Judaism is a tradition of great debates: Hillel vs. Shammai. Mystics vs. Rationalists. Hasidim vs. Mitnagdim. Rashi vs. Rabbenu Tam. But, without a doubt, the most confounding debate in Jewish tradition is the debate between Rambam…and Maimonides.
Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, was known by his Hebrew acronym Rambam in the world of classic Jewish learning and was known by his Greek name, Maimonides in the world of the academy. And, in more than a few instances, Maimonides, the rational philosopher cannot easily be reconciled with Rambam, the traditional rabbi.
In the yeshivot, Rambam is revered as the author of Mishneh Torah, a masterpiece work of Jewish law and an eloquent articulation of Jewish belief and ethics. Grudgingly, they acknowledge that Rambam also wrote a book of philosophy in Arabic called A Guide for the Perplexed, but he didn’t really mean everything he wrote there. That was a book he wrote for those who were already corrupted by the study of philosophy and secular wisdom.
In universities, Maimonides is revered as one of the few medieval Jews who made an enduring contribution to human wisdom through his Guide for the Perplexed, a masterpiece of philosophical literature. Grudgingly, they acknowledge that Maimonides also wrote books of popular religious guidance. But he didn’t really take any of that seriously and only wrote those books for the masses who were not sufficiently sophisticated to appreciate the pure philosophical perspective of the Guide.
This conflict is quite apparent when considering the sacrificial rites, the korbanot, that are introduced in Parashat Vayikra and further described in the rest of Sefer Vayikra, the Book of Leviticus, and much of Sefer Bamidbar – Numbers – as well.
Maimonides, in the Guide (III:32), explains that people cannot change their outlook overnight but need time to undergo gradual and slow processes of change and development. When the Torah was given the Jewish people, every religion worthy of the name included animal sacrifices. Even though God has no need whatsoever for animal sacrifices, and even though there is nothing rational about killing animals as a form of worship, the Torah includes animal sacrifices because the original audience to whom the Torah was given would not have taken the Torah seriously – they would not have taken Judaism seriously as a religion if it did to include animal sacrifices. In the same way we would not pay attention to someone who told us that prayer was primitive and we should intend only meditate, our ancestors would not have accepted a religion that did not include animal sacrifices.
And yet, in Mishneh Torah, Rambam’s magnum-opus, his recapitulation, restatement, and reorganization of the entire corpus of the Jewish legal and ethical tradition, he includes the entire sacrificial order, in all of its laws and details in his perfect guide to Jewish law for a perfect world. Were sacrifices a historically contingent concession to the primitive status of the Jewish people centuries ago, or are they part and parcel of an eternal Torah?
Who wins the argument, Maimonides or Rambam? Which position reflects the true opinion of the author and which is an apologetic argument for those who needed it?
I was taught to reconcile Rambam and Maimonides, to acknowledge that the author of the Guide for the Perplexed also wrote Mishneh Torah and that the author of Mishneh Torah wrote the Guide for the Perplexed. That can solve local contradictions and problems – sometimes the resolution of a difficulty in Mishneh Torah can be found somewhere in the Guide. And the Guide can only be fully understood, in all of its philosophical brilliance, in light of the Mishneh Torah.
Korbanot are in the Torah, not because God needs them, but because we needed korbanot in our religion. And they’re still part of the Mishneh Torah because we have not yet outgrown them.
We are not as advanced as we think we are. On the contrary, there is grave danger in deluding ourselves into thinking we are more religiously advanced than we are. Our worship and avodat hashem is weaker because we cannot offer korbanot. And, more significantly, without korbanot, without animal sacrifices as part of our worship, we are denied a powerful tool for the sublimation of bloodshed.
The Talmud teaches that one born under the influence of Mars will shed blood. Some people have inclinations towards violence and bloodshed; that is just how they are made. What should someone like that do? Rav Ashi says they will end up as a surgeon…or a thief. A shochet who slaughters animals for kosher meat, or a mohel.
Imanuel Kant wrote, “our of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.” But it isn’t necessary to make something straight. What is needed are ways to sublimate violence and destructive urges so they do not harm others.
And the same is true of nations as well.
Shirley Jackson’s chilling 1948 short-story The Lottery is a chilling tale of what can happen in a community that lacks an authentic ritual to sublimate violence. I don’t want to spoil the ending for those who haven’t read it or who have forgotten it, but I read the story this past Thursday evening for the first time since high school and it was a terrifying story to read.
In 1836 John McIntosh got into a fight with a group of police officers in the port of St. Louis, killed one police office and wounded another before being captured and brought to prison. A mob gathered at the prison, took McIntosh outside where he was burned alive. McIntosh begged the mob to shoot him quickly with a gun. When the mob did not comply with that request, he sang hymns as he was slowly roasted to death.
Elijah Lovejoy, the editor of the St. Louis Observer witnessed the mob kill John McIntosh and vociferously condemned the actions of the mob. McIntosh would have been brought to justice without the mob violence. Lovejoy’s words condemning the mob were so powerful and inflammatory that he had to flee St. Louis. He was eventually found and killed in Alton, Illinois where he had relocated his newspaper.
As journalist Philip Gourevich has noted, the world would little note, nor long remember neither McIntosh nor Lovejoy had they not been the subject of a speech given in Springfield Illinois in 1839 by a 28 year old lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. For Lincoln, the ease with which murderous violence had exploded within America was a threat to the rule of law and to democratic self-government itself.
“Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth … in their military chest… could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Indeed, in Lincoln’s lifetime and during his presidency, the anarchic violence he feared in 1839 would come very close to destroying the United States. How much progress have we made since the time of McIntosh, Lovejoy, and Lincoln? Human nature can change, grow, and mature, as Maimonides taught, but it does so very slowly. And woe to an individual who doesn’t recognize his own propensity for violence so that he can pursue a career as a shochet and sublimate those violent urges.
And woe to a nation that doesn’t recognize how strong the temptation to violence endures under a veneer of civility and masked by decency. It doesn’t take much to uncover that mask.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 