Menachem Kellner Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers

Editor-in-Chief Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Arizona State University

Editor Aaron W. Hughes, University of Rochester

VOLUME 12

LEIDEN • BOSTON The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/lcjp 2015 Menachem Kellner

Jewish Universalism

Edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2015 Cover illustration: Menachem Kellner. Courtesy of Rivka Kellner. The series Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers was generously supported by the Baron Foundation. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Menachem Kellner : Jewish universalism / edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes. pages cm. — (Library of contemporary Jewish philosophers, ISSN 2213-6010 ; volume 12) Includes bibliographical references. Summary: “Menachem Kellner is an American-born scholar of Jewish philosophy, an educator, and a public intellectual who lives in Israel. For over three decades he taught at the University of Haifa, where he held the Sir Isaac and Lady Edith Wolfson Chair of Jewish Religious Thought as well as several high-level administrative positions. Currently he teaches Jewish philosophy at Shalem College, Israel’s first liberal arts college, which seeks to integrate Western and Jewish texts. Trained in ethics and political philosophy, Kellner specializes in medieval Jewish philosophy, arguing that Maimonides’ rationalist universalism should serve as the ideal for contemporary Jewish life. Creatively fusing Zionism, modern Orthodoxy, and democracy, his vision of Judaism is open to and engaged with the modern world”—Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-90-04-29827-9 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-29829-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)— ISBN 978-90-04-29828-6 (e-book) 1. Universalism. 2. Jewish philosophy—21st century. 3. Judaism and philosophy. 4. Kellner, Menachem, 1946– I. Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava, 1950– editor. II. Hughes, Aaron W., 1968– editor. B5802.U65M46 2015 181’.06—dc23 2015016417

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 2213-6010 ISBN 978-90-04-29827-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-29828-6 (e-book) This hardback is also published in paperback under ISBN 978-90-04-29829-3. Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. CONTENTS

The Contributors ...... vii

Editors’ Introduction to the Series ...... ix

Menachem Kellner: An Intellectual Portrait ...... 1 James A. Diamond

Heresy and the Nature of Faith in Medieval Jewish Philosophy ...... 35 Menachem Kellner

Maimonides on the Science of the Mishneh Torah: Provisional or Permanent? ...... 53 Menachem Kellner

Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? ...... 77 Menachem Kellner

We Are Not Alone ...... 107 Menachem Kellner

Interview with Menachem Kellner ...... 119 Hava Tirosh-Samuelson

Select Bibliography ...... 187

THE CONTRIBUTORS

James A. Diamond (Ph.D., University of Toronto, 1999) is a full professor and the Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo and former director of the university’s Friedberg Genizah Project. His principal areas of study include biblical exegesis and hermeneutics, medieval Jewish thought and philosophy, Maimonides, and rabbinics. He has published widely on all areas of Jewish thought. He is the author of Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment (SUNY Press, 2002), which was awarded the Canadian Jewish Book Award and Converts, Heretics, and Lepers: Maimonides and the Outsider (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), which was awarded Notable Selection – Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in the Category of Philosophy and Jewish Thought for best book in the last four years (2008) as well as the Canadian Jewish Book Award. His most recent book, Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon (Cambridge University Press, 2014), argues that Maimonides’ philosophy and jurisprudence has become an integral part of the Jewish canon alongside the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. He is also coeditor of Emil Fackenheim: Philosopher, Theologian, Jew (Brill, 2008) and Encounter- ing the Medieval in Modern Jewish Thought (Brill, 2012).

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson (Ph.D., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1978) is Irving and Miriam Lowe Professor of Modern Judaism, the Director of Jew- ish Studies, and Professor of History at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. Her research focuses on Jewish intellectual history, Judaism and ecology, science and religion, and feminist theory. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters in academic journals and edited volumes, she is the author of the award-winning Between Worlds: The Life and Work of Rabbi David ben Judah Messer Leon (SUNY Press, 1991) and the author of Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-Being in Premodern Judaism (Hebrew Union College Press, 2003). She is also the editor of Judaism and Ecology: Created World and Revealed Word (Harvard University Press, 2002); Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy (Indiana University Press, 2004); Judaism and the Phenomenon of Life: The Legacy of Hans Jonas (Brill, 2008); Building Better Humans? Refocusing the Debate on Transhumanism (Peter Lang, 2011); Hollywood’s Chosen People: The Jewish Experience in American Cinema (Wayne State University Press, viii the contributors

2012); and Jewish Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century: Personal Reflec- tions (Brill, 2014). Professor Tirosh-Samuelson is the recipient of several large grants that have funded interdisciplinary research on religion, science, and technology.

Aaron W. Hughes (Ph.D., Indiana University Bloomington, 2000) holds the Philip S. Bernstein Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of Rochester. Hughes was educated at the University of Alberta, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Oxford University. He has taught at Miami University of Ohio, McMaster University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Calgary, and the University at Buffalo. He is the author of over fifty articles and ten books, and the editor of seven books. His book titles include Abrahamic Religions: On the Uses and Abuses of History (Oxford University Press, 2012); Muslim Identities (Columbia University Press, 2013); The Study of Judaism: Identity, Authen- ticity, Scholarship (SUNY, 2013); and Rethinking Jewish Philosophy: Beyond Particularism and Universalism (Oxford University Press, 2014). He is also the Editor-in-Chief of Method and Theory in the Study of Religion. EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES

It is customary to begin studies devoted to the topic of Jewish philosophy by defining what exactly this term, concept, or even discipline is. We tend not to speak of Jewish mathematics, Jewish physics, or Jewish sociol- ogy, so why refer to something as “Jewish philosophy”? Indeed, this is the great paradox of Jewish philosophy. On the one hand it presumably names something that has to do with thinking, on the other it implies some sort of national, ethnic, or religious identity of those who engage in such activity. Is not philosophy just philosophy, regardless of who philosophizes? Why the need to append various racial, national, or religious adjectives to it?1 Jewish philosophy is indeed rooted in a paradox since it refers to philosophical activity carried out by those who call themselves Jews. As philosophy, this activity makes claims of universal validity, but as an activity by a well-defined group of people it is inherently particularistic. The question “What is Jewish philosophy?” therefore is inescapable, although over the centuries Jewish philosophers have given very different answers to it. For some, Jewish philosophy represents the relentless quest for truth. Although this truth itself may not be particularized, for such individuals, the use of the adjective “Jewish”—as a way to get at this truth—most decidedly is.2 The Bible, the Mishnah, the Talmud, and related Jewish texts and genres are seen to provide particular insights into the more universal claims provided by the universal and totalizing gaze of philosophy. The problem is that these texts are not philosophical on the surface; they must, on the contrary, be interpreted to bring their philosophical insights to light. Within this context exegesis risks becoming eisegesis. Yet others eschew the term “philosophy” and instead envisage themselves as working in a decidedly

1 Alexander Altmann once remarked: It would be futile to attempt a presentation of Judaism as a philosophical system, or to speak of Jewish philosophy in the same sense as one speaks of American, English, French, or German philosophy. Judaism is a religion, and the truths it teaches are religious truths. They spring from the source of religious experience, not from pure reason. See Alexander Altmann, “Judaism and World Philosophy,” in The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion, ed. Louis Finkelstein (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1949), vol. 2, 954. 2 In this regard, see Norbert M. Samuelson, Jewish Faith and Modern Science: On the Death and Rebirth of Jewish Philosophy (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), e.g., 10–12. x EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION TO the SERIES

Jewish key in order to articulate or clarify particular issues that have direct bearing on Jewish life and existence.3 Between these two perspectives or orientations, there exist several other related approaches to the topic of Jewish philosophy, which can and have included ethics,4 gender studies,5 multiculturalism,6 and postmodernism.7 Despite their differences in theory and method, what these approaches have in common is that they all represent the complex intersection of Judaism, variously defined, and a set of non-Jewish grids or lenses used to interpret this rich tradition. Framed somewhat differently, Jewish philosophy—whatever it is, however it is defined, or whether definition is even possible—represents the collision of particularistic demands and universal concerns. The universal, or that which is, in theory, open and accessible to all regardless of race, color, creed, or gender confronts the particular, or that which represents the sole concern of a specific group that, by nature or definition, is insular and specific-minded. Because it is concerned with a particular people, the Jews, and how to frame their traditions in a universal and universalizing light that is believed to conform to the dictates of reason, Jewish philosophy can never be about pure thinking, if indeed there ever can be such a phenomenon. Rather Jewish philosophy—from antiquity to the present—always seems to have had and, for the most part continues to have, rather specific and perhaps

3 See, e.g., Strauss’s claim about Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, perhaps one of the most important and successful works of something called Jewish philosophy ever written. He claims that one “begins to understand the Guide once one sees that it is not a philosophic book—a book written by a philosopher for philosophers—but a Jewish book: a book written by a Jew for Jews.” See Leo Strauss, “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,” in The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), vol. 1, xiv. Modern iterations of this may be found, for example, in J. David Bleich, Bioethical Dilemmas: A Jewish Perspective, 2 vols. (vol. 1, New York: Ktav, 1998; vol. 2, New York: Targum Press, 2006). 4 See, e.g., David Novak, Natural Law in Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Elliot Dorff, Love Your Neighbor and Yourself: A Jewish Approach to Modern Personal Ethics (New York: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2006). 5 E.g., the collection of essays in Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy, ed. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004). 6 E.g., Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid a Clash of Civilizations (London: Continuum, 2003); Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility (New York: Schocken, 2007). 7 E.g., Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004); Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Elliot R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (New York: Zone Books, 2011). EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION TO the SERIES xi even practical concerns in mind. This usually translates into the notion that Judaism—at least the Judaism that Jewish philosophy seeks to articulate— is comprehensible to non-Jews and, framed in our contemporary context, that Judaism has a seat at the table, as it were, when it comes to pressing concerns in the realms of ethics and bioethics. Jewish philosophy, as should already be apparent, is not a disinterested subject matter. It is, on the contrary, heavily invested in matters of Jewish peoplehood and in articulating its aims and objectives. Because of this interest in concrete issues (e.g., ethics, bioethics, medical ethics, feminism) Jewish philosophy—especially contemporary Jewish philosophy—is often constructive as opposed to being simply reflective. Because of this, it would seem to resemble what is customarily called “theology” more than it does philosophy. If philosophy represents the critical and systematic approach to ascertain the truth of a proposition based on rational argumentation, theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and the articula- tion of the nature of religious truths. The difference between theology and philosophy resides in their object of study. If the latter has “truth,” however we may define this term, as its primary object of focus, the former is concerned with ascertaining religious dogma and belief. They would seem to be, in other words, mutually exclusive endeavors. What we are accustomed to call “Jewish philosophy,” then, is a paradox since it does not—indeed, cannot—engage in truth independent of religious claims. As such, it is unwilling to undo the major claims of Judaism (e.g., covenant, chosenness, revelation), even if it may occasionally redefine such claims.8 So although medieval Jewish thinkers may well gravitate toward the systematic thought of Aristotle and his Arab interpreters and although modern Jewish thinkers may be attracted to the thought of Kant and Heidegger, the ideas of such non-Jewish thinkers are always applied to Jewish ideas and values. Indeed, if they were not, those who engaged in such activities would largely cease to be Jewish philosophers and would instead become just philosophers who just happened to be Jewish (e.g., Henri Bergson, Edmund Husserl, and Karl Popper). Whether in its medieval or modern guise, Jewish philosophy has a tendency to be less philosophical simply for the sake of rational analysis and more constructive. Many of the volumes that appear in the Library of

8 A good example of what we have in mind here is the thought of Maimonides. Although he might well redefine the notion of prophecy, he never rejects the concept. On Maimonides on prophecy, see Howard Kreisel, Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 148–56. xii EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION TO the SERIES

Contemporary Jewish Philosophers will bear this out. The truths of Judaism are upheld, albeit in often new and original ways. Although Jewish philosophy may well use non-Jewish ideas to articulate its claims, it never produces a vision that ends in the wholesale abandonment of Judaism.9 Even though critics of Jewish philosophy may well argue that philosophy introduces “foreign” wisdom into the heart of Judaism, those we call Jewish philosophers do not perceive themselves to be tainting Judaism, but perfecting it or teasing out its originary meaning.10 The result is that Jewish philosophy is an attempt to produce a particular type of Judaism—one that is in tune with certain principles of rationalism. This rationalism, from the vantage point of the nineteenth century and up to the present, is believed to show Judaism in its best light, as the synthesis or nexus between a Greek-inflected universalism and the particularism of the Jewish tradition. What is the status of philosophy among Jews in the modern period? Since their emancipation in the nineteenth century, Jews have gradually integrated into Western society and culture, including the academy. Ever since the academic study of Judaism began in the 1820s in Germany, Jewish philosophy has grown to become a distinctive academic discourse practiced by philosophers who now often hold positions in non-Jewish institutions of higher learning. The professionalization of Jewish philosophy has not been unproblematic, and Jewish philosophy has had to (and still has to) justify its legitimacy and validity. And even when Jewish philosophy is taught in Jewish institutions (for example, rabbinic seminaries or universities in Israel), it has to defend itself against those Jews who regard philosophy as alien to Judaism, or minimally, as secondary in importance to the inherently Jewish disciplines such as jurisprudence or exegesis. Jewish philosophy, in other words, must still confront the charge that it is not authentically Jewish. The institutional setting for the practice of Jewish philosophy has shaped Jewish philosophy as an academic discourse. But regardless of the setting,

9 This despite the claims of Yitzhak Baer who believed that philosophy had a negative influence on medieval Spanish Jews that made them more likely to convert to Christianity. See Israel Jacob Yuval, “Yitzhak Baer and the Search for Authentic Judaism,” in The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians, ed. David N. Myers and David B. Ruderman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 77–87. 10 Indeed, Jewish philosophers in the medieval period did not even see themselves as introducing foreign ideas into Judaism. Instead they saw philosophical activity as a reclamation of their birthright since the Jews originally developed philosophy before the Greeks and others stole it from them. EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION TO the SERIES xiii

Jewish philosophy as an academic discourse is quite distinct from Jewish philosophy as constructive theology, even though the two may often be produced by the same person. Despite the lack of unanimity about the scope and methodology of Jewish philosophy, the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers insists that Jewish philosophy has thrived in the past half century in ways that will probably seem surprising to most readers. When asked who are the Jewish philosophers of the twentieth century, most would certainly mention the obvious: Franz Rosenzweig (d. 1929), Martin Buber (d. 1965), and Emmanuel Levinas (d. 1995). Some would also be able to name Abraham Joshua Heschel (d. 1972), Mordecai Kaplan (d. 1983), Joseph Soloveitchik (d. 1993), and Hans Jonas (d. 1993). There is no doubt that these thinkers have either reshaped the discourse of Western thought for Jews and non- Jews or have inspired profound rethinking of modern Judaism. However, it is misleading to identify contemporary Jewish philosophy solely with these names, all of whom are now deceased. In recent years it has been customary for Jews to think that Jewish philosophy has lost its creative edge or that Jewish philosophy is somehow profoundly irrelevant to Jewish life. Several reasons have given rise to this perception, not the least of which is, ironically enough, the very success of Jewish Studies as an academic discipline. Especially after 1967, Jewish Studies has blossomed in secular universities especially in the North American Diaspora, and Jewish philosophers have expressed their ideas in academic venues that have remained largely inaccessible to the public at large. Moreover, the fact that Jewish philosophers have used technical language and a certain way of argumentation has made their thought increasingly incomprehensible and therefore irrelevant to the public at large. At the same time that the Jewish public has had little interest in professional philosophy, the practitioners of philosophy (especially in the Anglo American departments of philosophy) have denied the philosophical mer- its of Jewish philosophy as too religious or too particularistic and excluded it entirely. The result is that Jewish philosophy is now largely generated by scholars who teach in departments/programs of Jewish Studies, in departments of Religious Studies, or in Jewish denominational seminaries.11

11 See the comments in Aaron W. Hughes and Elliot R. Wolfson, “Introduction: Charting an Alternative Course for the Study of Jewish Philosophy,” in New Directions in Jewish Philosophy, ed. Aaron W. Hughes and Elliot R. Wolfson (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), 1–16. xiv EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION TO the SERIES

The purpose of the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers is not only to dispel misperceptions about Jewish philosophy but also to help nudge the practice of Jewish philosophy out of the ethereal heights of academe to the more practical concerns of living Jewish communities. To the public at large this project documents the diversity, creativity, and richness of Jewish philosophical and intellectual activity during the second half of the twentieth century, and early twenty-first century, showing how Jewish thinkers have engaged new topics, themes, and methodologies and raised new philosophical questions. Indeed, Jewish philosophers have been intimately engaged in trying to understand and interpret the momen- tous changes of the twentieth century for Jews. These have included the Holocaust, the renewal of Jewish political sovereignty, secularism, postmodernism, feminism, and environmentalism. As a result, the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers intentionally defines the scope of Jewish philosophy very broadly so as to engage and include theology, political theory, literary theory, intellectual history, ethics, and feminist theory, among other discourses. We believe that the overly stringent definition of “philosophy” has impoverished the practice of Jewish philosophy, obscur- ing the creativity and breadth of contemporary Jewish reflections. An accurate and forward looking view of Jewish philosophy must be inclusive. To practitioners of Jewish philosophy this project claims that Jewish philosophical activity cannot and should not remain limited to professional academic pursuits. Rather, Jewish philosophy must be engaged in life as lived in the present by both Jews and non-Jews. Jews are no longer a people apart, instead they are part of the world and they live in this world through conversation with other civilizations and cultures. Jewish philosophy speaks to Jews and to non-Jews, encouraging them to reflect on problems and take a stand on a myriad of issues of grave importance. Jewish philosophy, in other words, is not only alive and well today, it is also of the utmost relevance to Jews and non-Jews. The Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers is simultaneously a documentary and an educational project. As a documentary project, it intends to shape the legacy of outstanding thinkers for posterity, identifying their major philosophical ideas and making available their seminal essays, many of which are not easily accessible. A crucial aspect of this is the interview with the philosophers that functions, in many ways, as an oral history. The interview provides very personal comments by each philosopher as he or she reflects about a range of issues that have engaged them over the years. In this regard the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers simultaneously records Jewish philosophical activity and demonstrates its creativity both as a constructive discourse as well as an academic field. EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION TO the SERIES xv

As an educational project, the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers is intended to stimulate discussion, reflection, and debate about the meaning of Jewish existence at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The individual volumes and the entire set are intended to be used in a variety of educational settings: college-level courses, programs for adult Jewish learning, rabbinic training, and interreligious dialogues. By engaging or confronting the ideas of these philosophers, we hope that Jews and non-Jews alike will be encouraged to ponder the past, present, and future of Jewish philosophy, reflect on the challenges to and complexities of Jewish existence, and articulate Jewish philosophical responses to these challenges. We hope that, taken as individual volumes and as a collection, the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers will inspire readers to ask philosophical, theological, ethical, and scientific questions that will enrich Jewish intellectual life for the remainder of the twenty-first century. All of the volumes in the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers have the same structure: an intellectual profile of the thinker, several seminal essays by the featured philosopher, an interview with him or her, and a select bibliography of 120 items, including books, articles, book chapters, and public addresses. As editors of the series we hope that the structure will encourage the reader to engage the volume through reflection, discussion, debate, and dialogue. As the love of wisdom, philosophy is inherently Jewish. Philosophy invites questions, cherishes debate and controversy, and ponders the meaning of life, especially Jewish life. We hope that the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers will stimulate thinking and debate because it is our hope that the more Jews philosophize, the more they will make Judaism deeper, durable, and long-lasting. Finally, we invite readers to engage the thinkers featured in these volumes, to challenge and dispute them, so that Judaism will become ever stronger for future generations.

MENACHEM KELLNER: AN INTELLECTUAL PORTRAIT

James A. Diamond

Biography and Career

There is no more appropriate opening for any introduction to the life and thought of Menachem Kellner (b. 1946) than with Maimonides in general, and the following singular citation from his written legacy in particular. Moses Maimonides (1138–1205), the seminal jurist, halakhist, and philosopher, who, since medieval times, set the agenda across the entire spectrum of Jewish thought in jurisprudence, philosophy, rabbinics, and biblical exegesis, “codifies” various nonlegal principles in the Mishneh Torah, his pioneering legal code. Among those is an ethically and spiritually edify- ing sentiment capping off highly technical laws related to the regulation of agricultural productivity during the sabbatical and jubilee years. Members of the tribe of Levi must be free to lead all-consuming spiritual lives and are therefore excluded from virtually every form of political and communal life, exempted from military service, and barred from ownership of land. Once this exceptional Levite mode of participation in the Israelite polis is stipulated as a normative category of Jewish national life, Maimonides, as is often his wont, then inserts his own creative addendum to it. Maimonides holds out the Levites as a model for the kind of life he considers spiritually and intellectually ideal, the summum bonum, for all human beings, and I stress, all, to pursue: also each and every individual of those who came into the world, whose spirit generously moves him and whose knowledge gives him understanding to set himself apart in order to serve before the Lord, to serve Him, to worship him, and to know Him, who walks upright as God has made him, and releases his neck from the yoke of the many calculations that human beings are wont to pursue—such an individual is consecrated to the Holy of Holies and his portion and inheritance shall be in the lord forever and evermore. The Lord will grant him in this world whatsoever is sufficient for him, the same as He had granted to the priests and the Levites.1

1 Mishneh Torah, Laws of the Sabbatical and Jubilee Years 13:13 (emphasis mine). 2 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait

Any glance at Kellner’s prodigious scholarly output during his career as an academic launched at the University of Virginia (1972–1973; 1975–1980), followed by a stint at the College of William and Mary (1973–1975), and subsequently, for the majority of his career over three decades, in Israel at the University of Haifa, and now at Shalem College in Jerusalem, reveals an uninterrupted fascination with a myriad of dimensions of Maimonides’ thought, even when Maimonides isn’t the central focus of a particular study. For example his numerous studies on dogma and of Gersonides’ (1288–1344) and Isaac Abravanel’s (1437–1508) thought are all conducted in the shadow of, and contrapuntally to, Maimonides. Although he has deeply probed many facets of Maimonidean thought, this excerpt from Maimonides’ legal code exemplifies that critical one, involving concepts to which Kellner returns again and again, in ever fresh and creative ways— universalism, holiness, chosenness, and an authentic Jewish notion of the good life that transcends the strict confines of Judaism, accessible to all of humanity. In other words his Jewish scholarship and popular writings are not driven solely by the question “Is it good for the Jews?” Kellner’s Jewish and ethical passions stem from a combination of the general social upheaval in North America, especially on its university cam- puses while Kellner was in their attendance, and the influences of family and teachers of his formative years in rabbinical colleges, or yeshivot, in Chicago and Jerusalem as well as of the secular environment of the university. A self- professed “child of the sixties,” Kellner’s academic studies were conducted when revolution was in the air revolving around the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, fierce opposition to the Vietnam war, and the pervasive protest music of folk singers such as Bob Dylan (née Zimmerman) and Phil Ochs. There is no doubt then, that the heady events of those years, suffused by endless demonstrations, marches, sit-ins, flag burning, draft dodging, and student occupation of administrative offices, informed his choice of dissertation topic on “Civil Disobedience in Democracy: A Philosophical Justification,” completed in 1973 at Washington University under the super- vision of Steven Schwarzschild. As the title suggests, Kellner’s academic life is grounded in the marshal- ing of his intellectual talents and acumen in the cause of bettering the ethical fabric of his country, namely, in the search for a philosophical rationale that would underpin, in the way he felt best equipped to do, radical change in the ethics of social and political life in America. His graduate studies led him to the conclusion that he would never abandon. One must never allow noble ideals such as democracy to be obscured, perverted, or thwarted by technicality and thus: menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 3

the consistent democrat may on occasion be in a position in which his very commitment to democracy forces him to violate the laws of a democratic government. If a law passed by a democratic government is so antidemo- cratic (by the criteria of ideal democracy) that obedience to it must clearly and gravely hinder, rather than advance the attainment of democracy, it is the duty of the democrat to disobey it.2 In a certain sense, much of his subsequent Jewish scholarship to this very day is fuelled by this same sentiment—halakha and Jewish thought must always reflect the ethical and intellectual ideals for which Judaism as a way of life stands, which can never be allowed to degenerate into racism, fanati- cism, particularism, or xenophobic essentialism. It is a way of life shaped first and foremost by behavior, a principle preserved by a rabbinic source for which Kellner has a particular affinity, which depicts God lamenting over the state of His people: “Would that they abandon Me and observe My Torah—the light within it would return them to the good.”3 Aside from the general revolutionary atmosphere of America in the sixties, Kellner’s life and scholarly choices have been profoundly influenced by two figures. The first is his father, Rabbi Abraham Kellner (1910–1965), born in Hungary and graduate of Yeshiva and Columbia Universities, who served as a spiritual leader of an Orthodox congregation in St. Louis as well as president of the local branch of Mizrachi, and chairman of the educational committee of the Rabbinical Council of America. During an all too short life, tragically ended at the age of fifty-six, Rabbi Kellner himself left a literary legacy that includes sermons, talks to soldiers, wartime relief appeals, and an edited volume of tributes to John F. Kennedy, which clearly reflect the life of a devout Orthodox Jew who, at the same time, was committed to the welfare of both his own religious community and the broader community of his adopted country, the United States. Menachem Kellner attributes his path toward universalism first to “growing up in the home of an Orthodox rabbi who loved all things Jewish, and who sincerely tried to love all Jews, and indeed, all of God’s creatures.”4 It is apparent that Abraham Kellner instilled in his son what Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazic chief Rabbi in pre-state of Israel Palestine, considered

2 Menachem Kellner, “Democracy and Civil Disobedience,” The Journal of Politics 37, no. 4 (November 1975): 899–911, at 911. 3 Jerusalem Talmud, Hagigah, i, 7, and see Menachem Kellner, Must a Jew Believe Anything?, 2nd ed. (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2006), 114. 4 Menachem Kellner, Science in the Bet Midrash: Studies in Maimonides (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 10. 4 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait

“groundless love” (ahavat hinam), as an antidote to the destructive impulse of “groundless hate” (sin’at hinam).5 Secondly the elder Kellner also “combined deep human warmth with a certain Litvak impatience with nonsense,”6 inspiring his son’s lifelong engagement with the rationalist trend in Judaism. No wonder this “impatience” translated into a healthy obsession with Maimonides who elevated the study of science and philosophy to a primary halakhic obligation without which one could not possibly fulfill the very first three cardinal mitzvot to know, to love, and to fear God. As Kellner ably argues, the very purpose of the Mishneh Torah itself is to provide a concise halakhic encyclopedia for the sophisticated readers who could then spend their time better in the pursuit of science and philosophy.7 That “Litvak” sensibility clearly attracted him to a worldview in which “scientific progress, in bringing one closer to the truth, enables one better to observe the commandments,” and that “has one overarching allegiance: to truth.”8 The second was the prominent Jewish philosopher and theologian, Steven Schwarzschild (1924–1989), his thesis supervisor or academic “father,” so to speak, but much more than that—a friend and a mentor—under whom Kellner completed his dissertation on civil disobedience. On the one hand, Schwarzschild’s rehabilitation and further strengthening of Hermann Cohen’s interpretation of Maimonides’ philosophical ethics which renders “an ethically but also a socio-politically radical understanding of Maimonides’ individual and social ethics” clearly left an indelible impression on Kellner’s own view of Maimonides.9 In addition Schwarzschild’s “unswerving rationalism” which left no room for “obscurantist readings, leaps of faith, or dogmatic appeals to authority,”10 also strongly imprint Kellner’s oeuvre throughout. Schwarzschild’s messianic vision, suffused by ethics and the primacy of halakha, whose every performance brings that

5 “If we were destroyed, and the world with us, due to groundless hatred, then we shall rebuild ourselves, and the world with us, with groundless love—ahavat chinam.” See Orot HaKodesh, vol. 3, 324. 6 From the personal introduction to Menachem Kellner, Science in the Bet Midrash: Studies in Maimonides (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 10. 7 See Menachem Kellner, “ ‘Mishneh Torah’—Why?,” Mesorah le-Yosef: A Journal on the Legacy of R. Joseph Kafih 4 (2005): 316–29, esp. 327–29 [Hebrew]. 8 “Maimonides’ Allegiances to Torah and Science,” Torah U’Madda Journal 7 (1997): 88–104, at 104. 9 See Steven Schwarzschild, “Moral Radicalism and ‘Middlingness’ in the Ethics of Maimonides,” Studies in Medieval Culture 11 (1977): 65–94; repr. in The Pursuit of the Ideal: Jewish Writings of Steven Schwarzschild, ed. Menachem Kellner (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 137–60. 10 Kenneth Seeskin, “Foreword,” in Pursuit of the Ideal, ix. menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 5 utopian future into the present or advances the present toward the future, also shapes Kellner’s own brand of messianism.11 The very Maimonidean passage with which this introduction began is cited by Schwarzschild as the most extreme possible pronouncement endorsing the proposition that salvific knowledge is not restricted to elites or to Jews.12 Both Kellner’s natural rebbe and adopted rebbe contributed to his lifelong obsession with not simply Jewish thought and philosophy but how to live life as a good Jew and a good human being and educating others on how best to accomplish those lives. As such Kellner has led a life as a scholar and public intellectual deeply committed to education not just in a university setting but in the larger arena as well. In addition to serving as Dean of Students at Haifa (1994–1997), on the Coordinating Committee on Students from Ethiopia (1985–1986), Chair of Haifa’s Department of Maritime Civilizations (1988–1989)—a unique institution that focuses on interdisciplinary studies, the combination of the humanities and sciences, and provides a comprehensive approach to the study of coasts and the sea—and sitting on virtually every committee possible at the University of Haifa, his commitment translated into active advisory roles for colleges outside his own formal academic affiliation. These included membership for a better part of the last two decades on the academic governing councils of institutions dedicated to the training of religious teachers such as Shaanan College; Safed College, which seeks to graduate students as educators in underserved communities throughout Israel’s northern periphery; and Gordon College of Education, a teacher’s seminary focused on the development of teaching skills and furthering Zionist, Jewish, and humanistic values. He also founded and led for over a decade beginning in 1999 a program at the University of Haifa called BaZavta, whose purpose was to foster understanding and dialogue between students of varied backgrounds and approaches to Israeli culture centered around the shared study of central Jewish texts. It is important to note that his promotion of Jewish education and his advocacy of a Jewish ethic and universalism is always advanced from the stand of his personal commitment to Jewish Orthodoxy and the binding authority of its normative structure. Setting the stage for this approach is his very first publication, which appeared, not coincidentally in a journal dedicated to Orthodox Jewish thought, where he asserted that without a

11 Schwarzschild, “The Lure of Immanence—The Crisis in Contemporary Religious Thought,” in Pursuit of the Ideal, 61–82. 12 Schwarzschild, “Moral Radicalism,” in Pursuit of the Ideal, 157. 6 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait belief in the mitzvot as a direct expression of divine will “there is no reason to observe the halakha in the face of persecution or if better means can be found to achieve the same ends.”13 Although religion, especially of the monotheistic bent, often conjures in the popular imagination (and now bolstered by the new school of atheists led by Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris) divisiveness, conflict, exclusion, supremacist ideology, and suppression of unfettered intellectual inquiry and scientific progress, Kellner repeatedly seizes on a vision, offered uniquely by Maimonides, of the religious and spiritual life driven by unbounded intellectual curiosity, which also unites rather than fragments. Given the daily headlines, religious divisiveness is no less a problem in modern times than in medieval or more distant history, making Kellner’s voice a sorely needed one.

The Maimonidean Ideal

As Maimonides unequivocally states, human perfection does not require obedience to the dictates of parochial traditions, nor is ultimate reward due to those who have converted to a particular faith community or who meticulously observe a rigid set of exclusive religious rituals and norms. And, as Kellner himself summarizes it in a book-length study dedicated to the very subject of Maimonidean universalism, “the hand of friendship and cooperation, more, the offer of physical support, shared worship, and shared life in the world to come, is extended to each and every human being who wishes to join himself or herself to the worship of God.”14 Even the phrase “worship of God,” as we shall see, when examined through a Maimonidean lens, connotes a life of reason common to all individuals, in the pursuit of the ultimate universal truth that governs the entire world. History progresses toward a unified global objective both politically and spiritually. Kellner’s choice of a language of inclusivism, of “friendship,” “cooperation,” “shared,” “himself or herself ”—terms that are blind to gender, ethnicity, and religious persuasion—betray not just a well argued conclusion of research and insightful reading of medieval texts, but a

13 “Louis Jacobs’ Doctrine of Revelation,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 14, no. 4 (1974): 143–47, at 145. 14 Menachem Kellner, Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), 74. menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 7

utopian moral vision he hopes the world, well beyond the narrow confines of the academy, will appreciate and work toward. When it comes to the issue of the divine election of Israel, one that always threatens to lead to exclusivism and superiority, Kellner argues forcefully in numerous studies that it is Maimonides who provides the antidote to prevent the notion of “chosenness” from deteriorating into “chauvinism.”15 According to that Maimonidean construct, as Kellner describes it, Jews enjoy a functional advantage over others only as beneficiaries of a divine promise to ancient ancestors and as recipients of a most exquisite instruc- tional book on how to live and think—the Torah. However, they are decidedly not ontologically superior, as other strains of Judaism might have it. Election does not and must not produce a metaphysics of superiority. Kellner shares this view with, and has been influenced by, R. Joseph Kafih (1917–2000), one of the great rabbinic masters of the Maimonidean corpus and author of many modern Hebrew translations of Maimonides’ Judeo-Arabic works that have become standard in the field whose own non-ontological view Kellner characterizes as “180 degrees opposed to that preferred by the majority of Jewish thinkers from the days of Judah Halevi to our own times.”16 No other Maimonidean text corroborates this better to my mind than the response to Obadiah the proselyte who was deeply concerned about ever becoming fully integrated as a Jew when so much of its liturgy and rab- binically standardized texts are replete with ethnocentric expressions that rendered it highly resistant to the entry of outsiders anxious to become full- fledged members of the club. Maimonides does not simply offer the convert a categorical inclusive embrace but actually elevates the convert, the outsider, to the status of the only authentic Jew over those who belong by virtue of heredity. These scholarly exercises impact directly on the potential to resolve the greatest crisis facing contemporary Jews and Judaism— the Israeli/Arab conflict of the Middle East. As Kellner states, this research

15 See for example Menachem Kellner, “Chosenness, Not Chauvinism: Maimonides on the Chosen People,” in A People Apart: Chosenness and Ritual in Jewish Philosophical Thought, ed. Daniel Frank (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), 51–76, 85–89; Menachem Kellner, “Maimonides’ ‘True Religion’: For Jews or All Humanity?,” Meorot [=Edah Journal] 7, no. 1 (2008), http://www.yctorah.org/content/view/436/10/; Menachem Kellner, “On Universal- ism and Particularism in Judaism,” Da’at 36 (1996): v–xv; Menachem Kellner, “Overcom- ing Chosenness,” in Covenant and Chosenness in Judaism and Mormonism, ed. R. Jospe, T. Madsen, and S. Ward (Fairlawn, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2001), 147–72. 16 Menachem Kellner, “R. Joseph Kafih on the Question: ‘Who Is a Jew?,’ ” Sha’anan 16 (2010): 171–77, at 173 [Hebrew]. 8 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait is informed by a profound existential dilemma—“as a committed Jew I must affirm chosenness; as an Israeli seeking peace with my neighbors I must reject chauvinism.”17 Kellner’s ongoing project of fleshing out and promoting Maimonidean universalism addresses his greatest fears of a “super-chauvinism” in Israel and of a “North American Jewry that refuses to take its Judaism seriously and immerses itself in a shallow, self-glorifying ethnicity.”18 In his scholarly, Jewish, Zionist, and human quest for a kind of Orthodox pluralism, universalism, and mutual respect for other faiths, Kellner shares the theological/academic/public intellectual stage with other Israeli thinkers, most notably Aviezer Ravitzky and Moshe Halbertal.19

The Ethical Challenge

Virtually every one of Kellner’s scholarly studies bears pertinent ethical and philosophical implications for contemporary Jewish life both in the diaspora and Israel, the latter his home of choice for much of his scholarly career. This is what motivated him very early on to edit a volume of wide- ranging essays on Contemporary Jewish Ethics,20 which has since become a classic text for any college course related to the topic. I count six copies alone in the university library where I am drafting this very introduction, which attests to its pedagogical importance. The concern of modern Jew- ish ethics is no less urgent than it was nearly forty years ago when Kellner distinguished the problems contemporary Judaism faced from its previous incarnations in medieval and ancient times: Contemporary Jewish ethics is distinguished from medieval Jewish ethics in that the problems it faces are largely those it shares with the surrounding culture (e.g., the problem of relating morality and religion, and specific

17 Kellner, “Chosenness, Not Chauvinism,” 53. 18 Ibid., 88. 19 For Ravitzky, see, for example, his Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, trans. M. Swirsky and J. Chipman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) and the chapter excerpted online “ ‘The Revealed End’: Messianic Religious Zionism,” http:// www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres8/kookism.pdf, where he tends toward R. Abraham Isaac Kook’s theology that “the political restoration of Israel depends on a moral transformation of global proportions, that the Jewish return to history is conditional on the elimination of all the corruptions of worldly politics” (p. 43). For Halbertal and, similar to Kellner, an example of a turn to a medieval model in the promotion of religious tolerance, see Moshe Halbertal, “ ‘Ones Possessed of Religion’: Religious Tolerance in the Teachings of the Me’iri,” Edah Journal 1, no. 1 (2000): 1–25, http://www.edah.org/backend/JournalArticle/ halbertal.pdf. 20 Menachem Kellner, Contemporary Jewish Ethics (New York: Sanhedrin Press, 1978). menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 9

questions like political obedience and medical ethics). In short, Jews and Judaism have become part of the modern world and, to significant degree, the modern world has become a factor which cannot be ignored by both Jews and Judaism.21 Kellner returns repeatedly to confront questions of ethics directly from a Jewish perspective but virtually every other publication of his reflects some struggle with, or has ramifications for, questions related to the marriage between the very particularistic manner in which Judaism is practiced and ethics that is universal in scope and application. As he states when focusing on another of the seminal medieval rationalists, Saadia Gaon, although ethics is grounded in reason that is universal, Jewish ethics is concretized by the detailed prescriptions of the mitzvot: “Thus, we may say that there is a uniquely Jewish ethic in detail but not in general. Since this uniquely Jewish ethic is taught in detail by the commandments of the Torah, there can be no talk of a Jewish ethic independent of Jewish law.”22 This Orthodox posture also raises the vexing dilemma of the autonomy or heteronomy of Jewish ethics. Neither will do for autonomy renders divine revelation irrelevant and heteronomy offends Kantian moral philosophy.23 However one thing Kellner is certain of: Jewish isolationism will simply not do. Thus his manner of doing philosophy and choice of topics in Jew- ish intellectual history to research have been calculated to inspire consideration and reconsideration of a Jew’s moral responsibility within her own community and within the community of nations. As well, his mission is to discourage a kind of religious chauvinism that seems to be an ever- present hazard of Jewish Orthodoxy. Thus doctrine must never ossify to become an end in itself that loses sight of an original overarching goal or that squelches independent thought. As but one illustration, consider Kellner’s book-length work, Maimonides on the “Decline of the Generations” and the Nature of Rabbinic Authority. This study is emblematic of Kellner’s research elsewhere which plies his well-honed academic skills to weed out myth from fact, to replace a caricature by a coherent objective portrait of a notion and thus offers us a glimpse into the disciplined workshop that has inordinately enriched

21 Ibid., 15. 22 Menachem Kellner, “The Place of Ethics in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” Shofar 9 (1990): 32–47, at 46. Also published in Judaica 5 (Solomon Goldman Essays) (1990): 56–70. See also Menachem Kellner, “Well, Can There Be Jewish Ethics or Not?,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 5 (1996): 237–41. 23 On this see Kellner’s “Reflections on the Impossibility of Jewish Ethics,” Bar-Ilan Annual: Moshe Schwarcz Memorial Volume 22–23 (1987): 45–52. 10 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait

Jewish thought and philosophy. A closer examination of its thesis reveals the idealistic intent motivating the curious choice of what would at first sight appear to be a harmless, commonly accepted minor rubric of the rabbinic tradition. In fact it poses a sustained argument against a doctrine that would vigorously suppress intellectual freedom within Judaism in favor of an authoritarian conservatism. Kellner demonstrates that the theory of the “decline of the generations” is a reactionary one which subscribes to an inherent process of degeneration in the moral, spiritual, and intellectual human constitution, mandating a rigid obedience to prior authority in both legal (halakhic) and nonlegal (or aggadic) matters. Kellner challenges this doctrine by way of demonstrating that, as with all other issues that raise the specter of Jewish essentialism, Maimonides rejected an essentialist doctrine of the superiority of ancients over moderns. What particularly troubles Kellner about this doctrine is that it has been treated within traditional circles as just that, a “doctrine.” Kellner first undermines the common assumption that this has always been a tenet of Judaism quite independently of Maimonides. After canvassing all the classical rabbinic sources that one could invoke as for or against, the inescapable conclusion is that there in fact is no settled rabbinic doctrine on the issue prior to the tenth century Gaonic period. Kellner’s operative thesis in reviewing these sources is the lack of systemization that we normally ascribe to philosophical or jurisprudential texts. Each rabbinic source must be analyzed on its own terms and cannot necessarily be har- monized with other disparate sources to produce a unified rabbinic theory on this issue, or any other for that matter. In opposition to the “decline” view, Maimonides’ view of history is one of a series of peaks and valleys conditioned by category mistakes rather than ontological degeneration. In fact, Maimonides’ view of history may be somewhat closer to a Hegelian one of natural progression culminating in its messianic apex of universal enlightenment. In the nonlegal realm, Maimonides had no compunction about rejecting the obiter dicta of rabbinic sages, chalking it up to outdated science or primitive superstition. Submission to ancient authority is a prag- matic factor of historical circumstances as well as highly developed halakhic expertise and spiritual devotion. In fact, in another important study, Kellner demonstrates that Maimonides himself did not view his own scientific and halakhic conclusions as the final word. He considered his own understanding of physics, based on the best science available to him, as well as his presentation of halakha, as provisional, subject to revision should future discovery demand it. As Kellner states, “Maimonides was not irretrievably wedded to the menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 11 details of the account of the structure of the universe presented in the Mishneh Torah [and] . . . was not even wedded irretrievably to the details of his account of halakha presented there. He recognized that he could err, corrected mistakes which he caught himself, and admitted the fact when others found mistakes in the work.”24

Rethinking Orthodox Judaism

Kellner is drawn to Maimonides the great demystifyer in all aspects of Judaism and his tendency to naturalize events (e.g., miracles), personalities (e.g., prophets), and divine law (hukkim) traditionally understood in supernatural categories, extended to the rabbinic legal system as well. The Babylonian Talmud’s binding authority is a consequence of a combination of historical conditions, which, if replicated, could introduce a supersession of its authority. What Kellner would like to retrieve for contemporary Orthodoxy is the Maimonidean terminology of authority that is not circumscribed by mystery, revelation, and holy spirit, but rather by a coherent jurisprudential theory to which even contemporary students of law could relate. That theory encompasses such familiar rational prerequisites of a properly reconstituted judiciary with all the trappings of a functioning civil judicial administration including: an ultimate source of judicial review (Sanhedrin); an official process for judicial appointment (rabbinic ordination/semikha); and some semblance of national sovereignty (unanimous assent of rabbis in Israel). This thesis is one example of Kellner’s penchant for choosing issues in a medieval context that are not merely of scholarly interest in antiquated texts. Rather, they bear serious ramifications for current raging debates within various sectors of Judaism. What is a doctrine such as the “decline” other than the attempt to dogma- tize the very chain of authority in Jewish law? Cardinal tenets of the rule of law within both secular and religious contexts are intelligibility and accessibility, both of which the “decline” would vitiate. Any challenge to an innately superior authority then can be labeled heresy delegitimizing honest debate and reasonable inquiry. Kellner’s solid grasp of medieval Jewish philosophy and law are characteristically evident throughout this study of a notion, which is an exemplar of the Maimonidean enterprise to preserve both rabbinic authority and intellectual freedom.

24 See Menachem Kellner, “Maimonides on the Science of the Mishneh Torah: Provisional or Permanent?,” AJS Review 18 (1993): 169–94. 12 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait

This model emerges from a striking Talmudic tale about an encounter between Moses and a second-century rabbinic acolyte, Rabbi Akiva. Transported by God to Akiva’s academy, and anonymously eavesdropping on a current legal debate regarding the Torah, Moses finds himself confused and unable to follow the drift of the argument. Moses is finally comforted to learn that the source of the law in question is none other than himself. What the great legal philosopher, H. L. A. Hart has termed the “open texture” of all legislation and legal precedent is what allows any legal system to advance healthily and naturally. Any legal document including the Torah cannot possibly contemplate every single circumstance that may arise so that there is an inherent indeterminacy in all legislation and precedent. The task of the judge and the rabbi is to tease out the general principles, moral or spiritual, which allow him to replace a lacuna with a formal imperative that is consistent with its legislative precursors. Moses finds solace over the human creativity, which confounds him in the final acknowledgment that the resolution of his legacy’s “open texture” is consistent with its original intent and therefore can be attributed to him. Kellner’s thesis is not just some arcane study of an esoteric concept but a potent antidote to those in Orthodox Judaism today who would shroud the authority of their rabbinic scholars with some innate mystical quality which mandates obedience rather than cogent legal reasoning. Maimonides and, ipso facto, Kellner, would have nothing but contempt for the contemporary resurrection of the “decline” ideal known as da’at torah, which magically imprints nonlegal rabbinic pronouncements with the quality of infalli- bility akin to ex cathedra pronouncements of the Catholic Pope.25 Much later in his career Kellner would describe those who subscribe to a Judaism governed by da’at torah as living in a comfortable “enchanted world,” “who does not want the challenge of living by his or her wits (literally), but the comfort of God’s love and the instructions of His agents,” while those who bow only to a reason-based Judaism have chosen a far more complex “disenchanted” world to live in.26 The combination of Maimonides’ philosophical and juridical acumen and his commitment to the integrity of both systems prevented him from bowing to any authority for reasons other than

25 On this issue of Maimonides’ aversion to any such concept that would link truth somehow to charismatic authority rather than substance, see Kellner’s “Rabbis in Politics: A Study in Medieval and Modern Jewish Political Theory,” Medinah ve-Hevrah 3 (2003): 673–98 [Hebrew]. 26 Menachem Kellner, Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism (Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2006), 294–95. menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 13 the logical categories upon which each operate. The antiquity of thought does not immunize it from the scrutiny of reason and those who subscribe to such an ideology are considered by Maimonides to be suffering a serious disability: “The great sickness and the grievous evil (Eccles. 5:12) consists in this: that all the things that man finds written in books, he presumes to think of as true—and all the more so if the books are old.”27 His all-consuming passion for the truth, from whatever source it emerged to whatever conclusion it led, is implicit in his rejection of the “decline,” and so with this study Kellner fortifies the Maimonidean proscription to “never cast his reason behind him for the eyes are set in front, not in back.”28

Zionism and the State of Israel: A Public Intellectual

Kellner’s aliyah, raising of a family in Israel, and establishing his academic home and reputation in an Israeli university for most of his working career constitutes an emphatic existential rejection of his teacher Steven Schwarzschild’s principled anti-Zionism. In fact, Kellner tirelessly defends the State of Israel and its noble Zionist ideals against the onslaught of biased anti-Israel vitriol that unfortunately has become fashionable in the academy, emanating from every quarter, including his own Israeli and Jewish colleagues.29 Although wary of the dangers posed by certain triumphalist and messianic strains of Zionism,30 he will not remain silent in the face of perverse calumnies so au courant which characterize Israel as an apartheid state that patently fly in the face of what he personally experiences daily, living equally alongside a substantial Arab population

27 Menachem Kellner, “Letter on Astrology,” in Maimonides’ Empire of Light, ed. Ralph Lerner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 179. 28 Ibid., 186. 29 See for example Menachem Kellner, “Daniel Boyarin and the Herd of Independent Minds,” in The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders, ed. Edward Alexander and Paul Bogdanor (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2006), 167–76. See also the following online links of Kellner’s politics: “Israel Reverses Gravity,” https://www.opendemocracy .net/conflict-debate_97/gravity_3404.jsp; “The War in Lebanon: A View from Haifa,” https://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-middle_east_politics/lebanon_haifa_view_3803 .jsp; “Resisting Falsehood and Protecting Integrity” (Kellner’s reply to Omar Barghouti, “Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Why the Academic and Cultural Boycott?”), http://www .engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=950; and “Israel’s Gaza War: Five Asymmetries,” https://www.opendemocracy.net/article/israel-s-gaza-war-five-asymmetries. 30 For just one excellent sample of Kellner’s appeal to medieval sources to guide the future of Zionism on this issue see his “Messianic Postures in Israel Today,” Modern Judaism 6, no. 2 (1986): 197–209. Also published in Essential Papers on Messianic Movements in Jewish History, ed. Marc Saperstein (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 504–19. 14 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait in Haifa. In fact his contribution to the sustained flourishing of all that is decent and just in the Zionist cause of national Jewish liberation and that remains critical to the physical, cultural, and spiritual survival of the Jewish people continues unabated even after his recent retirement from the University of Haifa. He was instrumental in founding a new liberal arts college, Shalem College, in Jerusalem, and, as this is being written, chairs its program in philosophy and Jewish thought. This latest position simply represents another phase in his relentless commitment to the ongoing excellence of Jewish scholarship and ensuring that Israel appropriately maintains its stature as host to the premiere institutions of Jewish learning in the world.

Science, Philosophy, and Jewish Education

Besides Maimonides, the other central medieval figure that has been the subject of many Kellner publications is R. Levi ben Gershom, known as Gersonides, a Provencal rationalist who penned groundbreaking studies across the board of Jewish thought including halakha, biblical exegesis, and philosophical theology, as well as astronomy, astrology, logic, and supercommentaries on commentaries of Aristotle and Averroes. One of Kellner’s very first academic articles was on Gersonides31 followed by another dozen between 1974 and 1996,32 including a critical edition and English translation of Gersonides’ commentary on the Song of Songs. Although Gersonides follows very much in the rationalist tradition forged by Maimonides, he also struck out on his own, often in disagreement with the Great Eagle. But what drew Kellner to this medieval polymath is consistent with his interests and passions we have seen emerge thus far in this short introduction: Kellner informs us explicitly that it is Gersonides’ importance as a model for contemporary Judaism in its confrontation and intersection with the outside world: He was medieval Judaism’s most prominent actual working scientist; his commitment to rational thought led him to adopt positions which would be anathema in today’s Orthodox Jewish world; explicitly rejecting the midrashic approach to understanding the true teachings of the Torah, Aristotle was his guiding star for understanding the Torah; and yet, despite

31 Menachem Kellner, “Gersonides, Providence, and the Rabbinic Tradition,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 43 (1974): 673–85. 32 Many of these are now collected in one volume: Menachem Kellner, Torah in the Observatory: Gersonides, Maimonides, Song of Songs (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2010). menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 15

all this, he remained unswerving in his commitment to Torah and halakha. Gersonides stands as an ongoing rebuke to all who would tell Jews that in order to be faithful to Torah they must turn away from the wider world.33 In other words, Gersonides is an exemplar par excellence of the way to negotiate one’s own Jewish particularity in the study of Torah and observance of halakha with the broader world in which one lives—a world that offers its challenges no doubt, but also one that can enrich one’s own narrow domain. Scientific progress and truth can never be shut out of the beit hamidrash but must be an integral component of it as Gersonides, and Maimonides before him, have shown. Reason can never be abandoned for blind subservience to religious dictates and texts, and so surely, Ger- sonides’ own philosophical allegorization of the Song of Songs resounds in the very name of Shalem College. Gersonides considers the role of “Jeru- salem” in the book as an allegory for man since part of its name, shalem, is etymologically related to the Hebrew term for perfection and man is the most perfect of all existents. Solomon, whose name is also philologi- cally linked to the term for perfection, rules over Jerusalem, as an allegory for the intellect which rules over man.34 The term shalem then, in its Gersonidian garb, resonates with everything Kellner holds dear, elevat- ing that which signifies Jewish particularity—Jerusalem and its political leader—to the more universal categories of the human and the intellect. Gersonides mediates between the parochial Jewish polity and the broader cosmopolitan global village. One of Kellner’s studies on Gersonides in particular offers a window into his fascination with that medieval thinker which perhaps compensated for what Maimonides lacked. While for Maimonides, the desire to teach and perfect others is simply a by-product of one’s own intellectual self- perfection, for Gersonides it is an act of imitatio dei, the very highest of religious enterprises and mandates possible for: it is not proper for someone to withhold what he has learned in philosophy from someone else. This would be utterly disgraceful. Indeed, just as this entire universe emanated from God for no particular advantage to Him, so it is proper for someone who has achieved some perfection to try to impart it to someone else. In this way he is imitating God as best he can.35

33 Ibid., 18. 34 See Kellner’s translation of Gersonides on Song of Songs, Yale Judaica Series (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 13–14. 35 Introduction to Wars of the Lord, trans. Seymour Feldman, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1984–1999), vol. 1, 97. 16 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait

Kellner’s explanation of this position, especially his analogy to contemporary academics, is revealing in explaining his attraction to it: It is the nature of perfection, Gersonides in effect maintains, that it seeks to expand. Perfected individuals are not content to exist in lonely splendor, as it were, but are driven by nature to seek to share their perfection with others. Gersonides proves the point by appealing to the literary work of scholars. In an age before royalties and academic promotion, no one undertook the hard labor of writing a scientific work for his or her own benefit; rather, if such books were written, it must have been out of the author’s desire to be of benefit to others. This characteristic of perfection is universal, explaining God’s beneficence in creating the universe and explaining the beneficial emanations of the separate intellects and heavenly bodies.36 Gersonides elevates teaching, collaborative research, helping others advance in their human development, and passing on the benefits of one’s accomplishments to others, to both a halakhic and philosophical enterprise in the performance of the most paramount of all spiritual acts—imitating God’s ways. If that is the case, then firstly, Kellner, in his own dedication to imparting what he sees as the best of Jewish intellectual traditions to students in lectures, in print, as well as in community talks across the globe, has followed in his medieval predecessor’s foot- steps, walking in God’s ways. Secondly, Kellner’s voice, as Gersonides’ and Maimonides’, is guided by one thing, and one thing alone: the search for the truth and its dissemination at any cost, even at the peril of condem- nation by his own community. As Maimonides famously asserted about his compulsion to pen what would become the Guide of the Perplexed, despite being certain that its exposited truths would attract criticism, rejection, and character assault, “I am the man who, when the concern pressed him, and his way was straitened and he could find no device by which to teach a demonstrated truth other than by giving satisfaction to a single virtuous man while displeasing ten thousand ignoramuses—I am he who prefers to address that single virtuous man by himself, and I do not heed the blame of those many creatures.”37 Indeed, the entire Guide is written as a private correspondence for the benefit of one single beloved student. Kellner’s personal reflections on Gersonides’ contributions to the advancement of Jewish thought echo this very bold sentiment. Consider- ing his role as a scholarly and talmid hakahm gadfly within the Orthodox

36 See Kellner, Torah in the Observatory, 240. 37 Guide of the Perplexed, ed. and trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 16. menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 17

Jewish community, we can easily substitute Kellner for Gersonides in the following assessment: God endowed us with the ability to distinguish truth from falsity and we are expected to make full use of that divine endowment. If using this ability leads us to positions unacceptable to the mass of humanity (or to the mass of rabbis), why so much the worse for them. Loyalty to God and to God’s Torah demands nothing less.38

The Problem of Dogmatism

Another crowning achievement of Kellner’s scholarship is his pioneering series of studies culminating in a book-length examination of the notions of dogma and heresy in Judaism.39 This topic too reflects Kellner’s abiding interest in exposing those dimensions of Jewish intellectual history that set up barriers between people rather than integrate them, that determined rigid boundaries which effected membership in the religious community for some, while censoring, censuring, and ejecting others for not strictly conforming with them. As with every love affair, that between Kellner and Maimonides is not free of its periodic rockiness, and on this issue Kellner breaks ranks with his medieval master. Kellner lays the blame squarely at the feet of Maimonides for having radically transformed a religion that primarily concerned itself with proper behavior to one that defined itself in terms of thought and theological convictions. With the introduction of his Thirteen Principles of Faith (ikarim), and its subsequent near can- onization in the rabbinic tradition, Maimonides dogmafied what Kellner has convincingly argued and demonstrated was a previously dogmaless Judaism that cared primarily about what its adherents did rather than thought. What is particularly upsetting for Kellner’s vision of an ideal faith community is that first Maimonides literally defines Jewishness by subscription to beliefs rather than compliance with halakhic precepts governing conduct, or the performance of mitzvot. Second, and even more

38 Kellner, Torah in the Observatory, 335. 39 See in particular Menachem Kellner, “Heresy and the Nature of Faith in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” Jewish Quarterly Review 77 (1987): 299–318; Menachem Kellner, “What is Heresy?,” Studies in Jewish Philosophy 3 (1982): 55–70. These and other articles on the subject have now been collected and reprinted in part 2 of Kellner, Science in the Bet Midrash, “Religious Faith and Dogma.” These concise studies led to the book-length treatment that has become a classic resource for anyone interested in the topic of heresy and dogma in Judaism, Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought: From Maimonides to Abravanel (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 18 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait revolutionary, for the worse according to Kellner, is Maimonides’ failure to apply the classic halakhically exculpatory distinctions of intentional- ity, inadvertence, and negligence. Heresy, according to Maimonides, is blind to intent and thus errant belief held mistakenly does not absolve its adherent of guilt.40 For Maimonides theological conviction rather than transgressive behavior determines exclusion from the club, carrying with it the serious negative social consequences in this world compounded by the loss of eternal reward in the next, that are usually associated with the heresy, excommunication, and inquisitions of the Catholic church rather than Jews and Judaism. One practical consequence, yet most strikingly reflective of this Maimonidean transformation of Judaism, or what Kellner characterizes as a “theological novum,”41 is the prerequisites stipulated by Maimonides in his legal Code for the acceptance of converts. At stake with conversion, of course, is what precisely defines Jewish identity. While the classic rabbinic sources require apprising the potential convert of the onerous mitzvot she is pledging herself to assume, Maimonides slips dogma into the conversion classes and is categorical about its urgency over and above the commandments: “He should then be made acquainted with the principles of the faith which are the oneness of God and the prohibition of idolatry. These matters should be discussed in great detail; he should then be told, though not at great length, about some of the less weighty and some of the more weighty commandments.”42 In other words the potential convert must be schooled in the theology and dogma of philosophical monotheism rather than simply the normative obligations of the mitzvot: Orthodoxy replaces orthopraxy. Once again Kellner is drawn to this subject for its pressing ramifications on contemporary Judaism. He thus poses a different medieval model formulated by a trio of major thinkers in opposition and preferable to Maimonides’ view: R. Shimon ben Zemah Duran (1361–1444), Hasdai Crescas (1340–1410), and Rabad of Posquieres (1125–1198). That model allows for inadvertent or well-intentioned misbeliefs and exonerates those subscribing to them from being condemned as heretics. Kellner advocates this “softer” stand in a bid for what he sees as a more pluralistic Judaism for two reasons:

40 See Menachem Kellner, “Inadvertent Heresy in Medieval Jewish Thought: Maimonides and Abravanel vs. Duran and Crescas?,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 3 (1984): 393–403 [Hebrew]. 41 See Kellner, Science in the Bet Midrash, 90. 42 Mishneh Torah, Laws of Forbidden Intercourse 14:2. menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 19

1) such a position is inclusive as opposed to exclusive, and makes serious religious discourse among religiously committed Jews of various persua- sions possible, and, 2) it can be argued that such a position is closer to the spirit and practice of classical Judaism than is the position of Maimonides, reflecting as it does the influence of alien categories of thought.43 The years of hard scholarly research and publications in academic forums led Kellner, as a committed Orthodox Jew, as an Israeli, and as an idealistic humanist to expose his conclusions to a wider general audience. As he succinctly put it in an interview in 2012, his motivations for doing so were threefold: (a) Annoyance with the ads the Chief Rabbinate would put in newspapers here in Israel every year before the yamim noraim, warning people not to attend services in Conservative or Reform synagogues. It seemed to me then (and seems to me now) that the Rabbinate would prefer to see secular Israelis spend Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur at the beach or on picnics than in non-Orthodox synagogues. (b) growing concern over the way in which Orthodoxy, by drawing ever sharper lines of demarcation, pushes Jews away from Torah instead of bringing them closer. (c) a number of experiences made me realize that the “tinok she-nishba” solution [a legal fiction which characterizes nonobservant Jews as having been raised as “children taken captive by heathens” and therefore do not know any better than to follow the allure of the modern world and abandon the Torah], while well-meaning is deeply patronizing, as well as making very little sense in today’s world.44 The result was his provocatively titled book, Must a Jew Believe Anything? Formulated to challenge long standing preconceived notions of Jewish- ness, its impetus was self-admittedly polemical, “arguing against theological exclusivism and arguing for a more inclusivist vision of Judaism.”45 Perhaps his most widely read and controversial book, it generated much discussion in the larger Jewish community and is a model for the kind of thought-provoking debate scholarship could generate when distilled into an accessible format. Kellner’s work equips Orthodoxy with a sorely needed theology that could face the ongoing political, social, and spiritual challenges modernity raises. Kellner demonstrates with passion and

43 Kellner, Science in the Bet Midrash, 122. 44 http://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/interview-with-menachem-kellner/. 45 Menachem Kellner, Must a Jew Believe Anything? (London and Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1999), 9. 20 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait elegance how Maimonides radically transformed Judaism into an “eccle- siastical community,” transfiguring the epikoros from an insolent and irreverent rogue to a theological apostate. Membership in the “community of Israel” and entitlement to divine recompense were limited to those who accepted a fixed set of thirteen dogmas. What a Jew thought, rather than what he or she did, became the sine qua non for affiliation with coreligionists. The wrenching of the original meaning of belief (emunah) from a performance based “trust” and “confidence,” a “belief in,” to a propositional “belief that,” is the crux of Kellner’s more popular j’accuse against Maimonides. Though formal Jewish Inquisitions never evolved, it now was possible, as Kellner demonstrates, to trace a straight line from Maimonides’ “dogmafi- cation” of Judaism to contemporary halakhic strictures. For instance, those of R. Moshe Feinstein (d. 1986) (the most respected and revered posek, or halakhic decisor, of the twentieth century) against the Conservative and Reform movements, which effectively consign all forms of Judaism other than Orthodoxy (more appropriately, R. Feinstein’s brand of Orthodoxy) to the category of the heretical. By implication, Kellner’s argument suggests that fixation on dogma and ideological bias has the power to undermine the roots of halakhic authority. To wit, for example, the responsum of R. Moshe Feinstein concerning whether it is permissible for an Orthodox congregation to sell a Torah scroll to a Conservative congregation. The sale of a new Torah, he allows, but not of one housed previously in an Orthodox synagogue, for, he says, such a sale would be tantamount to diminish- ing (horadah) its holiness. His jurisprudential rationale for this ruling is patently flimsy: “Though I have no legal support for this prohibition, it seems that this must be taken into account.”46 Ideology is the driving force here, and it is instrumental in erecting a superfluous halakhic barrier. The legal tenuousness of the ruling also compromises halakhic integrity. The dogmas, creeds, and catechisms so characteristic of Islam and Christianity are absent from the Bible and Talmud. That the medieval hal- akhists (rishonim) debated whether the First Commandment constitutes an actual mitzvah to believe in the existence of God is indicative of how free of dogma Judaism is. For those who say no, that it is not a mitzvah, it is theoretically possible to be a fully observant Jew without believing in God’ existence. It is for this reason that heresy, in the technical sense of the term, is much more at home in the Christian tradition than in the Jewish.

46 Iggerot Moshe, Yoreh Deah, no. 174. menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 21

Epikoros, the term widely understood to mean the Jewish heretic, is actually defined classically in terms of ethics, not dogma, as one who exhibits the offensive behavior of vilifying Torah scholars or others in the scholar’s presence.47 As the term “halakha,” meaning the legal structure by which Orthodox Jews govern their life, suggests, concrete external physical movements, not cerebral synapses, are what determines a Jew’s relationship to God. Scholars would be wise to heed Kellner’s own impulse to render scholarship relevant: “No work of scholarship, no matter how dry, boring, and distant from the claims of ‘real life’, can be entirely divorced from the life, concerns, hopes, and fears of the scholar who produced it. If this is the case generally, it is all the more true of a person living in Israel and dealing with Judaic scholarship.”48

Choosing between Jewish Variants

Although there seems to be a kind of love/hate relationship with Mai- monides and the rationalist tradition, there is far more weight on the love side. Though he faults Maimonides for introducing what he sees as an alien and divisive concept of creed into Judaism, Kellner, throughout his career, has been valiantly attempting to retrieve, or salvage, far many more noble and virtuous dimensions from Maimonides’ rationalist legacy that have been lamentably lost or overwhelmed by Kabbalah, that other major strain of Jewish thought. We have already discussed some, such as Maimonidean universalism and progressive rather than regressive view of intellectual advancement, but there are other crucial notions to which Kellner is particularly drawn. As with those discussed, all these could be grouped under a general heading of a functional or instrumentalist view of Judaism associated with medieval Jewish rationalism in direct contrast to an ontologically essentialist view promoted by the mystical strain. For example, the difference between the two prominent trends on the notion of “holiness” (kedushah), one central to Judaism and religion in general, is paradigmatic of how radically divergent the two approaches are, positing two virtually irreconcilable models of Judaism. Upon close textual analysis, Kellner demonstrates that for Maimonides holiness is simply descrip- tive of ethical behavior that rises to the standard of imitating God’s ways. Since, in Maimonides’ strict version of negative theology, God defies any

47 Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 99b. 48 Kellner, Must a Jew Believe Anything, 3. 22 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait description or attribute, the characteristic of holiness, when ascribed to God, like any other, merely describes the way we perceive His actions. Kellner demonstrates, both from Maimonides’ legal and philosophical works, that holiness is a standard of moral behavior which emulates God’s actions on earth and not some metaphysical ontological feature, that neither He nor us possess. Maimonides’ introduction of the notion of holiness alongside such ethical traits as graciousness and mercy in the Mishneh Torah’s Laws of Moral Qualities49 establishes its halakhic definition of imitatio dei in terms of conduct. Likewise the Guide’s etymological analysis of the term yields exclusively behavioral senses of obedience to commandments, physical cleanliness, and ritual purity.50 This Maimoni- dean model stands in stark contrast to the kabbalistic one which sees holiness as an objective reality which inheres in things, places, and people. Thus Kellner concludes that for Maimonides “the Torah engages in what might be called the construction of social reality. Religious reality is not a given, not something found in the universe. Torah, for Maimonides, seeks to inject religious meaning into human life, as opposed to finding it already present in reality. A life thus lived is ‘spiritual.’ ”51 Here we arrive at what I would consider Kellner’s magnum opus, a book that develops this contrast of the two models of Judaism that cuts across the entire spectrum of Jewish thought and practice, Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism.52 It is also a mature study published in 2006 that crystallizes some thirty years of research and publications with serious ramifications again for a healthy and viable Judaism in the modern age. In addition to “holiness” Kellner fleshes out opposing theologies on a variety of subjects that are critical to Judaism such as halakha, ritual purity, the Hebrew language, divine presence, Jews vs. non-Jews, and the existence of wholly spiritual entities such as angels. Taken together, Kellner presents a stark choice between two Judaisms, that, building on the thesis developed in Must a Jew Believe Anything?, while identically practiced are supported by two entirely distinct theologies. Maimonides’ intellectual and halakhic oeuvre is distinguished by a systematic purification of Judaism of

49 1:5–6. 50 III:47, 595–96. 51 See Menachem Kellner, “Spiritual Life,” in The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides, ed. Kenneth Seeskin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 273–99, at 290. This article concisely presents Kellner’s analysis of Maimonides’ conception of holiness that I have digested here. 52 Menachem Kellner, Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism (Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2006). menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 23 proto-kabbalistic features that had seeped into and permeated its culture. Representing the other side is Judah Halevi (d. 1141), whose “mystical” welt- anschauung Maimonides exerted every effort to suppress since it threatened what he considered the entire Jewish normative edifice was originally constructed to preserve: the unity and absolute transcendence of God. Maimonidean conceptions of much of the mainstay of Jewish thought and law such as holiness (kedushah) and ritual states of purity and impurity (toharah, tumah) profoundly challenged then current perceptions of these categories as somehow essential or ontological states of reality. Kellner demonstrates (and favors) methodically and convincingly that, as opposed to a mystically inclined worldview, these categories do not describe existing reality but rather constitute a social reality. They are conventional and, in many cases, even arbitrary institutional constructs intended to assist Jews toward perfecting their humanity, something Jews share in common with all other human beings. In a sense one can say that for Maimonides all those religious notions that were traditionally accepted as inherent in the world, and that continue to be thought of as such in contemporary Jewish religious culture, must in fact be jettisoned from the world in order to safeguard God’s existence and unity. It may come as a shock to all who subscribe to Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith that maintaining a belief in a divine presence (shekhinah) or glory (kavod) that are somehow physically situated in the world seriously violates the Maimonidean credo. Any concretization, however partial, of an utterly transcendent, ontologically unique, unknowable, and indescribable Being is tantamount to what Maimonides would consider heresy. A prime example of Maimonidean, and ipso facto Kellnerian, iconoclasm is in response to what sense are we to understand the Hebrew language as “holy” (lashon hakodesh). If kedushah is a quality that inheres in something then Hebrew defies any linguistic commonality with other languages. If the beginning of Genesis is taken literally, Hebrew is God’s native tongue, must therefore preexist the world, and is the tool by which the creation material- izes. God’s declaration “Let there be light” effectuates its existence lending it some innate creative power. However, for Maimonides, a fundamental principle that underlies much of Maimonides’ Guide and, particularly, the first section which develops a lexicon of Hebrew terms and their meanings, is the conventionality of Hebrew, as any language, which evolves and reflects the particular sociocultural milieu in which it is spoken. In one fell swoop, as was most probably his intent, Maimonides undermines a core legacy of the mystical, or what he would consider superstitious, tradition which reifies Hebrew. 24 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait

On this issue I mention but three important implications for current Jewish belief, although certainly not exhaustive. Firstly, Hebrew, and consequently, the Torah, loses a kabbalistic hyper-significance which reduces sentences to a string of characters and allows meaning to be teased out of individual words, letters, numerical values of letters (gematria), shapes of letters, and even blank spaces. Secondly, Hebrew divine names (shemot) merely reflect the types of heavenly governance that are observable in the world. In other words they are derivative of the world and do not cap- ture any divine essence.53 You would not find a keme’a (amulet) adorning Maimonides’ synagogue. Thirdly, books belonging to the mystical sacred canon such as the “Book of Creation” (Sefer Yetsirah), a treatise traditionally attributed to Abraham (but conspicuously ignored by Maimonides) would be a must for inclusion in any Maimonidean list of banned books. Its advocacy of Hebrew characters as both generative forces and building blocks of the very structure of the cosmos flies in the face of a conventional linguistic theory of Hebrew. Rather than simply a mode of communication, Hebrew is supernaturally imbued transforming the Torah from a teaching conveyed through its language to a conjurer’s tool that resonates with magical powers. Maimonides’ demystification of Hebrew ties into his essential understanding of the nature of God and the Torah’s content. How would Maimonides respond to the biblical account of divine speech as a creative force and therefore Hebrew as somehow innately potent? As with all anthropomorphisms, the operative rule that governs its composition is the Talmudic rubric, “the Torah speaks in the language of human beings,”54 which demands any attribution to God of human characteristics to be taken metaphorically. God does not possess a mouth, lips, or vocal chords, and His sole activity is thought, thus He did not speak. Maimonides is absolutely unequivocal about the equivocal sense of divine speech in the first chapters of Genesis as a metaphor for “will” (Guide I:65, 159). As a result all magical or theurgic use of Hebrew is preempted. One can master Hebrew and combine letters in any way one wishes to gain mastery of nature, and possibly even God, but all for naught since God’s primal will is inscrutable. As with the other subjects dealt with in the book, what Maimonides challenged has become so commonplace in current Jewish Orthodoxy that it would no longer be considered mystical but integral to mainstream

53 Guide, I:61, 149. 54 See, e.g., Babylonian Talmud Nedarim 3a–b; Mishneh Torah, Yesodei HaTorah 1:12; Guide I:26). menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 25

Judaism. For but one example, no less a brilliant twentieth-century posek than R. Moshe Feinstein when canvassing the complexities of a law dealing with oaths (nedarim), takes it as a given that Hebrew is wholly distinct from other languages in its being “the essence of speech, not a product of human convention, as through it was the world created and the Torah given.”55 Since this is an integral part of his legal rationale it has normative implications. In this instance it affects our understanding of both a biblical prescription dealing with oaths and its Talmudic overlay. There is still another fundamental of mystical theurgy and, ipso facto, of popular folk religion that Maimonides felt needs disposing of. Alongside God’s names on amulets (keme’ot) that adorn many synagogues are those of a myriad of angels. However, there would be no sense in appealing to or calling on figments of the imagination, and, for Maimonides, even less sense, since they are the boorish fantasies of ignorant minds. Maimonides’ world is indeed populated by “angels” because they are metaphorically representative of all causal forces in nature. Since the Hebrew term mal’ach simply means “messenger,” all of nature can be said to operate via angels since nature was initially activated by God and therefore is ultimately an expression of God’s will. Angels represent a comprehensive range of things including the elements, what propels animals, the catalysts for all physical functions, the inspiration of mental activity, and indeed “all forces are angels.”56 By having angels represent everything, they represent nothing, so thoroughly subverting the term as to drain it of all meaning. Angelology is much more attractive for public consumption than science because it relieves human beings of the rigorous intellectual undertaking required to truly understand the world. Angels reassuringly qualify everyone as a scientist, when in fact such a worldview amounts to surrender to “the blindness of ignorance.”57 This “confrontation” has sweeping consequences theologically, halakhically and exegetically. For Maimonides the ultimate goal in life is to know God and the sole means by which one can accomplish that is through knowledge of His creation. In fact the very pinnacle of human knowledge, and consequently perfection, is typified by Moses at the top of the mountain whose glimpse of God’s “back” constitutes an all encompassing apprehension of what “follows necessarily from My will—that is, all the things

55 Iggerot Moshe, Yoreh Deah, vol. 5, ed. S. Rappoport (Jerusalem, 1996), 209. 56 Guide II:6, 262–63. 57 Ibid. 26 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait created by Me.”58 This comprehension entails the mutual connections between all existing things,59 which can only emerge from the painstak- ing curriculum of what today, in the Orthodox world, would be termed the “outside” knowledge Maimonides expected of his true disciples.60 Theologically, every replacement of natural causality with an angelic entity is a step further away from God and human perfection since it egregiously misperceives the creation—the singular route toward knowledge of, and thereby intimacy with God. Belief in angels can also seriously undermine halakhic observance. Maimonides in his Mishneh Torah harshly condemned the widespread practice of inserting angelic names in mezuzot. His criticism is instructive for it reflects an overarching conception of mitzvot that courses through all the subjects in Kellner’s book. More than simply a useless gesture to ficti- tious entities, it expresses a self-centered “asinine” (tipshim) degradation of a “paramount mitzvah geared toward the unity of God and the love and worship of Him” into “an amulet (kemie’a) for self-gratification.”61 An apo- tropaic view of mezuzah as a kind of religious house and health insurance is far worse than simply nonsense; it transforms a God-directed action into one of narcissism. As Kellner notes, the holiness of a mezuzah (as well as tefilin and tsitsit) lies in its religious utility, not its ontology. Maimonides’ theology would preclude any attempts to condition human fortune and misfortune on the kashrut of a mezuzah as defeating the very raison d’etre of the mitzvah. More than any other passage in Maimonides’ intellectual and legal corpus, it is I believe his portrayal of Abraham’s discovery, or more appropriately recovery, of monotheism and “true religion” in the first chapter of the Mishneh Torah, Laws Concerning Idolatry, that draws an incisive line in the sand between his theology and that which he opposed. In Kellner’s apt formulation Maimonides stands the traditional notion of divine election on its head by having Abraham choose God rather than vice versa. God plays no active role whatsoever in Abraham’s forging of a relationship with Him. That relationship is the natural outcome of decades of intellectual angst, inquiry, search, and investigation leading to, at the age of forty, the rejection of everything he had grown up with in favor of a single creator God. Maimonides’ Abraham then assumes the Socratic mantle as a pur-

58 Guide I:38, 87. 59 Guide I:54, 124. 60 Guide, Epistle Dedicatory, 3; I:34, 73–77. 61 Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Mezuzah, 5:4. menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 27 veyor of truth at any cost including his own personal safety, by “sowing doubt,” “engaging in debate,” “informing,” “overpowering with demonstration,” “accumulating a following,” informing each follower “in accordance with his capacity,” and ultimately leaving a textual legacy by “authoring treatises.” What this militates against is another mainstay of the opposing model taken for granted by so much of Orthodoxy today that the Torah preceded creation and therefore nothing is historically contingent, Abraham’s role was already pre-chosen by God, and the patriarchs observed the commandments prior to Sinai. Abraham as described by Maimonides, “taught his children and those who joined them a belief in one God based on reasoned demonstration. Since this philosophical religion did not withstand the Egyptian exile, God found it necessary to give Israel ritual commandments in order to preserve philosophical religion.”62 In other words philosophy needs Torah to ensure its survival, and not, as is commonly thought, the other way around! At its very inception Judaism is rooted in enlightenment rather than mystery, in the demonstrable grasp of universal truths over esoteric parochial traditions, in the primacy of self-development over submission to authority, and in reason over magic. Abraham paves the way, not for Judaism, but for a “nation that knows God” (umah shehi yoda’at et hashem). Whereas Halevi’s nation is distinguished by some inherent godly gene called the “divine thing” (inyan elohi), Maimonides’ coheres through knowledge. As a result Halevian, and subsequently Zoharic, humankind is stratified by a genetic hierarchy that resists even conversion. Whenever dealing with the nature of man and human perfection throughout his philosophical works, he consistently deals with the human qua human as opposed to Jews vs. goyim. Simply put, what distinguishes humankind from the animal kingdom is intellect, and perfection lies in its realization. Ultimate imitatio dei consists of exercising the mind, which is the only faculty we have remotely in common with God. A realized intellect is the only thing that survives the body. There is no Jewish intellect and consequently no such thing as a “goyishe kop.” However, for Halevi, and subsequently the Zoharic and kabbalistic traditions, Jews are inherently distinct from and spiritually superior to Gentiles. It is virtually endemic to all the various strands of Hasidism, the popular torchbearer of the mystical tradition. For Maimonides knowledge is the only criteria for

62 “Did the Torah Precede the Cosmos?—A Maimonidean Study,” Da’at 61 (2007): 83–96, at 86–87 [Hebrew]. 28 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait calibrating human spirituality, “for His favor and wrath, His nearness and remoteness, correspond to the extent of a man’s knowledge or ignorance.”63 Kellner sums up the core of his thesis, which also builds on all his previous work, and which acts as a cri de coeur for a retrieval of the best in the medieval rationalist tradition that has unfortunately been drowned out by the forces that would prefer a Judaism shrouded in mystery and myth. It is an urgent appeal for an entirely different world in which to live which confronts all the challenges modernity might throw at religion and yet still maintain the integrity of halakha: It is a “disenchanted” world, a world which can be understood and, so to speak, applied. It is a world which demands maturity from those who live in it, since nothing, not their humanity, not their Jewishness, is presented to them on a silver platter; everything must be earned. It is a world in which Jews are called upon to fulfill the commandments, not because failure to do so is metaphysically harmful, but because fulfilling them is the right thing to do. By making demands, imposing challenges, Maimonidean Judaism empowers Jews. Their fate is in their own hands, not in the hands of semi- divine intermediaries or in the hands of a rabbinic elite.64 Since publishing this magisterial work, Kellner’s scholarship and prophetic voice for the future of Judaism continues unabated.65 It is a voice articulated in true Maimonidean fashion which combines intellect and the creative imagination so vital for the pedagogical translation of what that intellect has grasped into a format accessible to all who are in need of its message. He continues to lament the apparent failure of much of Maimonides’ project and its succumbing to the lures of mysticism and Kabbalah. Yet, the very end of Maimonides’ great Code with its utopian vision of the messianic period when all humanity will join forces in the pursuit of the common enterprise of reasoned enlightenment continues to guide and inspire his thoughts. As he asserted recently, “Ultimately, and this perhaps explains why Maimonides’ vision of Judaism has attracted so few adherents over the generations, his is a religion addressed to emotionally and spiritually mature human beings (not Jews specifically, human beings generally): It is a religion of challenges, not endowments; of demands not bequests. It is, admittedly, the religion of an elite, but it is

63 Guide I:54, 124. 64 Kellner, Maimonides’ Confrontation, 294–95. 65 See, e.g., Menachem Kellner, “We are Not Alone,” in Radical Responsibility: Celebrating the Thought of Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, ed., Michael J. Harris, Daniel Rynhold, and Tamra Wright (Jerusalem: Maggid Books, 2012), 139–54. menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 29 open to all willing to make the effort to join the elite, and it aims toward a (messianic) future when all will have joined that elite.”66 I can personally attest to Kellner’s actual translation of lofty ideals into practice. While still a graduate student at the University of Toronto I had the privilege of listening to a visiting lecture of his followed by a dinner attended by a number of prominent academics with well-established rep- utations. I had never met him before, but he turned to me and inquired about my background, scholarly interests, and plans for the future. Rather than the norm of a curt, polite pleasantry, I was struck by how he continued to engage me at length, addressing my scholarship and offering sage advice, genuinely concerned for where I was headed, all the while sacrific- ing his opportunity to be feted by his peers. I had been familiar with Kellner the scholar from his writings, but I had now been introduced to Kellner the mensch, and subsequently the friend and mentor, the one who was “willing to make the effort” to enable others to “join the elite.” Since we opened with Maimonides, followed by an extensive discussion of Kellner, it is appropriate to end with that Maimonidean “ending” which so appeals to Kellner followed by Kellner’s own most recent reflections on its meaning for a Judaism that is interpretively forward looking and not mired in an immutable ancient text that is etched in stone. Recently Kellner grappled with the quandary of an immoral biblical mitzvah, which actually mandates genocide of indigenous populations as a necessary stage in the conquest of Canaan by the ancient Israelites. Once again, by now predict- ably, Maimonides poses a critical juncture in the ongoing rabbinic strug- gles with the patent evil of a divine command. Here too, Kellner overlays ancient biblical theology with Maimonides’ naturalistic messianic vision which culminates history and his own legal code: Then there will be neither famine nor war, neither jealousy nor strife. Good things will be abundant, and delicacies as common as dust. The one preoccupation of the whole world will be only to know the Lord. Hence [they] will be very wise, knowing things now unknown and will apprehend knowledge of their Creator to the utmost capacity of the human mind, as it is written: For the land shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Isa 11:9). Just as R. Akiva famously reduced all of the Torah to the single principle of loving one’s neighbor as oneself, one could also ground all of Kellner’s passions, scholarship, Orthodoxy, Zionism, and moral conscience into his

66 Kellner, “Spiritual Life,” 293–94. 30 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait gloss on Maimonides’ final juristic word. Read in the shadow of the intellectual biography portrayed here there are a host of serious implications for modern Orthodoxy, for the Jewish way of engaging its foundational sacred text, for the resolution of the Middle East conflict, for the future of Zionism, for the future of humanity as a whole, and for living an authentic Jewish life in the modern world that, in good Maimonidean/Kellnerian form, I allow the reader to draw on his or her own: Wisdom, apprehension, and knowledge, cannot be achieved by war, only by study. The whole world can become preoccupied with the knowledge of the Lord only if war is replaced by teaching. To the extent that it is rational for ends to determine means, then the only way to bring about the fulfillment of the messianic redemption, at least as it is understood by Maimonides, is to make the study of true Torah (which includes ma’aseh bereshit, physics, and ma’aseh merkavah, metaphysics) our aim, and not wars of extermina- tion. The texts will remain, not as any sort of ideal, but as a permanent reminder of the dangers of idolatry: replacing God with humans or human artifacts. Judaism calls on us to look forward to the messiah, and not back- ward to Amalek and the Canaanite nations.67

The Essays That Follow

Though extremely difficult to do when faced with such a voluminous corpus of publications with which Kellner has privileged us and posterity, the four chosen to be included in this volume are emblematic of the key concerns discussed so far and to which Kellner has dedicated much of his life thinking about. The first, “Heresy and the Nature of Faith in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” revolves around the issues that are crucial to his earlier research on dogma and its place in Judaism and the history of Jewish thought. Though it initially appeared in an academic journal,68 its subject matter was considered important enough to be excerpted in a volume that surveys essential turning points in the history of Jewish philosophy.69 Kellner examines

67 Menachem Kellner, “And Yet the Text Remains: The Problem of the Command to Destroy the Canaanites,” in The Gift of the Land and the Fate of the Canaanites in Jewish Thought, ed. Katell Berthelot, Joseph David, and Marc Hirshman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 153–79, at 170–71. 68 Menachem Kellner, “Heresy and the Nature of Faith in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” Jewish Quarterly Review 77 (1987): 299–318. 69 Menachem Kellner, “Heresy and the Nature of Faith in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” The Jewish Philosophy Reader, ed. Daniel H. Frank, Oliver Leaman, and Charles Manekin (London: Routledge, 2000), 114–18. menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 31 what he considers nothing less than the question of “Who Is a Jew?” and the very nature of Jewish faith. Maimonides is the towering exponent of a Judaism that stands or falls on matters of belief with his introduction of the Thirteen Principles that literally qualifies membership in the community of Israel by subscription to the thirteen dogmas he formulated. In other words Maimonides transformed Jewishness, from a simple halakhic genetic definition of maternal descent into an issue of heresy. More importantly, such heresy, and its concomitant exclusion from both the earthly community of Jews and the eternal posthumous reward earned by leading a genuinely Jewish life, is not contingent on intent, painting the conscious rebel and the innocent mistaken believer with the same heretical brush. Maimonides’ position is then bolstered by two subsequent prominent medieval thinkers, R. Abraham ben Shem Tov Bibago (d. ca. 1489) and Isaac Abravanel, who endorse the principle that inadvertence is irrelevant to the determination of heresy. However, despite the powerful authority of this triumvirate of medieval intellects, Kellner argues that their position did not remain unopposed and another triumvirate mounted a forceful challenge to it. That other eminent group is composed of Rabad of Posquieres, R. Simeon ben Zemah Duran, and R. Hasdai Crescas, whose numbers are perhaps boosted by the alli- ance of R. Joaseph Albo, who excuse heterodoxy that is unintentional or motivated by faulty exegesis. Though the two groups stand opposed on this issue they all agreed on defining Judaism in terms of theology rather than practice. Kellner demonstrates how this radically transformed the notion of faith (emunah) from its biblical and rabbinic antecedents where it “relates not to propositions but to dispositions, not to assent but to consent, not to intellectual acquiescence but to loyalty and faithfulness.”70 Thus Kellner presents two distinct understandings of the nature of religious faith, with his preference clearly inclined toward the biblical/Talmudic view. Despite Kellner’s aversion to Maimonides’ introduction of the category of heresy into Judaism, he is intellectually, politically, and emotionally drawn to Maimonides’ rationalism and so the second essay, “Maimonides on the Science of the Mishneh Torah: Provisional or Permanent?,”71 deals with a potential threat to the viability of that rationalist model as an option for the future of Judaism. As we have seen, Maimonides conditions the first three cardinal mitzvot of to know, love, and fear God on the comprehensive

70 Kellner, Science in the Bet Midrash, 97. 71 Menachem Kellner, “Maimonides on the Science of the Mishneh Torah: Provisional or Permanent?,” AJS Review 18 (1993): 169–94. 32 menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait understanding of nature, physics, and metaphysics. He also renders an account of physics and astronomy in the Mishneh Torah consistent with the most up-to-date findings of his time. The problem is that we now know that account to be wrong. If Maimonides considered his scientific knowledge to be all that could be known and anchors these mitzvot in that knowledge then his theology and halakha become very tenuous. Kellner convincingly adduces texts to demonstrate that Maimonides considered the classical rabbis capable of erring based on faulty science of their day, that those qualified for prophecy could be mistaken in matters of science, and indeed that Aristotle himself was not infallible. Consistently, Maimonides considered his own scientific conclusions to be provisional, acknowledged the process of scientific development, and anticipated it would progress beyond his own time. Thus he did not consider his theology threatened by new scientific developments. The lesson I believe Kellner would want this to convey to contemporary Orthodoxy is that its theological tenets and halakhic integrity need not feel threatened by scientific progress, since it can comfortably accommodate it and remain intact. The third essay, “Maimonides’ ‘True Religion’: For Jews or All Humanity?,”72 appearing in a forum intended for more general audiences for the discussion of Orthodox Judaism’s engagement with modernity, summarizes in a succinct and accessible manner all the issues related to universalism—another dimension of Maimonides’ thought that Kellner finds particularly appealing and vitally relevant for modern Jewish Orthodoxy. Pivotal to his attraction is his view of Maimonides’ messianic anticipation at the very end of the Mishneh Torah of all nations adopting the “true religion” (dat ha-emet), when “all human beings will worship God from a position of absolute equality.” The essay is written in the form of debate with a contemporary rabbinic opponent who maintains that Maimonides’ messianic era will still maintain the distinction between Jews continuing to observe the Torah and gentiles observing the Noahide laws. Kellner then marshals all the arguments we have canvassed previously relating to universalism in a rebuttal of this essentialist position that refuses to surrender Jewish singularity even in a utopian age. The crux of the argument for Kellner is Maimonides’ definition of what constitutes a human being and what distinguishes her from the animal kingdom. Maimonides clearly identifies that essential component

72 Menachem Kellner, “Maimonides’ ‘True Religion’: For Jews or All Humanity?,” Meorot [=Edah Journal] 7, no. 1 (2008), http://www.yctorah.org/content/view/436/10/. menachem kellner: an intellectual portrait 33 of humanity at the very beginning of his Guide with the “image of God” (tzelem) in which the primordial human being, not Jew, was created. For him “image” translates into intellect and the capacity for philosophical reasoning. Only through the cultivation of that dimension of our being do we realize our humanity. Maimonides never distinguishes Jews from non- Jews on this fundamental core upon which his entire philosophical edifice is constructed. It follows then, as Kellner persuasively argues against his able opponent, when it comes to the messianic period, the very apex of the universal turn to reasoned thought, “that Maimonides can have no reason for thinking that once all human beings have achieved the highest level of understanding possible to them, that the distinction between Jew and gentile will be preserved.” The final essay, “We Are Not Alone,”73 accentuates the ramifications of the universalist model for Jewish life and responsibility in the global village as opposed to a strictly insular inward-looking theology that is ethnic and tribal. Here he applies his findings in his scholarly studies such as Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism to his own contemporary Orthodox community which, lamentably, he finds perilously inclined to a Judah Halevian view of Jews as ontologically superior to non-Jews. Once again he turns to Maimonides as opposed to Halevi for guidance, but here he introduces humility—another crucial ethical posture that must be adopted in the modern world—in a world very different from that which confined Jews to ghettos. This is a new world in which Jews find themselves intellectually, religiously, culturally, and politically, “not alone.” In the tradition of Maimonides’ acknowledgment of some truths Christianity and Islam have to offer, Kellner urges a certain modesty in one’s own faith and its claims to truth which allows for dialogue and reciprocal enrichment between peoples of other faiths equally possessed of such modesty.

73 Menachem Kellner, “We Are Not Alone,” in Radical Responsibility: Celebrating the Thought of Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, ed. Michael J. Harris, Daniel Rynhold, and Tamra Wright (Jerusalem: Maggid Books, 2012): 139–54.

HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH IN MEDIEVAL JEWISH PHILOSOPHY*

Menachem Kellner

Two very different conceptions of the nature of heresy and the question of who is a heretic are to be found in medieval Jewish texts.1 I wish to suggest here that these different conceptions reflect (not surprisingly) different answers to the question “Who is a Jew?”, and that these different answers reflect in turn different conceptions of the nature of religious faith. In other words, the controversy over the nature of heresy was a dispute not over what Jews were expected to believe (the content of faith) so much as over what it means to say that a person is a believer (the nature of faith). We may say that the question is less one of theology than of epistemology. Maimonides, as is well known, laid down thirteen specific doctrines2 which every Jew qua Jew had to accept.3 Failure to accept even one of these doctrines caused a person to be excluded from the community of Israel, both in this world and in the next. This is what he says:

* This article is based upon my book Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought (Oxford, 1986). Here I focus on one issue, drawing together material treated in the book in a variety of contexts. 1 By “heresy” I refer to the idea usually expressed in Hebrew by terms such as kefirah, minut, and ʾepiqorsut. I cannot define the term further at this point since in this paper I hope to prove, inter alia, that the exact meaning of the term was a matter of dispute in the Middle Ages. The issue of heresy usually arose in the medieval period in the context of discussions of dogma. On that subject see my “Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought: A Biblical Survey,” Studies in Bibliography and Booklore 15 (1984): 5–21. I have dealt with some of the issues raised in the present study in my essay “What is Heresy?,” Studies in Jewish Philosophy 3 (1983): 55–70. In that article I explored some of the contemporary implications of the issues treated here. The purely historical portions of that article were published in Hebrew in Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 3 (1983): 393–404. 2 Maimonides’ text may be most easily found in English on pp. 417–23 of I. Twersky (ed.), A Maimonides Reader (New York, 1972). 3 I purposely use the term “accept” since the question of whether Maimonides insisted on knowledge of the principles or belief in them is a vexed one. See my Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought (henceforth: Dogma), chapter 1, n. 160 (p. 233).

This essay was first published as, “Heresy and the Nature of Faith in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” The Jewish Quarterly Review (1987): 299–318. Reprinted with permission of the University of Pennsyl- vania Press. 36 HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH

When all these foundations4 are perfectly understood and believed in by a person, he enters the community of Israel, and one is obligated to love and pity him and to act towards him in all ways in which the Creator has commanded that one should act towards his brother, with love and fraternity. Even were he to commit every possible transgression, because of lust and because of being overpowered by the evil inclination, he will be punished according to his rebelliousness, but he has a portion [in the world to come]; he is one of the sinners in Israel. But if a man doubts any of these foundations, he leaves the community [of Israel], denies the fundamental,5 and is called a sectarian,6 an ʾepiqoros,7 and one who “cuts among the plantings.”8 One is required to hate him and destroy him. About such a person it was said, Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate Thee? (Ps. 139:21).9 This statement teaches a number of important lessons:10 first, that entry into the community of Israel depends upon the perfect understanding and acceptance of Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles;11 second, that a person who accepts these principles is thereby rendered worthy of all the benefits of being a Jew;12 third, that sinning (i.e., violating specific precepts of the Torah) does not cost one either one’s membership in the community of Israel or one’s portion in the world to come; fourth, that an individual who doubts any one of the principles excludes himself or herself from the community of Israel and by implication from the world to come;13 fifth, that such a person must be hated and destroyed.14

4 I.e., Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles. 5 Kafar be-ʿiqqar. 6 Min. 7 On this term see B. Sanh. 99b–100a. 8 A reference to Elisha ben Abuyah; see B. Ḥag. 14b. 9 My translation here is based upon the text presented by Rabbi Joseph Qafiḥ in his dual (Arabic and Hebrew) edition of Mishnah ʿim Perush Rabbenu Mosheh ben Maimon (Jerusalem, 1965), 4:217. 10 I ought to emphasize that in this article I deal only with the “public” Maimonides, ignoring altogether the question of whether or not he had a “secret doctrine.” This is entirely legitimate, since the other medieval thinkers with whom I will be dealing were responding to the public Maimonides. 11 Maimonides seems to accept the halakhic implications of this contention; see his codification of the laws of conversion, discussed below. 12 Maimonides codifies the obligation to love a fellow Jew in “Laws of Moral Qualities” (6.3). 13 It is implied by the fact that the mishnah on which Maimonides is commenting here (see below) deals precisely with the question of who does and who does not merit a share in the world to come. Maimonides makes the point explicitly in “Laws of Repentance” 3 and in his commentary on Sanh. 10.2 and 11.3. 14 See “Laws of Idolatry” 10.1, “Laws of Testimony” 9.10, and “Laws of the Murderer” 13.14. HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH 37

It is clear from this that Maimonides construes as heresy the denial (or even questioning) of one or more specific teachings.15 Maimonides gives no reason to assume furthermore that a person who denies one of his Thirteen Principles without thereby intending heresy (out of ignorance, stupidity, poor education, or whatever) is any the less a heretic. Just as a rose is a rose is a rose, so also heresy is heresy is heresy, no matter what the intentions of the heretic.16 Maimonides’ clear position on the issue of condemning as heretics all who deny certain Torah teachings was explicitly accepted by at least two other medieval thinkers: Abraham ben Shem Ṭob Bibago (died ca. 1489),17 and Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508).18 In his Derekh ʾEmunah (completed about 1480),19 Bibago analyzes Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles in detail and responds to a number of possible objections to them. The second of these objections involves the question of why one should be considered a heretic for denying a principle of the Torah if one’s denial was not motivated by rebelliousness. Bibago attributes this objection to R. Abraham ben David of Posquières (RABaD)20 and responds to it in the following way: RABaD’s statement is really amazing to me, since if it were correct everyone who denied a principle without meaning to do so would have an excuse and a portion in the world to come. [Even] the belief of the Christians would not be inconsistent with true felicity, since they understand Scripture literally and think that the intention of the verse is as they believe it. [On this basis] they would not be called heretics and sectarians. It would be possible to find a man who does not believe in any one of the principles or beliefs of the Torah because of his failure to understand the meaning of the Torah. [On this position] such a one could be called neither a sectarian nor a heretic. All this opposes reason and faith.21 Thus for Bibago reason and faith join hands in rejecting the idea that a person who innocently denies a principle of the Torah is no heretic.

15 See the texts cited above in note 13. 16 For further elaboration of this point see my “What is Heresy?” (referred to above in note 1). 17 On Bibago see Allan Lazaroff, The Theology of Abraham Bibago (University, Alabama, 1981). 18 The best one-volume treatment of Abravanel may be found in Benzion Netanyahu, Don Isaac Abravanel, 3rd edition (Philadelphia, 1972). 19 The book was printed completely only once (Constantinople, 1521). Selections from it were critically edited by Chava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt (Jerusalem, 1978). 20 On RABaD (12th cent.) see I. Twersky, Rabad of Posquières, revised edition (Philadelphia, 1980). 21 Derekh ʾEmunah, p. 101d. 38 HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH

In his lengthy disquisition on Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles, entitled Rosh ʾAmanah,22 Isaac Abravanel adopts Bibago’s position and quotes him nearly word for word.23 He makes the following addition to Bibago’s statement: These things are intolerable according to both the faith of Torah and correct reason. For a false doctrine about any one of the principles of faith turns the soul from its true felicity and will not bring [one] to life in the world to come, even if the opinion is held without intention to rebel. It is like poison which consumes the spirit of him who eats it, and his spirit will be gathered to God ( Job 34:14), even if he ate it thinking that it was good and healthy food. Similarly, heresy and false belief in the matter of principles of religion will expel the soul of man and without a doubt make it impossible for him to inherit the world to come.24 Maimonides, Bibago, and Abravanel, then, all together disallow inadvertence as valid ground for a plea of exculpation in the question of heresy. By this I mean to say that they do not see the issue of intent as relevant to the definition of heresy, nor do they see inadvertence as an exculpating factor in judging heresy. This strict and no-nonsense approach to the question of heresy represents a theological novum in Judaism, ignoring as it does the entire category of shegagah (inadvertence) which plays such an important role in halakhah. While in the Middle Ages this view was not recognized for the theological novelty which it was, it did not go unchallenged. It was explicitly rejected by Maimonides’ contemporary and critic, RABaD of Posquières, and by R. Simeon ben Ṣemaḥ Duran (1361–1444).25 I have argued elsewhere26 that there is very good reason to suspect that R. Ḥasdai Crescas (died ca. 1412)27 joined RABaD and Duran in rejecting the Maimonides-Bibago- Abravanel position, and that R. Joseph Albo (15th century)28 was ambivalent on the issue.29

22 This work is available in my English translation, Principles of Faith (East Brunswick, N.J., 1982). 23 But without acknowledging his indebtedness to Bibago. On the question of Abravanel’s free use of the writings of others see Principles of Faith, p. 219, and Dogma, chapter 7, n. 74 (p. 278). 24 P. 113. 25 For English language studies of Duran see M. Kellner, “Rabbi Shimon ben Zemach Duran on the Principles of Judaism,” PAAJR 48 (1981): 231–65; idem., “What is Heresy?”; and J. David Bleich, “Duran’s View of the Nature of Providence,” JQR 69 (1979/80): 210–38. 26 In “What is Heresy?” 27 H. A. Wolfson’s Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle (Cambridge, Mass., 1929) remains the only available extended English language study of Crescas. 28 On Albo see Isaac Husik’s translation of Sefer ha-ʿIqqarim (Philadelphia, 1929). 29 See Dogma, chapter 5, section 4, pp. 151–55. HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH 39

The central focus of the opposition to Maimonides is a statement of his. In “Laws of Repentence” 3.7 Maimonides codifies as law that Five classes are termed sectarians:30 he who says that there is no God and that the world has no ruler; he who says that there is a ruling power but that it is vested in two or more persons; he who says that there is one Ruler, but that He has a body and has form; he who denies that He alone is the First Cause and Rock of the universe; likewise he who renders worship to anyone beside Him, to serve as a mediator between the human being and the Lord of the universe. Whoever belongs to any of these five classes is termed a sectarian.31 Sectarians, Maimonides tells us also, “have no portion in the world to come, but are cut off and perish, and for their great wickedness and sin- fulness are condemned for ever and ever.”32 RABaD composed a series of critical glosses on the Mishneh Torah, the work in which “Laws of Repentance” is found. On the statement cited above, with specific reference to Maimonides’ third class of sectarians (believers in God’s corporeality), RABaD comments as follows: Why has he called such a person a sectarian? There are many people greater than, and superior to him, who adhere to such a belief on the basis of what they have seen in verses of Scripture, and even more in the words of the aggadot which corrupt right opinion about religious matters.33 In typically forceful language34 RABaD here defends the naive corporealist from Maimonides’ charge of heresy. RABaD is not defending the view that God has a body;35 he is, however, defending those Jews who, because they mistakenly understood certain scriptural verses and aggadot literally, believed that God has a body. In other words, RABaD allows for the category of inadvertence to play a role, not just with respect to commandments involving actions but also with respect to heresy; a person who

30 Minim. 31 I cite the text as translated by Moses Hyamson, The Book of Knowledge (New York, 1974), p. 84b. 32 Ibid. 33 I cite the text as translated by Twersky in his Rabad, p. 282. 34 There exists a less forceful version of this gloss. See “What is Heresy?”, n. 16, expanded in n. 10 of the Hebrew version. 35 See Twersky’s discussion of the subject, ad loc. On the question of medieval Jews who believed in a corporeal God, see Dogma, chapter 1, n. 159 (p. 233). To the sources listed there should be added Shem Ṭob Falaquera, “Mikhtab ʿal Debar ha-Moreh” in Abba Mari Astruc of Lunel’s Minhat Qena⁠ʾot, ed. J. Bisliches (Pressburg, 1838), p. 183; and H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), pp. 106–11. 40 HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH inadvertently (bi-shegagah) commits what otherwise would be considered heresy is no heretic.36 RABaD’s gloss here is quoted (in the more polite version) by Duran in chapter 9 of his ʾOheb Mishpaṭ.37 Duran then expresses himself in the following items: You also ought to know that one who has properly accepted the roots of the Torah but was moved to deviate from them by the depths of his speculation, and who thereby came to believe concerning one of the branches of the faith the opposite of what has been accepted as what one ought to believe, and tried to explain the verses of Scripture according to his belief—even though he errs, he is no denier. For he was not brought to this deviation by heresy at all, and if he found a tradition from the Sages to the effect that he ought to turn from the position he had adopted, he would do so. He only holds that belief because he thinks it is the intention of the Torah. Therefore, even though he errs, he is not a denier and sectarian according to what is agreed upon by our people, since he had accepted the roots of the Torah as he should.38 Duran here expands upon RABaD’s statement, making clear the importance of intention to the definition of heresy. The inadvertent denier denies Torah teachings because he or she thinks that the Torah itself com- mands such denial. The heretic, on the other hand, is the person who, fully knowing that the Torah teaches a particular doctrine, goes ahead and denies it nonetheless.39

36 This conclusion is not, strictly speaking, warranted by the text. It is conceivable that RABaD (a) admits the existence of principles of Judaism; (b) does not consider belief in incorporeality to be such a one; and (c) excuses inadvertent heresy only with respect to beliefs which are not principles. Were this the case, we could say that RABaD excuses the naive corporealist, but only because belief in God’s incorporeality is not a principle of faith. There is, however, absolutely no evidence that (a) is true. This is so for the following reasons: RABaD was not familiar with Maimonides’ Commentary on the Mishnah, the text in which the Thirteen Principles appear (see Twersky, op. cit., p. 107). Maimonides’ claim that Judaism has dogmas or principles of faith was an absolute novum in Judaism (see my Dogma, pp. 1–9). It stretches belief to maintain that RABaD independently arrived at a position identical or even importantly similar to Maimonides’ great novum. But let us assume that this is wrong. It is still highly unlikely that (b) would be true. After all, had RABaD indeed adopted the view that Judaism has dogmas, it is very unlikely that he would fail to include in his list of dogmas the claim of God’s incorporeality, especially since he was familiar with Maimonides’ argument (“Laws of the Foundations of the Torah” 1.7) that incorporeality is an absolutely necessary corollary of unity. On this see also Twersky, pp. 283–84. 37 Venice, 1590. 38 P. 146. 39 The interpretation of Duran offered here is defended in detail in my PAAJR article (cited above in n. 25). HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH 41

As indicated above, there are good grounds for linking R. Ḥasdai Crescas with RABaD and Duran as against Maimonides, Bibago, and Abravanel on the issue of inadvertence in heresy. Crescas’ position, however, is complex and there is no clear-cut text which I can cite in support of my claim.40 Such, however, is not the case with Crescas’ well-known student, R. Joseph Albo. Although Albo appears to be ambivalent on the issue, in one place (ʿIqqarim 1.2) he clearly allies himself with the RABaD-Duran-Crescas camp: It is proper to say this in justification of those Jewish scholars who deal with this subject.41 Every Israelite is obliged to believe that everything that is found in the Torah is absolutely true, and anyone who denies anything that is found in the Torah, knowing that it is the opinion of the Torah, is a heretic. . . . But a person who upholds the Torah of Moses and believes in its principles, but when he undertakes to investigate these matters with his reason and scrutinizes the texts, is misled by his speculation and interprets a given principle otherwise than it is taken to mean at first sight;42 or denies the principle because he thinks that it does not represent a sound theory which the Torah obliges us to believe; or erroneously denies that a given belief is a fundamental principle, which however he believes as he believes the other dogmas of the Torah which are not fundamental principles;43 or entertains a certain notion in relation to one of the miracles of the Torah because he thinks that he is not hereby denying any of the doctrines which it is obligatory upon us to believe by the authority of the Torah44—a person of this sort is not a heretic. He is, rather, classed with the sages and pious men of Israel, although he holds erroneous theories. His sin is due to error and requires atonement.45 In this passage Albo adopts Duran’s principle that basically one is obliged to accept that all that the Torah teaches is true. Once he does accept it, if he is led—either by philosophical speculation or by honest exegesis of Scripture—to adopt certain types of heterodox positions, he does not thereby become a heretic who forfeits his share in the world to come. Albo discusses four types of heterodox positions to which one might be led by faulty speculation or faulty exegesis and which do not remove one from the community of Israel: (1) misinterpretation of a principle; (2) denial of

40 I refer the reader to my detailed argument in “What is Heresy?” (cited above in n. 1). 41 I.e., the subject of the principles of the Torah. 42 E.g., Maimonides’ treatment of resurrection: see Albo’s ʿIqqarim 1.2 (Husik’s translation, p. 54). 43 E.g., Maimonides’ treatment of creation: see ʿIqqarim 1.2 (p. 51). 44 Possibly a reference to Gersonides; see ʿIqqarim 1.2 (p. 52). 45 ʿIqqarim 1.2 (pp. 49–50). 42 HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH the truth of a principle; (3) denying that a particular belief is a principle, while not denying that the belief is true and truly taught by the Torah; and (4) misinterpreting a miracle. Persons who err in any of these ways are not heretics, are not excluded from the community of Israel (indeed, they may be classed among “the sages and pious men of Israel”), and although they have sinned and must expiate their sin, they are not denied a share in the world to come. Albo goes on to give various examples of “sages and pious men of Israel” who, misled either by philosophy or their failure to understand Scripture properly, adopted one or more of the heterodox positions listed above.46 “We say, therefore,” he concludes, that a person whose speculative ability is not sufficient to enable him to reach the true meaning of scriptural texts, with the result that he believes in the literal meaning and entertains absurd ideas because he thinks they represent the view of the Torah, is not hereby excluded from the community of those who believe in the Torah, heaven forfend! Nor is it permitted to speak disrespectfully of him and accuse him of “perverting the teaching of the Torah”47 and class him among the heretics and sectarians.48 Thus we find Albo staunchly defending those Jews who are led to mistaken beliefs by honest mistakes in their understanding of Scripture. “That man alone,” Albo tells us, who knows the truth and deliberately denies it, belongs to the class of the wicked whose repentance is rejected. But the man whose intention is not to rebel, nor to depart from the truth, nor to deny what is in the Torah, nor reject tradition, but whose sole intention is to interpret the verses according to his opinion, though he interprets them erroneously, is neither a sectarian nor a heretic.49 Albo concludes this chapter with the following declaration: It is clear now that every intelligent person is permitted to investigate the fundamental principles of religion and to interpret the verses [of the Torah] in accordance with the truth as it seems to him. And though he believe

46 Albo cites as examples the statement in Gen. Rabbah 3 that “temporal sequence existed before creation” and the discussion in Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer 3 on the primordial matter out of which the world was created. He also refers to an interpretation of the story of Balaam’s ass which was adopted, as we know but as Albo does not mention, by both Maimonides (Guide 2.41) and Gersonides (in his commentary to Num. 22). 47 ʾAbot 3.15. 48 ʿIqqarim 1.2 (p. 52); Albo goes on to support his position by citing RABaD’s gloss to “Repentance” 3.7. 49 ʿIqqarim 1.2 (p. 54). HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH 43

concerning certain things which earlier authorities regarded as principles, like the coming of the Messiah and creation, that they are not fundamental principles, but merely true doctrines, which the believer in the Torah is obliged to believe . . ., he is not a denier of the Torah or its principles.50 We have before us, therefore, two very clearly opposed views. The first, that of Maimonides, Bibago, and Abravanel, holds that every Jew is required to accept certain teachings51 and that the rejection of any of these teachings for any reason constitutes heresy. On this account the category of inadvertence (shegagah) simply does not obtain with respect to questions of doctrine. The second view, that of RABaD, Duran, Crescas, and Albo, does allow for shegagah with respect to doctrinal matters. This view does not by any means deny that the Torah teaches certain doctrines; nor does it deny that some of these doctrines may be singled out and categorized as dogmas or principles of faith. This view, however, does distinguish between a person who purposefully denies Torah teachings knowing that they are Torah teachings, on the one hand, and a person who denies the very same Torah teaching without realizing that he or she is thereby con- tradicting the Torah, on the other hand. The first person is condemned as a heretic while the second may be excused as mistaken. We can make the point clearer by examining some cases. Let us say that a person purposefully denies some teaching that is not a principle of faith because he or she purposefully rejects the Torah; all would agree that such a person is a heretic. Maimonides would count such a person as a heretic because his or her purposeful denial of Torah teaching involves a rejection of his eighth principle, Torah from heaven. Duran would count such denial as heresy because that is exactly how he defines it: knowing and purposeful rejection of any Torah teaching. What about the case of a person who denies a principle innocently (i.e., through what we have been calling inadvertence)? Maimonides would count such a person as a heretic, while Duran would not. This last case must be contrasted with the case of a person who inadvertently denies some teaching not included in the principles. In such a case, both Maimonides and Duran would admit that such an individual is no heretic. In other words we may say that the two views of the nature of heresy delineated here reflect two different conceptions of what it means to be a

50 Ibid., p. 55. 51 Maimonides and Abravanel do, of course, disagree on how many teachings a Jew must accept. For Maimonides it is thirteen; for Abravanel it is every doctrine taught by the Torah. See Principles of Faith, p. 28. 44 HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH

Jew. The first conception defines a Jew as a person who holds certain specific doctrines. There may be some disagreement over what these beliefs are, but no disagreement over the fact that to be a Jew means to accept certain specific teachings.52 Once that is accepted, it follows as a matter of course that a person who rejects any of the specified teachings has failed to fulfill one of the cardinal requirements of being a Jew. It is no surprise that, in this conception, such a person is condemned as a heretic and excluded from both the community of Israel and the world to come. The opposed view is also willing to define a Jew in theological terms but refuses to specify the precise and exact teachings which must be accepted in order to count as a Jew. In this view, “there is only one principle of the Torah: to believe that everything included in the Torah is true.”53 It is acceptance of the Torah in general which defines a person in theological terms as a Jew. Once the Torah is accepted wholeheartedly, innocent deviations from the exact letter of its teachings can be accepted for what they are— mistakes. One can be mistaken about details of Torah teachings without thereby impugning its overall truth. This dispute reflects a yet more basic disagreement, a controversy over the question of what faith or religious belief actually is. It is almost a commonplace to distinguish between “two types of faith”,54 between belief that something is the case and belief in something or someone, between “theology” and “depth theology.”55 These two ideas are so often and so easily contrasted that one is tempted to forget how important and fundamental the distinction actually is and suspect that it cannot stand up to close scrutiny. Kenneth Seeskin has recently subjected the distinction between intellectual acquiescence to the truth of a proposition (“belief that”), on the one hand, and trust, loyalty, and commitment (“belief in”), on the other hand, to acute analysis and has confirmed the prephilosophical intuition that we have here a distinction with an important difference.56

52 I do not mean to ignore the halakhic definition of a Jew as an individual born of a Jewish mother or properly converted to Judaism. In phrasing the issue here in theological terms I simply follow Maimonides’ lead. Maimonides, in effect, added a theological dimension to the halakhic definition. 53 ʾOheb Mishpaṭ 9. 54 The title of Martin Buber’s book on the subject (New York, 1951). 55 See A. J. Heschel, God in Search of Man (New York, 1977), p. 7. 56 See Kenneth Seeskin, “Judaism and the Linguistic Interpretation of Faith,” Studies in Jewish Philosophy 3 (1983): 71–81. This is not the place to review Seeskin’s arguments. It is, however, safe to continue assuming that the distinction between “belief that” and “belief in” is significant and well-understood. Further on the issue see Louis Jacobs, Faith (New York, 1968), chapter 1, and E. E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem, 1975), 1:31–36. HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH 45

In general, when the Bible and the Talmud use the word ʾemunah (“faith”), it relates not to propositions but to dispositions, not to assent but to consent,57 not to intellectual acquiescence but to loyalty and faithfulness. Short of an exhaustive textual analysis, I cannot prove this contention. I shall, instead, cite a number of examples from rabbinic literature58 which support my position. I have not chosen these examples at random. Rather, they are drawn from places where we would expect to find evidence of the propositional conception of faith had the idea been so understood by the rabbis. The first text is central to all discussion of dogma in Judaism, since it is the only place in the entire corpus of rabbinic literature where we find what appears to be a systematic attempt to specify what teachings a Jew must hold in order to merit a portion in the world to come.59 M. San. 10.1 reads as follows: All Israelites have a share in the world to come, as it states, Thy people are all righteous, they shall inherit the land forever (Isa. 60:21). But the following have no share in the world to come: he who says that there is no resurrection, that the Torah is not from heaven, and the ʾepiqoros. R. Akiba says: Even he who reads the external books and he who whispers upon a wound, saying I will put none of the diseases upon thee, which I have put upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee (Exod. 15:26). Abba Saul says: Even he who pronounces the Name according to its letters. According to this mishnah there are six things that cost a Jew his or her share in the world to come: denying resurrection, denying the divine origin of the Torah, being an ʾepiqoros, reading certain types of forbidden literature, using Scripture magically in order to heal, and pronouncing God’s name (the tetragrammaton) as it is spelled. Let it be noted that of these six items the last three are clearly actions, not beliefs. Let it be further noted that the Gemara understands the third, ʾepiqoros, in purely actional terms.60 The remaining two issues (resurrection and Torah from heaven) may very well relate to specific disputes which

57 This formulation of Seeskin’s. 58 For biblical examples see Gen. 15:10, Deut. 32:2, Prov. 20:6, and Job 4:18. For important confirmation of the thesis advanced here see Norman J. Cohen, “Analysis of an Exegetic Tradition in the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael: The Meaning of ʾAmanah in the Second and Third Centuries,” AJS Review 9 (1984): 1–25, especially pp. 7–8. 59 This is certainly the way in which Maimonides understood the mishnah. I cite the text according to Maimonides’ version. 60 See B. Sanh. 9b–11a. This, of course, is no proof that this was the opinion of the author of this mishnah. But the Gemara gives no hint of any nonactional interpretation of the term. 46 HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH occupied the tanna or tannaim whose views are expressed in the mishnah. But even if they do not, this mishnah is still a far cry from the systematic statement of necessary beliefs that it is often presented as being.61 Had the rabbis of the Mishnah really believed that Jewish faith was measured by acceptance of carefully delineated specific teachings, this mishnah would have been a natural place for them to list these teachings. That they failed to do so is indirect evidence for the thesis that “faith” or “belief” was not so understood. Had the rabbis defined Jewish faith in terms of its propositional content, there is another place where we would expect to find some systematic discussion of those specific teachings which a person had to hold in order to be considered a faithful Jew: discussion of conversion. Given the fact that the rabbis were constrained by the halakhic definition of a Jew as a person born of a Jewish mother or properly converted to Judaism, they had very little control, so to speak, over the beliefs of a person born Jewish; but they surely could lay down explicitly what beliefs a person converting to Judaism had to adopt. But when we turn to the central talmudic discussion of conversion this is what we find: Our rabbis taught: If at the present time a man desires to become a proselyte, he is to be addressed as follows: “What reasons do you have for desiring to become a proselyte? Do you not know that Israel at the present time are persecuted and oppressed, despised, harassed, and overcome by afflictions?” If he replies, “I know, and yet I am unworthy,” he is to be accepted forthwith and given instruction in some of the minor and some of the major commandments. . . . He is also to be told of the punishment for the transgression of the commandments. . . . And as he is informed of the punishment for the transgression of the commandments, so is he also informed of the reward granted for their fulfillment.62 The entire emphasis here is on the teaching of the commandments, as opposed to the acceptance of any catechism. We find then that in two crucial places—discussions of who will and will not merit a share in the world to come and who may or may not be converted to Judaism—that the rabbis give no indication of having adopted a propositional definition of the concept of ʾemunah. For had they so interpreted it, they surely would have been careful, wherever they were able, to exclude from the community of Israel in this world and in the next

61 Note that the holders of these deviant views are not labeled heretics by the rabbis. 62 B. Yeb. 47a–47b. HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH 47

individuals of defective faith, and would have specified how to measure the wholeness or defectiveness of that faith. I should like to adduce one more example, one in which we find the Talmud actually defining the term ʾemunah. The concept is defined, as we shall see, not in terms of specific teachings or propositions which can be accepted or rejected, but in terms of the performance of the commandments: R. Simlai, as he was preaching, said: Six hundred and thirteen precepts were communicated to Moses, three hundred and sixty five negative ones, corresponding to the number of solar days [in the year], and two hundred and forty-eight positive ones, corresponding to the number of members of a man’s body. . . . David came and reduced them to eleven [principles], as it is written, A Psalm of David. Lord, who shall sojourn in Thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in Thy holy mountain? {i} He that walketh uprightly, and {ii} worketh righteousness, and {iii} speaketh truth in his heart, that {iv} hath no slander upon his tongue, {v} nor doeth evil to his fellow, {vi} nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor, {vii} in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but {viii} he honoreth them that fear the Lord, {ix} he sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not, {x} he putteth not out his money on interest, {xi} nor taketh a bribe against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved (Ps. 15). The Talmud continues, citing Isaiah who reduced the six hundred and thirteen commandments to six principles, Micah who reduced them to three, and Isaiah again who is said to have reduced them to two. The pericope ends as follows: Amos came and reduced them to one [principle], as it is said For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel: Seek ye Me and live (Amos 5:4). To this R. Naḥman ben Isaac demurred, saying: [Might it not be taken as meaning] Seek Me by observing the whole Torah and live? But it is Habakkuk who came and based them all on one [principle], as it is said, But the righteous shall live by his faith (Hab. 2:4).63 We have here before us a text which begins with the six hundred thirteen commandments of the Torah and which, by a series of graduated steps, reduces them to one: that the righteous shall live by his faith (be-ʾemunato). ʾEmunah is defined here not in terms of its propositional content but in terms of fulfilling the commandments of the Torah. These three strategically chosen texts support the contention that ʾemunah as generally used by the rabbis of the Talmud is best understood in

63 B. Mak. 23b–24a. 48 HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH terms of loyalty, faithfulness, and commitment, rather than in the intellectualist terms of acquiescence in (or rejection of) certain specified doctrines. We may compare this conception of faith with the conception found in a number of medieval Jewish philosophic and halakhic works. Saadiah Gaon sought to convert the ʾamānāt of Judaism (“doctrines accepted as an act of religious faith”) into ʾiʿtiqādāt (“doctrines subject to an attitude of firm belief as the result of a process of speculation”).64 This latter term (ordinarily rendered into Hebrew as ʾemunot and into English as “beliefs”) Saadiah defines as follows: It behooves us to explain what is meant by ʾiʿtiqād. We say that it is a notion that arises in the soul in regard to the actual character of anything that is apprehended. When the cream of investigation emerges [and] is embraced and enfolded by the minds, and through them acquired and digested by the souls, then the person becomes convinced of the truth of the notions he has thus acquired. He then deposits it in his soul for a future occasion or future occasions.65 The subject of ʾiʿtiqād, then, are propositions which are either true or false. Judaism for Saadiah, it must be emphasized, is a matter of both ʾamānāt and ʾiʿtiqādāt, specific discrete propositions. Maimonides presents a similar definition of the term: “Know, thou who studied this my treatise, that ʾiʿtiqād is not the notion that is uttered but the notion that is represented in the soul when it has been averred of it that it is in fact just as it has been represented.”66 Furthermore, Maimonides uses this term, and its Hebrew cognate daʿat, consistently in the context of religious beliefs.67 For Saadiah and Maimonides, then, religious belief was

64 See Alexander Altmann, “Translator’s Introduction” to Saadiah Gaon’s Book of Doctrines and Beliefs in Three Jewish Philosophers (New York, 1972), pp. 19–20. See also H. A. Wolfson, “The Double Faith Theory in Saʿadia, Averroes, and St. Thomas,” Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), 1:583–618, especially pp. 585, 587–88, and 597. See further Israel Efros, Studies in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (New York, 1974), pp. 27, 31–32. 65 See Saadiah Gaon, Book of Beliefs and Opinions, Introduction, chapter 4 (translated by S. Rosenblatt [New Haven, 1948]), p. 14. 66 Guide for the Perplexed 1.50, translated by S. Pines (Chicago, 1963), p. 111. See further H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), 2:147. 67 Maimonides opens his commentary on Ḥeleq (which contains his Thirteen Principles) with the following words: “I have seen fit to speak here about many principles concerning very important doctrines [al-ʾiʿtiqādāt].” See Rabbi Qafiḥ’s edition, p. 195. He concludes his discussion with the following statement (cited above): “When all these foundations are perfectly understood and believed in [ʾiʿtiqāduhū] by a person he enters into the community of Israel” (Qafiḥ, p. 217). See further A. Nuriel, “Musag ha-ʾEmunah ʾeṣel ha-RaMBaN,” Daʿat 2–3 (1978/9): 43–47. Nuriel shows how Maimonides uses al-ʿimān (= ʾemunah) in the sense of “trust” with no reference to cognitive content. The term HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH 49 more than a matter of trust, loyalty, and faith; it was also a matter of the affirmation or denial of certain propositions. Further, and striking, evidence concerning Maimonides’ view on this matter may be found in the Mishneh Torah. In “Laws of Forbidden Intercourse” 14 Maimonides codifies the procedure for conversion, basing himself upon the texts from B. Yeb. cited above. He writes: 1. In what manner are righteous proselytes to be received? When a heathen comes forth for the purpose of becoming a proselyte, and upon investigation no ulterior motive is found, the court should say to him, “Why do you come forth to become a proselyte? Do you not know that Israel is at present sorely afflicted, oppressed, despised, confounded, and beset of suffering?” If he answers, “I know, and I am indeed unworthy,” he should be accepted immediately. 2. He should then be made acquainted with the principles of the faith, which are the oneness of God and the prohibition of idolatry. These matters should be discussed in great detail; he should then be told, though not at great length, about some of the less weighty and some of more weighty commandments. Thereupon he should be informed of the trans- gressions involved in the laws of gleanings, forgotten sheaves, the corner of the field, and the poor man’s tithe. Then he should be told of the punishment for violation of the commandments. How so? The court should say to him, “Be it known unto you that before entering into this faith, if you ate forbidden fat, you did not incur the penalty of extinction; if you desecrated the Sabbath, you did not incur the penalty of death by stoning. But now, having become a proselyte, should you eat forbidden fat, you will incur the penalty of extinction, and if you should profane the Sabbath, you will incur the penalty of death by stoning.” This, however, should not be carried to excess nor to too great detail, lest it should make him weary and cause him to stray from the good way unto the evil way. A person should be attracted at first only with pleasing and gentle words, as it is said first, I will draw them with cords of a man, and only then with bonds of love (Hos. 11:4).68 This statement, when compared with its talmudic source, is seen to be really quite remarkable. Maimonides introduces references to the “principles” of religion, insists that we expatiate upon them in great detail, and prohibits lengthy discussion of the commandments. According to Maimonides, then, conversion seems to involve the acceptance of what might be called “the yoke of specific beliefs” more importantly than the

appears rarely in the writings of Maimonides, since he understands the content of faith in terms of specific teachings (ʾiʿtiqād). 68 I cite the translation of Rabinowitz and Grossman (New Haven, 1964), pp. 91–92. 50 HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH acceptance of the “yoke of commandments.” Where the rabbis of the Tal- mud shied away from references to the acceptance of specific beliefs, Mai- monides makes it centrally important. One more example: Abraham Bibago subjects the concept of ʾemunah to minute analysis in Derekh ʾEmunah and defines it in terms of the specific beliefs (ḥelqe ʾemunah) which form its content. “Do you not find some people,” he complains, “who call themselves believers [ma⁠ʾaminim] and members of the Mosaic covenant and who, if you ask them the number of their beliefs and what they are, put their hands upon their mouths?”69 Bibago goes on to say that one who cannot number and “define his beliefs in his mind” ought not properly to be called a believer at all. We have here very clear evidence that Bibago understood ʾemunah in terms of its propositional content.70 We have before us, then, evidence of two distinct understandings of the nature of religious faith: one, which I have labeled biblical and talmudic, understands faith primarily in terms of the attitude of the believer. A religion conceived of in these terms has no need of theological systemization. The second conception of faith defines it in terms of the specific propositions which the believer accepts or rejects. It is this conception of faith which gives rise to statements of dogma, and it is thus no surprise that we find none in biblical and rabbinic literature. A person defining ʾemunah in this fashion would have good reason to be upset if the propositions held were incorrect. An attitude of trust in God, for example, is not compro- mised if some of one’s specific conceptions concerning God are mistaken. But if one’s faith in God is defined in terms of certain specific propositions about God, then that faith is certainly defective if one affirms incorrect propositions about Him. We may now understand how these different attitudes towards the nature of belief underlay the different conceptions of heresy which we have discussed here. If we define “belief” in fundamentally attitudinal terms, we can allow for a person to be considered a good and faithful Jew even if he or she is mistaken with respect to certain teachings of the Torah. The one has literally nothing to do with the other. If, on the other hand, we define “belief” in terms of its specific content, then, while we would

69 I.e., cannot answer (compare Mic. 7:16); Derekh ʾEmunah, p. 94b (in Fraenkel- Goldschmidt’s selections, p. 289). 70 For a further example see Albo, ʿIqqarim 1.19 (p. 165): “Belief in a thing means a firm conception of the thing in the mind, so that the latter cannot in any way imagine its opposite, even though it may not be able to prove it. Examples are, belief in the axioms. . . .” HERESY AND THE NATURE OF FAITH 51 certainly demand of the faithful Jew an attitude of trust, loyalty, and commitment to God and to His Torah, we could not be satisfied with that, but would also be forced to judge the faithfulness of every Jew in terms of the specific doctrines which he or she affirms or denies. All this is clear in retrospect. It was not so clear to the medieval figures whose texts we have been analyzing. This is indicated by the fact that strict consistency would demand that a thinker who defined “belief” in what I have called biblical-rabbinic terms (“belief in”) should reject the notion of dogma or principles of faith altogether. This is emphatically not the case: Duran, Crescas, and Albo all put forward dogmatic systems of one form or another. They were willing to follow Maimonides’ lead in laying down principles of faith for Judaism, even as they resisted adopting the conception of faith which underlay his system of dogmas.

MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH: PROVISIONAL OR PERMANENT?*

Menachem Kellner

What was Maimonides’ attitude toward the typically medieval description of the universe presented at the beginning of his great law code, the Mishneh Torah? Was that account of the physical universe meant only as a statement of the best description of nature available at the time (and thus radically distinct from the halakhic matters which make up the bulk of the Mishneh Torah), or was it meant to be a description of the true nature of the universe as it really is, not subject to revision in the light of new paradigms or new models (and thus essentially similar to the halakhic matters in the text)?1 In this paper I make the following argument: Maimonides, as a man of his time, had many reasons to hold that the physics he presented in the

* The Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture supported the research on which this study is based; I am pleased here to thank the Foundation for its support. For their intellectual support, I am indebted to Gad Freudenthal, Bernard R. Goldstein, and Giora Hon. 1 It is difficult to write on this subject without falling into anachronistic usages. The closest medieval terms for what we mean by the modern expression “science” in the broad sense seem to be ḥokhmah (“wisdom”) or ʿiyyun (“looking into,” “speculation”), both of which can be translated back into modern English more easily as “philosophy” than as “science.” Ḥokhmah, however, can also mean a specific discipline, and as such is adequately captured by the modern term “science” when it refers to a specific scientific discipline. But here, too, the overlap in meaning is hardly isomorphic. The main problem is that between the time of Maimonides and his contemporaries and our own day, the great scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took place and the term “science” began carrying with it a whole new range of sociological and epistemological meanings; furthermore, the term “scientist” was coined, a usage which has no place in discussions of medieval thought. Another notoriously problematic term is “progress,” and where I am forced to use it I hope that I can avoid invoking wholly inappropriate connotations. It is hard to avoid using the term, however, since Maimonides and some of his contemporaries held a “whiggish” view of the history of natural sciences, according to which they had indeed progressed beyond the accomplishments of their predecessors. On whig interpretations of history generally, see Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1963); on whig interpretations of the history of science, see, for example, Stephen Jay Gould, Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 4–5.

This essay was first published as “Maimonides on the Science of the ‘Mishneh Torah’: Provisional or Permanent?” AJS Review 18, no. 2 (1993): 169–94. Copyright © 1993 Association for Jewish Studies. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press. 54 MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH

Mishneh Torah was complete and perfected, sharing the epistemological status of the halakhot codified in that text. I will show that Maimonides did not in fact adopt this view. In so doing light will be shed on Maimonides’ views of rabbinic and scientific authority.2 In two related studies, comparing the astronomy of the Mishneh Torah with that of the Guide of the Perplexed, I prove that Maimonides rejects the idea that astronomy and metaphysics can reach perfection,3 and suggest that this rejection is based upon theological considerations crucial to Maimonides.4 The conclusions of those studies will be relied upon at certain points in this discussion, and where appropriate I will summarize their results. Maimonides opens the Mishneh Torah as follows: “The foundation of all foundations, and the pillar of all sciences, is to know that there exists a First Existent.”5 Maimonides continues, telling us that the Torah positively com- mands that we know that God exists.6 The rest of the chapter is given over to a discussion of God’s unity and incorporeality. Maimonides opens the second chapter by telling us that Jews are commanded to love and fear God. “What is the way,” Maimonides then asks in 2.2, “that will lead to the love of Him and fear of Him?” The answer, Maimonides says, is the examination of God’s work of creation: “When a person contemplates His great and wondrous works and creatures and from them obtains a glimpse of His wisdom which is incomparable and infinite, he will straightaway love Him, glorify Him, and long with an exceeding

2 I discuss Maimonides’ conception of intellectual authority generally in “Reading Rambam: Approaches to the Interpretation of Maimonides,” Jewish History 5 (1991): 73–93. 3 “On the Status of the Astronomy and Physics in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah and Guide of the Perplexed: A Chapter in the History of Science,” British Journal for the History of Science 24 (1991): 453–463. 4 “Maimonides and Gersonides on Astronomy and Metaphysics,” in S. Kottek and F. Rosner Maimonides on Medicine, Science and Philosophy, ed. S Kottek and F. Rosner (New York: Jason Aronson, 1991/1993). 5 Laws of the Foundation of the Torah 1.1. This translation is my own. Subsequent translations from Laws of the Foundations of the Torah will be from Moses Hyamson, ed. and trans., Maimonides, The Book of Knowledge ( Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1974). Isaac Abravanel suggested that Maimonides meant to say here that the basic dogma of religious belief is the basic axiom of all the sciences; i.e., that religious belief and science share the same starting point and hence must arrive at the same conclusions. Abravanel makes this claim in his Rosh Amanah, chap. 5. In my translation, Principles of Faith (East Brunswick, N.J.: Associated University Presses for the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1982), p. 76. For an argument to the effect that Abravanel was correct in his assessment of Maimonides here, see my Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991). 6 Foundations 1.6. In his book enumerating the commandments, Sefer ha-Mizvot, this is positive commandment no. 1. MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH 55 longing to know his great name.”7 By way of helping his reader to fulfill the commandment to love and fear God, Maimonides explains “some large, general aspects of the works of the Sovereign of the Universe.” Maimonides continues the second chapter of Laws of the Foundations of the Torah with a cursory account of the Separate Intellects, or angels.8 These two chapters, we are told indirectly, deal with metaphysics.9 The third and fourth chapters present a brief summary of physical science:10 the third is given over largely to superlunar matters, the fourth to sublunar affairs. Chapters 3 and 4, then, present an account of the physical universe as Maimonides saw it. It is a finite universe, composed of nine concentric spheres, with the earth in the center. The ninth and largest sphere “includes and encircles all things.” Each of the eight internal spheres is divided into subspheres, “like the several layers of onions.” These subspheres are con- tiguous, with no empty space between them at all. In addition to the concentric spheres which encompass the earth, there are smaller spheres fixed in the larger spheres. In a statement which will be important for us below, Maimonides summarizes the situation:

7 The obligation to study God’s works in order to know God to some extent is one of the recurring motifs of medieval Jewish philosophical thought. See, for example, Steven Harvey, Falaquera’s “Epistle of the Debate” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 88. 8 For the identification of Separate Intellects, with angels, see Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, pt. 2, chap. 6. In the translation of Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. 262. Subsequent citations from the Guide will be from this translation. The question of the relationship between the views Maimonides expresses in the Mishneh Torah and those which he expresses in the Guide of the Perplexed (and the exact nature of the views which he espouses in the Guide) is one of the most hotly debated issues in current Maimonidean scholarship. Recent studies which focus on this issue include Oliver Leaman, Moses Maimonides (London: Routledge, 1989); Marvin Fox, Interpreting Maimonides (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); and Menachem Kellner, Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991). The nature of science is not an issue which Maimonides addressed directly (exoterically or esoterically) and is not a question on which he can reasonably be thought to have had an esoteric teaching. 9 Maimonides says that these chapters deal with Maʿaseh Merkavah (“Account of [Ezekiel’s vision of] the Chariot”) in Foundations 2.11. For the claim that Maʿaseh Merkavah means metaphysics, see Maimonides’ commentary on Mishnah Hagigah 2.1, Guide 1, Introduction (p. 6), and my detailed discussion in Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People, chap. 8. 10 Maimonides says that these chapters deal with Maʿaseh Bereshit (“Account of Creation”) in Foundations 4.10. For the claim that Maʿaseh Bereshit means physics, see Maimonides’ commentary on Mishnah Ḥagigah 2.1, Guide 1, Introduction (p. 6), and my detailed discussion in Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People, chap. 8. 56 MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH

The number of all the spheres that revolve around the world is eighteen. The number of small spheres that do not so revolve is eight. And from the courses of the stars, from their known daily and hourly rate of movement, from their declination from the south towards the north and from the north towards the south, from their height about the earth and their approximation to it, the number of these spheres can be ascertained, as well as the lines of their movement and the courses they traverse. This forms the science of mathematical astronomy, on which the Greek sages composed many treatises. (3.5) Maimonides continues his description of the superlunar realm, making comments about the size of some of thew planets, and their distance from the earth. The spheres and stars, we are told, are living beings, possessed of souls and endowed with intelligence. Laws of the Foundations of the Torah 3 closes with a transition to the sublunar realm; the reader is told of the four elements of Greek physics: earth, water, air, and fire. These bodies, unlike those of the superlunar world, are lifeless, without souls or intelligence. The sublunar realm is then described in the fourth chapter: it is the world of the four elements and of bodies composed of them. It is a world in which things strive always to return to their natural place. It is a world of constant generation and corruption, a world the most fundamental principles of which are form and matter. Maimonides’ description of the universe is dramatically different from the world in which we live, work, and play: ours is an infinite universe, in which material bodies exist in a vacuum; in our solar system, the sun stands at the center, the dead planets revolving around it. Gravity replaces the notion of “natural place,” and atomic physics the four elements. Maimonides’ description would present no problem did it not appear in a law code, the Mishneh Torah, in a section called Laws of the Foundations of the Torah. Maimonides composed his code in an apodictic fashion because he expected it to be exactly that: a code.11 Furthermore, it was a work meant to translate the immutable Torah of God into a useful, man- ageable body of specific prescriptions. It was Maimonides’ hope that the Mishneh Torah would be adopted as the binding code of Jewish law.12 Did

11 For a detailed and nuanced discussion of Maimonides’ statements on this matter, see Isadore Twersky, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 97–187. 12 As Maimonides states: “On these grounds I, Moses, the son of Maimon, the Sefardi, bestirred myself, and, relying on the help of God, Blessed be He, intently studied all these works, with the view of putting together the results obtained from them in regard to what MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH 57

Maimonides expect his vision of the physical universe to be as immutable as his codification of the laws, say, of theft? In other words, does the description of the universe presented in Foundations of the Torah have the same binding status as the commandments codified there and in other parts of the Mishneh Torah? Some interpreters of Maimonides think so. I recently heard a lecture by a prominent physicist and Habad Hasid who argued that since Maimonides wrote his Mishneh Torah with divine assistance, we had to interpret our view of the universe to match his; we are not permitted to dismiss his understanding of the superlunar and sublunar worlds as expressions of now outmoded theories.13 Maimonides himself may have had a more modest assessment of his own work,14 but the question remains valid and of interest: Was this Maimonides’ own view? Did he, that is, consider the description of the physical universe presented in the Mishneh Torah as representing the final word on the subject, or was he prepared to entertain the possiblity that our understanding of the universe might develop beyond the stage it had reached in his day? An analysis of this issue will help us further to understand Maimonides’ conception of philosophy and its relationship to halakhah, his views concerning what we would today call progress,

is forbidden or permitted, clean or unclean, and the other rules of the Torah—all in plain language and terse style, so that thus the entire Oral Law might become systematically known to all . . . [and so] that all the rules shall be acessible to young and old . . . so that no other work should be needed for ascertaining any of the laws of Israel, but that this work might serve as a compendium of the entire Oral Law. . . . Hence, I have entitled this work Mishneh Torah (Repetition of the Law), for the reason that a person who first reads the Written Law and then this compilation, will know from it the whole of the Oral Law, without having occasion to consult any other book between them” (Mishneh Torah, Introduction, Hyamson, p. 4b). See further Hannah Kasher, “The Study of Torah as a Means of Apprehending God in Maimonides’ Thought,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 5 (1986): 71–81 (Hebrew). 13 Not every traditionalist interpreter of Maimonides takes this view. R. Meir Leibush Malbim, the nineteenth-century author of a popular and highly traditionalist commentary on the Bible, in his Commentary to Ezekiel (Vilna, 1911), p. 3a, rejects Maimonides’ explanation of Ezekiel’s Vision of the Chariot (Maʿaseh Merkavah) on the explicit grounds that “the foundations on which he built it have been refuted. The astronomy, natural science, and ancient philosophy which were the foundations and supports of his interpretation have been completely undermined and destroyed by the scientific research which has developed in recent generations.” I cite this passage as it is brought by Marvin Fox, Interpreting Maimonides, pp. 23–24. 14 But not necessarily; see Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Did Maimonides Believe That He Had Attained Prophecy?” Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1946), pp. 159–188. 58 MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH his own self-understanding as a student of physics and metaphysics, and the vast gulf which separates the world of Maimonides from our own.15 At this point another issue raises its head, one which cannot be wholly ignored.16 Maimonides’ philosophy is based in very large measure on his physics and metaphysics. I will demonstrate below that Maimonides related to the description of the universe presented in the Mishneh Torah as provisional in the sense that it could be superseded by future developments. If the physics of the Mishneh Torah (both terrestrial and celestial) is mutable, can the metaphysics of the Mishneh Torah and of the Guide of the Perplexed be immutable? Since Maimonides argues that correct religious belief depends upon correct philosophical belief,17 our question here becomes, how can a mutable account of the universe serve as the basis for religion? In part, the answer to this question depends upon the fact that Maimonides dramatically distinguishes the description of the cosmos in the Mishneh Torah, which is conventional and addressed to the rank and file of the Jewish people, from that of the Guide of the Perpelexed, which is far more sophisticated and serves as a stable basis for the philosophical and religious edifice constructed upon it.18 But what of the “wisdom” (physics

15 The issue gains further importance in the light of a comment by Isadore Twersky to the effect that for Maimonides, “knowledge of the physical sciences is necessary for a correct understanding of halakhah.” See Twersky, “Halakhah and Science: Perspectives on the Epistemology of Maimonides,” Hebrew Law Annual 14–15 (1988–89): 121–151 (Hebrew), p. 132. I am not competent to go into the question of the status of specific halakhic decisions (if any) in the Mishneh Torah which depend upon now rejected theories concerning the nature of the physical world. But if Twersky is correct in his assessment (and the evidence he adduces is most convincing), then the question of Maimonides’ own understanding of the status of the physics and biology he presents in the Mishneh Torah should be of crucial interest and importance to historians of halakhah. Further on the issue of halakhah and science, see the remarks of Shalom Rosenberg, Torah u-Maddaʿ bi-Hagut ha-Yehudit ha-Ḥadashah (Jerusalem: Ministry of Education and Culture, 1988), pp. 58–62. 16 Although I did my best to ignore it in an earlier draft of this essay; my thanks to Gad Freudenthal for not allowing me to get away with it. 17 On this, see my Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), chap. 1. 18 See my “Astronomy and Physics in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah and Guide of the Perplexed.” I there argue that even though Maimonides clearly held what would today be called a “whiggish” view of scientific progress, and also held that the sciences could reach perfection or completion, he still maintained that the science in the Mishneh Torah was simply the most up-to-date scientific information available to him, not the most perfect account of science which could ever be reached. In proving this I noted that Maimonides distinguished radically between sublunar and superlunar science: the former could reach completion, and in fact had been brought to completion; the latter was incomplete and would forever remain so. It must remain incomplete and unperfected because the heavens are the heavens of the Lord and will always remain beyond our ken, both in terms of the actual motions of the heavenly bodies and in terms of what we can know about MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH 59 and metaphysics) of the Guide: can it change too? I think that Maimonides would have been surprised if sublunar physics changed, but not be unduly upset, since that physics is not crucial to his theology. And since he held that celestial physics, which is crucial to his theology, is basically beyond our knowing, he could, I think, envision basic changes in it with relative equanimity. In effect, the limitations Maimonides imposes upon the scope and content of metaphysics render his theology relatively independent of change, development, even revolution in the sciences.

There are good reasons to suppose that Maimonides would urge us to relate to his account of the universe in the Mishneh Torah as being nothing more than a statement of the best physics available in his day, not as an incontrovertible account of the world as it actually is, was, and always will be. The strongest reason for understanding Maimonides in this fashion is his account of how we are to relate to the scientific pronouncements of the rabbinic sages. He sharply distinguishes their role as transmitters of the Sinaitic revelation from their role as individuals reporting on their own ideas and interpretations or on the best physical science of their day. Thus, in connection with questions concerning the messianic advent, Maimonides writes: Some of our Sages say that the coming of Elijah will precede the advent of the Messiah. But no one is in a position to know the details of this and similar things until they have come to pass. They are not explicitly stated by the the incorporeal intellects associated with those bodies. In other words, the actual truth concerning celestial physics and concerning metaphysics lies beyond the limits of human knowledge. This position (which aids him in the solution of many theological problems) forces Maimonides to adopt an instrumentalist view of astronomy, according to which it is the goal of the astronomer to provide a mathematical model of the observed motions of the heavenly bodies (to “save the phenomena”), not to describe them as they actually are. Maimonides’ instrumentalism, then, is a handmaiden of his theology. Admitting that metaphysics and celestial physics will never be brought to completion, perhaps in Maimonides’ day they had reached the highest level they ever would reach? Were that the case, then perhaps the account of natural matters given in the Mishneh Torah really does represent the most complete possible picture and not simply the most up-to-date picture available to Maimonides. Two reasons were adduced for rejecting this hypothesis: first, Maimonides himself foresaw the possibility of progress in the understanding of superlunar phenomena; second; the account of astronomical matters presented in the Mishneh Torah is simply incorrect on Maimonides’ own terms as expressed in the Guide of the Perplexed and thus could not represent his view of the most perfect possible view of superlunar science. 60 MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH

Prophets. Nor have the Rabbis any tradition with regard to these matters. They are guided solely by what the scriptural texts seem to imply. Hence there is a divergence of opinion upon the subject.19 The talmudic sages, when describing the messianic world, were not trans- mitting “Torah from Sinai.” They were, rather, reporting on what today would be called “educated guesses.” If, with respect to the interpretation of eschatological verses, the opinions of the sages are not obligatory for us, how much more so should we expect this to be the case with respect to their reports of physics, astronomy, and biology!20 In two passages in the Guide of the Perplexed Maimonides informs his readers that the sages indeed erred on such matters. One of the ancient opinions that are widespread among the philosophers and the general run of people consists in the belief that the motion of the spheres produces very fearful and mighty sounds. . . . This opinion also is generally known in our religous community. Do you not see that the sages describe the might of the sound produced by the sun when it every day

19 Laws of Kings and Their Wars 12.2. I cite the translation of A. M. Hershman, Book of Judges (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949). For Maimonides’ attitude toward midrash in general, see the introduction to his commentary on Mishnah Sanhedrin, Perek Helek. The text is available in English in I. Twersky, ed., A Maimonides Reader (New York: Behrman House, 1972), pp. 401–423. Compare further Marvin Fox, “Nahmanides on the Status of Aggadot: Perspectives on the Disputation at Barcelona, 1263,” Journal of Jewish Studies 40 (1989): 95–109. 20 It might be objected to the argument being developed here that showing that Maimonides held that some of the sages could and did err proves nothing about his understanding of the epistemological status of his own science, since he may have held himself to be superior (in having reached a higher degree of intellectual perfection) to all or most of the sages. This is not the place to go into a detailed refutation of this hypothesis. Here it should suffice to note that this objection rests upon the claim that Maimonides presented as what Pines called “a convenient fiction” his argument that the prophets and sages had access to a philosophic tradition some of the elements of which he had succeeded in teasing out of the sources with enormous difficulty. This objection further rests on a reading of Maimonides which renders absurd his attempts to understand rabbinic allegories philosophically: if he held himself to be a better philosopher than all or most of the sages, why bother reconstructing the philosophic meaning under their allegories? I reject this approach to reading Maimonides. This rejection finds detailed expression in two recent books of mine, Maimonides on Human Perfection (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990) and Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991). In the latter, for example, I show that Maimonides adopted unusual positions on religious matters (providence, prophecy, immortality, messianism, the nature of the Jewish people, the nature of the Torah, and others) because of his antecedent adoption of an Aristotelian psychology. Were his philosophic and religious concerns as radically divorced as Pines maintains, he could have saved himself from much aggravation and calumny by simply adopting unexceptionable, standard positions on these religious matters, even though such positions contradicted his “truly held” philosophical beliefs. For other recent studies critical of the Pines approach, see the books by Leaman and Fox, cited in n. 8 above. MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH 61

proceeds on its way in the sphere?21 . . . Aristotle, however, does not accept this22 and makes it clear that the heavenly bodies produce no sound. You should not find it blameworthy that the opinion of Aristotle disagrees with that of the sages. . . . [The sages themselves] in these astronomical matters preferred the opinion of the sages of the nations of the world to their own. For they explicitly say, “The sages of the world have vanquished.”23 And this is correct. For everyone who argues in speculative matters does this according to the conclusions to which he was led by his speculation. Hence the conclusion whose demonstration is correct is believed. (2.8, p. 267) Truth is truth;24 what is proved, is proved. No matter who says the opposite, their view is not to be accepted. Maimonides often gives expression to this attitude. It is my intention in this chapter to draw your attention to the ways of research and belief. If anybody tells you in order to support his opinion that he is in possession of proof and evidence and that he saw the thing with his own eyes, you have to doubt him, even if he is an authority accepted by great men, even if he is himself honest and virtuous. Inquire well into what he wants to prove to you. Do not allow your senses to be confused by his research and innovations [stories]. Think well, search, examine, and try to understand [the ways of nature] which he claims to know. Do not allow yourself to be influenced by the sayings that something is obvious, whether a single man is saying so or whether it is a common opinion, for the desire of power leads men to shameful things, particularly in the case of divided opinions. . . . I advise you to examine critically the opinions even of such an authority and prominent sage as Galen.25

21 Pines cites Pesaḥim 94b. 22 Pines cites On the Heavens ii.9.290b.l2 ff. 23 Pines cites Pesaḥim 94b. 24 And, as Maimonides says, “For only truth pleases Him, may He be exalted, and only that which is false angers Him” (2.48, p. 409). 25 Pirkei Mosheh, chap. 25. I quote from the translation of George Sarton in “Maimonides: Philosopher and Physician,” Bulletin of the Cleveland Medical Library 2 (1955): 3–22; reprinted in Sarton on the History of Science, ed. Dorothy Stimson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 78–101. The passage quoted appears on p. 89 of the reprint. In Fred Rosner’s translation (The Medical Aphorisms of Maimonides, vol. 2, trans. and ed. Fred Rosner and Suessman Muntner [New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1971]), the passage appears on pp. 218–219. The Arabic original of Maimonides’ Medical Aphorisms, known in Hebrew as Pirkei Mosheh, has never been published in its entirety. Portions of the Arabic text of the twenty-fifth chapter, with modern Hebrew translation, appear in Y. Kafih, ed. and trans., Iggerot ha-Rambam ( Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1972), pp. 148–167. Two medieval Hebrew translations were edited by Suessmann Muntner in Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides) Medical Works, vol. 2: Medical Aphorisms of Moses (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1959). 62 MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH

One of the reasons that people are led astray by arguments to authority is because of their excessive veneration of the written word, especially when found in ancient works: “The great sickness and the grievous evil (Eccl. 5:12) consists in this: that all the things that man finds written in books, he presumes to think of as true—and all the more so if the books are old.”26 Maimonides rejects the approach; one must follow the argument where it leads, even if that means that one imputes error to one of the sages of the Talmud. I know that you may search and find sayings of some individual sages in the Talmud and Midrashoth whose words appear to maintain that at the moment of a man’s birth, the stars will cause such and such a thing to happen to him. Do not regard this as a difficulty, for it is not fitting for a man to abandon the prevailing law and raise once again the counterarguments and replies [that preceded its enactment].27 Similarly, it is not proper to abandon matters of reason that have already been verified by proofs, shake loose of them, and depend on the words of a single one of the sages from whom possibly the matter was hidden. Or there may be an allusion in those words; or they may have been said with a view to the times and business before him. . . . A man should never cast his reason behind him, for the eyes are set in front, not in back.28 The second passage from the Guide in which Maimonides informs his readers that the sages erred on what we today call scientific matters explicitly distinguishes the authority of the sages as transmitters of Torah from their authorities as astronomers. Do not ask me to show that everything they [the sages] have said concerning astronomical matters conforms to the way things really are. For at that time mathematics were imperfect. They did not speak about this as transmitters of the dicta of the prophets,29 but rather because in those times they were men of knowledge in those fields or because they had heard these dicta from the men of knowledge who lived in those times. (3.15, p. 459) If Maimonides thought that the sages could err when they relied on the best account of the universe with which they were familiar, would he not

26 Letter on Astrology, translated by Ralph Lerner in Medieval Political Philosophy, ed. Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), p. 229. On this text, see Jacob I. Dienstag, “Maimonides’ Letter on Astrology to the Rabbis of Southern France,” Kiryat Sefer 61 (1987): 147–158 (Hebrew). 27 I.e., Maimonides had just proven that the rejection of astrology is “one of the roots of the religion of Moses our Master” (p. 234). 28 Letter on Astrology, p. 235. 29 Compare the passage cited above in n. 19 from Laws of Kings 12.2. MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH 63 feel the same about his own reliance on the prevalent accounts of the universe in his day?30 But not only could the sages err in such matters, so, Maimonides apparently held, could individuals who reached a low level of prophecy. Exodus 24 begins as follows: “And unto Moses He said: ‘Come up unto the Lord, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship ye afar off.’ ” After sundry events, the passage continues (vv. 9–11): Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and they saw the God of Israel; and there was under His feet the like of a paved work of sapphire stone, and the like of the very heaven for clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel He laid not His hand; and they beheld God, and did eat and drink. These verses obviously raise all sorts of questions.31 Let us focus here on one that troubled Maimonides: what does the reference to God’s “feet” mean in this context? Just “seeing” God can be understood in purely intellectual terms;32 but what could the reference to that which was under God’s “feet” mean? Maimonides explains that it was “the nobles of the children of Israel,” not Moses, who saw this (1.5, p. 30). Their apprehension

30 This attitude of Maimonides’ toward the sages finds indirect expression in another source. In Guide 2.9 (p. 268) Maimonides records the claim that there are nine spheres. But spheres can be counted in different ways (compare Laws of the Foundations of the Torah 3.2), and what one person counts as nine, another could count differently. “For this reason,” Maimonides says, “you should not regard as blameworthy” a rabbinic dictum which seems to indicate that there are only two spheres. Relevant to our theme here is the unarticulated supposition that in astronomical matters rabbinic dicta have to be brought into line with those of the astronomers, not the other way around. It was the rabbinic dictum which might be thought to be “blameworthy,” not that of the astronomers. Another indirect expression of Maimonides’ idea that the sages could err on matters of physics and metaphysics may be found in his use of the expression “Ben Zoma is still outside” in Guide 3.51 (p. 619). As Marc Saperstein has shown in a remarkably sensitive reading of this passage in the Guide (Decoding the Rabbis [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980], p. 18), Maimonides uses this text (from Ḥagigah 15a) to indicate that Ben Zoma, a mishnaic sage, failed to attain mastery over the physical sciences and thus failed to attain even a rudimentary knowledge of God. Maimonides clearly felt that he himself was, and the student to whom he addressed the Guide could be, superior to Ben Zoma in scientific (and hence religious) attainments. Ben Zoma, it should be recalled, was one of the three companions who sought to enter “Paradise” with R. Akiba (Ḥagigah 14b). Ben Zoma apparently lost his mind as a result of this experience, adding to the impression that he would not have been considered by Maimonides to be one of the leading sages. On the Ḥagigah text, see the discussion in Gershom Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1965), pp. 14–19. 31 See Shaul Regev, “The Vision of the Nobles of Israel in the Jewish Philosophy of the Middle Ages,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 4 (1984/85): 281–302 (Hebrew). 32 The point of Maimonides’ discussion in Guide 1.4–5. 64 MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH of God was imperfect because they were “overhasty [and] strained their thoughts,” and thus “corporeality entered into” their apprehension of God to some extent. Put simply, they made a mistake in their approach to the science of metaphysics. Now, who were the “nobles of the children of Israel”? From the biblical text it appears that they are the “elders of Israel” spoken of earlier in the passage. This is the interpretation of the standard Jewish commentators on the Bible, and, more important, it is clearly the interpretation of Maimonides, as his discussion in 1.5 makes clear. Who, then, are the elders of Israel? As it turns out, they are individuals who, at least from time to time, reach a low level of prophecy. In Guide 2.45 Maimonides distinguishes eleven degrees of prophecy. The second degree is composed of those “who speak through the Holy Spirit.” The authors of Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Daniel, Job, in short, of all of the Hagiographa, wrote their works having achieved this degree of prophetic inspiration. “It was to this group,” Maimonides says, “that the ‘seventy elders’ belonged” (with reference to Numbers 11:25), as did Eldad and Medad, and as did all the high priests when they received oracular information through the Urim and Tummim. Returning to our issue, we see that Maimonides imputed scientific error, not only to the rabbinic sages, but even to individuals who were capable of achieving a low level of prophetic inspiration.33 How much more so, it is safe to assume, would he be willing to impute the possibility of such error to himself! Further support for this position is found in Maimonides’ attitude toward Aristotle. In a well-known letter to Samuel ibn Tibbon, Maimonides observes that there is no need for Samuel to study the writings of philosophers who preceded Aristotle, because the works of the latter are sufficient by themselves and [superior] to all that were written before them. His intellect,34 Aristotle’s, is the extreme limit of human intellect,

33 Two points should be noted here. First, this means that the “nobles of the children of Israel” were superior in their intellectual attainments to Aristotle, who, as we shall see below, never achieved even the lowest level of prophetic inspiration; despite this they erred on an important metaphysical (and thus scientific) matter. Second, if Isaac Abravanel, Shalom Rosenberg, and W. Z. Harvey are all correct, then Maimonides even imputed scientific error to Ezekiel, who achieved the fifth degree of prophecy. For details, see Warren Zev Harvey, “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed I, 1,” Daʿat 21 (1988): 5–23, pp. 21–23 (Hebrew). 34 Hebrew (the Arabic original of the letter is lost): daʿato. Another possible translation is “his knowledge.” On Maimonides’ use of this term, see David Baneth, “Maimonides’ Philosophical Terminology,” Tarbiz 6 (1935): 258–284 (Hebrew), p. 260, and David R. Blumenthal, “Maimonides on Mind and Metaphoric Language,” in Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times, ed. D. R. Blumenthal, vol. 2 (Chico: Scholars Press, 1985), pp. 123–132. MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH 65

apart from those upon whom the divine emanation has flowed forth to such an extent that they reach the level of prophecy,35 there being no level higher.36 We must further note that in Guide 1.5 (p. 28) Maimonides calls Aristotle, “the chief of the philosophers.”37 Who were the philosophers of whom Aristotle is the chief? In his “Letter on Astrology” to the sages of Mont- pellier, Maimonides writes that the hakhamim, or wise men, of Greece, who were philosophers and “who are genuinely wise,”38 never dealt with astrology. In his commentary to Mishnah Avodah Zarah 4.7, Maimonides explains at length that the philosophers never dealt with astrology, which, as he explains both there and in Laws of Idolatry 1.1, is the cause and root of idolatry. Aristotle, then, in his own right nearly reached the level of prophecy; he is “chief” of the philosophers who attained to such an understanding of the universe on their own steam that they rejected astrology because it leads to idolatry. Put simply, Maimonides thought very highly of Aristotle. But not so highly that he thought that Aristotle could not err on matters of physics and metaphysics: it is well known that Maimonides at least claimed to reject Aristotle’s assertion that the universe was uncreated. It was Maimonides’ argument that Aristotle was wrong on his own terms: in thinking that he could prove the eternity of the universe, Aristotle was simply doing Aristotelian philosophy poorly.39 But Aristotle could err in other areas as well. Everything that Aristotle has said about all that exists from beneath the sphere of the moon to the center of the earth is indubitably correct, and no one will deviate from it unless he does not understand it or unless he

35 Compare Guide of the Perplexed 2.32–48. 36 I quote from Iggerot ha-Rambam, ed. and trans. Yaʿakov Shilat (Jerusalem: Maʿaliyot, 1988), vol. 2, p. 553. On this letter see Alexander Marx, “Texts By and About Maimonides,” Jewish Quarterly Review 25 (1934–35): 374–381; Alfred Ivry, “Islamic and Greek Influences on Maimonides’ Philosophy,” in Maimonides and Philosophy, ed. S. Pines and Y. Yovel (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986), pp. 139–156; and Shlomo Pines, “Translator’s Introduction,” p. lix, in Pines’s translation of the Guide. 37 See also 2.23 (p. 332). José Faur plays down the significance of these passages, interpreting them so as to diminish Maimonides’ admiration for Aristotle. See his ‘Iyyunim ba-Mishneh Torah li-ha-Rambam, p. 7. I find Faur’s interpretation forced, an estimation reinforced by the fact that Shem Tov ibn Falaquera, Maimonides’ great thirteenth-century admirer, criticized the Master for his excessive admiration of Aristotle. See Henry Malter, “Shem Tob ben Jospeh Palquera II: His ‘Treatise of the Dream’,” Jewish Quarterly Review 1 (1910–11): 451–501, p. 492. 38 P. 230; I have slightly emended the translation. 39 This is the burden of Maimonides’ refutation of Aristotle’s thesis concerning the eternity of the world in Guide 2.13–31; see especially chap. 17. 66 MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH

has preconceived opinions that he wishes to defend or that lead him to a denial of a thing that is manifest. On the other hand, everything that Aristo- tle expounds with regard to the sphere of the moon and that which is above it is, except for certain things, something analagous to guessing and conjec- turing. All the more does this apply to what he says about the order of the intellects and to some of the opinions regarding the divine that he believes; for the latter contain grave incongruities and perversities that manifestly and clearly appear as such to all the nations, that propagate evil, and that he cannot demonstrate. (2.22, pp. 319–320) Maimonides emphasizes this point by repeating it. I shall repeat here what I have said before [2.22]. All that Aristotle states about that which is beneath the sphere of the moon is in accordance with reasoning; these are things that have a known cause, that follow one upon the other, and concerning which it is clear and manifest at what points wisdom and natural providence are effective. However, regarding all that is in the heavens, man grasps nothing but a small measure of what is mathematical; and you know what is in it. (2.24, p. 326) Why was Aristotle mistaken in this fashion? Maimonides explains: “How- ever, as I have let you know, the science of astronomy was not in his [Aris- totle’s] time what it is today” (2.19, p. 308).40 Once again, if Aristotle can be mistaken about astronomical matters, would not Maimonides admit that he himself could be mistaken?41 There is yet a further reason for thinking so and for thinking that Maimonides was not irretrievably wedded to the details of the account of the structure of the universe presented in the Mishneh Torah.42 Maimonides, it turns out, for all his interest in presenting the Mishneh Torah in apodictic terms, was not even wedded irretrievably to the details of his account of halakhah presented there. He recognized that he could err, corrected mistakes which he caught himself, and admitted the fact when others found mistakes in the

40 Compare also 2.3, p. 254. Here we have an example of Maimonides’ whig interpretation of the history of science. 41 The argument here rests upon the assumption that Maimonides saw himself as part of an ongoing process of investigation into physics and metaphysics; if he thought that his own work (or generation) marked the capstone of all possible scientific development, then my argument clearly fails. That he did not so think is shown by the text I will cite immediately below from 2.24 (p. 327). 42 I say “details of the account” because it is safe to say that Maimonides would be very surprised by Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein. Acceptance of some notion of development in the understanding of the universe in the Middle Ages cannot be equated with our modern expectation that just as the Newtonian universe was replaced by the Einsteinian, the Einsteinian universe may very well be replaced by another vision of the structure of the cosmos. MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH 67 work.43 It seems fairly clear that if Maimonides was willing to admit that in halakhic matters the Mishneh Torah was not necessarily the last word, he would even more be willing to admit that such was the case with his description of the physical universe. There are further reasons for thinking that Maimonides presented his account of nature in the Mishneh Torah provisionally, as a statement of the best science available to him, and not as the final, absolute account of the universe as it truly is, was, and always will be. Maimonides held that human history was largely marked by a development away from falsehood and toward truth, in matters both philosophical and religious. May we not assume that he held that this would continue after his day as well? With respect to the ever greater approximation of truth in the various spheres of philosophy (what we would today call “science”), we just saw that Maimonides held that the mathematical sciences were incorrectly understood in Aristotle’s day; in his own day they had reached a much higher level of perfection. This is true not only of the mathematical sciences, but also of anatomy: “[Galen] attained enormous success in anatomy, and things became clear to him in his time that were not apparent to anyone else. In addition, the activities and functions of organs, and their physiology, as well as conditions of the pulse which were not clear at the time of Aristotle [were understood and explained by Galen].”44 Finally, with respect to astronomical matters Maimonides thought that his own knowledge might be superseded: “It is possible that someone else will find a demonstration by means of which the true reality of what is obscure for me will become clear to him” (Guide 2.24, p. 327). Without getting into the vexed question of when the idea of progress entered Western culture, we can see here that Maimonides admitted the fact of scientific development and even anticipated that science would develop beyond what he himself, or, more accurately, his generation, had been able to accomplish in it.45 In terms of what we can call “spiritual progress,” Maimonides indicates that human beings grow and develop from generation to generation, both

43 For details, see Alexander Marx, “Maimonides and the Scholars of Southern France,” Hebrew Union College Annual 3 (1926): 325–335; reprinted in Marx, Studies in Jewish History and Booklore (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1944), pp. 48–62. The passage in question is found on p. 52 of the reprint. 44 The Medical Aphorisms of Maimonides, vol. 2, translated and edited by Fred Rosner and Suessman Muntner (New York: Yeshiva University, 1971), p. 205. 45 Further on this point, see the discussion in my “Astronomy and Physics in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah and Guide of the Perplexed,” the conclusions of which are summarized above in n. 18. 68 MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH as individuals and as a race. As individuals, Maimonides maintained in one of the most notorious passages in the Guide, the generation of the Exodus were unable to worship God in a truly mature fashion and needed a sacri- ficial cult. For a sudden transition from one opposite to another is impossible. And therefore man, according to his nature, is not capable of abandoning suddenly all to which he was accustomed. . . . and as at that time the way of life generally accepted and customary in the whole world and the universal service upon which we were brought up consisted in offering various species of living beings in the temples . . . His wisdom, may He be exalted, and His gracious ruse, which is manifest in regard to all His creatures did not require that He give us a Law prescribing the rejection, abandonment, and abolition of all these kinds of worship. . . . At that time this would have been similar to the appearance of a prophet in these times who, calling upon the people to worship God, would say: “God has given you a Law forbidding you to pray to Him, to fast, to call upon Him for help in misfortune. Your worship should consist solely in meditation without any works at all.” Therefore He, may He be exalted, suffered the above-mentioned kinds of worship to remain.46 (3.32, p. 526) Our forefathers may have been religious primitives; spiritual development had taken place since the days of the Exodus, however, and some Jews in Maimonides’ day were ready to be told how to worship God truly. In 3.51 Maimonides explains that in order to achieve true worship we must first strengthen the bond of intellect between ourselves and God. Hav- ing attained that apprehension, we can then truly love God (“love is pro- portionate to apprehension”). “After love of God, comes true worship: it consists in setting thought to work on the first intelligible and to devoting oneself exclusively to this as far as this is within one’s capacity” (p. 621). Individual human beings have developed spiritually to the point where they can truly worship God through intellectual meditation.47 Eventually, all human beings will reach the point where they abandon idolatry and embrace Judaic monotheism: the Messiah “will prepare the whole world to serve the Lord with one accord, as it is written, For then will I turn to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord to

46 On worship in Maimonides as philosophical meditation, see Guide 3.51; M. Fox, “Prayer in the Thought of Maimonides,” in Ha-Tefilah ha-Yehudit: Hemshekh vi-Hiddush, ed. G. Cohen (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1978), pp. 142–167 (Hebrew); and my Maimonides on Human Perfection, pp. 31–33. Fox’s article is now available in English in his Interpreting Maimonides, pp. 297–321. 47 This last point was suggested to me by J. J. Ross. See “Maimonides and Progress— Maimonides’ Concept of History,” in Hevrah vi-Historiah, ed. Yehezkel Cohen (Jerusalem: Ministry of Education and Culture, 1980), pp. 529–542 (Hebrew). MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH 69 serve Him with one consent (Zephaniah 3:9).”48 Maimonides explains how this is going to come about in a remarkable text censored from the printed editions of the Mishneh Torah. But if he does not meet with full success, or is slain, it is obvious that he is not the Messiah promised in the Torah. He is to be regarded like all the other wholehearted and worthy kings of the House of David who died and whom the Holy One, blessed be He, raised up to test the multitude, as it is written And some of them that are wise shall stumble, to refine among them, and to purify, and to make white, even to the time of the end; for it is yet for the time appointed (Daniel 11:35). Even of Jesus of Nazareth, who imagined that he was the Messiah, and was put to death by the court, Daniel had proph- esied, as it is written And the children of the violent among thy people shall lift themselves up to establish the vision: but they shall stumble (Daniel 11:14). For has there ever been a greater stumbling than this? All the prophets affirmed that the Messiah would redeem Israel, save them, gather their dispersed, and confirm the commandments. But he [ Jesus] caused Israel to be destroyed by the sword, their remnant to be dispersed and humiliated. He was instrumental in changing the Torah and causing the world to err and serve another beside God. But it is beyond the human mind to fathom the designs of the Creator; for our ways are not His ways, neither are our thoughts His thoughts. All these matters relating to Jesus of Nazareth and the Ishmaelite [Mohammed] who came after him, only served to clear the way for King Messiah, to prepare the whole world to worship God with one accord, as it is written For then will I turn to the peoples a pure language, that they all call upon the name of the Lord to serve Him with one consent (Zepha- niah 3:9). Thus the messianic hope, the Torah, and the commandments have become familiar topics—topics of conversation (among the inhabitants) of the far isles and many people, uncircumcised of heart and flesh. They are discussing these matters and the commandments of the Torah. Some say, “Those commandments were true, but have lost their validity and are no longer binding”; others declare that they had an esoteric meaning and were not to be taken literally; that the Messiah has already come and revealed their occult significance. But when the true King Messiah will appear and succeed, be exalted and lifted up, they will forthwith recant and realize that they have inherited nothing but lies from their fathers, that their prophets and forbears led them astray.49

48 Laws of Kings 11.4. The text here is not without its problems, none of which, however, impinge upon our discussion. See Ya’akov Blidstein, “On Universal Rule in Maimonides’ Eschatological Vision,” in ‘Arakhim bi-Mivḥan ha-Milḥamah (Alon Shevut: Yeshivat Har Ezion, n.d.), pp. 155–172, n. 54 (Hebrew). I cite the translation of A. M. Hershman, Book of Judges, p. 240. 49 11.4; presented by Hershman on pp. xxiii–xxiv. See Hershman’s comments there and Leah Naomi Goldfeld, “Laws of Kings, Their Wars, and the King Messiah,” Sinai 91 (1983): 67–79 (Hebrew). 70 MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH

Thanks to the intervention of Christianity and Islam, then, the world is being slowly monotheized, thus making possible the eventual advent of the Messiah. With such human development possible, is it credible that Maimonides would have thought that the description of the universe presented in his Mishneh Torah would never become outdated?50 It will be useful to summarize the materials adduced to this point. Did Maimonides think that the picture of the universe presented in the Mishneh Torah was like the traditional halakhah codified in that text: a body of precepts that would stand for all time? Or did he present these matters in the text as simply the most up-to-date account of the cosmos available to him, subject to change, development, refinement, or even total rejection? In support of the latter hypothesis I have adduced texts showing that Maimonides held that the rabbinic sages could err when led astray by the sciences of their day, that individuals capable of achieving a level of prophecy could make mistakes in fields such as physics, astronomy, and metaphysics, that Aristotle could so err, that he (Maimonides) himself could and did err in matters of halakhah, and that Maimonides recognized the fact of progress in scientific and spiritual spheres.

III

The question, however, is far from being as straightforward as I have made it appear to this point. In order fully to understand Maimonides’ position on these matters, we will have to raise questions concerning the perfectibility of science and the role of astronomy. The discussion to this point would strike a contemporary scientist as odd. Few working scientists today would claim that they could ever (practically, if not necessarily theoretically)51 achieve a complete and once-for-all

50 Lest it be objected that there is no necessary connection between spiritual and scientific improvement, let the following be noted: (a) true monotheism, for Maimonides, depends upon the correct intellectual apprehension of God; Maimonides’ messianism, therefore, is based upon the assumption of universal intellectual (i.e., scientific) progress; (b) in general, and this is only to restate the previous point in broader terms, Maimonides did not view perfection as something which was radically divisible: true perfection in one area necessarily went hand in hand with true perfection in other areas; radical spiritual progress could not be absolutely divorced from radical intellectual (i.e., scientific) progress. 51 On this subject, see Nicholas Rescher, The Limits of Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH 71 account of some aspect of science.52 The reason for this has to do with modern conceptions of science as process (Forschung), not product (Wissenschaft),53 and, overall, with the question of the perfectibility of science. These issues will be taken up in what follows. Did Maimonides think that we could reach perfection in or closure of the sciences? In other words, did he think that we could reach a stage at which all that could be known in some particular science or other would be known? It seems that the answer to this question is both yes and no. Before explaining the answer, it may be useful to elaborate on the question. Citing a text by Gersonides (1288–1344) will be helpful in this connection. Having proved philosophically to his own satisfaction that the world was created, Gersonides adds the following consideration: That which adds publicity and perfection to what has been made clear concerning the creation of the world is that we find that all that has been written in the sciences54 is new and recent. We find that the early [savants] said something about each science; afterwards each was perfected during the course of time. We find sciences which did not reach their perfection till Aristotle and others which did not reach their perfection till Galen. There is another science which we do not find perfectly in the work of any of the ancients; this is the science of astronomy. [All this shows that] a science which demands more time for its perfection because of what you must determine concerning it from the senses reaches its perfection later. Thus, the mathematical sciences, such as geometry and arithmetic, are found earlier than other sciences. Aristotle’s predecessors already expressed them perfectly, according to what is told about them. Physical science, on the other hand, because of its greater need of the senses, reached its perfection later. Thus the art of medicine, which is more dependent upon the senses,

52 In modern philosophy of science this view has been particularly emphasized by Karl R. Popper, who called his autobiography, Unended Quest (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1976) (a reprint of “Autobiography of Karl Popper,” in Paul Arthur Schilpp, The Philosophy of Karl Popper [LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1974]). See, for example, p. 131: “This is why the evolution of physics is likely to be an endless process of correction and better approximation. And even if one day we should reach a stage where our theories were no longer open to correction, since they were simply true, they would still not be complete—and we would know it. For Goedel’s famous incompleteness theorem would come into play: in view of the mathematical background of physics, at best an infinite sequence of such true theories would be needed in order to answer the problems which in any given (formalized) theory would be undecidable.” Stephen Hawking is notorious for holding the opposed view that we will soon achieve knowledge of all the fundamental equations of reality. 53 On this distinction with respect to the differences between medieval and modern philosophy, see my “Is Contemporary Jewish Philosophy Possible?—No,” in Studies in Jewish Philosophy: Collected Essays of the Academy for Jewish Philosophy, 1980–1985, ed. Norbert M. Samuelson (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), pp. 17–28. 54 Ḥokhmot; plural of ḥokhmah. 72 MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH

especially with respect to what is learned in it from the senses and from dissection, reached perfection still later. But astronomy, which depends upon the senses in such a fashion that its perfection through them can come about only after a stupendously long time, reaches its perfection even later. Since these sciences bring a man along the route to perfection, and he naturally desires them, it cannot [therefore] be said [both] that the human race is uncreated and that these sciences were discovered by them recently, for were the matter so we would be faced with a possibility which only became actualized after the passage of an infinite period of time, despite the existence of many natural implements for bringing it into actuality, and of humankind’s extremely strong natural desire to actualize it. This is clearly absurd.55 In this text we find an idea of scientific progress clearly expressed. Ger- sonides places a great deal of emphasis on the cooperative nature of the scientific enterprise: students of nature labor, generation after generation, to add to our knowledge.56 Alongside this view of scientific progress we see the clearly expressed view that scientific progress is not an open-ended affair: the various sciences reach perfection or closure. The mathematical sciences were perfected by Aristotle’s predecessors (contra Maimonides); Aristotle himself, it seems, brought physics to perfection; Galen brought medicine to perfection; astronomy, which depends upon a huge number of difficult observations, had not yet, by Gersonides’ day, been brought to perfection.57

55 Gersonides, Wars of the Lord 6.i.l5. In the Leipzig, 1866 edition of the Wars (reprint: Berlin, 1923), the passage appears on p. 356. 56 The idea is repeated frequently in Gersonides’ commentary on Song of Songs. See, for example, the following comment on 1:2: “The third impediment—our ignorance of the way that leads to perfection—will also be overcome in this fashion. This is so because while each of those who endeavor to achieve this apprehension by themselves will either apprehend nothing or very little, when what all of them have apprehended is gathered together, a worthy amount will have been gathered. Either by virtue of himself or by virtue of his directing those who see their words towards the achievement of the truth in this. Therefore, one must always be aided in one’s research by the words of those who preceded him, especially when the truth in them has been revealed to those who preceded him, as was the case during the time of this sage, for the sciences were then greatly [perfected] in our nation. The matter being so, our perfected predecessors guide us in speculation in a way which brings us to perfection, either through their speech or writing, by virtue of the natural desire they have for proffering this influence, and will make known to us concerning each thing the way in which it should be researched, and what they have understood concerning it, together with the assistance [concerning it] which they have derived from their predecessors.” 57 This understanding of scientific progress is unfashionable today, and derided as “whiggish” by many students of the history of science circles. By imputing this view to Gersonides (and, as shall be seen, Maimonides) I do not mean to express either approval or disapproval of it. See further above, note 1. MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH 73

This, then, is the notion of the perfectibility of science which I have in mind. The idea that sciences can be brought to closure or perfection in this manner depends upon a conception of science as being primarily a matter of the amassing of knowledge (Wissenschaft) as opposed to a matter of ongoing research (Forschung); on a conception of science, that is, as product and not process. On this view scientific progress is possible, but it is a closed-ended affair: given enough time, every science will be brought to perfection and closure.58 Once that happens, the role of the student of nature is to preserve and teach what has been discovered; no longer does he or she investigate and conduct independent research.59 What is Maimonides’ position on this question? On the basis of the texts already quoted, we can see clearly that Maimonides largely accepts the state of affairs described in the passage quoted from Gersonides above. The mathematical sciences, while not perfected in Aristotle’s time, had ultimately reached or at least come close to perfection; Aristotle had brought the physics of the sublunar world to perfection and closure;60 Galen had brought anatomy to a state of great perfection.61

58 The reason for this, I think, is that pre-Baconian science was largely deductive, not inductive. Starting out from a limited number of axioms, the number of useful and interesting theorems which can be deduced must be finite. Gersonides gives plenty of evidence that he conducted research into astronomy and even biology inductively, but his overall intellectual framework was deductive. 59 This is, as I understand it, the stereotype of pre-Galilean medieval science; how closely, if at all, that stereotype fits the facts I cannot say. This is also the view of science held by the ancien regime in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation. For a discussion of the extent to which this stereotype matched reality, see Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, “Ptolemy vs. Al-Bitruji: A Study of Scientific-Decision Making in the Middle Ages,” Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences 35 (1985): 124–47. 60 See the texts cited above from Guide 2.22 and 24 (in the text between nn. 39 and 40). 61 Progress in the sciences (in the Gersonidean sense of the term as we are using it here), it should be noted, was not always assumed by medieval thinkers. Maimonides’ fellow Cordovan Averroes thought that humanity had regressed in astronomy from the time of Aristotle. See Joel L. Kraemer, “Maimonides on Aristotle and Scientific Method,” in Moses Maimonides and His Time, ed. Eric L. Ormsby (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), pp. 53–88 (p. 81) (=Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy 19). For Averroes’ Aristotelianism in astronomy, see Charles Genequand, Ibn Rushd’s Metaphysics (Leiden: Brill, 1984), p. 178. Further on this subject, see the sources cited by Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, “Ptolemy vs. Al-Bitruji: A Study of Scientific-Decision Making in the Middle Ages” (previous note), p. 125 (n. 3); see also Bernard R. Goldstein, “Towards a Philosophy of Ptolemaic Planetary Astronomy,” Ancient Philosophy 5 (1985): 293–303 (p. 301). For an important discussion of the exact nature of Averroes’ position, see A. I. Sabra, “The Andalusian Revolt Against Ptolemaic Astronomy: Averroes and al-Bitruji,” in Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences: Essays in Honor of I. Bernard Cohen, ed. Everett Mendelsohn (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 133–153. 74 MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH

But if this is the case, then perhaps my conclusion above, that Maimonides would admit that the description of the universe he presents in Laws of the Foundations of the Torah is provisional in the sense that it represents only the best and most up-to-date account of the sciences available to him, was too hasty. If the various branches of wisdom had reached perfection, then what Maimonides was presenting in the Mishneh Torah was not simply a report on the current status of our understanding of the universe, but the absolute codification of physical and metaphysical truth, once for all, just as the laws in the Mishneh Torah are the absolute codification of the commandments of Judaism (minor errors aside), once and for all time. On this basis we could construe Maimonides as saying that the sages and Aristotle erred in scientific matters simply because they lived in times before the various sciences had reached their perfection; the fact that they erred, therefore, does not mean that he must err. Since progress understood in this fashion is not open-ended, there is no problem with asserting both that human beings progress scientifically and spiritually, and that the acme of this progress has been reached, or nearly reached.62 It turns out, however, that this is not Maimonides’ position. I have demonstrated elsewhere that Maimonides distinguishes between the astronomy presented in the Mishneh Torah and in the Guide.63 Maimonides’ astronomy in the Mishneh Torah is straightforwardly and conventionally Ptolemaic. Maimonides is there interested in presenting a nonproblematic account of the heavens in order to impress upon his readers the magni- tude of God’s wisdom. In the Guide of the Perplexed, on the other hand, he was interested in presenting the truth. The truth presented there is that astronomy and metaphysics are intrinsically uncompletable.64 Whether

62 Maimonides asserts that he is living on the eve of the messianic era and may even have meant it. For details, see my “A Suggestion Concerning Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles and the Status of Non-Jews in the Messianic Era,” in Tura—Oranim Studies in Jewish Thought: Simon Greenberg Jubilee Volume, ed. Meir Ayali (Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz ha-Meuhad, 1986), pp. 249–260, n. 35 (Hebrew). 63 In “Astronomy and Physics in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah and Guide of the Perplexed.” 64 A “complete” science would be one which could be presented in the manner laid down by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics: a finite number of axioms from which all true knowledge taught by that science could be derived. For the impact of this position on medieval Jewish philosophy, see, for example, Joseph Albo, Sefer ha-Ikkarim 1.17 and Isaac Abravanel, Rosh Amanah, chap. 23 (in my translation [above, n. 5] p. 194); see further my discussion in “The Conception of Torah as a Deductive Science in Medieval Jewish Thought,” Revue des études juives 146 (1987): 265–279. For Maimonides’ reasons for reaching the conclusion that astronomy and metaphysics are uncompletable, see my “Maimonides and Gersonides on Astronomy and Metaphysics.” In that article I show that in order to make his synthesis of religion and philosophy possible, Maimonides was forced to claim MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH 75 this truth was known to him when he wrote the Mishneh Torah, and hidden from his not to confuse them, or whether he hit upon it after completing the Mishneh Torah and before writing the Guide, is irrelevant; either way, the astronomy he presents in the Mishneh Torah does not represent the most perfect possible exposition of that science available to him and most certainly, therefore, does not represent the highest stage that astronomy can reach.

I have argued here that Maimonides presented the scientific matters in the Mishneh Torah as simply the most up-to-date account of the universe available to him, subject to change, development, and refinement. In support of this claim I adduced materials showing that Maimonides held that the rabbinic sages could err when presenting evidence based on the sciences of their day, that individuals perfected enough to achieve some level of prophetic inspiration could err, that Aristotle could err in scientific matters, that he (Maimonides) could and did err in matters of halakhah, and that he expected there to be further progress in scientific and spiritual matters. All this being the case, I argued that Maimonides could not have been wedded irretrievably to his account of natural matters as found in Laws of the Foundations of the Torah at the beginning of the Mishneh Torah. But, taking away with the left hand what I had just given with the right, I then pointed out that the issue was not so simple and straightforward. Maimonides, in his medieval fashion, accepted the fact that closure or perfection of the sciences was inevitable. Furthermore, he held that the physical (sublunar) matters discussed in the Mishneh Torah represented physical science in its perfected, completed form. But if this is the case, then perhaps it is incorrect to conclude that Maimonides would admit that the description of the universe he presents that the science of astronomy can never be brought to perfection or closure. What humans can know of astronomical phenomena does not accord with the true (unknowable) facts; rather, astronomical knowledge is only a model which allows us to make predictions, while telling us nothing about the true state of the heavens. This instrumentalist stance in science, I further argue, is a consequence of Maimonides’ theory of divine attributes, just as Gersonides’ realism in science is connected to his theory of divine attributes. If astronomy, the science of the motions of the heavenly bodies, is uncompletable, then metaphysics, the science which, inter alia, deals with the incorporeal movers of the heavenly bodies, is a fortiori incompletable. 76 MAIMONIDES ON THE SCIENCE OF THE MISHNEH TORAH in Laws of the Foundations of the Torah is provisional in the sense that it represents only the best and most up-to-date account of the sciences available to him. If the various branches of wisdom had reached perfection, then what Maimonides was presenting in the Mishneh Torah was not simply a report on the current status of our understanding of the universe, but a permanent description of physical and metaphysical truth parallel to the laws in the Mishneh Torah; the latter are the absolute codification of the commandments of Judaism once and for all time; the former represents an unalterable description of physical reality. On this basis Maimonides could be construed as saying that the sages and Aristotle erred in their descrip- tions of the natural world simply because they lived in times before the various sciences had reached their perfection; that they erred, therefore, does not mean that he must err. This approach allows us a whig approach to progress, one which does not understand such progress as open-ended; thus Maimonides could assert that human beings progress scientifically and spiritually, and that the acme of this progress has been reached, or nearly reached. But this in fact is not Maimonides’ position. Astronomy and metaphysics had not reached perfection in his day, nor will they ever. The conclusion reached above stands: the astronomical science of the Mishneh Torah is not and cannot be the final, immutable statement of physical reality as it actually is. MAIMONIDES’ “TRUE RELIGION”: FOR JEWS OR ALL HUMANITY?1

Menachem Kellner

Introduction

In the first halakhah of the last chapter of the Mishneh Torah,2 Maimonides writes: Let it not enter your mind that in the days of the Messiah any aspect of the regular order of the world will be abolished or some innovation will be introduced into nature; rather, the world follows its accustomed course. The verse in Isaiah, The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the kid is an allegory and metaphor.3 Its meaning is that Israel will dwell in security with the wicked nations of the earth which are allegorically represented as wolves and leopards, as it says (Jer. 5:6): the wolf of the desert ravages them. A leopard lies in wait by their towns. Those nations will all adopt the true religion [dat ha-emet]. They will neither rob not destroy; rather, they will eat permitted foods in peace and quiet as4 Israelites, as it says, the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw. All similar things written about the Messiah are allegories, and in the days of the messianic king everyone will understand which matters were allegories, and also the meaning hinted at by them.5

1 In addition to individuals thanked at specific points below, I would like to thank Avi Kadish, Avram Montag, and David Gillis for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay. 2 “Laws of Kings and Their Wars” XII:1. Here and below translations from the Mishneh Torah are taken from the Yale Judaica series translations, heavily emended to make them more literal and to match the text in Yohai Makbili’s one-volume edition of the work (Haifa: Or Ve-Yeshu’ah, 5765). 3 Hebrew: mashal ve-hiddah. Sara Klein-Braslavi shows that Maimonides uses the Hebrew word hiddah as a synonym for mashal, allegory. See “Maimonides’ Commentaries on Proverbs 1:6,” in Moshe Hallamish (ed.), ʿAlei Shefer: Studies in Literature and Jewish Thought Presented to Rabbi Dr. Alexandre Safran (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1990) (Hebrew), pp. 121–132, p. 123 n. 10. 4 Following Makbili’s text; printed editions and some manuscripts read: “with.” אל יעלה על דעתך שבימות המשיח יבטל דבר ממנהגו של עולם, או יהיה שם חידוש 5 במעשה בראשית, אלא עולם כמנהגו הולך. וזה שנאמר בישעיה וְגָ ר זְאֵ ב עִ ם כֶּכֶ שׂ וְנָמֵ ר עִ ם גְּדִ י יִרְבָּ ץ משל וחידה. ענין הדבר, שיהיו ישראל יושבין לבטח עם רשעי אומות העולם המשולים כזאב ונמר, שנאמר זְאֵ ב עֲרָ בת יְשָׁ דְדֵ ם נָמֵ ר שׁ ֹקֵ ד עַ ל עָרֵיהֶ ם )ירמיהו ה, 6(, ויחזרו כולם לדת האמת, ולא יגזלו ולא ישחיתו, אלא יאכלו דבר המותר בנחת כישראל, שנאמר וְאַרְ יֵה כַּבָּקָ ר יֹאכַ ל תֶּבֶ ן. כל כיוצא באלו הדברים הכתובים בענין המשיח משלים הם, ובימות המלך המשיח יודע לכל לאיזה דבר היו משל ומה ענין רמוז בהם.

This essay was first published as “Maimonides’ ‘True Religion’: For Jews or All Humanity?,” Me’orot 7, no. 1 (2008): 2–28. Reprinted with permission. 78 Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity?

What does the expression dat ha-emet mean in this context? In a number of places I have argued that Maimonides means that in the messianic era (or, more accurately, by the time it reaches fruition since it is, after all, a process and not an event)6 all human beings will worship God from a position of absolute spiritual equality.7 Whether Gentiles will convert formally to Judaism,8 they will be absorbed into Israel in some other fashion, or that the distinction will become in some way less important than it is now9 is open to question. What is clear, I maintain, is that the distinction between Jew and Gentile will disappear by the time that the messianic process has reached completion.10 In making this claim, I stand opposed to those who interpret Maimonides in a more particularist fashion, according to whom even at the end of days for Maimonides the Jews will remain God’s chosen people, especially beloved, and distinct from the mass of humanity. I also stand opposed to those who might want to read Maimonides in a pluralist fashion, as if he holds that in the messianic era many different paths will lead equally to God.11 Rather, I read him as a messianic universalist.12

6 This is an important point, not only because it makes Orthodox Zionism possible. While Maimonides rarely specifies the precise stages of the messianic process, reading him as if everything happens at once, be-heseah ha-da’at (Sanhedrin 97a), as it were, is radically to misunderstand him. He expects the messianic process to unfold within nature as we know it. Further on the connection between Maimonides’ messianism and Orthodox Zionism, see my “Messianic Postures in Israel Today,” Modern Judaism 6 (1986): 197–209 [http://www.jstor. org/view/02761114/ap050017/05a00060/0]; reprinted in: Marc Saperstein, ed., Essential Papers on Messianic Movements in Jewish History (N.Y.: New York University Press, 1992): 504–519. 7 Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991); “Chosenness, Not Chauvinism: Maimonides on the Chosen People,” in Daniel H. Frank (ed.), A People Apart: Chosenness and Ritual in Jewish Philosophical Thought (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993): 51–76, 85–89; “Overcoming Chosenness,” in Raphael Jospe, Truman Madsen, Seth Ward, eds., Covenant and Chosenness in Judaism and Mormonism (Fairlawn: Associated Univ. Presses, 2001): 147–172; “Was Maimonides Truly Universalist?” Trumah: Beitraege zur juedischen Philosophie 11 (Festgabe zum 80. Geburtstag von Ze’ev Levy) (2001): 3–15. 8 As I argue in Maimonides on Judaism, pp. 39–58. 9 Ya‘akov Blidstein, Ekronot Mediniyim Be-Mishnat Ha-Rambam, 2nd ed. (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2001), pp. 245–248. I will cite this book below as Blidstein, Ekronot. 10 It is not clear to me that Maimonides himself addressed this question self-consciously; it may have been among the things he expected to be clarified after the coming of the Messiah—see Laws of Kings, XII:1. 11 Raphael Jospe points to Netanel ibn al-Fayyumi (Yemen, c. 1165) as a medieval Jew who held a pluralist view of religious revelation. This is surely a case of an exception proving a rule. For sources and discussion, see the debate between Jospe on the one hand and Jolene and Menachem Kellner on the other in the forthcoming, Jewish Theology and the Religious Other, Alon Goshen-Gottstein and Eugene Korn, eds. The philosopher cited by Halevi at the beginning of the Kuzari might be cited as an example of a medieval religious pluralist, but that is surely a mistake: his pluralism consists in saying that all religions are equally false, not equally true. 12 There is no dearth of apologetic writing on biblical and rabbinic universalism. Moshe Greenberg often (but not always) succeeds in going beyond apologetics; see his Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? 79

This needs clarification. Let us distinguish between the Torah, as it were, of Noah, the Torah, as it were, of Abraham, and the Torah of Moses.13 As I will point out below, the Torah of Noah includes neither the affirmation of God’s existence nor the obligation to worship God. The Torah of Abraham can be seen as building on the Torah of Noah, but adding the affirmation of God’s existence and the obligation (and, I would add, the privilege) of worshiping God. This Torah is meant for all human beings. The Torah of Moses can be seen as either a special boon to the Jewish people, or as a concession to their primitive character (as evidenced by the episode of the golden calf).14 A radical reading of Maimonides would see him as envisioning a messianic era in which all humans, including the people of Israel, would observe the Torah of Abraham, and not the Torah of Moses. A more conservative but still universalist reading of Maimonides would see him as envisioning a messianic era in which all human beings observe the Torah of Moses. Particularist readings of Maimonides would have him envision a messianic era in which Jews observe the Torah of Moses and

“Atem Qeruyim Adam,” in Avraham Shapira, ed., Al ha-Miqra ve-Al ha-Yahadut: Qovets Ketavim (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1984): 55–67, and, in the same collection, “Erekh ha-Adam ba-Miqra” (pp. 13–23). See also “Mankind, Israel, and the Nations in the Hebraic Heritage,” in J. Robert Nelson, ed., No Man Is Alien: Essays on the Unity of Mankind (Leiden: Brill, 1971): 15–40. In a wholly non-apologetic plane, for the Bible see, Jon D. Levenson, “The Universal Horizon of Biblical Particularism,” In Ethnicity and the Bible, edited by Mark G. Brett (Leiden: Brill, 1996) pp. 143–69 and Joel S. Kaminsky, Yet I Loved Jacob: Reclaiming the Biblical Concept of Election (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007). For rabbinic Judaism, see Gerald Blidstein, “A Note on Rabbinic Missionizing,” Journal of Theological Studies 47, no. 2 (1996): 528–31; and Menachem Hirshman, “Rabbinic Universalism in the Second and Third Centuries,” Harvard Theological Review 93 (2000): 101–15 and Hirshman, Torah le-Khol Ba’ei Olam: Zerem Universali be-Sifrut ha-Tana’im ve-Yahaso le-Hokhmat he-Amim (Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz ha-Meuhad), 1999. For medieval views, see Menachem Kellner, Maimonides’ Confrontation With Mysticsm (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2006) (cited henceforth as Confrontation). For Maimonides’ geonic background, see David Sklare, “Are the Gentiles Obligated to Observe the Torah? The Discussion Concerning the Universality of the Torah in the East in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” in Jay Harris, ed., Be’erot Yitzhak: Studies in Memory of Isadore Twersky (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2005): 311–346 (and the other studies cited there). R. Rapoport himself, with typical intellectual honesty, cites several medievals who read Maimonides in “my” universalist fashion and other figures who, independently of Maimonides, adopt the view of the messianic era that I find in his writings. If nothing else, this proves that my interpretation of Maimonides is not outlandish. Indeed, I hope to convince readers of this essay that my view of Maimonides is closer to the peshat and context of his writings than is that of R. Rapoport. 13 R. Joseph Albo may have been the first to posit a series of divine Torahs. See Sefer ha-Ikkarim, I, chs. 13 and 14. On Albo’s impact, see A. Melamed, “Natural, Human, Divine: Classification of the Law among Some 15th and 16th Century Jewish Thinkers,” Italiah 4 (1985): 59–93. 14 For sources which support this interpretation, see Confrontation, pp. 140–148 and 152–154. 80 Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity?

Gentiles observe either the Noahide laws or the Torah of Abraham. On my understanding, Maimonides is a conservative universalist: all humanity will accept and observe the Torah of Moses by the time that the messianic era reaches fruition.15 My friend and colleague, R. Chaim Rapoport, is convinced that my understanding of Maimonides is mistaken. On his reading of the relevant texts, Maimonides claims that in the messianic era Jews will observe the Torah of Moses while Gentiles will observe the Noahide laws. R. Rapoport paid me the compliment of writing a detailed refutation of my position and I would like now to offer my response to his critique.16

Part One: Statement of R. Rapoport’s Thesis and My Initial Reply

R. Rapoport generously began his discussion by seeking to strengthen mine. I would like to repay his kindness by also trying to strengthen his position. His overall conclusion is that: The expression “religion of truth” (“dat ha-emet”) refers to the “religion of Moses,” encompassing both “the Law of Israel” and the “Law of the Noa- hides”; both of them were “commanded by God in the Torah”—the one Torah—given to us through Moses our Teacher at Mount Sinai. The words “dat ha-emet” mean “the religion truly given by God” or “the religion that shows us the way of truth” or (combining the two) “the religion

15 It is certainly not inconceivable that Maimonides might have adopted the radical universalist view of the messianic era, in which all humanity observes “only” the Torah of Abraham. As I will note below (fn. 22), Nahmanides adopts a structurally similar view, according to which the Torah as we know it will not be observed in the messianic era. However, I take Maimonides’ claims about the permanence of the Torah literally, not only because he says so, but because he holds that the Messianic era will someday end (Introduction to Helek, Sheilat edition [Jerusalem, Ma’aliyot, 1992], pp. 138–139), at which point one assumes that the Torah of Moses will once again play a necessary role in the education of humanity. For arguments to the effect that Maimonides distinguished between the historical explanations of why commandments were given on the one hand, from their permanent validity on the other, see Confrontation, chapt. 2, notes 21 and 125, ch. 4, note 57, and chapt. 7, note 63. I have written a (Hebrew) essay in which I compare Maimonides and Nahmanides on the permanence of the commandments, proving (to my complete satisfaction) that Maimonides adopted a much more conservative stance than did Nahmanides. I hope to publish that essay soon. 16 After writing several drafts of this essay, I had the pleasure of reading Howard Kreisel, “Maimonides on Divine Religion,” in Jay Harris, ed., Maimonides after 800 Years: Essays on Maimonides and His Influence (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2007): 151–166. Professor Kreisel arrives at the same conclusion I do, although he largely takes a different route. I will cite this essay henceforth as “Kreisel.” Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? 81

truly given by God, which shows us the way of truth.” The words may also refer to the true belief, which is the foundation of religion. Whatever the case may be, the expression “dat ha-emet” is used to describe the entire Torah and all the commandments revealed by God through Moses our Teacher (parts of which had already been given via the prophets who preceded the giving of the Torah at Sinai). That religion includes “the ways of truth” (darkhei ha-emet) discovered by Abraham our Father and proclaimed by him throughout the world as well as the commandments issued to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc.; and it is the religion that was bolstered by the righteous kings of the House of David over the years and that will be exalted by the King Messiah, may he speedily be revealed, may that be God’s will. If I may rephrase R. Rappoport’s position in terms which I hope he will be willing to accept, he tells us that the term dat ha-emet in our text in the Mishneh Torah refers to true divine revelation. Such divine revelation encompasses two types of believers: Noahide Gentiles and Jews. The first group is bound to obey the Seven Noahide Laws, while the latter group is bound to obey the Torah of Moses. In the messianic era dat ha-emet will be accepted universally but practiced in two different ways: by Jews through the 613 commandments of the Torah, and by Gentiles through the 7 Noahide Laws.17 This certainly seems to be a position congenial to Maimonides,18 and it accords with the broad contours of his history of religions as outlined in the first chapter of “Laws of Idolatry.”19 On this account, Abraham taught monotheism to descendents of Noah, without imposing any commandments upon them.20 The obligation of circumcision was, however, imposed upon Abraham and his descendents. The parallelism here is attractive:

17 On the Noahide Laws see David Novak, The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism: The Idea of Noahide Law, 2nd ed., edited and with an afterword by Matthew LaGrone (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2011). 18 I suspect that some of the reasons that I find it congenial to Maimonides might appeal less to R. Rapoport. Maimonides as I understand him sincerely held that the secrets of the Torah were pretty well captured in Aristotelian physics and metaphysics. Kabbalists, as I will have occasion to note below, agree with Maimonides that the Torah has a deeper meaning which underlies the commandments (and gives them much of their significance); they disagree with Maimonides about the nature of that deeper meaning. 19 For the text and discussion, see: Confrontation, pp. 77–83 and the sources cited there. See now also the very interesting discussion in Alex P. Jassen, “Reading Midrash with Maimonides: An Inquiry into the Sources of Maimonides’ Account of the Origins of Idolatry,” Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 21 (2007): 170–200. 20 Further on the distinction between Abraham and Moses, see Guide of the Perplexed II:39. Citations from the Guide will be from the translation of Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963). 82 Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? in the messianic era the descendents of Noah will “practice” Abrahamic monotheism, while the descendents of Abraham will fulfill the commandments of the Torah.21 As much as I would like to help my friend R. Rapoport, I fear that this suggestion is of little value in supporting his case. It ignores Maimonides’ notorious claim to the effect that parts of the Torah as we have it are con- cessions to the primitive character of the Israelites leaving Egypt.22 On this view, Mosaic legislation is a concession on God’s part to the primitive, pagan nature of the Jews who left Egypt.23 Taking R. Rapoport’s thesis to (admittedly) extreme lengths, one might even be led to suggest that Noahide monotheism is thus superior to Mosaic legislation, since it seems to follow that in the messianic era on this view the Noahides will follow a more refined religion than the Jews! Further, the Torah of Moses may be a concession, but coming from God, it is also good for those to whom it was revealed (as Maimonides explains in detail in the latter half of the third part of the Guide) and will remain good for them in the messianic era. The Torah is a tool for perfecting us as

21 Often ignored in this context is the point that the obligation devolves upon all of Abraham’s descendents (excluding Ishmael and Esau), including the offspring of Keturah who, according to Maimonides, are today’s Arabs. See Laws of Kings, X.8 and Hannah Kasher, “Maimonides’ View of Circumcision as a Factor Uniting the Jewish and Muslim Communities,” in Ronald Nettler, ed., Studies in Muslim-Jewish Relations (Luxembourg: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995): 103–108. Thus, the Jews have 613 commandments; the Noahides, 7; and the Arabs, 8. This seems to weaken the parallelism between Abrahamic and messianic times I am trying to draw here in order to strengthen R. Rapoport’s thesis. 22 To traditional Jewish ears this positions sounds shocking. Indeed, Maimonides himself wrote about it: “I know that on thinking about this at first your soul will necessarily have a feeling of repugnance toward this notion and will feel aggrieved because of it” (Guide, III: 32, p. 527). But the fact of the matter is that in structural terms, Maimonides is making a claim very similar to that made by Kabbalists; when they make it, it sounds very “frum,” yet when Maimonides makes it, it sounds shocking. There is an important strand in Kabbalah, expressed openly by Nahmanides, among others, that the Torah as we have it exists in its corporeal form only because of the sin of Adam and Eve, and will cease to exist in the form in which we know it in the messianic era. While I recognize its great difference in tone, I have a hard time understanding how that differs in structure from Maimonides’ position. Indeed, I wonder if Maimonides’ insistence on the permanence of the Torah (in the ninth of the ‘Thirteen Principles’ and, in an explicitly messianic context, in Laws of Kings XI:2) might be aimed, not only at Christians and Muslims, but at what I have called (in Confrontation) proto-Kabbalists as well. 23 I have come to realize that Maimonides is not making an historical claim here, so much as explaining the human condition, just as his account of the Garden of Eden in Guide of the Perplexed I:2 is not meant to be taken as history; rather, it is an allegory explaining the nature of humanity. For support for this latter point from a traditionalist perspective, see R. Kafih’s commentary to Laws of the Sabbath, V.3. I treat of the broader point in an article I am writing with my student and friend Oded Horetzky. Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? 83 human being,24 as such, how could it be restricted, in the messianic era, to descendents of Abraham? But perhaps the Torah is a tool for perfecting Jews only? This is a view certainly rejected by Maimonides and I will devote most of my efforts in this essay to showing why this must be so. Here, I will present the point in a cursory fashion, developing it more fully below. Maimonides’ position is “forced” upon him because, unlike R. Simeon bar Yohai as reported in the Talmud,25 and unlike a host of medieval interpreters of Judaism, Maimonides takes very seriously the implications of the Torah’s unambiguous statement that all human beings are created in the image of God. Gentiles are no less created in God’s image than Jews. There is simply no difference between Jews and Gentiles on the level of what my friend Professor Daniel J. Lasker calls “hardware.”26 On this issue, with tongue slightly in cheek, we might call Maimonides a biblical fundamental- ist. But at this point, another question must be addressed: in what way are humans created in the image of God? Maimonides adopts a definition of humanity most famously associated with Aristotle.27 Human beings are rational animals, and it is by virtue of our rationality, as Maimonides emphasizes in the opening chapters of the Guide of the Perplexed, that we are said to be created in God’s image. Further in an Aristotelian vein, Maimonides saw rationality as a potential with which humans are endowed at birth. In his eyes, very few human beings, whether Jew or Gentile, rabbi or layman, actualize that potential. Here Maimonides’ notorious intellectualist elitism kicks in: God’s image is present in all human beings, but to different degrees. “Aha!” says the reader—“Maimonides can sneak preference for Jews over Gentiles into the equation in this fashion.” Hardly: for Maimonides, thanks to the Torah, more Jews than Gentiles will

24 On the view (of the students of R. Yishma’el) that the Torah is ultimately meant for all humanity (kol ba’ei olam) and not just for the Jews, it is obviously a tool for human, and not only Jewish, perfection. For details, see the book and article by Hirshman, cited above in note 12. 25 Taking literally R. Simeon bar Yohai’s statement (Yevamot 60b–60a) that only Jews are called adam. This statement has generated a huge amount of commentary (starting with Tosafot ad loc.). Whether or not R. Shimon considered Gentiles as fully human, the Talmud reports several statements attributed to him that betray, to put it mildly, lack of sympathy for the Gentile world: Sifri Num. 69; Shabbat 33b; Mekhilta be-Shallah 2. 26 Daniel J. Lasker, “Proselyte Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the Thought of Judah Halevi,” Jewish Quarterly Review 81 (1990): 75–91. 27 This view was already attributed to Aristotle in the ancient world, but my friend Moshe Grimberg and I have not been able to find any place where he actually says so in as many words. There can be little doubt that Aristotle agrees with the definition (see, for example, Nicomachean Ethics, X, viii, 1179a24–30), but he never stated it explicitly. 84 Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? actualize their humanity to the greatest extent possible. But that is a relative advantage: humans who live lives governed by the Torah are more likely to achieve intellectual perfection than those who don’t. But a Gentile philosopher nevertheless enjoys more divine providence, and has a greater share in the world to come, than a saintly and learned Talmudist who knows no science.28 All this being so, and it most certainly is, on what grounds could Maimonides expect or want that the distinction between Jew and Gentile could have any relevance or significance in an era when, as he puts it in the very last halakhah in the Mishneh Torah (Laws of Kings XI:4): . . . there will be29 neither famine nor war, neither jealousy nor strife. Good things will be abundant, and delicacies as common as dust. The one preoccupation of the whole world will be only to know the Lord. Hence [they]30 will be very wise, knowing things now unknown and will apprehend knowledge of their Creator to the utmost capacity of the human mind,31 as it is

28 This is the way that the parable of the palace in Guide III:51 is usually read (see Shem Tov ad loc.); for my alternative interpretation, see Maimonides on Human Perfection (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), pp. 15–33. For Profiat Duran’s account of what medieval Jewish philosophers affirmed on this, see pp. 770–774 of Dov Rappel ed., “Haqdamat ‘Sefer Ma‘aseh Hoshev le-Profiat Duran,” Sinai 100 (Anniversary Volume) (1986–1987), pp. 749–795. In my book I cited Duran as cited by Shem Tov in his commentary ad loc. In a private communication the late and lamented Isadore Twersky later made me aware of the original source. 29 Hebrew: lo yihiyeh sham. This Arabism calls to mind the very first paragraph of the Mishneh Torah, a text addressed to all human beings. 30 On the textual issues here see: Simon-Raymond Schwarzfuchs, “Les lois royales de Maimonide,” REJ 111 (1951–52): 63–86. On pp. 81–82, Schwarzfuchs shows that many printed editions and manuscripts add the word “Israel” here. Makbili has it in the first printing of his edition, with a note that Sheilat excludes the word from his text (Ha-Rambam ha-Meduyaq). Makbili informs me that the word will be excluded in subsequent editions. On literary grounds alone it appears clear that the word is an emendation since the prooftext from Isaiah speaks of the entire earth. See also the next note. 31 On this expression, and many of the issues raised here, see Aviezer Ravitzky, “ ‘To the Utmost of Human Capacity’: Maimonides on the Days of the Messiah,” in Joel Kraemer (ed.), Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1991), pp. 221–256. It must be recalled that in this context the intellectual perfection to which Maimonides refers here is relative, not absolute. Human beings, even in the messianic era, achieve intellectual perfection to different degrees. When Maimonides says here that humans will come to know God kifi ko’ah ha-adam he means, to translate him literally, “according to human abilities” and not “according to human ability.” The latter reading would involve a miraculous change in human nature. Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? 85

written: “For the land32 shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”33 (Isaiah II:9).34 Let us follow this a little bit further. Why should the distinction between Jew and Noahide be preserved in the messianic era? Why should not all humans be Noahides, or all followers of the Torah of Moses? If Mai- monides were Judah Halevi, were he the author (or authors) of the Zohar, were he Maharal, were he the author of the Tanya, were he almost any

32 On the question of what this land is (and for more on the textual issues) see Blidstein, Eqronot, p. 246, n. 56. Ridbaz to Laws of Kings, XI:1 understands the term as referring only to the Land of Israel. Maimonides’ use of the verse in Guide III:11 would seem to preclude Ridbaz’s reading. The text there reads: . . . If there were knowledge, whose relation to the human form is like that of the faculty of sight to the eye, they would refrain from doing any harm to themselves and to others. For through cognition of the truth, enmity and hatred are removed and the inflicting of harm by people on one another is abolished. It holds out this promise, saying, The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and so on. And the sucking child shall play, and so on (Isaiah 11:6–8). Then it gives the reason for this, saying that the cause of the abolition of these enmities, these discords, and these tyrannies, will the knowledge that men will then have concerning the true reality of the deity. For it says: They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9). Know this. Warren Ze’ev Harvey has pointed out that this chapter of the Guide is a kind of poetic and philosophical rendition of the last paragraph of the Mishneh Torah, glossing it in the way Maimonides meant it to be read. See pp. 23–24 in Harvey, “Averroes, Maimonides, and the Virtuous State,” in Iyyunim bi-Sugyot Philosophiyot . . . Likhvod Shlomo Pines (Jerusalem; Israel Academy of Sciences, 1992), pp. 19–31. Pushing Harvey’s insight one step further, I think that the next chapter in the Guide also glosses the last paragraph in the Mishneh Torah. 33 The verse from Isaiah recalls Genesis 6:13: וַ י ׂ אמֶ ר אֱ -הִ ים לְנׂ חַ קֵ ץ כֶּ ל בּשָׂ ר בּא לְפָ נַי כִּ י מָלְאָ ה הָאָרֶ ץ חָמָ ס מִפְּ נֵיהֶ ם וְהִ נְנִי מַשְׁחִ יתָ ם אֶ ת הָאָרֶ ץ׃ I am tempted to say that just as that verse surely relates to humans simpliciter, and not to Jews, Maimonides uses the parallel verse from Isaiah in the same way. The prophet is surely alluding to the difference between the messianic and antediluvian eras through the use of the expression ki male’ah ha-arets; it is a safe bet that if I noticed it, Maimonides certainly did. 34 R. Jeffrey Bienenfeld pointed out to me that the meaning of the word “sea” here is “seabed” and that just as water spreads to cover every part of any enclosure in which it is placed, seeping into every nook and cranny, so too will the knowledge of God extend to and seep into every nook and cranny of the world, and, hence, into the hearts of all human beings. Here is the Hebrew of our passage: ובאותו הזמן לא יהיה שם לא רעב ולא מלחמה, ולא קנאה ותחרות, שהטובה תהיה מושפעת הרבה, וכל המעדנים מצויין כעפר, ולא יהיה עסק כל העולם אלא לדעת את ה' בלבד, ולפיכך יהיו חכמים גדולים ויודעים דברים הסתומים וישיגו דעת בוראם כפי כח האדם, שנאמר ]לֹא יָרֵ עוּ וְ לֹא יַשְׁחִ יתוּ בּכָ ל הַ ר קָדְשִׁ י[ כִּ י מָלְאָ ה הָאָרָ ץ׀ דֵּעָ ה אֶ ת ה' כַּמַּ יִם לַ יָם מְכַסִּ ים )ישעיהו יא, 9(. 86 Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? post-medieval Jew, the answer would be simple: there is an ontological difference between Jews and Gentiles such that in one of many ways, it “makes sense” for the Jews to the fulfill the 613 commandments and makes no sense for Gentiles to do so. Since the distinction between Jew and Gen- tile is part of the very fabric of the universe, they say, it will be maintained in the messianic era. Maimonides, however, is not Judah Halevi, he did not write (or even know of) the Zohar, he is not Maharal, and he is certainly not the Ba’al ha- Tanya! He denies that there is any ontological difference between Jew and Gentile. It is that denial which forms the basis of my discussion here.

Part Two: The Term Dat Ha-Emet—Our Positions Restated

As noted above, the expression in debate between R. Rapoport and me is found in the first halakhah of the last chapter of the Mishneh Torah. In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides is usually the soul of precision. When translating the second volume of the Mishneh Torah into English,35 I was struck by how rarely I came across ambiguous passages. But this paragraph is full of problems and ambiguities: First, with whom will Israel dwell securely: the wicked among the nations of the earth, or are all the Gentile nations wicked? The latter seems to be the case, since the next sentence says “Those nations will all adopt the true religion,” implying that all the Gentile nations are (or were?) wicked. Second, what does va-yahzeru (translated here as ‘adopt’) mean? Third, what does dat ha-emet mean? Fourth, what are the “permitted foods” which the (erst- while, according to me) Gentiles will eat? Does it mean kosher, tithed food as I maintain, or does it mean food permitted to Gentiles as Rabbi Rapoport maintains? Fifth, what does “as Israelites” mean? I will paraphrase the paragraph in a manner consistent with my interpretation; before I do so, however, some linguistic issues must be addressed. First, the root h-z-r does not always mean “return” or “revert” in Maimonides’ Hebrew; it often means “change.”36 For a good example of this usage, see “Laws of Repentance,” III:9, where Maimonides explains that an apostate

35 Book of Love by Maimonides (Mishneh Torah, vol. 2) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 36 For details, see Mordechai Akiva Friedman, Maimonides, the Yemenite Messiah, and Apostasy (Ha-Rambam, ha-Mashiah be-Teiman, ve-ha-Shemad) (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2002), pp. 2 and 72. See also Blidstein, Ekronot, p. 247, note 60. I was not aware of this linguistic fact when I wrote Maimonides on Judaism; hence my mistaken discussion on p. 35. Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? 87 concerning the whole Torah is a person who hozer to Gentile37 religions during a period of religious persecution.38 It makes little sense to see this text as referring to a Jew who reverts to a Gentile religion; rather, its clear meaning is a Jew who opportunistically changes religions. The use of the term datei here confirms that. In Maimonidean usage the term dat usually means what we today would call “religion.”39 Thus, for example, we find Maimonides talking about the beautiful captive in the following fashion (Laws of Kings, VIII:5): What is the law with regard to an Israelite and a captive woman? If after the first coition, while she is still a Gentile, she undertakes to enter under the wings of the Shekhinah, she is immediately immersed for the purpose of conversion. If she is unwilling, she remains in his house for thirty days, as it is said: She shall bewail her father and mother a full month (Deut. 21:13). She weeps also for her religion [datah] and he may not stop her. I thus translate h-z-r in our passage as “adopt” and not as “revert” and translate dat as “religion.” Having clarified these meanings, I can now paraphrase the text in dispute between R. Rapoport and myself: Let it not enter your mind that in the days of the Messiah any aspect of the regular order of nature will be abolished or some innovation will be introduced into the world of nature; rather, the world follows its accustomed course. The verse in Isaiah, The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the kid is an allegory and metaphor.40 Its meaning is that Israel will dwell in security with [those who were] the wicked nations of the earth, which are allegorically represented as wolves and leopards, as it says (Jer. 5:6): the wolf of the desert ravages them. A leopard lies in wait by their towns. Those nations will all adopt the true religion. [In consequence,] they will neither rob not destroy; rather, they will eat permitted foods in peace and quiet as Israelites, as it says, the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw.41 All similar

37 Although the term goy in the Mishneh Torah usually refers to idolaters, here the apparent meaning is any Gentile. See Blidstein, “On the Status of the Resident Alien in Maimonides’ Thought,” Sinai 101 (1988): 44–52 (Hebrew), pp. 44–45. 38 Ve-hameshummad lekhol ha-Torah, kegon ha-hozer le-datei ha-goyyim be-sha‘ah she- gozrin shemad. . . . See also Responsum 149, cited below near footnote 94. 39 See Blidstein, Ekronot, p. 106, note 29, and, of course, R. Rapoport’s discussion of the term. Note also James Diamond, Converts, Heretics, and Lepers: Maimonides and the Outsider (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2007), p. 254, note 32. 40 Sara Klein-Braslavi shows that Maimonides uses the Hebrew word hiddah as a synonym for mashal, allegory. See Sara Klein-Braslavi, “Maimonides’ Commentaries on Proverbs 1:6,” in Moshe Hallamish (ed.), ʿAlei Shefer: Studies in Literature and Jewish Thought Presented to Rabbi Dr. Alexandre Safran. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1990 (Hebrew), pp. 121–132, p. 123 n. 10. 41 Note that according to this prooftext, the lion and the ox eat the same food. But note R. Rapoport’s alternative reading of this at his note 79. 88 Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity?

things written about the Messiah are allegories, and in the days of the messianic king everyone will understand which matters were allegories, and also the meaning hinted at by them. R. Rapoport, on the other hand, would have to paraphrase it more or less as follows: Let it not enter your mind that in the days of the Messiah any aspect of the regular order of nature will be abolished or some innovation will be introduced into the world of nature; rather, the world follows its accustomed course. The verse in Isaiah, The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the kid is an allegory and metaphor. Its meaning is that Israel will dwell in security with the wicked nations of the earth, which are allegorically represented as wolves and leopards, as it says: (Jer. 5:6): the wolf of the desert ravages them. A leopard lies in wait by their towns. Those nations will all revert to the true [Noahide] religion. [In consequence,] they will neither rob not destroy; rather, they will eat foods permitted to Gentiles in peace and quiet as Israelites [will eat food permitted to them], as it says, as it says, the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw. All similar things written about the Messiah are allegories, and in the days of the messianic king everyone will understand which matters were allegories, and also the meaning hinted at by them. These two paraphrases obviously express very different understandings of Maimonides’ conception of the messianic era. Can one be shown to be textually superior to the other? I do not believe so. I obviously think that my interpretation of the passage is closer to the meaning of the Hebrew original and closer to the spirit of Maimonides, but, as R. Rapoport’s spir- ited and learned analysis shows, I really can not prove that to be the case on textual grounds alone. Let us turn now to an examination of the crucial term in this discussion, dat ha-emet. To state it simply, Maimonides is inconsistent in his use of this term. In one version of the text that originally sparked this whole discussion, Maimonides’ letter to R. Obadiah the Proselyte, he uses it to mean the religion taught by Abraham, which is certainly not the Torah of Moses.42 On the other hand, in one version of his “Letter on Astrology” to the rabbis of Marseilles, he explicitly refers to “adherents of the dat ha-emet, it being the religion of Moses our teacher (dat Mosheh Rabbenu).”43

42 See “Laws of Character Traits,” I:7, where the middle way between character extremes is called derekh ha-shem and is presented as the religion taught by Abraham. 43 This is the text as presented by R. Sheilat on p. 485; other versions have: “ve-anahnu, ba‘alei ha-torah ha-amitit.” Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? 89

One thing is pretty clear, however: the expression dat ha-emet in our passage from Laws of Kings can not mean the seven Noahide laws, as R. Rapoport suggests, since the point of the messianic era, as Maimonides affirms towards the end of chapter XI, is to “correct44 the whole world to worship the Lord with one accord, as it is written: For then I will turn to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord to serve Him with one consent (Zeph. 3:9).” The worship of God is not one of the seven Noahide laws, as Maimonides makes clear in Laws of Kings, IX:1 After there listing the seven Noahide laws, he goes on to state that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob each added one prayer-service and one commandment to the seven, thus making clear that divine worship is not included among them.45 On this technical ground alone, R. Rapoport’s reading must fail. That R. Rapoport’s specific reading of our passage fails does not necessarily mean that mine is correct. The real issue here—what sort of messianic era Maimonides expected—can not be settled on textual grounds alone. But can it perhaps be settled on contextual grounds? As my friend R. Shalomi Eldar pointed out to me, our text follows immediately upon the notorious passage, censored from printed editions of the Mishneh Torah, in which Maimonides grants a messianic role to Christianity and Islam. At the conclusion of that passage, Maimonides writes: All these matters relating to Jesus of Nazareth and the Ishmaelite [Moham- med] who came after him, only served to clear the way for King Messiah, to prepare the whole world to worship God with one accord, as it is written, For then will I turn to the peoples a pure language, that they all call upon the name of the Lord to serve Him with one consent (Zephaniah 3:9). Thus the messianic hope, the Torah, and the commandments have become familiar topics—topics of conversation (among the inhabitants) of the far isles and many people, uncircumcised of heart and flesh. They are discussing these matters and the commandments of the Torah. Some say, “Those commandments were true, but have lost their validity and are no longer binding”; others declare that they had an esoteric meaning and were not to be taken literally; that the Messiah has already come and revealed their occult significance. But when the true King Messiah will appear and succeed, be exalted and lifted up, they will forthwith recant and realize that they have inherited nothing but lies from their fathers, that their prophets and forbears led them astray.

44 U-letaqqen olam, on this expression in Maimonides, see Menachem Lorberbaum, “Maimonides on Repair of the World,” Tarbiz 64 (1995): 65–82 (Hebrew). 45 This is noted by Blidstein, Ekronot, pp. 245–246. I hasten to explain that I am not equating worship with prayer (this is denied by Maimonides in Guide, III.32), only trying to show that there is no obligation of worship or prayer in the Noahide laws. 90 Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity?

Our passage follows immediately upon this text. Thanks to Christianity and Islam, Gentiles had become accustomed to discussing divine commandments, even if they now misunderstand and misrepresent them. But after the true King Messiah appears, succeeds, is exalted, and is lifted up, they will realize that they had been misled, and therefore “will all adopt the true religion,” a true religion of commandments properly understood. Contextualizing our passage in this fashion surely lends support to my interpretation of it. But context is a tricky thing, and perhaps we should read our text in its larger context. My student David Gillis proposed that I do precisely that. What subjects are covered in Laws of Kings immediately before the last two, messianic, chapters? Those chapters treat the status of the Noahide laws in particular and of non-Jews in general in a Jewish state. Recalling that Maimonides insists: Let it not enter your mind that in the days of the Messiah any aspect of the regular order of the world will be abolished or some innovation will be introduced into nature; rather, the world follows its accustomed course, We might be led to say that this is a contextual indication that there will be Noahides and perhaps also Gentiles in the messianic kingdom. Contex- tualizing our passage in this fashion supports R. Rapoport’s reading of it. But context, again, is a tricky thing, and perhaps we should read our text in an even larger context? The Mishneh Torah opens with four chapters on physics and metaphysics, chapters addressed to all human beings, and it closes with two chapters on the messianic era—again, I suggest, addressed to all human beings. This way of looking at things gains support if we look at the exact mid-point of the Mishneh Torah, the famous text at the end of Laws of the Sabbatical Year and the Jubilee.46 In this passage Maimonides promises that any human being who devotes himself or herself to God will become as sanctified as the holy of holies. Following immediately upon this text we find the eighth book of the Mishneh Torah, the “Book of [Temple] Service (Avodah)” which itself opens with Laws of the Temple. The Temple, we have seen, will be rebuilt by the Messiah.47 Contextualizing our passage in this fashion, it seems clear, supports my reading of it, not R. Rapoport’s.

46 On my literal (and hence universalist) reading of this text see my: “Each Generation and its Maimonides: The Maimonides of R. Aharon Kotler,” in U. Ehrlich, H. Kreisel, D. Lasker (eds.)., By the Well: Studies in Jewish Philosophy and Halakhic Thought Presented to Gerald J. Blidstein (Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press) (Hebrew), pp. 463–486. 47 See the fuller discussion of this point in Maimonides on Judaism, pp. 73–75. Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? 91

Context is indeed a tricky thing. If we read our passage in light of the parallel discussion in the Guide (III:11),48 my reading of Maimonides is strengthened, and R. Rapoport’s is weakened. Analyzing the afflictions from which humans suffer (most of which are self-inflicted, or inflicted by other humans), Maimonides discovers that the vast majority are the result of ignorance, ignorance which the prophet Isaiah promises will be overcome in the future. Let us recall the last sentence in the chapter: . . . the cause of the abolition of these enmities, these discords, and these tyrannies, will be the knowledge that men49 will then have concerning the true reality of the deity. For it says: They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah II:9). Know this. It is all human beings, and not just Jews, who will understand the truth of God’s nature and who will therefore behave well on God’s holy mountain; the whole world, and not just the Land of Israel, will be full of the knowledge of God. As I understand this passage, Maimonides teaches here that the whole Earth will be God’s holy mountain. But, I must admit, R. Rapoport could reply that one short chapter in the Guide of the Perplexed is not the appropriate context for determining the meaning of a passage in the Mishneh Torah. Alternatively, he might admit the relevance of the passage, while contesting my reading of it.50 Thus, our search for the meaning of dat ha-emet in its context founders on the question of what that context is. We must look further to solve our problem.

Part Three: Interpreting Maimonides: Why I Interpret Him the Way I Do—Humans as Rational Animals

It turns out that R. Rapoport and I each interpret certain Maimonidean texts: he in one direction, I in another. This, I believe, is unavoidable. There are inconsistencies in Maimonides’ writings.51 The only way to

48 I cite the text above, note 31. 49 The Arabic here is al-nas, which means human beings as such (cognate to the Hebrew enosh). 50 And, indeed, this seems to be the point of his footnote 70. 51 This, of course, is a huge issue. See my discussion in Confrontation, pp. xi and 15–16. R. Yehonatan Simhah Blass, Mi-Nofet Zuf: Iyyunim ba-Moreh ha-Nevukhim (Neveh Zuf, 5766), 2 vols., finds 136 contradictions in Maimonides’ writings. Here, I do not have in mind the sorts of contradictions beloved of the Straussians, but, rather, contradictions of 92 Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? arrive at a consistent reading of his works is to interpret some in the light of others. Thus, while admitting that in some places in Maimonides’ writings the term dat ha-emet refers to “Judaism,” and while admitting that there are other medieval authorities who apparently support my universalist reading of Maimonides in Laws of Kings,52 R. Rapoport feels constrained to apply harmonizing exegesis to the passages in Maimonides’ writings that do not accord with his understanding of what Maimonides must have meant to be teaching about the messianic era. I, in turn, do the same thing, but in the opposite direction. As I have already stated, I do not believe that the issue can be settled textually. Rather, the question between us is not over how to read this that or the other specific text, but why it is that my Maimonides looks forward to a messianic era characterized by universalism, while R. Rapoport’s Maimonides does not. I will not presume to answer on R. Rapoport’s behalf, and will devote the rest of this essay to showing why it makes sense to read Maimonides as I do.

the following sort. The eleventh of Maimonides’ “Thirteen Principles” is divine reward and punishment. (Maimonides’ ignores this issue in his restatement of the Principles in the third chapter of Laws of Repentance but that is easily explained.) In every place but one, Maimonides’ accounts of divine reward and punishment can be easily made to accord with the philosophical view, according to which there is no actual reward for the fulfillment of the commandments or actual punishment for their violation; rather, the only true reward is survival of the intellect after death, a consequence of intellectual perfection, not a reward for obedience to the commandments. For a discussion of this view, see my Must a Jew Believe Anything?, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2006), pp. 149– 164. But in one place, his commentary on Mishnah Makkot III:17, Maimonides explicitly states that it is a foundation of faith in the Torah that if one fulfills any single one of the six hundred thirteen commandments “appropriately, as they ought to be fulfilled, without associating with this fulfillment any this-worldly goal at all, but fulfilled the commandment for its own sake (li-shemah), out of love, as I have explained to you,” that person will merit a share in the world to come. Of course, I have no trouble interpreting this text according to the philosophic view (especially with its mention of obedience to commandments out of love, since Maimonides regards love of God as a function of intellectual perfection; for details, see the introduction to my translation of Book of Love, above, note 31), but it is still an interpretation. Another example of the sort of contradiction I have in mind is between Guide III:17 (and elsewhere), where providence is presented as attaching only to individuals and being consequent upon intellectual perfection, on the one hand, and, on the other, Treatise on Resurrection (Sheilat, p. 370), the one place in his writings where Maimonides affirms special providence over the nation of Israel. A third example relates to the question of miracles in the messianic era: in Laws of Kings Maimonides denies that there will be any; in “Epistle to Yemen” he affirms that there will be. As Maimonides tells in Guide II:25, the gates of interpretation are never closed, and one can certainly solve these contradictions, but it involves what I would call the exegesis of Maimonides’ texts, in one direction or another. 52 The text cited by R. Rapoport from RaN is particularly telling. Given his use of the verse from Zephaniah, which shows up in a crucial (and censored) point in Maimonides’ discussion, it is likely that RaN interpreted Maimonides as I do. Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? 93

Maimonides is deadly serious when he defines human beings as rational animals and sees in their rationality the element that makes them creatures formed in God’s image. In consequence of this definition, he is locked into a view of human perfection as intellectual.53 This, in turn, forces him to accept the idea that the key to survival after death is cognition of the intelligibles. This view of what constitutes our humanity deeply affects Maimonides’ understanding the nature of Torah and mitsvot. Jews are humans who happen to be descended from Abraham (biologically or spiritually),54 while it is Abraham who happened to be the first human who realized, following the loss of world-wide monotheism during the time of Enosh, that the world had to have a Creator and Guide.55 The Torah brought by Moses to Abraham’s biological and spiritual descendents is ultimately meant for all humanity.56 One consequence of these positions is that Maimonides can have no reason to think that the distinction between Jew and Gentile will endure beyond the point at which all human beings have achieved the highest level of understanding possible to them. That, in brief, is why I read his vision of the messianic era universally. Let me make a number of assumptions clear. I assume, first, that everyone reading this essay is convinced that the cultural, ethnic, national, and linguistic matrices in which we are raised or with which we choose to identify are indissoluble parts of our personalities. It is hard for me to see how such an idea could have made sense to a twelfth-century neo-Platonically Aristotelian rabbi such as Maimonides. I also assume that most of the people reading this essay can at least make sense of a pluralist notion of “different strokes for different folks” even in matters of religion. I would be surprised if many readers of this journal would adopt the position on religious matters, but would expect them to understand it. I am far from convinced that religious pluralism of any sort would make sense to Maimonides. For him, truth is one, unchanging, absolute and universal. While he would certainly understand a notion of different levels of understanding the one truth, I doubt that he would be happy with talk of different paths to that one truth.

53 Maimonides’ position is actually more nuanced than often thought. For details, see M. Kellner, “Is Maimonides’ Ideal Person Austerely Rationalist?” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 76 (2002): 125–143. 54 For an important study of Maimonides’ unusual attitude towards proselytes (spiritual descendents of Abraham), see Diamond, Converts, Heretics, and Lepers, chap. 1. 55 Laws of Idolatry, chap. 1. 56 For rabbinic background to this idea, see the studies by Hirshman, above, note 12. 94 Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity?

There is any number of reasons why one might want to reject my universalistic approach to Maimonides: 1. It takes his philosophical concerns seriously 2. It commits us to reading the Mishneh Torah in the light of the philosophy Maimonides accepted 3. It leads to imputing to him a thoroughgoing universalism, denying any essential difference between Jew and Gentile as such 4. It leads to aligning him with R. Yishma’el vs R. Akiva on the question of whether the Torah was given to all humans or just to the Jews? 5. It leads to imputing to him an instrumental view of the commandments; on this reading, the mitsvot of the Torah are tools which enable us to reach our true perfection, which is constituted by understanding the cosmos and its Creator to the greatest extent possible 6. This in turn leads to the denial of any concrete reward for fulfillment of the commandments or punishment for violating them; the only true reward is survival of the intellect after the death of the body, but this is a consequence of certain actions, not a reward for them57 7. In a very real sense enjoying divine providence and surviving the death of the body on this view result from intellectual attainments, not from obedience to the commandments of the Torah in particular 8. It is a deeply elitist view Let us assume for a moment that Maimonides indeed defines human beings as rational animals and that the various consequences listed above do indeed follow from that position. On what grounds might we reject the definition and the consequences that follow from it? We might, of course, simply say that no good rabbinic Jew could conceivably hold the positions here attributed to Maimonides and leave it at that.58 We might

57 Me’iri well understood this distinction. See his Hibbur ha-Teshuvah (New York, 5710) pp. 441 and 541. My thanks to Marc Shapiro for drawing my attention to these passages. For a full discussion of the issue, see my Must a Jew Believe Anything?, 2nd ed., pp. 149–163. 58 I am reminded here of a story my late father, zt”l, told me. In the 1930’s he served as a rabbi in Miami, Florida, then a Jewish backwater. Unusual for an Orthodox rabbi, and under the influence of my American-born and raised mother, zt”l, my parents kept a pet dog. Their home in Miami was a small bungalow and my father told me that once he was sitting in the front room when a hungry meshulach, looking for a kosher meal, walked up to the door. My father told me that he overheard the following soliloquy: “I know this to be the home of Reb Avraham Kellner, whom I know to be an ehrliche yid. But I see sitting here on the front stoop, looking very much at home, what appears to be a dog, something which is inconceivable in the home of an ehrliche yid. So, either Rabbi Kellner is not an ehliche yid, or this is not a dog. But Rabbi Kellner is well known to be an ehrliche yid, so this must not be a dog!” At which point our hungry meshulach knocked on the door. Many people have said: “No ehrliche yid could possibly hold the positions academics like Menachem Kellner attribute to Rambam; ergo, Rambam does not hold those positions.” Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? 95 take a more responsible approach and try to show how the texts on which these interpretations of Maimonides are based can and ought to be read differently.59 We might propose that Maimonides says the things here attributed to them, but read him “politically,” i.e., affirm that he did not mean them.60 We could say that Maimonides indeed defines human beings as rational animals, but that he was unaware of or uninterested in the consequences of that position. Or we might say that he was simply inconsistent. For reasons which would take a book to explain,61 I reject these various approaches to reading Maimonides and insist that we pay him the courtesy of taking what he says seriously. I do not mean to imply, of course, that R. Rapoport treats Maimonides discourteously. What I mean, rather, is the following. We can decide that Maimonides fits seamlessly into the rabbinic tradition as it developed before him and continued to develop after him.62 If we adopt this view, we will be forced to ignore or explain away those passages in Maimonides which do not fit with the interpretation advanced here.63 There is a sense in which for many Orthodox Jews this is the only possible approach to our issue (and I do not mean for one moment to include R. Rapoport in this category): adopting what is essentially a static view of Torah,64 they feel that it is somehow un-Orthodox to acknowledge that our tradition has a history, that there are serious and profound debates about the nature of Torah within the tradition, and that great rabbis like Maimonides could have been influenced in their understanding

59 R. Yehonatan Blass (above, note 51) attempts to read Maimonides as if he fit well into the mainstream of what might be called standard contemporary rabbinic theology. To my mind, his attempt is, to put it mildly, unsuccessful. My attention was drawn to this work by a review of it Jewish Action 68.3 (Spring, 2008), pp. 93–96 by Professor Yehudah Gellman. I thank Prof. Gellman for his kindness in sending me an advance copy of the review. 60 This is basically the view I find in Responsum 45 of Rivash (R. Isaac Bar Sheshet Perfet, 1326–1408). See M. Kellner, “Rabbi Isaac Bar Sheshet’s Responsum Concerning the Study of Jewish Philosophy,” Tradition 15 (1975): 110–118. 61 I did so in Confrontation. 62 Of course what we take to be the main contours of that tradition is itself a matter of debate, as pointed out in the first and last chapters of Confrontation, but we can leave that aside for the moment. 63 There is, of course, a long history of doing just that. See, for example, “Each Generation and its Maimonides,” cited above in note 46. 64 On static vs. dynamic views of Torah in rabbinic thought, see Menachem Fisch, Rational Rabbis: Science and Talmudic Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997) and Yohanan Silman, Kol Gadol ve-Lo Yasaf: Torat Yisrael bein Shelemut Ve-Hishtalmut (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999). 96 Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? of Torah by “outsiders” like Aristotle and Alfarabi.65 As I understand him, Maimonides played a pivotal role in effecting change in the history of the Jewish tradition (by placing it on a firm dogmatic footing);66 he rejected mystical understandings of the nature of Torah to such an extent that he might have been tempted to agree with the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz and condemn as heretics all Kabbalists (including, emphatically, Nahmanides); and he preached a Torah influenced by Greeks and Muslims (not that he was aware of that—he was convinced that the Greeks and Muslims from whom he learned were teaching doctrines originally taught by the Torah and forgotten by the Jews).67 (Readers who find these views wholly unacceptable are probably best off stopping right now—the rest of this essay will only distress them.) So, the task before me becomes to show: 1. That Maimonides did define human beings as rational animals 2. That such a definition leads to universalist positions I attribute to him 3. That among these positions is the claim that all humans will worship God from a stance of complete religious equality by the time that the messianic era reaches its fruition What does it mean to affirm that Maimonides defines human beings as rational animals? In terms of our genus, we are animals. Our specific difference, that which distinguishes us from all other members of the animal kingdom, is our rationality. Everything that is not a direct reflection of rational thought—hopes and fears, love and hates, desires, needs, passions— is a consequence of our animal nature. In his earliest work, Treatise on Logic, Maimonides wrote: “Rationality we call man’s difference, because it divides and differentiates the human species from others; and this rationality, i.e. the faculty by which ideas are formed, constitutes the essence of man.”68 Thus, a person born of human parents is not human just by virtue of that birth; rather, “It behooves him who prefers to be a human

65 I cite these two in particular because of Maimonides’ comments in his introduction to his “Eight Chapters” as elucidated by Herbert A. Davidson in “Maimonides’ Shemonah Peraqim and Alfarabi’s Fusul Al-Madani,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 31 (1963): 33–50. 66 This is argued in my Must a Jew Believe Anything?, 2nd ed. 67 For the history of this notion, see Abraham Melamed, Al Kitfei Anaqim: Toledot ha-Vulmus Bein Aharonim le-Rishonim be-Hagut ha-Yehudit bi-yemei ha-Beinayim u-ve- Reishit ha-Et ha-Hadashah (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan Univ. Press, 2003). 68 Treatise on Logic, trans. I. Efros (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1938), pp. 51–52. For the controversy surrounding the authorship of this work, see Confrontation, p. 57, note 61. Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? 97 being in truth, not a beast having the shape and configuration of a human being, to endeavor to diminish all the impulses of matter—such as eating, drinking, copulation, anger, and all the habits consequent upon desire and anger, to be ashamed of them, and to set for them limits in his soul” (Guide of the Perplexed III:8, pp. 433–434). The Guide of the Perplexed is replete with consequences of this position. The very first chapters of the work make no sense unless one understands Maimonides to define humans as rational animals. Humans are there said to have been created in the image of God only because of “the intellect that God made overflow unto man and that is the latter’s ultimate perfection” (I:2, p. 24). It is in consequence of this view of the divine image— which humans can, through much effort, actualize in themselves69—that Maimonides writes in I:51 that “being a rational animal is the essence and true reality of man” (p. 113)70 How does one do this? By “knowing everything concerning all beings that it is within the capacity of man to know in accordance with his ultimate perfection” (III:27, p. 511). This perfection is purely intellectual; as Maimonides continues: “It is clear that to this ultimate perfection there do not belong either actions or moral qualities . . .”71 Maimonides has little occasion in his non-philosophical writings explicitly to affirm the definition of human beings as rational animals.72 But in these writings he consistently affirms an important consequence of that definition: to the extent that humans achieve immortality,73 it is due solely

69 Maimonides thus sees being created in the image of God as a challenge, not an endowment. 70 See Michael Schwartz’s note in his Hebrew translation of the Guide (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2002), p. 116, note 7. Tel Aviv University Press is to be commended for its decision to make this magnificent contribution to Jewish and human culture available on the internet [http://press.tau.ac.il/perplexed/]. See further Guide I:52 (pp. 114, 116), II:48 (p. 422), III:8 (p. 432), III:12 (p. 444), and III:14 (p. 458). 71 Given that Maimonides defines humans as rational animals (i.e. humans belong to the genus ‘animal’, and to the species ‘rational’), it follows that if language is a property by which humans are distinguished from all other animals, it must be intimately connected to rationality. Thus, it is no surprise that in Tibbonian Hebrew (following Arabic precedents) the term ‘rational animal’ is translated hai medabber (literally, speaking living being); see, for example, Samuel ibn Tibbon’s translation of the Guide I:51, I:52, III:48, and III:12. Ibn Tibbon makes this explicit in his Peirush ha-Millot ha-Zarot, alef (s.v. ma’amorot—gader), heh (s.v. higayon), and kaf (s.v. koah medabber). 72 An exception is his explicit statement of the claim toward the end of the Introduction to his Commentary on the Mishnah. Sheilat, p. 57. 73 There is considerable debate among Maimonides’ contemporary academic interpreters over whether or not humans can actually achieve immortality (“a share in the world to come”) or not. Shlomo Pines denies the possibility in “The Limitations of Human Knowledge According to Al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja, and Maimonides,” in Isadore Twersky (ed.), Studies in Medieval Jewish Histoy and Literature (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1979): 98 Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? to their intellectual achievements.74 All that survives death is what we have learned. This is a position that Maimonides espouses in all this major writings, including the Commentary on the Mishnah,75 the Mishneh Torah,76 and the Guide of the Perplexed.77 Viewing existence in the world to come in these terms, it is no surprise that Maimonides made fulfillment of the commandments of the Torah in particular and moral behavior in general only prerequisites for achieving a share in the world to come, not guarantors of it.78 One must be a decent and disciplined human being to achieve any level of intellectual perfection. The Torah is the best, but not the only, route to achieve such decency and discipline.

88–109. His view was criticized by Alexander Altmann, “Maimonides on the Intellect and Metaphysics,” in Von Der Mittelalterlichen Zur Modernen Aufklaerung (Tuebingen: Mohr, 1987): 60–91 and Herbert A. Davidson, “Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge,” Maimonidean Studies 3 (1992–93): 49–103. For further discussion, see Howard Kreisel, Maimonides’ Political Thought (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), pp. 142–43 and 242–43 and Alfred Ivry, “Maimonides’ Relations to the Teachings of Averroes,” Sefunot 8 (2003): 61–74. 74 Other consequences of Maimonides’ view of human perfection that find expression in the Guide are that providence and prophecy depend upon intellectual perfection. For discussion see my Maimonides on Judaism (above, footnote 8), chap. 4. 75 Sanhedrin, Introduction to Pereq Heleq, in the dual-language (Arabic/Hebrew) edition of R. J. Kafih (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1963), vol. 4, p. 204. 76 Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, IV:9, Laws of Repentance, VIII:2–3, and Laws of Phylacteries, VI:13. 77 I:30 (p. 63), I:40 (p. 90), I:41 (p. 91), I:70 (p. 174), I:72 (p. 193, implicitly), I:74 (p. 220), III:8 (pp. 432–33), III:27 (p. 511), III:51 (p. 628), and III:54 (p. 635). 78 For Maimonides moral perfection is a necessary, but not sufficient, pre-requisite for intellectual perfection. For sources, see Guide I:34 (pp. 76–77, where Maimonides writes: “the moral virtues are a preparation for the rational virtues, it being impossible to achieve true, rational acts—I mean perfect rationality—unless it be by a man thoroughly trained in his morals and endowed with the qualities of tranquility and quiet”), I:62 (p. 152), III:27 (p. 510), and III:54 (p. 635) and Commentary on the Mishnah, Hagigah II:1. For discussion, see Kellner, Maimonides on Human Perfection, 26–28; id., “Is Maimonides’ Ideal Person Austerely Rationalist?” and Kreisel, Maimonides’ Political Thought, pp. 160, 238, 317. Charles Manekin suggests the following analogy: “To be a physicist one has to know mathematics. Without knowing mathematics, no matter how much physics one has managed to learn, one is not a physicist. And yet, knowing math is not part of being a physicist per se; it is not what distinguishes physicists from, say, mathematicians. In Maimonides’ (and Gersonides’) world, there can be no “Nazi scientists”, although there can be Nazis who practice science. For true science entails morality. Morality is not something one can shed; if one does, one loses one’s knowledge.” My friend Avram Montag (a true physicist—as opposed to metaphysicist) disagrees with this analogy, since, he says, without knowing significant amounts of math, one can know very little physics. He prefers Jacob Bronowski’s argument in The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978) that a certain level of honesty, integrity, and even morality is required if one is to make progress in science. Bronowski claims that nothing came out of the Nazi’s horrible experiments on prisoners. Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? 99

Our issue is not entirely absent from Maimonides’ rabbinic writings. The Talmud (Berakhot 17a) states: “In the world to come there is no eating, drinking, washing, anointing, or sexual intercourse; but the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads enjoying the radiance of the divine presence.” Maimonides glosses this text on a number of occasions. In his commentary to Helek he explains: “The [rabbinic] expression, ‘crowns on their heads’ signifies the existence of the soul through the existence of that which it knows, in that they are the same thing, as the experts in philosophy have maintained . . .” He repeats the point in Laws of Repentance VIII:2. It is, I believe, worth citing the full text: In the world to come there is nothing corporeal, and no material substance; there are only the souls of the righteous without bodies, like the ministering angels. And since in that world there are no bodies, there is neither eating there, nor drinking, nor aught that human beings need on earth. None of the conditions occur there which are incident to physical bodies in this world, such as sitting, standing, sleep, death, sadness, joy, etc. So the ancient sages said, “in the world to come there is no eating, drinking, washing, anointing, or sexual intercourse; but the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads enjoying the radiance of the divine presence” (Berakhot 17a). This passage clearly indicates that there is no corporeal existence there, since there is no eating or drinking there. The phrase, “the righteous sit” is alle- gorical and means that the souls of the righteous exist there without fatigue or labor. The phrase, “their crowns on their heads” refers to the knowledge they know, by virtue of which they merited life in the world to come, which knowledge exists with them. This is their “crown” . . . And what is the meaning of “enjoying the radiance of the divine presence”?—that they know and apprehend of the truth of the Holy One, blessed be He, what they did not know when in their murky and lowly body.79 Maimonides’ point here is to insist that the world to come (i.e., the world that comes immediately after death to those who earn it) is entirely incorporeal. The righteous exist there without bodies, as do the angels;80 there is therefore no eating or drinking in the world to come. Nothing that pertains to bodily existence, such as sitting, standing, sleeping, death, sadness or joy, occurs there; it is against that background that Maimonides cites the Talmud in Berakhot. The Talmud there cites the dictum as “a favorite saying of Rav,” while Maimonides cites it in the name of the “Early Sages,”81

79 Based upon the translation of Moses Hyamson, The Book of Knowledge by Maimonides (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1974), pp. 90a–b. 80 Maimonides’ angels are a far cry from the common understanding of them. See Confrontation, chap. 8 and Diamond, Converts, pp. 214–218. 81 The standard term for Hazal in Maimonides’ writings. 100 Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? conveying the impression that it is the generally accepted view of the Sages.82 The text states: In the future world there is no eating nor drinking nor propagation83 [nor business nor jealousy nor hatred nor competition,]84 but the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads enjoying the radiance of the divine presence [as it says, And they beheld God, and did eat and drink].85 This text presents problems for Maimonides. First, the passage states that the righteous sit in the world to come. Maimonides explains that to mean that they exist without any effort. Second, the passage says that the righteous have crowns on their heads. This, Maimonides explains, means: the knowledge that they knew, because of which they merited life in the world to come, remains with them, and is their crown. This passage is one of many examples from his rabbinic writings in which Maimonides accepts what came to be known as the theory of the acquired intellect. The technical philosophical issues need not detain us here; it is enough to say that according to this theory all human beings are born with a potential to know and that only those who actualize that potential are fully and truly human and achieve a share in the world to come.86 Defining human beings the way he does, Maimonides has no way of dis- tinguishing Jews from Gentiles on any level but that of history, belief, and behavior. Since the Middle Ages various Jewish thinkers have sought ways to distinguish Jews from Gentiles in some ontologically significant way. Judah Halevi asserted that only Jews had what he called al-amr al-ilahi, which

82 This is not the only place where Maimonides adopts this tactic; he does the same thing when he attributes to the generality of the Sages the view of the amora Samuel that the only difference between this world and the next is political subjugation. Isaac Abravanel takes him to task for this in his Yeshu‘ot Meshiho, Part II, Iyyun 3, Chapter 7 (Bnei Brak: Me’orei Sefarad, 5753), p. 157. 83 Maimonides has tashmish, our standard texts have piryah ve-reviyah. 84 These words are missing from Maimonides’ text. 85 Ex. 24:11. These words are missing from Maimonides’ text. I follow the Old Jewish Publication Society (1917) translation [note: That’s the translation used in the Soncino Humash] here, with minor emendations. Given Maimonides’ attitude towards the Elders of Israel referred to in this verse, it is not surprising that he leaves out this part of the Talmudic text. See Guide of the Perplexed I:5, Confrontation, pp. 52–54 and Shaul Regev, “The Vision of the Nobles of Israel in the Jewish Philosophy of the Middle Ages,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 4 (1984–85): 281–302 (Hebrew) and Michelle Levene, “Maimonides’ Philosophical Exegesis of the Nobles’ Vision (Exodus 24): A Guide for the Pursuit of Knowledge,” Torah u-Madda Journal 11 (2003): 61–106. Isaac Abravanel wrote a whole book, Ateret Zeqeinim, defending the Elders from Maimonides’ strictures. 86 For a fuller discussion see Confrontation, pp. 223–229. Isaac Abravanel and Shem Tov ibn Shem Tov, both opponents of the theory, had no problem attributing it to Maimonides; see Confrontation, p. 226, note 29. Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? 101 meant that it was possible only for native-born Jews to aspire to prophecy. The Zohar teaches that the souls of Jews derive from a higher, more spiritual level of the sefirot than do the souls of Gentiles.87 The Maharal of Prague thought that with the giving of the Torah at Sinai, the image of God in Gentiles was diminished.88 The founder of Habad held that the souls of Gentiles were cruder than those of Jews.89 One could multiply these unfortunate examples without end.90 As noted above, Maimonides will have none of this, and, given his philosophical anthropology, he can have none of it. We may now turn to the third point I promised to discuss above. Let us assume that all that I have written here is correct. Why must that entail the claim that all humans will worship God from a stance of complete religious equality by the time that the messianic era reaches its fruition? In other words, why can’t Maimonides define humans as rational animals, reject the notion that there is any essential difference between Jew and Gentile, and yet continue to maintain that Jew and Gentile will remain distinct in the messianic era? In principle, there is no reason why Maimonides could not maintain such a position. The position is not incoherent and is lucidly explained by R. Rapoport, but, I suggest, it simply makes no sense in a world in which Jews and Gentiles are all ruled by the same wise and exalted king, a world in which there is no essential distinction between Jew and Gentile and that fact is acknowledged by all, a world in which Gentiles admit that the Torah is true and its commandments are divine, a world in which the closing peroration of the Mishneh Torah is realized:

87 See Moshe Hallamish, “The Kabbalists’ Attitude to the Nations of the World” in Aviezer Ravitzky, ed., Joseph Sermonetta Memorial Volume (=Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 14) (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 1988): 289–312 (Hebrew) and Elliot Wolfson, Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Yehudah (Jerome) Gellman has recently examined the issue with sensitivity and sophistication in “Jewish Mysticism and Morality: Kabbalah and Its Ontological Dualities,” Archiv fuer Religionsgeschichte 9 (2008): 23–35. It is unfortunate that Gellman published this important (and for a person like me, deeply disturbing) study in so obscure a journal. 88 Derekh ha-Hayyim III:14 (end), Gur Aryeh on Ex. 19:22, Netsah Yisra’el, ch. 3 (Jerusalem: Makhon Yerushalayim, 1997), p. 305 (see p. 458 n. 1 for references to other particularist expressions in the writings of the Maharal), and Tif’eret Yisra’el, ch. 32. 89 Tanya, end of I:1. 90 Even R. Samson Raphael Hirsch held that Jews occupy a higher rung of humanity than Gentiles. See Mordechai Breuer, Modernity Within Tradition, tr. Elizabeth Petuchowski (New York, 1992), p. 27, cited by Marc B Shapiro, “Torah im Derekh Erez in the Shadow of Hitler,” Torah u-Madda Journal 14 (2006–07), pp. 84–96, p. 96, note 15. 102 Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity?

In that time there will be neither famine nor war, neither jealousy nor strife. Good things will be abundant, and delicacies as common as dust. The one preoccupation of the whole world will be only to know the Lord. Hence [they] will be very wise, knowing things now unknown and will apprehend knowledge of their Creator to the utmost capacity of the human mind, as it is written: For the land shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9) In that world one can be a follower of the Torah,91 the one full, complete and true religion, or, according to R. Rapoport, one can settle for a pale, thin, stripped-down and essentially spiritually empty92 set of Noahide laws.93 In a world in which all humans achieve knowledge of the Creator to the greatest extent possible to them, a world in which all humans live on God’s holy mountain, a world from which evil and violence are ban- ished because the knowledge of God fills the earth as the waters cover the sea, why would any person alive settle for less than the true and complete dat ha-emet?94 Let us also recall that Maimonides held an unusually positive attitude, not only towards proselytes, but even towards proselytizing (responsum 149).95 In that light, one can assume that in the messianic world he would expect the Jews to mount missions to any remaining Gentiles—Gentiles, who, it will be recalled, accept the truth of Torah in any event. As long as I have brought up the issue of conversion,96 note should be taken of an issue to which I originally drew attention in my book,

91 I hesitate to use the word “Judaism” here, not only because it is anachronistic vis- à-vis Maimonides, but because of its intimate connection to the Jewish people. It is my claim here that in the messianic era the link between Torah as dat ha-emet and the Jewish people as ethnic entity will be severed—all humans, whatever their ethnos, will adopt the dat ha-emet. 92 Technically, as Kreisel points out (p. 161), a Noahide is forbidden to perform idolatry, but need not even be a theist! 93 Consider further: the punishment for the violation of any of the Noahide laws is execution (“Laws of Kings” IX:14). On the view that messianic Gentiles will be Noahides we would have a situation in which a Jew who steals must return the stolen item and pay a fine while a Gentile who steals even something of trifling value will be executed! I take this one fact to be a reductio ad absurdum of the idea that in Maimonides’ messianic world Gentiles will remain Noahides and not adopt the full range of the Torah. 94 Kreisel (p. 153) makes the same point very well: “Why would Gentiles settle for anything less than the one true divine legislation, if they have come to realize the true purpose of life, and the role played by Mosaic law in attaining that purpose . . . and finally have no other religious option, at least no other complete religious law that can be considered divine?” 95 See Diamond, Converts, ch. 1. 96 Actually, R. Rapport brings it up in footnote 71. He bases his discussion there on an alleged inconsistency in Maimonides. But, in point of fact, the inconsistency is not within Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? 103

Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People (pp. 42–43). In two places (Yevamot 24b and Avodah Zarah 3b) the Talmud states: Our Rabbis taught: proselytes are not accepted in the days of the Messiah, just as proselytes were not accepted either in the days of David or in the days of Solomon. Maimonides relates to this in the Mishneh Torah as follows (Laws of For- bidden Intercourse, XIII:15): Therefore, throughout the days of David and Solomon, the court accepted no converts—in David’s time because [the convert] might have been motivated by fear, and in Solomon’s time because [the convert] might have been motivated by the benefits and grandeur of the Israelite kingdom. It is reasonable to suggest that in the messianic era—when the whole world will be ruled by King Messiah and the truth of the Torah will be evident to all—one might be led to suspect the sincerity of converts. Nev- ertheless, Maimonides refuses to accept as authoritative a rabbinic statement ruling out the possibility of conversion to Judaism in the messianic era. My explanation for that is that he expected (all) Gentiles to convert during the messianic era. This brings up another point, to which R. Hanan Balk of Cincinnati kindly drew my attention. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 58b–59a) teaches that a Gentile may not study Torah (other than the seven Noahide commandments)— on pain of death. Maimonides codifies this is as law in Laws of Kings, X:9. In his responsa (no. 149) he was asked if this is indeed the law, and that a Jew is forbidden to teach any but the seven Noahide commandments to a Gentile. He answered: It is the law without a doubt. When the hand of Israel is uppermost over them, we restrain him from studying Torah until he converts, but he is not to be killed if he studied Torah . . .” And then, notoriously, Maimonides goes on to add: It is permissible to teach the commandments to Christians and attract them to our religion, but none of this is permissible to Muslims. Maimonides explains that, unlike Muslims, Christians accept the divine origin of the Torah, and therefore it is more likely that they will turn to the good way (yahzeru la-mutav). The Talmud relates to the study of Torah

Maimonides, but between Maimonides and the Talmud. I hope that the reader will find my discussion here more convincing than that of R. Rapoport. 104 Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? by Gentiles in another context: Hagigah 13a teaches that it is forbidden for a Jew to teach Torah to a Gentile. Unlike the prohibition in Sanhedrin, which Maimonides codifies as law, this prohibition is simply ignored in the Mishneh Torah. This odd state of affairs has led to considerable discussion on the part of Maimonides’ traditionalist interpreters.97 Pulling together the points about conversion discussed here, it seems obvious that if Maimonides expected the Gentiles to convert in the messianic era, he could hardly have forbidden teaching them Torah now—and he could not very well forbid it now before the coming of the Messiah and permit it after his coming. That must be the reason why he permits teaching Torah to Christians in the pre-messianic world. Further considerations support my claim that for Maimonides, all humanity in the messianic era would accept the Torah fully. Maimonides was severely criticized for his account of the reasons for the commandments, an account which boils down to the claim that the commandments of the Torah serve one of two ends: to improve moral and social relations, or to correct philosophical mistakes. Maimonides says this quite explicitly in Guide, III:27. The commandments of the Torah, therefore, have a relative, not an absolute, advantage over other systems of ethics and philosophy. But that relative advantage is great, since the commandments were ordained by God (Who obviously knows our creaturely natures far better than any human legislator or philosopher).98 Maimonides is also quite explicit in his repeated claims that one cannot achieve intellectual perfection unless one antecedently achieved a high level of moral perfection—no physicists like Einstein (who abandoned his first family) or philosophers like Heidegger (who never expressed regret for his support of the Nazis) for Maimonides!99 One of the commandments which play a direct role in the achievement of moral perfection is circumcision.100 As Maimonides says in Guide, III:49 (p. 609):

97 For discussion, see David Novak, Maimonides on Judaism and Other Religions (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997). 98 All these claims are supported in Confrontation, chapter 2. 99 For texts and discussion, see Confrontation, p. 63, note 71 and above, note 71. 100 See Josef Stern, “Maimonides on the Covenant of Circumcision,” in Michael Fishbane, ed., The Midrashic Imagination (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), pp. 131–54 and “Maimonides’ Parable of Circumcision,” Sevara 2 (1991):35–48. My thinking here was stimulated by reading Shaye J. D. Cohen’s Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Covenant in Judaism (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2005), chapters 6 and 7. Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity? 105

Similarly with regard to circumcision, one of the reasons for it is, in my opinion, the wish to bring about a decrease in sexual intercourse and a weak- ening of the organ in question, so that this activity be diminished and the organ be in as quiet a state as possible. . . . In fact this commandment has not been prescribed with a view to perfecting what is defective congenitally, but perfecting what is defective morally. . . . violent concupiscence and lust that goes beyond what is needed are diminished. If all humans are going to devote themselves to the knowledge of God when the messianic era reaches its fruition, how could Maimonides possibly expect that Gentiles would remain uncircumcised, and thus at a disadvantage in curbing their passions, which, in turn, leaves them at a disadvantage in seeking to know God? Furthermore, circumcision for Maimonides is, as Shaye Cohen aptly puts it, “a sign of membership in the covenant of Abraham, the league of those who believe in the unity of God” (p. 152).101 Since all humans in the messianic era will be members of that league, does it make sense to think that Maimonides would not expect them to bear the mark of that covenant? It should also be borne in mind in this context that in Laws of Kings X:7 Maimonides writes that “he alone is a descendent of Abraham who holds fast to his religion and honest way, and they alone are obligated to be circumcised.”102 If Arabs in the pre-messianic world are obligated to perform circumcision, how much more so will all humanity in the messianic world be so obligated, a world in which all human beings will hold fast to Abrahamic monotheism? As my friend and student Yisrael Ben-Simon pointed out to me, this argument ought to be generalized. The commandments of the Torah are the best way for human beings to achieve their full potential as human beings in that they are the best route to preparing us to perfect ourselves intellectually. It is simply inconceivable that in a world in which all human beings strive to perfect their knowledge of God (and thus reach the highest possible level of human perfection to which each person can separately aspire)103 that Gentiles would be left at the tremendous disadvantage of only being called upon to fulfill the Noahide commandments.

101 See further, Hannah Kasher, “Maimonides’ View of Circumcision as a Factor Uniting the Jewish and Muslim Communities,” In Studies in Muslim-Jewish Relations, edited by Ronald L. Nettler (Luxembourg: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995): 103–08. המילה נצטוה בה אברהם וזרעו בלבד, שנאמר אתה וזרעך אחריך, יצא זרעו שלישמעאל 102 שנאמר כי ביצחק יקרא לך זרע ויצא עשו, שהרי יצחק אמר ליעקב ויתן לק את ברכת אברהם לך ולזרעך מכלל שהוא לבדו זרעו שלאברהם המחזיק בדתו ובדרכו הישרה, והם המחוייבין במילה. 103 If details are needed, one can consult my Maimonides on Human Perfection. 106 Maimonides’ “True Religion”: For Jews or All Humanity?

Conclusion and Final Reflection

According to Maimonides all humanity will adopt dat ha-emet by the time the messianic era reaches fruition. The dat in question can refer either to the Torah of Noah, to the Torah of Abraham, or to the Torah of Moses. R. Rapoport thinks it refers to the Torah of Noah; I am convinced that it refers to the Torah of Moses. He and I both agree that Maimonides did not mean the Torah of Abraham. Because text and context are not con- clusive R. Rapoport cannot prove his position textually any more that I can. Therefore, we must approach the issue philosophically and ask which position coheres best with Maimonides’ overall view of Torah and humanity? I have shown here that Maimonides, who believed that all human beings are equally created in the image of God and that the part of us which is Godlike is our ability to reason, could not and would not hope for a messianic era in which Jews and Gentiles remain distinct. I am aware of the fact that according to this reading of Maimonides, all humans in the messianic era will obey the commandments of the Torah (including the holidays marking events in Jewish history) despite that most of them will have no personal Jewish memory or identity. To rephrase in modern terms, for Maimonides Jewish ethnicity is accidental, not essential, to Judaism. Although this may sound surprising to some of my readers, it actually accords well with Maimonides’ dogma-centered notion of what constitutes Jewish identity, and with the positions put forward in his letter to Obadiah the Proselyte. That Maimonides adopts surprising positions should not, after all, be surprising. WE ARE NOT ALONE

Menachem Kellner

Our World

Each of us lives at the centre of his or her universe, but few of us mean that literally. Not too very long ago, however, that human beings literally lived at the centre of the universe was a given, at least in Western culture. From our perspective, that universe was very small. It was a sphere which in today’s terms was smaller than our own solar system. It was small in other ways as well: spiritual entities aside, all that was thought to exist could be seen by the naked eye (or inferred to exist)—nothing micro- scopic, nothing telescopic. The world was small in another sense as well: it had no history, either because it was uncreated and basically unchanging (as Aristotle taught) or because since creation the natural world (miracles aside) was as it was meant to be, with no evolution. In this world, populated by only a few million human beings, people’s lives were often nasty, brutish, and short since so many of their fellows were often nasty and brutish (and often short as well, given available nutrition). In such a world, it made immediate intuitive sense to think that one’s own group had been specially chosen by God: all other groups believed in arrant nonsense, behaved outlandishly, and were often thought to be barely human.1 The universe we live in is dramatically larger than that of our forebears. Looking outward, we discover that we orbit the sun, not the other way round, and live on a planet which is one of many that orbit the sun. The sun itself is a star of no particular distinction, tucked into a galaxy of no particular distinction. Our Milky Way galaxy is part of a galactic cluster, which itself in turn is part of a super-galactic cluster, and so on, with no end in sight. Zooming back into ourselves, we discover that we are composed of molecules, composed of atoms, composed of atomic particles, composed of sub-atomic particles, and so on. When Jews look at the world around

1 Anthony D. Smith has shown that the notion of chosenness is endemic to Western culture (and not just the West)—but, of course, the Jews get blamed for the idea more than do other peoples. See Anthony D. Smith, Chosen Peoples (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

This essay was first published as “We Are Not Alone,” in Radical Responsibility: Celebrating the Thought of Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, ed. Michael J. Harris, Daniel Rynhold, and Tamra Wright (Jerusa- lem: Maggid Books, 2012), 139–54. 108 we are not alone them, we discover that in numerical terms we do not even constitute a sta- tistical error in the Chinese or Indian censuses. Looking at the world in this way, it becomes harder and harder to take seriously those who read Rashi’s comment on Genesis 1:1 to the effect that all that exists was created only so that God could reveal the Torah to Moses, in order that the Jewish people could live according to it in a small patch of real estate on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Looking at the billions of human beings who surround us, we discover that a huge percentage of them are no less moral and no less sophisticated than we are.2 The challenge to Jewish self-importance constituted by alternative faiths and cultures is not new, but it does have a beginning point in time. The biblical authors were confident that the idolaters against whom they struggled were barbarians. The talmudic sages seem not to have been overwhelmed with admiration for the cultures of the people among whom they lived. Living in an Islamic world, however, Sa’adiyah Gaon (882–924), Judah Halevi, and, pre-eminently, Maimonides realized that they confronted a challenge that could not be brushed aside with a broken reed. Samuel ibn Tibbon (c.1150–1230) and Menahem Me’iri each showed that they found much in contemporary Christianity to admire. It is against this background that I would like to comment on Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s challenging observation, ‘Those who are confident in their

2 Rashi opens his commentary on the Torah by paraphrasing from Midrash tanḥuma (‘Bereshit’ 11) as follows: Rabbi Isaac said: It was not necessary to begin the Torah [the main object of which is to teach commandments] with this verse, but from ‘This month shall be unto you [the first of the months]’ [Exod. 12:2], since this was the first commandment that Israel was commanded to observe. But what is the reason that the Torah begins with ‘In the beginning’? Because of the verse, ‘The power of His works He hath declared to His people in giving them the heritage of the nations’ [Ps. 111:6], for if the nations of the world should say to Israel: ‘You are robbers, because you have seized by force the lands of the seven nations [of Canaan],’ Israel could reply to them: ‘The entire world belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; He created it, and gave it to whomever it was right in His eyes. Of His own will He gave it to them [the seven Canaanite nations] and of His own will He took it from them and gave it to us.’ Rashi here expands on the Tanḥuma text, but, so far as I can judge, in no way distorts it. Emphasizing what I take to be a central focus of his gloss here, Rashi continues, this time paraphrasing Genesis Kabbah 1:1: ‘In the beginning He created’: This passage cries out for a midrashic interpretation, as our rabbis have interpreted it: [God created the world] for the sake of the Torah since it is called ‘the beginning of His way’ [Prov. 8:22] and for the sake of Israel, since they are called ‘the beginning of His crops’ [Jer. 2:3]. we are not alone 109 faith are not threatened but enlarged by the different faith of others.’3 There is much to admire in this statement, although, if it is true, it would appear that very few religious people in the pre-modern West were confident enough in their faith to feel enlarged, rather than threatened, by the faith of others—such would appear to be the evidence of wars of religion, crusades against infidels and heretics, and the persecution of religious, cultural, and ideological others. Even in our relatively enlightened age, it would appear that more people are threatened than enlarged by the faith of others. All this is true, but there is still much to be learned from Rabbi Sacks’s observation. I believe that it provides a new angle for understanding an 800-year-old debate in Jewish sources. Bluntly, I want to make the case that attempts to ground Jewish chosenness in the claim that Jews are distinguished from others by some sort of innate characteristic, which makes them both different from and superior to other human beings, reflects a lack of religious self-confidence. Not to beat around the bush, the alternative view is that of Maimonides, according to which all human beings are equally made in the image of God. What distinguishes Jews from other human beings is nothing innate, ontological, metaphysical, or however you might want to characterize it, but the truth of the Torah. This view is neither pluralist nor liberal, but it does save Maimonides from the charge of a lack of religious self-confidence, and from the charge of racist particularism. We do not have to remain bound by Maimonides. He takes us many steps on the way towards enabling us to be enlarged by the faith of others, but certainly does not take us all the way—that we will have to do on our own.

The World of Halevi and the Halevians

Two facts about the earliest statement that Jews are in some actual sense distinguished from non-Jews are significant. The first is that it dates from the twelfth century, not earlier,4 and the second is that it occurs in a

3 Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference (New York: Continuum, rev. edn., 2003), 65–6. 4 I am more than painfully aware of the (thankfully very small number of) rabbinic passages which could be construed as teaching that Jews are not only God’s chosen people, especially beloved first-born sons, as it were (Exod. 4:22), but in some inherent sense truly distinct from and superior to non-Jews. But even such statements as bt az 22b, according to which only non-Jews carry the pollution which the Edenic snake cast into Eve (a statement the outer meaning of which Maimonides, Guide, ii. 30, says is deeply disgraceful), and the various misanthropic statements attributed to R. Shimon bar Yohai, need not be read literally (indeed, that is the general approach to R. Shimon bar Yohai’s 110 we are not alone book titled The Book of Refutation and Proof on Behalf of the Despised Reli- gion. Judah Halevi’s Kuzari, as the book is better known, was written as a defence of rabbinic Judaism in the face of attacks by Karaites, Christians, Muslims, neo-Aristotelian philosophers writing in Arabic, and, I would add, by the kind of Judaism soon to be found in the writings of Moses Maimonides (1138–1204; Halevi died in 1145). It is noteworthy that Hal- evi’s defence of Judaism involves unprecedented claims about the special nature of the Jews.5 We have thus a fairly late book, written by a poet-philosopher who was clearly affronted by the disdain he felt on the part of the majority cultures then warring over his homeland (born in Christian Spain, Halevi spent his maturity in the Muslim South). He also lived in a world in which Muslims of pure Arab descent saw themselves as superior to other Muslims and in which some Christians cast doubt upon the simple humanity of Jews, who had every reason to know better, but stubbornly persisted in rejecting the messiahship of Jesus, despite its ‘obvious’ truth. It is hardly surprising that Halevi chose not only to emphasize the truth and beauty of the Torah, but also the special nature of its recipients. What did Halevi claim in this regard? In light of later iterations of the claim that Jews are significantly distinguished from and superior to non- Jews, Halevi’s claims are restrained, and, as was pointed out to me by Rabbi Daniel Korobkin, perhaps wholly theoretical.6 Halevi maintained that in the ten generations from Noah to Abraham, a line of descent developed (or, perhaps more accurately, was caused to develop by God) of individuals

famous statement in bt Yev. 60b–61a—see especially Tosafot ad loc). Even if one insists on reading them literally and anachronistically, as if they reflected views that found general expression only in the Middle Ages, they still remain a tiny and wholly unrepresentative set of texts. 5 I am writing on the assumption that the Zohar postdates Halevi and that its doctrines were, by and large, unknown to him. Contemporary scholarship usually ascribes authorship of the Zohar to the 13th-cent. Spanish kabbalist R. Moses de Leon and his circle, even if some scholars see it as the outgrowth of a long mystical tradition that preceded it. For a recent analysis of rabbinic views which qualify or reject the traditional ascription of the Zohar to R. Shimon bar Yohai, see Marc Shapiro, ‘Is there an obligation to believe that R. Shimon bar Yohai wrote the Zohar?’ (Heb.), Milin ḥavivin, 5 (2010–11) Heb. section, 1–20. On zoharic doctrines concerning the special nature of the Jews, see Moshe Hallamish, ‘The Kabbalists’ Attitude to the Nations of the World’ (Heb.), in Aviezer Ravitsky (ed.), Joseph Baruch Sermonetta Memorial Volume ( Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 14) ( Jerusalem, 1988), 289–311. Hallamish’s interest in this article is in the image of non-Jews in kabbalah, but its picture of the Jew is made clear along the way. 6 The differences are only theoretical since no one achieves prophecy any more. However, there are those who interpret a late poem of Halevi’s as explaining his resolve to reach the land of Israel in order to achieve a prophetic experience. See Yosef Yahalom, Shirat ḥayav shel r. yehudah halevi ( Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008), 93–106. we are not alone 111 capable of achieving prophecy. This special subset of humanity continued to develop through Abraham (but not through his brother Haran), through Isaac (but not through his brother Ishmael), and through Jacob (but not through his brother Esau) and finally to all of Jacob’s descendants, the children of Israel/Jacob. For Halevi, this special subset of humanity is related to the rest of the human race as the heart is related to the rest of the body: the core organ (and the seat of thought for mediaevals, following the Bible), without which the other organs cannot survive and which itself, if we take the analogy further, cannot survive without them.7 Halevi’s intellectual honesty is such that he accepts the consequences of his position. Flying in the face of received halakhah, he maintains that converts to Judaism remain inferior to born Jews (Kuzari, i. 26): ‘whoever joins us from among the nations especially will share in our good fortune although he will not be equal to us’.8 Halevi’s honesty is further evidenced by his astounding admission (Kuzari i. 113–15) that Jews in practice all too often fail to live up to their divine potential, and, if given the chance, could be as brutal as the nations among whom they live. Writers coming after Halevi tended to be more absolute in their claims about the special nature of the Jews, most often rooting their claims in kabbalistic notions. Historically, the various forms of Jewish ontological particularism have been purely theoretical discussions, with no concrete consequences in the lives of their authors, or those who read their works. One hopes that the same will be true for what appears to be a truly blood- thirsty contemporary expression of the view that Jews are ontologically distinct from and profoundly superior in every fashion to gentiles. The book Torat hamelekh purports to be a disinterested and entirely theoretical halakhic discussion of the circumstances under which it is permissible to kill innocent gentiles. I do not mean to blame Halevi or his successors in the Jewish tradition for this book, but do want to insist that it is one possible consequence of their ontological particularism.9

7 See Halevi, Kuzari, i. 27–8, 96, 101–03, and 115. 8 See further Daniel J. Lasker, ‘Proselyte Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the Thought of Judah Halevi’, Jewish Quarterly Review, 81 (1990), 75–91. The inferiority which Halevi attaches to converts to Judaism relates not to matters of yiḥus (‘descent’; a convert may not become a king of Israel, for example, nor marry a kohen), but to their very nature—in effect, they are no longer gentiles, but not entirely Jewish either. 9 Yizhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur, Torat hamlekh (Yitshar: Yeshivat Od Yosef Hai, 2009). Some of the ‘pearls’ found in this book include the claim that the existence of a gentile who is not a ‘resident alien’ (and in this day and age, no gentiles can achieve that status) ‘has no legitimacy’ (p. 43); Jews and gentiles share nothing in common, but, in effect, belong to different orders of reality (p. 45); a gentile who violates one of the seven Noahide commandments (stealing, for example, even something of slight value, or, in 112 we are not alone

Moving from the immoral to the ridiculous, Jewish ontological par- ticularists always remind me of a joke I like to tell, along the lines of the country mouse and city mouse, only in this case the mice are Jews in late nineteenth-century Tsarist Russia. A Jew from a small shtetl meets a Jew from the great city of Odessa. The big- city Jew, trying to be polite, asks about the shtetl and inquires, how many people live in your village? The shtetl Jew replies with pride, at least two thousand. And how many of them are Jews, continues his interlocutor. Oh, about 1,800, he is told. Not to be outdone, the country Jew asks the city Jew, how many people live in Odessa? He is impressed with the reply, at least 3 million. He then asks, and how many of them are Jews? Flabbergasted by the answer (about half a million), he asks in amazement, really? Why do you need so many goyim? The doctrine concerning the special innate ontologically superior nature of the Jews is, on the face of it, so obviously insane, so observably false in the real world (as Judah Halevi himself had to admit), and so totally unsupported by the overwhelming majority of biblical and rabbinic texts (and to my mind both immoral and fundamentally unJewish), that one is driven to wonder how anyone could take it seriously, and how it could have become so dominant a theme in mediaeval and contemporary Juda- ism. Two answers spring to mind, the second of which will bring us back to Rabbi Sacks’s observation about confidence in one’s faith. Jewish history may not be exclusively lachrymose but the survival of the Jews in the face of exile and persecution is indeed remarkable. Persecuted individuals and peoples often develop a common defence mechanism, to

the eyes of the authors of the book, undermining Jewish sovereignty over any part of the land of Israel) is to be executed without advance warning. The Jew who witnesses the act can serve as judge and executioner (pp. 49–51); and so it goes in depressing and blood- curdling detail. Torat hamlekh’s views are based on readings of kabbalistic texts mediated through the teachings of R. Yitshak Ginzberg, cited as direct inspiration by the authors of the book. I regret to note that the idea that Jews and gentiles do not share the same human essence is found in circles which identify with modernity and enlightenment, far from R. Ginzberg and his morally twisted views. See, for example, Hershel Schachter, ‘Women Rabbis?’, Hakirah: The Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought, 11 (2011), 19–23. On p. 20, R. Schachter, distinguished professor of Talmud and Rosh Kollel at Yeshiva University, writes, as if it is totally uncontroversial: ‘Hashem [God] created all men B’Tzelem Elokim [in the image of God], and Bnai Yisrael [Jews] with an even deeper degree of this Tzelem Elokim—known as Banim LaMakom [Children of the Omnipresent].’ I hasten to add that R. Schachter (who bases himself here, apparently, on a [mis-]reading of Mishnah Avot, 3:14) would be horrified to have his views connected to Torat hamelekh. I cite him only as an example of the casual way in which many Jews assume some sort of ontological divide between Jews and gentiles. (R. Schachter expands on his particularist views on the nature of Jewish uniqueness in a lecture, which can be accessed at: http://www.torahweb.org/ audioFrameset.html#audio=rsch_050204.) we are not alone 113 wit, that their persecutors are themselves inferior. Is it any wonder that the Jews adopt that view? All people need to feel special; persecuted individuals and peoples (when they do not succumb and internalize the views of the persecutors—a syndrome which appears particularly widespread today among Jewish enemies of Israel) will often and understandably claim moral and even innate superiority over their persecutors. This is perhaps one way of understanding how a religious tradition that begins with the insight that all human beings are created in the image of God could spawn a book like Torat hamelekh. This matter is so basic, so fundamental, that I am not familiar with any Jewish thinker, no matter how liberal and universalist in his or her views, who manages without some interpretation or other of the idea of Jewish chosenness. Even Mordecai Kaplan—whose view of God is basically that of George Lucas’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, namely, an unself-conscious natural force in the universe—arrives in his last book (The Religion of Ethical Nationhood ) at the unexpected conclusion that it is only the special nature of Jewish nationalism which stands between the world and nuclear Armageddon. Thus, even those who try to naturalize everything (such as Mordecai Kaplan) end up with some notion of Jewish chosenness. The issue achieves added urgency in the light of a comment I once heard the late Emil Fackenheim make: Jews were murdered in the Holocaust because their great-grandparents refused to assimilate. From this it follows, I add, that the decision to remain Jewish in the face of great assimilatory pressures and inducements is a moral choice, one which might be fraught with unimaginably horrible consequences for one’s grandchildren, God forbid. One must have good reasons for remaining Jewish. Given all this, it is hardly surprising that Jews and Judaism have developed mechanisms for keeping Jews Jewish. One mechanism which appears to have proved effective is the claim that Jews constitute a metaphysical kind, distinct from and superior to other humans. This is certainly one way to encourage loyalty in the face of fierce persecution, and in the face of the blandishments of the contemporary world, which, in the USA, at least, seem to be wiping out the Jewish people through kindness, not murder. The view that Jews are in some serious way innately different from and superior to gentiles is deeply rooted in contemporary Judaism.10 This is so

10 In my experience, so-called liberal and secularist Jews are no less particularist than are the Orthodox; indeed, when it comes to the full acceptance of proselytes, Orthodox Jews in Israel are typically much more open than their secularist counterparts. I often check the ‘particularism-level’ of audiences to which I speak by telling the following joke: an Eastern European Jew in the nineteenth century, tired of the discrimination to which 114 we are not alone much the case that after I literally wrote a book to convince one of the members of my synagogue that for Maimonides, there is no inherent difference between Jews and non-Jews (my Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People), he read the book, admitted the cogency of my arguments, and then said that in consequence, his admiration for Maimonides had diminished. Another member of my synagogue, a lawyer, sought to convince me that when Maimonides used the talmudic expression kol bad olam (all human beings), he could not mean to include non-Jews, since the term is found in the liturgical poem, ‘Unetaneh tokef’:11 for him it was a given that God neither judges nor even listens to the prayers of non-Jews! For people like my two fellow synagogue-goers, billions of gentiles are like static, background noise, of no possible interest to God. This is certainly not the view of Maimonides and his contemporary followers, as I will suggest after making one more point. Biblical authors, and to a great extent the rabbis of the Talmud, appear to have been convinced that idolaters were brutal and corrupt. As much as idolatry was a religious deviation, it was also a cause of profound moral corruption and in that sense was truly a source of tumah (ritual impurity). But what happened when the gentiles among whom the Jews lived, and with whom they conducted business, and with whom they often had social ties (otherwise, why forbid the consumption of gentile wine, oil, and bread, for fear that it might lead to intermarriage?) turned out to be moral individuals, trustworthy in their personal dealings, and sophisticated in their religious beliefs? People confident in their faith would be untroubled by such a situation. But perhaps people not so confident in their faith would seek to bolster their identities by denigrating the others as, in effect, not fully human, not truly made in the image of God to the fullest extent possible, not only different, but also innately inferior? There is no way to perform psychoanalysis on long-dead Jews, but looking at those Jews among us today who most disdain gentiles, is it far-fetched to see the results of a persecution complex (as paranoids may really have enemies, so also, as it

he was subjected, converts to Christianity. The following morning he starts to put on tefillin. His wife says, ‘Idiot, what are you doing? Just yesterday you converted!’ The man strikes himself on the head and says ‘Goyishe kop!’ The last expression means ‘gentile head’—in my experience many people who laugh at the joke think that conversion out of Judaism makes a person dumber. Invariably, almost everyone in the audience laughs. 11 A central element in the liturgy of the High Holidays. For a recent study, see Reuven Kimelman, ‘U-N’Taneh Tokef as a Midrashic Poem’, in Debra Reed Blank (ed.), The Experience of Jewish Liturgy: Studies Dedicated to Menahem Schmelzer (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 115–46. we are not alone 115 were, one can acknowledge persecution without justifying a persecution complex), the results of a lack of self-confidence? Again, there is no way of knowing, but it does help set the stage for a wholly other way of looking at the difference between Jews and gentiles, one which grows out of untroubled confidence in the truth of Torah.

Maimonides and the Maimonideans

There are many ways of proving that Maimonides rejected the idea that Jews are in some innate sense distinct from and inherently superior to non- Jews.12 One of the most direct texts is his letter to Obadiah the Proselyte.13 In this letter, he writes that Abraham is as much the father of proselytes as he is of born Jews. That this is no rhetorical flourish is evidenced by the fact that Maimonides makes this statement in a halakhic responsum and that he derives halakhic consequences from this claim. Indeed, he goes on to say (as if he were directly controverting Halevi, which is not beyond the pale of possibility) that the proselyte is actually closer to God than the born Jew.14 In further contradistinction to Halevi, Maimonides points out that the children of Israel at Sinai were themselves all converts to Judaism: the Jews are a nation constituted by a religious act, not by shared descent. This point was made by a prominent twentieth-century Maimonidean, Rabbi Joseph Kafih (1917–2000), but before turning to his comments, I want to elaborate just a bit on Maimonides’ position. My friend Hayim Shahal pointed out to me that the Hebrew expression kedoshim tihiyu (Leviticus 19:2: ‘You shall be holy’) can be read in the future tense (as a promise) or in the imperative (as a commandment or challenge). Maimonides read it in the latter sense, Halevi in the former. Another way of putting the same point: for Halevi, the Torah was given to the Jews, for only

12 Much of my academic writing has been devoted to this issue. In particular, see Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991); Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2006); and Science in the Bet Midrash: Studies in Maimonides (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2009). 13 For an English translation of much of the letter, see Franz Kobler, Letters of Jews through the Ages (New York: East and West Library, 1978), vol. 1, pp. 194–6; for discussion, see James Diamond, Converts, Heretics, and Lepers: Maimonides and the Outsider (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007). 14 In a certain sense, converts are more Jewish than born Jews, since born Jews may or may not know truth while converts (at least in a Maimonidean beit din) only become Jewish by virtue of knowing the truth. 116 we are not alone the Jews could receive it; for Maimonides, it was receipt of the Torah which created the nation of Israel out of a motley collection of ex-slaves and hangers-on. Maimonides’ views in this regard are so extreme that I believe it is fair and correct to say of him that the history recorded in the Torah could have been different (had Abraham been a Navajo, for example) and that the commandments which reflect that history (the festivals, the sac- rificial cult, etc.) could also have been different. For Maimonides, in other words, the Torah records what actually happened, not what had to happen. History could have worked out differently (but, of course, it did not). In 1958, the then-Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, wrote to about fifty Jewish intellectuals asking for help in defining who is a Jew. One of the answers he received was from Rabbi Joseph Kafih, then at the beginning of a magnificent career of translating and explaining Maimonides’ works. Rabbi Kafih wrote to Ben-Gurion: What is the meaning of the term ‘Jew’? It must be stated that the term does not denote a certain race. Perhaps it is wrong to use the word ‘race’ so as not to mimic the modern-day racists and their associates, as according to the perception of the Torah, there are no different races in the world. In order to uproot this theory, the Torah felt compelled to provide extensive details of the lineage of all the people in the world so as to attribute them to a single father and a single mother. Thus it might be more proper to say that the term ‘Jew’ does not denote a certain tribe, or in other words, does not indicate the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the limited sense of the phrase. We know beyond any doubt that throughout the generations, many people of different nations became intermixed with the Israelites.15 But Jews are not just followers of a religion, Rabbi Kafih writes, since at their core is a nation; anyone who accepts the religion becomes so deeply interwoven in the nation that he or she becomes indistinguishable from born Jews. Rabbi Kafih also makes the very interesting point that the detailed accounts of the ‘descent of man’ in the book of Genesis were included in the Torah to emphasize that all the nations of the earth are essentially one family, all descended from one source. Maimonides does not need to posit the superiority of Jews over non- Jews since he is convinced of the truth of the Torah. Since the Torah is true, and since all humans are essentially the same, there is no reason why all humanity will not someday accept the Torah. His messianism, following that of Isaiah and of Amos, is universalist.

15 R. Kafih’s letter may be found in Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Jewish Identities: Fifty Intellectuals Answer Ben-Gurion (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 247–53. we are not alone 117

Fine and good, for Maimonides, non-Jews are made in the image of God, just as Jews are. What of non-Jewish religions? Can one find truth in them? Maimonides clearly held that there was some truth in Christianity and Islam, since he tells us that they each have a role to play in making the world ready to accept the messiah. Christianity teaches the sanctity of the Written Torah, acknowledges that the Torah’s commandments were at least once normative, and looks forward to a messianic redemption. Islam pro- fesses a no-nonsense version of austere monotheism. Let us now recast our discussion in terms common to contemporary Jewish discourse: why be Jewish? For Halevians the answer is simple: you are Jewish. Remaining Jewish means remaining what you are; you can fool yourself into thinking that you can cease being Jewish and the attempt means that you are untrue to your innermost essence. For Maimonides the answer is also simple: one should remain Jewish because Judaism is true (a view which Halevi and those in his camp would, of course, heartily endorse). That is enough for Maimonides, but not, it appears for Halevi—it is here that I detect the lack of Jewish theological self-confidence that I suggest is to be found in Halevi, but very clearly not in Maimonides. It is because of that self-confidence that Maimonides has no trouble acknowledging the partial truth of Christianity and Islam. That made sense in his world in his day . . . does it make sense in ours? Maimonides lived and thought in a world in which truth was one, objective, unchanging, and accessible. This made excellent sense in his finite, static universe. While I have no desire to admit to any version of epistemological relativism, it cannot be denied that our confidence in what we can know has been shaken. The appropriate response to this situation seems to me not to be relativism, which makes a mockery of truth and of the possibility of actual communication; nor pluralism, which makes a mockery of truth and of revelation; but, rather, the appropriate response to our predicament ought to be modesty.16 A person who is modest about his or her claims to truth, as opposed to absolutist about them, is open to the possibility of being inspired, enlarged in Rabbi Sacks’s term, by other people whose claims to truth are equally restrained and modest.17

16 My wife and I have argued for this position in ‘Respectful Disagreement: A Response to Raphael Jospe’, in Alon Goshen-Gottstein and Eugene Korn (eds.), Jewish Theology and World Religions (Oxford: Liftman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012), pp. 123–33. 17 Here we go beyond Maimonides, who was much more optimistic than we can be about accessing truth, both of reason and of revelation. One need not be a postmodernist to admit that access to absolute truth is more problematic than many of our mediaeval forbears thought. 118 we are not alone

We Are Not Alone

While not giving up on the idea that revelation (be it Jewish, Christian, or Muslim) teaches truth in some hard, exclusivist sense, putative addressees of revelation ought to be modest about how much of it they understand, and restrained in the claims they make on behalf of revelation and about adherents of other religions. Admittedly, it may be easier for a Jew to advance this position than for a Christian or a Muslim. This is so for several reasons. First, until the Middle Ages, at least, Jews sought to understand how God instructs them to inject sanctity into their lives, and paid very little attention to the question of how God expects them to think. Given the notion that the Torah contains many levels of meanings, and the profound differences among Jewish thinkers about the nature and content of those meanings, a stance of theological modesty ought to be easier for Jews to maintain than for adherents of more clearly theologically-based religions. Second, given the nature of Jewish-gentile relations over the last two millennia, Jews had very little reason to look to gentiles for spiritual enrichment. We, however, live in a different world, and I thank God for that.18 Last, Jews, not thinking that one must be Jewish in order to achieve a share in the world to come, have traditionally paid little attention to the beliefs and practices of others. But, having left the ghetto and the mellah, we live in a world very different from that of our forebears and, looking around, discover admirable gentiles from whom we can learn much. We are no longer alone.19

18 The Lord of all the Universe is not too great to have revealed the Torah to us, but is certainly too great to be captured by our puny understanding of Torah. To claim otherwise is to be guilty of cosmic hubris, and to close ourselves off to the possibility of being enlarged by meetings with others who also seek God and whom God does not ignore. 19 My thanks to James Diamond, Jolene S. Kellner, Eugene Korn, Ariel Meirav, and Avram Montag for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER JUNE 16, 2014

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson

Professor Kellner, we are going to start with a personal introduction. Please tell us about your life: Where did you grow up? Where were you educated? What did you study in college?

I was born into the home of an Orthodox rabbi, whose wife became observant out of her love for her husband. She functioned as a rebbetzin all her life, but I never had the impression that it really was her chosen role in life. Being a rabbi’s wife was the role she accepted in her life, and therefore she made certain sacrifices in becoming a rabbi’s wife. Her husband also had to make certain sacrifices, because my mother basically said to him, “Marry me, marry my dogs.” So, my siblings and I were probably the only children of an Orthodox rabbi in North America who grew up with lots and lots of dogs, which has a certain amount of impact on the way we view the world. I think it’s best to characterize our home in the following fashion. There were things which we thought while growing up that Jews simply could not do. We knew that some Jews did these things, but we also knew that we weren’t supposed to do them. For example, you weren’t supposed to violate the Sabbath, you weren’t supposed to eat non-kosher food, you weren’t supposed to cross picket lines, and you certainly were not supposed to vote for Republicans. As a child I knew that there were Jews who did not keep kosher and did not observe the Sabbath, but it was only much later in life that I discovered to my surprise that there were indeed Jews who were Republicans. So that says a lot about the nature of the home in which I grew up. My father, as I said, was a rabbi, born and trained in Hungary. His family very slowly came over to the United States after World War I. His father, my grandfather, had been a Jewish chaplain in the Hungarian army.

Oh, really? How interesting!

Yes, and for years and years, I said to myself, “Well, if he was a Jewish chaplain, he must have been the only Jewish chaplain.” So I told people he 120 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER was the chief Jewish chaplain of the Hungarian army. But, I came across a book recently from which I learned that there were something like sixty to eighty Jewish chaplains because there were several hundred thousand Jews in the Royal Austro-Hungarian Army. But my grandfather came back from the war and, I am told by people outside of the family, insisted that everyone in his shtetl leave Europe. And he took his own advice, came to America, and over a period of ten years, managed to bring the family over.

And when was that?

Right after World War I. They still got in despite the restrictions imposed in 1924. My grandfather settled in Passaic, New Jersey, and became the rabbi of a congregation called “Hungarian Hebrew Men”—a name which always amused me when I saw the sign. I assume that the synagogue had a Hebrew name as well, but I do not know if I ever knew what it was. My father, who was born in 1908, actually wanted to be a historian and he enrolled at Columbia University where he went to graduate school in History specializing in American history. His undergraduate degree was from Yeshiva College, as was his rabbinic ordination, while his M.A. and his “A.B.D.” were from Columbia, where he studied with Allan Nevins. But marriage (in about 1935), family, the Second World War, all of that intervened and he took advantage of his rabbinical training to be a rabbi. And so he spent his career in a variety of synagogues. He used to say that rabbis and football coaches travel around a lot. So, growing up we lived in lots of different cities. My father served congregations in Baltimore; Miami; Albany, New York (where I was born); and Long Branch, New Jersey. In Long Branch my parents founded a day school (in nearby Asbury Park), which is today one of the largest day schools in North America. It seems that they had done the same thing in Albany. My father then worked in Jewish education in Washington, D.C.; New York City; and finally in St. Louis. In Washington and in St. Louis he also served congregations in a part-time capacity.

I am confused because I thought you went to school in Skokie, Illinois, and therefore assumed that the family lived in Skokie.

Well, I went to high school in Skokie, Illinois. At the time, there was no Jew- ish high school in St. Louis and the Hebrew Theological College in Skokie was the closest yeshiva high school to St. Louis. It was also a school which reflected my parents’ values: Zionist, and supportive of secular education. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 121

We studied Talmud in the mornings and secular studies in the afternoons, returning to the bet midrash in the evening. All in all, I remember it as a happy time. We were all very innocent. In general, the expectation was that students would continue on to college after high school.

So you went away from your family during your high school years.

Indeed, and in those days it meant a train trip of several hours from St. Louis to Chicago; we came home only twice a year.

So throughout your high school years you saw your parents only twice a year?

Yes, I saw my parents only twice a year, during Sukkot and Pesach. Remember, these were the days before cheap flights were available. I do not remember how often we spoke by telephone (“long-distance”!), but I am sure it was no more than once a week at most.

That biographical fact is very interesting because it explains why you chose to go to college and graduate school in St. Louis, where your family lived, whereas most American students move away from the family during their college years.

Exactly. My family lived in St. Louis. When I finished high school, I was too young to go to college. Since my father had gone to Columbia Univer- sity and my mother had an M.A. in teaching, it was clear to all the children that we were going to go to college, even though we were a very—I guess you’d call it—a rabbinical family plus dogs. So, there was no doubt about going to college, but I was too young to enroll when I finished high school. So, my parents decided I should go to Israel. I was sixteen at the time, and they sent me to Israel.

That could not have been easy to be in Israel as a teenager all on your own.

I was a very scared, little dorky kid, and I had to function on my own and to make my own decisions. My father was very active in both the Religious Zionists of America and the Rabbinical Council of America, so 122 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

I was enrolled in a yeshiva in Rehovot called Yeshivat Ha-Darom, which had connections to both those institutions. But after a short time, I made the first independent decision in my life. The yeshiva had sent us to Jeru- salem for a week of study at Mercaz HaRav and I liked the experience so much, that I just stayed.

So you became a regular student at Mercaz HaRav?

Right. In 1962–1963 I studied there for a year. And there I got to see Rav Zvi Yehudah Kook, but only from a distance, because he was surrounded by the people who later became famous, his followers. But nobody else in the yeshiva actually had much to do with him. It was a very small institution. And when he spoke, had he been wearing a tie, it was to his tie he would have been talking. So, only his acolytes who were right around him, heard what he had to say; nobody else heard a word. At the end of that year, I actually wanted to remain in Israel, but my parents said, “No, no, come back and start college.” So I went back to St. Louis and enrolled at Washington University. And because I was always in a rush for some reason, I compacted the first two years into one year, so I could go back to study in Israel during my junior year. Thus I came to the Hebrew Univer- sity of Jerusalem on a junior year abroad program, hoping to remain, but during that year my father suddenly passed away at the age of fifty-six. We are about to mark his fiftieth yahrzeit. I am planning a siyum (text study in his honor) of the Guide of the Perplexed again. Thus instead of staying in Israel as I had wanted, I returned to St. Louis. That was an important turning point in my life, because in that year I met Steven Schwarzschild, who had come to St. Louis while I was in Israel.

Yes, I was wondering how did you, an Orthodox young student, decide to study with Steven Schwarzschild, who was actually associated with Reform Judaism. That decision makes more sense, given the sequence of events.

The decision to study with Schwarzschild makes a lot of sense. He came into my life in all kinds of ways, just after my father died. I wouldn’t say he was a father figure for me, but he was a very important figure in my life. Despite his attempt to pretend to be a strict Germanic personality type, he was actually a very friendly man and a very warm individual. For whatever reason, he took me under his wing, perhaps because I was the only other INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 123

Jew at Washington University. I’m only kidding, but I clearly stood out as an Orthodox Jew among the undergraduates of Washington University. Of course there were many Jewish students at Washington University at the time, even in the early 1960s, but many weren’t “Jewish Jews,” they were just Jews by birth: they were not very committed Jews; by and large they weren’t interested in Jewish things, per se, whereas I was. So I naturally fell into Steven’s orbit, because he was a very seriously committed Jew and a first-rate Jewish philosopher, although he was not an Orthodox Jew. I was also drawn to him because there were lots of ways in which he was similar to my father.

In what way?

In the following ways: To the end of his days, Steven Schwarzschild was not a Zionist and not a nationalist, a vegetarian, a Socialist, and a heavy smoker. In these regards, Steven wasn’t like my father at all. But Steven was very much like my father in that they both had a strong sense of Ahavat Yisrael (love of the people of Israel), that sense of Jewish solidarity which Gershom Scholem claimed Hannah Arendt did not have. Beyond the shared Jewish solidarity, both Steven and my father also shared the kind of Lithuanian/Litvak impatience for what I would call a kabbalistic nonsense. By that I mean to say that they were rationalists who had no patience for mythical speculations about God. A third element that both shared was the commitment to Jewish education. My father was committed to Jewish education in primary and secondary schools, and Steve expressed his commitment in college education. Steven, who was a Reform rabbi, left his career as a rabbi in order to become a professor of Jewish studies.

Where was he a rabbi?

He served as a rabbi first of all, in Berlin, which was amazing. He was sent to Berlin by the World Union of Progressive Judaism, I believe, the Reform organization, in order to serve the Jewish community, which was recreating itself right after the war. If I’m not mistaken, he spent two years in Berlin, where he met his wife, Lily, a British Jew who was working there as a relief worker. During those postwar years in Berlin, Steven documented the experience in amazing accounts, which Steven’s son, Professor Maimon Schwarzschild, has shared with me. These fascinating 124 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER reports are now deposited in, I think, the Leo Baeck Institute. Maimon informs me that LBI plans to publish them soon. The story is fascinating because Steven was a young man in his twenties, who had left Ber- lin just before the war, spent basically the war years becoming a Reform rabbi in Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and right after the War was sent back to Berlin to serve the community of people who had survived the concentration camps, or who had been in hiding during the war. The reconstituted Jewish community in Germany after the war was very small, totally dispirited and a destroyed community. He had many conflicts with the Allied occupying forces in his attempts to serve his flock and interesting stories to tell about the revival of Jewish life. But after he returned to the United States, Steven became a rabbi in Fargo, North Dakota. And then a rabbi in Lynn, Massachusetts, which is a suburb of Boston where he became, I wouldn’t say, friendly with, but he got to know Rav Joseph Soloveitchik. And that was how Steven became involved with Jewish Orthodoxy in America, even though he was not an Orthodox Jew. At one point, Steven joined the Rabbinical Assembly, the movement of Conserva- tive rabbis, while maintaining his membership in the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the professional organization of Reform rabbis. If I am not mistaken, he is the only American rabbi ever to have been simultaneously a member of both organizations. In terms of his life style, Steven was basically an observant Jew. He was much more observant than other Reform rabbis of his day.

What would you say was his impact on you intellectually or spiritually?

Let me begin by discussing the ways in which he failed to have an impact on me. Steven never got me really interested in Hermann Cohen, the Neo- Kantian philosopher who shaped his own Jewish identity. Steven also never got me to become a non-Zionist or anti-Zionist, as Hermann Cohen was. I want to say a word about that because it’s easy to misunderstand in today’s world. Steven was never a Zionist, but also he was never an enemy of the State of Israel, as are far too many non- and anti-Zionists today. He also never got me to be a Socialist, even though I have a strong “Demo- cratic gene.” But I could never go as far as to endorse Socialism. And he certainly never got me to be a vegetarian. Nor did he get me to be a heavy smoker of unfiltered cigarettes, or a person who would generally start the evening with a drink. I’m not a teetotaler, I just don’t like alcoholic bever- ages, whereas drinking Scotch was a regular part of his evening. Those are INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 125 ways in which he didn’t succeed in influencing me. But in more profound ways, Steve impacted upon me deeply: he helped me to understand that Judaism can be construed in purely universalistic terms. He also instilled in me the importance of treating all human beings as ends also, and never as means only. That was the advice he gave me when I asked him about child-rearing, when our son, Avinoam, was born in 1971. I have more to say about this point, but for now let me state that from Steven Schwarzschild I learned that one can be a faithful, even sentimen- tally deeply “Jewish Jew” while not turning off one’s brain; it was important to remain self-reflective and rational. Steven also made me see the importance of messianism in the Jewish tradition and that messianism has to be understood in rationalist lines. It’s my reading of Maimonides’ messianism colored by Steven Schwarzschild which is perhaps one of the most important aspects of my own Jewish identity. My wife actually finds it very odd that I have such interest in “messy- anism” since, while I’m not quite an obsessive/compulsive person (but don’t ask my daughter Rivka about that), I very much like to be in neat surroundings. Thus Jolene, my wife, claims to find the idea of me studying messianism to be really awkward and out of character for someone who so values neatness. But all this is a pretty lame joke. Seriously, Judaism is all about pursuing the ideal, and not settling for the real. It is no coinci- dence that Steven’s book, which I had the privilege of editing, is called The Pursuit of the Ideal—and hence messianism is at the very heart of Judaism. So, rationalism and messianism are the two important ways in which Steven deeply influenced me. He impressed upon me the importance of being self-reflective, of taking nothing for granted, while being very polite to the people with whom you disagree. I also took from Steven his absolute refusal to create disciples. He did not want his students to become little Schwarzschilds, so to speak, unlike other influential scholars for whom the perfect student is someone who simply mimics what the teacher does or says or thinks. So in all those ways Steven strongly influenced me and for all of them I’m forever grateful to him.

How do you explain the fact that most people, even scholars of Jewish philosophy, are actually not familiar with the legacy of Steven Schwarzschild?

There are a number of reasons for his failure to be famous, shall we say. One is that he died rather young, while only in his mid-sixties and that his 126 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER death was very sudden. He had an undiagnosed aneurism, and within a couple of days he was gone. For me it was quite a shock. At the time I was already living in Haifa and he and I had become even closer than before through daily correspondence. We communicated regularly through the invention of what was then called bit-net, the predecessor of the Inter- net, and we were able to write back and forth every single day. One day, to my utter astonishment, I receive an announcement of his death from his computer account. The announcement was sent by the secretary in the Department of Philosophy at Washington University who got into Steven’s account and sent out an announcement to everybody. So, I got a letter from Steven Schwarzschild announcing his own death. This was totally unanticipated and quite a shocker, since at the time I was working on the index of the edited volume of his Jewish writings under the title The Pursuit of the Ideal—the title he himself gave to the collection. So, you can imagine how terrible I felt when I learned about his death. At any rate, to go back to your question, Steven is not well known because he died rather young. The second reason was that Steven spent most of his career as a rabbi, not as an academic. After leaving the rabbinical post at Lynn, he had a job at Brown University for a few years. When he came to Washington University he was originally placed in the Classics Department and it took him a long time to convince the philosophers that he was a serious philosopher. In the end, he was a very central figure in the Philosophy Department at Washington University because of the strength of his intellect and his personal character. I can even say that he was very popular at the university, even though you wouldn’t think of him as a “regular guy.” He was not the kind of person who goes out to a bar and slaps you on the back. So in the end Steven was highly respected and highly liked in the Philoso- phy Department, but his impact on the field of Jewish philosophy remained limited because, and this is a third reason that he is relatively little-known, he had a perverse pleasure in not publishing what he wrote.

Did he suffer from a writer’s block?

No, no, he wrote and wrote and wrote. He just had a sort of obstinate reluctance to publish what he wrote. It was, I think, a way of demonstrating his independence. Let me tell you a story about him which illustrates the kind of amusing nature of this pleasure. He was editor of Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought for about ten years. Under his editorship, this journal was a very important venue for the dissemination INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 127 of ideas and opinions in the Jewish world. For example, it was one of the first places where the Holocaust was taken seriously as a theological issue as opposed to as a social or historical event. One person, who will remain nameless, submitted an article for publication in Judaism. Steven reads this article and says, “Wow, that’s very interesting. This is a chapter stolen from my Doctor of Hebrew Letters dissertation written at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.” Nonetheless, Steven decided to publish the essay under the name of the person who submitted the article, because it was a very good article. That says something about his lack of interest in the “publish or perish” rule of academia. I have in my storage room back home piles and piles of unpublished papers that Steven left behind him, and his son, Maimon, has copies of a plethora of unpublished, unfin- ished pieces of work by Steven. Professors Robert Gibbs of the University of Toronto and Reinier Munk of Amsterdam informed me recently that they are about to publish the first of three scheduled volumes of Steven’s unpublished papers.

Perhaps there was a deeper psychological cause that prevented him from completing the essays, for example, the fear of criticism.

I don’t know and I don’t want to speculate, but he always seemed to make fun of himself in that he didn’t want to be part of the rat race. And so most of the stuff Steven wrote he simply put in a drawer. He published only when there was some external reason or when somebody was nudging him to do so. He was quite happy to share these writings with students and colleagues.

I understand the deep impact that Schwarzschild had on you. But who else besides him shaped your early intellectual growth?

Clearly my father was a very important figure to me in human terms and in terms of Jewish commitment and Jewish identity. My father was a very sweet man. Even to this day, fifty years after his passing, I occasionally meet very old people in my travels around North America who tell me stories about their childhood in his synagogues and his multiple acts of kindness. He left a mark on people’s lives because he was such a very kind human being—which is not always the case among rabbis. So I am a rabbi’s kid and my wife is also a rabbi’s kid. We’re both what is known in America as PKs, namely, “preachers’ kids.” My father was a Zionist, in fact, 128 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER a fervent Zionist. My older sister told me that she remembers seeing my father in the kitchen of our home in May 1948, crying tears of joy as he lis- tened to the radio announcing the establishment of the State of Israel. My father was also a great lover of America; he was a great American patriot. To this day I have a picture of Abraham Lincoln prominently displayed in my study at home. When we were kids, for six years we lived in Washing- ton, D.C. and the visits to the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memo- rial were regular events of our family life. We not only took friends to visit these places, our family activities revolved around these monuments while we were growing up. So my father inculcated in us a deep love for American history. In addition, he was a very good man, a very effective rabbi, and a very good darshan (homilist), he loved to deliver sermons built around his interpretations of biblical texts. Every rabbi is expected to deliver these kind of derashot, but my father told me that he actually liked to do it. And he was very good at it. In fact, he was really amazingly good at it. He told me that when he was still in yeshiva back in Hungary, he got into trouble because the students were supposed to study Talmud exclusively, whereas he spent a lot of time reading midrashim. The Rosh Yeshi- vah scolded him saying, “Why are you devoting yourself to that?” Clearly, in his Hungarian yeshivah, Talmud study was held in higher esteem than midrash, but the fact that my father had a penchant for midrash stood him in good stead later on when he was a rabbi. He always had a midrash at the tip of his fingers. As a Zionist, an American patriot, and a great lover of the Jewish people he was able to use the midrashic form to express deep religious values. In parentheses let me say that my father also used to say, jokingly, “It’s easier to love the Jewish people, than to love this Jew or that Jew; loving Jews as individuals is a harder task and one we have to work at deliberately.” He was very good at that love. I inherited, or at least I think and I hope that I inherited from him these three things (Zionism, love and respect for the USA, and ahavat yisrael). Not too long ago, I was swimming in the pool at the Technion (my wife and I are avid swimmers) and while I was swimming it struck me that I was living the life my father wanted to live. I am a college professor in Israel and he always wanted to be a college professor; I live in Israel, and he always wanted to make aliyah. So, without really planning to satisfy his goals, I had done so. It was a bittersweet moment on several levels. On the one hand, I was happy to have fulfilled his goals and sorry that he had not been able to do so. Secondly, I wondered, did I have my own life? But actually that is much too introspective a question, best left to shrinks, who wonder about such things for a living. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 129

What were your own goals then and in retrospect did you fulfill them?

So far as I can judge, yes.

Before we move forward to explore other issues, I have a question about an earlier phase of your life. Did you experience any problem moving from the yeshiva environment of your early life to the environment of Washington University?

Yes and no, but here is the story. I went to a yeshiva high school in Skokie which was part of a very modern Orthodox Americanized yeshiva where all the guys went to college. So going to college was part of one’s expected development. And then I’d gone to Israel and studied at Mercaz HaRav, but I never liked studying Talmud; It just never turned me on and I couldn’t see spending the rest of my life sitting in a bet midrash. But I liked Jewish learning and the Jewish way of life. So, it was no problem to go back to college and Washington University was the natural choice because it was a few blocks from our home. It was a very lovely place which I entered with a kind of mission: I went to study philosophy, that is, general philosophy, not Jewish philosophy. I was the first person on that campus to wear a kippah. I remember once somebody came all the way across the quad to tell me that a leaf had fallen on my head because I was wearing a bright green kippah. So the picture of a traditional Jew studying philosophy was not common place in those days. I wanted to prove that a nice Jewish boy could be a philosopher! Actually, the initial intent I had when I enrolled in Washington University was to study American history, as my father had done at Columbia. But, in the first semester, I took a philosophy course and it really turned me on.

Do you remember the teacher of that course?

A man named Donald Verene, whom I think later on had a career in the southeastern portion of the United States. We weren’t close, and he simply happened to have been my first philosophy teacher.

But he turned you on to philosophy. Why?

In retrospect, I see that he was trying to turn me off Judaism, because he had me read Francis Bacon’s The Idols of the Marketplace, which is part 130 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER of his Novum Organum, one of the earliest treatises arguing the case for the logic and method of modern science. In that text Bacon basically says that religion is nonsense. Not in so many words, but he speaks about the “idols of the market place” as well as the “idols of the tribes,” “the idols of the caves,” and the “idols of the theater” that collectively constitute the “idols of the mind.” For Bacon these “idols” represent a logical fallacy that results from the imperfect correspondences between words as linguistic constructs and real things in nature to which words refer. By critiquing the various idols, including the idols of the church, Bacon was paving the way for modern science. Only many years later did I realize that this philosophy teacher insisted I read Bacon because he was probably trying to open me up to philosophical and scientific thinking and, I suspect, free me from religion. Despite my interest in it, it was not really a good course in the sense that we read no philosophers. We only read textbooks about philosophers, which was fairly standard of teaching philosophy in the early 1960s.

So far you have identified two people who really shaped your life, and another person who played a pivotal role in college. Were there other thinkers who greatly influenced your life?

Well, my wife, Jolene. She has exerted very important influence on my life. We met when I was in graduate school. After I got my B.A. at Washington University, I went to NYU for one year, which was a big mistake because NYU was a factory for graduate students. All the classes started at 4:00 or 6:00 P.M. so people could work all day. I had a fellowship, so I was one of the few people there who had free time during the day. But at NYU I met my wife, who at the time was a nursing student (currently she is a reference librarian at the University of Haifa), and she has been central in my life. Since she was studying to be a nurse, she provided a totally different perspective on life. Whereas I, as a philosophy student, was wondering about the nature of existence and the meaning of life, she was dealing with dying people and real existential decisions. She has helped me very much to realize that there are things in life that are more important than wondering about the meaning of it. And she’s a very smart lady. And also, how to best put this, she has limited tolerance for the arrant nonsense with which philosophers are sometimes afflicted. So, she really does keep me grounded, and additionally she edits all my writings. When we first got married, she was totally uninterested in what I was doing, but over the INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 131 years, after she became a librarian and took a course in style and composition, she has become quite involved in my work and shapes my style. She doesn’t always care what I’m saying as long as I say it clearly.

It’s good to have such a good reader at home.

Yes, when I was in graduate school, the chairman of the department, Bob Barrett, said every philosopher needs to have a smart, but uneducated and nonphilosophical friend, to read his or her stuff. My wife is smart, educated, and not interested in philosophy, but she admirably fits Barrett’s suggestion that one write such that nonphilosophers can understand what one has written. It’s very good advice, since philosophers must be able to be understood by nonphilosophers. Otherwise, there is little purpose to writing philosophy.

Would you define yourself as a philosopher, a Jewish philosopher, a Jewish theologian, a historian of philosophy, a Jewish political thinker, or a public intellectual? To some extent all of these phrases fit you, but how do you define yourself?

First of all, you left out the most important one.

Which one?

Frustrated stand-up comedian! It’s one of the many reasons why I enjoy teaching so much; it gives me an opportunity to perform in front of an audience. But speaking seriously, I don’t see myself as a philosopher.

Why don’t you see yourself as a philosopher?

I went to college to become a philosopher, after I got turned on to philosophy, and I wrote a dissertation in which I was trying to settle an issue. It was called “Civil Disobedience in Democracy: A Philosophical Justifica- tion.” For those of us philosophy grad students at Washington University in those days it was important to “do philosophy” as opposed to “just” studying its history. The late sixties and early seventies were a time of great dislocation in the United States: civil rights, the Vietnam War, Soviet Jewry. I wanted to write a dissertation which was (a) “relevant” and which 132 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

(b) Steven Schwarzschild would be willing to direct. There was nothing particularly “Jewish” about my choice of topic, although I did try to inject a bit of Judaism into the project by choosing as my motto, the story of Shifra and Puah, the midwives who refused to kill Israelite male children (Exod. 1:16–17) before the Exodus, but that was the extent of it. Looking back at it now, I see that I also had a second motto, from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham City Jail.” I read a lot of law journal articles in connection with the dissertation, and see that I used philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, H. L. A Hart, and John Rawls, but truth to say, I recall very little about the dissertation. I was very interested in proving to myself (and to my teachers and fellow students) that one could be a faithful, observant Jew, and, at the same time, “secular” philosopher whose Jewish commitments played no particular role in his philosophical work. It turned out that I was fooling myself. It’s now 2014, but I was a child of the sixties and that was the context of my involvement in philosophy. After the year at NYU I returned to Washington University, where I was to be trained in philosophy with Schwarzschild. At the time, given the primacy of analytic philosophers, all of us felt that doing history of philosophy was sort of silly. We wanted to be philosophers and that meant to be analytic philosophers. But over the years, I’ve come to realize that philosophers nowadays tend to be people employed by departments of philosophy who only talk to other people employed by departments of philosophy. Philosophers converse only among themselves; they do not talk to ordinary human beings. So the technical analytic discourse that has dominated the field in American universities became less and less attractive to me, even though I was trained in the analytic tradition. In fact, because of this analytic training I have had no sympathy for or little understanding of figures such as Martin Heidegger and his followers, including the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. I was really unfamiliar with and unsympathetic to continental philosophy because of my analytic training. I’m trying to fix that a little bit now because I want to be a responsible person and because of my work with the Shalem College, which is committed to a broad understanding of Western culture. I do recognize the narrowness of the analytic tradition and I want to broaden the scope of philosophy.

So, if you do not see yourself as a philosopher, what about “Jewish philosophy”? Are you not a Jewish philosopher?

No, I don’t see myself as that either. But I would say, because I’ve written books that could be called “Jewish theology,” I could define myself as INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 133 a Jewish theologian, but, without sounding overly and falsely modest, I don’t think of myself as such a grown-up individual. The phrase “Jewish theologian” is too pompous perhaps. As for the phrase “public intellectual,” my wife really hates it because she thinks it sounds unbearably pre- tentious. She has no patience for pretentiousness. Admittedly, I do try and address issues that are in the public square from my own perspective and I’m happy when I have a bit of an impact. So if you want, call me a “lower- case public intellectual,” that is, lower-case “p” and lower-case “i.” That is fine with me. The one categorization that fits me best is historian of Jew- ish philosophy. I’ve made a living doing that. One of the other things I’m not is a political thinker, even though I write about politics. I am definitely not like Michael Walzer, who is a creative and learned political thinker who has written extensively on Jewish political theory. I only write at the edge, nibble at the edge of politics because I’m trying to defend the state of Israel. Formally speaking, my Ph.D. is in the field of political philosophy, but what I do now wouldn’t be called political philosophy. It would be more accurate to call it polemics.

Over the years you have been associated with two main institutions: one is the University of Haifa, where you have been for most of your academic career and from which you are now an emeritus, and the other is Shalem College.

Right, right.

Can you explore the differences between those institutions?

Sure. First and foremost, I am very indebted to the University of Haifa, which was my academic home for thirty-four years and which continues to pay my pension. This institution has given me a wonderful life because it allowed me to explore aspects of myself I never dreamed I could. At the University of Haifa I was not only a Professor of Jewish philosophy, but I also held administrative positions. I was Dean of Students for three years, which is sort of like being a yeshivah mashgiah only with sixteen thousands students, 20 percent of whom are Arabs, some of whom are not all that happy to be in a Jewish/Israeli institution. It’s a very complicated and very challenging job. 134 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

Yes, the University of Haifa is very diverse, both ethnically and religiously, and addressing the needs of students must have been very demanding.

Absolutely. It’s a very impressive institution, even though it is an institution with very limited endowments. The university prides itself on its diversity and it prides itself on making its students feel welcome, emphatically including the 20 percent of the student body which is Arab. I spent a lot of time negotiating with Arab students and I always annoyed them because I would not call them Arabs, but Israeli students who speak Ara- bic. They took it as a put-down, because they felt that I did not acknowledge their distinctiveness. For me this was a way to tell them that in my eyes they are first and foremost students and as such they are equal to all other students, some of whom speak Hebrew, some of whom speak Ara- bic. For me the only relevant difference was linguistic, whereas they were interested in politics. As a university administrator, I was also the Chair of the Department of Maritime Civilizations for three years, which was quite a remarkable experience.

How did that come about?

It’s basically a Department of Maritime Archaeology with a little history and a little biology thrown in but it’s mostly about maritime archaeology. Some of the archaeological finds of members of that department are housed in the Hecht Museum at the University of Haifa, which is a remarkable museum for the history and culture of the Land of Israel. Well, that department was self-destructive and the administration decided they could not run their own affairs. The then dean called me and said: “Are you willing to do something for the University?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Okay, you’re now Chair of the Department of Maritime Civilizations,” which was three of the most amazing years of my life. During that time I got to know a different kind of scholar, individuals who are very different from the humanists I had known until that point. Archaeologists, I will allow myself to say, are, by and large, lunatics, in the sense that they are able to imagine the remote past from very limited concrete evidence. Archaeologists would bring me a little rock from some excavation and the following day I would see a picture of a huge temple, you know. In other words, they really live in an imagined world, since the physical remnants of the past are so few. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 135

Archaeological research is very costly and archaeologists are always in competition with each other for funding. This is not the case in philosophy or the humanities in general: if I get a grant it doesn’t hurt somebody else in the field, so among humanists there is very little internal competition. The members of this department were constantly competing against each other and that created a difficult work environment, even though they were all very interesting people. When I was appointed to be the Chair of that department, I got them together and said, “Listen, guys, either you cooperate with each other and with me, or the university will close the department and fire you.” The prospect of being hanged in the morning, as Samuel Johnson said, wonderfully focuses the mind. So when they realized that their future depended on collaboration and cooperation, they changed course and as a result I had three really exciting years doing all kinds of nifty stuff with them.

So did you get them to work well together?

Yes.

And what happened after you left this position?

For twenty years afterwards the department functioned well, but I am told it’s beginning to fall into its old ways again.

So you have administrative experience in which you had a lot of responsibility. Would you say that you have a certain talent for administration and management?

Well, I’m not sure about the talent, but the experience I have and the responsibility for sure. Those two positions made me realize that being a college professor is a job without responsibility.

I tend to agree with you. A faculty person today does not know how the university is run and has no responsibility outside the classroom.

Absolutely not. The entire responsibility of a faculty person is to evaluate students’ performance and give an A, a B, a C, or an F at the end of the course. And nowadays, because of the inflation in grading, evaluation of students’ performance means choosing between an A and a B. 136 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

That’s exactly right. So how does the University of Haifa compare with Shalem College?

Shalem College is a very interesting institution which grew out of Shalem Center, a think tank with a clear ideological mission: to be a kind of beach- head in Israel for neoconservative thinking, social conservatism, and very, very emphatic intellectualism. The Shalem College which grew out of that has a mission to be a fine liberal arts school with no political baggage.

So how did Shalem College manage to shed its initial identity and evolve into a different kind of institution?

It wasn’t all that easy. But the people who were brought on to build Shalem College, while not denying the history of the institution, wanted to create a college which did not have a political orientation. Our vision is to create an institution which exposes our students to the best of Jewish and general culture, emphasizing interconnections where they actually occur, without in any way forcing the issue. We also want to honor the disciplinary commitments of our faculty while in a certain sense undermining, as it were, the overly strict disciplinary distinctions characteristic of many Israeli universities. We also offer a very rich menu of extracur- ricular activities aimed at helping our students explore their identities as Israelis and, where relevant, as Jews.

So, who is the audience of Shalem College? Who are the students you wish to attract or address?

Well, we basically have to satisfy three audiences. The first one is obviously the students. The second is Israel’s Council of Higher Education, which supervises the academic work of the college and will have to give us formal accreditation (we are still in the process of receiving accreditation). In Israel an institution has to receive permission to open and after graduating its first class, that permission becomes permanent and the institution receives formal accreditation. If students leave from our college now, their courses will be recognized on a one-by-one basis by other colleges. And the third group we need to satisfy are the donors, without whom the college cannot exist. Shalem College is a private institution that does not get a shekel from the State of Israel. Thanks to our generous donors, we are enabled to offer our students very generous aid packages INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 137 so that in effect this is practically a free B.A. I’m exaggerating a little bit. It’s not entirely a free degree, but it’s close to it.

So how do you compare the education in Shalem College to the education Israeli students can receive in other institution of higher learning?

Well, we’re vastly superior. I’m serious about that statement, because in Israel, colleges (as opposed to universities) are profit-based institutions. If they’re private colleges, that means that they have to be not only finan- cially self-sufficient, but they have to make a profit. They’re for- profit institutions. If they’re public colleges, then they teach what students want, because they have to attract consumers. Whereas we basically teach what students don’t necessarily want but what we think they really need to know. Our very rich core curriculum is an expression of this.

Do you mean that you offer the liberal arts, which most students shun because they cannot translate into an income-producing job?

Precisely. We have a very extensive core curriculum, and currently we have two disciplinary departments: one department is a combination of Islam and Near Eastern studies, and the other department is a combination of philosophy and Jewish thought, of which I am the Chair. The fact that both departments are interdisciplinary speaks of our commitment to break out of narrow boundaries wherever possible. The combination of philosophy and Jewish thought tells you something deep about the intellectual orientation of the institution and our educational mission. For years, I taught happily at the University of Haifa, where there was a Philosophy Department, a Jewish Thought Department, a Jewish History Department, a Jewish Literature Department, and a Hebrew Language Department. This kind of structure accentuated the particularity of the Jewish subject, separating it from its proper intellectual discipline, be it philosophy, history, literature, or language. Students in the Philosophy Department had no knowledge of Jewish philosophy; for them Rambam is the name of a hospital in Haifa rather than the name of the most important Jewish thinker. They may have heard about an individual called Moses Maimonides but have no idea about what he stood for or what was his cultural significance. Conversely, students in the Jewish Thought Department who are familiar with Maimonides have some vague notion that his ideas were related to Aristotle, but they may have never read a single word by 138 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

Aristotle. In other words, at the University of Haifa and other public universities in Israel there is a deep gap between Jewish learning and general knowledge. Our mission at Shalem College is to bridge the gap. In the Department of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at Shalem College that means educating philosophers who know that Maimonides actually was a philosopher and had something to say which is philosophically significant not only to Jews. By the same token, for those students interested in Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah, we teach them that they cannot study those fields without studying Aristotelianism and Neo-Platonism. Even the Jewish mystical tradition, which expresses Jewish particularism, cannot be divorced from the general intellectual context where it functioned. As we teach Jewish thought we highlight the influence of the general culture on Jewish ideas and wherever relevant the impact of Jews on non-Jewish culture of the wider world. So, we want to create students who can swim in both pools, so to speak, the Jewish pool and the general pool. Our core curriculum is very much patterned after Columbia University’s core curriculum, the famous Contemporary Civilization course. Last year we brought the head of the core curriculum program at Columbia University to Shalem College for consultation. He presented the curriculum, gave us a sample lesson, and met all the teachers and chairs of programs. It was a very, very helpful experience because we’re trying to recreate all of our courses as part of a Jewish liberal arts education.

So, the mission of Shalem College is to combine Judaism with Western liberal arts tradition.

That’s right. For this reason, the core curriculum in the first year includes a course on Greek and Roman literature, a course on the Bible, a course in rabbinic literature, and a course in Western literature. It also includes courses on Plato and Aristotle, on music, and on computational reasoning. This is a civilizational, integrative approach in which the Jewish past, Jewish culture, and Jewish thought are understood in the larger historical and cultural context. The President of the College is Professor Martin Kramer, an Orientalist from Tel Aviv University, who is very prominent in his field and was the head of the Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University for many years. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 139

How big is your student body?

Tiny. We want 50 students a year. So at the end of four years, we’ll have a student body of 200. Remember, this is an expensive project because we largely fund student tuition. If we had a billion dollars, we’d probably extend it to about 250 students. We want to remain small because we insist on small classes: no class is larger than 25 students. If we have a class of 50 students, it means each course has two different instructors.

Do you teach online?

No, we make no use of distant learning technology because we are not interested in growth through numbers. We care about the quality of instruction and about affordability for students.

Those are good goals but they entail that you will remain a very small institution.

True. Our student body is diverse, but not yet as diverse as we would like. To be more specific, we would like to recruit non-Jewish students and we actually sent one of our senior people up to Nazareth to talk to high school principals hoping to recruit Arab students. So far, we’ve failed. We also wanted to recruit people from what in Israel is called “the periphery”; here, too, we have more work to do. By and large, our students are—and this was to be expected—representative of Israel’s middle class. We had hoped to do a better job, and maybe we will in the future. But we just started, and our students, if we are to judge from the first-year recruits, are largely middle-class kids. Some of them represent the crème-de-la- crème of Israeli society because they served in special units in the army, and there are even students from the diaspora who come to Israel without their family. One such student just completed his army service and we are going to have a celebration for him since he received a very high award in the army for courage under fire. We also have among the students people who appear to come from the far Left but who are interested in bridg- ing the gap between Jewish and general learning. We really do not know much about our students’ political leanings (any more than we know the politics of our colleagues), but it is pretty clear that our student body is culturally and ideologically diverse. 140 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

This sounds like a very interesting project.

More than just interesting, it is exciting and fascinating. I want to emphasize that we are very uninterested in what our students think about Israeli politics.

So you try to be nonpolitical?

Correct. This is especially important because of the perception of the Shalem Center, which was a politically oriented institution.

Could it be that you have difficulties recruiting students because they think that Shalem College and the old Shalem Center are the same institution?

That could be right, although it appears that we have done a very good job of proving our intellectual and ideological independence. We make a special effort to publicize our educational agenda and to deliver excellent education.

In other words, you convey the message that what matters is who you are and not what you wear.

Well put! And one last word on Shalem College: one of the reasons I’m excited about this project is that for the thirty-four years I taught at the University of Haifa, I always felt guilty. I received a really great education at Washington University in St. Louis, but my students, through no fault of my own, get a much worse education. Why? Because Israeli college- level education is so narrowly focused in terms of the curriculum or the methodology that informs the courses. By teaching at Shalem College I feel I’m having a chance to give back to the students a little bit of what I received in St. Louis.

Earlier you indicated that you are most comfortable with the label of historian of Jewish philosophy. Indeed, most of your academic publications concern medieval Jewish philosophy, focusing on two main thinkers, Maimonides and Gersonides. What did you find most INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 141 attractive about each one of these thinkers, since they were quite different from each other?

You are right: Maimonides and Gersonides are quite different types of thinkers. As to my interest in them, a lot of good things in my life happened by accident. When I was in graduate school planning to be a philosopher I was taking every course Steven Schwarzschild offered, which were mostly in epistemology, Kantian philosophy, and other topics in European philosophy. But occasionally, Steven would also teach a course on Jewish philosophy. So I wrote a term paper for him on Gersonides, which he liked well enough to give me a B-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus. He wasn’t willing to give me an A, but a lot of pluses after the B. When I finished my graduate training I was looking for a job and there were no jobs for philosophers. But it turns out that in those days Jewish studies was just beginning to be established in American universities and there were lots of jobs for people like me who could pretend to be teachers of Jewish studies. Now, I had a bit of a yeshiva background and as a traditional Jew with a kippah and a beard I got many job offers in Jewish studies. So in truth, I really fell into it, literally fell into it. And I’m very grateful that I did. I landed a position at the University of Virginia, but a year later, a real Gersonides expert was recruited by the university: Norbert Samuelson. We shared an office for a while, and the association with Norbert has definitely contributed to my interest in Gersonides. The third factor that contributed to my interest in Gersonides was probably less conscious, but in retrospect Gersonides is a very good figure to write about if one is a nice Jewish boy who wants to keep his mind wide open. In contemporary terms we can say that Gersonides is so heterodox, that if you want to stay within the traditional Jewish community and you want to be a philosopher or a historian of philosophy, and you want to be free to say what you think or go where the evidence seems to lead you, then it’s nice to have Gersonides in your back pocket because that’s what he does. His views on all kinds of traditional issues are bizarre in the extreme such that the historian of Jewish philosophy, Isaac Husik, called them “theological monstrosities.”

Well, you could have stayed with Maimonides, whose views were less radical than those of Gersonides, but you didn’t. Why?

Yes, I didn’t remain with Maimonides, but keep in mind that I was introduced to Gersonides already in Washington University whereas I didn’t 142 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER really get involved with Maimonides till I moved to Israel. And actually the first thinker who preoccupied me after I moved to Israel was Isaac Abra- vanel, and that interest too began somewhat by accident. I taught at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, but we lived in Richmond. One day, I remember very well, I got a phone call at home in Richmond from Rabbi Dr. J. David Bleich, who told me that he was putting together a book on Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith. He inquired whether I would translate a chapter of a work by Isaac Abravanel called Rosh Amanah. I said, sure, and so I translated that chapter, and found it very interesting, so I wrote to the people at the Littman Library and asked them whether they would be interested in the translation of the entire book by Isaac Abravanel. And they said yes. So I translated the whole book and I wrote an introduction and then I realized that in order to understand the book, you needed a bit of background. So that led me to write a book on dogma and its meaning in Jewish thought.

This is still a landmark study and no one has written more systematically about the topic.

Well, somebody will eventually.

So, if I hear you correctly, your writing about dogma and dogmatism was also the result of accident rather than planning.

Right, I fell into that topic and then I moved to Israel. My wife claims that the move to Israel was a surprise to her, even though it should not have been, since in truth my whole adult life had been aimed at trying to move to Israel. If you are a traditionally observant Jew, and politically center- left, and a historian of Jewish philosophy, then the only person you have to talk to is Maimonides. And if you’re studying Gersonides and want to know why he says what he says, you’ve got to go back to Maimonides anyway. Thus Maimonides became more and more a focus of my life on all kinds of levels, both intellectually and also, I guess you could say, personally. I think it’s fair to say—and I’m not alone in saying this, I know a lot of people like me—were it not for Maimonides, I doubt that I could be an observant Jew.

Now that’s an important and somewhat surprising statement.

But I’m not alone in thinking this. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 143

So how do you understand the importance and value of medieval Jewish philosophy, historically, philosophically, existentially, and spiritually?

Well, let me blunt here. I always like to tell my students that anybody who looks to Maimonides for answers is being foolish. But if you’re looking to Maimonides for, shall we say, an imprimatur to ask hard questions, then that’s the right thing to do. Maimonides was smart enough to publish the Mishneh Torah before he published the Guide of the Perplexed.

Could it be that Maimonides did so on purpose?

Likely, which is the exact opposite of Hasdai Crescas, who made the “mistake” of publishing, Or Ha-Shem before he did his halakhic work. Had he first published his planned halakhic work he would be another important Jewish thinker in the world today, instead of a little-known philosopher. But because Maimonides was first the Rambam, namely a halakhic authority who could not be ignored, he made all kinds of things possible that would otherwise not be possible. As my wife constantly tells me, “when teaching about Rambam, make sure to remind the students that he is also a rabbi.”

Could you give examples?

I’ll give you a bunch of examples. I’ve thought about this quite a bit actually. On the one hand, were it not for Maimonides, it would be very hard to find an entrée into what we would call philosophy and science from within the Jewish tradition. He gave traditional Jews a rabbinic permission to be philosophers and scientists. In fact, he demands it of all Jews, as I understand him. Maimonides demands that you actually study science. And by “science” Maimonides did not limit himself just to the science of his own day, namely, Aristotelian science, but included also the science of future generations. In so doing Maimonides expanded the scope of traditional Judaism immensely. But on the other hand, without Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, it’s not likely there would be Joseph Karo’s Shulḥan Arukh. And without the Shulḥan Arukh, Judaism would look different, probably better, but different than it does today. Without Maimonides and his notion of the thirteen principles, there is no place for Orthodoxy per se, since “orthodoxy” means orthos doxos, that is, “straight doctrines.” Maimonides made dogmatism possible within Judaism. In my book, Must a Jew Believe Anything? I critique this endeavor, because Judaism should not be about 144 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER orthodoxy but about orthopraxis. I have a good friend in D.C. who is a great Rambam devotee and he was very upset by this book. He said, “Menachem, you’re supposed to be writing books in defense of the Rambam, that is, of Maimonides, and not a book that in effect criticizes him.” I replied that the book is not a critique of Maimonides so much as a critique of the way in which he is understood in contemporary Judaism. But I’m allowed to critique Maimonides and he is allowed to be wrong. Other ways in which Judaism would look different without Maimonides has to do with Kabbalah. As Moshe Idel made clear, Kabbalah came out of the closet, so to speak, as an antidote to Maimonides and the spread of Maimonideanism in the thirteenth century. If this is historically correct, then it’s possible that had Maimonides not laid out his extremely intellectualist/universalist vision of Judaism, Kabbalah might have remained a small subterranean stream within Judaism and the development of Judaism in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period would have been very different.

You mean to say that Maimonides compelled the kabbalists to say what Judaism really is by publicizing knowledge that was supposed to remain esoteric.

Yes. Maimonides put on the table, so to speak, his rationalist and universalist understanding of Judaism, which they utterly rejected, so they had to come up with their own alternative model. Without Maimonides, Jews would have been even more particularistic than they are already, which is very particularistic. So Maimonides made Jewish universalism possible and for this we should all be grateful. My next book is all about that: Maimonides’ Jewish universalism.

So far you made a good case why an Orthodox Jew should pay attention to Maimonides and Gersonides.

True.

But why should a secular Jew or a nonobservant Jew care about it?

Right. Before I answer your question, let me preface it by telling you about the book that late Arthur Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr published under INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 145 the title Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought. Not surprisingly, the book includes an article on dogma, which I wrote, among the other fifty or so essays on various Jewish concepts. I doubt that many people have actually read the book from beginning to end, although I did. From my impression a large number of the articles start with what Maimonides says on the topic under consideration. These essays were not written by Orthodox Jews, by any means, and yet the authors all begin with the authoritative voice of Maimonides. Putting this differently, Maimonides functions in this capacity as a source of authoritative Jewish teaching for all kinds of Jews. I think one of the reasons for that is that Maimonides may be the only figure in post-Mosaic Judaism, who, if he expresses an opinion, makes that opinion Jewishly legitimate. Precisely because he was an authoritative figure, his views encountered (and continue to generate) such fierce opposition. We have no other Jewish figure that has generated such a response. Take, for example, Ramban (Nahmanides) who was the leader of Spanish Jewry in the mid-thirteenth century. You can say that Nahmanides says X, Y, or Z, but there will be no real debate about it, because Ramban is not taken to be the authoritative voice of Judaism. But you can’t admit Maimonides holds a given view and then say, well, that view is not legitimate within Judaism. Maimonides’ authority vali- dates our views, and therefore so many of us adopt Maimonides as our own voice.

This is fine to a contemporary Jew who lives within the structure and strictures of traditional Judaism. But what about the secular Jew, who can be an educated Jew, but who does not regard Maimonides as an authoritative figure? Why should a secular, or nonobservant Jew today care about Maimonides? How do you make Maimonides relevant to nonobservant Jews?

Well, certainly, Maimonides is relevant to any nonobservant Jew interested in the history of Judaism. For historical reasons Jews should care about Maimonides because he is a very important historical datum. The point is well understood by George Orwell, the author of the political parable, 1984. As you may recall the hero, Winston Smith, is being interrogated, and the interrogator says, “He who controls the past controls the future.” History and historical awareness matter a lot to who we are and what kind of society we will be. We can rephrase Orwell’s statement and say: he who controls the present determines what the past is. We control the 146 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER present, and therefore, it follows that we control the future as well. This is a very great responsibility. I firmly believe that if there is to be a Jewish future, it cannot be disconnected from the Jewish past. And Maimonides is a very large part of that Jewish past. So if the nonobservant Jew wants his or her position to be part of the Jewish future, the nonobservant Jew can’t ignore the Jewish past. The Jewish religious past is part and parcel of Jewish secular culture. Otherwise, it could not be defined as Jewish.

In The recent book of Amos Oz and his daughter, Fania Oz-Salzberger, Jews and Words, there is one reference to Maimonides in the entire book, and Jewish philosophy does not really function as part of the argument about Jewish culture. So, here is an example of a very intelligent and informed discussion of Jewish secularism that does very well in terms of explaining the continuity of the Jewish experience but without reference to philosophy. What is the place of Jewish philosophy in the context of Jewish culture?

I was actually trying to answer another question about Maimonides and Jewish history and of the continuity of Jewish culture. I’m going to tell you something that may sound somewhat shocking: I don’t think philosophy is all that important. Perhaps this statement will lead us to terminate the interview, since it is done for a book in the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers.

In truth, several participants in the Library have expressed that very viewpoint.

I think that the older I get, the more convinced I become that philosophy is a personality quirk. I may have stated that too strongly. Some people by their nature are drawn to philosophical questions. For these people, and I count myself among them, these issues are important, so that they worry about them and wonder about them. But 99 percent of the human race is quite happy without philosophical questioning. So, philosophy is of importance to people who have, I would say, a philosophical bent. Now, like people who are raised in the Maimonidean tradition and have a Ph.D. in philosophy and made a living for thirty-odd years and continue to make a living teaching these materials, I obviously think it’s important, or at least is important to me and people like me. But I don’t delude myself into thinking that it’s important to other people, or has to be. But all that INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 147 said, once again, I very much live in the sense that cultures do not create themselves de novo. And that a Jewish culture which tries to do so, cannot succeed. I don’t know Amos Oz personally, but I do know Fania and I admire her a lot. I once incorrectly assumed that she was totally untra- ditional and she corrected me once in a very funny fashion. But that’s neither here nor there. The general point is that in order to have a future, a society and a culture must always be rooted in the past. My sense is (although I cannot prove it) that people who cut themselves off from the historical tradition will slowly cut themselves off from the continuation of the Jewish tradition. Amos Oz is currently an important Israeli writer. But will he be important for Jews in a hundred years? I just do not know. He will definitely be important for historians of Hebrew literature, but will he be important in Jewish life? Only the future will tell.

To say that you do not know is fair enough.

One of the reasons why over the last several years I have more and more written in Hebrew rather than in English, even though English is so much easier for me, is because I want to be part of the ongoing Jewish discussion which has been carried out over the centuries in Hebrew. Now, we all know wonderful scholarship which was written a hundred years ago in German which no one reads today. I would like to think that a hundred years from now, people who are interested in the history of Jewish tradition, Jewish thought, Jewish philosophy, will be reading it in Hebrew.

I would not bet on that, because in America, we have many scholars of Jewish studies who do not read Hebrew and the dominant language of Jewish studies is English rather than Hebrew.

Oh, I understand that.

If we are to predict the future, I would say that English will remain the dominant language of Jewish learning because of the Internet and because English is the lingua franca of the twenty-first century both in terms of conversation and commerce.

I can hardly deny it. The fact that we are carrying on this conversation in English supports your point. But, still, the study of Judaism in English is, 148 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER in many respects, study at a distance. Secular Israelis with no command of classical Jewish texts are also condemned to looking at Judaism from a distance—less of a distance, perhaps, but still from a distance. Truth to tell, most Orthodox Jews, even those who spend their lives in yeshivot, usually expose themselves to a narrow range of Jewish texts and ideas.

The Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers is published in English because if we were to do this project in Hebrew, nobody would read it!

Right. Precisely.

Let’s go back to the issue of philosophy and use this word more broadly to denote Jewish rationalism or rationalism in general. What do you think is the role of rationalism within the Jewish religious tradition?

I think that philosophy has an extraordinarily important role in the contemporary Jewish world to fight nonrational or antirational tendencies. And I think these nontraditional, antirational tendencies are terribly dangerous because they tend to be used today to justify horrible Jewish chauvinism. They tend to be used today to justify totally magical thinking. They tend to be used today to turn various kinds of rabbinic figures into messiahs or into magicians.

Do you mean, shamans?

Yes, shamans is the exact word. And I think the traditional Jewish rationalism has an important role to play in fighting against these tendencies.

And where do those tendencies come from? Why now and not thirty years ago?

These antirationalist tendencies come from one obvious source: Kabbalah. Now, Kabbalah as a historical fact should not be blamed for the uses to which it’s put in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but Kabbalah is the origin of antirationalism in Judaism. Why does Kabbalah flourish now and not thirty years ago? I don’t know. Let me just point out that I was raised in the home of an Orthodox rabbi. I never heard that Jews were ontologically, that is intrinsically, distinct from or superior to non-Jews. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 149

Is this idea now commonplace among Orthodox Jews?

Now it’s commonplace. But, I never heard the expression Esav sone le-Yaakov (that gentiles by their nature hate Jews). Even though this phrase is already in the Talmud, it was not part of the Talmudic world in which I was raised.

So, why do you think that the responsibility for it rests on Kabbalah rather than other elements within Judaism that have little to do with Kabbalah? In other words, chauvinism is not necessarily linked to irrationalism; you can be a rationalist and a chauvinist.

Right, but here in Israel (and in Crown Heights, Brooklyn), what you have is chauvinism dressed up with kabbalistic motifs. What you have here is magic drawn from practical Kabbalah. Again, I’m not blaming Kabbalah as a historical movement for the abuses of Kabbalah in the present. My point is that Kabbalah has been appropriated by certain people (for example, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh) to justify chauvinistic and xenophobic views which I cannot possibly accept. For example, it has been reported that according to Ginsburgh (at least in principle) if a Jew needs a liver transplant, it is permissible to just pick a non-Jew on the street, kill him, and take his liver to save the Jew. Extreme and disgusting views such as these underlay the book written by two of Ginsburgh’s disciples, Torat Ha-Melekh, which caused such a furor a few years ago. This position follows directly from views on the superior nature of the Jews vis-à-vis gentiles. As far as such views are concerned, Jews and gentiles do not exist on the same plane. Now, if you look for it, you can find expressions of Jewish particularism in the Talmud, but you can also find expressions of Jewish universalism. Jewish particularism is also clearly stated by Judah Halevi, even though he is not a racist, despite what some people have claimed about him. It’s hard to be a racist in a religion which accepts the notion of conversion. But even Halevi, who’s got a problem with converts, admits that after a couple generations, they’re Jewish in all respects. So what’s going on today is taking views like Halevi’s relatively moderate particularism and ratcheting it up a lot. Now, you ask, why now? One answer that suggests itself to me, but which I’m loathe to give, is how some people interpret the meaning of the Holocaust. Take, for example, the book by Jacqueline Rose called The Question of Zion. She’s a British professor of children’s literature, and the sister of the Jewish philosopher Gillian Rose, who on her death bed converted to Christianity. 150 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

Jacqueline Rose, like many literary critics, is deeply influenced by the views of Edward Said. He wrote an anti-Israel book called The Question of Palestine, and she wrote an anti-Israel book called The Question of Zion, in which she argues that the reason why Zionists are so “brutal” is because the Jews were brutalized by the Nazis. And just like abused children grow up to be abusive parents, the Jews, having suffered abuse, are now abusive to the Palestinians. It’s a book full of mistakes which Princeton University Press republished in paperback even after the factual mistakes were brought to the attention of the press. The thesis is nonsense, at least in my opinion, but I care not about the thesis but about the factual mistakes. The fact that Princeton University Press published the book only illustrates how university presses have been politicized. I could give you a long and embarrassing list of books published by once reputable university presses which defame Israel on the basis of gross factual inaccuracies. If you hold politically correct views, you can get almost anything published these days by prestigious presses. So I’m loath to say that because of the horrors of the Holocaust, the Jewish people have become open to racism and chauvinism and magic. That’s like an answer which presents itself which almost asks itself to be given. Because of the way in which that answer could be used by other people, I’d prefer to be an agnostic on the question of why now and simply say that I don’t know why these troubling views are so prevalent today. Perhaps I should simply say that magical thinking is ever more prevalent today, and Jews seem no less susceptible to it than other people. This brings to mind the late Carl Sagan’s book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

I understand that you want to defend the Jewish rationalist posture/ position/tradition. What would be the price of focusing on Jewish rationalism? What gets lost?

Oh, a lot gets lost. What gets lost, unless you’re very broad-minded, is sentimentalism.

The word “sentimentalism” has a negative connotation. Do you mean “emotionalism”?

Yes, “emotionalism” is a better word. What gets lost is the religious experience; the entire experiential dimension of religious life. We can see that in the case of Maimonides, who was a very complicated individual. From INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 151 his letters and from various comments he makes in his works, you see that Jewish experience was important to him. But if you just read what he wrote formally, you would reach a different conclusion because he sounds very rationalist, very intellectualist, and very elitist. In his own life, Maimonides wasn’t like that at all. In fact, he suffered fools gladly. He may have not liked doing it, but he did. We have all kinds of letters from the Genizah where people write, “I took my kid to see Maimonides and he gave them some candy and he played with him, and then I asked him my [stupid] question and he gave me an answer. He was very polite.” In other words, we know that he didn’t treat people the way in which his position would appear to dictate. But if you are a straight-forward rationalist, intellectualist, and elitist, you exclude a whole range of important Jewish experience and a whole range of people.

This point brings us back to the importance or relevance of Kabbalah, and more broadly the artistic, imaginative, and emotional dimension of Judaism.

I think those dimensions are extremely important and without qualifications.

Would you say that philosophy has its own spirituality?

Yes, but philosophical spirituality is different from kabbalistic spirituality. Indeed, Maimonides himself has been read more and more as intellectualist mystic, as David Blumenthal has demonstrated. And in his Commen- tary to the Mishnah, Tractate Hagigah, Chapter 2, Mishnah 1, Maimonides really sounds like someone who’s working towards some sense of intuitive knowledge in addition to discursive knowledge. The centrality of creativity in Judaism should be obvious since the Bible opens with the description of the creative act. Any Jew who takes the Bible seriously has to know that the first thing the Bible describes is a creative act. Now, we human beings do not create the world or worlds, but we create other things. And the Bible is full of artistic creativity. The Book of Psalms and the Song of Songs are examples of beautiful poetry in the Bible. The description of the Tabernacle emphasizes the aesthetic dimension of this creative activity. So, clearly, one cannot ignore the aesthetic, imaginative, and creative dimensions of the Jewish tradition. And Maimonides himself doesn’t deny that music, for example, has the charms to soothe the savage breast. 152 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

Yes, but for Maimonides the aesthetic dimension is only instrumental rather than intrinsic, and that is quite different from the kabbalistic understanding.

That’s true. Absolutely. Yet, Maimonides was at least a rationalist who could see the instrumental value in a variety of things which aren’t strictly speaking “rational.”

If I hear you correctly, you express a certain discomfort or dis-ease with the kabbalistic tradition, precisely because it expresses a different kind of spirituality from rationalist philosophy.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Can you explain why do you view Kabbalah negatively?

Well, one of my colleagues once said that he’s tone deaf to Kabbalah. That is certainly true of me.

That phrase actually comes from Weber who said it about religion.

I didn’t know that, but that expression seems apt to me. So I think I’m tone deaf to Kabbalah. I’ve got colleagues with whom I’m very close, who spend their lives studying it. Most of them are not kabbalists themselves, but some of them are in that range. But even the ones who aren’t just love it. For them the Zohar is a beautiful book. But I never managed to discover that. I have no objection to people who read it, and I see my inability to appreciate the Zohar as a defect in myself, not a defect in them. And given the current misuse of Kabbalah to justify a range of problematic views and actions, I tend to emphasize the downside of the way in which these things find expression now.

Since for you it is the present that controls the past, let’s explore the philosophic dimension of Jewish canonic texts of the Jewish tradition. Do you consider the Bible a philosophical text?

No. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 153

Why not? As you know, some people, such as Yoram Hazony, say that the Bible is indeed a philosophic text.

Yes, I am familiar with his book on the philosophy of the Bible. Michael Walzer just published a book in that general direction, although I would say his claims are more moderate than Yoram’s. Part and parcel of the fact is that I was raised in the Anglo-American tradition of what philosophy is and we thought of Plato and Aristotle as paradigms of what philosophy is. I always think of philosophy as a search for truth, phrased in arguments which are, or at least can be, abstracted from their historical context. I don’t see any of that in the Bible. So that’s the first reason. The second reason is that I think that for philosophers, knowing the truth is very important. My read of the Bible is that doing the right is very important and more important than knowing the truth, so much so that even doing the right thing for the wrong reason is valuable. And that this was the point behind my book Must a Jew Believe Anything? In that book I argue that philosophical/theological/dogmatic orthodoxy is foreign to Judaism. I think that foreignness is a reflection of the fact that the Bible is primarily concerned with making the world a holier place. And that’s not just action, because action without intent is not good either. When we judge the rightness of actions, intent is very important to understanding what an action is. Context is also very important in understanding what an action is. You can have two people doing the exact same thing in very different contexts, and one blows up the universe and the other one saves the universe by pushing the same button, if you’re Dr. Strangelove who figured it out properly. So, I don’t think the Bible is a text which supports orthopraxy per se, but it certainly is not all that interested in getting you to the guts of your philosophical positions. And of course, the Bible has philosophical presuppositions.

Could you give a few examples?

For example, that the world was created in some sense, that God has some role to play in the world, that God is interested in how we behave and that our behavior affects somehow what happens to us. But these are very broad and abstract ideas and you can, as the Jewish tradition does, argue a lot about the details. Let me give you a more specific example that I like to use with my students. You will surely agree with me that an important element of Jewish and biblical thought is the notion of divine providence. 154 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

God provides for human beings, God watches over human beings, God encourages them through reward, and discourages them through punishment. Those are the biblical ways of talking about the notion of divine providence. However, there was no way of saying “providence” in any Jewish language before the Middle Ages. Put differently, the word “hash- gahah,” which we all use, was invented only in the Middle Ages by a member of the Ibn Tibbon family, who translated a technical Arabic term into Hebrew. Prior to the Middle Ages there was no technical term for that abstract notion, not in the Bible, not in the Mishnah, and not in the Tal- mud, and not even in any of the midrashim. And yet, we just agreed that providence is an important biblical idea.

So the Bible has ideas which are philosophical and it is possible to tease out philosophical ideas from biblical texts even though they are not philosophical strictly speaking.

Exactly. That’s the way I understand it. But because philosophical ideas can be teased out of biblical and rabbinic texts, they can be teased out in different ways.

What about rabbinic texts, the siddur? Do you see the prayer book as a more philosophically oriented text?

I once taught a course on philosophy and the prayer book. And there are many statements that lend themselves for philosophical analysis because they express theoretical positions. For example, the statement, “I give thanks to you, living God, for returning my soul to me,” is amenable to philosophical discussion, because it expresses the notion of soul-body dualism: the soul as separate from the body. But the relationship between body and soul in the siddur can be interpreted in all kinds of directions. What I see a lot of in the siddur is something which has been a motif of my work for a long time. I refer to the way in which Jewish universalism gets covered over by Jewish particularism.

And what do you mean by Jewish universalism?

I will get to that presently. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 155

Isn’t “Jewish universalism” a contradiction in terms?

Well, if you are going to ask me at the end of this interview to give you my “last word,” concerning an ancient motif that is found in the Bible, my last word would be a defense of the idea of Jewish universalism. In this regard I am simply repeating Hermann Cohen, channeled through Steven Schwarzschild.

Even though in the beginning of the interview you stated that Schwarzschild did not succeed in making you keen on Hermann Cohen?

Indeed, I never became a Cohenian, that is, a Jewish philosopher who thinks like Hermann Cohen, even though I have read a lot of Cohen’s philosophy. But Cohen definitely shaped Schwarzschild’s thought and I know that his idea of Jewish universalism should be traced to Cohen. So what I’m saying was already said by Hermann Cohen before me, and I got it from Schwarzschild in the same way that Yeshayahu Leibowitz got a lot of stuff from Cohen. The idea of Jewish universalism is very common in a text that traditional Jews repeat several times every day. I refer to the prayer that Jews call Ashrei, which is Psalm 145 with two verses added at the beginning and one verse added at the end. Psalm 145 itself is a totally universalistic statement about God and the world. There’s nothing specifically Jewish about it. But we start by adding the formula “Ashrei yoshvey veitekha” (“happy are those who dwell in your house”) and we end with the statement “ve-anahnu nevarekh Yah me-atah ve-ad olam, Hal- leluyah” (“but we shall praise God, for now and forever, Hallelujah”). In other words, I don’t think this was a conscious attempt so that people wouldn’t notice the universalistic message of Psalm 145, but if you read Psalm 145 only in the context of the two opening verses and the closing verse you will never get the universalistic message because it starts with the particular and ends with the particular. And one of my hobbies is finding examples of this kind, especially ways in which people “improve” the writings of Maimonides by making him more particularistic. I’ve written a good number of essays on this topic because it happens all the time, and it is a fun project. 156 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

So the gist of your intellectual message is Jewish universalism. For you, Judaism is not a particularistic religion but a universal vision for all humanity.

That’s right.

Is Jewish universalism and Jewish philosophy interchangeable?

Interchangeable is too strong a term, because we have in fact Jewish philosophers like Judah Halevi who are not Jewish universalists. But, and now I’m sounding like Steven Schwarzschild would have sounded, I think when Jewish philosophy is at its best and is truest to itself, Jewish philosophy is universalist.

If that’s the case, what’s the difference between Jewish philosophy and Jewish theology?

I don’t worry about that distinction.

Well, in the middle ages many thinkers did make a formal distinction between philosophy and theology in terms of method, content, and style.

Oh, sure, that is true, but it’s not an important issue to me.

Let’s look at your understanding of Jewish universalism in terms of educational context. What’s the best context of teaching Jewish universalism and how do you go about teaching Jewish universalism?

Let me respond by dividing my answer into two parts. I try to be a serious teacher which means I don’t try and sell my own ideas as such. I don’t want to convert my students to becoming Jewish universalists. Rather, I want to show them that that’s an option, because it is possible. There are three views here. There’s one view which says that Judaism is entirely universalist, and that is Hermann Cohen’s view. Another view says Judaism is entirely particularist, and that is the view expressed most radically today by Chabad but also held by various other variants of contemporary Juda- ism. And then there’s the correct view which is that there are elements of universalism and elements of particularism in Judaism and that they INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 157

coincide or coexist, sometimes helpfully or healthfully, sometimes not, but they’re both there. It would be very hard to deny that. The Bible starts, “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth,” right? You can’t get a more universalist statement than that. And then the first creature is the first human being rather than the first Jew. The Jews, or the People of Israel, emerge only much later. I always like to remind my students that technically speaking, Abraham, the Patriarch, was a non-Jew, as were Isaac and Jacob. They were non-Jews married to non-Jewish women.

What about the circumcision of Abraham? Does not that ritual act make Abraham (or Abram, as he was originally called) no longer a non-Jew?

Circumcision by itself is not sufficient to make people Jewish. For example, all the Muslims who see themselves as descendant of Abraham and Ishmael are circumcised, but they are not Jewish. This issue actually both- ered the Talmudic rabbis enough to in effect retroactively convert the Patriarchs by having them fulfill the commandments, which is something Maimonides never says, by the way. So the issue of what makes a person Jewish is highly debated within the tradition. In any event, in terms of the opening verse of the Bible which establishes the universality of the biblical vision, what does Rashi do? He takes the word “bereshit” (“in the beginning”) and cites three verses in which “reshit” refers to the Jewish people or the land of Israel. That is to say, Rashi particularizes the verse dramatically. I’m not sure how to interpret his intent. It is very possible that Rashi’s particularistic message was occasioned by the fact that Mus- lims and Christians were at that time fighting over the land of Israel, and he wanted to remind them that it belongs to the Jews. But regardless of his original intent, for nearly a thousand years the first verse of the Bible was understood to say that the universe was created for the sake of the Jew- ish people to receive the Torah and reside in the land of Israel. That is a hyper-particularization of an originally highly universalistic statement. So if my students can get their heads wrapped round that, I’d be very happy.

Since you taught at the University of Haifa where 20 percent of the students are non-Jews, I assume you also had non-Jewish students in your classes. What is your message to them? How do you want non-Jews to understand your Jewish universalism?

Before I answer that question, let me reflect to your interesting question about the educational context. What’s the context in which this stuff 158 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER should be taught? That’s a very important question especially in Israel because there are two models historically. One model is a Department of Jewish Thought, where Jewish thought is taught largely independent of the non-Jewish context. The other model of teaching Jewish thought is to incorporate the Jewish material into a broader general curriculum, and that is what we seek to do in Shalem College. The particularistic model has to be understood historically. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, it was important to study and accentuate the particularistic experience of the Jews. Hence there was a tendency to establish a Department of Jewish Law, a Department of Jewish Mysticism, a Department of Jewish History, etc., all of which provided very important knowledge and deep understanding of Jewish history, society, and culture. As the years went by, it became evident that the Jewish experience could not be understood apart from the larger world of which the Jews were a part. Now that Jewish particularism is firmly established it is time to integrate ourselves into the larger scope of western culture. What we’re trying to do in Shalem College is exactly that. Not to take Jewish thought out of the history of Western thought, but integrate it back in. Shalem College is an Israeli institution as well as a Jewish institution, but it is not religious in any sense of the word. It’s not antireligious, either, but an Israeli academic institution that insists on integrating Jewish culture within the broader culture.

Let me go back to the case of an Israeli, non-Jewish student you mentioned above. What do you offer an Arab student that will make it attractive to him or her to study at Shalem College as opposed to studying in England or in Canada? After all, universalism can be found in many other places and contexts rather than in your Jewish institution?

Oh, for sure.

If so, what is the appeal of Jewish philosophy or Jewish universalism to a non-Jew?

Probably very little, but let me expand it a bit. Certainly, an Israeli-Arab student, who plans to live here and be integrated in Israeli culture, is interested in knowing more about Jews and Jewish culture, and indeed should be interested in knowing more about the culture. This is analogous to an American Jew who has interest in studying American history. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 159

So my message to the non-Jewish student is as follows: “For good or for ill, you’re going to be a minority here for a long time to come, and I hope that you would want to be integrated into Israeli society. Unless you’re interested in not being integrated, in which case, you need to think carefully about your relationship to majority culture. But if you are going to be an Israeli citizen you should be interested in integrating into Israeli society, and indeed more and more Arab Israelis are, then it behooves you to know something about the broader Israeli culture.” This is not an ideological position, but a sensible position about the place of ethnic and religious minori- ties vis-à-vis the larger society and culture.

Yes, but within Israeli academe, there are other institutions where an Arab-Israeli could be more at home, for example, Tel Aviv University or the University of Haifa or Ben Gurion University because the student specializes in a discipline without requiring him or her to know something about Jewish culture.

Right. Sure. Indeed, many non-Jewish Israeli students enroll in these institutions.

But you’re saying that there’s something unique about Shalem College that offers a marriage of two intellectual traditions, the Western and the Jewish and that it is worthwhile for the non-Jewish Israeli.

We offer something unique because we stress a core curriculum that we believe is crucial for all educated Israelis. Other universities do not offer a core curriculum which means that students will never get a view of West- ern culture as a whole or Jewish culture as a whole. Our core curriculum is also different from “great books” courses that are offered in American universities such as St. John’s College in Annapolis, because that approach pays little attention to history. By contrast, we insist on the historical framework of culture and our students very much like that emphasis. I consider the historical approach to culture to be very important, because it enables us to appreciate Judaism as a product of history and at the same time understand how Judaism relates to other civilizations, societies, and cultures. When I started college in 1963, the first course I took in summer school was Western civilization. And it’s remained with me all those years. 160 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

So the program of Shalem College is to provide all students regardless of religious and ethnic identity a view of the relationship between Jewish civilization and Western civilization.

Right, exactly. We’d be very happy if we had more non-Jews interested in our curriculum, but I do not want to create a false impression about the relationship between them. Jewish history is part of world history, but world history is largely not part of Jewish history.

Could you explain?

Well, you know, how many Chinese read Maimonides? But the non-Jews, at least in the West, do read the Bible.

So Jewish thought is an integral part of Western thought.

One of the things that Shalem Center was known for is political Hebraism. Clearly political theorists such as Thomas Hobbes read the Bible, and John Milton was certainly influenced by rabbinic texts. But you could still write a history of Western culture with only a small chapter on the Jews.

Actually, I maintain that Western history and culture could not be understood without Jews and Judaism; the Jew is not just a footnote to the Western story.

Well, I’d be happy if you’re right. But it’s not common perception. Again, I don’t worry about it, but I do have colleagues who do worry about that.

Let’s explore the question of Jewish universalism in regards to Jewish ethics. Do you think that there is something distinctively Jewish in the approach to ethical issues?

This is a very good question. The first book I ever published was an anthol- ogy called Contemporary Jewish Ethics. But it’s hard for me to accept the notion that there is a distinct Jewish ethics. I think if something is ethically and morally right, it’s right, and if it’s wrong, it’s wrong. That is the universalism I speak about. And there may be reasons how we got to it and there may be some variants, but I don’t see Jewish ethics as some INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 161

distinctive message that is central to the world. I think it’s central to Juda- ism. Perhaps what I say is a function of having grown old, but generally speaking I believe that human beings are human beings. As human beings we all to a considerable extent share the same moral intuitions. For example, there is no society in the world which condones murder. It depends how you define “murder” but, however defined, within the context of that society, murder is prohibited. Similarly, there are many other basic moral intuitions that are shared by all societies and culture, and I do not think that Judaism has something distinctive to add to universal morality.

Well, let’s think it through. It seems to me, for example, that the notion of responsibility is distinctively Jewish; Jewish thinking about ethical issues ranks the value of responsibility very highly. So I have no problem saying that there is a distinctive Jewish voice in ethics, and that the primary Jewish ethical value is responsibility.

Is responsibility just another way of saying “Jewish guilt”?

Well, guilt has something to do with responsibility, but responsibility is a broader term because it tells you what you need to do in order not to have guilt or not to feel guilty, right? I certainly see responsibility as the main Jewish contribution to ecological thinking, another area where you can see the interplay of universalism and particularism. Several contemporary Jewish philosophers, most notably Emmanuel Levinas, place the emphasis on responsibility as the distinctive Jewish position from which to engage Western philosophy critically.

Let me say first, I hope you’re right, and second I’ll have to think more about it, because it is an interesting point.

In your book Must a Jew Believe Anything? you argue that commitment to the Jewish people and to Torah is paramount, over commitment to certain beliefs. Do you still hold this view or have you changed your position over the years?

I don’t think I’ve shifted a lot on this issue. Let me explain the problematic. I think that Maimonides was trying to get away from what I would call in simple-minded terms racism. And let’s put it in fancier language, 162 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER a position which holds that there is an ontological difference between Jew and gentile. If so, what makes a Jew a Jew? One reason that led Maimonides to articulate the thirteen principles was that the list is a simple way of defining who a Jew is. Maimonides’ dogmatic criteria for inclusion in the Jewish people are problematic since he emphatically states in the statement ending the principles, that if a person accepts these thirteen principles correctly, that person can perform every possible sin. You can shoot your mother-in-law on the Day of Atonement while eating a cheeseburger, but as long as your principles are okay, you’re within the Jewish community and you really have a share in the world- to-come. That’s a dramatic attempt to create an abyss between practice and theology. Now, in the Middle Ages, where Jewish communities were clearly demarcated, that wasn’t a problem. Nobody went around asking other people what their views were. But in the modern age, especially after the French Revolution—when Jews get up in the morning and while brushing their teeth ask themselves, in what sense am I Jewish today?— Maimonides’ position becomes dangerous. Because if we define Judaism as Orthodoxy, it means that we have heterodoxy. If you have heterodoxy, it’s a simple jump to heresy. If you have heresy, then you have attempts to persecute the heretics or at least exclude them. We can see this problem most clearly in the attacks on Chabad, which some people, for example David Berger, argue is heretical. I believe that Berger is right in the following claims: in Maimonidean terms, Chabadniks who believe that the Rebbe is or was the Messiah, and that the Rebbe in some sense shares divinity with God, are “heretics.” But David goes further to deduce from this that adherents of Chabad should be treated as heretics. And this I find very problematic, because I don’t think heresy is a useful concept for us. I think that using the category of heresy is a way of pushing people out of the Jewish community as opposed to pulling people in. My rejection of the category of heresy is strongly influenced by the fact that I live in Israel. There are plenty of people here who would be considered “heretics” according to some list of Jewish dogmas, but who sacrificed their lives for the State of Israel and for the Jewish people. I remember once, when I was Dean of Students, I organized a symposium about a related topic and one of the speakers mentioned that a standard way of solving the problem of nonobservant Jews and not treating them as heretics is to say that they are like “babies captured by heathens,” and therefore are not responsible for what they do. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 163

That is paternalism in its worst form, is it not?

Oh, boy, is it ever! But it never occurred to me how paternalistic it is until a man in the audience, who actually was one of the founders of the university, got up and said, “My son is an officer in the army in an elite com- bat unit. He always brings his soldiers home for various kinds of events, and he asked one of his soldiers, who was an observant Jew, ‘How is it you can be so friendly and respectful?’ And the fellow said, ‘Well, because I treat you as if you are a child taken by heathens.’ ” This man stood up and angrily said, “I did not raise my son among heathens!” That’s when I realized how deeply offensive (and not only paternalistic) is the traditional category. This interview is taking place at the Shalom Hartman Institute and right here among the faculty and fellows you can find people who would be counted as “heretics” according to Maimonides’ dogmatic criteria, even though they are deeply learned Jews. They can’t be deeply learned Jews and at the same time “children taken captive by heathens.”

So what does it mean to belong to the Jewish people?

Yes, this is the right question, but I don’t have a good definition of that. I am fully aware that the boundary issues are difficult ones. Where do I put Jews for Jesus?

Some people featured by the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophers use the Jews for Jesus as the defining limit for inclusion in the Jewish people: you cannot be Jewish and believe in Jesus.

And I understand that very well, but let us remember that we have Jews who endorse other religions and we do not cut them off from membership in the Jewish people. For example, a very large percentage of Buddhists in America are Jews by birth but no one gets bent out of shape about the so-called “Jewbu.” The notion of Jewish Buddhists is usually taken with a smile. But they are no more theologically incoherent than the Jews for Jesus. The fusion of Judaism and Buddhism does not generate deep emo- tions for a simple reason: how many Jews were killed for their beliefs by Buddhists over the last two thousand years? The answer is: zero! By contrast, for the past two thousand years many Jews were killed by Christians 164 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER precisely because they refused to recognize Jesus as messiah, so the Jews for Jesus phenomenon rubs a lot of raw nerves because of two thousand years of shall we say difficult history. In truth, defining the boundaries of Judaism is not a simple matter and I don’t have a good answer to the question about boundaries, but I’m not too worried about them, either. I think these kinds of questions where you have to draw the boundaries very sharply will be taken care of by history. In other words, I’m enough of a believer to think that over the long run, the Jews for Jesus will either become Christians or disappear or come back into the Jewish fold. But I’m not going to worry today how to define them. In general, I think we should be as polite as possible to everybody, and I see no reason to offend the Jews for Jesus now.

The question we were exploring is not so much where the boundary should be placed, but what does it mean to belong to the Jewish people? What does “belonging” comprise of?

I don’t have a really good answer, because this is not a simple question, and I cannot give you a halakhic answer. But for me, when someone ties her fate to the Jewish people, like the biblical Ruth or like the Ethiopians in our day, that person belongs to the Jewish people. Let me give you a story about Ethiopian Jews. When the first Ethiopian aliyah came in the early eighties, my wife, children, and I adopted two teenagers and took them into our home for about a year. They would spend the Sabbath and holidays with us, and it was very clear that they had no connection to or knowledge of Judaism as it’s known today. But all of us in our neighborhood in Haifa involved with this project felt very strongly that these people had been mistreated in Ethiopia because they were Jews; they had suffered enormously as they made the tremendous trek through Sudan in order to get to Israel. They clearly tied their fate to the fate of the Jewish people and I had no problem seeing them as 100 percent Jewish. And similarly, my daughter is a high school teacher in the Israel Air Force Academy. It’s a technological college, but they have a regular high school. She teaches Hebrew literature and she has lots of students who aren’t Jewish. I mean, literally, aren’t Jewish. She even occasionally hears them telling anti-Semitic jokes. These are kids whose parents came here from the former Soviet Union because they have some kind of Jewish family connection and mainly because they wanted to leave the Soviet Union. So some of these kids want to be assimilated into Jewish Israel, but some are quite INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 165 happy not to be Jewish. But they’re all in Israeli Air Force uniforms and they’re all going to be serving in the Israeli army. It seems to me that even though they have no intent of becoming Jewish, we have to find some way of assimilating them into the Jewish people. We need to integrate them in some fashion into our society and not get bent out of shape by the rabbis because they are not Jews halakhically speaking. My inclusive view has many historical precedents recognized even by some religious authorities such as Rabbi Joseph Kafih. Over the generations, Jews have assimilated in and assimilated out.

So you are saying that the Jewish people is not a purist category but rather a kind of a melting pot that has always responded to changing historical situations.

Exactly.

The question of membership in the Jewish people is always tricky, because over the centuries the boundary between Jews and non-Jews has been more porous than is often assumed, especially in antiquity. I would like us to explore this point a little bit and by considering Israel since this topic relates to the relationship between politics and religion in Israel. How do you understand the relationship between religion and politics in Israel, since this is a topic you have written about quite a lot?

Well, I don’t know quite a lot about the topic, but I know what I don’t like: I don’t like religious parties and I don’t like religious coercion. I think it’s bad for the state and bad for religion. In this regard, I’m a classic American liberal. I think we should have total separation of “church” and “state” here, which translated into Jewish parlance means separation of “synagogue” and “state.” I benefit from the fact that in my neighborhood, the synagogue is supported by taxes and I don’t have to put money into it, which means that my performance of mitzvot is supported by taxes. The schools are supported by taxes. It’s a tremendous relief to the individual, okay?

But, nonetheless, you are for separation of synagogue and state.

Indeed I am because I don’t think it’s the right way to run the state. I think it causes more damage than it brings benefit and I think that we 166 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER could find other ways to support synagogues other than use taxes. For example, we could have a voucher system. If we think more seriously and creatively about it, we will find other ways of solving this problem without making rabbis into state bureaucrats, each of whom is sure, by the way, that he (and I cannot even say “she”) knows exactly what God wants. In Israel, because there is no separation of religion and state, and because too many rabbis often behave like accountants for the Lord, Judaism is hated by so many people. I don’t see the advantage of it and as a person who cares about the future of Judaism I would like to radically separate Judaism from state bureaucracy. I hasten to add that I realize that this could only work if the entire political system were revamped.

How do you explain the fact that so far, at least, non-Orthodox forms of Judaism, which are mainly American, have failed to take root in Israel?

Well, you know the old story that the synagogue which the standard Israeli doesn’t go to is an Orthodox synagogue. There’s a lot of truth to that, because secular Israelis identified Judaism with Orthodoxy.

Why? How do you explain the Israeli resistance to non-Orthodox forms of Judaism?

I do not have a good answer, but first let me give you an example. One of the last courses I taught before my retirement was on trends in contemporary Judaism. I have a colleague who is a specialist in the study of New Age Judaism, and I introduced the scholar to my class, which included not only regular students but also older people who were auditing the class. These older students, who were in their sixties and seventies, got quite upset at the scholar, even though all that person did was to describe some New Age varieties of Judaism here in Israel. She was not advocating that Judaism should be practiced in that manner, only describing non- Orthodox variants, but the older students were still mad as hell. They said, “You call this Judaism?” The fact that they were very, very upset illustrates the problem: when secular Israelis think about Judaism they have in mind a rigid form of Orthodoxy which they certainly reject. I don’t know why there is a rejection of non-Orthodox forms of Judaism but I do know that it exists. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 167

There’s a difference between New Age Judaism and Reform, Conservative, or even Reconstructionist Judaism.

Okay, you are probably right, but I took my students to the Reform congregation in Haifa, where we met with the rabbi, and I took them to a Conservative synagogue and we met its rabbi, but they were only slightly less critical than they were of the lecturer about New Age Judaism. In Israel, the Reform congregation looks like an Orthodox synagogue without the mechitzah, and the Conservative synagogue in Haifa, with the exception of the mechitzah, is Orthodox in every possible respect and the rabbi is very traditional. So the students could convince themselves they were simply visiting a more modern-looking Orthodox synagogue, and they were not nearly as challenged by Reform and Conservative synagogues as they were by the lecture about New Age Judaism. To understand why non-Orthodox forms of Judaism have failed to take root in Israel we need a skilled sociologist or perhaps a cultural historian.

Let’s approach this question from a different direction. How do you see the philosophical significance of the State of Israel? The significance of the Jewish state, after all, is not only historical or cultural, right?

Right. I’m not sure “philosophical” is the word I want to use. Can we say theological, or spiritual? When I was a young man I wrote a very short article for a Canadian Zionist magazine called “Israel Is Too Important to Leave to the Israelis.” And I still believe that: Israel is a project of the Jew- ish people. Perhaps not all the Jews, but at least a very large part of the Jewish people. If you are a Jew, you must have some notion of the election of Israel. Even Mordecai Kaplan, the most radical challenger of traditional Judaism, had a notion of the election of Israel. His last book, The Religion of Ethical Nationhood, was an attempt to show that, thanks to the Jews, nuclear holocaust can be averted. He wrestled with the notion of election and was sort of forced to scratch his left ear with his right arm, but in the end he couldn’t get away from a notion of Jewish election. Speaking of Mordecai Kaplan, let me tell you good story about him. When I moved to Haifa thirty-four years ago, I was invited to someone’s home. The chief rabbi and his wife were there. To make conversation, the chief rabbi asked me who I thought was the most important Jewish thinker of the twentieth century in America. I said, “Mordecai Kaplan” because 168 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

I thought that his book, Judaism as a Civilization was an amazing prediction of what was going to happen forty years on. I mean, Kaplan could really be seen as a prophet of modern life in America. Years later, the wife of the chief rabbi told me that she and her husband took me to be a Reconstructionist, because I named Kaplan as the most important Jewish thinker rather than, say, Heschel or Soloveitchik. But Kaplan was really on the ball. This story illustrates that you have to be careful with the impressions you leave with people. In any event, to go back to the point that the State of Israel is a project of the Jewish people let me say the following: If you accept some notion of the election of Israel, then what the Jewish people do has significance for the entire world. You know, there are many ways of parsing that, but it’s not just another form of nationalism which happened to have succeeded on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. If I believed that, then I would simply be outside of the framework of the Jewish tradition, as I understand it. For this reason I say that the State of Israel is too important to leave to the Israelis, because it’s important to all Jews, even those who aren’t interested in it.

It’s very curious that when I pose the question about the State of Israel to thinkers who live in the United States, they usually say, “Well, I don’t live in Israel, therefore, I don’t want to tell the Israelis what to do.” This is to say that Israel belongs to the Israelis, and they have to solve the problems of living in a Jewish state. The main problem, of course, is the tension between Judaism and democracy. What is your view?

Well, I think that the rule “there is no taxation without representation” applies here as well. We who are living here in Israel tax the American Jewish community very heavily. Therefore, as I see it, American Jews have a right and an obligation to be involved in what is happening in Israel.

That means that American forms of Judaism, including Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, and Reconstructionist Judaism really deserve a much larger space in the Israeli public sphere than they actually get.

I absolutely agree. The usual explanation for why they don’t have that space is that they’re not here. The overwhelming majority of Jews from the United States who live in Israel are right-wing Orthodox, maybe modern Orthodox; the liberal Jews simply do not make aliyah; they do not choose Israel as their home. But does that mean that they should have INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 169 no say in what happens in Israel? I think they should have a say. I’m just explaining why they don’t have a say, even though they should. There are many pro-Israel and Zionist organizations whose members are Liberal and Progressive Jews, and yet when they come to Israel, they’re treated almost not as Jews, right? Their rabbis aren’t given respect and their form of Judaism is denigrated. I find it to be both wrong and stupid. The mal- treatment of non-Orthodox Jews is definitely bad and unjustified.

What do you think are the challenges facing the State of Israel today? Do you have a problem calling Israel a “Jewish state” as some people do?

No, I don’t have any problem whatsoever any more than I have a problem calling France a French state, even though defining Israel as a Jewish state is a fraught issue. I’m a Jewish nationalist. I don’t need to live in the State of Israel to observe the Sabbath or keep Kosher. And I don’t believe the State of Israel was founded to make the observance of the Sabbath either better or easier. The State of Israel was founded by Jewish nationalists; living in the State of Israel expresses my nationalist choice. The nationalist choice is separate from the religious choice to observe Jewish law. After all, one can be a Zionist and still eat pork on Yom Kippur. Zionism is simply the name given by somebody for poetic reasons to the program of Jewish nationalism. Now, it happens to be the fact, and this complicates the matter, that the Jewish religion also sees nationalism as part of the religious definition of a Jew. In that regard, there is a difference between being Jewish and being French. In France one can be a French Jew or a French Catholic as well as many other kinds of French, because your definition in France is national. Here in Israel, part of being a Jew by nationality cannot be separated from the Jewish tradition or the Jewish religion. The Jewish religious tradition has a much deeper understanding of our collective identity than as simply a form of nationalism; that surely complicates the issue.

That brings us back to the secular Israeli who is definitely a nationalist by self-definition, and yet has nothing to do with the Jewish religion; most often the secular Israeli feels a deep dislike of the Jewish religious tradition.

Actually, most Israeli Jews, according to poll after poll, are not truly secu- larists, but traditionalists. 170 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

So, what is the meaning of Jewish nationalism for secular Israelis? If I hear you correctly you offered a religious interpretation of Jewish nationalism, which may not be satisfactory to secular Israelis.

No, I don’t mean that at all. I think for Jewish nationalism to be Jewish, (a) it has to be nationalism, and (b) it has to be connected to Jewish culture. Let me explain that claim. I don’t have a good definition of Jewish culture, it’s like pornography: I know it when I see it. Here is a story to illustrate the point. For ten years, with another colleague, I ran a program at the University of Haifa which we called Be-tzavta, namely, “sitting together.” It was a program which was funded by a very wealthy man in the hopes that we would teach participants Judaism and thus inocu- late participating students at the University of Haifa against assimilation into the globalized world. Our funder thought that exposure to “Torah” as traditionally taught would speak to the souls of these young Jews. We told him, “We don’t believe that, and our institution is a university, which obligate us to convey ideas in a certain way. We’re going to teach them about Judaism in an atmosphere of teaching without preaching. If you are convinced that their Jewish souls will react to that in the right way and become more Jewish, fine, as long as you don’t think that we believe that, because we’re not out to convert anybody.” At the University of Haifa the issue is especially pertinent, because we had Arabs in the classes and we did not want to be preaching another religion to them. Thus, he gave generously each year in order to free students to study; in effect, we were buying their time. Four hours a week, they would come and study with us. In the beginning of every year, I would get up and announce what my goals were. My goal was, if at the beginning of the school year, we had students who eat bread on Pesach, at the end of the year they will know that they were eating hametz on Pesach. I just wanted to give them a new conceptual framework; I did not want to change their behavior. The program only framed existing behavior within the context of and in the terms of the Jewish tradition. I only wanted students to be aware how what they do fits into the part of the tradition. So that’s a very low level notion of what Jewish culture is all about. Right? And I remembered that there were huge fights at the university over this program. People thought that I was trying to impose religious ideology on the university, but that was not the case at all. I was very offended by the criticism, because I had been Dean of Students, as well as the Chair of Maritime Civilization, and a very active member of INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 171 the University Senate along with many other public activities. But it turned out that nobody saw anything but the kippah on my head. They didn’t know me at all. Even people whom I thought knew me well opposed the program and the opposition was almost wall-to-wall. In my defense, I told my critics the line I already stated to you: “Without a past you don’t have a future,” but one of my good friends, who is a very prominent academic, basically said, “Well, maybe the Jewish future is different now, Menachem. Maybe we’re moving into a new direction.” I don’t have an answer to that criticism. If she is right, then I’m wrong. But you know, maybe my colleague is right and Judaism has now reached a new stage where it can continue in some sense, divorced from its history. I just do not believe that to be possible. Time will tell.

Well, I would not go that far, nor do I think that people like Amos Oz and his daughter, Fania Oz-Salzberger, would say that. Their point is that the Jewish past is accessible to us primarily through language, through the Hebrew texts. It’s a textualist and literary understanding of Jewish identity, which I personally find very attractive and convincing. Jewish culture then means a relationship to a literary tradition, whether or not one observes Jewish law.

But then again, which texts are we going to emphasize? Which texts are we going to teach? We are going to start with the Bible, and then go to the Mishnah, Talmud, and midrash. Right? These are all religious texts that call on Jews to act in a certain way, so the definition of Jewish culture cannot be devoid of religion. It surely includes more than religious texts, but it certainly cannot exclude them. I understand that “culture” is a very inclusive category. My friend, Danny Lasker, who is a scholar of Karaism, is going to include the Karaites in the story of Jewish culture.

The place of the Karaites in Jewish history and culture is very important and it raises again the question about boundaries of the Jewish people. Earlier in our discussion you excluded the Jews for Jesus, but what about Karaites? Would you exclude them as well? But let’s focus on the State of Israel and the meaning of meaning of Jewish nationalism. What do you think are the most poignant challenges to the State of Israel?

Oh, there are so many. 172 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

Could you give me three?

Here are the three main challenges: first, how to integrate different kinds of Jews into the polity on a basis of equality; second, how to integrate the Arab as a distinct minority without asking them to cease to be Arabs, and without asking us to cease being Jews; and three, how to create an Israeli identity which to my mind draws from the Jewish past but does not exclude from it the non-Jewish part of our population. Otherwise, we’re condemning ourselves, as John Kerry said, to becoming an Apartheid state. I’m not optimistic about all this, certainly not in the near future, even though I tend to be an optimist, perhaps I am simply a born optimist. In the near term, I’m not going to live to see a peace break out between Israelis and Arabs, and I’m not going to live to see Israeli culture rooted in the Jewish tradition that also respects the non-Jew, even though the changes of the last few decades are quite dramatic. In the thirty-four years we’ve lived here, the integration of Arabs into Israeli culture is amazing. Here is another story for you to illustrate the point. I was in the elevator at the University of Haifa with a girl who was definitely an Arab, given her dress. She looked at her watch, smacked her head, and said, “Oy, vey!” This is just a small example how Israeli Arabs have been integrated into Israeli culture. As a speaker of Hebrew the Arab girl absorbed Jewish speech patterns, without giving up her Arab or Muslim identity. So integration of Arabs into Israeli culture is possible. I would like to see the nastier aspects of Judaism I mentioned before to be toned down. I think they’re very dangerous; they’re dangerous internally. I think when you turn Judaism into a kind of magical thinking suffused with ethnocentrism and triumphalism, it is a very dangerous development, because you breed hatred of the non-Jew, namely, hatred of Arabs who live with us and among us.

You can also say that the hatred of the non-Jew can be translated into the hatred of the Jew who is not like you, namely the liberal Jews with whom many Israelis are not familiar with, right?

That’s right, although I hope that the term “hatred” is too strong in this context. Just recently I was told about a synagogue in a Chicago suburb, allegedly “modern Orthodox,” which maintains a list of prominent Ortho- dox Jewish scholars who are not to be invited to speak to that congregation, because their orthodoxy is suspect. I very much hope that those excluded are not hated; more likely, they are feared. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 173

Since we’re speaking about pluralism and diversity within Judaism, what about women? Where does gender fit into your understanding of pluralism as an ideal?

With women, I have no problem. In fact, I’m much more feminist than my wife is, for example. We belong to a standard Orthodox synagogue that has a women’s gallery. My daughter, the one I mentioned before, the high school teacher of Hebrew literature, is an “Orthodox feminist.” Jew- ish women who define themselves as “Orthodox feminists” have to know enough to work out the relationship between their feminist sensibilities and Jewish religious obligations. They also often have to endure a fair amount of resistance, as was the case with my daughter in the many years that she represented the women’s gallery on the synagogue board. For me Jewish feminism is occasionally too radical, reminding me of the cutting- edge liberal arts colleges during the 1960s and their desire to dump everything traditional. Eventually, the rabbis will define women as men and the whole problem will go away, but my wife doesn’t think that’s amusing, because she doesn’t want to be defined as a man. She wants a seriously respected place within traditional Judaism as a woman. But I’m convinced that contemporary Orthodoxy will increasingly include women more and more and more, until the problem will go away.

Your inclusive posture is quite problematic. A few minutes ago you included the Arab in Israeli society, and now you want to include women in traditional Jewish religious life. But what does it mean to include the minority into the majority? Can the minority retain its distinctive identity, or do you expect the otherness of the minority to disappear, which means getting rid of the distinctive identity?

Well, I don’t know. When I lived in the United States, I felt very included in majority culture, and at the same time I felt very Jewish. I don’t think inclusion means boiling everybody together in a pot. I am a multicultural- ist only in the sense that I think lots of cultures can coexist. And, I might add, women are not a minority in Judaism!

Multicultural coexistence is a good idea, but when it comes to gender, there is always the issue of power: who has the power to decide?

What we need is to have women rabbis in order for the power to be shared. And that’s happening right now even within Orthodoxy. We are not going 174 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER to have total equality tomorrow, but the growing inclusion of women in the decision-making process is happening right now. My late mother used to say that the main problem with Judaism is that the rabbis are all men. At the time, that was true. Now we even have Orthodox congregations in which women function as rabbis in all but name. It is important to keep a historical perspective here. If you look at Judaism since World War II, the changes are unbelievable. For the past twenty years the changes within Orthodoxy are truly amazing, since we now have institutions that prepare women to function as rabbis. They don’t call themselves rabbis, but they learn enough to be Posekot, namely, to decide cases of Jewish Law. And I am not referring to overtly modern Orthodox institutions only, but rather to the mainstream of Israeli non-Haredi Orthodoxy. In other words, women have made enormous strides within Orthodoxy, even though over the last twenty years there has been a big fight about it. The status of women has been in the forefront of internal fights within non-Haredi Orthodoxy in the United States.

What about the status of women within the Orthodox world in Israel?

Like in so many other ways, Israel is both behind and ahead of the times. There are many more opportunities for Orthodox women to learn and seriously engage the Jewish textual tradition, but many of them are paternalistic in their attitudes toward woman. For example, my daughter went to a high school where the principal’s name was Nechamah Gonen. It was like a yeshiva high school for women. The principal kept getting letters addressed to Rabbi Nechemiah Gonen because no one would believe that someone named Nechamah (clearly a female name) was head of the high school. Since my daughter graduated from high school the perception of women has changed dramatically, so I have reasons to be optimistic about the future of women in Orthodox Judaism. Figures such as Adina Bar-Shalom, founder of a Haredi college and daughter of the late Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, may auger dramatic changes even in the Haredi world.

Feminism is an important voice within the academy and feminism has made deep impact on Jewish Studies. How do you see the role of Jewish studies in contemporary Jewish life? More specifically, what is the role of Jewish philosophy within Jewish studies? Can the discipline of Jewish INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 175 studies help us cope with the challenges for Jewish existence, either in Israel or in the diaspora?

That’s a very hard question. I can’t really address the diaspora because I don’t know enough about it. When I look at the schedule of the lectures at the Association for Jewish Studies, I get on my high horse saying, this is not serious. In my view too much attention is given to marginal issues such as film and food, very little attention is now given to what I consider to be the proper concern of Jewish studies. But perhaps my criticism reflects my age and the fact that I’m an old-fashioned person, or an academic dinosaur, of sorts. I have no objection to various contemporary developments, for example the use of Twitter or other social media, but I just find it odd that so many people in the Association of Jewish Studies can’t read Hebrew, and it makes me feel superior and somewhat dismis- sive of Jewish academics in the U.S.

If you extrapolate to the future, what trajectory do you see for Jewish studies? Are you optimistic about the future of Jewish studies in the diaspora and in Israel?

Let’s remember that Jewish studies in the diaspora includes Europe and is not limited to the United States. Europe is full of really fine scholars of Jewish texts and of Jewish history, who are, shall we say, Jewishly challenged. In fact, many of them are gentiles who are really fine scholars. If I’m not mistaken, the editor of the AJS Review, the major academic publication of Jewish studies in America, is not Jewish. That’s a tremendous development for the discipline of Jewish studies because it means that in academic institutions, non-Jews and Jews are equal and the study of Juda- ism has reached academic maturity. The Jewish academic endeavor is not a game limited for the Jewish insider of the community. Now, in historical terms, Jewish studies has played an important role, a Jewish role, also. First of all, when Jewish studies emerged as an academic discipline it gave a place for Jewish students to come and feel a little bit comfortable. It gave a place for Jewish students who wanted to enrich their own Jewish knowledge and identity to study within the secular university. I think Jewish studies plays an important sociological role in facilitating the integration of Jews into the general culture, while allowing Jews to identify 176 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER themselves as Jews and be proud about it. Ever since World War II, rabbis have become more and more social workers and less and less scholars and as a result the only place you look for Jewish scholarship nowadays is in the secular academy. Certainly, you almost never find it in the rabbinate. And that’s not a criticism of rabbis; they simply have a different role in contemporary Jewish society. Even if I would like rabbis to be scholars, that’s not what they’re paid for. Here in Israel, Jewish studies has a very important role because it insists on a rationalist approach to Judaism. If we give up on rationalist inquiry, we will fall prey to the irrationalism that is so rampant today in Israel, and, for that matter, in the rest of the world. Reason is crucial to Jewish identity, because without it we would not be able to be open to the world at large. Without rationalism we will continue to look at the world in premodern terms of how Jews lived back in Lithuania or back in Morocco. This is how I understand my role as a scholar of Jewish studies, and people occasionally tell me that their minds have been opened by what I and my colleagues write. Because I have been writing primarily in English, my scholarship is better known abroad and I get letters from people telling me that what I’ve written was very important to them, precisely because they come from the kind of traditional world that is insular and exclusive. This makes me very happy, because I am helping Jews to look at the world in more open-minded way.

What’s the impact of your scholarship on the relationship between Judaism and other religious traditions, especially Christianity and Islam?

I don’t know, I’m not sure that my scholarship is at all relevant to non-Jews.

I am asking about the relevance of Jewish studies for interreligious relations.

On not very rare occasions, I am invited to be on interreligious panels where there’s a Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim. What we very quickly discover is that we have more in common with each other than we have with our own religious cohorts, be it in the synagogue, the church, or the mosque. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 177

So what does that show, that there’s a selection process going on here?

Of course. The people who are interested in and are open to interreligious dialogue are a particular kind of person with a particular take on the world. They don’t represent their own respective communities; rather they are the exception that refutes the rule. This realization is somewhat depressing, but that is indeed the fact. It goes back to Ernst Simon’s famous line, “The people I can pray with, I can’t talk to. The people I can talk to, I can’t pray with.” That remains largely the case, which indicates a certain gap between the scholar and the religious community to which he or she belongs. My synagogue is a typical example. It is full of very nice people who are fairly open-minded, but they are not interested in academic learning. Occasionally I give talks after the Sabbath services, and it sometimes seems that they mostly listen to me for the jokes, because the content of what I say is quite alien to them—it’s not what they’re looking for. They’re simply not interested in what I have to teach, which suggest that the scholar of Jewish studies has a limited role to play in the life of the Jewish community.

As a scholar of Judaism, what is the gist of your message?

That’s a very difficult question, but I am glad to address it. My intellectual message pertains to the connection between Judaism and democracy, namely, the connection between Jewish particularism (e.g., the election of Israel and messianism) and universalism. I think the following is a fair description of the way Maimonides understands Jewish history, or world history. God started with Adam. It didn’t work out. God started again with Noah. It didn’t work out. God started with Abraham. That didn’t work out too well, either. The religion that God revealed to Abraham, to use traditional language, was a kind of philosophical monotheism, what Reform thinkers in the nineteenth century called ethical monotheism. And Abra- ham managed to pass that on to his son, Isaac, who passed it on to his son, Jacob, who didn’t dramatically succeed in implanting it in his children because when they went down to Egypt, they lost it very quickly. And so God sent Moses, or Moses actually appointed himself, so to speak. Moses takes the Jewish people out of Egypt and gives them, according to Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed 3:32, two things: the Sabbath and civil law. The next thing that happens according to the biblical narrative as read by Maimonides is the Golden Calf, so, as Isaac Abravanel interprets 178 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

Maimonides, God was forced to give the rest of the Torah, but that wasn’t the original plan. The original plan was a religion based on the Sabbath which has for Maimonides philosophical significance, and civil law, so society would be well-structured. But God finally understood this was not going to work. And so God was forced—in Abravanel’s terms—to give the people 613 commandments with the hope and expectation that eventually they would get back to Abrahamic monotheism when the human species matured enough. Note that this Abrahamic monotheism was totally not connected to a particular people. Abraham, in effect, chose himself. As I have written quite a few times and nobody has challenged me on it, for Maimonides Abraham happened to be the first person to choose God after the deterioration between Noah and Abraham in that ten-generation period.

This narrative about the intellectual development of the human species is a Jewish narrative. That’s just the way the Jews tell the story to themselves.

No, no, Abraham happened to choose God. If Abraham had been a Navajo, then the Navajos would be the Chosen People, not the Jews. Under that scenario the Torah would describe Navajo history and Navajo ceremo- nials. The internal philosophical core for Maimonides would remain the same, but the Holy Land would be in Nevada. I am convinced that this universalist view is Maimonides’ real view. The Jews are the Chosen People because they chose to believe in the universal God.

And what’s your view?

Oh, I am fully on board with Maimonides on this point. Therefore, for me the particularistic ideas of election or nationalism are only stages on the way to philosophic truth, or to enlightenment. I don’t know if this is ever going to happen, but, and here I take from Steven Schwarzschild, Hermann Cohen, Maimonides, and also my own father, what we’re trying to reach for is what we can call universal enlightenment.

Now that’s a very modernist position that has been seriously challenged by postmodernism.

I understand that and indeed I am very much not a postmodernist. I often like to think that postmodernists who talk about science as a narrative INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 179 shouldn’t get on airplanes. That is to say, I would never trust my life to a narrative of aeronautics, but I am very trustful of science and technology.

All right, but some people (for example, Heidegger and his followers) say that human existence is rooted in narrative. Human existence is first and foremost linguistical.

Yes, I am aware of this emphasis on linguisticality, and I am also aware of the dangers that came out of modernist thinking and its rather naive belief in science and technology. I know that modernism is in the background of two destructive totalitarian movements, Nazism and Soviet Communism. But modernism didn’t have to develop in that fashion. Totalitarianism is not the only option available to those who endorsed the universalism of the Enlightenment. And I am enough of an optimistic universalist to think that the ultimate telos of the human race is to live together in peace and in mutual respect, sort of like the imagined reality of Star Trek.

Is that your messianic view that the knowledge of God (namely, philosophic truth) will be shared by all?

Right. That view is precisely what Maimonides expresses in the very last chapter of the Mishneh Torah. I think that is actually Maimonides’ view and not just my own interpretation of his view. I do not think that I am reading my own thoughts into Maimonides, but that I’m reading my ideas out of him.

This is a utopian, universalist, and highly intellectualist vision, right?

Yes, absolutely. It is a rationalist vision that entails that even though not everybody is meant to be a philosopher, everybody is supposed to use their head and develop their intellectual potential. In my rationalist pro- clivities I remained very close to Schwarzschild. I also learned enough from Schwarzschild, who was “channeling” Cohen, that if we don’t have an ideal to aim for, you’ll always make the real your goal. I’m not saying we’ll ever get to realize the ideal, but it’s actually a goal worth pursuing.

It’s the pursuit of the ideal that makes our life worth living.

That’s right. And that’s the title of Steven’s book that I published after he died. 180 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

That rationalist vision is a nice nineteenth-century vision.

Well, I’m very much a nice, nineteenth-century Jew.

In fact it is a very German view.

Absolutely.

But the nineteenth century also gave us the historicist critique of universal rationalism. So does historicism (for example, biblical criticism) undermine some of your universalist assumptions?

Why would it undermine my belief in universalism?

Historicism teaches us that we have to contextualize everything and makes us skeptical about the possibility of universal knowledge. All knowledge claims are always historically, sociologically, economically embedded and situated.

Well, you see, I’m enough of a religious person and enough of an optimist to think that truth matters. But I’m also what I like to call epistemologi- cally modest. I like to have my cake and eat it, too. I believe that there is truth. That very few of us, or perhaps, none of us, actually have a lock on it. So I can say, yes, there is a difference between truth and falsity. But I’m not going to shoot you because you disagree with me about it.

That’s just because you are a nice liberal. But if you were not a nice liberal, then you could shoot me, or at least you can shut me up, right?

Well, I think being a nice liberal is an important part of being a human being. I do not deny that these views are not very current. I keep saying I’m sixty-eight years old, you know; I’m a dinosaur of sorts, and therefore my views are quite old-fashioned. Let me tell you about my next book which fits into all of this. It is the first book I wrote in Hebrew from scratch and it is being published by Bar-Ilan University Press. The English title will be: They Also Are Called Human Beings. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 181

That is a nice title.

It was suggested to me by a colleague at Shalem College and it echoes the famous statement attributed to R. Simeon bar Yochai, that only Jews are called human beings. The book is my attempt to prove “to my total satisfaction” that for Maimonides, gentiles are human beings. Now you would think that’s a silly thing to need to be proven. Unfortunately, it’s not a silly thing that needs to be proven. It’s very much something that needs to be proven, especially today when various Jews doubt that gentiles are human. And I try to do it in a convincing way by offering a very close reading of the first, middle, and the last paragraphs of the Mishneh Torah. Now, it’s fairly easy to reach this conclusion on the basis of Maimonides’ Guide, which indeed I did in my book, Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People, but making the case on the basis of the Mishneh Torah is both more complicated and more compelling for traditional Jews. But that’s all part of my general sense that Judaism teaches that when God says that human beings are made in the image of God, it’s not a joke. It includes not only Jews but even also women. Many years ago, I published an article about misogyny in medieval Jewish philosophy, comparing Maimonides and Gersonides. I wrote the article in English and my daughter translated it into Hebrew. And she said that when she was reading the section on Gersonides, smoke was coming out of her ears, because she was so mad about his misogyny. By the way, around the same time my son talked me into accepting the Yale Judaica Series invitation to translate the second volume of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, The Book of Love. But I should not give the impression that my kids are actually interested in what I write. Anyway, after reading the article, Colette Sirat, the prominent historian of medieval Jewish philosophy, said to me: “Menachem, you didn’t convince me that the Rambam was really not a misogynist, but you convinced me you’re a nice fellow. You’re a good guy.”

I would certainly concur, but to return to your utopian vision, how does egalitarianism fit into your view of ideal reality?

I am definitely in favor of egalitarianism. “We hold these truths to be self- evident that all human beings are created equal. That each is endowed by her creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness [whatever that means].” I think this is the natural outgrowth both of my being raised as an American liberal and my being raised as a Jew. 182 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

And yet, some people will probably see you as endorsing Jewish particularism rather than American liberalism.

In what way?

Your nationalism and your endorsement of the doctrine of election affirm Jewish particularism.

Well, that’s a very good point. When I was much younger, I thought that nationalism was a bad idea. And perhaps at some point in the future, like on Star Trek, human beings will have outgrown it. But I don’t think we can simply say it’s not important. I don’t think there’s any such thing as an undifferentiated, vanilla ice cream, or “white bread” human being. We all are humans in the context of specific cultures and societies. And it’s foolish to refuse to admit that.

In other words, human beings are always particularized.

Exactly. And the question is, what do you with that? Do you then take that and kill the next guy who is different from you? Or do you try to acknowledge the other guy has a different culture and that you’re not going to like the food that she eats, or the prayers they say, or the sounds of their practices of worship? But what do you emphasize? Do you emphasize the things that distinguish you from other human beings, or the things that you share in common with them? My universalist commitment leads to emphasize our shared humanity over our cultural differences and to challenge my fellow Jews as well as other people to pursue the universalist ideal.

What are the challenges that face the Jewish people in the foreseeable future?

The first challenge is not to disappear.

How would you prevent the disappearance of the Jewish people?

God almighty, I wish I knew. But one sure way to ensure the perpetuity of the Jewish people is education. INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 183

But as we all know Jewish education is not working so well.

I agree that it’s not working well, but smarter people than me don’t have a better answer to the challenge of Jewish existence.

What do you think about the revival of anti-Semitism today? Does anti- Semitism pose a serious challenge to the future of Jewish existence? It is now happening more and more in Europe and it’s probably going to become more common even in the United States.

I grew up in a bubble. I didn’t realize that. I grew up in an environment— my wife feels exactly the same way—where when the older generation talked about anti-Semitism, we thought they were crazy. So from 1946 when I was born, to 2000, when the second Intifada broke out, I can recall in my entire life, two events which might have been characterized by anti- Semitism. I think somebody once yelled at me across the street because of my kippah. I’m not sure what they yelled at. And I think I once had a teacher who gave me an A-minus instead of an A because he didn’t like Jews, or at least so I think even though I have no proof of it. Oh, I also had a colleague at the University of Virginia, whose name I cannot mention, whom I am convinced was an anti-Semite in principle, but in practice made an exception for every Jew he met. Until I moved to Israel, no one ever tried to harm me because I was Jewish. Now, people are shooting rockets at me because I am a Jew. The rise of anti-Semitism in this mil- lennium shook my entire being. I thought that the Holocaust had made it impossible to be an anti-Semite, but I was wrong. And I’m not one of those people who thinks that every criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, but I think a lot of it is.

Speaking of the Holocaust, what is your view of post-Holocaust theology? Should Jewish philosophers or theologians be engaged in post-Holocaust theology?

I’m torn about this because, in principle, the Holocaust should not present any new philosophical problems. The problem of evil is not a new problem and it has engaged Jewish thinkers for centuries before the Holocaust. Even though the Holocaust affected us, you know, the problem of evil is not to be reduced to the Holocaust. How many people were killed in the Japanese/Chinese war that was going on at the same time? How many 184 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER people are being killed right now fifty miles from here across the Syrian border or in Iraq not to mention the genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia? In principle, the Holocaust should not present a new theoretical problem. But in practice it does because we react to it on an emotional level.

Wasn’t the Holocaust a unique event in your view?

You’d have to ask Steve Katz about that.

I know his position. He thinks it was a unique event.

I don’t know. I guess, if you push me to the wall, I would say that the only serious way to assess the significance of the Holocaust is to do it in a hundred years.

In other words, we need more time to have a better perspective on the Holocaust. Currently, we are too close to these horrific events.

Yes, we are too close. I think so. When I was younger I read everything I could get my hands on about the Holocaust and all the theology that came out of it. But the older I got, the less I was willing to engage in this literature; I just got too upset, so I stopped reading it.

You are not alone in this regard, but that actually raises the issue of education once again. If we do not educate people about the Holocaust, will we face a future in which the Holocaust will not be known at all?

Well, Holocaust education is very problematic here in Israel. One thing I can’t stand is the way in which, especially here in Israel, the Holocaust becomes the source of Jewish identity and Israeli identity. My wife is always dismayed by this. Every year, high school students are sent to visit Auschwitz as a way to strengthen their Israeli identity, as if the Holo- caust justifies why we live in Israel. Not in my book! I really object to that. And I also objected to the way in which the late Menachem Begin used the Holocaust. That always offended me. Yasser Arafat, who was nobody I appreciate, was not Hitler, and the political decisions facing Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians are independent of the Holocaust. To use the INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER 185

Holocaust as a justification for everything, I think, cheapens it. It is factu- ally wrong and in value terms, also, it cheapens the Holocaust.

The current rise of anti-Semitism makes the situation more complicated. As anti-Semitism becomes more prevalent it will become part of the political lingo, especially in Europe. This is why we have no choice but educating our youth about the Holocaust. If education is no good, what else is left to us?

Well, what is left is for all these Haredi Jews to become less and less observant. Historically, that’s what happened. I once spoke at a Reconstruc- tionist synagogue, in Washington, D.C. where the rabbi told me why he was having a problem. He said, “The founders of my synagogue were all people raised in Orthodox homes, who left Orthodoxy behind them and came to us because we filled a need for something they missed. But their children don’t know that they are missing something, and do not come.” So in effect he was saying, we need lots of Orthodox Jews to lose their faith or become less religious, less observant, in order to fill up the pews. But that’s not a serious answer. It’s a sociological observation. The future of the Jewish people is a serious problem, and perhaps we do not have many solutions other than Jewish education. I certainly think that’s the case in the diaspora where a lot of children grow up with very little Jewish knowledge. Most kids who get a Jewish education learn something in first grade. You learn the same thing in second grade on the same level and they go on like that through high school, while they’re getting more and more sophisticated stuff on the secular side. So the intellectual gap between secular knowledge and Jewish knowledge is enormous; Jewishly speaking most Jews remain on a first-grade level. It is only when they get to the university and they encounter Jewish studies professors that they begin to engage Judaism more intellectually and seriously. They realize, “Wow, I don’t have to be an idiot to be Jewish.” In this regard, Jewish studies fulfills an important role in terms of ensuring the future of the Jewish people.

That’s also what you’re trying to do in Shalem College. Right?

Absolutely. We’re not trying to convert anybody to Judaism but to show them that the Jewish tradition has depth. 186 INTERVIEW WITH MENACHEM KELLNER

On this point we both agree. Thank you so much for participating in the Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophy. Your subtle attempt to bridge philosophic universalism and Jewish particularism is a very important contribution.

I’m very honored to be part of it. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

1. Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Paperback reprint, 2004. Hebrew translation, Torat ha-Ikkarim ba-Philosophiah ha-Yehudit Bimei ha-Benayim. Jerusalem: WZO/Hillel ben Hayyim Library, 1991. 2. Maimonides on Human Perfection. Brown Judaic Studies. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990. 3. Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People. Albany: SUNY Press, 1991. Serbian translation, Maimonid O Judaizmu I Jevrejskom Narodu. Belgrade: Pismo, 2000. 4. Maimonides on the Decline of the Generations and the Nature of Rab- binic Authority. Albany: SUNY Press, 1996. 5. Must a Jew Believe Anything? London: Littman Library of Jewish Civi- lization, 1999. Second edition, revised and expanded, 2006. Hebrew translation in progress. Jerusalem: Shalem Press. 6. Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism. London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2006. Revised paperback edition, 2010. 7. Science in the Bet Midrash: Studies in Maimonides. Brighton, MA: Aca- demic Studies Press, 2009. 8. Torah in the Observatory: Maimonides, Gersonides, Song of Songs. Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2010. 9. They Also Are Called Human: Maimonides on the Gentile. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2015 [Hebrew].

Critical Editions of Medieval Texts

10. Rosh Amanah (Principles of Faith), by Isaac Abravanel. Hebrew text edited, with introduction and notes, and companion texts from Duran, Crescas, and Bibago. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1993. 11. Commentary on Song of Songs, by Gersonides. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2001. 188 select bibliography

Translations of Medieval Texts

12. Principles of Faith, by Isaac Abravanel (translation, introduction, notes). London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1981. Paper- back reprint, 2004. 13. Commentary on Song of Songs, by Gersonides. Yale Judaica Series. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. 14. Book of Love, by Maimonides (Mishneh Torah, vol. 2). Yale Judaica Series. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

Collective Volumes

15. Contemporary Jewish Ethics. New York: Sanhedrin Press, 1978. 16. The Pursuit of the Ideal: Jewish Writings of Steven Schwarzschild. Albany: SUNY Press, 1990. 17. (Associate Editor; with Charles Manekin) Human Freedom and Moral Responsibility: General and Jewish Perspectives. College Park, MD: Uni- versity of Maryland Press, 1997.

Special Issues of Journals

18. (With Ehud Luz) Iyyun 50 (2001). Special issue devoted to Leo Strauss. 19. Jewish History (2004). Special issue devoted to the Eight Hundredth Anniversary of Maimonides’ Death. 20. (With Abraham Melamed) Jewish History (2010). Special issue devoted to the Five Hundredth Anniversary of Isaac Abravanel’s Death.

Book Chapters

21. “Dogma.” In Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought, edited by Arthur A. Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr, 141–45. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1987. 22. “Gersonides’ Commentary on Song of Songs: Why He Wrote it and to Whom it was Addressed.” In Gersonide en son Temps, edited by G. Dahan, 81–107. Paris and Louvain: Peeters, 1991. 23. “Bibliographia Gersonideana.” In Studies on Gersonides—A Fourteenth Century Philosopher Scientist, edited by G. Freudenthal, 367–414. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992. http://hcc.haifa.ac.il/Chairs/Wolfson/biblio graphia.htm. select bibliography 189

24. “The Virtue of Faith.” In Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, edited by L. E. Goodman, 195–205. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992. 25. “Chosenness, Not Chauvinism: Maimonides on the Chosen People.” In A People Apart: Chosenness and Ritual in Jewish Philosophical Thought, edited by Daniel H. Frank, 51–76, 85–89. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993. 26. “The Structure of Jewish Ethics.” In Contemporary Jewish Ethics and Morality, edited by E. Dorff and L. Newman, 12–24. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Expanded and revised as “Ethics of Judaism.” In The Encyclopaedia of Judaism, vol. 2, ed. J. Neusner, A. Avery-Peck, and W. Green, 250–60. Leiden: Brill, 2000. 27. “Communication or Lack Thereof Among 13th–14th Century Pro- vençal Jewish Philosophers: Moses ibn Tibbon and Gersonides on Song of Songs.” In Communication in the Jewish Diaspora, edited by S. Menache, 227–55. Leiden: Brill, 1996. 28. “Maimonides on the Decline of the Generations.” In Hazon Nahum: Studies Presented to Dr Norman Lamm, edited by Y. Elman and J. Gurock, 163–85. New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1997. 29. “Israel-Diaspora Relations after the Assassination: Can We Remain One People?” In A Portrait of the American Jewish Community, edited by N. Linzer, D. Schnall, and J. Chanes, 165–76. Westport, CT: Prager, 1998. 30. “Maimonides’ Commentary on Mishnah Hagigah II.1: Translation and Commentary.” In From Strength to Strength: Lectures from Shearith Israel, edited by Marc D. Angel, 101–11. New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1998. 31. “Philosophical Misogyny in Medieval Jewish Thought: Gersonides vs. Maimonides.” In Y. Sermonetta Memorial Volume, edited by A. Ravitzky, 113–28. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1998 [Hebrew]. 32. “The Tenth Commandment.” In Broken Tablets: Restoring the Ten Commandments and Ourselves, edited by Rachel S. Mikva, 129–32. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 1999. 33. “How Ought a Jew View Christian Beliefs about Redemption?” In Christianity in Jewish Terms, edited by D. Novak et al., 269–74, 396–97. Boulder: Westview, 2000. 34. “The Literary Character of the Mishneh Torah: On the Art of Writ- ing in Maimonides’ Halakhic Works.” In Me’ah She’arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky, edited by E. Fleisher, G. Blidstein, C. Horowitz, and B. Septimus, 29–45. Jerusa- lem: Magnes Press, 2001. 190 select bibliography

35. “Overcoming Chosenness.” In Covenant and Chosenness in Judaism and Mormonism, edited by Raphael Jospe, Truman Madsen, and Seth Ward, 147–72. Fairlawn, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2001. 36. “Steven Schwarzschild, Moses Maimonides, and ‘Jewish Non-Jews.’ ” In Moses Maimonides (1138–1204)—His Religious, Scientific, and Philo- sophical Wirkungsgeschichte in Different Cultural Contexts, ed. Görge K. Hasselhoff and Otfried Fraisse, 587–606. Ergon: Wuerzburg, 2004. 37. “Spiritual Life.” In Cambridge Companion to Maimonides, edited by Kenneth Seeskin, 273–99. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 38. “Each Generation and its Maimonides: The Maimonides of Rabbi Aharon Kotler.” In By the Well: Studies in Jewish Philosophy and Halakhic Thought Presented to Gerald J. Blidstein, edited by U. Ehrlich, H. Kreisel, and D. Lasker, 463–86. Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2008 [Hebrew]. 39. “Maimonides’ Critique of the Rabbinic Culture of His Day.” In Rab- binic Culture and Its Critics: Jewish Authority, Dissent, and Heresy in Medieval and Early Modern Times, edited by Daniel H. Frank and Mathew Goldish, 83–116. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008. 40. “Maimonides’ Disputed Legacy.” In Traditions of Maimonideanism, edited by Carlos Fraenkel, 245–76. Leiden: Brill, 2009. 41. “Philosophical Themes in Maimonides’ Sefer Ahavah.” In Maimonides and His Heritage, edited by Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Lenn Evan Good- man, and James Grady, 13–35. Albany: SUNY Press, 2009. 42. “Maimonides’ Moses: Torah, History, and Cosmos.” In Moses the Father of Prophets, edited by Hannah Kasher, 151–77. Ramat-Gan: Bar- Ilan University Press, 2010 [Hebrew]. 43. “Rashi and Maimonides on Torah and the Cosmos.” In Between Rashi and Maimonides: Themes in Medieval Jewish Thought, Literature and Exegesis, edited by Ephraim Kanarfogel and Moshe Sokolow, 23–58. New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2010. 44. “Between the Torah of Moses (Maimonides) and the Torah of R. Elhanan (Wasserman).” In Jewish Thought and Jewish Belief, edited by Daniel J. Lasker, 249–68. Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University Press, 2012 [Hebrew]. 45. “Rabbi Elhanan Wasserman on Maimonides, and Maimonides on Reb Elhanan.” In Aviezer Ravitzky Festschrift, vol. 2, edited by Benjamin Brown et al., 595–629. Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute, 2012 [Hebrew]. select bibliography 191

46. “We Are Not Alone.” In Radical Responsibility: Celebrating the Thought of Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, edited by Michael J. Harris, Daniel Rynhold, and Tamra Wright, 139–54. Jerusalem: Maggid Books, 2012. 47. “Gersonides’ To’aliyot: Sixteenth Century Italy vs. Nineteenth Cen- tury Poland.” In As a Perennial Spring: A Festschrift Honoring Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, edited by Bentsion Cohen, 282–304. New York: Downhill, 2013. http://www.asaperennialspring.org/content/ gersonides%E2%80%99-to%E2%80%99aliyyot-sixteenth-century- italy-versus-nineteenth-century-poland. 48. “And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight: Twisted Messianic Visions— A Maimonidean Corrective.” In Rethinking the Messianic Idea: New Perspectives on Jewish Messianism, edited by Michael Morgan and Steven Weitzman. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2014. 49. “And Yet, the Texts Remain: The Problem of the Command to Destroy the Canaanites.” In The Gift of the Land and the Fate of the Canaanites in Jewish Thought, edited by Katell Berthelot, Menachem Hirshman, and Josef David, 153–79. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 50. “The Beautiful Captive and Maimonides’ Attitude towards Gentiles.” In Essays for a Jewish Lifetime: Burton D. Morris Jubilee Volume, edited by Menachem Butler and Marian E. Frankston. New York: Hakirah Press, forthcoming. 51. “Rabbi Soloveitchik and Maimonides.” In Studies in the Thought and Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, edited by Dov Schwartz and Ephraim Kanarfogel. New York and Ramat Gan: Yeshiva University Press and Bar-Ilan University Press, forthcoming [Hebrew]. 52. “Who Are Those Human Beings Who Can Become as Holy as the Holy of Holies?—Maimonides, Laws of the Sabbatical Year, XIII.13.” In Hallamish le-Ma’ayon Mayyim: Moshe Hallamish Festschrift, edited by Avi Elkayam and Haviva Pedaya. Jerusalem: Carmel, forthcoming [Hebrew].

Journal Articles

53. “Gersonides, Providence, and the Rabbinic Tradition.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 43 (1974): 673–85. 54. “Democracy and Civil Disobedience.” Journal of Politics 37 (1975): 899–911. (This article appeared with a response by Sidney Hook: “In Defense of Terminological Sobriety—A Reply to Professor Kellner.”) 192 select bibliography

55. “Gersonides and His Cultured Despisers: Arama and Abravanel.” Jour- nal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 6 (1976): 269–96. 56. “Maimonides and Gersonides on Mosaic Prophecy.” Speculum 42 (1977): 62–79. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0038-7134%28197701% 2952%3A1%3C62%3AMAGOMP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6. 57. “Rabbi Isaac Abravanel on the Principles of Judaism.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 45 (1977): 1183–1200. http://links.jstor .org/sici?sici=0002-7189%28197712%2945%3A4%3C500%3ARIAOTP %3E2.0.CO%3B2-J. 58. “Maimonides, Crescas, and Abravanel on Exodus 20:2—A Medieval Jewish Exegetical Debate.” Jewish Quarterly Review 69 (1979): 129–57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1454595.pdf. 59. “Gersonides on Miracles, the Messiah and Resurrection.” Da’at 4 (1980): 5–34. 60. “Gersonides on the Problem of Volitional Creation.” Hebrew Union College Annual 51 (1980): 111–28. 61. “Rabbi Shimon ben Zemah Duran on the Principles of Judaism.” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 48 (1981): 231–65. 62. “Maimonides’ ‘Thirteen Principles’ and the Structure of the Guide of the Perplexed.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 20 (1982): 76–84. 63. “Jewish Dogmatics After the Spanish Expulsion: Rabbis Isaac Abra- vanel and Joseph Yabes on Belief in Creation as an Article of Faith.” Jewish Quarterly Review 72 (1982): 178–87. http://links.jstor.org/sici? sici=0021-6682%28198201%292%3A72%3A3%3C178%3AJDATSE%3E 2.0.CO%3B2-D. 64. “Inadvertent Heresy in Medieval Jewish Thought: Maimonides and Abravanel vs. Duran and Crescas?” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 3 (1984): 393–403 [Hebrew]. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23363192. 65. “Messianic Postures in Israel Today.” Modern Judaism 6 (1986): 197– 209. Reprint in Essential Papers on Messianic Movements in Jewish History, edited by Marc Saperstein, 504–19. New York: New York Uni- versity Press, 1992. 66. “The Conception of the Torah as a Deductive Science in Medieval Jewish Thought.” Revue des Etudes Juives 146 (1987): 265–79. 67. “Heresy and the Nature of Faith in Medieval Jewish Philosophy.” Jewish Quarterly Review 77 (1987): 299–318. http://links.jstor.org/ sici?sici=0021-6682%28198704%292%3A77%3A4%3C299%3AHATNO F%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N. Partial reprint in The Jewish Philosophy Reader, edited by Daniel H. Frank, Oliver Leaman, and Charles Manekin, 114– 19. London: Routledge, 2000. select bibliography 193

68. “Reading Rambam: Approaches to the Interpretation of Maimonides.” Jewish History 5 (1991): 73–93. 69. “On the Status of the Astronomy and Physics in Maimonides’ Mish- neh Torah: A Chapter in the History of Science.” British Journal for the History of Science 24 (1991): 453–63. 70. “Maimonides on the Science of the Mishneh Torah—Provisional or Permanent?” AJS Review 18 (1993): 169–94. 71. “Politics and Perfection: Gersonides vs. Maimonides.” Jewish Political Studies Review 6 (1994): 49–82. 72. “Gersonides on the Song of Songs and the Nature of Science.” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 4 (1994): 1–21. 73. “Gersonides on the Role of the Active Intellect in Human Cognition.” Hebrew Union College Annual 65 (1994): 233–59. 74. “Gersonides on Imitatio Dei and the Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge.” Jewish Quarterly Review 85 (1995): 275–96. http://links .jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-6682%28199501%2F04%292%3A85%3A3%2F 4%3C275%3AGOIDAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T. 75. “Well, Can There Be Jewish Ethics or Not?” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 5 (1996): 237–41. 76. “On Universalism and Particularism in Judaism.” Da’at 36 (1996): v–xv. 77. “Maimonides’ Allegiances to Torah and Science.” Torah U’Madda Journal 7 (1997): 88–104. http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/ 704639/Maimonidies’_Allegiances_to_Science_and_Judaism. 78. “Can Orthodoxy Share the Public Square?” Jewish Political Studies Review 11 (1999): 127–43. 79. “Could Maimonides Get Into Rambam’s Heaven?” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 8 (1999): 231–42. 80. “Strauss’ Maimonides vs. Maimonides’ Maimonides: Could Mai- monides Have Been Both Enlightened and Orthodox?” Iyyun 50 (2001): 397–406 [Hebrew]. 81. “Is Maimonides’ Ideal Person Austerely Rationalist?” American Catho- lic Philosophical Quarterly 76 (2002): 125–43. 82. “Maimonides on the Nature of Ritual Purity and Impurity.” Da’at 50–52 (2003): 1–30. 83. “The Moral Significance of the Laws of Ritual Purity and Impurity—A Maimonidean Study.” Sha’anan 9 (2004): 213–21 [Hebrew]. 84. “Rabbis in Politics: A Study in Medieval and Modern Jewish Political Theory.” State and Society 3 (2003): 673–98 [Hebrew]. 85. “Worship of the Heart vs. Worship in the Temple: A Study in Mai- monides.” Sha’anan 10 (2005): 131–39 [Hebrew]. 194 select bibliography

86. “Farteitcht un Farbessert (On ‘Correcting’ Maimonides).” Meorot [=Edah Journal] 6, no. 2 (2007). http://www.yctorah.org/content/view/ 330/10/. 87. “A New and Unexpected Textual Witness to the Reading ‘He Who Kills a Single Person—It Is as if He Destroyed an Entire World,’ ” Tar- biz 75 (2007): 565–66 [Hebrew]. 88. “Did the Torah Precede the Cosmos?—A Maimonidean Study.” Da’at 61 (2007): 83–96 [Hebrew]. 89. “Maimonides’ True Religion—for Jews, or All Humanity?” Meorot [=Edah Journal] 7, no. 1 (2008). http://www.yctorah.org/content/view/ 436/10/. 90. (With Liron Hoch) “ ‘The Voice Is the Voice of Jacob, But the Hands Are the Hands of Esau’: Isaac Abravanel between Judah Halevi and Moses Maimonides.” Jewish History 26 (2012): 61–83. 91. “Judaism and Artistic Creativity: Despite Maimonides and Thanks to Him.” Milin Havivin 7 (2014).

Reviews

92. Decoding the Rabbis, by M. Saperstein. Speculum 57, no. 2 (1982): 430–31. 93. Jewish Bioethics, edited by D. Bleich and F. Rosner. Association for Jewish Studies Bulletin (1982). 94. Israel Salanter: Text, Structure, Idea, by H. Goldberg. Forum (1984). 95. A New Jewish Ethics, by S. D. Breslauer. Journal of the American Acad- emy of Religion 53, no. 2 (1985): 293–94. 96. Modern Jewish Morality: A Bibliographical Survey, by S. D. Breslauer. Journal of Religion 67, no. 4 (1987): 610–11. 97. Falaquera’s “Epistle of the Debate”: An Introduction to Jewish Philoso- phy, by S. Harvey. Iyyun 38, no. 1 (1989): 74–76 [Hebrew]. 98. A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages, by C. Sirat. Interna- tional Studies in Philosophy 21, no. 3 (1989): 149–50. 99. Proofs for Eternity, Creation, and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy, by Herbert A. Davidson. International Studies in Philosophy 22, no. 3 (1990): 98–99. 100. Crescas’ Bittul Ikkarei ha-Nozrim, by Daniel Lasker. Da’at 26 (1991): 125–26 [Hebrew]. 101. Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, by Isaiah Leibowitz. New York Times Book Review, July 19, 1992, 7. select bibliography 195

102. Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism, by Arnaldo Momigliano. His- tory of European Ideas 22, no. 2 (1996): 146–47. 103. God of Abraham, by Lenn Evan Goodman. Textual Reasoning: Jour- nal of the Postmodern Jewish Philosophy Network 5, no. 4 (December 1996). http://jtr.lib.virginia.edu/archive/pmjp/pmjp5_4.html. 104. Worship of the Heart: A Study in Maimonides’ Philosophy of Religion, by Ehud Benor. AJS Review 22, no. 2 (November 1997): 258–60. 105. Israelis and the Jewish Tradition, by David Hartman. Jewish Quarterly Review 92, nos. 3–4 (2002): 609–12. (2002). 106. Maimonides’ Empire of Light, by Ralph Lerner. Jewish Quarterly Review 92, nos. 3–4 (2002): 613–14. (2002). 107. The Limits of Orthodoxy: Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles Reappraised, by Marc Shapiro. Edah Journal 4, no. 1 (Iyar 5764). http://www.edah .org/backend/JournalArticle/4_1_kellner.pdf. 108. Sodotav shel Moreh ha-Nevukhim (Secrets of the Guide of the Per- plexed), by Micah Goodman. H-Net Reviews (2011). https://www .h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=34331. 109. Maimonides, by Moshe Halbertal. AJS Review 38, no. 1 (April 2014): 175–78.

Polemics

110. “Israel Is Too Important to Leave to the Israelis.” Canadian Zionist 43 (1974). 111. “Jews and their Messiahs.” London Jewish Quarterly 41 (Autumn 1994): 7–13. Slovak translation: “Zidia a ich Mesiasi.” In Fenomen Mesian- zimu, edited by Rudolf Dupkala, 7–21. Presov: Preovska Univerzita, 2001. 112. “Daniel Boyarin and the Herd of Independent Minds.” In The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders, edited by Edward Alexan- der and Paul Bogdanor, 167–76. New Brunswick: Transaction Publish- ers, 2006. 113. “Israel Reverses Gravity.” OpenDemocracy (March 30, 2006). http:// www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-debate_97/gravity_3404.jsp. 114. “The War in Lebanon: A View from Haifa.” OpenDemocracy (August 8, 2006). http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-middle_east_politics/ lebanon_haifa_view_3803.jsp. 115. “Resisting Falsehood and Protecting Integrity” (reply to Omar Barg- houti, “Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Why the Academic and Cultural 196 select bibliography

Boycott?”). Babylon [Norway] 5, no. 1 (2007): 122–31. http://www .engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=950. 116. “Must We Have Heretics?” Conversations 1 (2008): 6–10. 117. “Israel’s Gaza War: Five Asymmetries.” OpenDemocracy (January 14, 2009). http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/israel-s-gaza-war-five- asymmetries. 118. “Two States—Ultimately.” Democratiya 16 (Spring/Summer 2009): 29–31. http://dissentmagazine.org/democratiya/article_pdfs/d16Sym posium.pdf. 119. (With Jolene S. Kellner) “Le-Hiyot Am Hofshi Be-Artzenu: The As Yet Unrealized Dream.” Conversations 10 (2011): 21–23. Hebrew translation: Makor Rishon Sabbath Supplement, July 15, 2001, 15. 120. (With Jolene S. Kellner) “Does Judaism Have Anything to Say about Democracy? Not Yet!” Conversations 14 (2012): 82–90.