The Intellectual Process of the Torah

by R. Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (the Piaseszner rebbe)

A person is used to all kinds of intellectual processes the entirety of whose existence lacks intrinsic quality, essence and being, but only maintains an existence like the shadow of an object—which, even though it exists and it indicates the matter whose shadow it casts, itself is only of nothingness, without being.

After all, what being and essential quality does a person gain when he thinks that two times two equal four? True, his mind is now filled with knowledge and intellectual process—but what is the value of that knowledge and its existence? It is nothing—it has no strength and no being—it is like the existence of the shadow.

And if a person thinks, for instance, of a technique that someone discovered in mathematics, to calculate sums of fractions easily [paraphrase], does that bring him any closer to the person who devised this technique?

If the discoverer was wicked, will everyone who studies his techniques grow wicked? Or will a person purify himself and improve his ways if he studies the techniques of a pure and good person, since he is contemplating the intellectual achievements of that person?

He will gain nothing by doing this, for even though the existence of the intellectual process of the person who devised the technique is in his mind as he thinks of it, its existence is an existence of nothing, like a shadow.

And this understanding and habit that have become implanted in the minds of people regarding the mind and its actions are an understanding of a shadow and of nothingness.

There are some people who realize that the intellectual process of Torah is not like that of mundane matters (heaven forbid), that the Torah and its intellectual processes are the Holy of Holies, whereas other intellectual processes are trivial and mundane.

Nevertheless, in regard to how the intellectual process of the Torah affects a person at the time that he contemplates it, they err and think that it is comparable to that of the effect of any intellectual process. They do not purposely compare the effect of the intellectual process of the Torah to other intellectual processes.

However, they possess no other concept of the effect of the intellectual process on a person besides its trivial effect, the intellectual process of shadow and nothingness. Therefore, when they contemplate the effect of the intellectual process of the Torah on a person and fail to take into account its difference from the effect of other intellectual processes, they sin inadvertently, heaven forbid, since they think that the intellectual process of the Torah has the usual affect [of other intellectual processes] on the person who contemplates it.

That is to say, according to their concept of the effect of the intellectual process, its effect is one of nothingness.

That is like [the popular] conception of an angel. No matter how hard we may tell a simple person that [an angel] is not a man and does have a human image, when he thinks of an angel, he cannot help imagining it as looking like a person with wings. This is because his entire life his idea [of an angel] has been a messenger who speaks and acts. But [that kind of a description] only meant to give us some way of approaching the topic.

So even if we speak to them and explain that the light of the [divine] intellect is drawn down to a person who is engaged in contemplation, we will not make them any wiser, for they will pervert the very idea of this drawing down, as though it is like a more intelligent person who simplifies the description of a mathematical function so that a less intelligent person can understand it, and the like—which is, again, drawing down nothing.

This perverse error of equating all matters that are called “abstract” has cast down many victims.

If we call mathematics abstract, then everything abstract has a similar existence—so they think—and they do not stop to consider that mathematical concepts have no existence outside the human mind. A person thinks it [into being], and even in his mind its existence is no more than a shadow without tangibility.

Holy abstract matters, on the other hand, are like a soul, which has existence and tangibility—to the point that it vivifies and moves the body.

In this regard, we must proclaim that a person who errs in this matter, heaven forbid, does not believe in the holiness of the existence of the Torah and of how it is drawn down [into our lives].

The abstract quality of all holiness and Torah has intrinsic [being], unlike other things that are called abstract, but which are nothingness. The abstract quality, the spirituality, of the Torah and holiness has existence and being. Indeed, it is the essence of existence. Even the understanding of Torah that a person attains with his human understanding cannot be compared to any other understanding, heaven forbid. It transcends any human understanding.

The existence of the light of the intellectual process of the Torah and how it is drawn down are comparable to the existence and drawing down of the soul, which, even though the senses cannot feel it and it is abstract, nevertheless it is not abstract in the same manner as mathematics, which has no being, heaven forbid. To the contrary, it contains the essence of a person’s existence, and from it come his energy and all his being.

Mavo Hashaarim, pp. 194-196