Maimonidean miracles: providence and the Twilight Zone

As we approach Shabbat Bereishit, the first week of the parashah cycle, Maimonideans among us would be well served to celebrate the preceding twilight – a watershed moment in Rambam’s theological calendar. A Mishnah in the 5th chapter of Avot lists ten things which were created on the eve of the first Shabbat such as the ‘mouth of the earth that swallowed Korach’ and ‘Moshe’s staff’. Rambam, like Rabbi Yehuda Halevi before him, detected within this teaching a strong traditional support for his religious philosophy:

They (the sages) did not believe in the constant renewal of God’s will, but at the beginning of creation (God) put the nature of things into the world, both the way in which things should act regularly – this is ‘nature’ – or the abnormal manner in which they should act rarely – this is a ‘miracle’. All is equal.

As Judaism Reclaimed discusses at length, the popular religious notion of a miracle – in which God is understood to alter the rules of nature – presents a challenge to Rambam’s way of comprehending the universe. In Moreh Nevuchim (2:28) Rambam sets out his theory of the laws of nature. Quoting from a passage of Tehillim which relates God’s creation of the world, Rambam highlights the verse “And He set them up to eternity…He issued a decree, which will not change” (148:6).

The consistency of the natural order is not due to any lacking on the part of God, but because “a matter which changes, changes only because of an inherent lacking”. In contrast to this, God’s “work is perfect” (Devarim 32:4) – His absolute knowledge means that He does not need to keep fiddling with and adjusting His creation. Any subsequent requirement for adapting of the rules of nature can be foreseen by Him and placed within (or alongside) the natural order.

In the subsequent chapter of the Moreh, Rambam further elaborates upon his understanding of how biblical miracles can fit within this model:

For when God created this existence and established all of its nature, He placed within their natures that all miracles too would arise at the times of the … It states: “R’ Yonatan said “God made conditions with the sea that it should split before the Israelites…R’ Yirmiyah son of Elazar said: “Not only with the sea did God make conditions, rather with all that He created in in the six days of creation… I commanded that the sea split, and that the furnace should not injure Chananya, Mishael and Azariah, and that the lions should not damage Daniel, and that the fish should vomit out Yonah.” [Bereishit Rabbah 85]. From here one can draw an analogy to all the other [miracles].

These pre-conditions which God made with all aspects of the creation facilitate the miraculous phenomena which occur throughout the Torah. By depicting them as having been created “bein hashemashot” – in the twilight zone between the week of creation and Shabbat, the sages may have been implying that these exceptional miracles are set aside from the regular predictable natural rules, but still belong within the broader creation process.

From Miracles to Providence

Rambam’s standard approach to providence focuses on an individual, who has developed his or her relationship with God, thereby being the recipient of flashes of divinely-assisted insights and intuition. This approach thereby avoids any interference with God’s natural order. Does Rambam’s theory of miracles present an additional dimension through which his understanding of Providence can assessed?

As David Hartman has noted, once it has been proposed that God built miracles into the natural world from its origin, it makes no difference, from a strictly logical perspective, whether one admits to one or a thousand such miracles. This allows us to speculate more broadly as to which of the many manifestations of providence which appear in the Torah can be explained in this manner.

One possible example of ongoing miraculous providence, that Rambam appears to actively endorse, is the national covenant of blessings and curses in which God promises the Jewish people rewards and punishment such as abundance or scarcity of rainfall. The level of rainfall and other such promises which feature in the Torah are not easily explained through Rambam’s standard providential theory of intellectual inspiration or intuition. Perhaps we can suggest therefore that they too are contained within this category of ‘miracles built into nature’ at Creation. Such a suggestion can draw support from the closing stages of Rambam’s Iggeret Techiyat Hameitim where he writes: “…we believe that the blessings which come from obedience [to God] and the maledictions from disobedience, for this nation, become a sign and a wonder”.

Can this theory be stretched even further? The discussion thus far has focused primarily on miracles on a national scale – the providential relationship based upon God’s covenant with the Jewish people. There is an indication from the closing chapters of Moreh Nevuchim that this concept of inbuilt miracles, based on God’s infinite and timeless knowledge, can also apply to the manipulation of the laws of nature on behalf of exceptional individuals. Commenting on Tehillim (91:7-8), Rambam describes the righteous person who has developed a connection with God:

If you happen to pass through a battlefield of drawn swords, you will go on your way with thousands being killed at your left hand and myriads at your right hand, no harm will be inflicted upon you … as it says: “A thousand will fall from your side, ten thousand at your right, but (the evil) will not befall you”…This person’s great providential protection is “Because he has set his exclusive love upon me, therefore I shall rescue him, for he knows My Name.” We have already explained that ‘knowing God’s name’ refers to perceiving Him. The Psalm is therefore saying: that this individual is protected because he perceives and passionately loves Me.

The sort of divine assistance being described in this passage, which depicts a person being rescued from a raging battlefield, is not easily attributed to Rambam’s standard approach to providence of heightened intellectual awareness and inspired knowledge. Might it be taken to imply that, in certain situations, God may have built miracles into Creation in order to “manipulate” laws of nature even on behalf of individuals.

This discussion leaves us with several questions:

1. Modern scientific theories of Quantum mechanics understand there to be inbuilt randomness within certain aspects of atomic behaviour. Does this modern scientific knowledge make it easier to accept (or perhaps develop) Rambam’s theory of inbuilt yet undetected providence within the laws of nature?

2. If it is indeed correct to apply Rambam’s theory of miracles more broadly so as to include possibilities of individual providence, would this necessarily be limited to exceptional people (who Rambam is describing in that passage) or could regular people also be beneficiaries of some degree of miraculous input?

3. Some scholars interpret Rambam’s comments concerning the worthy individual being rescued from a raging battlefield to mean that the person will no longer be concerned about his fate, rather than miraculously rescued. While this may be easier to reconcile with other statements of Rambam elsewhere, is this really a satisfactory reading of his words?

First posted on Facebook 30 September 2021, here.

Where on Earth is God?

Yesterday’s Torah reading introduces us to a concept which is theologically challenging yet fundamental to our faith: that God can “dwell in our midst”. While the notion of God dwelling in a nation’s midst would seem to be conferring some sort of benefit on them, its precise meaning is complex and elusive. As the wise King Shlomo succinctly summarised during his dedication of the first Beit Hamikdash:

"Can God really dwell on earth? ... the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You, and surely not this Temple that I have built!" [Melachim I 8:27] 

The answer is indicated both in the continuation of Shlomo's speech (“But may you turn to the prayer … that Your servant shall pray towards this place”) and by God's subsequent response. God's 'residing' in a particular location represents, metaphorically, the notion that people’s prayers will be answered there, thereby making His existence more tangible to them.The Maharal (G.A. Bereishit 6:6) restates the problem before elegantly expanding upon this theme, explaining that God indeed 'fills the Earth' and cannot be confined to a specific place. One who claims, however, that all places are therefore equal to worship Him is attacking a core tenet of the Torah: the principle that God designates as 'holy' certain places in which He enables people to relate to Him more easily. Maharal’s statement highlights the tension that prevails between our awareness of God's infinity on the one hand, and the Torah's assertions that our ability to experience and relate to Him fluctuates in accordance with the limiting physical variables of time and place. 

In an almost “Maimonidean”-type manoeuvre, the Maharal clarifies that God’s dwelling in our midst does not imply any change in God – rather the “intervening screen” which typically diminishes our ability to perceive Him which is partially removed. This process, which is referred to biblically in terms of a relationship between God and His nation, evolves in Midrashic and Tannaitic Hebrew into a noun: “Shechinah” which is taken to denote God’s Presence in a particular place. 

Rambam’s presentation of this concept in the first section of Moreh Nevuchim focuses on the heightened providential opportunities that such a “divine dwelling” affords. One manifestation of this is the differential between the Land of Israel which “God’s eyes are always upon” [Devarim 11:12] and the rest of the world. Our analysis may help to clarify a perplexing statement of the Gemara that "anyone who lives outside the Land of Israel is considered not to have a God". Derashot HaRan (4) explains that a person who lives outside Israel distances himself from God's direct providence. In doing so, he forfeits the benefit of the special hashgachah-based relationship with God that only living in Israel can convey. Relatively speaking, therefore, such a person can be considered “not to have a God.” 

It is an important principle of Judaism that the opportunity to do good breeds a commensurate negative potential to do evil, and this principle manifests itself clearly in the 'residing' of the shechinah. While an increased concentration of hashgachah affords people an opportunity to enhance their perception and relationship with God, it is accompanied by the commensurate threat of a more direct and drastic response to any wrongdoing. This idea is used by Rabbeinu Nissim (Ran) in connection with God's sending an angel to oversee the Jewish People's journey to the Land of Israel in place of His personal direct Providence, which had governed the Jews’ progress until the sin of the Golden Calf.

The Netziv (Bemidbar 11:1), provides further examples of this principle, contrasting the immediacy of the punishment suffered by the 'mitonenim' (complainers) in the desert when compared to the relatively distant threatened punishments which would be visited upon the nation in the event of them sinning described in the book of Devarim. The Netziv deduces that this is due to a differential in the concentration of shechinah and hashgachah between that which existed in the desert at the time of the mitonenim, (whose complaints were "in the ears of God"), and the ‘regular’ hashgachah which would be present once the Jews had entered the land. 

Varying concentrations of shechinah or hashgachahmay also help us to explain the severe punishment meted out to Nadav and Avihu for bringing “strange fire” before God. The verse emphasises that their sin was committed “before God”, which indicates the presence of a heightened degree of the shechinah and an increased level of hashgachah. For this reason, the divine decree against them was both immediate and severe. Perhaps this is the real significance of the words "bikrovai ekadesh" (“among those close to Me will I be sanctified”): that God will be sanctified by the evidence of hashgachah among those closest to Him. This can be contrasted with the punishment received by King Uzziah in the late first Mikdash period for the same sin — the bringing of an unauthorised ketoret offering. Uzziah received punishment through the affliction of tzaraat, not death, because there was a reduced level of hashgachah after the inauguration of the Mishkan.

There is a tradition that "veshachanti betocham" refers not only to the shechinah residing in the Mishkan, but also alludes to each individual's mission to develop himself into a Mikdash within which the shechinah can reside. This teaching can be viewed consistently with Rambam's principle that the level of Providence that a person is capable of receiving is directly dependent on the extent to which he has developed his character and intellect. 

In Rambam’s understanding, as a person becomes more righteous, he gradually minimises the extent to which he is governed by forces of nature; through this process he becomes subject instead to God's direct hashgachah, which guides and facilitates his continued development. However, just as the direct hashgachah on a national level causes the nation to be judged more severely should they sin, so too an individual upon whom the shechinah resides is judged "kechut hasa'arah", causing him to be judged severely even for more minor infractions.

This reciprocal relationship between God and humanity is pointed out by Rambam in the closing stages of his Moreh Nevuchim where he writes that

“…the intellect that overflows towards us and is the bond between us and Him, may He be exalted. Just as we apprehend Him by means of that light which He caused to overflow towards us – as it says “In Your light do we see light” (Tehillim 36:10) – so does He, by means of that same light examine us; and because of it He, may He be exalted, is constantly with us, examining us from on high”. [3:52]

See more at www.TalmudReclaimed.com.

First posted on Facebook 18 February 2024, here.