The commandments were designed to help people become more natural, in the sense of being more balanced and whole. But if nature, which is universal, reflects the Torah, why isn’t the Torah universal? Why was it given only to Jews?
When God revealed himself to Israel on Mount Sinai, He began with a personal introduction: “I am the Lord your God who took you out of the Land of Egypt” (Exod. 20:2). God introduces Himself, so to speak, with a fragment of autobiography, the part that is most relevant to His encounter with the Jewish people: their liberation from slavery. A moment before He asks for Israel’s absolute allegiance, God states the historical drama that created that obligation. God saved Israel, and from this flows the exclusivity that He demands from Israel. The early national history of Israel was marked by the liberation from Egypt, the drama of wandering in the desert, and the miraculous military victories that Israel won upon entering the promised land. This history is the source of God’s authority, but it is also a principal source of religious inspiration for the Jewish people.
The Rambam proposes an alternative source of authority. Instead of basing God’s authority on history, he bases it on nature. The perfect order of the cosmos bears witness to God’s perfection.
Substituting nature for history at the center of religious life has far-reaching consequences. One important implication is how we understand the uniqueness of the Jewish people. National history is necessarily particularistic. Every people has its own story. Basing religion on history emphasizes the distinctiveness of the religious group. Nature, on the other hand, is universal; it is blind to differences between religions and peoples. The sun shines on every nation. So when nature becomes the basis for religious authority, the boundaries between religions are inevitably blurred. Basing religion on nature weakens particularism and emphasizes common, universal themes. The God of nature is the God of all peoples.
Halevi, who grounded the Torah in history, emphasized not just the Jewish people’s difference from other nations but also their superiority. God chose the people of Israel from all the nations on the face of the earth because He found in them certain qualities that were absent from all the rest. According to Halevi, Israel has a special connection to the divine. All people can achieve philosophical perfection, but only Israel can reach the level of prophecy. The summit of religious life is blocked for other peoples and is attainable only by one nation, the Chosen People.
Many religions believe that God communicates with human beings by way of intermediaries. This was the function of the priests in Mesopotamian cultures, of the king in Egypt, and it is the role of the pope in Catholicism. Halevi also thought that God conducts a conversation with human beings, but for Halevi, the mediator is not a chosen individual but rather the Chosen People. Israel is a kingdom of priests with an open channel to God.
Did Maimonides believe that God communicates directly with non-Jews? Whereas Halevi saw prophecy as a special faculty that is distinct from ordinary wisdom, the Rambam considered prophecy a natural extension of wisdom. As we saw, Maimonides viewed prophecy as something that happens in a man who has successfully combined three types of perfection: perfection in moral qualities, intellect, and imagination. In such a person, intellect and imagination join forces to create the prophetic experience. Intellect is a universal quality that all people share; imagination, according to the Rambam, is a faculty that not only people but also that animals have. He thought of prophecy as resulting not from a choice by God to confer it on a particular person but rather from a human initiative to cultivate the forms of perfection that will bring him or her to prophecy. If so, then surely any person from any religion could become worthy of prophecy. If there is no fundamental obstacle, either conceptual or genetic, to non-Jews receiving prophecy, then one cannot insist that the Jewish people function as God’s exclusive channel for communication with humanity.
This would also imply that God’s providential concern is not devoted exclusively to Israel. For Maimonides, such divine concern is a consequence of our level of understanding and thirst for knowledge. But intellect and the yearning to know are human traits that transcend ethnic limitations. It follows that the criterion for providence is whether or not you are enlightened, not whether you are Jewish.
The Chosen People have no monopoly, then, either on prophecy or on providence. But they do have one big advantage: the mitzvot. As we have seen, the commandments of the Torah serve as a kind of personal training program that is designed to bring us closer to moral and intellectual perfection. When non-Jews fall short of the level of prophecy, this is not due to any innate incapacity on their part. The limitation is cultural. Just as someone who aspires to become a great athlete will need to follow the best possible training regime, so too, prophecy and providence are more available to Jews than to other people because they have the most successful educational program. The Torah is uniquely suited to lead to prophecy. The Rambam did not think Jews were inherently better that other people, but he did believe that the Torah was superior to any other body of spiritual teaching.
One of the fundamental differences between the Guide and the Mishneh Torah is their attitude toward non-Jews. Whereas the Guide does not distinguish between Jews and gentiles, the Mishneh Torah records many such distinctions throughout its fourteen books.1 Philosophy is blind to ethnic differences; halakhah, on the other hand, insists on them. Many of the laws of the Torah apply differently to Jews and non-Jews.
But the Rambam’s philosophy does not contradict halakhah. Generations of scholars and interpreters of the Guide argued that the Guide and the Mishneh Torah represent two very different spiritual sensibilities. However, the consensus among modern scholars is that the distance between these two works is not so great.2 (The bridge between the two books was built by the Rambam himself, who wove in philosophical ideas throughout his halakhic works.) Nevertheless, the place where the gap between halakhah and philosophy seems widest in Maimonides’s thought is around this question of the relationship to non-Jews. Despite his philosophical universalism, the Rambam is committed to a separatist halakhic tradition that treats Jews and non-Jews differently in significant ways. Should we assume, then, that the universalism of the Guide is qualified by the particularist halakhah of the Mishneh Torah?
I would argue that the Rambam’s commitment to the traditional halakhic system does not really undermine the egalitarianism of his philosophy. Maimonides created a unique space for universalism within his halakhic discourse. In a number of places in the Mishneh Torah, the Rambam concludes a halakhic discussion by summarizing the relevant legal obligations and then giving instructions to those who want to go beyond the strict halakhic requirements. Halakhah lays out the norms of religious behavior, but those who strive for spiritual excellence can choose to transcend the letter of the law. In these passages, Maimonides tended not to focus on voluntary stringencies that one might choose to adopt in halakhic observance. Instead, he often took a kind of meta-halakhic leap in the direction of universalism.
For example, the halakhah is replete with instructions about how an owner should treat his Jewish slave, namely, with kindness, concern, and sensitivity. There are so many rules institutionalizing this relationship that the sages said, “If you acquire a Jewish slave, it is as if you acquire a master for yourself.” However, the halakhah does not codify one’s obligations toward a non-Jewish slave. After detailing all of the rules that regulate the relationship with a Jewish slave, the Rambam had this to say about how to treat a slave who is not Jewish:
It is permissible to give a Canaanite slave hard work to do. Even though this is the law, saintliness and the ways of wisdom require that a man be merciful and pursue justice. Therefore one should not place a heavy yoke on a non-Jewish slave, and one should give him food and drink from whatever the master eats and drinks. The early sages would give their slaves whatever they themselves used to eat and drink and would take care of the food for their slaves and animals before they sat down to eat. As it says, Like the eyes of slaves toward their masters, and of maidservants toward their mistresses . . . (Ps. 123:2). Therefore, they should not be despised, either in deed or word. The Torah permitted us to take them as slaves, but not to humiliate them; one should not scream and yell at them, but rather speak gently and listen to their complaints. This is explicit in the praiseworthy ways of Job, who said, Did I ever brush aside the case of my servants, man or maid, when they made complaint against me? . . . Did not One form us both in the womb? (Job 31:13–15). (MT, Hilkhot Avadim, 12:8)
Here, Maimonides is not satisfied with the particularist halakhah that only regulates how owners should behave toward slaves from their own community. He insists that “saintliness and the ways of wisdom” require us to go beyond the halakhic norms and to act with compassion toward all. The morally excellent individual is not the one who is extra strict about particularistic obligations to his own people, but rather one who seeks to go beyond them and embrace a universal commitment to all people. It is interesting to note that the Rambam bases this universalistic ethics on a biblical verse that stresses the shared nature of humanity: “Did not One form us both in the womb?” The God of nature, creator of the world, is the God of the non-Jewish Job just as He is the God of Israel. Nature is indifferent to nationality; treating nature as a source of authority implies a blindness to ethnic differences. A Jew who lives according to halakhah is required to love the whole halakhic community; however, a Jew who is guided by an understanding of nature is enjoined to love all human beings, since all were created in the image of God.
Maimonides did not change halakhah in order to make it more universal. Instead, he created a non-halakhic space of moral excellence where a universal ethic could flourish. This type of excellence builds on the normal feelings of solidarity that people have toward others from their ethnic group and channels these emotions toward the rest of humanity. By creating this special moral space, the universalist philosopher of the Guide inserted himself into the halakhic discussion of the Mishneh Torah.
At the beginning of this section I pointed out that one of the key differences between halakhah and philosophy is that halakhah expresses the religious norm, whereas philosophy articulates the aspiration to religious excellence. In the parable of the king in his palace, the Rambam places experts in halakhah outside the king’s palace, whereas the philosophers are inside.
Separating spiritual excellence from halakhah has far-reaching implications. So long as it is inextricably connected to halakhic observance, religious excellence is only accessible to Jews. Freeing it from halakhah implies a democratization of the highest reaches of religious achievement.
In the Mishneh Torah the Rambam is explicit about the universal nature of spiritual excellence. At the end of the section about the laws of the sabbatical year and Jubilee, he writes about the special political and economic status of the tribe of Levi. The members of this tribe were not required to work for a living or to go to war. They were exempt them from these obligations so that they could devote themselves to philosophical study. They were free of the day-to-day struggle of life in order to inquire into the meaning of life. At the end of this passage, the Rambam comments:
Not just the Tribe of Levi, but any person in the world whose spirit moves him and who wishes, on his own initiative, to stand before God and serve Him by striving to know Him, and who follows the straight path, and removes from his neck the yoke of the manifold calculations that most men are involved with—he becomes sanctified as holy of holies. God is his portion and his inheritance forever. He will merit to receive whatever he needs in this life, just as the priests and Levites did. As David said, God, you are my inheritance and my cup; you support my way (Ps. 16:5). (MT, Hilkhot Shmitah v’Yovel, 13:13)
The members of the tribe of Levi become a metaphor for all people who choose to devote themselves to a life of study and contemplation and the pursuit of truth. Levi is a symbol for all those who aspire to reach the summit of human existence. In this surprising passage, the Rambam affirms that his ideal of religious excellence is accessible to all people regardless of their ethnic group. Moreover, he adds a new metaphor, the idea of the “holy of holies,” the most special and distinctive space in the Jewish universe. The Holy of Holies may never be entered, except by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year. The Rambam takes a symbol for the most rarified religious reality and applies it to something that is universally accessible. The metaphor signals the democratization of his version of religious excellence and an access to high levels of spiritual achievement for anyone willing to strive for them.
The Guide implies that the peaks of religious experience are open to all people. In the Mishneh Torah, this is not just obliquely implied; it is stated explicitly. Still, our original question remains: although truth is universal, the path that leads to it—the Torah—is particular. Did the Rambam believe that there are roads to the truth that do not follow the way of halakhah? When he opened up the Holy of Holies of philosophical perfection to all-comers, was he conceding that Judaism has no monopoly on pathways to truth?
The Mishneh Torah hints at the radical answer to this question. One of the ways in which halakhah influences human personality is by training us to have refined personality traits. The Torah itself embodies perfect balance, and its intensive training program allows us to internalize this balance. The role model that the Rambam chose to exemplify this path is Abraham: “The one who follows this way brings goodness and blessing on himself, as it says, in order that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what He has promised him (Gen. 18:19)” (Hilkhot Shmitah v’Yovel, 13:11). This is a surprising choice, because Abraham, according to the Rambam, did not have the Torah. The Rambam did not go along with the talmudic rabbis’ project of recasting Abraham as an observant Jew who kept all the commandments. The Rambam’s Abraham had just eight mitzvot: the Seven Noachide Laws plus circumcision.
Abraham, then, is the archetype of one who was able to actualize the goal that the Torah and mitzvot direct us toward, but without the mitzvot themselves. How was Abraham able to develop a perfectly balanced personality without the mitzvot to guide him? Maimonides does not tell us. However, the choice of Abraham as a model for spiritual greatness without the Torah strongly hints at the Rambam’s real view: that the path to religious excellence does not depend on keeping halakhah, as he writes at the end of the Hilkhot Shmitah v’Yovel, but rather that it is open to all.
The figure of Abraham recurs throughout the Rambam’s writings. We saw earlier how the Rambam uses Abraham’s story to reinforce the importance and prestige of halakhah. Abraham’s attempt to preserve philosophical truth within a non-halakhic community ultimately failed. Nevertheless, the Rambam’s depiction of Abraham also assumes that for certain people, at least some of the time, the truth can appear (and also disappear) even without the benefit of halakhah. The Rambam acknowledged that great spirits who are not Jewish can reach perfection and touch the truth.
Halakhah alone cannot bring a person into the king’s palace. It can, however, take him up to the entrance, where he can decide whether or not to step over the threshold. The Rambam seems to have thought that the likelihood of non-Jews reaching perfection without halakhah is not high, and moreover, if they reached it they would be unlikely to maintain that level for long. Nevertheless, he believed that it was possible. In this sense, the universalist philosophy of the Guide triumphed over the halakhic particularism of the Mishneh Torah.