Human beings are creative, intelligent, and powerful, but at the same time, we are incredibly 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.
- We have limited strength and energy.
- There is a vast, almost infinite world of wisdom that we have no grasp of whatsoever.
But what if this weren’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, and 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 formulates thirteen principles of faith that he believes to be the absolute foundational pillars of Jewish belief, emphasizing that every Jew must believe in these principles. The sixth principle states that all the words of the Neviim (prophets) are true. The seventh principle specifies that the prophecy of Moshe Rabbeinu is true, and that he was the greatest Navi of all time, greater than both those who came before him and those who came after (Rambam, commentary on Sanhedrin, perek Chelek). The sixth principle is obviously crucial; the seventh seems redundant. If all of the Neviim’s words were true, of course Moshe’s were true as well. What is so fundamentally important about the superiority of Moshe’s prophecy that the Rambam deemed it necessary to state it as a separate principle of faith?
More broadly, what does it mean that Moshe was the greatest prophet to ever live? Hashem Himself attests to the greatness of Moshe and his unique level of prophecy (Bamidbar 12:6–8). What was so 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 even called “Toras Moshe” (Malachi 3:22), indicating an intrinsic tie between Moshe and the Torah. But what was the greatness of Moshe’s prophecy that earned him this unique status? Why was Moshe’s nevuah fundamentally different from all other Neviim 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 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 framework 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 thinkers 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 or her 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 complete command over one’s middos 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 otherworldly, transcendent experience. Hashem opened and expanded the Navi’s consciousness, allowing him to connect to a higher dimension of existence that lies far beyond the limitations of time and space, and far beyond the capacity of the regular human mind. In doing so, the Navi became capable of experiencing lofty ideas and intellectual truths that he would otherwise have no access to. (The prophetic experience is beyond space and time. This explains how a Navi can become aware of future events that have not yet occurred. Within this transcendent realm of experience, time itself breaks down. Past, present, and future melt into one continuum.) These ideas and truths would then filter down through the Navi’s intellect and get translated by his imaginative faculties, resulting in his unique, subjective experience of these lofty objective truths. In a very deep sense, nevuah was a transcendent, angelic experience of the spiritual world that a Navi experienced while still in this world.
Building off this general understanding of prophecy, we must now ask: What made Moshe’s prophecy unique?
Clarity of Vision
The first unique characteristic of Moshe’s prophecy was his level of clarity. (See Rambam’s introduction to perek Chelek for his description of Moshe’s unique characteristics mentioned in this article. See also Mishneh Torah, Yesodei HaTorah 7:6.) The Gemara explains that while all other prophets saw through a clouded lens, Moshe saw through a clear lens (Yevamos 49b). We all perceive reality through our own unique lens. A tremendously developed and wise person will see the world through a much more sophisticated lens than an immature child. One of them sees many layers of depth behind every aspect of reality, while the other sees nothing more than the surface. One of them looks at the Torah and sees layers of wisdom, while the other looks at the same words and sees meaningless scribbles. As the child matures, he will have the ability to expand his understanding and develop a more sophisticated approach to life.
The same is true regarding prophecy. There were many different levels. As humans, our consciousness is limited in that we only see the physical, not the spiritual. Since prophecy is a window into the spiritual world, the metaphor Chazal use to describe the quality of the Navi’s vision is an “aspaklaria,” loosely translated as a window, lens, or mirror. The greater the prophet, the clearer his vision and the better his understanding; the lesser the prophet, the more opaque and cloudier his vision and the hazier his understanding. While all other Neviim’s vision had some measure of cloudiness, Moshe saw Hashem and the spiritual world with absolute clarity, or with as much clarity as possible for a human being. In other words, while other Neviim saw a reflection of the spiritual world and its truths, Moshe saw the spiritual world itself, with no filters. As the Ramchal puts it in Derech Hashem, Moshe saw through a “glass window”; he saw the spiritual world as it is with absolute clarity.
In our next article, we will delve deeper into this fascinating topic and try to understand Moshe’s unique level of prophecy on an even deeper level.
Rabbi Shmuel Reichman is the author of the bestselling book, The Journey to Your Ultimate Self, which serves as an inspiring gateway into deeper Jewish thought. He is an international speaker, educator, and the CEO of Self-Mastery Academy. After obtaining his BA from Yeshiva University, he received s’micha from RIETS, a master’s degree in education, a master’s degree in Jewish Thought, and then spent a year studying at Harvard. He is currently pursuing a PhD at UChicago. To invite Rabbi Reichman to speak in your community or to enjoy more of his deep and inspiring content, visit his website: www.ShmuelReichman.com.
