Halakha, theology, practice, and the inner life of Jewish observance.
“Morir habemos” – we all have to die
“Ya lo sabemos” – I know it
And with that the Sabbath departs and 9 Ab begins.
With the departure of our additional consciousness and with a step across the edge of madness.
A return to our worst memories from which we can only hope will be birthed the hope to truly return to ourselves.
With the knowledge that everything must come to an end – has come to end before – maybe we will be ready to make a new beginning.
I spoke with someone yesterday and the conversation has stayed with me.
He is a Rambamist, a learned student of a great scholar who passed on to his world, and someone who works tirelessly on behalf of the community, providing educational resources to audiences from underserved communities.
Yet when I mentioned that an individual with whom I am working on a joint Sepharadi publishing venture happens to be a Masorti rabbi, the gentleman took a moment to go on a tangent about how bad the Conservative movement is and how they’re no different from Reform.
I told him the topic didn’t interest me and we moved on.
But I’m still thinking about it.
Why are so many people caught up in divisive, tribalist, denominational thinking? Why are so many people caught up with purity tests and with separating Jewish people into good Jews and bad Jews? Why are so many of those convinced they’ve found truth, that makes their lives cohere, so convinced that those who disagree are not only wrong but defective? Why are so many people convinced that other Jewish people – their brothers and sisters – are not worth working with towards a common goal?
The lack of self-awareness is astounding. The lack of ahabath Yisrael is frustrating. The need for serious heshbon hanephesh is clear.
I’ve written before about the contributions I see each of the Ashkenazi denominations making to the Jewish national discourse; and it goes without saying that I appreciate the contributions of the various Sepharadi, Yemeni, and other communities to that discourse.
I will work with any Jewish person of good moral character and commitment to our Torah, regardless of whatever labels, boxes, or communities you want to stick them into. The notion of rejecting my fellow Jew out of baseless chauvinism is abhorrent.
We did not survive colonization, exile, multiple genocides, and now nearly a century of military attacks, to simply perpetuate the same profitless hatred that started the whole process in the first place.
And as Rambamists – Talmidé haRambam – Neomaimonideans – whatever we call ourselves- it should be front-most in our minds that what we need is to emulate Rambam z”l in building bridges of Torah and empathy for the lived experiences of our fellow Jews, and not in misguidedly continuing polemics against the heretics that are best left to the dustbin of history.
As we approach our day of national calamity and memorial, I pray that we learn from our mistakes instead of repeating them.
There can be only one national law
If every community splinters off into its own separate legal system, the nation is lost
So there’s gotta be a baseline, a law set down by whatever court last represented the whole nation
Beyond that baseline, communities can establish whatever customary practices and policies they want
But the settled law remains the baseline
That’s what we actually *have* to do
And any book that serves as a guide to that settled law would be pretty darn useful, like a textbook or a manual is useful
It would be the work of one person, but would reflect far more than one person’s opinion – or the practices of one community
….you vibin with all this? You’re on you’re way to becoming a neomaimonidean my friend
“If it could be proven, I would reinterpret the Torah to resolve any contradiction with it”
Bold words. Bold commitment.
Even if what we know is contingent and limited – it’s the best of what we’ve got.
Reinterpret the Torah.
I would argue that far more observant Jewish people are a small step away from Neomaimonidean thought and practice than they are aware.
If you’re sure that there’s an organic, rational, coherent, meaningful approach to Judaism somewhere out there that embraces life and questions while respecting text and law, but are drowning in a mess of reactionary superstition and groupthink – you ain’t alone.
Welcome to the party.
Being Jewish in an unredeemed world means living under essentially unfair conditions stacked against you, where you are the least understood yet the most well-known in the international room. Where a magnifying glass is held to your every deed solely because you insist on your difference, and where your own perspective is neither acknowledged nor relevant to onlookers whose own self-understanding is abysmal at best and who are subject to continuous mass indoctrination and conditioning programs throughout their daily lives. This is not a complaint: we have enough of those. It is a call to recognize the facts of life in the spiritual desert that is this world order, and to build a better world in spite of them.
מי לה’ אלי
O El
Lord of dreams
Show my soul your garden
Of cosmic vines heavy with starry fruit
And trees five hundred years wide
Ever presently fragrant blossoms unfolding into infinity
Angels hovering upon them
Photonic feathers rustling in the breeze
Filled with the voices of your saints
Grant my soul dwelling for this night
Amidst the ethereal throngs gathered
Beneath your seven canopies
A seat from which it may hear
The murmuring sea of secret light
Waves dancing between the souls
Of the heavenly house
Let my body slumber
While my heart is awake
And when the dawn comes
Let me remember the mystery
You have shown me
“For the world is not its place – but it is the place of the world”
The ground of all being necessarily exists, is one, and is incorporeal.
I worship the ground of all being by contemplating its uniqueness and perfection with the mind whose development it causes. In this worship, I join not just the awakened of my own species across our different countries and cultures, but all intelligent beings across all the planets and stars.
Everything else, I do to inspire, guide, deepen, and otherwise enhance that worship.
Gold from the Guide for Us Perplexed Folk
What is God? Do Rambam’s Neoaristotelian premises and arguments still hold water in light of the subsequent scientific revolutions?
Background: After dispensing with the theologians’ arguments for and about God at the end of part one, Rambam begins part two with 25/6 premises of the philosophers that support the traditional ideas about God without violating reason.
🧭 Overview
Rambam’s goal — to demonstrate that God exists, is One, and is incorporeal — remains philosophically viable. His reasoning, though couched in Aristotelian physics and metaphysics, can be reformulated with modern concepts while preserving the structure and force of his arguments.
Here’s a breakdown:
✅ What Still Holds Up
1. Metaphysical Contingency
Propositions XIX–XXIV (about necessary vs possible existence, dependence on causes, and matter as the substrate of possibility) are still sound in modern metaphysical terms.
Rambam’s conclusion that a non-contingent, necessary being must exist still holds.
2. Simplicity and Unity
Propositions XXI–XXII, arguing that a being composed of parts cannot be self-sufficient, remain persuasive.
Modern physics supports that unity and simplicity increase explanatory power (e.g. unification of forces).
3. Incorporeality of the First Cause
If the necessary being is not composed, not contingent, and not subject to time or space, then it must be immaterial.
Rambam’s arguments for God’s incorporeality are reinforced by the insight that all physical things are causally and ontologically dependent.
⚠️ What Requires Reformulation
1. Aristotelian Motion and the Celestial Spheres
Propositions I–IV, XIII–XIV, and XXV–XXVI depend on:
Circular celestial motion
The fifth element (aether)
No inertia without constant movers
These are outdated. But their purpose—to establish that motion must ultimately come from an unmoved, immaterial source—can still be re-expressed in terms of:
The fine-tuning and initial conditions of the universe,
The non-self-explanatory nature of dynamic systems and laws,
The non-sufficiency of brute physical facts.
2. Actuality and Potentiality
Propositions V, VI, XVIII assume an Aristotelian metaphysics of change (potential → actual) that’s not how modern physics models causation.
However, modal language (possible vs necessary, dependent vs independent) remains meaningful, especially in cosmology and metaphysics of explanation.
❌ What Can Be Rejected
1. Prohibition of Actual Infinities (Propositions I–III)
Modern mathematics and cosmology do allow actual infinities (in space, time, or cardinality).
Still, causal infinite regress remains a philosophically weak explanatory model. The infinite regress can be mathematically consistent, but epistemologically and ontologically empty.
So these propositions can be replaced with:
> “A chain of contingent causes cannot explain itself; there must be a non-contingent source of being.”
🧠 Reformulated Core Argument (Rambam 2.0)
Let’s rebuild Rambam’s argument in modern terms, drawing on his metaphysical structure:
1. Contingent beings exist.
(They begin, change, and depend on conditions.)
2. The existence of contingent beings requires a cause.
(Contingency is not self-explanatory.)
3. There cannot be an infinite regress of contingent causes.
(An infinite chain of dependencies never grounds itself.)
4. Therefore, there must be a necessary being—one that exists by its own essence.
5. This being must be:
Immaterial (not dependent on matter or form),
Simple (not composed of parts or aspects),
Unchanging (not dependent on time or undergoing transitions),
Unique (no plurality among necessary beings),
The cause of all else (without itself being caused).
6. This being is what we mean by God.
✨ Final Verdict
Rambam’s propositions, though grounded in medieval science, retain their logical structure. When we swap Aristotelian physics for modern cosmology and metaphysics, we find:
His proofs remain conceptually valid, though the terms must be updated.
His goal is met: to rationally demonstrate that existence implies a necessary, non-corporeal, unified cause of all being.
> His brilliance lies not in the physics he inherited but in the logical architecture he built on top of it — an architecture that still stands, if we renovate its foundations.
It takes courage to believe in the quiet goodness surrounding us in a world of loud wickedness threatening us.
It’s a narrow, fragile bridge to walk with your heart in hand.
Have strength and courage.