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Week 3: Response from
Rabbi Joe Rapport |
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Moses Maimonides (1135-1204)
 Moses Maimonides was, without doubt, one of the most extraordinary and complex figures in the long history of our people. He was, as our text reveals, a brilliant legal mind whose works remain today as our primary resource for understanding Jewish law and custom. But he was also a man of science, the greatest physician of his age. And he was a brilliant philosopher, in an age when philosophy was banned by the very law for which Maimonides stood as the greatest authority.
In many ways, Maimonides was the first truly Modern Jew, even though he lived several hundred years before the modern age. And yet, it was his struggle to try and balance the traditions of our people, the "truths" of science as he had learned them, and the logical demands of Western philosophy, which challenged the ideals of Judaism so directly as to be banned as a threat to the faith.
What a fascinating man he must have been. What a complex mind to balance such vastly divergent worlds within one soul. His wisdom resides with us in the volumes of literature which he left behind, but beneath those words, lies a message not always apparent on the surface of the text.
This week’s text centers on the tension between the belief in "fate" or predestination, and the value of Free Will as an essential lesson for the coming of High Holy Days. Here, Maimonides builds the case for free will despite the essentially "fate-oriented" culture of his age. Maimonides cites Genesis and Jeremiah as his proofs that despite the fatalistic worldview of Medieval life, which sought to understand the motivations of mortal beings in the movement of the stars and the preordained nature of our destinies, Judaism presents an image of humanity which is capable of both good and evil and responsible for the nature of each choice.
There have been many biographies of Maimonides. Many interpretations of his life and works. But perhaps the most fascinating consideration of his words and the values he intended to teach can be found in a book called "Persecution and the Art of Writing" by Leo Strauss.
Strauss was an American historian who chose to write about Maimonides during the McCarthy era, when Jews, immigrants, social activists and intellectuals in American society needed to carefully watch their words because of the sure and certain knowledge that Joseph McCarthy and his committee on "un-American Activities" was watching their words even more closely. Strauss saw in this stifling intellectual environment a parallel to Maimonides and the Medieval world.
Though there were many truths which Maimonides knew, there were precious few which he could afford to freely tell. As an example of this concern, Strauss reminds us that Maimonides famous philosophical masterpiece, "The Guide to the Perplexed", was issued not as a book, rather in the form of a private letter. And that despite this none-to-subtle attempt to work his way around the ban on philosophical writing, the Guide was burned as heresy by many of the orthodox authorities of his day.
And so, according to Strauss, we can fairly assume that there are words beneath the words which Maimonides chose to print, a secret layer of meaning to be found only by those adept enough and committed enough to find their true meaning beneath the text. Without delving into the depths of Strauss' fascinating analysis, there are a series of clues he develops for reading beneath the writing of Maimonides words. First among these, is a tendency by the great legalist to defend those principles which he truly supported by logical argument, and those he truly questioned by a simple proof-text from the Bible.
You will notice in our selection from Mishneh Torah that the argument for free will is supported solely by Biblical quotations. The Genesis text, however, is the most instructive.
From Genesis 3:22 we are taught: "Behold, the earthlings have become unique just as we are, Unique, that is knowing good and evil." To this Maimonides adds that humans are unique from the other creature on the earth in that they know good and evil "and do what they desire." The last five words are Maimonides own, they stand unsupported by the biblical text.
And the addition here is significant. There is an important distinction between knowing the difference between good and evil and choosing between them. We learned that lesson from the Holocaust, although Maimonides seems to have figured this out long before. Choosing takes courage, an act of will, this is more than knowledge alone. Maimonides knows this, his poor proofs are seldom accidental. Sometimes we might know a thing is "wrong" in the sense that it is forbidden and yet choose it anyway because we understand the reason for the law and yet choose to accept the consequence of breaking it.
Think for a moment of the fuller context of this quote from Genesis. Good and Evil does this remind you of a tree? Adam and Eve were charged with but one command, not to eat from the tree of knowledge, a symbol of the knowledge which Maimonides himself was forbidden to eat of. They chose to eat of the tree as an act of free will despite the fact that this would inevitably lead to their banishment from Eden. A foolish choice, unless you consider the alternative -- a life of innocence in Eden, eternal and eventless, without the sexual knowledge that would bring forth children, without the growing knowledge that would create history, without any of the challenges or experience which make our lives worth living.
Maimonides understood the law which forbid him from tasting the fruit of foreign wisdom, but he chose to study it anyway, and he wrote the "Guide for the Perplexed" as a response to the challenges of Western Philosophy which still stands as one of the most eloquent defenses of our faith ever penned. The Guide was released just a few years before his death. Perhaps our great teacher Maimonides knew that, having mastered so much of the wisdom of our faith, there would be few who would come after him who would be as capable of overcoming so difficult a challenge.
Whatever his reasons, Maimonides words reside with us today and the lessons beneath them teach us even more eloquently what we must do. Knowing the difference between good and evil is a beginning, but doing what is right is the end which we must reach. Sometimes that may mean following the law towards righteousness whatever the cost might be. And at other times it may mean opposing an unjust law, for righteousness sake just as well.
This is the message we must carry with us into these High Holy Days. Seek Justice, not mearly legal conformity. Know the difference between good and evil and have the courage then to make the choice.
The Temple -- Louisville, Kentucky
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