Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb - Jewish Philosophy: Maimonides Writings

okay talking about Maimonides what I propose to do in this hour over the next few weeks is to go through as much of my manatees laws of Cuba as possible surely sometimes translated as repentance but that's not a wrong translation as we will see this is preparation for rosh hashanah Yom Kippur is the way we repair mistakes that have been made and we are going to look at his texts in translation I will go through it piece by piece today I'd like to start with an introduction to whom my monetise was what kind of scholar he was what kind of thinker he was what his place was in Jewish history she was thought and then tomorrow we'll start with the actual text I remember when I was in high school about 103 years ago they had a list of 12 people in the history of the world each of whom knew everything there was to know in his culture like Aristotle my monitor is one of the twelve he lived in Spain and then in Egypt he had visited her to throw and he mastered everything in medieval Arabic culture including their works on their own works on philosophy and the translations of Aristotle and Plato into Arabic which were plentiful at that time and history and other religions and whatever there was to mathematics astronomy whatever there was to know he knew now when a secular story and says that for him that's a whole universe but he hasn't got a clue what it means to master all of the Jewish information honorees was a consummate master of all the Jewish information that was available at his time not only did he know it all but he understood it in an extremely profound way and he had an extremely original revolutionary way of dealing with it my mana tease was the first Jewish author to create a code of Jewish law before that there were no codes of law simply instructions this is what you should do the mission is not a code of law in that sense the Talmud is certainly not a code of law in that sense go on him did not produce codes of law it was the first one to produce a code and in fact it was very controversial many people opposed it he simply said this is what the Torah wants you to do he didn't give any sources he didn't give any proofs he simply codified laws he reorganized all of Jewish law into 14 categories and the categories were broken down into separate books of separate subjects and then into separate paragraphs of individual laws organization is entirely his own there's nothing like that organization in the Talmud or the Midrash or any earlier Jewish sources not only that but he included not only the practical laws the laws that people were actually practicing in the 11th century but all the laws that will be practiced at the time of the Messiah that was the principle by which the Mishneh Torah was written which means all the laws are sacrifices the temple the Land of Israel agricultural laws laws of purity which were not practiced and which prior commentators tended to skip or deal with lightly because they were practically applicable I manatees took responsibility for the entire corpus now before you wrote the mission of Torah he wrote a commentary in the missionary commentary the Mishnah is very extensive it was written in arabic those who wrote Jewish works Toro works in Arabic were writing for a population who would find reading in Hebrew difficult and whose knowledge of Jewish sources and Jewish background was sparse and therefore in the commentary the mission he concludes systematic introductions to various topics which he assumes the reader may not be familiar with he also includes some material from philosophical sources I'll talk to you a minute about what that means what the significance that has so that if you are looking in the next tutorial which is the law of code and you want some information as to where he might have sourced the laws that he put to the law code you could go back to the commentary of the mission and see how he treated the machining sources there you may find some argumentation with some statement of preference which indicates how we arrived at the conclusion that he wrote in the mission of Torah but that's only a minority of the cases because the conclusions are not based on the mission that based on the Talmud Talmud postdates the Mishnah the Babylonian topic was redacted 350 years after the mission of was created that's where the sources for the laws are and there he doesn't it doesn't quote them it doesn't reference them he just simply tells you what the laws i created an industry of people taking my manatees laws going back through the tom unit corpus and trying to figure out what sources he had why chose one source or another source in order to be able to arrive at his opinion okay let me just stick in at this point a little quiz on logic suppose we discover a contradiction between a law and my mind at ease corpus on the one hand and a statement the talmud on the other hand who wins so you're absolutely right my mother's wins why why would my mind at ease with came 2,700 ears BF to the top he took his position knowing what is written in the talmud so he had some reason for taking his position in spite of the contradiction between what he said and this particular statement in the top for example maybe there are other places in the problem but say differently or maybe when you think it's a contradiction you don't know how he understood the statement in the Talmud or maybe he had a different text at the top of the the text of the Talmud underwent variations there were mistakes made by copyists at all times there were lists of mistakes that people knew about changes that were made in our Talbot there are at least three separate commentaries on every page talking about where there are difficulties in the text where the text has to be amended often cement that on the basis of other manuscripts sometimes meant that on the basis of logic happened there all stages of Jewish development except for the Torah which is dictated by guy but all human human bodies when they were transmitted mistakes were made sometimes in the talmud when they're quoting a Mishnah the response of a scholar is that missioner was communicated in a confused to action we're not getting the original text because what you're presenting to me is so illogical that it can't be the original text me chef Ashley it's confused the transmission was confused and you're not getting the original text so that happened at all times so that's why we say my monitor is moving entire Talmud if he made his statement in spite of this sentence that you see here at this piece of Talmud then he took that into account and took his position anyway so there's a contradiction the later source always wins that's all I gamarra it's not permission right the mission is worse because that the Talmudic sages often rejected the missional also the mission is not binding then this is not binding I'm sorry saying it supposed to be oral that mark that would have nothing to do why it's binding whether they put pen to parchment or whether you recited orally the words of the same words the preposition same proposition logic is the same logic but the the samuel de sages had the right to reject the mission and they did on many occasions they rejected the mission and they decide against the mission what you may be referring to is a slightly different proposition there is the entire corpus of literature prior to and including the Mishnah which includes much more than the mission and the question is whether latest scholar can go against that entire corpus not just a particular book called the mission the mission is selection out of a much larger corpus of information just go against some of the oral law well okay now it's interesting since we've gotten onto this let me let me just particular lady the principles down any later generation can challenge any previous generation and eat later generation can challenge any previous generation there's no such thing as they said it a thousand years ago so it's binding the phrase of atomic uses is aimed ladai indella marcia intervals the judge has only with his i see he only has with his eyes see now there is an impression created by some passages in the Talmud that immunity age can't reject the entire corpus of the received information up to and including the mission of that's called a tentative period there is such an impression kesef mission with Yosef karo says that's because there was a convention rabbis got together and they decided not to do that they chose voluntarily not to do that to guess of mr. Nichols mommy very gimel but it's only because they decided they didn't have to decide there's no principle of Jewish law that requires that every later generation can challenge anything in any previous generation with only one exception that's the final decision in the Babylonian tablet if the Babylonian Talmud says this is the law that's binding but only that Mishnah not which came before and all the later coats all the letter codes have their critics and disagree disagree with the decisions there's no any no other position of Jewish law earlier or later it has this binding nature why is the stated law of the Babylonian atomic binding for two reasons my manatees rights as introduction to the mission one is the tablet was circulated to all known Jewish communities that they all accepted it and the second was that the editors of the Babylonian Talmud raveena bashe had a certain scholarly quality hard to describe because the word he uses is a word which is unique does not use anywhere elsass not exactly easy to explain what he means bali I talk a lot taking Hebrew be something like copy faithfully but when you're dealing with concepts and principles and ideas and arguments faithful that it has to be with great intellectual grasp and they were the end of the people who had those qualities though those two reasons together is why if the tom wood settles a law that law is binding but nothing before nor since has that quality yes people are reluctant to take issue with the sages of early generations usually because of their statute I doubt if anyone in this room was taking a first year of physics and read a paper by Einstein and saw something would look very funny would say oh I found a mistake in Einstein he probably wouldn't do that you probably say listen you know nice family evolving genius it was time magazine's man of the century that's all and probably then there's something here that I didn't quite get but when you are yourself a recognized scholar and you learned what the prior say and you and you disagree you're always free to disagree and so throughout Jewish history down to the present day the goal of Vilna was famous for disagreeing with me evil with run Bob with tasteless with others there's no word no limitation whatsoever each generation has to decide in terms of the logic that it understands I'm learning I learned that I fill me with only in the dorm now and the Ron's the luminous commentary says I went through the rash bondhus and because I didn't understand his reason I say differently not because I didn't understand his reason so I have to have to submit myself to him because it's greater than I am no I didn't understand he didn't communicate with me he didn't convince me so I say differently I have to follow what I understand I couldn't understand him every mayor was viewed it to be one of the greatest of the tunnel that's a scholar up to it and including vision he was so good the Talmud says that if he would argue pro everybody would say oh yeah pro he would argue con everyone would say oh yeah con and he could play them with up like a pinball he could just push up on one side to the other and the Tama concludes therefore the law was not decided according to be mayor why because if you hear him arguing pro and you're convinced it must be pro and then you're my recon and you mr. buzzby con you know you don't get it you don't get him you're not grasping he can argue you either way you're not understanding his arguments get understanding his arguments then you can't use them if you can't use them in fact this himself out so you are free to decide against it that doesn't mean every time the canary can just can't decide back to your first first year physics student but those who are on the level of the top scholars of generation they go with what they can understand and then I bound by earlier judgments except for when the Babylonian Talmud says that it is has arrived at a legal decision that's fine but nothing else is binding so that's how it works Maimonides if it seemed like a competition traditional manatees and the thought would we follow my minor is because he knew that statement in the tongue and he said even so I'm taking another position then he had a reason for taking their position in general we follow the later the later authorities for that very reason because the later authority has in front of him all of the previous and in light of all of the previous takes the position that he does okay so that's something that maimonides did he organized the laws and laid them out and as I said all the laws even the ones that aren't applicable now but will be applicable times of the Messiah and that was a gigantic effort and I said there was opposition to the idea of just a book of laws but have all the derivations and arguments was controversial for a while my mother is one day hands down there are hundreds of different codes some comprehensive codes some codes on very narrowly fine subjects but the idea of having a handy co simply tells you what to do and something which became universal in Jewish literature a revolution that he himself made another thing that my monetise did this I heard from the Lewinsky Rebbe i was privileged to have a meal with him in Chicago a couple years ago in the winter traipsing through the snow and shabbos he asked a few of us who were there what was my minor his greatest contribution to the Torah the Jewish life did you wish thought and we suggested various things and he offered an idea which was very novel none of us thought of it when he explained it to us was very impressive he said my mana tease made the study of the basic beliefs of Judaism a central study you may know that in the sitter there are the 13 principles of faith someday we'll talk about what faith is it isn't it's over the top but there are 13 principles to take about maimonides commentary in the Mishnah before maimonides there was no such thing as a list of principles and a categorization and attempted to find them there was no such thing governments Kirby pointed out a lot of these days many Jews believed that God is a physical body Maimonides mentions that he classifies it others talked about it why do they believe that because the verses in the Torah if you take literally do talk about God's head and God shoulders and God the arms at God's legs cause eyes God's ears if you have a certain cast of mind which apparently was common in those times among simple people and today it's common among people who are simple will think of themselves very sophisticated that if it's physical it's real if not physical is not real they called materialists or physical lists it's not physical is not real so to them I have a book this book is received by my community has a book of truth it talks about a being called God if I'm going to relate to it as we that's where they do it is physical because otherwise to me it's just I real the fantasy by the way in ancient world we were accused of being atheists because we had no pictures of God no statues no pictures no statues no form then you're fully you're just fooling you they believe it in a being that has no physical form just a joke that's not serious I can't be serviced said the government's crabby today you will not find a Jew on the planet who thinks that God has a body that's been wiped out totally wiped out my manatees right data because he made the study of the principles a study he made it a matter of discussion a matter of Investigation and by doing that little by little it percolated through the people and he simply wiped that out fact that there are books that talk about the principles and what the principles mean and how they're buying to get everything else and monitors invented that as a subject and it has had a lasting effect on the on the Jewish people he also wrote a very famous book called the guide of the perplexed the guy that perplexed is a review of the philosophy that was in existence at his time he is he treats central questions like God's being embodied has 50 chapters where he takes all the vocabulary that implies being about it it shows how it should be understood so it doesn't carry that implication he talks about the nature of prophecy he talks about the reasons for the commandments 16 of the book is reasons for the commandments where he has reason for almost all of them a few he says I have not been able to discover the reasons for these are these Commandments he includes a description of the deepest levels of Jewish mysteries but as he says said she not allowed to publicize these things i'm going to write the mysteries in mystery and you'll penetrate my mystery or you won't penetrate my mystery and it sort of there you know I read that passage at least 2,000 times a night I don't get it ya gotta get outta get those mysteries it's a monumental work now it was written in Arabic again for people who had studied our philosophy and through Arabic translations Greek philosophy it was translated into Latin and had effect on Christianity in Europe Thomas Aquinas knew it and used a great deal of it it's a landmark work in philosophy generally now in the Mishnah atomic emission and in the mission of Torah itself and also in the inner guide he says the following thing I often quote ideas from other books Jewish scholars and Abdullah non Jewish scholars sometimes identify the authors and sometimes I don't the reason is this first of all if I identify an author the reader may have prejudices against him and he may reject what the author says just because it comes for that author and I don't want the principal I don't want the statement to be rejected just because the reader is prejudiced against the author qabalah sabes be home row accept the truth from whoever says it you shouldn't have prejudices like that number one and number two he says all of the material that I quote from other authors I verified myself I don't rely on then as authorities I don't believe it because so-and-so said so that's the opposite of prejudice it's the opposite but parallel prejudice prejudice means I don't believe it because he said so and this the opposite is to say I believe it because n so both of them are prejudiced I'm honored you said to get out for yourself I thought they live for myself when I write it I'm taking responsibility for it this is very important because since there are some overlaps between what maimonides wrote now my Aristotle wrote he will read in irresponsible authors that maimonides was in our civilian that is the furthest thing from the truth furthest thing from the truth number one he didn't recognize our stylist authority there's only one authority and that's the Jewish tradition the Tanakh the written Torah oral torah that's the only authority of my mother is recognized indeed several times in the guy he says I'm going to tell you what Aristotle said can i'll show you what's in the verses of the prophets and Dora I'll show you what's in the oral tradition so we can see what parts of Aristotle we can accept and what parts of Aristotle we have to reject he says that word for word I must tell you I had a very very pleasant discovery there is a encyclopedia online called the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy it is very very good they pick top people for each subject if you want to review of a philosophical subject of course is written for philosophers so sometimes there's technical terms but it's extremely well-organized and extremely well-researched and they have an article in maimonides and the author Lamanna T of the article is a is a recognized scholar in the academic world he's written books on my manatees he added to the cambridge companion to my mind at ease he's not Orthodox he's not worth it acts so thought to myself wow what is he going to say what is he going to say Kenneth C skin at Northwestern University I was overjoyed where he says my manatees was not in our city so somebody out there in the academic world is getting it I'm overjoyed to see that I got a book of his cuz I manatees on the creation of the world it's a very good book I'm doing everything in it but it's a very good book and here's the answer to the standard academic mistakes that that are typical and common it's also published by Cambridge University Press I mean he's a top top scholar so my manatees says explicitly the only authority I accept the authority of Torah and that being the case if someone preaches or Qaddafi's or asserts I measure it against our if it's tareq then it's then example doesn't fit Tori it doesn't it's not acceptable somebody might think of something I didn't think of that could happen but whether it's correct or not is not determined by who said it prejudices to say I reject it because so-and-so said it the opposite which is also bad is to say I accepted because someone says that had to be able to evaluate it on your own and the basis of the body of truth that you start with and of course not i start with the Torah as his body of truth now my mom needs attitude towards the Talmud is exactly the same way he accepts anything that is a Talmudic decision but not everything written in the Talmud is at a munich decision for example you may have heard the idea that our phase of history our phase of the world up to the coming of the Messiah will has a limit of six thousand years my minor is rejected say he rejects it explicitly it's a statement of the tablet and he rejects it says my manatees yes but it's a statement of an individual in the Talmud statement of an individual statement of individuals not binding when the Talmud says the magic word hilsa so he'll also means that's the law then it's binding the statement of a comedic opinion an individual comedic opinion is not buying and therefore he rejected it and the robber no followed him and rejecting it so much so that I could come a net ski who live the United States and died about ten years ago number fifteen years ago buddy told his students that if our face of history goes on beyond the year six thousand that's not a disproof of Judaism if you have two people like my monitors in a bar bunnell both of them say that six thousand not binding you cannot call the six thousand an article of faith in the Jewish Jewish religion the fact that one time you to sage said so does that mean that it's binding on later generations so my manatees will take the Talmud and use its own principles of what's binding and what is it to determine what he takes from the thamana what he doesn't yeah what if more than one person that holds the six x x 6000 years or if there's a bunch of people but it's not necessarily a Philco you'd have to know what what what the others held and very interesting that the Talbot often quotes an opinion and it says this opinion was held by the following string of people and it goes to improve that they all held this opinion right the general attitude towards such a statement is and therefore the law is not like that the list the list of the exceptions here are the exceptions all five of these are exceptions but all exceptions and the law is not like that so you have to know what the means there are hundreds of sages quoted in the dollar fact that you have five doesn't tell you much that's why if you don't if it doesn't say he'll throw suck and then then there's no way to say that it's binding you can have disagreements on how to handle it but a way to say that it's absolutely binding hi manatees does that in a number of a number of cases now yeah now there is a idea that was expressed by certain rabbi 1970s and it became very popular in certain circles and does the last thing I want to tell you today what is Jewish law cover what are subjects what are what is its extent in particular does Jewish law cover belief matters of philosophy abstract understanding or is Jewish law is simply what you have to do putting on tefillin the morning keeping kosher praying does Jewish law extend into the area of what's called philosophy about re Kaplan Kaiba no dress and it was published as an article and what she said there's no Jewish law about philosophy class topical issues no Jewish law no bindings ish and therefore everyone is free to take any position that he wants he cited three places where maimonides says in the commentary the Mishnah and in his book which goes to the six out of thirteen Commandments both early works of my mana tease where he says that I'm not going to settle this issue because it has no practical effect now these works are written in Arabic so we're at the mercy of stresses that exactly what it says exactly what it means and one place he says I don't have to in one place he says there is no decision nobody says I'm not going to decide it's hard to know because it's medieval philosophic Arabic so it's very hard to get clear on new nuances like that at any rate she quotes these places where manatee says this is it look I'm artists whose bigger than my minor ease my mind he says there are no decisions in areas where there's no practical effect I never everybody's free to believe what he feet what he pleases of emotion myzel Minh was a contemporary friend of mine teacher of mine put out a book two years ago your neph ago altura has Alan science 900 pages worth and he covers the vast vast round of issues relevant to science in general and he has a couple of chapters on this subject and he demonstrates that this position is incorrect first of all to out of the places which I Kaplan chose I manatee says no decision because it's not practical in the mission of Torah which came later he decided them he himself decided them so what could he have meant could he have met no decision because it's impossible no decision because there's no truth no decision because it's beyond our ability then how did he himself give answers in a later work how did he do that did he change his mind in the my resume see the essay on the resurrection which is where at the end of his life he quotes what he says in the pair i come to the mission and he says the mission of tour I reaffirms at the end of his life so apparently didn't change his mind so what did he mean furthermore there are statements in the tablet which are clearly statements of what you would call philosophy this world will last for six thousand years or not what I'm supposed to do about that put on tefillin on Fridays or not it keep kosher or not but how's that going to affect what i do now in fact what I do at all yet my manatees treated that statement of the Talmud as a matter that he had to deal with and he dealt with it in this way you deal with laws its majority against minority somehow I already opinion it doesn't bind me he didn't say it's philosophy I don't care what they said I can think whatever I want he didn't do that furthermore there are statements at the top of the field with clearly philosophical issues here's one the Talmud records debate between house ville house of Shammai was man's creation no acolo no hello and Hebrew was hard to translate pleasant appropriate successful valuable valid successful was man's creation good or not they debated it for two and a half years you can imagine which side took which position they still said that it was good they shall I said it was no good and after two and a half years base hillo caved in and said we give up your right now whatever this means whatever this means this is not you know how many minutes after sundown must I wait before shabbos is over and you know can I eat a milk left to me five hours later or six hours later there's not a practical matter so this is strictly philosophical matter what was it about well since the Torah says at the end of the breadth of the creation that God saw everything that he did it was very good it couldn't really be about whether or not the creation was good growth creation was good said so in the Torah know what they were discussing courtroom so cilantro but they're discussing was can we see that it's good or not we look at the Torah look at the tour once we look at people's lives can we see that people's lives are successful or can we not and as a matter of fact there's an investor there's a responsibility to investigate when we are told things in the tradition whether it's in the Torah or in the oral tradition there is a responsibility to investigate to see if we could understand it our own of course if we don't understand it that does mean isn't true question is we trust with the exercise our knowledge understanding try to understand another rope so that's what they tried to do in two for two and half years and in the end they decided they still caved in which they did very often in controversies between Hillel and Shammai how's the villain outs of Shammai very often they they sell changed their minds in the end and came to who they shall we the vast majority of the time few times by Xiaomi change that might the Boston fan base will change their minds and they said now that we can't see how to deal with it so a person should try to do the best that he can we can't see the the success that it carries so this is a case where the Talmud is it discussing a philosophical issue and conclude on the basis of a boat that this is what the what the what the horse yeah who said six thousand years initially like I always believed that was set in stone like who was the first person that said that they did not come from Sinai orally no it's a statement in the tablet the Talmud wasn't given at Sinai I thought the oral law was passed down in the oral law and the Talmud are not the same thing no there's there was an oral law that was given to Moses at Sinai that's true but there were many many additions later all the rabbinic laws which are part of the oral law were made later so how did they derive 6,000 how could someone initially come up with such a binding statement I could risk losing the faith like if they got to the Year 6010 like people who to started to panic in the wood having people that uh huh but that's not a reason not to state what you believe to be true if we adapted that kind of reasoning then you had you would have be justified questioning everything you read like will hide that from the public because if they hear that maybe under certain circumstances they're going to be their faith is going to be shaking it's over the song then you never know what it's true we don't play that game but we're today where could somebody have got 6,000 from from certain verses interpreted the way he interpreted emanate he says a day in God a thousand years as a day in God's sight there were six days of creation so in a thousand years corresponding to each of the six days of creation and it goes on like that and the truth is the capitalistic sources use this it vary greatly oh the Talmud doesn't directly quote Kabbalistic sources question of how much was common knowledge that time but my monitors and has a position that that's the SS since it's the state in the Talmud is recorded the statement of individual it's not binding not binding that's the way you so then it means that matters of philosophy also are up for the same methodology that you use to decide what's kosher what strafe how long shabbos is what you can do and holidays it's the same procedure after all as we said 25 minutes ago that's a joke I don't know where was 25 or 27 my mind it is instituted the book the study of fundamental principles of belief some of those fundamental principles of belief are matters that you could call broadly philosophical reward and Punishment reward and punishment doesn't determine what's kosher and what straight but it's a fundamental principle one of the things which if a Jew doesn't believe then there's something seriously amiss something seriously wrong isn't that philosophical so if we definitely have man Vince of belief how could it be that there's no discussion about how those Commandments should be implemented what they contain what they don't contain now they should be defined of course they contain of course they're they're defined so this is lie now in the lowest repentance I manatees discusses as chubhan as I said repents not quite the right translation laws of Cuba is essentially about how do you respond to mistakes that you made what do you do to repair but because it talks about mistakes and responsibility for mistakes he has a whole discussion of free will what is free will why is it important when the supply how do we answer challenges against free will as discussion of the world to come the word punishment what is the ultimate reward what is it like he has discussion of how one should serve God what is the ideal way to serve God ideal motivation psychologically to have her serving God servant got out of love serving God without the hope of reward though the reward is promised but that shouldn't be the motivation how that's possible psychologically all of this and more is included in the laws of children that we are going to study I've taken a translation from the net the Habad has a reasonably good translation I've changed it in certain ways I'm putting the changes in my own bracket so you'll see which witch is which and we'll discuss it I'm going to start with chapter two chapter two is more focused on the definition of juba and they will move both backwards and forwards from there to cover the text as best we can okay so we'll pick up tomorrow you