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Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz: “He must move to a totally different framework.”

 

Every divine revelation always involves a manner of change, of breakage in the character of the world.

This is seen in the description of the revelation at Mount Sinai, and so it is in all descriptions of individual revelation (see Rambam, Sefer HaMadda, Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah 7:2).

The revelation is dependent on a person’s ceasing to see as he saw previously, and beginning to see things differently.

We do not feel the Divine Presence, just as we do not feel any presence which cannot be directly, tangibly encountered.

The Rambam describes something similar to this (in his introduction to Perek Helek) when he compares this phenomenon to a person who is blind from birth and cannot comprehend what color is.

It can be described and explained to him, but none of these things will ever suffice.

Every attempt to explain the difference between green and blue (other than the numerical differences in lightwave frequencies) will immediately expose the inability of Ianguage to capture even something that involves our direct human experience.

All the more so, when speaking of the Divine, in order for the listener to hear, in order for the comprehending person to relate, he must move to a totally different framework.

A person who is tied to the concepts of the body cannot begin to comprehend what the Divine is and what the divine power is.

He lacks words and points of relation- ship needed to construct a relationship.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz