The Essential Agus. Steven T. Katz
of Saadia was, according to M., remiss in that they accepted uncritically the premises of the Moslem Mutazilites. As a child of his age, M. believed that classical Greek philosophy was an integral part of the esoteric tradition of the biblical prophets and sages of the Mishnah.2 M.’s historical knowledge was faulty, but not his reverence for the sovereignty, indeed the holiness of reason. To him, systematic and objective reasoning is the highway to truth, and God disdains those who forsake the manifest principles of truth for the sake of pleasing Him.3 The anti-intellectualist mentality of a St. Paul, a Tertullian, a Luther, a Kierkegaard, with their subjective, or “existential” “truths” was to him an abomination.
Neo-Maimonism, too, asserts that rationality is of the essence of humanity. There is more to humanity than reason can comprehend, but the irrational and the subjective cannot serve as clues to the Image of God in man. To love God is to seek to know Him, and the greater our knowledge of Him, the greater our love of Him and of all who are created in His image.4 And God’s love of us is manifested in our love of Him and His Kingdom on earth.
REJECTION OF ETHNIC MYSTICISM
M. scorned the Halevian axiom that Jews and Jews alone are endowed with a special capacity for the “divine manifestation.” To Halevi, Jewish people occupy an exalted level in the hierarchy of being, somewhere between the angels and the rest of mankind. All Jews inherit this unique intuition, which was given to them for the sake of humanity as a whole. As God has chosen the biblical prophets for the purpose of bringing His admonitions to the Jewish people, so too He has chosen the Jews from among the nations and endowed them with a unique capacity for things divine, and assigned to them the task of functioning as “the heart” of mankind. This “heart” will regain its vigor in the land of Israel, and then all mankind will be “saved” through Israel. However, even in the messianic future, ethnic Jews alone will serve as the channels of communication between God and mankind, for only ethnic Jews can function as prophets.
The Halevian approach has not lost its popularity even in our own day. Its plausibility derives, not alone from its seductive appeal to the hurt pride of a persecuted people, but also from the uniqueness of Jewish history. Here is a people that has been reduced to “dry bones,” yet all the nations of the western world were brought to the service of God through its prophets. And the western world appeared to Europeans until recently to be synonymous with civilized humanity. If, then, in the past, Israel served as “a prophet unto the nations,” why not in the future?—The fact that this self-image entailed the anguish of martyrdom and the aura of dedication to the service of all men kept this doctrine from turning narrowly chauvinistic and narcissistic. Furthermore, with the rise of romantic nationalism in the modern world, the Halevian approach was rendered the flattery of imitation by such popular “prophets” as Fichte, Mazzini, Mickiewicz, Danilevski and Dostoevski. Ethnic mysticism proved to be fantastically contagious.
Even the builders of classical Reform and cultural Zionism succumbed to the seduction of Halevian racism. Geiger, with all his rationalism, based his Jewish theology, especially his concept of Israel’s “mission,” on the axiom of an innate Jewish “genius” for religion. A’had Ha’am believed that “the national ethnic” and “the national soul” were all but atrophied when the people of Israel was uprooted and driven into exile and that with the return of Jews to their native land Israel’s ancient genius would be revived and revitalized. Echoes of mystical racism abound in the works of Buber and Rosenzweig. As Christian theologians are perpetually tempted to transfer the mystery of the Divine Being to “the secular city,” so Jewish theologians are equally prone to transfer the mystery of Divine oneness and uniqueness from God to the people of Israel, or to the land of Israel, or to both. “Sanctified egotism” is the demonic underside and shadow of traditional Judaism.
M. refused to indulge in collective self-sanctification. The quest of truth is not a national monopoly It is man qua man that is the subject of all speculations about God. To limit “the divine manifestation” to Jews living in the land of Israel is as unworthy of Jews as it is destructive of the principle of human equality, which is affirmed in the Mishna. To be sure, in his letter to the Jews of Yemen, M. found it necessary to descend to the level of popular mythology and to argue that those who are descended from the men and women that stood at Sinai cannot possibly disbelieve in the promises of the Torah. However, in his “Guide,” he does not restrict prophecy either to the land of Israel or to the people of Israel. The reason prophecy is not attained in the lands of exile is due to the wretchedness of life in those countries. (II, 36.) And in a famous chapter (III, 51) he ranks the philosophical saints of all nations ahead of “Talmudists” and mizvah- observers. Also, in the well known letter to R. Hisdai concerning people of other faiths, he avers, “God seeks the heart. . . .”5
Neo-Maimonism, too, disdains the mystique of racism and ethnic narcissism along with the assorted brands of anti-intellectualism. All who base their faith upon their existential identification with the historical career of the Jewish people, affirming that such existence is unique and sui generis, simply beg the question. The task of reflection is to analyze, to discover relationships, to demonstrate the universal components in all particular events. All individuals, all historic peoples, are unique. And the conviction of being chosen by a supreme deity for high ends is by no means unique, either in ancient or in modern times. To insist on the uniqueness of the Jewish people as an irreducible phenomenon, that can be understood only by reference to the meta-historical, the meta-philosophical and the metaphysical is as irrational in principle as it is vicious in actual, historical consequences. For a people that is lifted out of the common run of humanity and enveloped in the ghostly haze of mythology is far more likely to be demeaned by opponents as subhuman than to be exalted as superhuman. If the holocaust demonstrates anything at all, it is the vulnerability of Jewish people to the mystique of racism. Jews should be in the forefront of the fight against this social disease, not promote it. Haven’t we been decimated by its ravages?—Yet, so strangely seductive is the temptation to mythicize our own being that the Jewish “meta-myth” is still a potent force in our midst and, owing to the mirror-image effect, among Christians.
THE QUEST OF SELF-TRANSCENDENCE
M. was a rationalist, but not in the flat sense of this term. Speculative reason, directed toward the ultimate mysteries of life, is far more than the sheer process of intellection. In fact, one must guard against the temptation to plunge prematurely into reflection on God and creation, before one has properly prepared himself for this arduous and perilous task. The preparatory disciplines are not only logic and mathematics, but ethics and esthetics. Also, one must be endowed from birth with a balanced disposition, which shuns all tendencies to excess and exaggeration. The prophet must be gifted in all the disciplines that are needed for the perfection and balance of the human personality. His imaginative and intuitive talents must be as excellently attuned to the reception of the Divine Influence as his intellectual faculties. The prophet shares in the talents of the statesman, whose spiritual antennae relate him to the needs of the community as a whole, so that he senses “the general will” of the nation, to use a Rousseauist phrase. The prophet is also a gifted poet, creating myths and metaphors that reverberate with powerful resonance all through the ages. So, while the man of intellect can only gain from the Divine Influence some philosophical reflections, and the man of intuition and imagination can only be inspired by the same divine source to devise some ordinances and works of literary art, the one who is gifted in all faculties of outreach can hope to attain moments of prophetic inspiration, that lead him to channel divine energy into the community of Israel and the society of mankind.6
It follows that man’s pathway to God consists in the attainment of balanced perfection, or to put it differently, the quest of God is dependent on the attainment of wholeness and harmony, since God