Four Rabbis walk into a Garden, and one says "a God!"

[jack]

In the Talmud there's a famous story about four Rabbis who enter a fine garden. The word is "Pardes" which literally means orchard, but is a distant cousin of the word paradise. To no-one's surprise this turns out to be (spoilers!) a metaphor for heaven or divine knowledge which is Making a Point. In fact, I think the whole story is recorded not for its own sake but as a supporting example to a general prohibition, if you meditate and study so hard you gain divine insight that gives you miraculous powers, only share the knowledge with sober-minded over-40s of good character, in case someone is a bit reckless and heat-visions an entire landscape or designs a robot that runs amok and destroys Prague, or whatever.

You will also be shocked, shocked, to learn that when reach these heights of divine knowledge, three of them act incautiously and get comeuppance for it, and R Akiva is sensible about it and gets out safely and becomes One of the Most Famous Rabbis in the Talmud ever.

According to later versions of the story, the first rabbi, Ben Azzai saw God and died. In the earliest version is just says he went into the garden and "glimpsed and died", and what exactly he glimpsed was something only contained in oral versions of the story. The real life Ben Azzai was another Talmud Rabbi famous for all sorts of things, although apparently he did die young-ish and never officially got recognised as a rabbi in his lifetime.

The second, Ben Zoma, looked around and saw too much, but not so much that he died, and went mad. The original cliff notes version quotes a bit of the bible about not eating too much honey here, so something like, he didn't know what was too much. Apparently he also died without becoming a Rabbi but was famous for his learning anyway.

The third "trampled the stalks" which is bad in a field, and super super bad to do in heaven. The expanded version says he saw God and Metatron and said, "oh look, there's two Gods!?" and caused a holy hullabaloo across all of heaven, and got kicked out. And in real life, he abandoned being a great famous Rabbi and became a super super heretic, and went around gratuitously sinning all over the place -- or perhaps, adopted ideas of a different sect of Judaism that the people writing this down wanted to tell everyone how BAD it was. His name as Elisha ben Abuya, but he's known as "Acher" which means "The Other" all through the talmud where's an example of what absolutely not to do.

And Akiva entered the garden peacefully, did no harm, and left again safely. The Talmud usually likes Akiva.

Next time we'll talk about Acher's heresy in a lot more detail. Also (spoilers) the angels drag Metatron from his throne and whip him with thousands and thousands of fiery whips (yes, really) which may give some satisfaction to those of you who read Good Omens.

Comments

[simont]

which may give some satisfaction to those of you who read Good Omens

Hmmm. For all that I'm a great and lifelong fan of Good Omens in general, I must admit that the portrayal of Metatron in particular that tends to spring to my mind first is Alan Rickman's in Dogma. I'm not sure that Metatron particularly deserved the fiery whips.

[jack]

I'm sure Alan Rickman enjoyed it :) I'd forgotten Dogma, I will include the comparison in the next post :)

[simont]

I suppose there's also the His Dark Materials Metatron to consider. That's definitely a less sympathetic iteration of the character – and, until they bring out series 2 of the TV adaptation, one we haven't seen on screen yet. But I feel confident predicting it would have a hard time outdoing Alan Rickman :-)

[seekingferret]

if you meditate and study so hard you gain divine insight that gives you miraculous powers, only share the knowledge with sober-minded over-40s of good character,

Right, the story is skating a very fine theological line. If you want to say that anyone who gets too close to God suffers for it, then what kind of God is Hashem? Why are we given the Torah, why are we compelled to study it and gain ever greater knowledge of its truth, if learning it will drive us to madness and suffering? And even moreso, the Torah tells us repeatedly that the path of halacha is not a narrow one. Everyone who is willing to pursue it should be able to find a place on the path.

And furthermore, Rabbi Akiva's flesh was painfully torn from his body with hot combs until he died! So what does it mean to say Rabbi Akiva yetze bashalom?

The story of Pardes says that there is some sort of knowledge of Hashem that really isn't necessary for Jewish life, but if you are compelled to pursue it anyway, it has to be done both with incredible self-discipline and self-knowledge, and with incredible depth of Torah scholarship. That's a strange position. It kind of reminds me of the straddle R' Heschel takes in trying to explain Rambam's Moreh Nevuchin, which represents a very different sort of dangerously esoteric exploration, in that case of a rationalist Judaism. R' Heschel basically says that Rambam felt most Jews shouldn't pursue that rationalist Judaism to its ultimate conclusions, but there were a small number of Jews, or possibly just one specific Jew, who would be led astray if they weren't guided properly and allowed to explore those subjects, so he wrote Moreh Nevuchin as a guide.

And I think your point about the Talmud liking R' Akiva is an important one. There's a lot of random stories in the Talmud of lesser known Rabbis performing miraculous acts or possessing astonishing depth of knowledge of the secrets of the Torah, but those can be understood as representing less traveled paths. Their accomplishments can be seen as admirable and communally valuable, but if it's Rabbi Akiva who successfully visited Pardes, then there seems to be a sense that this is a path Jews ought to pursue in spite of the dangers. Moreover, inasmuch as Rabbi Akiva is the great Tannaitic systematizer and forerunner to the Mishnaic style of Rabbinic Judaism, the Gemara's story can be seen as saying that the way to visit Pardes is along the path of Akiva. That is to say, study the Talmud and it will take you safely to the orchard.

[sfred]

Thank you!