Rating: 4/5, good
Maimonides: A Guide for Today’s Perplexed is a very slim volume, only 127 pages long, and is an introduction to Maimonides’s epically long tome The Guide for the Perplexed which was originally written in 1190.
Maimonides’s main point seems to be that Jewish mono-theism is not simply believing in one God, but believing in a God that is incorporeal. The Bible contains a lot of anthropomorphisms of God (ex: God’s hand), but Maimonides argues that these are literary devices and that taking them literally is not only incorrect but amounts to idolatry because of the Bible’s prohibition on graven images.
This incorporeal God is not easy for humans to connect with, so Maimonides puts heavy stress on intellectual rigor. Although no one can understand the true nature of God, people can get close by studying the holy books and thinking critically about God.
Maimonides criticizes Jews and Jewish leaders who follow ritual uncritically. He says that without understanding the reasons for the rituals, the rituals are empty of meaning and will eventually become obsolete, leading to the slow disappearance of the Jewish religion.
I think Maimonides is trying to reconcile an abstract, rationalized, philosophical, scientific concept of God with a firm belief in the Torah and Jewish teachings.
I think he’s successful at counseling observant Jews to dive deeper into Torah study, but as a secular/ethnic Jew, I don’t understand why the specifically Jewish God or Judaism are important in a multicultural world. If we can see God as a disembodied creative force, why can’t he be for all people instead of just the Jewish people?
At such a low level of belief, this book doesn’t make a strong case to me personally for further study of ancient Jewish texts. I guess I could learn something new about ethics? But what could I learn about ethics that I couldn’t learn reading secular philosophers? Kenneth Seeskin asserts that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of Western morality. He implies that morality as we know it today couldn’t have come into existence without the specific influence of Judaism.
With that in mind, let’s review the Ten Commandments:
1 + 2: No idolatry. If you’re following Maimonides’s pure monotheistic interpretation of God, this means that you aren’t allowed to worship anything that is not the incorporeal God, so no worshipping statues, stars, the ocean, small local deities, prophets, or anything concrete. In Biblical times, idol worship lead to some nasty stuff, like animal and human sacrifice, but I still don’t understand why worshipping a God from another religion such as Shintoism or Greek mythology is wrong. It may not be the “true God” but if you ask me, it’s not conducive to world peace to tell other cultures that their religious practices are wrong (at least if they’re positive and not hurting anyone). Even if this rule is only for Jews, I don’t understand why Jews can’t worship other gods, at least as manifestations of the One True God.
3: Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. While this is a good thing, I don’t think this is something only the Jews could come up with. This could be interpreted to apply specifically to the Jewish God, or it could apply to a secular concept of God. Most peoples have some sort of reverence for whatever they perceive to be the creative force of the universe.
4: Keep the Sabbath. This has contributed a lot to human happiness, but I’m sure other peoples could have come up with the idea that everyone should rest one day a week. There’s another issue with that one in the modern day in that if everyone takes a day off on the same day, we might have some major issues (ex: if someone gets sick and needs a doctor). For this law to work, there needs to be other religions (and the people of those other religions/no religion have to be willing to work for religious people). In other words, “Idolatry is wrong (but we need idolaters).”
5: Honor your father and mother. This is fine, assuming you have a father and mother and that they aren’t abusive. This is also a social norm that exists in most cultures.
6: No killing. I think most societies agree that killing is bad…? In my (very limited) knowledge of history, killing is considered bad unless the people being killed are different from us, in which case killing them is considered acceptable (this is consistent with the anti-idolatry/anti-other sentiment of commandments 1 + 2 and the implications of a master-slave relationship with other races in commandment 4).
7: No adultery. Sure? Adultery hurts people? I think other peoples could come up with this.
8: No stealing. Yes. Stealing is bad.
9: No lying. Also bad.
10: Don’t be envious of what your neighbor has. It’s good to abstain from this because it leads to doing bad things, and also because it’s bad for your own mental health.
To my secular mind, all of these are either meaningless, exclusionary, or obvious.
And that’s why I really don’t go to temple. It’s not that I’m lazy (ok, maybe it’s a little bit that I’m lazy), but it’s also not compatible with my modern values, which can be summed up as:
- Treating myself, my fellow humans, animals, and Mother Earth with respect.
That’s it.
That’s my 1 commandment.
That includes all the negative commandments and the positive ones, but excludes the exclusionary commandments that don’t really apply to modern life.
I think religion is kind of like moral training wheels. It gives us support while we’re learning how to be good people, but at a certain point, once we’ve caught our balance and the training wheels are barely touching the ground when we ride, it makes sense to take them off. Now our morality is supported by a sophisticated legal system and a broad, secular code of ethics, so I personally don’t see the need for religion as a support for morality in today’s society.
However, I still feel a certain pressure to perform Judaism as a nod to ethnic heritage, though observing in this way is, admittedly, insincere. On the other hand, I can’t change my ethnicity, so I’ll never be able to say I’m not Jewish. For now, I guess, I rest in the awkward middle box of “secular Jew” – not fully Jewish or fully assimilated.
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