Imagination

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Visualization in Prayer

CHASIDUT

Imagination can be a powerful tool in prayer. In his early 20th-century work, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Piaseczner Rebbe, provides readers with a profound visualization of self sacrifice for God during the recitation of the Shema. His description guides readers through an intense spiritual and emotional experience

You will literally be seized by the wish that you had never been created. And when you recite Shema and visualize that you are ready to sacrifice your life for God, this constant wish that unceasingly afflicts you in the hidden part of your heart will be aroused: “How I wish I could be freed of all these matters, and I were once again one of the limbs of the King (so to speak).” Your yearning and thought will grow so intense that it will seem that you are actually undergoing this test, and that you are joyfully leaping into the flames to the Infinite One—so much so that at times your body will…

Bnei Machshava Tova, Principles and Advice 14:7

The Impact of Visualization

COMMENTARY

Radak, a medieval Jewish commentator, explains how Jacob influences the breeding patterns of Laban's flocks through the use of his imaginative power.

ותלדן הצאן, the sheep would give birth to young with the skin patterns Yaakov desired, as their imagination had been fired at a time when they were more than usually impressionable.

Radak on Genesis 30:39:3

The Role of Contraction in Creativity

COMMENTARY

The concept of tzimtzum, or divine self-contraction, generates space for human creativity and agency. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a prominent Jewish thinker, explores this idea in his weekly reflections on the Torah portion.

The holy is that segment of time and space God has reserved for His presence. Creation involves concealment. The word olam, universe, is semantically linked to the word ne’elam, “hidden.” To give mankind some of His own creative powers – the use of language to think, communicate, understand, imagine alternative futures, and choose between them – God must do more than create Homo sapiens. He must efface Himself (what the kabbalists called tzimtzum) to create space for human action. No single act more profoundly indicates the love and generosity implicit in creation…

Essays in Ethics; A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible, Shemini; Fire, Holy and Unholy 8

The Danger of Visualizing God

KABBALAH

Anthropomorphizing God can lead to a destructive relationship to the divine. In the medieval Jewish philosophical text Or Neerav, Moses Cordovero warns against the danger of attributing incorrect characteristics to God.

The poor man thinks that God is an old man, as it is written, the ancient of days sits, that he has white hair because of His great age, as it is written, the hair of his head like pure wool; and [that] He sits on a marvelous throne of fire which gives off flashes, as it is written, His throne was fiery flames (Dan. 7:9). [He thinks that] His appearance is similar to fire, as it is written, For the Lord your God is a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24, 9:3). There are other, similar fantasies which the fool believes in his mind…

Ohr Ne'erav, PART II 2:2

The Power of Positive Visualization

COMMENTARY

Positive visualization can lead to a better future. This contemporary commentary explores two examples of the impact of positive visualization from the Book of Jonah: Yonah’s experience in the fish and the king of Nineveh’s proclamation about Teshuvah.

Rabi Akiva might have learned the power of a positive vision to create a better reality from Yonah’s positive visualization in the depths of the fish. The same confident approach is reflected in the king of Nineveh proclaiming “Mi Yodeia Yashuv, VeNicham HaElokim,” “if one does Tehsuvah, Hashem will relent” (Yonah 3:9 as interpreted by Targum Yonatan ben Uzziel, discussed at length in our chapter devoted to an analysis of this phrase).

Depths of Yonah 2:5:15

Prophecy and Imagination

JEWISH THOUGHT

Maimonides' 12th-century philosophical work, The Guide for the Perplexed, explores the relationship between everyday perceptions and prophecy. He explains that true prophets receive their visions through a divine agent that perfects their imagination, allowing them to perceive future events with clarity that ordinary imaginative and sensory faculties cannot access.

The true prophets undoubtedly conceive ideas that result from premisses which human reason could not comprehend by itself; thus they tell things which men could not tell by reason and ordinary imagination alone; for [the action of the prophets’ mental capacities is influenced by] the same agent that causes the perfection of the imaginative faculty, and that enables the prophet thereby to foretell a future event with such clearness as if it was a thing already perceived with the senses, and only through them conveyed to his imagination…

Guide for the Perplexed, Part 2 38:4

Imagination and The Internalization of Oppression

COMMENTARY

The oppression faced by Moses and the Israelites involves a combination of external and internal factors. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg's contemporary work explores how their constricted condition is a result of the combination of not just their circumstances but also by their imagination, which is fed by unconscious fears and desires.

To bring them to consummation, a surface coherence must be lost. A depth world, a fantasy world, is to be engaged: perhaps the paralyzing fantasy of the master-slave relation, of the irresistible gezera, the edict of the Mitzrayim realm, whose law is constriction. The power of these conditions lies in the fact that they are not only external, imposed by others: they live in the internal world of the victim, answering to unconscious fears and desires.

Moses; A Human Life, 1 Identities 77

Metaphoric Imagery in Prophetic Visions

HALAKHAH

In his famed 12th-century code of Jewish law, Mishneh Torah, Rambam explains the nature of prophetic visions. He describes how the visions are conveyed through metaphorical imagery, with their meanings directly imprinted upon the prophet's heart.

When a prophet is informed of a message in a vision, it is granted to him in metaphoric imagery. Immediately, the interpretation of the imagery is imprinted upon his heart, and he knows its meaning.
For example, the ladder with the angels ascending and descending envisioned by the patriarch, Jacob, was an allegory for the empires and their subjugation [of his descendants]. Similarly, the creatures Ezekiel saw, the boiling pot and the rod from an almond tree envisioned by Jeremiah, the scroll Ezekiel saw, and the measure seen by Zechariah [were all metaphoric images]…

Mishneh Torah, Foundations of the Torah 7:3

Chronological Imagination

COMMENTARY

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik's interpretation of the two creation accounts in Genesis offers a profound example of how conflicting propositions can both be valid but not simultaneously. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his series 'Covenant and Conversation,' expands on this concept of 'chronological imagination'.

The other way is through the chronological imagination. Conflicting propositions may both be valid – the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth – but not at the same time. A classic example of this is the interpretation by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik in The Lonely Man of Faith of the two creation accounts in Genesis 1, and in chapters 2–3. In the first, man is created in the image of God and given dominion over all other life forms. In the second, man is formed from the dust of the earth, and told to “serve and conserve” the garden…

Covenant and Conversation; Leviticus; The Book of Holiness, Behar, The Chronological Imagination 15

Imagination, Levels of Prophecy, and the Sefirot

CHASIDUT

Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira’s Mevo HaShearim delves into the distinctions between various levels of prophecy and their association with the sefirot, key concepts in Kabbalistic thought. He describes how each level of prophecy, and its associated sefirah, has a different relationship with the imagination.

And see Tikkunei Zohar (30: 74b): …Regarding prophecy, the Upper Mother [i.e. Binah] is closed vision without imagery; the Lower Mother [i.e. Malkhut] is revealed vision with imagery; about it is said, ‘I will be imagined by the prophets…’ The master of Hokhmah is comprehended by the mind, and thus a ‘sage is superior to a prophet…” This means that prophecy in the vein of Malkhut comes in visions, that of Binah of vision without imagery, that of Hokhmah even more internally, in a mode superior to the prophet…

Mevo HaShearim 2:13

The Nature of Divine Inspiration

SECOND TEMPLE

Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, vividly describes how prophets received divine inspiration for the creation of the Tabernacle and translate it into physical creation. His writings reflect his desire to harmonize Jewish scripture with Greek philosophy to explain the process of divine inspiration.

[76] So the shape of the model was stamped upon the mind of the prophet, a secretly painted or moulded prototype, produced by immaterial and invisible forms; and then the resulting work was built in accordance with that shape by the artist impressing the stampings upon the material substances required in each case.

On the Life of Moses, Book II 16:1

The Imagination in Sleep

CHASIDUT

In Sha’ar HaYichud, Rabbi Dov Baer Schneuri delves into the mystical aspects of the mind and soul. In this section, he describes how, during sleep, the mind is reduced to its imaginative faculties.

This is because, during the time of sleep, all that remains of the mind is the very last portion of the powers of thought, which is just the imagination of thought.

The Gate of Unity 41:15

Prayer for Purifying the Imagination

CHASIDUT

Imagination has the potential to cause harm or to cause healing. This prayer from Likutei Tefilot by Rabbi Nathan of Breslov asks for spiritual purification in order to bring clarity, purity, and lucidity in thoughts and fantasies.

Purifying Our Thoughts and Imagination
May our imagination not confuse us with deceitful illusions and evil fantasies, Heaven forbid. Instead, may we attain a power of imagination that possesses a completely perfected clarity, purity and lucidity.

Likutei Tefilot, Volume II 8:115

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