Maimonidean

The Mishne Torah overall reflects Rambam’s relatively objective interpretation of Talmudic law. Where he records his own opinion, he makes it clear; and even the nuances of his application of the accepted rules of interpretation (interwoven with explicit and implicit Geonic guidance) can be discerned in comparison to the original sugiyoth themselves (often hinging on a particular keyword). So MT’s sometimes negative description of women as a class and their roles within the Talmudic society overall reflects the perceptions and prejudices of the classical era, and not necessarily those of Rambam himself. (And certainly, we should learn and practice accordingly – we’re under no obligation to adopt the same perceptions and prejudices.)

But what about the actual women of Rambam’s life? What about his mother, his sister, his first wife, or his second? How did he feel about them, their intellectual abilities, their relationship with Torah? What lessons did he learn from them, if any? How did they figure into his world of Torah?

The mind rebels against the thought of a man as intelligent and wise as Rambam retreating into a dim misogyny that admits of no female philosophers.

But when it comes to these primary figures in his life, we have less than silence, we mostly don’t even have names.

I’m raced as White by American cultural standards. My rabbi is raced as Black.

In reality, that pesky intruder into social fantasies, neither of us is either White or Black.

Not just because both of us are Jewish by birth and American cultural standards have nothing to do with our traditional culture.

But because race is a pure abstraction without a real physical correlate, a social construct created explicitly for the purpose of exploiting (African) human beings and violating their human rights for monetary gain – a mental virus that systemically infects entire countries to this day and (violently) disrupts the lives of (hundreds of) millions of people.

Due to the toxic influences of this long Exile, many Jewish people have become vulnerable to infection by this mental virus. We must all guard ourselves against it, and return to the world and words of our sages – the physicians of souls – for regular inoculation (first ensuring of course that the physicians to whom we turn are not themselves infected).

But during such a pandemic we must always remain vigilant, especially with our language, the main vector of this disease.

חוֹלֵי הַגּוּף טוֹעֲמִים הַמַּר מָתוֹק וּמָתוֹק מַר. וְיֵשׁ מִן הַחוֹלִים מִי שֶׁמִּתְאַוְּה וְתָאֵב לְמַאֲכָלוֹת שֶׁאֵינָן רְאוּיִין לַאֲכִילָה כְּגוֹן הֶעָפָר וְהַפֶּחָם וְשׂוֹנֵא הַמַּאֲכָלוֹת הַטּוֹבִים כְּגוֹן הַפַּת וְהַבָּשָׂר הַכּל לְפִי רֹב הַחלִי. כָּךְ בְּנֵי אָדָם שֶׁנַּפְשׁוֹתֵיהֶם חוֹלוֹת מִתְאַוִּים וְאוֹהֲבִים הַדֵּעוֹת הָרָעוֹת וְשׂוֹנְאִים הַדֶּרֶךְ הַטּוֹבָה וּמִתְעַצְּלִים לָלֶכֶת בָּהּ וְהִיא כְּבֵדָה עֲלֵיהֶם לִמְאֹד לְפִי חָלְיָם. וְכֵן יְשַׁעְיָהוּ אוֹמֵר בַּאֲנָשִׁים הַלָּלוּ (ישעיה ה כ) “הוֹי הָאֹמְרִים לָרַע טוֹב וְלַטּוֹב רָע שָׂמִים חשֶׁךְ לְאוֹר וְאוֹר לְחשֶׁךְ שָׂמִים מַר לְמָתוֹק וּמָתוֹק לְמָר”. וַעֲלֵיהֶם נֶאֱמַר (משלי ב יג) “הַעֹזְבִים אָרְחוֹת ישֶׁר לָלֶכֶת בְּדַרְכֵי חשֶׁךְ”. וּמַה הִיא תַּקָּנַת חוֹלֵי הַנְּפָשׁוֹת. יֵלְכוּ אֵצֶל הַחֲכָמִים שֶׁהֵן רוֹפְאֵי הַנְּפָשׁוֹת וִירַפְּאוּ חָלְיָם בַּדֵּעוֹת שֶׁמְּלַמְּדִין אוֹתָם עַד שֶׁיַּחֲזִירוּם לַדֶּרֶךְ הַטּוֹבָה. וְהַמַּכִּירִים בַּדֵּעוֹת הָרָעוֹת שֶׁלָּהֶם וְאֵינָם הוֹלְכִים אֵצֶל הַחֲכָמִים לְרַפֵּא אוֹתָם עֲלֵיהֶם אָמַר שְׁלֹמֹה (משלי א ז) “חָכְמָה וּמוּסָר אֱוִילִים בָּזוּ”:

Unconventional advice: For beginners looking to learn Mishne Torah in order to understand how to practically observe the law, reading the book straight through from the beginning can be a mistake, especially for the modern reader.

As fundamental as philosophy is to the Maimonidean system – and I don’t mean to undermine that centrality in any way, it really is important to understand certain basic ideas about the Creator and the creation – a reader looking for practical guidance can easily get distracted and confused by the Aristotelian cosmology and theological details (much of which I think is better learned from a teacher, in a seminar setting, and/or with an experienced study partner).

Instead, I suggest reading the Introduction, to get an overview of the Maimonidean-Talmudic halakhic system, and then contemplating the following points before moving on to actually start studying the second book:

– The Creator exists in a way that is essential, and completely different from all created things, certainly with no physicality or dependency on anything created; but nevertheless establishes communication with created beings via prophecy, at which Moshe rabbenu surpassed all others

– It is possible for a created being to self-regulate and seek self-perfection, and this is the path of wisdom

– Continually learning, teaching, and studying Torah, which is wisdom and law communicated by the Creator to the creation via Moshe rabbenu, is a fundamental obligation of the nation of Israel

– Worshipping or deifying any created entity – any entity other than the Creator – is tantamount to rejecting all of the above

– The choices of created beings have consequences and yet it is always possible for a created being to reconsider their choices, and furthermore to learn to serve the Creator not just in order to avoid negative consequences, but out of love for the Creator itself, Law-maker of the kosmos

…and now you’re ready for the Book of Love, starting with when and how to recite the Shema’ properly.

I thankfully was able to obtain a copy of R Moshe Shamah’s “Recalling the Covenant,” which includes his commentary on the biblical censuses as well as an appendix on biblical number symbolism and the usage of numbers in the Hebrew Bible, apparently based on the theories of the polymath R S D Sassoon (whose only book I have is his work on theoretical physics).

And all I can say is that I’m more perplexed than ever regarding the tallies of individuals in the Torah.

Are they intended literally, and just happen to be both improbably large and skewed while exhibiting many signs of fabrication?

Are they intended non-literally, and the historical truth was considered unimportant to record in comparison with encoding symbolic ideas that only a select few of careful readers would be able to (even know to) decode?

What does the answer say about the meaning, purpose, and accessibility of the Torah? What does it say about the meaning of Torah as a divine message? What does it say about the meaning of our collective memory of our history?

What does the Creator mean with any of this?

I don’t know.

The search for truth is messy.

Sometimes you just gotta live with the perplexity and trust the God of truth to some day enlighten you.

How did the physical constants of the universe become fine-tuned to support stable and ordered complexity in the universe?

How did the first DNA replicators form and allow the diversity of life as we know it to evolve?

How did the first members of the human species develop the linguistic units and structures necessary to create language/culture and sufficiently organize to dominate the world?

How did one human subgroup collectively survive with its cultural memory intact despite thousands of years of war, colonization, and geographic dispersion?

You could answer “blind chance” for all of the above, although that’s a hard sell on each question, for different reasons.

Or you could answer “intelligent cause,” which for some may also be a hard sell, but for entirely different reasons.

R. Yitshaq alFasi disputed the Geonim and began the task of summarizing the practical law of the Talmud, making it accessible outside of the Geonic academies. Instead of establishing a dynasty like the Geonim did before him, he appointed his disciple Yoseph ibn Megas to lead the academy after him.

R. Yoseph ibn Megas ruled that after the sealing of the Talmud, all legal authorities were equal and the Geonim of his day held no authority solely by virtue of their office. In the academy of Lucena he taught the way of the Talmud to his disciples from Cordoba Maimun the judge and Maimun’s young son, Moshe.

R. Moshe b. Maimun disputed the Geonim and upheld his master’s ruling that after the Talmud, all authorities are equal. He continued his grand-master’s project of summarizing the practical law of the Talmud for public consumption, opting for the more accessible encyclopedia model becoming popular in his era and the common lingua hebraica of the Jewish people.

Rambam’s work shook the rabbinic world and changed the path of rabbinic Judaism, but he was just following in his teachers’ footsteps.

1) At Sinai, the people of Israel voluntarily contracted a bilateral covenant with the Creator, mediated by Moses, in which they agreed to follow the precepts instructed to them via Moses.

2) The aforementioned covenant includes a provision for dealing with questions that arise regarding the formulation or practical implementation of its precepts, especially in regards to their more ambiguous aspects that have yet to be officially regulated: consult the highest court and follow their decisions.

3) From the time of Moses until the closing of the Talmud, there was always a high court charged with determining the national calendar and with defining, formulating, and regulating the precepts of the national covenant, although the guises the high court took often changed with the epochs: an assembly of seventy elders, a council of prophets, a great congress, a Sanhedrin, a national academy’s court.

4) A record of the decisions of the high courts is found in the content of the classical rabbinic corpus – the Tosephta, the Siphra and the Siphré, and the two Talmudim – and ends with the last high court to historically serve the entire people of Israel, that of Rabina and R Ashé.

5) After the last high court of Israel disbanded, there is no entity with institutional authority to determine the national calendar; to define, formulate, or regulate the precepts of the national covenant; or to make any laws that are binding on the entire nation.

6) Nevertheless, many other institutions and individuals have, over the centuries, claimed the prerogatives of the highest court, making alternate claims to legal and social authority and even promulgating rulings, laws, and customs at odds with the recorded decisions of that court.

7) Trained in the jurisprudential tradition of the Talmudic academies and comprehensively educated in the classical rabbinic corpus, Rambam undertook the task of constructing an encyclopedic textbook of the actual laws of Israel, the Mishneh Torah (“restatement of the law”), composed in the familiar Hebrew language common to all communities of Israel, that would provide everyone without access to the classical rabbinic corpus with an understanding of what the national covenant requires of them, personally and collectively.

8) Although widely accepted throughout the Middle East and North Africa as part of the new standard in Jewish education and jurisprudence, the Mishneh Torah was also heavily criticized by detractors who objected to both Rambam’s style (in that he presented settled law while only obliquely referencing his sources) and his decisions (challenging his fidelity to the Talmudic record); however, there simultaneously emerged a scholarly defense of Rambam’s work throughout the ages that culminated in R Yoseph Qafeh’s exhaustive commentary to the Mishneh Torah, in which he provided all of Rambam’s sources and successfully rebutted all challenges to Rambam’s decisions vis a vis the Talmudic record.

9) The Mishneh Torah was the work of one brilliant, highly educated, but ultimately human scholar capable of error, and was accordingly subject to constant revision throughout the author’s lifetime (and inescapably contains idiosyncrasies and ambiguities of language and meaning); furthermore, the ever-growing socio-economic gap between the historical world of the cases Rambam discusses and our own modern world, additionally complicates any reading with the aim of practicing what is read.

10) Nevertheless, the final edition of the Mishneh Torah – when read together with the Hebrew Bible – remains the best guide to the laws of the covenant of Israel as understood and decided by the highest courts of Israel throughout history; and the intervening years since its publication have produced an abundance of commentaries, ancillary literature, and actual practice to provide necessary context and elucidation in interpreting Rambam’s decisions.