The Essential Agus. Steven T. Katz
each ideal within the two traditions are fruitful and enriching for both. If love in the Christian tradition evokes the images of self-giving and self-denial, and if in Judaism it evokes primarily devotion to the building of the community, the two traditions gain in depth as they welcome each other’s insights. In the infinite quest for perfection, people can only follow one pathway at a time, but by imaginative empathy they can feel the zest and grandeur of their confreres climbing by other paths toward the same broad summit.
NOTES
1. J. Taitelbaum, Vayoel Moshe (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1959).
2. Airuvin 13b.
3. Berochot 31b.
4. Amos 5:4.
5. Politics.
6. Deuteronomy 18:13.
7. Leviticus 19:34.
8. Yoma 86b.
9. Gittin 10b.
10. The Orthodox literature on this subject is summarized in I. Jakobovits. Jewish Medical Ethics (New York, 1962), pp. 167–69. The author concludes: “Some later authorities add that, when a pregnancy constitutes a permanent danger to life, X-ray or surgical contraceptive treatment is to be preferred to devices requiring constant use. But under no circumstances is the husband permitted to do anything to render his act ineffective. Nor are mere considerations of health, as distinct from life, usually sufficient to warrant active precautions on the part of the wife. Already in the eighteenth century, it is true, a rabbi recognized that it might be advisable to space the arrival of children; but the recommended means to achieve this did not include recourse to contraception.”
11. Zohar, Exodus, beginning.
12. See Philo, De. Spec. Legibus, III, 108–10; Josephus, Contra Apionem, II, 202; I. Jacobovitz, Jewish Medical Ethics, pp. 182—91.
13. Baba Bathra 10a.
14. Baba Mezia 10a.
15. Deuteronomy 21:1—9.
16. Sanhedrin 97a.
17. Hosea 4:1, 6; Isaiah 5:131.
18. Ethics of the Fathers, I, 2.
19. Ibid., 1, 13
20. Megillah 26a.
21. Ethics of the Fathers, IV, 11.
22. Proverbs 9:10.
23. Ibid., 20:27.
24. Gittin 61 a.
25. Midrash Tehillim, Psalm 105:15.
26. Sanhedrin 74a.
27. Ibid., 37a.
28. Samuel 2:20.
29. Jerusalem Talmud, Terumot 8.
30. Micah 4:5.
4
NEO-MAIMONISM
THE TERM “Neo-Maimonism” is coined in the same manner and for the same reason as the well-known designations—Neo-Aristotelianism, Neo-Platonism, Neo-Thomism, Neo-Kantism and Neo-Hegelianism. Strictly speaking, we should speak of Neo-Maimonideanism, but we prefer the shorter form, for the sake of convenience.
There are only so many basic positions that a thinker can assume vis a vis the riddle of existence. And all serious scholars are aware of the historical roots of their thoughts. So, the ends of logical clarity and historical perspective are both advanced when a contemporary movement is described as a version of a well-known historical position.
In the case of Neo-Maimonism, this policy is all the more to be commended because the “Guide of the Perplexed” served as a touchstone of philosophic speculation ever since it appeared. To the religious liberals, it was the pillar of light, blazing a bold pathway through the arid wilderness of contending passions and superstitions. To the naive and the literalists, the philosophy of Maimonides was a snare and a delusion, even when they admitted that his Code was a most precious part of the sacred tradition. In a sense, the Maimonidean controversy continued unabated into our own time. While in the thirteenth century, the question for the literalists in regard to the “Guide” was “to burn, or not to burn,” the subsequent centuries rephrased the alternatives, but they continued the debate. The rise of Kabbalah and its triumph, after the expulsion from Spain, did not succeed in suppressing completely the influence of Jewish rationalism. And every new wave of enlightenment was powerfully assisted by the momentum of the Maimonidean philosophy. If Hassidism generally scorned the “Guide,” the Maskilim felt that it propelled them directly into the intellectual world of the end of the eighteenth century. Moses Mendessohn found that Maimonides prepared him to understand Spinoza, Descartes and Leibnitz. Solomon Maimon went directly from Maimonides to Kant. Several decades later, Nahman Krochmal and Samuel David Luzzatto defended opposing positions in regard to the place of Maimonides within authentic Judaism. In the past century and a half, when Jewish intellectuals were beguiled by the spirit of the times to move in different directions, drawn now to the nationalist-romanticist pole, now to the humanist-rationalist pole, it was the adequacy of the Maimonidean synthesis that they debated.
Our generation is called upon to undertake a basic reexamination of our convictions and goals. We are no longer driven by desperation