Studies in Maimonides and His Interpreters

Marc Shapiro is the darling of the modern Orthodox.He is an historian, brilliant, informed, insightful & entertaining.He opens new Vistas for the ones who are not scared to get them.Call him an iconoclast, call him a realist, but your understanding of the Jewish world will change substantially after you read his works.Thank you, Marc.

Shapiro is great scholar and lucid writer.

Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) has been considered to be the greatest Jewish philosopher and codifier, a man with highly unusual intellect. The popular adage, repeated by many sages since Maimonides' death, is that "from Moses to Moses there has been no one like Moses." The accolade recognizes that all of the rabbis, sages and philosophers who lived during the two millennia from the time that the first Moses led the Israelites from Egypt - including the writers of the Mishnah, Talmuds and Midrashim - failed to approach the pinnacle of wisdom and leadership of Moses Maimonides. Rabbi Judah Alharizi, a near contemporary of Maimonides and a translator of his book on philosophy, Guide of the Perplexed, extolled him as "an angel of God." The nineteenth-century rabbi Maharam of Rotenberg described Maimonides' code of law, the Mishneh Torah, as the urim ve'tumim, the part of the high priest's breastplate through which he received divine communications. Maimonides' disciple Joseph ibn Caspi wrote to his son, "our teacher Moses, a father in Torah and a father in wisdom, is in our opinion greater than Moses." He was and is seen by traditionalists, to use the words of Nietzsche, a ueber-mensch, an individual with super-human intellectual qualities. Thus, to suggest that he had human frailties such as forgetfulness, that he made mistakes, or that he purposely wrote things that he did not personally believe to deceive the masses who could not understand what he could understand, borders, in the minds of traditionalists as gross heresy.Marc B. Shapiro, who holds the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Scranton, recognizes this fact in his excellent and well-researched and annotated Studies in Maimonides and His Interpreters, and even cites several prominent traditional rabbis who were convinced that Maimonides wrote his works with ruakh hakodesh, divine inspiration, and, therefore, was incapable of making a mistake. Yet, he distinguishes the traditional and the academic approach. The leitmotif of the former, as stated by R. Malakhiha-Kohen, is: "All of Maimonides' words are exact," there are no mistakes. The latter, on the other hand, see many instances where Maimonides depended upon his memory, without consulting the original source, and quoted statements erroneously. Dr. Shapiro catalogues more than 210 instances, many noticed by traditional rabbis who did not accept the leitmotif, where Maimonides "made a careless error," misquotes biblical, talmudic and midrashic texts. These include mistakes in spelling, missing words, and even, rarely, the quotation of one verse when another was clearly intended. He notes that Maimonides himself admitted that his memory became faulty as he aged, and Abraham, Maimonides' son, also acknowledges that a contradiction between two Maimonidean statements was due to faulty memory.Academics have long recognized that Maimonides frequently inserts contrary views into his writings, one statement for educated intellectuals who are capable of understanding and accepting his intellectual view of life and the role that an individual should follow, and a contrary notion for the more traditionally-minded populace who are incapable of comprehending his teachings and incapable of accepting them because they need to believe in the untruthful notions to feel content with their lives. His statements for the masses of people could be called a "noble lie" or a "necessary belief." Maimonides discusses the "necessary belief" in his Guide of the Perplexed 3:28 and in the introduction to his Guide in item 7 of the reasons why one statement in his Guide differs with another. The belief in resurrection is generally understood to be a Maimonidean teaching that was a "noble lie" because Maimonides felt that life after death was so enjoyable that no one would want to be resurrected to a lesser condition.Many philosophers used the concept of the "noble lie." Plato (427-347 B.C.E.), in his Republic, recognized the need for community leaders to lie to people in this fashion, an idea obviously accepted as rational by many politicians today. Epicurus (c. 342-270 B.C.E.) wrote to his followers that he did not believe in God, but told his general readers that he did believe in the existence of a deity.Many scholars are convinced that talmudic rabbis, or at least some of them, did so as well. They spoke about the existence of demons as a practical "necessary belief" or aveirah lishmah, "a sin committed to accomplish a good," to protect large generally uneducated segments of the Jewish population from harm, such as prohibiting entering an old dilapidated ruin because of the presence of demons, when the true reason is to protect foolish people from a dangerous situation.Dr. Shapiro goes beyond this. He points out that Maimonides stated in a letter to R. Pinchas of Alexandria that whenever he states a law in his code, his Mishneh Torah, a reader can be assured that the law was derived from explicit traditional rabbinic teachings in the Talmuds, Midrashim, or Gaonic teachings. He wrote that if he was presenting his own view of the law he would say explicitly, "it appears to me." Yet there are a host of instances where he presents a law that is not found in former sources and even more where he gives his own slant to ancient laws, and does not indicate that this is his own view. "(H)is originality is (also) seen in the way he reworks various talmudic halakhot, emphasizing some aspects at the expense of others, and offering reasons of his own devising." Maimonides, for example, occasionally offered his own biblical verse to prove the origin of a halakhah, one different than the verse offered in the Talmuds.Another, prominent example among many is laws that relate to superstition; that is, laws developed because of popular ignorance, fear of the unknown, belief in the efficacy of magic, and/or a misunderstanding of causation. Maimonides omits all such "flawed" laws either by leaving them out entirely from his Code or by subtly altering the law to remove all superstitious elements, especially the belief in the truth of astrology and the existence of demons and magic. As he wrote in his Letter on Astrology, "A man should never cast his reason behind him, for the eyes are set in front, not in back."Dr. Shapiro cites more than fifty examples where Maimonides omits laws that are mentioned in the Talmuds connected to superstition or "cleanses" them. He outlines the views of others on these laws, such as Rashi, who did believe in the existence and danger of demons, and discusses how other rabbis explain and treat these talmudic halakhot.These include the following laws from the Babylonian Talmud: Berakhot 43b states that people are forbidden to leave their houses on Wednesday or Saturday night because 180,000 demons wander about on these nights looking about to wreak destruction. Shabbat 12b and Sotah 33a state that people should not pray in Aramaic because angels do not understand Aramaic (and their help is needed to assure that God receives the human petition). Megillah 3a prohibits individuals from greeting others at night lest the "person" that is greeted is a demon (who takes notice of the greeter and does him or her harm).Dr. Shapiro notes that Maimonides' aversion to superstition had only a negligible impact upon the rabbis or their congregants. He does not discuss in any detail the reintroduction of superstition into the codes written after Maimonides' death or speculate upon whether one of the reasons for writing the new codes, other than to present sources for the halakhot and divergent opinions, was the need to give the masses the superstitions they felt they needed. Examples of the multiple superstitions introduced into the later codes include putting on and taking off shoes in the morning and evening in a prescribed order because of the superstitious value of starting everything on the right side, not pouring water with which one washed after awakening on the floor because the water spreads demons throughout the house, the idea that the shema yisrael need not be said at bed time on Passover eve because the shema is recited at bedtime to protect a person from demons and this protection is unnecessary on Passover eve, called leil shemurim, when God gives Jews unique personal protection.Dr. Shapiro should certainly not be criticized for this omission, for the examination of the introduction of superstition into the post-Maimonidean code is an independent study and not the purpose of this excellent volume.In summary, this book on the generally unknown methodology of Maimonides is filled with insightful information about Judaism's greatest sage, and is essential reading for people who want to understand him.