Chasidut sur L’Exode 28:4

Regarding the Talmudic sages about whom the Talmud says ‘even though prophecy ceased from the prophets it did not cease from the Sages,’²⁹⁶Talmud Bava Batra, ibid. and the Kabbalistic masters about whose grasp we cited R. Shimon b. Yokhai’s words above—revelatory images were revealed to their intellectual faculty, to the soul’s capacity which perceive that which is above the capacity of figurement with which the prophets perceived. With this faculty, they did not receive prophecy through imaginations of this-worldly things, but rather with the intellect of the Torah [as expressed] in Talmud, Kabbalah, and the sefirot. Indeed, it is difficult for us to understand how the intellectual faculty and prophetic revelation work together; yet then again, and in truth, it is difficult for us to understand how prophecy was revealed in the imagination of the prophet in the sense of “through the prophets I will be imagined [adameh].”²⁹⁷Hosea 12:11. We have become accustomed to this notion since our childhood. Yet we are astounded when we hear that the sages of the Talmud and Kabbalah received prophecy through their intellectual faculties, wondering, what connection could there be between the intellect and prophecy?! And yet—why are we astounded? Are not all matters of the intellect and its revelations beyond human comprehension? Just as we do not comprehend how the prophets envisioned prophecy through their imaginations, we cannot intellectually comprehend how revelation was revealed in their words. Yet, we can surmise just a tiny bit of how every student of the Torah experiences something of prophecy, though it is really different from the grasping of the prophets.²⁹⁸R. Shapiro hedges here between wishing to correlate the Torah student’s experience with prophecy and wishing to distinguish the former from the latter. Sometimes, when a person is deeply analyzing something in the Torah, and is unsure of a specific meaning or intent, and there are indications to various possibilities—then suddenly, as he is sitting silently, all at once he says “This is its meaning! My heart tells me such…!”²⁹⁹A rabbinic idiom; see, for example, Rashi to Exodus 28:4. What is this utterance of the heart? It is his soul sparking forth to be revealed in his intellect, gazing at the Torah from a [vantage point] above proofs and demonstrations. More than this, it is brought in the holy books [ I believe in the Meor Enayim³⁰⁰Meor Enayim of Rabbi Menahem Nohum Twersky of Chernobyl.] that when a person is learning and a feeling comes to him that he has something new to say regarding a given verse or a piece of Talmud, yet he intellectually has nothing yet to say, and it is only when he thereafter analyzes it that the new ideas comes to his mind—the previous feeling was a spark of the Holy Spirit. That is, a spark of the Holy Spirit was revealed to his intellect, and had he not thereafter employed his intellect in thought, the Holy Spirit would not be revealed through his intellect.