The Holy Dialectic
O’ Yisrael,
your name means struggle.
The Name!
The Name!
O’ Yisrael,
your name is their kampf.
Come and see,
this solemn dialectic.
O’ Yisrael,
blessed is your name,
you are what you are,
and you will be what you will be.
As Yaakov wrestles the Angelus Novus…
We encounter two sages, Lamed Vavniks (ל״ו צדיקים), two of thirty-six, one younger and one older, on a Shabbos walk on a brisk fall morning somewhere on the edge of the diaspora. They walk silently, alone together for quite a while, when the younger turns to the elder and asks, “Which is greater: Echad (אחד) or Shtayim (שתיים)?”
“One or two? Aleph (א׳) or Bet (ב׳)?” The elder Lamed Vavnik, intrigued by the question, looks up from the ground on which they are walking, smiles, and says to the younger, in a still, small voice, “That is the question of questions, isn’t it? When we recite the Shema (שמע), do we say, ‘Hear O’Israel, the L-rd is our G-d, the L-rd is Two?’ I think not. One is therefore greater than two.”
The younger Lamed Vavnik, looking down from something previously noticed in the sky above into the receptive face of the elder Lamed Vavnik below says in agreement, “No, we certainly do not! But why then use six words to say what can be said with one, as in the Shema (שמע)? Echad (אחד) is simple. One is undivided. It seems to me that if a second can’t exist outside of that One, then that One must be divided into parts to make space for the six.”
The elder Lamed Vavnik smiles again and responds, “So, six by six is also One? It is written in the Zohar (זוהר): One light that shone and was concealed is the light of the letter Bet (ב׳) of Bereshit (בראשית). The second light is the light that gradually fades away before nightfall. The third light is the light that combines these two lights, which represent the right and left columns. It is the light that shines for healing.”
“This,” the older Lamed Vavnik said, “is the secret of the Holy Dialectic. It is the process of a progress. Negation and synthesis constitute the etz chaim (עץ חיים), the Tree of Life. One becomes two as opposition and difference, and two becomes One in the synthesis and harmony of the many. This is the creative principle that defers entropy, sustains life, and is the secret of that sacred conversation that has continued from generation to generation. We can think of that conversation as the mind of G-d.”
“But what is this ‘Holy Dialectic’?” the younger inquired.
“A dialectic is merely a conversation. It has two parts. It has ‘this’ that is contrasted against a ‘that;’ a tension which eventually resolves into a unified whole. A dialectic is expressed in the unity of opposites. The Holy Dialectic is all conversations; it is a conversation like the one we are now having. The Holy Dialectic, as articulated in the Zohar (זוהר), as well as in the dialogues of our sages, is the unfolding of a process of understanding reality that is structured by complementary oppositions held together within a living whole. It is consciousness coming into being. It is participation in creation. In this way, two are one and one is two, like night and day, like male and female, which together constitute a whole; like wisdom (Chochmah — חכמה) and understanding (Binah — בינה), like lovingkindness (Chesed — חסד) and judgment (Gevurah — גבורה), like endurance (Netzach — נצח) and splendor (Hod — הוד), like foundation (Yesod — יסוד) and sovereignty (Malkhut — מלכות) — all are not absolute oppositions but two sides of the same unity, whose harmony and tensions sustain and advance creation.”
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The younger Lamed Vavnik reflected, “So, the ten sefirot (ספירות) form a divine flow (shefa — שפע) that characterizes this process in the imaginations of the sages, moving through phases of tension and balance — from right to left and from left to right, from expansion to contraction, from giving to receiving — each defining and completing the other.”
“Yes, that is correct,” reflected the elder Lamed Vavnik. “It is G-d expressed as history. It is G-d manifest in the interactions we have with each other, as we are doing now. In fact, there is no place where that Spirit is absent, if it is truly One.”
“Spirit?” asked the younger.
“Many have imagined these conversations, and not just our fellow co-religionists,” the elder replied. “They form the foundations of the cultures and civilizations of every nation, not just our own. There have been many wise individuals who have stumbled into the mysteries of mysteries. We can imagine this holy conversation, which includes all conversations in all times and all places, including this conversation, in the aggregate, and imagine that as a reflection of the mind of G-d.
The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel imagined this as Spirit, or “Geist” in German, but it is also described similarly by our sages as Ruach (רוח) or breath. One might imagine a great wind blowing across history, like the one described in the story of the Angelus Novus. That same breath, or some part of it, blows across the centuries out from the great academies of Babylon and Jerusalem. It blows from the first emergence of alphabetic writing, which also came out from the Sinai with our ancestors, and which coevolved with the stories of our people. It is why in the absence of idols and physical markers of the divine, language has always been holy to the Jewish people.
Hegel imagined history as a process that produces greater consciousness through successive generations of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. He tells us that the relationships between the Self and the Other are bound together in this dialectical relationship. He understood the underlying unity of all things, but also understood the way our consciousness shapes reality, lending it multiplicity — even tension and conflict — as it works itself out from generation to generation. There are many ways to imagine this deep structure of a simple monad.”
Hegelian dialectics describes reality and thought as a dynamic process in which oppositions are not merely conflicts but moments within a larger, unfolding unity. Rather than a simple “thesis–antithesis–synthesis,” Hegel understood dialectic as the self-development of concepts: each determination reveals its own limits, gives rise to its opposite, and is then sublated (aufgehoben) — simultaneously negated, preserved, and elevated — into a more comprehensive whole. Contradiction is therefore productive rather than destructive; it is the engine of intelligibility and historical development. Being and nothing yield becoming; subject and object interpenetrate in self-consciousness; freedom emerges through the tension between individuality and ethical life. Dialectic here names an immanent logic of reality itself, not merely a method imposed from outside: unity exists only through difference, and difference is intelligible only within unity.”
The younger Lamed Vavnik followed up with another question, perhaps a bit more abstract, a bit more poetic than the questions that had come before:
“What then of that country beyond the imagination? What about that noumenal thing, creation as a thing in itself, beyond representation, and into the ineffable and unknowable transcendental object, beyond us? What about the thing we can say nothing about? Does this Holy Dialectic exist only in ourselves and each other, or is it a feature of the world independent of us?”
“I do not know,” the elder Lamed Vavnik replied. “I cannot know. Is there a difference between the positive charge and negative charge of a subatomic particle? Is there a difference between the complementary colors at the ends of the spectrum of visible light? And what about the unseen part beyond that? Is there an actual distinction independent of the mind that captures its form and translates its meaning? Blessed are the shapes of our minds that intuit that deeper consciousness and transcendental objects, but in doing so also distort it into meandering pluralities.”
By this point in their wandering, they had ascended high into the hill country and found themselves quite far from home. When the younger asked the elder:
“Then what of me, and what of you? What of the space and difference between us? What of the give and take, shakla v’tarya (שקלא וטריא) that characterizes these discussions? We often argue for the sake of heaven, as the sages say machloket l’shem shamayim (מַחֲלוֹקֶת לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם).
The elder replied, “This tradition would seem to imply that we are the same in our differences. We were both conceived in the mind of the same author”
The elder Lamed Vavnik paused for a little longer, and concluded cryptically:
“In the days of monarchy, moshiach (משיח) was imagined as a king. In the days of empire, moshiach was imagined as the antithesis of an emperor. In these days, may awareness of the moshiach become ubiquitous, as we recognize moshiach in ourselves, both as One and as Two.
