Honoring the divine as virtue and practice in maimonides

Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy

Volumn 16, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 195-251

  Seeman, Don ^a  

^a EMORY UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 69949177181     PISSN: 1053699X     EISSN: 1477285X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/105369908786611523     Document Type: Article

References (297)

1. Proverbs 25:2. This verse is cited by R. Bahya ben Asher as an effective epigraph to his long and unattributed citation of Maimonides' views on divine kaood. "The honor [kavod] of God is to conceal a matter" refers to the knowledge of God's true essence according to the view cited by R. Bahya, while "the honor of kings" refers to the knowledge of God through attributes of divine action. See R. Bahya ben Asher, Bi'ur 'al ha-Torah to Exodus 33:13, ed. R. Hayyim Dov Chavel (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1994), vol.2, 341-343
2. 'Avodat ha-Kokhavim 1:1.
3. I have relied with some changes upon the translation of Isidore Twersky, A Maimonides Reader (New York: Behrman, 1972), 71-72. I have, for example, translated kavod as "honor" in every instance, in order to make the repetitive quality of the original Hebrew more apparent. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Hebrew in this article are my own. Notes on the original Arabic, where not otherwise credited, were made with the help of my able graduate student and research assistant Nathan Hofer, whose comments on this work at all stages have proven invaluable. Thanks also to research assistants Michael Ausubel and Daniel Goldstein, and to two anonymous reviewers at JJTP, for their insightful contributions.
4. On narrative and philosophical concerns in the Mishneh Torah, see Isadore Twersky, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 356-507;
5. Isadore Twersky idem. "Some Non-Halakhic Aspects of the Mishneh Torah," In ed. Isidore Twersky, Studies in Jewish Law and Philosophy (New York: Ktav Publishing, 1982), 52-75;
6. Warren Zev Harvey, "The Mishneh Torah as a Key to the Secrets of the Guide," In eds. Ezra Flesicher et al, Me'ah She'arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isidore Twersky (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001), 11-28.
7. This view should be contrasted with that of R. Menahem Schneersohn, whose view (influential in the contemporary non-academic world) is that every apparently narrative or philosophic passage in the Mishneh Torah bears only legal significance. See for instance Kelalei ha-Rambam (New York: Kehot Publications, 1991), 39-40.
8. R.Joseph Rosen of Dvinsk, Zafnat Pa'aneah (Jerusalem, 1979), 4a.
9. The Talmudic citation is from Qiddushin 43a, quoting II Samuel 11:11.
10. The Tosafists, however, dispute Rashi's reading, arguing that Uriah could only have been called a rebel on the basis of some real disobedience to the king. Rabbi Rosen's older contemporary, R. Naflali Zvi Yehudah Berlin, likewise argues (Hiddushei ha-Neziv mi-Volozhin, [Jerusalem, 1957]) that Uriah could not have been considered a "true rebel" in the Talmudic sense.
11. For a related reading, see Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry, trans. Naomi Goldblum (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 42-45. One nineteenth-century author who seems to have grasped Maimonides' rejection of analogy was R. Gershon Henokh of Radzin (1839-1891), who worked to explicate the meaning of divine kavod for religious praxis. R. Gershon Henokh was a mystic who wanted to rehabilitate the analogy between divine and human kings, but who recognized Maimonides' rejection of this approach and was forced to posit a distinction between our unredeemed world, in which such analogies are dangerous, and a future reality in which the manifest power of God would render it safe to honor God's servants without fear of idolatrous substitution.
12. See his marginal notes, or gilyonot, to his grandfather's Mei ha-Shiloah, vol.I parashat Vayikra (Bnei-Brak, 1995), 103.
13. Maimonides himself would surely have rejected this solution, inasmuch as he rejects the sharp distinction between redeemed and unredeemed history. Divine kavod was frequently understood by Hasidic writers as an expression of radical divine immanence, which put them in tension with Maimonides even when they used Maimonidean terminology and ideas. Writers who wrestle explicitly with Maimonides on this matter include R. Menahem Mendl Schneersohn (Zemah Zedek) of Lubavitch, Sefer ha-Haqirah, (New York: Kehot, 2003);
14. R. Zadok Ha-Cohen of Lublin, Sefer ha-Zikhronot,
15. and R. Gershon Henokh's already-mentioned Hakdamah le-Vet Ya'akov (BneiBrak, 1996), 17-29.
16. On the importance of Maimonides to these mystical thinkers, see Shaul Magid, Hasidism on the Margin (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003);
17. Alan Brill, Thinking God (New York: Ktav Press, 2000);
18. and Don Seeman, "Martyrdom, Emotion and the Work of Ritual in R. Mordecai Leiner of Izbica's Mei Ha-Shiloah," AJS Review 27:2 (2003): 253-280
19. Heqesh is Ibn Tibbon's translation of the Arabic qiyās. Saadyah and Ha-Levi both critique the Karaite interpretation of divine law without benefit of rabbinic tradition, but Ha-Levi extends this critique to other spheres in which the authority of revelation could also be said to be threatened, including the systematic innovation of Sufi-like pietistic practices that were designed to cultivate religious experience, as well as the philosophers' attempts to establish theological truths independent of Scripture. Al of these can be classified as qiyās or heqesh according to Ha-Levi because they utilize reason to supplant the traditional authority of divine revelation.
20. See Diana Lobel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy: Sufi Language of Religious Experience in Judah Ha-Levi's Kuzari (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 58-60, 66-87. Like Maimonides, Ha-Levi {Kuzari 4:3) identifies the origin of idolatry in misplaced logical proofs about God, but Ha-Levi seems to blame the reliance upon logical proofs per se, rather than the misleading analogies with created beings that are the focus of Maimonides' critique.
21. I believe that this passage may be one of the sources of an important twentieth century mystic's complaint that "the honor of heaven which is embodied tends toward idolatry and debases the dignity of human beings and all creatures."
22. See Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Middot ha-Ra'ayah (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1985), 81. Elsewhere, I have argued that Rabbi Kook's (1864-1935) understanding of divine honor is crucial to undoing the logic of violence inherent to certain strains of contemporary Jewish mysticism, and that the influence of Maimonides in this matter was profound.
23. See Seeman, "Violence, Ethics and Divine Honor in Modern Jewish Thought," 1028-1036. Rabbi Kook himself argues in his "special essay on Maimonides" that the latter helped to purify Jewish mystical thought by insisting on the radical critique of divine embodiment to which kabbalistic thinking is prone.
24. This essay has been re-published in Ma'amarei ha-Ra'ayah (Jerusalem, 1984), 105-133.
25. On the debasement of human dignity that follows from too corporeal a conception of God, see the continuation of Avodat ha-Kokhavim chapter 1, which describes the gradual enslavement of humanity by a priestly class who are empowered by faulty theology.
26. Tesodei ha-Torah 1:9.
27. Scholars have pointed to the fact that Maimonides' use of this Talmudic principle to combat anthropomorphism goes far beyond the Talmud's more modest application to certain kinds of linguistic-interpretive problems, like the apparently needless doubling of words. "The Torah speaks in human language" is, however, used in much the same way by Maimonides' predecessor, R. Bahya Ibn Paquda, Duties of the Heart 1:10.
28. R. Meir Simha Ha-Cohen of Dvinsk, in 'Or Sameah (Jerusalem, n.d.), 1, also cites the late midrash Pesikta Zutarta to parashat Va-Ethanan: "Who can speak of the prophets who said, 'I have seen God' (Isaiah 6:1), 'seek God while He may be found, call to him while He is near' (Isaiah 55:6). .. and a limitless number of similar verses? Yet the Torah speaks in human language, and so do the prophets following the Torah, the Writings following the prophets, and the sages after them, all in a single manner, whose understanding requires some intelligence."
29. Exodus 33:18.
30. Tesodei ha-Torah 1:10.
31. The narrative account of the request and dialogue could therefore be read as a literary device for something far more abstract. Hannah Kasher ("Maimonides' Interpretation of the Story of the Divine Revelation in the Cleft of the Rock" [Hebrew]. Daat 35 [1995], 49) points out that this was the reading of Efodi on Guide I: 21. "Do not think that Moses engaged in bargaining with Him, may He be blessed through this question ['Show my please Thy kavod!']. Rather [the meaning is] that he found with his intellect that this apperception [of the kavod] was inaccessible to him."
32. See Saadyah's Beliefs and Opinions 2:12;
33. Ibn Paquda's Duties of the Heart 1:3;
34. and Ha-Levi's Kuzari 2:7, and 4:3. In chapter 4:3, Ha-Levi writes: "'Glory of God' is that fine substance which follows the will of God, assuming any form God wishes to show the prophet. This is one view. According to another view the Glory of God means the whole of the angels and spiritual beings, as well as the throne, chariot, firmament, wheels, spheres and other imperishable beings. Al this is styled 'Glory,' just as a king's retinue is called his splendour. Perhaps this is what Moses desired, when he said, 'I beseech Thee, shew me Thy glory.'"
35. Translated by Hartwig Hirschfeld in Judah Halevi, The Kuzari: An Argument for the Faith of Israel ed. H. Slominsky (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), 211.
36. In general, Ha-Levi is much more comfortable than Maimonides with the use of corporeal imagery in Scripture, including the vision of divine kavod, because he believes (see chapter 4:4) that corporeal visions help to instill the fear of God in the human heart. Ha-Levi is an important counterpoint because, like Maimonides, he deploys kavod as a central organizing concept related to themes like the uniqueness of the land and people of Israel with regard to prophecy.
37. See Lobel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy, 116-20;
38. also R. Yehudah Moscato's sixteenth century commentary Qol Tehudah on the introduction to Part II of Kuzari, and the introduction to parts II and IV in the commentary of R. David Cohen, ha-Kuzari ha-Mevo'ar, ed. Dov Schwartz (Jerusalem: Nezer David, 2002).
39. Despite his distance from Maimonides on the meaning of the divine kavod, however, Ha-Levi is equally far from the kabbalistic view elaborated by Nahmanides and others (see below), as is already noted by R. Israel Ha-Levi in his sixteenth century commentary, Ozar Nehmad, at the end of Kuzari 4:3.
40. Maimonides' son, R. Abraham, feels obligated not just to note the distinction between his father's approach and that of his predecessors (i.e., Saadyah and others), but also to seek some middle position between the two. In his own commentary on Exodus 33, he writes: "Al that my father and master, peace be upon him, has mentioned with regard to these matters, is closer to high level investigation and to the comprehension of the student, but what others have written is closer to the language [of the biblical text] . . . There is no avoiding, in my opinion, some compromise . . . between the intention of my father and master and those enlightened scholars who preceded him, which is to say that there was some sense of sight or a vision like sight of the created light [in Exodus 33], by means of which Moses was guided or sought help in the intellectual apprehension of the greatness of the Creator."
41. See Perush Rabenu Avraham ben ha-Rambam 'al Bereishit u-Shemot, trans. Efraim Yehudah Weisenberg (Jerusalem: Keren Hoza'at Sifrei Rabanei Bavel, 1994 [1958]), 96.
42. See, however R. Abraham's commentary on Exodus 16 (p. 26), in which he seems to identify more closely with his father's teaching.
43. See The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew-English Lexicon (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1979), 458-59.
44. Kavod is derived from the root for heaviness or weight, and among its meanings in the biblical context are that of riches and material substance (as in Genesis 31:1), glory or splendor (as in Genesis 45:13), and honor or dignity of position (as in Numbers 24:11), all of which relate in different ways to the distinctiveness-gravitas, really-of a thing or person to which it is applied. Kavod can also signify the "seat of honor in the inner man, the noblest part of man" (as in Genesis 30:13), which may be comparable to the usage that Maimonides has in mind when he renders the divine kavod as God's "essence."
45. This reading of Tesodei ha-Torah 1:10 is also supported by a closely parallel passage in Maimonides' commentary on the Mishnah, in chapter seven of the Shemoneh Peraqim, which is devoted to the limitations of human (i.e., Moses') ability to know God. In Shemoneh Peraqim, Maimonides adds the words, "but when a person sees the back [of another], even though he recognizes him through this vision, sometimes he is in doubt and confuses him with others. . ." Based on R. Joseph Kafiqh trans, Mishnah 'im Perush ha-Rambam (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1989), vol. 2, 259-60. Hannah Kasher ("Maimonides, Interpretation of the Story of the Divine Revelation") notes some subtle differences between this source and the one in Tesodei ha-Torah, but she basically agrees that both are concerned with the problem of epistemology and human limitation. My only disagreement with Kasher is in the specific emphasis I bring to bear on the issue of divine incommensurability, which makes Maimonides' parable of the face much more appropriate to his philosophical message.
46. On the homologous meanings of "face," including divine incommensurability, see chapter I: 37 of the Guide: "But My face shall not be seen, meaning that the true reality of My existence as it veritably is cannot be grasped." Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 68. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Guide are from this edition. Italicized words in this translation indicate words used in Hebrew within Maimonides' original Judaeo-Arabic text. Maimonides' homologous reading of "face" may be contrasted with the approach of Nahmanides and many later kabbalists, who asserted that even though corporeal language in Scripture cannot be interpreted literally, there is nevertheless some kind of true analogy between human and divine attributes.
47. For numerous examples of this principle, see Elliot R. Wolfson, "By Way of Truth: Aspects of Nahmanides' Kabbalistic Hermeneutic," AJS Review 14:2 (1989): 102-178.
48. Yesodei ha-Torah 1:10,
49. citing Exodus 33:23.
50. Menachem Kellner's recent important study of the kavod in Maimonides' corpus neglects his strong insistence on divine incommensurability in this and some related passages. Kellner argues instead that Maimonides reads the quest for kavod in Exodus 33 as a search for positive knowledge of the divine essence-a view I will dispute below.
51. See Menachem Kellner, Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism (Oxford: The Littman Library, 2006), 179-215. It should be noted that in the Guide, Maimonides seems to identify the divine "back" not with incommensurability per se, but instead with the vision of divine "goodness" (God's providence in the working of the cosmos). However, this seems to me not so much a contradiction as a shift in emphasis at a different moment in the intellectual process-as I will explain.
52. Hannah Kasher ("Maimonides' Interpretation of the Story of Divine Revelation," 45-47) usefully raises some of these questions through different readings of Moses' engagement with the question of the divine kavod in Exodus 33.
53. Aso see Shlomo Pines, "The Limitations of Human Knowledge According to A-Farabi, ibn Bajja, and Maimonides," Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. I. Twersky (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), 82-109;
54. Herbert A. Davidson, "Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge" Maimonidean Studies, vol.3 (1992/1993): 49-103.
55. A very helpful discussion is to be found in Ehud Z. Benor, "Meaning and Reference in Maimonides' Negative Theology," The Harvard Theological Review 88 (1995): 339-360, where Benor proposes that "Maimonides found in negative theology a method of uniquely identifying the ground of all being," and thus "determining the reference of the name 'God,' without forming any conception of what God is" (347).
56. R. Nissim of Gerona, Derashot ha-Ran, ed. Aryeh L. Feldman (Jerusalem: Makhon Shalem, 1977), 55 (fourth derashah).
57. Even a sympathetic philosophical reader like R. Isaac Arama (1420-1494) assumes that Maimonides believes Moses' request to see the divine "face" was really a quest for knowledge of positive attributes, as opposed to the divine "back" through which the so-called negative attributes were ultimately revealed. However, this leads Arama, like R. Nissim and others, to wonder how Maimonides could think Moses would ask for such an impossible boon. The advantage of my reading is that it obviates this question by making Moses' request more philosophically plausible and also accounts better for Maimonides' parable of the desire to distinguish people by their faces, as used in both the Mishneh Torah and his commentary on the Mishnah.
58. See R. Isaac Arama, 'Aqedat Yizhaq, ed. Hayyim Yosef Pollock (Jerusalem, n.d.), vol.2, 198-201 {Sha'ar 54).
59. Hilkkot Teshuvah ("Laws of Penitence") 5:5,
60. citing Job 11:9.
61. Exodus 33:20.
62. Isaiah 55:8.
63. See the criticism by R. Abraham ben David of Posquières, Hasagot ha-Rabad, ad loc.
64. This problem is in a sense only intensified by those later kabbalists who, while they pointedly reject the strong form of anthropomorphism implied by divine corporeality, nevertheless insist upon the necessity of a real analogy between divine and human attributes, including human body parts. See Wolfson, "By Way of Truth." R. Menahem Recanati, for example, writes in his commentary on the Torah (76c) that although God is wholly incorporeal, Scriptural choices of language portraying God's hands or eyes "are an extremely inner matter concerning the truth of God's existence, since [these attributes] are the source and wellspring of the overflow that extends to all creatures, which does not mean that there is an essential comparison between Him, may He be blessed, and us with respect to form . . . It is like someone who writes 'Reuben the son of Jacob,' for these letters are not the form of Reuben the son of Jacob or his structure and essence but rather a recognition [zikhron] ... a sign of that existent and well-known structure known as Reuben the son of Jacob." This kind of analogous conception of the relationship between God and human bodies was by no means unique to R. Recanati, and it also bore strong implications for the kabbalistic understanding of Jewish ritual. "Since God, may He be exalted and blessed, wished to confer merit upon us, He created within the human body various hidden and wonderful limbs that are a likeness of a sign of the workings of the divine Chariot [ma'aseh merkavah], and if a person merits to purify a single one of his limbs, that limb will become like a throne to that supernal, inner limb that is known as 'eye,' 'hand,' and so forth." Despite all of Recanati's hedging and subtlety, it is clear that this view would have been anathema to Maimonides.
65. Twersky, Code, 227.
66. In 'Avodat ha-Kokhavim 3:6, Maimonides concludes his discussion of the prohibited forms of idolatrous worship by detailing a lesser prohibition of acts of honoring idols, all of which are acts that emphasize the sensuous corporeality of the material form: "Anyone who hugs an idol or kisses it, or cleans before it, or washes it, or anoints it or clothes it or causes it to wear shoes, or any similar act of kavod has violated a negative commandment, as it is written [Exodus 20:5] 'nor serve them.'" This is a close citation of Mishnah Sanhédrin 7:6, except that our printed Mishnah omits the concluding words ("or any similar act of kavod").
67. In his first gloss on the text of the Mishneh Torah (Yesodei ha-Torah 1:10), R. Abraham ben David of Posquières (Rabad) takes Maimonides to task for failing to recognize the "profound secrets" contained in the allusion to God's "face" and God's "back" in this biblical episode. Maimonides, he says, must not have known these secrets. R. Joseph Karo defends Maimonides without reacting in any way to his wholesale rejection of kabbalistic concepts, while R. Shem Tov Ibn Gaon (born in 1283) defends Maimonides in his Migdal 'Oz [ad loc.) by claiming that the latter repented later in life and became a kabbalist! It would seem that Maimonides' treatment of Exodus 33 in the Mishneh Torah struck a sensitive nerve.
68. While Rabad, incidentally, remains circumspect about the specific meaning of the "secrets" Maimonides neglected, these are specified at greater length in the sixteenth century by writers like R. Meir Ibn Gabbai, 'Avodat ha-Qodesh Part III: 30 (Jerusalem: 1992), 317-20,
69. and R. Issachar Eilenberg, Be'er Sheva, No.71.
70. See R. Saadyah Gaon, ha-Nivhar ba-Emunot uva-De'ot, trans. R. Joseph Kafiqh (Jerusalem: Makhon Moshe, 1993), 110-11 (Part II: 12).
71. Aso see Ozar ha-Geonim: Thesaurus of the Gaonic Responsa and Commentaries, ed. B. Lewin (Jerusalem, 1928), vol.1, 15-17.
72. For more on Saadyah's view and its later influence on Jewish thought, see Joseph Dan, The Esoteric Theology of Ashkenazi Hasidism [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1968), 104-168.
73. It is telling that the thirteenth century writer R. Avraham ben 'Ezriel, who was deeply influenced by R. Yehudah he-Hasid, cites Maimonides' formulation of divine non-corporeality from the first chapter of Tesodei ha-Torah at length in his liturgical compendium 'Arugat ha-Bosem, but stops short of Maimonides' interpretation of the divine kavod in that same chapter, which he simply omits in favor of Saadyah's view.
74. See R. Abraham b. R. 'Ezriel, Sefer 'Arugat ha-Bosem, ed. Efraim E. Urbach (Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1939), 198-199. Urbach also cites the opinion of R. Hananel (990-1050), later quoted by R. Yehudah he-Hasid (1150-1217), which is that the kavod constitutes an actual vision seen by the prophet as in Saadyah, but only "a vision of the heart" ('uvnata de-liba). In I: 21, Maimonides lists this as one of the acceptable readings of the events in Exodus 33, although he makes it clear that it is not his preferred reading.
75. Nahmanides already notes that since Ezekiel 3:12 portrays the angels as blessing God's kavod, any reading that treats the kavod as a created light would essentially be portraying the angels as idolaters! See his commentary on Genesis 46:1 in R. Moshe ben Nahman (Ramban), Perushei ha-Torah, ed. R. Hayyim Dov Chavel (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1976), vol.1, 250-251.
76. Nahmanides' critique was amplified in the sixteenth century by R. Ibn Gabbai, 'Avodat ha-Qodesh, part III: 30, 317-20. Athough he was a member of the Nahmanidean school, R. Yom Tov ibn Avraham Asevilli (Ritva) defended Maimonides convincingly in the fourteenth century by pointing out that kavod means different things to Maimonides in different Scriptural contexts.
77. See his Sefer ha-Zikaron (Jerusalem, 1956), chapter 4. Some of Nahmanides' fears may arguably have been realized among the Hasidei Ashkenaz of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, whose views were influenced by translated works of Saadyah and Ibn Ezra rather than Maimonides, and who sometimes portray the divine kavod as either a created entity towards which worship should be directed or as a permanent hypostatis, nearly coterminous with God.
78. See Dan, The Esoteric Theology of Ashkenazi Hasidism.
79. Aso see Avraham Epstein in A. M. Haberman, ed., Mi-Kadmoniyot ha-Yehudim: Kitvei Avraham Epstein (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1957), vol.II, 226-241,
80. who refers to the conception of kavod in at least one of these texts as "almost a second God." Daniel Abrams, "Sod Kol ha-Sodot: Tefisat ha-Kavod ve-Kavvanat ha-Tefilah be-Kitvei R. Eleazar me-Vermais" Daat: A Journal of Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah 34 (1995): 61-81, shows that R. Eleazar of Worms insists that worshippers should not have the created kavod in mind during prayer, even though they may direct their prayers towards the place where the kavod is visible. The philosophically minded R. Joseph Abo (Spain, 1380-1444) solves this problem in another way, by arguing that sometimes the biblical text says "kavod" when it really means God, and sometimes God (the tetragramaton) when it really means a created light or angel who represents God. Thus, every problematic Scriptural verse can be explained in the least problematic way possible depending upon context.
81. See section II: 28 of Sefer ha-'Iqqarim (Jerusalem: Horev, 1995), vol.I, 255-256
82. See Nahmanides, Perushei ha-Torah, vol.1, 621;
83. R. Bahya ben Asher, B'iur 'al ha-Torah, vol. 1, 347;
84. and R. Menahem Recanati, Levushei 'Or Yaqrut (Jerusalem: Zikhron Aharon, 2000), 194, whose wording may actually have been influenced by the Maimonidean formulation of divine incommensurability. It is ironic that the phrase "there is kavod above kavod" was apparently first coined by the author of the eleventh century Talmudic lexicon 'Arukh, in a paraphrasing of Saadyah's "created light" theory as it was developed in his commentary on Sefer Yezirah.
85. Joseph Dan [The Esoteric Theology of Ashkenazi Hasidism, 111-113] argues that Saadyah coined the idea of a "higher kavod" visible only to the angels in order to explain how Moses could have been denied the ability to see a species of created light that other prophets (like Isaiah and Ezekiel) were later granted. Saadyah's notion of two different levels of created light is left sufficiently ambiguous in the 'Arukh, however, for later interpreters to be able to connect it with the Neo-Platonist view of divine emanation popularized within Kabbalah. For Nahmanides and his followers, "kavod above kavod" refers not to two levels of created light as in Saadyah, but to two stages of divine emanation, Keter and Malkhut, the latter of which was otherwise known as Shekhinah; Moses wanted to see the former but was only granted a vision of the latter. R. Meir Ibn Gabbai subjected Maimonides and the whole "created light" school to a withering critique on this score in the sixteenth century.
86. In 'Avodat ha-Qodesh, part III, chapters 29-35 (vol. 2, 315-48), he argues that Moses sought a true, physical vision of God's ineffable unity with the divine attributes or sefirot, which is normally perceptible only to the mind's eye of a true prophet.
87. For a similar reading, see the late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century responsa of R. Issachar Eilenberg, Be'er Sheva', no.71.
88. Ehud Benor, Worship of the Heart: a Study in Maimonides' Philosophy of Religion (Abany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 47, also points out that in Maimonides' view, Moses must have been virtuous and philosophically accomplished prior to the revelation of Exodus 33-34.
89. I should note that Kenneth Seeskin raises some of the same conceptual issues I have raised here, but without the organizing focus on divine honor, in his Jewish Philosophy in a Secular Age (Abany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 31-70.
90. For R. Hai, see Avraham Shoshana ed., Newly Discovered Geonic Responsa (Notes by Simcha Emmanuel; Jerusalem: Ofeq Institute, 1995), 219-221 (resp. 155 [67]). As the editor notes, the opinion attributed in this letter to R. Hai is also identical with the commentary of R. Hananel on Berakhot 7a,
91. and is attributed to the latter by many later authors, including R. Yehudah of Barcelona, Perush Sefer Yezirah, ed. Shlomo Hayyim Halberstam (Berlin, 1885), 32-33, so that perhaps the attribution to R. Hai is in error. R. Hananel also reads the vision of "Pardes" sought by some rabbis in Hagigah 14a as a "vision of the heart" rather than of the eyes, which is significant because Maimonides may be following his lead in reading the story of the "four who entered Pardes" and the biblical account of Moses' request to see the divine kavod as essentially parallel sources. As with the "created light" theory, however, Maimonides mentions this view in the Guide 1:21 as a theologically acceptable but inferior interpretation. Maimonides' own view is that only abstract intellectual apprehension of speculative truth (but no "prophetic vision") was involved in either case.
92. See Nahmanides, Perushei ha-Torah to Genesis 18:1 (vol. 1, 103-7). The subject in this context involves a debate over what precisely Abraham saw when he was visited by three angels disguised as humans. Maimonides contends that this episode took place within a prophetic vision, to which Nahmanides retorts that it would strain credibility to believe that the whole cycle of events involving the visit of the angels, the destruction of Sodom and the salvation of Lot's family by those same angels all took place in a vision rather than external reality. He writes instead that "a special created glory [kavod nivra'] was in the angels," making them visible to the naked eye. Athough the language of "created glory" here seems like a nod to Maimonides, it is more likely that Nahmanides had in mind those Geonim who held that all of the prophetic visions in Scripture involved appearances of a "created light" or glory that takes on different forms.
93. (See the lengthy discussion of variations upon this theme by R. Yehudah of Barcelona, Perush Sefer Yezirah, 19-46). Athough he assimilates the Geonic teaching into his own kabbalistic ontology (he calls the created glory a "garment" in the kabbalistic sense), Nahmanides is strongly attracted to the Geonic insistence that the images of prophecy could really be seen with the human eye.
94. R. Bahya ben Asher, B'iur 'al ha-Torah to Genesis 18:2 (vol. I, 167) likewise pauses to emphasize that Abraham's vision of the angels was "with the physical sense of sight," which makes better sense once we understand the polemical context vis-à-vis Maimonides.
95. For more on this issue, see Elliot R. Wolfson, "Beneath the Wings of the Great Eagle: Maimonides and Thirteenth Century Kabbalah," in Gorge K. Hasselhoff and Otfried Fraisse, eds., Moses Maimonides: His Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Wirkungsgeschichte in Different Cultural Contexts" (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2004), 209-238
96. R. Yehudah of Barcelona, Perush Sefer Yezirah, 34-35. "But Moses our master, whose mind and heart were purified and whose eyes were more enlightened than any who dwell below, God showed him of His splendor and His glory [kavod] that He had created for the glory of His name, which was greater than the lights seen by any of the prophets ... It was a true sight and not a dream or a vision . . . and therefore [Moses] understood that there was no human form or any other form, but only the form of the splendor and the light and the great created fire."
97. Michael Carasik's consistent decision to follow the NJPS by rendering kavod as "presence" in The Commentator's Bible (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2005), 299 works well enough for scriptural translations but wreaks havoc on the commentary of Saadyah, which he cites. The whole "created light" paradigm popularized by Saadyah is, after all, a response to the grave theological difficulties that may arise if one thinks that people are physically able to perceive the divine presence. Carasik seems to recognize this dilemma but is unable to fully compensate, given the demand for consistency in translation. Maimonides, by contrast, specifically rejects the idea of consistency in translation with respect to kavod in chapter I: 64 of the Guide.
98. "Presence" is a core theme of Buber's whole philosophical and literary outlook, including his interpretation of biblical materials such as Exodus 33. See Pamela Vermes, Buber on God and the Pefect Man (London: Littman Library, 1994), 119-130.
99. For Abraham Joshua Heschel's approach, see God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1955), 80-87.
100. See Seeman, "Violence, Ethics and Divine Honor in Modern Jewish Thought," 1036-1042.
101. The Levinas citation is from Emmanuel Levinas, God, Death and Time, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 195.
102. Shmuel Trigano ("Levinas and the Project of Jewish Philosophy," Jewish Studies Quarterly 8 [2001]: 397-301) has argued that Levinas is indebted to Saadyah on this score: "it is as if Levinas had reworked Saadyah's 'glory' using Maimonides' negativization, for there is something affirmative in the other human being but there is no positivity." Yet it is only in Maimonides that the "glory" of Exodus 33 appears not even as a representation or sign of the divine presence, but only as the radical critique of any quest for presence in the anthropomorphic sense. My argument linking Levinas with Maimonides here, rather than with Saadyah, is strengthened by the fact that Levinas used the Guide (especially chapters II: 13 and 17) to argue against Nazi (and Heideggerian) fatalism in the 1930s. The term kavod does not appear in these chapters, but the closely related idea of a God who transcends all of the categories and limits of human comprehension-and who creates the world ex nihilo-certainly does. "Paganism," writes Levinas, "is a radical impotence to escape from the world."
103. See Emmanuel Levinas, L'actualité de Maimonide, in Paix et Droit 15 (1935), 6-7
104. and Francesca Abertini, "Emmanuel Levinas' Theological-Political Interpretation of Moses Maimonides," in Moses Maimonides: His Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Wirkungsgeschichte, 573-86.
105. I would also add that Levinas is sure to have noted Maimonides' argument (in Guide I: 56 and 63) that even the term "being" cannot properly be attributed to God without one's doing violence to divine otherness.
106. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 82.
107. Mishnah Hagigah 2:1.
108. My English translation is based on the Hebrew translation of Kafiqh, Mishnah 'im Perush ha-Rambam, vol. I, 250-51. I have, however, restored the word "melancholia," which appears in transliterated form in the original Arabic text of Maimonides' commentary, rather than following both Kafiqh's and Ibn Tibbon's rendering of the Hebrew shemamon (normally translated as "desolation"), whose connotations today are far less medical and
109. See Jennifer Radden, ed., The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), who makes it clear that melancholia was for many centuries an organizing principle of both medical and philosophical discourse rather than just a discrete medical diagnosis. It seems reasonable to suggest that Maimonides' association of melancholia with the intellectual elite of rabbis who contemplate metaphysical matters draws precisely on this tradition.
110. See for example R. Moshe ben Maimon, Medical Works, ed. Suessman Muntner (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1992),
111. especially Regimen Sanitatis: Letters on the Hygiene of the Body and of the Soul, vol.1, 59;
112. (Medical) Aphorisms of Moses, vol.II, 72, 80, 126-27, 140, 144, 148, 176;
113. Commentary on Hippocrates' Aphorisms, vol.III, 59, 122.
114. For more on the Maimonidean virtue of equanimity, see Samuel S. Kottek, "The Philosophical Medicine of Maimonides," in Moses Maimonides: His Religious, Scientific and Philosophical Wirkungsgeschichte, 65-82;
115. Seeman, "Martyrdom, Emotion and the Work of Ritual," 264-269
116. See Luis Garcia-Ballester, Galen and Galenism: Theory and Medical Practice from Antiquity to the European Renaissance, eds. Jon Arrizabalaga, Montserrat Cabre, Lluis Cifuentes, Fernando Salmon. (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2002), 150.
117. Commentary on the Mishnah, Hagigah 2:1, citing Hagigah 16a, Kiddushin 40a and Tanhuma, Naso 5. Maimonides' linkage of intellectual overreaching with secret sin is also suggested by the juxtaposition of these themes in the Talmudic discussion in Hagigah. Other sources relevant to Maimonides' formulation include Jerusalem Talmud 2:1 and a variant of the same teaching in Bereishit Rabbah 1:5: "R. Huna quoted in Bar Kappara's name: Let the lying lips be dumb.. . which speak arrogantly against the righteous [Psalms 31:19], meaning [lips which speak] against [the will of] the Righteous One, who is the Life of all worlds, on matters which He has withheld from His creatures ... in order to boast and to say, 'I discourse on the work of Creation! [ma'aseh bereishit] ... To think that he despises My Glory [kavod]! For R. Yose ben R. Hanina said: Whoever honors himself through his fellow's disgrace has no share in the world to come. How much more so when [it is done at the expense of] the glory [kavod] of God!"
118. My translation, with some stylistic emendations, is based on that of H. Freedman, Midrash Rabbah: Genesis, vol.1 (New York: The Soncino Press, 1983), 5.
119. See Byron Good, "The Heart of What's the Matter: The Semantics of Illness in Iran," Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 1 (1976): 25-58.
120. See (Medical) Aphorisms of Moses, 80, 140.
121. See Perushei Rabenu Saadyah Gaon 'al ha-Torah, trans, and ed. Joseph Kafiqh (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1984), 90-91.
122. Guide, 30 (I: 5).
123. Although his interpretation differs in some ways from mine, Kellner [Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism, 196) put the correlation very succinctly: "He [Moses] sought to understand God's kavod (understood as essence) so that he could have more kavod (understood as honour) for God, and thus better express the kavod (understood as praise) for God." My reading attempts to account more explicitly for this set of homologies by linking them through the idea of intellectual restraint and acknowledgement of limitation. Yehudah Even Shmuel, similarly, comments in a note to chapter I: 32 that divine honor consists simply of the proper functioning of every created thing, but fails to emphasize the setting of correct speculative limits that, in my view, makes this possible.
124. See Moreh Nevukhim la-Rambam 'im Perush Yehudah Even Shmuel (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1987), vol.I, 140-141
125. Guide, 68.
126. These themes are also the subject of Sara Klein-Braslavy, "King Solomon and Metaphysical Esotericism According to Maimonides," Maimonidean Studies, vol.1 (1990): 57-86. However, she does not discuss kavod, which might have contributed to the thematic coherence of Maimonides' various statements on this subject.
127. See for instance the beginning of I: 33. On the debate among medieval (and modern) commentators as to whether Moses represents an attainable human ideal, see Benor, Worship of the Heart, 43-45, 186.
128. Worship of the Heart Ibid., 69. This passage should be compared with Ha-Levi's description of sight and its limitations with respect to the divine kavod in Kuzari 4:3. In III: 11 [Guide, 441) Maimonides adds that the relationship between knowledge and the human form (intellect) is analogous to that between the faculty of sight and the human eye. Both, that is, can be overwhelmed and damaged.
129. Guide, 68.
130. On "sight" as an equivocal term signifying intellectual apperception, see also Guide, 27-28 (I: 4), which cites Exodus 33:18 as a main proof-text. In books two and three of De Anima, Aristotle establishes a close analogy between intellect and sense perception, since both are premised on the impression of forms upon the sensory faculties: "as the wax takes the sign from the ring without the iron and gold-it takes, that is, the gold or bronze sign, but not as gold or bronze . . . And it is also clear from all of this why the excesses of the sense-objects destroy the sense organs. For if the movement is too strong for the sense organs, its formula [or proportion] is destroyed . . . just as the congruence and pitch are lost when strings are too vigorously struck (Book II: 12, 424a)."
131. From Aristotle, De Anima (On the Soul), trans. Hugh Lawson-Tancred (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), 187-188;
132. also see Book III: 2, 426a-b and III: 4, 429a-430a. Aristotle does, however, place certain limits on the analogy between the intellect and the senses: "a sense loses the power to perceive after something excessively perceptible; it cannot for instance perceive sound after very great sounds, nor can it see after strong colors nor smell after strong smells, whereas when the intellect has thought something extremely thinkable, it thinks lesser objects more, not less" (202). Presumably, Maimonides would argue that this is true only for that which is in fact "thinkable," and not for something that transcends or frustrates thought entirely, like the incommensurability of the divine essence. Kasher ("Maimonides, Interpretation of the Story of Divine Revelation," 32-33) has perceptively argued that Maimonides' discussion of prophetic vision may actually have been influenced by his understanding of optics and the effects of lenses.
133. Belifs and Opinions, I: 12 (Kafiqh edition, 111).
134. Guide, 70. It is worth noting that many of the arguments and proof-texts marshaled by Maimonides in this chapter are previously marshaled by R. Bahya Ibn Paquda, Duties of the Heart, part I, chapter 10. A careful analytic comparison of these two sources would exceed the scope of this article, but it is clear that Ibn Paquda does not thematize divine honor with the same force and persistence that Maimonides does.
135. Maimonides' view can, for example, be contrasted with that of Nahmanides, who argues in his introduction to the commentary on the Torah [Perushei ha-Torah, 7-8) that "my words [with respect to the secrets of the Torah] will not be apprehended or understood at all by any intellect or understanding, save from the mouth of a wise initiate [mequbal] to a receptive and understanding ear. Reasoning with respect to [these matters] is foolishness . . . brings great harm and prevents benefit." See Moshe Idel, "We Have no Tradition on This," in Isadore Twersky, ed., Rabbi Moses Nahmanides: Explorations in his Religious and Literary Virtuosity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 51-74. Unlike Nahmanides, Maimonides explicitly seeks to understand the teaching of the "Chariot" through speculation, as he writes in the introduction to Part III of the Guide: "In addition to this there is the fact that in that which has occurred to me with regard to these matters, I followed conjecture and supposition; no divine revelation has come to me to teach me that the intention in the matter in question was such and such, nor did I receive what I believe in these matters from a teacher. But the texts of the prophetic books and the dicta of the Sages, together with the speculative premises that I possess, showed me that things are indubitably so and so. Yet it is possible that they are different and that something else is intended" (Guide, 416).
136. As a contrast to Maimonides, consider, for example, R. Hai's polemic against those who doubt that God enacts miracles or shows visions to the righteous, and his association of the "Four who Entered Pardes" with the esoteric visions of Heikhalot mysticism; Ozar ha-Geonim, 13-15. R. Hai is cited by later kabbalists in the context of their own polemic against philosophical texts and approaches. R. Isaiah Horowitz, for example, writes that "the avoidance of philosophy and its prohibition is clear from the words of all the early and later sages, so that it would constitute a burden for me to cite them all. You may observe a small piece of what they have written on this subject in the words of R. Hai Gaon ... on the story about the four who entered pardes in Hagigah." See R. Isaiah Horowitz, Shnei Luhot ha-Brit, ed. Meir Katz (Haifa: Makhon Yad Ramah, 1992), vol. 2, 259 (Masekhet Shevuot no. 55).
137. Incidentally, Kellner believes that Maimonides' impatience with the "re-mythologization" of Judaism through Heikhalot literature was one of the main reasons that he worked so hard to reinterpret the divine kavod (Maimonides' Confrontation with Jewish Mysticism, 215).
138. Guide, 69, citing Proverbs 25:16. Here, too, the metaphors of overeating and vomiting blur into a decidedly non-metaphoric medical reading, since in his medical writings Maimonides sometimes associates melancholia with an appetite for "very many kinds of food . . . and in some cases disgust and rejection of food arousing nausea so that he vomits," while in another passage he describes "melancholic confusion of the mind, which leads in some cases to strong stomach pains . . . and in some cases to vomiting after a time ... so that they cannot find peace except through vomiting or excreting.. .." See (Medical) Aphorisms of Moses, vol.II, 80, 140.
139. Guide, 70.
140. Guide, 69
141. citing Ecclesiastes 4:17. The entire verse is translated by NJPS as "Be not overeager to go the House of God [i.e., the Temple]: more acceptable is obedience than the offering of fools, for they know nothing [but] to do wrong." For Maimonides, the thematic association of reluctance, intellectual comprehension, and obedience to God should by now be clear. Aso see Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 4:13, in which Maimonides cites Hagigah once more in order to admonish readers not to "stroll through Pardes" until they have achieved a requisite grounding in the knowledge of Jewish law. In Guide 1:13, Maimonides establishes that "standing" can also mean "desisting" or "abstaining."
142. Citing Exodus 28:2.
143. In the first chapter of Hilkhot 'Avodat ha-Kokhavim, Maimonides used the term "evil opinion" to describe the analogy between human and divine honor that led to idolatry. Reading these two passages in tandem leads one to the sense (also supported in the Guide) that, for Maimonides, there is a close relationship between gross passions or appetites and the imaginative faculty, and that imagination clouds the intellect, leading directly to the attribution of imaginary, corporeal attributes to God. See, for example, chapter I: 32 of the Guide, described above.
144. Hilkhot Tumi at 'Okhlin 16:12, citing Leviticus 11:44 and 21:8.
145. In "The Laws of Ritual Baths," Hilkhot Mikva'ot 11:12, Maimonides similarly calls attention to the fact that laws of purity and impurity are divine decrees and "not among the things that the human mind can determine." There is no physical change at all associated with purity and impurity for Maimonides, yet immersion in a ritual bath "hints" to the immersion of the soul in "waters of pure intellect," which serve to counteract sin and false opinions-probably by symbolizing and also helping to bring about the subduing of the passions.
146. See also "The Laws of Forbidden Foods," Hilkhot Ma'akhalot 'Assurot 17:32. Once the passions are subdued and the intellect disciplined, it is possible to achieve a non-corporeal conception of the divine, which apprehends the attributes of action and seeks to emulate them.
147. Kafiqh edition, Seder Taharot, 23.
148. See Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 4:13 and
149. 'Avodat ha-Kokhavim 2:2-3, respectively. Both texts, it should be noted, make reference to the Mishnah in Hagigah.
150. Guide, 29
151. citing Exodus 3:6.
152. Exodus Ibid., citing Numbers 12:8.
153. Divine honor is therefore closely related to the virtue of yishuv ha-da'at or deliberateness and equanimity that Maimonides describes in I: 34 and in many other contexts throughout his legal and philosophical works, including Tesodei ha-Torah 4:13. For a reworking of this theme by a Hasidic thinker influenced by Maimonides, see Seeman, "Martyrdom, Emotion and The Work of Ritual."
154. Commentary on the Mishnah Hagigah 2:1. Compare Aristotle's opening to the Metaphysics (980a), which not incidentally also touches on the role of sight in knowledge acquisition: "All human beings desire to know [eidenai] by nature. And evidence of this is the pleasure that we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are enjoyed for their own sake, and above all others the sense of eyesight... for this more than the other senses allows us to know and brings to light many distinctions." See the discussion of this passage by Nancy Sherman, "The Habituation of Character," in Aristotle's Ethics: Critical Essays, ed. Nancy Sherman (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 239.
155. For one example among many, see chapter I: 1 of the Guide.
156. For more on this understanding of virtue in Aristotle's ethics, see for example Nicomachean Ethics, 42 (1106a);
157. Roger Crisp, "Aristotle on Greatness of Soul," in The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Richard Kraut (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing), 78. Compare the first two chapters of Maimonides' Hilkhot De'ot.
158. Nichomachean Ethics, 172-173 (1145a).
159. Nichomachean Ethics Ibid.
160. See Crisp, "Aristotle on Greatness of Soul."
161. The multiplicity of chapters in the Guide in which Maimonides discusses words from the theophany of Exodus 33 was already noted by R. Yizhak Abravanel at the beginning of his commentary to Exodus 33: Perush 'al ha-Torah (Jerusalem: Arbel Publishers, 1964), vol. 2, 324.
162. Also Kasher, "Maimonides' Interpretation of the Story of Divine Revelation,"
163. and Mordecai Z. Cohen, Three Approaches to Biblical Metaphor (Boston: Brill Publishers, 2003), 202-3, who proposes a schema for understanding the organization of chapters 1-49 of the first part of the Guide, which highlights Maimonides' use of these verses.
164. In Yesodei ha-Torah 1:10.
165. Guide, 48-49.
166. Guide, 87.
167. Exodus 33:13.
168. Exodus Ibid., 33:19.
169. Guide, 124.
170. Guide Ibid., 123-124.
171. In Duties of the Heart 1:10, Ibn Paquda also emphasizes that attributes of action are the sole accessible way of achieving positive knowledge about the divine, but one gets the sense from his discussion that practical and cognitive knowledge are simply distinct, whereas Maimonides maintains a much more robust sense of the interdependence between them. This is partly the result of Maimonides' strong literary reading of Exodus 33-34, for which Duties of the Heart offers no parallel.
172. Guide, 124
173. citing Genesis 1:31.
174. Guide Ibid.
175. Perushei Rav Saadyah Gaon le-Sfer Shemot, 217-218
176. This is perhaps my primary disagreement with Kellner's discussion of kavod in Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism.
177. Hilkhot De'ot 1:6.
178. Aso see Sefer ha-Mizvot, positive commandment number 8.
179. Commentators have noted that Maimonides eschews the formulation of the Babylonian Talmud [Shabbat 133b, Sotah 54b), 'Just as He is compassionate, so you should be compassionate," in favor of Sifri, 'Eqev 13, which is close to the language cited here. Aso see Midrash Tanhuma, Shemot 20, in which God responds to Moses' request to know God's name at the beginning of Exodus: "What do you wish to know? I am called according to my actions-When I judge the creatures I am called Judge' ('elohim) . . . and when I conduct myself in the attribute of mercy, I am called 'Merciful.' My name is according to my actions." Most other commentators, it should be pointed out, cite the Babylonian Talmud unless they are directly quoting Maimonides. An exception that supports my reading is the heavily Maimonidean Sefer ha-Hinnukh, mizvot 555 and 611, which cites the Maimonidean formulation in order to make a point about the impossibility of God's possessing actual attributes.
180. In Guide I: 54, ironically, Maimonides does cite the simpler version of this teaching from the Bavli, but this is in the context of a lengthy discussion about the nature of the attributes, which makes it less likely that the reader will misunderstand.
181. Guide, 125 (chapter I: 54),
182. citing Psalms 103:13.
183. Psalms Ibid.
184. Passion or affect (infi'āl in Arabic, hf'alut in Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew) is used in the Aristotelian sense of "being acted upon" and hence changed by an external force, which is one of the reasons Maimonides holds that this kind of language cannot be applied to God. He is preceded in this argument by Ha-Levi's Kuzari, 2:2. "The sage said: 'All of these names are descriptions of attributes that are added to His essence, since they are borrowed from the passions that created beings are moved by. . . Thus, He is called 'Merciful' when He does good for man .. . even though the nature of [these qualities] in us is nothing other than weakness of the soul and the activation of our natures, which is impossible to predicate of Him, may He be blessed. ..." Later writers who sought to preserve Maimonides' authority while rejecting his cosmology sometimes argued that these strictures on divine emotion applied only to the upper reaches of divinity in the sephirotic sense-an argument that Maimonides himself would have rejected.
185. See Seeman, "Ritual Efficacy, Hasidic Mysticism and 'Useless Suffering' in the Warsaw Ghetto," Harvard Theological Review 101: 2 (2008),
186. and Seeman idem., "Ethics, Violence and Divine Honor in Modern Jewish Thought."
187. Guide, 128.
188. See for instance Howard Kreisel, Maimonides' Political Thought (Abany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 140, 175, who argues that imitatio Dei leads to the transcendence of all emotional traits, and other writers who identify imitatio Dei with the performance of the commandments as objective acts, without reference to the expression of any intentional virtue.
189. Cf. Kenneth Seeskin, Searching for a Distant God: The Legacy of Maimonides (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 95-98;
190. Menahem Kellner, Maimonides on Human Perfection;
191. and Shalom Rosenberg, "You Shall Walk in His Ways," trans. Joel Linsider, The Edah Journal 2 (2002).
192. I have relied upon the Hebrew translation of R. Abraham's responsa, which is printed as a commentary on the eighth positive commandment ("To Emulate God") in Maimonides' Sefer ha-Mizvot, trans. Moshe Ibn Tibbon (Jerusalem: Shabse Frankel Publisher, 1995), 218. Maimonides' own language in Sefer ha-Mizvot mentions the imitation of God's "good actions and honorable traits," which is also the topic of the first chapter of Hilkhot De'ot and the fourth chapter of Shemoneh Peraqim.
193. J. O. Urmson, "Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean," in Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 157-70, reminds critics that for Aristotle, "excellence of character is concerned with both emotions and actions, not with actions alone" (159), so that ultimately there is "no emotion one should never experience" (165-66). Aristotle himself writes: "We have now discussed the virtues in general . . . they are means and they are states. Certain actions produce them and they cause us to do these same actions, expressing the virtues themselves, in the way that correct reason prescribes."
194. See Nichomachean Ethics, 70 (1114b);
195. cf. L. A. Kosman, "Being Properly Affected: Virtues and Feelings in Aristotle's Ethics," in Aristotle's Ethics: Critical Essays, 261-276.
196. See Nichomachean Ethics, 42 (1106a);
197. Garcia-Ballester, Galen and Galenism, 140-41.
198. Maimonides makes this distinction in a medical context in Regimen Sanitatis, 58-63.
199. Aso see Benor, Worship of the Heart, 46. Aristotle's doctrine of the mean, upon which Maimonides relies, is itself arguably based upon a medical analogy.
200. See Izhak Englard, "The Example of Medicine in Law and Equity-On a Methodological Analogy in Classical and Jewish Thought," Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 5:2 (1985): 238-247
201. Psalms 145:9.
202. See for example the "Laws of Slaves" (Hilkhot 'Avadim) 9:8
203. and "Laws of Impurity of Foods" [Hilkhot Tum'at Okhlin) 16:12.
204. "[T]he law alone," Twersky notes, ". . . is not the exclusive criterion of ideal religious behavior, either positive or negative. It does not exhaust religious-moral requirements ... for the goal of the Torah is the maximum sanctification of life" (Introduction to the Code of Maimonides, 428).
205. Aso see Sefer ha-Mizvot, positive commandment number 8.
206. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985), 3 (1094b) and 23 (1100a) respectively.
207. Aso see the useful discussions in Eugene Garver, Confronting Aristotle's Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)
208. and Malcolm Schofield, "Aristotle's Political Ethics," in The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Richard Kraut (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2006), 305-322.
209. Nichomachean Ethics, 29 (1102a).
210. See the useful discussion of various modern views on this matter in Kellner, Maimonides on Human Pefection (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990).
211. Guide, 124-125,
212. citing Exodus 33:13.
213. Various readers have puzzled over the relationship between ethical and speculative knowledge in Maimonides' corpus. I find especially intriguing the sixteenthcentury kabbalist R. Isaiah Horowitz's suggestion that each of Maimonides' famous "Thirteen Principles of Faith" is actually derived from one of the "Thirteen Attributes of Mercy" described in Exodus 34. While some of R. Horowitz's readings feel forced, and there is no evidence to suggest that Maimonides himself could have held such a view, this intuition of a close relationship between speculative and ethical knowledge in Maimonides does seem to me to be correct, and is supported by the revelation of ethical knowledge at the limit of philosophy in Exodus 33-34.
214. See R. Isaiah Horowitz, Shnei Luhot ha-Brit, vol.1, 212-219 [Sha'ar ha-Otiyot, Sha'ar 'Alef).
215. See James Arthur Diamond, Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment: Deciphering Scripture and Midrash in The Guide of the Perplexed (Abany: State University of New York Press, 2002).
216. For nearness to Him, may He be exalted, consists in apprehending Him" (Guide, 44-45).
217. Aso see chapters I: 4 and 25.
218. Guide, 104-106 (chapter I: 47).
219. Guide Ibid., 133, 140 (chapters I: 57, 59).
220. Guide Ibid., 133.
221. Guide Ibid., 137.
222. Guide Psalms 65:12.
223. Guide, 139-140,
224. citing Psalms 4:5.
225. On the importance to prophecy of sleep and the moments before sleep, see Diamond, Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment.
226. For a comprehensive view of Maimonides' attitudes towards prayer, see Benor, Worship of the Heart.
227. Guide, 140,
228. based on Talmud Berakhot 33b.
229. Berakhot Ibid.
230. In his "Laws of Prayer," or Hilkhot Tefillah 9:7, Maimonides rules somewhat sweepingly (and in language reminiscent of the Guide) that the multiplication of divine titles and praises beyond those used by Moses is prohibited under Jewish law, since "it is not within human power to adequately praise Him." Later commentators (like Maharsha to Berakhot 33b) cite Rav Hai's view.
231. Along these lines see Shulhan 'Arukh, 'Orah Hayyim 113:9 and related commentaries.
232. Guide, 142.
233. "Honoring him" here is ta'zimuhu, from the same root as "His greatness," 'azmatahu, so that another way of translating this might be "Rendering God great means apprehending His greatness." This is well within the homonymic sense of kavod as praise, set forth by Maimonides in I: 64.
234. Psalms 35:10.
235. Guide, 157,
236. citing Isaiah 6:3.
237. Isaiah Ibid., 156,
238. citing Exodus 24:16.
239. Exodus Ibid.,
240. citing Exodus 33:18-20.
241. Exodus Ibid., 157.
242. Exodus Ibid.
243. Ezekiel 3:12
244. and Exodus 33:21.
245. Guide, 34.
246. Deuteronomy 4:11.
247. Guide, 437,
248. citing Ezekiel 43:2.
249. This is the overall theme of III: 12.
250. In III: 10 for instance, he writes, "Rather, all His acts, may He be exalted, are an absolute good; for He only produces being, and all being is a good." In III: 12, "For His bringing us into existence is absolutely the great good, as we have made clear. . ."
251. See Guide, 440 and 448, respectively.
252. Guide, 448-456 (chapter III: 13).
253. Guide Ibid., 440 (chapter III: 10).
254. Guide Ibid., 452-53,
255. citing Proverbs 16:4.
256. See Norman Lamm, "Man's Position in the Universe: A Comparative Study of the Views of Saadia Gaon and Maimonides," The Jewish Quarterly Review 55 (1965): 208-234.
257. Also see the statements Maimonides made as a young man in the introduction to his commentary on the Mishnah, where he cites the view that the world was created for the sake of the righteous individual. This anthropocentric position was typically embraced by later kabbalists.
258. For a classical statement, see R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto's early eighteenth century ethical tract Mesilat Yesharim (Dialogue Version and Thematic Version), ed. Avraham Shoshana (Jerusalem: Ofeq Institute, 1994), 369, as well as 66-74 of the dialogue version and 204-208 of the thematic version. Luzzatto argues that since the world was created for the sake of human spiritual advancement, human beings can either elevate or desecrate creation through their behavior. Joseph Avivi's introductory essay to this edition suggests that Luzzatto was specifically motivated (especially in the dialogue version) by his disagreement with Maimonides on this score.
259. See Nahmanides' commentary to Exodus 29:46, where he writes that the building of the Tabernacle by the Israelites fulfilled "a need of the Shekhinah and not merely a need of human beings," which was later formulated as 'avodah zorekh gavoah or "human service is a divine need."
260. See R. Bahya ben Asher's commentary on Exodus 29:46 and Numbers 15:41, as well as the whole second section of R. Meir Ibn Gabbai's 'Avodat ha-Qodesh, which details this principle and makes it one of the central points of his long polemic against Maimonides.
261. The important Lithuanian writer R. Shlomo Elyashiv (1839-1926) goes out of his way to cite Maimonides' Guide (especially I: 69 and III: 13) in his qualification of this principle. The idea that "human service is a divine need" still requires "sweetening and clarification," he writes, despite its extensive and widespread kabbalistic credentials. "As for what is written [in Proverbs 16:4] that God made everything for His own sake," writes R. Elyashiv, "and similarly what has been established that [God] created everything for His glory [kavod], the meaning is not, heaven forbid, that it was for His advancement or benefit, but the deep intention is that His light and glory [kavod] should be revealed to those who are worthy of it, because the revelation of His light and the revelation of His glory, may He be exalted, is itself the joy and sweetness and brilliance for all those who are worthy to cling to Him and to be together with Him."
262. R. Shlomo Elyashiv, Sha'arei Leshem Shevo ve-Ahalama (Jerusalem: Aharon Barzani, 1990), 1-10 (chapter 1:1).
263. R. Elyashiv's sometime student, R. Abraham Isaac Kook directly advanced this same approach in his treatise on ethical development Musar 'Avikha (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1971), 46-49. Rabbi Kook attempts to reconcile the Maimonidean and Kabbalistic positions by arguing that human perfection is the greatest of divine "needs"; this is essentially R. Elyashiv's position.
264. On the influence of Lithuanian Kabbalah upon Rav Kook's thought, see Tamar Ross, "The Concept of God in the Thought of Rav Kook" (Hebrew), Daat 8 (1982): 109-128.
265. Isaiah 43:7.
266. Guide, 453.
267. It is worth noting that all three of these biblical sources are already juxtaposed in Sifri 'Eqev 13, which we have already cited above as the source of Maimonides' formulation of imitatio Dei. Thus, it may be argued that Maimonides' rich thematic associations were already evident in one of his primary rabbinic sources.
268. Sifri 'Eqev Ibid., 456.
269. In III: 19 (479), Maimonides punctuates this set of reflections on providence and the problem of evil with a reflection on Psalm 73:11, in which he says that the Psalmist "begins to make clear . . . that God, may He be honored and magnified, who has given us the intellect with which we apprehend-and because of our incapacity to apprehend His true reality, may He be exalted, there arise in us these great doubts-knows, may He be exalted, this our deficiency; and that no attention should be directed to rash reflections . . . proceeding from this our inadequate thought."
270. Compare Schofield, "Aristotle's Political Ethics," which describes the relationship of law and political science to both individual and collective excellences in Aristotle.
271. Guide, 627.
272. Guide Ibid.
273. Miriam's inclusion is important here because of what it says about Maimonides' view of women's potential for intellectual perfection, which he hints at in a more veiled and possibly ambivalent way in relevant passages of the Mishneh Torah, such as Yesodei ha-Torah 4:13
274. and Teshuvah 10:1.
275. Guide, 628.
276. Guide Ibid.
277. Guide Ibid., 622.
278. For more on this theme, compare Hilkhot Mezuzah ("Laws of Mezuzah") 6:13
279. and Hilkhot Shemittah ve-Yovel ("Laws of Sabbatical and Jubilee Years") 13:12-13.
280. Hilkhot Shemittah Ve-Yovel ("Laws of Sabbatical and Jubilee Years") Ibid., 629,
281. citing Isaiah 6:3.
282. "For honor [kavod] does not pertain to the commandments themselves, but to the one who commanded them, may He be blessed, and saved us from groping in the darkness. He prepared for us a lamp to straighten perversities and a light to teach us straight paths. Just as it is said [in Psalm 119:105], 'Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.'"
283. Tesodei ha-Torah 2:1-2. In his edition of the Mishneh Torah, R. Joseph Kafiqh adduces a possible source for this formulation. It is from Sifri to Deuteronomy 33:26. "All of Israel gathered before Moses and said, 'Moses our master, what is the measure of honor above [kavod ma'alah]?' He said to them, 'From what is below you can learn what the measure of honor above is.' This may be likened to a person who said, 'I desire to behold the honor of the king.' They said to him, 'Enter into the kingdom and you will behold it.' He [attempted to] enter the kingdom and saw a curtain stretched across the entrance with precious stones and jewels affixed to it. Instantly, he fell to the ground. They said to him, 'You were not even able to feast your eyes before falling to the ground. How much more so had you actually entered the kingdom and seen the face of the king!'"
284. Exodus 33.
285. Exodus Ibid., 637.
286. Hilkhot Teshuvah 10:1.
287. A similar statement can be found in the introduction to the tenth chapter of Sanhedrin in the Commentary on the Mishnah [Kafiqh edition, 135): "The only telos of truth is to know that it is the truth, and the commandments are true, therefore their telos is their fulfillment." Compare Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics 2:4, on the performance of virtuous actions for their own sake- also discussed by M. F. Burnyeat, "Aristotle on Learning to be Good," in Aristotle's Ethics, 205-239.
288. Aristotle's Ethics Ibid.
289. Guide, 638.
290. This is, I believe, the heart of R. Kook's argument [Middot ha-Ra'ayah, 81) that "When the honor of heaven is lucidly conceptualized, it raises the worth of humanity and of all creatures . . . [while] the honor of heaven that is embodied tends towards idolatry and debases the dignity [kavod] of humans and all creatures." Failure to purify the God concept leads to an anthropomorphic understanding of divine honor, which tends to collapse over time into to "a cruel demand from a physical being that longs for honor without limit." Only exaggerated human servility is thought to magnify the glory of such a God, the same way that it often helps to promote the glory of human kings.
291. See Seeman, "Violence, Ethics and Divine Honor in Modern Jewish Thought," in which I previously underestimated Maimonides' influence on this formulation.
292. Kellner, Maimonides on Human Pefection, 56. Focusing on kavod would in my opinion give Kellner's argument an operational aspect that could sharpen his conclusion.
293. Duties of the Heart 1:10.
294. On the unfolding of ritual process over time, see for example Victor Turner, In the Forest of Symbols (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967).
295. For an application of this anthropological principle to a Jewish mystical text, Seeman, "Martyrdom, Emotion and the Work of Ritual."
296. The importance of learning and inculcating virtue over time in an Aristotelian context has been described by M. F. Burnyeat, "Aristotle on Learning to be Good,"
297. and M. F. Burnyeat idem., Nancy Sherman, "The Habituation of Character." Burnyeat writes: "What is exemplary in Aristotle is his grasp of the truth that morality comes in a sequence of stages with both cognitive and emotional dimensions (206-7). . . Given this temporal perspective, then, the real problem is this: how do we grow up to become the fully adult, rational animals that is the end towards which the nature of our species tends? ... In a way, the whole of the Nïchomachean Ethics is Aristotle's reply to this question."