Bereshit (Rambam)

Introduction to Rambam Theme

The theme we have chosen for this year’s studies is the thought and spiritual life of the Rambam, Moses Maimonides. This choice may seem surprising to some, constituting as it does almost a 180-degree turnaround from last year’s theme of Hasidism. From the emotional ecstasy and untrammeled religious enthusiasm of Polish Hasidism, we turn to the seemingly cold, formal, rational, intellectual elitism of the Rambam, a figure whose main concerns—halakhah and philosophy—seem to focus entirely upon the highly disciplined realm of the intellect rather than on the spontaneous outpouring of the soul that we found in the persona of the Baal Shem Tov and his disciples.

I hope that by the end of the year I will have demonstrated that this is not in fact the case, and that there is an intense and passionate spiritual life waiting to be discovered within the pages of Rambam’s writings. The idea for this year’s studies was first conceived just twenty years ago, when Arthur Green asked me to translate a series of Hebrew articles for the two-volume set of essays on Jewish Spirituality that he edited as part of the encyclopedic set, World Spirituality. At the time I suggested to Green that I would write an essay on “Maimonidean Spirituality,” seeing that there was nothing in these volumes on that central, towering figure of medieval Judaism; but since at the time I had not yet matured as a scholar or a thinker, and was thus hardly ready to undertake such a daunting undertaking, nothing came of the idea. The basic intuition I felt then, and which has not left me in all the intervening years, is that, over and beyond Maimonides’ tremendous intellectual acumen and knowledge, and even beyond his pivotal position at the crossroads between traditional Jewish religiosity and the predominant intellectual stream of his day, that of neo-Aristotelian philosophy (the central problem that, for example, exercises David Hartman in his Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest), Maimonides had a very specific ideal conception of the nature of the inner spiritual life of the religious individual—a conception which as yet awaits its phenomenological description. During the course of the coming year, I plan each week to present a different selection from the Maimonidean oeuvre, and in the course of my discussion to seek an answer to the question: how does the passage in question, the interpretations and views expressed, reflect his understanding of the religious life?

There are two more factors that draw me to the Rambam. First, my beloved teacher, Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik ztz”l, who was a central formative figure in my life, was a Maimonidean in two different senses. First, as a teacher of halakhah and Talmud in the Brisk tradition, he constantly referred to the Rambam, taught his Mishneh Torah as a central text, etc. Second, as Hartman also notes, the Rav was, perhaps more than any other traditional, Orthodox figure in many centuries, one who himself followed in the footsteps of the Rambam by his own profound involvement in both halakhah and philosophy, on a level unparalleled by any other recent figure. Second: something of my own predilections. As I have remarked before, I am perhaps equally drawn to the intellectual and rational and to the emotional and mystical side of Judaism. My family background contains both Hasidic and Mitnaggedic elements. In our present zeitgeist, I find Kabbalah and Hasidism to me enormously popular. Classes in Sefat Emet, Mei Shiloah, Peri Zaddik, and Bretslav proliferate and seem to draw impressive crowds. Journalists like to refer to the latest movement among Israeli religious youth as “Habakkuk”—a mélange of Habad, Bretslav, Kook, and Carlebach, all of which relate in one way ir another to Hasidism and mystical thinking. In the US as well, neo-Kabbalah of all sorts prevail, especially among New Age circles. In light of all this, a certain contrary spirit within me says: ifkha mistabra. Perhaps it is time to give a serious airing to the more intellectual, closely reasoned alternative? Is it in fact so utterly cold, uninspiring, without a relevant spiritual message? Or does it perhaps need to be perceived more profoundly? It is this question that I raise, and to which I hope to provide an answer in the coming year.

A few brief introductory sentences, for those unfamiliar with Rambam. Moses ben Maimon, generally considered the single most impressive, seminal figure of medieval Judaism, was born in Cordoba in Spain in either 1135 or 1138. In his early youth, when the fanatic Almohad Islamic dynasty came to power in Spain, the family moved to North Africa, where his father, Rabbi Maimun, served as a much beloved Rabbinic leader. But the spirit of fanaticism and intolerance struck there as well, and they fled that country as well, and Maimonides eventually settled in Fustat (old Cairo) in Egypt, where he became leader of the Jewish community, while serving professionally as physician to the sultan. He died in Egypt in 1204.

His main works are: (i) the Commentary to the Mishnah (began 1158) or Siraj. This is mostly a brief textual commentary, but it incorporates three important essays: the Introduction to Seder Zeraim, which is a discussion of the nature of Oral Torah generally; the Eight Chapters (Introduction to Avot), in which he presents the outline of his moral philosophy and theory of personality; and the Introduction to Perek Helek (Sanhedrin Ch. 10), in which he discusses the nature of aggadah and the principles of the faith. (ii) Sefer ha-Mitzvot (ca. 1180?), a compilation of the 613 positive and negative commandments, written as kind of introduction to his code of law, including a lengthy methodological introduction, with 14 principles (or what we might call algorithms) for enumerating the mitzvot. (iii) his halakhic magnum opus, the Mishneh Torah or Yad ha-Hazakah (completed 1185), his vast, comprehensive compendium of all of Jewish law; and (iv) the Guide for the Perplexed (1195), his major philosophic work which, as its name suggests, attempts to answer the theological perplexities faced by the educated Jew of his day, and to resolve the contradictions between the traditional tenets of Jewish religion and the philosophical assumptions widely accepted in his day. (v) Occasional writings. These include: his numerous pastoral epistles to various Jewish communities around the world, the best know of which are: The Epistle to Yemen, The Letter of Apostasy or Ma’amar Kiddush Hashem, and the Essay on the Resurrection of the Dead; halakhic responsa; medical writings; and a brief treatise on logic. All of these writings, with the exception of the Yad, were written in Arabic, and are known today mostly through Hebrew translations, whether of his contemporary Judah ibn Tibbon, or of modern scholars, most notably the late Rabbi Joseph Kapah.

Several questions that will be constantly raised in our discussion of Maimonides, in our quest for his exegetical and spiritual personality, are the following: 1) What are his Talmudic and Geonic sources and how does he select them and use them? 2) Order: How does he arrange the halakhic material in the Yad, and what conception is reflected by this arrangement? In general, order and arrangement are important elements in Rambam’s writing; 3) What are Rambam’s own novella? While there is much in his great halakhic work, the Mishneh Torah, that is simply taken verbatim from classic rabbinic sources—as in any code or compendium of Jewish law—there are also many passages of his own, which are particularly revealing of his own world-view. This is true of the perorations of each of the fourteen books—but not only of them. 4) Internal contradictions within his oeuvre, especially between the Yad and the Guide. Can these be harmonized or reconciled and, if not, how is one to understand them? Crudely put, “Who was the real Maimonides?” Needless to say, we shall have much more to say during the course of the year about the background, methodology, and nature of Maimonides’ work.

Maimonides did not write any commentary on the Torah such , although his work abounds with quotations from and comments on biblical verses. Indeed, Book One of the Guide is an attempt to deal with one central problem in understanding the Bible generally: namely, the abundance of anthropomorphic and anthropopathic expressions in the Tanakh. Each week during the course of the coming year, I shall bring a different passage from Maimonides that is connected in some way to the subject of the weekly parsha. If I may be so bold as to compare my work with one of gedolei Yisrael (albeit only in the programmatic sense): this is somewhat akin to the spirit of R. Yosef Hayyim b. Eliyahu Al-Hakam, the 19th century Baghdadi scholar, whose halakhic compendium Ben Ish Hay, arranged to be read over two full annual cycles of Torah readings, draws at times imaginative connections between the halakhic topic chosen and the Torah lection.

Without further ado, then, we now turn to this week’s portion: Bereshit: the portion of beginnings.

In the Beginning... There was God

Bereshit always seems the richest and fullest of all weekly parshiyot—philosophically, anthropologically, even “mythologically,” it presents a veritable embarrass des richesses. Maimonides’ thought is certainly rich in this area. Tel-Aviv University scholar Sarah Klein-Braslavy has written two full-length studies on Maimonides’ approach to this section alone: one on his interpretation of the Creation, the other on his interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve (both in Guide III, around Chs. 29-30). But it seems to me that Bereshit is linked to beginnings in another sense as well: the Mishneh Torah begins with a summary of the first principles of religion: the existence of a God, who is called the First Cause, and what follows from that. Hilkot Yesodei ha-Torah (Laws of the Fundaments of Torah) 1.1:

The basic fundament and the pillar of all wisdom is to know that there is a first cause, that brings into being all that is. And all that exists, in heaven and earth and all that is between them, only exist because of the truth of His being.

This opening makes an interesting contrast to other classical Jewish books. The Talmud, for example, begins with the question “From whence does one recite Shema in the evening?”—that is, it jumps right into the laws governing the performance of one of the practical mitzvoth—in this case, one pregnant with theological meaning (interestingly, Rambam opens the second book of the Yad with that mitzvah). The two other great codes, the Arba’ah Turim and the Shulhan Arukh, begin, even more prosaically, with the beginning of every person’s daily routine—walking up in the morning: “He should rise, strong as a lion, to do the will of his Creator.” (Interestingly, the nearly-modern Rav Yehiel Mikhal Epstein begins his Arukh ha-Shulhan with a discussion of basic principles of the faith, in part quoting from this chapter in Rambam.) Midrash Rabbah opens with the pre-created Torah, which was God’s “plaything” even before Creation, and which also served as a kind of blueprint for creation. Only the Zohar also begins with Creation—but with the plastic imagery of God “hewing” the Creation from the primordial point.

Maimonides, in contrast with all these, starts with the most basic statement: that all being began with the Creator. Hence, to understand the universe, and man’s place within it, we first need to establish several truths about the Creator. This chapter continues with a discussion of what is meant by God’s unity, His incorporeal nature, and an extremely abbreviated discussion of the Bible’s use of anthropomorphic language and imagery, which seems to contradict this (all of these issues are discussed at great length, and with numerous illustrative examples, in Book I of the Guide). We shall return to the actual contents of these ideas at a later date.

It is important to understand, in terms of where these things fit into Rambam’s schema, that for him it is impossible to worship God, perform mitzvot, or talk about God, if one has improper conceptions of Him. The rejection of paganism was absolutely central to his understanding of Judaism; but for him, Avodah zarah, “paganism,” also includes worship of improper conceptions of God, in which one worships constructions of the imagination rather than the true, living God. For this reason he is such a stickler for theological correctness, devoting the opening page of his magnum opus to clear definitions of who and what God is.

Only after having done this, in describing what he defines as the first two mitzvot—knowing that there is a God, and that He is One— can he now turn to what are in human psychological terms perhaps the most basic mitzvot of all: the love and fear of God. (Hasidism, by contrast, sees the love and fear of God, dehilo u-rehimo, as the starting point, without feeling it necessary to work through the two theological mitzvot.) After briefly stating these as mitzvot, and invoking suitable biblical verse, he proceeds to ask the question, in 2.2, of how one achieves that state:

And what is the path to His love and fear? When a person contemplates his wondrous and great acts and creations and sees from them His wisdom, which is without limit or end, immediately he loves and praises and extols and greatly desires to know the Great Name. As David said, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” [Ps 42:3]. But even as he thinks these very things themselves, he straightaway recoils backwards and is afraid, knowing that he is a small, lowly, shadowy creature, who stands with paltry and inadequate knowledge before He of Perfect Knowledge. As David said, “When I see Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, [the moon and the stars which You created], what is man that you should remember him?” [Ps 8:4-5]. And in light of these things I shall explain great general rules regarding the works of the Master of the Universe, so that there might be an opening to He who understands or love God. As our Sages said regarding the matter of love, that through this you know He who spoke and the world came into being.

Two central points here. Maimonides assumes a close relation between the mind and the emotions: that something which leaves a powerful impression upon the mind will in turn inspire the heart, the perception of the grandeur of creation in turn evoking feelings of love and awe of God. A Jerusalem rabbi-psychologist who make extensive use of graphology once commented about a specimen of Rambam’s handwriting, that it revealed “a man of powerful passion, ruled by an even more powerful will.” It was thus natural fir him to see the emotions going through the cognitive faculty, and knowledge of a certain kind producing love.

Second, there is an interesting interplay here between love and fear. The same wonders of nature that inspire love and the ardent desire to know God, the next moment awakens a sense of fear; comparison of the mortal human self with the Infinite (“He of Perfect Knowledge,” tamim de’im, is an epithet largely peculiar to Rambam; I do not know its history) inspires a sense of fright, of “recoiling backwards.” Maimonides is anything but sentimental. Religion is not only sweetness and light, comfort and tranquility and “feeling good about yourself.” There is something frightening, overwhelming, even terrifying in the encounter with the mysterium tremendum that is God, what Otto called the “Wholly Other.” Again, it is impossible to imagine Rambam talking to the “ribonosh’lolam” with the casual intimacy of a R. Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev.

This passage is followed by two and a half chapters devoted to a detailed discussion of cosmology, the arrangement of the universe, the celestial bodies with their orbits and spheres, etc.—material intended, in practical terms, to guide the reader in his contemplation of God’s greatness as reflected in the Creation. All of this, rooted in the medieval, pre-Copernican, four-tiered universe, with angels and other intelligent, sublime celestial beings.

I cannot elaborate upon this further. Those who are able to do so should read Yesodei ha-Torah 4.13; Talmud Torah 1.12; and Teshuvah 10.6—texts to which we shall return later.

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I will conclude with a brief comment linking all this to our liturgy. In the daily prayers, both morning and evening, we recite two blessing before reading the Shema: at the Morning Prayer, Yotzer Or and Ahavah Rabbah (“He who creates light” and “Great love”), and in the evening, Ma’ariv Aravim and Ahavat Olam (“He who brings on the evening” and “Eternal Love”). In each case, the former blessing refers to Creation, as felt in concrete terms through the natural diurnal cycle, while the latter refers to the Torah.

What I find of great interest is the emphasis in the first blessing of each pair on wisdom. Nature reflects the Divine wisdom, and teaches our minds about the Creation. In Ma’ariv, we have the key phrases behokhma … u-tevunah (“with wisdom… with understanding”). The poem of the Merkavah mystics which we recite on Shabbat morning, El Adon, states: yetzaram beda’at be-vinah uve-haskel (“You have formed them with knowledge, with understanding, and with intelligence.”). Or, in the same blessing, both weekdays and Shabbat (in Nusah Sefarad) we quote the verse, “How great are Your works, all of them you have made with wisdom” [Ps 104:24], which may serve as almost a leitmotif for this blessing.

By contrast, the second blessing, about Torah, stresses Divine love: it is filled with words like ahavah, rahamim, hemlah gedolah ve-yeteirah (“love, mercy, great and excessive compassion”), etc. That is, even though the Torah is elsewhere considered as an embodiment of the Divine attribute of wisdom, here the giving of the Torah to Israel is primarily perceived as an expression of Divine love. A point worthy of reflection.