RAMABAM, and other rabbis committed to the philosophical, rational understanding of Judaism saw a world with fixed, logical rules. Only in the rarest of occasions does G-d intervene, temporarily suspending these rules for some greater purpose. Even many of the miraculous events in the Torah, are interpreted as not actual events, but visions, dreams or parables, The twelfth century was, at least in intellectual circles, a time of hard facts, with all things, , or nearly all things, having a logical explanation. RAMBAM declares the wisdom of Aristotle, as "one degree below prophecy". The Talmud, on the other hand, believes in "extreme possibilities". This is even more true of the Kabbalah. Miracle stories appear frequently. One rabbi has no oil for his lamp. He declares "He who commanded oil to burn, can declare that vinegar should burn as well", Miraculously, the vinegar that he placed in his lamp burned like oil! The "rationalists" chalk this up to parable, or even folklore. RAMBAM was a master physician. Yet, in his day, medical procedures that were once common, were now believed to be mere folklore. There is much in Talmud about birth by Caesarian Section, and its halachic ramifications. RAMBAM writes that such a procedure, resulting in a live birth, is totally impossible. That the mother would survive the operation is "highly unlikely". The rabbis of the Talmud were unwilling to reject other realities. It is a fact that the last pagan temples to close in the West, were the temples of Aesclepius,the god of healing. People would travel great distances to come to these temples for relief from their suffering.. They would sleep there, and have visions of Aesclepeus healing them, or even giving them medical advice. (We have written testimonies of people's experiences. One even mentions a person being told to eat pork. The man asks Aesclepeus "what would you tell me if I were a Jew?". He then gets an alternative recommendation!) One of the rabbis went there to check it out. (I cannot imagine a modern rabbi doing this!) During the night, he saw a figure going from person to person, and healing them. When the figure came to where he was lying, it simply passed him by. "Why are you passing me by?!?!" "Because you are a Jew!" "So?!?!" "I am an angel of G-d! I am sent to heal these people. But YOU must pray to G-d for you healing!". The implications of this story are mind boggling. But it shows the willingness of the rabbis to consider the possibility of the reality of unexplained phenomena. The Kabbalah even presumes that creation happens every day, and every moment. There is no reason to assume that today's world must be identical to yesterday's. We find this same conflict in secular thought as well. Sir Isaac Newton (ironically, one deeply involved in the study of Kabbalah!) showed that nothing was by accident. Everything was the result of natural laws, which could be measured, and were immutable. Alexander Pope said:
NATURE and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night:
G-d said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light.
Then, two hundred years later, comes along Albert Einstein and proved that almost NOTHING is a fixed rule. Anything is possible!
In the play "The Dybbuk", by S. Ansky, the main character explains his involvement with Kabbalah. He says that under our feet, there is another world, just like ours; with people, cities, oceans traversed by great ships. It is lacking but one thing. It has no sky. Kabbalah has a sky. So must we ask. Is what we see all that what is, or must we look up, to see a sky?