Or Adonai

Or Adonai (Hebrew: אור אֲדֹנָי), The Light of the Lord, is the primary work of Rabbi Hasdai Crescas (c. 1340 - 1410/1411), a Jewish philosopher.

Crescas makes no concealment of his purpose to vindicate classical Jewish thinking against the rationalism of Maimonides and Gersonides.

While, in those instances where this harmony could not be established, Maimonides refused to follow Aristotle to the exclusion of Moses, his successors seemed bent upon the opposite course.

Crescas deplores the fact that Maimonides, whose scholarship and honesty he otherwise admires, seemed to make Greek philosophy the basis for Jewish doctrine.

Crescas does not denounce heretics, but rather exposes the weakness of the ground on which those views he considers to be heterodox rest.

The first main division opens with a thorough criticism of the twenty-five (or twenty-six) Aristotelian propositions ("hakdamot") which Maimonides accepts as axiomatic and out of which he constructs his idea of God.

In the first section he presents all the demonstrations for these theorems, especially those adduced by Tabrizi; in the second, he shows the inadequacy of many of these ontological and physical propositions, and thus demolishes Maimonides' proofs for his God-concept.

Crescas, admitting that the existence of a first cause is susceptible of philosophic proof, but only by contingence (he rejects the Aristotelian assumption that an endless chain of causes is unthinkable; i.e., the first cause of all that is must be regarded as existent), holds philosophy to be incompetent to prove God's absolute unity, as does Ghazzali.

In God, in the Absolutely Good, they merge as identical unity; predicates, especially of only logical or conceptual significance, are incompetent to cause real multiplicity or composition.

Therefore, from this perspective, it is fitting that the perfect man who intellects in actuality and who is conjoined to God and is one with Him, should have providence extend to him; and it is fitting that he who, despite having the potential and disposition, does not intellect in actuality since he has not acquired this union and attachment, be abandoned on account of his deficiency and defectivenessThe knowledge of God is thus in every moment of existence: this can give us knowing about all things happen in the World, i.e. Providence; this can be the virtue of the best and higher wise man who is knowing on will and thinking of God.

Wisdom and knowledge of providence may be the quality of "right-man", that in the Torah is the figure of sage, prophet and Tzaddik.

Hasdai Crescas gives a vision about the providence of God also with Torah: As our Sages of blessed memory said: "Declare three things before Me: kingship, remembrance, and shofar.

This accords very well with what we have said, namely, that the shofar, which is an instrument customarily sounded on the day of the coronation of a king, as it is said: "And they sounded a shofar and the entire people proclaimed, 'May the king live,'" is worthy of being present on the day when the kingship of Heaven is affirmed in its uniqueness, in memory of the ram of Isaac that was caught in the thicket by its horns.

It is in the nature of truth that it attests to itself and agrees with itself from all perspectivesThe sages of Israel teach that the "good" is from God, the King of Heaven and the Creator of the World He governs with providence, that is for the Avodah, the Temple of Jerusalem..."Sion" where Abraham, Yitzchak and Yakov find their eternal Brit with God.

In the second division Crescas enumerates six fundamental doctrines as presupposed by revealed faith, without which he believes Judaism would fall: God's omniscience, providence, and omnipotence; the belief in prophecy, Free will, and that the world was created for a purpose.

Man's highest perfection is not attained through knowledge, but principally through love, the tendency to, and longing for, the fountainhead of all good.

Religious tradition is so preponderatingly in favor of the assumption that the world and matter are created, and Gersonides' counter-reasoning is so inconclusive, that Crescas regards the denial of creation as heterodox.

Immortality, punishment, reward, resurrection (a miracle, but not irrational), the irrevocability and eternal obligation of the Law, the belief in urim and thummim and Messianic redemption, are the other tenets treated as doctrines which should be accepted, but which are not strictly speaking, basic.

In the fourth division thirteen opinions are enumerated as open to speculative decision, among them the questions concerning the dissolution of the world.

This was due to its absence of indications of the sources, the rare mention of divergent opinions, and the lack of provision to meet new cases, owing to its neglect to establish general principles of universal application ("Or Adonai," Preface).

If among Jews he exercised for a long time only through Joseph Albo any perceptible influence, though he was studied, for instance, by Don Isaac Abravanel, who controverts especially his Messianic theories, and by Abram Shalom in his Neveh Shalom, Crescas' work was of prime and fundamental importance through the part it had in the shaping of Baruch Spinoza's system.

Since it is fitting that the absolute good be eternal, it is said: “His kindness endures forever.” Hasdai Crescas teaches that there is the way of Torah to do with perfect view all Mitzvot, that is the service of all religious.

This indeed necessitates immortalityAmple space is then given to the end of the World, that is to the end of the universe which could dissolve into nothingness; the world (the creation and “creatures”, i.e. humankind, animals and Nature) is finite precisely because matter isn’t spiritual while spirituality falls within the scope of eternal life: the soul and body (earth in hebrew “Adamà” and Adam is the first man who is created by God from the four types of dust in the world, that is from North, South, East and West… “Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris“, so Adam in rabbinic literature is the correlation between spirit and matter).