The line of Rambam and his family — reason, evidence, accommodation.
As a Maimonidean, as a #Zionist, as a Libertarian Socialist – communal self-determination has a high place in my hierarchy of values.
I think it’s all the more important here in #Israel, where the need to form new types of communities together, with new identities, new norms, new customs, new niggunim, is critical.
Come To The Dark Side, Luke
While I’m still recovering from the flu and am stuck on the couch with all this extra time to examine my life lol, I thought it would be somewhat instructive for most of you if I listed some of the perks that I see in moving beyond #Ashkenazi/#Sephardic Judaisms and choosing the #Maimonidean path in halakha.
The goal is to live a life that is:
✅ Halakhic (rooted in Gemara and Geonim)
✅ Rational (no superstition or magical thinking)
✅ Practical (meant to be accommodating)
✅ Meaningful (a coherent framework for perfecting ourselves and our society)
…as guided by Rambam’s and his family’s writings and responsa.
Without becoming a partisan of the:
❌ Orthodox
❌ Conservative
❌ Reform
❌ Or any other denomination
…while maintaining respect and love for the members of those communities ❤️
That’s the basic idea.
What follows are some of the small (and big!) ways my life as a halakhically-observant Jew might differ from what you’re used to, particularly if you come from an Orthodox background.
If you have any questions about any of them, feel free to ask (although fair warning, I generally don’t debate people).
If you also chose the Maimonidean path and can think of some perks that I missed (hello, flu-brain!) – list em in the comments.
The Perks of Being a Maimonidean
Meta Perks
– Only the national court can obligate all Jewish people
– Minhag is never binding unless you’re in a public setting with a group of people that exclusively follow it
– If there is any doubt about how to apply a rabbinic law – we go lenient
– Rabbinic decrees are limited to only what they originally decreed, not everything analogous
– There is no such thing as daas Torah – consulting a rabbi is the same as consulting any legal advisor
Shabbath
– Electricity on Shabbath is permitted
– Nolad is not an operative category on Shabbath at all
– Muqtse is only an issue if the object has no use but melakha
– Open and closing modern devices is normal use – you can open an umbrella on Shabbath
Yom Tob
– Only one day of yom tob for everyone celebrating in Israel
– Cooking on yom tob is straightforward
Pesah
– No fast for bekhor on ‘ereb Pesah (phew)
– Pesah cleaning is normal – simply removing leavened food, cleaning crumbs, and removing stains
– Qitniyoth are fine! Gebrokts is fine!
– Selling hamets is not required if you get rid of it, but is easy to do if you can’t
– The Haggada can be made shorter or longer depending on preference
Kashruth
– Six hours between meat and cheese is either approximate (simple read) or replaceable with mouth cleaning (taking Rambam’s approach to the sources)
– No waiting between cheese and meat
– Bishul akum requires actual bishul and actual akum, and only applies to fancy food
– Fish and meat together is fine
– Bittul be-shishim doesn’t escalate
– No separate dishes if vessels are non-absorbent
Nidda
– No extra waiting time beyond the Talmudic clean days
– Ketamim, bediqoth, and harhaqoth are all the Talmudic baseline, no extra stringencies
– Immersion requirements are more flexible (any moving body of rain/water) and less demanding (just remove whatever you don’t want that prevents the water from reaching your skin)
Marriage, Divorce, and Membership
– You don’t need a rabbi to get married
– The aguna crisis is solved via annulment
– Giyyur is simple and can be done by three Jewish adults in an hour, for the right person
Tephilla and Berakhoth
– Prayers are much shorter and more embodied
– Women have the same obligation in tephilla as men (no exemption or diminution of obligation due to being time-bound)
– But women are exempt from qeriath shema
– No tebilath Ezra required (but a shower would count anyway)
– Torah reading is fulfilled even from a defective scroll
Mourning
– Mourning minhagim are simple and non-obligatory, responsive to the mourner’s needs
– But also music during the Omer!
– Meat during the Nine Days!
Monetary
– Tips count as tsedaqa
What else can you add to the list???
—
Now don’t get it twisted: being a Maimonidean, following Rambam, doesn’t mean accepting everything he says uncritically.
It’s about learning from and relying on his and his family’s halakhic and philosophical works as real guides for developing a Torah life – and ultimately it’s about embracing a method and a path, not a set of claims.
Sometimes, after reviewing the sources Rambam based himself on, I come to the realization that I disagree with him.
That’s fine – Rambam himself said to go with whomever presents the more reasonable argument.
The point is not to profess loyalty to another man’s ideas but to serve Hashem with an ever-growing awareness of truth and Torah.
May we all merit such awareness.
May we all be inspired to do teshuba.
May Hashem keep us safe and guard us from all who would do us harm.
May there be peace like Above.
The Agunah Crisis
Women Chained to Dead Marriages
Is Easily Solved
We have so many options:
– a clause in the kethuba stipulating binding arbitrage (including divorce, if mandated) in the event of marital dispute (the “Lieberman Clause”)
– a prenuptial agreement stipulating payment of thousands of dollars a month in the event of separation without divorce (the RCA’s approach)
– a pre-written divorce document placed in escrow (the bride can choose a relative or friend she trusts) and given to the wife in the event she files for civil divorce
– a pre-written divorce document, written, signed, and given to the bride on camera, stipulating that it automatically takes effect in the event that she presents it to a court and requests her marriage be terminated
These are all great solutions, even though (of course) none of them are universally agreed upon or accepted – but the problem is that they all require planning for the possibility of terminating the marriage BEFORE getting married.
What about women who are chained to marriages and did not plan for this possibility with their partners?
I think the best solution is one that is based on the plain reading of the Gemara, as understood by Rambam, the Tosaphists, and other Rishonim:
– annulment of the marriage by a duly-constituted court exercising its Torah-given discretion
You can annul marriages in Judaism???
Yep. In several places in the Gemara, cases are described where rabbinic courts annulled marriages. The justification given is a simple principle:
“Everyone who marries, does so by dint of the court’s dispensation.”
Rambam (the greatest rabbi of the past 1500 years) cites this principle in his responsa, claiming it applies to all forms of marriage.
Why?
While the operational form, details, and regulations of every biblical precept are left to the human court to decide and formulate, the other precepts all correspond to an objective substrate – an act or an object – that can be identified as constitutive of the precept, even if the exact legal definition is left to the court.
For example, if I make a vow, I’ve performed an objective speech act articulating an intent to (not) do something. Whether it technically qualifies as a vow under halakha is secondary to the act itself.
To give another example, if I slaughter a sheep, I’ve performed an objective act that had the identifiable effect of killing an animal. Whether or not it technically qualifies as acceptable slaughter according to halakha, you can still point to what I’ve done and said that’s slaughter.
But marriage is something different.
There’s no underlying substrate to marriage – no act or object that it refers to.
It exists purely as signification – a communicated sign of status and relationship, not an ontologically real phenomenon.
Every society has to choose how it signifies marriage.
Jewish society is based around the Torah and its precepts. The Torah says “when a man takes a woman [as a wife]” – and what man? what woman? how? are, like all other details of the precepts, all left for the court to determine.
But unlike all other precepts, the court’s determination of what signifies marriage *is all marriage is*.
Without the court’s choice that they should signify marriage in Jewish society, the classic forms of halakhic marriage would just be unrelated acts of gift giving, note passing, or relations, not obviously connoting any sort of special status or relationship.
The court’s choice that they signify marriage is what makes marriage possible in a halakhic society.
Or in the Gemara’s words:
“Everyone who marries, does so by dint of the court’s dispensation.”
And if the court can decide that an act signifies marriage, it can decide that THIS act – this giving of a ring, this writing of a note, these relations – no longer signify marriage.
By withdrawing its recognition of THIS act as constituting the marriage, the court is able to annul the marriage.
(Without any negative repercussions for any children produced in the union, I might add.)
That is the power of the court in halakha.
Of course…
Not everyone agrees.
Some people read the Gemara’s “everyone who marries” as meaning only people who marry in the specific cases listed in the Gemara.
Some people believe that only national courts, or courts of the caliber of bygone days, can annul marriages.
Some people are afraid that if you allow courts to annul marriages, then they’ll start rubber-stamping every impulsive separation (or worse) presented to them by their constituents.
I think some of these objections are more rational than others. All are fairly easy to rebut. But ultimately, none of them address the unacceptable cost of keeping people chained in marriages that they want (or need) to leave.
Their suffering should be enough to motivate the rabbinic establishment to at least seriously consider the option to annul those marriages.
In the twentieth century, two famous rabbis – R Uzziep and R Rackman – each proposed exactly that – make discretionary use of the court’s power to annul marriages that need to be terminated.
Both rabbis requested the support of their colleagues.
Both were ignored, despite their formidable reputations, and despite the stakes of the issue.
Why?
Because centuries of interpretative inertia had made the non-Maimonidean reading of the Gemara the dominant one, and when the Rema ruled that a formal divorce document is required in all cases to terminate a Jewish marriage, that became the final word for most of the Jewish world (even those who don’t normally hold like the Rema 🤦 thus is the power of doubt wields in the conservative mind).
My friends, it seems the rabbinic establishment – at least in the Orthodox world – has painted itself into a corner and is unwilling to step outside of it.
Yes, they recognize the problem exists and are willing to take some small steps to prevent it from growing (although the Orthodox rabbis who will refuse to assist with a marriage unless one of the aforementioned methods is utilized, are still few and far between).
But the really necessary action – what it takes to actually SOLVE the problem – is still off the table. It would require changing historical course and (even respectfully) disagreeing with some of Jewish history’s Great Men. And that’s something that the current rabbinic establishment – comprised almost entirely of a) men b) educated in an Ashkenormative milieu and c) who themselves aspire to be Great Men – simply can not bring itself to do.
No matter what the cost, apparently.
Will things stay this way forever?
Will there always be women chained in marriages that for all practical purposes ended years ago?
I hope not.
The Orthodox world is slowly warming up to the idea that Yes Women Can Be Rabbis Too, and as they join the ranks of the rabbinic establishment they’ll hopefully bring with them a heightened focus on and concern for issues currently sidelined or ignored.
Orthodox Jewish people are also considering alternative paths of halakhic observance that aren’t limited to what their grandparents did or what they learned in yeshiva. The internet age has drastically increased the amount of halakhic information, opinions, and possibilities people are exposed to, and the corresponding changes in observance are starting to emerge.
And across the Orthodox world, people are starting to demand more of their rabbis. People are looking for real answers and real solutions, and “we don’t pasken that way” sounds increasingly hollow to increasingly exhausted ears. Rabbis must live with the times and meet the needs of the moment of history in which they actually live and preach – or they will be replaced with those will.
One day, it will be commonplace for courts to annul marriages that they decide should be terminated.
We’ll look back at the Aguna Crisis (along with so many other issues – another chat, friends) and wonder how we could have let it persist for so long.
“Everyone who marries, does so by dint of the court’s dispensation.”
כל המקדש אדעתא דרבנן מקדש
4 Categories of Disagreement with the Orthodox Street
(Believe it or not the great rabbis of the past actually got most of the following right imho)
A) Issues where the settled law simply does not support the popular post-Talmudic position
B) Issues where applying settled ritual law to modern life is unclear and the popular approach is to be stringent
C) Issues where implementing the settled law in modern times systematically results in comprising someone’s well-being or an affront to their dignity, a desecration of the idea of God especially among gentiles, and/or decreased overall observance of the law individually or communally
D) Issues where I think the settled law itself needs to be updated by a national court, of our wisest and most virtuous judicial scholars, that represents the people and can restore halakha to the living, dynamic system it is supposed to be (this category is currently theoretical and aspirational, “I’ve gotta list of demands, written on the palm of my hand”)
And Rambam has been the guide throughout.
May Hashem protect us in his merit, during this fragile and dangerous time.
Can you prove the Creator exists? Here’s a modern update to Rambam’s argument for the existence of God…
Let’s say, for the sake of discussion, we make the following eleven claims:
1′. The physical, observable universe has a finite history.
2′. The physical universe is governed by laws (that we can express in math!) that are themselves contingent, meaning they could have been otherwise, and physics cannot explain why we have these laws rather than others.
3′. No infinite chain backwards of contingent explanations is an actual explanation of anything. You can reject this, but doing so means accepting brute inexplicability as the basic nature of reality, which is quite the metaphysical commitment.
4′. Every physical state is dependent on the physical states that came before it, plus the laws governing transitions between them.
5′. The laws themselves, and the initial conditions, are not explained by the physical states they govern.
6′. Physical reality considered in totality – laws, constants, initial conditions, spacetime structure – is either self-explanatory or requires an explanation from outside itself.
7′. Whatever can be broken down into separate components or properties requires some explanation of why those properties are combined in that way rather than otherwise.
8′. Whatever is contingent – whatever could have been otherwise – does not contain within itself the reason for its existence or its specific character.
9′. If something exists necessarily (i.e., its nonexistence is impossible), it is uncaused, uncompounded, and not dependent on anything external.
10′. The physical universe is contingent. Its laws, constants, and initial conditions could have been otherwise. This is what the fine-tuning data and the landscape problem in string theory both point toward.
11′. An infinite chain backwards of contingent beings/states, each explained by the one before it, does not explain why there is a contingent series at all rather than nothing. You can have an infinitely long chain of dominos each knocked over by the previous one – but that doesn’t explain why there are dominos, or why any of them are falling.
If you’re on board with each of those claims, then here’s how taken together, they prove the Creator exists in eight steps:
Step 1: The physical universe exists and has specific features – specific laws, specific constants, a specific spacetime structure, specific initial conditions. Call this total configuration CREATION.
Step 2: CREATION is contingent. Its features are not necessary in and of themselves. The laws of physics do not explain why these laws of physics hold rather than others. The constants do not explain their own values. The initial conditions do not explain themselves. There is no known physical principle from which CREATION can be derived as the unique possible configuration. (This is supported by: the fine-tuning of constants, the landscape problem in string theory yielding ~10⁵⁰⁰ possible vacua, the fact that the Standard Model’s parameters are empirically measured rather than theoretically derived.)
Step 3: Every contingent thing requires an explanation for why it exists and why it exists as it does rather than otherwise (Premise 3′). This explanation is either internal (the thing explains itself) or external (something else explains it).
Step 4: CREATION cannot explain itself. Self-explanation would mean that CREATION exists necessarily – that its nonexistence is impossible. But we established in Step 2 that CREATION is contingent. A contingent thing cannot be its own sufficient reason.
Step 5: CREATION cannot be explained by something else that is itself contingent in the same way, because that merely pushes the question back. An infinite chain backwards of contingent explanations doesn’t solve the problem (Premise 11′) – it just gives you an infinitely long version of the same unsatisfied demand for explanation.
Step 6: Therefore, the explanation of CREATION must end in something that exists necessarily – something whose nonexistence is impossible, whose existence requires no further explanation, and which is not contingent on anything external.
Step 7: This necessary being cannot itself be physical in the way CREATION is physical. If it were, it would share CREATION’s contingent character – it would have specific features that could have been otherwise, components whose conjunction requires explanation (Premise 7′).
Step 8: Therefore there exists a non-physical, non-composite, necessary being that is the ground of the contingent physical universe.
This is what Rambam means by the Creator.
Now, like any logical argument, this one isn’t airtight. You can always argue with anything:
– First, the principle of sufficient reason (Premise 3′) is not itself logically required: you can simply deny that contingent things require explanation. Some philosophers bite this bullet and say the universe is just a brute fact. That’s coherent but it means accepting that the most fundamental questions – Why is there something rather than nothing? Why this something? – have no answers, not because we haven’t found one yet, but because there are none to find.
– Second, the claim that an infinite chain backwards of contingent explanations is not a genuine explanation (Premise 11′) has its challengers: some philosophers argue that if each link in the chain is explained by the prior link, the whole chain is explained. Rambam thought this is fundamentally wrong: you’ve explained each domino’s falling but not the existence or activity of the series.
So needless to say, not everyone will be convinced. 😉
But for those of us who do believe there is an explanation for why there is something rather than nothing – and that you have to explain things in the big picture, not just what’s in front of your nose – I think this is a solid argument.
What do you think, friends?
What’s on your seder plate? Five traditional options for the “bitters”:
Ḥazzereth – cultivated lettuce (Lactuca sativa) (all identifications follow Rambam’s commentary on Mishnah Pesachim 2:6). An annual vegetable that develops a dense rosette of edible leaves. At first, its leaves are small and bitter.
ʻOlashin – cultivated chicory (Cichorium intybus). A perennial garden plant with elongated leaves and light blue blossoms, with many varieties. Today, a coffee substitute is made from its roasted roots, and its young leaves, which are slightly bitter, are used in salads.
Tamkha – endive (Cichorium endivia). Similar to lettuce and eaten in the same way.
Ḥarḥabina – wild plants (from the genus Eryngium). The young plant has edible leaves with a bitter taste. At maturity, the plant becomes spiny. The common wild species in the Mediterranean region of the Land of Israel is Eryngium creticum.
Maror – desert lettuce, which is very bitter (ibid.), likely referring to prickly lettuce (Lactuca serriola).
So in other news this weekend, I read some convincing critiques of the theory of the development of complex structures and speciation via blind selection of (even path-limited) randomly-generated possibilities. 🤷 I still think Dawkins is a great zoology writer but I’m no longer convinced the Modern Synthesis is a reasonable explanation of the biosphere. First in physics, now in biology: I’m finding that something analogous to design (read the Guide for the Perplexed before you @ me) is actually the most parsimonious explanation of the available data.
Who says we can’t change our minds. 😀
Fun fact: I am allergic to bullies and I detest religious bullies. I also have limited patience for those who evade accountability, especially in the name of winning the American culture war, and so an abusive, religious bully who evades accountability in the name of pwning the libs is basically gonna get the stick and not the carrot from me, to put it mildly.
May we all return to the proper path and abandon the false idol of ego!
But a particular divine reminder that the views I profess have enough merit to trigger religious bullies suggests to me that I should redouble my effort and be more transparent regarding them, as the proper response to spiritual impediments along my way.
So here goes. I hope the following is crystal clear:
1) I am fundamentally forward thinking. I draw my ideas from my dream of the Israelite future as it arises organically from the Israelite past: and from there I meet this moment in the Israelite present. That historical consciousness is fundamental to my understanding of myself, my people, and my creator.
2) I am not: Sepharadi, Ashkenazi, Teimani, or the product of any other exilic collective noted in the annals of Jewish history: I am a free born, free thinking Jew, charged with dual responsibility as a member of an eternal divine pact by birth and a renewed national project by choice. I am not Orthodox or Conservative or Reform or Reconstructionist or Renewal, or a member of any other ideological party or camp within our nation.
3) I am loyal to the national court of our ancestors and I follow their laws beyond the reach of any community’s custom. My customs are my own, personal adornments to my small practice of implementing the Creator’s instructions, in the context of my life, my family, my social network, my country, my region, my planet………….
4) I learn from all the sages of Israel, as I learn from the sages of all the nations, but I particularly follow the Rambam’s way. Especially in disagreeing with the Rambam – because that was the way of Rambam himself, as I was first taught it in youth and later came to know it in (relative) maturity: to follow one’s mind to the end of knowing the God of truth.
5) I have a deeply held belief in the rights to security, justice, freedom, and peace shared by all human beings. All of them. That is what I was taught as a child and that is what I learned, from some of the past century’s greatest exponents of Judaism, that the Torah promotes, and I have never been persuaded to relinquish that belief. “Maybe one day.”
And last but most important:
6) I am nobody. Nothing. No one to take seriously, to learn from, or to emulate. I am not a source of wisdom or guidance. I am not an expert in anything and I’m wrong about at least one thing every day. I share what I share with you, or with the world, not to teach you but to awaken thoughts within you, so that you may join me on this journey.
Sometimes I’ll say or write something that may seem to conflict with the above – but that is because I choose a way of expressing things obliquely, as juxtapositions and phrases meant to awaken your own thoughts in response to mine, not to disclose to you the fullness of my own thought.
There are volumes more to write on this but I think this was a good opportunity to set the record straight on some matters.
After all, I have a reputation as a dilettante to uphold. 😂
Stay Frosty, Friends
We know the names of Rambam’s father, brother, son, nephew, father-in-law, and brother-in-law (twice over).
We have a letter congratulating Rambam on his marriage.
We do not know the name of Rambam’s wife.
(Or sister. Or mother.)
Not because there was anything wrong with her or because she had no impact on Rambam or their son, or because she played no role in enabling him to engage in so much exemplary study or shoulder so much communal responsibility.
Not because she had had no name.
But because no one cared to remember it.
I believe that casual erasure reflects so much that is wrong with how we relate to great rabbis, Jewish history, and Jewish women, then and today.
A major corrective is needed, and formally opening the national rabbinate to women is just the first step.
PS: You’re kidding yourself if you think this isn’t connected to the statements about women from some of the classical sages that Rambam promoted in his works.
What ties together all Hasidim across time and space?
Look to the root, not the branches
There is one river with many streams
You can research the thing in the academy if you want, but set your scope to maximum scale
Otherwise you’ll spend your life in the tide pool not even knowing of the ocean