Reaction To Abstraction

Parshas Pinchas: Connecting to authentic being

Reality is out of fashion. At least, that's what Apple's cappuccino-slurping marketers want you to believe. Recently, CEO Tim Cook unveiled the ominously named Vision Pro to resounding applause. This dystopian mixed-reality headset blends physical sidewalks and sofas with virtual representations, a seamless fusion that maximises visual stimulation through curated 'experiences'. I have put experiences in quotation marks because what's their selling us here is anything but that. During Apple's promotional clip, a father sits alone in a darkened room, absorbed by a 3D film of his smiling children—total, utter disconnection. Apple's unsettling vision disturbs us. But truth be told, this has been a long time coming.

You WILL buy a vision pro, and you WILL be happy

Our society is obsessed with facts, figures and statistics. It drives our lives into fragmentation, transforming what we experience into sterile, impersonal ideas. The result is a feeling of distance and detachment from the world around us. Natural wonders are reduced to resources for exploitation. Relationships are constructed around what we can extract from them. Soon everything becomes classified and arranged by systems that conceal rather than uncover. In our age, conceptual grids smother the light of authentic being. Thus mankind -modernity's intended beneficiary- is left adrift and feeling a pervasive sense of alienation. Our skulls may not be wedged into Apple's monstrous headgear just yet. Nonetheless, we witness reality from an unbearable distance.

How did we get here? Historians attribute conceptual thought's emergence to the Greek Philosophers. For example, Plato's theory of ideas proposes that pristine truth is not found in experience but in abstraction. Aristotle classified our world by grouping all entities within his ten categories. From there on in, we started looking at our environment as something apart from us, as something other. This state of affairs deteriorates during the Enlightenment era. Descartes's famous mantra, 'cogito ergo sum' I think therefore I am, makes the human mind central to what is real. He reduces the physical world to a subordinate state—a subject to be analysed and mastered by our sovereign minds.

Capitalism, commercialism, and accelerating technology drive the final nail into this battered coffin. Baudrillard shows how our immersion in media and information means we no longer interact with things as they are. Instead, we engage with them as disconnected mental representations. Simulated versions of reality have replaced the real thing, and we no longer confront objects directly. Digital payments, devoid of physical essence, carry vast symbolic value. Rather than nutritional content and taste, intangible branding informs our food choices. And Social media disentangles our impressions from actual events or people. Thus public personalities become impersonal avatars for generic ideals, whilst war media is carefully construed through proper political perspectives. In this hyperreal world, abstract representations are more real than reality itself. It's like we're all living in the Wachowskis' movie The Matrix - except instead of slow-motion dodging bullets, we're battling auto-renew subscription plans.

Rav Goldberg took to the matrix like it was no biggie

But what does modernity's malaise mean for us Jews? We see the effect of Greek thought manifesting in the works of more Rationalist Jewish thinkers, such as the Rambam and the Ralbag. These distinguished greats consider mitzvahs as ladders leading to a more profound intellectual bonding with God. They relate to Mitzvahs as teachers who guide us towards an ideal Godly state of mind. Maharal aggressively condemns their approach—seeing such a worldview as detached from active engagement with the Mitzvah as it is. He wryly remarks that such thinkers have 'fallen off the ladder' they intended to climb.

But hold up, mystical types, dismount your high horses now! Because the same accusation can be equally lobbed against the Kabbalistically inclined. When hurrying to transcend the physical, we risk rendering Mitzvahs as mere tools for achieving spiritual outcomes in the lofty supernal worlds. For example, one could give charity to elevate divine sparks rather than help a fellow Jew. Once again, abstraction has replaced the concrete. This critique informs Rav Soloveitchik's conception of the ideal Halachic Man. It can also be detected in Misnagdim's initial reaction to Hassidic practice.

At the very least, conceptual dissociation from the physical dilutes our experience of faith. When the Psalmist exclaims, 'all beings praise [God]' he is not making some far-off philosophical observation but exuding a living, immediate spiritual awareness. He feels God in his being and finds Him in everything. He discerns divinity not only in the sublime but also in the imperfect, the coarse and the ordinary. Establishing such a connection is a challenge that faces all of us—a struggle which resonates in light of Pinchas’ story.

Last week's Parsha concluded with Moabite and Midianite women seducing Jewish men and enticing them to idol worship. The sins of the Israelite's resulted in a deadly plague. At that point, Pinchas executed a Jewish leader along with the Midianite princess with whom he was being publically intimate. Critically Pinchas acted without due process, committing an apparent murderous sin. Yet, this week's reading opens with God praising and rewarding Pinchas for his righteous act.

The glaring theological difficulties raised by the Torah's account are apparent. Needless to say, both the sages and commentaries widely address them. Their answers vary, but a common theme is that Pinchas acted under a historically rare prerogative of 'kanoim pogim bo'. The function of kanoim pogim bo is far from clear-cut. But it's not a model for vigilante behaviour, a license to harm evildoers, or applicable in our times. It was a unique manifestation of zeal for God's honour, exhibited by Pinchas and a handful of others alone.

But assuming ethical concerns are resolved, we are still left with a fundamental question. God did not intend the Torah to be a history book; every recount teaches a lesson. If Pinchas’ actions were unrepeatable, how can we gain insight from an event so thickly woven into the fabric of its time and context? In searching for an underlying message, I hope we discover instruction for this age of disconnection.

The narrative at hand possesses a stand-out characteristic, immediacy. What I'm trying to describe with this word is direct experiential access to reality. To access immediacy is to be suddenly propelled from abstraction into the jostling chaos of the here and now. When man breaches a particular perceptual barrier, things cease to be mental representations. And instead, become a tangible 'hereness' which envelops our consciousness. Let's take a closer look to understand what we're getting at.

The Torah introduces the event as follows:

Pinchas, the son of Elazar, the son of Aaron the Kohen, saw and arose from the congregation, taking a spear in his hand. {Bamidbar 25:7}

Our verse declares that Pinchas saw without telling us what he observed. Rashi picks up on this gap, explaining that:

He saw the deed [ of Zimri and Cozbi] and reminded himself of the law {Rashi Ibid}

We can suggest Rashi is hinting at a foundational understanding. Rav Hutner notes the etymological connection between the word for witnessed proof (ראיה) and vision (ראייה). Thus sight, unlike auditory perception, implies vivid factual awareness. Pinchas did not see an event and indirectly extrapolate the halachic implications. There was only one stage here. For Pinchas, the event and its ramifications were one and the same. His immediate circumstances gave rise to the Halacha. He felt it in his bones. Rav Soloveitchik attaches a similar level of immediacy to his Halachic Man, who experiences a rising sun as directly conveying "the recitation of the morning Shema, tzitzit, tefillin, the morning prayer" and concludes that "It is not anything transcendent that creates holiness but rather the visible reality...". The Sifsei Chachomim makes clear that the absolute authority of Kanoim Pogim Bah, upon which Pinchas relied, exists only at the moment of action and can't be authorised through consultation with Beis Din. This fits nicely with our theory that the entirety of this act was removed from analytical dissection.

An outline of a message is forming here. But there's more. A cryptic and highly controversial piece from the Mei Hashiloach explains that Zimri had lofty mystical intentions behind his liaison with Cosbi. And that the depth of the situation was not apparent to Pinchas, who looked at it only through human eyes. Whilst it is not beyond the pale for commentators to attribute spiritual goals to apparent biblical villains, it is a whole other thing to hint at inadequacy in the protagonist. Yet, in light of our understanding, it is possible to interpret this seeming slight to Pinchas as praise. In approaching the world from an extreme mystical standpoint, Zimri fatally disconnected himself from what God required of him in practice. Abstraction had entirely swept him away from being. Pinchas’ praise is that he remained grounded in the world as it is. He saw it through human eyes.

Now what I will argue here is not that we should approach the world with absolute immediacy. Rabbi Jeremy Kagan explains this approach drove pagan societies into worshipping nature. Life without the ability of abstraction risks reducing existence to matter alone, worshipping creation over the Creator. Similarly, new-age spiritualists worship Mother Earth. It's definitely possible to be too in touch with our environment. We must stand in awe of our being to be receptive to a God who breathes life into existence. And yet wonder must lead us onward; it points to a creator beyond itself.

Max got a little too in touch with Mother Earth

Rav Tzadok teaches that Avraham synthesised the Mesopotamian idolator's existential wonder with abstract speculation and thus came to God—one without the other leads to paganism and atheism, respectively. God rewards Pinchas for his actions by making his descendants Cohanim priests. Priesthood is a role that involves gruelling physical service as well as sublime spiritual effects. A Jew's paradoxical charge is to live grounded in a moment while simultaneously transcending it.

No one can maintain immediacy. And we are not meant to. But our current world is heavily weighted towards the abstract. A pedantic obsession with theoretical ideas of advancement has undercut our ability to locate the hidden sources of significance and presence that bestow existence's true worth. We are estranged from ourselves, each other and the sacred. Pinchas’ actions teach the value of experiencing life and its mitzvos as they are, for the Mitzvah is a candle thrust into swirling darkness, a song rising from silence. But these are empty analogies until we actually do. For in action, the Mitzvah brings heaven and earth together. Time and eternity converge. And we may glimpse, however briefly, what our lives can be when we live for what is real.

Good Shabbos, and Keep Pondering!