Can matters of belief be subject to halachic resolution?

As diligent Daf Yomi dedicants drive on through the final chapter of Sanhedrin, they become increasingly exposed to theological and aggadic material which, while often fascinating, appears to have little impact on practical halacha.

It is on one of these discussions that Rambam relates a fundamental principle. In the third Mishnah of Chelek, sages dispute as to whether various sinful generations forfeited their share in the World to Come. While Rambam typically concludes his Mishnah’s commentary with a halachic ruling, here he teaches that, since this dispute has no practical ramification, it is not subject to the regular process of halachic determination.

Judaism Reclaimed shows how similar comments of Rambam can be found elsewhere concerning other disputes as to the methods and processes of the Heavenly Court.

Some writers, such as Marc Shapiro in The Limits of Orthodox Theology, have argued that this principle extends to any discussion over theology and heresy. The implications being that there can be no definitive red lines drawn to determine what is considered a heretical statement or belief. Judaism Reclaimed brings opposing arguments from the writings of Rabbi Gil Student – also endorsed later by Rabbi Joshua Berman in Ani Ma’amin – that determining the parameters of heresy indeed has practical halachic ramifications, albeit indirect. There are a numbers of laws concerning heretics which require and presuppose the existence of such a determination: for example a heretic cannot lead a prayer service and his ritual slaughter – and a Torah scroll he pens – is invalid.

A more careful reading of Rambam’s comments on the subject shows that he only writes this comment concerning disputes that relate exclusively to the operation of the Heavenly Court. The current Daf Yomi pages of study provide a strong support for this assertion.

After all, the opening Mishnah of Chelek details a series of heretical beliefs – some of which are disputed among the sages. Yet the Rambam does not state his principle here. Instead he waits until the third Mishnah of the chapter which contains disputes over worthy and condemned generations in order to tell us that disputes over the functioning of the Heavenly Court are not subject to halachic determination.

The tenth chapter of Talmud Reclaimed goes further to explore the ramifications of such a principle – how laws of heresy might be determined. To what extent these can be disputed and whether such required beliefs can change in the course of different generations.

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Rambam and belief in Techiyat HaMetim

Belief in the doctrine of revivification of the dead, normally associated with a future Messianic era, is declared by an undisputed Mishnah in this week’s Daf Yomi study to be a fundamental belief of Judaism and a pre-requisite to entry to Olam Haba. This position is adopted by Rambam in his halachic works, Hilchot Teshuvah and the 13 Principles of Faith at the end of his Introduction to Chelek.

In the worldview of Ramban, techiyat hametim is the highest level of posthumous reward, and is facilitated by the soul being reunited with the body. Accordingly, one can understand why such emphasis is placed on belief in techiyat hametim.

Such an approach, which suggests a role for the body in the ‘world of the souls’, is absolute anathema however to Rambam, for whom the body does not and cannot feature in any aspect of Olam Haba. For Rambam the physical body is a barrier which prevents the mind from fully grasping divine matters during a person's lifetime. The reward of Olam Haba is experienced by the soul when it achieves a purer perception of reality after death, a level of understanding which can be reached precisely because the soul is no longer restrained by its previous physical associations.

Techiyat hametim, Rambam explains in his introduction to Chelek, is not a reward in the sense in which Ramban understands it. Rather, it is a temporary return of the soul from its place of pleasure in Olam Haba to the physical body from which it had departed. But what is the utility of this techiyat hametim for Rambam, and how can we explain the importance he attributes to it, listing techiyat hametim among his 13 Principles of Faith?

One possible answer is that, since the ultimate reward of Olam Haba is limited by the extent of the connection that a person is able to forge with God during his lifetime, the opportunity to return temporarily from Olam Haba in order to enhance this connection is a considerable benefit. The extent to which the soul can comprehend divine truths in Olam Haba is determined by how much it was developed, both in terms of intellect and character traits, during the lifetime of the body which that soul inhabits. Techiyat hametim, in the sense of a temporary reunification of soul and body, will occur in the times of Mashiach when persistent worldly distractions will be replaced by a 'tidal wave' of knowledge of God. With this heightened awareness of God, conditions will be ideal for the soul to achieve its perfection, and a clear perception of Divine truths will be accessible to all. In this elevated state of perception, "Your sons and daughters will prophesy".

This way of explaining Rambam finds support in the Sefer Ha’ikkarim of R’ Yosef Albo (4:30):

“… Rambam concludes that the primary divine reward for mankind relates to the soul and not the body, and therefore it appears to him that the primary function of techiyah is not to furnish reward to the body, but rather so that the person can acquire a greater degree of perfection than he was able to achieve originally [in his initial life] when he was inhibited by external preventative factors such as those arising from exile, poverty or others; the inhibitions did not arise from him making unsound choices or in any way from himself.”

On this basis we can suggest that a particular significance of techiyat hametim to Rambam’s thought, which may explain its inclusion among the core tenets of Jewish faith, is that, without it, God and His system of Olam Haba appear fundamentally unfair. If reward in the next world is determined solely by the extent to which a person has been able to develop and connect his soul to God during his lifetime, it is inevitably limited by that person’s life-span, material and intellectual assets and position in society.

Without techiyat hametim providing a further opportunity to connect with God even after death, it would appear that every individual’s personal allocation of Olam Haba is strongly influenced by good fortune, with those afforded greater opportunities and resources receiving an arbitrary advantage. A corollary of this would be the conclusion that God operates unjustly, discriminating against those whose life circumstances do not permit them to reach their potential. In this light, Rambam's techiyat hametim can be seen as crucial in allowing for the rectification of unavoidable deficiencies which would otherwise have prevented the soul from achieving the connection to God in Olam Haba of which it was worthy.

Rambam’s acceptance of the doctrine of techiyat hametim was a matter of great controversy during his lifetime; his earlier works only making brief mention of it in order to confirm its status as an essential tenet of faith. This lack of coverage, combined with Rambam’s strong insistence on a purely metaphysical Olam Haba, led some to question whether he genuinely subscribed to the traditional view of the soul returning to the body. The issue gained particular prominence because it represented a deeper question: how did Rambam resolve contradictions between the Torah's teachings and his general worldview which was based upon Aristotelian rationalism?

In response to the ongoing controversy, Rambam wrote his Iggeret Techiyat Hametim in which he forcefully condemned the 'slanderous allegations' against him. Explaining why he had previously written so little on the subject of techiyat hametim, Rambam describes it as a 'mofet' that defies the kind of rational explanation which dominates his philosophical works.

Judaism Reclaimed’s treatment of this topic, which explores how the respective techiyah theories of Rambam and Ramban can be fitted into their broader worldviews, concludes with a comprehensive appraisal of claims made in various quarters that Rambam’s Iggeret concerning resurrection did not represent his true views on the subject. Whatever one concludes, the subject of techiyat hameitim remains pivotal to understanding the Maimonidean world view and how it contrasts to other systems of thought within Judaism.

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Judaism as a genuine religion?

Parashat Yitro contains God's historic revelation and communication of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. Much attention is focused, understandably, on the content and nature of this communication to the assembled masses. What is often overlooked however are the strict rules which governed the Jewish people's conduct both during this unique revelation and on the days leading up to it. Rabbi S. R. Hirsch analyses these laws and derives from them a series of crucial ideas concerning the relationship between the Torah which was being received and the nation which was to accept it.

The people were first instructed, three full days in advance, to prepare and purify themselves for the forthcoming divine revelation. Then, at the time of the law-giving, they were warned not to approach the mountain. Each of these rules was intended to emphasise the reality that the Torah was communicated to the Jews from an external superior source, and did not emanate from within them.

Rav Hirsch continues by describing how the fields of anthropology and sociology view religion, like arts and culture, as a mere projection of the social values of society. This approach treats religion as little more than a means by which we can understand the behaviour and beliefs of the social unit formed by its adherents. In this sense, Judaism stands apart and cannot be truly defined as a religion, since the Torah’s rigorous and demanding laws do not reflect the religious and moral status of the nation which first received them. God’s instructions to the Jewish people to purify themselves for several days in advance of receiving the Torah represent a principle of fundamental importance: that its recipients were not inherently worthy of hearing God's word. Additionally, the prohibition against drawing near the mountain during the Ten Commandments reinforces the distinction between the source of the communication and the people to whom it was addressed, thereby emphatically rejecting the notion that the Torah emanated from the people themselves.

The idea that the Jewish people were not initially suited to comply with the demanding standards of the Torah finds further expression in the aftermath of the shocking sin of the Golden Calf, which occurred so soon after the national revelation. As is clear from the conversation between God and Moshe which took place immediately after that sin was committed, the people were considered to be thoroughly unworthy of the recently-received Torah. God even suggests to Moshe that He annihilate the entire nation, replacing it with a new chosen people to be drawn from Moshe's own descendants. God’s proposal, though troubling, also imparts a constructive message: an eternal principle that the Torah contains timeless and unchanging truths.

Thus, when the people sinned en masse with the Golden Calf immediately after having received the strong prohibitions against idolatry, there was no suggestion that the Torah be watered down or altered to accommodate their human weaknesses. It was up to the Jewish people to prove themselves capable of living up to the standards required by the Torah: if they were unable to refine themselves, they could be replaced with a new nation comprised solely of Moshe’s descendants — a nation made up of people who could guard God’s eternal Law and live their lives in a way that embodied His immutable truths. That this first generation of Jews, when proven inadequate, faced the prospect of either having to change or be changed teaches a vital lesson for all generations: people cannot expect the Torah to accommodate and be manipulated to suit their personal preferences and sensibilities.

In summary, the deliberate distancing of the gathered nation from Mount Sinai can be seen as emphasising the gulf that existed between the capabilities of the nation leaving Egypt and the Torah’s lofty ideals. This conscious distancing demonstrated in purely physical terms the axiom that the Torah is not a mere expression of the Jewish people’s beliefs and thoughts of that era. The significance of this point is amplified by the fact that, when the Jewish people were subsequently tested by the episode of the Golden Calf, most of them immediately failed. This failure underscored their initial lack of suitability to be the nation of the Torah, a phenomenon which needed to be tackled by improving the suitability of the recipient nation, and not by tailoring the Torah’s immutable rules.

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Can God change His mind?

In a popular post last month, this group explored a suggestion (advanced by the Seforno and developed by Rabbi S. R. Hirsch) that God’s initially “universal” plan for the world was recalibrated and amended to seek out a single “Chosen Nation” which would receive and transmit His Torah. While that post addressed the issue from the perspective of Choseness, the very idea of God appearing to change His mind and resort to Plan B raises thorny theological problems.

Judaism Reclaimed highlights Rav Hirsch’s approach to tackling this difficulty. Focusing on a close grammatical reading of the relevant biblical phrase, he argues that none of these amendments represented a 'change of God's mind', but rather a tailoring of the divine plan in response to human conduct.

“And God regretted (vayinachem) that He had made man upon the earth, and He became grieved in His heart.” (Bereshit 6:6)

Crucially the Torah employs the active form of the verb "vayinachem" rather than the reflexive form of the verb "vayitnachem", which would have implied that God changed himself. This usage supports the idea that the element of change was caused by a factor — the exercise of human free will — that was inherently external to God rather than being intrinsic to His original plan.

The word vayinachem appears again in response to Israel’s repentance and Moshe’s prayer in the immediate aftermath of the Golden Calf:

“God reconsidered (vayinachem) the evil He had said He would do to His people.” (Shemot 32:14)

This can be seen in contrast to the word vayitnachem – which the Torah itself tells us cannot be applied to God:

“God is not a man that He should lie, nor is He a mortal that He should change His mind (veyitnecham).” (Bemidbar 23:19)

Interestingly, while Rav Hirsch in this instance steadfastly rejects the literal implication of the Torah’s text, he nevertheless makes it clear that he opposes the position advocated for by Rambam which seeks to reinterpret and explain any biblical terms which appear to impute physicality to God.

“Scholars have philosophised about these expressions [anthropomorphism], in order to keep us far from ascribing to God material features. This gives rise, however, to the danger that the Personality of God will become increasingly blurred and indistinct to our perception. Had that been the Torah’s intention it could easily have avoided such expressions … Belief in the Personality of God is more important than the speculations of those who reject the attribution of material features to God.”

Elsewhere Rav Hirsch explained further how: “the maturest mind of the philosopher knows no more about the essence of God than the simple mind of the child”.

As Judaism Reclaimed proceeds to analyse in a subsequent chapter, Rav Hirsch’s position comes very close to that of earlier rabbinic authorities who took biblical descriptions of God at face value. Marc Shapiro, in The Limits of Orthodox Theology, invests great effort to collect and present rabbinic statements which, taken superficially, reflect belief in a physical deity. While he sees medieval rabbinic commentator, Moshe Taku, as the “most significant" example of rabbinic corporealism, leading scholar of medival rabbinic mysticism, Joseph Dan begs to differ, writing that:

"He [R’ Taku] insists on the literal acceptance of the prophets' descriptions of their visions as well as the anthropomorphic references to God in talmudic-midrashic literature. He does not do so because of his belief in the literal veracity of these descriptions; he only insists that they represent the maximum that can be conveyed concerning God's essence and appearance, and that any further inquiry cannot lead to valid conclusions. God chose to reveal to us in the scriptures whatever is found in them: man should be satisfied with that, and ask no more questions. It is not that Rabbi Moses Taku believed in an anthropomorphic God; most probably, he did not.”

Having addressed claims of rabbinic belief in a physical deity, Judaism Reclaimed then proceeds to demonstrate, however, that none of this would be likely to impress Rambam, who states with equal force that any attempt to worship or connect “without knowledge” to God such as by attributing physical features to Him:

“does not in true reality mention or think about God. For that thing which is in his imagination and which he mentions is his mouth does not correspond to any being at all and has merely been invented by his imagination”. (Moreh Nevuchim 3:51)

Since, for Rambam, connection to God is an absolute reality and achieved primarily by means of the intellect, the quality and existence of such a connection is directly affected by the correctness of a person’s intellectual perception of God. He cannot accept, therefore, the notion that one should just accept the biblical text at face value. Instead biblical indications about the incorporeality of God combined with a powerful rabbinic tradition serve as signposts to scholars seeking to maximise their understanding of and relationship with God.

Find out more at www.TalmudReclaimed.com.

First posted on Facebook 10 November 2024. For comments and discussion, click here.

Chance or guided providence?

As I flitted through the reporting of Al Jazeera, BBC and the Tehran Times last week, one repeated theme I noticed in the anti-Israel media was the attempt to downplay the significance of Israel’s achievement in its “lucky” killing of Yihyeh Sinwar. But while it seems true that Sinwar’s demise did not involve the same degree of intelligence and planning as that of others such as Nasrallah, does it automatically follow that it should just be attributed to good luck?

On what will be a particularly poignant Simchat Torahin a few days’ time, we will read the final poetic portion of the Torah in which God is depicted as “rochev shamayim - Rider of the heavens”. This cryptic description is expounded by Rambam towards the end of the first section of Moreh Nevuchim, where he sees it as providing an important insight into the nature of the relationship between God and the physical world. Not only does “rochev” denote that God is separate from the world and not a force within it (a statement which powerfully rejects any notions of pantheism/panentheism), but it also indicates that God controls and moves the world just like a rider who “makes the beast of burden move and go where he wishes”.

This second aspect of “rochev” got me wondering if we could take the rider metaphor one step further. Some brief research on forums of horse-riding enthusiasts confirmed my suspicion that the way in which riders guide their horses can be extremely subtle – barely detectable to the casual observer:

“Someone recently asked me an interesting question: “Can my horse read my thoughts?” This person went on to describe the extraordinary bond he has with his Arabian horse, and his belief that the horse knows how he feels and where he wants to go without being cued. What appears to be a telepathic connection develops from experience and sensitivity and emerges when the horse and rider are working together in harmony with a common mind and purpose.”

What does this all mean for our understanding of hashgacha– the way in which God is perceived to manage and govern His world?

Judaism Reclaimed dedicates long chapters to an exploration of Rambam’s view of the subject. On the one hand, Rambam’s worldview sees God as having a constant will with which He established unchanging rules of nature. Certainly, those approaching Maimonidean thought from the academic perspective tend to downplay any possibility for miraculous or providential interference with the natural order. Rambam himself comments on a Mishnah in Avot:

“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.”

But does this tell the whole story?

As David Hartman pointed out in his Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest, once it has been stated that God used His knowledge of ‘future’ necessity in order to build 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.

The Moreh Nevuchim also contains several intriguing comments which suggest that Rambam’s position on providence may be more complex than is commonly thought. First, in 1:35, Rambam states that “the character of His governance … the ‘how’ of His providence are truly the secrets of the Torah”. Later, at the peak of the famous palace parable, Rambam describes the highest category of those who seek God – the prophets in the king’s inner chamber – as turning their intellects “to know His governance of them in whatever way is possible”.

In his Iggeret Techiyat HaMeitim, Rambam explicitly considers the historical fate of the Jewish nation to be providential:

“…we believe that the blessings which come from obedience [to God] and the suffering from disobedience, for this nation, become a sign and a wonder”.

Returning to our opening question, to what extent should Sinwar’s death – along with a number of other events from the past year – be attributed to good or bad fortune?

Drawing upon the Torah’s horse-riding metaphor, at times it may be impossible to detect any guidance or direction from the rider – yet when one examines the horse’s entire journey around the race track or obstacle course it will be abundantly clear that it could not have achieved what it did unaided.

So too at times with our national fate. It may be possible to explain away each isolated event via natural cause and effect. But, taking a step back to appreciate the broader – sometimes historical – perspective, the series of events that we have experienced over the past year(s) and indeed throughout Jewish history appear far too unusual to be attributed to natural phenomena alone.

I am reminded now of an Israeli spy series “Tehran” that I watched a couple of years ago. At the time I thought that the show was well written and put together – my only complaint was that the final episode in each season just seemed way too far-fetched. Too removed from reality. Today the show’s drama and unexpected twists and turns cannot even begin to compete with what we have been witnessing on the news cycles.

We continue to pray to the Rochev Shamayim for the protection and success of our soldiers and swift return of all our hostages as we await the final dramatic episodes of the festive season.

First posted on Facebook 20 October 2024. For comments and discussion, click here.

The House of the Resting Shechinah -- Human attempts to conceptualize God

The coming week’s parashah poses a thorny theological challenge – the notion of God ‘residing’ in a specific location within the physical world. In his dedication of the first Mikdash (Kings I, the wise king Shlomo was highly sensitive to this complexity, stating: 

 “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You; much less this temple that I have erected”. 

Nevertheless, Shlomo puts aside his apparently unsolved conundrum and states:

"That Your eyes may be open toward this house night and day, toward the place which You said, 'My Name will be there;' to listen to the prayer that Your servant will pray toward this place”.

It is possible that Shlomo’s petition embodies an approach neatly formulated in a far later era by Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, which recognises that God’s existence and essence lie well beyond human comprehension, and instead chooses to focus exclusively on the practicalities of the God-human relationship. R’ Hirsch was adamantly opposed to what he regarded as the over-philosophising of descriptions of God in the Torah, accusing its proponents of causing God’s Personality to become “increasingly blurred and indistinct to our perceptions”. Rather, 

“belief in the Personality of God is more important than the speculations of those who reject the attribution of material features to God”.

Professor Joseph Dan, a leading scholar in the subject of medieval Jewish thinkers, proposes a similar interpretation of anthropomorphic statements in the writings of the Rishonim – most striking among them the Bohemian Rabbi, Moshe Taku. R’ Taku’s Ketav Tamim at first glance contains overwhelming evidence of Rabbinic belief in the notion that God has physical attributes, a fact not missed by Prof Marc Shapiro (The Limits of Orthodox Theology) who regards R Taku as the “most significant” example of Rabbinic corporealism. Prof Dan however, whose opinion is not mentioned in The Limits…, writes that:

He [R’ Taku] insists on the literal acceptance of the prophets' descriptions of their visions as well as the anthropomorphic references to God in talmudic-midrashic literature. He does not do so because of his belief in the literal veracity of these descriptions; he only insists that they represent the maximum that can be conveyed concerning God's essence and appearance, and that any further inquiry cannot lead to valid conclusions. God chose to reveal to us in the scriptures whatever is found in them: man should be satisfied with that, and ask no more questions. It is not that Rabbi Moses Taku believed in an anthropomorphic God; most probably, he did not.

Just as R’ Hirsch regarded human speculations as to God’s essence as futile and distracting from the primary religious endeavour since “the maturest mind of the philosopher knows no more about the essence of God than the simple mind of a child”, R’ Taku is similarly dismissive of attempts to place God within what he perceives to be a restrictive rational framework: “they are issuing decrees to the Creator as to how He must be. By doing so they are degrading themselves”. (Some fascinating debate surrounding the proper interpretation of R’ Taku’s work has been taking place in the comments section to this recent blogpost of R’ Slifkin relation to a chapter of Judaism Reclaimed).

Rambam, however, who studied in a philosophical setting more confident in its ability to discern “absolute truths”, is more prepared to embrace the fruit of rational human contemplation even concerning God (he crucially identifies the human intellect with the “image of God” of Bereishit). While he strongly asserts that the human intellect and language cannot make any positive pronouncements in this area, he does allow and even require us to declare what God is NOT. In a similar vein, he is sufficiently confident in the binding nature of his rational conclusions to declare that God’s inability to perform the impossible or take on what we perceive to be limiting physical attributes “signifies neither inability nor deficiency of power on His part”. Rambam’s confidence in human rationality leads him to the philosophising of anthropomorphic passages in the Torah which dominates the opening section of Moreh Nevuchim. Others such as R’ Taku and R’ Hirsch appear to have been more convinced of the limitations of human speculation regarding the divine. Their interpretation of anthropomorphic texts was therefore limited to the practicalities of the religious message they sought to convey.

First posted to Facebook 22 February 2020, here.