urgency and a drive that drives us though the uncomfortable areas of our lives in the search to find something... something that requires us to leave our comfort zone, to leave our chosen ideals and concepts. And sometimes, if we dig enough, we will find that the truth is unpalatable and we wish we could return to someplace further back on our quest.
For in this lies the cause of false beliefs (and all the idols) of man. We see how man was able to halt the quest and stifle their curiosity, and their need, to continue and find the source... the cause of existence.
Evolutionary theories takes us back to the earlier stages of man and, sooner-or-later, arrives at a point where - it ends. That place where theories about the “Big Bang” are postulated and that somehow this lead to a point where a life-form evolved. Right! And that is easier for us to accept because (a) our minds cannot grasp something bigger, more eternal?, or (b) accept the fact that the question is unanswerable in terms of theory, and we accept arbitrary assumptions (as if they were “scientific truth”), because they suit our own desires. Just as it did for the Greeks and their gods and the Romans and their gods.
Onward. The Rambam set forth three stages in the development of idol-worship: First the veneration of the forces of nature and astronomical bodies as being emissaries of the Divine Will. So man had the desire to placate these things of nature. As this was based on a fallacy; G-d is to be worshiped directly and with intermediaries of any kind, That did not work out and man moved to the second level.
Man thought that these forces of nature and heavenly bodies must have some kind of power of their own and must be feared or placated. And this was followed by their own kind of logic that G-d was put aside and these ‘agents’ were credited with the final, the ultimate, authority and sovereignty. Oy! The universe was its own cause and its own animator! ???
They never went past their comfort zone. They did not try to find the truth. They never went beyond the surface. WE seldom go beyond the surface - OUR comfort zone. They/we never travel into the uncertainty and would rather live with doubts and questions.
A place of willful mystification. A place where: when causation is broken off, where theories take over and become arbitrary, and where existence becomes trivial &/or meaningless, that it is the pursuit of truth that becomes our raison d'être.
Now, if you can follow that thread back to the Hebrew “shrugging off” Moses‘ attempts to reach out to them, maybe you can understand the suggestion of the parshat being an ‘a fortiori’ argument.
Or perhaps you can find that your (our) quest for truth is thwarted by our own Yetzer Hara - that element of evil within us all that we considered last week.
Let’s not go there. Instead let’s consider Aaron’s staff turning into a serpent - as do the staffs of the Ministers of Pharaoh... AND Pharaoh and his staff did not believe the miracle before their eyes even after Aaron’s serpent ate up the others. You think, maybe, that this is a natural, every-day occurrence?
It has been argued that this episode shows us the roots of Avodah Zarah (idol worship!). How is that? It is the unwillingness of man(kind) to pursue a matter to its logical conclusion. The search for truth takes effort and will. And man will only dig as deep as is convenient. The search for the truth (whole truth and nothing but...) is not a search the most are willing to undertake. It requires a passion. It has an urgency and a drive that drives us though the uncomfortable areas of our lives in the search to find something... something that requires us to leave our comfort zone, to leave our chosen ideals and concepts. And sometimes, if we dig enough, we will find that the truth is unpalatable and we wish we could return to someplace further back on our quest.
For in this lies the cause of false beliefs (and all the idols) of man. We see how man was able to halt the quest and stifle their curiosity, and their need, to continue and find the source... the cause of existence.
Evolutionary theories takes us back to the earlier stages of man and, sooner-or-later, arrives at a point where - it ends. That place where theories about the “Big Bang” are postulated and that somehow this lead to a point where a life-form evolved. Right! And that is easier for us to accept because (a) our minds cannot grasp something bigger, more eternal?, or (b) accept the fact that the question is unanswerable in terms of theory, and we accept arbitrary assumptions (as if they were “scientific truth”), because they suit our own desires. Just as it did for the Greeks and their gods and the Romans and their gods.
Onward. The Rambam set forth three stages in the development of idol-worship: First the veneration of the forces of nature and astronomical bodies as being emissaries of the Divine Will. So man had the desire to placate these things of nature. As this was based on a fallacy; G-d is to be worshiped directly and with intermediaries of any kind, That did not work out and man moved to the second level.
Man thought that these forces of nature and heavenly bodies must have some kind of power of their own and must be feared or placated. And this was followed by their own kind of logic that G-d was put aside and these ‘agents’ were credited with the final, the ultimate, authority and sovereignty. Oy! The universe was its own cause and its own animator! ???
They never went past their comfort zone. They did not try to find the truth. They never went beyond the surface. WE seldom go beyond the surface - OUR comfort zone. They/we never travel into the uncertainty and would rather live with doubts and questions.
A place of willful mystification. A place where: when causation is broken off, where theories take over and become arbitrary, and where existence becomes trivial &/or meaningless, that it is the pursuit of truth that becomes our raison d'être.
Now, if you can follow that thread back to the Hebrew “shrugging off” Moses‘ attempts to reach out to them, maybe you can understand the suggestion of the parshat being an ‘a fortiori’ argument.
Or perhaps you can find that your (our) quest for truth is thwarted by our own Yetzer Hara - that element of evil within us all that we considered last week.
As a suggestion: Read (or re-read) Luzzatto’s Mesillat Yesharim.
Shabbat Shalom
see you at our Shabbos Torah Study Group
see you at our Shabbos Torah Study Group
*An argument where similar circumstances are compared, but as one may be intensified, the consequence is likely.
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