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Professor Stephen Katz
on Maimonides
We gained a deeper understanding of Maimonides-both his life
and his work-when Steven Katz, Professor of Jewish Studies at Boston University,
visited in December.
Maimonides (1138-1204), also known by the acronym Rambam (for Rabbi Moses ben
Maimon) was born in Cordoba, Spain. His father was a dayan, or
judge, and Maimonides was raised in a learned environment at the height of
Spanish culture. This environment was cut short, however, when an
intolerant group of Muslims (the Almohades) overcame a tolerant group and his
family had to convert or flee. They traveled to Morocco, and finally
settled in Fez, where, as a teenager, he was introduced to Islamic philosophers
and traditions. For a time he also wandered across North Africa and made a
trip to Israel, which influenced him deeply. For him, as for all medieval
Jews, Israel was more a magical than a real place. At this time, Jerusalem
was under control of the Christians, which made travel there treacherous.
After Israel, he went to Egypt and settled there some time in the 1160s when he
was between 23 and 26 years of age. Here he went into business with his
brother, David, trading in precious jewels, silks and spices from the far east.
Jews were prominent in this trade, traveling from North Africa to India, China
and Afghanistan. His brother was quite successful and knew this business.
Unfortunately, David died in a ship wreck in the Indian Ocean.
Maimonides following his brother’s death, became nearly dysfunctional for a
year, then recovered his emotional equilibrium and took up the practice of
medicine in his 30s. At that time, this meant reading the medieval
physicians, doing an apprenticeship, hanging up a shingle and hoping for repeat
business. He was a success and before long established himself both as a
presence in the Jewish community and as a physician of renown. He married
into a prominent family, which meant political and financial help. He and
his wife had one child. Soon he became head of the local Jewish community,
following his public criticism of how charity funds were dispersed. He
also became the physician to the vizier, who was second only to Saladin the
Great. We examined a reading which showed how he worked incredibly long
days-full time for the vizier then saw his own patients while almost always
involved in his writings. He wrote his philosophical and medical work in
Arabic, his halachic works in Hebrew. He began to write at 23 and in his
20s wrote a book on logic, another treatise on the calendar (an important aspect
of Jewish life), his famous rabbinic commentary on the Mishnah and more.
Philosophy and Law
Maimonides introduced a philosophical conversation into the principles of the
law (halachah). For example, in his 13 principles of faith, he raises
philosophical issues in a way that differed from the usual format of rabbinic
commentary, which traditionally laid out a law and commented on it. For
Maimonides, the law (halachah) needed to be interpreted in a philosophical
sense. Otherwise he felt it would become a dry legal document, missing
what matters.
His Guide for the Perplexed was written as a response to his friend and
disciple Joseph, was intended only for intelligent readers attempting to
reconcile apparent contradictions between Jewish (biblical) and Greek
(philosophical) thought. He notes that there were three groups of people
who are the audience of the oral Torah tradition. Of the people who read
the rabbis and the aggadah (Talmudic stories), some are literalists even though
the things they believe are scientifically impossible. The second group
takes the readings literally, but says the sages were fools with little
knowledge of medicine or other science. The third group involves fewer,
but wiser, people, who say that the sages were wise and that the stories don't
make sense at first because we don't know how to read them. We have to
puzzle out the esoteric as well as the exoteric meaning. In addition to
positioning the rabbinic non-legal sources as riddles, he also positions them as
metaphorical and argues that they contain metaphysical, not empirical, truth.
Uncovering Secrets
Organizing the Law (Halachah)
For Rambam, the biblical writings were books of secrets. Examining the Song
of Songs, which many considered a love poem by a lovesick woman for her
beloved, he said that in addition to its beauty as a poem, it was about God's
love for Israel. The God of Israel loves us in a mystical way. (This
is also consistent with, if different from, Rashi's interpretation that views
the The Song of Songs as the secret history of Israel.) Here it
should be noted that when the Rabbis at Yavneh discussed the canonization of the
Torah, the majority of sages didn't want to put the Song of Songs in, as
it was too physical and sensual. R. Akiva, however, said that while the
whole Torah was holy, the Song of Songs was the most holy. It
became, in fact, the favorite of mystical authors for 2000 years.
Leading up to his great work, the Mishneh Torah, he wrote Sefer
haMitzvot, an outline of all 613 commandments. He included in his list
intellectual commandments. In Sefer haMitzvot he was also making an
inventory that would later serve him well in the writing of his great halachic
work, the Mishneh Torah.
Medical Writings
In his medical writings, Maimonides was very careful about the matters under
consideration. In the 12th century you didn't do dissections, you read the
prior Greek and Arabic physicians. He also wrote, however, on kosher
slaughtering and some of the insights he had into the nature of animals suggests
he did anatomical studies because his knowledge was so precise. He wrote
10 medical tracts in all, all in Arabic. The first was a summary of the
work of the famous Greek medical authority named Galen in which he criticized
both Galen and Hippocrates. His third work was a book of medical
aphorisms, taken from Arabic science. Translated into Hebrew, then Latin,
it became a standard in medical school. He also became famous for his next
work, a discussion of diabetes. The next work was about hemorrhoids.
He warns against surgery and bleeding and denied that bloodletting had any value
at all. At the request of the vizier, he wrote a book on sex. In his
discourse on asthma, he suggested going to the desert and he discusses pollution
and dirty air. His most famous work was his 9th-on poisonous snakes, bee
stings and other animal bites. It was widely used in medieval medical
schools. He also wrote a treatise on health regimens for the young vizier,
who was overdoing it sexually. Maimonides, in effect, told him that many of his
ailments were psychosomatic. Finally, he also wrote a pharmacopia,
detailing over 400 prescriptions.
Mishneh Torah
In the Mishneh Torah, his very great halachic work of the whole of Jewish
law, Maimonides argued that all statements had to conform with reason and
correspond to truth. Even the Torah has to conform to reason. This
was a remarkable and radical thought. The Torah, having been given by God, was,
he argued, reasonable and we had to discover the reasons for its legislation.
Maimonides' Mishneh Torah was an extraordinary work. It took ten
years to write. While many people study his Guide to the Perplexed,
the Mishneh Torah is the summary of his genius. Written about 1168
to 1178 when he was about 40, it is, Katz said, the most important book of
Jewish law after the Mishnah and Talmud, in our history. It is comprised
of 14 books, written in the Hebrew of the Mishnah.
The novelty of the Mishneh Torah is seen throughout its pages.
Almost everywhere you open it up, there is novelty, Katz noted. Indeed, it
is so all inclusive and wide-ranging that many people thought he was trying to
replace the classical rabbinic Mishnah as the source of Jewish
law, but that wasn't the case.
The first two volumes of the work are about philosophical principles for reading
the law (Bible and rabbinic sources). That marked the book as a work of
philosophy. For Maimonides, you could not really understand Jewish law if
you were not a philosopher. Interestingly, the book is written in the form
of a code, not a commentary. It tells his opinion. It has
extraordinary scope. Later, Joseph Caro, in the Shulchan Aruch (16th
Century, Israel) would leave out discussion of laws Caro deemed no longer
relevant. Maimonides, however, didn't leave anything out. He
discusses sacrifices and laws of purity and says that if you want to know what
Judaism means in its fullest sense, you have to consider everything found in the
Bible and the rabbinic texts. He does all this and, at the same time, puts
together the philosophical and the halachic.
In a reading we examined, he gives "reasons" for the commandments.
He believed that every commandment had a reason and it was our obligation to
search it out. In an examination of the law of sacrifice, for example, he
said the insight in the law was that we are all cheap and have a natural desire
to be devious. This was not a legal insight, but a deep philosophical and
psychological observation about human nature. Again, in a passage about
the laws regarding the ownership of slaves, he notes that the law says you can
have a slave, but the person who actually is a slave owner is violating the
deeper ethical meaning of the law.
Ethical Essence of Law
For Maimonides, the real obligation of a Jew was not only to keep the law in its
outward performance, but to keep the ethical essence of the law. In
delving deep, he psychologizes and emphasizes various aspects of halachah.
Some people were unhappy with this approach and burned his books. In the
end, however, he won out. The Mishneh Torah is the classic
commentary on Jewish law.
His philosophical material was central to his reputation. It was found in
texts such as Ma'aseh B'resheit and those dealing with Merkavah,
i.e. texts that deal with the mysteries of the book of Genesis and Ezekiel,
and that are traditionally considered mystical texts. Maimonides
interpreted as being related to physics (Genesis and Ma’aseh
B’resheit) and metaphysics (Merkavah). The authors knew about
philosophy, he argued. It is important to understand this to properly
situate Maimonides who strongly believed that philosophy was inherent in Jewish
tradition from its beginning and not a foreign (Greek) interpretation.
So he calls Abraham and Moses philosophers in the sense that they knew
the right way to read the basic religious texts.
Philosophy is the Key to a Jew’s Understanding of Jewish Tradition
Why is philosophy so important to him? Jews, in his view, had lost the
ability to understand their own tradition because they didn't know how to read
the biblical text. When they studied their texts and then the science of
the day, they'd find themselves confronted with serious intellectual
contradictions. Or, if they read the texts too literally, they could find
themselves with false beliefs. Maimonides felt a corrective was
needed to these sorts of mistaken hermeneutical approaches.
As to his own method: Maimonides did not think that philosophy proceeds by
equations or syllogisms. While there are some elements that can be
produced by demonstration, most of philosophy, particularly the metaphysical
issues under discussion, does not provide these types of knock down arguments. Moreover,
the problems are compounded for Jews, because they are, while doing philosophy,
also trying to protect Jewish tradition. So they do philosophy in unusual
ways.
While many people said that the Rambam was a strict Aristotelian that is an
error. He did say that everything that Aristotle said about all that
exists from beneath the sphere of the moon to the center of the earth is
undoubtedly correct-but that everything that Aristotle expounds with regard to
the sphere of the moon and that which is above it, except for certain things, is
something analogous to guessing and conjecture. Contrary to the belief of many,
Maimonides held that Aristotle does not have knockdown arguments for these
transcendent dimensions and we therefore do not have to accept his work
regarding these domains as "truth" in the same way that we do in, for
example, physics.
Not for Everyone
Maimonides was an elitist. He noted that people who were not serious
learners did not need to worry about what he had to say. His audience was
the person who was multi-talented and knew Torah, philosophy and science and
asked how they could all be true. Even today, people may decide, for
example, to give up Torah if it looks as if it can't be true. Others turn
their back on science in order to retrain their faith. Maimonides took the more
complex road of trying to reconcile faith and reason, science and religion.
Torah on Many Levels
The Rambam worked from the key principle that the Torah has many levels.
The simple reader stays on the surface while the real philosopher delves deeper.
In order to convey his meaning to true philosophers and to keep it out of the
hands of the ignorant, he writes the Guide in hints and contradictions so
as to fool the simpleminded, as well as to point the ways to untangle the
meaning if readers were smart enough to understand his hints. In some ways
this approach honored the tradition set out in the Talmud (Hagiga) for dealing
with mystical secrets so profound that they should only be taught to masters of
the law, who were over 40, with the requisite spirituality. Maimonides,
knowing this tradition, did not want in writing the Guide
to violate the rabbinic principle that these ideas should not be taught
in public. So you have to go through the book very carefully and figure
out which parts go with what other parts. Often, this is done by bringing
together the mention of particular biblical citations. For example, if he
mentions a specific text in Genesis in different places, the reader is
meant to bring those segments together to get at the full meaning of what
Maimonides wants to tell him. Thus, using this method, the truth is
simultaneously revealed and concealed.
In the Introduction to the Guide, we get a sense of his purpose. He
writes that, just as the candle, which may not be worth much, lets us see the
pearl, there may be deeper value in stories and parables. If you don't
know that a parable is a parable, it's worthless, but if you unlock it properly
it leads to the deeper meaning of the text. Most of us read the stories
and don't understand where the secrets are. To repeat the key point: He
sets up the possibility of a non-literal reading of scripture and proceeds on
the assumption that scripture cannot contradict what we know to be true.
Torah as Metaphor
For example, applying his non-literal method of interpretation, he considers Genesis,
and the question of whether or not God has a body. Many people, he tells
us, either think God has a body or they don't believe in God at all. But
he rejects this simple dichotomy. Instead, he looks at the specific biblical
terminology used in Genesis, noting that the terminology we use for
ordinary form in our world is not the terminology used for God in the
Bible. This demonstrates that it is not this everyday understanding of
physical form that is being referred to in Genesis. Instead, the
Bible is using physical terminology metaphorically. If, for example, we
want to say that God is great, we talk about something that is great in our
world-i.e., the idea that God has an extraordinary palace. But, of course, God
does not have a physical palace or a physical throne or a physical body that
occupies this palace and sits on this throne.
His methodology is to compare all the uses of a word used in the Bible and to
show that it is possible to interpret them metaphorically. For example,
when we say that taking the lulav and etrog together brings unity to the world,
we understand it as a metaphor. And if ritual is metaphorical, then, for
example, eating matza or opening the door to Elijah at the Seder can be
understood as actions that are messianic and that help define redemption.
Katz noted that this is where the Catholic Church got in trouble on the idea of
transubstantiation. Maimonides, on the other hand, acknowledged the
metaphor and the idea that you have to understand is that, in ritual actions,
you are not literally doing the thing represented.
Maimonides points out that people have a remarkable instrument in their minds--
their ability to conceive of things that aren't "real" in the
ordinary, empirical way. This ability to utilize metaphor was a special
human capacity.
Is the World Eternal?
One famous and crucial discussion in the Guide takes up the issue of the
eternity of the world. Both Plato and Aristotle argued for the
existence of a Being who put the world in motion. God in Plato is a Being who
molded reality (the Demiurgos) and in Aristotle God is understood is the Prime
Mover. The question is, did creation actually arise in time or is the
world eternal? In the Greek view, the world is eternal and the Demiurgos
or Prime Mover did not create everything from nothing but rather merely shaped
the always-existing primordial matter into our present world. Thus, Plato
thought that there was creation, but not from nothing while Aristotle denies
that the Prime Mover can make things happen as a result of his free decisions.
For Aristotle, the Prime Mover doesn't make choices in the sense of free
choices. The Prime Mover only acts out of necessity. For Aristotle,
it is impossible for God to change his mind as that would be an imperfection.
It would mean that either he made a mistake or didn't think the matter through
as He should have originally.
Alternatively, In the Jewish view, there was a time when only God existed and
the world did not exist thus there was a fundamental collision between Greek
philosophy and the Bible.
In the end, Maimonides rejects the Aristotelian theory that the world is
eternal.
Katz noted that he could have accepted the eternity of the world and interpreted
it in a non-literal way, i.e., he could have treated it in the same way that he
did the question of God's body. But, in the end, he chose not to do this
for at least two basic reasons.
The first is because in the case of the claim that God has a body, Maimonides
thinks there is actually a logical demonstration that God can't have a body. Since
the demonstration exists, he is forced to use the non-literal way to confirm
religion.
In the case of eternity, however, Aristotle and Plato were not able to
demonstrate their view. It was just a conjecture. Therefore, it
didn't have the same authority and Maimonides wasn't forced to reinterpret the
Torah.
Furthermore, the discussion of God having a body was also not crucial because no
essential principle of Judaism depends on God having a body. As regards
the question of the world being eternal, however, the religious stakes are
higher. And this because everything in Judaism depends on God creating the
world in time. On this belief rests the belief in a God who can perform
miracles. In turn, a God who can perform miracles has free will. And
this is important because only if God has free will can he make a covenant with
Abraham. Indeed, the Covenant, the Torah, even the rebirth of the
dead in messianic times depends on God having a will that is free to do
something that is not "natural". Thus Maimonides makes creation
such an important issue and in that differs so strongly with Plato and
Aristotle.
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