Foreword by KHALIL

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FOREWORD

by Daniel N. Khalil

*

Jewish philosophy is often resigned to the assumption that fundamental descriptions of God and the universe are beyond the grasp of the human intellect. Questions of Jewish philosophy are generally posed in the context of a mysterious framework that is rarely examined per se. Such a mindset is often more concerned with man’s place, role, and duties in the world, than it is with the contours of the universe and the latter’s relationship to the Eternal:

[The reason of Jewish philosophy] is the reason that we find in chess…Chess offers the greatest possible scope for calculation…But all this takes place in accordance with a set of rules that determine which moves are permitted and which are not and how the pieces are set up. The rules themselves are the limits of reason in chess. They are not questioned nor need they be justified because the rationality of chess begins after the rules have been set down…This is Jewish intelligence…[it] has a sense of limit, of the vanity involved in hurling questions at the limits…”

– Michael Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith I, 3.
[italics mine]

Of course, there have been noteworthy attempts to defy this generalization. Maimonides is perhaps the most prominent example of a Jewish philosopher who would analyze — if not challenge — Judaism’s fundamental suppositions. In his Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides describes a Judaism that dovetails seamlessly with an understanding of the universe as established primarily by Aristotle. As Maimonides holds Judaism to the light of Aristotle’s logic, he finds concordance on all topics, with merely one exception: the question of eternalism.

~continued~

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Encapsulization

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Quest for Potential∞ is at the core of the Divine

Quest for Potential (to the infinite divine power)
drives the cosmic order

– Book #1

Quest for Potential∞—

-the embryonic Divine

…an infinitely expanding,

fully integrated METAPHYSICAL WOMB—

encompassing all in its wake—

from the beginning

through the forward reaches of TIME

energizing
life-actualizing
optimizing
nourishing

and
potentializing
our cosmos –

…and all cosmos

– as it actually IS the cosmos –

…striving for complete fulfillment

and striving to attain infinitely perfect Divine

*
Quest for Potential∞
is at the core of the infinitely questing Divine
They are essentially one-and-the-same
* * *

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In Tribute

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William Rice Kimball
(1919-2005)

President, Stanford Board of Trustees

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Dedication

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To My

“INNER CIRCLE”

*

HARVEY COHEN, Encino, CA.

STEVEN GROSS, Jerusalem *

GARY KAUFMAN, New York – Princeton

JOSHUA MILLER, Jerusalem **

SAMUEL WILCHFORT, Jerusalem ***

*

* formerly of Manhattan
** formerly of Great Neck, NY
*** formerly of Englewood, NJ

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Caution

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Caution to dogmatists:

This book supplants centuries–old perspectives.

This book peels away layers of the cosmic code.

This book attempts to “cut-to-the-core”.

Parental guidance suggested.

~continued~

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Author’s Note

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Metaphysics is ultimately about the questions that 5-year-olds ask.

for example,

Why is there anything?

Where is everything headed?

Where is God?

Therefore, to write Metaphysics one must be at least
as smart – and as ‘open’ as –
a 5-year-old

That is not necessarily as easy as it sounds

*

This work attempts to advance our understanding of
the cosmos.

This work attempts to get us where others have not… into the very “throne room” of metaphysics…

But, the infinitely evolving, morphing and expanding cosmos does not yield its secrets easily.

We will need to peel-it-away layer-by-layer

Approach by approach. Theme by theme.
Conjecture by conjecture. Hypothesis by hypothesis.

With no significant mistakes at any level

– as that would throw-off the expeditionary journey

Please note that, respectfully,
I only write one treatise / lifetime – and this is it.
There are no philosophy books before – or after.

Be assured that I have endeavored to be very, very careful with what I commit to paper

* * *

Oh, one last thing……

To understand the infinite cosmos, one truly need not spend-a-life-time peering through large telescopes or fathoming hyper-complex physics equations or wading-through dozens of esoteric writings…..Indeed, respectfully, they will not advance you beyond, say, ‘second base’.

One needs, however, to attempt to listen very carefully
to the very core of one’s soul.

Sincerely,
David Birnbaum

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Overview

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God and Good,
this companion–work and sequel-to God and Evil (1988)

is composed of
3 inter–related works:

Part I: The Cosmic Womb of Potential

An original proposed metaphysics.

It dovetails with the metaphysics explicated
in the first book of the series, God and Evil

Part II: God’s 120 Guardian Angels

A quasi–mythical work of quasi–poetry which is used as a vehicle to explicate and flesh-out “Quest for Potential∞” from a different angle.

Part III: The Lost MANUAL

This work plays with applicability of the metaphysics noted in the prior sections, but on an INDIVIDUAL level.

The work maintains that Quest for Potential∞ drives not only the COSMOS as well as the DIVINE but also, the INDIVIDUAL, all in 1:1 parallel to one another.

…..and that “enlightened Self-Actualization” is front– and– center in human development.

The Lost Manual is a self–actualization guide as well as a 21st century (alleged) “Wisdom Book” along with several other treats.

—————————————
Q4P = Quest for Potential∞
Q4F = Quest for Fulfillment

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A “Subtle Dynamic”

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When I was ~11 years old, (1961) I was a sixth grade student at (scholastically demanding Modern Orthodox) Yeshiva Dov Revel in Forest Hills, (in Queens, NY of tennis championship fame). About a third of my fellow students were children of Holocaust survivors, or of 1930s emigrés from Europe. The evils of the Holocaust were raw – and it was not at all clear that the theology could handle it.

The philosophical situation was not much better for more general philosophical or general inter-related scientific questions, like: How did this universe come to be? If God existed, where did this all-powerful God come from? If God did not exist, what drove the universe? Why was there anything at all?

Thus, we were in sixth grade in a top Jewish Day School, and the fundamental and core philosophical, theological, and scientific questions remained thoroughly unanswered – at home, at shul (synagogue), and at school.

I intuitively felt that out there, there was one elegant yet subtle dynamic – a potentially relatively simple idea – which everyone was just missing – which, if uncovered, would, indeed, ‘crack-the-cosmic-code’, and perhaps the bulk of these issues simultaneously. I felt that it was at the very edge of human awareness. Waiting to be discerned. However, it was clear that discerning it might take years…

At the same time, I was frankly not all-that-sure that Judaism or Orthodox Judaism or monotheism would survive the ‘code breaking’. My gut-feeling was that it would be a close-call.

I determined to learn what I could learn about the world – and observe what I could observe – and, as an aside to my life, try to uncover that elusive ‘code-cracking’ dynamic. I embarked on an informal odyssey seeking this philosophical and theological “Holy Grail”: the “highest common denominator”.

In January 1982, ~two decades later – on the beach in the Barbados of all places, ‘matters crystallized”. The elusive “simultaneous solution”. The precise moment is ingrained in my psyche, of course, freeze-framed.

The dynamic which I discerned may have been “subtle”, but it was certainly not without power. I was now more than quite fully ‘psyched-up’.

First, I had to get back to NY, to a library, a big library. This was pre-GOOGLE, and then we really needed big libraries for potentially ‘original concepts’.

I did two reality-checks, the first with my Yeshiva University High School comrade, intellectual consigliere, and close friend-to-this-day Steven Gross (of NY and Jerusalem) 30 days into the project. He was a GO.

The second reality-check was at the ~6 month mark, with my Great Neck neighbor (who I had never actually met prior) and soon-to-be quite world-renowned, Lawrence Schiffman, Professor of Jewish History at NYU, and budding Dead Sea Scrolls expert’s expert. He too was a GO – and admonished me to maintain total secrecy until the book was actually out. He would, in due course, unilaterally volunteer to personally Copy Edit the manuscript start-to-finish – TWICE – Draft #1 (in 1985) and Draft #2 (in 1986) – to maintain its total confidentiality, and prep-it for submission to the putative publisher in due course. Schiffman valiantly moved to vigilantly protect and advance the project and insure the manuscript’s power and viability. Once-in-a-while in life, one encounters a truly extraordinary inpidual, dedicated to his craft and to the pursuit of knowledge and truth. The Dead Sea Scrolls – and the Discovery Channel – would have to wait just a touch more….

A solitary five years of work after that epiphanous ‘moment’ on the beach in the Barbados, the manuscript for God and Evil was completed in time for the birth of my first child, Rafaella, January 1986. The editors at KTAV Publishing, who accepted the book for publication later in 1986, cautioned me that if one comma was out-of-place on my erstwhile revolutionary thesis, I would be crucified – by the Jews. And they did not want to be party to a crucifixion. I frankly thought they were a little overwrought, but in any event, the book was micro-edited over the course of 1987, and then published and released in November 1988.

At first there were ‘sounds of silence’. But then matters began to roll. The work would go through Five Printings between 1988 and 2000.

The primary editor, scholar-extraordinaire Yaacov Elman of Yeshiva University did a fastidious job with his plodding hyper-perfectionism. Word by word of the text, then the 600+ footnotes, footnote by footnote. No word of the text or related has been changed in any of the printings, including the printing incorporated now into the 2-book Summa Metaphysica series.

Before the Jewish journals got around to reviewing the book, in their own good time, to our astonishment the major Jesuit publications around the world, in-short-order – reviewed it – in-depth and enthusiastically. Theological Studies Journal (then at Georgetown University) led the charge – juxtaposing the concepts of the work against those of Aquinas very specifically. Sounded good to me…

Simultaneously, Brandeis University started assigning the work as a Required Text – Masters Degree graduate Term Papers and all – in Advanced Religious Philosophy. In the early 1990s, Hebrew University (Jerusalem), Yeshiva University, Jewish Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary (Christian) and, later, Emory, started assigning the work in Philosophy and/or Jewish Thought. Other universities in the USA and around-the-world would follow.

It sounds like a simple enough journey. But it was a very, very solitary and hi-risk endeavor.

I believe the hypothesis is on-the-mark. Its core inherent power gave me the motivation to embark on the project.

D.B.

To the reader –My (previously) agnostic SOHO WebSite designer, after reading the text said I should add the following alert at the very beginning of the book, so here-it-goes…

“Hey you – potential Reader – THIS, all this, applies to YOU, don’t go away, read this! It isn’t over your head; it IS your head… This book about GOD is a transcendent work… Read this work and enter an extraordinary realm”

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note: The Key Term

Published on 30 Aug 2006 at 5:59 pm. No Comments.
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Quest for Potential∞
should always be understood as

Quest for Potential∞ (recursive to the infinite power)

meaning

Quest for Potential ( within Potential ( within potential…

…ad infinitum

see following page-

~continued~

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Introduction:
The Metaphysical Gates
of the Forest

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by William Johnson,
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy
Brandeis University

“Why is Birnbaum’s paradigm uniquely different from
all pre-existing paradigms?”

Compare three-and-a-half-thousand-year-old Jewish philosophy to a majestic oak tree: roots, trunk, large branches, smaller branches and then leaves. Then figuratively, many of the daring medieval (Golden Age) Jewish philosophers often dealt with the trunk and the major branches, while many modern Jewish philosophers often deal with some of the branches, some larger, some smaller, and some of the interesting leaves. The Kabbalists often dealt with the roots, but generally from an acutely mystical, esoteric, and generally, obscure fashion.

Birnbaum maintains that the structural weaknesses in existing philosophical constructs, leave one no choice but to go after the major root. That if one gets a handle on the major root, one gets-a-handle not only on the major root system, and not only on the entire tree, but, indeed, on the entire forest. That is, one will have in-hand the hitherto elusive key to the gate of the mythical metaphysical forest.

Birnbaum, whose works are rooted partially in Lurianic Kabbalah, goes for the root of the roots – the tap root – and in a non–mystical fashion. As a Master Diamond Cleaver might attempt to cleave an extraordinary and large rough diamond with one deft tap, so too Birnbaum proposes to crack-the-cosmic-code with one deft dynamic.

Birnbaum the conceptual theorist searched for a unique, transcendent dynamic which might, on-the-one-hand, almost by definition, be Eternal, and which, on-the-other-hand, could possibly be infinitely dynamic. He conceptualizes a candidate: Potential/Possibility. Then Birnbaum asks himself if that dynamic – multiplied infinite-fold – could possibly achieve the necessary ‘traction’ to ignite and then propel a cosmos? He emerges with Quest for Potential∞ (recursive to the infinite power).

Birnbaum’s approach and solution lies on the fault-line between Western and Eastern philosophy. Birnbaum avoids both classic Western linearity, as well as classic Eastern circularity in his formulation. However he will employ demanding Western Aristotelian deductive reasoning – as well as a plethora of Eastern concepts of complementarity.

Dealing in the realms of the infinite, Birnbaum in Book #1 brings-to-bear his original concepts of INFINITY-POTENTIAL, RECURSIVENESS-POTENTIAL and leveraged– RETROACTIVITY-POTENTIAL, all in fashions certainly not employed previously in metaphysics or philosophy. He crafts his metaphysics methodically and very carefully anchored, while keeping a careful eye on the outer boundaries of Jewish theological tradition and doctrine.

Moving to fill-out his overarching metaphysics, Birnbaum in Book #2 will daringly conceptualize and propose a series of sophisticated ‘cosmic metaphysical tools’. The approach – as well as the arsenal of ‘tools’ – is original and powerful. In combination with Quest for Potential∞, these ‘tools’ drive the cosmic engine of Quest for Potential∞.

In Book #2, one of the key tools Birnbaum introduces is ‘Extraordinariation’. Coupled with ‘Quest for Potential∞’, this original concept will be employed by the author along with his core proposition, as a daring philosophical 1-2 punch.

The series of ‘cosmic tools’ – employed in combination with the above-noted three particular ‘realm-of-the-infinite concepts’ – merged with yeshiva scholar Birnbaum’s re-engineering of historical Lurianic and Hasidic concepts – net him his unified, overarching metaphysics. Deftly employing his key components, he sculpts his metaphysical diamond key – which he will use to “unlock-the-cosmic-lock” to the metaphysical “Gates of the Forest”.

Bringing to bear a repertoire of scholarship and a wide gamut of skills, conceptual theorist Birnbaum – whose Book #1 I have assigned to Masters Degree candidates at Brandeis in Advanced Religious Philosophy in the ‘90s – methodically builds his carefully constructed case. Resolutely stalking-his-quarry, the author surrounds and entraps it in one conceptual net after another.

In Book #1, God and Evil, Birnbaum does so from a Theological-Academic-Philosophical-Metaphysical perspective (encapsulated in his section 99.00 Unified Formulation in that book).

In Book #2 Birnbaum constructs his case first within a Metaphysical – Philosophical construct (“The Cosmic Womb of Potential”). Moving into Section 2 of the second book, he builds his case within a Poetic-Mythical perspective (“God’s 120 Guardian Angels”) and then, finally, moving into the final section of the second book, (“The Lost Manual”) Section 3 of God and Good, he builds his case within a Holistic-Self-Actualization-Wisdom book construct.

Yeshiva Dov Revel’s inquiring-mind student in the late ‘50s, Birnbaum in 2006 believes that the elusive quarry is now finally trapped and cornered. ‘Forged-in-intellectual-fire’ under the multi-year tutelage of his rebbe and mentor – Yeshiva University’s legendary Rav Shmuel Scheinberg – yeshiva-educated Birnbaum believes he has not only firmly anchored his work meticulously in the Torah itself, but has erected fairly impregnable theological shields via the works of Rashi, Ibn Daud, Luria and Abraham Isaac Kook, in particular, to protect his Right flanks. Simultaneously, Harvard grad Birnbaum believes he has the Aristotelian camp and St. Thomas Aquinas intellectually at-bay on his Left flanks. He anticipates, probably correctly, that the Eastern philosophical camps will grant him ‘safe passage’. 18 years after the publication of God and Evil (1988) he is “good-to-go” for his long-awaited final assault on the ‘throne room’ of the Cosmic Code.

Birnbaum’s works are dressed in establishment Aristotelian-style garb; but their soul is Lurianic. This unusual duality compounds the power of his works.

Modern-day Kabbalists are highly likely to be simpatico to his treatise: After 450 years on the very periphery of mainstream philosophy, Kabbalist Luria’s ostensibly mystical 16th century En Sof is re-engineered by the author, and is now enshrined as a metaphysical centerpiece-anchor of Birnbaum’s formidable 21st century major opus, Summa Metaphysica.

According to the Author, only ‘possibility’– or its first-cousin ‘potentiality’ – could have existed eternally.
“BY DEFINITION”, according to the Author.

This is key – because, aside from the elegance and power of the SUMMA formulation, “BY DEFINITION” is what may very well render this construct quite uniquely “bullet-proof”, and further secure its position in the pantheon of philosophy. By definition, according to the Author, only “Eheyeh” – ‘possibility/potentiality’ (Eheyeh Asher Eheyeh – I WILL BE THAT WHICH I WILL BE) – Luria’s “En Sof” – can be eternal.

According to Birnbaum, METAPHYSICAL POTENTIALS–in parallel to Luria’s sefirot, Rashi’s angels–are the offspring. Our cosmos, in turn, is a latter-level reality-morphing of the same transcendent metaphysical dynamic. Philosophically and theologically elegant. As these esoteric matters go, Birnbaum’s formulation “keeps it simple” – and straightforward enough.

Birnbaum’s Quest for Potential∞ (recursive to the infinite power), after Luria’s En Sof, is the turbo-charged version of ‘potential/possibility’. And everything, absolutely everything according to the Author’s hypothesis, is both part of – and driven by – this one overarching sui generis transcendent dynamic. (The Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hassidism, would certainly smile.)

Simply put, Birnbaum’s Summa Metaphysica proposition attempts to totally overhaul the way the world – East and West – looks at – absolutely everything. Everything.

His proposed paradigm endeavors to totally change the contours and boundaries of, among other fields, Philosophy, Metaphysics, Cosmology, Cosmogony, Physics and Biology, for starters.

As of this November, 2006, Birnbaum’s key proposition of “Eheyeh” – Holy Quest for Potential∞ (recursive to the Infinite power) – and the Unified Formulation meticulously articulated therein – will have withstood 18 years of international scrutiny since the publication of God and Evil by KTAV in November 1988.


~continued~

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