From the age of the Renaissance, the sci-fi Torah of the Maharal is a auratic object, strange and alien, from a distant place. Here’s a complete AI translation of the Maharal of Prague’s Tiferet Yisrael, a table of contents. The translation and TOC both include my annotations and a warning about AI translation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TEXT

Separation is the keyword of Tiferet Yisrael. As if seen from a distance through a telescope, the world picture of the Maharal is of an interconnected-interactive cosmos or nature marked by imperfection and death (chps. 1, 5). Across earth and the starry heavens, the world picture is segmented and hierarchical. Israel and Torah and Land and Temple stand in the middle, a separate (nivdal) form above nature. Being imperfect, defective, deficient, lacking, the created world requires the completion, actuality, perfection made possible only by  a synthesis of human-divine action. From inside canons of thought and culture particular to the Renaissance, the Maharal throughout Tiferet Yisrael takes a position against a cartoon of philosophy and science. Philosophy and science turn away from the human body, attaching the person to things (e.g. celestial-heavenly bodies and angles and nature) that have no reality, real or actual existence. The study of the heavens and angels do not perfect the person because the heavens and angels are themselves defective, not complete, not perfect, not actual. Philosophers seek to outwit reality.  For the Maharal, existence is inherently good. It requires both aspects: the initial divine cause and, once existence is established, its preservation by means of human action (chp. 42).

In the center of the physical universe Torah, composed of code or decrees, is a technological object. In this conception, Torah is  light, a connecting circuit consisting of light, higher and more beautiful than the world it comes to perfect (chp. 2). Mitzvot are lamps or receptors in the shape of a body-scheme.

In the world of flux, Torah is a separate form, a perfect object not subject to change. As light, Torah is not natural nor even human; its purview is not ethics or social, not natural law, nor customary law (nimus), nor a moral guide (derekh eretz) for the establishment of society (chps. 7, 26, 50). Mitzvot are lamps, divine acts that a person performs with the body; they draw the human subject out of the non-existence of nature to cling to God. Torah is the bond between person and God, compared to the branch connecting fruit and tree (chp. 9). Torah does not concern the essence of physical things because physical created things are defined by lack; created things are only potential, not actual, just a simulacral surface (chp. 11). Separate from material and the form of the human person, the image of the God in the image of the human person, Torah is the form of the world. As changeless completion and the perfection of everything, “the order of created beings,” Torah is auratic object, absolute truth and dangerous (chp.18).

As a technological object, the image-form reflects the mirror relation of “man” and God and world inside a lens. Torah is the perfect form of the human, the human person being a separate intellectual soul, an emanation of God,  in the image of God. Composed of 248 positive mitzvot and 365 negative mitzvot, the 613 mitzvot actualize the human, actualize the image of God in the human person.  The positive mitzvot correspond to 248 limbs comprising the human body, the negative mitzvot to the 365 days of the solar year (chp. 7). Torah is Torat Adam, the Torah of “man,” who has the image of God, the perfect form of “man,” who is everything, the perfect form for the whole world  (chp. 12) The human body is the vessel that receives the divine image. The image is what connects the human with God as mediated by Torah commandments. This image is received by the physical body, attached and sustained through physical matters, which are the practical commandments (chapter 24). God is bound to Israel (chp. 7). Most remarkable is the notion that subordinates God to Torah, the mediating apparatus. When God gave the Torah to Israel, it was impossible for Him to detach from the Torah. Thus, as it were, God Himself was “taken” with the Torah (chp.46).

For all the emphasis on light, points of pitch darkness sharpen the picture of Torah in Tiferet Yisrael. Scripture or Written Torah is light and compared to daytime. The Oral Torah of the rabbis is something else, a kind of dark magic. From the Written Torah, one learns nothing about the quality and essence of the commandment, how it should be performed. For its part, the Mishnah is composed of fine distinctions, dividing and dividing, the establishment of one branch growing from another, until Torah grows higher and higher in width and height. This growth is without end, or even purpose (chapter 56). Torah is pitch black, containing everything, including the evil inclination/yetzer. Oral Torah is “black as a raven.” Represented by R. Akiva, the level and greatness of Oral Torah are violently detached from the reality of this world. The heaps of laws and understandings are separated from this world, distant from the physical reality of human being. One darkens oneself in Torah, becoming like a raven, separated from the attribute of mercy and cruel to one’s own children (chapter 63). Halachah itself is otherworldly. The Holy One, Blessed be He in this world has only four cubits of halakha, which is completely pure intellect, with no relation to the physical (chapter 70).

Close to the history of modern astronomy and as if close to science fiction, the glory of Torah is like a star of redemption from a distant place. Torah is World to Come, distant from planet Earth, “distant from this material world” (chp. 57).

In the humanism of the Renaissance, the human creature is an intermediate being, a body-schema, a cyborg, a plant-like entity, an organic-intellectual synthesis of earth-potential and spirit-actualization, an object of a separate and superintending intelligence. Human origins are deeply connected to the Earth, which is unique in its potential to bring forth all forms of life—plants, trees, and every other living thing that emerges from it. Therefore, the name Adam is fitting to be shared with the earth (adamah). The “perfection of man” is called “fruit.” “For man is a tree of the field.” The seed planted in the earth brings forth its action which brings forth its branches and fruits to perfect its nature without which is would be corrupt, ingrained in matter and the body like a golem (chps. 3, 7, 16). That seed is the divine decree, the primary attribute of Elohim being judgment, mixed with mercy (chapter 6). The “supreme intellect” requires a physical vessel (chapter 24), cannot be perfect and without flaw, not fit for this world, being completely separate (chapter 43);