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Moses Maimonides, medieval Judaism's leading legist and
philosopher, and a figure of central importance for contemporary
Jewish self-understanding, held a view of Judaism which maintained
the authority of the Talmudic rabbis in matters of Jewish law while
allowing for free and open inquiry in matters of science and
philosophy. Maimonides affirmed, not the superiority of the
"moderns" (the scholars of his and subsequent generations) over the
"ancients" (the Tannaim and Amoraim, the Rabbis of the Mishnah and
Talmud) but the inherent equality of the two. The equality
presented here is not equality of halakhic authority, but equality
of ability, of essential human characteristics. In order to
substantiate these claims, Kellner explores the related idea that
Maimonides does not adopt the notion of "the decline of the
generations", according to which each succeeding generation, or
each succeeding epoch, is in some significant and religiously
relevant sense inferior to preceding generations or epochs.
Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed addressed Jews of his day who
felt challenged by apparent contradictions between Torah and
science. We Are Not Alone: A Maimonidean Theology of the Other uses
Maimonides' writings to address Jews of today who are perplexed by
apparent contradictions between the morality of the Torah and their
conviction that all human beings are created in the image of God
and are the object of divine concern, that other religions have
value, that genocide is never justified, and that slavery is evil.
Individuals who choose to emphasize the moral and universalist
elements of Jewish tradition can often find support in positions
explicitly held by Maimonides or implied by his teachings. We Are
Not Alone offers an ethical and universalist vision of
traditionalist Judaism.
The crucial question for today's Jewish world, Menachem Kellner
argues, is not whether Jews will have Jewish grandchildren, but how
many different sorts of mutually exclusive Judaisms those
grandchildren will face. Kellner's short, brisk, and accessible
book examines how the split that threatens the Jewish future can be
avoided. The first six chapters of this strongly argued book
analyse what religious faith means in classical Judaism and will be
of interest to anyone seeking lucid insights into the nature of
Judaism. The final chapter builds upon the conclusions of the first
six in order to argue for a new way of construing the relationship
of Orthodoxy to non-Orthodox Jews and institutions. Kellner argues
that the Orthodox practice of framing the debate with non-Orthodox
movements in terms of dogmatic fidelity contrasted with heresy is
not the traditional Jewish approach, and that the debate could well
be framed in other ways, ways that would allow all Jews to work
together towards a less polarized Jewish future. Undoubtedly, Must
a Jew Believe Anything? has the potential to make a difference to
how Orthodoxy understands itself and its relationship to other
Jewish movements in the modern world. For the second edition, the
author has added a substantial Afterword, reviewing his thinking on
the subject and addressing the reactions to the original edition.
What is the secret that Maimonides hides? He himself tells us: the
rabbis of the Talmud used the expression ma'aseh bereshit ("Account
of Creation") for what the Greeks called physics and used the
expression ma'aseh merkavah ("Account of the Chariot") or what the
Greeks called metaphysics. So why is this important? The
consequences of these equations are momentous. Maimonides imports
what we today would call science into the heart of Torah. This is
allied to his universalism and to his conception of the
commandments of the Torah as tools (which could in principle have
been different), whose importance lies in the end they serve, and
not in themselves. That being the case, true reward and punishment
are not connected to behavior, no matter how saintly or how vile,
but to proper conceptions of God, crystallized in the 'Thirteen
Principles'. Maimonides hid these secrets from his fellow Jews, not
out of fear of reprisal (protected as he was by his good friend,
al-Qadi al-Fadl, he had no reason to fear them), but out of
noblesse oblige. Exposing simple Jews (and their philosophically no
less simple rabbis) to these truths could only lead to perplexity
(in the best of circumstances) or to falling away from observance
(in the worst of circumstances), neither of which Maimonides had
any interest in promoting. One God wrote two books, as it were:
Torah and Cosmos. The truly devout Jew realizes that he or she must
study both books, or only have access to half of God's oeuvre. Born
and educated in the United States, Menachem Kellner (Ph.D.,
Washington University in St. Louis, 1973) has lived in Israel for
the last 30 years. Author, editor, or translator of 16 books and
over 100 scholarly articles, Kellner's most recent book is
'Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism' (2006).
Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed addressed Jews of his day who
felt challenged by apparent contradictions between Torah and
science. We Are Not Alone: A Maimonidean Theology of the Other uses
Maimonides' writings to address Jews of today who are perplexed by
apparent contradictions between the morality of the Torah and their
conviction that all human beings are created in the image of God
and are the object of divine concern, that other religions have
value, that genocide is never justified, and that slavery is evil.
Individuals who choose to emphasize the moral and universalist
elements of Jewish tradition can often find support in positions
explicitly held by Maimonides or implied by his teachings. We Are
Not Alone offers an ethical and universalist vision of
traditionalist Judaism.
Rabbi Levi ben Gershom (Ralbag, Gersonides; 1288-1344), one of
medieval Judaism's most original thinkers, wrote about such diverse
subjects as astronomy, mathematics, Bible commentary, philosophical
theology, "technical" philosophy, logic, Halakhah, and even satire.
In his view, however, all these subjects were united as part of the
Torah. Influenced profoundly by Maimonides, Gersonides nevertheless
exercised greater rigor than Maimonides in interpreting the Torah
in light of contemporary science, was more conservative in his
understanding of the nature of the Torah's commandments, and was
more optimistic about the possibility of wide-spread philosophical
enlightenment. Gersonides was a witness to several crucial
historical events, such as the expulsion of French Jewry of 1306
and the "Babylonian Captivity" of the Papacy. Collaborating with
prelates in his studies of astronomy and mathematics, he apparently
had an entree into the Papal court at Avignon. Revered among Jews
as the author of a classic commentary on the latter books of the
Bible, Kellner portrays Gersonides as a true Renaissance man, whose
view of Torah is vastly wider and more open than that held by many
of those who treasure his memory.
Maimonides ends each book of his legal code the Mishneh torah with
a moral or philosophical reflection, in which he lifts his eyes, as
it were, from purely halakhic concerns and surveys broader
horizons. Menachem Kellner and David Gillis analyse these
concluding paragraphs, examining their verbal and thematic echoes,
their adaptation of rabbinic sources, and the way in which they
coordinate with the Mishneh torah's underlying structures, in order
to understand how they might influence our interpretation of the
code as a whole-and indeed our view of Maimonides himself and his
philosophy. Taking this unusual cross-section of the work, Kellner
and Gillis conclude that the Mishneh torah presents not only a
system of law, but also a system of universal values. They show how
Maimonides fashions Jewish law and ritual as a programme for
attaining ethical and intellectual ends that are accessible to all
human beings, who are created equally in the image of God. Many
reject the presentation of Maimonides as a universalist. The
Mishneh torah especially is widely seen as a particularist
sanctuary. This study shows how profoundly that view must be
revised.
Many books on Maimonides have been written and still more will
appear. Few present Maimonides, as Menachem Kellner does against
the actual religious background that informed his many innovative
and influential choices. He not only analyses the thought of the
great religious thinker but contextualizes it in terms of the
'proto-kabbalistic' Judaism that preceded him. Kellner shows how
the Judaism that Maimonides knew had come to conceptualize the
world as an enchanted universe, governed by occult affinities. He
shows why Maimonides rejected this and how he went about doing it.
Kellner argues that Maimonides' attempted reformation failed, the
clearest proof of that being the success of the kabbalistic
counter-reformation which his writings provoked. Kellner shows how
Maimonides rethought Judaism in different ways. It is in
highlighting this and identifying Maimonides as a religious
reformer that this book makes its key contribution. Maimonides
created a new Judaism, 'disenchanted', depersonalized, and
challenging; a religion that is at the same time elitist and
universalist. Kellner's analysis also shows the deep configuration
of Judaism in a new light. If, as Moshe Idel says in his Foreword,
Maimonides was able to 'reform so many aspects of rabbinic Judaism
single-handedly, to enrich it by importing such dramatically
different concepts, it shows that the profound structures of this
religion are flexible enough to allow the emergence and success of
astonishing reforms. The fact that, great as Maimonides was, he did
not overcome the traditional forms of proto-kabbalism shows that
the dynamic of religion is much more complex than subscribing to
authorities, however widely accepted.'
Moses Maimonides was the first medieval Jewish thinker to posit a
set of dogmas for Judaism, his 'Thirteen Principles of Faith'. His
statement initiated an extensive discussion among other medieval
Jewish thinkers on the subject of dogma, which had an important
impact on subsequent Jewish thought. The reaction to Maimonides'
innovation was complex: some scholars accepted his position without
reservation; others accepted the idea that Jewish beliefs could be
reduced to a creed but disagreed with Maimonides' formulation;
still others rejected the project of creed formulation in Judaism
altogether. The locus classicus of this last position is the Rosh
Amanah of Isaac Abranavel (1437-1508). Abravanel's ostensible aim
in writing Rosh Amanah was to defend Maimonides' creed from the
attacks of its critics, notably Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo, and
it contains the most exhaustive and systematic analysis of the
Thirteen Principles ever written. After twenty-two chapters of
sustained and zealous defence of Maimonides, however, Abravanel
seems to contradict himself, arguing at the end of his book that in
fact Judaism has no dogmas whatsoever and that all its beliefs are
equally valid, fundamental, and precious. This is the first
complete English translation of Abravanel's classic work, and
includes a comprehensive introduction and notes.
Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought is an essay in the history of
ideas which traces the development of creed formation in Judaism
from its inception with Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) to the
beginning of the sixteenth century when systematic attention to the
problem disappeared from the agenda of Jewish intellectuals. The
dogmatic systems of Maimonides, Duran, Crescas, Albo, Bibago,
Abravanel, and a dozen lesser-known figures are described,
analysed, and compared. Relevant texts are presented in English
translation. For the most part these are texts which have never
been critically edited and translated before. Among the theses
defended in the book are the following: that systematic attention
to dogma qua dogma was a new feature in Jewish theology introduced
by Maimonides (for reasons examined at length in the book); that
the subject languished for the two centuries after Maimonides'
death until it was revived in fifteenth-century Spain in response
to Christian attacks on Judaism; that the differing systems of
dogma offered by medieval Jewish thinkers reflect not different
conceptions of what Judaism is, but different conceptions of what a
principle of Judaism is; and that the very project of creed
formation reflects an essentially Greek as opposed to a
biblical/rabbinic view of the nature of religious faith and that
this accounts for much of the resistance which Maimonides'
innovation aroused.
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