A Remembrance of His Wonders. David I. Shyovitz
should speak with a sage (hakham) who is expert in theological matters … and who will give a wise and fitting answer to the doubter’s words.”64 The Pietists also discuss skepticism explicitly in their writings on pedagogy. Thus Sefer Hasidim at one point counsels, “One must not reveal wondrous teachings to children, lest they say, ‘This is nonsense, and since this is false, so are the others [teachings of Judaism].’”65 Elsewhere, the opposite approach is considered: “Children’s minds are like the minds of adults who are dreaming—they accept the truth of everything. So, too, children believe that everything they are told is true, until they are led astray by evil acquaintances.”66 In any event, it is clear that doubts about theological teachings were by no means uncommon during this period, thus necessitating the kind of exoteric response contained especially in the sifrut ha-yihud.
In sum, it is crucial to examine not only the content, but also the context of Pietistic invocations of Psalms 111:4. The Pietists’ analyses of the relationship between God and the natural world were not abstract or theoretical—they were rather aimed at real-life skeptics, necessitating argumentation that was rhetorically compelling. This need could be met by linking apparently unbelievable claims about God’s capabilities with common, prosaic natural phenomena, like steam, the rising and setting of the sun, and so on. The world’s “customary course” was not, per Soloveitchik, “empty of harmony and beauty, and above all of meaning.” Rather, as Eleazar puts it, God “created the world to reveal the power of His actions to His nation”67—the spiritual resonance and theological profundity imbued within the created world can be uncovered via careful study and observation. Or, as Judah states categorically elsewhere, at Creation, “God said in his heart: ‘Let Me create the world, not because I have any need of it, but in order that my creations might rejoice when I reveal My wisdom to them.’”68
EMPIRICISM AND ESOTERICISM
Significantly, the Pietists invoke empirical observations not only to confirm basic theological truths such as God’s existence, invisibility, and omniscience, but also to validate the more rarified teachings of the Jewish esoteric tradition. Beginning in late antiquity, Jewish texts identified the creation account in Genesis (ma’aseh bereishit) and Ezekiel’s vision of the divine chariot (ma’aseh merkavah) as two major loci of secret knowledge,69 and the Pietists subject both of these categories to extensive commentary and interpretation—particularly in Sodei Razya (Secret of Secrets), Eleazar’s massive five-part compilation of esoteric traditions. Sodei Razya and related texts were aimed at an audience of initiates, elite disciples who could be entrusted with secret traditions whose transmission was strictly regulated. In these writings, too, the Pietists invoke and explore the routine workings of the natural order, marshaling an array of naturalistic “proofs” that render their esoteric teachings convincing or comprehensible. As such, the theology of nature they lay out in their exoteric teachings mirrors, and must be understood in light of, the approach to the natural world undergirding their more recondite doctrines.
In Sodei Razya, empirical proofs are often marshaled with reference to Sefer Yetsirah, a cryptic cosmological text that the Pietists cited from frequently and reverently.70 Sefer Yetsirah focuses in part upon God’s creation of the universe, and details the precise sequence in which the primordial elements were formed—God first created air (ru’ah), derived water from air, and then fire and earth from water. Eleazar justifies this order using an array of confirmations from the natural world—what the Pietists elsewhere call “remembrances”—some original to his writings, others culled from a range of earlier sources:71 “There is an example in the world: If one breathes into the palm of his hand, it will become wet, and thus we know that water emerged from air. Fire emerged from water—for if water is heated in a clean glass vessel, and placed in the sun during the summer time, it can be used to light bits of flax. And stones [come from] fire [and water], for if you fill a pot [with water] and boil it for many days, the vessel will produce something like a piece of stone. All this is intellectually logical (sevarat ha-da’at).”72 Man can thus comprehend the order of God’s creation of the elements by being attentive to the moisture in one’s breath, the ability of a water-filled glass vessel to focus sunlight and kindle a fire, and the crystallization of minerals that have been boiled in water for an extended period.73 Using such observable phenomena, as filtered through sevarat ha-da’at, as a way of making sense of the order of creation, clearly comports with the Pietists’ instructions to “compare one situation to another until we discover the truth.”74 Eleazar similarly justifies the creation of water from air by invoking “the wet moisture of speech,” observable in the steam that comes from one’s mouth during the wintertime, “when the air is cold and the body is warm, and steam comes out of one’s mouth like smoke.”75 The same “smoky” steam allows Eleazar to verify that God could indeed speak at Sinai “from within the fire” (Deut. 4:13), since “the steam [of one’s breath in winter] resembles thin pillars of smoke.”76 That water originates in air is also proven by the fact that dew collects on the ground overnight, even when it does not rain.77
Experimental data is marshaled in Pietistic sources not only to justify the creation process according to Sefer Yetsirah, but also to shed light on such scientific topics as the workings of meteorology and the structure of the cosmos. Thus Eleazar explains the way in which winds separate raindrops from one another by advising his reader to “take light feathers, and place them into a vessel, and blow into it, and the feathers will be separated from one another.”78 Elsewhere, he describes a similar experiment, which can be marshaled to justify the fact that the earth is suspended in the center of the universe: “The earth is suspended in mid-air with the spheres rotating around it, and the earth does not move from its place. This is analogous to a wide glass vessel with a narrow opening, in which one places … dry leaves, or birds’ feathers, or garlic peels. [If] one places his mouth by the opening of the vessel, and blows forcefully till the entire vessel is full of his breath, then whatever is inside the vessel will rise to the middle of the air on account of the wind within—so too the earth is suspended in mid-air.”79 An array of other meteorological phenomena are explained by analogy with everyday observations. Thus the appearance of lightning can be attributed to the “heavenly water jars” (following Job 38:37) striking one another, which produces lightning in the same manner that hitting rocks together creates sparks.80 The origin of rain can be traced to the heavenly waters, which were separated by God from the lower waters on the second day of creation, and which are now in close proximity to the heat of the sun. That this contact causes rain to fall can be understood in light of “a man who brings a vessel full of water into a bathhouse—because of the heat, [the vessel] will start to sweat” and to drip due to condensation.81
The role of water in the Creation account is explored empirically elsewhere as well. Eleazar argues that the water that God initially created was fresh water, not salt water; the latter came into being only later, when “pure” water mixed with the “mountains of salt” that were made later in the process of Creation: “And anyone who wants to understand the truth, [which is] that the oceanic waters were initially sweet, and became salty on account of the mountains of salt, should construct a glass vessel, like those used by artisans to distill rosewater, and [use it to] separate out the sweet water, leaving the salt by itself. The moisture of the water rises within the vessel due to the heat of the fire, just as it rises upwards from the earth, leaving the salt behind in the bottom of the vessel.”82 Eleazar’s familiarity with the mechanics of distillation allows him to explicate—and in theory, to experimentally recreate—the workings of God’s creative activities.
Analyzing the process and workings of ma’aseh bereishit—the created world—by means of empirical proofs from the natural order seems fitting, and is in keeping with the theological value attributed to observable “remembrances” described above. But significantly, the Pietists harness natural phenomena even in their discussions of ma’aseh merkavah, the most recondite and transcendent contents of Jewish esotericism. As scholars have long noted, the Pietists transmitted (and perhaps even originated) the sod ha-egoz (“secret of the nut”), a cryptic motif in which the spatial structure