Maimonidean mysticism as a love song

“Cold”. “Elitist”. “Rationalist”. “Aristotelian”.

These are the sorts of words which are customarily associated with the Jewish philosophy of Rambam. In recent years, the popular trend in Jewish thought has portrayed a gaping gulf between Mysticism and Rationalism – with Rambam typically placed firmly in the rationalist corner.

As I have posted on a couple of occasions however (links at the end), a strong mystical theme is detectable in much of Rambam’s writings. While it is true that Maimonidean thought firmly rejected magical rites and superstitions as well as the notion that divinity could enter the physical domain, much of the Moreh Nevuchim seeks to guide its readers to train their “tzelem Elokim” mind so as to be able to transcend the limitations that the physical world places upon it. By doing so, it enables itself to receive flashes of intuition and profound knowledge which form the basis of a providential relationship with God.

A newly-released book, The Mysticism of Andalusia, by Rabbi Yamin Levy, explores this dimension of Rambam’s thought in great depth – also showing how it contrasts with the mysticism of Kabbalah. The opening chapter of this book presents Judaism as embracing the seemingly contradictory notions of a God who is both unknowable and indescribable on the one hand, while being personal and reachable on the other. A biblical prohibition of idolatry emphasizes the “otherness” of a God who cannot be represented in any form or image – yet God is also depicted throughout Tanach as being acutely concerned and involved with human affairs. At the foot of Mount Sinai, as the Jewish people prepared themselves to receive the Torah directly from God, barriers were placed around the mountain so that the people would maintain their distance.

Rabbi Levy proceeds to draw upon the powerful poetry of Shir HaShirim, a book that many of us read yesterday, in order to illustrate how Maimonidean thought approaches the subject of mysticism. Shir HaShirim, in Rambam’s telling, describes the complex nature of this relationship between God and humanity, portraying it in the form of two lovers who are seized by a holy passion for one another.

The following is paraphrased from Rabbi Levy’s opening chapter:

From the moment the scroll of Shir HaShirim opens the lover becomes increasingly bold and brave in her attempts to consummate her relationship with her heart’s desire. She craves him, she pursues him to the hills and through the valleys in order to find the one whom her soul loves. The lover, however, is in no rush to respond. He hides behind the walls, looks through the window and peers through the lattice but does not reveal himself to her. When she asks about his whereabouts, he responds by advising that she go and search for him.

The passionate lover is bursting with emotion. She does not hesitate and leaps forward in a torrent of stormy love. Her love is not gradual – it is a rush that ascends along a path of holy passion through the burning sun (1:7) and late at night (3:2). And while her lover tries to calm her down and allow their love to deepen gradually her unmitigated passion and impulsive pursuit exhausts her to the point that when the great and long-awaited moment for their union finally arrives, she is unable to open the door of her chambers (5:1-6). When she finally does her beloved is gone.

After recognizing her mistake, she passionately resumes her pursuit. The beloved, we are informed has sixty men surrounding his chamber so that the lover is not able to storm his room, espousing a love that is carefully nurtured and disciplined. He has earlier asked her to be like “a stallion of the chariots of Pharaoh” (1:9). While the horse is one of the bible’s most striking images of unrestrained energy (Iyov 39:19-25) here he invokes a horse that is hitched to a chariot. The same horse that has enormous energy in this image must harness that energy for the sake of the chariot and channel it to afford his charioteer the maximum strength. The disciplined powerful horse is the symbol of harnessed and restrained energy ready to burst forward in a disciplined manner at the appropriate moment. The lover must learn to integrate her heart and her head – her emotions and her actions.

The story of the lover and the beloved in Shir HaShirim ends in a calm and soothing place:

“Come my beloved, let us go forth into the field, let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards, let us see if the vine has flowered, if the grape blossoms have opened, if the pomegranates are in flower; there will I give you my love. The mandrakes give fragrance and at our gates are all manner of choice fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for you, O my beloved.”

The contrast between these verses at the end of the book and the tension of the pursuit at the beginning of the story are striking. At this later stage in the relationship the lover and beloved have found a place of love and harmony where the lovers merge as one; a mature and serene love has replaced the unrestrained passions of youth.

Rambam concludes Hilchot Teshuvah with a description of the sort of love for God that a person should aspire to:

“What is the proper love of God? That a person should love God with a very great and exceeding love until his soul is bound up in the love of God. In this way, he will always be obsessed with this love as if he is lovesick”.

The entire Shir HaShirim, notes Rambam, is a parable describing this love. Yet this is not an overwhelming emotional frenzy. Rambam proceeds to explain that love for God is by means of the “knowledge through which we know Him”.

The Andalusian mystical tradition, according to Rabbi Levy, teaches that God is absolutely separate from, and not dependent upon His creation and yet the possibility of an intimate relationship with God is real. The crucial message which emerges from Shir HaShirim, however, is that our pursuit of a relationship with God must be patient and mature. Built upon carefully thought out knowledge and serene meditations rather than fueled by passionate emotional impulse.

From the sections that I have read so far, Rabbi Levy’s book is an excellent introduction to this world of Maimonidean mysticism.

https://www.amazon.com/Mysticism.../dp/B0BXNK5DF6....

Previous posts on the subject of Maimonidean mysticism.

https://www.facebook.com/.../permalink/2945031085726048/

https://www.facebook.com/.../permalink/3204453023117185/

First posted to Facebook 9 April 2023, here

Can one unify the God of monotheism?

A long-standing irony of the daily Sefirah count is the L’Shem Yichud prayer which many communities recite prior to counting. This prayer specifies that, through the performance of a positive biblical commandment, The Holy One, Blessed be He is being “unified”. This is somewhat puzzling. Pretty much the only legal authority who considers counting the Omer to be a biblical commandment nowadays is Rambam. Yet it is hard to imagine Rambam embracing the notion of a God who requires unification. He wrote in his opening chapter of Mishneh Torah:

“This God is one. He is not two or more, but one, unified in a manner which [surpasses] any unity that is found in the world; i.e., He is not one in the manner of a general category which includes many individual entities, nor one in the way that the body is divided into different portions and dimensions. Rather, He is unified, and there exists no unity similar to His in this world.

If there were many gods, they would have body and form, because like entities are separated from each other only through the circumstances associated with body and form.

Were the Creator to have body and form, He would have limitation and definition, because it is impossible for a body not to be limited. And any entity which itself is limited and defined [possesses] only limited and defined power.”

Such a principle was not an invention of Rambam – it was expressed even more powerfully approximately a century earlier in the Chovot HaLevavot, which considered God’s absolute unity to be a foundational pillar of monotheistic faith – a pillar which distinguishes it from polytheism.

This is not to suggest, of course, that all of those who recite the L’Shem Yichud prayer would be thought of by Rambam as polytheists. Judaism Reclaimed, which devotes several chapters to this complex matter, notes how the system and texts of Kabbalah are, in Gershom Scholem’s words, “symbols” and “images of a spiritual mode of existence…the Divine Being Himself cannot be expressed”. Several prominent kabbalistic works take great pains to point out, for example, that

“… there can be no change in God and no division within Him which would justify the assertion that He is divided into parts in these ten Sefirot, for change and division is not to be found within Him … It can be compared to water which is divided into different variously coloured [translucent] vessels… the water, despite its natural lack of colour, will appear to bear the colour of the various vessels in which it is contained … [This change in appearance] is solely from the external perspective of the one viewing the vessels, not within the water itself. So too is the matter of the Sefirot … There is no change in the spreading Essence [ie God] except for in the view of the beholder …” [R. Moshe Cordovero, Pardes Rimonim 4:4]

But why is it that Rambam and Chovot Halevavot regard implications of division and form regarding God with so much more severity than their kabbalistic counterparts?

A key difference between Rambam and the Kabbalists in this regard appears to be that Rambam presents a binary system of absolute physicality and spirituality. There is no middle ground.

For Rambam and his binary system of physicality and meta-physicality, therefore, the concepts of substance, form, division and unity relate specifically to the limited physical realm. To apply such terms to God therefore would be to subject Him to the limitations of time, space, decay and all other laws of nature to which physicality necessarily submits. As quoted above from the chapter of Mishneh Torah:

"If the Creator were a physical body, He would have bounds and limits, for it is impossible for a physical body to be without limits".

Such a position is not consistent with monotheistic religion, which is premised on the principle that God acts freely and independently, transcending all the limitations that hold sway in the physical domain.

Within the kabbalistic system however, an incorrect belief in God’s physicality or disunity does not necessarily imply a limitation of His power. In contrast to the stark binary system of Rambam, in which all of existence falls neatly into either the physical or spiritual realm, Kabbalists introduce a complex and interconnected range of quasi-physical existence which occupies the vast middle ground separating absolute physicality from pure spirituality. Judaism Reclaimed shows how this distinction between Rambam and Kabbalists can be detected in their disputes over concepts such as angels, the nature of the soul, and afterlife punishment in Gehinnom. While for Rambam therefore, the use of terms which imply form, division and unity to God are tantamount to an assertion of His limited and fully-physical status, such a deduction is considerably less straightforward from the perspective of the Kabbalist.

Rambam goes further, considering that the God of Tanach is one who cannot be contained in human thought or terms – as King Solomon declared: “The heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You, and surely not this Temple that I have built!". Any relationship with this God must be premised upon this foundational principle. Conceptualising God in physical terms, even if one recognises that His true Essence lies beyond them – is at best misleading and unhelpful. It does not truly relate to God in any way.

And what of those who follow the simple meaning of these kabbalistic prayers – unaware of the warnings of kabbalistic masters as to their symbolic meanings – and consider their actions and prayers to be somehow unifying disparate elements of God?

One fascinating teaching on this subject can be found in the writings of the Chazon Ish, who suggested that deeming such people to be heretics “applies specifically to one who has not analysed the matter or is of limited intelligence”. Nevertheless, “one who understands that all that we have received in our tradition concerning the true Creator cannot co-exist with physicality…he is a “min” for he is denying the core belief”. A stricter interpretation of Rambam’s position regarding accidental heretics is attributed, however, to Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, who is reported to have declared that even “an unfortunate heretic is nevertheless a heretic”.

Fiery words indeed!

First posted on Facebook 8 May 2023, herehere.