Some of the most enjoyable and memorable parashah stories of my early school years told of the young Avram discovering God, challenging pagan authority, smashing idols and being thrown into a fiery furnace by King Nimrod -- but being saved by miraculous intervention. Imagine my shock and disappointment when I grew up to discover that these thrilling episodes did not actually feature in the Chumash. Why would such a narrative, seemingly so central to the Jewish People's formation and purpose, not be included in the Torah?
Judaism Reclaimed examines two approaches to this question. The first cites Rabbi Ari Kahn’s excellent Explorations [an early inspiration in my Torah studies, more recently expanded and re-released], which adopts the approach of R Yehudah HaLevi in his Kuzari.
The Kuzari explains that, while Avram had successfully speculated about the world around him in order to find God, his primary achievement lay in his willingness to set aside this rational reasoning in favour of obedience to God’s revealed (and sometimes inexplicable) commands.
The significance of Avram’s choice of obedience over reason is twofold. First, rational speculation can never achieve the certainty imparted by a genuine Divine revelation. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, revelation replaces the cold, abstract, conceptual “God of Aristotle” with the a more meaningful, experience-based relationship with the God of the Torah (Judaism Reclaimed suggests how Rambam might have responded to these arguments).
On this basis we can understand why the Torah would choose to start its account of Avram with a revealed command, leaving Avraham’s prior intellectual accomplishments to be recounted by Midrashim.
[Rambam clearly considers these Midrashic accounts to be conveying accurate historical information, based on his presentation of them at the start of Hilchot Avodah Zarah and Moreh Nevuchim. A later chapter investigates the different theological approaches to interpreting various forms of Aggadah and Midrash].
In attempting to propose an answer to this difficulty, Judaism Reclaimed argues that Rambam understood the Torah to contain a two-tier system. While the Torah’s ultimate goal is unquestionably intellectual excellence and the connection to God that this creates, Rambam recognises that such a pursuit, when taken by itself, is of practical relevance only to those endowed with exceptional intelligence and adequate resources. Concerning the vast majority of people, he writes:
“if we never in any way acquired an opinion through following traditional authority…this would lead to most people dying without having known whether there is a deity for the world … much less whether a proposition should be affirmed with regard to Him …” [Moreh 1:34]
The Torah’s role, according to Rambam, is therefore to guide the vast majority of people – not just the elite upper echelons – on their journey from religious-intellectual error and immaturity towards a more correct grasp of divine matters. This is strikingly consistent with Rambam’s approach to anthropomorphism and with the reasons he offers for mitzvot – all of which are intended to make Judaism a religion of the many, not the few as Judaism Reclaimed explores in further chapters.
Ultimately Judaism Reclaimed recognises that the Torah requires humans to develop a relationship with God based on both their intellectual dimension and their spiritual-experiential faculties. This point is made in the introduction to the book (viewable here) which cites an interpretation of Bereishit Rabbah made by Rabbi Mordechai Schwadron.
Rav Schwadron begins by quoting the Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 39:8) which explores a comparison of Israel with a dove. There we are taught that while all other birds rest on a rock or tree when they tire, when a dove is tired, it pushes itself with one of its wings, and flies with the other.
Based on this, Rav Schwadron explains that each wing represents a different way that we connect with God. The first, which we may call the philosophical approach, emerges from our own intellectual endeavours to comprehend and connect with the awesomeness of God, while the second - which is a more emotional and spiritual connection - is stimulated by religious and spiritual moments that God sends our way to uplift and inspire us.
By developing these complementary aspects of religious endeavor, a person who runs into difficulty with one approach can fall back and rely upon the other (just like when either wing is “tired”, the dove can “fly” with the other). Both intellectual and spiritual-experiential approaches are thus of crucial relevance in every individual’s religious quest, even though the extent to which each of these two approaches is drawn upon will necessarily vary from person to person.
First posted on Facebook 23 October 2023, here.
