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JULY 2, 2020 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
Think, Feel, Grow
What Makes Moshe’s Prophecy Unique? By Shmuel Reichman
H
uman beings are creative, intelligent, and powerful, but at the same time, we are exceedingly limited. Our experience of this spectacular physical universe is limited to our five senses. We can only be in one place at any given point in time. There is a vast, almost infinite, world of wisdom that we have no grasp of whatsoever. But what if this wasn’t the case? Imagine a life beyond the one you currently experience – one with new senses and sensations, new colors added to your field of vision, new sounds to your range of hearing. What if you had abilities that far surpassed anything you can imagine? Consider a reality in which you had access to all wisdom and could experience and grasp it all instantaneously. It is so difficult to imagine this because it is nearly impossible to think about something that you have never experienced before – just try thinking of a color that doesn’t exist.
Moshe’s Prophecy The Rambam famously quotes thirteen principles of faith which he believes to be the absolute foundational pillars of Jewish belief and strongly emphasizes how every Jew must believe in these principles. The sixth principle states that all the words of the nevi’im (prophets) are true. The seventh principle states that the prophecy of Moshe Rabbeinu is true and that he was greater than all other nevi’im, both those that came before him and those that
came after him. The sixth principle is obviously crucial; the seventh seems redundant. If all of the nevi’im’s words were true, of course Moshe’s were true as well. Why did the Rambam deem it necessary to state this as a separate principle? More generally, what does it mean that Moshe was the greatest prophet to ever live? What was unique about Moshe’s prophecy? We know that Moshe received the Torah from Hashem and brought it down to the Jewish People, a role he seemed uniquely suited for. The Torah itself is called “Toras Moshe,” indicating an intrinsic tie between Moshe and the Torah. Moshe was the sole person capable of receiving the Torah, to the extent that it is identified with him.
What was the greatness of Moshe’s prophecy that earned him this unique status? What was so special about Moshe’s nevuah that rendered it fundamentally different from all other nevi’im who came before and after him? In order to understand Moshe’s prophecy, we must first develop an understanding of nevuah in general.
The Nature of Prophecy We live in a world devoid of prophecy, therefore, attempting to understand it is like trying to understand a human sense of sight by hearing someone describe it to you. However powerfully you can describe sight, it won’t mean much to a person who has been blind from birth. Likewise, a deaf person could
read about hearing, but he has no past experience or mental construct in which to place it. Similarly, in a world devoid of prophecy, it becomes exceedingly difficult to understand or even relate to the experience. However, we will try to paint as clear a picture as possible. Throughout the Middle Ages, there were various attacks against Judaism by secular and non-Jewish philosophers. One area commonly targeted was prophecy, resulting in many Jewish philosophers attempting to clearly describe their understanding of nevuah. While there is variance within their opinions, the basic consensus is as follows: a prophet must be a great tzaddik, spending his entire life building to the stage where he is worthy of receiving prophecy. This includes both a mastery of Torah knowledge and commitment to its observance, as well as a mastery over one’s middos (character traits) and intellect. Once he achieves this exalted status, he is capable of receiving prophecy, and Hashem will choose whether or not to grant him prophecy. The prophetic experience itself was an other-worldly experience. Hashem opened and expanded the navi’s consciousness, allowing him to connect to a higher dimension of existence, one that lies far beyond the limitations of time and space, far beyond the capacity of the regular human mind. In doing so, the navi became capable of experiencing lofty ideas and intellectual truths which
