חסידות אויף תהילים 92:7

A man needs to know and know well that man’s intellect and its mechanics have no real existence in the world. If we took into detailed account all of the ways of the world and man, or in other words, if in our view of the “big picture” of life, which is a distillation of essential conclusions based on a reckoning of the of all the actions of man in the world and the workings of man’s mind and heart that engenders these actions,¹⁵⁹The original is more succinct, אם נמצה את תהלוכות העולם ואת האיש, which in a crude translation could read, “if you squeeze out all the ways of the world and man to their very essence.” This root finds other cognates in such words as, “mitsui,” squeezing out, “mitz,” juice, or “tamtsit,” essence. It is used in the Mussaf service on Rosh Hashannah in the prayer, “אם תמצה את עומק הדין, מי יצדק לפניך בדין, קדוש” which the Artscroll translation of the Machzor renders, “If You (God) wring out judgment to its essence (scrutinizing carefully and impartially all our deeds and intentions), who can survive before You in judgment, O Holy One!” we would see that really there is no need for him to be happy at times when he is joyous, and there is no need to be sad when he feels sadness. There is really no reason to desire that which he desires, and no reason to despise that which he despises.¹⁶⁰Feelings of joy or sadness, love and hate, are based on nervous impulses set of by external stimuli. We simply do not have the knowledge needed in order to truly understand that which we think we understand, and at the heights of understanding we simply admit that we do not know. This is hinted at in the verse (Tehilim, 92), “a brutish man cannot know, nor can a fool understand this.” That is to say, only a dullards and fools think that they possess the knowledge to truly know and understand. Therefore they are baffled when they come upon something that they do not know or understand. They think, “this defies logic,” and they open their mouths and tell you how difficult it is for them when it beyond the grasp of their intellect. But for someone who is neither a dullard nor a fool knows that the human intellect is not capable of understanding whether everything is truly logical or illogical, from the simple fact that there are many things that the mind is incapable of grasping. But for one, God is the unique being, and His will it truly unique, and God’s knowledge is also truly unique.¹⁶¹Meaning that there is no unity in the world like God’s unity, nor any will or knowledge in the world that can be like God’s will or knowledge. He is truly and supremely unique. Mishne Torah, Deot, 1:1 When God wills something and adjudicates it in the world, man understands that it is good, and that which God does not desire and duly adjudicates that it is not to be, man understands that it is not good. When God willed it and decreed that the inhabitants of the earth will see the sun rising in the east and traveling across the sky to its setting in the west, we all understand that this is how it has to be. If it were not to follow this course, it would defy human logic. If God decided that the sun would not move, or that we would see it moving from the west to the east, then humans would find it normal and logical that the sun does not move, or moves to the east.¹⁶²For a development of this idea, see Part Two of Rav Gershon Chenoch of Radzin, Zts”l’s Introduction to the Beis Yaakov.