DAVID BIRNBAUM METAPHYSICS
DAVID BIRNBAUM PHILOSOPHY
“Birnbaum’s proposed solution to the question of
divine origins, to the mystery of the kabbalists’ En Sof
(the infinite theistic principle giving rise to the God of Israel) is that “Holy Potential is at the epicenter of the Divine,” that God is, by His very nature, potential and possibility, “transcending, space, time and cosmos,”
and ever-surging towards greater actuality. Birnbaum bases his thesis, in part, on the name by which God first became known to Moses and Israel: Eheye Asher Eheyeh, “I-will-be-that-which-I-will be” (Exodus 3:13-14) which
he sees as a prooftext for his claim that potential is the holiest state of the Divine. Birnbaum sees the kabbalists’ sefirot* as “primal quests for potentiality” which bridge
the gap from “emptiness” to “somethingness,” and thereby become the vehicles of creation.”
* parallel to Plato’s Forms