{"id":62196,"date":"2019-09-02T17:12:29","date_gmt":"2019-09-02T14:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=62196"},"modified":"2023-03-28T18:12:10","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T15:12:10","slug":"the-dilemmas-of-an-active-imagination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-dilemmas-of-an-active-imagination\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dilemmas Of An Active Imagination"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[690,539,838],"acf":{"old_id":"62196","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":36277,"related_cahpter":"298","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"It can lead to great sin, spiritual and sexual - but also to great art and creativity","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Solomon&#8217;s love for foreign women, who turned him away from God, was the downfall of his kingdom. According to a talmudic and kabbalistic tradition, it was worse than that. His love for them caused a kind of a cosmic rupture which, perhaps, is only now starting to be fixed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The most beloved of these women, Rashi says, was Pharoah&#8217;s daughter. When Solomon married her, according to the Talmud, &#8220;the Angel Gabriel stuck a reed in the sea out of which grew the great city of Rome.&#8221; (Sanhedrin 21b) Upon this terse and enigmatic statement, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, drawing on earlier kabbalistic sources, builds a sweeping schematic history (Orot. 18).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rav Kook saw the greatness of Solomon in his successful integration of creative imagination into all aspects of his rule. Though his magnificent architecture, buildings adorned with beautiful art, all-encompassing wisdom and creative legal judgments (such as in the case of the two women who both claimed one baby), Solomon attained an unprecedented merging of the intellectual and imaginative worlds.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But imagination is, at least in Jewish thought, double-edged. The power to evoke images can help us conceive of beautiful not-yet existent things, but it also may tempt us to idolatry by forming visual representation of the divine. Moreover imagination is at work in erotic fantasy and sexual sin. Solomon fell prey to both of these, unable to maintain the delicate synthesis of a refined\u00a0 imagination with the rational, legal sphere, that he had previously achieved.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The breakdown came when he married Pharaoh&#8217;s daughter. This was the moment of the foundation of Rome, Rav Kook explains because from then on the imaginative powers that Solomon had previously managed to domesticate, began to desert him &#8211; and the Jewish people. They had to go somewhere, he assumed, and where they went was to Rome, which became the citadel of Western, Christian culture. The stunning, religiously inspired art and architecture of Rome developed as the visual arts atrophied within Jewish civilization.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rav Kook predicted that with the return of the Jewish people to a physically rooted existence in its land, creative imagination would find expression once more. Maybe he would see the extraordinary efflorescence of religiously inspired artistic creativity in Israel over the past decade as the start of a recovery of powers that we have not fully possessed since King Solomon.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":62199,"id":62199,"title":"1kings11-imagination","filename":"1kings11-imagination.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings11-imagination.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-dilemmas-of-an-active-imagination\/1kings11-imagination\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"1kings11-imagination","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":62196,"date":"2019-09-02 14:15:30","modified":"2019-09-02 14:17:09","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1280,"height":720,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings11-imagination-150x150.jpg","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings11-imagination-300x169.jpg","medium-width":300,"medium-height":169,"medium_large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings11-imagination-768x432.jpg","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":432,"large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings11-imagination-1024x576.jpg","large-width":1024,"large-height":576,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings11-imagination.jpg","1536x1536-width":1280,"1536x1536-height":720,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings11-imagination.jpg","2048x2048-width":1280,"2048x2048-height":720,"post_full_size":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings11-imagination-1200x675.jpg","post_full_size-width":1200,"post_full_size-height":675,"home_baner":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/1kings11-imagination-747x420.jpg","home_baner-width":747,"home_baner-height":420}},"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"The Dilemmas Of An Active Imagination","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"It can lead to great sin, spiritual and sexual - 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