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ErosValue: Early Thoughts – Dr. Marc Gafni

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The core Value of Cosmos is Eros. Indeed, the words cannot be fruitfully split.

Eros IS ethos.[1] Or said slightly differently, Eros is Value exponentialized as the Infinite Value, which suffuses Reality. Nothing exists outside of the circle of Eros as Value and Value as Eros. Eros IS ethos, and ethos, or Value, is the Ought implicit in Reality, which suffuses all of Cosmos. This is what we refer to in CosmoErotic Humanism as ErosValue.

Eros is life.

Eros generates new life.

Eros is a First Principle and First Value of Reality itself.

Eros is Value.

And Value is Eros.

Indeed, it is for that reason that we coined a new term in CosmoErotic Humanism:

ErosValue.

ErosValue generates the Value of Life.

In its creative movement, ErosValue generates ever-greater life through ever-deeper contact. It is the movement of Cosmos that brings together separate parts into larger wholes. The greater wholes have ever-more value. At every greater level of value, the emergent whole has greater depth, consciousness, and capacity.

A subatomic particle has a certain level of depth, consciousness, and capacity—all expressions of Value.

An atom—which contains, within it, subatomic particles that have come together to form a larger whole—has more depth, more consciousness, and more value.

The notion that there is already proto consciousness at the level of atoms is found across the interior sciences and is now appearing in multiple forms across the leading edges of the exterior sciences. The premise, which explains empirical reality far better than the other stunted hypothesis, is what we call pan-interiority. Reality is neither material nor spirit [value]. Rather, Reality is interiors and exteriors all the way up and all the way down the evolutionary chain. Alfred North Whitehead, who wrote Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russel, called this proto interiority at the atomic level prehension.

Atoms come together to form larger wholes, molecules, which have more depth, capacity, and consciousness—more value.

Molecules form a larger whole, macromolecules, which have more depth, capacity, and consciousness—more value.

Macromolecules come together, intensifying their intimacy, aggregating, alluring separate parts into a larger whole with greater depth, capacity, and consciousness—more value—emerging as cells.

Matter has become life. The physiosphere has morphed into the biosphere. This is the inherent process of Eros—animating the processes of classical science and mathematics, as well as the interior sciences—which drives life all the way up the evolutionary chain. At ever-higher levels of emergence, there is more depth, capacity, consciousness, and hence more value. But while there are self-evident gradients of values, all of Reality has inherent Value. Value lives all the way up and all the way down the evolutionary chain. Eros is value generating ever-more value.

Ethos and Eros Are One: Eros Is ErosValue

Not only, however, is Eros virtually identical with ethos. Ethos is identical with Eros. In other words, there is a feeling to the ethos-suffused movement towards wholeness. That feeling is Eros. The Universe feels, and the Universe feels Eros. For the feeling of ethos is Eros. (more…)

ErosValue: Early Thoughts – Dr. Marc Gafni2024-04-09T06:55:22-07:00

The Eye of Value: Early Draft Essay – Dr. Marc Gafni, 2018

Four Prisms of the Eye of Consciousness: The Eye of Value, the Eye of Contemplation, the Eye of the Spirit, and the Eye of the Heart

The Eye of Value is a term coined and shared by Dr. Gafni in multiple oral teaching over many years and in this more formal essay from 2018. This early draft was drawn from the forthcoming volumes of The Universe: A Love Story—First Meditations on CosmoErotic Humanism in Response to the Meta-Crisis by Dr. Marc Gafni. A more expanded version will also appear in forthcoming work by Gafni, Stein, and Wilber under the moniker of David J. Temple.

The essay was edited and prepared for publication by Kerstin Tuschik. We welcome substantive feedback as we prepare a more advanced version of this essay.

Download a PDF of the Essay

The Empiricism of Love: The Three Eyes of Knowing—The Three Eyes of Eros—The Three Forms of Gnosis—The Three Eyes That Are One

How do we know that Love is Real?

Not because of faith or dogma.

Rather, we know Love is real because the depth of our direct felt experience of Love tells us it is so. Our experience of Eros generates gnosis. That Love is real, and not a social construction, a fiction, or a figment of our imagination, is, like all good science, an empirical truth. This is, in fact, how all true knowledge in every field of inquiry is obtained.

Knowing through experience, however, is precisely the opposite of dogma. Knowing through experience is what we call empiricism. And knowing that Love is real—in fact more real than anything else, as the intrinsic value of Cosmos it is—is what William James correctly called Radical Empiricism.

Indeed, all of science, as opposed to organized religion, is based on the authority of direct validated experience. This is true both in the exterior science and what we have called the interior sciences. Indeed, in exterior and interior sciences, there are three ways to unfurnish our eyes—or what have been called the Three Eyes of Knowing. In fact, these Three Eyes are three distinct forms of the Anthro-Ontological Method.

In CosmoErotic Humanism, we refer to them as the Eye of the Senses, the Eye of the Mind, and the Eye of Consciousness.

The Eye of Consciousness is also known by at least four other names: the Eye of Value, the Eye of the Heart, the Eye of the Spirit, or the Eye of Contemplation.

It is this last set of eyes, by all of their names, which discloses Love’s Ultimate Reality, which is Love’s Knowledge, which is Love’s Value.

But we will see, as consciousness evolves, these very distinct eyes begin to come together, and we realize that, at the higher levels of consciousness, they inseparably inter-animate each other.

Each of these eyes illuminates a different dimension of Reality.

Each one is the province of particular dimensions of knowledge.

At higher levels of consciousness—what is sometimes called, in the interior sciences, nondual realization—the different dimensions, perceived by the different eyes inter-animate, pointing towards a larger Seamless Field of Eros.

Each of the Three Eyes goes by different names.

The Three Eyes Are:

The Eye of the Senses or the Eye of the Flesh.

The Eye of the Mind or the Eye of Reason.

The Eye of Consciousness, alternatively known as the Eye of Value, the Eye of the Heart, the Eye of the Spirit, or the Eye of Contemplation. [These names, however, are not quite synonyms. Rather, each implicitly implies a different quality of the Eye of Value. As such, we will occasionally use all of the names together with the lead name(s) being written first and the other names in brackets next to it.]

The Eye of the Senses [Eye of the Flesh] is generally referred to as empiricism. This eye is what is classically called empirical knowledge. But, as we shall see, it is referring to a very narrow strain of empiricism.

The Eye of the Mind [Eye of Reason] is generally known as rationalism, while the Eye of Consciousness [alternatively the Eye of the Spirit, the Eye of Contemplation, the Eye of the Heart, or the Eye of Value] is generally known as mysticism.

But it would be more accurate to say that all of the eyes are forms of science, what we refer to, in CosmoErotic Humanism, as exterior and interior sciences. All Three Eyes are forms of empiricism. (more…)

The Eye of Value: Early Draft Essay – Dr. Marc Gafni, 20182024-05-21T08:24:09-07:00

Introduction from the New Book on “First Principles & First Values”

Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come by David J. Temple

CosmoErotic Humanism is a philosophical movement aimed at reconstructing the collapse of value at the core of global culture. This movement emerges in response to the meta-crisis, understanding existential and catastrophic risks as rooted not only in failures of economics, politics, and technology, but in failed worldviews. The core of CosmoErotic Humanism is a system of First Principles and First Values that recasts cosmic evolution as a Story of Value in which humanity plays a unique role. These First Principles and First Values ground a comprehensive set of theories, including self and psychology, epistemology, scientific metaphysics, education, theology, mysticism, sexuality, and value.

CosmoErotic Humanism thereby responds to the three great questions: Where? Who? and What? It offers a new Universe Story (Where am I?), a new narrative of identity (Who am I?), and new vision of ethics (What ought I/we do?). These are some of the first words on the possibilities of a world philosophy adequate to our time of civilization transformation. What is offered by CosmoErotic Humanism is a new Story of—eternal yet evolving—Value that can serve as a context for our diversity, finally allowing us to speak of humanity as part of a shared Story of evolving Cosmic Value.

Download Chapters 1-5 of the Book HERE

To the Reader

The propositions collected here unpack the urgent moral need to articulate a new vision and theory of value. Simply put, humanity must redefine what it understands to be valuable if it is going to survive. Humans must understand the importance of what they value in the Cosmos—the reality of value itself—beyond the notion that what they value is, for example, simply an arbitrary price that can be fixed to a commodity. The idea that a tree is only as valuable as what it can be sold for is absurd. The idea that a person is only as valuable as what they can contribute to society is also absurd. In fact, both incarnate a dimension of value that is immeasurable and fundamentally irreducible to its commodified form. Yet just this kind of absurdity has been driving global culture for centuries.

There has been great confusion in value theory over the last two hundred years. On the one hand, conservatives have attempted to simplify the discussion to a single list of preordained and eternal values, which must be protected, and to which all people must pledge allegiance. At the same time, driven by a reductive materialism, scientific communities largely claim that only what is described by physics is real and that therefore nothing ultimately has intrinsic value. Given this metaphysical assumption, contemporary value theory has stridently argued that value is but a contrived human invention. The rise of postmodernity has only exacerbated this trend, labelling all values “social constructs,” “fictions,” or “figment of our imaginations.” This claim has now entered mainstream culture. To cite but one example, two extremely popular books by Yuval Harari, Sapiens and Homo Deus, present these kinds of dogmatic postmodern claims as taken-for-granted assumptions. Harari’s books have received enthusiastic endorsements from popular cultural luminaries, including prime ministers, presidents, corporate leaders, and myriad literary, spiritual, and religious figures.

Value, however, is not merely instrumental or economic. It is not a social construction or cultural contrivance—not a mere fiction covering over a truly valueless and therefore ultimately meaningless world. The propositions here begin to demonstrate that value is intrinsic to Cosmos, all the way down and all the way up the evolutionary chain. Value is foundational and evolving. It is not that human beings contrive value; rather, value precedes life. Life is an inherent expression of value. Life is contrived in pursuit of Cosmic Value. Cosmic Value in this way generates life, as life emerges in pursuit of value. We live inside of value even as value lives inside of us. Reality is value. But this is all ahead of the story.

The material collected here from the internal writings of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion. The Center is co-founded and led by Marc Gafni and Zak Stein. Together with Ken Wilber—also a cofounder of the Center—and an international team, they execute the Center’s mission: to evolve culture as needed in response to the looming threat of existential and catastrophic risk. This movement in culture has become referred to as CosmoErotic Humanism. Future volumes will include many colleagues who have been in leadership positions or dialogue with the Center for World Philosophy and Religion over the years—including Barbara Marx Hubbard, Lori Galperin, John P. Mackey, Howard Bloom, Ervin László, Sally Kempton, Daniel Schmachtenberger, and others. In each volume, as appropriate, we will recognize any particular partners who played a key co-authorship role in that particular work.

Taking the form of forty-two telegraphic propositions, this extended monograph provides a brief unpacking of CosmoErotic Humanism’s First Principles and First Values. We are not making our full arguments here; these will appear in longer forthcoming volumes. Please read through the propositions themselves, skipping ahead to those most interesting to you, those that elicit the most desire. Also review the list of First Principles and First Values (see pages 168–170) and try to hold the whole picture before beginning to read through them in sequence. Here we are putting it all on the table, as it were, so that, as we begin to publish more and elaborate on these themes, there is no confusion as to where we stand.

David Judah Temple
October 2023
Vermont, USA

Photography by Kristina Tahel Amelong

The following is the Introduction from our new book “First Values & First Principles” by David J. Temple.

Download Chapters 1-5 of the Book HERE
Order the Book

David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion. The two primary authors behind David J. Temple are Marc Gafni and Zak Stein. For different projects specific writers will be named as part of the collaboration. In this volume Ken Wilber joins Dr. Gafni and Dr. Stein.

Dr. Marc Gafni is a visionary world philosopher and futurist, one of the leading formulators of world spirituality and religion of our time, and a beloved teacher and public intellectual with a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University. He has more than twenty books to his name, including Your Unique Self, A Return to Eros, and three volumes of Radical Kabbalah.

Dr. Zak Stein is an educator, groundbreaking educational theorist, and futurist who specializes in developmental theory and metrics with a doctorate in the philosophy of education from Harvard University. He is the author of Education in a Time Between Worlds, among many other publications.

Ken Wilber is the creator of Integral Theory, with over twenty-five books to his name. He is one of the most influential philosophers of our time.

Introduction: On Redefining “Value” & Realizing Intimacy with All Things During the Meta-Crisis

The world is not what it was when the great wisdom traditions first began to (re)connect (“religion” is from the Latin religare, meaning to bind or tie) the human to the Cosmos through the identification of a Field of Value in which all life participates. The last century has seen more change in the conditions of human existence than any other period in known history. Technologies and societal evolutions have moved the center of culture outside the Field of Value. Humanity has become untethered from Reality, and more specifically: divorced from the Reality of Value. And so there is an urgent need for new forms of religion, philosophy, and culture that reconstruct value and reconnect humanity with nature and Reality.

Concern for the legacy of the great traditions is what unites the writing collected here to the modern tradition of perennial philosophy. This tradition suggests that a common core of truths can be found within all the best works of humanity’s religious imagination and interior sciences of contemplation. We propose here an Evolving Perennialism in which universal and eternal truths can be identified without becoming fixed. Eternal values evolve. As explained below, this is one of the ways beyond the devastating criticisms of accepted forms of value that modernity and postmodernity have rightfully offered. The failures of prior traditions that enthroned value do not put an end to value; in our hands, these critiques serve to evolve value. (more…)

Introduction from the New Book on “First Principles & First Values”2024-03-12T08:34:49-07:00

Dr. Marc Gafni: Anthro-Ontology and the Three Eyes

Download a PDF of the Essay HERE

This is an early draft of an essay drawn from the forthcoming volumes of The Universe: A Love Story—First Meditations on CosmoErotic Humanism in Response to the Meta-Crisis in the Great Library of CosmoErotic Humanism. The first draft of this essay was written by Dr. Marc Gafni in conversation with Barbara Marx Hubbard and Dr. Zak Stein. It was edited and prepared for publication by Kerstin Tuschik. We welcome substantive feedback as we prepare a more advanced version of this essay.

At the core of CosmoErotic Humanism—in contradistinction for example to the Kingship model of God that dominates much of classical organized religion, or the flatland reductionism not of authentic empirical science but, rather, of the dogmas of scientistic materialism—is the realization that Reality is Eros. Eros, as we have noted, is not a one-dimensional force of allurement. If it was, Cosmos would disappear in a split-second. Rather, Eros is the precise balance between allurement and autonomy—attraction and repulsion—fusion and fission.

It is this kind of First Value and First Principle that animates our words when we write, we live in an Intimate Universe—or what we sometimes refer to as a CosmoErotic Universe. Eros seeks intimacy. Indeed, the plotline of Reality is the progressive deepening of intimacies. Evolution is the Love Story of the Universe—The Universe: A Love Story.

This gnosis of First Principles and First Values, however, is disclosed to us not through natural law, which would then be subject to the naturalistic fallacy,[1] nor through what is classically termed a supernatural intervention of revelation. We do not turn first to nature. Nor do we turn to the caricature of a small local God, owned by one nation or religion.

Rather, we turn inward. And here, we invoke the Anthro-Ontological Method. At the core of Anthro-Ontology is the realization that not only do we live in Reality, but Reality lives in us. We not only live in an Intimate Universe, but the Intimate Universe lives in us.

The far-reaching implication of this realization is that our own clarified interiors—as humans (= anthropos)—disclose a deeper truth (ontology) about the nature and structure of Reality itself. That means that the Eros—or Love—that throbs at the core of our being is not isolated or local. Rather, the qualities of clarified Eros that live inside us participate in the largest qualities of Evolutionary Love, as intrinsic to Cosmos.

These First Principles and First Values of evolution are both the ground and the telos of Cosmos.

It is within the context of this telos—these evolving First Values and First Principles—that the Reality of Cosmos unfolds.

In this context, there is no contradiction between freedom and necessity, or between contingency and elegant order and design. Eros is full suffusion and presence, and full freedom—living in dialectical relationship—which is the core nature of the Eros that animates Cosmos. Radical presence, which animates, suffuses, seduces, invites, and even subtly directs us, lives dialectically with contingency, freedom, and surprise—with the possibility of possibilities inherent in every moment.

As our close colleague, the philosopher and scientist Howard Bloom, expresses it, from the perspective of exterior science, opposites are joined at the hip.

Indeed, this notion of paradox—opposites joined at the hip—has been articulated by us, together with Howard, as itself being one of the First Principles and First Values of Cosmos. In the Eros of Cosmos, we directly experience ostensibly designed, elegant order and telos—dancing with contingency and freedom.

You can access this quality—anthro-ontologically—directly in your own experience.

Consider a truly great conversation between close friends, unfolding over many years, which is almost a sacred process.

The nature of such conversations is never pre-planned. There is no formal itinerary, no designated or designed program. They are filled with radical surprise. They are defined by contingency.

At the same time, they are not in any sense random or arbitrary. Indeed, they are filled with elegant order and inherent design. Pieces, strands of conversation, and themes weave themselves together into a larger whole that would have taken months of painstaking planning had they been pre-ordained or written out as a script. And it is doubtful that such pre-design could yield that level of elegance, nuance, and depth. Such conversations are ultimately meaningful and often disclose depth and originality in an always surprising and often shockingly beautiful fashion.

In the Eros of the conversation, the apparent contradiction between elegant design and contingent surprise disappears.

That is the nature of a genuine sacred conversation.

Conversation itself is the erotic structure of Cosmos. Conversations—exchanges of inherent design, proto-interiority, and freedom—define Cosmos from its inception.

It is in this sense that, as noted above, we join Howard Bloom in referring to Reality as the conversational Cosmos. All the way down and all the way up the evolutionary chain, within the conversational Cosmos, randomness and contingency are paradoxically seamless with elegant order and telos.

(more…)

Dr. Marc Gafni: Anthro-Ontology and the Three Eyes2023-12-06T05:10:18-08:00

Essay on Gratitude by Dr. Marc Gafni

FAITH: IS IT TRUE OR AM I TRUE?

by Marc Gafni

This essay was written in different forms over many years. I first taught this Torah some 13 years ago in 1995 in Jerusalem at talks I gave in the Yamim Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem at the Zionist confederation. This was the seed of material that I would later contribute to a co-authored book by myself {and Ohad Ezrahi} on Lillith. Ohad had been struck by Tishbi’s comment identifying Lillith and Leah and shared it with me. I shared with him my understanding of Leah. The pieces fit together and we both inhabited a broader and fuller view of Leah and Lillith. {I discuss this book and it’s genesis in somewhat more detail under the Lillith section.} The material was then published in a Hebrew book called Vadai, in English A Certain Spirit.

Later, the material evolved again as sacred text met sacred autobiography, in meeting Brother David Steindl-Rast and talking with him of Gratitude and God, and in reading and receiving some of the Torah of a work called The Dawn Horse Testament by Da Free John recommended by Treya Wilber in the book Grace and Grit.

The material and my understanding has again evolved significantly since this writing, particularly in wake of my growing non-dual realization. At some point, I was guided to an obscure Torah of the Seventh Rebbe of Lubavitch, in which he wrote that the practice of the Modeh Ani prayer with which the Hebrew initiate begins his day is the practice of realization of Yechida She-Be-Nefesh, the Yechida quality of the soul.

The Yechida dimension of the soul is the radical and full realization of the already and every present non-dual ground of reality from which we spring, of which we are a part, and from which we never separate. It is the realization of ultimate grandeur and ultimate humility. It is having nothing, knowing nothing, and being no one. It is having everything, knowing everything, and being everyone.

The Biblical Certainty Moment

A Declaration of Gratitude

Every morning begins with a proclamation of a certainty and gratitude. Before the start of each day, I say the prayer Modeh Ani Lefanecha and in so doing make the ultimate statement of certainty. Modeh ani lefanecha – I give thanks before You, I give thanks in Your presence–is a clear and strong statement of divine relationship. In it one speaks directly to the divine, acknowledging the daily presence of the Spirit in our lives, the divine role in creation, and the divine dimension of ourselves created in the image of God. Emerging from the nightmares of “maybe,” the darkness of “so what,” I begin the day with the certainty of “Before you, I give thanks.” Thanks or gratitude is the ability to pierce the veil of experiential uncertainty and experience oneself as held in the fullness of the divine embrace. Every act of gratitude is both an expression of that clear moment of perception as well as a heart opening movement, which makes that perception available.

This certainty and gratitude is not intellectual; it is instinctive and primal. It is not a schematic knowledge of the way of the world; it is a deep internal understanding of the way of the divine within. Gone are the medieval days when we could employ Aristotelian physics to offer rational proofs for the existence of God. In a post-Kantian world, the easy certainties of the medieval schoolmen are simply not available to us. In the discarded image of the old world, faith meant, “it is true.” Today faith means, “I am true.” I am true because I am in the presence of God and because the presence of God is in me. I believe not in set of dogmas that seek to explain the nature of all that is; rather I believe in the divinity of my humanity and I know that all that is courses through my Self.

It is this core certainty of being and the primal experience of gratitude that, according to the esoteric teachings of the Kabbalists, the Modeh Ani prayer seeks to access every morning as we engage the waking world. One way this is expressed in the code of the Kabbalists is in the simple reading of the closing words of the Modeh Ani prayer. The words Rabah Emunatecha are addressed to God and literally mean, “Great is your faith.”

The postmodern Kabbalists teach that this is the faith of God in Man, the divine affirmation that man is “enough.” In the nomenclature of the Kabbalists, the Modeh Ani prayer affirms to man his ‘Yechida She-Benefesh,’ the baby-faced divine that is the essence of every man. How grateful am I to be part of God.

Careful investigation will show that this expression of certainty and gratitude does not emerge from a moment of easy faith, of happy embrace. It is not the religion of the happy-minded. On the contrary, this prayer is the liturgical encapsulation of a fragile moment of certainty and gratitude that is hard won, emerging from confusion and distortion: a moment whose power is far-reaching, tragically fleeting, and yet ultimately transforming. Rather than being a quiet statement of the obvious, this core certainty prayer reverberates with the pain and struggle necessary for transcendence.

The classic commentaries on the Liturgy record no source for the Modeh Ani prayer. It has found its way into the consciousness of a people without leaving behind any trace of its origin. Here we seek to unpack its source and to begin our quest for the certainty of being and the joy of gratitude that is our birthright.

Modeh ani emerges from the words of Leah, wife of Jacob, on the occasion of the birth of her fourth son, Judah:

She conceived again and gave birth to a son, and she said: This time I thank God – ha pa’am odeh et hashem.” And therefore she called his name Judah…”

Notice how, on the birth of her fourth son Judah, Leah says “hapaam odeh et hashem” — “this time, I thank God.” Odeh from the biblical text and Modeh Ani from the liturgy mean the same thing: I acknowledge, I thank. When I wake up in the morning and say Modeh ani, I am conceptually, linguistically, and experientially reformulating Leah’s acknowledgment of and thanks to God upon the birth of Judah.

Why about this moment is so transformative that in re-engaging it every morning human beings access their own sense of divine enough-ness?
Leah is popularly seen as the lesser of two sisters, the matriarch that most of us find difficult to remember; so why do we find ourselves repeating her words every morning? Modeh Ani is one of the first prayers a parent teaches a child. What is the secret of this chant? Words in Jewish meditative text always have a story. To understand the psycho-spiritual moment of faith that the Modeh Ani words invite us into, we need to unpack the story of the words. We must explore the story of Leah: a heroic journey from confusion and alienation to core certainty and gratitude that we repeat daily in the course of our lives.

Who is Leah?

Jacob arrives at Laban’s home and, in the only biblical story of love at first sight, falls immediately in love with Rachel, Leah’s younger sister. He agrees to work for seven years in return for Rachel’s hand in marriage. This handsome romantic stranger appears out of nowhere exhibiting superhuman powers of strength, not to mention charm, and falls in love–not with Leah–but with her younger sister. Leah is painfully peripheral. The text even tells us that Rachel is deemed the beauty of the family, while Leah is very much the inelegant ugly duckling archetype. Leah is on the outside.

However, when the seven years are over and Jacob has completed his labor of love, Laban deceives Jacob and marries him to the seemingly inelegant Leah. In the gloom of a night wedding Leah stands heavily veiled next to the unsuspecting Jacob under the wedding canopy. It is not until the following morning that Jacob realizes he has been duped: he has married Leah instead of Rachel. When Jacob protests, Laban gives him Rachel as well, on the condition that Jacob will work an additional seven years.

Although Leah is usually viewed as but a pawn in the manipulations of her father Laban, a close textual reading paints a more complex picture of the event. The simple fact is that Laban could not have deceived Jacob on his wedding night without the full complicity and cooperation of Leah. Indeed according to the implied assumptions of one Midrash (biblical exegesis), it is clear that Leah is fully complicit in defrauding not only Jacob but her sister, Rachel, as well.

Another Midrash suggests that, after a few years in Laban’s service, Jacob began to understand the way his uncle’s mind worked. He suspected that Laban would attempt to trick him into marrying Leah instead of Rachel. In order to pre-empt Laban, Jacob taught Rachel a set of signs so she would be able to signal to him that it was indeed her under the wedding canopy, thus preventing Laban from exchanging her with Leah. A wise move; but Jacob had not taken into account the possibility that Rachel would give the signs to Leah. That evening Leah stands under the wedding canopy facing Jacob in the darkness. Jacob tries to make out her face but the veil does its job too well. He does not panic, but smoothly signals to the woman opposite him, and she fluently responds. All has gone according to Jacob’s plan; the marriage proceeds. But the veil must at some point lift. The Midrash offers a dramatic description of how Jacob confronts Leah the following morning. The early rays of sunlight begin to filter through the tent walls, and Jacob gradually begins to make out the face of his beloved. The veil of darkness lifted, he sees…the…eyes of…Leah! Jacob, outraged, cries out: “All night I called out ‘Rachel, Rachel,’ and you answered!” Indeed, Leah did not remain the silent pawn. She was fully complicit and answered to the name of her sister in the passion of first sex, playing an active role in the deception. After the wedding ceremony, Leah took care to make sure the deception was not revealed until too late.

Leah is Us

It is not for naught that we asked earlier: “Who is Leah?” The ultimate question in every person’s life is, “Who am I?” It is this core uncertainty about identity that Leah is desperately attempting to resolve by marrying Jacob. When Laban substitutes Leah for Rachel, Leah still has ways of letting Jacob know that he is being deceived. But she chooses instead to participate fully in the deception. She shows no reluctance, because her father’s actions suit her own designs. She wants to marry Jacob. Moreover she feels she must marry Jacob. It is through Jacob that she thinks she will finally touch a sense of inner certainty and gratitude For the first Leah can say with certainty, I am grateful to be me.

It is through Jacob that Leah accesses the truth of her own being. If Jacob were to divorce her, she would need to destroy Jacob in order to retain the integrity of her own self. Of course she would develop elaborate sets of psychological, moral, and spiritual explanations to explain her need to destroy Jacob. She might say that she bears Jacob no ill will, that she is merely protecting other women from Jacob. Even the simplest among us often manifest genius when it comes to self-deception. If Jacob does not love me, cries Leah, then clearly he loves no one. Moreover he has never loved anyone.

Jacob will be demonized by Leah even as Leah refuses to integrate her shadow, which she has projected onto him. That is not to say that Jacob might not bear genuine responsibility; but between responsibility and demonization runs a long and treacherous road. Whenever we demonize another we merely show that we lack core faith in our own essential truth.

In Kabbalah radical personal insight which realizes the ontic identity of the human being and God is called Shekina. In the stunning non dual language of the Zohar,

“Shekinta De’Ikra Ani.”

“The Shekina which is called Self”

When one has not realize his already and ever present Shekina nature then according to Lurianic Kabbala the energy of the demonic lurks ever ready to subvert the energy of the Shekina to the pathologies of evil. Kabbalah refers to this as the dance of the demonic. In the language of Kabbalah the demonic “erotically sucks from the back of the Shekinah.” The back of the Shekina refers to the unconscious Shekinah. The human being who is disconnected, wholly unconscious of her radical nature as Shekinah.

Demonic in this context refers not to red devils with pitchforks but to the far more ominous and destructive energy field of the demonic. The demonic are the People of the lie. They violate the signet ring of God which is truth.
And yet People of the lie are often not easily discernible. They hide between the sheets of noble ideals, in the vacuity of righteous jargon, and most insidiously in the self righteous murder of other always in the name of ethical and spiritual idealism.

The demonic however is recognizable by three demarcating characteristics.
First the tendency of the demonic is to demonize. The demonization of other virtually always stems from a deep discomfort with the lie deep inside of us. That discomfort is so unbearable that we externalize it and then project onto other. More often then not, onto one whom we once loved and we feel has somehow rejected us.

We all experience the rituals of rejection. The question is only; Does our suffering evolve into compassion or devolve into malice. Do we suffer the slings and arrows of love’s inevitable misfortune as insults which Close our hearts and move us respond with UnLove? Or do we muster the discipline to maintain our internal rigor and remain Open as Love even in the face of the rituals of rejection. If we are able to remain in divine communion, to stay open even in the face of apparent rejection, then we being to experience the legitimate hurts of love not as insults but as wounds. We begin to practice the wounds of love. When we finally learn how to suffer the wounds of love with open body and heart we touch the certainty of our own divinity and are filled with an awesome gratitude.

It is when we experiences the hurts of life as insults then we close as UnLove which is the soil of the demonic. The basic movement of the demonic is to demonize.

The second characteristic by which the demonic may be recognized is its utterly destructive nature. The good with all of its flaws and imperfections builds. The demonic behind all its righteous rigor and joyous jargon is still discernible by the destruction which is its true intention. Love spends years building worlds that malice sometimes destroys in a day.

The third characteristic which by which the demonic can be recognized is its utter lack of gratitude. To be grateful requires the ability to perceive the innate goodness in the action of an other towards myself. The demonic type always ascribes base motives even to all the good turns which are done him. She perceives the demonic even in the good, not understanding that it is but a projection of her own interior. The defining quality of the divine person is infinite gratitude, which wells up from the full experience of one’s own divine person. And to be truly grateful, we must be grateful even to those demonize us. Even demonizer, that is even the demonic, in non dual understanding, are but angels of God’s love.

The human being can never achieve any sense of fulfillment until essential uncertainty of identity is satisfactorily resolved. The magic of the Hebrew language is such that the etymologies for the words Uncertainty–safe–and satisfaction–sippuk–are identical. The resolution of personal safek is difficult. We often avoid the necessary effort and pain required to answer the question of identity by consciously or subconsciously forging a pseudo-identity. One form of pseudo-identity is the demonization of the other.

I exist only if you do not exist. I am good because I have made you bad, is the most common refrain. A second form of pseudo-identity is the attempt to live a story that is not my own. It was Jung who said that all neurosis stems from the refusal to bear legitimate suffering. He refers to the effort and investment that are indispensable tools in knowing our true selves. This is the subtext of our drama.

The safek of “Who is Leah?” will now be answered, “Jacob’s wife.” Jacob becomes the resolution of her safek and the exclusive source of her sippuk. To gain this certainty of pseudo-identity, this opportunity to fill the void within her, she is willing to betray even her own sister. When we feel essentially unloved, uncertain about our core value, we are willing to do almost anything to touch the sippuk, the satisfaction of feeling loved–anything to resolve the core safek of our identity.

Leah feels ugly, while the text describes Rachel as beautiful. The best the text can say about Leah is that “she has ‘soft eyes.’” She feels as if she is not enough. She feels that she needs to find fulfillment or completion outside of herself, and that the person who can provide this for her is Jacob. Leah refuses her true destiny of marrying Esau, Jacob’s twin brother, who is, according to the Midrash, “fit to her,” because she is fundamentally disconnected from her identity. She is desperately trying to fit in to a form, a face, a destiny that is not hers.

T. S. Eliot captures the feeling of living without a personal center of gravity or gravitas:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpieces filled with straw. Alas
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, Shade without color
Paralyzes force, Gesture without motion

When we try to fit in to a form or destiny not our own, we are paradoxically left hollow… shape without form. We have each at one time or another tried to attain things or people by pretending to be someone other than our true self. The motivation is always a hunger, a neediness that moves us to sate our hunger with nourishment foreign to our souls. We all recognize the hollow men and the stuffed men. We have all of us, on some level, married Jacob in the darkness.

The Downward Spiral

Of course, the painful truth is that when we look to “have” somebody to fill a hole in our own identity, we never really “have him”…even if we’re married to him. Jacob is Leah’s husband, but Leah feels unloved and cries out, “The Lord has heard that I am hated.” Jacob is her husband, but he does not take walks with her at night. “This time my husband will accompany me,” says Leah in a pathos-filled cry of longing for Jacob. Jacob is Leah’s husband and the father of her three children, but there is no intimacy, no love. Jacob has not chosen her, and so Leah has nobody. She has him yet she has nothing.

But she needs Jacob! She is convinced that only Jacob will make her complete, that only Jacob can establish the certainty of her identity. If the marriage ceremony was not enough, then Leah needs to seek other ways to get Jacob. The downward spiral begins:, “If only I could do this…then I would have him.” Manipulation always creates the need for the next manipulation; using someone always creates the need to use someone else. And so she uses her children. From the moment her children are born, she begins to treat them not as people that need to be loved unconditionally, but as vehicles to attain the attention she so desperately craves from her husband. With each child the spiral plunges deeper into unrealistic fixation.

Repeating patterns of her own childhood, Leah uses her children as objects to fulfill her unrealized dreams. In the process, the children are short-changed because they are denied the unconditional love that they need to develop as full human beings with inner certainty about their worth.

Yet patterns can be broken, because the human being is free. Leah can still find inner peace and satisfaction in her self; love in the presence of God. This finally is what Leah understands when it is time for Judah to be born–Judah, the fourth child.

The Judah Moment

When her first two children are born, Leah speaks of her pain, her hurt, her feelings of rejection by her husband: At the birth of Reuben, “God has seen my suffering.” At the birth of Simeon, “God has heard that I am hated.” When her third child, Levi is born, once again she hopes that his birth will precipitate genuine intimacy and love in her relationship with her husband: “This time my husband will accompany me,” she plaintively cries out. But at the birth of Judah we hear a different song entirely: “ha paam odeh et hashem“–“this time I thank God.”

We hear nothing of pain, no mention of loneliness. Jacob is not even mentioned for good or for bad: only gratitude rings out. When Leah gives birth to her fourth child she says, “ha paam odeh et hashem.” And so she calls her son Judah; in Hebrew, Yehudah–“gratitude, acknowledgment.” Gratitude is not obeisance. I am grateful for your gift for it teaches me that I am worthy of receiving. Leah has been able to move beyond her dependency on Jacob, and to stand up in God’s presence as a dignified human being. The fundamental safek Leah had about herself has been resolved.

No longer dependent upon anyone, perhaps for the first time Leah feels her own adequacy, her “enoughness”–her sippuk. She says, “ha paam–this time.” She does not deny her past, she does not pretend it did not exist, but she celebrates that “this time” she has moved on. “This time” I value myself. “This time” I know who I am. “This time” I don’t feel I need another to fulfill myself. “This time, I thank God.” She has gained a core certainty of her identity, of her value, of her dignity.

Unlike Leah’s first three children, Judah is born with no conditions attached. Leah is able to accept and love Judah unconditionally, and it is this love that imparts to Judah a sense of certainty about himself and his place in the world.

Faith in the Nursing Mother

A friend of mine, a prominent scholar in medieval philosophy and mystical thought, once traveled from New York to visit Reb Menashe, a Jerusalem mystic. I accompanied him.

“What does emunah–faith–mean to you?” Reb Menashe asked the scholar.

The scholar reviewed various positions on the matter of faith, from medieval to Chassidic. Reb Menashe listened patiently and then responded:

“It is so much simpler than that,” he said, “Emunah is the feeling that the baby has that its mother will not drop him.”

A child wrapped in the cradling arms of his or her mother conveys the most powerful yet gentle image of certainty. The mother, merely by being present, confers unconditional love to the child. The nursing mother, in Hebrew called the omen, gives the child a sense of safety and clarity.

As Reb Menashe was aware, the word emunah – faith – plays on the word omen – nursing mother. Listening carefully to the nuance in the Hebrew language, we can thus appreciate that “faith” is infused with connotations of the babe in its mother’s arms. Conversely, we can also see how the act of nursing a newborn child contains with in it echoes of God’s relationship with humankind. This is the experience of Leah nursing her baby Judah.

With this perspective on faith and on a mother’s love, we can begin to approach an understanding of how Leah’s praise to God became the matrix of our morning prayer of core certainty. I believe that Leah is able to experience herself in God’s reassuring loving presence because for the first time in her life she gives that very same experience to someone else. In experiencing for the first time her desire and ability to be unconditionally present for her son, she understands this experience to be a reflection of God’s unconditional presence for her. Just as she is the omen, the nursing mother, to Judah, God is the omen to her. So it is with all of our highest moments of faith, when we touch the God in ourselves, we feel about ourselves the way God feels about us.
There is a secret wound lurking inside all of us. It is the fear that we are somehow not enough. We secretly feel that if people really knew all of our imperfections they would not love us. Much of Western religion, in a distortion of the tradition, has reinforced this feeling: Indeed you are not enough; so aren’t you lucky that God is so wonderful that he loves you anyway…even though you are not enough? This is a love that creates radical dependency and emasculates a human being. Biblical consciousness begins with the statement, “You are enough. You could be more. God is the force within that invites you to be more, as well as the cosmological embrace that loves you as you are.” Even as we strive to grow we need to realize in the depths of our souls that we are enough.

I am grateful. Therefore I AM.

Marc Gafni

Essay on Gratitude by Dr. Marc Gafni2023-06-19T11:05:01-07:00

Tears and Transformation: Toward the Redemption of a Crying God

Excerpted from Chapters 1, 10, and 11 of Reclaiming Rosh Hashanah: The Dance of Tears (forthcoming, Integral Publishers)

Photo: Pink Sherbet Photography

Summary: In this essay, excerpted from Marc Gafni’s forthcoming publication Reclaiming Rosh Hashanah: The Dance of Tears, we encounter biblical myth character Rachel and her three levels of tears of transformation: human empathy for the suffering of other human beings, human empathy for the pain of God, and empathy of God for man. These three strands of Rachel’s tears form “a sacred circle of nondual love,” according to Marc in this passage. Furthermore, these tears of redemption express a core idea in Hebrew wisdom: “The human being, by engaging the Rachel archetype and entering into the pain of the Shechina in exile, can “through his tears” realize his ontic identity with the Shechina herself, and in this very realization, be aroused to great compassion and achieve redemption.” This excerpt introduces the mystical techniques of the crying of transformation and the transformation of crying. It is by accessing these tears that we offer redemption for a crying God.

In order to fully appreciate the nature of Rosh Hashanah theatre and the dance of tears, it is necessary to point out the implicit distinction between this biblical form of holy day theatre and the concept of theatre inherited by western civilization from ancient Greece. In classical Greek theatre, the operative principle was Aristotle’s understanding of catharsis. Catharsis for Aristotle meant the purging of the emotions.

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Tears and Transformation: Toward the Redemption of a Crying God2023-06-16T14:37:49-07:00

Dr. Marc Gafni: The Seven Levels of Certainty and Uncertainty

Standing StoneBy Marc Gafni

The following are notes from Marc Gafni’s dharma talk given in March 2012 at Shalom Mountain Wisdom School, where Gafni serves as the World Spirituality Teacher in Residence.

Introduction

The seven levels of certainty and uncertainty tells the story of how the great religious traditions came into being and how they were challenged first by science, and then by modern and post-modern mindsets.

This is a rough sketch of a map of certainty and uncertainty.

We have forgotten what we know. Indeed we do not know whether we know or not at all. We do not know whether we know or what we know or even how to know. The general impression today is that anyone who claims to know something is lost in dogma or regressive fundamentalism. Indeed almost the definition of a fundamentalist is someone who claims to know something with is totally “true” about Ultimate issues.

A person cannot survive and certainly cannot thrive without knowing.

A generation cannot survive without its knowing. A generation certainly cannot participate in the evolution of consciousness, which is the evolution of love, without knowing what it knows.

The public teachings of the great traditions were not about enlightenment. Enlightenment teachings in virtually all of the great traditions were esoteric. The great traditions taught the masses of people by leading them to believe a set of dogmas. Whether it was Christians professing, “Jesus is a saving grace,” Tibetan Buddhists or Jews professing, “We are the chosen people,” or Hindu doctrine, there was always a set of dogmas.

In each of the great traditions, a belief in a set of dogmas leads to a set of actions. The great traditions motivated people by infusing their daily lives with the belief that these actions were ultimately right. What motivated the actions was the belief that the actions were in alignment with the core constructs of the cosmos. Failing to do these aligned actions was sin, punishable not only in this world but in the next. Some of the dogma reflected deep reflection on the nature of the cosmos. Other doctrines emerge from the surface structures of that particular religion’s journey in history.

The goal was almost always a complex mixture of ethics and a sense that these teachings led the most possible people to lead lives that were most right in accordance with an ultimate knowing of the nature of reality.

Almost every system has a strong sense that is was the best system of human living. Other systems were thought to be inferior is some substantive way.

In all the great religions, to be in alignment with the beliefs and actions of “my system” meant public membership, the obligation to perpetuate my system, to be in alignment with the Gods, to be obedient to the Gods, to be responsive to the Gods.

So the story begins with each of the religions holding absolute certainty in regard to right action, right belief and the essential structure of the cosmos.

Post-modern naturally moves to reject these certainties for any number of compelling reasons. One of the most powerful is that virtually every religion claims to have an exclusive truth that competes with and contradicts the exclusive truth of another religion. So it seems that since not everyone can be right, everyone is probably all wrong. And we are left – after all the great postmodern deconstructions of knowing — with a painful and gaping uncertainty. The only certainty of post-modernity seems to be that you cannot be certain of anything. And any sort of claim to true knowing or certainty of any kind is in many circles mocked or worse. It is thought to be dangerous — as we said earlier — a sure sign of fundamentalist thinking.

But the true relation of certainty and uncertainty, knowing and unknowing, is far more nuanced and interesting. And to understand it is essential. We absolutely move beyond the post-modern dogmatic certainty which deconstructs all knowing and bows only to the ultimate and all pervasive claim of radical uncertainty. So let’s reconstruct some of the stages in spiral dance between certainty and uncertainty and let this be the beginning of our post-postmodern reconstructive project in which we are able to reclaim the Eros of knowing even as we hold the Eros of not knowing.

We begin with a simple reconstruction of seven levels of certainty and uncertainty.

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Dr. Marc Gafni: The Seven Levels of Certainty and Uncertainty2023-06-21T10:26:05-07:00

The Israel Moment: Reclaiming uncertainty as a spiritual value

Old Person

Photo Credit: .craig

By Dr. Marc Gafni

Uncertainty is ethically and spiritually essential, Marc Gafni writes here, because it allows us to reach higher certainty, avoid the seduction of false certainty, and reach spiritual authenticity. In this excerpt from Chapter One of his volume Uncertainty, Marc introduces the core “Ullai Stories” or “Maybe Stories” of the Old Testament, explaining the role of Jacob, whose name is changed to Israel, as a major character in these stories.

The Israel Moment: Reclaiming Uncertainty as a Spiritual Value

Much of religious tradition can be understood as culture’s attempt to fully triumph over uncertainty. Indeed one of the most important modern Biblical commentaries argues that divine revelation is the gift of a loving God who wants to spare the world the pain of uncertainty.  Many voices in the religious world have declared unilateral victory, arguing that all of life’s doubts can be defeated through faith, religious observance, and logic.1

I believe our life experiences give lie to absolute religious and spiritual claims to certainty. Sometimes the way religious tradition critiques itself and conveys its more subtle and even radical ideas is through the seemingly innocent story. It is in this light that I understand the following wonderful story:

Yankele used to go to the market every week to buy the basic necessities for the Sabbath. Every Friday, he would buy Sabbath candles for one ruble, bread for one ruble, and Kiddush2 wine for another ruble: three rubles were all he and his wife could spare for the Sabbath meal. One day, Yankele arrives at the market with the three coins jingling in his pocket, and he comes across an elderly gentleman that he has never seen before. The old man looks at him deep in the eyes and says softly, “Excuse me, young man, but I am terribly thirsty. Could you please buy me a cup of tea?”

Now a cup of tea cost one ruble. To buy this man a cup of tea means that Yankele would have only two rubles left, which would make one of his Sabbath purchases impossible. Yankele is not sure what to do. But he looks into the eyes of the stranger, and for some reason, has a feeling this man is truly thirsty.  And, as something of a scholar, Yankele knows that one can make Kiddush over bread even without  wine, and so he decides to do without the wine this week and buy this enchanting stranger a cup of tea. Together they sit down in the tea-shop, the old man picks up his tea cup, makes a blessing and drinks the tea, closing his eyes in pleasure as the refreshing liquid pours down his throat. It is a few minutes before he opens glistening eyes and thanks Yankele with a very slight bow of the head.

Just as Yankele stands up to leave, the old man says, “Excuse me, could you wait a moment? You have been extremely generous to me. But you see, I am very, very thirsty. Perhaps you could buy me one more cup of tea?” Yankele looks at this old thirsty man and knows he has a problem. What to do? On the one hand, he likes this strange old man. On the other hand, his wife will not like him too much if he comes home with no way to celebrate the Sabbath.

But then, on the other hand, Yankele remembers that one legal authority,  R. Akiva Eger, taught that lacking bread and wine, one can just say “Shabbat Shalom” to bring in the Sabbath.  In the end, Yankele takes the plunge. He sits back down and orders the man another cup of tea.

Again, the old man makes the blessing and drinks deep with eyes closed. Again, the man thanks Yankele with glistening eyes. But this time, as soon as the man bows his head, Yankele stands up quickly in the hope of escaping the words he knows are about to come: “Excuse me, sir,” says the old man before Yankele has reached the exit, “I am still very, very thirsty. Please could you buy me just one more cup of tea?” Again, Yankele is full of uncertainty. A crowd of Halachic variables rush around his head, but this time he can find no legal justification for forfeiting the last ruble which he needs for the Sabbath candles. “I’m sorry,” he says, “But I can’t buy you another cup of tea.” The old man smiles a sad smile, and bows his head. “Before you leave, let me bless you,” the old man says. “I bless you with great wealth, health, and a good long life.” Yankele thanks the man for his blessing and hurries off to prepare for Sabbath.

Sure enough, Yankele becomes a very wealthy man. He is able to look after his wife and all his children in luxury and style. He lives the epitome of a good, long life. But he is now nearing the end of his days, and he has only one desire left in the world and that is to thank the old man from that fateful encounter in the tea-shop. And so he goes and sits in the tea-shop every Friday in hopes of finding him again. Finally, one Friday before the setting sun, Yankele looks up from his tea and sees”¦the old man. It’s the old man””and although Yankele has grown older, the old man seems to look exactly the same.

Yankele jumps up, grasps the old man’s hands and blurts out all the gratitude that has built up inside him all those years. But the old man does not return his embrace, does not respond to his thanks. Yankele sees that the old man has bowed his head in order to hide a silent tear running down his face. “What is the matter?” asks Yankele, “Did I say something, did I do something wrong?” And the old man says, in a quiet, infinitely understanding voice””a voice which resounds throughout the heavens””he says, “If only, if only you had poured me one more cup of tea…”

The story,3 speaks to the experience of us all. We have all of us faced situations where we have needed to risk buying a cup of tea for a stranger, where we have to decide whether to take a leap in the dark. Likewise, we have all come across situations where we wish we had risked more, where with the benefit of hindsight we regret our caution. I have drawn on a story from within the Jewish tradition to point out that this universal experience of the uncertainties in life happens to us all. Yankele is a religious man, an observant, knowledgeable Jew with a deep faith in God, and yet this faith does not save him from uncertainty. Yankele acted according to the certainties provided to him by the law. The stranger makes the radical suggestion that there are times when we need to move beyond the soothing certainties of law or even common sense. This is the symbol of the third cup of tea. There is a point in our lives where, in order to reach authenticity, we need to buy the third cup of tea. Indeed in this story, sometimes only through entering uncertainty can the highest treasures be attained.

And yet Safek, which we have translated as uncertainty or perhaps more correctly, ambiguity, is the greatest producer of anxiety, tension, and existential malaise. There is no joy like the resolution of doubt. But how do we know how to resolve and when to resolve? Emily Dickinson wrote, “Hamlet wavered for us all.” His “to be or not to be” soliloquy is Shakespeare’s song of uncertainty which resonates in the melodies of all of our lives. How, if at all, can certainty be achieved? How are such decisions made? When to buy the tea and when not to buy the tea? When do we need to be safe and clear; when is risk irresponsible and immoral; and when is risk courageous, audacious, and even the highest expression of our humanity?

Biblical theology’s unique understanding is that living the sacred life requires a dialectical relationship between paradise and paradox, between core certainties and the existence of uncertainty. Both certainty and uncertainty are vital””each has its moment. Healthy religion, as well as healthy living, flow from simultaneously maintaining certainty and uncertainty.

In order to live in the world in a way that is both grounded and passionate, I need first to be certain about myself. If I do not doubt myself, then I have the inner strength to be able to encounter the many areas of my life where uncertainty is inherent and inescapable. Moreover, healthy acceptance of uncertainty will enable me to avoid both the paralysis of indecision and the recklessness of an extremism which craves the certainty of over-simplification. If I am anchored and motivated by some sense of inner certainty, then I can act courageously in uncertainty. If I hold no inner certainties, then acting from uncertainty is almost invariably a far too dangerous proposition.

In our book on Certainty, we understood that in order to reach sippuk””fulfillment””I need to resolve my inner safek””uncertainty. My failure to resolve that inner safek will prevent me from ever reaching true sippuk””satisfaction and will cause me almost pathologically to seek sippuk in places which are not of myself. Such a spiral will eventually lead to Amalek””the embodiment of evil””which the Zohar explains is the mystical equivalent of safek.4

In the first book of this study entitled Certainty, the Judah Moment framework was introduced, associated with the biblical story of Judah, in order to unpack the experience of core certainty. There is, however, a second moment in biblical consciousness where precisely the opposite holds true: where, rather than being enemies, safek-uncertainty and sippuk-satisfaction are inseparable allies. In this way of thinking, I can never reach deep sippuk without holding, choosing, or grappling with safek. Satisfaction is not attainable without uncertainty. In this second mode of Jewish thought, it follows that if I am unable to countenance safek in my life, I will always rush to grasp at a false certainty in order to escape the tension of uncertainty. This false certainty will never lead me to true sippuk.

In conjunction with teaching the need for inner certainty, biblical thought also deeply affirms the benefit of doubt. Uncertainty is understood to be both a spiritual necessity, a requisite for reaching authenticity, and an indispensable tool in achieving the highest levels of certainty. I shall refer to this experience as the Israel Moment. This because the archetypal Biblical figure of Jacob, whose name is changed to Israel, is the paradigm for the spiritual reclamation of uncertainty as a reality to be embraced and not resolved. First, however, let us acknowledge the common assumption that faith and uncertainty are inherent contradictions.

Ever since the medieval period, when Aristotelian rationalism began to exert its overwhelming influence on western culture, doubt has been the perceived foe of religious man, or rather, religion has been the stick with which to beat down doubt.  Dr. Akiva Tatz provides a contemporary example of this tradition in his  popular spiritual handbook, Living Inspired.5 There, he suggests a seemingly overwhelming piece of evidence to prove that true religion is the antithesis of uncertainty. According to Tatz, not only does the Bible not accept the existence of doubt, but biblical Hebrew does not even have the word to express it.  On the face of it, Tatz would appear to be correct: the word for doubt””safek””first appears in post-biblical Hebrew and cannot be found anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. Linguistically at least, doubt seems to be banished from the spiritual vocabulary of Biblical consciousness.

Tatz should not be so sure. For there is a second Hebrew word signifying uncertainty in the Bible, and particularly in the book of Genesis; that word is “maybe”””in Hebrew, ullai. As soon as we begin to explore the appearances of this word “maybe –– ullai,” an astonishing pattern begins to emerge. The Book of Genesis contains six distinct episodes which contain the word “maybe.” In all of them, “maybe” provides a vital key to understanding the story.  They are a heretofore unacknowledged, yet clearly recognizable, genre in their own right””-the six “Ullai Stories” of Genesis””and they provide us with the entry-point into Judaism’s embrace of doubt.

Sarai, the barren wife of Abram, uses the word ullai when she suggests Abram marry her maidservant Hagar, saying, ullai””maybe””Avram will have children through Hagar. Eliezer, servant of Abraham, expresses his fear of uncertainty with the word ullai when sent to find a wife for Isaac, saying, ullai””maybe””she will not agree to return with me to Isaac. Abraham himself sings the defiant song of ullai to God when challenging Him over the destruction of Sodom. Ullai””maybe””there are 50”¦40”¦30”¦20”¦10 righteous people in Sodom for whose merit you should save the city.

We will examine all these episodes at a later stage in our discussion. We will see how these, together with five other biblical episodes which””though they lack the word ullai in the biblical text””have been understood primarily by the Kabbalistic mystical writers as what we have termed “Ullai Stories.”  These stories are no less central than the Garden of Eden, the Binding of Isaac, Eliezer and the search for Isaac’s wife, the Covenant Between the Pieces, and finally the Golden Calf stories reread. In all of these stories ullai-uncertainty–plays a central role.

The major ullai character, however, is Jacob, whose life encompasses two of the ullai stories and whose transformation from Jacob into Israel will provide us with the matrix within which we will attempt to chart the spiritual path of uncertainty. It is this story that we have termed the “Israel Moment.” In contrast to the Judah moment, which suggests paths to inner certainty, the Israel moment is about struggling in uncertainly and the dialectical oscillation between the two. The final Ullai Story, with which we conclude, is when old Jacob, now called Israel, is confronted by Judah. Judah, the major protagonist of our first volume meets Israel, the major protagonist of our second volume. Henceforth, our discussion will revolve around the Israel Moment and the Ullai stories.

Before beginning our journey, however, it may be of value for the reader to have at least a very bare outline of the three reasons I hold uncertainty to be ethically and spiritually essential. These underlying motifs will guide our entire discussion.

  1. First, only by holding uncertainty can I attain higher certainty. The embrace of false certainty always prevents me from reaching the higher clarity and vision that is mine.
  2.  Second, we hold uncertainty in order to avoid the seduction of false certainty.  False dogma, be it religious, national, spiritual, or secular, is the ground out of which the dynamic of human evil always feeds. Most of the evil in the world is committed by people who are one hundred percent convinced they are right. People who hold uncertainty as a spiritual value rarely perpetrate massacres. Uncertainty is one of God’s protective mechanisms against hubris and it’s devastating consequences.6 Indeed, the cruel shadow side of modernity, which killed no fewer than a hundred million people in the last century, stems largely from its refusal to hold intellectual uncertainty. Instead of holding safek, moderns feel the need to claim their safek as Vaddai””clarity. Modernity, however, has ample precedent in almost all of the religious systems which history has produced. Uncertainty is sublimated by excessive and often fatal displays of religious or secular zeal and certitude.
  3.  Third, I need to hold uncertainty because only in uncertainty do I reach spiritual authenticity. This third level of uncertainty is never resolvable in favor of higher certainty.  This uncertainty is higher than any certainty and is reflective of the deepest nature of both spiritual and physical reality.

From Uncertainty.
Dr. Marc Gafni

1. A classic example is David Gottlieb, leading lecturer in Ohr Sameach, the premier intellectual center of Orthodox study for those returning to Jewish observance from an assimilated secular context. Gottlieb argues explicitly that if one takes together all of the classic theodicies, religious explanations offered to explain how a good God can allow innocent suffering, one has “solved the problem” of innocent suffering. Gottlieb explicitly and rather matter of factly makes the claim that religion has answered the great question of theodicy. The holocaust for Gottlieb no longer poses any essential challenge to religious faith. The extent of the challenge that one may feel is no more than the extent of one’s own ignorance of the explanations of suffering offered by Jewish wisdom.  That is to say, for Gottlieb, religion has answered the cry of the prophets who cry out in great pathos and audacity””How can the good God whom we love so allow such horrible suffering in his world? Had the prophets only attended Gottlieb’s lectures at Ohr Sameach, the problem would’ve been solved.
2. Kiddush is the blessing recited by observant Jews in order to usher in the Sabbath. According to the law the blessing is preferably recited over wine.
3. In my retelling of the story I haven interpolated my understanding into the text of the story much in the same way that Buber retold tales of Hassidim.
4. In chapter two of Certainty, volume 1 of this study, it is explained that the numerical equivalence in Hebrew letters between the word Safek and Amalek suggests that  uncertainty is an Amalek quality. It does not primarily refer to theological uncertainty as it is usually understood, but uncertainty of my own essential value.
5. Targum Press Ltd., 1993.
6. See  Abraham Kuk who expresses this notion in one of his letters.

The Israel Moment: Reclaiming uncertainty as a spiritual value2023-06-21T10:31:24-07:00

Dr. Marc Gafni in Azure 1996: On the Commandment to Question

In 1996, Azure published a paper by Dr. Marc Gafni titled “On the Commandment to Question.”

Download the PDF Version of the Paper HERE
Download the PDF Version of the Paper
Dr. Marc Gafni in Azure 1996: On the Commandment to Question2023-06-21T11:23:18-07:00
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