Purim Will Never Cease: Rambam, Aggadah, and the Eternal Purim

Last time, we concluded a series on Rambam’s inclusions of aggadah in his Mishneh Torah. As I finished, I realized that my plan was to start Aruch HaShulchan’s drashot for Shabbat HaGadol, which seemed odd to do before Purim (next Monday will, at least, be Shushan Purim).

Instead, I found a comment of Rambam’s that sort of continues the theme of aggadic insertions and says something meaningful about Purim as well. In the last paragraph of Laws of Megillah (2;18), Rambam mentions that all the books of Nach are atidin libatel, will be nullified (or, more likely, will fade away) in the future, with the exception of Megillat Ester, which will join Torah and Oral Law as that which never goes away. The memory of all past troubles will also be forgotten (a claim he supports with a verse in Yeshayahu), but the days of Purim will not (with a verse from the Megillah).

Rabad didn’t like it. He glossed: “these are the words of simpletons (my poor translation of hedyotot; the unsophisticated is another reasonable word), since no book of Nach will be batel (nullified), for every book has some valuable inference in it. Rather, they meant that even if other books became ignored, the Megillah would not.”

The sources that fed their debate, with their ramifications, tell us much about how to experience the holiday we are about to observe.

What Will or Won’t Go Away

Rambam’s source is Yerushalmi Megillah 1;5, where R. Yochanan says all of Nach is destined libatel, to become unnoticeable, other than the Torah itself. Resh Lakish says Ester and halachot (by which he means the Oral Law) will also not be lost.

A first problem with Rambam’s recording this Yerushalmi is that he seems to follow the view of Resh Lakish, when the general principle is that we accept the views of R. Yochanan when the two debate. Mareh HaPanim (a commentary on Yerushalmi)suggests this isn’t a debate, that R. Yochanan found a verse to prove that Torah would not go away, and Resh Lakish added a verse for Megillah and halachot. (Theoretically, that could mean other verses would be found for other books, but I don’t know of anyone who suggests such verses).

The more glaring question is why those books should no longer be consulted (and why, for Rabad, they will continue to be). Korban HaEdah, commenting on that Yerushalmi, reasoned that those books were all tochacha, prophets admonishing the Jewish people on their need to improve. In that future time, when all Jews will know Hashem well and serve Him properly, those books will be unnecessary.

Getting It From a More Direct Source

Shu”t Radvaz 2;666 (who lived before Korban HaEdah) reasons similarly, that in the days of Mashiach, we’ll learn directly from Hashem, as we did in the time of Moshe Rabbenu. Some of his locutions sound like he meant that radically, that we’ll consult directly with Hashem about halachah (I think Rambam would have a problem with that, because it implies that we can override the Torah itself). Along those lines, he says people will source their claims by saying “this is what so and so said in the name of so and so, who said it in the name of so and so… who heard it from Hashem.”

The continuation of the responsum leaves room for a less radical reading as well, in that he says people will be so learned of Hashem (as a verse says) that they won’t need the prophets, they will be able to derive everything they need to know from the Torah itself.

After that, he again mentions that we’ll learn mi-pi haGevurah, from Hashem Himself, as it were, but it seems to me that he means it in the less revolutionary way, that we will be able to read the Torah so insightfully, our inferences will be as if we heard them directly from Hashem.

We can be more certain about his overall meaning, matching that of Korban HaEdah, that our spiritual progress will make most of the books of Nach irrelevant to our lives. Their messages will be found in the Torah itself.

(There’s much to be said about that, since those books aren’t always directly or only about admonishment—there are promises of comfort, insights into Hashem and humanity, and more. I believe these commentators meant that the Torah has all of that, too, for those advanced enough to to see it).

Another Gri”d and the Change to Torah in That Future Time

In chapter 12 of his Chiddushei HaGri”d (on the Bar-Ilan CD, under ma’arachim), the other Gri”d (in the circles I travel, Gri”d is the acronym for the R. Yosef Dov Soloveitchik who was a Rosh Yeshivah at YU, son of R. Moshe Soloveitchik; thisGri’d was the son of R. Yitzchak Ze’ev Soloveitchik, R. Moshe’s brother, each of whom named a son for the Beis HaLevi, their grandfather) agreed with this basic view, that we won’t need those other books anymore.

That helped him explain Rabad’s disagreement; Rabad held that the connection between those books and the ideas/laws we infer or derive from them was so strong, the link so unbreakable, that there was no way we could dispense with them. He adds that his father held that Resh Lakish meant something more far-reaching, that the Oral Law derived by inferences from those books will itself fade away (to consider how remarkable that is, it means that any practice that we source to Nach would no longer necessarily apply, that our understanding of halachah would be re-analyzed, looking only at Torah. Since there are many prominent halachot of which that’s true, that’s quite a claim).

He does mention that the Chafetz Chayyim was quoted as rejecting that, as certain that there’s no way the Oral Law aspects of Nach would go away. It raises tremendously interesting questions of what’s essential to Jewish observance, what the religion can or cannot do without, and what could be construed in other ways.

R. Yitzchak Ze’ev Soloveitchik’s idea would mean that Judaism could change significantly in the future, since whole sections of Jewish practice would have to be rederived (he may have assumed they would all end up reaching the exact same conclusion, which would make it more conservative an idea than I am portraying it), without that affecting or damaging our essential connection to Hashem. That certainly needs further thought and consideration, not for now, but it is on my agenda.

Purim As a Prophetic Institution

I have not found commentators who offer explicit reasons for why Megillat Ester should be different. Before I share the idea that strikes me, I want to point out other ways Purim seems to be different, since those are useful building blocks of the claim I want to make.

Rambam referred to Purim as a takkanat nevi’im, an ordinance of the Prophets. Divrei Yirmiyahu, a commentary, quoted Yedei Eliyahu (whose biography is fascinating; he was a rabbi in Syria, India, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, passing away in 1938) to say that creating a holiday could not have been done just by rabbis (not the first time, anyway), it needed to be done by prophets. As the Gemara noted, the usual assumption is that neither prophets nor sages can add to Jewish practice. It took new insight to understand when they in fact may, and how.

(I think that is why the beginning of Rambam’s Laws of Chanukkah repeatedly refers back to Purim—Purim created the paradigm, made it clear that holidays could be established, as long as they were not confused with Biblical ones.)

To Tzitz Eliezer 18;42, that explains why the Al HaNisim for Purim doesn’t refer to ve-kav’u, they made these days. Torah scholars are kove’a holidays, like Chanukkah, but prophets made Purim, in a way that was ratified by the Heavenly Court itself (this is based on Megillah 7a, which reads the phrase from Megillat Ester, kiyyemu ve-kibbelu, as meaning, “they ratified above what was established below”).

Prophets’ Words: Boon or Burden?

That has other ramifications, for Tzitz Eliezer. The obligations of the day are not Rabbinic, they’re an ordinance of the prophets, and—he says—are part of why this book and holiday will never go away. That’s an odd claim on its face, since the other prophetic books will fade or be nullified, Rambam held.

A similarly surprising comment comes from Or Sameach (written by the author of Meshech Chochmah, a classic fox as compared to R. Chaim Soloveitchik’s hedgehog) to this Rambam). He notes Nedarim 22b, which says that had the Jews not sinned, they would have only gotten the Torah plus Yehoshu’a, since that has discussions of the significance of Israel (and of the division of the Land among the tribes).

It seems to contradict our discussion here—if all of Scripture other than Yehoshu’a would have been better left unwritten, what does that say about Ester? One option is to assume R. Ada berebbi Chanina in Nedarim disagreed with Resh Lakish.

I think it’s also possible that R. Ada would have said that, ideally, we’d never have needed Megillat Ester but then agreed with Resh Lakish that, once written, it would stay forever.

Purim and Eternity

Why, though? To me, the idea of Yedei Eliyahu and of Tzitz Eliezer, of the necessity of prophets to the process of creating this holiday, is the linchpin of the answer. In their view, Purim is the first and paradigmatic example of where human access to the divine led to humans’ abilities to change the world (and especially the world of Torah) in appropriate and proper ways.

All the other books of Nach (and, for the Gri”z, all the ideas we derived or inferred from them) are an outgrowth of human failure. In the Messianic world, in Rambam’s view, we will not need—and will therefore dispense—with those markers of a world that we will have outgrown. (Of course, Rabad disagrees with this entire train of thought, but I’m working with Rambam).

Purim is different, in that it is (at least by the end of the story) a success, an example of humanity doing well and being able, from doing well, to constructively and productively shape the world, with divine input. It’s not that we come to know how to build the world on our own, since that’s what Chazal do; it’s that we came to know how to build the world in direct partnership with Hashem.

That, I think Resh Lakish understood the Megillah to be telling us, we will never want to forget, since it can and should be a permanent model for humanity going forward—to build well and creatively, using our human ingenuity, in consultation with the Master of the Universe.

Summarizing Rambam’s Aggadic Insertions: Context and the Insufficiency of Law

Almost ten years ago, a business consultant named Steven Spear introduced me to the concept of a personal ideas map. The concept is that every time a person speaks or writes, s/he should jot down the basic ideas expressed. By periodically reviewing those abstracts, each of us might see an unrealized direction, a cohesive set of themes or motifs, around which we had been circling.

I am not nearly disciplined enough to do that with whatever writing or speaking I am invited to do. But I find it hugely valuable in my study of the writings of our great forebears. I am in the final stages of a book on Rashi, which attempts to elucidate themes of Rashi’s thought in exactly that way. Here, let’s do it for the sample of selections of Rambam we studied, where Rambam includes aggadic ideas in a purportedly legal work.

These aren’t necessarily reflective of Rambam’s use of aggadah in Mishneh Torah generally, both because I have no idea if this is a statistically significant sample (since I don’t know how many times Rambam did it in Mishneh Torah as a whole), and because the selection process wasn’t quite random (I searched for mentions of the Avot for some of these, but for others chose ones I happened to know; that feels pretty random, but by people who care about randomness, it’s not random).

I think these selections show some running themes nonetheless. These might be the only places where Rambam acts as I will suggest, but it gives one reason Rambam includes aggadic material, and the use to which he puts those ideas. To see what those were, let’s briefly remind ourselves of what we saw in our selections of Rambam:

1)    The beginning of Laws of Chanukkah—Rambam put the national distress in the run-up to Chanukkah in broader terms than just religious persecution. Political, financial, and sexual independence were also taken away from the Jewish people. After describing the troubles facing the nation, Rambam then inserted and stressed Hashem’s role in the salvation, making the Maccabees vehicles of Hashem’s salvation, not independent actors.

2)    The beginning of the Laws of Worshipping Other Powers Than Hashem—As part of a mini-history of idolatry, Rambam also laid out the Jewish people’s path to faith. He started with Avraham’s search for Hashem, which started at age three and went until he was forty. Avraham (in apparent contrast to the other monotheists of his time, whom Rambam mentions) sought to bring those around him along on his path, and succeeded with tens of thousands of people. This tradition passed to Yitzchak, Ya’akov, and the Tribes (see Ya’akov’s deathbed), but was lost in Egypt, other than the tribe of Levi, which never worshipped powers other than Hashem.

3)    The beginning of Laws of Reading Shema—To explain why we say the phrase baruch shem kevod malchuto le-olam va’ed, Rambam recorded the Talmudic picture of Ya’akov’s deathbed, where he worried about his sons’ fidelity to Hashem. Rambam ignored the Talmud’s focus on Ya’akov’s desire to reveal to them the End of Days, and portrayed it as being about whether they continued to be monotheists. Rambam linked that to Devarim 29;17, where Moshe worried that some of the Jewish people might already be thinking of abandoning Hashem.

4)    The second chapter of Laws of the Select House—When introducing the altar, Rambam declares its place to have been very exact, and then says it was where Avraham bound Yitzchak, Noach offered sacrifices after the Flood, Kayin and Hevel made their offerings, and where Adam gave a sacrifice, at the place he was created. To me, that reverse chain of history of the place implied a reason for sacrifice (which was permanently restricted to that one place once the Temple was built)— it’s where humanity started, and from there we receive kapparah, atonement.

5)    The End of Laws of Mourning—As he was completing his discussion of mourning, Rambam broadened his scope to kindness in general. A mix of halachic and aggadic sources showed him that accompanying travelers on their way (which we no longer do, apparently because it’s no longer necessary) was more valuable even than hosting them. The Talmud says welcoming guests pushed aside greeting the Divine, which Rambam applied to seeing them on their way as well. He also recorded the Talmudic statement that the failure to accompany a traveler was akin to killing him or her.

6)    The ninth chapter of Laws of Kings, the introduction of the Noahide laws– Rambam mentioned the seven Noahide laws, then paused to give an after-history that has no obvious relevance to non-Jews; he tells us how the Jewish people rounded out the complement of 613 mitzvot. After the commandment of berit milah, circumcision, the Avot added practices, daily prayer,ma’aser, and gid hanasheh (which is reported in the Torah itself). He also claimed, based on sources that remain somewhat obscure, that Amram was commanded mitzvot in Egypt.

7)    The seventh chapter of Laws of the Foundation of the Torah (the first chapter on prophecy)—Rambam recorded the aggadicview that Moshe ceased marital relations after Sinai. Rambam took that to indicate that Moshe in fact left all involvement in the physical, one of the contrasts between Moshe and other prophets. To connect with Hashem, Rambam assumed, requires either a temporary or permanent renunciation of the physical.

8)    The beginning of Laws of Prayer—Fixed prayer was how Ezra and his court eased Hebrew prayer for a generation that lacked fluency. The unstated assumption was that prayer is better in Hebrew than in any other language, or in the mix of languages the returnees from Bavel spoke. I suggested that Rambam’s calling the language Yehudit implied its connection to Jewish faith, since that’s a word Rambam elsewhere uses solely about the dat, the Jewish creed.

What Have We Got?

Two commonalities of those too-brief summaries seem to me to point us in an interesting direction. First, note that almost all of them come at the beginning of some section of laws. Those in the middle (such as Laws of Kings) are at the beginning of a new section, a discussion of new laws or ideas. That’s true for Laws of Mourning as well, where Rambam was moving from mourning to kindness more generally. (Over Shabbat, I mentioned this series to someone, and he jumped to say that they probably all come at the beginning or end of halachot; that’s because Prof. Twersky z”l pointed out that Rambam often pauses at the end of sections to give a broader philosophical context or comment on an issue related to the halachot just seen. But those comments, in my recollection, don’t particularly summon aggadic material for support).

Second, these were all places where Rambam inserted Hashem where not required. Chanukkah became a holiday of Hashem’s salvation, rather than what the plain law would require—a holiday where we thank and praise Hashem for a hidden miracle with human beings as the main actors; Avraham is brought in, almost unnecessarily, as a counter-model to idolatry in that he found his way to faith in God, which he then spread; Ya’akov’s deathbed left us a reminder of the centrality of monotheism to his legacy; sacrifices are offered (and atonement secured) at the place Hashem created humanity; accompanying travelers is more important than greeting Hashem; part of what distinguished the Jewish people from Noahides was their taking on more practices in service of Hashem than they were commanded; prophets reached Hashem by denying the physical, either temporarily or, in the case of Moshe, permanently; and prayer needed to be in a language that reflected Jewish faith.

Context and the Insufficiency of Law

To me, these all show Rambam’s interest in a context that law itself does not provide. Laws are obligations and prohibitions, and those are necessary for a religion. Some of those laws themselves make explicit our need to interact with or relate to Hashem. But not enough for Rambam’s taste.

It wasn’t enough to have a holiday whose essence was singing songs of praise, to have rules against worshipping powers other than Hashem, etc. For Rambam, those laws needed a context that that had to be imported from aggadic material.

That’s important in terms of deciding what he did or didn’t believe. There is a long-running  (centuries long, since almost right when he published his books) debate about Rambam’s “real” beliefs, since he made clear that he sometimes shaded his presentation to accommodate the needs of his readers.

I have long thought that one way to be sure of a sincere belief of his is when he includes an idea that his framework did not demand (the first place I noticed it was his reference to the return of sacrifices in his description of the Messianic era in Laws of Kings), Since he could have left them out without ruffling any feathers.

In our cases, it points to a Rambam who took aggadic versions of history literally when he might easily have dismissed them as metaphorical or allegorical, all of them pointing to what I think is undeniably central to Rambam’s view of the religion in general and all the halachot we have seen in particular: the faith in and connection to the One God, Creator of the Universe.

The Importance of Praying in Hebrew and the Push Towards Fixed Prayer

This is the last of our random sample of places Rambam inserts aggadic material into Mishneh Torah. Next time, I hope to review them briefly, to see if any themes or ideas characterize them all. Here, let’s look at his understanding of how fixed prayer came to the Jewish people.

Remember that Rambam held that the Torah obligates Jews to pray once a day (many if not most other authorities held that daily prayer is a Rabbinic obligation).  To fulfill the Torah’s standard, every Jew must say words of praise, request, and thanks, for as long or short as s/he wants, or is able to offer (more is better, a fuller service of the heart).

Rambam opens his Laws of Prayer with an explanation of how that model changed into the current one of three prayers on most days, with a set form for those (to which individuals can add requests, but the backbone of which has been set by tradition).

Connecting It to the Return From Exile

Rambam’s answer, in paragraph four, is that when the Jews returned after the destruction of the first Beit HaMikdash, their exile to Bavel had led to them mixing with Persians, Greeks, and other nations, and they had children in those foreign lands. The polyglot environment in which those children grew up taught them several languages poorly, such that they could not fully express themselves in any one language, especially Hebrew.

One of the ramifications was that they could not pray in Yehudit [ the word Rambam uses for Hebrew here. It is the word used in the verse in Nechemiah we’ll see below, but it seems to me to stress the connection between language and faith. I say that because Rambam generally uses the word Yehudit as an adjunct to dat, religion. He uses Ivrit for Hebrew in Laws of Other Conveyors of Ritual Impurity 9;7, in contrasting Hebrew to Aramaic. The language’s name, it seems, is Ivrit; but when it expresses particularistic Jewish identity or faith, it’s Yehudit ].

That got in the way of people speaking to Hashem as fully and volubly as they (and we) might have wished, unless they mixed in other languages. When Ezra and his court saw that, they set up the Amidah, eighteen blessings in order, three of praise, middle blessings that ask for all of one’s needs, and then three of thanks.  

In this way, closes Rambam, the least verbal people could express themselves in a full prayer [ those more comfortable in Hebrew would still have an easier time adding thoughts and wishes, as Rambam recommends, but they will have achieved a minimal standard ].

The Easily Established Part of Rambam’s View

Two of Rambam’s claims are grounded in texts, but the way he puts those texts together takes us in directions that seem less than necessitated by the texts themselves. It is true that Nechemiah 13;23 describes the Jews as having taken Ashdodite, Amonite, and Moabite wives, which led to the younger generation speaking Ashdodit rather than Yehudit. Those nations are all in the region of Israel, but Rambam took that as showing they had intermarried with Persians and Greeks (and Greeks aren’t even close to Bavel)!

The second point of interest is that while the verse supports his assessment of the generation’s knowledge of Hebrew, it does not connect that to prayer. So we need answers to two questions: Why does Rambam think Ezra set up prayer, and what suggested that it was a language issue?

Fixed Form of Prayer Set by Ezra

A first possible source for the idea that Ezra was involved in setting our form for prayer is Megillah 17b. R. Yochanan or a Baraita said that one hundred twenty elders, including some prophets, established eighteen blessings in order. The Gemara continues with a tanu rabbanan (probably a baraita) that lays out how they decided on this order (we start with a blessing that mentions the Patriarchs, for example, because Tehillim 29 starts with the words havu laShem benei elim, give [ praise ] to Hashem, sons of the mighty; the order and content of the first three blessings are all inferred from Tehillim 29, although the Gemara doesn’t defend its assumption that this havu is telling us the right and best way to praise Hashem. That Talmudic discussion offers essential and enlightening insight into what each blessing of our prayers intends, but this is not the place to review it fully).

The Gemara does not identify the one hundred and twenty elders as Ezra and his court. In the Introduction to the Mishnah Commentary, Rambam understood Avot 1;1, which speaks of the prophets handing over guardianship of the tradition to the elders, to mean that that generation had both prophets and elders. If so, any group of elders that includes some prophets (as Megillah said) had to be from that era.

In addition, Berachot 33a tells us that R. Chiyya bar Abba quoted R. Yochanan that the Anshei Kenesset haGedolah¸ the Members of the Great Assembly, established the forms of blessings, prayers, Kiddush, and Havdallah. If Rambam understood a reference to Anshei Kenesset HaGedolah to mean Ezra’s generation, that would drive his conclusion.

The Gemara doesn’t link them, though. In Baba Batra 15a, it treats them as separate, in fact, telling us that Anshei Kenesset HaGedolah wrote [or edited] Yechezkel and Trei Asar, while Ezra wrote his book and much of Divrei HaYamim. Rambam might have argued they were distinct in writing or editing books of Tanach but elsewhere functioned together.

However we explain it, Rambam chose to take this tradition and include it in his Mishneh Torah as the source of our fixed prayer [ nothing would have been glaringly missing had he said only that by Torah law, we pray once a day and Chazal decided it should be three times, with a fixed order. Especially since, as we saw, Rambam held that three times a day prayer was intended to parallel the daily sacrifices in the Beit HaMikdash ].

I suggest that Rambam linked this development to Ezra and his time because it connected to another concern of his, the importance of the Hebrew language.

Hebrew as a Mitzvah

Rambam doesn’t explain or defend his assumption that the preference for prayer in Hebrew was enough for Ezra and his court to establish a fixed form of blessings. Unless Hebrew is that important, Ezra could have left them using their pidgin to speak to Hashem. If they were praying more briefly because they were embarrassed about their ignorance, he could have educated and encouraged them that Hashem accepts prayer in all languages.

He assumes instead that Ezra and his court reworked the landscape of Jewish prayer in order to ensure all Jews could pray in Hebrew. That only makes sense if Hebrew prayer is better enough that it justifies such a change. Sotah 33a does give it the upper hand in efficacy, but Rambam does not record that. (Shulchan Aruch does, Orach Chayyim 101;4).

A first indication of what might have been Rambam’s concern comes in his commentary to Avot 2;1, where Rebbe adjures us to be as careful about a mitzvah kalah, a “light” mitzvah, as a chamurah, a more “stringent” one. A “light” mitzvah, Rambam explains, is one that people think of as less important; his examples are simchat haregel, rejoicing on holidays, and learning lashon kodesh, the holy language (Hebrew).

Hebrew In Competition with Arabic

That’s a surprising comment—about which many have already written, to which I don’t intend to add here– since there’s no obvious source for the claim that there is a mitzvah to learn Hebrew (early sources speak of teaching Hebrew to infants, but don’t label it a mitzvah; R. Kapach, in an article in Sinai 79, suggested that by the time he wrote Mishneh Torah, Rambam thought this was a part of the mitzvah of Torah study).

When I was in graduate school, Prof. Bernard Septimus suggested that part of what might have led Rambam to stress the value of Hebrew was that Moslems spoke of Arabic as the most exalted of all languages. One of the instigating factors for Jews in Moslem countries to write Hebrew poetry, he said (or implied; my memories of graduate school aren’t always exact; that’s what I took away from his disquisition), was to show that Hebrew could generate poetry as excellent as that produced in Arabic.

Rambam’s commentary to Avot 1;17 lines up with that idea. The Mishnah itself spoke about the virtues of silence. After discussing at length speech that is obligatory, praiseworthy, prohibited or discouraged (limiting the areas where silence is preferred), he noted that some in his time—zekenim ve-anshei ma’aleh, elders and people of elevated character– thought the language in which an idea was expressed mattered more than the idea itself. A Hebrew poem praising drunkenness and revelry was better to recite, they said, than an Arabic poem that spoke of cultivating virtuous character traits.

Rambam disagreed, because content matters. He didn’t reject the basic idea, though, that Hebrew was a language with value and virtues, especially for Jews serving their Creator through their avodah she-ba-lev, service of the heart.

It seems to me, then, that Rambam saw the transition from a minimal prayer to three fixed ones a day as not only about thenumber of times a Jew spoke to Hashem, but about the language used in that conversation. Building off of aggadic sources he could easily have left out of Mishneh Torah, Rambam elicited a sense that how we speak to Hashem—and, especially, that we do it in Yehudit, in lashon kodesh—was also important enough for Ezra and his court to intervene, to make sure that all Jews would be able to pray in this fundamental way.

I started this series with no real end point in mind. I had noticed a few passages in Mishneh Torah, and figured I’d work from there (I had a few mishaps along the way, searches in my Bar-Ilan I closed too soon and then lost).

Now we have only three weeks left, because I need five before Pesach for Aruch HaShulchan’s sermons for Shabbat HaGadol (readers may remember I spent a few months reviewing his other sermons; here is the summary of that series. I promised then to take up his Shabbat haGadol sermons before Pesach. There are four, and I need a week to review).

That means we have two substantive weeks, and then a review week, where I try to see if there are any recurring themes in the aggadic passages Rambam included in Mishneh Torah. For this week, we’ll take a comment he makes about Moshe Rabbenu, which leads to an insight into Rambam’s view of prophecy, and the role of our physical selves in our lives.

Prophets’ Work/Life Balance

The seventh chapter of Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah discusses prophecy in general, including (in paragraph six) ways Moshe Rabbenu’s was unique. After listing those, Rambam comments that this is why other prophets returned to their tents when their prophecy was complete. For Rambam, “returning to their tents,” (a phrase he takes from how Hashem told Moshe he was different from ordinary human beings) means involving themselves with their physical needs and concerns, like all other human beings.

Ordinary life includes the full range of married life. In contrast, Moshe separated from his wife (and all women), and from all that was similar to that (this is a telling addition—Rambam is saying that the sources that say Moshe separated from Tzipporah mean that as a paradigm of all physical involvements. He seems to see marriage is the paragon of physicality, such that if a person gives up marriage, it’s because he’s giving up physicality in general, not that marital relations is some particularly odious physical activity).

From the time he did that, Rambam writes, he was always mentally connected to Hashem (Rambam uses the phrase Tzur haOlamim, the Rock of the Worlds; we could spent profitable time analyzing which term for Hashem Rambam and others use in what situations. But not here), his face developed its shine, and he reached the level of the angels.

Moshe Left His Wife

A source for this part of the paragraph is Avot de-Rabbi Natan, Version 1, Chapter Two, which records a difference of opinion about how Moshe understood that he should not return to living with Tzipporah after Sinai. The first view is that he reasoned that if Hashem required couples to separate from each other three days before the Giving of the Torah, Moshe—who was supposed to be available for Hashem’s Word at any time—clearly could not be part of a married life.

The other view, that of R. Yehuda b. Beteira and an anonymous “there are those who say,” is that Hashem told him to, perhaps by contrasting the order after the Ten Commandments—“return to your tents”—and what was said to Moshe, Devarim 5;28, “As for you, stand here with Me.”

For the first view, the only one Shabbat 87a records, Hashem ratified Moshe’s logic in Devarim 5;28. In other words, Moshe decided that the Jews’ preparations for Sinai meant he had to stay away from marriage permanently, and Hashem agreed. [This is a topic for another time as well, when people come up with ideas that turn out to either match what Hashem always wanted, or at least turn out to be paths Hashem applauds].

The Prophecy/Physicality Conundrum

Those sources specifically address only the issue of marital relations. It would have been easy, nay natural, to assume that it was that act and its physical remnant (the Gemara says the three day period was to be sure any physical remnant of the marital act was gone by the time of the Giving of the Torah) which were inimical to the experience of hearing Hashem’s Word. Yet Rambam takes it to be emblematic of involvement in the physical and ordinary life generally.

That assumption goes both ways. It tells us Rambam saw marriage as the height of what it means to be involved in an ordinary human life, which makes for a good vort at wedding celebrations; but, for our purposes, it suggests that Rambam saw a tension between physicality and prophecy. For regular prophets, too, his phrase was that when they weren’t prophesying, they returned to marital and ordinary physical life. When they were prophesying, apparently, they had to remove themselves from physical life.

Why is that?

How Prophecy Happens

To understand his perspective, let’s turn to the beginning of chapter seven of Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah. Rambam asserts that belief in prophecy is foundational to Jewish faith; to become a prophet, a person needs to be very wise, of great character (such that his yetzer, his instincts, do not rule him at any time), and of broad intellect.

Those are prerequisites. Beyond that, the person would have to delve into matters of Pardes (a Talmudic term Rambam uses to refer to topics of God and God’s ways of interacting with/ relating to the world, laid out in the first four chapters of the Mishneh Torah).

This potential prophet also then sanctifies him/herself, withdraws from the ways of the masses (who are too caught up in the day to day), and trains him/herself never to have a thought about vacuous or ephemeral matters. Rather, s/he is always connected with the Divine (throne, Rambam says) to understand it and the intermediaries between Hashem and the world. Such a person will be visited by ruach hakodesh, the Divine spirit, and rendered permanently different.

There’s much to be discussed in this passage, but my concern here is physicality. What leads Rambam to understand that the way to prophecy necessitates withdrawing from physicality?

I think a clue comes in the next paragraph, where Rambam says that during a prophecy, the prophet loses all his/her physical strength, his/her body shakes, and the intellect is freed to focus on the vision being experienced. In paragraph four, he notes that to attain prophecy, the prophet must be joyful, in contrast to the extremes of sadness or excessive levity.

In paragraph seven, Rambam is clear that a community would not begin to consider whether a certain person might be a prophet until and unless that person had the requisite qualities of character and intellect [note: someone could perform remarkable miracles, speak impressively, even predict the future regularly; but if s/he did not have the necessary character and intellect, the community was supposed to be sure s/he was not a prophet].

Rambam already espoused this position in the Introduction to his Mishnah commentary, so this was a fixture of his thought, a lasting aspect of his view of prophecy.

I think it’s because Rambam saw the physical as so contradictory to interaction with the completely non-physical Divine. Since Hashem has no body (and this is crucial to Rambam’s understanding of Hashem’s Unity), our bodies must be barriers to hearing from Hashem, to interacting with Hashem.

Ran’s Greater Comfort with Physicalityof the Prophet

That’s not the only way traditional authorities saw it. Ran in the third of his Drashot, for example, read a crucial Talmudic statement about the qualities of a prophet differently than did Rambam. Nedarim 38a says that prophecy will not rest on anyone who’s not a chacham, gibor, and ashir. Rambam in several places interpreted those terms along the lines of Avot 4;1, that achacham is a quality of intellectual curiosity, that gibor is a quality of self-control, and ashir is a freedom from feeling the need for greater material wealth.

Since Avot says it, it’s not patently false of Rambam to see that as the meaning of those same words when Nedarim uses them [another important underlying question, how we understand words that are sometimes technical terms of art, not to be understood as common parlance would have them, and when we understand them in their ordinary way].

But Ran took them more literally. He argues that Nedarim makes very clear that gibor referred to the prophet’s physical strength (since the Gemara proved that claim from Moshe’s being able to smash the Tablets) and ashir meant wealthy (since the Gemara proved that claim by referring to the tradition that the leftover stones of the Tablets made him rich).

Ran thinks the prophet needed these qualities to be impressive enough to his/her listeners that they’d pay attention. In offering this view, though, he makes clear that he sees the balance between physicality and the ability to connect to/with Hashem differently than did Rambam.

Since Rambam’s our concern here, we won’t discuss Ran as fully as he deserves. What we can say is that Rambam here inserted a tradition about Moshe Rabbenu’s withdrawal from marriage (which he took to be code for saying he withdrew from all physical life) because it was a source that shaped and confirmed his understanding of how prophecy and prophets worked in general, that connecting more with Hashem involves, for Rambam, withdrawing more from the physical, as taught to us by Moshe Rabbenu, in the aggadic source that Rambam includes in Mishneh Torah.

Introducing Mitzvot to the World and the Jewish People

Laws of Kings includes the obligation for the king to wage war against certain populations. In a passage that seems to me too-little remarked, Rambam advances the theory that any non-Jew who agrees to observe the Noahide laws need not be put to death.

There’s more to it than that, but that’s not our topic today. I only mention it so we can understand why Rambam spends two chapters of Mishneh Torah laying out the Noahide laws in detail. Those chapters have much of interest (a long time ago, I wrote an article based on those chapters of Rambam, which appeared in the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal), but our topic today is how Rambam leads into them.

Chapter 9, paragraph 1 of Laws of Kings mentions the six Noahide laws commanded to Adam. I am largely going to skip over this part of the presentation, because it’s not clear whether any of it is aggadic. Rambam does adopt the view that humanity was prohibited from eating meat until after the Flood, and he seems to see Sanhedrin 56b’s source for these laws as not as legally textual as the Gemara itself expresses it.

But all of that may or may not be an halachic reading of halachic sources, which is not our topic in this series. It’s after laying out those laws (in brief; he then elaborates in the rest of that chapter and the next) that Rambam goes firmly into our orbit, rounding out that paragraph with a mini-history of how the rest of the mitzvot came to human awareness. Let me quote it, in my approximate translation:

That’s how it was in the whole world until Avraham. He came, was commanded in circumcision, and prayed the morning prayer, Yitzchak set aside a tenth and added a prayer towards the end of the day, and Ya’akov added gid hanasheh and prayed the nighttime prayer. In Egypt, Amram was commanded in additionalmitzvot, until Moshe Rabbenu came and the Torah was completed at his hand.

Before we get to the multiple aggadic ideas, let’s consider why’s he doing this at all. These two chapters are about the Noahide laws, not Jewish law. Once he told us the seven Noahide laws in brief, he could have moved on to paragraph two, about the punishment that a Noahide incurs if he worships a power other than Hashem.

Why did we need—here, four chapters before the end of Mishneh Torah—to hear about when which practices were commanded or adopted? I hope our discussion of the various pieces helps us find our way to an answer.

The Patriarchs Prayed

Let’s start with the practice that comes up with each of the Avot, their instituting one of the three daily prayers. This is, first, a clearly aggadic idea, from Berachot 26b, where a baraita finds code words that point to each of the Avot having prayed a different prayer. Bereshit 19;27 tells us that the morning after Sodom was destroyed, Avraham arose early to the place where he “stood” before Hashem, and the verb “to stand” is used elsewhere in Scripture regarding Pinchas’ praying to Hashem; Yitzchak went out lasuach in the field in the late afternoon, a verb that elsewhere indicates prayer; and Ya’akov stops on his first night out of Be’er Sheva, the verb for which also can indicate prayer. They prayed at three junctures of the day and, the baraita assumes, set a model that we follow.

While even just the decision to mention that in Mishneh Torah would interest me for its use of aggadic sources in anhalachic context, here it’s even more noteworthy, because Rambam in Laws of Prayer 1;5 took the view of an opposingbaraita in Berachot, which says that Chazal set the number of prayers to correspond to communal sacrifices.

It’s not a contradiction—Rambam could say the Avot prayed these, and instructed their children to do so, but when Chazal instituted them, they set them up to reflect the sacrifices— but it does make clear that Rambam accepted this aggadic idea when he had no halachic need to. He had a different source for those prayers, and yet still included this. We’ll have to explain that as well.

What Else the Avot Added

Two of the other commandments Rambam mentions are explicit in the Torah, circumcision and not eating the gid ha-nasheh, although Rambam is remarkably precise in his formulation (as Kessef Mishneh notes). He says Avraham was commanded in circumcision, but for the others, including gid ha-nasheh, he credits the Avot themselves as the instigators of the practice (until Amram, who was commanded in more mitzvot, a claim we’ll need to discuss).

That means, by the way, that if Rambam here was laying out only how the commandments came to be, he need not have mentioned these, since they weren’t obligatory when they started. He  seems to me to imply that the Avot’s decisions impacted the history of commandments, that this was the contribution they made but it wasn’t the only way it could have gone, that , possibly, had they expressed their spiritual genius in other ways, the end-story of Torah and mitzvot might have been different as well.

That might be the answer as to why he mentioned this here. As he noted what Hashem told all people, he wanted it to be understood that that, too, did not have to be the end of their spiritual development, even without specific commandments from Hashem. People could have expanded and enriched their lives with religious practices, as the Avot did, especially since they don’t have a prohibition against adding to what they were told (that perhaps is part of the story of the famous censored Rambam about Jesus and Mohammed being prophets sent to bring the pagans to monotheism).

It’s perhaps not that clear, though, since Avraham only added prayer after he was commanded in circumcision. One could argue that only then did he come to know he was allowed to institute further religious practices, and that other Noahides never knew that.]

Who Tithed First?

We have two more pieces of this Rambam to work on. First, Rambam credits Yitzchak with being the first to set asidema’aser, a tenth of one’s produce. Ra’avad questioned this, since Bereshit 14;20 tells us that Avraham gave Malkitzedek a tenth of everything (either all his possessions, according to Rashi, or a tenth of what he had rescued from the four kings, according to Targum Yonatan and Radak’s father). Why does Rambam ignore Avraham’s tenth?

The question becomes even stronger when we notice that we have no verse that tells us that Yitzchak tithed. Bamidbar Rabbah Naso 12 notes the verse that says that Avraham gave a tenth, then adds that Yitzchak did as well, inferring that fromBereshit 26;12, where Yitzchak reaps a hundredfold. The Midrash notes that he could only have known that it was a hundred-fold if he measured the harvest, and the clearest halachic reason to measure a harvest is to give ma’aser [terumahis given by estimate, but ma’aser is supposed to be measured out exactly].

The problem with seeing that as Rambam’s source is that it says Avraham tithed as well. More, the Midrash is elucidatingMishlei 30;4, which wonders as to the name of a remarkable person and his son. In this Midrash, Avraham is remarkable because he tithes, as does his son, which makes it an odd source to use to say that Yitzchak was the first to tithe. (Mirkevet HaMishneh knew of a Pesikta, which I did not find, that said that Avraham gave terumah, and Yitzchak gave ma’aser sheni, the tithe that’s eaten in Yerushalayim).

Radvaz defended Rambam by pointing out that ma’aser, halachically, comes from produce, that which grows from the ground, while Avraham gave his tenth from the spoils of Sedom. Radvaz says that’s why Rambam reached instead for theaggadic reading of Yitzchak’s reaping a hundredfold. Kessef Mishneh added that Avraham’s tenth isn’t quite as clearlyma’aser, either, because it’s in response to Malkitzedeck’s bringing bread and wine to Avraham. It is an act of honor, respect, and thanks more than it is an act of tithing, which Yitzchak does first.

This is the end of the specific practices Rambam saw as having developed between the Noahide laws and those given to Moseh Rabbenu at Sinai—circumcision, prayer, tithing, and not eating the gid hanasheh.

There’s a sermon there, but it’s not our topic, so we’ll leave it. But it is a remarkable example of Rambam weaving aggadicmaterial into his halachic presentation with—I think—impact on how we are to understand his worldview.

Amram Was Commanded in Mitzvot?

By far the most puzzling piece of this paragraph, though, is his claim that Amram, Moshe’s father, was commanded in moremitzvot. I say that because both Radvaz and Kessef Mishneh say they don’t know what he means (Radvaz says he doesn’t know what mitzvot, and Kessef Mishneh says he doesn’t know where Rambam derived this).

Meshech Chochmah points us to Shemot Rabbah Shemot 3. The Midrash portrays Hashem as having decided to sound like Amram so as not to scare Moshe. When Moshe responds, Hashem says (Shemot 3;6) I am the God of your father, which the Midrash tells us means [literally, avicha, your father, is a lead-in to Avraham, Yitzchak, and Ya’akov, although there’s some agreement problem between plural and singular].

In the Midrash, Moshe then rejoices that his father had been included—and mentioned before—the Avot. Meshech Chochmah seems to be suggesting that Rambam understood this to mean that Amram was “with them” not only in the verse, but also in having received commandments [which might imply that for Hashem to “be” someone’s God, at least in terms of linking His Name with them, implies that Hashem commanded them, but that’s a different discussion].

What Mitzvot?

No Midrash tells us what Amram was commanded, leaving us to infer what those might have been. Maharatz Chayes suggested it was divorce and marriage, based on how Sotah 12a reconstructs how Miriam convinced Amram to remarry Yocheved, from which reunion Moshe was born [I don’t have room to recap that whole story; Rashi gives it to us in his commentary on Shemot 2;1, so you can find it there if the Gemara isn’t accessible].

As R. Yitzchak Ze’ev Soloveitchik notes, however [Griz, in his comments on Sotah that came up with a Bar-Ilan search], that nothing in that Gemara speaks of being commanded, but Rambam specifically does. He leaves it there, and so will we, unsure of what Amram was commanded.

But it is one more Rambam with surprising, striking, and stimulating use of material that is far from technically halachic. In this case, it reminds us of a whole spiritual history we might have thought became obsolete once Hashem gave the Torah, yet which Rambam finds worthy of inclusion in the Mishneh Torah. In addition to giving us a sense of a spiritual leader of the Jewish people whom we might not otherwise have known, Moshe’s father Amram

Avraham’s Hachnasat Orchim: The Important Part of Welcoming Guests

Avraham’s welcoming of guests stands out for many people today even more than his adamant propagation of monotheism (a characteristic of his we discussed previously). It’s interesting to me, therefore, that Rambam mentions it only once in theMishneh Torah, a bit buried at the end of Laws of Mourning 14;1-3 (which is towards the end of Mishneh Torah as a whole). 

More, Rambam’s version of helping guests takes a different approach to that act of kindness than we commonly express today. In laying out his view, finding the sources that led him to it (some of which are not purely halachic), and the way it differs for us today, I think we’ll find much of interest, including new insight into how Jews are supposed to perform kindnesses for others.

Rambam’s Picture

The last chapter of Laws of Mourning moves from the obligation to comfort the bereaved to “kindness obligations” more generally. He asserts a Rabbinic obligation to visit the sick, comfort the bereaved, attend funerals (and bury the deceased), assist brides in getting married, and accompany guests. These are all examples of kindnesses we perform with our bodies, with no set amounts for fulfillment.

Paragraph two singles out accompanying travelers whom we hosted on their way as more significant than the others. As Rambam tells us, this was a practice our forefather Avraham modeled, feeding wayfarers and accompanying them [that is explicit in the story of the three angels; Bereshit 18;16 tells us Avraham went with them to send them on their way. Here is a good point to note that “guests” means travelers, not neighbors with whom we enjoy socializing; there’s value in building social connections, but it seems to me erroneous to think of that kind of hosting as hachnassat orchim.  See also Rema Orach Chayyim 333;1, who seems to me to say that explicitly].

Rambam adds that welcoming guests is more vital than greeting the Divine, an idea he takes from a non-halachic statement inShabbat 127a. The Mishnah on which Rav Yehudah expresses this idea in the name of Rav came in the context of a Mishnah that makes exceptions in the rules of Shabbat to make room for guests—allowing us to move items we ordinarily may not touch on Shabbat. Rav said we can see that welcoming guests outweighs greeting the Divine because Avraham felt comfortable asking Hashem to wait while he attended to his guests [then Hashem apparently waited while Avraham prepared a meal, fed them, and accompanied them on their way].

Accompanying Even More Than Welcoming

That Gemara speaks only about welcoming, but Rambam adds that accompanying guests is more important, because whoever doesn’t accompany guests is like a murderer [for reasons we’ll have to consider]. The comparison of not accompanying to murder [also not an halachic statement] appears in Sotah 46b, where R. Yochanan says that in the name of R. Meir (the topic was why the Torah requires an act of atonement from the city closest to a corpse found murdered in a field).

Rambam still made a jump from what that Gemara says to saying that it’s more important than welcoming guests, since the latter was important enough to justify putting Hashem on hold. Migdal Oz, a commentary printed on the page of the standard Rambam, suggests that Rambam understood that accompanying was more important because Avraham asked permission towelcome the guests, but did not even ask when it came to seeing them off [that’s not a perfect answer, since the original permission might have included the entire mitzvah, including seeing them off, but it is the only answer I have seen as to how Rambam derived this idea].

Connecting Aggadah to Halachah

Perhaps a text earlier on that page in Sotah also showed Rambam the greater mitzvah content of accompanying guests. R. Meir held that members of a city can legally force each other to subsidize levayah, people who accompany guests or wayfarers on the road out of town. Rambam codifies that in paragraph three of this chapter, along with the information that courts would appoint messengers to do this. Rambam then repeats the idea that neglecting to accompany wayfarers is like committing murder [despite having just said it in the previous paragraph; seemingly superfluous repetitions are supposed to be attention-grabbers, signals that we should take not of what’s going on].

Scripture tells us Avraham welcomed guests and that he went with them on the start of their continued journey. Other halachicsources make clear that the seeing travelers on their way part of this kindness was very important. But it was non-halachicsources that enabled Rambam to say that these kindnesses outweighed greeting Hashem and that the end of the mitzvah, seeing them off, was more significant than the beginning, giving them food, drink, and lodging.

Why Don’t We?

To me, that makes this Rambam already worth careful consideration, since it’s another example of his inserting aggadicmaterial into his halachic presentation. Once we’re here, though, it seems worth noting how much his view differs from how we perform hachnassat orchim, focusing almost exclusively on providing food and lodging.

Some people do accompany guests out the door, or down the block, but Sotah speaks about going to the town limits or beyond. (Rambam, in 14;3 of Laws of Mourning, says even four amot is a great mitzvah—which he seems to have taken from anotheraggadic statement in Sotah, where R. Yehoshua b. Levi says that the four steps Par’oh walked with Avraham on his way was why he got to enslave the Jews for four hundred years). Why the discrepancy?

Be’er Sheva, by R. Yissachar Dov Eilenberg (ca. 1550- 1623, Poland and Moravia), noted that Semag and Semak (mid- to late 13^th century) included the rules of levayah, but from the Tur (early to mid-1300s) on, codifiers omitted the idea of accompanying guests. He wonders why.

Dangerous Roads

He suggested that roads were so dangerous, halachah could no longer obligate a host to risk heading on the road with his guest, at all. To show that halachah sometimes works this way, he points to the obligation to move to Israel. Tosafot to Ketubbot 110b, said that there is currently (meaning: 12^th century France) no such obligation, because the Torah does not obligate us to take on that level of danger. The same logic, Be’er Sheva argued, frees a host as well.

That claim raises several questions (none of which mean it’s wrong, only that it rests on assumptions that are not intuitive). First, were roads in 14^th-16^th century Europe (the Tur wrote his work in Spain, but grew up in Germany, while R. Eilenberg was in Eastern Europe) more dangerous than the time of the Gemara? Were they meaningfully more dangerous than for Semag and Semak (only about a half-century before the Tur)?

Grant for a moment the answer is yes, or that some similar argument is true, such as that Tur was the first to realize how dangerous the roads had gotten. It’s still surprising that that would exempt the host, since the whole mitzvah seems aimed at protecting the traveler). In contrast, settling the Land of Israel, I could imagine arguing, was never specifically about bearing danger, so that when it became dangerous, the obligation was suspended. For Be’er Sheva, we would need to know how much danger lets the host off the hook—and, in such cases, would he have said that if the man got killed, the city wouldn’t have to bring an eglah arufah?

I hope to offer another answer, but first let’s look at how the halachic expression of this mitzvah changed once accompanying guests was off the table.

How We Keep It Now

Shulchan Aruch mentions welcoming guests in two places in Choshen Mishpat. 163;1 talks about what the members of a city can force on their fellow citizens, and includes the requirement to host people and give them tzedakah (but doesn’t mention, asSotah did, accompanying them).

427;7-8 is about the obligation to avert dangers, expanding it from what the Torah discussed– building fences around roofs—to any danger. Sema, a commentary, cites Darkei Mosheh (Rema’s commentary on the Tur) 426, who refers us to Rambam’s mention of accompanying, an apparent revival of the idea.

Aruch HaShulchan mentions it as an obligation, and gives a different reason we no longer observe it—people travel in carriages, not alone, so they don’t need accompanying; he also says Rema gave a reason, that travelers forego the honor of being accompanied (which puts the issue in a different framework, how we are supposed to honor guests). Aruch HaShulchan’s view still fits the idea of danger, except that even carriages are vulnerable to robbers (as movies set in the wild West remind us—you needed someone riding shotgun, hence the phrase).

One possibility, more clear in Rema but perhaps which fits Aruch HaShulchan as well, is that the obligation was more a question of honor than danger (although Rambam clearly didn’t see it that way, since he stressed that not accompanying a guest was like committing murder).

Meeting Their Needs

If I may offer my own suggestion, I would go the other way than Be’er Sheva. I think it’s possible that travel picked up after the time of Semag and Semak, but that travelers’ needs changed. A traveler is limited in how much s/he can carry when travelling by foot, horse or even carriage, so that finding hosts to replenish supplies was a vital need. Halachah understood that the mitzvah was to help travelers with their needs; when the roads were dangerous, helping ensure safe travel was the most important aspect of the mitzvah. Once that was no longer true, provisioning was still a communally enforceable obligation.

It suggests that seeing guests off became obsolete at some point, for a host of reasons—routes were better marked, the level of danger dipped (it’s worth noting that nowhere is it clear how dangerous roads would have to be either for us to feel the need to accompany a guest and/or for us to exempt ourselves because it’s too dangerous. Putting numbers to that seems to me to be anhalachic desideratum).

My idea would mean that Avraham taught us—in verses and then in the aggadic passages Rambam incorporated—to help travelers in the ways they need. For much of human history, the most important of those was accompanying the traveler, setting him on the right path, and (perhaps) being there in case danger came. Over time, that morphed into an obligation to be sure the traveler had food and drink.

Today, when kosher food is generally accessible, that, too, has receded, although Chabad Houses in farflung locations would be doing classic hachnassat orchim. For the rest of us, a place to sleep and a home-cooked meal might be all we can do.  

In taking Avraham’s kindnesses seriously, as portrayed by non-halachic sources as well as halachic ones, Rambam shows us how to find our way to the best fulfillment of this example of kindness we do with our physical body.

The History of the Place of the Mizbeach, and Rambam’s View of Sacrifices

As the Jewish people return to Israel and rebuild Jewish life there, enthusiasts periodically raise the idea of restoring the sacrificial service, because halachah allows at least some sacrifices to be offered even if the Beit HaMikdash has not yet been rebuilt. For that, we would need to know the exact location of the mizbeach, the altar. It is in asserting the exactness of its placement that the Rambam makes the next comment that incorporates aggadic elements within the Mishneh Torah.

Hilchot Beit HaBechirah (Laws of the Select House) 2;1starts by declaring the place of the mizbeach “mechuvan be-yoter, very exact,” that it cannot be changed [that is one of the central reasons we cannot have sacrifice today], and then gives a series of events that happened there.

It was in the Mikdash, he tells us, that Yitzchak was bound to the altar for the Akedah. That’s a claim he can source to Tanach, since Hashem tells Avraham to go to Eretz HaMoriah, the land of Moriah, and Divrei Hayamim tells us that Shlomo built the Temple on Har HaMoriah, Mount Moriah. That verse says that that was the place where David had seen an angel stop a plague [for another time] and had then bought from Arnon (or, Aravnah, as Rambam calls him in the next halachah) the Yevusi.

A Place With Quite a History

Then, in 2;2, Rambam says that it is a masoret be-yad hakol, a tradition everyone knows, that the place where David and Shlomo built the altar (he is now more explicit that it’s the place of the altar itself, not the Mikdash as a whole, which explains why he waited to tell us all this until the second chapter of these laws) was also the site of several other important events. It was where Avraham built the altar to bind Yitzchak (that it was the exact place of the mizbeach has to be a tradition because the verses don’t prove that—Avraham is told to go to the land of Moriah, whereas this is Mount Moriah).

There, too, Noach built an altar when he left the Ark, Kayin and Hevel sacrificed on an altar [before any other discussion, we can note that Rambam assumes they used the same altar for their respective offerings], was where Adam offered a sacrifice when he was created, and from there he was created.

For that last claim, Rambam references a specific statement in Chazal, a Yerushalmi in Nazir that my Bar-Ilan found for me. Other than that, he does not tell us much that we need to try to find out: where he got these ideas (he says these traditions were “in the hands of everyone”), why he assumed they were authoritative, and why he finds this information vital to our understanding of the Temple and the altar. Let’s see what we can figure out.

Noach Built an Altar

Bereshit 8;20 tells us that Noach built an altar when he came out of the Ark, for burnt-offerings of some of the “pure” animals and birds. Bereshit Rabbah Noach 34 quotes R. Elazar b. Ya’akov that this was on the great mizbeach in Yerushalayim, where Adam offered his sacrifices (as we’ll discuss below). 

Rashi quotes an earlier part of that Midrash, that Noach understood which animals to offer from the fact that Hashem had told him to bring so many more of them onto the Ark (seven pairs as opposed to one). I think academics debate whether Rambam knew Rashi’s commentary (my memory is that years ago Professor Yeshayahu Maori showed me a draft of an article where he listed places Rambam seems to be reacting to Rashi’s commentaries, but later in his life). If he did, Rashi’s quoting it might have supported Rambam’s thinking it was authoritative.

Otherwise, it’s a bit of a puzzle, because Zevachim 108a uses Noach’s example to prove an halachah about ha’alat chutz, offering a sacrifice outside the Mikdash. Rashi there speaks of what Noach did as making an offering on a bamat yachid, an individual’s altar, which makes it seem like it’s not the one at the Mikdash (of course, it could be that it’s treated as a private altar because it was before the Temple was built, but it still does not refer to it in any way as being in the place of the Mikdash).

Kayin and Hevel Offered Sacrifices

However he resolved that, we can move on to the story of the respective offerings made by Kayin and Hevel. Kayin, the older brother, the farmer, brought some of his fruit as an offering to Hashem, and then Hevel also brought an offering, of the best of his sheep and their fats. Hashem accepts Hevel’s offering over Kayin’s, for reasons the text doesn’t make explicit.

After Hashem encourages Kayin to improve, he instead engages Hevel in conversation, which leads to a fight, and he kills him.Bereshit Rabbah Bereshit 22 wonders what Kayin and Hevel discussed just before Kayin committed this first murder. R. Yehoshua of Sichnin’s suggestion was that they they agreed to divide the world between them, but reached an impasse when it came to the place the Mikdash would be built. R. Yehoshua sources this in the verse’s referring to them as having been “ba-sadeh, in the field,” and then pointing out that the Beit HaMikdash is also referred to as a field.

From that Midrash, we do not yet know that they offered their sacrifices at the place of the future altar, only that it was ownership of that place that led to their fight. It’s Yalkut Shimoni Vayera 101 that says it (as far as my Bar-Ilan research found). The Midrash picks up on the fact that the Torah says that Avraham built “hamizbeach, the altar,” before the Akedah, which the Midrash takes as a reference to a pre-existing altar, where Noach offered sacrifices, and where Kayin and Hevel did.

Once the Midrash mentions Noach, it has sufficiently explained the definite article the verse used about the mizbeach. If the Midrash includes Kayin and Hevel anyway, it must have (Rambam seems to assume) meant it literally and historically.

We still no suggestion as to why this should be so; it may be an historical fact, but if it’s just coincidence, it’s not clear why the Midrashim would make sure to point it out. When we get to Adam harishon, the first man, I think we get the key to the whole picture.

Adam Sacrificed Where He Was Born

Yerushalmi Nazir 7;2 presents the tradition of R. Yehudah b. Pazi, that Hashem took a spatula’s worth of dirt from the place of the altar, and used it to create Adam, expressing the hope that by doing so, Adam would have staying power, would be able to survive and thrive. The Gemara then explains that the connection is inferred from the fact that Bereshit 2;7 says Adam was created from the dirt of the ground, and the same word, adamah, describes the altar in Shemot 20;21.

Bereshit Rabbah Bereshit 14;8 gives a possible explanation for why creating Adam from this place would give him lasting power. R. Berechyah and R. Chelbo say in the name of R. Shmuel bar Nachman that Adam was created “mimakom kapparato, from the place of his atonement.”

As we saw at the outset, Rambam includes that last comment in the Mishneh Torah. Why would Rambam accept these Midrashic sources as reflecting the history of this place.

It’s not enough to say that the Midrash asserted a view of history, because Rambam does not obviously accept all historical statements in the Gemara or Midrash as meant literally. Nor, even, does these texts’ citing of verses explain it fully, because he could have dismissed those as asmachta, as a Rabbinic way to attach a point they want to make to a piece of Scripture.

What Is the Temple For?

I don’t have any ironclad answer to that question, but I have a suggestion. The whole idea of a Temple (and sacrifice) presents problems for a thinker like Rambam, since it seems to say that some places in the world have “more” of Hashem’s Presence than others, seems to see value in offering sacrifices to Hashem, etc.

In Moreh Nevuchim, Rambam famously and controversially implies that the Temple was more for people than for Hashem. They needed a place completely dedicated to Hashem’s worship, and they needed some sacrifice; limiting it to one place was part of weaning them from it, is how Rambam sounds. I find that an unsatisfactory claim, especially since I am one of those who deny significant disparities between Mishneh Torah and the Moreh.

Buried in our Rambam here, I suggest, is an idea about Temple and sacrifice that runs counter to how most people imagine Rambam’s worldview. If Rambam truly accepts this history— there’s no reason for him to have included it here unless he believed it; it’s not like anyone would have noticed anything missing from a legal code if he left it out—it means the mizbeachwas put in a place that has recurring world-historical importance. It is where humanity started, where we’ve always gone for atonement (Adam) and for building a positive relationship with Hashem (Kayin and Hevel, Noah, Avraham).

It means Rambam might have seen an aspect to the Mikdash beyond that of sacrifice– sacrifice, the way everyone did it, had to be reined in and limited, as Rambam says in the Moreh. In addition (and this is an idea I can easily imagine him leaving out of the Moreh, since it is not the kind of idea rationalists would easily accept), the history of this place made it the ideal candidate for a location of most focused service of Hashem.

Sefer HaChinuch’s Reason for a Temple

Support for my theory comes from Sefer HaChinuch, Mitzvah 95, a long mitzvah where he struggles with why God would need a house. His first idea, based on Rambam in the Moreh, is that having one place where everything and everyone focuses on Hashem helps all of us do so as well, turns our thoughts and intent more effectively towards Hashem than in our usual lives.

That doesn’t solve the problem fully, because the Mikdash retains its sanctity even when there’s no structure there. To answer that, Sefer HaChinuch suggests that Hashem chose that as the place from which to bless people, whom He created from there, which I think alludes to the Midrash that we saw, that Adam was created from dirt from the place of the mizbeach.

Possibly, then, these Midrashim, our latest example of Rambam incorporating material he would not seem to have had to, show us a latent explanation for why the Beit HaMikdash was there: because Rambam understood it to be the place we humans got our start, the place we have always gone, sometimes to atone, but even more so to build our best relationship with Hashem.

The selection of Rambam we’re going to see this time is the one that first brought me to want to study these kinds of passages in the Mishneh Torah, where I sat back and said, “wow, why would Rambam include that ?” To appreciate it fully, let’s start with the Gemara, and then see what Rambam did with it.

Ya’akov Wants to Reveal the Eschatological Future

Pesachim 55b is discussing six actions of the people of Yericho, three of which the Sages protested and three of which they did not. Among the ones they did not protest was the way the Yericho-ites said Shema; in discussing that, the Gemara quotes a Baraita where R. Yehudah says that they did not say the words baruch shem kevod malchuto after the first verse of Shema.

The Gemara wonders why we do say it, and tells the following story (attributed to R. Shimon b. Lakish): in last week’sparsha, Bereshit 49;1, Ya’akov gathers his sons and says he’s going to tell them what’s going to happen in acharit hayamim, the end of days. The next verse, he again calls for them to gather and listen to him, then speaks to each of his sons about his future.

Maharsha explains it was that odd flow that hinted at the drama between the two verses. Ya’akov wanted to reveal ketz hayamin, the (Messianic and beyond) End of Days, but the Divine Presence left him. He worried that that was because one or more of his sons wasn’t worthy, had left true faith and service of God (the phrasing used is “perhaps my bed has some invalidity to it, like Avraham had Yishmael, and my father had Esav;” years ago, I heard Dr. Aviva Zornberg point out that Midrashim and Rashi see Ya’akov as repeatedly concerned about this issue, that it was both important and a source of worry to Ya’akov lest any of his children not make it to be part of the Jewish people).

The Genesis of Baruch Shem Kevod

His sons, to assuage him, say, “Shema, Yisrael, Hear O Israel (meaning their father, Yisrael), the Lord Our God, the Lord is One.” By which they meant, the Gemara clarifies, the same way you serve only one God, so too do we. He respondedbaruch shem kevod malchuto le-olam va’ed, Blessed is the Name of the Honor of His Kingdom forever.

When it came to establishing our practice of reciting Shema, the Sages could not see saying that phrase, since it doesn’t appear in the Torah, but also couldn’t see refraining from saying it, since Ya’akov had said it, so they instituted saying it in a whisper.

Maharsha was bothered by the pairing, since Ya’akov said it as a response to hearing his sons invoke Hashem’s Name, whereas Moshe Rabbenu said it as a verse in the Torah, part of teaching the Jewish people what they need to know. Since the two cases were different, Maharsha wonders why we could not have said it when we call to Hashem, as Ya’akov did, but not when we encounter Hashem’s Name in study, as Moshe Rabbenu did not.

His answer is that once the verses were included in the Torah, to loudly insert a break between them is a genai, inappropriate, so we say it in a whisper.

Making It About Monotheism

In Laws of Recitation of Shema 1;4, Rambam explains the whispered recitation of baruch shem as a masoret hi beyadeinu, a tradition we have, that when Ya’akov gathered his sons to his deathbed, he commanded them about belief in the One God and the path of God Avraham and Yitzchak had followed, and then asked them, is there perhaps one here who no longer adheres to that worldview, that no longer believes in the One God?

Let me pause to note that by calling it a masoret, a tradition, Rambam is saying that this is how we understand the history to have occurred—Resh Lakish wasn’t inferring something from verses that make a pedagogical point, he was relating a tradition about what happened before Ya’akov’s passing.

Rambam has also omitted the whole End of Days part of the story. Kessef Mishneh suggests that it wasn’t germane, that that exact reason he gathered them wasn’t important. He also mentions Sifrei’s comment on the verse “Shema Yisrael,” which says that Ya’akov gathered each of his sons individually, to check that none of them had complaints or issues with the Creator and faith. If Rambam was relying on that source as well, it would explain why he spoke of checking out their faith.

That helps explain why Rambam saw this story as worthy of inclusion in the Mishneh Torah, but not why he ignored the connection to revealing the advent of Mashiach.

Revealing the End of Days

I would suggest one more possibility, based on a different reading of “Ya’akov wanted to reveal.” We usually understand that as Ya’akov intended to tell his sons exactly what would happen to them in history, and that Hashem didn’t want that because it would take away the challenge of living out history successfully. But another way to read those words is that Ya’akov wanted to reveal to his sons how to achieve the End of Days; if so, strengthening their faith is exactly that way.

If Ya’akov was going to tell or show them something that would make it impossible for them to stray from faith, that too would a sort of “revealing the End of Days,” since it would show them how to get there in a way they could not but sign on to.

When the Divine Presence left—presumably because Hashem didn’t want that point made that clearly, Hashem wanted the Jewish people to stumble through history until they came to that level of faith on their own—Ya’akov worried. The nature of that worry, too, supports Rambam’s view, since he jumps to assume that the Divine Presence leaving was a sign of his sons’ lack of faith—if faith wasn’t the topic at hand, why would he assume that? If he planned to reveal the timing or nature of the Messianic era, it’s not clear why he should see the loss of Presence as a sign of lack of faith. But if the whole issue was faith, it works better.

Broadening Its Importance

Rambam diverges from the Gemara’s telling also in that he throws in that Ya’akov’s checking whether his sons still adhered to proper faith was similar to Moshe Rabbenu’s adjuring the Jews in Devarim 29;17, “lest there be among you a man or woman whose heart is turning away from Hashem, etc.”

Pesachim did not refer to this, so Rambam seems to be making a point of his own. It could be that this shows that a Jewish leader would likely be worried, or even was supposed to be worried, about such issues on his deathbed, and therefore adds credibility to the tradition that this was what Ya’akov did with his sons.

It might, it seems to me, also be a subtle suggestion that we all should think that way, that before any of us leave the world, we should do our best to ensure that those who follow us—children, students, friends, disciples– are solid in their faith in the One God.

Rambam says that we say it in a whisper, but does not include the reason the Gemara gives, balancing imitating Ya’akov Avinu with Moshe’s not having said it. He also does not include the common custom to say it out loud on Yom Kippur, since we’re like the angels (Hagahot Maimoniyot mentions that last one, perhaps because it was an originally Ashkenazic custom).

Aruch HaShulchan’s Version

Let’s close by looking at how Aruch HaShulchan recorded this. In Orach Chayyim 61;4, he offers the simple meaning of Shema, after noting that there were certainly more esoteric ones. He says that Rashi interpreted the verse to mean that Hashem Who is currently Elokeinu, our God (in the sense that we are the only ones who recognize Him, as it were), will one day be One, in the sense that all nations will recognize and accept Hashem as the Master of the Universe.

Aruch HaShulchan says is all we hope for, that Hashem’s Name be recognized and sanctified by all, which is why we add the phrase baruch Shem, that at that time the Name of the Honor of His Kingdom will be revealed to all, so we now, quietly, express our blessings of it.

It’s not yet universal because of our sins [by “our,” he could mean people in general, but he might mean Jews in particular; the latter option seems to be saying that if the Jewish people acted properly, not only would Mashiach come, but the whole world would be brought to recognition of Hashem]. On Yom Kippur, when we don’t have sins, we say it out loud, the atonement of the day making us able to speak openly about a world where everyone recognizes Hashem.

After that lengthy introduction, he links it to the Ya’akov/Moshe dichotomy, saying that Ya’akov could say it out loud because the Jews in his time were righteous (he says everyone was righteous, which can clearly only mean the Jews); Moshe did not say it out loud, though, since the people had committed the sin of the Golden Calf, and more. He then references Rambam’s reading, that “Shema Yisrael” was the sons calling out to their father Ya’akov.

I can’t be sure, but I think Aruch HaShulchan was trying to offer a reading that combined Rambam’s idea that the discussion was about faith in Hashem, bring it closer to the Gemara’s casting it as being about revealing the End of Days, and explain the whisper and the Yom Kippur custom. The missing piece, in his reading, was the equation of the End of Days with the time that baruch shem could be said out loud, since all would recognize Hashem, and that that coming depends on our managing to free ourselves from sin, as on Yom Kippur.

Aruch HaShulchan, I am suggesting, was implicitly clarifying what he understood Rambam to mean in his presentation of Pesachim.

One more example, then, of aggada becoming halachah. A story we could have imagined treating as “Bible school” material was instead understood as a longstanding tradition of the Jewish people, teaching us about how Ya’akov handled his deathbed (and, perhaps, how we should handle our own) as well as explaining the way we say Shema, and what we mean as we say it.

Last time, we had space to discuss Rambam’s reconstruction of how and when Avraham found his way to understanding Hashem’s role in the world. Once that happened, Rambam tells us in the section we’re reviewing this week, he began to argue with those around him (Rambam’s phrase is “made responses to… and litigated with them, to say they were not taking a true path”).

He broke their idols and vigorously spread his view that the only Being worthy of worship was Hashem, that they should destroy all the other forms they worshipped, so that others not make the mistake of following them. When he started winning—i.e., being convincing—the king wanted to kill him, but a miracle happened to him and he left for Charan.

The Gemara and the Furnace

That’s quite a mouthful about how Avraham handled his discovery. Rambam does not include the idea (which Rashi does) that Avraham convinced people of Hashem’s existence by first feeding them and then urging them to thank Hashem for their food. He does accept (Laws of Mourning 14;2) the assertion of R. Yehudah in the name of Rav (Shabbat 127a) that Avraham asked Hashem to wait while he welcomed the three angels (whom he thought were human guests), but does not connect that to bringing people closer to monotheistic faith.

In Rambam’s presentation, as far as I can tell, they were two different aspects of his character—he did great kindnesses for others and, separately, argued with them about their faith, showing them the error of their ways. When he was too successful, the king got involved, wanted to kill him, and he was saved, miraculously.

He doesn’t give us the details of that miracle—I don’t want to speculate, but the most obvious possibility is that it wasn’t vital to his presentation– but he seems to be making a clear reference to Eruvin 53a, where either Rav or Shmuel assume that Nimrod threw Avraham into a furnace, which is why he was also known as Amrafel.

Avraham and His Father’s Idols

Pesachim 118a also speaks of Nimrod throwing Avraham into a furnace, although neither Gemara tells us why. Bereshit Rabbah Noach 38 gives a fuller version of the story, that Terach was an idol-merchant, and once left Avraham in charge of the store. Avraham dissuaded the potential customers, and then smashed all the idols except the biggest one, into whose hand he placed a club (or shepherd’s crook).

He then told his father the idols had fought over a woman’s flour-offering, a story his father immediately rejected as ridiculous, because the idols don’t know anything. Avraham urges his father to pay attention to what he himself just said.

Terach takes Avraham to Nimrod [imagine being so dedicated to your idol that you’ll turn your son over to the authorities for going against that worship!]. Nimrod tries to force Avraham to worship, but Avraham shows him, too, the illogic in his worldview, by noting how each supposed power worthy of worship (fire, water, etc.) has some other superior physical power. Frustrated, Nimrod orders Avraham to worship his original god, fire; when Avraham refuses, he has him thrown in a furnace, only to watch him be saved.

A Jewish Obligation to Bring Others to Monotheism?

Rambam is clearly relying on these traditions, but not presenting them in any detail. In Laws of Alien Worship (or, in my continuing search for a better English phrasing of avodah zarah, Laws of Worshipping Any Power Other Than Hashem, but that’s a little long), he chose to stress that Avraham found his way to faith through long intellectual search (a reminder that truth isn’t always immediately obvious) and then worked to spread his discovery, not keep it to himself.

He did that through intellectual and logical argumentation, not—as Rashi has it on Bereshit 21;33, a verse Rambam quotes here as well—by doing kindnesses for them that led them to then accept his way of looking at the world.

To Each According to Their Abilities

In laying out Avraham’s modus operandi, Rambam uses a phrase Prof. Twersky z”l frequently stressed, that Avraham would explain his ideas to each listener kefi da’ato, according to his understanding, until he brought that person to the true way. Prof. Twersky pointed to it as evidence that Rambam was not some uber-intellectual, for whom only the elite could come to true service of God; all we need is that each of us come to service and understanding of Hashem kefi da’ato, to the extent possible.

In Rambam’s view, Avraham did this with and for tens of thousands of people, wrote books about it, and bequeathed this worldview to Yitzchak, who did much the same with his life. (As did Ya’akov, but we’ll get there next time).

Why is that relevant or useful as a lead-in to Laws of Worshipping Other Powers? My own answer is that Rambam thinks Avraham should be a model for us in this way as well, even if this is not a codified Torah obligation. He is implying, I believe, that all descendants of Father Abraham should do their part to bring those around them (Jewish and not, each to his or her own ability) to realize that Hashem is the only worthy target of worship.

(Prof. Aviezer Ravitzky once read this paragraph in Rambam as implying that the faith Avraham instilled in others faded over time, because it lacked law, which was what Moshe Rabbenu added; if he’s right, it would make sense that Rambam would encourage us to use Avraham’s path as well, only with the addition of bringing people to observance, not just faith. But also not just observance, since the point of the observance is that it supports and maintains the faith).

Avraham Was Saved from the Furnace

The other striking piece of Rambam’s incorporating the tradition about Avraham’s experiences in Ur Kasdim is that he does say Avraham was saved miraculously. I cannot think of a reason for him to mention this other than that he believed it really happened.

I stress that because I think some people today rely on their superficial knowledge that Rambam was a rationalist (as he certainly was) to allow themselves to think they need not believe in miracles that run counter to what science tells us. This is a counterexample, where Rambam wasn’t that much of a rationalist.

Ra’avad Wonders About Shem and Ever

In his second gloss to this paragraph, Ra’avad wonders about why Avraham would need to convince the people of Canaan not to worship idols, when Shem and Ever were there. He suggested that Shem and Ever objected to the idol worship they saw but that the people hid their idols from them. Avraham’s father sold idols.

Kessef Mishneh disagrees, for two reasons. First, Nimrod and the kingdom of Ur Kasdim worshipped publicly, and sold idols publicly, so the difference between Avraham and Shem and Ever can’t lie in Avraham’s having had some special access to the idols. His answer is that perhaps in Canaan, where Shem and Ever were, people didn’t worship publicly. (Avraham smashed idols in Ur Kasdim; another option, it seems to me, could have been that the different societies called for different strategies—idol-smashing wouldn’t have been as effective in Canaan, so Avraham took a different tack. But if so, why didn’t Shem and Ever?)

More, though, he thinks Shem and Ever only told their students (meaning, I think, those who came to study with them of their own volition), whereas Avraham brought monotheism to public attention, and did his best to bring unsuspecting others to a greater appreciation of this truth.

For Kessef Mishneh, that explains why Avraham is seen as so much greater than Shem and Ever—they knew a truth, adhered to it, shared it with those who wanted to know about it, and even set up an institution where that could happen. But Avraham told as many people as he could about it, made it his life’s mission to spread knowledge of Hashem as far and wide as he could.

And set up his son to do the same, who set up his son to do the same.

The Nature of Being a Prophet

The paragraph goes on to explain that when the Jews went to Egypt, all this was slowly lost. Except among the Levites, who never reverted to idol worship. This, too, is based on an aggadic section of the Gemara, Yoma 66b, that Rambam did not have to include (Rav Yehudah infers it from their answering Moshe’s call at the Golden Calf, when I could easily have imagined that the events of the Exodus and Giving of the Torah had reintroduced them to Hashem’s service).

I’m not questioning the Gemara, I’m pointing out that it’s not the only way one could have seen it, so Rambam wouldn’t have been forced to accept this as authoritative. Other Midrashim, for example, say that the tribes of Reuven and Shimon also never worshipped idols, but Rambam ignores that. This statement, though, he takes as representing the history of the tribe of Levi.

Getting back to Avraham, Moreh Nevuchim II;45 lists levels of prophecy. The lowest level is that Divine help will move a person to some great action, such as saving a community from evildoers, or to perform some other great good for others. That’s called ruach Hashem, the spirit of Hashem, and it came to people like Shaul when he heard of the threat Nachash had made to the people of Yavesh Gil’ad.

The next level is ruach hakodesh, Holy Spirit, where people speak very wisely (Rambam’s examples are David in Tehillim and Shlomo in Mishlei, so he means “speak in ways worth codifying in Tanach, just not in a prophetic experience”). Beyond that are experiences that are in some way obviously prophetic—dreams, visions, etc.

I thought of it in our context because the description of Avraham as being moved to argue with others about faith, to bring them to see the truth, at risk to his own life, being saved miraculously and then continuing to do so–a choice that the other great monotheists of his time did not make– seems to me to fit right in this first level of prophecy, the Divine spirit moving him to do that which others were not doing. And, in the process, becoming Avraham Avinu, an example to all of us, his descendants.

An example whose nature is fleshed out by aggadic material Rambam might well have ignored but chose instead to incorporate in his great legal work, Mishneh Torah.

Aggada Becomes Halachah: Avraham Finding Hashem and Spreading the Word

As I mentioned last time, this series examines places where Rambam lets Aggadah or Midrash—meaning, sections of Talmudic literature not obviously meant as prescriptive or focused on halachah—nonetheless shape his presentation of Torah law. Because I am not nearly the expert in Rambam I would wish, I found these by searching for the names of the Avot, the Patriarchs, in Rambam’s Mishneh Torah. There might be many more examples than we’ll have a chance to see, but these are the ones I found.

One more brief reminder: Rambam started his Introduction to Chelek (well worth reading, if you have a chance; it’s the first place he lays out his Principles of Faith, and much more) by decrying both those who read Chazal literally and believe they meant it that way as well as those who read Chazal literally and therefore dismissed their views. He thought we were instead supposed to understand that Chazal sometimes spoke in metaphors and allegories, cloaking deep ideas in ways that only those ready for them would absorb.

(I have long been bothered by this idea, because it means that no one knows what Chazal meant; esotericism only works if there’s also an authoritative tradition of what the hints mean. Otherwise, everyone can be sure they know a different truth. For another time.)

Based on his view of Chazal’s words, I would have assumed that Rambam would treat many of the Midrashic stories about our Patriarchs as metaphors and allegories, yet he doesn’t, in ways that affect our halachic realities. Or so I aim to show by taking up some of those passages in Mishneh Torah.

Why I Call It Alien Worship, Not Idolatry

Rambam starts Laws of Alien Worship with what Prof. Twersky z”l called “A Brief History of Idolatry.” A digression for an apology. In writing that sentence, it’s clear that Prof. Twersky referred to avodah zarah as idolatry, as does almost everyone else, yet I have chosen not to.

I recognize the infelicity of my formulation, but do not yet have a better option; it started a couple of years ago, when it struck me that “idolatry” or “idol worship,” the usual ways of translating avodah zarah, misleads us into thinking the prohibition is only or primarily about worshipping physical objects as a representation, incarnation, or actualization of a god.

When, in fact, we are prohibited from worshipping anything other than Hashem, tangible or intangible, man-made or not. In addition, the Hebrew words avodah zarah say nothing about idols; they mean a strange, foreign, or alien worship. I chose alien, because strange or foreign seemed too narrow.

Worldwide Alien Worship Before Avraham

Rambam builds his history off several Talmudic or Midrashic claims; in doing so, he seems to “rule” that Jewish tradition assumes a certain version of how the history of human faith went. Whether or not we take it all as historical fact, Rambam seems to think this is how we should understand the genesis of our belief system. Let’s look at a few of his points.

In the second paragraph, where he lays out how false prophets led the world astray [an important theme in Rambam and Judaism, that false prophets can convince masses, even the majority; being convincing, then, is no guarantee of being right or truthful], he says that at one point, only individuals worshipped Hashem, like Chanoch, Metushelach, Shem, and Ever. That continued until Avraham was born, whom Rambam refers to as amudo shel olam, the pillar of the world.

That Chanoch worshipped Hashem is in the text of the Torah, and Metushelach isn’t a hard leap. But the reference to Shem and Ever seems to me based on the multiple comments in Chazal about their having a yeshiva, as it were, a place that those who believed in God could come and learn about what that means and how to act on it. We don’t know of many students, but Shem and Ever were clearly monotheists.

That means that he’s not claiming, as we often hear growing up, that Avraham founded or reintroduced monotheism. The Rabbinic sources Rambam chooses to accept as historically accurate tell us that that’s not true, that several monotheists were alive when Avraham was born (if you calculate from the listings of births and deaths in the Torah).

So what made Avraham special?

Avraham Finds His Way

Before we answer that, we should see Rambam’s portrayal of how he came to his monotheistic faith. In 1;3 of Laws of Alien Worship, Rambam writes that from the time that he was weaned, Avraham started thinking, day and night, about how the world kept spinning, certain it couldn’t be self-perpetuating, that there must be a force that gave it the energy to go [Not quite our topic, but Rambam here implicitly challenges modern scientists’ confidence that the laws of physics can explain the universe without resort to a God—what provides the energy that makes the world go? Rambam would have rejected the idea that the Big Bang supplied that energy, but even if it did, where did that come from?].

While thinking through these issues, Avraham was stuck in Ur Kasdim, among idolaters, worshipping with them (Rambam says) even as he searched for the truth. That’s an image that resonates with me, the idea that he was still doing that which he sensed was in error, even as he sought the truer path.

When he was forty, writes Rambam, he got there, realizing the world had to have a single Creator, Who keeps the universe going, and that there was no other power competitive with that Creator. The age of forty comes from a Rabbinic text Rambam incorporated where he didn’t have to.

Before we see that, I pause to point out that Rambam assumes a process of Avraham finding his way to belief in Hashem. It wasn’t like we learn it in elementary school, where over the course of a day he rejected the sun and moon as supreme powers and boom, monotheism. For Rambam, it took decades of intellectual wandering and struggle, from childhood to age forty.

Three or Forty?

Ra’avad glosses this paragraph twice; the first says that “there is an Aggadah that says it was three.” Brief comments lend themselves to multiple interpretations which may not have been the author’s intent, but in this case, I hear Ra’avad’s “there is an Aggadah” as saying, “this isn’t a big deal because it’s Aggadah, but if you care, I think tradition says Avraham was three.”

The simplest place to find that idea is Nedarim 32a, where R. Ami bar Abba notes that Hashem tells Yitzchak that various blessings will come to him and his descendants ekev that Avraham hearkened to Hashem. Ekev isn’t such a common word; the Torah’s decision to use that word told R. Ami bar Abba that it was meant also for its numerological value, 172; Avraham lived for 175 years, and ekev (172) of them, he was obeying Hashem. Meaning he found Hashem when he was three.

When the Age of Torah Began

That doesn’t fit another Talmudic text (let alone that we have to believe that a three year old would come up with monotheism on his own), because Avodah Zarah 9a records Tanna de-bei Eliyahu as dividing world history into three two thousand year periods, the second of which is Torah. The two thousand years of Torah couldn’t have started at Sinai, since it hadn’t been that long from Sinai to then.

Instead, the Gemara says it was the moment the Torah describes at the beginning of Lech Lecha, when Avraham and Sarah leave Charan, and take with them “the souls they made” there. Apparently, the two thousand years of Torah started with the spread of Torah ideas, not Avraham and Sarah’s adhering to Torah ideas (that could be one difference between Avraham and earlier monotheists, as we’ll discuss).

The Gemara says he was fifty-two when that happened. That, too, raises problems, as Tosafot note there: The verse just before this one says explicitly that Avraham was seventy-five when he left Charan, so how does the Gemara say he was fifty-two? Tosafot answers that Avraham left Charan twice, a tradition bolstered by the view that he was seventy at theBerit bein HaBetarim (that’s to resolve yet another complication of reconciling verses, one of which says that the Jews were in Egypt for 430 years, when Hashem told Avraham his descendants would live in a land that wasn’t theirs for 400 years, as Rashi points out several times in his commentary on the Torah).

Avraham could have left Charan at 52, lived in Israel until at least seventy, and then gone back to Charan (for unknown reasons), only to leave again at 75, when Hashem told him. That suggests a great deal about the course of Avraham’s life and spiritual development; in addition, it reads the beginning of Lech Lecha as switching within the space of a verse between Avraham’s two leavings of Charan. But we’ll leave that, too, for another time.

Avraham’s Religious Development

It does serve as background for a comment of Maharsha’s to Nedarim. He says that R. Ami bar Abba meant only that Avraham began to recognize his Creator at the age of three, but the age of Torah did not begin until he was fifty-two, when he had already begun bringing others to recognize Hashem.

Maharsha had clearly read our Rambam, although he doesn’t reference it, and may not have read it as I am suggesting Rambam intended it. He does show us two Talmudic sources that would help Rambam place the beginning of Avraham’s search at a young age and continue on to a fuller realization.

Rambam’s “weaned” might have been his reading of three years old in the Gemara; even if physical weaning happens at a younger age, Rambam might have meant it as intellectual weaning, when he started to think on his own, but at a very young age. By age forty, his worldview crystallized into monotheism and all its ramifications.

Maharsha could be adding that between forty and fifty-two, Avraham (and Sarah, who was ten years younger than him, but presumably learned from her husband) began gathering adherents to this view of the world (as we’ll discuss next time), whom they took with them when they left for Charan.

Forty or Forty-Eight?

Where did that closing age come from? Bereshit Rabbah Toledot 64, where R. Yochanan and R. Chanina agree that Avraham was forty-eight when he recognized his Creator, and Resh Lakish says he was three, citing the same verse as R. Ami bar Abba does in Nedarim. As Kessef Mishneh points out, Rambam’s version of the Midrash apparently had the number forty, not forty-eight.

Avraham’s Journey as a Paradigm

There’s too much more in that paragraph of Rambam to deal with here, so we’ll leave it for next time. Already, though, Rambam has shown us his acceptance of passages in Gemara (and of Midrash Rabbah) that we could have imagined treating purely allegorically.

Stubborn readers might argue that he really meant it allegorically, that the point of sharing this version of Avraham’s life story was to make a point to us about the need to delve deeply into belief in God, to realize that it takes the greatest of us years and years to get there, and to therefore see what a delicate and pressing task it is to cultivate full and proper faith in our Creator.

All of which I think is true. Is why, as far as I can tell, Rambam included this material in an halachic work. He was ruling that carrying this story with us is part of being full Jews, accepting that we descend (biologically and, we can hope and strive, intellectually and in terms of our characters) from a man who lived this process to come to his understanding of fundamental truths of the world.

Another example of Aggada that Rambam accepted and incorporated in his picture of the world.